Wallace

by Marshall Frady

  “George was very remorseful,” says Glenn Curlee. On the day DeGraffenried was buried, Wallace was scheduled to speak in the House chamber to a women's group. “He didn't know exactly what to do,” says one of his aides. He wound up sending someone from his office to represent him.

  After a short but respectable passage of time, Wallace announced Lurleen's candidacy.

  A member of Wallace's family says, “If Ryan had lived, it's highly possible George would not have run Lurleen.” Wallace himself admits, “The more in a race, the more considerations. I would have naturally had more considerations if Ryan hadn't got killed.” He hastily adds, “He was a fine man. I never said anything but kind things about him…”

  Through the spring and fall campaigns of that year, then, she tagged after him as he scuttled over Alabama with the tense urgency of a squirrel. They put her, with one female companion, in a separate car behind his, and she was borne from town to town like some irreplaceable ceremonial fixture, a token to lend the enterprise a measure of legitimacy and sanction, like those provincial plaster madonnas snatched from the gloom of medieval church naves and carried by the grimy, red-eyed, sulfurously profane, leek-breathing crusaders into flames and pillage. She submitted to it with an air composed, patient, somewhat inert, and remote-a small, quiet figure, smiling pleasantly and a little uneasily, with an expression sometimes, as she squinted in the sun, faintly perplexed and querulous.

  And, of course, only the uninitiates-those excellently reasonable people behind desks and typewriters regarding the whole thing incredulously from afar-supposed that it was too baroque to work. Through the first and second reconstructions, Alabami-ans like most other Southerners had developed a high appreciation of the art of the solemn masquerade, the straight-faced ruse. Segregation itself has probably been one of history's most elaborate and durable disguises, a colossal facade constructed around what is really an irreconcilable blood belief in the innate inferiority of the Negro, and the maintenance of this improbable edifice of law and logic has become, in a way, its own perverse tribute to the industry and ingenuity of the Southern mind. Whatever the task may have cost in character, it has left Southern society with certain talents and certain tolerances. In fact, Wallace's deft stratagem probably had an endearing effect on Alabama voters.

  Lurleen went through both campaigns bravely enough, but in the second one, in the fall, she began to get a little tired. The winter before, she had undergone major surgery for cancer. There were moments now when she seemed to flag. After one particularly strenuous morning of rallies, the party stopped at a high school to eat lunch, and Wallace, not thinking yet of food but rather of all the children collected there in one place and the family supper tables they represented, bolted off down the corridor toward the classrooms, leaving his group behind. Lurleen, who had been beside him coming through the door, stopped and watched him for a moment. She slumped forward as if something inside her had caved in a little, and then she called wearily, her voice just edged with exasperation, “What are you going to do now, George? Where are you going now?” He turned, as if suddenly reminded of something he had forgotten to fetch, and came back and took her aside, and as the rest of the party watched, engaged her in a brief moment of animated whispering, the two of them standing alone together a few feet down the hall. She mostly listened, her face turned slightly away, and then she seemed to sag forward a little more as he took her arm and led her to the first classroom.

  But she endured. The tight little cavalcade of cars sped from one crossroads rally to another, with the crowds always gathered and waiting in the windy fall weather. At one rally shortly before nightfall in a village in central Alabama, she mounted the flatbed trailer, acknowledged the applause with a single wave of her thin slight hand, and then, without further flourish, read her speech. It was short, toneless, metronomic, without humor or any of her husband's kind of raw passion, her syllables slow and deliberate and enunciated with an unchanging expression of vaguely scowling earnestness-she sounded, really, like a high-school valedictorian delivering a laboriously crafted commencement address. While Wallace himself spoke, she sat off to one side in a corner of the platform, looking blank and irrelevant and a bit bored, gazing fixedly over the heads of the crowd, as if she were musing on grocery lists and school clothes for her children. Wallace's voice blared electronically in the twilight: “My opponents say they don't want no skirt for governor of Alabama. That's right-no skirt. Well, I want you to know, I resent that slur on the women of this state…” Her expression did not change. She sat rigidly and a little primly, as if she hadn't heard, her hands in her lap, still gazing off into nothing. The wind feathered her hair. And suddenly one had the impression that when it was all over, when Wallace's people had gotten back in their cars and the townsfolk had scattered, she would still be sitting up there on that platform, all alone, straight, composed, smiling vaguely, gazing blankly off into the distance, to be hauled away finally with the platform to the next town.

