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Stengrow's Dad
Elia Katz
7/26/2003
BOSON BOOKS
____________
STENGROW'S DAD
by
Elia Katz
____________
Published by Boson Books
ISBN 1-886420-22-X
An imprint of C M Online Media Inc.
Copyright 1995 Elia Katz
All rights reserved
For information contact
C M Online Media Inc.
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606
Tel: (919) 233-8164;
Fax: (919) 233-8578;
e-mail:boson@cmonline.com
URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com
URL: http://www.bosonromances.com
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: See and Raise
Chapter 2: "In Vitro Veritas"
Chapter 3: Estrangement
Chapter 4: The California Craftsman
Chapter 5: "I'm Seventeen, Ma'am"
Chapter 6: My Uneventful Escape
Chapter 7: "French Fries on a Stove"
Chapter 8: Embeds
Chapter 9: I Am Offered a More Important Job
Chapter 10: Working with Daphne
Chapter 11: At the Home of Mr. Elam
Chapter 12: Subway Subliminals
Chapter 13: The Work
Chapter 14: True Dads # 2 and # 3
Chapter 15: The Church of Marilyn
Chapter 16: Faint Signs of Secret Success
Chapter 17: The Blessing and The Curse
Chapter 18: Space Dad
Chapter 19: A Few Minutes With Octo Rooney
Chapter 20: Mr. Steinstein
Chapter 21: A Superfluity of Dads
Chapter 22: Elam's Election
Chapter 23: Looms of Hell
Chapter 24: "SEX TALK WON," SEZ FBI
Chapter 25: Home Education
Chapter 26: Short Overcoats
Chapter 27: White House, Black Heart
Chapter 28: My True Dad, at Last
This book is dedicated, with much love, to
my brother
Fred Katz
See and Raise
Six years ago. The night I made the
discovery that tore me from my family, and the life I had known, and
threw me onto the dark, broken road that ends at the door to this plaid
room where I write, on my Executive Writing Tablet, in the light of
this brown TV...
I was l7 years old.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mother
and father, and my sister Tule, playing poker. We were in the family
condo, in Santa Monica. Outside, the tree-bats flapped through the
trees, and sat on the condo patios, among the bicycles and hibachi
grills.
All night I had been the winner. The table in
front of me was covered with mounds of red, white and blue chips. There
were so many it became a chore to stack them, and my father had already
told me a couple of times to get them organized. Once, he even refused
to deal the cards until I had carefully gathered up all my chips and
put them in neat piles. I did this, feeling that he might reach out and
swipe at me across the table, in his anger. Not that my father had ever
hit me, but on this night, and in the weeks and months preceding it, I
noticed more and more that my father's feelings toward me had changed,
in some way I didn't understand. It was as though he was trying to
communicate to me, in all kinds of ways (except by telling me) that I
had done something wrong. I couldn't figure out what it was.
My mother was looking at him as though he were a
plate she had balanced precariously on a coffee cup while she stretched
for the phone, as though she were ready at a moment's notice to drop
whatever she was doing and catch him before he slid off the coffee cup
onto the floor. Her hands were nervous, ready to cover his mouth. Her
mouth was ready to talk loudly and drown out whatever he said, if she
should find it necessary. Once or twice I looked up from my hand and
saw the two of them exchanging looks. My father finished his babka with
butter and his cup of coffee. He sighed. We played another hand. The
spirit of mischief came over me. I had nothing in my hand, but instead
of asking for three cards, I only asked for one. This made it seem
there was something about the four cards I had kept that I liked. When
everyone had taken the cards they wanted, and the betting began, I
raised the pot over and over. Finally, my sister and mother both
folded. My mother said somebody had better just settle down, but my
father and I sat there, betting against one another.
In these games, money changed hands at the end. We
weren't betting for much, but it was real money. There got to be about
eleven dollars in the pot, and my father finally listened to the gentle
voice of my mother (I wouldn't) and he said "I'm out," and threw his
cards on the tablecloth, (I can still see the golden plastic of that
tablecloth, and feel the stamped smoothness of the translucent flowers
around the border) and smiled at my mother, who touched his hand
supportively, because he was being a mature person, and she was
relieved, and he didn't seem to hate me any more, but instead was
looking at me lovingly.
I put my cards down, face down, and started to
gather up the sea of plastic chips, chortling as I did it, in that
family style of chortling, when you know everyone is on your side and
everyone loves to see you happy, and you feel like acting up. My father
reached in over the chips, between my gathering forearms, and flipped
my cards over, saying, "Let's see what the boy had."
I had nothing. The fifth card had not matched any of those in my hand.
My father said, "Not even a pair of deuces. The boy has zip."
"Heh," my mother said in an attempt to laugh, or
at least to indicate laughter, and she leaned against him in a playful
way. But he was looking stranger and stranger, his eyes all lit with
waters and lights I was not to understand at all for the next few
seconds, and I was not to fully understand ever, even up to this
moment, as this dragon fly hops across the wall over the TV,
distracting my eye.
"I had three nines, but I gave him the pot," said my father to my mother, "because you conned me into it."
"I didn't con you, darling..."
I watched them. My sister slunk away into the kitchen.
"I guess it's his highly-prized intelligence,"
said my father, and when I looked at him he was smiling at me. "Our
son, the genius... You're a great genius, aren't you?" he said to me.
Then, to my mother, he said, "The great genius. The great genius."
"Shut up, Nick," said my mother, at the same time looking frightened, tired...
"He must get it from his wonderful parents," said
my father. "It's 85% of the battle if you have the right parents,
right, son?" he said, with that big smile and those wet eyes, like you
don't want to see your father's eyes, except in a situation where the
two of you are in agreement, and united.
"Did you ever hear of the genie from the bottle?" my father then asked me.
I said, "you want to play that hand over again?"
"That's what you are," he said to me, "the genie from the bottle."
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked, wishing he would go for a walk or something.
"It doesn't mean anything," said my mother. "It means your father is a sore loser."
My father turned to my mother and wiped away a
tear from his own eye. "His father?" he said. "His father's a glass
tube. His father's some anonymous stain in some beaker somewhere,
that's all we know about that illustrious individual. His father!"
My mother said, "Reynold, go down to Wilshire, I
need something at the store," and she reached across the table and
started tugging at my arm, to make me go. I didn't even look at her, I
couldn't hear what she was saying. I was staring at my father's hands,
which now covered his face. I watched him make rubbing, washing motions
with his hands. Finally, he put them down, and he looked at me. He
said, in a voice that sounded as though he were speaking from his
death-bed - croaking: "Your father isn't me. I want you to know that
(and here he said my name, which I may not honestly reveal to you, but
must transcribe as) Reynold. He isn't me."
"Oh, my God!" said my mother, and she grabbed his
throat as though attempting to strangle him. His chair fell over
backwards and they both hit the carpet shouting with surprise.
The secret was out.
But not all of it.
Later, as the three of us sat around the coffee
table in the living room, and I toed at the magazines with
embarrassment and anger as they both talked to me (they were together
again in their love) I discovered the rest of the secret, which
concerns things done to me, and even things done to the components of
myself, prior to their combination into the person I know as me, and
everyone else knows as my pseudonym, and effects.
Perhaps, telling this will help you understand how
I came to do the things I have done since the night I made this
discovery. Things which the Government and the media have portrayed as
crimes, and which probably were crimes. Perhaps, it will have no bearing on my case at all. I want to tell it anyway, the story of my creation.
They sat side by side on the white couch. Above
their heads was an oil painting of the four of us, Mom, Dad, Tule and
me, painted when I was five or six. We all still looked like the people
in the picture. My mother, hands pressed together on her knees, began
by telling me she and my father were very, very sorry I had learned the
truth this way.
She said, "We've talked hundreds of times about
how to tell you, Reynold, but we could never agree on a way. I am sorry
to say that most of the time, I think both of us intended never to tell
you at all. Certainly not like this... In this traumatic... "
She reached out and put her hand on mine. My
father put his hand on hers. They looked at each other and kissed. She
was crying. She sat back, pulled some tissues from the mother-of-pearl
box on the side table, blew her nose, wiped her eye, and put the
tissues in her dungaree pocket.
She said, "A little over twenty years ago, your
father and I decided we were ready to have a child. We were in love, we
were optimistic about the future of the world, or some such nonsense,
and we felt, in a way, obligated to contribute something of ourselves
for the sake of the future. Typical, and if not praiseworthy, at least
not entirely evil, motives for having a child. Maybe, not even true.
Maybe, with our teaching careers going well, with both of us having
traveled to most of the cities and nations in the world, and with me
facing the prospect of starting the novel I had always told everyone I
wanted to write, the only way out I could see for myself was to become
a mother. Whatever the spark actually was, we tried. We tried and tried
and tried. Three, four, five years went by. 'We're still trying,' we
told our parents and friends. Nothing. We saw doctors, one after
another. Nothing. We were about to give up, when the cleaning lady who
cleaned our rental units to get them ready for the summer, told me
about a doctor in Burbank. This doctor could work miracles, she told
me. His name was Dr. Lord, Hamish Lord. At first, we didn't really
think about going to him. We were tired of doctors, of hoping, and
trying."
"Then we saw him on TV," said my father, joining
in really for the first time, the muggy look of guilt starting to clear
up on his face, and the strength coming back into his voice. He even
laughed, though dimly. "He was in handcuffs, and they were leading him
into the District Central lockup!" He laughed again, and I could see he
felt a certain admiration for this Dr. Lord, and especially for the
fact that he had been arrested.
I was smiling, but wary, as I always am when someone discusses a period in my life when I was not yet a conscious being.
"What was he being arrested for?" I asked my Dad.
But my Mom answered. "That was for the genius thing."
When I looked perplexed, my father said, "He
promised people a genius for a kid, and somebody didn't like that and
they complained or something, and Dr. Lord had to stand trial..."
"But for what?" I asked.
"For nothing. Envy," my father said, and swiped
the thought away with a strange dance-like movement of his right arm.
Then, the strength that had carried him through that gesture, carried
his hand to the serving tray, where he gathered more of the rich bakery
crumbs from the babka we had had for dessert, and brought them to his
mouth, which was still smiling. He was beginning to enjoy the story.
They both were. I realized they had never told anyone before.
"We thought, shit. A genius! That might be interesting to have in the family," said my Dad through the dry crumbs.
"I remember we went out there early in the
morning," my mother said, as she fed my father more small pieces of
broken-up cake and cookies, those yellow cookies with the chocolate
icing in the shape of oak leaves covering their top halves. He was
shaking slightly as she fed him, as though he was cold.
"He lived across the street from a little airfield, for those small planes, you know," she said.
"We should have spit on the ground and turned
around and walked away," said my father. My mother fed him a piece of
cookie, and pushed a crumb from the corner of his chalk-white lips into
his mouth. She said, "Be a man about this, Nick." He looked at me,
peered at me like a man waking up from a long sleep, recognizing a face
he feels he should know, not wanting to admit he doesn't.
"He had a little California Craftsman," said my
mother, referring to the house of Dr. Lord. "Remember, Nick? How lovely
it was, with those strange flowers growing all up the fence around the
porch?" She looked at me. "The flowers - you would have thought you
were in South America," she said. "There was a chain link fence across
the street, and little planes were pulling up to it, like they were
looking at us through the fence."
"He doesn't care what was across the street," said
my father, pushing her hand away, even though she had bunched up her
fingers and was about to transport to his mouth a large mound of crumbs.
"We had a l954 Lincoln," she said to me, as she
first held the compressed thumb, crumbs and fingers toward me, asking
with her eyes if I wanted any. I shook my head. She ate the crumbs
herself and continued. "It was blue and grey, with a green interior.
The seats had a diamond pattern in white leather cutouts along the top
where you rested your head." Here, she brushed my father's thinning
brown hair back with her hand. She got some crumbs in his hair, which
she quickly picked out and threw on the floor behind his chair. "I
remember it so well," she said, "that street he lived on, so white,
white - like talcum powder was covering the whole road, and the
sidewalk, the lawns, everywhere. It was six-thirty in the morning. Dr.
Lord had told me on the phone that his office hours were from
five-thirty to seven, every weekday morning. He said by the time most
people were getting to work in the morning, he was back in bed - "
"Weird hours," I said. I had a feeling of
foreboding, concerning what was coming, but I wanted to keep things as
normal as possible for as long as possible. I felt I should make
comments. I also felt I should make those sounds you make when you want
to indicate to somebody that you care about what they are saying, and
want them to continue, and that I should have some sort of facial
expression, while she was talking to me, but I was too tense for any of
these things. I sat like a stone, after I had squeezed out the words,
"weird hours..."
"It was fine with us," said my mother. "We wanted
a child - we wanted you - so badly, we would have gone there at
midnight. Anyway, we were able to drive to his place on the way to
work; and then we stopped at Du-Par's when we got through there, before
we went to our respective schools. Remember that, Nick?"
My father said, "Du-Par's," and brought a crumb
down from his hairline by pressing his forefinger against his face as
the crumb slid all the way down to his mouth, and then he ate it.
"So we got out of the car, and it was total quiet.
When we shut the car doors we felt like somebody was going to scream at
us from a window for waking them up. We scuffled across the road, up
the stairs to the doctor's house. He had a porch, covered with flowers.
On the mailbox it said, Dr. Hamish Lord, M.D."
My mother's face had assumed that trancelike
appearance she often got when remembering things from her past. She was
travelling through the past in a diver's suit, walking through the
aquarium of bygone scenes, speaking into a tiny microphone, recording
everything that floats by her, for those listening to her story - in
this case, my father and me - to hear, at their posts on the surface of
the ocean, bobbing in their boat, waiting for her to return to them.
"Your father turned to me," she said. "There was
dew on the wood, on the mailbox. Your father kissed me. That was so
sweet. He touched my waist. We kissed again. Then, he kissed me on the
forehead, as though he was worried, so I said, 'Don't worry. It's in
God's hands,' and he said 'OK, baby.'
"There was a cheap, plywood door, painted red. It
didn't even look like the door to a house. It was like a door from one
room to another, inside a house, but not a door to the street. I didn't
like that. Your father knocked on the door. We watched it, but nobody
answered, nobody came to the door. So your father said, 'What would
General MacArthur do in a case like this?' You know, it was a joke we
had."
"Luana," said my Dad, rolling his eyes and then his whole head.
"Just then we heard a voice, calling - remember,
Nickie? Calling: "I'm here! I'm on the way!" And there he was - Dr.
Lord - coming up over that hilly street, that powdery sidewalk -
"Thirty more feet! Here comes Dr. Lord! Coming to you now!" This
roly-poly little muffin. Like a round, golden corn muffin, chugging up
the hill. He had these big hips and tiny little feet. I thought at
first it wasn't a man, but a small dog on a unicycle, wobbling up the
hill, about to fall off the unicycle at every moment... possibly with a
man behind him. But, of course, that was the man. That was Dr. Lord
himself.
"When he got up the stairs, and he came right up near to us, and I could smell his breath, I coughed."
"The man was a drunken pig," said my Dad. "Still is."
"Shh!" said my Mom, quickly, so that I was clued
to the fact that my father had revealed something (even in those few
words which fate and my mother had allotted to him) that he shouldn't
have revealed to me.
I realized that what my father had said, and my
mother's reaction to it, meant they still saw this Dr. Lord, or at
least had some contact with him.
"He could hardly find the keyhole of his door,"
said my mother. "He could tell I disapproved of the fact that he was
obviously drunk as a skunk at six in the morning. He could see how I
felt, a potential patient after all. So he kept looking at me, instead
of the door, and scraping the key all over the place. 'Madam,' he said
to me,' if you had discovered, even as a child, that you were of an
order of intelligence not dreamed of or hoped for by the rest of the
people with whom you had daily contact; and if you, further, found the
picture did not improve no matter how close to the border you allowed
yourself to look; that is, if you found, even as a child, that you were
desperately alone in this world, and if your attempts to use the
natural intelligence with which you had been blessed, were met, from
the start, with the scorn and laughter of humanity, that tree of old
foam - I ask you - hic - as a fellow individual - what would you have
done that I have not done? Would you, do you think, have resigned
yourself to a lifetime in your own company, made pleasant only by the
addition of some drug or stimulant to the daily routine? Well, so did
I.' That's when I took the keys out of this cool, plump little hand -
like a white cupcake coming out of his sleeve - and I opened the door,
and we went in. First I went in, then Dr. Lord, with his breath, and
then your father. Your father closed the door before anyone had turned
on any lights. Dr. Lord put his hand on my behind, under my dress, and
goosed me. I gave a little yell, because it was so surprising. Your
father asked what was the matter, and I said, "Oh, nothing." Of course,
I told him later, when we were thinking everything over - thinking over
whether or not to go back to Dr. Lord, and have the procedure done."
"What procedure?" That was me, rubbing one of my eyes vigorously as I spoke, and closing the other one.
What was this procedure doing in the story of my birth, and how could I get rid of it, without hearing what it was?
But it was too late. A thing like a procedure can
either be totally forgotten, never mentioned, or, once mentioned, must
be entirely brought out into the open. The procedure in my past had put
its foot in my door, and I knew it wouldn't leave me alone until I had
bought the whole encyclopedia.
"That's what we're getting to," said my mother. I
heard the tinny, hopeless melody of the ice cream truck outside our
little cream-colored building.
"In Vitro Veritas"
The doctor took my parents into a back room of his house.
As my mother recalled it, when she was telling me,
the room was covered with white dust, everywhere, like the dust in the
street outside the house. The doctor had to kick aside small piles of
dirty laundry. Then, he bent to shove against the wall a leaning stack
of magazines, so my mother could pass by them with ease. In this back
room, he had a collection of used furniture, and medical diagrams, that
made it look like an examination room. There was a dentist's chair in
the center which Dr. Lord said he was using as an examination table,
because his real examination table was being used as a lawn chair by
his nurse, one Lilly Bakoff, who waved to my parents from the back
yard, where she was relaxing on the table at that moment.
On the walls, Dr. Lord had a series of medical
drawings with thick arrows leading the viewer's eye from one to the
other - all on a series of ivory oaktag sheets around the walls -
representations of the stages of Dr. Lord's procedure.
These days, in vitro fertilization is
fairly commonplace, but you have to remember this was l973, and my
parents had never heard of anything like it before. They were amazed as
Dr. Lord showed them how it worked - the egg cells taken from the
woman, then combined with the sperm of an anonymous donor, in a round,
low-sided dish called a petri dish, then placed in an incubator for a
few days, to start the embryo's life on its way, then inserted into the
mother's womb for the rest of the foetal journey, with its dividings
and expandings into the formal nest of eights called a human being.
"But who's baby will it be?" asked my mother right away.
"Yours, dear lady," said Dr. Lord. "Yours and your husband's child it will be, completely."
"You mean, the egg cells will come from me and the sperm cells will come from Nick?"
"I didn't say that," said Dr. Lord, putting his
hand up like a traffic cop. "Each couple is different. In your case,
the fact is, you are perfectly capable of reproducing, but Nick isn't.
According to what you told me on the telephone, his sperm - possibly
because of genetic reasons, possibly through some excess in the way he
has led his life - it doesn't matter, really - his sperm has about as
much life in it as a bag of drowned puppies. No offense."
"No offense taken," said my father, "but if the sperm isn't going to come from me, who will it come from?"
The doctor said, "Here is the real beauty of the
method I have hit upon. In cases like this one, where the husband can't
provide it, we get the necessary masculine component from one of a
limited number of men, all thoroughly tested by me, all completely
known to me. Not only they, but their families, going back as far as
anyone in each family can remember, are included in the information
bank I require for each sperm donor before I will consider using his
sperm for the delicate, personal, and holy purpose to which it is
intended. As a result of this careful research, I can guarantee that
the biological father of the child will be, with one hundred per cent
certainty, a total and complete genius."
"Well, good bye, Doctor," said my mother. She was
ready to leave. She had thought the famous procedure would allow her to
have my father's child, and she didn't want to be the mother of anyone
else's child, she said.
"Not so fast," said my father, and held onto the
belt of her raincoat, so she couldn't get out of the room. He was still
looking up at the oaktag diagrams, fascinated. "Who are these, uh,
genius donors, Dr. Lord?" he said.
"The greatest minds of our time and place," said
Dr. Lord. "The goal of my work is to improve the genetic material of
the human race. In order to do this, I have prevailed upon a few men of
acknowledged brilliance in their respective professions, to donate
their sperm. This seed, the raw material of a brighter future for all
mankind, I then match with carefully chosen couples, who want and can
provide good homes for, the next generation of geniuses."
"But who are they, specifically?" asked my father. "Do we get to meet them, and pick the one we want?"
"I'm afraid that is a matter between myself and my
donors, Mr. Stengrow," said the doctor, "but you can rest assured these
are the sort of fine, high-class individuals you yourself would choose
to impregnate your wife, if you met them. Which I would love for you to
do, if it weren't for my strict rule, keeping the donor and the
receiving couple totally unknown to each other. I'm sure you
understand. But I assure you that, as the District Attorney has so
accurately written in the complaint against me, I only accept the seed
of geniuses. That is the purpose of my clinic. Not to fulfill your
dreams of parenthood, noble though I am sure they are - but to increase
the number of geniuses in the world! Let them call me an elitist, let
them call me...' and here he drifted off, to total silence and a period
of wobbling on his feet, with his eyes closed, before he started up
again, loudly calling: 'The biological father - '
"'Which one is that?' I asked him," said Mom.
"'That's the sperm donor,' said Dr. Lord. 'He will
be a man with at least a 150 IQ. That is my breakthrough. That is my
service to the nations and peoples of the earth, little regard though
they have had for me,' he sniffed. 'Mr. Stengrow will be the legal
father, however, and the biological father will have no rights at all
over the child. You can understand why. Except for the physical reality
of his high I.Q. health-filled sperm, it will be as though the
biological father never existed. As a person, he is not. As an
individual, you can forget him completely. Don't even think about him
-'"
"But I want a child who looks like me, my family -
or at least has a chance," said my father. He is light-colored, with
light, long eyelashes and pale blue eyes that sometimes, especially in
the bright sunlight, make him look insane. My mother is even lighter -
with white skin and light red hair. The doctor assured my father that
the child would look like he, my father, did. In this, he lied. As I
look at myself here in the mirror, I see a large man with black hair
and brown eyes.
"But you're sure the procedure will be safe for my wife?" asked my father.
