Spinning Dixie (25 page)

It felt good to be out of my Confederate uniform for the plane ride to Washington. I landed at Andrews Air Force Base in the middle of the day. A driver whose identity I did not probe drove me into town.

I kept a safe-deposit box at a bank on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventeenth Street. I did not remember the last time I was here. I didn't like bank vaults. They smell like whatever comes before prison. I always feared that somebody would slam the huge door shut and leave me inside to suffocate. I told Mickey that once. He hated my worrying and other “crazy thoughts.” If my thought was so irrational, then why would they have an emergency air supply canister on the wall? Whenever I would go into a vault with Mickey, it was to “snatch something” before we took off for a “long weekend.”

I returned to Washington for the sole purpose of visiting the safe-deposit box. The bank clerk recognized me. I got a big smile. “Look how scruffy,” she said of my unshaven face. “Not on TV today, I guess,” she said. Perhaps never again, I thought. The woman couldn't do enough for me, inviting me to go through my box in one of the bank's “special rooms.”

Entombed air belched out of the box when I opened it.

Mickey's passport. Deedee's passport. Their death certificates. What does one do with such things, frame them?
Mazel tov, you're dead!
A certificate of acquittal for a skimming case. The incorporation papers for Taste of the Shore Saltwater Taffy company. Ah, the legal papers. No wonder Mickey didn't leave me any money; he spent it all on lawyers. Stuart F. Cohn, Esq., known as the Cohn of Silence because hostile witnesses against his clients tended not to testify. Unger & Miller. Flamperton, Putpharken & Schnell. F. Lee Bailey. (Cool) Moskowitz & Forelli—MoFo. I pulled this envelope out. Legal jabber, dates in the mid-1970s and early 1990s. Related to gambling. Nothing relevant to the current drama. A few dozen other meaningless legal papers. A note in Mickey's handwriting on a legal bill reading,
“Missed me again.”
Nothing else. Nothing. Hope is abandoned. Almost.

As I excavated my way through this tomb of grift, Mickey's handwriting appeared on a plain letter-size envelope that must have once been white, but was now yellow. It read: “Jonah/Girl Mishegoss.” I coughed up a laugh.
Mishegoss
is Yiddish for “insanity.” I open the paper-clipped envelope, taken aback that my conduct with women warranted such a category, let alone a file. The envelope was scented and had a smudge of red nail polish on the edge. Inside: (1) a piece of paper containing telephone numbers in an unfamiliar area code; (2) a four-page dossier entitled “Elmer Hicksen/Hilliard Enterprises.” Dated July 15, 1980; (3) a trust document on the stationery of the esteemed gentlemen of Moskowitz & Forelli. A signature, too.

There is a God, not to mention a worrywart criminal grandfather—and a meddling grandmother if the nail polish smear was any indication—who had gone to more trouble than I had ever imagined.

 

I was back at Rattle & Snap by prime time. The president's news conference came on at eight o'clock Central. Huddled around a television set in the mansion's first floor den were Claudine, Six, Marcus, and myself. I told them nothing about what to expect.

The president strode down the central aisle of the White House toward the East Room right on time. This part—the walking—always made me nervous. Too much time and space to trip and fall, and no podium for protection. Truitt still walked like a cop, as if he were maneuvering from his patrol car to the perp's
VEE-
hickle. There was a judgmental quality about his gait, which was off-putting. Once he was behind the podium, I felt better, because I knew he was going to tell America a story rather than give us a ticket.

President Truitt spoke for a few minutes about boring topics such as unemployment, the war against terrorism, his Supreme Court nominee, and the possible migration of an organ-melting disease from Indonesia. The media, rudely, followed up on these subjects for twenty minutes until EBS News's senior White House correspondent, Maddy Sherman, asked, “Mr. President, as a son of the South, what do you make of the activity around the Rattle & Snap plantation in Tennessee, and the rumors that billions of dollars in gold bullion may have been stored there by rebel leaders during the waning days of the Confederacy? Could the discovery of gold destabilize the economy in any way?”

The president brushed the top of the podium, one of his more endearing time-buying gestures. “Now, Maddy, don't go spreading undue anxiety about our rebounding economy,” he drawled to titters. “We've been off the gold standard since you were in grade school, so I think finding buried treasure at an old plantation is the least of our worries. You know, come to think of it, I do recall hearing stories as a young boy about Confederate gold being stored inside Rattle & Snap's pillars. It was folklore, something you believe when you're a child, but let go of as you grow older. Even so, Maddy, if there is gold down there, I don't believe it would amount to billions now, do you?”

“I don't know, sir,” Sherman said, “But folks are asking to whom the gold would belong if it were to be found. Would it belong to the Polks, who own the property, or the government, which is entitled to seize Confederate assets?”

“Aw, now, Maddy, you're getting into arcane aspects of the law, and I'm a touch rusty on that type of thing. It's a tricky affair. You've got a family that rightly owns a property, a family that had prominent Confederate leaders. Then maybe there's currency that belonged to rebel forces that may have been placed on that property, so you've got an issue that ends up in court.”

