The old slur had long since been forgotten by most persons, since it dated back to 1907-8. In that era, though the quadroon ball had long since lapsed from the quasi recognition once accorded it, Northern magazines still published muckraking articles about miscegenation in the South. On the other hand, memories of relatively recent carpetbag evils were so vivid that the “taint of the tarbrush” was fatal to any political aspirant. Thus the fact that in spite of Sheriff Swords’s allegations in a milieu of that sort, Judge Pavy was not only elected, but re-elected for five or six consecutive terms, testifies eloquently to the universal disbelief this imputation encountered.
Naturally, I did not spell all this out to Dr. Pavy. I merely made a casual reference to the general spread of all sorts of rumors about Dr. Weiss’s motives, and asked whether he had any information on this score other than what he had told us on the morning after the shooting.
“I tell you again,” he replied with profound conviction, “that this was an act of pure patriotism on Carl’s part. He was ready to lay down his life to save his state, and perhaps this entire nation, from the sort of dictatorship which he felt Long had imposed on Louisiana.”
None the less, in many minds—my own, for one—the feeling that there might be some substance to the racial motive would not down. Many Louisianians, for example, well knew that in his weekly, American Progress, Long never referred to the scion of a certain socially prominent family as anything but “Kinky” Soandso.
Even more recent in public memory was his insistent conjunction of Dudley LeBlanc with Negro officers in his “Coffin Club,” the outlawed burial-insurance society. Moreover, the knowledge that a derogatory allegation was untrue never deterred Huey Long from trumpeting it forth at least by innuendo on every stump during a political campaign. For example, an office seeker opposing the candidacy of a man Long had endorsed was in the business of installing coin-activated devices for jukeboxes and an early type of vending machine, but Long never referred to him in his tirades as anything but Slot Machine Soandso.
Amid a fog of conflicting rumors and surmises, the first note of doubt that Carl Weiss, Jr., had even tried to kill Senator Long was sounded by the young physician’s father, in a statement he made at an inquest into the circumstances of his son’s death. Such as it was, this probe was conducted by District Attorney John Fred Odom, one of the leaders of the Square Deal Movement. It developed little more than one possible explanation of the contusion, abrasion, or cut visible on Long’s lower lip when he reached the hospital.
“Was Senator Long bleeding from the mouth?” District Attorney Odom asked Dr. William A. Cook, after the latter stated that he had assisted Dr. Vidrine in the emergency operation on the mortally wounded patient.
“Dr. Henry McKeown, who was administering the anesthetic,” responded Dr. Cook, “called my attention to an abrasion on Senator Long’s lower lip. It was an abrasion or brush burn. When it was wiped with an antiseptic, it oozed a little.”
“Did it appear to be a fresh abrasion?”
“Yes.”