“The Senator’s been shot, you dumb rube! Where’s the nearest hospital?”
He opened his eyes wide and pointed. Through the portals of the portico, the statehouse lights danced on the small, manmade Capitol Lake, and on just the other side of it, not a quarter of a mile away, the lights of a low-slung building winked on the black surface of the water, as well.
“Our Lady of the Lake,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s a hospital, ya dumb city slicker!”
I yanked his door open. “Help me with the Senator….”
The driver got out, leaving his motor running, and now he saw Huey leaning against the glass doors like a statue that lost its pedestal. “Jesus Christ…it’s Huey Long.”
“Help me with him!”
We drunk-walked him to the car, eased him into the backseat; Huey didn’t cry out or even moan-he was barely conscious. I sat back there with him as the car drove through the portico, made a U-turn and pulled around to head north on a street that hugged the wooded lakeside. The farmer had the old sedan floored, but top speed seemed to be about forty. The skyscraper Huey had built in this wilderness receded behind us; the motor thrummed in tune with the nocturnal drone of crickets. Between statehouse and hospital was a little bitty stretch of untamed Louisiana….
With both hands, Huey held on to the right side of his upper belly; he lay draped across the backseat, his head resting on my shoulder. I kept an arm around him, as if he were a big child I were comforting.
“We’re almost there,” I said. “Very close.”
“I wonder…”
His eyes were wild.
“What, Kingfish?”
“…I wonder why he hit me?”
He closed his eyes. I patted his shoulder gently as the lights of the sprawling three-story brick building that was Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium grew larger before us.
The beat-up sedan pulled under the brick canopy of the emergency entrance and jolted to a stop. I got out on my side and came around and opened Huey’s door. The driver was still behind the wheel.
“Give me some help, goddamnit!” I said.
“I helped you,” he said. “I brung you here.”
I half-dragged Huey out of the backseat-he was just awake enough to be cooperative-and was standing there with the Kingfish leaning his full weight against me when the driver said, “I didn’t even vote for the son of a bitch,” and peeled off in a cloud of gravel dust.
Shit! And here I thought Huey had the farm vote sewed up….
I lifted Huey gently up, on his back, onto a rolling metal stretcher-table that waited by the emergency room doors; he groaned, moaned, but did not cry out. He seemed semidelirious, muttering, “Why?” and “Why’d he shoot me?” and “I don’t understan’” and variations and combinations. All I could see on the suit coat was a quarter-size black powder burn surrounding a small bullet hole, and some flecks of blood. But his mouth bubbled bloody foam….
There was a bell to summon aid, and I rang it, rang it hard, and kept ringing, but nothing happened, so I kept ringing while I pounded my fist on the nearest of the double doors so hard the goddamn hinges started coming loose. Finally a ghostlike figure of a nun in her flowing white habit came rushing into view, and pushed open the doors.
“It’s the Senator, Sister,” I said.
Her pale pretty face was a cameo of concern as she went to the Kingfish, stretched out on the rolling table. “Oh, dear-what’s this?”
“He’s been shot.”
“Help me wheel him to the elevator.”
We pushed him through the doors and onto an elevator, which the Sister operated.
“What happened?” she asked. “Who shot Senator Long?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
I told her how he’d come stumbling down the stairs, and I’d commandeered a car to bring him here.
She was shaking her head. Then she said something that surprised me, something I’ll never forget: “This was bound to happen.”
We got off on the third floor; most of the lights were out in the hospital, it was after hours, but things were coming alive, nuns floating down the hallway like pelicans, and other medical personnel, nurses, interns, were starting to gather, as well. It all seemed unreal; the world whirled as we rolled the silent Kingfish down dark narrow hallways and finally toward, and through, the double doors labeled emergency operating room.
Suddenly the world was blinding white, as more ghosts gathered ’round the Kingfish and eased him from the metal stretcher onto a sheet-covered operating table. A white-garbed intern, with no surgical mask, a blond boy who looked impossibly young, approached with a scalpel; but all he did was start razoring off the Kingfish’s clothes.
Huey was conscious, but he wasn’t saying anything; he was staring at the ceiling with wide empty eyes. If his chest hadn’t been heaving, I’d have taken him for dead.
Another intern, a dark-haired boy, was swabbing out Huey’s mouth. “Little abrasion.” He turned to glance at me; I was keeping back, out of the way. “Did he hit himself against something?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he stumbled against a wall, coming down the stairwell….”
The blond intern was still cutting Huey’s coat open when a big dark curly-haired man with a cleft jaw burst in, sweating, breathing hard. I recognized him at once, and was relieved to see him.
“Dr. Vidrine!” the blond intern said. “We’re glad to see you, sir…the Senator’s been shot.”
“Ran all the way over here, from the capitol.” He was removing his coat, and a nurse was taking it. “My wife and I were attending the legislative session…. There was a bad shooting over there.” He walked to the prone Kingfish, still speaking to the intern. “Word was it involved Senator Long, and I thought maybe somebody might have had the presence of mind to bring him over here….”
“That gentleman did,” the dark-haired intern said, pointing.
I nodded. “Dr. Vidrine.”
He frowned at me. “Have we met?”
“I’ve been working as one of Huey’s bodyguards. I was in the Kingfish’s suite when you dropped by this afternoon.”
He was leaning over the Kingfish, but speaking to me. “I see. Did you witness this?”
“No,” I said, and told him briefly what little I knew.
“Your quick action probably saved this man’s life,” Vidrine said. He was looking at the Kingfish’s wound, a small bluish hole under the right nipple. “Huey?” the doctor asked gently. “Do you recognize me? It’s Arthur Vidrine.”
Huey nodded.
“Senator, we’re going to need to clean this wound.”
“Go…go ahead.”
“What happened here on your lip, Huey?”
“That’s where he hit me! Why’d he hit me, anyway?”
This seemed to upset Huey, and Vidrine let go of the topic. He turned to the nun who’d helped me bring Huey in. “Sister Michael, can you make some phone calls, at once?”
“Certainly.”
“Begin with Dr. Maes, in New Orleans. He’s the best surgeon in the state. Then call Dr. Lorio, here in Baton Rouge…he’s the Senator’s personal physician….” Huey raised his head. “Am I going to live, doc?”
His voice was as casual as if he were ordering a ham sandwich; but his eyes were wild.
“Huey, I feel certain everything will come out jus’ fine. Now, Sister….”
“Sister!”
It was Huey, crying out. Not in pain. Fear.
“Yes, Senator?”
“You won’t lie to me, Sister. How bad is it?”
“Gunshot cases are always serious,” she said softly. “It’s best to be prepared.”
“Would you pray for me, Sister?”
She took his hand. “We’ll pray together, Senator.”
“Sister…I’m a Baptist….”
The kindness of her smile was heartbreaking. “Just repeat after me, Senator…. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry…”
“Oh my God I am heartily sorry,” Huey muttered.
Vidrine stepped away from the surgical table as the Sister and Huey prayed. Another nurse, a pleasant-looking brunette who was not a nun, approached Vidrine and said that she would contact the doctors for him.