David Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair

"So let's just don't talk, and let's just don't brag. Let's talk to our kinfolks and our uncles and our cousins and our aunts, and let's go do our duty November third and vote Democratic."

— Speech to Senior Class

Chesapeake High School,

Baltimore, Maryland

October 24,1960

"So you tell them what you do is just reach up there and get that lever and just say, "All the way with LBJ.' Your Mamas and your Papas and your Grandpas, some of them are going to forget this. But I am depending on you youths who are going to have to fight our wars, and who are going to have to defend this country, and who are going to get blown up if we have a nuclear holocaust — I am depending on you to have enough interest in your future which is ahead of you to get up and prod mama and papa and make them get up early and go vote."

— Speech to Fourth-grade Class

Mansfield Elementary School,

Mansfield, Ohio

October 31,1964

"Boyd and Johnson? There wasn't one of us could really say we understood Dave's relationship with LBJ. None of us knew what kind of hold the boy had on Johnson. But we knew he had one."

"That's for sure."

"But it worked the other way, too, didn't it? Boyd worshipped the hell out of LBJ."

"I would've said 'worshipped' wasn't the right word."

"Loved?"

"Now let's not get off on that again, boys. Those rumors, we knew those were just rumorous lies, even at the time. There wasn't a homosexual bone in Lyndon Johnson's body. And he loved Lady Bird like an animal."

"There was something animalistic about LBJ, wasn't there? He confirmed animalism for me, in a way. His time in the limelight, that time seemed to confirm for the whole country that a man was nothing more than a real sad and canny animal. He could hope to be no more. It was a dark time."

"That's what those radicals hated so much about him. They were scared that all they were was animals, and that LBJ was just a cannier and more powerful animal. That's all there was to it."

"God knows what that bodes for the political future of this nation right here."

"LBJ was a genius and a gorilla at the same time."

"And Boyd liked that."

"I think Dave was certainly drawn to it, don't you all? Dave was not one bit like an animal. No way."

"Too refined to ever be animalistic, maybe."

"You could say he was refined, I suppose. But I never trusted him. Not enough of his personality or his character was ever out there for me to see for me to really call him refined. A refined what?"

"A lot of times Dave could be in a room with you and you'd never even notice him in the room."

"Almost refined right out of existence, somehow."

"Whereas a whole giant ballroom or convention hall would know if Johnson was in it. He made the whole air in a room different."

"Johnson needed to have people know he was in their room."

"Was that it, then? Johnson needed an audience, and Boyd was an audience that Johnson knew was just barely there? That he didn't ever even have to acknowledge or feel any responsibility to?"

"I'm still not sold on it being impossible they were involved."

"I'm sure sold on it."

"I'm sold, also. Being homosexual would have been too delicate or human for LBJ to even dream of. I doubt if LBJ even had himself any ability to even try to imagine what being homosexual was like. Being homosexual is kind of abstract, to my way of thinking, and LBJ hated abstractions. They were outside his ken."

"He hated anything outside his ken. He'd totally ignore it, or else hate it."

"Boyd lived with that third-world French nigger that wore high heels. He lived with that nigger for years."

"Johnson had to have had some kind of hold over him,"

"Did LBJ ever even know, though? About Boyd and that Negro? Even as close as him and LBJ were?"

"I never knew of anybody who had any inklings as to that."

"No one knew if he knew,"

"How could he not know?"

— From Dr. C. T. Peete, ed.

Dissecting a President:

Conversations with LBJ's Inner Circle

1970

Lyndon as Vice President still kept his Dirksen Building office, the red tile with gold stars, the huge cubicled staff complex, the big window and the knotty-pine table where my new assistants sorted mail under my supervision.

'There was just one goddamned job I'd of picked up and moved that whole real carefully put-together system of offices and technology and personnel for. One goddamned job, boy,' he told me in the freezing open-air limousine on the way to his running mate's inauguration. 'And it seems like some good folks in their wisdom didn't want to give Lyndon Baines Johnson that job. So I say fuck off to all them, is what I say. Am I right Bird?' He knuckled at Claudia Johnson's ribs under her furs and taffeta.

'Now you just hush, now, Lyndon,' the lady said with a mock severity Lyndon clearly adored, a code between them. Lady Bird patted Lyndon's lined topcoat's thick arm and leaned across his red hooked profile, resting her other gloved hand on my knee.

'Now Mr. Boyd, I'm holding you responsible for making this rude and evil force of a man behave.'

'I'll try, Ma'am.'

'That's right boy, make me behave,' whooped the Vice President, waving to crowds he really looked at. 'I'll just tell you now, I have to blow my nose, or fart up there on that platform, I'm farting. I'm blowing my nose. Don't care how many ílectronic eyes are on that handsome little shit up there. Hope all this wind messes with his hair some.' He paused, looking around, surprised. 'Shoot, I do have to fart.'

He farted deeply into his coat and the limousine's cold hard leather seat.

'Whooff.'

'What is to be done with you, Lyndon?' Lady Bird laughed, cheerfully horrified, shaking her head at the crowd's waving line. I again remember white plumes of breath from everyone's mouth. It was freezing.

I first met Claudia Alta 'Lady Bird' Taylor Johnson at a summer barbecue on the banks of the Perdenales River that bordered Lyndon's ranch in Texas. Close friends and staff had been flown down to help Lyndon blow off steam and prepare for an upcoming Convention that already belonged, mathematically, to another man.

Lyndon had me shake hands with his dog.

'I'm telling Blanco to shake, not you, boy,' he reassured me. He turned to Lew N. Johnson. 'I know this boy will shake. Don't even have to say it to him.' Lew N. had pushed up his horn-rims and laughed.

'And this here is my unnatural wife, Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson,' he said, presenting to me a lovely, elegant woman with a round face and a sharp nose and a high hard hairdo. 'This is the Lady Bird, boy,' he said.

I'm very pleased to meet you, Ma'am.'

'This pleasure is mine, Mr. Boyd,' she murmured, a soft Texan.

I touched my lips to the small warm knuckles of the hand she proffered. Everyone around us could see the way Lyndon hung on the sound of his wife's voice, saw the tiny curtsies, her social motions, as though each movement of Lady Bird gently burst a layer of impediment between her and him.

'Lyndon has spoken to me of you with affection and gratitude,' she said, as Lyndon draped himself over her from behind and used his mouth to make a noise against the bare freckled shoulder just inside her gown's strap.

'Mr. Johnson is too kind,' I said, as Blanco slid against my shins and the hem of my Bermudas and then ran toward the smoking barbecue pit.

'That's it boy, I'm too kind!' Lyndon blared, knocking his head with his hand in revelation. 'Write that down for me, son: "Johnson too kind."' He turned, making a bullhorn of his hands. 'Say!' he shouted. 'Is that there band going to play some songs, or did you boys' asses get connected onto your chairs?' A cluster of men with instruments and checked shirts and cowboy hats began to fall all over themselves rushing toward the small bandstand.