by G L Rockey
Zack recalled a Variety story that reported it differently:
Ben Armstrong, on his way to Las Vegas to open at the MGM, after ABC splitsvilled his TV show for “undisclosed personal reasons,” experienced a neurological overhaul, saw a bright light
More a nervous breakdown, Zack thought and remembered highlights of the Variety article:
Two month after his Las Vegas debut went bust, Armstrong returned to Spartanburg for rest and relaxation...then Armstrong, feeling that Damascus jolt more intensely, turned TV evangelist/faith healer and, at last count boasted a million-follower mailing list which, when he announced his bid for the Presidency, donated to the local Eleventh Hour Baptist Church...
Zack wiped his mouth with his hand, muttered, “And now the snake handler is Commander-in-Chief of the largest military machine in the history of Adam and Eve’s vegetable patch.”
He looked out the side window. “Anybody listening?”
His phone rang. He didn’t answer.
Dodging around traffic, Zack mulled Armstrong’s resume, partially gleaned from his autobiography, God’s Way, My Way, The Only Way–son of Piedmont Media owner George Barnes Armstrong...mother, Ida Shaffer, Daughter of the American Revolution...great-great-grandfather Luke, cousin to some English duke...Ben a backyard barbecue king, famous pecan pie maker, married to Gertrude McCartney, daughter of a fast-food king...no children...
Zack stopped at a red light and said to his car, “Benjamin Armstrong, saved by a blinding light on the way to Las Vegas, short time after which he began a television ministry, The Miracle Touched...sweeping victory in 2016...now president, Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America...TV star turned preacher with his finger on the button, and where we go from here is anybody’s guess—only in America.”
He filed the book stuff and came to mind what he had found about Armstrong when nosing around the internet—Benjamin Paul Armstrong, only son of media mogul George Barnes Armstrong who owned, last count, two hundred and ten radio and TV properties in the Southeast...as George plowed broadcasting gold, Benny earned a B.A. from the University of South Carolina, theater major, emphasis acting...first job a weatherman at Daddy’s Spartanburg TV station...short time later he popped up at L.A.’s hottest production studio, became the star of the hit ABC sit-com Meat Loaf, which ran for nine years until Benny’s character, Meat Loaf, had a sex change operation...TV ratings gone south, ABC canceled the show, Ben found the Lord and, with the help of Daddy’s broadcasting empire, became TV evangelist/faith healer extra ordinaire...regular visits to Phoenix’s billionaires Linda Roy and Lem Beaulieu...inherited, when Daddy died, billions...a Jack Daniels connoisseur...community activities include President of the National Association of Religious Broadcasters, Past President of the National Association of Broadcasters, Chairperson of the South Carolina’s Tallyho Beagle and Rifle Club...list went on and on...
The light changed, Zack pulled away, and his mind went to another story he had dug up in a thirty-year-old issue of the Spartanburg Herald Journal that had Benny serving for a brief stint as a Grand Duke of the Spartanburg County Gaggle of the KKK White Knights.
The KKK connection denied by Ben with reported threats of bodily harm, Zack said to his car, “No wonder in South Carolina politics Ben’s name is associated with Vaseline, cod liver oil and rails.”
Zack went over a summary of all the above and concluded–red-white-and-blue, absolutely qualified, blue-ribbon cut and dried, add to that the current juicy rumor floating around in media circles that his media guru, Babs Lande, is his closet masseuse–Ben’s smoother than an eight-ounce Everlast boxing glove..
He wiped his face with his palm, thought, And that smoothness, coupled with a promise to deliver peace to an American people weary of terrorist alerts, drive-by hand grenades, Uzi-toting school teachers, random Wendy’s shutdowns, three-fifty Big Macs, six-fifty regular at the pump, throw in a Viagra shortage and the flashy, gold-chained, lying sonofabitch, with a few billion bucks spread around television commercials, bagged him, with thirty percent of the vote, the three-way 2016 Presidential election!
