Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [282]
Lazar let us in and made the introductions. The Reverend Jackson—his followers, as I was soon to learn, referred to him, without humor, as The Rev—was tall, with the build of an athlete beginning to run to fat, beautifully dressed, sported a gold Rolex wristwatch, and gave the impression of a man in a singularly bad mood. This, as it turned out, was entirely due to our presence. Jackson had been persuaded by Lazar, very much against his own instincts, that he should write a book. Now that he was actually here with us, however, he felt a strong resentment against having to put on a show for us—or, as one of his associates later put it, “to audition for whitey.”
Even Lazar’s considerable reservoir of charm failed to produce a cordial atmosphere, nor were matters helped when it was discovered that The Rev suffered from a whole complicated series of food allergies of which he had failed to inform his host, so that there was virtually nothing that he could eat of the elaborate lunch that Lazar had ordered. A tuna-salad sandwich was sent for, while the four of us sat around the dining-room table making uncomfortable small talk. It was apparent even to Dick and Lazar that there was no chance at all of asking Jackson any questions about his life or how much of it he was willing to have committed to print. On the subject of anything more personal than the weather, Jackson put up a stone wall.
Finally, Dick decided to break the ice. On the way over here, he said, he had been reading a newsmagazine and had come upon a fascinating article about teenage pregnancy. Jackson leaned forward, his face blank, an expression of impatience on his face. His eyes—remarkably small and close together for such a broad face—showed nothing, except for a certain sullen suspicion. Dick, not always the most sensitive of personalities, plunged on with his analysis of the magazine story, despite a warning glance from Lazar. Here were girls of twelve, even eleven, for chrissake, having babies! It was an outrage, a really frightening thing, didn’t the Reverend Jackson agree?
The Reverend Jackson nodded. He had not touched his tuna-salad sandwich, I noticed, as if he had decided he simply wasn’t going to break bread with us, but he relaxed a little, now that he had a subject to discuss. He held up one neatly manicured hand to still the flow of Dick’s eloquence. “I know where you’re comin’ from,” he said, his voice low, deep, silky, soft, a voice born for the pulpit. “You are talkin’ about babies having babies.”
Dick’s eyes snapped open behind his tinted aviator glasses (the power symbol of Paramount at that time). That was it exactly, he said. Nobody could have put it better. Jackson had come up with just the right phrase, one that said it all.
I was pleased, but not surprised. If there was anything The Rev was good at (apart from getting money out of the pockets of guilty white folks), it was coming up with the right phrase. Words, after all, had always been the power of black Southern preachers, eloquence their stock-in-trade, the Bible the only book that mattered. The Rev was the inheritor of a long tradition. He might not be able to stop teenage pregnancy, but he could define it in a phrase better and more quickly than any Time editor.
Now that Dick had found his subject, he was not willing to let it go. Teenage pregnancy was a terrible problem, he went on, it blighted lives, both of the mothers and of their children. It was exactly the kind of subject on which Jackson should be speaking out, loud and clear. “The thing is,” he said, looking Jackson intently in the eye, “you ought to be doing something about it, because it’s a problem for your people.”
There followed a hush, broken only by a snort of alarm from Lazar, who had been contentedly eating his shrimp cocktail, his mind on other things.