Roger smiled reluctantly. “Well, I’ll grant you Fareek has come out free and clear of the whole thing. But you know, I don’t think he ever lost a moment’s sleep over it, even when it all looked very bad. He thinks he lives on Olympus, with all the other gods.”

  “Like Zeus,” said Wes. “And how’s he doing on the gridiron this season?”

  Roger smiled another reluctant smile. “Even better than last year. Barring a complete shutdown, he’ll be an all-American again. They’re already talking about him as the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy.”

  “See?” said Wes. “And how about you? How’re you doing? How’re things down at Wringer Fleasom & Tick?”

  Roger now smiled the smile of capitulation that says, Okay, you got me. “I shouldn’t give you the satisfaction, but I guess I have to tell you I got quite a nice dividend at the end of the summer after all the Fareek business.”

  “Dividend?”

  “Bonus.”

  “Did they say why?”

  “No, but it wasn’t hard to figure out. The Fanon case made them look good. It’s one thing for an old Atlanta firm like that to have a couple of token African-American lawyers. That’s better than nothing, but everybody knows it’s window dressing. But to get involved, successfully, in a high-profile African-American case—now that’s the real thing. Nobody can go around calling you a stuffy, old-fashioned, white-glove firm any longer. ‘Old-fashioned’ is what gets them. The white lawyers at Wringer Fleasom couldn’t care less about African Americans singly or in the aggregate. But in Atlanta not even the bigots want to look old-fashioned, and acting like a bigot makes you look old-fashioned. The general partner, Zandy Scott, has been dining out on the Fanon case. He’s probably out there somewhere right now, casually referring to Fareek as if he was the one who masterminded his defense. But that doesn’t bother me.”

  “Yeah, and just wait,” said the Mayor. “Pretty soon it won’t just be public relations. There are plenty of big African-American corporations in Atlanta and plenty of rich African Americans running them, and Wringer Fleasom is going to like their business and they’re going to get it, all thanks to you, Brother Roger.”

  Roger smiled in spite of himself. “Well—I can’t say you’re wrong. We just got the Sweet Auburn account—you know Clarence Harrington’s restaurant chain?”

  “See?”

  “I see that Booker T. was right all along,” said Roger, “that’s what I see. Wringer Fleasom & Tick, the most solemn old-line white law firm in Atlanta is overjoyed to be doing business with a successful African-American entrepreneur like Clarence Harrington.”

  “So this has all been very good for you,” said the Mayor, smiling once more. “Admit it.”

  “Well, I suppose.” Roger paused, opened his mouth to say something else, then thought better of it. He opened his mouth again and finally screwed up his courage and said, “We’re still Brother Wes and Brother Roger, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And that applies just as much to what Brother Roger tells Brother Wes as it does the other way around, right?”

  “Rest assured, Brother Roger.”

  “Well then, I’m going to tell you something I haven’t even told Henrietta. I first got into this case with great trepidation. Fareek took an instant dislike to me. Obviously I was a Roger Too White for sure, as far as he was concerned. Then I worried that my involvement with Fareek would alienate Wringer Fleasom’s white clientele—and I’ve spent years looking good in the eyes of ‘the business interests.’ But a funny thing happened. It started right after that press conference we held in the library at Wringer Fleasom. People on the street, our people, African Americans, recognized me, because the press conference had been on TV. They’d smile and say things like ‘Right on, brother’ and ‘Gotcha back.’ Gotcha back! Gibley Berm—you know Gibley Berm?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, at the big press conference—your press conference, Gibley Berm comes up to me—and you’ve got to understand, I never saw the man in my life, except in newspaper pictures—and he says, ‘You’re doing great work, Counselor! Gotcha back!’ Gotcha back. The big admission I have to make here, Wes, is that … I loved it! I can’t tell you how much I loved it!”

  “Of course,” the Mayor said softly. “You had just entered the political arena. It’s more intoxicating than any drug.”

  “Well, maybe that’s it, but I loved the fact that I was no longer an African American who had risen far above the level of his people. I was with my own people at last.”

  “Welcome to the club,” said the Mayor in the same soft way. “That’s politics, too.”

