“Thanks a lot, Elmo.”
“Because you got a weak connection between your teeth and your head. You worry so much about what you should want, you lose track of what you really want. You’re a mixed-up animal, like a vegetarian dog. But that’s the way most people are, Jimmy.”
“Maybe my wants are small.”
“Maybe it pleasures you to think they’re small. Up in Georgia we had a school catalogue with the snap courses marked, so we wouldn’t have to put too big a strain on our football brains. I took a marked one in philosophy. Ethics it was called, a lecture course by a man named Hoosin. Now don’t bug your eyes at me like that, boy, it’s downright impolite. The lessons didn’t take hold on me. I listened good, but I thought it was a lot of crap. Those lessons didn’t jell until my time on the road gang, with Pete Nambo beating on me of an evening, whistling between his teeth and grunting when he wound up for a good one. I came up with my own ethic right about then. I want satisfaction, Jimmy. And I want to know when I’m having it, and keep track of what it costs. I want the most people possible saying ‘Here comes Elmo’ and ‘There goes Elmo.’ I want people anxious to make sure I’m comfortable. I want all the pretty things — like people writing down what I say, and motorcycle escorts, sirens, steaks, secretaries, dollar cigars, mahogany boats, clothes tailored to fit, my name in books, little girls fussing to pleasure me. To get it all, and keep it coming, I have to take the right-size bite at the right time.”
He leaned into the light and banged his fist on the desk with a force which startled Jimmy Wing. “I want the world knowing I’m here, and I want it excited about Elmo Bliss, and a little nervous wondering what comes next. Because I know what comes next for everybody, boy, and that’s a black hole in the ground, and of all the people who have lived and died in this world, maybe one tenth of one percent even got a name on top of the hole they’re in.”
He leaned back. After a long silence Jimmy said, “You’re uncomplicated in a complicated way, Elmo. How about good and evil?”
“I’ll keep doing enough good to make it no problem living with the bad, and let somebody else keep score. This is my time to be here, and I want the meat in my mouth and room to taste the juice. There’s getting to be so many people crowding the earth, it makes it easier.”
Jimmy was startled by the concept. “Easier?”
“Everybody fights hard to be ordinary and inconspicuous, just one of the group. Fifty years ago there were so many unusual fellas around, you had to be hell on wheels to get any attention at all. Nowadays the people of the world are so hungry for somebody different that a lot of half-bright men stand out. Watch the news. Every month or so some little pissant will get up on his hind legs and say something stupid and startling and find out he’s a public figure.”
“Maybe it isn’t that simple.”
“We’ll have a chance to find out, Jimmy. Right now I’m not running again. I don’t have to. I’ve got the county. Old Elihu is being eat up by the cancer; and the heart has gone out of Sam Engster, so when two new commissioners go on this fall, they’ll be the ones I put there, Brade Wellan and Willy Bry. In four years I’ve put a lock on this county nobody can shake off in a hurry, and I’ve made a lot of grateful friends in five other counties and in Tallahassee. I haven’t been either so greedy or so pure I’ve made the boys nervous. I built up and run a successful business. I’m a family man. I’ve worked hard for the party. I come over real good on television. I’ve been on the right side of the issues that have come up. Four years from now, when I’m ready to make my move, I’ll be forty-four. Now you tell me the size of the bite I’m thinking about.”
Jimmy Wing considered it carefully. The nape of his neck felt cool. “Senator?”
“Not my style, boy, but you’re moving in the right direction. I don’t want to try to get elected to a club where you wait twelve years before you’ve got any weight or voice. Governor, Jimmy. Governor of the Sunshine State.” He got up abruptly and went over to a cabinet, brought back a bottle and two glasses, poured drinks. “Twelve-dollar brandy, Jim. And right now we drink to setting up the machine that’s going to do it. Right now that machine is just you and me. And years from now, boy, we’ll both remember how we started it together.”
Jimmy Wing sipped the brandy. “Forgive me, Elmo, but... it seems a little fantastic.”
“With a whole four damn years to set it up?” He reached into a lower drawer of one of the desk pedestals, fumbled and came up with two fifty-dollar bills. He slapped them on the desk in front of Jimmy.
“And here’s the first investment in the campaign, Jim. Go ahead. Pick it up. Don’t look so worried. You’ll keep right on at the paper until things get so hot and heavy you’ll have to come over with me full-time. But I sure want you to have regular expense money for the little things you’ll be doing for me. It isn’t salary, Jim. It’s for expenses. I’ll be accounting for it, so you don’t have to worry about it. You’ll get that every week, and when you quit the paper, I’ll triple it. Pick it up, boy!”
“What will I be doing for you?”
“Gathering information. Writing speeches. Giving out news items. Sort of a public-relations job, I guess you’d call it, and eventually you’ll be a personal aide and press representative. You’ll be my Salinger. There won’t be anything you won’t know about, and you’ll be in on the strategy. You rate yourself too small, Jimmy. You’ve got a hell of a lot on the ball. It’s time you got stirred up.”
Jimmy picked the two bills up, put them in his wallet and noted a slight tremble in his hands. He hesitated as he started to return the wallet to his hip pocket. “Elmo, this isn’t buying you any immunity in the work I do for the paper.”
“If it did, Jimmy, I wouldn’t have any use for you.”
“I suppose the next question is, what do you want me to do first?”
Elmo poured two more shots of the fine brandy, took his glass and went over to the couch on the other side of the room. “I’ll have to have backing, of course. But I don’t want to go to Tallahassee as somebody’s hired hand. And that means coming up with some money, a good piece of clean money I haven’t got. I think three or four hundred thousand would do it just fine. And that means a capital gains. I’ve been hunting a good one for a year now. Once I’m out of office, I think those boys who’ve started this Palmland Development Company will let me buy in. Burt Lesser, Leroy Shannard, Buck Flake, Bill Gormin, Doc Aigan. I’ve got reason to believe those five old boys would each let loose of a piece of their piece in return for my personal note.”
Jimmy Wing had turned his chair around to face Bliss. Though he could feel the tension in the room, he kept his voice as casual as Elmo’s. “For those shares to be worth anything, the county commission would have to approve changing the bulkhead line. When anybody runs for governor, the opposition takes a good close look. Somebody could make quite a thing out of it, a man voting himself into a piece of money.”
“Now, I wouldn’t want to do a thing like that, Jimmy. Look at the record and you’ll find I was the one had most to do with getting that bulkhead line established in the first place. I believe in preservation of natural beauty. I believe in it so much that the record after the public hearing is going to show I voted against the Grassy Bay fill.”
“But you vote next to last.”
“Now, I would guess that DeRose Bassette and Horace Lander, being in favor of growth and progress and so on, would vote for it. Then Stan Dayson, being our only Republican right now, and against everything Horace and Stan are for, he’ll vote against it and so will I. Then it’ll be up to the chairman, Gus Makelder, to cast the deciding vote. So as long as it goes through in spite of my vote, I’d be a damn fool not to buy into it after my term is over, given the chance.”