by John Barth
You’re making it worse.
Let me talk to him.
Our man quietly does: assures Tippecanoe and Tyler too that their parents’ love for each other and for them is not in question in the current squally weather. The boat of our marriage, he declares, may pitch and roll a bit, but our ground tackle is secure. We’ll ride it out, little Tip; never you fear. His sister tattles that her brother keeps going for the button, but she won’t let him push it; and what a crybaby! Her father advises Be gentle, honey: little boys are emotionally younger than little girls. But keep his hand off that button. Don’t worry, Dad: But you’d better cheer Mom up so she’ll stop pounding us, or we’ll be Black and Blue, ha ha.
Marvels Peter to his wife That’s some daughter you’ve got in there. She’s twenty-three already.
Kate sniffles We talk a lot; you know me and women. I may call her May.
I might call her Might. Might and Main.
Come here to me.
Come here to me.
K thinks about it. The nothing at her center feels just now even larger than the people in her belly. I guess not, hon. Go write your stories.
Does Peter tell her to go have her babies? They’re our stories.
Says sad Kate They were going to be.
They still are! And I’ve got Chip stuff to tell you; he’s in on the plot.
K doesn’t reply.
But the phone won’t do. I hate talking to you on the telephone, Katherine.
K doesn’t reply, says K; she says further K doesn’t need to reply. What we’ve done, she echoes, is what we’ll do.
DAY 9: WYE 1.
Chip in on the plot? Why not?
Neither Katherine nor Peter quite forgot, in our late long conversations with the Talbotts concerning BONAPARTE and Breadbasket and KUBARK and Kepone, Andrew Sherritt’s anxious telephone-voice in the Annapolis Hilton on the morning of the Brandy roses. It even occurred to Peter Sagamore later, up in Queenstown Creek—call it masculine intuition; call it a dramaturgical mind-set—that the boy might possibly have overheard some quarrel at Nopoint Point between Willy and Molly Sherritt concerning the Deniston School/Soviet Embassy transaction and Molly’s courtship by the CIA. But in the Whole New Ball Game of Days 7 and 8, our concern for the boy got sidetracked. Then yesterday, as long-faced Chip and shaken Peter waited for the taxi to fetch them from Jack Bass’s office out to Key Farm, the boy said again I’ve got stuff to say, Pete, but this is a dorky time to say it. When you’re ready, okay?
Say, say, said Peter. And so there on the sidewalk, then in the cab, later in Story’s cockpit over canned beans and franks prior to Henry Sherritt’s gray-eyed visit—all tentatively, the lad realizing that he faced a problem in dramatical priorities but understanding as well that dramatical priorities are not always the highest priorities—
WHAT CHIP SHERRITT TOLD PETER SAGAMORE YESTERDAY
was effectively this:
That he had pretty well decided to be an artist instead of a computer theorist when he grew up, though probably not a writer, though probably some other kind of a storyteller, not a painter or a sculptor or an architect or a musician. Maybe he would get into movies or theater, but not as an actor; he didn’t care to be any kind of performer. Maybe he’d write for serious public television.
Well now, Chip, drowning Peter managed to say.
That while working with Peter two Sundays ago on Buck Travers’s Nopoint Point audiovisual intercom installation, and studying the system manual later that evening aboard Katydid IV in Dun Cove with his parents, he’d observed that a fairly simple bit of recircuiting could defeat its privacy-protection feature so that the audio output of any “remote” station could be monitored from the “master” station in his father’s study, even when the remote station was switched from Monitor to Off. As scrupulous as he is curious, Chip had experimentally diddled only the unit in his own bedroom; once he’d proved his reasoning correct by hearing his stereo play Scarlatti over the intercom master downstairs, he restored the wiring to normal and went back to reading Joseph Conrad and improving his tennis backhand against his father.
A few days later, however, Olive Treadway had asked him to have a look at her CB transceiver before she took it into Easton for repair: Several times her husband had tried to call her from one of his trucks and had failed, though he could raise his other drivers without difficulty. Examining its owner’s manual with the other still fresh in his mind, Chip believed he saw a way to interface the systems so that the intercom remote station in Olive’s room (where she sometimes spends nights when her services are needed late, and to which she retreats from time to time during breaks in her day) could monitor her CB radio in the kitchen. Should her husband call during one of her breaks, Olive could return to the kitchen and call him back.