“Are you saying, sir, that you think there
is
gold bullion at Rattle & Snap?”

“No, Maddy, I think you're saying that. All I'm saying is that I remember the legends told to me on muggy summer nights. Next question. Tom—”

EBS News announced the return of Six Polk to his family's ancestral home. I wanted to keep Six in the shadows, allowing imaginations to run wild, so I prohibited him from giving interviews.

EBS ran with another installment of “Rebel Voices” (
pa-rum-pum
). The network had condensed the feature by removing Liz Marsh, and simply allowing the designated rebel to state his or her case concisely against the backdrop of milling Confederates.

The latest Confederate was a middle-aged black man, a school administrator from Kentucky:
“I've been going to reenactments for fifteen years—as a Confederate. Friends look at my skin, and they ask: ‘You're a Confederate?' Look, I hate the idea of slavery as much as the black men who fought for the Confederacy in the real war did. But after a while, you find yourself fighting not for what the whole thing was about in the first place, but for your home. To keep the other guy out. Does that make any sense? Even if it doesn't make sense, it's how I feel. When I heard the government making noise about coming into this old house looking for gold—man, I felt it in my bones, it just stinks.”

 

It was late morning. The neo-Confederate Army was preparing the grounds for Claudine's press conference while Six and I discussed optical strategy. He had rigged up a sound system that piped out music that had been popular in 1980. It was a peculiar sensation, the kind one gets when taking cold medicine—I'm here, but I'm not here.

“Jonah, I'd like to stand beside Claudine, along with some of the troops,” Six said.

“I'd prefer that she stand alone, Six. If there's too much ancient history beside her, it may give off the impression that she's a little loony. It's best if she looks like a lone woman standing her ground.”

“But they all came out here to help us.”

“I know, but there's a subtle difference between Claudine accommodating the rebels and her commanding them. There are some cultural nuances here.”

“Is it that she's a woman?”

“Partially, yes. New York cameras don't flatter Southern white men.”

 

Claudine wore a white cotton shirt, khaki pants, and paddock boots. An American flag was pinned to her collar. Her hair was around her shoulders. We brought in a makeup artist to prepare her for the intrusive media lights.

“Is this necessary?” she asked.

“Fact is, kiddo, you're great looking,” I said. “We need to exploit that.”

Linda Ronstadt spooked us from the brick patio:

“The public won't support an ugly woman's right to her heritage?”

I held her chin. “No. Do you remember that cute kid a few years ago from Cuba, Elian Gonzalez?”

“Sure. Everybody was up in arms about sending him back to Havana.”

“Right. Do you think everybody would have cared if he was an ugly kid?”

“That's horrible, Jonah.”

“Yes, Claudine, it is.”

Claudine sat in an ancient chair. The makeup artist, a ditz out of Nashville, blasted her with light, which made Claudine squint. “Oh, Jonah, go away, I must look horrid under this light.”

I was glad that she cared.

“Do you remember this song?” I pointed toward the patio.

“Linda Ronstadt?”

“Right. It was playing when I first met you at the Atlantic City Racetrack.”

Failing to detect an affirmation of this memory, I backed off, and sat on a sofa across the room where Claudine could not see me.

“What classic features,” Ditzy said, studying Claudine's face. This stung me, provoking one of my “Did I blow it?” sentiments.

“Thank you,” Claudine said softly.

“You don't need much, just enough to tamp out the glare. Did you ever do any acting?”

“Heavens, no.”

“You've got the look,” Ditzy said, getting to work with a small, triangular sponge.

“I don't even want to go out in front of these cameras,” Claudine said. “I'm not good at things like this.”

“Well, perhaps you can have your friend over on that sofa get you ready. I've seen him on TV. He's the secretary of defense or somebody.”

“He's here as a friend. You won't tell anybody, will you?”

Ditzy zipped her lip. All Nashville would know I was here by the weekend. The key was to blow town fast. If my presence broke after the jig was up, the media would be on to the next spectacle. If it broke beforehand, I'd be the spectacle.

 

News helicopters circled to the north and east of the mansion. Microphones were set up on the front steps. Satellite trucks lined the quarter-mile driveway. Hundreds of rebel vehicles were parked in the fields beside tents. Cooking grills and sleeping bags rolled on to the horizon.

Dressed in Confederate gear, I supervised the press area, which was arranged using the White House format—chairs in front of a podium with a raised platform for camera crews at the rear from which to film Claudine against the backdrop of Rattle & Snap's pillars. We had erected a makeshift wall behind the podium where the portraits of Will, George, Sallie Hilliard Polk, Indy Four, Six, and Sallie Polk Hilliard were displayed. When the portrait of Sallie the younger was hung, I had to walk back into the mansion, find a couch, and rest my head on my knees. A terrible discussion in South Jersey loomed.

