by Sol Stein
They were bedded in alphabetical order. The bunk to Henry’s right was the province of a young man named Brownell, who had admitted to Henry during one of their late-night chats that, before the army, he’d never met a Jew. It was Brownell who slowly got off his bunk and strode across the aisle. Suddenly he grabbed Cooper’s rifle away from him, pulled the bolt back, unloaded the M-l, threw the empty weapon on Cooper’s bunk, and said so he could be heard by everyone who was staring, “That’s not a toy,” and that was that.
Except the next day Henry had, with some trepidation, sought out his platoon leader, a certain lieutenant from Virginia, and told the officer about what had happened the night before.
“Why are you telling me this?” the officer had said.
“Cooper just could have shot somebody.”
“He broke the rules, bringing live ammo into quarters,” the officer said. “If you and he and Brownell want to make an issue of it, I can tell you none of you is going to get your bars two weeks from now. If I were you, soldier, I’d just forget you came to see me.”
Two weeks later to the day, Cooper and Brownell and Henry Brown were all made officers and gentlemen by act of Congress, second lieutenants of infantry in the Army of the United States.
*
“Hey there,” Clete said, “you’re daydreaming. I asked you to tell me about yourself.”
Henry stood up, got behind Margaret’s chair so she could rise easily, then walked with her through the dining room toward the door. Some of the guests pretended not to watch. Others couldn’t keep their gaze from the familiar spectacle of a first-nighter’s behavior.
Clete followed along, ten or fifteen feet behind them, not hurrying.
Out-of-doors, Henry trod on the crunching white gravel as if he were wearing sneakers with very soft soles. He knew what he was doing. He was leaving.
Margaret had to walk quickly to catch up to him. “It’s something in the food,” she whispered, but Henry wasn’t really paying attention.
“It’s their method of control,” she said.
When they came to the road going down, Henry turned left, walking a bit faster. “Come on,” he said to Margaret, who was having trouble with those shoes that weren’t meant for fast walking.
Behind them Clete picked up his pace, but only enough to stay the same distance behind the couple.
It was very dark on that road.
“I can’t walk this fast downhill,” she said to Henry.
Henry slowed a bit, glancing behind him to see if Clete was closing the space between them. Clete seemed in no hurry, as if Henry were doing nothing unexpected.
Around the first bend Henry saw the object across the road, then, squinting, made out a camper parked sideways on the road. On its roof sat four orange T-shirted young men, all Clete’s age more or less, their legs dangling. Only one of them wore a holster. It was that one who said, “Mr. Brown, would you and your wife please return to your room. Clete will show you the way.”
Henry looked up at their faces. You really couldn’t tell the difference between them and any other American kids their age.
“I know the way,” Henry said. He took Margaret by the arm and started back uphill, passing Clete.
Clete waved a casual greeting to the four atop the camper, then turned to follow the Browns to the door of their room.
Inside, their sudden privacy seemed a godsend. Then they heard Clete lock the deadbolt from outside.
5
I shouldn’t have gone walking off down the road like that,” Henry said. His head felt a bit strange.
“If I hadn’t had these absurd shoes on,” Margaret said, “we could have gone through the brush.”
“There are steep drops in places, didn’t you see? At night it would be hazardous unless we had a light. And if we carried a light, they’d find us.”
“What about the mountain lions?”
“I’m sure Clete just dropped that one to scare us.”
“We must get out of here, Henry.”
He didn’t answer.
“You heard me,” she said softly. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” he said.
It was then she told him about the dark-haired young woman in the bathroom.
“Clete said there wasn’t any nursery.”
“Maybe there is,” Margaret said. “Maybe he was just saying that to put off further questions.”
“Don’t be naïve,” Henry said.
Had she been?
They were both startled by a sharp rap on the door. An unfamiliar male voice said, “Lights out in twenty minutes.”
“Like summer camp,” Margaret said.
“Like jail,” Henry said.
“I thought,” Margaret said, “they kept the light on all night in jails.”
“Maybe you’re right. Let’s get our stuff sorted away before we’re in the dark.”
“We don’t have to obey,” Margaret said. “We can keep the light on as long as we feel like it.”
It’s not that she’s an optimist, Henry thought, she has just never been a Jew. “They may turn the electricity off from some central place,” he said.
“How long is it since we were eating?” she asked. “An hour?”
“About that.”
“Don’t you feel odd in any way?”
“I don’t feel sick.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Well,” Henry said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “I was thinking that I hadn’t had a drink before dinner and…”
“And?” She sat down in the one armchair, facing the bed.
“Well,” he said with a half-laugh, “I guess I feel as if I’d had more than one drink before dinner and wine during.”
“It was the fish mousse,” Margaret said. “I’m almost certain.”
“What was wrong with it?”
“It had a stronger flavor than it should have. And it was a tiny bit grittier.”
“Maybe it’s the way they prepare it,” Henry said.
“It’s what they put in it.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it were a chemical—there are dozens of things they could use—it wouldn’t change the texture. It’s probably THC.”
Henry looked blank.