The procedure for this experiment (in which Chip’s interest far exceeded Olive’s) involved, for reasons not followable by Peter while worrying about the crisis in his marriage, the defeat of the no-snoop switch on the kitchen intercom station—and thus Chip happened to overhear a conversation not meant for Sherritt ears though conducted in the Sherritt kitchen, beside the principal Sherritt fridge.
Doctor Jack Bass and ex-Interior Secretary John Trippe had repaired from the Sherritt tennis court to the nearest patio for refreshment after a set of doubles, while Henry warmed down by hitting a few more with his eldest son: the second or third time since Day Zero that that foursome had combined business and pleasure. Finding neither Irma nor Olive about, they had moved from patio to kitchen, which Chip had just vacated, to help themselves and fix drinks for the other players as well. In his father’s study, Chip was surprised to hear John Trippe’s voice declare Nothing against queers, Jack. They disgust me, but that’s their business. And it don’t matter (Chip’s reproduction of the ex-secretary’s speech) that I wouldn’t trust Baldwin with a ten-foot pole, ‘cause we’re not about to trust the sumbitch with anything. But you let Sherbald into Breadbasket, you’re setting the fox to mind the henhouse.
Chuckling Jack Bass had replied You burnt your mouth on the soup, John; now you blow on the milk. See any lime there? Willy’s talking big bucks. Doctor Jack had said further, and it means a lot to Hank to have his son on board.
Had grumbled John Trippe The bucks had better be big, ‘cause they got to buy me out if they’re buying Sherbald in. And then God help the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Under Peter’s questioning, Chip acknowledged that actual dialogue, eavesdropped upon or not, is seldom if ever so convenient and efficient as the above—whose substance, however, he stood by. At this point the men had moved out of intelligible range, except that Chip thought he heard Mister Trippe say something like You take your Bobby Henry and your Lester Treadway, and you multiply by a couple thousand. . . . But that ominous arithmetic meant nothing to Andrew Sherritt; embarrassed to have eavesdropped even unintentionally, he had as soon as possible thereafter restored the intercom to normal and contented himself with repairing Olive’s CB, which needed only a replacement jack at the transceiver end of the antenna lead. As he understood already from outspoken Katherine that neither their brother nor her first husband was held in universally high esteem, Chip was not especially dismayed to hear John Trippe’s sentiments. But he was and remains troubled by the insinuating references to Bobby Henry and Lester Treadway—is insinuating the right word?
It is, Chipper.
—and he wonders how it is that letting Sherbald Enterprises buy into Breadbasket Incorporated would be like setting the fox to mind the henhouse. Moreover, it bothers him to know stuff that his father and mother apparently do not, and it makes him sick to his stomach to think that his brother is, evidently, an evil man. He’d hardly thought before about what evil means, really. Do evil people think of themselves as evil? Do they, you know, enjoy eviling? He’d wondered about that the night Willy did his famous one-eighty on the Deniston School business and got all syrupy with Molly; everybody but her saw
how phony the whole thing was. But this new trouble between Katherine and Peter makes his stomach sicker yet. Between the two, a boy can hardly hack his beans and franks. He has decided to remain a bachelor when he grows up; a bachelor writer, as Peter used to be, but in some other medium than prose fiction. He allows, however, for his being currently a twelve-year-old virgin, who may change his mind.
Henry Sherritt’s arrival at this point, yesterday, rescued pained Peter from the obligation of speaking to the general phenomenon of evil while adding the franks of Chip’s information to the beans of what he knew already, in the . . . oh, in the saucepan of his professional problems, bubbling on the fire of his personal ones, fuck it. Hank now gone (yesterday), phone call to Nopoint Point completed, sun down on the daytime portion of Monday, 23 June 1980, the pair redescended Key Farm’s dew-soaked lawn, lump-throated P recollecting the evening-wet swards between the Sherritts’ Main House and First Guest Cottage, where swallows swoop like Stealth aircraft around the statues Cathode and Anode, Less and More. Now that Chip’s bike was parked on the farmhouse porch, anytime the boy felt like returning home, he could be there in under an hour. But he was of no mind to do that, yet. Did Pete see what he meant about his hating to know things, at his age, that his father didn’t?