Zack sucked his front teeth, thought, Like Joe said, you get what you pray for. He paused. Or is it you get what you pay for? In any case, Benny had U-hauled his fat saddlebag chops into the White House and the fabric of world history on a TV sit-com and a prayer. He looked up. “And Thy wonder has been wrought.”
Driving easy in lighter traffic, Zack put his thoughts to a draft editorial for Wednesday’s The Boca.
Many things about President Benny bother us. Two are what Ben might call golly-wumpers. First wumper is his subtle reference to innate racial behavioral patterns and what he calls, their relation to the spreading terrorists’ gangland violence that is hemorrhaging America to death. The other wumper, most troubling, is his reference to Divine guidance—-a hallowed voice that he alone is privy to.
Zack pondered aloud. “But then, what do I know? Maybe he does talk to God. Maybe God talks to him. And maybe the Second Coming came” His phone rang. He ignored it.
Chapter Six
The San Luis shopping strip resembled a south-of-the-border movie set—beige stucco walls, exposed wood beams and a pink flamingo fountain stuck center stage. Near the main entrance, anchoring the mini-mall, a McDonald’s offered free fries with an order of two cheeseburgers. At the far end of the mall, Zack had leased and transformed the former Oscar’s Health Studio, a two-story building, into The Boca’s home.
Zack parked in a slot near the front door and repeated the incentive he invoked when recruiting minimum wage help.
“Free parking, worth at least a hundred bucks a month.”
Stepping to the sidewalk, he noted again the winsome evening, the quietness of the mall and the eerie stillness of the sky. He smelled the coconut palms, hibiscus, fresh-cut Bermuda grass. The entire scene, sketched in the air, seemed like the artist had forgotten it, had no place to hang it, no home to show it. Also, lingering in his thoughts: his dinner conversation with Joe Case—the recording he had, working on, wouldn’t talk about; the love/hate, order/chaos, blackness/light, give/take, how many steaks can you eat a week, profit has no home thing.
Why is that last so strange to you? Zack thought. Maybe because it’s so simpleone thing I know, something is strange in this evening.
At The Boca’s front door he unlocked the dead bolt and entered the stuffy building. Scanning the cramped reception desk for notes, mail, whatever, he shuffled through several pink phone messages, saw nothing of importance. Then, one from Mary O’Brien hit him like a quick left jab.
TO: Zackary URGENT: Always
DATE: Friday TIME: 5:00 p.m
WHILE YOU WERE OUT
MS/MR: Mary
OF: You know
PHONE #: You know
MESSAGE: Boca, Need an answer
He mumbled to himself, “I wish she’d quite calling me ‘Boca,’ and she has to stop leaving these ‘you know, you know’ notes all over the place. You know, you knowI don’t know but everybody else seems to know and she knows everybody knows”
He remembered when he’d avoided Mary on Friday. He had worked half a day, took Veracity out, spent the weekend fishing, reading, thinking, enjoying a few cold Bohemias and did a little writing. He looked at Mary’s message again.
“Need an answer.”
“So does everybody” he said aloud.
Her image again stuck in his head. Young enough to be your granddaughter. He stuffed the message in his front pants pocket. I’ll call her later.
Sacking a tinge of something akin to his former life’s contrition, wondering why, knowing answers were not forthcoming (good ones, anyway), he walked down the hall past the press room (formerly a weightlifting area), and waved to two weekend part-timers. Around a corner, he ambled up a narrow wooden staircase that led to his second floor shoe box office. He never understood why, but his thoughts were moresay, unencumberedsurrounded by the coz
y imitation maple paneling. He looked forward to going there, something about something—the grain of the paneling, the way the nails showed. An other-side-of-the-tracks ease.
He opened the office door and through a small curtainless window late-afternoon sunlight filtered a thousand specks of dust. He flipped on the overhead fluorescent light, tugged the ceiling-fan chain, went to the brown plastic window air-conditioner and punched it to high. As the vintage machine rattled to life, he paused to wipe some dust from his wall of makeshift bookshelves which displayed hundreds of book from Homer to Aquinas, Freud to Harry Stack Sullivan, musings of McLuhan to the fiction of Sinclair Lewis, Ferber, and Faulkner. Also present was the old Bible his mother Martha had given him at his twelfth birthday. And on the bottom shelf were six stately volumes titled Great Religions of the World—Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam.
