The Thomas Berryman Number

An attempt on Horn would have been made on Sunday night. An attempt was made.

At about seven-thirty, Santo Massimino was studying ten Jimmie Horns on videotape monitors, and he was liking all of them.

The young media flash was stalking Tennessee in a WWII flight jacket and ice-cream-store pants. He was a N.Y. hippie, but a serious, wooden-faced one. He was also one of America’s finest salesmen. Right up there with Arthur Godfrey. Massimino’s secret was to talk fast, make as little

real

sense as possible, and give people absolutely no chance to consider what he was saying.

Jimmie Horn has a news commentator’s face, Massimino was thinking to himself. It was a good TV face. It filled up the gray screen in a nice way and made you feel pretty good about politics. About life in general. That was the way Horn would be merchandised.

Massimino walked away from the monitor Horns, and called out in the direction of the real McCoy. “No way, Thirsty,” he called. “Take the mike off his tie. We’ll go with the offstage mike.”

Jimmie Horn was being prepared for a half-hour TV broadcast at eight.

Thurston Frey, a long-haired station hand, finished nailing down an apple-red carpet around Horn’s armchair. Then he gingerly picked the microphone off the mayor’s silk tie.

Meanwhile, Horn’s appointments secretary was reading him a riot-act fact sheet by way of prepping him for the TV show.

Off to one side, Horn’s best friend, Jap Quarry, sipped Navy coffee on a couch used on the “Noon” local TV show. Ten-year-old Keesha Horn was with him. Little boys were already taking after-school jobs to raise money to take pretty Keesha to movies like

Superfly

and

Claudine.

(Except that lately she’d had to go to movies, and even to school, with a policeman.)

Quarry suddenly roared out cruel laughter. The welfare worker stomped over to Jimmie Horn on big orange work boots. He presented the mayor with the styrofoam coffee cup he’d just drained. He shook his head sadly. ELECT HORN SENATOR was printed on the cup’s inside bottom.

“Such bullshit, man,” Jap Quarry said. “Pure, pure, 100% pure, bullshit, Jim.”

“Television and radio commercials,” the appointments secretary read on from the fact sheet, “are just extensions of the whistle stop.”

“One hundred percent pure, Jim. How much do you want it?”

A makeup man put a touch of light pancake on the mayor’s chin. Then he wiped it off.

Santo Massimino stood jabbing a rich ward chairman named Heck Worth in the cowboy shirt. “I want you to personally take full responsibility for the busing of the Nashville Technical and the Nashville Pearl High School marching bands,” he said to this man who had made a million dollars out of mere apple cider.

A sound man crept up alongside the makeup man and started to whisper to the mayor. “I need a level on you, Mayor.”

“I cannot stand this confusion and noise,” the mayor said to him.

“Thank you.”

Massimino entertained a woman caller on the station telephone line. She was Betsy Ribbin calling from Clarksville, Tennessee. She was fifty-seven years old, married, with six grown-up children. She was undecided about Mayor Horn, but she welcomed the opportunity to question him on the special TV program.

Massimino had already decided to open the show with this sweet-voiced woman.

On the other side of a gold, sequined curtain, a small live audience was listening to the mc of the “Noon” television show. He was warming them up for the broadcast, not so much telling funny stories, as telling stories funny. Sometimes he’d disappear behind the curtain and two guitars and a drum would play songs like “The beer that made Milwaukee famous, made a loser out of me.” Everybody liked that.

Thomas Berryman sat near the rear in the far left aisle.

He tapped his shoes to the music, laughed at the country corn, and made friendseeking small talk with the people around him.

Berryman also watched the audience for the appearance of the long-haired man. One nicely dressed boy of about twelve wore a button,

Where Are You Lee Harvey Oswald, Now That We Need You?

Horn came on without fanfare. He was wearing a light gray suit. A light blue shirt. A dark blue tie. His stomach was queasy, as if he’d stayed up all night.

Sitting down by the interview phone, Horn remembered a time in his freshman year in the state legislature. He had been talking through his hat, practicing his public speaking more or less, and then he’d noticed that Estes Kefauver was watching him from the balcony. After the session, Kefauver had approached him in the hallway. “Young man,” he’d said in the most low-key manner, “you are one of the finest public speakers I have ever had the privilege of watching. In the future, try not to talk, when you don’t have anything to say.”

The telephone rang. Jimmie Horn picked it up in a businesslike way.

“Helloo. Helloo. Is this really Mayor Horn?” Betsy Ribbin asked in her sweet drawl.