  * * *

  The morning of her election-and the morning of Wallace's climactic, triumphant translation into a political phoenix dawned splendid and lyrical. In Montgomery, in the mansion's huge white-tiled kitchen, Negro cooks bustled about preparing breakfast for the bodyguards as a soft sweet breeze came through an open window. (The Negro servants at the mansion are all convicted murderers furnished by the state's penal system, and they move about the house and over the grounds, fetching the morning newspaper or carrying breakfast trays, with a composed and eternal serenity, their faces vague and blank and peaceful, having now abstracted themselves into a kind of quiescence that is beyond the cares of this world.) Wallace appeared, wearing a shiny black suit, pale blue shirt, black tie. Lurleen joined him outside by the car, and Wallace asked the patrolman who opened the door for him, “How's it look?” The patrolman answered, “Real good.” Chomping on his cigar, Wallace said, “You done voted?” The patrolman replied with an uncomfortable little laugh, “Well, the polls hadn't opened quite yet, governor, but I'll vote just as soon as I get a chance.” Heading now out of Montgomery on the way down to Clayton to cast his ballot, Wallace immediately began looking for bumper stickers on the passing cars and trucks. “Hope there's enough of 'em today,” he said.

  He turned to Lurleen. “You got to bed mighty late last night,” he said. “You should of been in bed earlier than you were.” She protested that she had spent the time tucking in the younger children. She was wearing, this morning, her customary dark blue blazer and white turtleneck sweater. “Yeah,” Wallace continued, “and at that rally last night, you didn't introduce me right. You should of introduced me as governor. I was shocked when you said 'George.' You said, 'And now, I give you your governor and my husband, George.' I was shocked.” She only leaned back in the seat and turned her face away, gazed out the window with a steady, patient little smile on her face. But he did not notice; he was perched now on the edge of his seat, still talking, with his small stubby hands lying flat and side by side on the back of the front seat, where a reporter was riding.

  Lurleen listened to him raptly, and with a small and strangely proud smile. It seemed that she had finally arrived at a kind of solitary, contented affection for him, not only deferring to him but actually doting on him. (”When we were married,” she said, “he had to borrow a tie for the ceremony. But he has lots of shirts and ties now. People are always giving him shirts. And he has so many suits…”) All the way down to Clayton, Wallace chatted ceaselessly and jubilantly, seeming only incidentally aware of Lurleen beside him, while she-who that day was to be elected governor of Alabama-wordlessly and tenderly and steadily picked invisible pieces of lint from his sleeves and brushed dandruff from his shoulders.

  When they emerged from the car in front of the Clayton courthouse, they were immediately greeted by three frantic, scurrying photographers, who, their faces crammed against the back of their cameras, swam madly and dizzily around them with persistent discreet little clickings. Empty bleache
rs from the rally the night before were still sitting in the sun on the lawn before the courthouse. It was a sensuous autumn day, with a light warm breeze. The trees were bare, spread over the rooftops of the town like dainty fans, and the grass, though faded now with November, was thick and lush underfoot.

  On the courthouse steps the Negro turnout was quickly reported to Wallace: “We been here about an hour, and we ain't seen the first one yet.” He went on into the lobby, with its black-marble pillars and liver-colored marble floor and tall glass windows faintly tinted against the glare. Someone asked him, “You gonna sit with us today?” and he replied, “Little while. Brooks is still down at the Railway Express, ain't he?” He went in to vote, stepping into a booth that looked a little like a Parisian pissoir, only the cuff of his pants visible under the black curtain. He had trouble getting the curtain yanked completely shut at first, and as he was giving it furtive little tugs, a Negro woman came into the room to vote-she stood off to one side looking a bit awkward and embarrassed and startled to find Wallace there, her hands folded in front of her, the light reflecting blankly off her glasses.

