LUCKILY FOR Bobby and Lois, Charlie Fowler was a man of his word and as the company began to grow, so did Bobby’s salary. Within a year after their son was born they were able to buy themselves a nice house and a new car. They found that they loved living in Kentucky and even brought Doc and Dorothy and Mother Smith and Jimmy over for the Kentucky Derby. Dorothy had just lost Princess Mary Margaret to old age and the trip did his mother good. It was especially wonderful when she met her new blond, blue-eyed grandson, Michael.
That year Poor Tot had lost her mother as well. Literally. While she was at work her mother had wandered off from the house and apparently had gotten into a car with strangers, who drove her all the way to Salt Lake City, where she wound up living in a Mormon home for the aged. By the time they found her she said she did not want to come home, but Tot still had to pay for her room and board each month.
On July 6, 1962, Macky and Norma Warren were celebrating a special day and early the next morning Norma called Aunt Elner, even before Elner had called, which was a first.
Aunt Elner wiped the flour off her hands on her apron and picked up. “Hello.”
“Aunt Elner, it’s Norma. Do you have your hearing aid on?”
“Yes.”
“You are not going to believe what Macky got me for our anniversary. It is the cutest thing I have ever—”
“What did he get you?”
“Well, remember how mad I got at him last year when he gave me that stupid Rainbird sprinkler for the lawn?”
Aunt Elner laughed. “I remember. Poor little Macky.”
Norma said, “Poor little Macky? Of course, I was upset. Can you blame me? Our thirteenth wedding anniversary and he buys me something for the lawn. He takes me outside, turns on the water, and says, ‘Happy Anniversary.’ I said, ‘Macky Warren, after thirteen years of marriage I get a sprinkler?’ And not only that, he got it out of his own hardware store. He didn’t even shop for it. After I had driven all the way to Poplar Bluff and bought him all those cute boxer shorts, remember, with the little hearts on them, and baked him a cake. I could have killed him on the spot. Well, anyhow, this year he made up for it. Wait till you see what that crazy fool bought me. I’m looking at it right now.”
“What is it?”
“It is the cutest thing you have ever seen. It is these two storks, at least I think they’re storks—aren’t they the birds with the long beaks? Anyway these two storks are all dressed up and are dancing. The male stork has on a tuxedo and the female is all dressed up in a green evening gown with a red headdress and they are dancing on this pedestal, and you turn it over and it’s a music box. When you wind it up, it turns around in a circle and plays ‘The Sheik of Araby’ while they dance. I said to Macky, ‘This is the cutest thing I have ever seen.’ Listen, I’m going to wind it up for you.”
Norma put it close to the phone while it played. Aunt Elner sat and listened. After about a minute Norma came back on the phone. “Can you hear that? Is that not the cutest thing you ever heard?”
Aunt Elner agreed. “Yes it is. I always loved that tune.”
“Me too, I’m just tickled to death with it, and I said to Macky, ‘This is more like it, this is much more romantic than a sprinkler.’ Men, aren’t they silly sometimes? He won’t tell me where he got it, but it says on the bottom it was made in Czechoslovakia, so it must have cost him a fortune. He said he bought it for me to put on my knickknack shelf and I said, ‘Macky, this is not an ordinary knickknack.’ I’ve been thinking about where to put it and think I’m going to keep it in the living room on my end table. I mean, it certainly is a conversation piece. After all, how many homes could you go into and find storks dancing to ‘The Sheik of Araby’?”
Aunt Elner said, “I’ve never seen it.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I was surprised Macky had the good taste to pick it out all by himself. You know the kind of junk he usually gets. So I said to him, ‘Macky, you can still surprise me. That must mean we have a good marriage.’ He said, ‘We must have, because you surprise me with something every day.’ I said, ‘Well good, I don’t want you to get bored.’ And he said he was anything but bored, wasn’t that sweet?”
“Yes, it was. How did he like your present?”
