“Has anyone actually tried to take advantage of you?”
“Oh, Dick, please—don’t be such a naif. You should see some of the letters in that P.O. box. When I drove to Jacksonville to pick up the first batch—”
“Drove to Jacksonville? You said you lived in Jacksonville.”
“I maintain a post office box there, yes, but just as I was reluctant to give my right name, so was I loath to declare my true place of residence. How many estates of the kind I described do you suppose there are in a city the size of Jacksonville? As I’ve been at one time or other a guest in them all, I know only too well how easy I would be to trace. Look, everything I told you before is substantively true. I wasn’t trying to deceive you personally, and I didn’t intend my natural precautions to be taken as a slander on the Mail Baggers themselves. The people in the Listening Posts are good people, but there are others—voyeurs—who listen to this program who have never bothered to list themselves in the Directory. It’s these people who aren’t my friends.”
“You lied once, and you lied twice. You could be lying a third time.”
“The Harpers are not liars, Mr. Gibson.”
“Hah.”
“Nor are we sitting ducks. I’ve explained why it’s necessary to misrepresent myself, why it’s necessary for me to hire a car to take me to Jacksonville to pick up my mail. If you read that mail you’d understand. I have money. People want to trick me. They make the most blatant overtures. There are people who will do anything for money, Mr. Gibson, and while I don’t care for the money itself, I have no intention of turning over my fortune to gold diggers and picklepusses. Not so long as that fortune can be used to relieve the miseries of my friends—and I consider all the legitimately unfortunate my friends. There are operations, medicines, birthday presents for children whose parents can’t afford them. There are vacations, holidays, financing alcoholics and addicts at sanitoria. There are so many good purposes to which my money can be put.”
“You’re a good boy, Henry. I’ve already told you,” Dick said bitterly. He felt that perhaps he was being unfair. The kid’s reasons—if he was a kid—were excellent, but a program like this was peculiarly susceptible to masquerades. His phones must not be used for disguises.
“Why are you doing this?” Henry pleaded. “I’m a child, an orphan. Do you think I’m Tom Sawyer? That I find being alone romantic, or that the enormous estate I live on is some dreamy little treehouse place where I can escape from the realities of the adult world? I’m a child. A child needs guidance, security, love. It’s his instinct to have these things. Do you suppose I’m the only little boy ever to overthrow his own instincts? I sleep with a light on, Mr. Gibson! When I sleep. Why do you suppose me so unnatural as to wish myself naked in the world? Is a little boy naturally a loner? Absurd! No. I place myself in this awful jeopardy because in addition to a child’s instinctive need for guidance and security and love, he has an even more powerful instinct for virtue. It’s like a tropism with us. We’re innocents, sir, every mother’s son of us, innocents who would legislate a just world where no one is deprived or disadvantaged, where virtue is rewarded and evil punished, and all needs annulled. I place myself in jeopardy not by choice, not by dint of rebellion, but because only by operating outside the law am I able to operate at all. Only in this way am I able to do my part, pull my own small boy’s weight in the world and do something with my little shaver’s instinctive sympathies. How long do you think I would be permitted to contribute to my favorite charities or allay with money—yes! I admit it; money, alas, is all that ultimately makes the difference—the sufferings of my fellows? How long would I be able to accomplish these things if I were to turn myself over to an executor or allow myself to be legally adopted? The best-willed bankers and trustees in the world would turn down my requests for funds to make my little gifts. And I’d respect them for it. I wouldn’t blame them one iota, for anything less would be a betrayal of their instincts and duties! The most loving, abnegative adoptive parents would do the same. That’s why I didn’t give my name.”
“You lied to me over the air on my program,” Dick Gibson said stubbornly.
“I’m a child, Mr. Gibson,” Henry Harper told him tragically. “I’ve a child’s emotions. Don’t expect self-control from me. Don’t look to me for emotional continence. I’m little and my passions are everywhere closer to the surface than in an adult. I’m small and may be bullied. It’s often difficult for a child to distinguish between pressure and the guidance his childishness requires. I warn you of this, for I know I will not be able to stand up to you. In any contest of wills between us yours is bound to emerge triumphant.”
