by Frank Capra
“My God, Steve! That guy’s got to be some kind of nut!” I blurted out.
“Unfortunately not, Frank. Nuts can be handled. But at unpredictable times, God sends a hell-raiser to test our human failings. And if you don’t believe in God, blame it on a random cosmic ray that knocked certain genes around at conception, and a man-child is born with a messianic mission to lead the chosen out of bondage; the kind of a Messiah the Jews prayed for when the rejected Prince of Peace walked the shores of Galilee—a King on a white horse, they wanted, a warrior King that would lead them in driving the Romans into the sea. Most ‘redeemers,’ of course, end up as frustrated fanatics, born with the zeal but not the tools of a messiah—like John Wilkes Booth who shot Lincoln.
“But give a ‘redeemer’ the messianic mission and the inflammatory tools to kindle passions, and millions will follow him in confusing, shaking, and ravaging the world with hate and war—as they did in Germany not too long ago. And as they may do again, in any country, including ours, if the right ‘redeemer’ comes along.”
We left the June Lake Loop highway and turned up a steep forest road that twisted and turned among the towering trunks of Jeffrey pines—dark red Corinthian columns supporting their dark green vaulted domes. Through the leafy maze ahead, warm, twinkling rays welcomed us to the always-open doors of Boatcourt’s popular chalet, especially the beams from the always-lighted two lower stories which housed collections of fine paintings and great books. A museum? No. Those two floors were crammed with musical instruments and record players, billiard tables, ping-pong tables, bridge tables, and tables groaning with snacks, sandwiches, coffee, milk, and soft drinks. Boatcourt laughingly called it “a recreation center for blockheads and eggheads, run by a mush-head.” Here the high school boys of the area and dozens of college kids working in resorts during summer vacations came to play, listen, read, or yak it up in bull sessions. And all free, including the books. Any boy interested in any book could take it home and keep it. Old Boatcourt’s smile would light up a room every time a youngster left with a volume of Plato, an art book on El Greco, or even a rare copy of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.
My wife once told me that at a Women’s Club luncheon, one needling mother goaded Boatcourt with this prod: “Mister Gorski, some mothers say your influence on our boys is good, and some say it’s evil. Which would you say it is?”
“Oh, evil indeed, Madam,” Gorski retorted amiably. “You see, I’m a pyromaniac. I like to rub young minds and great minds together. And sometimes they spark, and start fires.”
The chalet was built on a steep hillside. We heard voices and music below us as I parked on the third-floor level—the entrance to Boatcourt’s exquisite private quarters. Boatcourt was loath to leave my car. Slowly, awkwardly, like a man dredging up words from an inner well of agonizing memories, he began talking again. “I guess I loved that man more than… Anyway, that’s why I filed as a candidate to run against him for the state assembly. I didn’t want the job. But I had to beat him, Frank. Before his halo got too tight. Understand? Before he actually believed he was God’s answer to our country’s crisis. You see, if I could stop him once, just once here at home—prove him fallible, human, teach him humility—then he would have had it all to go places. And now he’s going to die. Pity. If I weren’t an atheist I’d have to say it was Providence once again sparing our nation from men who have it all.”
“Wait a minute!” I said, having had a bellyful of Mr. Great. “You mean that cancer bit? Baloney! I don’t believe a word of it. No man with his colossal ego would blurt out ‘cancer’—cold turkey—like he did to us. Not even in a ‘B’ movie.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“Hell, no!” I said. “He’s faking. And I’ll give you two reasons why: First—there’s too much sympathy for Lefty and his pals, Bear Bait and Dry Rot. They could become public martyrs. Second—he’s polluting the issue. The small petition majority he won by could tarnish Wonder Boy’s shining armor, perhaps put him behind the eight ball in the race for assemblyman. Therefore: Out-martyr the martyrs. Make a grandstand play for greater sympathy by (a) magnanimously insisting on a public hearing, regardless of winning the petition battle; and (b) paralyzing the opposition’s will to win with that corny cancer bit. Result: at the hearing those who know will say, ‘How brave!’ And when it’s all over, when the tumor miraculously becomes benign, or nonexistent, everyone will shout, ‘Thank God!’ and vote him into the Assembly by a headline majority. Make sense to you, Boatcourt?”