  Now Roger smiled what he realized was a sheepish smile. “Brother Wes, I even have to admit I’ve entertained thoughts of running for office myself … someday. I’m not sure about running for what.” This he tried to pass off with a bigger, broader, all-in-fun smile.

  “Aha! Don’t think I didn’t notice that you were saying ‘African American,’ too. Well … you’d be good,” the Mayor said matter-of-factly. “You have name recognition now, thanks to the Fanon case. You’re a family man living in South Atlanta. You can always leave Niskey Lake out of it. Besides, who the hell knows Niskey Lake is all mansions?”

  “Well, not really mansions...”

  “Anyway, it’s no big deal,” said Wes. “And one other thing. Right off the bat you’ll have the support of a former mayor of Atlanta.”

  “Who?”

  “Me. As you know, a mayor of Atlanta can’t serve but two consecutive terms.”

  Wes had made it all seem so real, so possible, Roger realized too late that he had allowed a gooey, dreamy smile to spread over his mug.

  “Sounds good, hunh, Roger?”

  A wave of embarrassment. Why had he revealed so much of himself? He stood up abruptly and smiled and extended his hand to Mayor Wesley Dobbs Jordan. “I didn’t mean to come in here and bore you with my daydreams, Brother Wes! Congratulations. I’m so proud of you, and I feel so fortunate, just knowing you. I’m not kidding. You were a great Morehouse Man, and you’re a great mayor, and you’ll be even greater in the future.”

  Wes stood up, and they shook hands, and Wes said, “Thanks, but I don’t know about the future. There’s no place for a black mayor of Atlanta to go. When you start talking about being governor or senator, the white folks’ reluctance to appear old-fashioned somehow evaporates. Andy found that out.”

  “Well,” said Roger, “what about Congress?”

  “That’d be a step down,” said Wes. “Being Mayor of Atlanta is a much bigger job than being Representative from the 5th District.”

  “Whatever you do, Brother Wes, you’re the greatest man”—but he was afraid of sounding sappy, and so he smiled and said—“the greatest man whose time I’ve ever had the chance to take up too much of after a big election.”

  “Nonsense, Brother Roger,” said Wes. “Just remember one thing. You’ve got to start making the rounds and shaking hands. The awards dinners, the retirement dinners, the charity dinners, the fund-raisers, the community meetings, the church meetings. You got to get to know the ministers, like Ike Blakey, who has poisoned his own goose, that snake.”

  Roger felt foolish. He had talked too much. “I was just thinking out loud, Brother Wes.”

  “That’s how we all start, Brother Roger,” said the Mayor. “We think out loud and hope the right people are listening.”

  Brother Roger and Brother Wes embraced, and then Roger turned to go, but his eye was caught by all the ivory Yoruban ceremonial swords on the ebony walls. He gestured toward them. “I’ve got to tell you, those swords are fabulous. What’s going to become of them?”

  “I’ll have to start sending them back, which is too bad. They were just a sly piece of campaigning when I got them. But now I think they’re fabulous, too. Roots, Brother Roger, roots.”

  By the time Roger emerged into the waiting room, the place looked like a cocktail party. There must have been sixteen or seventeen men standing around, most of them with glasses of champagne, talking up a storm.

  “Hey, Rodge!”

  It was Julian Salisbury, the one white face in the room other than the usual policeman. Julian was with Don Pickett, and so Roger went over and shook hands with both of them and listened to a couple of war stories from the late Fanon campaign. He was about to leave again when a deep voice said:

  “Mr. White!”

  It was Elihu Yale, the police chief. Roger had never dreamed the chief even knew who he was. But he did! Roger went over and shook hands with him and exchanged a few observations about the closeness of the election and felt like a man of the world.

  Finally he was all but out of the mayoral offices for good when a young woman’s voice sang out:

  “Mis-ter White!”

  Roger turned around, and there was Miss Beasley, who had been busy serving the champagne. She was really quite lovely, beautiful, in fact, aglow with happiness and champagne and the presence of so many males, all of whom no doubt found her just as gorgeous as he did.

  “You can’t leave without saying goodbye!” she said.

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” said Roger, “and thanks for everything.”

  “Don’t forget where we are, now!”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said the man of the world, “I’ll be back.”

