“Shawanda rides home with me. She won’t know what—”
“We’ll telephone her. Does she drive?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, she can drive your car home. On our way back from Fort Benning this evening, I’ll drop you off at your house, and she can pick you up in the morning.”
“But—”
“What’s the matter? Did you bring your car keys with you?”
“Yes, but there’s a duplicate set at the office. Only—”
“That’s wonderful. Don’t second-guess me. It’s decided.”
And it was. Lia found herself using the Berthelot telephone in a large white room off the solarium.
Soon afterward, she was sitting beside Grace Rinehart in her Cadillac as it slid down the winding gravel drive. Behind them in the portico—Lia glanced back to see this—Twitchell was holding a Brezhnev bear to his lapel. After waving them good-bye, he began to pat the cavy on the back as if trying to burp it. Meanwhile, the other agent, Scarletti, followed them to the gate in the armored golf cart, eating the Cadillac’s dust all the way.
As soon as they were on the highway, Grace popped a tape into her player. It was José Feliciano wailing a hip rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner”.
14
GRACE RINEHART and her passenger reached the outskirts of Fort Benning, the sprawling army installation south of Columbus, by two that afternoon. Grace drove her Cadillac down the four-lane onto the post, turned below the army hospital, and went on past the mall housing the commissary and the PX to a vast enclave where all the World War II era buildings had a forbidding official aspect. A war college of some sort, the officers’ club, the enlisted men’s dining hall, the quartermaster’s barracks, the motor pool.
Lia felt that she had entered a foreign country. Even when she saw a Burger King amid all these austere structures, she regarded it as she would have a McDonald’s in the center of Mexico City—as an anomaly that in no essential way undid the estranging exoticism of the place. She was an outsider here, a tourist, possibly even a captive being paraded before an indifferent and already victorious enemy. As a spit-and-polish platoon came trotting along the road to the chirpy hut-hutting of a red-haired DI in a wide-brimmed hat, she had to fight the urge to duck from view. Even after realizing that her window glass was tinted against Tom Peepery, she could not relax and enjoy the sightseeing.
“What’s the matter?” Grace asked her.
“I don’t know. I guess that army posts make me nervous.”
“They ought to calm you. My God, this is a bastion of American strength and resolution.”
Of course it was. On the other hand, the sound of helicopters swinging low over the parade fields—thwup-thwup-thwup-thwup-thwup!— and of soldiers jogging to quick-time rhymes called out by career disciplinarians was painfully daunting. It recalled to Lia the war years: the divisive 1960s, the repressive early 1970s, the insane euphoria of victory when the bombing of North Vietnam’s irrigation dikes and the push into Hanoi by a joint force of ARVN regulars and US Marines had broken the backs of the Reds and brought the long agony of the Indochinese conflict to a surprisingly decisive end. Grace Rinehart’s hero, Richard Nixon, had achieved this triumph, primarily by refusing to mute American power and by ordering Harry Kissinger to portray him at the Paris peace talks (ah, the irony of that epithet) as a Hitlerian madman who would do anything to obtain his goals. This cynical characterization had not been a lie.
Briefly, the hard-won triumph had been sweet. Soon, though, it had acquired a bitter taste—the apotheosis of the President, the institutionalization of repression, the crazy glorification of all things military. So how, given this dismaying history, could Lia ever feel at ease on an army post?
The Cadillac—some good distance from the Burger King—turned onto a street in an area where only a few barracks-like buildings dotted the brown meadows of the post. Lia soon caught sight of a painted sign near one of these structures: LIBERTY AMERICULURATION CENTER, GREATER SOUTHEAST, FORT BENNING FRANCHISE.
From the outside, the center looked closed. It had no windows, only outsized clapboard shingles—all of them dingy—resting on a concrete foundation at least three feet high. Grace parked her car on a diagonal near the hanging wooden sign, and she and Lia climbed a series of steps to the porch giving access to the entrance bay of the center. In this bay, everything was vast and shadowy, but Lia, squinting, could see corridors leading off it at weird and distant angles and rooms giving on these halls in the brightnesses beyond. Eventually, she also began to hear voices, most of which echoed scratchily across the gloom.
