by Frank Capra
“THE ACTIONS OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY, AND OF THE CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION, IN REFUSING LEFTY WAKEFIELD AN OPEN HEARING BEFORE PUBLIC AND PRESS, SO THAT ALL MIGHT HEAR AND KNOW LEFTY’S REASONS FOR DISOBEYING A GESTAPO ORDER TO ARREST TWO MEN ON TRUMPED-UP VAGRANCY CHARGES…THIS TOO, SMELLS TO HIGH HEAVEN.
“THIS NEWSPAPER BELIEVES ONLY AN OPEN PUBLIC HEARING BEFORE THE ENTIRE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS WILL DRIVE AWAY THE STENCH.
“BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS ARE INVOLVED. AMERICAN LAW IS BASED ON COMPASSION AS WELL AS JUSTICE. HUMAN DIGNITY IS SACRED…EVEN TO THE LAW.
“IF YOU AGREE, SIGN THE PETITION ON PAGE 3 OF THIS EDITION, WHICH REQUESTS THE SUPERVISORS TO CALL AN OPEN HEARING.
“REMEMBER, CITIZENS, YOU ARE THE ULTIMATE POWER IN OUR DEMOCRACY.
“SIGN THE PETITION.”
“Oh, this is marvelous!” enthused ex-attorney Herb Kelly, “another Dred Scott decision…a Dreyfus ease…another Stokes trial! Another example of man-made laws colliding with God-given human rights. Oh, legal minds have bashed their heads against this rock for centuries. The problem is: Where does Justice end and compassion begin? How far can the Christian ethic of ‘Love thy neighbor, even if he’s your enemy’ spill over into the framing of laws?’
“Should you still love your neighbor if you catch him stealing, or raping your wife? Or should you turn him in to the law? Marvelous, marvelous…the Bear Bait-Dry Rot case… Does a person forfeit his human rights when he disowns the society that gives him those rights? What a field day for legal philosophers… What a headache for the Supreme…”
He was interrupted by the entrance of friend and neighbor, tall John Hewitt, as he stomped in waving a different newspaper.
“Hi, neighbors,” greeted pleasant John. Then, turning to me, “Well, Frank, I see you made the out-of-state papers, too.”
“Me? What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Minden, Nevada paper. A big, red, Mono County fire truck, blowing its siren like Billy-be-damned, is dropping bundles of ’em off all up and down three ninety-five…Whole-page ad in it by county officials…”
“Let me see that…” I grabbed his paper and read the ad out loud: “‘SHAME! SMEARERS!’… That’s the headline,” I told the others. “‘SINCE ALL THE MONO COUNTY PRESS IS A MONOPOLISTIC DICTATORSHIP, CONTROLLED BY ONE PERSON (A LYING MUDSLINGER), WE, YOUR ELECTED COUNTY OFFICIALS, HAVE SUFFERED THE HUMILIATION OF BUYING SPACE (AT OUR OWN EXPENSE) IN A NEVADA NEWSPAPER, IN ORDER TO EXPOSE THREE VENAL MEN AND CHARGE THEM WITH CHARACTER ASSASSINATION.
“‘NEVER HAVE SO FEW STOOPED SO LOW TO DESTROY SO MANY. AND FOR WHAT? FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE!
“‘YES, FRIENDS…IT’S A POLITICAL PLOT!…A PLOT TO ELECT A HANDPICKED HACK FOR STATE ASSEMBLYMAN, OVER YOUR DEVOTED SERVANT, DISTRICT ATTORNEY TONY CALDWELL.
“‘THAT’S THE TRUTH AND THE WHOLE TRUTH.
“‘THREE MEN, THREE UNSCRUPULOUS VENAL MEN, ARE DISRUPTING YOUR WHOLE COUNTY WITH VICIOUS LIES. THEY ARE:
“‘NUMBER ONE: “BOATCOURT” STEVE GORSKI, FOREIGN-BORN, “CHARACTER” ATTORNEY: RICH (AND HOW HE GOT RICH IS STILL A MYSTERY), UNMARRIED, ECCENTRIC, BOHEMIAN, ATHEIST, POWER-CRAZED STEVE GORSKI. HE IS THE BACKER AND ‘ANGEL’ OF HIS HANDPICKED CANDIDATE FOR THE STATE ASSEMBLY—HIMSELF!
“‘HIS AMBITION? TO BE A ‘TAMMANY HALL’ BOSS OF MONO COUNTY.
“‘NUMBER TWO: ‘HOPPY’ HOPKINS, PUBLISHER AND EDITOR OF ALL MONO COUNTY PAPERS: APTLY NAMED “HOPPY,” FOR ONLY A MAN FULL OF POPPY JUICE COULD TREAT ALL ELECTED COUNTY OFFICIALS AS AUTOMATIC “CROOKS.”
