“You poor dumb son of a bitch,” Doctor Zane said.
*
Dr. Zane Woolfolk moved as quickly as he could to clean up the Wilkinses’ mess. He had Larry Glenn drop his egg-sized chunk of cesium 137 into an empty soup can, which he carried into the X-ray room, dropped into a metal bowl, and covered with a vinyl-encased lead vest that his X-ray patients wore.
He hurried back down the hall, gave Larry Glenn a bar of soap, shoved him into the bathroom, and said, “Strip. Put your clothes in the trash. Hand the can out. Scrub your hands, wash yourself from scalp to sole. I know it’s tight in there, but do it. I’ll bring you some more clothes.”
As soon as Larry Glenn had wadded his clothes into the trash can, Dr. Woolfolk carried it across the hall to the girls’ mothers. He told them to undress the girls, stuff their clothes into the examination room’s trash can, and hand the trash can out to him. Then the mothers should take turns scrubbing themselves, from their fingertips to their elbows, with the soap he gave them. Once finished, they should wash their daughters thoroughly and scrub themselves again. Nurse O’Brien would bring each child an inexpensive change of clothes.
Dr. Woolfolk took both trash cans to the clinic’s incinerator, set a week’s worth of trash on fire, and dropped the lid so that the smoke from the burning waste could escape through a single metal pipe. Back in his office, he phoned the Silvanus County sheriff’s department to suggest that a pair of deputies be sent at once to the Larry Glenn Wilkins property on Lickskillet Road, to quarantine the place.
Dr. Woolfolk’s next phone call, after dialing Information for the number, was to REACTS, Radiation Emergency Assistance Center / Training Sites, a World Health Organization-affiliated outfit. REACTS’ main offices were in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, less than three hundred miles away. Dr. Woolfolk explained to the radiation expert who came on the line what had happened, how he’d found the problem, and what he’d done so far.
His contact, Dr. Joseph Lusk, said, “That’s good, real good. Now, listen up. . . .”
50
“Jury-Rigged Rainbows”
On Saturday afternoon, Xavier keyboarded his final twice-weekly installment of “Thus Saith Xavier Thaxton.”
I am leaving the Urbanite. This is my last column here. It’s hard to say goodbye. Writing arts criticism and promoting our species’ finest imaginative products have been my only goals since embarking on my journalism career.
In “Thus Saith Xavier Thaxton,” ego and love have led me to speak my mind about the arts. I’ve applauded and scolded the makers, and the would-be makers, of art. I’ve railed against fraud, sloth, nincompoopery, misguidedness, and even blatant immorality. I’ve taken to task persons seduced into huzzas by our most popular artists’ most wretched excesses.
To my own and others’ amazement, I have occasionally reversed fields and scolded myself for championing (or slighting) an artist once blindly praised (or dismissed). I’ve passed judgment, and I’ve made mistakes. For my benefit and yours, I’ve sought to analyze and correct my errors. I never ceased wanting our entire species, myself included, to be better—spiritually richer—than it is.
“Just who the hell do you think you are?” aptly paraphrases the major thrust of a lot of my “fan” mail. Snob, elitist, longhair, bigot, high-hatter, blusterer, know-it-all, puff adder, and critic—shied at me with a sneer—are a few of the printable epithets that my judgments have provoked. Sometimes, I’ve deserved both these epithets and the unprintable ones not catalogued here.
(Parenthetically, let me add that even if my column criticizing the power-fantasy underpinnings of Uncommon Comics was a myopic one, I didn’t deserve to be shot three times for writing it. “Once would have done,” editor and friend Walt Grantham said, “if the gunman’s aim had been better.”)
With my words here, I have incurred your ire, your righteous indignation, your dismay, and (if you were an aggrieved artist or one of the artist’s partisans) your withering contempt, if not your deathless hatred. After all, I had attacked that by which some of you at least partially define yourself. And only saints, angels, or the astonishingly serene can withstand such assaults without leaking either rage or self-esteem.
Bootless to argue that I never meant to wound, only to admonish and correct.
“Just who the hell do you think you are?” Well, a Sufi saying that has calmed me when my words, discomfiting others, have spurred the wounded to act upon their fury and loathing: “Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied—or think they have been denied—something.” Praise, usually, praise or regard.
