The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  He continued: “Anyway, not so with an Indian village. They’d just blast away. Anyone who got in the way, well, tough. That was what I was thinking of. We walked through one of those villages after a fight. I think maybe the government troops had killed a couple of guerrillas and the guerrillas managed to kill a couple of government troops. That’s it. No big deal. But they sure as hell had torn the shit out of the village.”

  He hesitated.

  “Baby blood. There’s nothing like it. It’s almost useless to take pictures of baby blood because no one will run them. Editors look at them, tell you how powerful they are, what a statement they make, but damn, they won’t run them. Americans don’t want to know about baby blood . . .”

  He looked over at her.

  “There was one Indian woman, sitting, holding her child. She looked up as I took the picture. Her eyes were like yours. That’s what I remembered . . .”

  Again he paused.

  “I was standing next to this CIA guy named, named, Christ, Jones or Smith or some other lie he told us. He looked down and saw the woman and the child, same as me, and he said to me, ‘Probably got hit when those rebel rounds fell short.’ And he looked hard at me and said, ‘The damn Russians are always short-loading the shit they sell these backwater revolutions. Too bad, huh?’”

  Jeffers thought before continuing. “I remember his words perfectly. He was one of those guys that wasn’t there, you know.”

  Jeffers was momentarily silent and drove on steadily.

  “Do you understand what he was saying?”

  “Not exactly,” she replied.

  Without hesitation, Jeffers took one hand off the wheel and slapped her hard. “Wake up! Dammit! Pay attention! Use your mind!”

  She cowered back in the seat, fighting the tears that formed instantly in the corners of her eyes. It was not so much the pain of the blow, which on the scale he’d established was relatively low, it was the suddenness of it.

  She took a deep breath, struggling for control. She could hear the quaver in her voice as she spoke: “He was saying we didn’t do it . . .”

  “Right! Now what else?”

  “He was fixing the blame for murder on everyone but . . .”

  “Right again!” Jeffers smiled.

  “Now,” he said, “isn’t it easier to use your head?”

  She nodded.

  “Gratuitous cruelty. Delusion. If we had not been there, there would have been no battle and the child would have lived, at least a few more days, weeks, who knows. But we were there. But we didn’t cause the death?”

  He laughed, but not at a joke or anything humorous.

  “Delusions, delusions, delusions.”

  She wrote this down.

  Anne Hampton thought of a dozen questions and bit back each one.

  After a moment he said, “Death is the easiest thing in the world. People think killing is hard. That’s only what they want to believe. In reality it is the simplest thing around. Pick up the newspaper some morning, what do you see? Husbands kill wives. Wives kill husbands. Parents kill children. Children kill each other. Blacks kill whites. Whites kill blacks. We kill in secrecy, we kill in stealth, we kill publicly, we kill with purpose, we kill by accident. We kill with guns, knives, bombs, rifles—the obvious things. But what happens when we cut a federally subsidized grain shipment to Ethiopia? We kill, just as surely as we would had we taken a handgun and put it to the temple of some little kid with a swollen belly. Hell, if you think about it for a moment, our entire national approach to the world, to life itself, is based on the question of who we may or may not kill on any given day. And what weapons we might or might not use. Foreign policy? Hah! We should call it our death policy. Then a spokesman could get up at a nice Washington press briefing and say, ‘Well, the President and the cabinet and the Congress have decided today that Guatemalan Indian peasants, South African demonstrators, certain elements of the issue in Northern Ireland, both sides, mind you, and a few other sundry peoples about the world are doomed. Once again, just as I said yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, the Russians are okay. No need for dying there.’” He stared down the highway and laughed.

  “I really sound crazy.”

  He glanced over at her. “Do I scare you?”

  Her heart sped as she tried to decide what the right answer would be. She shut her eyes and spoke the truth: “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose that’s reasonable.”