“‘THE MAN HATES…HATES ALL THAT HE CAN’T CONTROL. HE WOULD “ACCUSE” GOLDILOCKS IF IT WOULD PUT NEW LIFE IN HIS MORIBUND CIRCULATION.
“‘NUMBER THREE: A MOVIE DIRECTOR FROM HOLLYWOOD, THAT CESSPOOL OF VICE. HE IS FOREIGN-BORN, A CATHOLIC, A ‘LIBERAL’—PROBABLY IS FINANCING THE SMEAR CAMPAIGN IN ORDER TO SUBVERT A LIBEL SUIT FOR SLANDERING YOUR INCORRUPTIBLE SHERIFF, TOM MCMAHON.
“‘THERE YOU ARE. WE APOLOGIZE FOR HAVING TO GO TO ANOTHER STATE TO BRING THE TRUTH INTO YOUR OWN COUNTY.
“‘IF YOU BELIEVE IN YOUR DULY ELECTED COUNTY GOVERNMENT, AND NOT IN FOREIGN-BORN, POWER-MAD, KOOKY OUTSIDERS, THEN:
“‘SAVE YOUR COUNTY FROM THEIR DOMINATION BY SIGNING THE PETITION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. TELL THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS NOT TO BE PANICKED INTO CALLING AN OPEN HEARING OVER A TRIVIAL AFFAIR INVOLVING TWO SORDID MISFITS. EVERY DAY YOUR LAW OFFICERS HANDLE DOZENS OF SIMILAR CASES INVOLVING THE SAFETY AND PROTECTION OF YOUR HOMES AND CHILDREN. AND THEY WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO.
“THE THREE VENAL MEN WANT AN OPEN HEARING, ONLY AS A FORUM TO TRY TO SUBVERT YOUR COUNTY GOVERNMENT.
“SIGN THE PETITION!
“SAVE YOUR COUNTY’S GOOD NAME!
“SIGN FOR JOBS, PROGRESS, AND PROSPERITY!
“SIGN THE PETITION, AMERICANS!
“‘Signed:
COMMISSIONER KYLE SOMMES,
SHERIFF TOM McMAHON, and
DISTRICT ATTORNEY TONY CALDWELL.’”
I was shocked. I couldn’t think of anything to say. The ferocity of the half-truths, the viciousness of the innuendos…
There they were, printed in black and white, certified with the official county seal and attested to by the highest governing officers. No wonder politicians say the prime requisite in politics is a thick skin.
I looked around at our neighbors—friends of twenty years standing. They, too, were mulling the charges in the unexpected counterattack. Surely they would raise a storm of protest in my defense. They were silent. Was bigotry a dormant disease in all of us, even our friends, waiting to be stirred into virulence by the dirty finger of innuendo? A dirty suspicious finger of my own began stirring up a counter-nastiness. Persecuted skins become supersensitive to the faintest gleam of discrimination.
“Well!” I finally said lamely to nobody in particular.
“Frank, whoever wrote that rebuttal knows his infighting,” said ex-attorney Herb Kelly with admiration. “That’s a beautiful counterpunch, cunningly devised to confuse the issue.”
“I’d say it’s a beautifully timed counterpunch, anyway,” mused John Hewitt. “You betcha…SHAME! SMEARERS!… A solid right cross over your straight left of SHAME! MONO! They play rough up here in the hills.”
“Speaking of prize fights,” threw in my already fed-up wife, “having to go out of the state and buy space to tell their side of the case, that pretty much makes them the underdog, too.”
“Lu, you’re absolutely right,” said Mrs. Herb Kelly. “That’s one thing I can understand. I think it’s terrible that county officials are forced to go to another state to defend themselves against charges.”
“My dear, that’s just a brilliant piece of strategy to enlist voter sympathy,” countered her ex-attorney husband. “All that’s being asked of them is to hold a public hearing…”
“I don’t care, Herb,” she snapped back. “It’s just not fair.”
“Darling, all is fair in love and war, and a legal fight is mental warfare. Yes, and as in war, the best defense in law is to attack. Attack your opponent’s motives. Destroy his credibility; his character. And if his case is clean and logically clear, be a squid and squirt the ink of doubt all over it. Very seldom is a case all black and white, so you attack with grays. Make the sinner seem more sinned against than sinning.” He turned to me.
“Frank, that’s what those shrewd boys in Bridgeport are doing to your lost cause crusade. You and your friends are fighting for an idea…all right…an ideal—human rights—difficult to spell out perhaps, but nevertheless, very dear to you. But in the process you are threatening political lives…and survival is very dear to them, too.”