Further, a Sufi riddle that generously supplies its own answer has also given me comfort: “Who is the wrong person to criticize?” Answereth this riddle, quite simply: “You.” Along with an apothegm of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (“Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall”), these Sufi sayings restore a degree of perspective, not to mention my oft-abused and gun-shy soul.
But even as I set them down here, I can hear some screaming, “Just who the hell do you think you are?” The outrageousness of my self-image, as you falsely perceive it, must appall or amuse you (if you care at all). But I am chastened by my own failures and inadequacies even as I tweak you, tenderly, for yours. The spiritual humility behind my public arrogance is what my detractors and enemies have never understood.
But let me answer the one question—“Just who the hell do you think you are?”—that echoes like a refrain from your every letter of protest, dissent, or heartfelt contumely. I am Nietzsche’s would-be Übermensch. I am Superman in feckless Clark Kent drag. I am, in short, a Stalwart for Truth.
Here, I thank the Urbanite for giving me this twice-weekly forum. I must also thank my staff: Donel Lassiter, Ivie Nakai, and Pippa Wiedmeyer, who succeeds me. I also thank my colleague Lee Stamz, who taught me a few of the errors of my ways, and my nephew Mikhail Menaker for struggling to teach me the others. I thank Walt Grantham for several years of gutty indulgence.
Most of all, I thank the would-be artists striving to show us the rainbow, and the beholders seeking to see as rainbows the jury-rigged arches winched into view by their hopeful makers. Sometimes the noise is bearable. Sometimes the guy-ropes are harder to see than threads. Sometimes the sky is afire with color and light and passion. Sometimes . . .
Goodbye, Salonika. Goodbye.
*
“The thank-yous are nice, but the counterattack on your readers is—”
“It’s not a counterattack, Walt. It’s an explanation and an apologia: a love letter.”
Grantham stared at the printout on his desk. “You virtually admit you’re Count Geiger. You do just what you asked me not to do until Monday.”
“By writing ‘I am a Stalwart for Truth’?”
“Of course.”
“If you can’t accept ‘I am a Stalwart for Truth’ as a metaphor, Walt, try viewing it as a hedge against being scooped.”
“Come again.”
“If, tomorrow, the TV dinks—the vacuum tubes—try to drop the bombshell that Xavier Thaxton is Count Geiger, the Urbanite will’ve already stolen their thunder.”
“But you’ve disguised the admission as—” Grantham stopped.
“A metaphor? Yeah. Do you want a straightforward admission or a metaphorical admission? You seem to want both.”
“Damn it, Xavier! I don’t want an admission at all.”
“Unless Alex Meisel does the admitting for me, turning the fact into an Urbanite scoop instead of a confession.”
“Rewrite this last column, Xave. It’s bombast, special pleading, and innuendo.”
“It’s my last literary hurrah here in Salonika. Please run it as it stands.”
On the following Sunday morning, “Jury-Rigged Rainbows,” the last “Thus Saith Xavier Thaxton,” appeared in the Fine Arts pages of the Urbanite exactly as Xavier had written it.
51
Stung!
Before most of Salonika’s churches le
t out, the nearer parking lots of the Hemisphere began to fill: muscle cars, Mercedes, 4 x 4 trucks, stretch limos, jalopyesque pickups. At the only gate open for foot traffic, security cops frisked everybody, allowing no one to enter without passing through a metal detector. American military intervention overseas had made tight security at most major public events, as a hedge against terrorist attacks and bombings, a commonplace.
Most filing into the stadium were young and male, but whatever their age or sex, all had received a letter promising an afternoon of free entertainment and exciting giveaways as part of a regional promotion by a new music, video, and ad consortium (Mambo-Ra Flix & Kix, in tandem with Blackguard Pictures and Uncommon Comics). These letters had been sent to known bail jumpers, suspected drug dealers and burglars, verified prison escapees, possessors of delinquent parking tickets, and heretofore uncaught con artists, car thieves, bank robbers, and felonious ne’er-do-wells. The letters had resembled sweepstake invitations, not subpoenas or crude dunning instruments, and response had been gratifying: approximately a thousand invitations had netted a crowd of over six hundred, each soul conscientiously punctual.