Grace said, “We first set up these centers for the Vietnamese, our enemies as well as our allies. The South Vietnamese really only needed pep talks and fine tuning, but the redeemable commies—Northerners that we thought might be able to influence the diehard Reds back home—they needed out-and-out conversion and hypnagogic reinforcement. As you can probably guess, the two or three years right after the war were our busiest times in the centers. Lately, I’m afraid, it’s been a little slow.”
If what I’m seeing right now is any indication, Lia thought, it’s more like D-E-A-D than S-L-O-W.
“We’re going to stay at it, though,” Grace confided. “We still have a number of Vietnamese to Americulturate, of course, but in recent months we’ve begun to diversify. Now we deprogram Muslim extremists for the new Shah, Castroite revolutionaries from Central and South America, and captured Marxists from Africa. Naturally, working with hostiles is harder than dealing with those predisposed to love us, but the rewards are greater. Unfortunately, it’s also difficult to capture and transport the hostiles back here so that we can do something with them.”
“Who’s here now?”
“A few Vietnamese, a few wild-eyed Islamic terrorists, several Sandinista guerrillas from Nicaragua. But mostly, even yet, it’s the Vietnamese—for which I’m grateful.”
“Does it depress you that the main work of your centers seems to be winding down?”
“Sure. A little. First the film career. Now this. Wouldn’t you be depressed?”
Lia said nothing. As her eyes adjusted, she realized that the bay was a kitchen and dining area. Ovens, stoves, stainless-steel tubs, and big wooden butcher blocks bulked in the dimness. Dozens of fold-up tables insulated the wall next to the street.
“Pollard!” Grace shouted. “Pollard, you’ve got company!” The echo of this shout ping-ponged around the room in a way that made Lia cringe.
A small, neat man in civilian clothes appeared in the mouth of one of the far corridors and then came tap-tapping across the open bay to greet them. Grace introduced him as Ralph C. Pollard, the director of this center; he shook Lia’s hand with a single limp pump. He had a silky mustache, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and five or six strands of snow-white hair sweeping over one ear in a coiffure otherwise dark and youthful. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty; nothing in his demeanor enabled Lia to make a more precise estimate.
“What’s going on today, Pollard?”
“As always, that depends on which room you’re in, Grace,” he said. Apparently, she called the director by his surname even though he was obliged to use her Christian name. “If you’ll just come with me, ladies, I’ll give you a tour.”
Lia was glad to get out of the bleak entrance bay. Was it any less oppressive when lights were gleaming, pots boiling, and people sitting at the tables for their meals? Naturally. It had to be. Maybe if she and Grace had arrived at noon, her first impression of the center would not have been so negative. Well, Pollard was going to try to reverse that impression, and Lia told herself that she must do her damnedest to help him. Negativism was a killer; it was certainly Cal’s least winsome personality trait.
The LAC director led them to the first door in the hallway from which he had come. Looking into the room, Lia noticed that it was decorated to resemble the interior of a subway car; it had false windows, with rectangular advertisements slotted into metal f
rames directly above them, and fake-leather seats that rested flush against the sides of the car. Floor-to-ceiling support poles lent an air of authenticity to this unorthodox decor, as did the spray-paint graffiti—most of it inauthentically bland—rippling over the walls and many of the ads. Tobacco firms, banks, soft-drink companies, and auto manufacturers had all bought ad space, but big concealing smears of crimson, blue, or ebony made it seem unlikely that these various concerns were getting their messages across.
Ten or twelve people—they looked Vietnamese—slumped or stood in the make-believe subway car, taking turns sharing recent good or bad experiences with their fellow passengers. Lia could not follow their talk well—not because they were speaking Vietnamese but because speaker units at each end of the car were flooding it with clickety-clackety subway-train noises. Moreover, everybody seemed to be swaying in their stationary conveyance as if it were actually hurtling them through the catacombs under New York City.