"I've done over a hundred of these fertilizations,
and so far not a single problem for a mother since the twenty-fifth, if
you don't count the thirty-eighth -"
"Over a hundred?" said the young husband, his
renewed hope allowing him to touch his wife for the first time since
they had arrived there. He pressed his thigh against hers.
"Well," said the Doctor, looking around the room,
and out the door into the corridor, for his nurse, "not all of them
were human females, of course. But still, they were primates. Mammals,
anyway, most of them - Lilly!"
And the nurse, who had been sunning herself in the
rising sun, on the former examination table, came into the house.
According to my mother, she was a large, beautiful woman, around two
hundred pounds. She showed them the rest of the set-up while Dr. Lord
went into the kitchen and resumed the drinking he had evidently
interrupted somewhere else in order to get to his house in time to meet
my parents.
Nurse Lilly told my parents again about the high
caliber of the sperm donors, and in order to dispel any corners of
vagueness that might still exist in their minds concerning this event,
she showed them the room where the sperm donors, inspired by Dr. Lord's
historic collection of girlie magazines and pornographic novels,
donated their sperm into glass beakers, which they gave to Nurse Lilly,
who marked them with the doctor's secret code, so no one except Dr.
Lord would ever know which father had fathered which child or children.
Did Nurse Lilly know? I don't know.
Anyway, my parents were worried, because of the
way the doctor drank, and because of the dust that seemed to cover
everything in his house. When my mother asked him about the dust, he
tried to reassure her by telling her he washed the few glass implements
needed for his work, and that so far none of the offspring produced in
his house had been particularly dusty. As for his drinking, he defended
himself, saying, ""What can a true man of science do in America today,
where all the funding goes to the herd, and the lone man fends for
himself, but drink?"
My parents went home. My father convinced my
mother that he would love the child as though it were his own. That
they would raise it together, and their love would grow on account of
the child.
They went back to meet with the doctor one more
time, this time in a cocktail lounge near his house, and said they
would go ahead with the procedure.
That night, the night of the card game, my mother
spent a good deal of time comforting my father, and they did a lot of
low talking, that I couldn't hear, until I decided to wander off to
bed. There was a little residual kissing and touching among us, and
some time spent assuring me that my father had always loved me, even
though I was not, strictly speaking, his son, and even if my sister had
been born a couple of years after me, (much to their amazement) a true
child of the two of them, and had thereby linked them in a strong
union, which I, they told me, had failed to do in the first years of my
life, although they had given me every opportunity. Still, I never made
the grade. They would sit together and watch me playing in my play pen,
or taking my first leaden steps, and they were filled with admiration
for the workings of nature, in making children develop and change, and
do this and that, but they never felt drawn together by the shared
experience of being my parents. Instead, as Mom said with sadness, just
having me around made them feel estranged from one another. They were
happy and relieved when they got a woman to watch me, while they locked
themselves in their room, watching television.
True union had not come to my parents until the birth of my sister.
Not that they had ever hated me, they said.
Especially not Mom, who had after all put up fifty per cent of my
genetic stake. It's just that the main fascination I held for them, so
powerfully as to make them forget some of the other nuances of parental
love altogether - namely, trying to see in my attributes the attributes
of the man who was my biological father - the medical student or
lawyer, or chess wizard, that anonymous donor of me - that man they had
never met and did not know the name of, but a man who had been
described to them in the most glowing terms, by Doctor Lord, that
genius my parents loved to look for, so to speak, in me... I looked a
certain way when carrots were placed in my mouth, I made a certain
noise when I banged my head against the porcelain, maybe the brilliant
doctor or oratorically flamboyant lawyer, and his wonderfully hidden
genius-generating family had given me that look, or that particular
skeletal resonance...
At first, it seemed to my mother that, amazingly
enough, I was the spitting image of my father (by whom I mean the man
who raised me, Mr. Stengrow). He agreed, at first. At first, they tell
me, it seemed a miracle had been given to them, a son in the image of
the father who would raise and support him, even if he had not
contributed any gametes to the lad. However, my father said the only
important thing, as far as he was concerned, was that the two of them
had a child to raise, and teach, a biological child of my mother, who
was, my father said, the same person as he was, because doesn't it say
in the Bible, husband and wife are one flesh?
They tell me those were good days in the history
of our family. I don't remember them very well, except for the linoleum
on the floor of my room. My recollections only go back to when I was
about 5 or 6, maybe, and when I take myself through a mental review of
those times, even the earliest I can remember, I think they must
already have started that practice of theirs, of looking for the
qualities of the unknown donor who was my biological father, in my
qualities...
"Look," my father would say, pointing his finger
at me, "he loves the mud!" Then, my Mom and Dad would look at one
another, and if someone else were there, they'd say nothing. But if
they were alone, or if they remembered later how I had loved the mud,
one of them would be sure to say to the other one: "I wonder if the
Donor is clean?"
"Anyone in your family a mud-lover?" my Dad would
ask my Mom. She'd put her hand under her chin and squint her eyes.
"None that I can recall," she'd say. Then they'd laugh together,
fondly, thinking of the Donor, and the Donor's childhood, when, they
were sure, he probably dove into mud at every slight opportunity.
Sometimes, my Mom told me, they used to praise the
Donor. For example, when I got good grades in school, and when I beat
up another boy because someone said he drew horses better than I did.
My Dad got a kick out of that, partly because no one in his family had
been in a fight for three or four generations, as far as anyone could
remember, and because it pointed out the fact that I was so large. The
largeness inherent in myself, which some might call "my" largeness, is
one thing for which even now I thank Heaven, for it brought great
happiness to my Dad, and some cause for satisfaction to my Mom. Much do
I wish there had been more things about me that had brought them joy. I
tried my best. But I was not originated rightly, and there was nothing
I could do that ever could correct what had been made wrong in my
beginnings. Maybe you've done better with your beginnings - you who
will never read my story - I hope you have - As for me, my beginnings
are up before me each morning, and they see me to sleep at night,
softly tearing each day's creations, so that by the next morning I am
back once again where I was, with them - my beginnings, my cold spark,
the birth of the blues...
And sometimes, my Mom said, they would speak meanly, or make dirty jokes, about the Donor.
They sometimes felt he was a fool. After all, a
man who gave away the seed of his loins for twenty-five or thirty
bucks, never knowing or caring about the fate of his own offspring. My
father used to suggest that the Donor would one day wake up and want to
find all the children he had fathered in this disembodied way, but it
would be too late. "The records are sealed. End of discussion!" my
father would cry out triumphantly, making a grabbing motion with his
hand that ended with the hand in a fist against his chest, like a Roman
legionnaire, secure in the knowledge that the Donor, my true father,
would never find me, and would die tormented. All this, as I say, took
place out of my earshot.
Years later, when my mother was telling me the
story of those years, she said she had soon realized the habit of
looking for the qualities of the anonymous Donor in my qualities, was
not a healthy pasttime, and she could see the deleterious effect it was
having on their marriage. She was happy when my sister was born, and
they had something else to think about. She was happy when my father
lost his job in a recession, and he had to search for a new one,
because it gave them something else to occupy their minds.
Estrangement
The night my Mom and Dad told me the
story of my conception marked the birth of a new attitude on the part
of both my parents toward me. From this night on, I was no longer
really a part of the family.
It was only two days later that they said they
needed my room for a sewing room. They said I would be able to live in
the basement, though, and I would love it. My father said, with a
laugh, "you'll have the run of the place."
"Except when I do the laundry, you'll have complete privacy," said my mother.
My father said, "This will be great for you,
Reynold. Now, you'll be able to practice that damned hobby of yours all
night if you want to, without bothering anybody."
"I don't think so, Dad," I said. "It's hard to get maximum use from a telescope in a windowless basement."
"You could get a new hobby," said my mother. "That's not the point."
She was right. The point was, we had all changed. They had come to see me as a stranger. And I had changed, too.
From that night on, I was determined to learn the
identity of my true father, Our Anonymous Donor. Because now I knew he
was there, written on my face and my physical features, and in my
thoughts and deeds, but I couldn't see him. He was a shading over known
things, but not himself a known thing, and therefore impossible to
judge as to the extent of the shading. He was a hidden writing written
through me... my true father, the Donor - He was off the books, like
one of those day-workers you pay, but you don't want to pay their
unemployment insurance, and you don't want anyone to know you even had
the money to pay them, so they are off the books.
I wonder if my parents, while they were watching
me and I was failing to unite them, (even though I was succeeding in
providing them with many hours of wholesome fun looking for the True
Dad shining through their son,) ever thought of the things you can
inherit from your father, or your mother, that are not in the flesh at
all, or even in the mind, or the spiritual qualities of yourself, but
just words that have been said over the fates of your parents, or words
that have been said over the fates of their parents -- the blessings
and curses earned by ancient people, or more recent people? And is
there an inheritance called "Off the Books," and is it a curse or a
blessing to inherit this? It seems that all my life I have been off the
books. I have been seen but not recognized as having been seen - I have
been the shadow too pale to show up on the x-ray, the meaningful breath
too soft to feel on the sleeping face of the one I love.
I moved my things into the basement. My mother had
cleaned it out for me, and it was nice, but it wasn't the same as my
old room. I still ate dinner with my family, and for the most part, we
all acted as though nothing had changed. One day my father and I were
out in the front of the house, after dinner. He said, "You think you'll
do well in your math exam on Tuesday?" and I said, "No problem."
He looked at me in a strange way, as though the
sun were over my shoulder instead of his, and as though he was the one
with the trouble seeing me instead of me being the one having trouble
seeing him, which was the truth of the situation. He said, "I hope
there are no hard feelings between us."
I said, "Of course not, Dad. You raised me, you fed and clothed me."
He said, "You'll always be my son. I'll always love you."
At this moment, my mother came out of the house,
and we all stood together in the small vegetable garden my father has
always kept there, from which all the residents of the condo were
welcome to take vegetables. The earth was steaming up at us, along with
the smells of tomatoes and peppers, hot, as though we were standing on
a heated griddle in the sunset light, between the long shadows of the
palm trees outside on Fourth Street. My mother put her arms around my
father and me, and some people came along the street, and we called
hello to them, and they said they were going to the movies on Santa
Monica Boulevard, did we want to come? My mother said no, we were going
in to have coffee in a minute. The sun was shining on her beautiful
face. I kissed her cheek. My father clapped me on the back, reaching
around from the other side of my mother. I knew I would always love
these people, pioneers who had brought me into the world, settlers who
were here in the world before me, and made a place for me. But still,
the next day, I started to search for my other, my biological, father.
My True Dad.
My parents told me that they had long ago lost
track of Dr. Lord, and that they believed he was dead, or in Europe. I
knew they were lying, but out of respect for them, I decided to leave
them out of it, to search on my own.
I thought my best bet would be to read books and
scientific journals, looking for Dr. Lord's name, and some account of
his experiments, so I went to the UCLA library, and the main branch of
the Los Angeles library, downtown. I couldn't find his name anywhere. I
couldn't find any mention in the newspapers of his arrest. I went to
the police department, and the office of the District Attorney. There
was nothing. I enjoyed the feeling of driving around, searching,
getting out of the car and having a building to go into and a reason
for going into it. I enjoyed asking directions of the guards, and
getting help from the librarians. I even told one of the librarians, a
young woman with large brown eyes and curly brown hair at the UCLA
Graduate Library, the purpose of my quest. After I told her, she cried
with me, and held my hand on the yellow-wood table. She then went to
work, checking every library in the state, it seemed to me, and staying
after her work hours for a whole week, just to help me. But even she
couldn't find any mention of Dr. Lord, or his work.
I also went through the newspapers from l970 on,
jotting down the names of all the men in Los Angeles who were prominent
in the fields of medicine, mathematics, law and academia. My mother and
father had told me in no uncertain terms that my true father was a
great genius - as a matter of fact, he had only qualified to be my true
father because of his genius. The problem here was that there were so
many geniuses, when you took into consideration all the endeavors of
mankind, each having to itself its proper quota of geniuses, that the
possible population of fathers for me quickly became too large ever to
explore.
I drove around Burbank, all around the airport,
because of the description my parents had given me of the place where
Dr. Lord's house was supposed to be. When I told Mom and Dad, they got
upset, and said I should forget about finding my biological father,
because it wouldn't do me any good to find him anyway, and would only
bring me misery. An hour later, my mother told me she thought they had
made a mistake about the place where Dr Lord lived. She said it was
opposite an airport, but not necessarily the Burbank private field. She
thought it might have been further east, inland, in the Inland Empire.
She was sad for me. She kissed my hands. She said she hoped I wouldn't
make myself unhappy, searching for the Donor. Then she asked me if I
had told anyone about the fact that I had been created through
artificial insemination. I said I had only told the librarian. She got
angry, and my father heard her, and he came in chewing on a turkey leg,
and they both told me forcefully that I wasn't to tell anyone the facts
of my conception. My father said my mother would be sent to jail if
anyone knew. My mother cried. My father shook his head with a look of
wisdom. "That's the sad thing," he said, looking at me with a look
freighted with meaning, "because no matter what happens, I won't be in
any trouble at all. I didn't do anything wrong, after all. But your
mother did. She was the one that was artificially inseminated. She's
the one that committed adultery."
My mother made a noise of protest, and looked at him. He said, "Sorry, it's true."
I felt terrible about it. The fact is, not only
had I told the librarian about my condition, I had also made the
mistake of telling my best friend at school, Marty Rothenberg. I had
told him one day when I was feeling low, and he had told everyone else
in a mood of high spirits, over the next two or three days. Kids were
coming up to me in the cafeteria, or while I was crossing Pico to the
Taco stand, and saying, "Hey, Reynold - are you feeling ok? Your eyes
have kind of a glassy look," and then they would crack up. Or, they
would ask me if I had a navel. A lot of their fathers were thinkers in
think tanks up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, and in Malibu, so
they didn't really have as hard a time believing the story of my
conception and birth as the kids at another high school might have had.
In a way I guess this made it easier for me. Still, I knew that soon I
would have to leave school.
Then, one night I was supposed to go to the movies
with Rothenberg, but when I got there, he drove up with his father, and
they said they had to go on to the Cedars-Sinai, where Rothenberg's
grandmother was lying sick. I looked again at the cards in the lobby
advertising the film, and decided I didn't want to see it, after all.
Instead, I walked home, very slowly, listening to the televisions in
all the apartments along the way, and the sounds of people clearing up
after dinner. When I got home, I went in the back door, and right to
the kitchen to get a sandwich.
I heard my parents' voices through the kitchen
door, and another voice, and before I opened the refrigerator door, I
could hear my name, and I knew they were talking about me. Instead of
opening the refrigerator door, which would have made noise, I stood in
the dark and listened to the conversation in the living room.
"You never should have told him," said the
stranger's voice, which was high and strained, like wind coming through
the crack in a wall.
"It was my fault," said my father. "I lost my
temper. I felt estranged from him, and I wanted to show I knew
something he didn't. I feel like a fool."
"Oh, Doctor Lord," said my mother, "will he be able to adjust?"
So, this was Doctor Lord.
It didn't bother me that my parents had lied to
me, and told me they were out of touch with the doctor. I knew they had
done what they thought was best, for all of us. However, it was obvious
from the things they were saying that throughout my entire life, my
mother and father had been making regular, detailed reports to Dr.
Lord, concerning everything from my appetite to my moods to the notes I
made in my school notebooks when I was not writing my assignments. For
example, Dr. Lord said at one point that I had seemed so happy when he
had last observed me, "at the bowling alley on Pico." Then I knew why
my parents had urged me to take up bowling in the first place, and why
they had insisted on the three of us joining a family league, even
though it was so out of character for them - especially, for my father,
a man totally unathletic in every other respect.
I smiled at the thought of my father's
selflessness - allowing himself to look ridiculous (as everyone agreed
he did, every time we went bowling) for the good of science, and
probably for my good, too.
Also, I found myself wondering whether the doctor
had done his observing from another alley, or from the snack bar that
overlooked the entire place from its raised platform. Or was there a
camera set up in the crawl space over the alleys, or behind the alleys,
to film me? I wondered if there were other artificially inseminated
boys and girls, all living in this general area, whose parents also
dragged them to the Pico Lanes one night of every month, for
observation.
I gathered from their conversation, as I stood at
the breakfast bar, that Dr. Lord had a girlfriend who was an
Administrator at Santa Monica High School. This girlfriend had heard
about the controversy over my origins. I'm not clear on whether or not
the girl also knew about Dr. Lord's work, but for whatever reason, she
had obviously thought I was worth mentioning to the doctor. He was very
upset. He said he didn't know what the consequences would be, but as
for himself, he intended to leave Los Angeles.
"Unfortunately," said the doctor sadly, "the current climate in the world of science is unfriendly toward the real pioneer."
"But you've given barren couples babies," said Dad.
"Yes," said the doctor, "and a generous spirit,
such as you possess, will concentrate on that fact - the good a man has
done - the families he's helped to complete. However, the sad state of
the world is such that others will tend to dwell more readily on the
unavoidable tragedies and errors that (any innovator will be glad to
tell you) must precede even the most glorious new step in the
scientific progress of mankind, ah, me - The babies who never got born
- the few, and sadly remembered women who - " and here his voice became
so low that I'm sure even my parents, sitting directly in front of his
face, could not have heard what he said next - Then, a bit louder:
"They'll fixate on the fact that I guaranteed geniuses, and their envy
- the non-genius press, the non-genius public, the non-genius agencies
of government - will cause them to find every possible fault with what
I, we, have done... But still," he picked up volume here, feeling
better about what he was about to say than about that which he had
already said, "still, one day we'll all be able to tell the things we
know, to a humble and waiting world. I'm sure of it. However, until
then, I think it would be best for all of us, if we changed our places
of residence. In the future, I don't know exactly when, you will hear
from me. I will write, and send instructions on how we may continue our
acquaintanceship, and continue the vital work of observing young
Reynold, how he develops in the months and years to come. Until then,
good luck, dear friends - "
Then, I carefully looked out between the
plantation shutters that separated the kitchen from the living room. I
had to lean painfully across the breakfast bar, and I felt the
doorknobs of the cabinet push into my groin. I saw my parents standing
with a short, plump man in a brown tweed jacket with leather patches on
the elbows. Awkwardly, my mother walked forward and embraced the
doctor. Then, my father did the same. They said they didn't see how
they could leave Los Angeles on such short notice, but that they would
be sure to keep his secret, and not admit to anyone how I had been born.
He said, "The press has its ways - " but they
reassured him. He said, "The police, the FBI..." but they said there
was no way in the world anyone could get them to betray him. My father
(Mr. Stengrow, that is) said, "When the world is populated with
geniuses, they will appreciate what you have done."
Dr. Lord sighed, fumbled with his fingers in a
twirling gesture I have never been able to duplicate, and said, "I
sincerely hope so, my dear Mr. Stengrow. The problem is, geniuses, just
by the fact of their existence, are a standing insult to the rest of
mankind. This is the one problem I never counted on. I am afraid that
my life's work, when all the facts are known, will have been wasted,
wasted."
"No!" said my mother.
"Never!" said my father.
They walked him to the door.
The California Craftsman
I peered out at them, surprised to see how my mother towered over both Dr. Lord and my father, as they stood by the front door.
When Dr. Lord went out, I ducked out the back door and ran
around to get my car, which was parked on Montana
Avenue, so I could bring it around to Fourth in time to follow Dr.
Lord. He had a l969 Impala; I, a 1964 Pontiac LeMans with a white
convertible top, a black body, and red leather seats. He pulled out,
his car hoisting itself to the central mound of the street like a
waking lion, and I followed at a distance, trying to keep one or two
cars between us at all times. The streets weren't as bright at night as
they are these days, but I remember the blue-white lights under which
we drove, out to Burbank. I had only been in Burbank those times when I
was looking for Dr. Lord's house, and I didn't know it very well. I had
never been there at night, except if you count that long-ago time when
I was conceived there, and I couldn't be expected to remember much
about the place from that time, because after all, I didn't even have
eyes then, or a nose, and I was really nothing more than a rapidly
dividing clump of cells and a soul (if you want to give me the benefit
of the doubt) and so, I was pleasantly enjoying the sights of the clean
restaurants and ghostly auto repair shops, most of them lit and glowing
within.
Then, the Impala swept around a corner onto a
wide, downhill-running side street, with a long chain link fence
running down one side, as far as the eye could see. And a row of
single-family dwellings made of wood ran down the other side. And I saw
the white dust, as my father and mother had described it to me, puffing
up in clouds around the Impala, and around my car.
Dr. Lord pulled his car into the driveway of a
house I assumed to be his. A white, small California craftsman, with
trapezoidal posts in the corners of the porch. It was only then that I
noticed his headlights were off. Yes, I thought, he turned them off
when he came around the corner onto this street. I wondered why. I also
noticed that he got out of the car very fast, and when he shut the
door, he didn't let it slam, or even drop closed. He guided the door
instead to a position where it just rested against the car. He looked
over the top of the car, all the way up the street. I was parked by
then, against the chain link fence, but my lights were out, and I was
sitting as low as possible in the seat, looking over the dashboard. For
a moment, I thought he was looking right into my eyes, but he kept
rotating his head around on his neck, so I suppose he didn't see me. He
looked behind him, too, all down the other way. There was nobody in the
street. Once he saw that, he seemed to relax, and breathe more
naturally than he had been. He even looked up at the sky, and just
stood there, nodding at it for a while. Then, he appeared to remember
the mood he had just been in, and it was like an electric current had
been shot through him, the way he leaped into action, patting the top
of his car decisively and then running in through the garage door of
his house. I saw a light go on inside, and I could see that the garage
door hadn't closed all the way. I got out of my car, played the same
trick with my car door that he had, so that it would not make noise
when it closed, on this silent street, and I walked up to his house,
trying to look calm as I went. Just in case I was being watched from
one of the houses up or down the block.
What did I do? Walked along the fencing, as I
recall, pretending to be studying it for some purpose - what a fool I
must have appeared to be! What a fool, not to recognize those early
warning signs of being a fool! What did I do? Approached more closely,
walking with my hands in my back pockets, looking at the ground, as
though I was looking for a dropped quarter - yes, I engaged in two or
three separate ruses to give myself the confidence that just in case
anyone was actually watching me go (as it turned out, there were many
people watching me, but all of them knew where I was heading, from the
time my LeMans wobbled around the corner at the top of the hill, behind
the doctor's Impala) that just in case anyone was actually watching me
go, they would not know why I was here.
