by Fannie Flagg
She teared up again. “But what about my house? I bought so many nice things . . . it was going to be so pretty. . . .”
“I’ll tell you what. You can keep the house.”
“Really?” she said.
“Sure. It will wait, it ain’t gonna go anywhere. And you and Cecil can decorate to your heart’s content. Then when the term is over, we will walk out this door and move right in. In the meantime you and the kids and I can go over and spend the night or the weekend anytime you want. Or you and I can go over by ourselves and leave the kids with Alberta. It can be sort of like our love nest. What do you say? Will you do this one last thing for me?”
She looked at him. “No speeches?”
“None.”
“Do you swear?”
“I swear. On the Bible.”
She moaned. “Oh, God, Hamm, I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this. But if it’s really for the good of the state . . .”
And so, at 2:34 A.M., the woman in pink fuzzy bunny slippers agreed to run for governor.
He looked at her, genuinely grateful. “Oh, thank you, honey, you won’t regret it. I know I haven’t been the best of husbands but from now on things will be different, you’ll see. I promise.” He kissed her and quickly jumped up and ran off to the office.
As she sat on the bed and blew her nose with a fresh Kleenex she wondered what she was in for now.
She sat there for a while and tried to think about what Hamm had said. Maybe he was right, maybe this would bring them closer together. After all, it was the first time he had really needed her in eight years. Maybe it would not be so bad. She did get to keep the house and he had promised to swear on the Bible that this was the last time; he had never done that before. Maybe it could be like it used to be. She hoped so. Because for better or worse, she was still in love with her husband.
The Two-for-One Sale
Earl Finley called Vita, screaming at the top of his lungs. “That sorry son of a bitch promised me he would support Boofer. We had a deal and now he’s harpooned me in the back. You tell that son of a bitch that I’ll get him if it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“I’ll tell him, Earl,” Vita said.
“I could kill him with my bare hands.”
“I know how you must feel. Believe me, I was shocked. Just shocked when I heard.” Vita put the phone down, smiling. To hear a man who had done nothing all his life but pull one dirty deal after another so incensed and outraged that it had happened to him was highly amusing.
Minnie Oatman was in Pine Mountain, Georgia, at a Singing on the Mountain when she heard the news. She had just finished doing her new hit, “I Love to Tell the Story,” when someone came running out onstage and handed her a note. She then threw her hands up in the air and called out to the boys, “PRAISE JESUS, YOUR SISTER IS GONNA BE GOVERNOR!”
When it was announced to the public that Hamm was running his wife, the news was met with mixed reactions. The people who were for him laughed and winked at each other, tickled that their man had pulled one over the big shots. The rest were furious. They felt Hamm was making a fool of himself and them. But for him or against him, the announcement caused a loud stir. This was news. So far in the entire history of the United States, there had been only two women governors and they both had been elected back in 1924. In a special election, Nellie Ross of Wyoming had succeeded her husband after he had died in office, and Miriam Ferguson of Texas had stepped in after her husband was impeached for misappropriating funds. In 1964 women in politics were still considered a novelty, as well as something of a joke. The Fergusons of Texas were laughingly called Ma and Pa Ferguson and when it was joked that Missouri now had a new Ma and Pa team, Hamm loved it. The national magazines had a field day, coming down and taking pictures of him in an apron and with a feather duster in his hand. And they all wanted to interview Betty Raye but everyone on staff was instructed, “For God’s sake, whatever you do, keep her away from the press!”
Contrary to what Hamm had promised, Betty Raye was immediately picked and poked at by a slew of hairdressers and makeup artists and dress designers Cecil brought in to “improve her image,” as he put it. Not that she had an image, as he also said. After endless hours of Betty Raye trying on dress after dress, “look” after “look,” and standing there while Cecil and his friends argued back and forth, it was decided they would go with the Jackie Kennedy style, simple little knit suits and pillbox hats. But it turned out not to be a good look for someone with glasses. So the second thing Cecil did was to convince her that she simply must get contact lenses. “Darling, you have such beautiful eyes and you’ll take a much better picture, trust me.” What resulted was a disaster. At her first big press conference she stood beside Hamm, her hair in what was supposed to have been some hairdresser’s version of a Jackie Kennedy flip and looking extremely uncomfortable, squinting and blinking her eyes in pain. Then right in the middle of Hamm’s speech one lens popped out and Betty Raye panicked. “I’ve lost one!” she said and frantically started searching around the bustline of her dress to see if she could find it. A reporter turned to another and asked, “What did she lose?”