  Back in the courthouse lobby, Wallace, his heels clicking busily on the marble floor, made the rounds of all of the townsfolk with Lurleen. Presently she wandered outside and began walking toward their car. Wallace came out after her and called from the courthouse steps, “C'mon back here a minute, honey, fella here wants to say hello.” She returned, shook a few more hands, and then seemed to vanish suddenly, as if, at the conclusion of her final and complete service to him, she had evaporated into the air. She had left the day now to Wallace.

  It has become his custom to celebrate election days in the same manner he had been preparing for them, anticipating them, since he was a youth: by simply hanging around downtown with people. He took a long and leisurely stroll through the courthouse, and then sat for a while in one office talking with a collection of local officials, the windows open to the fresh autumn day, he smoking a cigar and twirling a Coke between his blunt little fingers. The chatter was casual and idle, as a damp warm breeze blew gently in through the window. “Yeah,” said Wallace, “I hear Bernice is pregnant again. She don't seem to do nothing but spend her time gettin' pregnant. Heard she got pregnant this time out there under the schoolhouse-that right? That place is a regular social club. Her daughter went up to Rochester, you know. She wrote my wife to send her twenty dollars, said she wanted to come back home. Didn't seem to find things quite suitable up there in Ro-ches-ter, New Yoke. My wife's always been givin' her money, went and cared for all her chillun when they were sick. They'd come to her whenever one of their chillun got sick, and my wife'd go out there and get 'em well. She was outside there this morning, Bernice was wanted a dollar. I had Hellier give her a dollar out there in front, and she went on in and voted. Guess we got that one, I don't know.” There was laughter. Wallace continued, “Ole Nook last night, I heard he was fussin” cause they didn't give him any fried chicken last night, just some weenies. I gave him a dollar, too. Thing about Nook, he won't stay bought. You got to buy him again right before he goes in to vote.” There was laughter again. Billy Watson wandered in at this point, slow and fragile and watery-eyed, freckled with age, looking convalescent and barely revived from an insulin shock of the night before. The bottom leaf of his tie was about six inches lower than the top leaf, and Wallace chuckled, “Somebody get some scissors and let's even up that tie for Billy.” Watson merely stared at Wallace and wheezed. The morning wore on. Once, as everyone seemed to rise together on some signal to change their sitting positions, Watson, remaining in his chair, invited them, “Why don't yawl come on out to the house and eat a little ham with me?”

  Finally Wallace went outside, pausing to arrange for the lifting of an old man out of a car and into the courthouse to vote-he was as small and shriveled as a monkey, in a crisply starched white shirt that fit him like armor plating, he seeming as slight and fragile inside it as a matchstick. He had been brought to town by his daughter, a trim young, harshly pretty girl with bleached hair, and her husband, fortyish and balding and burly with tattooes on his arm, wearing a black knit shirt. The old man sat in the car waiting for assistance, spitting tobacco juice into an empty Champagne Velvet can. “Ed,” Wallace called to someone behind him, “you hep 'em get Mr. Garrett in there, heunh?” The girl followed as two men carried the old man into the courthouse in a chair, his legs dangling down as uselessly as a doll's. Two old Negro women, sitting on a low wall along the sidewalk in the sun, watched the girl go up the steps. “Now, that's the oldest one,” one of them said. “She married?” said the other. “Yeah, she married,” said the first. “Well, lawd, I didn't know that.”

