Those respondents who were polite would reply, Sorry, they knew nothing about the political race for judge, and declined—thanks-very-much—to take note of where and when the announcement would be made. Other news offices, less indulgent of stray information gatherers, professed no knowledge of Joe McCarthy and registered no curiosity about him.
At a few minutes after eleven, Joe peeked in at the half-filled room. The absence of press confirmed Mike’s gloomy forecasts. Still, notice had got out: There were a dozen bodies in the lounge who were neither friends nor family.
The candidate walked in, smiling. The early winter sun shone through the windows on a quiet audience. The family members did not know what was expected of them, so they sat silent. Only Miss Hawthorne applauded, joined listlessly by a few of Joe’s schoolmates.
Joe nodded to them all, the bow of the head slightly accentuated when acknowledging Jim Kelly of the Post.
He walked to the improvised lectern and read out a speech about the importance of law and of order and of a genuine, up-to-date knowledge by the judiciary of exactly how the world of 1938 worked. He was proud, he said, to have come from a rural background, to have gone into business for himself at the age of seventeen, to have worked his way at a relatively late age through high school, on through college and law school, and now to be launched on a legal career. The incumbent, Judge Werner, was a very nice gentleman, but the seasons come and the seasons go, and—Joe looked up—“little acorns take root,” and nature has to make way for youth and for change. When he finished he got a rousing hand from his family, something more perfunctory from his boyhood friends, and, of course, pursuant to protocol (the press is not expected to applaud a political speaker)—nothing from Jim Kelly.
Mike went to the lectern and said that the candidate was ready for questions from the press. Joe scanned the room with concentrated attention, left to right, as if everyone there were representing an organ of the media keen to flash back to his constituency news of Joe McCarthy’s candidacy.
Jim Kelly finally broke the silence. His tone of voice was tinged with the tedium of the professional doing his duty. “What gave you the idea of running for judge? You’ve only been out of law school a few years.”
“Well,” said Joe, straightening his tie, “I was impressed by the great initiative taken by President Roosevelt just two years ago when he spoke of doing something about U.S. justice. Now, I’m prepared to go along, but the president was wrong to try to pack the Supreme Court. Congress was right to turn him down, and the elections last month were pretty conclusive on that point. But,” Joe looked up, his expression grave, “I did think the president was right when he said that the country needs new and younger judges. The time comes when elderly judges have to say, ‘Well, let’s have younger people, maybe more energetic, maybe better informed about what’s going on, let’s let them make a contribution to their country.’ I have to agree with FDR on that one, Jim. Hope you agree.”
Kelly was suddenly awake, taking notice of this improbable candidate for judge who had so neatly handled the hot quarrel of the political season and apparently emerged with a position congenial to both sides, and, of course, to his own candidacy. President Roosevelt, impatient with a contrarian Supreme Court that had resisted some New Deal legislation, had proposed the previous summer a retirement program for elder judges. “He tried to pack the court” was how it was negatively described. He suffered a devastating rebuke when, in November, the voters had sent back to office the same senators—friends of the autonomy of the court—FDR had singled out for defeat. Now Joe McCarthy was having the best of the two positions. Rebuking Roosevelt for his court packing while endorsing Roosevelt’s championship of younger judges. Jim Kelly resolved to dig in with his questions.
“Judge Werner is only sixty-six years old; that hardly makes him a … rotting old-timer, does it, Joe?”
Joe smiled. “Correction, Jim. That’s seventy-two years old, not sixty-six.”
Kelly was startled. It had all been a part of local legend for a generation. Edgar Werner had decided to run for district attorney when only thirty-six years old. In order to deflect criticism of his youth, he had given out his birthdate as 1866, when in fact it was 1872. That was a very long time ago, and Judge Werner was now a local institution. At banquets commemorating his years of service he was often teased about his youthful imposture—adding six years to his actual date of birth. But no one took seriously the misstatement of 1916—the mis-statement of twenty-two years ago.
“Come on, Joe. You know he’s only sixty-six.”