“The upper leaves and flowers of marijuana, where the resin is.”
“You mean we’ve been eating marijuana?” Henry laughed. “I don’t believe it.”
“Just a touch in the food will do it,” said Margaret.
“Do what?”
“It takes longer than smoking to have an effect. An hour is just about right for the high to start. And it lasts a lot longer when eaten. Four, five, six, sometimes ten hours.”
Henry, who now with certainty was feeling something he had always related to alcohol, couldn’t keep from laughing. “You mean after an adult lifetime of abstaining from the pleasure of the young, I’ve now had it in a three-star restaurant? Terrific. What would they do that for? Make you think the meal was great?”
“I doubt it,” Margaret said. “If everyone feels euphoric most of the time, I suspect it’s easier to keep them in line.”
Henry let his right eyelid droop, in an attempt to lend a stern expression to his face. “How do you know so much about it?”
“I run into it all the time in my practice,” Margaret said.
“Ever tried it?”
She remembered him saying that even alcohol was not usual for Jews in the generation that had preceded his. Perhaps a shot of whisky neat at bar mitzvahs and weddings, but as a predinner habit, never. It was contact with the Gentile world that had corrupted the original puritans.
“Once,” she said. “An eighteen-year-old, daughter of someone who’s been my patient forever, came to see me, nervous as hell, thinking she was pregnant. I told her she wasn’t. I said I’d send her urine out for a test, just to be sure. She was so relieved, she took a handmade cigarette—at least that’s what I thought it was for a moment—out of he
r bag and lit it. It was only when the twisted paper at the end burned off and I could smell the smoke that I knew it wasn’t tobacco. She thanked me effusively, as if she had been pregnant and I, by merely talking, had undone the harm. She offered me the thing, called it a joint. How could I refuse? I took a puff and coughed. When she realized I had never smoked, she showed me how, letting the smoke sort of roll down your esophagus, then breathing in deeply, and holding the smoke way down as long as you can.”
Henry reached out to take Margaret’s hands.
“You are a wicked lady.”
“You, my dear, are the naïve one, just an old-fashioned prude.”
Perhaps it was whatever they had ingested in the dining room, a middle-aged couple bound by half a lifetime shared, experiencing something new. As they stood, Henry put his arms around her, and suddenly the familiarity was an asset, and feeling ran high. Just then the lights went out, leaving them in the dark for a split second, then came back on.
“It must be a warning,” Henry said, not wanting reality to intrude on his euphoric state.
He started undressing.
“When we were coming back from our little stroll,” Margaret said, “I was thinking that it must be difficult to keep a place like this secret in the middle of things. But the cults and sects do. Remember when we met the mother of a Moonie—Rose something—and we didn’t believe her when she said her son was being held captive? We thought she was exaggerating.”
“Some of the kids seem to enjoy their captivity,” Henry said. “Did you think we’re in the hands of one of those sects this part of the country seems full of?”
“Something like that,” Margaret said.
“Remember the Joads?” Henry said.
“The Grapes of Wrath.”
“That’s it. Remember that camp they came to, it was like a prison. It had gates and barbed wire and guards, and the only way they could get out was to escape. Do you remember where that was?”
“Yes,” Margaret said. “California.”
Henry took Margaret’s face in his hands. There was no need to add anything. They were both of one mind. At the first opportunity, escape.
*
As he waited for Margaret, who was in the bathroom preparing herself for sleep, Henry lay stretched out on the king-size bed in his pajama bottoms, his hands clasped behind his head, trying to put the pieces together. Were all of those guests in the dining room unwillingly detained? Surely he couldn’t be the first to have thought of escape. That stuff in the food, even if one couldn’t avoid it, was that enough to keep everyone passive? Impossible.
He tried to let all thought drain from his head.
This place is a business, isn’t it? How do they keep it economically viable? They can charge what they like to my credit cards, it won’t last if there’s no one at the other end paying for it. Who supports this crazy place, not the guests? Where does it come from? This wasn’t a puzzle to be solved, but a place to escape from.
He let the muscles in his arms go limp, his body from the top down unwinding, then his legs. They needed rest if they were to make a break for it. They had to conserve energy, restore what had been lost during the long drive to the Big Sur area, and then in the tension of this evening. And from whatever it was in the fish mousse. Had they only been at Cliffhaven a few hours?
“What are you scheming?” Margaret asked, standing in her lavender Halston nightgown, her long hair brushed into loveliness.
He held his arms out to her. She sat on the edge of the bed.
His hands motioned her closer. She lay down at his side, and he put his arms around her, smelling the soap with which she had washed her face as he kissed her cheek, and then the side of her mouth, and then her lips gently as a lover would.
Margaret put her hands on his hair. She returned his kiss, gently.
Henry slipped his pajama bottoms off. Then she felt his hand, the familiar sensation, the excitement of his excitement.
Henry, who always wanted to look at Margaret’s face when entering, suddenly saw her blanch. Had he hurt her?
Her eyes were staring past him.
