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“I seen him go in her room with a bulge in his fly and his tongue hanging out. He always walks down the hall with his hand in his pocket. Stay away from her, J.P. I found a new place if you want some good girls.”
“I ain’t got time to talk anymore.”
He knocked on Virdo Hunnicut’s door and went in. Hunnicut sat in a leather chair with his feet across a footstool. He wore a purple robe and house slippers. Big Jim Lathrop sat at the desk, eating breakfast from a tray that had been brought up from downstairs. He was in his early fifties, dressed in a tailored blue suit with an expensive silk necktie. His fine gray hair was combed straight back. A gold watch chain was strung across his vest. He cut the pork chop on his plate and raised the fork to his mouth with his left hand. His hard gray eyes looked at J.P. as he chewed.
“Come on in,” Hunnicut said. “Meet Mr. Lathrop.”
Lathrop turned in his chair, still chewing.
“How do, boy. Sit down,” he said.
“Are you ready to go into politicking?” Hunnicut said.
“I reckon.”
“Jim and me have been making arrangements for the show. We’re going to Alexandria tomorrow night. We’ll have everybody down at the auditorium. No admission. All you got to have is a Live-Again box label.”
“Who you running against?” J.P. said.
“Jacob Arceneaux from New Orleans,” Lathrop said. “He’s French and he’s Catholic, and he’ll take most of the parishes in the southern part of the state unless we swing them over.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Nigger politics,” Virdo Hunnicut said. “Arceneaux has a reputation as a nigger lover. He hasn’t tried to stop the nigger kids from getting in the white schools, and it’s going to hurt him.”
“We’re running on the segregation ticket,” Lathrop said. “We’re going to show the people in south Louisiana what will happen when Arceneaux gets in office. Their children will be mixing with the colored children, and pretty soon they won’t be able to tell one from another. The future generations will be one race of high-yellow trash.”
“We’re going to get the nigger vote, too,” Hunnicut said. “We’ll put on special shows across the tracks in the shanty towns.”
“My singing ain’t going to put nobody in office.”
“People know you and they’ll listen to you,” Virdo Hunnicut said. “They know you’re one of them as soon as you open your mouth. One good country boy talking to the hicks is worth all the nickel and dime politicians in Louisiana. If a man can get the rednecks and the niggers and the white trash behind him he can do anything he’s a mind to.”
“I think J.P. understands,” Lathrop said. “He knows where the money is, whether in politics or selling Live-Again.”
“It’s in the hicks with eight bits in their pocket for a bottle of vitamin tonic that don’t do them no good.”
“All right, J.P.,” Hunnicut said.
“The boy is being honest,” Lathrop said. “The people want something and we give it to them. This time it’s a pro-segregation administration.” He chewed on the pork chop bone and dropped it into his plate.
“We already got the north part of the state,” Hunnicut said.
“Jacob Arceneaux is the man we have to break,” Lathrop said. He wiped his fingers with a napkin. “I want you to write a song about him.”
“Have something in it about him being partial to niggers,” Hunnicut said.
“I ain’t a songwriter.’
“It don’t have to be much,” he said.
“Get Seth to do it.”
“I don’t think Seth can read.”
“I can’t write no song for you.”
“You gotten high-minded since you went up to the