I noticed there were words written in paint on the
outside of the house and on the pavement, and what appeared to be
gashes across the front of the house, and burned places in the front
lawn. The one tree looked like it had been set on fire. Most of the
branches were burned off, and whatever leaves there had been, were on
the ground, black. I tried to see the words from under the shelf of my
brow, as I kept my head down. I saw the words "Hell," "Love," "Nazi,"
and "Bottle," all sprayed on the walkway, the public sidewalk, and the
three steps to the Doctor's porch. I don't know if they were parts of
sentences, or were supposed to stand by themselves. The words were too
big to take in, as I was going forward.
I went into the garage, and slipped through the
slightly opened door to his kitchen. I heard voices from the back of
the house, so I looked down a long corridor, to see the layout of the
rooms. I had to look around the doorway from the kitchen to the
corridor. The corridor was dark. There were two or three rooms off to
the sides of it, but they were all dark. The living room was out the
other kitchen door, and didn't come into play, because there were no
voices coming from there, and no lights were on. The main activity
seemed to be in the very back room of the house, which was lit up. It
was at the end of the corridor, and I could see people's bodies
crossing from one side of the room to the other past the narrow
doorway. One of the bodies I knew was Dr. Lord's. The other person
there seemed to be a woman, much taller and bigger than the doctor.
Then I heard the doctor say, "Faster, Nurse Lilly - I don't know if we
even have an hour, and all the files are still -- "
But the woman, Nurse Lilly, interrupted him, with
a beautiful, comforting voice I still remember, after all these years,
saying: "Don't worry, Doctor - I've already packed the petrie dishes
and the micropipettes - also, your diaries and notebooks, at least all
of them since Lisbon, and only you know (as you know) where the
pre-Lisbon books are - far be it from me to pry into a matter obviously
so tender in your - but that's neither here nor there -" (sigh) "- and
the diagrams are all rolled up neatly, along with your diplomas and
skiing awards; and your entire medical library, and those treasure
hunting magazines, are all in the boat, completely wrapped in
waterproof cloth, just as you instructed -"
"Fine," said the doctor, as he streaked and
blurred around the room, seeming always to be rising from some scooping
motion as he went from the left to the right, and seeming always to be
swooping, or scooping, down, as he went the other way. "That just
leaves thirty years of files, thirty years of photographs - Did they
come around today?"
"I didn't go to the door," said Nurse Lilly. "I
could hear them banging away, and they tried to see me through the
windows, but I stayed out of sight."
I supposed they were referring to the people,
whoever they were, who had written the words all over the house, and
set the fires that had created the unmistakable signs of burning which
I had noticed on the way in.
I decided this was as good a time as any to make
my presence known to the Doctor and his Nurse. I think I was emboldened
by the new knowledge that there were other people obviously interested
in them, people they were afraid of. I walked down the corridor. I
clapped my hands to get the dust off the palms, and also to announce my
presence to the two people. Nurse Lilly peered at me a long moment down
the corridor, and then started screaming, "Out! Get out! We didn't do
anything!" She dropped two stacks of files, that she had been carrying
pressed into her hips and supported by her forearms at the moment when
she had seen me. The files fell away like some rubbery animal being
sliced into a pan, and some of the pages fanned out into the corridor,
blocking the path of the door when Nurse Lilly tried to close it in my
face. I took advantage of my good luck to throw myself against the door
with all my might, and try to push it open. She yelled with pain, but
she held the door shut, or almost shut. The files were still in the way.
"I don't want to hurt you people," I said through the door. I'm Reynold Stengrow. Ask Dr. Lord. He knows who I am."
"Get away, Stengrow," I heard the Doctor call through the door to me, "there's nothing for you here."
I said, "I want to know who my real father was." I
didn't immediately throw myself against the door again, because I
wanted to try first to appeal to the Doctor's sense of fair play.
"That's confidential information," said Dr. Lord,
through the door, sounding like he was pressed close to his side of it,
probably standing right beside Nurse Lilly, helping her hold it shut.
"I'm a responsible man of science," he continued. "Go away, and be
grateful for life. Don't screw up everybody else's life by asking a lot
of questions."
"The Doctor is a man of great intelligence," said Nurse Lilly, "Listen to him, young man -"
There was something about the way she said the
words "young man" that made it sound like she wasn't quite as strong at
the end of the final syllable, as she might have been at the beginning
of her speech, so I took advantage of this moment of weakness, and
pushed with all my might, fast and hard. "The throw rug!" I heard her
say, with a sound of despair, just before her feet slid out from under
her body, and when I was able to get my head around the corner of the
door, I could see she was being glided across the floor by the motion
of a black and white hook rug in the shape of a baseball. By the time I
got inside, she was hanging onto the doorknob with both hands, trying
to pull herself back into an upright position. The Doctor, on the other
hand, had abandoned the door completely, and he was concentrating on
shoving his files into a bunch of sturdy-looking cardboard boxes that
said "Whitehall Moving and Storage Co., Inc., Worth Street, NYC."
He looked at me, like a golden retriever standing
defensively beside something he has been chewing, which has been
unjustifiably, as far as he can tell, claimed by some human... He said,
"Your father is a prominent man - they all are - or were - or, in the
case of one or two, could have been -" and he gestured around the room,
causing me to look around, and see the refrigerator units lined up
against all the walls, even blocking out most of the light of the two
small windows in the room.
"Now," he said sadly, "how can I take it all with
me? The seed of the one tenth of one per cent, here is an entire future
for mankind that mankind never will know, because its concentrated form
is in this room, and soon will exist no more." The Doctor saluted the
refrigerators, and gave them a lingering look, that made me sad, and
almost made me forget what I was there for.
"Still," said the Doctor, turning to look at me
again, with a look of courage, "I had a pact with these men - anonymity
for their sperm - and I intend to keep it." And with that, he tossed
the files he had in his hands, into a cardboard box, and walked sort of
heavy-footed to the row of refrigerators.
He opened one of the refrigerator doors - an old
Kelvinator of lime green - and I could see it wasn't like a regular
refrigerator inside, but more like a freezer, and a lot of smoke came
out of it when the door was opened. Inside, there were four shelves,
made of ice-covered metal, and on every shelf were wire and wooden
racks. Dr. Lord took one out and I saw it was a rack of glass test
tubes. "Good-bye, men," he said. It seemed he was talking to the test
tubes. "No one will ever know the contributions made by every one of
you, every dear one."
"Please," I said, "I want to know the name of my True Dad."
Nurse Lilly was still loading the boxes,
frantically. She said she wanted the Doctor to hurry up, and help her
load, but he didn't hear her. He turned to me, or rather, peered at me
through the row of frosty test tubes in his hand, and said, "Think of
what you are asking me to do! These are important men, men with
something to lose. These are men with families."
"I'm family," I said.
"Families that love them," said the Doctor, "that share their names. Is it fair to the families?"
"But that's who I am," I said, louder. "The
family! I'm a child of the man who donated. Half of me is from him.
It's not as though I were some stranger."
He said, "You'll be a meteor colliding into the planet of some poor fellow's life - "
"I'll be discreet - Please, Dr. Lord!"
At this moment, I started to see lights
criss-crossing outside the windows, like the lights at a premiere.
Flashlight beams, and maybe car headlights, lighting up different
sections of the sky and the building next door, and the wires that ran
over the street. I could also hear voices outside. Dr. Lord whispered
to me, "News of your search somehow reached my neighbors, confirming
suspicions they have long held about me, and about Nurse Lilly, and our
work. that is why we must now leave."
Then, it was silent for a few seconds. Nurse
Lilly, the Doctor and I all stood still, listening. Then, the voices
again. I could hear the ends of a couple of sentences - then, the way a
voice sounds at the end of a question - then, there was a rock through
the window. Then, there was screaming, and a shrieking voice over
everyone else's, yelling, "How many years I been saying this guy's
crazy? Since he moved in here!" Then I saw a little old lady poke her
face in the window. The lights were criss-crossing behind her, and over
her head, and she peered around the room from behind her little
wire-frame lenses. "What kind of a man needs twenty five refrigerators
was the very first thing I remember saying to anyone about you, Mister
-" she said straight at the Doctor. Then she pulled her head back out
and said. "It's just like I thought - they're gettin ready to pull out,
takin all the evidence with em..."
"Oh, no they ain't," said one of the men outside.
They crowded up to the window and one of them said, "You better hold
everything in there, and we'll be right in..."
The Doctor threw the rack of test tubes at the
face in the window. They missed him, but shattered against the wall
above his head, and he had to pull back to avoid being showered with
glass and gel-like, near-frozen sperm. I could hear people coming in
through the front door and through the kitchen door, and down the
corridor I had come down. Some of them were laughing, even while the
others sounded angry, and for some reason it was the laughers that made
me feel the most afraid. The fact is, of course, if there had only been
laughers, and none sounding angry, I might not have been as scared, or
at least, I might not have been scared in the same way - but the
presence of the laughers in that sea of dull, low-voiced rage, gave me
that rare taste of metal in the mouth you get when you're terrified, if
you're like me, and why should you be now that I think of it, but still
-- that sound -- the easy laughter of the ones in the crowd who know
that whatever hideous events may occur on this night, they will not be
held personally responsible for any of it, even if they enjoy it as
much as, or more than, anyone else.
Nurse Lilly took a file cabinet and pushed it in
front of the door to the corridor, just in time. As the people outside
smashed against the door with their shoulders and flashlights, she
pushed another cabinet, and an old wooden desk in front of the door.
Dr. Lord was emptying the open refrigerator-freezer of test tubes,
throwing them all at the window, to keep the crowd at bay.
"We've got guns out here, Doc," said one of the men.
"No!" a woman screamed, and all the other women
seemed to agree with her. I had a short glimpse of the crowd in the
yard when Nurse Lilly overturned one of the refrigerators, sending it
crashing across the room, opening up another small corner of the window
for me to see through. I saw the people were mostly in their bathrobes
and slippers, or barefoot, and there were children, running around in
pyjamas, carrying toys and playing with a small dog in the background
there, against the next house. There were also people on top of that
house, and its garage, pointing in the Doctor's window. A young boy on
the roof lit a rolled-up newspaper with a cigarette lighter, and threw
it at the Doctor's house, but one of the women leaped in the way, and
caught it. She and her friend stomped out the fire, and I heard one of
the women call out, "Be careful, all you men! We've got to get that
simmen in there and make him tell us who it all came from!"
"Good people," said the Doctor, "of what possible
use could that information be to you? You're trampling on the work of a
lifetime here, dear neighbors -"
The ceiling broke open and a man's legs dropped
into the room in front of my face. The door to the corridor was also
broken by now. Only the height of the furniture piled in front of it
prevented the neighbors from storming in through that opening. The man
in front, who had his arms stretched over the surface of the file
cabinet, found he couldn't slide over the cabinet into the room, so he
settled back to his feet and tried to reason with the Doctor from where
he was. The man had a long face, like a beagle.
"Listen, Doc," he said, trying to sound sensible,
"we know you been collectin the simmin a' some real smart men. It's
been a rumor around the block here for ten, fiteen years already, I
guess you know that. But now, well, it seems like the news is all over
town, and you been sellin this simmin all over Beverly Hills, Santa
Monica, Brentwood, to them that can pay, but what about us?"
"What about who?" asked Dr. Lord. He had stopped
throwing things and he seemed interested for the first time, even more
interested than terrified. I was still more terrified than interested,
but there was one thing I was interested in - the identity of my True
Dad - so I kept my eyes open, and looked for an opportunity, having no
idea what form that opportunity might take.
"Us! Us!" two women shouted through the window, in
answer to Dr. Lord's question. When he looked confused, the man at the
door said, "That simmin you got in there is from the best, right? Your
prize steers, if we hear correctly in these matters. Now, is that true?"
"Why," said Dr. Lord, "that's it exactly. It is all from geniuses. The genetic cream of the United States."
"And we all know what kind of a world we have out
here, with these smart Japanese and Koreans and who all, and the kind
of world we're going to have, come the future -"
Here, many of the people murmured agreement.
"A world," said the man, "where, if a kid ain't
smart, he's gonna be left right out. And, well, if a kid is smart, then
he can be expected to scoop up the best jobs, and make all kinds of
money. Am I right so far?"
"Sure," said Dr. Lord.
"But us whose neighborhood you lived in, and who
were civil to you every morning, even after Tom Stiller found all that
porno in your garbage cans that day - what shot have we got for any
kids with that kind of brainpower? None at all. Combine my brainpower
with my old lady's, you got enough brainpower to think of what to have
for dinner tonight, just about. How much can we give to our kids, then?
And the proof of it is, our kids themselves! Why, we got three and all
three of them haven't got enough sense to face the table when they eat,
let alone the intellect to be ready for the Twenty First Century!"
People started all talking at once, telling heart-rending anecdotes of how stupid their children were.
"But you sell that simmin all around Brentwood,
Beverly Hills, and where else, but around here, we're parched. What's
the matter, ain't we good enough? Who's gonna support me and my wife
when we get old if we can't have us a little computer kid or somethin
like that - or like a painter-genius-type kid, or some kind of kid who
can make a dollar in the Twenty-First Century, you know? Because I can
tell you as sure as I'm standin in a doorway with the door all busted
apart, my three kids I got now, they ain't gonna support one ounce of
me, let alone support all of me and all of my old lady. No sir, that
simmin ain't leavin this area till we come to some kind of an
understandin here - OK, Doc?"
"You don't know what you're asking," said the
Doctor, and he took the moment to resume stuffing his files and
photographs into the cardboard boxes. "I have to study the prospective
parents, I have to observe the home environment, I have to be sure that
each child is going to have a home commensurate with the potential
inherent in his conception itself, or it would be better not to do the
thing at all..."
"Then you're tellin us we gotta be poor just like
we are, forever," said the man. "And our kids'll keep gettin dumber and
the kids of the people that can pay you are gonna get smarter and
smarter, and probably better lookin', and whatever you can throw in
there, like extras on a new car, they'll get, and our kids won't get - "
"Please," said Dr. Lord, "go back to your homes,
my good people." He was imploring the young women at the window, and
the man at the door, and he turned back and forth between them as he
spoke.
"One day," said the Doctor, "the techniques I have
pioneered will be available to all people. Yes, even the poor, even the
ignorant. Even to you! Now, it's too soon. Science starts by ones and
twos, before its magic blossoms to the millions and billions. But hope,
dear neighbors! For I see a day when your children, and your children's
children, will be able to assure themselves that not one bit of any of
you will survive in their children, and their children's children!
Hallellujah, well you may say! There is indeed a brighter day a-coming!
When the apple will fall so far from the tree, you'll think it's a red
red rose --"
"Now!" said a woman at the window, "We need it to
start now! You can't keep these blessings from our kids - it just isn't
right!" She was a lovely woman, I still remember, with beautiful blue
eyes, and those long hands and fingers that make you want to be
touched. I remember thinking, God has done so well by this woman, why
does she think Doctor Lord can do any better? She was crying, reaching
out to the broken test tubes of the semen of geniuses, trying to touch
them.
"I'm Seventeen, Ma'am"
As for me, I took advantage of the
fact that the Doctor and his neighbors were busy having their
conversation. Moving slowly, so as to attract as little attention as
possible, I went to the cardboard boxes and started rooting around in
them, until I saw a stack of ledger books, taller than average
notebooks, and thinner than you'd expect books of that height to be,
and each one had a white label on the front of it, with a blue border,
and a year's number typed on the label... 1946, 1947, 1948...
The man hanging through the ceiling was stuck
there, with his feet dangling between the faces of myself and Nurse
Lilly. His friends were on the roof, struggling to free his shoulders,
so he could drop the rest of the way into the room. Now, just as I
found the ledger book for l973, which I hoped would tell me what I
wanted to know, although there wasn't time for me to open the book,
because I didn't feel confident enough in the situation to lower my
eyes even for a second, to see whether I had an accounts book, or a
personal diary, or whatever - but just as I found this ledger, the man
came down from the ceiling, with cracking noises, right in front of me,
and you could see he was injured. This caused Nurse Lilly to scream,
and run to him, while he was trying to stand up. She looked around
frantically, as she stood over the man, then found what she wanted, a
toaster, picked it up, and holding it in both her hands, smashed it
down on the man's face.
The toaster was still plugged in, and the wire
stretched over the black stone table that had a sink in it, and a lot
of bunsen burners and glass beakers on top of it. The wire stretched to
the other side of the table, then back a few inches to the wall, where
it had to go behind a metal bureau - not a file cabinet, but the kind
of cabinet that has two doors that can swing open, and shelves inside -
before it reached the wall-plug. When Nurse Lilly hit the man from the
ceiling, who was covered with white dust, and seemed to be trying to
spit some of it out of his mouth, he raised his hands in a natural
defensive measure (even today, I don't blame him, or even Nurse Lilly,
really) and sort of caught the toaster along one side with his wrists,
and the lower portion of his hands, and he pulled his hands violently
over his head, to deflect the toaster away from his face (you can't
blame him) and his motion pulled the wire attached to the toaster, out
straight. It stretched to its full tension, over the black table,
behind the black table, and behind the metal cabinet with the doors.
The wire behind the cabinet was low where it met the wall-plug, but it
had to go higher on the other side, to stretch over the table, and that
height, on that side, was sufficient so that the wire, when it was
stretched tightly, pushed the cabinet forward, away from the wall.
At first, the doors of the cabinet held. Then,
bulges appeared in the doors, on the lower left hand side and the upper
right hand side, so it looked for a moment like a beige man with one
knee raised and one hand pressed outward from the level of his chest,
to break his inevitible fall onto the sharp edge of the black table.
Then, before the cabinet could reach that sharp corner, the little lock
attached to the two lever-shaped handles on the doors, snapped open,
and the doors swung down and open. From the shelves of the cabinet,
like waves of neon-throbbing, multi-colored oil, poured several
thousand, or possibly several tens of thousands of magazines, all with
naked women on their covers. The top ones slid first, down to the
surface of the table, then skidded over the table, and cascaded to the
floor. The ones from the lower shelves dropped to the floor and the
others mounded up in piles where the magazines collided with one
another.
Everywhere you looked were brightly colored, vivid
photographs of naked women, women in bikinis or underwear, sometimes,
but mostly naked - winking, laughing, looking surprised, looking angry,
looking frightened or casually allusive - the naked women of thirty
years of publishing history, to judge by the covers I could see, that
lay around my legs and were piled almost to my knees, holding me in my
place.
Everyone stopped where they were. The women at the
window, the three men who had shoved the cabinets away from the door to
the corridor, and were crawling over the cabinets into the room, the
new people, including an old man with his glasses hanging from one ear,
wobbling above me in the hole in the ceiling, where he and his buddies
were staring down at us, the Doctor, and even Nurse Lilly - all stopped
and were silent, in homage to the overwhelmingly seductive effect of
all those magazines, those smiles and shoulders and breasts and bellies
and fingernail polish.
Many in the crowd no doubt scanned the images for
a favorite hair color, or a favorite style of lipstick, or a remembered
shape, or part of shape, when the sea of color came to a rest, after
its long slippery disgorgement from the cabinet.
Finally, one of the women said, "Why, you filthy old bastard." Then there was a continuation of the silence.
Nurse Lilly said, "You fools - how in the hell do
you think we get the geniuses to give us their sperm? You think we give
them one of the Doctor's monographs on the effect of chocolate syrup on
sex-selection in the Feather River Frog? Ladies, we have to get this
stuff when we need it - we have to catch it quick to freeze it good -
is that really so hard to figure out?"
But, while I would have answered her question,
"no," the people who were assembled there evidently would have answered
in the affirmative, if they had given any answer at all, which they
didn't, because the sight of those magazines had changed them from a
mindless, angry crowd into a furious, violent mob, almost European in
its ferocity, and they were so busy tearing at the confines which held
them back, trying to get their hands on the Doctor, and Nurse Lilly,
and probably on me, if they thought about me at all, that they didn't
even hear the end of Nurse Lilly's question.
Nurse Lilly, the Doctor and I stood in the
widening sea of the girlie mags, pulling our legs from the pulp
quicksand, then stepping carefully to stand atop the thousands of
beautiful girls, balancing our feet on their faces as though they were
a conquered race, forced by some decree to smile up at us.
Two of the the Doctor's neighbors, both women, got
in through the little window. Then, three men got into the room, the
first one helping the other two over the tilted cabinets, and they
ranged out behind Dr. Lord.
I took this opportunity to glance into the ledger
I held in my hands, and saw that there was every possibility it was the
one I needed. I saw the words, DONOR and FAMILY and CHILD, at the top
of the first page, and a wobbling, meandering line drawn down the page
between each of these words, from top to bottom. I must say, the way
those lines had been drawn, without a ruler, and looking so wretched,
as they did, brought me up short. I thought, here is this scientist,
the man responsible for bringing me into the world, when I would have
been well out of it if he had minded his own business in the first
place, and he can't even take the trouble to find a ruler, when he's
setting up a new notebook. A ruler isn't always available, I realized
that, but even then, he could have used the edge of the page itself,
which was straight, or folded the page in three. Well, fuck him, I
thought, now he's in the middle of a hundred people who want to kill
him. Until that moment, I had been sure that nothing bad would happen
to the Doctor, Nurse Lilly or myself, because, the fact is, I have
faith in anyone with the word Doctor in front of his or her name. But
now that I saw the first page in that ledger, with its wobbly lines, I
began to feel weak. I saw with new eyes the people crawling into the
room from top and sides, and for the first time I wondered if science
had an answer for the problem they posed to my safety.
One of the men pulled a knife out of the back
pocket of his blue jeans. He was barefoot, and as he walked, the
bottoms of his feet stuck to the girlie magazines in a series of
smacking sounds. He started positioning himself like a fighter, leaning
from side to side in front of the Doctor, as though looking for the
right moment to lunge forward with the knife and cut the Doctor's
throat. He said, "Now, a man that keeps this much pornography has got
something seriously the matter with him, and I don't care if he calls
himself a Doctor or a Dentist, or a Priest. Of course, any redblooded
American man likes to thumb through em in the drug store, maybe buy one
or two and read em, but shit... You got to throw one away before you
can buy another one, or else you cross right over the line and you
become a psychotic insanity case."
"Yes, sir," said another guy, who dropped in from
the hole in the ceiling, and slid around on a couple of piles of those
slick, flapjack-like magazines, "or else you start to fixate on these
girls, and the next thing you know, you're out there stalkin' em and
rapin' em and all that evil shit, just because you got fixated. Fixated
by pornography."
"Yeah?" said the first one to the second one, seeming rather surprised, and maybe a little worried by what he had heard.
Then, recovering his poise, this first one, the
barefoot one, turned to the Doctor and said, "That's it for the
gum-flappin'. Now, Doc, we want you to get that simmen into our women.
Then we'll let you out of here alive. If you won't do it, I can't
guarantee these women won't tear your head off, rather than see you
beat it outta here in that car o yours, with all this simmen and the
secret to how it gets used. Well, what do you say?"
"Sir," said Dr. Lord, and he gave the impression
of losing all strength, and will to argue, and he looked like a beaten
man. "Sir, you see me surrounded. I have chased a dream, since l945.
Since before that, if you want to know the truth, but that was in my
native land, and I never think about those days, and anyway, as I said
to the man at the State Department, when I had to answer all those
questions - and for what? for the privilege of bringing civilization
and knowledge to a nation of gum-chewers? - as I said to this pitiful
man at the State Department... science doesn't ask... science
doesn't..."
He paused to inhale, and it took on a withery
unhappy sound as the air rushed into his lungs. But the people standing
around didn't feel any pity for him, or if they did, they didn't let it
show. The Doctor seemed to be trying to remember what he had been
saying. Then he said, "Oh, yes -- and so the point is, here we are,
nineteen whatever, and I have brought many children into the world --
one -- " (he flung his arm in my direction, and everyone glanced at me
for a moment) " -- stands here with us tonight. Reynold Stengrow."
They looked at me in a more serious way. The women
looked me up and down, as though trying to see if I had turned out all
right, despite the strange circumstances of my conception. But perhaps
I am wrong about that, considering how excited they were to have the
process tried on themselves. Maybe they were too far gone in their
dream of more perfect children, even to care for any evidence
concerning the Doctor's methods. I felt as though I were standing in a
spotlight, having come a long way to deliver a speech, but I had
forgotten the words to my speech. I felt somehow that I should have
been able to say something to these people, something that would do
them some good, and even have the sound of a thing that would do them
some good, so it would save me and them at the same time, and even Dr.
Lord, and Nurse Lilly, but I couldn't think of anything to say.
One of the men who had come down through the
ceiling grabbed me by the upper arm, and gave me a hard squeeze. "Feels
normal," he said, and then gave the Doctor a little involuntary look of
approval and respect. The guy with the knife stepped back, too.
Everyone seemed to catch, like a premonition, the sense of the
importance of this moment. They were actually standing with a boy who
had been created by artificial insemination. He had hair, features,
height, weight, and all things, as far as they could see, that you
might look for in a boy.
"How old are you, son?" asked the beautiful woman
with the blue eyes who had crawled through the window. I could see now,
as she dusted the dust off her flanks, that she wore one of those
cotton dresses with a pattern of tiny flowers on it, and she had
sneakers on and no socks.
"I'm seventeen, ma'am," I said.
The woman said, "Well, tell us, son, we're dyin' to hear about it, can't you see?"
I said "Tell you what, ma'am?"
"Why - how it feels - how it feels to be the way you are - unofficial seminated - you know -"
"Well," I said, "for a long time, I didn't know."
Those that could hear me, whispered what I had said to the ones behind
them, out across the lawn and on top of the roof. I felt better,
because the people really seemed interested in what I had to say, and
they didn't look like they wanted to kill me any more. Also, I kept
looking in that one woman's eyes, and their beauty, along with the fact
that they looked so interested, and even concerned, as though they had
seen me hit my head against a wall, gave me a way to go - they let me
calm down enough to answer her question -
A lot of the people were saying awww, because they
pitied me for not having been told I was artificially inseminated. The
woman asked me when I had found out, and I told her about the card
game. Then I told her I was looking for my True Dad, and that was what
had brought me to the house of the Doctor that night. Some of the men
settled down on the floor, and were leafing through the colorful
magazines. Other men crawled into the room, and some of the magazines
were passed out the door and the small window, to those who couldn't
get into the little room.
The beautiful woman took my hand, and held onto it
with both of hers, as I talked. She started to cry. I told her there
was nothing to cry about. I was perfectly happy, except for the
curiosity to learn the identity of my True Dad. Still, it didn't
satisfy her, and she seemed very sorry for me.
She said, "This is something we didn't think
about. Whether we're gonna tell these kids they're unofficial
seminated, or not. Now, this young man never was told, until it came
out in the most embarrassing way, and tore his family apart. But on the
other hand, if we tell these kids as soon as they're able to
understand, then they'll know right away they're better than their
daddies, like this one does - "
"I don't - " I started to protest, but she kept on
talking through the sounds I tried to make. "And they'll have lots of
problems, and they'll always be off looking for their seminator
daddies, and be a royal pain the behind, if my imagination's not
playing tricks on me. Then, they might not even want to support their
parents that raised them and cared for them, when their parents are
old, and need that support from the kids with all that scientific
know-how, and computer training and so on - "
And the Doctor, looking over at her from where he
had returned to the job of stuffing the cardboard boxes with files, a
ceramic frog, and a calendar with pictures of different breeds of dogs
on it, said, "Now, you're treading on an area known as thinking, dear
young woman - You others - listen to her! She is thinking clearly now!
Go home - leave well enough alone - these processes are not for you -
not yet - go home -"
But the men on the floor, some of whom were now
leaning on one elbow, with their hands propping up their heads, as they
read the magazines all around them on the floor, now began to get
angry. One man said, "Don't start a lot of talk-talk with this guy -
he'll hypnotize us and get away clean, and take the simmen with im."
Then the man, and a couple of the others, got up,
and approached the Doctor. The one who had the knife, put it under the
Doctor's chin, and said, "Now, Doc - start telling us how to get this
simmin stuff rollin' - "
The Doctor was very brave. He said, "For your own sakes - I can't do what you ask - please leave my home right now - "
But the man with the knife made an animal-type
noise, and raised his hand way above his head. The women screamed, one
way or another, and the men inhaled, or made a ratchety sound with
their throats. The man with the knife brought his arm down, with the
knife pointing toward the top of the Doctor's chest bone. I thought the
Doctor was a goner, but the force of the knife-man's movements caused
the rubbery, slick magazines under his feet to slip and slide in a lot
of different directions all at once. The man's feet slid with their
separate piles of periodicals, in opposite directions. They slid out to
his sides, and the man was split at the crotch. Because of this his
knife missed Dr. Lord, and he drove it through a red headline on an old
issue of Cavalier. ("The Aztec Love Goddess Expedition to
Hell.") He followed the knife down, and landed on the point of his
chin, at the Doctor's feet. Blood from the man's nose flowed over a
glossy picture of a naked blonde woman looking at us over her right
shoulder from the balcony of an apartment in a place that seemed it
might be south of L.A., along the coast somewhere. The woman had her
hand under her breast, and she was holding it up, smiling, until the
blood covered her face. Another man made a dive for the Doctor. But
this second man also had his feet pulled out from under him by the
frictionless texture of the covers of the pornographic (although, who
can define pornography?) magazines.
As the second man went down, the Doctor reached
down to the floor and picked up an electrical outlet, attached to a
thick black wire. I could see it was attached at the other end to one
of the large freezer-refrigerators, one that had a green glass bulb at
the top, about the size of a basketball, glowing yellow-green, and
having a sort of fluid consistency inside its surface. Then, pulling
another wire from a place under the black table, the Doctor attached
the two wires through a plug and socket mechanism. There was a small
red button on the side of the plug end of the wire from under the
table, and the Doctor put the side of his thumb alongside this red
button. He called out, "Nurse Lilly, I cannot see you, but if you can
hear my voice, respond please -" and Nurse Lilly, behind me now, and on
the floor herself, gave forth with a muffled sound. The Doctor
recognized it as her voice. He said, "I am forced to go to Plan B..."
in a tentative, but loud way. The Doctor's attackers were struggling to
regain their upright positions. Others stood by with sheepish
expressions on their faces, some of them pushing the toes of their
sneakers through the porno lilly-pads, looking for things to look at.
"I understand, Doctor," said Nurse Lilly. "It can't be helped."
"And, are you ready, Nurse Lilly?"
"Ready, Doctor - I remember every step - " said Nurse Lilly -
And hearing that, Doctor Lord may have looked at
me for the briefest of moments, or he may not have, but he looked
around, the way men do in the movies when they are about to die. Then,
raising his face to the ceiling, and saying, "I have done nothing to
them," he pushed the side of his thumb upward until it was pressing
flat down against the red button, and when it got to the position where
you heard a tiny, tinny click, the lights went out. A moment later, the
refrigerator with the green bulb at the top exploded.
Red, yellow, black, white. That's all I remember
of the explosion, all I really noticed at the time... That, and the
impression of compressed light, bursting around the outline of the
refrigerator door. Then, the impact of something hard and wide across
my chest. The force of this object, the identity of which I have never
been able to learn, along with the expansion of the air in the room
according to the laws of gases, threw me across the room, through the
paper thin walls, into a blue bathroom with Spanish tiles on the walls
in the shape of Aztec faces, with their tongues stuck out, and down. I
was wedged into the sink, with my legs hanging over the edge. I still
held the big ledger book in my hands. The force of the explosion had
put a gash in its cover.
I got myself out of the sink, without letting go
of the book. I stood, at first bracing myself against the sink to avoid
falling. When I had the strength, I searched my body for injuries, and
found none, except for a couple of tender spots, one in the center of
my chest. Then, still holding the precious ledger, I exited the
bathroom into the long corridor by which I had come to the
refrigerator-room a few minutes earlier.
I looked into the refrigerator-room. The doctor's
body was face-down on the floor, not moving. Nurse Lilly was swinging a
broom at the men and women who filled the room, as she made her way
through their dazed, or preoccupied forms. No one tried to stop her.
They were like sleep-walkers in the dust. One man had a rolled up
girlie magazine coming out of his mouth. The beautiful woman in the
blue dress with the little flowers on it, sat up and wiped her forehead
with her forearm. At first, I thought she wanted to fall back down to
the softish surface of magazines spread out beneath her on the floor,
but she shook her head and forced herself to stand up. She helped
herself up with her hands.
She looked out through the back of the room, to an
area of the back yard that was now covered with the debris of the
room's wall, as well as thousands of pages of manila files, old
photocopies of documents, black with white lettering, the
still-ripe-looking pages of the magazines, an exploded chair, and two
or three men's bodies, who may have been dead, I didn't know - and she
evidently saw there what she was looking for.
"There it is!" she screamed, and staggered out
through the hole in the Doctor's house, to the place where broken test
tube glass was glinting in the moonlight, and the searchlights. Another
woman saw where the woman in the blue dress was heading, and she took
up the cry -- "There it is - the simmin -" she said - "The simmin's
over here - " The younger women converged on the test tube fragments
with a respectful but playful look in their eyes --
Some of the men were pointing at me. I could see
them over the bent backs of the women. I turned and ran down the
corridor, to escape.
The men didn't follow me. I had thought they
would. After a while, I turned and saw the yard scene from a further
distance. The women, crowding together, were trying to salvage what
they could of the test tubes. They poured the contents of the broken
test tubes into fruit and jelly jars that were brought to them by other
women. The men were hanging back from the center of the action, passing
a bottle of whiskey back and forth.
I crawled low up to the driver's side of my car,
so as not to be seen, and opened the door and crawled like a snake into
the seat. I threw the ledger onto the front seat, and put the key in
the ignition from an angle I had never seen before. I pushed down on
the gas pedal with my hand, and then with my knee, as I changed
positions, and the car rolled away from the Doctor's house.
I was covered with white dust when I finally sat
upright in the seat, and pulled the door closed, and drove normally
onto another dark street, then another, then into the peaceful glow of
Burbank Avenue - and there were lights in the Luther Burbank VFW - and
there were clear lights all the way to Barham Boulevard, like the
lights at a night ball game... I felt good... You'd think after the
explosion, I might not have, but I did.
My Uneventful Escape
I drove directly back to Santa
Monica, to my parents' condo, which I no longer thought of as my home,
thanks to the pride that was in me. Possibly this pride is the legacy
of my True Dad. Anyway, when I got to the condo building, I had to
circle the block a couple of times, to find a parking space. About the
second or third time around, I began to resent the fact that my
"father," Mr. Stengrow, had never allotted me a parking space in our
basement. He and my mother had their cars there, and there were two or
three spaces available, because a couple of the condo owners were too
old to drive, but my father had never thought it was worth paying the
owners' association an extra hundred dollars a month so I could put my
car somewhere secure and covered. Before I found a space, I realized I
didn't want to go into our condo that night. I didn't want to see my
parents, or tell them what had happened. I just wanted to be alone with
the ledger book. So I drove down to the beach parking lot on Navy
Street, and parked facing the ocean. There were some abandoned cars
there, and some vans with people living in them. Also, one of those old
Volkswagen buses with a mural painted on it, from which I could hear
the sounds of old music.
I sat in my car, with the interior light on, and I
looked at the book I had taken from Doctor Lord's house. It was the
first chance I had had since the explosion.
The pages smelled old and had none of the sharp
smell of new paper, but the smell of dark dirt mixed with sand, inhaled
under the warm sun. I liked the smell. In between the first and second
leaves of lined dried-out paper there was a photograph of a little
blond girl, sitting in front of a snow-capped mountain, on a stone
bench. On the back, it said "Connie." On the first page was written:
"The Property of Dr. I. Lord," and then the Doctor's address, Burbank,
California, U.S.A. And under that was the date: January - December,
l973. And under that were the words: "Record of Donors and Recipients."
And under that were the words: "If Found, Please Lose."
The book was an alphabetical list of the names of
men. Each man's name was at the top of a single page, written in ink,
black or blue or green. Under the name was a record of the man's age, a
brief physical description of the man - for example: "black hair, green
eyes, 5'4", mesomorph -" followed by some phrase indicating the man's
profession, field of study (or intended field), and an estimation
(presumably by Dr. Lord himself) of this particular donor's level of
intelligence. Level of genius, I should say, because none of the men in
the book was said to be anything less than a genius, a master, a future
pioneer, or something equally awe-inspiring, in his specific job or
course of study.
Under these few sentences, most of the page would
be empty, except for a series of dates: month-day-year, with each date
followed by the letter "M" or the letter "F". Across the page from this
brief entry, would be the name of a city and state, or in a few cases,
a province in Canada. There was also a parenthetical underneath the
city and state, which would say, "See Book A11," or "See Book V34."
I went through the book, page by page, and circled
all the birth dates that were the same as mine. I went back again, and
rechecked. I had them all. There were six. Then, I read the names of
the donors who had donated the seed that had gone on to become those
six births... Jonathan Elam, six foot two inches, blonde, slim;
Business Administration - "Best mind for math I've seen since
Canter..." David Peterson - even taller, at six three, but with red
hair and kind of fat - a big fat physical engineer; Dwight Hoff - a
squat, light NASA scientist; Abraham Steinstein; George Faroun (a
strange notation appeared under his name. It said: "As for this Donor,
I may have to apologize to someone at a later date - couldn't exclude
George, owing to his rhetorical brilliance/ logic of his thought");
Michael Popper - about whom more later - the six. They, who might be my
True Dad.
I sat in the car and studied their descriptions,
matching my own qualities to those of my possible fathers. I had this
one's height, that one's coloring, another one's interest in nothing in
particular. It gave me pleasure to imagine that I was the son of each
of them, first one, then the next, until I had imagined myself as the
son of each one.
I had my hand on the open pages of the book. The
interior light was still on in my car, but I didn't notice it, as I
drifted off to sleep, thinking of scenes from several lives. All the
lives were mine, but in each of them, I had a different family, and
different surroundings. In each life I was happy in a different way.
The words I said to others sounded the same, but they meant different
things, because they were said in the six different worlds, to the
faces that inhabited each one. All night, I dreamed of these worlds. I
will not bother to describe the fragments I can still remember of these
dreams, except to say that by the end of my long sleep, I was convinced
that my father, for some reason, needed me to find him. I woke with a
sense of urgency, as though I had been called by my mother, to wake up
for a test at school. I knew that one of the worlds in my dream was
incomplete because I was not yet in it. My head was on the back of the
seat, and my neck felt broken. I heard the sharp sound of a knuckle on
my window.
"I need I need I need a weed," said a grey,
watery-eyed 40 to 50 year old man, when I rolled down the window. Then,
he smiled at me. His teeth were broken. His lips were cracked and
bleeding. He leaned in his brown overcoat on the door of my car. I got
the pack of Marlboros out of my glove compartment that I kept in there
for when I went to dances, and I needed something to hold onto as I
tried to stand upright in a room full of women. I shook it out and gave
him two cigarettes. He said, "Hoo! Two for the price of one," and
kissed the two cigarettes, and winked at me, before pushing himself
away from my car door, and heading toward the ocean. He lit one of the
cigarettes with a plastic lighter, and inhaled it deeply. He coughed,
over and over, and used the coughing to say a few words to someone who
wasn't there, words bitter and long-suffering, as though this person
who wasn't there had kicked him high on his back, and made his coughing
jag start.
I slid lower in my seat, to give my head the
support of the seat-back for a few seconds, so I could gradually bend
my neck back into motion. Then, I got out of the car, got a bathing
suit out of the trunk, and changed beside the car. I ran across the
bike path, onto the sand, and ran diagonally toward the ocean, veering
away from the ocean enough so I could run until my legs got tired.
I jumped into the ocean and swam for a few
minutes. I laid out on the sand until I was dry. The sun by then was
coming through the morning fog. I went back to the car, and got some
money. I went to the Indian grocery a half a block inland, on Dudley
Avenue, and got a container of milk and two cruellers. I was going back
to the car, intending to drive to my home, so I could change my clothes
and go to school. But when I got to Main Street I saw a metal newspaper
machine with a picture of Dr. Lord looking at me from the top
newspaper. The picture had been taken twenty years ago, according to
the caption, but he looked exactly as he had the night before. I put a
quarter into the vending machine, and despite my agitation, and the
million images going off in my head, still had enough emotional energy
in me to feel gratified when the rickety machine actually opened, and I
was able to pull a paper out. Police were speculating, the paper said,
that one of the doctor's experiments had led to the explosion at his
home-and-lab. So far, the remains of seven people, all neighbors of Dr.
Lord's, had been identified. Dr. Lord's body, and the body of Nurse
Lilly, had not yet been positively identified, but the police were
still sifting through the rubble and feared the worst.
I thought of the people I had seen the night
before. The Doctor, Nurse Lilly, their neighbors. The newspaper
referred to a "thin layer of broken glass" covering the area of the
ruined house. A police lieutenant, interviewed for the article,
complained that the neighbors seemed to know a lot more about the night
of the explosion, and the goings-on in Dr. Lord's house, than they were
letting on.
He also said investigators were looking for a
young man who had been seen entering the Doctor's house a few minutes
before the explosion, and who had been seen emerging from the black and
red smoke, and running to a black Pontiac Le Mans with a white rag top.
This individual was not a yet a suspect, said the lieutenant., but most
certainly knew something about what had happened. Those same neighbors
who had been so unhelpful about everything else in the investigation
were more than willing to describe me and my car, (which descriptions,
inaccurate and unflattering one and all, the lieutenant passed on to
the reporter) and to ascribe to my face a "crazed look," and to talk
about me in ways that would lead people to dislike and distrust me. I
looked over my shoulder. I looked up and down the street. A man was
walking into an alley, one half block to my north, and the side of his
face was to me, but I had the feeling he had just been looking at me,
and turned when I looked up from the paper. I realized I had to get out
of L.A. I went back to my car, and read the rest of the article, as I
drank my beverage. I continued reading the paper, to put off the
necessity of serious thought.
Dr. Lord was called an eccentric scientist. He was
said to be the heir to a huge fortune, left to him by his mother, who
was a member of the royal family of an Eastern European nation (which
shall remain nameless). The Lord family had escaped to Germany when the
Communists took over their country. There were still, I read, many
citizens and exiles of that country who looked to Dr. Lord's mother,
and when she died, to Dr. Lord himself, as the only legitimate rulers
of their nation. However, Dr. Lord had never shown much interest in
politics, being obsessed with his scientific experiments, about which
very little was known.
He had no survivors. When I read this, I wondered
if I might consider myself a survivor of his. After all, I thought,
staring at the lifeguard tower a hundred yards in front of my car, in a
way, he had been my father.
But when I had that thought, it triggered once
again in me the idea of finding my True Dad. I picked up the ledger
book, which had fallen to the car rug. I put it on my lap, under the
newspaper. I kept my right hand on the ledger, while my left hand
rested on the newspaper, my arm and hand encircling from above the
photo of the Doctor. I closed my eyes and said in a whisper, though
there was no one near enough to hear, "Rest in peace, Dr. Lord. Thank
you for bringing me into the world."
When I opened my eyes, I saw in the rear-view
mirror that a police car was just entering the parking lot. It was
moving slowly, past the few abandoned hulks of cars, past the vans and
the painted bus. The cops were turning their heads as they passed each
vehicle, to look into all the windows. I fumbled with the pages of the
fat newspaper, attempting to fold them. Finally, I just shoved them
onto the rug. I nervously ran my hand along the top cover of the
ledger, pressing down on its pebble-like surface. The police car passed
behind my car and the cop on the passenger side looked me over
carefully. But the car didn't stop. It rolled slowly down to the far
southern side of the lot, then back through, in front of the vans
again, and then out onto Navy. They probably weren't looking for me on
the Westside yet. Or, it occurred to me, even if my description was
given to them this morning, before they left the station house, and the
description of my car, these cops might not connect me with the
description, because they already knew me. They were the police of my
neighborhood, after all, and had probably been watching me, around
school, or around the bowling alley, or when I had my paper route, for
the Outlook, for many years. So even though I hadn't recognized
them, they might well have known who I was, someone who, once they saw
him, merited no further thought. Still, I knew that one day, the police
would stop me, and I would be taken in for questioning. After that, I
might be arrested, for the murder of Doctor Lord, and Nurse Lilly, and
the others. If that happened, I thought, my story would be in the
newspapers, and everyone would know the story of my parentage. In order
to protect my mother and father (Mr. Stengrow) I could not allow myself
to be arrested. I knew I had to leave the city of my birth, that I had
never left before, within a few minutes.
I went back to my parents' condo, and went in
through the basement door to my room. I think they were asleep. Anyway,
I didn't want to talk to them. I got some of my things together. I put
some of the things in a nylon suitcase, some more in a duffel bag,
which I used for laundry. This green duffel bag had been my father's
during the Viet Nam war. I mean, it had been Mr. Stengrow's, and it had
his name on the white address tag under the thick cellophane sheet.
Even as I zipped it, to take it with me, I knew that in a way the thing
I had loved most about this duffel bag, I had already lost, for all
time. That connection I had felt, to the entire history of the world,
through thoughts of my father in Viet Nam, in that losing war, and with
his friends, performing that extreme act of citizenship - I had taken
so much glory from the thoughts of his deeds, the deeds he did before I
was born, the loyalty and courage he had shown. He was my pride, and
now my pride was gone. Instead, I could only lean on my own mediocre
history of accomplishments. That army that had always stood behind me,
and the armies behind that one, they were gone now. As I touched the
duffel bag, I thought of all the things my father had done for me, the
excuses he had made for me, the things he had paid for that defined me
now, my education, even the straightness of my teeth. Still, I didn't
want to talk to him or my mother, and I didn't want to see them before
I left. I wanted to go out on my own, with the notebook I had found at
Dr. Lord's house, and find my true father. After I did that, I thought,
I would be able to return to the house of my parents.
How could I have been such a fool? Which
chromosome on which strand of DNA, from which biological parent led me
to be such a moron? Please step forward.
I decided to keep the name of Mr. Stengrow, and
call myself Reynold Stengrow, as I had been called as long as I could
remember, in honor of Mr. Stengrow. I was alive because of his
sacrifice, and his efforts, and I knew that I had only reached the age
of seventeen, because Mr. Stengrow had refrained from killing me. After
all, he could have smothered me with a pillow when I was asleep. Either
when I was an infant or more recently. He had known he wasn't my
father, even if I had not. In that way, he had had the advantage over
me year after year, but still, I was alive.
Before I left, I looked up at the ceiling of the
basement, in my mind's eye seeing the floor of the upper rooms, to see
my father, Mr. Stengrow, mentally, and I silently thanked him for
letting me live and for feeding me, and for hiding his anger from me
for all those years. Now, I knew I must find my True Dad, but that
would only bring me closer to Mr. Stengrow, my false Dad, because I
would be able to return, and need nothing from him (because I would
have my True Dad, and my true identity, and I would be able to face him
as an equal) and I would be able to deal with him in a more dignified,
more loving way than had been possible up to now.
I thought of my mother. It was too painful. I
wanted to see her before I left, but I did not dare. I kissed my hand,
and traveled the ceiling with it, and said, "I love you, Mom." Then I
took my radio and left.
I looked over my shoulder as I went back to my
car, and looked at the old building. I didn't know how far away I would
have to go or when I would be able to return there, so I stopped at the
corner, and looked at the dew starting to bake off the old boards, the
old lawn, and I listened to the sputtering of the electric wires that
ran over our street.
I knew I should head out onto Wilshire, and then
drive down to the Pacific Coast Highway, and start driving north or
south, but first, I drove around past my old schools, and some of the
streets where I used to play. Where I used to play with Heavy and
Baker, when we used to skateboard from the Santa Monica Mall to the
bluffs, up past San Vincente, and those low trees, rolling down the
hill to the Pacific Coast Hwy in the pitch black four a.m. cold air.
Then, I drove to the ocean, and headed north. I
had forty seven dollars and three cents. I had some clothes in the
backpack which I had been using to carry my books to school for the
past three years or so. I had my radio. I had my toothbrush. I'm just
trying to be back there, and remember every detail, for the calories of
warmth in every item, that it can still send to me, even at this great
distance, even to the place where I am now. I had that plastic case for
my student I.D., and library card, and social security card. I had a
receipt from the purchase of my telescope. I did not have my telescope,
nor have I ever bought another one - even when I started making money,
that huge amount of money I was making from tricking the public, even
then I didn't buy myself another telescope. I still say hello to the
stars, but I do it from between the buildings, or under half-hiding
branches out in the country, but I still say hello, and I still use the
stars to travel through, into past times, and future times, as I always
have done. I lie on the ground, and look at a star, and I imagine that
the beam of my sight is bouncing off the star, like the path of the
billiard shot, off the cushion, and it bounces into another time and
another country, and I look down on scenes full of people I have never
seen, wearing clothes unlike the clothes I have seen, in life or in
pictures, and sometimes have watched these scenes until I fell asleep.
But when I was fleeing, that morning, with the ocean speeding by
beneath my left elbow, I didn't have time to think about the stars. And
then, in later years, even after I became rich, the stars themselves,
in some way that I couldn't describe, but had the sensation of, were
telling me not to buy another telescope. I think they wanted to keep me
at a distance.
"French Fries on a Stove"
I drove up the coast, and then
inland. I saw a sign that said Redbird, and another that said College
Avenue. I had been thinking of applying to Redbird College, before my
life had been so totally changed. I had been there for an interview
with an Admissions Officer the year before. I thought it might be as
good a place to hide as any other.
I soon found myself in front of the Administration
Building at the center of the campus. It is the only really old
building of the College. The other buildings are mostly yellow and
white, covered in ceramic tiles, built in the early 1960's, but the
Administration Building was originally built as a hotel, in the 19th
century, when Redbird was a gold-mining boomtown. It is four stories
high and covered with redwood siding.
I felt miserable, watching all the college
students walking in and out of the building, and greeting one another
beneath the leafy trees. I knew I would never be a part of their
carefree world. I got out of my car and went into the building, where
it was cool and smelled of sun-warmed floor wax.
I had to get a job, unless I wanted to become a
panhandler. I also needed a place to stay, in Redbird. If I continued
north, I would only reach a large city, and if I drove east, I would be
in the desert. I liked the air in Redbird. It was small, so I felt I
could handle it.
I saw a bulletin board, with jobs and apartments
advertised on index cards. I wrote down the details and phone numbers
for all of the jobs, and the cheapest apartments, or guest-rooms.
I went to the basement of the building, passing
the students and teacher of a drama class on the stairway. They were
coming up from the small theatre in the basement. There was an
unguarded telephone, attached to the wall behind the stage, and I was
able to make free calls to all the numbers I had copied onto my piece
of paper.
Reasoning that I would not need a place to stay if
I couldn't find a job here, I first called all the employment
possibilities. A job at a copy shop - filled just that morning - a job
at a pet grooming establishment, pizza delivery person, companion for
an elderly invalid, tutor in tennis, salesman of magazine
subscriptions, clerk in a comic book store - all of which were
unavailable, for one reason or another. This left me with one remaining
hope, the card that had said:
YOUNG PERSON REQUIRED,
LAB ASSISTANT
FOR IMPORTANT PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT
$6 PER HOUR
CALL DR. CROSSE
396-1194 AFTER 6PM
I had four or five hours to 6 PM. I walked around
the campus and the town. I could have gotten back in my car, and
continued north, even leaving California, going through Oregon and
Washington, escaping to Canada. But the beauty of the campus, the
freshness of the air, and, to be perfectly honest about it, the
loveliness of the female students, in their pleated skirts and fat
white sneakers, or their torn jeans and thin t-shirts, made me want to
be a part of the place, to be one of the men they knew by name, and
spoke to. Does this mean that later, when I fell in love with Daphne,
the moment I saw her, in her father's garden, I might have fallen in
love with any female of approximately my age? I don't think so. It is
just as possible that I had such a heightened appreciation of the
beauty of women, on that particular day, because the Universe, (or
Spirit of the Universe) was preparing me, gathering my attention in
gradual pulling motions, to those emotions and thoughts whose only
possible conclusion, I now have the perspective to realize, was my
first sighting of Daphne. During that day, however, I only knew I
didn't want to leave the town of Redbird.
I went to the small mall market and bought a
carton of milk and a package of hamburger rolls. I parked the car on a
dirt plateau in some canyon, got out and ate the rolls and drank the
milk staring into the purple shadow growing over the canyon like a
flood, and down toward the invisible sea. I got back in the car when I
was through with my meal.
I went to the college research library and read
until six. Then, I went to the front desk and asked the Librarian, a
middle-aged man with a blue suit on, and a head of slick grey-yellow
hair, to help me find a certain back issue of Telescope Monthly.
When he went into the large room behind the Librarians' Area, where the
back issues of magazines were kept, all on tan metal shelves, I
carefully slid the telephone across the desk, until it and myself were
out of sight of the Librarian. I called the number for Dr. Crosse.
"Hello," said the voice of a man with food in his mouth.
I said, "Hello. Is this Doctor Crosse?"
"It is," said the man with food in his mouth, and he went back to chewing.
I said, "I'm calling about the ad you had on the bulletin board in the Administration Building."
"What's your name?" he asked.
I had not remembered to supply myself with a false
name, although it was obvious that sooner or later the police would
connect me to the events at Dr. Lord's, and my own name would be
useless to me.
Now, I said, "Elam," taking the name of one of the
six men who might or might not turn out to be my biological father.
"Jack Elam."
"Are you a Redbird student?" asked the man, and
then evidently drank something from a wide-mouthed glass or pitcher,
that hid most of his face from the mouthpiece of his phone.
"No, sir," I said.
"Well, do you live here in town?" asked Dr. Crosse.
"Actually, sir, I just got here. If I can find a job, I do plan to stay in the area. Yes, sir."
"Do you have a car?"
"Yes, sir."
He gave me directions to his house, amid the sounds of what may have been a vigorous after-dinner flossing.
I drove along a narrow road that ran around and
around through the steep mountains. The sun was almost down, but it
still flashed out at me from between cliffs, momentarily blinding me
now and then. Finally, (after a hand-lettered sign on cardboard that I
almost missed, that said, "public road ends, make u-turn at earliest
convenience,") the public road ended at a set of high gates, made of
white boards about two stories high, with wooden cutouts at the top of
each gate. On the left gate was a cowboy, on a bucking bronco. On the
right gate was an Indian, riding flat out on his pony, while holding an
arrow high in one hand. Beyond the gates, the road continued, but it
was no longer paved. It was made of white gravel, and grass grew
through the stones in small clumps.
There was a metal post standing in the road, with
a red box at the top of it. There was a white button and a speaker on
the box. I pushed the button. I expected to hear a voice come through
the speaker, but instead, the gates just swung back, slowly. When they
were far enough apart, I drove through them. About a hundred yards up a
winding road, past meadows where horses stood in the evening's
colorless air, was a huge old ranch house - all white with a blue roof
- and surrounded by barns and outbuildings, all painted the same white
with the same blue roofs. It took a moment for me to realize that the
rooftops were made of stainless steel. In the front yard, there was a
neglected pond that seemed to have reddish-white hair over most of it's
surface. Standing to the left of the pond was a tall pole with an
American flag whipping softly in the wind.
Running the width of the front of the house was a
wide porch, with several groups of furniture on it. I went up the four
steps to the porch. I remember the triangle hanging from the porch
roof, with the metal pipe hanging next to it. Pointed at the triangle
from a few inches away was a video camera, that moved slowly from side
to side, covering that part of the porch near the front door, and
keeping an eye on the triangle, as though the ranch had been plagued by
some criminal who liked to sneak up onto the porch and ring the
triangle, summoning everyone to dinner.
I knocked on the door, and waited. I didn't know
if I should try to look into the house through the narrow bands of
clear glass around the ovals of frosted glass set in each of the double
doors at approximately eye level. I thought it might be rude. On the
other hand, it might be rude to stand back and spend my time swivelling
to look at the mountains and meadows, beautiful as they might have
been. I wanted to make a good first impression, because I wanted the
job.
The door opened, with no tell-tale squeak or
squeal. Standing there was a man of approximately, I didn't know -
forty? fifty? He was about six foot one or two, or five foot eleven. He
had thick brown hair with a good amount of gray in it. It was parted on
the side and the front of it kept falling in front of his eyes, and he
had to drag it back with his left hand, back to the top of his head,
where it waved and wavered for a while before crashing back over his
forehead to cover his eyes once again. His eyes were what you would
have to call "merry," unless, under extreme torture by someone who
denied your right to use that word, you were forced to choose an
appropriate alternative and that would have to be "miserable." Many
years later I was to realize that these eyes of merry misery are very
often the result, or at least the sure sign, of a lifetime spent in the
faithful service of Science. On that evening I just thought he had
gotten dust in his eyes, or smoke from the cigar he held in his right
hand.
"Jack Elam," he said. He transferred the four
inches of cigar to his left hand and stuck out his right. We shook
hands. "Yes, sir," I said.
"I'm Dr. Crosse," he said, and then his head
tilted slightly to the left as he lifted one corner of his mouth in a
self-deprecating manner, as though to say that all the wonderful things
I had heard about him were not necessarily true. This had the effect of
making me feel as though I had heard many praises of him, though I had
never heard his name spoken before. He stood away from the door and
ushered me into the house, saying, "Come on in, Jack. Let's shoot the
shit."
I entered the house. It took a moment for my eyes
to adjust to the darkness. Then I saw that we were going through a set
of doubled-doors, with the Doctor's hand guiding me by the elbow,
entering a cavernous living room. It had a floor made of one massive
stone. It was the weathered surface of a boulder or meteorite, that
looked like it had been in the sun for thousands of years.
"Is that the floor?" I said. It made you feel like
you wanted to reach down and touch it. Actually, I was feeling bad,
because I thought that someone had sliced the top off of a magnificent
boulder, probably somewhere in Africa, to bring its smoothe lid all the
way over to California, to be the floor in this rich doctor's house.
He stopped, took his hand from my elbow, and held
it poised over the floor like the hand of an angel in an Italian
painting. He said, "The house was built directly on the existing rock.
My father never let anyone so much as put a nail in this rock. When he
was building this place, the contractor told him, 'Dr. Crosse, at least
let me put grooves in the rock, to anchor the timbers.' But my father
told him to lay the timbers loose on the existing contour, and fill the
spaces with mud."
Dr. Crosse bent down and ran his hands over the
smooth rock, just as I had wanted to do. "Feel how cool it is," he
said. I bent and touched the rock. It was like a rock in the middle of
a flowing stream. Like glass, but secure, glass you can lean on.
Now, I felt differently about it. Better, because
the rock had not been disturbed and brought here from somewhere else.
But also, worse, because I felt I was standing on the head of a giant.
As I scanned the surface around me, it was like the forehead and brows
of an elephant, and the groups of furniture around the room were like
tufts of hair coming out of the elephant's head. I wasn't sure I was
standing in a place that might not uncomfortably touch on a nerve or
soft spot in the brain of that gigantic elephant on whose top surface
we were walking.
There were slight hills and valleys in the floor,
and the red Turkish rugs that were laid down here and there, making a
path into and through the living room, were allowed to lie unflat,
following the curvature of the floors, even if their corners stuck up
into the air, or they were permanently creased by the positions they
had to assume. There were groupings of furniture in four separate
places in the living room, each with its own fireplace and television
set, making the place look like the lobby of a hotel. We went to the
dining room, with its long window looking out on a garden. I could see
through the window that the contour of the rock continued a few feet
beyond the house. After that, grass grew, and in the grassy area was a
small vegetable garden, marked out with wooden stakes.
I saw a blur of motion in the garden, as someone
turned and went out of sight, behind a tree. All I could see of the
person who had been there was the heel of her foot, and the back of her
ankle. "My daughter," said Dr. Crosse, with a movement toward the
window through which we had both perceived that golden blur, as though
he was introducing us. Then, he went to the side wall, to a table
covered with plates, silverware and silver-topped serving dishes. He
lifted one of the silver tops and laid it on its back on the white
tablecloth. He spooned some huevos rancheros onto a plate, told me to
get some for myself, and sat down at the table to eat. I went to the
serving table and took some eggs. I sat down to the Doctor's right,
facing the window. I dug into the food.
The Doc chewed on a tortilla covered with hot sauce for a while, then took a swallow of beer.
He said, "I was expecting to hire a psych major."
I sat there. He said, "You have to live here. You
have your own car, which is good, but you'd still have to be here 24
hours, six days a week."
"What is the job, exactly? It said 'assistant'."
He said I would have to help him with his
experiments, when he was too busy with teaching, or with his other
experiments. He said he was almost continually running tests on various
subjects, to test aspects of the human mind. "You might be able to pick
up some extra cash acting as a subject now and then," he said with a
hopeful smile.
"What kind of experiments are they?" I asked, employing my own interpretation of a hopeful smile.
"All kinds," said Dr. Crosse, swallowing about half his glass of beer. "You'll see one tonight.
"Most of the time, I'll expect you to help around
the house, the yard. Shopping. My daughter has all her schooling here
at the ranch, and one or two of her tutors don't drive, so you'll have
to pick them up at the bus stop on Ocean, bring em back there. Do you
cook?"
"No, sir," I said.
"We have a cook, Maria, but she's off two days a week."
"I can make french fries on a stove," I suddenly remembered.
"The job is yours, if you want it," said Doctor Crosse.
At this moment, there was a knock on the door. The
Doctor called out, 'Come on in!' then stood up and walked toward the
front door, shouting again. The door opened, and a group of men came
in. Five or six. Surrounding a tall quiet woman with black hair, and a
scarf over her head. One of the scientists stood at either side of her,
holding her arms. Dr. Crosse greeted the woman, Mrs. Welby, and asked
if she was feeling better. She smiled, very exhausted, and said she
felt a lot more relaxed. Dr. Crosse said, "Who knows? If all goes well
tonight, we might be able to take you off drugs entirely,"
"I hope so," said Mrs. Welby. Dr. Crosse patted her on the back. He said, "First, everybody eat. Then, we'll go out there."
All of the scientists, and Mrs. Welby, ate in
impromptu groupings around the table. Then, we all went out the kitchen
door, to what looked like a barn.
Inside, the former barn had been refurbished as a
modern, steel and formica laboratory, with an acoustical ceiling and
walls paneled in golden wood. The room was divided into two halves, by
a wall of glass. We all sat on folding chairs. Dr. Crosse told me that
we could see through the glass, but the subject, on the other side,
could not see us. As he said this, the light went on in the other half
of the room, which had been dark up to now, and Mrs. Welby was sitting
there, in the middle of that part of the room, with two wires coming
out of the top of her head. Her hands were folded in her lap, her legs
were set solidly on the floor. On our side of the glass wall, one of
the scientists, (NOTE: I will not here reveal the identities of the
other men who were engaged, along with Dr. Crosse, in these scientific
studies. They have not done anything wrong - if, in fact, anyone has,
even Dr. Crosse, even me - but they would certainly be embarrassed to
be mentioned in these memoirs, without the opportunity to tell their
stories, each in his own way, in his own time. However, to assure
myself that somewhere there would be an accurate history of the ranch,
these names are all mentioned, in documents deposited by me with a law
firm in New York, to be opened and made public no sooner than 30 years
after my death), the scientist who had thought of this experiment,
sat at a small table set right against the glass wall. He fiddled with
a set of dials, and tabs that he moved up and down the table. He looked
at Mrs. Welby and gave her the OK sign. She gave him the thumbs up.
Dr. Crosse turned to me and said, "Mrs. Welby fell
off a horse eighteen months ago. Since then, she has been depressed.
Tried to kill herself twice. Responds to medication but complains she
isn't herself any more. The tranquilizers make her tired all the time,
she can't relate to her husband and kids. Her husband agrees. Dr.
--------- here (the scientist at the table), one of the most brilliant
students of the great Dr. Jose Delgado, out of Madrid, wondered if a
variation on Delgado's implanted electrode technique might give Mrs.
Welby a better way to control her moods than by using drugs."
Dr. Crosse went to a drawing on a blackboard, a
drawing of a brain, with two wires sticking out of it. The wires came
together in a little housing, that looked like a bullet, and that was
stuck into the center of the brain. "An electric current, sent through
the wires, through the electrode, to the right spot in the medulla,
should brighten anybody's day," said Dr. Crosse, to me, because
everyone else in the room already knew it. "The problem is, everyone's
spot is in a slightly different locale, and responds to a different
wattage, and more or less slips around so you don't really know when
you've got it, if I'm not getting it too far wrong, am I, Ernesto (not
the real first name of the scientist at the control panel)?"
"Si, senor," said Ernesto.
Dr. Crosse said, "So Ernesto is going to be
searching for that spot in the brain of Mrs. Welby, in the hopes we can
one day give her a little button to push whenever she feels down, and
it will cheer her up." All the other men nodded at Dr. Crosse's back.
"But first," said the Doctor, I'd like you to show this young man the
phenomenon we observed last week, Ernesto."
"But Doctor Crosse," said the man at the control panel, "would that really be fair to Mrs. Welby?"
"Of course it would!" Crosse said, swiping
backward to punch the blackboard as he spoke, "She's a member of the
human race, isn't she? She's a citizen of the twentieth century, isn't
she? She's already got the hole in the top of her cranium, and the wire
in place, hasn't she?"
"But she is a patient of mine, Dr. Crosse. She has
consented to an experimental procedure for one reason only, to improve
her health. The, the display, you ask for - that has no bearing on her
emotional condition whatsoever."
"Look, Ernesto," said Dr. Crosse, sitting down,
and settling back in one of the folding chairs, "I'm sure Mrs. Welby
would be thrilled to participate in a harmless demonstration to a
gathering of esteemed scientists, and would give her consent in a flash
if she knew about it."
"Which she doesn't."
"Which is what makes it an experiment," said Dr.
Crosse. "That, and the fact that all of her responses will be recorded
by that camera over there, and those heat meters over there, and the
computer under that knotty pine table over there, all paid for by me, I
hate to mention."
Ernesto shrugged, and hung his head over his
controls and jiggled on one of the wheels. He said into a microphone on
the table, "Injection number one." He then gave the date and the time,
and the strength of the shot, and the direction, given in map
co-ordinates. Finally, he gave a number indicating the depth at which
the injection had been fired into the brain, measuring in centimeters
from the top of the brain.
A split second after he said "injection number
one," Mrs. Welby turned around in her seat, and looked behind her, over
her left shoulder. After a moment or two, she turned again, to her
original position, seated squarely on the seat, facing forward.
Ernesto, speaking to me, because of the way he had
seen Dr. Crosse speak to me, explained, "When I throw this switch, she
can hear what we say in here. Up to now, she has not heard a word."
Then, he threw the switch, and said into the mike, "Mrs. Welby, why did
you turn around?"
She thought, and then said, "I felt a draft behind me."
Ernesto said, "You could have said something to me, if it was bothering you."
"No," she said, "it really wasn't important. When
I turned around, I saw the door was closed, and I didn't feel it any
more, so I didn't say anything."
Ernesto threw the switch controlling the
loudspeakers, so she couldn't hear him, and said "Injection number
two." Again, after he sent the current through her, she turned around
in her seat, and faced the back of the room. A second later, she turned
to face forward again.
Ernesto asked her, "Why did you turn around, Mrs. Welby?" She answered, "I thought I heard someone calling my name."
A few seconds later, Ernesto shot her another
jolt, and once again she turned in her seat, making almost exactly the
same motion for the third time, not too rapid, very little expression
on her face. Over and over he did it. Every time she would turn around.
Every time, he would ask her why she had turned around. Every time, she
had a reason. Every time she gave a reason, it was a different reason.
The current was the same strength, it went to the
same spot in her brain, and stimulated that spot in the same way, every
time. Therefore, she turned around in her seat, every time. So far, so
good. But the amazing thing is that when you asked her, a few seconds
after she turned around, why she made that motion, she had a
completely reasonable explanation for what she did. She heard her
cat... she thought something fell off a shelf behind her... she thought
there was a clock back there (there wasn't) and she wanted to know the
time... her neck was stiff and she wanted to stretch it... she was
doing a yoga position she had been taught twenty eight years ago in
South Carolina... the list was infinite. She always had another thing
she had heard, or another notion she had gotten in her head, to explain
that one motion, turning in her seat. A motion which we all knew had
been caused by a shot of electricity.
Ernesto shot Mrs. Welby with fifty-eight jolts of
electricity during this demonstration, in the space of about one hour
and ten minutes. After the first four or five times, there was a short
space in there when I thought it was funny, and I wanted to laugh, but
I didn't. Then, after the twentieth time or so, I didn't want to laugh
any more. I didn't feel comfortable, seeing what I was seeing. The way
Mrs. Welby turned every time, so simple and natural. That was the
weirdest thing about it. And the way she answered when Ernesto asked
her to explain why she had turned around. Again, natural and simple.
She never even remembered all the other times she had turned around.
She never even said, "Gee, it looks as though I've been doing quite a
bit of turning around here tonight." No, because every time, her mind
supplied her with a reason, a cogent, logical reason, for what she had
done.
"There's the rub, boys," said Dr. Crosse, when he
had told Ernesto he could stop what he was doing, and recalibrate the
electrode for the original medical purpose for which Mrs. Welby had
thought she was here - that is, to make her more cheerful - and while
Ernesto was doing that, Dr. Crosse and the others were discussing what
we had all just seen. "There's the rub. When we shoot her with the
jolt, and she turns around - fine. We're scientists and she's a
subject, and fine. But it's after that, when we ask her why she turned
around, and she gives us a reason. That reason is a memory, of
something that preceded her turning around, something that preceded the
jolt, but something that never happened. You get a stimulus you don't
feel, (which is the case with a brain implant - there is no feeling in
the brain at all) and since you didn't feel the stimulus, your mind
comes up with something else, to explain to itself what you have just
done. And you have to admit, when you hear the reasons, one after
another, supplied by Mrs. Welby to explain her turning around, that our
minds are no different from hers, when we think of any event in the
past - even the most recent past - even ten seconds ago - and try to
remember what made us do such and such a thing. Like Mrs. Welby, we may
just as easily be making it up, so we can explain our actions to
ourselves. In other words, we are separated at all times from the past
by a solid wall of ignorance. There is, in fact, nothing I can say with
certainty about any moment of my life before this very present one in
which I am now speaking. I may remember that eight seconds ago I was
also speaking, but how does that differ from Mrs. Welby's recollection
of all 72 of the things that never happened, each one of which she
remembers with utter clarity, that caused her to turn around in her
seat?
"We are in a state of exile from our own past.
Always. Every moment sends us once again into exile, and blocks the way
back, and we can never again see clearly the place we have just been
thrown out of. And this is done with the active participation of our
own brains, the gatekeepers that keep us out."
After this, Ernesto was ready with the controls,
and we watched for a while as he tried to find the pleasure center, or
the optimism center, or whatever it is, in Mrs. Welby's brain. That
night, he never found it. But I wasn't really paying attention, anyway.
I was thinking about the demonstration, the turning around. I was
trying to think of a way to catch the past, so I would be sure my
memories were accurate, and not lies told to me by my confused or
conspiring brain. And wondering, if the things I remember from a few
seconds ago are so susceptible to being total fabrications, what is not susceptible to being a total fabrication? What I see and hear? Ha! What I believe with all my heart? Double ha!
After the other scientists and Mrs. Welby had
gone, Dr. Crosse asked me where I was staying in town. I told him I had
been planning to sleep in the car, or on the beach. He took me to a
room in the main house, and said it was mine. He said I would get two
hundred dollars a week, which I thought was very generous, and he took
a wad of bills out of his side pocket and peeled off three hundreds and
two fifties. He said it was an advance. He said he would tell me more
about the various jobs he needed done, tomorrow.
I liked the room, which had a picture of an Indian
family in front of their tee-pee on one wall, and a lamp with a
spinning shade, with a picture of a train on it, and the headlight and
smoke from the engine kept moving all night, giving the room a good
feeling. Still, I slept in my clothes, in response to the flood of new
impressions that had washed over me since I had left my parents' condo
in Santa Monica. No, since before then - since I had learned the
terrible secret of my birth.
In a way I could not explain, Mrs. Welby and myself were the same.
I dreamt of a garden, where I was walking naked,
listening to a disembodied voice. The voice came through the branches
of the trees, from high above my head. The path was deeply shaded, and
my footsteps gobbled it up at an incredible rate of speed. I came down
to a lake, and stood knee-high in one of the side-pools. I was trying
to catch frogs. They popped out of the water, over my outstretched
hands, and back into the water, on the other side of me. I couldn't
catch one. They bounced around in all directions, even landing on the
top of my head, or resting for a moment on my shoulders, but I couldn't
get my hands around fast enough even to touch one. I got very tired,
and I fell into the water. I was sitting in the mud, but my back still
hurt, because I had to stretch in every direction, after the frogs. I
didn't give up, until the sun was completely down, and far away the
screen of a drive-in theatre suddenly lit up the sky. Then (I think) I
forgot the frogs, and the rest of the dream was the movie on that
screen. In it, I met Dr. Lord, and he took me to see my True Dad, who
looked a lot like the father on "My Three Sons." When we shook hands, I
saw that we were on a platform, overlooking a city park, and millions
were watching us, cheering.
Embeds
In the morning, I changed into my
other clothes, which I got from the duffel bag. I went downstairs to
the big dining room, and had eggs and waffles from under the silver
lids. No one else was there. It was about six a.m. I found a note from
Dr. Crosse. "Elam - eat breakfast, then mow the lawn down by the front
gate."
I got the mower from the garage. A guy named
Raphael showed me how to drive it. He said he was from El Salvador. He
told me how to lower the blades, and how to follow the curve of the
hillsides. I drove down to the front gate and was mowing happily until
I saw a police car on the road. It seemed to be skulking around the
sides of the hills, about five miles away, coming slowly. I thought
they were looking for me.
I turned the mower and drove it back up the hill,
away from the gate. I remembered too late that I had left the blades
down, and I looked behind me and saw I had mowed a straight swath
across the decades-old pattern of the hilly lawn. My destination was a
stone wall that enclosed the back and one side of the house. I drove
the mower out of sight of the road, behind the wall. I parked under an
African pepper tree, and stood on the seat in order to raise myself up
to the top of the wall. I wanted to be able to see the road, the front
gates, and the path leading to the house, without being seen. I lay
down flat on the grey slabs of granite stone. The police car came right
up to the front gates of the ranch, but then used the turn-around, and
headed back the way it had come, going just as slowly.
Relieved, I raised myself up to a slightly more
comfortable position, resting on my elbows, and turned to look into the
enclosure.
I saw that it was the same area I had seen the
evening before, through the dining room window. Through the branches of
a tree that stood beside the wall, I could see the small vegetable
garden. The marking stakes and mesh fences glittered in the sunlight.
Then I saw a flash of gold through some other branches, and realized
there was someone sitting at the edge of the vegetable garden, at a
filligreed white-metal table. The gold was her hair. I saw the heels of
her feet as they bounced up and down in a rapid, concentrated rhythm
under the cast-iron bench on which she sat. One of them was the same as
the heel I had seen on the previous evening, which Dr. Crosse had said
belonged to his daughter, Daphne.
The police were gone, and I knew I should climb
back onto the mower, but I wanted to see the face of this girl. I
crawled forward along the wall. Her hair was long, and spread over her
shoulders, so I had further to crawl than I might have if she had worn
her hair in a bun, or if it had been cut short. Soon, however, I saw
the first suggestion of the outline of the side of her face. It was
still mostly hidden by the branches of the tree, and the stray strands
of her hair, but already I could see how beautiful she was. "The future
Mrs. Stengrow," I said to the back of my hand.
Her long lashes, the quiet, studious set of her
back, the way her lips moved, mumbling something I could not hear, all
these conspired to hypnotize me, and draw me closer, closer along the
wall, until I was almost to the point where if I had gone another inch
she would have seen me in the corner of her eye. There, I stopped, and
re-focused my eyes, to see what she was doing.
She was writing. No, she was etching something
onto a thick sheet of glass, using an implement that was shaped like a
fountain pen, but made out of soft lead. Instead of an ink-producing
point, it had a sharp needle at the end. It scratched the glass, making
a sound like tires crunching over gravel, and leaving piles of dust,
which she bent now and then to blow away, then resuming her murmuring.
It looked like she was speaking to the glass.
Seeing the concentration on her face, and in her
every motion, I thought it might be safe to move myself forward a few
inches, and then raise myself from the waist like a failed push-up, to
see between her shoulder and the soft swell of her dumpling-like cheek,
what she was etching onto the sheet of glass.
At first, though the sheet faced me directly, and
I could see at least half of it, the light was wrong, and the glass
just looked like a rectangle of black and silver mercury. However, as
she ran her long, tapered forefinger (with a delicate scar on the first
joint) from left to right along the surface of the heavy glass, I
followed the finger with my eyes. As it moved, it changed the level of
light that fell on the glass, and in the moving shadow of her finger, I
could see, for the first time, that she was writing words in the glass.
The words were arranged in lines, but the lines weren't straight. They
went up and down like gentle hills. Also, the words were of different
sizes, some huge, some tiny, some words written through the holes in
the letters of larger words. As I saw the words, I realized for the
first time what I had been hearing, almost, in the air coming through
her lips. She was reading the words as she wrote them.
I hesitate to mention the words she was writing,
but for the purposes of this narrative, I must. She was writing, and
saying aloud, the words fuck, prick, cunt, shit, cock, asshole, death, cancer, suicide, and murder,
in an unbroken sequence, rising and falling across the page of glass,
never in the same order, and at the same time saying to herself, "Fuck
shit fuck fuck cock cunt asshole fuck death cancer fuck death shit
murder fuck," and so on.
"Fuck, fuck, sex, fuck, prick," all in gentle
hills of writing, line upon line on the glass. The same words emanating
from her pink lips. The tip of her tongue coming out to sit on the
corner of her lips. I stared at her. Somehow, my hand slipped over the
edge of the granite wall, and I fell into the enclosure. On the way to
the ground, I went through some branches, which cut my face, and I was
slapped by the leaves. I landed on my hands and knees, but my elbow
buckled, and I fell further, until my left cheek was against the
ground, and my mouth was filled with dust.
The beautiful future Mrs. Stengrow turned, and
screamed when she saw her future groom. She stood up, and the sheet of
glass slid off her knees, and off the edge of the table, where its top
third had been resting, and glided to the used brick patio, making a
clinking sound, followed by a moment of silent indecision, followed by
a resounding, cavernous sound of shattering, as it fell full on its
back on the bricks. She turned from me to the glass sheet, and surveyed
the damage. She sighed in a helpless manner. I raised my head, wiped
the mud off my cheek, and said, "I'm sorry. I was... I fell..." I said,
giving nothing away.
"What were you doing there?"
"Well, I was, the mower... and then I, I saw
something, cleaning, something that needed cleaning in the tree, so I
had to get up on the, so I..." I stood up, and checked my clothes for
tears and rips.
A woman in a light blue uniform, like a maid or
nurse, appeared at the long dining room window, saw me in the garden,
and put her hand over her mouth. "It's all right, Maria," said Daphne.
"Everything's fine."
Maria disappeared, not seeming satisfied.
I felt I should climb back over the wall, but I
couldn't stand to leave the presence of this angelic person, so I took
a step or two toward her, attempting to magnify the extent of my
injuries by limping as seriously as I thought might be believable,
considering the height of the wall. I hobbled forward, and bent down to
pick up the pieces of the glass. I held one large piece at arm's
length, and read it, and acted as though this was the first time I had
known what she was writing on the glass. I silently mouthed a series of
the words before my eyes: fuck fuck shit fuck cunt shit fuck. "Well," I
said, "I've had days like that myself."
She laughed and her eyes twinkled. "That's not the way I feel."
"What is it, then?" I stacked the broken pieces of glass one on top of the other and put the biggest pieces on the table.
"It's an embed," she said.
"An embed?"
"For an experiment of my father's. Oh, by the way,
I'm Daphne Crosse." We shook hands. Hers was cool and soft. A few
stones that had been imbedded in my palm, and the heel of my hand, fell
out.
"I'm Jack Elam," I said. "Your father hired me."
"I know," she said, "I saw you yesterday, when you got here."
I must have been looking at her too intensely,
because she turned her gaze from mine, and looked down at the pieces of
glass. "This was an embed for hair," she said.
I looked at the words on the shards, over which
she was then sliding the tips of some of her fingers. I looked at her
hair. I didn't understand what she was talking about. I said, "I don't
understand one word of what you just said." I was looking at the side
of her throat where it disappeared behind the rolled collar of her pink
cashmere sweater. She smelled like the earth after the rain.
"It's called 'subliminal marking,'" she said. "My
Dad has a grant to see if you print these words on top of a picture in
a magazine, will more people buy the magazine. At least, I think that's
what he said." She shrugged, and shook her head as though to show that
her head was filled with something filling and numbing, and that
therefore she was not the person to ask about complicated matters like
her father's experiments. But I wanted to know more.
"You mean," I ventured, "I'll start to see magazines on the newsstand with... with these words... written all over the covers?"
She laughed, and said, "No no no. They print the letters very lightly, so you can't
see them. Or else it wouldn't work. That's why I write on glass, so
they can put the glass on top of the pictures, and then take one
picture of the two things together."
"I still don't get it. If you don't see the words,
you don't see the words. It's the same as if they weren't there. What
good does that do?"
"Well," she said, "that's the experiment. My Dad
wants to find out, if these words are all over the picture, but you
can't see them, but they're really there, does your mind see
them? And if it does, will that cause you to act differently than if
the words weren't there. Like, would you be more likely to buy the
magazine? Less likely? Whatever."
I was beginning to get the idea.
"Like," she said, "You'll have a picture of a girl or a guy with a big wad of dark hair, right?"
"Right."
"And a plate of glass goes over the hair, when
they duplicate it for the magazine. A hair embed. This - " she pulled
another plate of glass to her, from across the wrought iron table - " -
is a flesh embed. It's for naked arms and legs - see? The words are
bigger, and I etch them lighter because they would be too easy to see
if I didn't."
I could read the words in the shadow of her
breast. It showed the same relentless string of obscene words as the
other plate of glass had shown. Fuck and shit climbing hills and
sliding down into the valleys, line after line.
She said, "Actually, it was my idea to use different size words for hair and skin. My Dad was real proud of me."
I touched the glass, putting my hand near hers.
"I also have a different style for the folds of dresses and shirts and stuff."
I touched her hand. She pulled it away, but only after a third of a second of stillness.
"These words, " I said. "Does it ever bother you?"
"What?" She looked at me. I felt warm. Her eyes
were light blue, her eyebrows and hair were yellow and red. Her lips,
after her pink tongue had travelled through them and back into her
mouth, were glossy and pink. Her father, she later told me, would not
allow her to wear lipstick.
I cleared my throat in order to start time moving
again, and said, "Does it ever embarrass you to write all of these
dirty words?"
For a moment, her expression was frozen. Then,
her cheeks became pink and her eyes welled up with water, and her lips
opened slightly. "This is science," Daphne said.
I realized at once how disgusting I had been, to
say such a thing, to bring the attitudes and thoughts of the
locker-room into a matter of science. I felt ashamed.
I said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. "
"Oh no, " said Daphne, lowering her gaze and smiling at the floor, "I just forgot how these words seem to most people."
"Seeing your lovely hand, writing those words -
your mouth," I said, not sure where I was heading with this line of
thought - whether toward a sad tone of voice, or a hope-charged
trailing-off of talking. I noticed that we were standing very close to
one another. I sent my hand forward once again, to find hers, below the
level of my sight. We were looking each other in the eye when my hand
found hers. I grabbed it, and she didn't move. I heard a motion several
yards behind her, and shifted my focus, to see her father, Dr. Crosse,
coming through the dining room, into the garden. He wore a tan-colored
cowboy hat that shaded most of his face, but I could see the grim look
on his face. In his right hand, he carried a long-barreled
nickel-plated revolver. He raised the gun to shoulder level, pointing
it at my head. He said, "Stand away from him, Daphne."
She reversed our hands, so that hers now was
clasping onto mine. With her other hand, she grabbed my shirt, and
stood closer to me. She said, "It's all right, Daddy. I just yelled
because I was surprised. That's what Maria heard. I told her there was
no problem."
"I was working on the tree, and I fell into the garden, sir," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Stand away," he said to his daughter. To me, he
said, "You weren't working on any tree." To his daughter he said, "Put
an arm's length between you and him, or I'll shoot him right now. You
know I won't miss." I felt her release the grip of her hand on my
shirt, and the energy went out of her body. She moved away from me,
looking at the ground.
I Am Offered a More Important Job
Dr. Crosse held the gun on me, as I
led the way into his study. Daphne walked behind him. He said, "I'm
sorry to treat you this way, Jack, but I have to ask you a couple of
questions so we can see where we're at here and what's what." He told
me to sit in one of the leather armchairs. Daphne stood at the door.
Dr. Crosse set one haunch on the edge of his desk, and now held the gun
on me more casually.
"Maria came in here and told me there was a murderer in the garden with my daughter. She saw your picture on TV, son."
To his daughter he said, "His name's not even Jack Elam."
Daphne looked at me. I couldn't tell whether she
was disappointed in me. I said to Dr. Crosse, "Sir, I am the one
they're looking for, but I didn't do anything. I was just there, and
that place blew up. I didn't kill anyone, I swear it!"
"What were you doing there?" he asked me.
I found that to explain, I had to tell Dr. Crosse
and Daphne the whole story of my life, from the night I beat my father
at cards, and discovered the true story of my origins.
I told them that I had gone to Dr. Lord's simply
to find out the identity of my biological father, had been caught up in
a neighborhood riot that had probably been building up over a period of
many years, and now suspected I had been falsely accused by the very
neighborhood people who had perpetrated the riot, in order to cover up
their own activities of that night, and even more probably, to avoid
having to answer any questions about what had happened to the thousands
of test tubes filled with the semen of American geniuses. I told them
how I had escaped, and the scene of pandemonium that existed at the
time. I told them about the ledger book. I told them I planned to find
my biological father.
Dr. Crosse put the gun down, soon after I
mentioned the name of Dr. Lord. At that time, he completely relaxed,
and rubbed his temples with his thumb and fingers, his hand spread
across his forehead. He massaged his eyes. He sat down in the other
leather chair in the visitors' section of the study, and nodded
knowingly at many of the things I said. However, he let me finish my
story, and only when I was silent, waiting for his response, did he
say, "As a matter of fact, Dr. Lord was a very good friend of mine. A
mentor, really." He paused. "Everything you say rings true," he said.
"I knew of his experiments years ago, at Berkeley. Before he was forced
to resign. Very controversial back then. Not just the in vitro
fertilization, it was the eugenics, the fascist overtones. Breeding for
intelligence! Of course, there were rumors he carried on, even after he
lost his university affiliation, but he kind of dropped out of sight.
None of the journals would publish his stuff. I must admit, even I
stopped thinking about him... So you're a product of that experiment! What do you know! I feel honored!"
He got up and came over and shook my hand. He
said, "Don't worry. I'll tell Maria she was mistaken. You can stay here
as long as you like."
"I don't know if she'll believe you," I said.
"Trust me. She's illegal. The last thing she wants
is to see or speak to any representatives of any law enforcement
organization."
Dr. Crosse continued, "In a while, they'll find
out what happened at Lord's place, and you'll be in the clear. Until
then, I have a proposition to put to you."
He went around to the other side of his desk and sat in his swivel chair. "But first, what is your real name?"
"Reynold Stengrow," I said. "Stengrow is the name of the man who raised me."
Crosse said, "Reynold, I have to ask you a couple
of questions. First: what were you doing on top of that wall? Were you
looking for my daughter?"
I told him about the police car.
He said, "OK, so then you were on the wall, and what? You saw Daphne making her embeds? Or you heard her?"
I didn't really remember which had come first, so
I hesitated. He said, "Come on, Reynold, no need to be shy. We're
scientists here."
So I told him the truth, which is that, after all
that had happened, I couldn't really be sure if the murmur of her
voice, or the vision of her sitting there, deep in concentrated work,
had been my first contact with his daughter. I said, "The way she was
speaking - now that I think of it - I might have started hearing her
voice before I saw her, and actually before I realized I was hearing a
human voice, or even hearing anything at all."
To my surprise, this answer seemed to be the very
answer Dr. Crosse was looking for. He raised his cowboy hat off his
head high in the air with his right hand and shouted, "Yee-ha!" then he
said to his daughter, "What did I tell you, Daff? Subliminal!" Then, to
me he said, "And it was the low sound, the unclear words, the sense
that you were missing something of importance that drew you along,
wasn't it? That kept you on that wall even after the police car was
gone, and you knew you should have climbed back on to your mower and
gone back down that hill. Am I right?"
I didn't know what to say, but he didn't seem to
need me any more, to answer the questions he asked me. "It works!" he
said to Daphne. She smiled weakly.
"You saw the words on the glass, then, didn't you?" he asked me.
Then, he answered, before I could, "Yes! At first,
you didn't know what you were seeing. Was your mind playing tricks on
you? What was the force drawing you forward? Maybe the sun was playing
tricks on your eyes, as it bounced against the glass plate. You had to
know. You had to know. Before you even knew what it was you had to
know, you were compelled to read, and hear, the words.! Right?" I
nodded. "See!?" he said to Daphne, and she nodded, too.
At this point, Dr. Crosse explained to me the
theory of subliminal messages. Telling me, in more technical terms,
what Daphne had already told me. While the conscious part of your brain
doesn't even know it saw the words, "fuck, cock cunt shit" written
subtly over some news photo, the sub-conscious part of your mind does
know it.