“He loved it, but you know Macky—anything with a fish on it and he’s happy.”
Not every marriage was as happy as Macky and Norma’s. Over the past few years things had started to change even more between Hamm and Betty Raye. It was not so much that they had stopped caring for each other; they had just slowly started drifting apart, until gradually, even before they were aware of it, he was living one life and she another.
Hers was a quiet life, trying to stay out of the spotlight, while it seemed he was always running toward it. His hours were so erratic—he only slept three or four hours a night—that they finally stopped sleeping together. He started to use the small room off the master bedroom so as not to disturb her and never came back. She had her two boys, whom she adored, and spent most of her time with them but still, being so in love with Hamm and not really having him was hard.
It was sometimes difficult to keep up a happy face all the time, particularly when her mother came to visit.
Minnie had just come from one such visit to the governor’s mansion to see her daughter and her grandsons. Being that they had another few days off, she and Beatrice Woods had decided to have Floyd drive them down to Elmwood Springs for the day. Everyone was glad to see Beatrice again. She seemed very happy and still laughed at everything Chester the dummy said.
Why? No one knew. Ruby Robinson said if she could see him she wouldn’t think he was so funny.
Like all mothers when they get together, the conversation usually revolves around the happiness and success of their children, and Minnie and Dorothy were no different. At this point Minnie could discuss success with authority. Her daughter was married to the governor and the Oatman Family Gospel Singers were doing so well they had just purchased another brand-new Silver Eagle custom-made Trailways bus and had a new hit album.
Minnie said, “With it all I’m so blessed and thankful to have the relationship with the Lord that I do. I look around me and people don’t seem happy with all the money they’ve got. It’s never enough. They always think they need more. And all you really need is the Lord. Money just don’t do it, does it?”
Dorothy said, “Not in a lot of cases, I guess.”
“I told Emmett Crimpler just the other day . . . I said, Emmett, just how many new suits do you need? You can only wear them one at a time. But every time we stop near a Sears, he’s got to run in and buy him another one. He says it’s ’cause he used to be so poor but I don’t believe it.”
“No?”
“No. He thinks all them new suits is gonna bring him happiness. But they ain’t. You know, Dorothy, up to now I’ve had to scrimp for pennies every day of my life, trying to make ends meet. I’ve been poor as long as I’ve been alive and, you know, when you is poor, most won’t give you the second time of day. Why, I can remember when I was nothing but a li’l ole barefoot child living in a little ole shack my daddy built us, setting on the top of a slump slab out in the country. Daddy worked from first light to last, picking out a few lumps of coal for us and the neighbors, but we was happy. Now that we’ve got money, I look at my boys and see they ain’t happy. Bervin is chomping at the bit to run off and be the next Elvis and Vernon is on his third wife and is gone cold on the Lord.” She sighed. “And Betty Raye . . . I just don’t know what’s the matter there. Here she has a cute little husband and two sweet boys but . . . Oh, she tried to put on a good face for me but a mother can tell when something’s wrong.
“Something’s wrong. I can’t put my finger on it but the whole time we was there Hamm goes one way and she goes another. It don’t seem right to me. Ferris and me was never apart a day or night from the first day we was married in 1931, by the Reverend W. W. Nails. He said, ‘Who God is joined together let no man put asunder,’
and I never forgot it . . . and I’ve got me a feeling that there’s something asunder going on.”
Vita Green
HARRY S. TRUMAN ONCE said there were three things that could ruin a man: power, money, and women. Hamm already had power and the promise of money. And a woman was getting ready to walk in any day now.
Hamm was determined to be the best governor he could and he worked hard at it. He made sure he was informed about how people felt on every issue. Along with talking to as many people as he could, he also read every paper in the state before starting work each morning. Although he never paid much attention to the society pages, he did begin to notice something in the Kansas City papers. He kept seeing pictures of this one woman, always photographed at some party or function. He usually did not have much use for the rich or any interest in their silly activities but as the weeks went by he found himself starting to look for pictures of her in the paper and being disappointed when she was not there.