Sure. But we really know nothing, Chipper, except that Mister Trippe is no fan of your brother’s. Let’s take a swim.
They did, off the pier, yesterday, under the Gouda-colored moon, among phosphorescing noctilucae and sea walnuts glowing yellow-pale and large as lemons, which is what Katherine calls them. Where was she? Peter as usual simply dropped his shorts and drawers on the pier-end and climbed in, cautioning Andrew (as we once again caution the reader) not to dive into water he can’t see through, at least until it has been walked around in. He rather expected Chip as usual to change modestly into swimtrunks in Story’s cabin; was pleasantly surprised to see the boy follow his example, merely turning hind-to to shed his Izods and Nikes. Painfully our man missed his woman: What was she doing just then? Sitting glumly all by her lonesome (at her own insistence) in the gazebo on the pointless point of Nopoint Point, under the smoked-Edam moon; sipping more brandy-and-Kahlua than is good for little Beans and her sorrowing brother; staring out at the slack low tide in Goldsborough Creek; wishing she were swimming naked off Story’s transom with her best friend.
Kath and I believe that Willy’s involved in some illegal waste-dumping, Peter told his young in-law, considering his words carefully as the pair paddled about. His Natural Recycling Research outfit and maybe Sherbald Enterprises too are doing stuff they shouldn’t do. We hope not, but we think so, and there’s more to it. What the connection is with Breadbasket Incorporated, exactly, and just where Bobby Henry and Lester Treadway fit in, we don’t really know. But let’s not forget the presumption of innocence, Chip. You know what that means, right?
Sure.
And it’s not necessarily our place to try to prove your brother guilty.
The boy considered, swooshing his arms on the water-surface to make the noctilucae flash. It is, isn’t it, if Willy’s doing bad stuff to himself and the family and the environment?
Yeah, well. But your father is a smart man as well as an honorable one, Chip; nobody’s likely to pull a fast one on him. And there are people looking into the case. If they find out anything real, the whistle’ll get blown.
Do you-all know things about Willy that Dad doesn’t know?
Maybe. Maybe not. We-all aren’t together just now.
Now and then, here and there (Where are you, children?), Peter felt along his skin the tiny stings of the first small sea nettles in the Wye, not present the night before. The Choptank/Tred Avon, therefore, next river-system down, was by now unswimmable, as this would likely become within the week. If K and Alpha and Omega were afloat just then, which they weren’t, they were in the Sherritt pool, which they weren’t.
Uh-oh, Chip said, in the Wye, yesterday: We’ve got company. From the moonlit dock, Frank Talbott called May we join you fellows? We’re bare-assed, Peter warned for Andrew’s sake. Understanding Leah reassured them at once We’re not, and promised not to peek; Hey, we want Katherine! Game Chipper called back So do we, and a quarter-hour later, when he was ready to climb out, simply announced I’m climbing out now, Lee, and climbed, and casually retrieved his clothes and strolled aboard Story to dry and dress. Good man, remarked pleased Leah. Pleased Peter reflected that Katherine would be pleased.
A PRETTY-GOOD CIA STORY
Says Kath via Chesapeake & Potomac from Nopoint Point next morning I am pleased. Chip’s a mensch. Has he grown any pubic hair?
That’s none of our business. How are By and Large these days? Up and Coming?
Seek and Ye Shall Find.
Ask and It Shall Be Given Ye. I’m asking you to come back here right now this morning, please?
No. How come you’re calling? You’re supposed to be working.
I’m going to work. I’ve run five miles and swum for fifteen minutes, and now I’m going to sit down in that Sagamore Twenty-five of ours and make notes for part one of a three-part story about Don Quixote’s further adventures in the Cave of Montesinos. Did those children get their bedtime story last night?
Hah. Their mother got one-quarter-sozzled on brandy-Kahluas and gave us all hangovers this morning. That’s what happens in broken homes. So what’d you-all do after you had your gorgeous swim amongst the sea lemons, which only you and I are supposed to swim naked amongst?
We told bedtime stories.
What was Lee wearing?