Joe reached over to Mike. “Can I have the Martindale, Mike?”
His partner handed him the black-bound volume.
“This, Jim, is the Martindale-Hubbell directory. As you know, it is the official register giving the names and dates of birth of all U.S. lawyers. If you look there, Jim, under ‘Werner,’ you will read, ‘Born, 1866.’ This being 1938, that makes him seventy-two years old.”
Jim Kelly was astonished. “Joe, you gotta know that’s a mistake—”
“If it’s a mistake, why is it printed in the current volume of Martindale-Hubbell?”
Jim Kelly made a note on his pad. His eyes ran down the McCarthy-for Judge circular everyone had been handed at the door. He pressed his investigation. “It says here in your official circular that Judge Werner has been paid a total of between one hundred seventy and two hundred thousand dollars—”
“That’s right. And that’s a lot of money, Jim. I was making just fifteen cents an hour back when Judge Werner was making that kind of money as a judge.”
“But what you don’t say in your circular is that he’s been a judge for twenty years! If you divide twenty into two hundred—” Jim Kelly looked up, eyes closed for a moment as he did the arithmetic—“that comes to ten thousand dollars a year—less than that. A judge’s salary is eight thousand. That’s a lot of money, I agree, but it’s about what the average lawyer makes in Wisconsin. You make it sound like grand larceny.”
McCarthy looked grieved. “I certainly didn’t want to give that impression. I just wanted it on record that any man who has taken from the taxpayers over two hundred thousand dollars should be ready to retire and spend whatever is left of his life—four, five years, maybe—I hope Judge Werner lives forever—doing something other than living on the people’s money.”
Jim Kelly scratched on his pad. He asked no further questions.
Joe looked around the room with the heavy maroon curtains. The noon sun highlighted the dust on the lace.
Did anyone else have any other questions?
Silence.
“Well, let me tell you something,” Joe said, “there is no substitute for hard work. I’ve worked very hard all my life, since I was a boy. And I’m going to work hard to give everybody in these counties, in Outagamie, in Shawano, and in Langlade, a chance to get someone who is young and vigorous. And to let an old-timer get the rest he deserves. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”
Joe McCarthy moved forward and shook the hand of Jim Kelly, and then the hands of everyone else in the room, giving his mother a furtive hug. One hundred thousand handshakes later, he won the election.
“Nothing to it,” Mike Eberlein commented to a booster at the victory party. “All it took was ten thousand handwritten postcards, fifty thousand miles of travel, two hundred speeches—and borrowing money from every human being in three counties!”
What was it like to lose to Joe McCarthy? Many years later, Judge Werner’s son would fume that Joe McCarthy had “driven my father to his grave.” Joe was sad everybody didn’t come to his celebration, but he guessed maybe Miss Hawthorne was right: Some people are just plain on the other side.
But it was more than that. Some people didn’t like Joe McCarthy. More than just that. Some people seemed to hate Joe McCarthy. He couldn’t understand that.
6
McCarthy goes to war
Captain Joe McCarthy, United States Marines, looked over the p
hotographs for distinguishing features. The photos had been taken on that morning’s bombing run of the Japanese installations at Kahili, off Bougainville in Indonesia. It was September 1943, and McCarthy had been at the Espiritu Santo Air Base two months. He was by normal standards buoyant but by his own standards depressed by relative inactivity, day after day, receiving, developing, analyzing aerial photographs. He lived with eight other officers in the tropical heat in a shelter constructed (“I guess maybe it must have taken them two hours,” he wrote to his mother) by the Seabees to accommodate eight beds, with mere hints of partitions to permit the privacy officers were theoretically entitled to when living on a base. The Marine Air Force installation VMSB-235 was designed to accommodate forty-six SDB Delta dive bombers, twenty-four fighter planes, and forward repositories for the tanks and light arms—machine guns, bazookas, rifles, ammunition—that General MacArthur had assembled. “I shall return,” the general’s most famous statement on leaving Corregidor after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. Well, Captain McCarthy observed in his letter to Charlie Curran, who was on the western front, “if the general makes it back, it’ll be us paving the way for him.”