“May not make sense, Frank,” he grinned, “but it could make the dangdest soap opera of the season.”
“Soap opera?”
“Sorry, Frank. Your hunch would make sense with anybody else but Tony. Wonder Boy is unpredictable because we look for normal, human deviations. When we find none, we can’t believe it. But when you know the hardline moral path he follows, so straight, so fixed, he is completely predictable.
“We didn’t believe Hitler, or Karl Marx—even though they gave us detailed road maps to the land of the ‘Herrenfolk’ in Mein Kampf and Das Kapital. Tony has given us his roadmap to the absolute Rule of Law in his ‘The Evils of Compromise’ valedictorian speech.
“He, too, has a messianic mission: To enforce justice ruthlessly—without the cloying impediments of compassion and mercy. According to Tony there is neither charity, pity, nor mercy in the Ten Commandments. Therefore: obey the ‘Thou shalt nots’ or suffer certain punishment.
“If we follow his roadmap, Tony’s actions of the last few days, baffling and quixotic as they appear to us, fall into a predictable pattern. You must remember that everything this young man has done so far, is ‘right.’ His unshakeable convictions—that the Rule of Law will eliminate wars, poverty, ignorance, and color lines—are difficult to fault. Couple these burning compulsions with good looks and charm, and you’ve got a powerful natural leader. And he knows it.”
“Does his lexicon of virtues include lying? He deliberately lied to us—either at the coffeehouse or at his home tonight.”
“That wasn’t really lying to him,” said Boatcourt. “That was making sure no mercy or compassion got in the way of Law. Let us take his actions, one by one, and see if they deviate from his roadmap. He won the battle of petitions; but to him that was a vote of confidence, not a judgement of law on Lefty’s appeal. Then too, petitions to him are frenzied, emotional outbursts, based more on energy than on statutes. The ‘City Hall’ people celebrated their petition victory, but not Tony. I’m sure he had decided the hearing must be held even before the votes were counted.
“The county supervisors were jubilant with the petition results, of course. Now they could sweep the insignificant, but mighty sticky, affair of Lefty and the two bums under the rug. But no. Tony forced the reluctant board into an open hearing. I say reluctant because, being human, board members know sympathy can be more potent in a public hearing than legalities. So Tony won that point for justice, by barreling right down the middle of his planned road: judge Lefty’s case, not with frantic petition signing, but by law, in a public court.
“Then Wonder Boy runs smack into an unmarked roadblock. A doctor tells him he has incurable cancer. At the coffeehouse he gives us the shocking news. Why? For sympathy? For a postponement, or perhaps a cancellation of the hearing? No. He was making it crystal clear to us that, come life or death, he wanted no part of humanistic detours around the lethal roadblock. No sir. He was crashing through it head-on. And Tony won himself another battle for justice. Over death.
“All right. At his home tonight, he denied his cancer. Angrily accused me of slimy tricks; warned us against spreading ugly untrue rumors; told us point-blank that he had promoted the open hearing in order to break us! Break us with his Rule of Law; and put us on guard to be prepared to fight for our lives. Why? To make us think he was faking; to make us so fighting mad we could slug him, health or no health. And he succeeded w
ith me. I was within inches of punching him in the nose. Me. Mister Calm himself. So he won that point, too. No compassion from his opponents. And now he can fight what may be his last battle on his own terms—a no-holds-barred scrap within the ring of Law. And with no piddling compromises to compassion, charity, or what have you.
“Oh, yes, prank. He’s got cancer. Probably of the brain. Otherwise his actions wouldn’t so perfectly fit his roadmap. And maybe it’s a blessing. In ten years he’d probably have been governor, after that—maybe higher. And God help us, he would have been a terror; an unassailable terror who did everything right—in the name of God and the Law.”
