The Quiet Game

"How long do you figure on sticking around city hall if you win?"

A bemused smile touches Johnson's lips. "Off the record? Just long enough to build a statewide base for the gubernatorial race."

"You want to be governor?"

"I want to be president. But governor is a start. When a nigger sits in the governor's mansion in Jackson, Mississippi, the Civil War will truly have been won. The sacrifices of the Movement will have been validated. Those bubbas in the legislature won't know whether to shit or go blind. This whole country will shake on its foundations!"

Johnson's opportunistic style puts me off, but I see the logic in it. "I suppose the black man who could turn Mississippi around would be a natural presidential candidate."

"You can thank Bill Clinton for pointing the way. Arkansas? Shit. Mississippi is fiftieth in education, fiftieth in economic output, highest in illegitimate births, second highest in welfare payments, the list is endless. Hell, we're fifty-first in some things-behind Puerto Rico! I turn that around-just a little-I could whip Colin Powell hands down."

"How can you turn this town around? Much less the state?"

"Factories! Industry! A four-year college. Four-lane highways linking us to Jackson and Baton Rouge."

"Everybody wants that. What makes you think you can get it?"

Johnson laughs like I'm the original sucker. "You think the white elite that runs this town wants industry? The money here likes things just the way they are. They've got their private golf course, segregated neighborhoods, private schools, no traffic problem, black maids and yard men working minimum wage, and just one smokestack dirtying up their sunset. This place is on its way to being a retirement community. The Boca Raton of Mississippi."

"Boca Raton is a rich city."

"Well, this is a mostly poor one. One factory closed down and two working half capacity. Oil business all but dead, and every well in the county drilled by a white man. Tourism doesn't help my people. Rich whites or segregated garden clubs own the antebellum mansions. That tableau they have every year, where the little white kids dance around in hoop skirts for the Yankees? You got a couple of old mammies selling pralines outside and black cops directing traffic. You see any people of color at the balls they have afterward? The biggest social events in town, and not a single black face except the bartenders."

"Most whites aren't invited to those balls either."

"Don't think I'm not pointing that out in the appropriate quarters."

"Mayor Warren doesn't pursue industry?"

"Wiley Warren thinks riverboat gambling is our salvation. The city takes in just over a million dollars from that steamboat under the hill, while the boat drains away thirty million to Las Vegas. With that kind of prosperity, this town will be dead in five years."

I glance at my watch. "I thought you brought me here to warn me."

"I'm trying to. For the first time in fifty years we've got a major corporation ready to locate a world-class factory here. And you're trying to flush that deal right down the toilet."

"What I said in the paper won't stop any company serious about locating here."

"You're wrong. BASF is a German company. They may be racists themselves, but they're very sensitive to racial issues in foreign countries."

"And?"

"They have concerns about the school system here."

"The school system?"

"The public school is eighty percent black. The population's only fifty percent black. BASF's management won't put their employees into a situation where they have to send their kids to expensive and segregated private schools for a decent education. They have to be convinced that the public schools are safe and of excellent quality."

"And is that the case?"

"They're safe enough, but the quality's not the best. We've established a fragile consensus and convinced BASF that the public school is viable. We've developed all sorts of pilot programs. Those Germans are damn near committed to build here. But if the Payton case explodes in the media, BASF will crawfish so fast we'll finally hear that giant sucking sound Ross Perot always whined about."

I hold up my hands. "I have no interest in the case. I made a couple of comments and attracted the attention of Payton's family. End of story."

As Johnson smiles with satisfaction, my defensive tone suddenly disgusts me. "But I'll tell you this. The harder people try to push me away from something, the more I feel like maybe I ought to take a look at it."

He leans back and eyes me with cold detachment. "I'd think long and hard before I did that. Your little girl has already lost one parent."

The words hit me like a slap. "Why do I get the feeling you might be the danger you warned me about?"