Herb Kelly’s words sounded like the lyrics of a funeral march. My God. My neighbors were taking this whole affair as a game, a contest in which the opposition held most of the legal and moral cards. Not a word about their bigotry. I glanced at my
wife. She averted her eyes. She knew what the others didn’t know—that I could be as boring and annoying as some blacks, Hindus, and South Americans who take a perverse pleasure in making life difficult for their friends by deliberately misconstruing a careless jocular word, a look, or a silence as a racist statement in disguise.
Lyle Wright, the retired librarian, had sat there all this time, detached, elbows on the table, a coffee cup in both hands—and, I thought, as haughty as a Mayflower descendant. “Lyle?” I asked with an overly honeyed voice. “Haven’t you got a witty remark up your white, Protestant sleeve to add to the obit of a lost cause?”
“Why, yes, Frank. I just looked into my white Protestant sleeve and saw an elbow that wants to bend a little.”
“Lu, hand me the brandy. That’s the best idea you’ve had in years, Lyle.” And everybody laughed, relaxed, and agreed wholeheartedly, thereby proving alcohol’s redeeming virtue: a relaxing catalyst.
“In my coffee, Frank,” said Lyle, holding out his cup, “that’s the way we drank it at the library. Looked better.”
“That’s the way we drank it branding cows in Texas,” added John Hewitt. “Brandied better.”
The corny pun got howls of pain.
“Ouch!”
“Did you have to reach way back to Texas for that?”
“Always got a laugh out of the cows,” retorted John with a straight face.
And so it went as the brandy warmed away the blues. The chitchat got sillier and sillier. For the moment, at least, everybody forgot about Bear Bait and Dry Rot and Lefty and the rest. Everybody but me, that is. Despite the brandy and banter, I was seething inside. “Foreign-born, Catholic, a movie man,” officialdom warned in their statement.
Of all the sins of man, bigotry has to be the cruelest. There’s no way to fight it—so you hate it. Then you hate yourself, for hating. Yes, I was kidding around and smiling at our friends, but smiling only with the mouth, not the eyes.
“A toast!” I announced suddenly. “It’s the only way to celebrate a wake. The Irish do it, the Jews, the Italians do it, the birds and the bees and the bigots do it…”
“Excuse me, Frank,” interrupted Herb Kelly, “But did you say we’re drinking to a wake? What Caesar are we burying now?”
“Haven’t you heard? Old Causus Lostus, who’s been buried and reburied a million times, and we’re burying him again, on this lone prairie…”
“I won’t drink to that, Frank,” said Lyle. “I came to praise, not to bury anybody.”
“Lyle,” I answered, “didn’t you hear Herb Kelly here, Mr. Law himself, make like Marc Anthony? Telling us you can’t fight City Hall?”
“Wait a minute, my boy,” said Herb, waggling a handful of fingers at me, “I didn’t say you can’t. I said they’d be tough and dirty; that’s all.”
“Well, Herb!” broke in Lu tartly, “I hope they have fun.” Her tone silenced our friends. They knew my wife as a no-nonsense gal who was made of sturdy stuff—the roots of four generations of hardy Western pioneers nourished her character. “Frank is a sucker for human rights stuff,” she went on. “I warned him he was silly to get mixed up with small-town politicians squabbling over who should lead the parade come next Fourth of July. But no. A couple of nice tramps were involved. So what does he get?” She held out the Nevada paper. “A lot of insulting name-calling. So if my husband is thinking of giving Mono back to the “fly people,” and going back to that cesspool of vice called Hollywood, where being a foreign-born, or a Catholic, or even a Hottentot doesn’t automatically qualify you as a leper, I wouldn’t blame him on darn bit.”
Lyle was first to comment. “Lu, if Frank left now, it certainly would be a big surprise to me.” He was puzzled when he turned to me—as if he had discovered a scar on my face he hadn’t noticed before. “Frank! I would never have put you down in my book as a summer soldier.”
“Summer soldier?”
“Yes…and I agree with Lyle,” interjected Herb Kelly, as he rose and began pacing the floor, waving his arms around like an orating penguin. “You’re not a sunshine patriot… You can’t be thinking of turning tail and running just because somebody yells ‘BOO!’ at you…and from way off in Nevada. Right causes never become lost causes until you quit fighting. My God, I wish I were twenty years younger… Frank, you believe in ideals…fine. But when the chips are down, it’s not ideals that are on trial… No, sir…it’s the men who champion them that are on trial. You’re on trial…”
“Oh, fiddlesticks!” interrupted the librarian’s wife, Marge, surprising everybody since she hadn’t said a word all morning. “Frank’s not on trial. He’s not running for office. Why should he have to take all these dirty insults?”