He sat behind his desk in the wooden swivel chair he had purchased at an Army surplus store. The chair matched the stained wood Army surplus desk. He studied, which for Zack was the entire top of the desk, his cluttered in-basket, then turning his computer-video phone on, he checked his audio messages.
(Beep) “Zack, Jim. Got a plum story for Wednesday’s front page.”
(Beep) “Boca, Mary. I tried to call you”
He turned the volume down and checked his email. There it was. Same while-you-were-out message from O’Brien, this one with more detail:
Boca, I tried to reach you Friday, but you had gone early. We simply have to get you an updated cell phone, Iphone something, there’s a whole new world out there, textingeverythingand a pager, call messaging, forwarding—it’s A.D.
He thought about calling her, started to punch in her phone number, stopped, thought: Get hold of yourself, she’s young enough to be your daughter (thought you said granddaughter), on your payroll, too good to be true, it wouldn’t last six months.
He sent her an email reply.
Ms. O’Brien, Got your message. Will talk to you tomorrow. Please bring notes on President’s speech. Thanks, Zackary Stearn.
He leaned back. The ceiling fan stirred smells of musty newsprint, peeling paint, decaying floor tile and day-old Maxwell House coffee.
He checked the time—six-twenty-five—then glanced to an olive-green file cabinet next to the entrance. The cabinet served as a resting place for a vintage nineteen-inch television Zack had picked up at a flea market. He had forgone the newer flat-wide-screen-HD-3D razzle dazzle. Enough is enough, he had thought and besides, he despised TV in general. McLuhan was right, he often thought, the medium is the messageand with TV, the message is Meat Loaf.
Anyway, he would watch the President on the proper forum for a former Meat Loaf TV sitcom star turned preacher turned politician turned Commander-in-Chief—a nineteen-inch TV. How far we have come, he thought.
His attention meandered over his desktop clutter to, opposite the desk three feet away, a worn brown Naugahyde sofa. It was there that Mary lounged when visiting his office. Too often, he thought.
“Nuts.” He stood and went to a used end table that was home to a yellowing used Mr. Coffee coffee maker. He looked at the remains of yesterday’s coffee, thought about it, paused.
“Long night any way you look at it—make a fresh pot.” He took the pot in hand and went downstairs to the employee kitchen for water. When he returned, he prepared his special seven-scoop brew.
Mr. Coffee gurgling, coffee aroma beginning to fill the office, he sat and studied the slow-turning ceiling fan. The blades a gentle blur, he talked to the self he called Jocko.
Your blades were supposed to have been smooth, balanced, wafting a steady stream of wisdom, advice and sacraments to the unwashed sinners.
“Fat chance, Jocko,” he sighed and, as usual when this particular replay button got pushed, he kicked around his estranged relations with the Church of Rome.
Born into an Irish Catholic family, faith by genetic infusion, somewhere around seven, visiting the funeral parlor where his father had been waxed, suited and laid out, mother grieving, some uncle said, He was a good man.
“And around that moment I realized a truth—everybody dies, good, bad or indifferent, including you, Jocko. Problem is the who, what and why are we here and why is the what after that, such a big secret.”
The nagging secret that began that day, persisted to the now, he recalled his parish priest, Father Alfonso’s explanation: “That nagging, son, is the Holy Spirit wooing youa calling.”
Agreeing with Alfonso, Zackary’s mother saw a dreamlike vision of Zack in white collar, with water, blood and a stained wooden cross all around. Then came the clincher. Zack, failing tenth-grade Catechetical Curriculum, on the final he got an A, Sister Ursula kissed his head, said, “A lead-pipe cinch, my boy, a sign” Zackary had been chosen, called to do God’s work. But he knew he had stolen a copy of the final test.