Inside, ushers passed out free issues of the latest Stalwart-for-Truth comic, “valuable coupon booklets,” and flyers listing activities and prizes available during the promotion. They directed guests to a fan-shaped section of bleacher seats behind home plate, urging everyone to sit as close to the field as possible to move things along should winners need to walk out to accept a prize. Although the invitations guaranteed that no one would leave empty-handed, they also said that, to conclude on time, the promo must start at exactly one o’clock. No one coming late could take part.
Three parachute tents, like canopies at a medieval picnic, rippled in the Cherokees’ outfield: one in left, one in center, one in right. Each tent was multicolored. Under their fanciful wings, the groundskeepers had set out metal folding chairs and an assortment of goods and equipment hard to identify from the seats into which the ushers had herded their guests. Erected on the infield, between the first and third base lines, was a V-shaped stage, with a pole mike at the point of the V above home plate. At the mike, in a smart cocktail dress, stood a young woman whom few at P. S. Annie’s Cutie Shoots probably would have recognized as Suzi Pybus. Steered to this booking by a tip relayed through Big Possum Screws, Suzi (a.k.a. Sweet Potato Pye) was taking less advantage of her beauty and dancing talent, and more of her parliamentary skills and her poise. She’d always wanted to be a “spokesmodel,” but this was her first opportunity.
“Welcome,” she said. “Please be s-seated. It’s t-time to get st-started.” Her stutter resulted as much from the under-cover-operative-for-hire aspects of her job as from performance anxiety. A flourish from the PA system—drums and trumpets—quieted the crowd, and ushers pointed stragglers to their seats. “Welcome,” Suzi Pybus reiterated. Several pockets of guests cheered, wolf-whistled, leered. “Mambo-Ra Flix and Kix thank you for attending our Go-Go Promo Rally. Our main purpose here today” —pausing to mentally review a script she’d already memorized— “is to make you happier Salonikans: happier and better.”
“Baby, you can’t get any better than the Dickybird already is!” shouted someone, probably “Dickybird” himself. Dome-filtered sunlight ricocheted off the windshield and body metal of a sports car parked behind second base. The flyer that the ushers had passed out promised that the vehicle was a prize in a coming giveaway. On the wings of Suzi Pybus’s stage stood fifty members of a men’s glee club wearing blue jumpsuits, their arms behind them and their hands seemingly clasped behind them. They looked as much like a drill team as a choral group.
“It was really smart of you to hang on to your invitations and to show up here today,” Suzi told the crowd.
“Really smart!” chorused the glee club.
“Some who got invites probably just threw them away,” she added. “How sad.”
“How sad!” crooned the glee club.
“Many of you will receive free tickets to important sporting events: the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament, the Indianapolis Five Hundred, the World Series, the Super Bowl.”
“Super Bowl!”
“Others will win free cars, cruises, stereo and video equipment, firearms, computer systems, and, maybe best of all, tax-free cash.”
“Tax-free, tax-free, tax-freee cash!”
“And some will get a chance to be paid extras in a brand-new Blackguard Pictures release featuring the exploits of the newest UC stalwart, Count Geiger!” On the electronic scoreboard in center field, above a lavender and mint-green parachute tent, flashed an animated sequence showing Count Geiger subduing four would-be EleRail muggers. Piano music, as if for a silent film, issued from the sound system.
The Hemisphere’s guests did the Wave, first horizontally and then vertically.
“Here to tell you just what each of you is likely to win is Count Geiger himself! The real Count Geiger! Please give him the welcome he deserves!”
Xavier, who’d been sitting out of sight beside the water cooler in the Cherokees’ dugout, walked onto the field in his Count Geiger costume. He mounted the stage and, to the cheers of the crowd, accepted a peck on the cheek from Suzi Pybus.
“You did well, Suzi,” he whispered. “Curtsy to everybody and hustle to the dugout before things turn nasty.” Waving and smiling, Suzi obeyed. A tunnel in the dugout led to the Cherokees’ locker room, where OBI agents would receive Suzi and escort her out of the stadium. “Good afternoon,” said Xavier, using the mike.
Crooned the glee club, “Good good gooood afternoon!”
