Undertow

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Undertow Page 24

by Warren Adler

“Do you think anyone saw that?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid to think about it.”

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “I think the procession is forming up ahead,” Davis said.

  Don reached for Karen’s pocketbook, opened it, rummaged through it, found the vial of pills, and spilled two into the palm of his hand. He forced open her mouth and popped them in. She swallowed hard.

  “Now just relax, will you?” he beseeched.

  She said nothing, closed her eyes, and laid her head back. Tears moved haltingly out of them from the sides of her eyelids. Don pulled out his handkerchief and wiped them roughly away.

  Finally, the way was cleared, and the car, waved on by police, was slipped into the moving procession.

  “It sure is lousy weather,” I said, breaking into the long silence.

  No one responded.

  By the time we reached the little country cemetery, Karen was sitting up again and surveying her face in the mirror.

  “Do you feel better?” Don asked her.

  “I’ll never ever feel better, Don.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Karen.”

  “So am I.”

  It was embarrassing to listen to this interchange, for it was obviously the last turning point in their marriage. It was something you sensed between them. From here on in, everything would be strictly business. The charade was over.

  The television crews, cameramen and reporters had already arrived, assembled nearby, jockeying for position as our car turned into the rusted gate of the cemetery entrance. We hesitated before opening the door, waiting for Karen to put a comb through her hair and reapply her makeup. The rips in her stockings would barely show under her skirt.

  “Follow me,” Davis said, as he jumped out of the car and opened the back door. Flashbulbs began popping again. Police still kept the reporters and cameras at a safe distance. Davis elbowed his way through the group crowding around the open grave and deftly maneuvered himself next to Mr. Jackson, then swiftly stepped away to make room for Don. Karen, her shoulders stiff, barely moved from the edge of the crowd. I faded back, both as a defensive measure and because I felt somehow out of place, uncomfortable. Why was I here? The cameramen moved quickly to the other side of the grave, holding their cameras high to get “the picture.” The coffin was lowered into the ground. Voices cried out as the first thump of earth pounded against the hollow surface.

  It was the end of Marlena, the gazellelike black girl. The fire was out.

  As if in anger, the rain came down in earnest as the workmen began shoveling the earth swiftly into the hole.

  Mr. Jackson knelt at the graveside, smoothing down the earth and arranging flowers along its top. Don stooped down beside him, as if to help. The flashbulbs popped.

  When we were back in the car, Don borrowed my penknife to clean his shoes.

  XXXIX

  The front page of the Washington Chronicle lay flat on the president’s desk with its four column picture of Senator James and the father of the dead girl kneeling beside her grave. Grasped in the old black man’s gnarled hands was a tiny bouquet of white flowers. Senator James seemed to be patting the earth of the grave, his face composed, saddened it seemed by the injustice of premature death. The photographer had frozen the moment exquisitely, the misted overlay, the anguish of the black man, even the bouquet seemed marvelously radiant, a fitting offering to dead youth. Death had come too soon, the picture said. Man grieved. The loss was irrevocable. It evoked the universality of art.

  “The son-of-a-bitch,” Baum said.

  “You’ve got to hand it to him, Baum. He’s a clutch player.”

  “Who’s going to believe this crap?”

  “Many people unfortunately.”

  The president tapped an ash from his cigar, pushed a lever for the ashes to drop into the false bottom of the tray, the laid the cigar carefully against its lips. He looked over his scrawled notes on the yellow pad of lined foolscap.

  “We’ve got lots of work to do,” the president said. “Playing the demagogue is an art that the good senator has honed pretty well, but he underestimates the power of the presidency.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Mr. President. I have some ideas of my own.”

  “Good.”

  The president stood up and faced the window of the oval office. He enjoyed the view of the well-kept lawn, greener now for the rain that came down in sheets.

