by Tom Wolfe
By now, after midnight, they had reached the garrulous stage. Their conversation chundered out against the irritating thud of a Country Metal band, which was beyond camera range. And yet such were the wonders of modern electronic surveillance—in this case, the microphone planted in the café lamp—he could hear every word they said, assuming you could call them words.
The biggest of the three boys was speaking, the one with all the muscles. His voice had a babyish quality: “Man … was some adder wit chew?”
“Dear God in heaven, Irv,” said the Blond Pomposity, “what’s he saying?”
“He’s saying, ‘Man, what’s the matter with you?’” said Irv. He spoke in a low voice and never took his eyes off the monitors and slouched down even farther into his seat, as if withdrawing into a shell, to indicate that questions and comments were not welcome.
On the screen, the boy continued: “You in see no snakes. I mean, hale, you caint tale me you seen no snakes outcheer in no broad daylight.”
“Deed I did, too, Jimmy,” said the rawboned boy right across the table from him. “You know, lack it gets sunny late’na moaning, toad noon? They lack to come outcheer on the concrete strip overt the depot? —whirr it’s warm?—and just stretch out fer a spale? Saw one yistitty, big ol’ rattler. Sucker mussa been big araound’s a gas’leen hose.”
The big blonde let out a ferocious sigh. “What—are—these—people—saying?! We’re gonna have to use subtitles, Irv. And see if somebody can’t do something about the light.”
“I don’t wanna use subtitles,” said Irv in a whisper meant to admonish her to keep quiet. “I don’t wanna create the impression that gay-bashers are some kind of strange alien creatures. Because they’re not. I wanna show they’re the boy next door. They’re as American as 7-Eleven or Taco Bell, and they’re bigots, and they’re murderers.”
“Well, that’s fine,” said Her Erect Highness, “but these three kidssuppose one of’em blurts out the whole thing while we’re sitting here. Suppose one of ‘em says, ‘Right, I’m the one who killed him,’ and it comes out, ‘Rat, ah’m the one whut kaled the quair.’ How’s the viewer supposed to know? I mean, these kids are speaking rural Romanian. I say we use subtitles.”
“It’s not that hard to understand,” whispered Irv, getting testy. “I thought you were from the South.”
“I am, but—” She broke off. Her eyes were pinned on the monitors. “Besides, the light’s too dim.”
Irv’s voice rose. “Too dim?” He gestured toward the screens. “Whattaya think that is, The Wonder Years? That’s a dive, a saloon, a gin mill, a topless bar in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Mary Cary! I mean, Jesus Christ, that’s real life you’re looking at, in real time, and that’s … the light that’s there!”
“Fine, but considering we’ve already gone to the trouble of wiring the place—who’s the field producer on this piece?”
“Ferretti.”
“Well, get him on the line. I wanna talk to him.”
“I’m not calling him in the middle of a live feed—when he’s monitoring an undercover operation!”
“I don’t see what difference—”
“Shhhhhh!” said Irv, slouching down still farther and concentrating on the monitors as if the three boys were about to say something pertinent. But it was just more redneck saloon jabber about snakes and God knew what else.
The truth was, Mary Cary was right. They probably would have to use subtitles. But he didn’t feel like giving her the satisfaction of saying so. He couldn’t stand the way she was already saying we, as if she had actually done some work on this piece. Up until tonight, when she finally agreed to spend a couple of hours monitoring the feed with him, she hadn’t done a thing. But obviously she was ready, as usual, to march in and take credit if the piece worked out. He had a very strong instinct about this piece. It was going to work out. And suppose he hit the jackpot. Suppose the three soldiers hung themselves right on that videotape. Who would get the credit? All the newspaper stories, the editorials, the Op Ed pieces, all the pronouncements by the politicians, all the letters from the viewers, would talk about this big, gross, aging blonde sitting up in this chair with her regal posture as if she actually ran the show. All anybody would talk about would be Mary Cary Brokenborough.
