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inherited it from his father, and he from his father.
    A story of the Old West.
    I guess Walter was more complicated than I gave him credit for.
    You can’t discuss J.J. without discussing Poppy.
    Born Sonora Ford, the Sonora from the state in northern Mexico where her mother’s family owned 212,000 acres richly veined with minerals. Margarita Ochoa Reyes had married Jim Ford, a fly-by-night prospector, and done him the favor of dying the day after their only child was born. A postpartum hemorrhage that made Jim Ford a rich man and a single parent on the same day. He was a doting father for over three decades until he was hit by a bolt of lightning on a golf course he was developing for a resort hotel he had underwritten outside Tangier. Except for charitable contributions and cash bequests to loyal retainers, Poppy was the primary beneficiary of Jim Ford’s largely unleveraged estate, which she used to finance her first congressional campaign and a substantial portion of her three subsequent races.
    Poppy never discouraged the notion that her nickname was affectionately given her by her father, but in fact it was bestowed on her when she was a student at Foxcroft. Her four years at Foxcroft are never mentioned in her campaign biographies, only that she went from “high school in Virginia” (never identified) to Wellesley, where she was exposed to what she now called “the pernicious virus of liberalism.” It was at Wellesley, she claimed, that she learned to hate tree huggers. “The most beautiful thing about a tree,” she says in her campaign literature, “is what you do with it after you cut it down.”
    The literature did not say that the line was lifted from Rush Limbaugh.
    From the moment she took her seat in the House, Poppy was in demand. She was beautiful, she was rich, she would say whatever was on her mind, and she would say it outrageously. It was treason to imply that the world’s ecosystem was fragile. Liberals only win elections by pretending they’re not liberals. Feminism is a twelve-step program for homely women. Prison construction is the only necessary public housing program. She was preaching to the converted, but the converted ate it up, and faltering Republican candidates begged her to show up at their fundraising events. Poppy on the dais meant headlines for her and big bucks for the party coffers. Publicity was her crack, a microphone her crack house. The Sunday-show bookers all had her on speed dial, knowing that Poppy McClure on air guaranteed a quotable sound bite. I sometimes think that the network and cable anchors, and the talk-show hosts, knew Poppy better than J.J. did.
    It occurs to me, as I am sure it had occurred to J.J., that death had twice been a fortuitous silent partner in the Ford family accomplishments. Poppy’s considerable treasure allowed J.J. to forsake the uncertainties of the private sector and remain a prominent presence in the A.G.’s office, however uncomfortable that presence made the Worm. J.J. was also too smart not to know that his role as a high-profile prosecutor boosted his political asset as husband, another complication in his and Poppy’s already complicated relationship.
    J.J. in effect was a weekend husband. He saw Poppy only when she flew back to her district on those Thursday nights when she was not booked on a talk show the following Sunday. It was common gossip among the local political reporters who covered her that, on her daily schedule, Poppy and J.J.’s occasional coupling was euphemized as “Private Time,” as in “Sunday 12:30 to 1 p.m.—Private Time.” Unless there was a fundraiser. Raising money always took precedence over copulation. It is not surprising that J.J.’s eye occasionally wandered between Poppy’s takeoff for Washington Sunday evening in the private jet she had inherited from her father and her return home to Cap City the following Thursday