The note was written in a scrawl
Chapter
5)
Churchail
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Maggie looked forward to days when River Boy was at school so she
could ignore him. He saw it.
She hadn’t decided what to do yet.
She
wrote his name in her notebook, then tore it out, daydreamed about his
hand on her thigh and imagined kissing him. At night the excitement
kept returning to her room. She tried to purge him from her memory,
afraid she was going crazy.
Tad lost his luster.
They went to the Junior-Senior dance and he didn't even try to kiss her.
She kept comparing him to the excitement of River Boy, and Tad was
falling short.
Summer
came. Her senior year loomed ahead, but none of the boys approached because of Tad.
Her
girlfriends told her they were planning a trip to Abbeyville to attend
Churchail's annual party at his plantation home, stocked with
maids and butlers and an endless line of visitors seeking favor.
The girls were laughing. It was a good place to meet men instead of
boys, and it sounded exciting.
Thomas
Churchail, the powerhouse glad-hander, was full mid-life desperate and
running for County Commissioner again. Backed by the party machine, he
had his finger in everybody’s wallet that moved through the area.
The general rumor was that nary a bean could be planted without his
consent.
He
owned the best of everything and his annual gala was going to be the
kick off for his re-election in the fall. Except this time, it posed a
problem. Apparently people were getting tired of the same face and same
speeches.
Small farmers were getting squeezed out by consolidators.
Statewide Bank was raising rates and there was only money if you could
plant big acres.
Sharecroppers, mules and farm workers were getting replaced by machines.
Large national interests wanted to end the small regional guys that
soaked up the money now.
Politics
is about the times in which you live, and the face of the land was
changing with wide roads, gas stations, motels, fast cars and rock and
roll.
Sears and Roebuck was attracting people
away from downtown businesses.
Woolworth's was pushing back, but town squares were dying out.
People asked, was it reasonable to skew apart the normal, what they
used to call sane and just?
The
Democratic machine was worried about backing Churchail since it looked
like he was going to lose. Work was needed to get the vote fixed, and
it might not be enough.
At the same time, Statewide Bank had a problem with greedy hands in
their pockets.
The Upstate Boys controlled Churchail, and most the other commissioners
around the state.
Those Boys were taking a big cut.
Churchail
for his part, was trying to block Statewide, not because he gave a crap
suit about farmers and small towns. He just wanted a bigger payoff.
He worked for the coin, as you might say.
Statewide
Bank was part of the national interests, and Churchail qualified as one
of those local ass flies that was stopping progress.
The
election became the firing point. Statewide put out a hard-punch
investigation of Churchail’s bank records ... and decided to back Lever
‘Lanky’ Johnson II for County Commissioner.
The New Reform Party
nominated Lever ‘Lanky.’ They came up with the slogan “Vote for Clever
Lever,” and paid an army of workers to hang his posters on every
telephone pole.
Not just that, but young Mr Lanky was good looking
and a college math professor. Apparently he had a long slide rule,
which of late was getting administered to Mrs Churchail every fourth
Wednesday of the month, following the New Christian School Board
meeting.
Mrs Churchail was fed up with Thomas Churchail’s
love-lolling for money and young girls. She had taken up with Mr Lanky
and craved his rhythmic upshot of duty between her breaths. She was a
bit older and quite familiar with her husband’s business and personal
affairs, thinking it would be nice to see him in jail stripes so she
could enjoy her own proclivities.
The Upstate Boys and the
machine politicians had gotten themselves into a brawl across the state
over control of the counties.
They
decided that Churchail was important and they needed to throw extra
weight behind him, and then somebody came up with the slogan 'Yankee
Lanky.'
The
reason for calling Lanky a Yankee was dubious, since supposedly his
mother came from Illinois, the despised home of Lincoln the dictator
who whipped the South, when actually it was his sister who moved there.
No
matter the facts, another army of volunteers followed behind Reform
Party
volunteers and pasted the 'Yankee Lanky' slogan over 'Clever Lever'
posters.
That prompted Statewide to put up money to re-paste slogans over the
Yankee slogan, saying Hail No.
It
was quite good for local entertainment, and more so after Mrs
Churchail's involvements with Lanky were disclosed at the School Board
meeting.
Mrs Churchail, hardly accustomed to public embarrassment,
had her numerous and important friends make wild accusations of slander
followed by all of them getting up and walking out of the meeting. It
was an impressive show of allegiance made stronger by the knowledge
that most of the women were vulnerably exposed over their own dilly
dally enjoinments that had been confided to Mrs Churchail over the
years, all in good friendship no doubt.
The effort backfired against the Christians, and handsome Mr
Lanky was more popular than ever with the women.
However, more
importantly to the election, Mrs Churchail ended up back with her
doting husband whose own carryings on were not an issue.
It had
been years since Churchail ran against opposition, but the fire
was still there. He wanted to win, and needed his wife's help, which
was unlikely since she would benefit nicely if he went to prison. But
as it happened, the unexpected turn of events played to his favor.
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