  The author bows deeply to

  JANN WENNER

  the generous genius

  who walked this book along until it found its feet,

  just as he did The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities,

  and Ambush at Fort Bragg.

  KAILEY WONG

  whose eye for the telling details of contemporary American life

  is unsurpassed and whose help, once more, has been invaluable.

  TOMMY PHIPPS

  whose walks on the beach with the author never failed to generate

  the necessary new approach and the joie de vivre to try it.

  GEORGE AND NAN MCVEY

  who provided the denouement,

  not to mention decades of treasured friendship.

  COUNSELOR EDDIE HAYES

  who stepped out of his starring role in Act III

  whenever the author needed him, which was often.

  You were there on the darkest night, Counselor!

  The author embraces

  SHEILA, ALEXANDRA, AND TOMMY

  whose love has made it all worthwhile.

  Also by Tom Wolfe

  The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

  The Pump House Gang

  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

  Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

  The Painted Wood

  Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine

  The Right Stuff

  In Our Time

  From Bauhaus to Our House

  The Bonfire of the Vanities

  Hooking Up

  I Am Charlotte Simmons

  PRAISE FOR

  A MAN IN FULL

  “RIGHT NOW, NO WRITER—REPORTER OR NOVELIST—IS GETTING IT ON PAPER BETTER THAN TOM WOLFE.”

  —Newsweek

  “Ambitious … Utterly compelling.”

  —The Times Magazine (London)

  “Wolfe has come through with yet another corking example of the ‘big realistic fictional novel’ (700-plus pages in this case) that he holds so dear.”

  —Vanity Fair

  “Brave, flamboyant.”

  —The New Yorker

  “A big ol’ American novel … Dazzling … Blessed with full-throttle momentum.”

  —The Boston Sunday Globe

  “Ambitious … propulsive.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A Man in Full nails the sensibilities and frailties of today … the quickest 742-page read you will ever find.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “EVERYTHING YOU WANT A NOVEL TO BE.

  It has complex characters, a storyline that keeps you guessing, and the kind of writing that makes you want to take your TV out in the back yard and pulverize it with a sledgehammer.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “A Man in Full is bound to take the nation by storm … . If Wolfe’s previous novel, 1987’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, is ever knocked off its pedestal as America’s finest work of contemporary fiction, A Man in Full will be what does it.”

  —Naples Daily News, Naples, FL

  “His most deeply felt, most unabashedly literary book, imbued with more compassion than satire … Timeless and resonant.”

  —The News & Observer, Raleigh, NC

  “A big, complex interweaving of characters to love, to hate, to marvel at, to be appalled by, to recognize as peers in our humans-with-faults parade through life … Certain to conquer the bestseller lists.”

  —The Indianapolis Star

  “Wolfe is at his best when he describes the boom times that have encompassed America … . When it comes to showing us the dimensions of the great sea of money, he has an exciting talent.”

  —The Star-Ledger, Newark

  About the Author

  TOM WOLFE is the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his B.A. at Washington and Lee University and his Ph.D. in American studies at Yale. He lives in New York City.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 1998 by Tom Wolfe

  Cover art copyright © 1998 by Daniel Lee

  Cover type design copyright © 1998 by Susan Mitchell

  A MAN IN FULL

  A Dial Press Trade Paperback Book / Published in association with Farrar, Straus & Giroux

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover edition published in 1998

  Dial Press Trade Paperback edition / June 2005

  Published by

  The Dial Press

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  For their help in identifying settings used in the book-jacket illustration, the publisher thanks (for research) William R. Mitchell, Jr., Mary Rose Taylor of the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum, and C. Tom Hill of the Thomas County Historical Society; and (for location photography) Brett Davidson and Pamela Scheier.

  This novel’s story and characters are fictitious. Certain long-established institutions, agencies, and public offices are mentioned, but the characters involved in them are wholly imaginary. One institution, the Santa Rita jail, is dealt with anachronistically. The jail was demolished not by the last major earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area but shortly before it.

  Quotations from Epictetus are drawn from The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers, edited by Whitney J. Oates (1940).

  Several chapters of this novel have been published, in slightly different form, in Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal.

  The Dial Press and Dial Press Trade Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  www.dialpress.com

  eISBN 9781429960694

  First eBook Edition : March 2011

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-29842

 

 

  Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends