Boomsday

by Christopher Buckley

  Cass’s assault on Gideon Payne put her back on the nation’s front pages, not that she had been off them for long. It also put Gideon Payne’s past back in the present, not that anyone had quite forgotten it. It was a matter of some delicacy.

  Gideon’s great-great-great-grandfather had, indeed, been the Confederate sharpshooter who put a .55-caliber minié ball into Randy’s great-great-great-uncle at Spotsylvania in 1864. For this conspicuous bit of marksmanship—General Sedgwick was one of the better Union generals and a favorite of Grant’s—Gideon’s ancestor was given an engraved gold watch and $100.

  After the war, he used the money to buy a hundred acres of timberland in Alabama and an old sawmill. (Cheap, in 1865.) He worked hard, prospered, and handed it over to his sons, and within half a century the family business owned tens of thousands of acres of timber forest in the South and saw and paper mills. At one time, all the Scrabble tiles, tongue suppressors, and Popsicle sticks in the United States were made from Payne pine. They also made inexpensive coffins.

  Gideon’s father was a kindly, rotund man who preferred to sit on the front porch and drink mint juleps rather than busy himself overly in the family business. He loved Gideon, who was born corpulent and remained so, and would dangle him endlessly on his knee and make up stories about mythical ancestors who, like the real ancestor, had performed heroic deeds on battlefields. His wife, Gideon’s mother, Cassiopeia Idalia Clampp—she could hardly wait to marry and get rid of the name—was very different in nature from her husband: tall, slender, fine-looking, and angry. (“Born angry,” her father used to say, “and she’ll probably die angry.”) Her own family fortunes dwindling, and determined not to live a life of poverty, she met her future husband one day at the Colonial Cup in Camden, South Carolina, and determined to marry him. It is not especially hard to seduce an amiable, rotund, and feckless pleasure seeker. All you have to do is lead him to the lotus patch and then to the altar while the poor beast is still in a daze. This she did with efficiency and in due course provided him an heir in the form of Gideon and a few perfunctory sisters.

  She had hoped for a son in the traditional southern mold, which is to say Yankee-hating, manly, attractive, good on the back of a horse, and reasonably sober. Gideon possessed none of these qualities, except for the last. His favorite children’s book was Ferdinand the Bull, the story of the Spanish bull who didn’t want to fight in the ring and preferred to sit in a field all by himself smelling flowers. His great joy, oddly, for one of his generation (and wealth), was reading the Bible, a pastime that took root one day at age five, when his father, nestling him on his lap, read him from Judges 6, chapter 11.

  “And there came an angel of the Lord, and sat under an oak which was”—Gideon would giggle at his father’s rendition of the oddly emphasized verbs in the King James version—“in Ophrah . . .Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.”

  Gideon was hooked. But then it is pleasant to find your own name in a book that everyone in the world owns.

  His father died when he was twelve. When the bereft child asked his rather dry-eyed mother what had caused his papa’s death—it was a heart attack—his mother replied, “Eating and drinking and not getting off that porch.” This was delivered with an icy stare, the implication being that her son was somehow complicit in his death. And that was the end of Elysium for young Gideon.

  A few weeks later, she handed him a rifle and said, “It’s about time you killed something.” Gideon was horrified. He was sent off whimpering with one of the plantation hands with instructions not to come back without a kill.

  The hand, an old colored man—as they were called then—took pity on the poor boy and shot a possum. He proudly told the evidently suspicious Cassiopeia that her son had by his very own self shot the creature off the highest limb of a sparkleberry tree by the creek.

  For weeks afterward, Cassiopeia referred to her son at the dinner table, in front of guests, as “our own little Lee Harvey Oswald.” Shortly thereafter, Gideon was sent off to a military academy in Mississippi, where his physique and temperament were not in step with those of the young savages. His torments were great. He was dangled from windows, had his head immersed in toilet bowls. His knowledge of the Bible made him a figure of ridicule and earned him the nickname “Preacher Boy.” One day he escaped. It could not have been called a heroic attempt inasmuch as he was found shortly, tucking into an enormous ice-cream sundae at a soda fountain in town. But he refused, absolutely, to return to what he called “that place of desolation.” Cassiopeia really had no choice but to take him back. Still, she was determined to make a man of him.

  To that end, she sent him to work the night shift at the Payne paper mill on the Coosoomahatchie River. In those pre-environmentalist days, paper mills emitted a noxious stink redolent of rotten eggs, sulfur, and vomit. The very thought of toiling away in this mephitic inferno appalled Gideon. He begged for reprieve. Cassiopeia would have none of it.

  To compound Gideon’s misery, she had him chauffeur-driven to the plant every evening. The spectacle of this butterball Fauntleroy emerging from a black Lincoln caused sniggers among his co-workers, even outright hooting. Gideon was mortified but determined to show that he had some steel inside, along with the blubber.

  Every morning before setting off in the Lincoln, he saturated a handkerchief with cologne (Eau de Joie). He would hold it to his assaulted nostrils when the stench of the mill overwhelmed him. This occasioned louder hooting among his colleagues, and the nickname “Rose of Coosoomahatchie.”

  Gideon soldiered on bravely like a forlorn character in an Edwin Arlington Robinson poem. He learned quickly and soon worked his way up to assistant night foreman. Then, some years later, came the incident that became known ever after as “the incident.”

  Cassiopeia, a traditional southern lady of a certain era, enjoyed being taken on Sunday afternoon drives. This chauffeuring duty fell to her young son, Gideon, now seventeen. After Sunday dinner (lunch, in the North), the two of them would drive off in Cassiopeia’s 1955 Cadillac Eldorado convertible with red leather upholstery, she in the back, holding her parasol in white-gloved hands, waving in a matriarchal fashion at the farmers and workers of the estate. These drives traditionally culminated at a promontory high above the Coosoomahatchie that looked out on a spectacular view of the Payne timberlands.

  Gideon’s account, sobbed out to Payne County sheriff Jubiliah Stipps, was as follows. He parked the Cadillac, as usual, on the sandy bluff, set the parking brake, and got out of the car in order to answer an urgent call of nature. While doing this, he said that he heard “an awful sound.” He turned and saw the car rolling forward toward the edge of the cliff with a wide-eyed, shrieking Cassiopeia in the back. He ran (“with all my lungs, I ran”) to intercept the car but was unable to reach the vehicle in time. It rolled off the bluff and came to a crunchy end three hundred feet below. Gideon’s imitation of the sound of the Cadillac landing was said by all who heard it to be a masterpiece of onomatopoeia.

  The only question remaining was—was he telling the truth?

  The inquest was inconclusive but left open the possibility, as it was quietly put, of “mischief.” The evidence, such as it was, was inconclusive. The district attorney declined to prosecute. No one wanted a scandal. His unconvincing explanation was accepted—with a collective rolling of eyes—and the matter was closed.

  In fact, it was anything but “closed.” Cassiopeia may not have been a popular person in Payne County, and her cruelty to Gideon was well-known. That said, matricide was “not done” in fine families in the South. Perhaps in the North, but not here.

  A year later and now legally an adult, Gideon left his ancestral home, some said with hardly a look back over his shoulder. He sold his shares in Payne Enterprises, which made him relatively wealthy. He enrolled in a theological seminary, where he excelled in homiletics. He concentrated his ministry among the elderly. (Guilt, they said back home.) In the process, he cam
e to know the owners of a home for the elderly outside Memphis. It was failing financially. He took an interest, bought it, and, displaying a genetic ability for business, turned it around and made it profitable. He bought a few more homes, turned those around. By the time he was in his mid-thirties, he owned a majority share in Elderheaven Corporation, which owned or operated nearly a hundred homes for the elderly throughout the country. Its motto was: “The next best thing to heaven.” Back in Payne County, heads were shaking, but they had to admit that this was penitence on a grand—and profitable—scale.