  “I want that man destroyed. He is a danger to everything we stand for. He’s taken a desperate gamble. But no matter what, he’s still a formidable opponent, the strongest of all the possibilities. What he represents has great currency in America, that dream of Utopia through simplistic compassion, simplistic solutions. He’d give the country to the bleeding hearts. He would see things different from this vantage point.”

  “As always,” Baum pointed out, “people like that are grist for the Communists’ mill. They’ll burrow inside his organization. They’ll manipulate his people. Why can’t people understand?”

  “We know that, Baum. But it’s an old line. Americans just can’t believe that Soviet Communism hasn’t changed its motives. We’ve grown fat with materialism and make-work. This man would have us with more bureaucracy, more government interference. Hell, the government can barely operate now; it’s so leaden with inefficiency and indifference. Why can’t they see the dual threat to our society? Weaken us by sloth inside. Deaden us by softness outside. It’s so damned frustrating.”

  Baum nodded. He said nothing.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t tell it like it is. We’re too committed to détente. It would blow our credibility sky high. The old style red-baiter is a dangerous image to project. They think you’re using the scapegoat techniques. Let’s all hate something that we can all agree to hate. Baum, why do we have such a bad way of saying things publicly?”

  “The media distorts whatever we say, anyway.”

  “The media is just a pack of howling wolves. Why don’t we feed them the right meat?”

  “Anything we say is distorted. Look at that picture. It’s a deliberate appeal for understanding and forgiveness. If it were you, they’d paint you at your worst.”

  “I don’t expect any better treatment. It’s as if a disease was running rampant in people attracted into that business. Freedom of the press! How can the press be free if it’s controlled by bleeding hearts?”

  The president shrugged. He was straying again, he thought. How his gall rose when he began to go down that road. It was not constructive to lose his cool on the subject. He couldn’t operate at white heat. He needed calm, calculation, well thought-out tactics, strategies formed by intelligence, not emotion.

  “We need a new device, something people will understand, that the press cannot ignore. We need to assassinate publicly the good Senator James, to push him over the brink.”

  The president turned from the window, sat down again at his desk, and looked over his notes.

  “I want this committee formed, totally political, outside the White House orbit. I want loyal men, reportable directly to you.” He looked into Baum’s steel-grey eyes. “When I say loyal, I mean loyal. Soldiers to the cause. No weakbellies. We’ll feed them with everything we can turn up. He’s a philandering bastard. I’ll get the raw FBI files on him. Then I want to know everyone he’s ever fooled around with. I want names. I want these names leaked to the press, until they can’t ignore it. Even if they found the sources, they would still have to tell the story. I want a full field investigation of the man’s life. I want to know all about his wife, his mother, father, brothers. I want to know everyone who has ever given him a dime for his campaign. I want to know what the source of his income is. I want his life turned inside out.”

  His anger rose in him as he spoke. He stopped himself again, picked up the cigar and puffed to quiet himself.

  “And if the information isn’t enough to warn the American people about his character, if they’re so debased
and degenerate as not to see through him, I want more and more and more, until they see the truth about him. That man is a danger and a threat to this country.”

  He looked at the picture of Senator James and the black man. “This is arrogance, pure arrogance.” The president stood up again and held up the picture for Baum to see. “It’s sophistry. Propaganda. Worse than Goebbels I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually murdered the girl.”

  He watched Baum’s reaction, although he knew in advance what it would be. Baum was the perennial flunky, the obedient functionary to whom every presidential opinion became gospel instantly. He never disagreed, but made notes endlessly in a loose-leaf notebook which bore the presidential seal.

  “Figuratively speaking, of course. What’s so incredible is that he has the gall to deny it publicly, on television. And worse, the American people could buy it. Put the power of television in the hands of a natural and, by God, they could buy it. Lord help us all.”

  “I’ll move ahead immediately on this.” Baum got up and began to walk toward the door.

  “And Baum,” the president called after him. “I want this handled in the usual way. I want the option of credible denial. No details please. But, by God, Baum, I want both barrels aimed at that man’s guts. Do whatever is necessary, even what might be characterized as extracurricular or quasi-legal.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Baum said with relish.