“Steve,” I said, more convinced than ever that I was right, “you’d give the devil himself an even shake. No, Steve. That fancy punk is a faking ham actor; trying to steal the spotlight from Lefty and those two nobodies; trying to make himself the issue, hoping to sabotage our human rights pitch. As a motion picture Joe I say he’s bollixing up the plot. You’re right. What might be another Stokes trial, another Dreyfus case, he’s trying to water down to a no-cal soap opera, in which the big suspense is, ‘Has Handsome Tony really got a fatal malady, or is he fibbing?’ Big deal. The real blessing to all would be if we slapped that faking bastard down so hard in that hearing that—well, we’d cook his goose forever as a public official. Right?”
But Boatcourt was so lost in his own hurt he hadn’t heard a word I said.
“You know, Frank, that’s why I love this guy, or who knows—maybe I really hate him.” A reflecting gleam betrayed a wetness in his eyes. “Anyway, I always wanted a son. And this boy got to me… But I could never get to him. Yes, sir…this Tony has done something very few others have done to me; put me in a position of no compromise. It’s either win or lose; break or get broken. ‘Sorry I can’t agree with you, sir,’ he said when I handed him his diploma. And DAMN! It’s come to a showdown against that eighteen-year-old boy with his diploma. Funny. Funny. And now… Whether he lives six months or six centuries, my conscience says I’ve got to smash him, destroy him! The boy I dreamed of becoming. Come on, Frank. Let me out of this blasted car. I’ve got homework to do…”
Chapter Eight
What happened in the next few days I will have to piece together from hearsay—eyewitness accounts from such diverse sources as deputy sheriffs, telephone operators, Marine Corps colonels, forest rangers, and talks with many personal friends. I believed what I heard, but, of course, the reader may not. For the reader’s credibility gap may have already been widened to the point where a recounting of what I myself saw and heard could be construed as more apocryphal than apostolic.
At any rate, this account appeared in Jake Ziffren’s Mono Herald column:
They said he wasn’t the oldest or the most toothless coot in Bridgeport but, for sure, he was the most fun-loving as he rocked on his rocker and had himself a ball watching the traffic tie itself into knots on the morning of the hearing.
“Ain’t seed such a hoop-de-doo,” he beat his gums at the people hurrying by, “since the Indians snatched old chink Ah Tai outten a courtroom and sliced ’im up into chop suey—right there on the street the year I was born, cackled odd skin full of bones. Slippery then, too. But ’twarn’t snow—just blood,” he snickered.
Ear-piercing police whistles shattered the falling snowflakes. Looking more like Batman in storm capes, highway patrolmen and deputy sheriffs waved, shouted, and tootled the snow-covered cars to skidding stops to let bundled-up Monoites slip and slush across 395 to the Courthouse.
Immediately the stopped drivers banged on their horns, and kept banging—the more musical beat out rhythms, the more wrathful long steady wails. Police ears can only take so much—so they’d toot the pedestrians to stop and waved the honking cars through. Muttering, the teed-off drivers spun their wheels on the getaway, splattering rooster tails of mud and slush all over the hated pedestrians. Women screamed, men cursed, police angrily blew staccato sixteenth notes.
Half the cars, of course, were filled with Mono natives in town for the hearing. They jammed things up good by stopping in the middle of 395 to yell: “Officers! Where can I park?” “Any place!” the steamed-up officers shouted back. “Move on! Move on!”
But what really knocked old toothless off his rocker was to see groups of rugged individuals—poo-pooing all this law-and-order stuff—make a dash for it on foot across the moving traffic. That would trigger such a pandemonium of dodging, splattering, tootling, honking, and shouting that it sent old bone-bag into a hysteria of cackling and knee-slapping.
For weeks now the dreary overcast sky had dropped little hints of snow—white flakes fluttering down in scattered bunches like “surrender” leaflets dropped from planes. Early on the morning of the hearing, the hints proved real—the sky dropped the year’s first barrage of steady snow.
But snow is a way of life for Mono natives. After putting on chains and snow tires, they peered through hardworking windshield wipers and took aim on Bridgeport. From the north and from the south; down from the peaks and up from the deserts, they zeroed in on the courthouse—their excitement whetted by the coming battle of the heavyweights (Boatcourt Gorski and Tony Caldwell) for the championship of the wilderness country. Schools were let out, stores closed, “Back sometime” signs were hung on doors. It was Fiesta Day in the Land of the Monos—and who knows? Maybe heads will fall and blood will run! Let’s go!
