It didn’t begin raining until Monday night. I was well on my way home, dry as a bone, in a private compartment, thanks to Seymour Weiss’s largess. But a day later, when I spoke to Alice Jean, long distance from Chicago, she said the rain had started Monday evening and was still coming down. Not a storm, but a steady, rhythmic rain. A deluge couldn’t have dampened the vigil of his followers, and when Huey died before sunup Tuesday morning, just as it was beginning to build, they were waiting, ready to add their tears to the downpour.
They had sunny weather for the funeral, except for a brief sprinkle that quickly turned to steam. It was so hot, in fact, many of the mourners used umbrellas to shield themselves and their children from the rays. Even in Chicago, you couldn’t avoid the details of the spectacle. Every radio carried it live; every newspaper gave it the front page; and a week later, the newsreels were full of it.
As it turned out, his skyscraper statehouse was the only gravestone large enough to suit Huey: it had been his wish to be buried on the capitol grounds, and he was, in the sunken garden facing his art moderne memorial. But first, twenty-two thousand mourners passed by the bier as he lay, strangely enough, in a citified tuxedo, a peasant under glass in an open coffin in grandiose Memorial Hall. So many flowers were sent, they would have overflowed the hall, had they all been displayed there; instead, they were set up on the grounds and extended out over several acres.
By daybreak Thursday-the day of the funeral-mourners were streaming into Baton Rouge from all over the state, by train and bus, by limo and pickup, black and white, rich and poor, man/woman/child, hillbillies and rednecks and Creoles and Cajuns, in tailored suits, in dusty coveralls, by some estimates as many as 150,000, congregating everywhere from oak trees to rooftops, perched on statues, peeking out capitol office windows, but most of all swarming the capitol grounds.
While the LSU Marching Band played a minor-key dirge variation of “Every Man a King,” Huey Long’s bronze casket was carried by Seymour Weiss, Judge Fournet, Governor Allen and other key figures in the Long machine, down the forty-nine steps through the crowd’s weeping gauntlet, to the resting place in the sunken garden.
At the graveside, Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith delivered the eulogy, making a bid for Huey’s followers. (The next day, in a press conference at the Roosevelt, in a flurry of anti-Semitism, the Rev announced himself officially the heir to the Kingfish’s throne.)
When the last mourner had drifted away, one final precaution was taken to guard Huey Long: he was buried beneath seven feet of steel and cement. Alice Jean said it was Seymour Weiss’s idea. Dillinger’s dad had done much the same for him. Keeps the tourists out.
A smaller funeral had been held, in the pouring rain, three days before: that of Dr. Carl Weiss. The monsignor at St. Joseph’s didn’t feel it had been clearly proven Dr. Weiss shot Huey, and granted a church burial. The funeral was attended by Baton Rouge’s business, civic and social leaders, as well as every doctor in town, not to mention several congressmen and one former governor.
And the Kiwanis and Young Men’s Business Club sent wreaths.
Sometimes at night, in the months that followed, I would think about being in the Reymond Building, trying to ferret out the Huey Long murder plot, wondering how many offices away from the real thing I’d been.
Other times I would think about Alice Jean, who occasionally dropped me a note, sometimes even called, urging me to return for a visit; but fond of her as I was, I wasn’t about to.
If I wanted to go to a banana republic, I’d hop a tramp steamer to South America.