“You lied,” Dick Gibson said. “I trusted you and you lied. Over the air. On my program. What’s your real name?”
“Very well then,” Henry Harper said. He was sobbing now and could barely catch his breath. “Very well then. My real name … my name … is … is Richard Swomley-Wamble. I live in Tampa, Florida.”
“How do I know that’s your real name?”
“It is.”
“How do I know?”
“I tell you it is.”
“How do I know it isn’t Edmond Behr-Bleibtreau?” It was thrilling to him to speak the name aloud. He listened for a reaction, some dead giveaway, but all he heard were the boy’s unbroken, now uncontrollable sobs.
“It’s what I said it is,” Henry Harper said, “and you’ll know it by the damage you’ve just done.”
A lady was on the phone. Her voice was familiar, though Dick was sure she had never called the program before. For one thing, she was shy and hesitant. Also her voice, though familiar, seemed altered.
Dick tried to help her out. “Take your time,” he said.
“Well, this is embarrassing to me.”
“Oh, come on,” he kidded, “we only go out to twenty-three states. There couldn’t be more than a million and a half people listening to you right now.”
“I was going to ask you a personal question.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t exactly know how to put it. I’m not really one of your regular listeners.”
“Win a few, lose a few.”
“I’ve only been listening to the program two weeks—since I’m on this case.”
“Are you a detective?”
“Oh, goodness no.” She laughed.
“That’s better. Well, since you’re not a detective, go ahead—shoot.”
The woman laughed again. “I’m calling from Ohio,” she said.
“How are we coming in up your way?” He was not as cheerful and expansive as he sounded, for Behr-Bleibtreau was on his mind. Ever since he had mentioned the man’s name on the air all his heartiness had been intended for Behr-Bleibtreau. He was showing the flag.
“Your station fades sometimes, but mostly it’s very clear.”
“Glad to hear it. Excuse me, let me just do a station break here. … WMIA, Miami Beach, the 50,000-watt voice of the Sun Coast. … I’m sorry, go ahead, ma’m.”
“Well, I was almost certain I was right, that’s why I called, but hearing you speak on the telephone, now I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what, ma’m?”
“Whether I know you.”
“Oh? Well, you know what? I was thinking your voice was familiar too.”
“I used to know somebody, oh years back. Gosh, if I’m right I’ll be giving away both our ages. He had [a voice something like yours, only your name is different. Marshall Maine?”]
Dick Gibson took her off the air. The six-second tape delay was enough to excise the passage.
[ “I don’t use that name any more,”] he said into the phone while they were still off the air. [ “Please don’t refer to it.”]
“That’s right,” he said easily when they were back on the air again. “Who might this be?”
“Well, I was Desebour then. Miriam?” He didn’t recognize the name. “I was working at the time in Morristown, New Jersey. A nurse? That
’s why I laughed when you asked if I was a detective when I said I was on a case. Do you remember now? I don’t blame you if you forgot, me springing it on you like this. Why, it was only a few nights ago I was able to place you.”
Then he remembered the time they had lived together in the nursing home. “Well, of course,” he said. “How are you … Miriam, is it?”
“Miriam Kranz. You knew me as Desebour.”
“You’re originally from Iowa.”
“That’s right. Say, you’ve got a good memory. I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten me.”
“No, of course not.”
“Old friends are the best friends.” Her voice had losts its reluctant edge, and she had become genuinely jolly.
“Kranz, eh?” He was surprised to find that he was slightly jealous.
“I’m a widow. You know, now that I think of it, you knew Kranz.”
“I did?”
“I’m sure he was around during your time. Let’s see [this would have been ’38, ’39. I left Morristown in ’40. You and I knew each other when I first got there. Kranz was there that whole time. He was one of my patients, a little fella. He had to be fed.”
“The one who got a hard-on when you gave him his dinner? Him?”
“Marshall! That’s terrible! We’re on the radio.”
“No, we’re on a tape delay. I’ve taken this part off. Don’t call me Marshall. Is that the one?”
