by Nik Cohn
Eddie was profoundly moved. In a flash, his dream was forgotten, and he raised his hand to shade his eyes, he buried his mouth in the depths of his overcoat collar: ‘A man feels humble,’ he said.
‘I bet he does,’ said Seaton.
‘Humble, and proud, and also a mite ashamed.’
‘Why ashamed?’
‘Because he did not have faith,’ said the King. ‘Because he thought he was alone, nobody cared or understood, and all his efforts fell on barren ground. But now he knows better, and he only wishes that he’d had more trust.’
From these small beginnings, Loyalism spread fast and could not be contained. All over America, secret cells sprang up. At midnight, men marched through the deserted streets, their steel-capped boots scrunching rhythmically on the pavement and, every time they passed an image of King Death, they saluted.
Posters and placards appeared by the hundreds of thousands, and bumper stickers, lapel buttons, sloganised balloons. A password was devised, namely Death, and a secret handclasp. And in fifty states, majorettes pranced and twirled to a brand new anthem, entitled The Shadow Knows.
In Corpus Christi, Texas, an unofficial KD Day was declared, a public holiday, with carnivals and rodeos, beauty queens, fireworks and free ice cream for the children. Meanwhile, in Tierra de Ensueños, the Englishman ate hot buttered crab with his fingers.
Awash in grease, he breathed in long and deep, as though inhaling a rare, elusive and most exotic perfume. ‘Fans,’ he said.
‘I call them friends,’ replied the performer stiffly, for fans were a vulgarity, and he travelled to Cincinnati, where he rendered the sex fiend Ringo Bullett.
From now on, each morning’s paper seemed to carry some fresh tale of devotion and sacrifice. The harder the authorities tried to clamp down, the faster the movement spread, and there were a number of bitter clashes.
In Syracuse, New York, police broke up a procession with tear gas and truncheons. Thirteen marchers were taken to the hospital, twenty-two arrested and severely punished. Even so, they remained unrepentant, and they were pictured with heads held high, grinning, on the courthouse steps.
Sighing, Seaton spread a slice of Melba toast with Patum Pepperium and brushed his fingers across his eyes. ‘These men need our help,’ he said. ‘They have suffered in our cause and we must not sit idly by, like pampered pashas, while they do all the work and take all the knocks. They have carried the weight long enough. Now it’s our turn.’
‘What do you propose?’ asked Eddie.
‘Sponsorship,’ said the Englishman. ‘The time has come to go to their aid. Undoubtedly, they must be in dire need of funds and guidance. And we will not fail them.’
Having once decided to act, he wasted no more time. Within a week, he had recruited a force of one hundred publicists, whom he christened King Death Kouncillors, and he sent them out into every corner of the nation, to help spread the good word.
As soon as a Kouncillor arrived in a new town, he located the nearest Loyalist cell and whispered the password. He shook hands, slapped backs and distributed a suitcase full of posters and stickers, badges and glossy photographs. He read out a personal message from the King, donated a satchel full of dollars and, if the atmosphere seemed right, delivered a short sharp lecture on Death herself, her meaning and true purpose. Finally, he showed a selection of 16-mm films, in which the performer waved from a balcony, bared his head beneath a star-spangled banner, knelt to pray in a tiny whitewashed chapel, revealed his face through a stained-glass window.
Having won the members’ confidence, the Kouncillor now got down to serious business. From each cell, he chose a nucleus of lieutenants, men to be relied upon in a crisis, and with their help he embarked on a phase of rigorous training. A formal hierarchy of officials was established, meetings properly ordered, all information filed, rowdy and dilettante elements ruthlessly weeded out. At the end, only the truest believers survived.
Each of those who remained was rewarded with his own private uniform, which consisted of a long black overcoat, black hat, black gloves and shiny black boots. They were taught how to march and how to salute and how to stand completely motionless. They were given pamphlets to study, autographed pictures to place beneath their pillows. They were indoctrinated, drilled, flattered with military rankings. Whenever their spirits showed any signs of flagging, they were revived with treats, such as dictaphones and sten guns.