One morning he called Cecil into his office. “When you were in the funeral business in Kansas City, did you ever know a Mrs. Vita Green?”
“Know her?” Cecil said. “She was one of my best customers and still is. We do the flowers for all her parties.”
“Is that so?”
“One year she gave a party for my theater group and we did her entire terrace in white roses. She has the whole top floor of the Highland Plaza apartment building, with a view from every room.”
“Huh,” said Hamm.
“You should see that place sometime. It is spectacular.”
“I’d like to sometime. What does the husband do?”
“Just made a lot of money is all I know. She was divorced before I met her. Why?”
“No reason. I was just reading where this Mrs. Green was named head of some arts council and I was thinking that it might be a pretty good thing for the governor to get involved in.”
Cecil looked surprised. “Really?”
“You’re always bugging me about all that artsy stuff, aren’t you? So I figure maybe I’ll give it a try.”
Cecil left the office, pleased that all his attempts to get Hamm interested in culture had finally paid off. Vita Green was one of the well-known cultural leaders in Kansas City and was admired by everyone, especially the men. She was a tall, striking woman of forty-three with shining black hair that she wore parted in the middle and pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She was always dressed exquisitely but simply, usually in bright red, or emerald green to match her eyes, with one spectacular pin on her right shoulder. At first glance she could have been mistaken for Spanish or Greek aristocracy. Few who met her would have guessed that she was 100 percent black Irish. But in addition to being a pure pleasure to look at, she was smart, witty, and a man’s woman in every way. She could converse on any subject and hold her own in any crowd. But when Mrs. Vita Green received the note from the governor asking if they could set up a meeting to discuss the state of the arts in Missouri, her first reaction was to laugh. Vita, along with the rest of her crowd, had always assumed Sparks was some country bumpkin straight from the agriculture department who would certainly never be interested in anything like the arts. She called her good friend Peter and said, “You are not going to believe who wants to have a meeting with me.”
Peter Wheeler, whom Hamm had defeated six years ago and who had turned down Hamm’s offer to join his administration, was a gentleman and as gracious as ever. “I think you should, Vita, and at least hear him out. You never know, and he may be trying to branch out a little.”
She thought about what he had said and after a moment replied, “I suppose you’re right, Peter—anything for art, as they say.”
A few days later, a member of Hamm’s staff called and informed her the governor was going to be in Kansas City for the day and asked if she would be available Wednesday morning between 8:30 and 9:00, before he did his speech at the Elks Club. Although it was an ungodly hour for her, she agreed to meet with him at the arts council building downtown. When she arrived that morning he was already in the president’s office making phone calls. A nervous secretary said, “He says you are to go right in.” His back was to the door and he was on the phone with his feet propped up on the windowsill. She stopped at the door but her perfume did not. It traveled on before her and wafted across the desk and caused him to turn around and hang up instantly. In that perfume were the possibilities of every kind of exotic evening, whether on the roof of her penthouse or on a moonlit beach in the tropics. All this before she said, “Hello, I’m Vita Green.”
When he saw the woman he had only seen in the black-and-white newspaper photographs standing there in living color, Hamm suddenly forgot every other pretty girl he had ever seen in his life—and as governor he saw quite a few, mostly blond beauty queens that had just won some contest or another. In his entire married life he had never thought of another woman in that way, but when Vita walked in, all thinking went out the door and slammed it shut. What stood before him now was the Rolls-Royce of womanhood. She was not a girl. She was a grown woman who, he could tell just by looking, was smarter and more powerful than he was by a mile and it excited him. He felt as if someone had just smacked him in the face with a million dollars. And as usual, it did not take him long to make up his mind.