The dumb, irritating way she said her own name on the air started running through his brain. On the air she still spoke with half a Southern accent. Merry Kerry Brokenberruh. That was the way it came out. She pronounced her own name as if it were a piece of rhyming trochaic duometer. It was ridiculous, but people loved it:
Merry
Kerry
Broken
Berruh
He stole a glance. The light of the monitors played across her big broad face. Up close, in person, she wasn’t much; not anymore. There was something gross about her supposed good looks. She was forty-two, and her skin was getting thick, and her nose was getting thick, and her lips were getting thick, and her hair was turning gray, so that she had to go to some hair colorist on Madison Avenue, or he came to her; whichever. Eight years ago, when she had first signed on with the network, she had still been—he closed his eyes for an instant and tried to envision her as she had been then; but instead of seeing her, he felt, all over again, the humiliation … the insouciance, the amusement, with which she had repulsed every effort of his to … get close … “Ummmmhhhhh .” He actually groaned audibly at the recollection of it. Little fat bald Jewish Irv Durtscher was what she had made him feel like … and still made him feel like … Well, her Southern Girl good looks were decaying fast … Another five years … although it was true that on camera she still looked great. She got away with murder. On camera she still looked like a blond bombshell; a cartoon rendition of a blond bombshell, but a blond bombshell all the same; and 50 million people tuned into Day & Night every week to see her.
And who the hell knew the name Irv Durtscher?
Well, that was nothing more than the nature of the business, and he had always known that. Nobody even knew what a television producer was, much less who Irv Durtscher was. Nobody knew that the producers were the artists of television, the creators, the soul, insofar as the business had any … Mary Cary knew that much. She wasn’t stupid, but she suffered from denial, in the sense that Freud used the word. She wanted to deny that she was really nothing but an actress, a mouthpiece, a voice box reciting a script by the creator of Day & Night, whose name happened to be Irv Durtscher.
They’d been sitting here in front of the feed for almost three hours, and she hadn’t stopped thinking about herself long enough to even acknowledge what a superb piece of investigative journalism she was looking at. Not a peep out of her about the ingenuity of what he had managed to pull off! What the hell would it cost her ego to say, “Wow, this is really fabulous, Irv,” or, “Nice work,” or, “How on earth did you know they’d be in that particular bar and exactly what booth they’d be sitting in?” or, “How’d you ever manage to install two hidden cameras and wire the place, for goodness’ sake?” … or just any goddamned thing …
No, she sits there and complains about the light. The light!—and up until now the Army and the locals in Fayetteville have managed to stonewall this whole atrocity, utterly, and insist there’s no evidence that anybody from Fort Bragg was involved. These three kids, these three rednecks he and Mary Cary were looking at right now—in real time, on these monitors—had beat up another soldier, a kid named Randy Valentine, killed him, murdered him, in the men’s room of a dive just like the one they were in at this moment, for no other reason than that he was gay. Everybody on the base knew who had done it, and there were soldiers who went around giving high fives to the big muscular kid there, the one who started it, Jimmy Lowe—and yet General Huddlestone himself denied all, and Day & Night had Huddlestone’s square, creased, lithoid, American Gothic WASP face on tape denying all—and I, Irv Durtscher, will gladly bury the general along with his three young Neanderthal enforcers … I, Irv Durtscher �
� I, Irv Durtscher, am the true artist of the modern age, the producer, the director, who can at one and the same time draw in television’s stupendous audiences and satisfy the network’s gluttony for profits—and advance the cause of social justice … The big thing in newsmagazine shows now was sting operations with elaborate setups, hidden cameras and microphones, incriminating statements on camera, and this case was perfect. It was I, Irv Durtscher, who convinced Cale Bigger, the network’s News Division chief, to authorize the huge expense of the spook operation to install the equipment and a live fiber-optic field feed from a dump, a topless bar called the DMZ, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And why did Bigger say yes? Because he cares for one second about the cause of gay rights? Eeeeyah, don’t make me laugh. It’s solely because I, Irv Durtscher, am the artist who can draw in the millions, the tens of millions, no matter what—and yet nobody knows my name …
He cut a quick glance at Mary Cary. She was looking straight ahead at the monitors. Why couldn’t he come on at the very beginning of the program, the way Rod Serling used to in The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock used to in Alfred Hitchcock Presents? Yeah, Hitchcock … Hitchcock was just as short, round, and bald as he was. More so. He could see it now … The titles come on … The theme music … and then … I, Irv Durtscher … but then he lost heart. They’d never go for it. On top of everything else, he looked too … ethnic. You could be Jewish and still be a star in television news, an anchorman or whatever, so long as you didn’t seem Jewish. And a name like Irv Durtscher didn’t help. No fat little baldheaded Irv Durtscher was going to be the star, the personality, of a big network news production like Day & Night.