  He was quiet before continuing. “Well, politics wasn’t how I wanted to start this. I mean, we can talk with more sophistication after you come to know me a little better. That’s why we’re heading this way.”

  “Can I ask a question?” she tried timidly.

  “Look,” he answered with a slight tone of irritation. “You can always ask. I’ve told you that before. Please don’t make me repeat things. Whether you get an answer or”—he balled one fist, then released it—“some other response really depends on my mood.” He reached down and suddenly grabbed the muscle above her knee, pinching it painfully. She gasped. “Remember, there are no rules. The game simply progresses, stage by stage, until it ends.”

  He released her leg. It continued to burn. She wanted to rub it to try to reduce the pain, but dared not. “Ask!” he said.

  “Are we going someplace where you’ll help me know you better?”

  He smiled. “Smart Boswell,” he said. “Excellent Boswell.”

  Jeffers hesitated, just to give his words a bit of impact: “That should be obvious. That’s the whole point of this little trip.” He smiled and aimed the car down the highway.

  They drove on in silence.

  Anne Hampton daydreamed as they swept past Mobile on the interstate. It was still early and she thought of the pleasant sensation that rising at dawn in the summer brings; a feeling of synchronization with the day. She recalled when she was a child how she enjoyed padding about the house by herself. It was time she spent in special quiet, alone with her things. Sometimes, she remembered, she would crack the door to her parents’ room and watch them lie in their bed. When she was sure they wouldn’t stir, she would creep across the hallway to her brother’s room. He would be flung across the bedclothes, a jumble of sleep, absolutely oblivious to the world. Her brother slept late. Always. Without fail. A bomb blast wouldn’t wake the little terror. It was as if her brother’s body knew how important it was to store energy for the nonstop way he threw himself into life. Inwardly she smiled. When Tommy died, she thought, the entire world probably slowed, even if just a small amount, an infinitesimal measurement, readable only by the oldest, wisest scientists at the greatest universities with the newest, most exacting instruments. When I die I’ll be lucky if there’s a ripple on some tiny pond somewhere, or a little gust of breeze in the trees.

  She blinked hard several times swiftly, to clear the thoughts from her head. My mind is filled with death, she said to herself. And why shouldn’t it be? She glanced over at Jeffers, who was whistling something she couldn’t recognize as he steered the car.

  “Are you only going to talk about death?” she asked.

  He turned toward her momentarily before shifting his gaze down the road. He smiled. “Good Boswell,” he said. “Be a reporter.” He paused, then continued. “No. I’ll try to talk about some other things. You raise a valid point. The trouble is”—he laughed before going on—“a certain preoccupation with morbidity. Fatalism. Ends rather than beginnings.”

  He paused again, considering. Anne Hampton scribbled down as many of his words as she could manage, then stared in despair at her handwriting. She didn’t trust its legibility, and wondered suddenly, in a moment of fright, whether he would check.

  Jeffers broke into a grin and laughed out loud.

  “Here’s a story for you. The best life-affirming
story I can think of off the top of my head. I’ll try to come up with some more from time to time, but this one, well, it was when I was with the Dallas paper, the Times-Herald, back in the mid-seventies. People used to call it the Crimes-Herald, but that’s another story . . .

  “Anyway, I was working day general-assignment, which usually meant anything from flower shows and business-page shots of captains of industry—what a silly phrase that is—to accidents and cops, and anything else that might come through the window. And we got this call, I mean, it was one of those sublime moments on a newspaper, which of course, no one ever realizes, but happens nonetheless. Guy calls in and says the damnedest thing just happened. What’s that? replies the city-desk man, who’s bored out of his skull. Well, the guy says, it seems like this couple was having a fight, you know, a domestic. They were getting a divorce and they were arguing over child custody and grabbing at the baby right and left and screaming at each other, and the dude tries to snatch the baby out of his old lady’s hands and whoops! Out the baby goes, right out the fourth-floor window . . .