Nothing worth reporting. Chip had a nightcap with us in Reprise’s cockpit, and there was a mosquito or two but no Katherine. I’d already told Chip in a general way about our worries about Willy, after Chip had told me what I told you he told me. I told him that Frank was quietly looking into the NRR thing, and that we weren’t particularly out to get Willy in trouble—
We aren’t?
—just to blow the whistle on the poisoning of our birthwaters et cet before we all start shining in the dark. You should’ve seen those lemons. Lee kept her bathing suit on.
Okay.
They’re working things out. They seem more worried about us than about them.
So am I. So is Lumière.
So is who?
Your bright little daughter. Et Son aussi, sans doute, but he’s off crying his heart out in a corner and won’t talk even to her. So what got said up there in Reprise’s male cockpit, with my cool kid brother and Lee with her clothes on and sexy Frank, while we’re down here drowning our sorrows? Did you see that moon?
Not the same one you saw. It’s a physical impossibility that the same moon could shine on the Tred Avon and the Wye when you’re there and I’m here. Lee told us Frank’s pretty-good CIA story.
How was it? Never mind. Okay, we’re listening.
Once upon a time there was this erratic North African dictator, like Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. Probably it was Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, in wherever. Algeria?
Jesus, Peter.
Libya, Libya. So a team of Rick Talbott’s P.O.D. types manages to penetrate the guy’s regime under deep cover the way Israel’s Mossad penetrated Idi Amin in Uganda, by leasing him a fancy private airplane through one of Mossad’s proprietary companies. The company, I believe, was Zimex in Switzerland, and the airplane was a Grumman Gulfstream Two, although they also leased him a Boeing Seven Oh Seven, if I remember correctly. God bless details.
Peter.
I was looking at that moon and missing my family. For all I know, it was the Israelis who got to Qaddafi and us who got to Amin. Anyhow, the shtik was—
The shtik? You were looking at Lee Allan Silver Talbott, is what you were looking at.
The shtik was that the lease agreement called for the suppliers to provide pilots and flight crews for the airplane, and a certain number of those people were our Prince of Darkness people, and so the equipment was exquisitely bug
ged, and the quality of our information about some of the guy’s plans and operations was unusually high. We were even able to thwart a couple of his hairier schemes, like buying bootleg nuclear weapons, without his ever knowing how we found out about them or how we messed them up.
Good for us. But.
Right. To maintain this unusually privileged intelligence, we have to maintain the dictator. So while this one P.O.D. team is bugging his Gulfstream Two, some of our other P.O.D.’s—P.’s O.D.?—are supplying him with stuff he needs for his terrorist operations. They even help him set up his own intelligence service. These were Company agents whose cover was that they were rogue agents, but who we believed or hoped weren’t really or mainly rogue agents. It gets that tenuous. So we permit at least some of the guy’s overseas operations to succeed at bloody cost, even though we know all about them in advance, and we don’t interfere in his domestic nastiness at all. We not only countenance his suppression of his enemies but in a few cases assist it, because if he’s overthrown, the new regime is going to be at least as anti-CIA as he is, and it will have to be penetrated from scratch, whereas we already have this character in our pocket without his knowing it. What’s more, the operation is a very profitable one for several of our suppliers and agents, and a good career move for three or four of our people, and the quality of that information is really high: a case officer’s dream.
So.
So the team’s job becomes not to help undermine the dictator for the sake of a government better for the country’s people or even better for our own government’s interests, but just to acquire higher-and-higher-grade information about him. The crux comes when one of our key people over there gets wind of a truly serious plot to overthrow the sonofabitch. In order not to disrupt our lines of intelligence, he makes policy and sees to it the plot misfires.
I hate this part.
“Key People” is my term, mind you, not Lee’s; I don’t think Frank was directly involved. This particular key person knew his American history: He cited the precedent of George Washington’s administration’s secret dealings with an Algerian pasha whose pirates had hijacked a U.S. merchant ship off Tripoli and made slaves out of its crew. Washington ransomed the American sailors by presenting the Algerian pasha with a brand-new, fully-armed frigate, ideal for piracy. The case officer in that case happened to be the poet and diplomat Joel Barlow, author of The Columbiad and The Hasty Pudding. Nowadays our writers teach in our universities.