By these methods, within a few short months, a close-knit and fully operational network was built up, nationwide, incorporating more than three hundred chapters and fifty thousand members.
King Death was booming as never before; he had become an institution, an integral part of everyday living, like toothpaste; and his image, serving as an icon, gazed down blankly from a million bedroom walls.
Yet, for all his triumphs, Eddie could not be satisfied; officially he was still a killer. Stuck upstairs in his attic, there were times when he believed that pardon would never come at all, that he would never again walk the streets or breathe the city air in freedom. At such moments, all the love and adulation of the Loyalists became a mockery, which only served to tighten the screws of his confinement, and the name King Death was a curse.
One afternoon, when he felt especially low, he went to visit Seaton in the Chinese pagoda, where the Englishman was nibbling at a packet of chocolate fingers. ‘What’s the use?’ said the performer. ‘My ratings might reach a hundred per cent, the whole of America might give me their support, and still I would not be legalised. I have not forgotten my friends, and I am most truly grateful. But they cannot achieve the impossible – no matter how they try, regardless of all my services rendered, I am doomed to remain an outlaw.’
‘Do not despair,’ Seaton told him.
‘How can I help it?’
‘The law cannot touch you. If only you knew your own strength, you would understand that you have soared far above it, where no one and nothing can reach you. Officials may still abuse you and pretend to chase you; but believe me, they dare not harm you. If they ever caught you, even if you were served to them upon a silver platter, they could no longer take advantage. For if they did, as they well know, they would set off such a holocaust of rage and sacred vengeance that every part of the nation would catch fire, and they themselves would be the first to be consumed in the blaze.’
The floor of the pagoda was carpeted wall-to-wall with unopened fan mail; peacocks and mockingbirds waded knee-deep in a sea of glossy photographs, and Seaton helped himself to another chocolate finger: ‘In plain point of fact, you are omnipotent,’ he said.
‘How can you be so certain?’ Eddie asked.
‘If you don’t believe me,’ said Seaton, ‘I will prove it.’
Sure enough, before another two weeks were out, he staged a practical demonstration. Taking Independence Day as his cue, he instructed that every able-bodied Loyalist make his way to Washington, complete with uniform, and when they were all assembled and darkness fell, they marched together to the Pentagon.
The result was a full-scale army, more than a hundred thousand strong, and they set out to the sound of muffled drums, their way illumined by a myriad of flickering torches. Ten deep they marched, a procession that stretched for almost three miles, and one of them, indistinguishable from all the rest, was King Death himself.
When the Loyalists were half a mile from their goal, they were confronted by the National Guard, who lined up across the concourse, guns at the ready. Immediately, the marchers halted and knelt, humbly removing their slouch hats, and only their leader was left standing, an open target for anyone who cared to destroy him. He made no speeches and gave no signal. In medium close-up, he simply stood to attention, staring straight ahead, and he waited to be captured, shot down, annihilated or whatever else might befall. His head was high, his features frozen. From a distance, he might have been an effigy.
From the depths of the Loyalist ranks, faintly at first, then with increasing fervour, there now arose the strains of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The muffled drumming grew steadily louder, the torches were stilled, the kneeling marchers laid their pistols at rest upon the ground. Music filled the night and, silhouetted in left profile, King Death saluted.
For a full minute, he remained unprotected, and his silhouette was framed by a star-spangled banner, flying proud and free. Across the nation, he was watched by 89.67 per cent of all Americans. But nobody shot him, and nobody tried to seize him. Just as Seaton had said, he was inviolable and only the cameras dared touch him. Creeping in relentlessly, they devoured the flag, his uniform, his face. Then only his eyes were left, filling the whole screen.
When the minute of observance was over, the army rose to its feet and Eddie was instantly swallowed up again. The Battle Hymn soared to a crescendo, and he was just one of the multitude. Wheeling, the Loyalists began to march away.
The performance was complete.
4
To celebrate his freedom, King Death embarked on a journey through America. Seaton created a private train for him, called the Deliverance Special. The Stars and Stripes flew proudly from the smokestack, a golden eye and a monogrammed KD were emblazoned on each carriage and, all along its route, the tracks were strewn with fresh-cut roses.