The second man said, “I don’t know, buddy, but I’m afraid to ask.”
What followed next were long days of running up and down every road in Missouri, packed in cars with trucks following behind carrying sound equipment, banners, folding chairs, a portable stage, and Le Roy Oatman and the Missouri Plowboys, who had been pulled back in for the occasion. Betty Raye would sit in the car and read until Seymour came to get her and escort her to the stage, where she would go to the microphone and say, “We are so pleased to be with you today and it is also my pleasure to introduce you to my number one adviser, my husband, your governor, Hamm Sparks,” at which point she would sit down and Hamm would talk for the next forty-five minutes while she sat behind him, waiting to be taken back to the car and head to the next stop.
Hamm was attacked from all quarters. Carnie Boofer banged his fists. “This hoax Sparks is trying to pull on the voters of Missouri is an insult and an embarrassment to every woman in America.” Editorials accused Hamm of using the state as a patsy and of trying to ride back in office by hanging on to his wife’s skirttail. Everybody in the state and out had an opinion about the matter. Back in Elmwood Springs, the morning Dorothy heard she was running, even though she had a strict rule and never endorsed a political candidate on her show, she did say this: “It looks like our Betty Raye is running for governor and we just could not be happier. I don’t know of a sweeter and nicer girl in the world.”
But Doc and Jimmy were of a different opinion. One night the two of them were out on the porch when Doc said, “That girl shouldn’t be dragged through all that mess. What is he thinking about?”
Jimmy said, “It’s a hell of a mean trick to pull on a nice lady, that’s for sure.”
“He ought to be horsewhipped.”
“Or something.”
Jimmy did not say what he really wanted to do. He had hated Hamm Sparks with a passion ever since that Christmas four years ago when he had been visiting his buddies at the veterans hospital in Kansas City, where the name of Hamm Sparks had come up quite by accident. His friends had handed him a present and when he’d unwrapped the box there were twelve cartons of cigarettes inside. One of his friends said, “Don’t thank us, thank the governor.” Another said, “Yeah, he’s over here all the time to see his lady friend. Since they took up, we get a lot of attention.”
“He’s a vet, so when he’s in town he comes over and throws a few cartons of cigarettes our way. She’s one of those society women, a looker, from her pictures in the paper—I guess he got tired of gospel singing. Yes, he’s been showing up over here quite a bit. Can’t say I blame him. I hear she’s put a lot of money behind him—she and those people she runs with. . . .”
Jimmy nodded and lit one of his own cigarettes. “Is that so?” He was thinking, Why that no-good, sorry little son of a bitch.
He did not mention that he knew Hamm or Betty Raye. A boy in a wheelchair said, “Hey, I wouldn’t kick a good-looking rich woman out of bed, would you? Hell, I wouldn’t kick any woman out of bed, I don’t care what she looks like.”
They laughed and then the conversation changed. Most of the men were paraplegic and would never sleep with a woman again.
When Jimmy left the hospital and got to the Greyhound station to catch his bus back home, he tossed the cartons of cigarettes to an old fellow sitting outside the building. “Here, buddy. Merry Christmas.” Jimmy loved to smoke but he’d be damned before he took anything from Hamm Sparks. It was all he could do to keep from going after him with a baseball bat.
Let’s Go On with the Show
OF COURSE, there were a few obstacles to overcome. A vote for Hamm Sparks was one thing but there were some men out there who would never vote for a woman even if she was just a surrogate candidate—stand-in or not, she was still a female. But the majority of the Democrats came through and Betty Raye won the primaries without a problem. Then came the Republicans to battle for the election in November. Their candidate was very careful not to attack Betty Raye and went after Hamm, but one of his top aides was overheard saying something snide about Betty Raye’s backwoods gospel-singing beginnings and the newspapers printed it. It was just the thing Hamm had been waiting for. He jumped all over it. “My wife and I, unlike our honorable Republican opponent, are not ashamed of being God-fearing Christians. My wife is a humble woman but she is proud that she comes from a family with the rich traditions of the Oatman Family Gospel Singers. And I’m proud to be the son-in-law of such a fine woman as Minnie Oatman.