“Marge,” Lyle replied to his wife with unexpected heat, “Marge, Frank started the insults by insulting the sheriff at the hearing; he told us so. And then he talked that lawyer Gorski, and Hopkins with his newspapers, to join him in a crusade for the human rights of Lefty and the two hermits. You know what Truman said about it—if you can’t stand the heat… Well, Frank not only went in the kitchen…he lit the fire. And Frank…your paisano Dante has a special place in hell for those who wouldn’t stand in a crisis. You’re out of your mind to even think of running out.”
“My husband never ran away from anything in his life, Lyle,” spoke up my wife evenly. “It’s me he’s worried about. I thought all this human rights business was just an excuse for a political dogfight, and I didn’t want him to be the patsy caught in the middle. If human rights are really involved…well, that’s up to Frank.”
“Thanks, darling. Yes, dear…there are human rights involved. And there is a vicious political dogfight, too. But that’s not what makes me so sick I want to climb in a hole… No. It’s seeing public officials, respected men…stoop so low…polluting everything with the dead cats of bigotry… Aw, to hell with it. I’m getting serious. And when I get serious, my yellow slip shows. You know,” I went on, “even when I was a kid, before every football game I’d vomit. But after getting knocked down a few times. I’d start laughing and play like hell.” I picked up the SHAME! SMEARERS! paper. “The Bridgeport boys are screaming ‘foul’ as they clip you from behind, so I guess I’d better laugh and get back in the game. And before you say no, Lu, how about another shot of that liquid courage all around?”
Lu filled up the cups with triple sec—and since our guests seemed loath to take the floor away from me, I went on talking.
“Funny thing, if I can make like a big philosopher for a second—I ought to know by now, that…it isn’t the world that beats you in the scuffle—you beat yourself. And only when you see the comedy of life can you really understand it. For instance—our different reactions to this screed from Nevada when John Hewitt brought it in here:
“Legal-beagle Herb Kelly, there, praised it as a fine example of tricky in-fighting. Texas John, here, saw it as a beautifully timed counterpunch… While thin-skinned me, wearing my inferiorities on my sleeve, I smelled the putrid odor of dying racism. So instead of laughing at the comedy in it, I burned…and beat myself. I let it hit my stomach instead of my funny bone.
“This is funny, my friends. All this screaming and yowling and appeals to Americanism is just noise…the noise of frightened little men…putting on their high hats of office and beating dish pans in the dark—to scare away the ghosts who point fingers and shout: ‘You’ve had it too good, Fatso…now get out!’”
“You’re absolutely right!” cried Herb Kelly, as he jumped to his feet again and flapped his arms like a cheerleading penguin. “We all missed the point. City Hall is shaking. That’s why they’re whistling hate tunes and rattling skeletons. Who was it said, ‘The classic defense of fear is noise?’ I’ve seen it in courtrooms…the lawyer with the weakest ease always yells the loudest. Hell’s a-poppin’…I ain’t been this excited since I won my first case…a chicken stealer he was…Helen, come
on, we’ve got doorbells to punch. Bring your paper, I’ll go get my baseball bat…”
“Where’re you going, Herb?” I asked.
“To get signatures on the petition. Think I want to miss all the fun? Come on, Helen…”
“Wait for me, baby,” enthused Librarian Wright as he leaped to his feet. “Come on, Marge, off the lead…Bring your petition and a long hatpin. Frank, this’ll be the biggest excitement in Mono County since Jimmy Whoosis burnt down Bodie.” Then yelling to the receding Kelly, “Herb…you bash heads on Silver; Marge and I’ll stick fannies on Gull Lake. To the ramparts, men!”
Then Long John un-jackknifed his six-five frame from the table and drawled, “Well, might as well go crazy with the rest of the world. Frank, looks like you stepped in your own bear trap.” Then, to the others leaving the house, “I’ll take the power plant, Lyle…then maybe a horse to the high lakes.”
Undone by the nutty events of the morning, my wife and I just sat, not daring to look at each other. When I finally turned to her with a silly, “Well, Lu?” we both exploded in loud laughs—even though some tears were trickling down both her cheeks.
Chapter Seven
Homo Americanus is a political animal. Ever since the classic revolutionary phrases of Tom Paine, John Adams, and Tom Jefferson transfused Liberty and Freedom into our bloodstream, we have been “We, the People!” Three little words: “We, the People”—but they turned history inside out.
Many slogans and battle cries have sparked causes, wars, and revolutions: “Deutschland Uber Alles!,” “Workers of the World Unite!,” “Remember the Maine!,” “Geronimo!,” “On Wisconsin!”
However, these “Calls to Arms!” are, to put it crudely, cries of “sic ’em” to incite man against man, gang against gang, people against people!
But “We, the People” is a clarion call for people against ideas; against tyranny, injustice, greed, corruption. Not a few, not some, but all the people—of all colors, class, or clime—exhorting each other to unite against the evils of the times. That is the grand concept capsuled into three little words—words of extraordinary power and meaning; words that spell HOPE!