I liked Dr. Crosse. I appreciated the fact that he
had put down his gun, and even more, that he had offered me sanctuary,
but I must admit, at first I had my doubts about these experiments in
the world of subliminal messages.
Daphne went to the kitchen to re-assure Maria and some other people who were evidently out there, and to get us some snacks.
Dr. Crosse said, "If our preliminary tests are any
indication, subliminal images are going to be a big, big part of life
in this world for the next several centuries." He sighed, as though he
had reached the end of a big desert, and found himself a spot of shade.
Why was he smiling so happily? Was it only the
understandable pleasure and relief we find at successfully explaining
something new to someone who seems to care? Or was he envisioning on
the screen of his thoughts a world filled with subliminal fucks and
sexs, and the rest of that titillating troupe?
This made me ask Dr. Crosse: "Why these words in
particular? I mean, if you want someone to buy a magazine, wouldn't the
words "buy me," or "get this," or "you'll love this magazine," written
in this same half-invisible way work better than..." and I didn't want
to finish my sentence, because Daphne was in the room. Dr. Crosse knew
what I meant, though, and he answered:
"Fuck and dick and cunt and sex and cock and death
and suicide and cancer are the powerhouse words. We've tried all kinds
of other things - but these are the "big triggers," I call em. For one
thing, less guilt-laden words don't seem to hide as well as the big
triggers. The word "love," written just as lightly, sitting in just the
same clump of hair or hidden in the same sweater weave as the word
"sex" will be spotted by the casual observer more than twenty times as
readily. It seems the big triggers are the words we all have a lot of
conflicting feelings about, a lot of things we'd rather not think about
mixed with a lot of things we can't stop thinking about. That's what
makes a good subliminal. But we're always looking for new ones. This is
a virgin field, Reynold. Any and all suggestions cheerfully accepted
and tested. Right, sweetheart?" This last, to Daphne.
"Yes, Dad," she said, looking at the floor.
"Who are the people who asked you to do the study?" I asked, filled with interest.
"The less you know about them, the better all
around, Reynold," said Dr. Crosse. "Even Daphne doesn't get told the
details of our sources of funding. Let's just say, they're people who
love America, and who have to know, no ifs ands or buts about it, any
technique that might be used by an enemy of our country, foreign or
domestic, to infiltrate the thoughts of our people. Good enough?"
"I won't ask again," I said.
"Good, becuase I want you to work on the project.
You're the first person outside of Daphne that I've told about it. None
of the other scientists who come here, and none of the people at the
college, are aware of this particular aspect of my work, and I am going
to ask you to promise me you won't blab it around."
"I wouldn't do that, sir," I said. "I'm grateful
for your help, and the faith you've shown in me. I would never do
anything to hurt either you or your daughter," I said.
"You're a good man, Reynold," he said.
Then, he clapped his hands together and said,
"You'll work with Daphne most of the time. Most of the time I've got to
work on other things - not to mention my teaching load, which is pretty
heavy this year - so I'll be counting on the two of you to keep good
notes, and fill me in every few days as fully as possible on whatever
you've been doing.
"What else? Oh, yeah. This is a well funded
experiment, so your former salary is hereby doubled." He took a roll of
bills from his pocket, peeled off four hundred, and gave it to me. "One
week in advance," he said.
He said, "One more thing. The money's good, but it
has to be off the books. You will be completely off the books. Another
little peculiarity of my funding situation, you understand. Again, this
is for your benefit as well as for mine. There might come a time,
though we hope it will not happen, when you will want to be able to
separate yourself in every possible way from the work we are doing
here. If that day comes, the lack of pay stubs will help you
inestimably."
Daphne served us our snacks, and we toasted my new
job. Daphne seemed glad to hear that we would be working together. As
for myself, I felt comforted. I liked the idea of having my well-being
in the hands of Dr. Crosse.
I told Dr. Crosse that I would assist him for as long as he wanted me to.
"Good," said Crosse. "I must tell you, I have
great hopes for these subliminals, and for our work in this field. I
have been a psychologist all my life, but this is a different realm for
me. The fact is, we are artists in this new form, more than scientists.
We - Daphne has been the pioneer for most of what we've done up to now
- I just suggest ways to go forward - we are a new art form."
He got us three glasses of red wine and said,
"Pale, pastel in tone - we are the Los Angeles of artistic forms - so
vaguely defined, so modest in the sphere of things, between the sky of
the viewer's eyes, and the ground, which is the page, the colored
photograph itself, on which we lay our humble, invisible efforts -
calligraphy and crude drawings (Daphne will show you later) that call
no attention to themselves, and yet stay in the mind of the viewer for
as long as he lives. And who will be the Michaelangelo, or the Rodin,
of this new form? It may be you, Reynold."
I thought of myself creating works of art whose
purpose was to hide themselves. Working on glass so that even I
couldn't see what I was writing unless the sun hit it just right. I
raised my glass to the Doctor, and then, shyly, I turned to Daphne and
raised my glass to her, also. We all drank our wine, and I became
drunk, although it was only ten in the morning.
When the Doctor went to another part of the house
to continue giving tiny electric shocks to student volunteers who
failed to correctly identity large photos of people in the news, Daphne
took me outside again, and showed me how to scratch the words on the
glass sheets. We did this until lunchtime. I chattered on and on about
myself as we worked, but she didn't say much in response. Finally, I
shut up.
That day, we didn't relate to one another like
human beings for the rest of the day. I don't know why. After lunch,
Daphne received her tutors in the living room, and I took a nap in my
room.
I had a strange, tired dream, where there was a
long table, dusty lights along its length, with florescent bulbs. And I
was scratching words in white dust.
After dinner, the Doctor left me again alone with Daphne.
I had an uneasy feeling, and made a comment on the
work we were doing. I asked Daphne whether or not she ever had thoughts
of the acts and objects represented by the words we were writing on the
sheets of glass. She said she only thought of the shapes and lengths of
the words, and the sounds of the words.
She said, "I set up a rhythm. You see? When I
write the words, I say them to myself, like a poem or a chant. That's
what they become - after a while."
She looked thoughtful as though deciding whether
to reveal a secret to a friend; weighing the pleasures of the secret
versus the pleasures of telling. Then she said, "Listen, it's like this
- are you listening?"
"Yes." I was very still.
"Ok." And she pretended to write in the air, with
her hand shaped as though it was holding a pen, as she closed her eyes,
and spoke in a quiet, deep voice, saying, "sex, sex, sex, fuck, sex,
dick, fuck, prick, fuck, sex, dick, cunt, fuck, cunt, fuck, cunt,
prick, sex, shit, sex, prick, cock, dick." She looked at me, to see if
I was following what she was saying. Then she said, "Death, fuck, shit,
ass, death, dead, suicide, suicide, dick, suicide, death, asshole," and
again wrote the words in the air. Finally, I took her plump hand in
both of mine. I kissed her wrist, and the palm of her hand. "Fuck, sex,
sex, fuck, fuck, death," she said, in a whisper.
"I love you," I said.
She withdrew her hand, and went back to scratching
diligently on her glass tablet. We wrote until the sun went behind the
Western hills, and turned us into giant shadows on the pasture that
faced the Indian Head Rock. We walked to the edge of the incline and
looked down into the grey valley, the meadows fenced and cross-fenced,
here and there a man or woman leading horses into the barn for the
night. A car on the valley floor turned on its lights. The strong
profile of the Indian, with full headdress, was the last surface on
which the sun blasted full and blazing before it fell into the sea. I
thought, in the golden dizziness of it all, that someone had written in
big crude letters across the face of the Indian Head, S-E-X S-E-X, from
just under the eye, all the way to the rear end of the headdress.
I thought of asking Daphne about it, but I didn't
want to spoil the mood of the moment, which lasted until Dr. Crosse
called me to assist in an experiment, part of another study entirely,
concerning the speed with which people make friends with other people
they meet in the dark. This other experiment took place in the
converted barn, and kept me busy until well after midnight, when I fell
into bed, exhausted.
Working with Daphne
There followed many happy days,
working beside Daphne, in that big house with the skulls of steers hung
against the white Spanish walls, along with ancient saddles, and
antique sample sheets of barbed wire, framed and encased in glass. In
those early days, we stood or sat side by side as we wrote on our embed
sheets, or Daphne would take the sheets into her photo lab, and shoot
the combination shots of photographs-plus-triggering-words. She kept a
careful record of the f-stop, and duration of each exposure, and could
match this information with its negative. Already, she said, her father
and the men she referred to alternately as his "friends" or his
"backers," had been including samples of her work in various magazines
and newspapers around the country. For example, she showed me a picture
of a little girl sitting in the dentist's chair, with her head back and
her mouth open wide, as the dentist, a white-haired, chubby-cheeked
gentleman of about sixty vibrant, productive years probed around her
molars with a steel pick and a mirror. Behind the little girl's head,
through the half-open window of the dentist's office, you could see
other children playing happily in a school yard. The dentist's window
had delicate blue curtains. Under this pleasant scene were the words:
"Fewer cavities. Don't you owe it to your family?" And below that, in smaller letters, a short sentence of praise concerning the brand of toothpaste whose ad it was.
I said, "Nice picture."
Daphne said, "This ad was in Time Magazine
six months ago. "In certain test markets - four towns - we only sold
copies that had an embed over the picture. Here is the same picture, in
a print made from a mistake - I exposed it too long, so you can see the
embed."
She handed me the print, and I could see the same
picture with the words SEX and FUCK clear and black, exactly as I had
seen them scratched on our sheets of glass. I saw that the words were
scratched in such a way that they followed the patterns of the little
girl's skirt, and the folds of the curtains, and the creases in the
dentist's shirt. There were other words, a train of COCKs and CANCERs
written small, following each other in a rush along their irregular
paths. Even smaller SEXes followed the strands of the little girl's
hair. A variety of larger words covered her bare legs and arms, and
followed the soft outline of her chin against her throat.
I said, "You mean these very words were also in
the magazine?" By this time, I should not have had to ask, but seeing
the picture of the little girl, juxtaposed with those already mentioned
words, or as Dr. Crosse preferred us to say, "phenomes," bothered me.
It seemed to me there might be a moral murkiness attached to this whole
science, or art, or whatever it was, in which I was beginning to
involve myself.
I said, "I hate to disagree with your father, but
it does seem to me that people who are thinking about buying toothpaste
for their families, are not the sort of people who want to see fuck sex
fuck fuck in tendrilly, hand-scrawled letters running up some little
girl's legs. Can we agree on that much, at least?"
She said, "In the four towns where the picture ran with the embed, sales of this toothpaste doubled."
I held the picture away from me. I tilted my head.
"And they don't see, see... what you said...
tendrilly anything... " she said. "They just see the picture, and they
buy the toothpaste because they want to keep their families healthy."
"But you've proved that they are responding, at least in part, because they like the dirty words."
"No. If they actually saw the words, of course they'd be disgusted. They'd never buy that toothpaste again."
I did not continue to argue, although I probably
should have. I myself was laboring under the subliminal forces created
many thousands of years ago for the propagation of the human race, and
many words, etched by spiritual, non-physical hands, seemed written on
the surfaces of the face, hair and clothes of my beautiful Daphne. I
was too grateful for the chance to be near her, so many hours a day,
and to talk to her. Instead of insisting on what I had been saying, I
bent my head over my glass, and wrote the words. She touched my hand,
and turned to her own work again.
One day, to help pass the time, I told her about
my goal of finding my True Dad. She said she could understand why I
would want to do that, because she knew how wonderful her father was,
and wished all children and their parents would have as good a
relationship as she did with him. Actually, the glory of her father was
just about the only topic of conversation that really interested
Daphne. His incredible youth on entering Harvard, his youth and fame on
leaving it, the gift he was giving to the State of California by his
presence among its unworthy populace, bringing wisdom and reason from
the East. Etc. Other than these tirades in praise of her father, she
was the quietest person I had ever spent any time with. She never said
what she thought about anything, apart from its effect on her father
and/or his work. She never seemed to have a thought with herself as the
center of it.
She said her mother had died giving birth to her,
sixteen years ago. She had travelled all her life with her father.
Because they moved so often, she had never been able to go to a regular
school. Her father got tutors, wherever they stopped, and the tutors
taught her at her own rate, instructed by her father not to speed her
up or slow her down in any subject.
I attribute to the solitudinous nature of her
education the fact that many of her emotional responses were like the
responses of tourists, who aren't sure of the language, or the customs,
and sometimes don't know whether something is supposed to be funny, or
insulting, or nothing, or what.
Here is this grave girl - shy, sheltered - having
a conversation with her Dad, about a week after we all started working
together:
"Father?" asked Daphne.
"Yes, my girl," said Crosse.
"What about a fuck through the u in a cunt or the o in a cock?" asked Daphne.
"If the fuck is horizontal, and the cock or the cunt is at an angle off the horizontal --"
"Forty-five degrees?" she asked, as she sipped her soup.
"No - at most I'd say fifteen..."
"How about a shit, right on top of a fuck?"
asked the Daphne next, as she looked at me, and
gestured that she would like me to pass her the basket of rolls that
was near me on the table.
"A big shit is generally preferable to a little
shit," said Crosse. "According to Liebermann and Guttmann in Detroit,
and Anselm in Massachussetts, people will detect a small shit, or if
not actually see the word, will be left with a distinguishable negative
feeling after exposure to the word, which they seem to attach to the
product being advertised. On the other hand, most subjects studying
subliminals of shit, written large... report feeling wonderful,
exhilarated, somehow 'lighter,' 'free-er' -- the conclusion is
self-evident -- Big shits are preferable."
"I see," said Daphne, as she spooned a few bright
vegetables along with the clear broth into her pink mouth, and then
stuck her tongue out a bit to gather in some of the moisture she had
left on the lower left-hand ledge of her cushiony lip. "Cocks?"
"The smaller the better," said Crosse, helping himself to a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
"What about cunts and fucks?" asked Daphne.
"According to Guttmann..."
Overhearing this, some people might think Daphne
and Dr. Crosse oddly ignorant of the normal uses of our language, but
in fact theirs was a self-imposed ignorance that aimed at forgoing the
"standard" responses to words and ideas, in order to push through to
the essentials of language.
When Daphne worked, she seemed to have no sense
of the meaning of the words she was writing on the glass. Hearing her
say fuck fuck cunt cock all day was enough to keep me in a state of
perpetual straining rigidity, as far as my emotional life was
concerned. But she was not emotionally affected at all. Hour after
hour, she wrote, and guided herself with her low mouthing of the words.
Her narrow lips, her pink tongue, her white translucent teeth, the
surfaces of which I would stare at sometimes, losing myself in the
fantasy that obscene words had been etched on them. Often, I found
myself alone with Daphne in the lab or garden - sometimes we would
accidentally touch. Sometimes I would take her hand. Once, we almost
kissed, while waiting for cheese sandwiches to heat in the toaster
oven, but before our lips met, the buzzer on the oven sounded, and
Daphne opened the glass door and took out the sandwiches. We were
excited by one another but stayed apart because we didn't know how
Dr.Crosse would react to our being lovers, and neither one of us wanted
to test that out. Thus, more and more, both Daphne and I directed all
our thoughts toward Dr. Crosse. The enjoyment we shared in one
another's company had little to do with one another, and everything to
do with making Dr. Crosse happy. That was our joy.
And I was happy in those days. Etching on the
glass, spending my time with Daphne, reporting every day or so on our
progress, to her father - were all pleasant things to me. Still, when I
felt enough time had passed, since the explosion at Dr. Lord's, I told
Dr. Crosse that I wanted to head out, to continue looking for my
biological father. I said, "I don't want to leave you, and Daphne, but
I feel - and don't ask me why - that my True Dad needs me. I have to
find him."
Dr. Crosse thought about what I had said, and the
next morning, he told me I could go and then come back again. He said
my job would still be there. Not only that, he said he would help me as
much as he could, help me to find my True Dad.
He asked me to give him the ledger book, with the
names of my six potential Dads, and he hired a detective (something I
never would have thought of) to locate them. A week later, he handed me
a manila folder with pictures and information about Mr. Jack Jerry
Elam, the first name on the list.
Mr. Elam lived in New York.
Dr. Crosse very kindly gave me a round-trip
ticket for New York, and again promised that my job would be waiting
for me when I came back. Before I left, he sent me into town with
Daphne, and she helped me pick out some clothes for traveling, and a
suit in which to meet Mr. Elam. Dr. Crosse suggested it might be a
better idea for me to phone ahead, but I didn't want to do that. I
wanted to meet the man face to face, and tell him of our possible
connection, and take it from there.
Dr. Crosse reserved a room for me at the Hotel
Pierre, on 60th Street and 5th Avenue. It was just a few blocks from
Mr. Elam's house, which was on 65th Street.
They drove me to the airport on a Thursday
morning. Smog was coming up the coast from Los Angeles. Dr. Crosse
said, "Wait till you get above all this shit, you've never seen
anything like it." He knew it was to be my first time in a plane. We
shook hands, and he said, "You've only been with us a while, boy, but I
consider us to be good friends. You're smart, and a good worker, and if
this doesn't work out with Mr. Elam, or any of the other possible
fathers in your book, you know you can always come back here, and I'll
try to be a good employer to you, which is all the dad a grown man
needs in this world, as far as I can tell." Then he told Daphne, "You
walk Reynold to the gate, hon, I'll wait in the car."
"He thinks we're in love," she said, when we were standing at the window of the terminal, waiting for my plane to board.
"I am," I said. I put my hands around her waist.
"How do you know?" she said, pulling away, and smiling mischievously. "Couldn't it be the effect of the triggering phenomes?"
I was insulted, but I didn't let her see that. I said, "No. I love you, anyone would love you."
"But why?" she said.
"Because you are you."
She looked at me sadly, and we kissed, for the
first time since we had met. We kissed for a long time, and I had the
impression she was trying to decide how she felt about me while it was
going on. She said, "What if it's all part of the experiment? What if
you love me, and I love you, because of something we know nothing of,
but my father has set up?"
"But why would he do that?"
"He puts us together, we write these words on sheets of glass, we are near each other." She said it as though she was accusing me of something.
She said, "You'd probably be better off if you
never came back here." She touched the side of my face, she gave me a
small kiss on the lips. She turned, before I could think of what to
say, and ran down the corridor away from my gate, back to her father.
At the Home of Mr. Elam
I read about Mr. Elam on the flight.
Jerry Elam had a very impressive history. High
I.Q., showing itself early in his school career, as he won award after
award for writing and drawing. Skipped a few grades, entered college at
seventeen - Johns Hopkins - graduated at twenty - then, Medical School
- after which, internship and residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital -
looked like he was on his way to a big career as a brain surgeon, when
he got involved with a scandal at the hospital. He found out some of
the staff were stealing and selling pain killers from the hospital
supplies. According to the file, these doctors were handing the drugs
to local police, who were selling them in the slums of Baltimore, and
splitting the profits with the doctors. Elam went to the head of the
hospital. A month later, fearing that nothing was being done to stop
the activities he had reported, he called the Baltimore Sun,
told his story to a young reporter there - a woman named Barbara Filter
- and then co-operated with her fully to get the evidence she needed to
expose the situation.
Their series of articles won Ms. Filter the
Pulitzer Prize, and was instrumental in getting a lot of doctors and
policemen fired. After that, Elam quit medicine. He and Barbara Filter
were married, and they started a newspaper together. This was the
sixties, and their paper was called "Deathburger." It was a sort of
underground publication, filled with muckraking about the city
government and horror stories about the chemicals in the food people
were eating. There were also advertisements for clothing stores and
shops that sold drug paraphernalia, and there were personal ads. Now,
these ads are everywhere. You can even call phone numbers announced on
TV to hear messages from men and women who want companionship. But
then, "Deathburger" was the only place in Baltimore where you could
find such messages. For this reason, "Deathburger" became a huge
success. Five years later, the Elams sold their newspaper for two
million dollars, and moved to New York. There, they founded a couple of
free newspapers, that were left in the lobbies of apartment buildings
and the entranceways of supermarkets. The personal ads in the back
attracted readers, and the readers attracted advertisers. Soon, they
were making so much money they were able to buy a small book publisher
specializing in bird and flower guides. The guides, one for each State,
were steady sellers, but the real reason they bought the company was
that it had its own printing plant. The Elams started publishing
reprints of classic novels and works of poetry, the kind of books that
were old enough to be in public domain, and good enough to be on the
reading lists of colleges and high schools. They managed to carve out a
niche in the textbook market, because their prices were low and most
students didn't mind the cheap paper and runny ink they used to
manufacture the books.
They continued thus, the small millions rolling
in, through the seventies and into the eighties, when a wave of
religious fundamentalism crashed over the formerly peaceful beach of
academic publishing.
Groups of parents in Texas and California started
to notice that their kids were learning from textbooks that taught, of
all things, man was descended from the apes! This was, the parents
felt, in clear contradiction to the words of the Bible, which tells us
God created man from dust, and woman from his rib. They brought their
concerns to the administrators of their schools, who passed them along
to the boards of education in their various towns and counties, who
duly informed the textbook publishers, at the next buying season, that
they would like Darwin left out, and the Bible taught. The publishers,
most of them located in New York, were not very quick to see the threat
this posed to their business. They issued statements that here at the
end of the 20th century, it was time we all took responsibility for
making sure our kids got a complete and correct scientific education,
so they weren't going to change their textbooks, just to please a few
crackpots in Texas and California. The problem with that stand,
principled as it was, is that between Texas and California, you have
about 40 per cent of all your textbook sales. You can't successfully
publish a textbook without selling it in these two States.
The Elams understood. They rushed into print with
a biology text that came complete with artwork of the Adamic dust
standing up in the Garden of Eden, and of naked Adam and Eve seeing
their nakedness for the first time, and being ashamed. Darwin and his
ilk were consigned to a small, red-bordered box on pages 143-144 in
which the Theory of Evolution got two short paragraphs, starting with
the words, "Some people believe..." and illustrated by drawings of
bearded Darwin and a chimp with eyeglasses staring at one another
across what looked like a small island, with one palm tree on it.
The Elam book was a big hit. They now had a 2,600
acre hunting preserve in Colorado, 4,300 acres of prime grazing land in
Montana, and a 32,000 acre ranch called Zinjaire in Northern
California. They also had property in Southern France.
My prospective father, and his wife (I wondered
if she would like me) spent most of their time in New York, guiding
their publishing empire, and doing charitable works. They had been the
subjects of many articles in such magazines as Time and Newsweek, Business Week, and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The file noted that Jerry Elam was considered to be a possible candidate for President of the United States.
