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One recent afternoon he was at home slouched in a living-room chair, feet in $7 mail-order sneakers flat on the floor. His dog Patches, essentially a beagle, quivered under the couch. Helms emptied his pockets—some change, a silver cross, a Christian medallion—and talked about his curious perch in American politics. "Some folks say I'm scary," he says. "The people here don't think I'm scary." Two of his four grandchildren, capering in the yard, call him "Sir," but they are not scared. He does not want to be scary.
"I am just speaking for me and what's right for me. Why not go back to traditional moorings? You say that conservatism is guilty of being too simplistic. It is more a choice of right and wrong," he says, settling the question. "My friends say they agree with me on everything except abortion," Helms admits. "Some have gone as far as to say they doubt they can support me. If I have to come on home on the principle of the rights of the unborn, then I'll come on home."
Helms belittles his role at the last two Republican National Conventions, where he shoved the party platforms as far to the right as they could go. Both times his name was placed in nomination for Vice President, and he ceremoniously declined. A third, charmed time? "No need to be cute about it. If I want to be Vice President, I'll be out on the hustings. You'll know." His current frenzy of banquets and rallies, then, is not to be considered hustings. "You get a certain serenity out of this," he says of his fractious Senate role. "You can't change the world all by yourself, but there is a serenity in trying." Aide Tom Ellis may have a straighter bead on any vice-presidential bid: "If Jesse thought it was in the best interests of his country, I think we could get the old bird into it."
On another, more public afternoon in Mocksville, N.C., at a Masonic picnic, Helms is not asked to account for his future. His speech is scheduled between Ferris wheel rides and an all-you-can-eat feast of baked ham and lemon pie. Supporters mob him all day. He is happy.
"Jesse, I grew up here, you know. I've remarried..."
"Why, yes ma'am. Bless your heart."
A well-wisher flutters up, and Helms remembers. "What kin are you to R.L.?" he asks.
"I'm his wife."
"Well, bless your heart."
Another Southern man of the people, Louisiana's Huey Long, would have found Helms incomprehensible. "Anybody that lets his public policies get mixed up with his religious prejudices," Long said, "is a goddamned fool." But Helms, heedless, faces the crowd this day in bleachers on the parched crab grass and delivers a sermon. He rhapsodizes about his pen pal Alexander Solzhenitsyn's dedication to freedom and Christianity. He flagrantly overstates Alexis de Tocqueville's 19th century observations about American piety. Most of all, he praises God. "The Lord is speaking to us: 'I have need for thee.' To uphold the principles and the laws, to be dedicated to the freedom, strength and nobility of those who preceded us."