  When he had gone, the president leaned back in his chair. If only he could make them see the truth. That was his main failing. Somehow he was missing that extra measure, that indefinable aura required for mass persuasion. It was a mystique. He had to plod his way through, bull it through. If he had that extra measure, he would not be going through this hell of frustration. He started to tear up his notes of yellow foolscap. History would prove him right. Of that he was dead sure.

  XL

  Ernie lay on his bed, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling. The ceiling wobbled, he had concluded, and the paint-covered crack along the center gave evidence that somewhere deep in the apartment building’s foundation all was not quite right.

  He had by now grown used to the sour stench of his body and the stale air, layered with the stinks of human consumption, cigarette smoke, rotting pizzas, bones of stripped chicken, fruit cores, and banana peels. For three days he had locked himself away in his lair, an injured lion, licking his wounds, waiting for healing, a process that had eluded him.

  Why did it not come? Rage ebbed. Indifference set in. Then the damned rage returned in gale force. He had actually quit his job, had opted for blind purity, for haughty principle. He had tasted, very briefly, the ecstasy of heroics, the heady brew of martyrdom. Then he had gone home, locked his door, refused to answer his phone, told Ellen to please, please leave him alone for a few days. Within the first few hours the plateau of joy collapsed under its tentative pilings as if they were made of balsa wood.

  He did manage a few monosyllabic phone calls.

  “You did what you had to do.”

  “It was stupid.”

  “It was worse than that.”

  “I’m sure you’d get the job back. All you’d have to do is ask. Chalmers knows you’re good.”

  “I can’t bring myself to do it. I think I’m crazy.”

  “Maybe a little self-righteous.”

  “A little?”

  “Lots.”

  Why didn’t his feeling of exhilaration sustain itself? Where was the fucking catharsis? He had done that thing that was a far far better thing to do than he had ever done. But at least Sidney Carton didn’t have to dwell on the abject stupidity of his action. Zap went the guillotine! And here Ernie was still conscious, bleeding like a sieve all over his rumpled bed, on to the floor of his pig sty of an apartment.

  Inflexibility. Martyrdom. He cursed at himself. Silent martyrdom no less. Only three people in the world knew about it, and one of them was him. Worse. He had two hundred bucks in the bank, owed five payments on his car, and he liked—loved—his job.

  But when self-pity retreated and his mind cleared momentarily, he felt more analytical about what he had done and less self-immolating. Wrong is wrong! It wasn’t a question of judgment. You just don’t compromise the fact of truth. That man got up on the boob tube and lied like hell. That was wrong. But worse, Chalmers didn’t want the truth. The smugness of Chalmers irritated him the most. The bile rose again—anger, rage.

  What people were capable of doing in the name of political ideology was incredible. Chalmers sucked the teat of the liberal bitch while the president stroked the conservative hound. How did such moral illiterates ever get so powerful! But that was the way it was, they all had said. Indignation was for suckers. The objective was to become powerful, to get into the position to state your message, the real message. Although, by then, after the rot of compromise had eaten away your gut, you wouldn’t have a message to state. Like Senator James, like the president, like all the rest in between. Let them all rot in hell, wherever that was.

  How many of us would finally be left? Was the movement decimated, the sweet, brave movement of love and truth, defeated? Where were his comrades? Hell, he couldn’t fight off the bastards all alone, not forever. The fucking foxhole was flooded. He was running out of ammo, and his courage—what courage—was evacuating him like rats from the hold of a doomed ship.

  He rose from his bed and put his bare feet into a pair of loafers, threw a sweater round his neck, and went out. Stiff and tired for lack of use, his legs rebeled against walking swiftly. He fought it, felt the pain in his shins, and pressed on. People observed him and then turned away. He knew he must have looked like a derelict, but he had to get out into the air to move with speed, to feel the blood pulse.