  “Well, the city-desk editor finally wakes up, because this is a helluva story and he starts yelling for me and a reporter to get going, because there’s a baby been tossed out of a window and suddenly the editor realizes that the guy on the phone is trying to interrupt. Yeah, yeah, the editor says, just give me the address. You don’t understand, the guy on the phone says, starting to get exasperated. What don’t I understand? says the editor. The story, says the guy. Well? says the editor. The story, the guy says, after getting his breath back, is that someone caught the baby. What! says the editor. That’s right, says the guy, there was this dude walking right underneath, who looks up and sees this baby come out the window . . . and damn if he didn’t catch it right on the fly.”

  Jeffers looked at Anne Hampton. She smiled.

  “Really? I mean, he caught the baby? I can’t believe . . .”

  “No, no, he did. I promise . . .” Jeffers laughed. “Fourth story. Just like a football player making a fair catch.”

  “What’s a fair catch?”

  “That’s where the guy receiving the ball can raise his arm and signal the other team that he’s going to catch the ball without trying to advance it. Then they’re not supposed to tackle him. It’s the ultimate act of self-preservation.

  “But how . . .”

  “I wish I knew.” Jeffers laughed again. “I mean, the guy must have had incredible presence of mind . . . I’d guess that most people would look up and see this shape coming out the window and scurry out of the way as fast as possible. Not this guy.”

  “Did you talk to him? I mean, what did he say?”

  “He just said he looked up and somehow knew right away, split second, really, that it was a baby, and he circled right under the child. He’d been a center fielder on his high-school baseball team, too, which was really funny, because when he said that, everyone nodded and thought, Sure, that explains it, but of course it didn’t explain anything, because baseball players don’t usually get much baby-catching practice.”

  “But maybe that’s where he learned to catch?”

  “I guess so. Football, baseball. It was a story that lent itself to sports metaphors.”

  Jeffers looked over at Anne Hampton. She caught his eye and shook her head. Then she smiled and the smile widened into a grin. The two of them laughed out loud.

  “That’s incredible. A bit wonderful, as well . . .”

  “In a way, that’s what photographers do. They periodically go from one incredible to the next . . .” Jeffers hesitated. “Better get that down,” he said, then paused while Anne Hampton scrawled some more notes on her pad. When she looked up again, Jeffers continued. “Anyway, I can tell you that that particular assignment absolutely made my day. Hell, it made everyone’s day. Made my week. Made my month, probably. I shot the guy, he had the most, I don’t know, delightful, I guess, sheepish grin on his face. We were all of us laughing and giggling, reporters, photographers, television crews, passersby, neighbors, the cop on the beat, everyone. Even the kid’s father, standing there in handcuffs, because the cops felt they sure as hell had to arrest somebody when a baby gets tossed out of a window. Funny thing was, he didn’t seem to mind. Then I got a picture of the mother, too. Have you ever seen a person whose life changes so abruptly, so quickly, so many times? From terror to despair to agony to hope to incredible happiness in a couple of seconds. It was all wrapped in her eyes. An easy picture to take. Just put the baby in her arms, sit her down next to the guy who caught the child, and press the shutter button. Bingo. Instant pathos. Instant joy.”

  “Unbelievable,” she said.

  “Incredible,” he said.

  “You’re not kidding me, just trying to make me feel better?”

  “No. Not a chance. That’s not something I do.”

  “What?”

  “Try to make people feel better. It’s not in the job description at all.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .”

  He interrupted. “I know what you meant.”

  He glanced over at her and smiled. “But it should make you feel better anyway.”

  She felt an odd warmth.

  “It’s nice,” she said. “It’s a really nice story. It does.”

  “Make sure you get it down,” he said.

  She scribbled quickly in the notepad.

  “. . . And the baby lived,” she wrote.

  She stared at the word for a moment: lived. For a moment she wanted to cry, but she was able to stifle it.

  They continued down the highway in the first benign silence she’d known for what she sensed was only hours but suddenly seemed to her to be weeks.