Joe was one of twenty-seven nonflying officers, charged with maintenance, provisions, and record keeping. “There is only one objective,” he and fellow officer Lieutenant Joyce Andrews had been told on arrival by Colonel Aspill. “It is to keep those airplanes flying, keep the bomb supply necessary to bring off their missions, and be ready to move when General MacArthur tells us to. Come to think of it, be ready to do anything General MacArthur tells us to, and that includes farting.”
Joe mingled easily with his fellow officers in the mess hall, the youngest fresh from Officers Candidate School, the elders in their late twenties, with the exception of the senior cadre of four career officers. He tasted that first meal of Spam and beans and coconut in the dining area, the mosquito nets keeping in the heat. He pronounced it awful, and ate it voluptuously. The first few nights he wandered with Andrews about the swampy, insect-ridden half-hundred acres surrounding the airstrip, smiling and gesturing to the native employees in their barracks and makeshift huts. One night, at the far end of the base in close quarters with the dense mangrove forest, a moonbeam darted through the cloud cover, catching the smile of a little girl. She waved at the two officers going by. Joe turned, bowed his head slightly to the mother, and scooped her up, his right arm dislodging her calico skirt under the naked buttocks. “I’m Joe,” he said. “Joe.”
The girl giggled then turned her face.
“Oh, you have lost … twelve teeth! …” Joe’s appearance was of great shock.
“Looks like three missing teeth to me,” Joyce Andrews interrupted. “Come on, Joe.”
“What’s your name?”
Giggle.
To her mother: “You tell me, ma’am, what little girl called? Er, nomme? You know … like Chiang Kai-shek, or, er, Horseshit Tojo?”
The mother looked blank.
Joe sighed. “Guess the girl’s name doesn’t sound like either the big cheese Chinaboy or the little turd in Tokyo. Maybe tomorrow we’ll come back with Cheeni.”
He was referring to the scrawny young native who looked after their quarters and served as rough translator. An older man emerged from within the little compound hedged in by the jungle and barbed wire. He wore a stringy beard. “Ah …” said Joe, “the fabled Hollywood detective Charlie Chan.” He had the general aspect of an elderly wise man, the soft voice, quiet and authoritative manner.
“That girl is called Li-la,” he said in a singsong English. “She my son’s girl. You wish some pluva?”
Joe looked over at Joyce. But Joyce deferred: Decisions of this kind were always left to Joe.
“Well, that’s just fine, old man, yes, sure.”
The grandfather gave instructions, and a young woman materialized with a round tray, its amber surface so highly polished it threw back the moonlight that shot through the clouds idling overhead. There were three miniature glasses. Still standing, the grandfather beckoned his guests to take one. Joyce carefully sipped his. Joe chided him. “What’s the matter with you, Lieutenant, you don’t take to Indonesian hospitality?” He threw his own drink down his throat and tried to suppress the expression of pain that came to his face. He looked over at Joyce Andrews. His face was still set in the smile he had shone upon the grandfather when he whispered to his junior officer, “Come on, you son of a bitch. Drink it and pretend you enjoy it!” Resigned, Andrews closed his eyes, gulped his drink down, and contrived a smile of satisfaction for the benefit of the grandfather.
“That was just fine!” Joe said. “And tomorrow I will come back and bring a present for La-li.”
“Li-la,” Andrews corrected him.
“La-la,” McCarthy obliged.
He looked over at the little girl, now covered by the cloud’s shadow. “Good night, dear.” He leaned over and kissed her.
Stopping by the PX, he bought some cigarettes for the old man and a coloring book for the girl. “Tomorrow,” he said to Andrews. “Remind me.”