Miriam giggled. “It is,” she said. “I married him right there in the nursing home.] He was a very nice man, you know.”
Now Dick remembered Miriam’s strange effect on him, how her voice telling a story, going at its own pace, random as landscape, had worked its cozy hypnotic sedation on him.
[ “Whatever happened to the old bastard who came when you gave him enemas?”]
“Gracious sakes, man, I’m an old woman now. Let’s not go into all that. Folks must think we’re terrible.”
[ “I took that part off. What happened to him?”]
“Well, that was just prostate trouble was what that was. He had a preternatural prostate. You know—tee hee—at the end, I could get that same reaction by taking his temp or just sitting him up in his chair. He knew he was dying, and do you know what he said to me one time? ‘Noitch Miriam, I’m a family man. I have grandchildren. I always tithed my church and believed in my God. I am as convinced of Heaven as I am of Kansas, and though I know I’m dying I want to tell you that you have made me happier in these past months than I have ever been in my life.’ Those were almost his last words, and I’ll never forget them.”
“What happened to you, Miriam? It’s been years since we’ve seen each other,” Dick said fondly.
“Oh,” she said, “a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. Kranz … Are we on the air now, [Marshall?”]
“Yes. [No, not that part. Call me Dick.”]
“Kranz had many wonderful qualities. If you didn’t know him well you might not have recognized them and just have dismissed him as a dirty little beast, but when you got to know him better he was a very fine gentlemen.”
Hearing her, it came back to Dick again how her voice had once been able to pull him out of time, float him snug as someone towed by swimmers. Her voice was quiet, historical almost; there was something in its cool timbre that assumed it would never be interrupted. As he listened to her he played absently with the six-second tape delay button. “For one thing, he was terrifically acute. He had a lot of savvy about current events. He knew more than the politicians, believe me; he was one of the canniest men I’ve ever known. He saw there was going to be a world [war] long before the rest of us dreamed of such a thing. ‘We’re sitting on a powder keg, Miriam,’ he used to say. [The Axis Powers,] those fellas over in [Germany,] Bulgaria, Finland, [Italy,] Rumania, [Japan] and Hungary, are out after everything we hold near and dear, and they’re not going to be satisfied till they get it. Why, everybody’s going to get into it—[France, England,] Costa Rica, [America,] Ecuador, San Marino, Syria—everybody. Now it’s an unfortunate thing, but there’s going to be some mighty big money made during all this. It’s going to be dog eat [dog, sure as you’re a] foot [high.] It’s coming, all right. Why, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some country like Japan weren’t planning its attack right now. It’ll be a sneak attack, I’ll bet you. We won’t have any warning. They’ll probably pick some out-of-the-way place like Pearl Harbor and do it on a Sunday morning in December after Thanksgiving and before Christmas when nobody’s expecting it.’ He had a terrific acumen in the political line.”
“It certainly sounds that way.”
“You know what he told me once? He said that probably once the war started there’d be a lot of technological advancement. He said you couldn’t tell him a smart man like Einstein didn’t have a little something extra up his sleeve, like unharnessing the power of the atom or something, and that’s what would finally win the war for us. He got all this just from reading between the lines in newspapers. I never saw anything like it. I tell you, he was one of the most logical men I’ve ever met. I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to know him better. Anyway, he kept insisting that we all ought to be prepared, that there were going to be a lot of personal opportunities for people once the war started. He figured there’d be a black market. He was too old and sick, he said, or he’d be in there with the best of them. And he would have been too. He knew there’d be shortages once it started. He told me to buy up as many pairs of silk stockings as I could, that it didn’t make any difference what size they were. And Hershey bars. He was always after me to stockpile Hershey bars. He knew that meat and gasoline were going to be at a premium too, and he had this notion about rent control. The thing to do, he said, was get the most expensive penthouse apartments you could find up along Riverside Drive in New York City. He figured that rents would be controlled in those places for years and that you could sublet them at terrific profits. Another thing was theater tickets. They’d be hard to get once war came. He said that if a terrific composer like Richard Rodgers ever teamed up with a wonderful lyricist like Oscar Hammerstein, Jr., and they did a musical together set in some Western state back before the turn of the century, that it would be a wonderful escape for people all caught up in the war effort, and that anybody who invested money in such a show would make a fortune. I didn’t pay too much attention to any of this or I’d be a rich woman today.