  Gideon’s ministry expanded with his business. He became a defender of life not only for the elderly, but for the unborn. Invited to speak at a pro-life rally on the Mall in Washington, he gave an impressive, pulpit-pounding defense that put many in mind of a younger Billy Graham or, as one newspaper put it, a “white Al Sharpton.” More invitations followed, and before long he became leader of the Protestant branch of the pro-life movement. He founded the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule, SPERM. Soon it became the go-to activist pro-life vanguard. If an abortion clinic opened somewhere, SPERM was there to protest. He spoke out against stem cell research. If the family of a vent-dependent, brain-dead coma victim tried to unplug life support, SPERM was there with a court order to stop it and a howling posse of interventionist congressmen. If a state legislature debated an assisted suicide bill, Gideon himself would be there to denounce it from the steps of the statehouse. Before long, Gideon was “Mr. Life.”

  Because of this and Elderheaven, he also became Mr. Rich. He was a significant personage in the nation’s capital, courted by presidents and by those who craved the presidency. Every so often, some smart-alecky pundit would allude to “the incident,” but they did it at their peril. Retaliation followed, sure and swift. Denunciations of the pundit would pour forth from pulpits all over the land. Most punitively of all, advertising would be pulled from the offending newspaper or radio or website. All of which made Cass’s remark on Greet the Press no mere taunt, but a formal declaration of war.

  “Why didn’t you just pull a knife and stab him in the neck?” Terry said, shaking his head. “Where’d you learn your debating style? From watching World Wrestling Federation Friday Night Smackdown?”

  “Whose side are you on?” Cass said. “He called me ‘demonic.’”

  “He calls everyone that.”

  “Well, I’m not going to take that from some Mr. Chubby Ducketts southern-fried preacher who drove his mother off a cliff. Why should I kowtow to that asshole?”

  “Cass—Supreme Court nominees kowtow to ‘that asshole.’ Powerful corporations kowtow to ‘that asshole.’ Corporations, by the way, that we seek to become clients of. Presidents kowtow to—”

  “I’m not running for president. Or the Supreme Court. Whatever. We got his attention.”

  “Oh,” Terry snorted, “yeah, I’d say we definitely accomplished that. You’re probably now numero uno on Gideon Payne’s shit list.”

  “Bring it on.”

  “Please don’t say that. It’s such bad karma. God might be listening.”

  “If Gideon Payne is God’s instrument on earth, I volunteer for the next manned mission to Mars.”

  The phone rang. It was the junior senator from the great state of Massachusetts, Randolph K. Jepperson.

  “I’m calling to say thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “I asked you to kick that sanctimonious bag of helium in the balls. And you ripped them right off. Bra-va.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” Cass said a bit hotly. “He called me ‘demonic.’”

  “Oh, heavens, he calls everyone that. Anyhow, you were brilliant. Brilliant. I love you. Marry me. Now, I am not without news myself. While you were administering bastinadoes to the Reverend Payne, I was working feverishly to make our little ‘Modest Proposal’ the law of the land. I presented the idea of co-sponsoring the Voluntary Transitioning bill to the distinguished junior senator from Oregon, Ron Fundermunk. At first the blood drained from his face. I thought he might faint. Then I explained that it’s a meta-political device. A proxy, as it were, a philosophical tool to spark spirited debate on the issue, sure in time to lead to reform of a less, shall we say, draconian kind. Sure enough, the color returned to his face. He gets it! Those Oregonians. I love them. They’re so ahead of the curve. He’s an educated fellow. He took philosophy in college. It’s not going to alarm his constituents. He represents a state that’s dying to commit suicide. He knows a brave new world when he sees one. So, Little Miss Sunshine, the bottom line is that I am calling to inform you that I have a co-sponsor for our bill.”

  The “our” gave Cass pause, but she had to admit it was, all in all, encouraging news.

  Chapter 15

  “Mr. President,” Senator Randolph K. Jepperson said, beginning his historic speech on the floor of the Senate, “I rise to introduce a bill of momentous importance and urgency.”

  The president pro tem nodded sleepily in return and went back to his Sudoko puzzle.

  The Washington and national press corps watched with one collective eye on C-SPAN, which had thankfully relieved them of having to be physically present when politicians rose to introduce bills of momentous importance and urgency.