“I say to attack folks because of their religion is downright un-American and, if I may say so, not very gentlemanly. Frankly, I’m ashamed of him and surprised he would stoop so low as to take a swipe at my wife and her family.” By the time Hamm got through dragging him over the coals, people had forgotten that it had not been the candidate who had said anything in the first place. During the campaign, although Hamm and Vita talked every day, Vita did not see as much of Hamm as she would have liked, but she was thoroughly enjoying the show and watching Hamm in action.
On the morning of November 5, almost everyone had their television sets on.
“Well, it’s ladies’ day in Missouri this morning,” said a smiling Barbara Walters on the NBC Today show. The male cohost snorted slightly, then caught himself and changed the subject, but not before adding his congratulations to the new Governor Sparks.
Bobby and Anna Lee both sent her telegrams of congratulations, as did Doc and Dorothy and Mother Smith. The first Sunday after Betty Raye had won the election Dorothy ran into Pauline Tuttle, Betty Raye’s old high school English teacher, at church. The very same Pauline Tuttle who, sixteen years ago at the A&P, had predicted that Betty Raye would never amount to anything. Dorothy did not want to rub it in but at the coffee-and-cake get-together in the parish hall afterward, she knew she shouldn’t but she could not help saying just a little something as she passed by. “So, Pauline,” she said, “what do you think about our girl up in Jefferson City?”
Pauline stood there holding her plate and looked at her with a helpless expression. “I just don’t know what to say, Dorothy, I’m speechless. How that shy little girl could grow up and become the governor of the state is simply incomprehensible; frankly, the whole thing baffles me.”
No more than it baffled Betty Raye. How she had let Hamm talk her into this charade was still a mystery to her but she had and now she was trapped. It was like being six months pregnant. She couldn’t go back if she wanted to. She had no choice but to go forward.
And so on Inauguration Day, as much as she dreaded it, she went through the necessary motions of being sworn in and posing for the pictures and although her hands and her knees were shaking, she read the short speech they had written out.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with the utmost humility that I accept this office today. And with your support and the help of my husband and number one adviser, I promise to carry out my duties as your new governor to the very best of my abilities, so help me God.”
Cecil then signaled the band to start up and she and Hamm walked down the avenue to the governor’s mansion on the coldest day of the year. But the streets were lined with well-wishers and Hamm strutted beside her, smiling and waving at the crowd. Some said if you did not know better, the way he was carrying on you would have thought that he was the new governor. As they walked, even though the streets were lined with the cheering people, Betty Raye felt lonely. Her mother was not there today because the Oatman family had an engagement they could not change. Dorothy and Doc were invited as well but Mother Smith was ill and they had to cancel at the last minute. When they arrived at the mansion, Betty Raye saw a familiar face at the top of the stairs waiting for her. “Welcome home, Governor Betty,” said Alberta Peets, the ice-pick murderess. “I’ve already taken care of Governor Hamm’s things and put them in his room and your things is all ironed and ready to go and so is the boys.”
Betty Raye was never so glad to see anyone in her life. “Oh, thank you, Alberta.”
“I’m glad to do it. You know it’s not good for me to be idle. What do they say? Idle hands is the devil’s workshop. Or something like that.”
After she gave the boys their baths and got them ready for bed she came back in Betty Raye’s room.
“I see that Figg man is here again.”
“Cecil? Oh yes. Everybody’s back, the same old people.”
“Well, all I can say is he better be careful this time. My feet is worse than ever and he comes down in my kitchen and makes me wear them shoes again, no telling what I’m liable to do.”
When Betty Raye was dressed and ready for the Governor’s Ball, she sat down on the bed. “Alberta,” she said, “I’d give a million dollars not to have to go tonight.”