He turned, the mood breaking, to follow her gaze to the place where the far wall met the high ceiling. He had to turn completely about to see what she was staring at.
It was a camera like the ones they had in banks to photograph thieves at the tellers’ cages at the moment of a holdup. The camera was aimed directly at them.
The sound that came from Margaret was despair.
Henry, who had rolled away from her, got off the bed, grabbed the chair at the desk and put it underneath the camera, stood on it, but could not reach it. The ceiling was too high!
Livid, he got off the chair and went to the phone. When the girl answered, he said, “Get me Clete!”
“It’s quite late,” the girl said. “We usually don’t—”
“Get me Clete!” Henry demanded.
He was left holding the phone for what seemed the longest time. Margaret had slipped the lavender Halston back into place. Finally Clete got on the line.
“Hi, Mr. Brown,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
His voice sounded as if he’d been drinking. Is that what he did late in the evenings, or was it more of that dope?
“What’s that son-of-a-bitch camera doing in our room?!”
“So that’s all,” Clete said, woozily. “You didn’t have to haul my ass over to the phone for that tonight, did you?”
“I want that camera out of the room!” Henry said.
“Listen, old man, what did you expect, a Judas hole in the door? This isn’t an old-fashioned place, we’re up to date as hell. If you have to fuck your old lady in private, why don’t you just throw a towel over the camera?” Clete laughed.
Henry looked at the camera, eleven or twelve feet up the wall. How would he ever get a towel up there?
“Listen,” said Clete. “Get used to it. Very few of the guests around here have sex anymore. After a while you won’t even be in a mood for it. Anyway, the lights are going out in a minute. Now go to bed like a good fellow,” said Clete, “and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Henry put the telephone on the cradle. He motioned Margaret to follow him into the bathroom. There he turned on both taps full blast and said into her ear, “They might have a bug in the room, too. We’d better be careful what we say.”
The lights in the bedroom went out, but stayed on in the bathroom.
“How considerate,” said Margaret.
The mood had gone.
Henry fished around in the dark for his pajamas, found them at last, and slipped them on, thinking how inappropriate the dacron and cotton fabric felt. What did prisoners wear?
As he slid into bed, he thought for a moment that Margaret had already fallen asleep, but she stirred and turned to put her arms around him.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he returned even more quietly.
The only sound he could hear was the tick of his watch on the night table. Sleep was a necessity.
It was Margaret who broke the silence again.
“How can they run a place like this without the world knowing about it?” she asked in a whisper.
And in a moment she answered her own question. “No one outside,” she said, “knew about Los Alamos, did they?”
6
The sixty-year-old founder of Cliffhaven, Mr. Merlin Clifford, was a rotund man with pronounced ideas about genetics, which he spent much of his time and some of his considerable income developing. His wife Abigail, who not only was much younger than her husband but seemed even younger because she percolated with vitality, considered herself, with justice, the authority on the subject of Mr. Clifford’s own genes.
At the age of eighteen, Abigail had come to the Southwest from somewhere in Alabama where an individual’s family background was of greater consequence than his or her ability to charm adjacent humanity. When she met Merle Clifford, he was already in his
late twenties and was running much of his father’s oil business. As a full partner, his income was stupendous for a young man, satisfying Abigail’s requirement that if a woman supported a man well in bed from time to time, it was only fitting that he support her in great style at other times.
Content that her new acquaintance Merle Clifford had enough money for her future needs, Abigail did not immediately rush him. Any man who had gotten to twenty-nine unmarried wasn’t going to be rushed, she figured.
Abigail observed how her new companion effused civility in his conversations with her. Merle said please and thank you and you’re welcome more often than any of the younger men she had now stopped dating. Though Merle didn’t smoke, he carried an elegant Ronson and was quick to light her cigarettes. He would rush around to open a door before she could touch it. He always got up when she entered the room and remained standing until she herself sat. His tone of voice with doormen and taxi drivers was suitably commanding, and when he instructed a dining room captain in their wishes for their evening meal, he sounded not twenty-nine, a bleak age for most men, but every bit an authority on food, wine, and the world.
In private Merle was different, a bit shy when he kissed her cheek the first time, hesitant when he reached to secure the button of her blouse just above her breasts.
He talked to her about his desire to travel to the far reaches of the world—Bali, Surinam, Japan—and shyly expressed his hope that she might travel with him.
“Didn’t you see some of those places during the war?” Abigail asked.
“I had a slight heart murmur,” Merle said. “They wouldn’t take me.”
Abigail patted his cheek. “Don’t look that way. I don’t mind if you were 4-F.”
It was dear that Merle minded even the designation. He led her away from the topic to his profound interest in genetics. He tried not to show his disappointment that she knew so little about the subject of his one intellectual passion. He recommended several elementary books, lending them to her as if they were volumes of poetry.
Abigail had noticed that Merle washed his hands not just before meals but at every opportunity. Thoughtlessly, she remarked on it, only to see a glower settle on his face. She had stepped over some line that protected his vulnerability. Abigail knew enough about the world to realize that whatever it was that made him vulnerable could also give her strength.