In the first carriage Eddie lay alone, in a skid-row bedroom; in the second, surrounded by gilt and cut crystal, came the Englishman; in the third the Kouncillors and publicists; in the fourth the assistant directors, executive producers, cameramen and scriptwriters; in the fifth the accountants; in the sixth the journalists; in the seventh the wardrobe mistress, stills photographer, hairdresser, make-up artist and grips; in the eighth Mantequilla Wickham and the stand-ins, extras and sparring partners; in the ninth the stenographers; in the tenth the caterers, chambermaids and messenger boys; and in the eleventh, visible only to Eddie, a shaggy golden lion.
For ninety days this cavalcade passed back and forth across the nation without a rest, describing such a labyrinthine network of loops and vaults, zigzags, circumferences and sudden detours that by the end it seemed there was not a single city, township or even whistle stop that had not been included.
Six or ten or a dozen times a day, the Special would pause at a different station, always to be greeted by the same demonstration. Brass bands played, civic dignitaries paraded, majorettes pranced. In the middle of the platform, flanked by a military guard, a banner of scarlet blooms spelled out welcome.
The crowds were held back behind steel-mesh fences, while the publicists fed them with souvenir badges and streamers, flung over the wires like cream buns at the zoo. Touts sold autographs and spurious relics, the loudspeaker exploded with a roar of pre-recorded gunfire. Behind the fence, the fans clawed and scrabbled, and the band played God Bless America.
Occasionally, Eddie would show his face beyond his window. Then cheerleaders in bobbysocks and high school sweaters chanted ‘King Death, KD, King Death, KD,’ and all the young girls began to scream and stretch out their imploring hands. Mothers held up their babies to be blessed, cripples threw away their crutches, the blind pretended to see. One minute passed, and the Special rolled on.
On board the train, time passed in a vacuum. Blurred by repetition, landscapes lost all meaning and reality, became no more than a series of slides, flashed upon the screen at random, to create an illusion of change. Mountain ranges and valleys, cities and rivers and flatlands – all were reduced to picture postcards and, like the limousine before it, the Special became a time machine, a compression chamber, in which the only reminder of motion was the rhythm of the wheels, the ceaseless buckle and sway below.
The inhabitants played cards, read paperbacks, stared out through the windows. They fell asleep in the Chicago stockyards and woke up again in the midst of the Georgia peach orchards. They browsed through the funny papers and soused themselves on lukewarm beer. They witnessed the Golden Gate, Niagara Falls, the Great Grand Coolee Dam. They yawned, they scratched themselves, they played strip poker. The bands played Chattanooga Choo-Choo and they fell asleep in the Rockies, they woke up beside the wide Missouri.
There were images of fall in New England, harvest time in Kansas, and the flies were murderous in Alabama. Grizzly bears and wildcats roamed across the tracks in Colorado and a man in an old blue suit flung himself beneath the wheels. There was a heat wave along the Gulf of Mexico. In Idaho, the temperature touched twelve below freezing and the snow was piled high as a house.
City after city passed by, dark and all-engulfing as tunnels. Black men in little round hats shook their fists and mouthed obscenities, young girls in ribbons shamelessly offered up their bodies. First the sky turned deep purple, then it burst into flame. The windows were blinded by the belch of factories, soot fell like rain. Turning his face to the wall, Eddie shut his eyes and, when he woke up, he was lost in a sea of pale-gold wheat.
At last, on the evening of the ninetieth day, the Special arrived at Los Angeles and halted. The travellers dispersed, the cameras were dismantled. All that was left was debris.
Cigarette stubs and plastic containers, half-eaten sandwiches, scrunched-up newspapers and dirty underclothes formed a rich, decomposing carpet underfoot. Windows were blurred with grime, gilded monograms chipped and rusted. The Stars and Stripes hung limp and dejected from the prow, and the all-seeing eyes were dimmed. Of the spotless, virgin train that had first set out, so full of hopes, hardly a trace survived.