Nevertheless, twenty years later Bishop Riley ordained him a Jesuit priest. Things went along fine for two weeks. Then, third week on the job, he remembered thinking, “This is not going to work.”
That nagging had grown stronger, becoming a nightmare on some dead-end street, he thought.
He put his hands behind his head and said, “Nothing fell the way it was supposed to, Jocko, and how do you know if the nagging is Father Alfonso’s priestly hope, a mother’s vision or a Sister Ursula’s lead-pipe cinch?”
He glanced at the sputtering coffeepot. “And then came widow Elizabeth and the five-year tryst even a torrid novel writer couldn’t imagine.”
The coffee brewed, he took his black stein, poured a cup, sat again at his desk and sipped. So here we are, he thought, having struggled for to many years with beliefs, organized religion, and the flesh, you come to realize that the struggling in itself is a sign.
Kierkegaard came to mind, I must find a truth that is true for me. The idea for which I can live or die.
What did he know? Crazy eggheads, him, Nietzsche—all of them were screwy, one way or another. There is no sign. Aquinas came up with quinque viae, five ways to know, that generated still more uncertainty. Five ways to know but fifty ways to doubt. The gut that says yes, the mind that says no. He looked up, “And why all the secrecy from the Sign-Maker?”
He wiped his face with his hand. In boxing it was simple. Knock the son-of-a-bitch down before he nailed you. Cut and dried, no signs. But this spiritual combat is all left hooks in a ring with no ropes.
The video phone rang. He looked at the caller ID. O’Brien. His mouth drying, he thought about answering. After the fifth ring he picked up. “Boca, Zack.”
Toying with her hair, Mary appeared on his screen. “Zackary, I’ve been trying to call you all over the place.”
“I—”
“Did you get my message at the Bimini Road?”
“No.”
“You didn’t go there? You always go there.”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“I was there.”
“You were there?”
“Yes, ah, later, after you called—”
“I called twice, when were you there?”
“After you called, Case told—”
“You’re lying.”
“I”
“Did you get the note I left on the office front desk?”
“Yes, the email too, and the—”
“I saw your reply—breathtaking. Where did you take off to Friday?”
“I went out fishing.”
“Something new, huhhow was it?”
“Okay, I”
“So, what’s the answer?”
“About what?”
“You know what?”
“Mary, I”
“I’m coming down there.”
“Don’t do that. I’m going to catch the President’s speech, do some homework.”
“Work, work, work—what time you think you’ll be going back to Veracity?”
“I have a lot to
do.”
“I could meet you there.”
“I’ll be here all night.”
“Bull. So when are we going for a ride on that boat of yours?”
“One of these days.”
“What did you eat for dinner?”
“Mary, I”
“I know, you have to work. What are you doing later?”
“I’ll take notes on Armstrong’s speech, then...”
“Okay. Let’s go over them tonight, your boat.”
“Bye.”
Chapter Seven
Mary’s presence persisting, Zack refilled his coffee stein, sat, sipped, tried to think but O’Brien thoughts wouldn’t go away.
“We’ve been over this, Jocko, damn it”
He shook it off, picked up a stubby number-two wood pencil and flipped the pages of a yellow legal pad to that draft editorial he had begun last Friday for Wednesday’s Boca. He read:
To listen to President Armstrong, the Second Coming already happened and somehow we all—or most of us, anyway (not him)—missed it. Turns out, J.C. is back and residing as a guest at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Two things about Armstrong that must be flushed out. One, his subtle references to innate racial behavioral patterns in the world’s gene pool and what he calls, their relation to the spreading violence that is hemorrhaging America to death. The other thing, most troubling, is his references to a Divine hallowed voice” that he alone is privy to.
He made a note between lines— more on this after tonight’s speech —and continued to read.
Benny should spend more time talking to a psychiatrist and less to God. Start a grassroots fund for his mental treatment. Of course, being so close to the Almighty, he could skip the latter. Nothing is an accident with this President, especially when it comes to the media. Count on it, he plays television news like a Stradivarius, smiling all the way to the next election. Mary O’Brien.