“Well, now that you’re a governor too I’ll bet they gonna have you do a lot of things you don’t want to.”
“I hope not.”
Cecil Figgs knocked on the door. “Darling, I don’t want to rush you but we need pictures before we go, so come on down as soon as you can. Do you need me to help you with anything?”
Betty Raye sighed and stood up. “No, I’m ready.”
Cecil opened the door and said, “Oh you look wonderful.” Then he noticed Alberta standing behind the door and added gaily, “Hello, Alberta, isn’t it exciting. Here we are all back together again.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Here we are again.”
From the moment that they walked into the governor’s mansion after Betty Raye’s inauguration it was clear that nothing much had changed. Hamm immediately went to his office with his staff and they started setting up meetings and going over bills and laws that had not been passed during the last four years, figuring out ways to change them and still get what they wanted. However, Alberta’s prediction was correct. From then on Betty Raye’s days consisted of hours of standing around having her picture made with every beauty queen, FHA winner, Girl Scout, Boy Scout, Eagle Scout, Teacher of the Year, Businessman and -woman of the Year, and anyone to whom Cecil promised a picture with the governor, while Hamm and the boys sat in the other room working on state government. At the end of each day she sat with pen in hand and signed everything that Wendell put in front of her and then went upstairs to bed, alone as usual.
But life was not all bad. She spent most of her free time over at the new house, simply wandering around happily or outside doing a little gardening. And several months after the election, Neighbor Dorothy and Mother Smith, who was over her terrible flu, came up and visited for the day. She laughed when Dorothy gave her the chili dog Jimmy had wrapped in tinfoil to send her and she caught up with all the news about Bobby’s new job and Anna Lee’s new baby. They were surprised to see how big her two boys had grown. All in all it was a wonderful day.
Old Friends
Neighbor Dorothy never liked to brag, so after they had returned from visiting her friend the new governor of the state, close to the end of the show she simply told her listeners this:
“Over the weekend Mother Smith and I were lucky enough to have had a lovely visit with an old friend of ours and it was so good to see her. And this morning, before we run out of time and get too busy, I just want to take a moment to tell you how grateful Mother Smith and I are having all of you in our lives. We just don’t know what we would have done all these years without all of our precious radio friends out there, who continue year after year to make our days so happy. And speaking of friends . . . one of our sweet listeners, Mrs. Hattie Smith of Bell Meade, Missouri, sent along this thought: ‘When you plant seeds of kindness, you are sure to grow a crop of good friends.’
“Thank you, Hattie, and we have a winner in the spelling bee. The champion, thirteen-year-old Miss Ronnie Claire Edwards, her word M-I-L-L-I-P-E-D-E. Congratulations—you must be a genius in the making. We will watch your career with interest. I tell you I could no more spell some of those words than I could empty the ocean with a bucket.
“Oh, thank you, Mother Smith, she’s looked it up in the dictionary. ‘Millipede, an arthropod having a cylindrical body composed of from twenty to over one hundred segments, each with two pairs of legs.’ Oh my. Now my question is, what’s an arthropod? What? Oh that’s right: Mother Smith says whatever it is, she doesn’t want it crawling on her. I’m with you down to the rattle on that one, Mother.
“Watermelons, sweet corn, and tomatoes will be among the topics discussed at a Vegetable Field Day this Friday. It will feature the latest results of vegetable research, so be sure and attend. We have all sorts of fun things coming up, but first here’s our big news of the day. I need a fanfare for this one, Mother Smith. Ada and Bess Goodnight have gone up to Kansas City and purchased themselves a brand-new Airstream trailer and now that they’re both widows and have retired they say they are going to take off into the wild blue yonder and become tin-can tourists. They say they don’t know where they are going to, or when they will be back, and they like it that way. Just think, they will have a different backyard every morning. Oh, I don’t know what I would do if I looked out and saw my yard was different, but those two are just full of spunk and raring to go. Their first stop will be the Nite-O-Rest Trailer Court outside of Mill Grove. . . . So all of you out there, if you see a tomato-red Dodge that looks like a big tomato aspic pulling a trailer go by, it will be them, headed for the open road. So good luck to our girls, traveling in tin.