  Gulfport slid past them as the morning sun took root. Occasionally the roadway would dip toward the Gulf of Mexico and Anne Hampton watched for the insouciant blue of the baywaters. These glimpses comforted her, as did the infrequent sight of a flight of gulls as they floated on the wind currents, just above the waves. She thought they seemed like gray and white sailboats, the way they moved with ease in conjunction with the desires and demands of nature.

  It was midmorning when Jeffers said, “Time to tank up.”

  He pulled off the interstate, heading down a narrow ramp toward the first gasoline station he spotted. To Anne Hampton it seemed to be a ramshackle place; the small white clapboard attendant’s building seemed to sway in the morning breeze, leaning against the solid square brick garage for assistance. Two lines of red, blue, green, and yellow pennants snapped in the wind above the pumps. They were the old-fashioned kind that gave off a ring as each gallon was pumped, not the newer, computer-driven style that was more familiar to her. It was called Ted’s Dixie Gas and was empty save for three cars parked on the side by the garage. Two of the cars seemed to be derelicts, stripped and rusted, barely recognizable. The third was a cherry-red street racer, its tail end jacked up, oversized tires and chromed wheels. Someone’s fantasy, she thought. Someone’s time and effort and money wrapped up in small-town heroics. She stared at the car as Jeffers crunched up to the pumps, knowing that a slick-haired teenager would emerge momentarily to take their order.

  “Hit the head,” Jeffers demanded.

  His voice had a sudden roughness in it. She shivered.

  “You know the rules, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you, do I?”

  She shook her head. She noticed that he had the short-barreled pistol in his hand and that he was sticking it in his belt, beneath his shirt. She stared, then turned away.

  “Good,” he said. “Makes things much easier. Now sit still while I come around to open your door.”

  She waited.

  “Hurry up,” he said as he swung wide the door. She looked up and saw a gangly teenager with straight dark
hair sticking haphazardly out from beneath a battered, faded baseball cap, walking across the dusty station toward them.

  “Fill ’er up?” he drawled. It took him almost as much time to speak the words as it had for him to lope across the space between the garage and the pumps.

  “To the top,” said Jeffers. “Where’s the ladies’ room?”

  “Wouldn’t y’all want the men’s room?” the boy replied, grinning. Anne Hampton thought suddenly that Jeffers would shoot the teenager right there and then. But instead Jeffers laughed. He made his finger into a gun and pointed it at the boy. “Bang,” he said. “You got me on that one. No, I meant for the lady, here.” The attendant turned his huge grin on Anne Hampton and she smiled faintly in return.

  The boy pointed to the side of the building. “Key’s on the inside of the door there. The old man will show ya.” He waved at the gas station office.

  Anne Hampton looked at Jeffers and he nodded.

  She felt hot as she crossed the twenty feet to the station. It was as if the wind had suddenly died down, just in the space around her. She stared up at the pennants, which still flapped and twisted above her, and wondered why she could not feel the breeze. She felt dizzy and her stomach churned in quick fashion. She stepped out of the sunlight into the doorway. There was an older man, unshaven, with a greasy striped shirt on, sitting by the register, drinking a can of soda. Her eyes fastened on a sewn name above his shirt pocket. It said Leroy. “The bathroom key?” she asked.

  “Right next to you,” the man replied. “You okay, miss? You look like yesterday’s bacon left in the skillet overnight. Can I get you a cold one?”

  “A what?”

  “A soda.” He nodded toward a cooler.

  “Uh, no. No. Yes, actually. Why, thank you, Leroy.”

  “Hell, it’s my brother’s shirt. That good-for-nothing never did a solid day’s work. I put all the grease there. I’m George. Coke?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  He handed her the cold can of soda and she pressed it against her forehead. He smiled. “I like to do that, too, when the heat gets to me. Seems to get right inside your head, that way. Better with a bottle of beer, though.”