Hours before, when every seat in the Board of Supervisors’ room had been filled, people jammed themselves three-deep along the walls and windows. The adjacent rooms were filled to the flood stage by the river of humanity that poured into the main hall. And when the river was blocked by walls, it sent tributaries up stairways and into nooks and crannies. Outside the main doors the jammed-up river was backing up into an ever-widening humanlake of cold, shoving latecomers. The old courthouse steamed with human heat and rocked with native chatter. Fiesta Day! “Hi, Pete!… Hi, Elmer!… Look who’s here! Maggie!…”
Deputy Sheriff Marty Strelnick told me early that morning that county officials realized they had been caught with their estimates down. Half a dozen deputies on patrol radioed headquarters that they could see lines of headlights snaking down from every side road. The dispatcher radioed Sheriff McMahon who was just getting out of bed. As usual, the diaphoretic sheriff blew his top and a quart of sweat, and phoned Supervisor Guy Hanford, getting him out of bed. Phone operators Betty and Olga Neilson (twins) giggled constantly when they recalled the conversation later.
“Guy!” bellowed the nightgowned sheriff into the phone, said Olga. “We’re gonna have a riot on our hands… What?… Who’s gonna riot? Don’t you know that half of Mono County’s on the way to the courthouse, now?… What’s to riot about? What’ll we do for water, food, heat, parking? And what about those two dinky two-holers you call washrooms over there?… More help?… Oh, sure…like I could call out the Marines… Hey, wait a minute! Marines… Goodbye, Guy.”
The sheriff slammed down the phone, then picked it up and jiggled furiously on the little thingamajig, sweat oozing freely now.
“Hello? Olga?… Where’s Olga?… Oh, you’re Betty. Betty, this is the sheriff… Confidential call, understand? To Colonel Miller at the Pickle Meadows Winter Training quarters. Quick, will you…”
“Colonel Miller talking. Oh, yes. Good morning, Sheriff…”
Ninety minutes later, Colonel Miller said, the Marines landed on the courthouse grounds—a fast-rolling convoy headed by the colonel and a squad of MPs. In another thirty minutes they had the units in line facing the courthouse: A comfort station marked “Men”; a first-aid van with medics; a rolling kitchen stuffed with hot dogs, buns, and huge coffee kettles; a water tank with Dixie cups; and another comfort station for “Women”—the whole line covered and surrounded on three sides with canvas, leaving open the side facing the courthouse. Communications men rigged up two loudspeakers outside the courthouse, wiring them
to microphones inside the hearing room. Thinking of everything, the Marines unloaded six oil-burning salamanders, placing them at intervals under the canvas. In a jiffy, they were glowing with welcome heat.
And when a band recording of the blood-stirring “The Halls of Montezuma” blared from loudspeakers, the patriotic fiesta atmosphere was complete. The three hundred or so spectators who had been standing and freezing outside rushed into the warm canvas haven, stomped their feet in march rhythm, gave each other exaggerated salutes, and began singing the Marine song with gusto, if not with harmony. Those sweating (and fainting) inside pried open a few ancient high windows and joined in the singing, the flashing light bulbs of Hoppy’s two press photographers adding the final seal of status to the event.
Those were “da conditions dat pervails,” as Jimmy Durante used to say when we heard a sharp knock on the door of our small room. We had been secretly led here after rapping on a small door at the rear of the courthouse, as we had been told to do. Our party consisted of my wife and me, Hoppy Hopkins and his wife, Boatcourt Steve Gorski (in a sedate dark suit, but with a flowing ascot tie—“so they won’t mistake me for a fisherman”), Lefty Wakefield (in uniform minus badge and gun—face showing strain), Lefty’s wife (a tiny woman, simple brown dress, strong face, no makeup, dark lines under her eyes, lips moving imperceptibly, and fingers thumbing invisible rosary beads), and Lefty’s six children, from fourteen to four—and all girls!—wearing clean simple dresses of various colors; but all with long black stockings and all with straw hair in ponytails. Lefty had objected violently to his children being at the hearing, but Boatcourt (his public defender) insisted even more violently—proof, I thought, that he knew his Freud as well as his Blackstone.