What Vita Green now saw, jumping up and coming around the desk to shake her hand, was a stocky man about her height in low heels, not handsome in the way she was used to, certainly not sophisticated or well dressed. But when he grabbed her hand and held on to it as if he was afraid she would escape, she was somewhat taken by surprise by the energy and vitality and just the sheer heat of the man when he touched her. She was used to being admired by men but this one was different. On first meeting her, most men were overwhelmed and usually fumbled and stepped back away from her, trying to think of a clever thing to say. But, clearly, Hamm Sparks was not trying to think of clever things—or stepping back. There was nothing thought out or calculated about his approach. He said exactly what was on his mind at the moment, he looked at her with the unguarded genuine appreciation of a male for a female, and said, “Mrs. Green, what is it going to take for me to get you? Because I’m telling you right now, I’m gonna move heaven and hell to get it. You want me to jump through hoops for you? Just tell me how high and how many.”
Now she was taken aback and, to her astonishment, she found this total candor to be refreshing and completely irresistible. She had to smile. At that moment someone started knocking on the door.
She said, “Why don’t we start with dinner?”
Not letting go of her hand and looking right into her eyes, he said, “Mrs. Green, I can’t wait that long. How about lunch?”
“It’s Vita. Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t care. You tell me where and when. . . .”
“How about the Downtown Club. Shall we say one o’clock?”
He nodded.
“Will we be discussing the arts, Governor Sparks?”
“It’s Hamm, and I sincerely doubt it,” he said.
She walked to the door and when she got there paused a moment and then turned around and looked back at him. “And by the way,” she said, “I intend to be early.”
“And I’ll be there waiting.”
All the way back to her apartment she had to laugh but the joke was on her. Of all the things she had expected to happen in her rather well-planned life, a rube politician named Hamm Sparks was certainly the last person she would have guessed.
That night after dinner he told her he had decided to stay in town for a few more days.
“Really?” she said. “Don’t you have a state to run?”
He looked at her. “Honey, I can do two things at once.”
I’ll just bet you can, she thought.
And this is how the relationship of Vita and Hamm began. There was no courting, no games, just raw physical attraction. They both had met their match and both felt as if they had unexpectedly stumbled u
pon something they had been searching for for years. There was no struggle for power, only the start of a powerful merger.
A Lot in Common
NO ONE HAD BEEN surprised when Mrs. Vita Green was named governor’s adviser on the arts. People were not in the least bit suspicious when Hamm spent more and more time in Kansas City and left his wife at home. She rarely went anywhere with him anyway, so no one noticed. The fact that Vita and the governor were seen at some of the same events and parties did not cause eyebrows to raise; it seemed only natural. But then few knew that when the governor checked into his suite at the Muehlebach Hotel he walked in and walked right back out again, through the basement door, where Trooper Ralph Childress was waiting in the alley to take him over to Vita’s apartment and would wait to take him back in the early morning.
Not only was Vita more wildly attracted to him than she had ever been to any man in her life, but she liked him. Hamm Sparks was exactly who he was, with no ego, no pretensions. He was an eager student. He wanted to learn, to improve himself. She had a lot to teach. Vita also recognized so much of herself in Hamm. They had a lot more in common than met the eye. Most people would not have guessed that Vita had ever worked a day in her life or that she had not been to the manor born. She had only heard about all of her rich cousins living in fine homes, going to the best schools, shopping in the finest stores. Her father, a likable man, had come from a nice, upper-middle-class family, attended a good college, but had been afflicted with an addiction to both gambling and drink. One by one, he’d lost every job he had been handed, until they wound up having to live off the small check that his embarrassed brothers sent them once a month, more to keep him away from them than from any real obligation. Growing up being thought of as the poor relations in a family takes its toll. Vita had seen her mother’s eyes, which had once been blue and sparkling, turn dull and lifeless and her hair go white from the stress and strain of lace-curtain poverty. This, she decided, was not going to happen to her. She made a vow she would never depend on anyone. But on the bright side, for all their bad qualities, shame and humiliation had fueled the ambition that led her to where she was today.