There was never any question what to do after dinner, not for the officers in VMSB-235. It was poker, Captain McCarthy presiding. They played in a jeep shelter. This meant pulling out the jeep to make room for the players. The jeep was parked right up against the entrance to the shelter, to block light from the gas lamp escaping into the night and attracting the attention of enemy aircraft. The jeep closed in the light, but closed in also the heat. Within the hour the players, sometimes six officers—an absolute limit of eight, Joe had decreed—were dressed only in undershorts and T-shirts. That heat was miserable and also distracting. After a week of it Joe decided to act. The next day he conferred with Cheeni.
The quietest hours of the day at Espiritu Santo began one minute after the last of that day’s dive bombers had lumbered down the strip and soared up into the sky. On Tuesday, after the twelfth plane had lifted off, Joe walked to the motor depot. Cheeni was there waiting for him. Joe looked about the pool of trucks and jeeps and signaled Cheeni over to an unoccupied jeep, getting into the driver’s seat. He waved at the superintending sergeant. “Mission for Major McClure,” he called out. The sergeant waved him on. He didn’t much care what officer got what jeep, as long as there was always one in reserve for Colonel Aspill.
Joe followed Cheeni’s directions and drove down the narrow row hemmed in by the prehensile jungle. They drove east, away from the main roadway, and six hot, jolting miles later reached the village. Cheeni directed him to one end of it, and, on instructions, Joe drew up beside a very large barrack, as though built for an airplane. The thatched roof was battened down by twine, decoratively applied. The dilapidated walls bore traces of large posters, advertising who or what, Joe could not tell and did not inquire. Cheeni walked to the curtains of netted bamboo and drew them apart.
Joe was astonished by the cavernous sight. It looked like a loading station for an army division, and looked also like a junkyard. Cheeni spoke to the slender shopkeeper. He bowed and walked off to the interior, quickly disappearing in the tangle of wheels, tires, batteries, wheelbases, ammunition cases, and five-gallon cans. Soon he was back, an electric fan in hand.
Then it began. Cheeni would screech out his price, the shopkeeper would pound down his hand on the counter. More shouting. Joe, deciding to get into the act, said imperiously, “Cheeni, let’s go back to the base. We really don’t need that old thing, you know.” He parted the curtains and walked out, Cheeni following; the expostulations came from the shopkeeper, they reversed their direction, resumed bargaining—and after a while, Joe had the fan, and the shopkeeper had Joe’s twelve dollars.
It was a big project to run an electrical line to McCarthy’s Casino, as it was now called. But that night after dinner, when the players assembled, Joe, seated Indian-style on the ground, looked up as if addressing a native bearer. “Cheeni,” he said theatrically, “it’s hot in here. Give us some air.” Cheeni rose and flipped
the invisible switch behind the hidden fan. The air rushed in. Major Stewart’s joy was unconfined. “I swear, McCarthy, you deserve a medal. If I’m ever in the line of command and can get you one, by God, I will!” The other men lent their voices in a cheer to Joe McCarthy.
Eight months later, Captain McCarthy had complained one time too many to Colonel Aspill. It wasn’t that the camera equipment was all that bad, Joe said, or that the altitude was too high for clear pictures. The trouble was technique. The actual taking of the pictures. This time Colonel Aspill turned on him. “All right, goddamnit, McCarthy. You go up tomorrow and show the regular technicians what you can do.”
That night, after the game, Joe lay in bed. He pondered the day ahead. His first combat mission. The casualties in the bombing campaign hadn’t been nearly as heavy as on the European front—they got their Stars & Stripes once a week and knew about the terrible attrition there. Still, last week they had lost four planes. Possibly this time tomorrow he’d be …
No, no. That wouldn’t happen to Joe McCarthy, he thought. Well. He would see. He would, however, make certain to say his prayers. He found himself resisting an answer to the question, Joe, assuming you come back, and the colonel likes your pictures and says to you, McCarthy, I’m going to alter things, make you a regular combat photographer instead of a photo analyst, would you be glad, or sorry? He didn’t want to answer that question, so he tried hard to think of other things. It was very late when, finally, he dropped off to sleep.
The Redhunter Page 5