“But you know, one thing he did convince me of was that there was going to be a terrific demand for R.N.’s. ‘You get your degree, Miriam,’ he said. ‘You get your R.N. license and you’ll have it made once war breaks out. Finish up, then enlist in the Army Nurse Corps. Don’t wait until December 7, 1941.’
“So that’s what I did. I enrolled as a student nurse at Morristown General, and I went into the Army Nurse program as soon as I graduated. Everyone on active duty as of 2400 hours on 6 December ’41 was promoted to first lieutenant, and if they agreed, as I did, to sign up for the duration they were jumped to captain. I was a major by V-E Day, stayed in for twenty years and rose to colonel before I retired.”
“After we were married Kranz put me through my student year at Morristown General and I made him the beneficiary of my $10,000 G.I. life insurance. He died just before the close of the war. I was with him at the time, on a stateside furlough. He had a hunch his time was up and, not wanting to die in bed, asked me to dress him. I got him into his clothes and tied his tie. When I finished knotting it he just looked down at it kind of thoughtfully for a moment and said, ‘You know, Miriam, styles come and styles go. Wide ties like this one aren’t going to be considered very fashionable in a while, but then, in about twenty-five years, they’re going to be more popular than ever.’ Marshall, these were the last words he ever spoke.”
Miriam related all this in her lazy style. Listening to her, Dick had a sense of the piecemeal forces of erosion. He never interrupted; even when she slipped and called him Marshall he let it pass. He was tilted back deep in his chair, hi
s feet on the desk next to the microphone.
“I take only private cases now,” Miriam was saying. “The money’s better, for one thing—though I don’t need money, really. There’s my army pension, and Kranz, who had this terrific business sense, told me back in Morristown that the big thing in the fifties and sixties was going to be office equipment—copiers, things like that. I made some good investments and I’ve got a pretty fair-sized nest egg now.”
Yes, Dick thought, nest. He remembered their nest. He undid the buttons of his shirt and scratched his belly.
“I take cases mostly because it lets me travel—I’m with an agency that sends nurses all over the country. I meet a lot of interesting people. The sick are wonderful folks, Marshall. If you recall I once told you I have to help people. Thank God that’s never burned out in me. Well, they’re just so gentle. Sedation does that, of course, helplessness does. It hurts them to move and you have to do everything for them. And if they’re old they’re that much weaker anyway. Why, some of my patients I just take and tote them around as if they were babies. I was always strong, you’ll remember, and I’m a big old gal now. You probably wouldn’t recognize me.”
He had an erection. The pressure of his clothing was irritating, so he unzipped his fly and his penis sprung out of his pants. His director rapped on the glass of the control booth with a key. Marshall Maine glanced at him and waved lazily.
“Course, maybe I wouldn’t recognize you either,” she said. “Oh Lord, I was with so many young men in the army. You know, you get tired of young people after a time. Of course if they’re really sick they’re just as good as anybody else, but most of the time they don’t want to take their pills, and they never get over being embarrassed. You just can’t do for them like you can somebody who’s had some experience and seen the world and knows its ways. My patient here in Ohio, now; he’s a man about our age, Marshall, a widower with a bad phlebitis. A very interesting man. ‘Mrs. Kranz,’ he’ll say, ‘with my leg the way it is I just can’t handle myself on the bedpan. Would you mind very much if I just let go? You don’t have to do the sheets—heck, just throw them away and buy some more over the telephone through the Home Shopper.’ He’s very generous. I just can’t say enough about it. Naturally I have to clean him up afterward; you can’t let a person lie in his own dirt. Now you couldn’t do that with a young man; a young man would just as soon be constipated forever before he’d let you touch him.
The Dick Gibson Show Page 37