“If you have your nontransferable invite verified by the Hemisphere’s security people at Gate Twelve, lift it over your head so I can see it.”
This command turned five hundred people into giddy game-show contestants. Woofing like berserk Clevelanders, they waved their invitations.
“You’re all under arrest,” Xavier said. The glee club’s members produced automatic rifles from behind their backs and pointed them at the crowd. The ushers on hand also drew firearms. “gotcha!” cried the scoreboard, visually.
Animated fireworks exploded on the board: rockets, whirlagigs, cascades. This would have been fine after a Cherokee home run, but today it smacked of tasteless electronic gloating. From the crowd, Xavier fielded a mixed broadcast of emotions: panic, bewilderment, ignorant amusement, abject surrender, fulminating rage. Well, the scoreboard had not been his idea. . . .
*
All the stadium’s exits and gates were sealed. The arrested felons—pokeweed junkies and dealers, fences, bail jumpers, bagmen, car thieves, parking-ticket dodgers, parole violators, prostitutes, extortionists, tax evaders, muggers, etc.—had nowhere to run. As the scoreboard had crowed, they’d been caught. Nabbed. Stung.
Under Xavier’s command (the distress of the duped simplified the remping of their private guilts), a complex processing formula was activated. Violent sorts and escaped lawbreakers trudged in files into a tunnel where paddywagons waited to haul them to Salonika’s central stationhouse. Some hung their heads and shuffled. Others cursed or swung their fist, inviting rebukes and billy-stick proddings. Finally, all those accused or convicted of violent crimes were ferried away, reducing the sting victims’ numbers and the danger of a collective uprising. As Count Geiger, Xavier remped all the arrestees to determine specific crimes and levels of hostility toward authority figures. He then ordered the least dangerous felons—tax evaders, call girls, ticket dodgers—to report to the center-field pavilion of phony silk and white PVC tubing.
“Why?” a CPA type demanded. “What’re you going to do to us out there?”
“Do you play a musical instrument?” Xavier asked.
“No.”
“All right. Do the scale for me. You know, do re mi fa so la ti do. Sing it, though. Don’t just speak it.”
“Do re mi fa . . . so la ti do,” sang the CPA type.
“Very nice.” To Officer Sturgis, the police
woman recording tent assignments on her clipboard, he said, “Voice lessons.” To the CPA type, he said, “Center field. You’ll rehabilitate through voice lessons. Six weeks’ worth. Or until you’ve mastered the second tenor’s part in Verdi’s Rigoletto.”
“What? The second what?”
“Go on. You’ll have an excellent instructor, courtesy of Skye University’s School of Music, with major funding from a retropunk group on educational hiatus, Smite Them Hip & Thigh, and generous though lesser contributions from Uncommon Comics and the management of both First Stringers and P. S. Annie’s.”
The CPA type, along with several other minor lawbreakers, hiked under guard to center field. Beneath the canopy there, he sat on a folding chair to take instruction from a professional voice coach and music historian. Other members of the same group began composing songs, playing the xylophone, or memorizing the librettos of musical comedies like South Pacific, My Fair Lady, and Gypsy. The noises from beneath this tent lasted for three hours, a spirited mongrel cacophony.
Elsewhere in the Hemisphere—namely, left and right fields—other lawbreakers began their own surprise rehabilitations. One group (left field) strove to learn painting, calligraphy, or cartooning. Another group (right field) tackled the rudiments of scriptwriting for stage, film, or TV, or took acting lessons. All those assigned to a tent received their assignments from Count Geiger, who remped each felon to determine who should go where: the music, drama, or visual-arts pavilion.
Not all apprehended had real creative or performing talents. Thus, Xavier, already prepared for that contingency, had reserved several community-service jobs in the arts for those unable to sing, paint, draw, dance, act, compose, or play a musical instrument. After today’s session, at which the “no-talent” types would simply observe and absorb, the city would find them weekend and evening jobs—salary-free—as custodians in art galleries, stagehands for theater groups and local puppetry workshops, instrument toters for the Salonika Symphony Orchestra, and jacks (or jills) of all trades for any other valuable artistic enterprise in greater Salonika. “Today’s sting,” Xavier told Officer Sturgis, a cop toting a clipboard, “went like clockwork.”
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