  “Together with my distinguished and learned colleague from the great state of Oregon, we are today introducing S.322, the Voluntary Transitioning bill. This bill is coming at a time of dire national economic crisis, as seventy-seven million . . .yes, Mr. Speaker, I said seventy-seven million members of the Baby Boom generation are beginning to retire, playing havoc with the Treasury and creating mayhem on Wall Street. Mr. President, under the provisions of the Voluntary Transitioning bill, which I believe will take its rightful place in the historic pantheon of legislation, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the recent Alaska Monorail Transportation Act, elder Americans will be able to give something back to their country. And in the process, provide for their children, and their children’s children, to make a better world.

  “Mr. President, I surely recognize that at first glance, this bill may appear to advocate a desperate remedy to our nation’s fiscal calamities. But it was a former member of this very body who, on assuming the leadership of this great nation at a time of great peril, said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you. . . .’

  “Mr. President, the generation that preceded my own has been called ‘the Greatest Generation.’ Born into the Depression, forged in the annealing fires of the furnace of World War Two, they made themselves great indeed. The generation that followed—my generation, and that of many of my distinguished colleagues—might be called ‘the Luckiest Generation.’ Why? Because of the sacrifices made by our fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, grandfathers and grandmothers. Meanwhile, my generation has not been idle, exactly. Perhaps we did not fight in a great war or weather a depression. But in our own way, we have contributed. We have made advances in science, in the arts, in technology. And some of us did fight in wars—perhaps not great ones, but wars nonetheless. Others of us were wounded on foreign battlefields—”

  “Gimme a break,” the correspondent for The Washington Post muttered to himself as he typed. “You drove into a minefield to get your rocks off.”

  “—in wars very different from the great ones fought by our forebears. Still, war is war.

  “Thanks to advances made by my generation, people around the world can now find decent coffee on practically every street corner. Can send e-mails. Participate in chat rooms. Type on laptop computers. No, Mr. President, we have not been idle. But these accomplishments pale in comparison with the ones of those who went before us. And so, Mr. President, it is—truly, surely, indeed, absolutely—time for us to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our children and give back. Give back our own lives, so that those who come after us may not become enmired indeed, enmeshed in an endless swamp of debt and misery. This, Mr. President, is truly the least we can do for our country
.”

  Cass and Terry watched Randy’s speech on TV at the Tucker offices.

  “Not bad,” Terry said. “A little Kennedyesque, but not bad.”

  “Give the man credit,” Cass said. “He definitely put it on the table.”

  “You know he’s gonna get crucified.”

  “Yes,” Cass said, “but Randy has a tendency to rise again on the third day.”

  Gideon Payne had also been listening. His minions had alerted him that a speech of keen interest to the pro-life lobby was being broadcast to the world. He watched impassively, stroking his neatly groomed beard. A smile spread across his face like an oil slick. Gideon thought, Truly the Lord is bountiful. Here is manna from heaven, and all covered in butterscotch sauce.

  Had he merely dreamed a beautiful dream, or had a United States senator just gone on national television to advocate mass suicide as a means of dealing with the deficit?

  He gave his chinny-chin-chin a little pinch to see if it was a dream. No, his beard felt real enough under his soft fingertips. This was no dream. It was the lowest-hanging fruit in the Garden of Eden. Gideon could scarcely believe his good fortune. He himself could not have devised a more succulent fund-raising opportunity. He folded his hands across his capacious belly. His gaze wandered to his phone. He counted silently. One, two, three . . .

  He’d only reached fourteen when it began to ring—line one, then line two, then all ten lines, lovely little green lights full of sound and fury, signifying . . .money.

  Bucky Trumble did not bother to knock on the door of the Oval Office.

  He said a bit breathlessly, “Jepperson just introduced a bill on the floor of the Senate that would legalize suicide in return for tax breaks. It’s Devine’s Transitioning scheme repackaged as legislation. And he got Fundermunk to co-sponsor it.”

  President Peacham barely looked up from his desk. “The ones committing suicide are Jepperson and Fundermunk. Hardly know how we’ll survive without ’em. Screwy fucking idea.”