The Thomas Berryman Number

“In the early mawnin’,” she used a leftover salesman’s desk as her lectern, “startin’ with a pa-rade at nine, the next senator of Tennessee will appear at a celebrity

Rallie

to be held at Vand-a-bilt Stadium, or rather, Dudley Field.

“Jahnny Cash. Albuht Gohr. Kris Kristoffason. They’ahr just a few of the personalities who will be on hand.

“At noon”—she handed Berryman a glossy leaflet entitled

The Dream

—“at noon, there will be a fund-raisin luncheon at Rogah Millah’s King of the Road.

“At fohah,” she smiled like a mother of the bride, “the mayor will speak to ow-ah black people. This will take place at the Fa’mer’s Market.

“At eight. Mayor Horn will appear with Guvnah Winthrop at the new

zoom, zoom, zoom,

Nashville Speedway. This will be ow-ah fawworks show, uh course.”

As the ramble continued, the long-haired youth from the Farmer’s Market wandered in off West End Avenue. He was wearing the same green fatigues, and close up, Berryman could see he was easily in his mid-twenties.

This was Bert Poole, the divinity student later killed by the gunman from Philadelphia.

“Help you?” the garrulous woman called to him.

Poole didn’t answer, or even look up at the voice.

He read some handouts about Horn stacked high on a wooden banquet table. He examined the advertising posters on the walls, and looked at Berryman and the woman with the same critical eye.

Then he popped out the swinging doors, just as quickly as he had come in.

“Comes in here every other day,” the gabby woman said to Berryman. “Never answers a civil question. Never smiles. Never volunteers to do a little work.”

Berryman watched as Poole crossed West End Avenue, going in the direction of Mason’s Cafeteria. “Huh,” he commented without looking around at the woman. “Sure looks like a strange one all right.”

The woman smiled, then went on with her own version. “Son of one of ow-ah so-called doctors of divinity,” she said. “Over at Vand-a-bilt School uh Divinity. Name of Bert Poole. The boy. And he’s slightly off. Slightly

buggo.

Says Mayor Horn has sold out his people, now isn’t that the most ridiculous … Sold out to whom, I’d like to know? …”

Thomas Berryman shrugged his shoulders. He started to walk off with

The Dream

and a few schedules rolled up in his hand.

“Oh, I thank you for these,” he smiled and waved back like Tom the Baker. “Very good work here. Wish you lots of luck, too.”

Claude, Texas, June 29, 30

Retired circuit judge Tom Berryman’s house is twenty-one ramshackle rooms on the road to Amarillo, Texas.

It’s a pink stucco house with green tile. Surrounded by unkempt hedgerows gleaming with large yellow roses, it sits lonely at the center of fifty thousand acres. There’s a swimming pool, but it’s deep in weeds, and looks more like a ruined garden than a pool.

The whole area is ugly, almost supernaturally ugly and sad.

In need of rest, however—at least a day’s good rest; in need of a Mexican visa in the name of William Keresty, Thomas Berryman went to Texas. He took a Braniff jet, and then, because he’d sometimes fantasized the scene, he rented a limousine and drove home in the twenty-two foot Lincoln.

Since his 1963 stroke in Austin, old Tom Berryman had been confined to a wheelchair. Each morning, Sergeant Ames would push him out among the twisted vines and monstrous sunflowers of his garden. There, the retired Texas Ranger would talk and read, and the wasted judge would only occasionally nod or open his puffy mouth to smile or curse. More often than not he’d just think about dying in the military hospital in Austin.

When old Tom Berryman got especially tired, his head would hang back as if he was finally dead. So it was that Young Tom popped in on him completely out of the blue (that blue being the high Texas sky). Young Tom was carrying about thirty shiny magazines that the old man knew must be for him.

As Berryman came up from the garages, he was struck with the arresting thought that his father was a stone on wheels; a two-wheeled boulder; a rolling tombstone. The old man was situated in the garden, and Sergeant Ames was sporadically putting a Lucky Strike down into his mouth.

Berryman passed beside a bawling cow in the garden. Slapped at its big swinging tail. Wondered if Ames ever struck out at his father. Struck out at the very idea of the old judge reduced to such wreckage.

Judge Berryman brightened immediately as his son appeared in an upside-down scene of pear trees and sunflowers and sky. Ames was so excited he spilled lemonade on his trousers.

“Lo Thomas,” his father managed with great effort. But he was up at attention, his hands were fluttering, and he was smiling. For some reason, decoration perhaps, Sergeant Ames had allowed a Wild Bill Hickok mustache to grow around his father’s lip. It was stiff and dead-looking.

“I brought the

Times

and these books for Bob to read to you,” Berryman spoke very slowly.