So he had his mouthpiece, this big, blond, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant from Petersburg, Virginia, Mary Cary Brokenborough … Merry Kerry Brokenberruh … What did she care about the cause of gay rights? Who the hell knew? Did she even know, herself? Well, at least she was smart enough to know that she should act enlightened about such things. She’d be savvy enough to take directions …
A small cloud formed in Irv Durtscher’s brain. Why was he himself so passionate about gay rights? He wasn’t gay himself; he’d never even had a homosexual experience; and the truth was, every now and then he worried lest his two young sons, who seemed so passive, timorous, overly sensitive … (effeminate?) … lest they turn out gay … Christ, that would be a real goddamned horror show, wouldn’t it? Of course, he would never express anything like that to them. Their orientation would have to be … their orientation … Nevertheless, he felt so goddamned guilty … Ever since divorcing Laurie, he really hadn’t seen that much of the boys. So if they turned out gay, it might be considered his fault … Still—that had nothing to do with whether he was truly committed to gay rights or not, did it? Social justice was social justice, and he was truly committed to social justice; always had been; learned it at his mother’s knee, saw the importance of it in his father’s anguished face—
“ … gay rats …”
He lurched forward in his chair and concentrated on the monitors and held up his forefinger so Mary Cary would do the same. The tall, rangy one, the one right across the table from Jimmy Lowe, the one with the strange last name, Ziggefoos, had just uttered the expression “gay rats,” which in their patois, he knew by now, would mean gay rights.
“ … they nebber tale you what the hale they deeud fo’ they got that way. You jes see some may’shated sommitch with a fo’-day growth a beard and his cheeks lack this here”—he hollowed his cheeks and rolled his eyes up into his head—“lucking lack Jesus Christ and talking abaout AIDS’n gay rats.”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Jimmy Lowe.
“I mean, sheeut,” said Ziggefoos, “they act lack they jes flat out got sick fum ever‘buddy calling’em quairs or sump’m. Wasn’t nothing they deeud, natcherly.”
“Fuckin’ A wale told,” said Jimmy Lowe.
The third one spoke up, the small, wiry, dark-haired one, the runt of the trio, the one named Flory. “Member ‘at little Franch feller come overt obstickle course last munt with that fust bunch a UN trainees? Olivy-yay? I ever tale you what h’it was he called ‘em? Be talking about some gladiola, and he’d say, ‘He ain’t fum our parish.’”
“Ain’t fum our parish?” said Jimmy Lowe. “What’s’at spose mean?”
“It means—ovairn France everbuddy’s Cath’lic? And ever‘buddy’s in one p’tickler parish er’nudder? Y’unnerstan’? So him‘n’me, one time we seen Holcombe lane the ballin’ sun out back at the Far Department with his shirt unbuttoned taking a goddayum sunbath, and Olivy-yay, he don’t even know the sucker, but he’s spishus rat away, and he says to me, he says, ‘He ain’t fum our parish.’”
Holcombe! Irv’s central nervous system went on red alert. He leaned forward even farther and held up both hands toward the monitors as if he were Atlas ready to catch the world. Holcombe had been one of Randy Valentine’s closest friends at Fort Bragg. Even Mary Cary seemed to sense the three boys were now entering a minefield. She had leaned forward from out of her perfect sitting posture.
Up on the two screens, the tall one, Ziggefoos, didn’t intend to get sidetracked by Flory and his “not from our parish.” He took a swallow of beer and said, “An’ all’em shows on teevee, an’ all’is sheeut abaout ‘the gay lifestyle’? The wust thang they gon’ show you is, they gon’ show you a couple lesbians dancing or sump’m lack’at’eh. Jewer see two faggots dancing on teevee or kissing each other on’a lips? Hale, no. Ain’ gonna show you any a that sheeut.”
“Fuckin’ A wale told, Ziggy.”