“This is a leaderless group-therapy session,” Pollard told Lia, sotto voce. “Everyone participates on an equal footing.”
“I don’t know,” Lia said. “I think the ones sitting down might have an advantage.”
Pollard gave her a wan, tolerant smile. “Right. Because this is supposed to be a subway car. Good, good.” Absent-mindedly, he wiggled the knot of his tie. “I meant, of course, that each person has an equal chance to contribute, to bring up problems they’ve had handling American manners and mores. Or they can tell the others an inspiring success story. In this part of the LAC program, members of our support groups meet once a week for six months.”
“Why do you distract them with the subway-car getup?”
“It’s not meant as a distraction,” Grace said. “It’s a means—an additional one—to acculturate them to our society. Two birds with one stone. Besides, they don’t always have the same backdrop against which to share their stories. We change the sets from week to week.”
Pollard said, “Last week, it was a small-town barbershop. It’s also been the lobby of a movie theater, the waiting room of a Midas muffler shop, and the first-class section of a 747 jumbo jet flying from Los Angeles to Hawaii.”
“Not to mention a hospital ward, the interior of a mobile home, and a diner right out of an old Edward Hopper painting.”
Isn’t that a lot of trouble to go to? Lia thought. And doesn’t it cost bundles of money to refit this overgrown confessional every week? Aloud, she said nothing. I’ve stumbled into a Mad Tea Party in Grace Rinehart’s batty Wonderland, she told herself, biting her tongue to remain silent.
“We have the members of the support group design and construct the sets themselves,” Pollard said. “It’s yet another way to make sure they’re exposing themselves to edifying Americana. We grade them on their choices and then on how well they render the sets they actually do.”
“And where do these poor people get the money to do them?”
“They’re not ‘poor people’, Lia,” Grace rebuked her. “Neither in a material nor in a spiritual sense. Some of them are already quite well off, having begun businesses or service organizations of their own. Most of them have a real creative flair, which shows to good advantage in their set-making. Sometimes—to answer your question—they use their own money; however, the Liberty Foundation always pays for most of what they need.”
When the clickety-clackety clickety-clackety of the subway tape briefly subsided, Lia heard one of the men declare, “… and so I have overcome my natural aversion to tossing beer or soda cans from the windows of moving vehicles.” Every member of the man’s support group, whether sitting or clinging to a pole, applauded him for his accomplishment. All, Lia noted, but one young man who appeared to be suffering from a private distress.
“Let’s move on,” Pollard said.
They did. Lia saw a room in which a small group of people were watching a kinescoped episode of I Love Lucy. Pollard told her that the students had already seen or would later see episodes of Amos and Arnie, Highway Patrol, The Honeymooners, Dragnet, Leave it to Bunny, Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and The Andy Griffith Show. Todd Turner, the owner of Channel 17 in Atlanta, a cable network whose programming consisted primarily of old movies, old television series, and sporting events, had helped LAC/GSE acquire many of these episodes, and so Grace considered him a special friend of the Liberty Foundation. Lia noticed that two of those undergoing Americulturation in this room were tactlessly “resting their eyes”.
Gesturing the two women onward, Pollard indicated the next door along the corridor. Here, Lia found herself gazing in at a smartly dressed young woman who appeared to be lecturing her charges on responsible consumerism. From the table before her, she lifted two cans of sliced cling peaches in heavy syrup, one a name brand, one a generic product; then she showed her students a designer box of Kleenex tissues and a modest box of nonproprietary tissues. After these demonstrations, she stressed that upwardly mobile Americans—Benjamin Franklin’s admonition “A penny saved is a penny earned” notwithstanding—would opt for the status-imparting and economy-boosting name-brand goods rather than the less attractive and less expensive generic products. Thrift without taste was unAmerican, but a pretty prodigality was patriotic.
“I regularly buy generic items,” Lia whispered. “If we want to make ends meet, we have to.”
“Well, you were born here,” Grace whispered back. “You can get away with a little tactical scrimping.”