Seaton was not distressed. Seated in the midst of the rubble, clad in a maroon velvet dressing gown with deep blue cuffs and collar, he seemed oblivious of the surrounding filth. His hair was all awry, his eyes black and heavy with fatigue, he reached for a nearby plastic cup, greasy and stained with lipstick, and filled it to the brim with tepid champagne.
He quaffed, he smacked his lips. Drinking off the cup at a single draught, he flung the dregs through the window and dipped his hand deep inside a bag of KD marbles, which were designed to look like golden eyeballs. As Eddie watched, he gathered a generous fistful, rattled them in his palm and held them up against the light: ‘Now we come to the best part of all,’ he said.
‘Death,’ said Eddie.
‘Money,’ said Seaton.
And he scooted the eyeballs down the carriage, one by one, careering and clacking wildly along the aisles, until they reached the open doorway and flew into space.
Overnight, America was swamped with produce.
There were KD wallpapers, KD canned peaches, KD golf clubs and charm bracelets, KD bubble gums, KD lipsticks and powder puffs, KD percolators, KD gas masks; KD lawn mowers, Bermuda shorts, diaries, electric guitars, washing machines, bubble baths and breakfast cereals; Golden Eye ballpoints and T-shirts, tennis rackets, motor cycles, jukeboxes, videos; Deliverance Special train sets; hats and gloves and overcoats, black suitcases and pre-scarred mirrors; motels and hamburger heavens; record companies, car rental services, real estate developments; bobbysocks, toy guns, heart-shaped lockets, loofahs, soda pops, holsters, garden gnomes, clocks and watches, fluffy bedroom slippers, sweet cigarettes, diapers, silhouettes and profiles, ketchups, jellies, jockey shorts and undershirts, comics, lampshades, sanitary napkins, bibles, TV dinners, dice, kewpie dolls, coffee mugs, fortune cookies and margarines; gymnasiums and funeral parlours; drugstores, laundromats, dance instruction centres; and a thousand-acre Disneyland in Santa Monica, called ‘King Death’s All-America’.
In the first year of trading alone, the turnover amounted to almost one hundred million dollars: ‘A mere bagatelle,’ said Seaton modestly. ‘No more than a drop in the ocean, compared to the long-term potentials.’
Commerce was not his only concern. In the intervals between making profits, he found time to sponsor a series of charitable organisations, among them the KD Save the Children Fund, the KD Campaign to Keep America Clean, the KD Library o
f Death and fifty KD Valhalla Retirement Homes, one in each state, for aged or ailing professionals. In years to come, God willing, there would also be schools and colleges, orphanages, crematoriums, perhaps a football franchise and one day, who could tell, a chain of KD temples.
Meanwhile, Eddie himself was paraded on a non-stop round of public engagements. He launched battleships, shook hands with senators and governors, dined at the White House. He threw the season’s first slider at Yankee Stadium and took the salute at West Point. On Christmas Eve, live from Tierra de Ensueños, he stood at his attic window and waved, and viewers voted him American of the Year.
And yet, in spite of all these honours, he was not at peace, for he still felt trapped.
While he was outlawed, he had believed that pardon would alter everything, that he would be truly released, but this had not proved to be the case. On the contrary, now that he was universally loved and idolised, he found himself more constrained than ever.
Wherever he went, he was mobbed. The moment that he ventured out into the open, the very instant that his foot touched a sidewalk, he was engulfed by fans and, even though he called them his friends, they tore his clothes off, ripped at his flesh, tried to gouge out his eyes. If they had not been forcibly prevented, their adoration would have destroyed him outright.
As a result, he was forced to live behind smoked glass. Henceforth, whether inside the mansion, on board the Deliverance Special or sunk in the cushions of the black limousine, he was separated from reality by an impenetrable screen, and he could never touch or be touched.
In a sense, King Death had made him redundant. Image had taken him over so completely that his own secret self, which he called Eddie, had lost all relevance. Alone in his attic, he might continue to eat and sleep and defecate, watch, dream and yearn. But he had no meaning or function. Unless Seaton clapped and the cameras rolled, he did not truly exist.