  Watson came out of the courthouse and sat for a while in the bleachers, his wispy pate bare in the sunshine, his cane between his legs. A woman headed for the courthouse greeted him, “I swear, dead last night, and here you are downtown this morning!” Watson gave a dry, weak, rustling chuckle. “Yeah, George told me to come on down this morning and vote as quick as I could while I was still alive…”

  Wallace had made his way around the square and now was sitting on the front porch of the Republican headquarters, a flat brick building that was a little newer than its neighbors. Among those gathered around him were the three leading local Republicans, a married couple and another man. With Wallace having decided to alight for a while right on their front stoop, they sat very straight and did not look at him but laughed rather loudly and abruptly at his remarks. He merely leaned back in his metal folding chair with his hands folded behind it, his dark glasses on now, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, his coat buttoned tightly across his middle, and his legs crossed with his elevated foot constantly twitching like a cat's tail. “Yeah,” he said softly, “this is the exact spot the Republicans were headquartered after the Civil War. Right here. Should have mentioned that last night and watched the crowd sort of move over in this direction.” The third Republican, a tall and gangling and sunburnt young man in white shirtsleeves, laughed. “Sho am glad you didn't do that, Governor.” Wallace grinned under his dark glasses, his cigarette pinning the grin together in the middle, and turned to repeat the line. “Yeah, if I had just thought to say that last night. The Freedman's Bureau was right here during Reconstruction-all them nigguhs and carpetbaggers and scalawags, right here.” His grin spread wider at the edges, the cigarette still pinched in its exact center, never quite looking at the three Republicans there, and, in fact, nobody during the conversation was really looking at the object of his remarks, in that curious, oblique, ceremonial way of casual but tense Southern exchanges. He was unmistakably presiding over the situation, and enjoying it enormously. A rickety drunk doddered past them, and Wallace muttered, cigarette ash flaking down over his black suit but he not stirring to remove the cigarette from his lips, “There goes yo man right there.” The woman had ceased smiling now. She finally got up and went into the building, without a word. Wallace did not seem to notice her flight, as if she simply had not come into his range of vision. He remarked, “ 'Course, I didn't say that last night, but I could have. This little corner of the square here has had quite a history. But you can always be magnanimous when you're beatin” em.” The Republican beside him leaned forward quickly and blurted, “Yes, magnanimous, yes, well, how about ostracization, judge? You using the big words, there's a big word for you, let's talk about ostracization a little bit.” Wallace said, “What's that? Hunh?” The man repeated, a little louder, “Ostracization, judge. You want to use the big words here, now, how about that one?” Wallace replied quietly, “Say it again one more time. My hearing's bad, you know. I can't hear good outta this ear.” Now, with rather an impaled look, the man fairly bellowed, “Ostracition!” Wallace, his hands still tidily folded behind his chair, paused a long moment, looked at everyone gathered around him, and finally remarked in a low voice, “Ostracism. Well, now, I don't think I know what that one is. Ostracism. Nossuh, I don't believe I ever heard of that one.” />
  Abruptly he rose, and with a parting flip of his hand, left the porch and walked back across the square. It was now early in the afternoon. The traffic in and out of the courthouse had thinned somewhat, and the square was nearly deserted. Wallace motioned to his bodyguard, and they got into a car and headed back toward Montgomery.

  Lurleen Wallace was closely surrounded by her husband's men after election. “I guess,” she said with a small smile, “that I'm just one of the boys now.” Though it was known that she regarded some of his aides with a cold distaste, Wallace's old staff was kept intact, and Lurleen existed as little more than a legalizing accessory to the extralegal extension of the George Wallace administration. Though, as Wallace heatedly points out, all the constitutional proprieties were observed, he still acted as the governor from his office directly across the hall from the executive suite (sometimes, late in the day after Lurleen had returned to the mansion, he abandoned even that appearance, quickly crossed the hall, and serenely continued his work, his telephone calls and conferences, from behind her desk). He still personally drew up the programs and strove with the legislature to get them passed, and the lobbyists and legislators still approached him directly, convivially pulling a chair over to his table in the capitol's bleak little basement cafeteria, where he hastily consumed eighty-eight-cent lunches of mealy peas and fried steak and cornbread and then held court with a toothpick, just as in the old days, just as if nothing had changed. The only difference was that now Lurleen served as head of state while he acted as prime minister; she attended to the ceremonial functions, leaving him that much freer for his maneuverings.