When I looked out the second-story window, every press seat was taken. Dozens of camera crews spilled over the rear platform and onto equipment trunks scattered nearby. Thousands of uniformed rebels created a perimeter beyond the press. I observed through a closed-circuit TV monitor.

As Claudine stepped from the side of the mansion to the podium, one hushed on-air personality speculated that she was going to deliver an ultimatum to the government, specifically its enforcers from the National Guard. Confederates lined the perimeter of the news conference but were not visible in Claudine's frame. The male reporters surveyed Claudine as men would—carefully, in order to mask any form of attraction that might be seen as less than journalistic. The female journalists had a slight edge to them as Claudine composed herself. On a raw, physical level, she was competition. She wasn't in her suicide-gorgeous prime, but it would have been difficult for a woman facing her not to feel a touch of envy at this emblem of American royalty, a status that wasn't supposed to exist, but, nevertheless, did. Modern American women were raised to rail against the very idea of princesses, but how much of this hatred was ideological, and how much was veiled disappointment that their own fairy tales hadn't come true?

Claudine's voice was inaudible at first. She was visibly nervous. This was good. It made her less threatening. The men would want to protect her. The women would lack the heart for resentment. A petty corner of my personality celebrated Claudine's tension. I wanted her to be bad at something that I was good at.

“Good morning. Welcome to Rattle & Snap,” she began.

“You've heard of Southern hospitality. It's very real, but we're more hospitable when we know guests are coming. It's hard to feed thousands of people who make a pilgrimage to your doorstep overnight, but we're doing our best.”

Perhaps I am biased by my misty affection for this region and its people, but there is no more alluring voice than a woman's Southern accent. To me, it's musical. It makes me want to go to sleep, not out of boredom or exhaustion, but because it's how I imagine that outside voices must sound to a baby in the womb. The baby rests in a warm fluid, passively confident in its security. There is no entertainment outside of the loving cadence of someone you cannot believe your good fortune to have adore you.

“I have never held a press conference before. I hope I never do again. I apologize up front if I don't seem very good at this, but my brother, Six, thought I should be the one to do it because I live here. You see, this house has been in my family for one hundred and sixty years. The land has belonged to my family for even longer. In all those years, there's never been a press conference.

“The Polks have been unusual for a very public family in that we've managed to be a private family, too. Our Polk presidents, statesmen, and generals were lucky enough to live in an age when they could fight for this country's independence, help establish our freedom, and even fight the Nazis, and then retreat into the shade when our time in the spotlight was over.

“My generation has been very blessed, and learned many things from our ancestors. One thing we didn't learn, however, was how to negotiate the spotlight. Ironically, that's why I've invited the press to Rattle & Snap.

“Several days ago, our home found itself at the center of a great American fault line. Rattle & Snap has triggered a debate about issues ranging from the appointment of Supreme Court justices to the true winners and losers of the Civil War. As I understand it, this interest arose from a legend that Confederate leaders buried a great amount of gold on this property. I certainly hope they did.”

The audience chuckled.

“But after years of digging here and there, we've never found any gold. I guess we'll keep looking. I know the law says that the gold would belong to the federal government—”

A chorus of boos rose from thousands of Confederate voices. News cameras swung wildly to absorb the faces of these protestors. Claudine gave them thirty seconds to exhaust their cries, which were docile.

“I don't know much about the law. I can't even say what we would do with Confederate gold if we found it. My brother and I sure aren't strong enough to fight the government, nor would we want to.”

A lone voice cried out, “We'll do it, Miss Polk!” The Confederates erupted in a spontaneous cheer.

The voice belonged to a roly-poly Confederate in his seventies. He wore a white Ernest Hemingway beard, wire-rimmed glasses and an immaculate uniform. He removed his hat and held it against his heart.

“Well, now,” Claudine said, “We don't want anybody to get hurt. But I'm grateful for your commitment. I've never been to a reenactment. I understand that they're usually well planned, but I came to this one because it's happening at my home. Perhaps what it lacks in advance warning, it makes up for in soul.

“What I've gained from this reunion is not gold, but sometimes when we see something that glitters, even if it's not gold, it may remind us of something that's been lost. To me, it's the understanding that for all our sins and imperfections, this home still has a heart. You all felt as if you had a home on short notice. And you do. Part of having a home is that you can come back to a place where there was heartache in the past, and then make the future better. And just as our family has made this home grand again because of the love that so many have had for it, all I ask is that you help me to present our home and our South to the world in a way that we want to be embraced going forward.

“The Polks were once warriors and slave owners. These institutions had their day, and the sun set long ago on that day, as it should have.

We have since become many other things we can take pride in in a new millennium. Most of all, we still have a home. My one aim is to keep this home. It's not about gold or Supreme Court justices or how a person pronounces the terrible world ‘nuclear.' It's about keeping this home, and most of all, keeping it using means that we can display before any camera that seeks to make this a judgment of history. It is more important to me during these days of awe that we demonstrate our capacity for growth as a civilization in a noble manner than it is to emerge with a prize. Our conduct is the prize and the badge of our heritage.”