Roundtable Dinners

Camelot had sad stories, too

As I began to grow into a man, Daddy and Rowan more and more treated me like a sort of mascot. It was love, and it meant I got to spend time with them. My cousin Robert quickly figured out the rules and joined in. Despite his reputation as a sinner, Nighttrain Charlie Deaton was one of the kindest men I have ever known. He teased me, too, but not in ways you could tell. It was often more like a private joke between us.

In the Camelot years, Daddy liked to have regular gatherings of the Roundtable so the knights could maintain relations and connections with one another and support each other's efforts. In those days, the good of Mississippi was more important than any party loyalty.

General Louis Wilson was part of the Mississippi gentlemanly class, going back generations. His family was deeply involved with Mississippi Law practices, and more recently, the Mississippi Power and Light Company. While his job with the Marine Corps mostly kept him in Washington, he was a sought-after sitter on boards in Mississippi, including Millsaps.

One night, I was old enough to help Johnny Gore with drinks. Daddy said, “Boyd, the General wants to ask you something.”

“Here we go,” I thought.

“Boyd, I understand this person is in your class.”

“Yessir.”

“That's my cousin.”

“Yessir, I knew that.”

“You're old enough now. I want you to make it your mission to watch out for them.”

Daddy and Rowan began to laugh.

“So, what are you gonna do?” Rowan asked.

“I suppose I'm gonna do what he tells me to,” I said, and excused myself to the kitchen.

I'll be honest with you. Even now, I have no idea if they were making fun of me. I was a notoriously earnest kid, and not always clued into the world around me. That makes it pretty easy to make fun of me, even now.

What the General said sounded like a gentleman's quest, and I took it as such. I was already honor-bound to look after his kin, as he had always looked after mine. Besides, he wasn't the first person to ask me to watch after this person, and the others absolutely weren't kidding.

“Buddy, will you get us…” was something I heard fairly often growing up in Camelot. Being useful meant I was included, even if it was in the most minor of capacities. Daddy missed most of my childhood. I started getting up at five am just so I could get a glimpse of him smoking that first cigarette in the dark, then sitting on his side of the bed to watch him shave through the bathroom door while Farmer Jim Neal kept me abreast of corn and soybean prices, and the value of whole hogs and pork belly while playing the mid-America songs of the sixties on the clock radio.

I don't think Daddy meant to be in the middle of Mississippi Camelot. He was born to it. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, but the Air Force said he was too tall. I was born into it, too, but I was broken. I could barely speak, and I couldn't read or write at all. Had it not been for a mother's love and a teacher who kept abreast of new ideas, I would have been buried in special education schools, what the kids called “retard camps.”

There were things I could do, and I could do them well. Nobody but Martha Hammond thought I should do them. Everyone else thought that I should live up to my name. Some even asked when I was gonna start.

Besides Millsaps and other Civic boards, the General was sought after for financial boards. During the Camelot years, serving on financial boards was not about making money. They were an extension of one's civic duties, what my Uncle Boyd called “For The Public Good.” People in Mississippi needed home mortgages, business loans, and financial institutions to function as a society, and nobody was coming to help us if we didn't do it ourselves.

After the S&L crisis, the government formed the Resolution Trust Corporation. It was a quasi-governmental function that was primarily comprised of Beltway law firms working for the government under contract. Suddenly, it seemed like half of Jackson was being sued by the RTC. There were tons of shady people in Jackson. Not one of them was being sued.

Three members of my family were being menaced by the RTC, including my dad. He would not live to see the end of it, but the General did. Once created, the RTC lost all loyalty to anyone except the partners in their respective law firms.

I felt awful for the General. After devoting his life to the country and the state of Mississippi, there was nobody he could turn to, and he was being sued for a sum of money that was far more than he had ever had, and for the life of me, I couldn't see what he had done that was remotely wrong.

The story broke that the RTC was charging the government far more than they were collecting. As the clock was ticking on the legislation that created them, the RTC offered the Jackson folks a settlement that was pennies on the dollar of their demand, fearing that if they didn't secure a quick settlement, the Washington lawyers would receive nothing when their contract expired.

Some people jumped on the offer, while others waited for the time to run out on the RTC contract because—fuck those guys.

It wasn't this particular bit of corruption that brought down Camelot, but it was a symptom. America's values were changing, and Mississippi was changing with them.

Hailey Barbour was the last governor of Mississippi Camelot. If he ran today, they'd call him a Rino and lie about his career. It wasn't his fault, but Katrina washed the ashes of Camelot into the Gulf of Mexico.

As the cracks in Camelot began to appear, Daddy and I started discussing an escape plan for Boyd. On the whole earth, he was the only person who understood how unhappy I was and why. He wasn't too sure about this writer business. “Writers drink too much.” He'd tell me, which was funny because if I drank much more than I drank with him, I would have ended up at Betty Ford instead of USC.

He didn't have much regard for California or Los Angeles, but he knew I'd die if nothing changed.

“Whatever happened with you and that blonde girl?”

“Remember when I said I was taking her to New York to see a play?”

“How'd that turn out?”

“She said she didn't feel right about me spending that kind of money on her when she was still in love with her ex.”

“Wait, didn't you go to New York though?”

“It's a lot cheaper when you go alone.“