The Dog of the South Read Free

even challenged him to a fistfight on Pennsylvania Avenue. This was pretty good coming from a person who had been kayoed in every beer joint in Little Rock, often within the first ten minutes of his arrival. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a President, unless it was tiny James Madison with his short arms, who couldn’t have handled Dupree in a fair fight. Any provocation at all would do. One of his favorite ploys was to take a seat at a bar and repeat overheard fatuous remarks in a quacking voice like Donald Duck. Or he would spit BB’s at people. He could fire BB’s from between his teeth at high velocity and he would sit there and sting the tender chins and noses of the drinkers with these little bullets until he was discovered and, as was usually the consequence, knocked cold as a wedge.
    I will have to admit that Dupree took his medicine without whining, unlike so many troublemakers. I will have to admit that he was not afraid of physical blows. On the other hand he did whine when the law came down on him. He couldn’t see the legal distinction between verbal abuse and death threats, and he thought the government was persecuting him. The threats were not real, in the sense that they were likely to be carried out, but the Secret Service had no way of knowing that.
    And he had certainly made the threats. I saw the letters myself. He had written such things to the President of the United States as “This time it’s curtains for you and your rat family. I know your movements and I have access to your pets too.”
    A man from the Secret Service came by to talk to me and he showed me some of the letters. Dupree had signed them “Night Rider” and “Jo Jo the Dog-Faced Boy” and “Hoecake Scarfer” and “Old Nigger Man” and “Don Winslow of the Navy” and “Think Again” and “Home Room Teacher” and “Smirking Punk” and “Dirt Bike Punk” and “Yard Man.”
    He was arrested and he called me. I called his father—they didn’t speak—and Mr. Dupree said, “Leavenworth will be a good place for him.” The U.S. Commissioner had set bond at three thousand dollars—not a great deal, it seemed to me, for such a charge—but Mr. Dupree refused to post it.
    â€œWell, I didn’t know whether you could afford it or not,” I said, knowing he would be stung by any suggestion that he might not be rich. He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then he said, “Don’t call me again about this.” Dupree’s mother might have done something but I didn’t like to talk to her because she was usually in an alcoholic fog. She had a sharp tongue too, drunk or sober.
    It certainly wasn’t a question of the money, because Mr. Dupree was a prosperous soybean farmer who had operations not only in Arkansas but in Louisiana and Central America as well. The newspaper was already embarrassed and didn’t want to get further involved. Norma put it to me that I ought to lend Dupree a hand since he was so absolutely friendless. Against my better judgment I got three hundred dollars together and arranged for a bondsman named Jack Wilkie to bail him out.
    Not a word of thanks did I get. As soon as he was released from the county jail, Dupree complained to me that he had been fed only twice a day, oatmeal and pancakes and other such bloodless fare. A cellmate embezzler had told him that federal prisoners were entitled to three meals. Then he asked me to get him a lawyer. He didn’t want Jack Wilkie to represent him.
    I said, “The court will appoint you a lawyer.”
    He said, “They already have but he’s no good. He doesn’t even know the federal procedure. He’ll start talking to this guy when he’s supposed to be talking to that other guy. He waives everything. He’s going to stipulate my ass right into a federal pen. A first