“But not these people,” Pollard said. “Foreign-born citizens who buy generic goods are in danger of making themselves feel like generic Americans, rootless and nondescript. It’s psychologically important for them to identify with name-brand products. That’s why, at graduation, we give them Adidas T-shirts and Papermate pens and tote bags from Macy’s.”
The director nodded at the next door down the corridor. “Come on, then, ladies.”
I hope you’re including yourself in that category, Lia thought, not because she believed Ralph C. Pollard gay or even off-puttingly effeminate but because there was something quintessentially bitchy about his manner. He was, she concluded, a patronizing creep, and this tour was depressing her, wearing her down, in a way that even an uneventful work day in Warm Springs could not do.
The next chamber they came to was a small auditorium. It had a low stage at one end, the backdrop to which was an immense—yea, an almost sardonically big—American flag. Previously, they had stood outside each therapy or lecture room, but this time Grace walked boldly in. As soon as the fifteen or twenty Vietnamese sitting in their theater chairs saw, and recognized, her, they came to their feet, enthusiastically applauding. Lia knew immediately that this display of respect and affection was both spontaneous and real; the men in the room were truly glad to see her. Even the young man on stage, whose presentation Grace had interrupted, was applauding. He wore a beige helmet liner and slapped a swagger stick repeatedly against his palm to show his delight at the unexpected advent of the Medal of Freedom winner.
“Let me apologize for breaking in on you,” Grace said, urging quiet with her hands. “We don’t mean to put you behind schedule. It’s only that I wanted Dr. Bonner here”—she indicated Lia—“to see how well you all’re doing and what great talents many of you possess. Please, now, go on with what you were doing.”
That said, Grace led Lia and the director along the wall to the rear of the auditorium, where they found standing room and crossed their arms and waited for the man in the helmet liner to resume his presentation. Which, unabashedly, he did.
It took Lia only a moment to comprehend that he was recreating the prologue to the film Patton, George C. Scott’s eloquent address to the troops. And he was re-creating it well, if not altogether expertly, striding this way and that, enunciating each syllable as though it had been engraved on a gold tablet, and using his swagger stick—it and the helmet were his only props—to punctuate Patton’s jingoistic but somehow moving harangue. Everyone in the little auditorium paid strict h
eed, and when he was finished, there was clapping for him as loud and heartfelt as that which had greeted Grace’s arrival.
“Very good, Pham Kha Son,” the actress told him, and the young man, taking off his helmet liner and facing everyone in his Calvin Klyne jeans and his Arrow shirt, shyly acknowledged her praise. He seemed embarrassed as well as gratified by it.
Pollard, leaning across Lia, whispered, “He’s just had his name legally changed to Frederick Cason, Grace. That’s what he’d like you to call him.”
“Very good, Mr. Cason,” Grace said aloud. “With your speaking ability, I think you should run for office.”
The man’s smile broadened, and he came down from the stage to pass the helmet liner and the swagger stick to the next performer. This was a fellow even younger than “Frederick Cason”, undoubtedly a teenager, who bowed accepting his props and then tripped almost daintily up the steps to the stage. Soon, he, too, was reprising the George C. Scott speech—in a voice exotically inflected and disconcertingly high-pitched. Still, he seemed to know what he was doing, and if he were less compelling than Mr. Cason, Lia knew that it was his physical appearance and his boyish voice rather than his lack of acting talent that made him so.
As he was swaggering and haranguing, Grace said, This is not only Americulturation, Lia, it’s a kind of assertiveness training. We bring only the men into this track, and we make them deliver the prologue from Patton because it’s a real flag-waver that requires whoever’s doing it to drop that self-effacing Asian gentlemanliness that undercuts their ability to compete in the West.”
“Amen,” said Ralph C. Pollard.
A Mad Tea Party, Lia thought. Everything I’ve seen here is an invitation to high tea with the March hare and the dormouse. But before she could think further on the insanity of this and other LAC activities, Grace eased past her, beckoning her to follow, and they left the auditorium, turned into another corridor, and walked along it—a long way—to a different sort of room.
Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas Page 19