  Perhaps, he thought, he could tell Chalmers, “Give me only assignments on which the truth is essential, where only the absolute truth counts.” “What is the absolute truth?” Chalmers would say. Nothing is absolute. Nothing but the truth. But to deliberately abuse a fact by filtering it out—that is wrong. He couldn’t redeem Senator James. He was finished, a turd like the rest of them.

  Maybe he should never have left good old Williamsport, P.A. Ambition, restlessness, opportunity had goaded him away. All these small-town boys slugging it out in the big cities—what good was it being a small-town boy if they didn’t break your heart in the city, as your mom and dad had warned?

  But who was ever really safe in Williamsport, P.A. where the mind caved in at thirty. Besides, technology had obliterated all the Williamsports, and Main Street now came crawling through the television set, and the White Charger was pots of glue and dogfood, or would be soon—very soon.

  Perhaps, in the end, he would have to go back to Williamsport P.A. wherever that was now, repack the battered suitcase, and roll back home. He could again smell his mother’s hard cookies, the ones with the raisins, and his father’s cigar-soaked breath; and with it, the memories returned of the old corny dreams. Old illusions. Dead dreams.

  He passed storefronts. Cars rolled swiftly by. Voices filtered past. Martyrdom somehow didn’t seem contemporary. He wasn’t a Thomas More, and, Christ, he wasn’t Christ. He began to look into the store windows, watching his own disheveled image float by. He passed bars, gift shops, antique stores. At an optical store, he paused and watched an old craftsman grind a lens. The man’s craggy fingers seemed sure. Perhaps he would become a skilled craftsman, deft fingers merged with roughhewn material, carving the truth from a piece of wood or metal or glass. There was greatness in that act. It wasn’t trivia. It couldn’t be bent or battered by compromise. He looked at his hands. They were clumsy, indelicate.

  He turned from the storefront and looked about him. People were scurrying about on their daily rounds, quite oblivious to his great act of moral indignation. The traffic along M Street seemed endless. A supermarket across the way was crowded with housewives engaged in the mundane chores of human sustenance. Children straggled to school, across traffic laden art
eries controlled by intense women with red chestbands.

  The sun was trying to work its way through the smog. Occasionally, a glint of its reflection would bounce off a metal sign. He breathed deeply, listened to the sounds of the street as if hearing them for the time.

  He yearned to be part of that throbbing mass again, not alone in himself, locked away in his apartment, morbid with self-pity. It was life that he wanted to sink his teeth into—life. He had built up too many expectations—great expectations. Perhaps Chalmers was right after all. Perhaps wisdom came only in tiny steps, a messenger wending his uncertain way through the crowded human experience.

  If he could only see it all as a mere difference of opinion instead of an irrevocable betrayal of principle. Was it pride? Or was it plain stubbornness, something injected into his blood by a long line of Pennsylvania Dutchmen on his mother’s side. Later, perhaps, he’d call Chalmers and ask for his job back. Yes, later, he’d call Chalmers. Tonight he’d see Ellen and get back to the land of the living.

  Turning a corner, he saw an old copy of the Chronicle lying on a pile of trash. Familiar faces appeared vaguely visible on the front page. He picked up the paper and carried it into a nearby coffee shop, crowding into a small booth in the rear.

  Spreading the paper, he saw the picture. And yet, the details of it, which he might first have studied, seemed obscured by the by-line: “Photo by Charles Hershey.” ”They set ’em up, I shoot ’em,” he remembered Charlie saying.

  He looked about him. Nothing had changed. An old man was drinking coffee at the counter. A woman’s voice drifted in from the kitchen. It was as if he shared a secret with very few men. Perhaps, instead of indignation, blunted now, he should substitute admiration. It was a dazzlingly masterful technical performance by the senator and his people. By God, they had done it, or seemed to have done it; they had shoved it right up the kazoo of fat-assed America.

  When the coffee came, he blew on its surface and sipped. A drop spilled on the picture, hitting the black man directly on his bowed head, fading away some of his image.

 

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