“Oncet my old man rented us a hotel room somers up near the pier at Myrtle Beach,” Ziggefoos said, “an’ rat next doe’s this bowadin haouse or sump’m lack’at’eh, and abaout five o’clock in the moaning? —when it’s jes starting to geeut lat?—me’n’ my brother, we kin hear somebuddy grunting and squealing on the roof of the bowadin’ haouse, and we tuck a luck out the winder, and there’s two guys upair on the slope a the roof, unnerneath one a them great big ol’ teevee earls they used to have?—nekkid as a pair a jaybuds, and one uv’em’s jes buggering the living sheeut out th‘other’n. Me’n’my brother, we didn’t even know what they was doing. So we woke up the ol’ man, and he tuck a luck out the winder, and he says, ‘Jesus H. Christ godalmighty dog, boys, them’s faggots.’ Next thang you know, the fust two uv’em’s finished, and they go daown this little hatchway they got upair in the roof, and rat away two more uv’em pop up, buck nekkid just lack the fust two, and they’s lane on the roof, and one uv’m’s rubbing some kinda all on th’other’n’s butt. And the ol’ man, he’s smoking, I mean he’s flat out on far by now, he’s so mad, and he yales out, ‘Hey, you faggots! I’m gonna caount to ten, and if you ain’t off’n’at roof, you best be growing some wangs,’cause they’s gonna be a load a 12-gauge budshot haidin’ up yo’ ayus!’ Well, I mean I wisht I’d a had a cam’ra and some fi’m, the way them faggots set to scrambling up the roof and diving down that hatchway. Come to find out that haouse was packed fulla them fucking guys. They got ‘em hanging on hooks in’eh, they’s so many uv‘em, and they prolly been coming up on that roof all night long takin’ tons unnerneath that big ol’ teevee earl. And ‘at’s what I’m talking abaout. That’s what they ain’t abaout to tale you when they’s talking about gay rats and legal madge between homoseckshuls and all’at sheeut.”
Jimmy Lowe was nodding his approval of all this. Then he leaned over the table toward Ziggefoos and looked this way and that, to make sure nobody was eavesdropping, and he said, “You just put yer fainger on it, old buddy.”
Irv held his breath. It was beautiful. The kid had leaned over the table so he could lower his voice and not be overheard, but that had brought his mouth no more than six inches from the microphone hidden in the little lamp. At that range it would pick up a whisper.
“Anybuddy saw what I saw in—” He cut it off, as if a cautious impulse made him not want to say where. “Anybuddy woulda done what I deeud, er leastways
they’d a wanted to. Soon’s I walked inair and I looked unner that tallit doe and I seen that guy’s knees on the flow, and I hud these two guys going, ‘Unnnnnh, unnnnnh, unnnnnh.’”
Even in the middle of it, in the middle of these words for which he had been lying in wait for two and a half weeks, Irv was aware of the sleazy throb of the Country Metal music in the background and the secretive sibilance of the kid’s near-whisper—and—perfection!—it was the perfect audio background! No one with all the money and time and imagination in the world could have dreamed up anything better!
“—I mean, I knew ‘zackly what h’it was. And when I walked overt the tallit and stood up on tippytoe and looked daown over the doe and seen it was a feller fum my own goddayum cump‘ny daown on his fucking knees gobblin’ at whangus sticking thew’at hole in the partition—I mean, I saw some kind a rayud, and ‘at was when I kicked inny doe. Broke’at little metal tab rat off’n it.”
Ziggefoos, also leaning in, right into the mike, put on just the beginning of a smile. “Summitch mussa wunner what the hale hit him.”
“Whole goddayum doe hit him, I reckon. That summitch, he was lane upside the wall when I grabbed him.”
And now little Flory had leaned in over the table, too. “And you nebber deeud see the other guy?” he asked.
“Nebber seen him t‘all,” said Jimmy Lowe. “Speck he hauled ayus real fayust,’cause whan y‘all come in’eh, y’all nebber seen nobuddy coming out.”
“That’s rat,” said Flory.
Then the three boys, still huddled over the table, looked at one another reflectively and solemnly, as if to say, “Maybe we’d better not talk about it anymore.”
An impulse like an alarm surged through Irv’s central nervous system and up his brain stem, and the significance of what he’d just heard swept over him even before he could sort it out logically.