I thought of it. Me, Reynold Stengrow, or rather
Reynold Elam... son of the President of the United States! Or maybe my
father, Mr. Elam, would prefer me to have a different first name.
Possibly, Jerry, after himself. Jerry Elam, Junior, the Son of the
President of the United States! I thought of myself allowing people
ahead of me in line, in department stores and supermarkets, even though
I was the Son of the President. I could feel the admiring gazes of the
other shoppers. Of course, they knew who I was. I thought of the word
getting back to my father, in the Oval Office, how democratic I had
been, letting people ahead of me in line. He would send for me. He
would tell me how proud he was of me. He would make me one of his
advisers. Daphne and I would sleep together. She would be proud of me.
I would gladly share my new status with her, and with Dr. Crosse, and
with the Stengrows, whom I intended to call, as soon as I was settled
in my hotel room.
However, I did not call them. I decided, once I was in the room, to wait until I had made contact with Mr. Elam.
I wanted to be able to call them with good news.
After all, they had nurtured me, and one of them was a biological
parent of mine. I wondered if my mother would get along with Mr. Elam.
I resolved myself to attempt to bring about their meeting and foster in
every way I could, their friendship. I looked out at the city of New
York, wet with rain, people running home from work. I felt warm and
safe in my room. The rug was thick and soft, after the hard stone floor
of Dr. Crosse's ranch.
While I was waiting for dinner, I called the
ranch, and talked to Daphne. "My father's got his friends over, they're
zapping that Mrs. Welby again," she said.
I told her I missed her, and she said she missed
me. I told her about the food on the flight, and the movie. Then, I
told her what I had read in the file her Dad had given me on my
possible Dad. I didn't mention anything about his being a possible
candidate for the presidency, because I didn't want her to feel I was
getting a swelled head over it. We laughed and talked about nothing for
several hours. My dinner came, and the steak got cold, and I watched
the ice cream sundae melt, and then the ice in the outer cup in which
the sundae was sitting. We couldn't stop talking, until two a.m., New
York time.
The next day, I slept later than I had intended
to, and left the hotel about nine a.m. The day was cool and sunny, and
the air was fresh and crisp against the sinuses. I stopped at a
florist's on Madison Avenue, and bought a dozen red roses for Mrs.
Elam. I felt wonderful, striding along the rain-cleaned streets to
65th. I was wearing my new suit, I was wearing leather shoes for the
first time in approximately ten years, and my hair was combed with
Vitalis. I liked the look of all the small houses in a row, with
brightly painted railings in front, and the two or three steps down to
the front doors.
I was vaguely aware of one or two people standing
around in the street near the house. A man in a tan blazer, if I
remember correctly, and a very pretty woman of about 30 years, also
wearing a tan blazer, twirling a microphone on the end of a wire,
around and around, as she leaned in a bored manner against the railing
of the house one over from the Elams'. I also vaguely remember that a
minivan pulled to a stop at the curb, as I reached the house, and it
parked in front of a fire hydrant. I remember looking in to see if the
driver knew what he was doing, but the look of the driver, large and
zombie-like, with silver wraparound sunglasses, dissuaded me from
offering him any parking tips. Instead, I smiled in passing, and
turned, and went down the stairs to the Elam house.
I knocked on the door. Mrs. Elam opened it, a
moment later. "Mrs. Elam," said. I would have continued, but she
stopped me by shouting, "More flowers!? More!?" She shook her head, and
put her hand out, against my chest, to bar my entrance. Then, she
looked at the flowers, and thought, and said, "Oh, well - never mind.
Put them in the library."
"Mrs. Elam - " said with clearly preparatory
intent, but before I could go on, she reached behind her, to a black
woman who had been walking by, with her arms full of saucers. She
grabbed this woman by the upper arm and said, "Gilay, show this young
man where to put his flowers." Then, she wheeled around Gilay like a
dancer around her partner, and propelled herself out of the doorway,
through the hallway, and into some distant room, to the left. Gilay and
I watched her disappear, then Gilay looked at me, angrily. "Wait," she
said. Then, muttering to herself a series of complaints, she found a
place to set down her saucers, looked at me again and said, "All the
flowers were supposed to be here before seven."
She turned her back on me, before I could
explain. She led me down the corridor, and finally opened the door to a
large room. There were dark-brown bookshelves covering all the walls,
to the ceiling. There was a single large window, with sunlight coming
through it, and in front of the window was a long, heavy table with a
row of chairs behind it. Four microphones stood on the table, in front
of the four middle chairs. There was a white cloth covering the table,
and on the part that hung down in front of the table, there was a
picture of a donkey. Several large American flags stood between the
chairs and the window, and there were small American flags in
water-glasses, in bunches, tied with rubber bands. Near the small flags
were floral arrangements. There were six floral arrangements, six
waterglasses filled with flags. I was trying to decide where I might
best put the roses I had brought when I heard a man's voice. It was
high, squeaky, like the voice of a movie gangster when he gets
defensive about something. At first I couldn't see where the voice was
coming from. I heard it say:
"I consider myself to be the Daniel Boone of
American intellectuals," and then it sounded like he was inhaling
strenuously with his mouth open, as if trying to swallow a man's head.
After what seemed like about eighty seconds, I heard a sound indicating
someone had breathed outwardly. Instantly, the room was filled with
gallons of smoke. From the currents in the smoke, I traced its source
to a place behind the library ladder. I went over there, the flowers
still in my hand, and saw the man I recognized as Jerry Elam, curled up
in a small chair, over a small table, smoking a filter cigarette and
reading from some sheets of paper. He continued, "Like ol' Dan'l Boone,
I like to build my cabin where I can't see the cookfires from the
chimneys of my nearest neighbors. Speaking intellectually, of course. I
try to search out new ideas, blaze new trails, neither liberal nor
conservative, neither hawk nor dove, neither bleeding heart nor heart
of stone. In other words, I'm kind of a, well I don't like aggrandize
myself, but I think of myself as a, well, a pioneer of the mind." He
smoked some more, and coughed, following that by saying, "Shit."
Then, still not seeing me, he put down the papers
and thought of what he had just said, saying to himself, "Daniel Boone.
I like it." Then, he saw me. "Aaa," he said, in a kind of muffled
panic.
I said, "Mr. Elam, I'm..."
"How did you get in here?" he asked, at the same
time struggling to get up, while at the same time hiding his cigarette.
He threw his whole body and face toward me across the desk, for no
other reason than to hide his cigarette. Finally, thinking I didn't see
it, he dropped it down the inside of his leg, and crushed it with his
shoe. In doing all this, he knocked over the small yellow table at
which he had been sitting.
"Your wife sent me in here," I said.
"She did?"
"With these flowers."
"I see. There, on the table. Thank you."
I said, "I can see I got here on a pretty hectic day."
"All right," he said with injured dignity, "so
you saw me with a cigarette. Fine! Blackmail me! Expose me! I'm a
hyprocrite, so fuck you!"
I said, "I'm not here to catch you smoking."
He said, "You're not?" Then, he obviously
believed me, because he became very relaxed, and took a pack from his
pants pocket, along with a lighter, and lit up another cigarette. "I'm
announcing my candidacy in about a half an hour. President of the
United States. But the American people won't elect a smoker. That's
what my wife says. And all my advisers. So what are you, from the
florist's?"
I said, "Actually, I came here to see you, Mr. Elam. About something."
He was putting the table back on its feet, and I
put down the flowers, and picked up the chair he had been sitting on.
When he heard the personal tone of my speech, he became flustered once
again, and moved around to put the table between us. "About what?" he
asked.
I said, "Well, I think I should have planned
better how to say this. I did have some idea, but everything's
different. The room looks different from the way I thought it would
look, and there's so much excitement here today."
He said, "Please, tell me what it is you want to see me about. Do you want to work in my campaign?"
I said, "Well..." I wanted to say yes, because it
sounded like a good idea. But, I decided to leap immediately to the
main purpose of my visit. "I guess the best way is to come right out
and say this," I started. "I mean, the thing is, do you happen to
remember a Doctor Lord? Doctor I. Lord?"
He thought about it. "Lord? Lord? Why I... Yes,
of course I do! Used to pay ten dollars a shot for..." Suddenly, his
face lost its nostalgic upward gaze, and he was looking straight at me.
"What is this about, young man? Why have you come here? Today, of all
days..."
I said, "I just got to New York, yesterday," as
though that were an answer to his question. After a moment of silence,
from both of us, I added, "I think I might be your son."
He stood staring at me. Then, he sat down.
Slowly, his face transformed itself into a warm and friendly smile. It
was a friendliness not primarily directed at me, but at Dr. Lord, I
soon learned, when he said, "That old psycho. I never thought he'd
really go ahead with that clinic of his. The Genius Sperm Bank. I
thought when they kicked him out of the UC system, that was it. Heard
he was running a plant nursery in Glendale. So, he did it, and you are
the product. Well well. Step into the light."
I did so.
"But the children weren't supposed to learn the
names of the donors. I'm sure that was part of the deal. Even the
parents who got the donations weren't supposed to know." I answered, "I
managed to get a ledger from Dr. Lord's office, that listed all the
children born in my year, and their fathers. I really don't know if you
are the one. There are five more possibilities. But I wanted to meet
you, and speak with you, and see if we might be related."
He laughed a choppy laugh, and said, "I hate to
get technical with you here, fella, but here's where I have to say, I
do not for a moment admit that I was ever a sperm donor for Dr. Lord,
but even if I were, which I do not admit, as neither do I admit I ever
met the man, or even heard of him, although I might under duress
confess the name is not unknown to me, so, considering all of that,
what would make you think that I might under any circumstances want to
admit to being your, or anyone's, father?" He seemed to be struggling
not to crease too visibly the line directly between his doe brown eyes
that indicated, all too visibly a former time when Mr. Elam was really
unhappy.
I said, "It's not a question of admitting
anything. I was just interested in finding out. I thought you might be
interested, too. I don't want anything from you."
He looked at me with renewed interest. "From the
look of simple, plodding honesty on your face, I could almost believe
you mean that. However, as you may or may not know, I am a very rich
man. Being my son might reasonably be expected to put you in the way of
quite a chunk of change. You might want nothing now, but you might want
a lot later on. Or, you may want a lot now. You may have heard about
Dr. Lord's experiment, possibly you were his prison cellmate, if he
ever went to prison, which is not what I would call unlikely."
"No, sir," said I. "Nothing like that." I told
him about how I had gone out to Dr. Lord's house, and about the
explosion. Though I hesitated to give him any more reasons to think
badly of me, I even told him that I was being searched for by the
police.
He said, "All these things you say, they make me
want to believe you. Also, that look of simple potato-brained honesty I
spoke of earlier. This intrigues me not because it makes me think you
are honest, but because I too have always been able to summon that look
to my facial features, when I need to, whether I am telling the truth
or not. Seeing you with that same expression I have so often seen on my
own popular mug, makes me think there might be some truth in what you
say - you might really be my son, my offspring." He stood up and leaned
very close to me, to study the features of my face one by one, this
eye, that eye, the sides of my nose, saying "hmmm" and "rrnnrr" now and
then.
As for me, I had no doubts that this was my True
Dad. As far as I was concerned, no test was necessary, there was no
reason to search further.
"We don't look too different, do we? " I asked
hopefully. He brought me to a mirror, and I had to squat down a few
inches, so that my face and Mr. Elam's could both be in the mirror at
the same time. I grinned at Mr. Elam, full of love, and playfully
twirled my fingers at him in the mirror. Mr. Elam, you might say, broke
open a pleasant little smile he seemed to have been saving for a
special occasion and which he thought, considering the unusualness of
my visit, and the biological and emotional issues involved, he could
probably go ahead and decant at the present moment.
"Uncanny" said Mr. Elam. "Although not decisive, I'm sure you don't have to be told."
But I couldn't believe he didn't see the
resemblance. To me, we were like peas in a pod - one much bigger, it is
true - one with a long face (me) and one with a round face (him) - one
with brown hair and one with formerly red hair - one with straight hair
and one with curly hair - one with brown eyes, one with green eyes -
but the similarity, I still insist, from the vantage point of my
current objectivity, was striking.
"Look at the way both of our faces are compounded
of interlocking eights, all with their centers at the same point, and
their top and bottom circles rotating like the hours on a clock!" I
suggested.
"Sorry, can't quite-- maybe it's the light--"
Temporized Elam. It occurred to me that he might be feeling warm and
uncomfortable in the crook of my arm, which I had thrown casually
around his neck in order to get our faces closer together, for
comparison in the mirror. I took my arm away, perhaps too quickly. My
hand brushed against a lamp shade and knocked the lamp off its table. I
apologized, as Mr. Elam picked it up, and set it back in its place.
He said, looking at me with one eye half-shut:
"In fact, I do see some resemlance between you and me, Mr. Stengrow.
And what's more, I like you. I have three sons, and I must admit I have
always thought of my children
as the worst set of betrayers, constantly
changing their personalities, even their forms and features, until you
can't remember what you started with to get the mess you now see before
you at the breakfast table. Eruptions, is a word I have used to
describe my sons, I'm not proud to admit. When you meet them, later on,
you may judge for yourself." He smoked, and stared into the problem of
which he spoke, with an intense look. Between massive inhalations and
life-saving exhalations, he said, "The word, "offspring" has always
carried the right sound to my ears, the ring of truth. I think of huge
children springing on and off parental trampolines, parents laying
prone in the back yards of their homes, each set of parents, lying side
by side -- with paperback books over thin faces, and their children
jumping on their bellies, higher and higher, and -- But I like you. A
son I never had a chance to spoil. I want to know all about you, later.
I can't wait to tell my wife of this incredible thing! Why, I could be
your brother," exalted Mr. Elam, checking his pockets, as he went over
to the tiny alcove covering a sink and a small refrigerator, and
shelves containing bottles of every known liquor---
Seeing Elam, and noting that the man looked old,
weak, unhappy, pasty, dry, asthmatic, dandified, expensively but
uncomfortably dressed in clothes that he seeemed to cringe from as from
an iron maiden, I still thought we looked alike. More than that, I was
sure that Mr. Elam saw the likeness, too, and that it made him happy. I
was at the age when we think older people want to look like us. I
couldn't know that Elam considered me to look like the large,
clown-faced golden retriever he had once, on a hillside in Virginia
with the sun going down over the ocean side hills, shot in the head
with an automatic pistol to cure it of flatulence.
He mixed a drink, and held the glass out toward me. I took it and quickly gulped.
Mr. Elam mixed himself a drink and sat down in one of the large, leather chairs. He put his feet out on the leather footstool.
I paced back and forth in front of Mr. Elam, with
my characteristic appearance of lurching forward as I walk, and leaning
forward so that to many observers it sometimes seemes I am toppling
forward with every step. I was very excited about being here, face to
face with one of my prospective fathers.
I stopped pacing, faced Elam, and said, "I want
to tell you things about myself -- would that be ok? And then you tell
me if any of these things remind you of things you have noticed about your self. Maybe that way we'll both be able to see the effects of our relationship. Could I do that, Sir, Please?"
"Absolutely," said Elam, "After the press conference. And I'll do my best to help, in any way."
"Just tell me if any of this sounds like you?"
Mistakenly, I thought he looked fascinated. "For example," I said, "I
have no social gyroscope. I say things in all sincerity and people
think I'm joking. I try to tell a joke, they think I'm being critical.
I -- "
Elam was too polite to stop me, but from behind me I heard a woman say, "What's going on here?"
I turned and it was Mrs. Elam. She ignored me and
said to her husband, "They're gathering in the street, for God's sakes.
You have to get ready."
He assured her that he was as ready as he would
ever be, and then introduced me to her, and her to me. He told her who
I was, and the purpose of my visit. He reminded her that he had
mentioned Dr. Lord, once or twice, and he asked her if this wasn't
great. He said, "Here I thought I was only capable of fathering louts
and slugs, and along comes this quite presentable young person." Elam
held his hand in my direction, like a figure in a painting whose
purpose is to draw the viewer's eye to the center of interest - me. She
looked at me, blank. Blink, then blank. Then, she took her husband by
the upper arm and led him toward another entrance from the one I had
come in through. She said, "Jerry will be right back." I smiled at her.
I heard her shouting from the adjoining room, and I heard his voice,
trying to soothe her. Soon, they both came back. He studied the floor.
She said to me, "Mr. Stengrow. As you know, Mr. Elam is about to
announce his candidacy for the presidency of the United States of
America. America needs Mr. Elam."
I nodded.
"The problem is you."
"Me?"
"If the press discovers, and broadcasts, the fact
that my husband was a sperm bank donor, I doubt that he will ever sit
in the Oval Office, or that America will ever get the benefit of his
vision, his ideas, and his strength. Perhaps this should not be.
Perhaps it is unfair. But as a woman who has seen a good deal more of
the world than you have, Mr. Stengrow, I have a feeling that the
thought of my husband jerking off into a glass bottle with a copy of Gent
open across his knees, is not going to spell landslide for him or the
Party, no matter how well you have personally turned out, and I do not
say that you haven't."
"My wife's kind of a pessimist," he said, not looking up from the floor.
"All I'm saying is, if you sincerely like Mr.
Elam, want to help him, ever hope to gain anything of material value by
your fortunate association with this family, you will not spread the
story of your birth before the election."
I breathed a sigh of relief, and said, to both of
them, "Of course! Anything I can do to help, I will do. I don't mean to
disrupt the lives of any of my prospective fathers, only to learn the
truth of my origins. The fewer people besides myself who know this
truth, the better I'll feel."
Hearing this, she turned to her husband, and
said, "There. I told you the young man would want to help." Soon
afterward, she said it was time to go. She straightened Elam's clothes,
and sprayed him, so he wouldn't smell like cigarette smoke.
She said, "Mr. Stengrow, you come, too."
The three of us went through a door and I saw we
were about to descend a flight of wooden stairs, into a basement. I
said, "I thought the press conference was going to be in the room we
were just in." Mrs. Elam said, "Mr. Elam wants to greet the press in
his office, and then walk them to that room. By coming down here, we
can come up again in his office, and they will think we've been there
all along."
We walked about fifty feet, when three men, in
their early twenties, met us, coming out of a small cellar room where I
could see bikes and pinball machines and clothes all piled up. They
were all dressed up for the press conference. These were Mr. Elam's
sons. They greeted their father and mother. Mrs. Elam gestured toward
me, and said, "That's the one." The three young men looked at me. "Our
new brother," said the largest of the three Elam boys. I thought I
detected a note of sarcasm, or was it only a slowness of speech? We
continued walking, toward another set of wooden stairs, which I assumed
led to the office. We went past heating ducts and stored furniture, and
the boiler. Mr. Elam climbed the stairs and opened the door to his
office. Mrs. Elam started after him. I remember the back of her shoe as
I started up the stairs. The lights went out in the basement. I felt a
breeze, I knew not from where. A moment later, I was struck on the top
of the head, by some heavy object. I remember the pain, a moment of
fear, then nothing.
Subway Subliminals
I woke up. I was lying on the
floor. From the feel of the concrete, I was still in the basement. At
first, the place was pitch black to my eyes. My head hurt when I tried
to move. I grabbed it with both hands, and screamed in pain. One side
of my face felt sticky and wet. I was sure I was bleeding. I heard the
sound of whispering, somewhere high above my head. I looked in that
direction. Gradually, as my eyes became accustomed to the light, I
realized I was looking at a cinder block wall. I noticed that where the
wall met the ceiling, there was a small rectangle of light, coming
through from another room. I looked toward the light, trying to focus
my vision, at the same time finding some position in which my head
could be comfortable (there was none) and attempting to figure out what
had happened to me. As I was looking at the rectangle of light, it got
smaller.
"Wait," I said, or rather tried to say. No sound
came from my throat. I now understood that I was in a small, enclosed
space, behind a brick wall, and that someone was closing me into this
space. A moment later, the area of light high on the wall got even
smaller, as another brick was shoved into place.
"Hey, I'm in here!" I attempted to shout. It came out as a dry rush of air.
The whispering voices on the other side of the
wall stopped for a moment, then started up faster and more urgent than
before. I tried to stand up, but fell on my back. "Please! Help me!" I
tried to yell. Another brick was shoved into the tiny area of light.
One more, and that would be it. I felt a moment of panic, then I
gathered my strength, and made one more try at standing up. I rose a
few inches before the pain in my skull overwhelmed me and I passed out
again.
I don't know if a half hour passed, or three
hours, or two days. When I again awoke, there was no light at all in
the place. I crawled around, feeling the walls and floor, searching for
a way out. Three of the walls were of rough stone, and the fourth was
the new cinder block wall. Nowhere could I detect a doorway, or any
possible opening. This time, I was able to shout loudly, but no one
answered me. I listened at the brick wall to try and hear the
whispering voices again, but I couldn't hear anything. I shouted. I
stopped. I thought of what had happened to me. I would have liked to
believe that the Elams and myself had been the victims of an
earthquake, or even a bomb plot, that had caught us all off guard in
the basement. But that would certainly not explain the hands bricking
up my little room, or the whispering voices. Then, I thought, perhaps
the Elam home had been invaded by terrorists, who had smashed me on the
back of the head and done whatever they wanted with the Elams, and
being humane terrorists, had decided not to shoot me, but to give me a
fighting chance by suffocating me to death in a tiny coffin-room. But
that idea didn't hold water, either, because I had not heard any
scuffling, or shouting, or anything behind me as I had prepared to
climb the cellar stairs. The three sons of the Elams had been behind
me, and certainly, any terrorist would have had to get through them to
get to me.
Finally, in the many hours I had there, to think
things over, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it was the Elams
themselves who had smashed me on the top of the head, thrown me into
this place, and sealed me up. I remembered what Mrs. Elam had said
about Mr. Elam's race for the Presidency, and how concerned she had
been that the public knowledge of my existence might harm his chances.
It's true, I had given Mrs. Elam my word not to tell anyone the truth
until after the election, but if she was an especially suspicious or
careful woman, perhaps my assurances had not been enough for her.
I realized I was hungry, and incredibly thirsty.
I slept again, drained of energy, and when I woke, again I felt along
the walls for a way out. I discovered a place on the wall where it was
wet. A rivulet of water, probably the sweat from some household pipe,
made its way down the irregular stone surface of the wall. I put my
mouth against it and let the water drip against my lips and tongue. It
might have been sewer water, for all I knew, but I had to quench my
thirst.
As I enjoyed the sensation of the water on my
lips, I felt, then heard, a tremendous rumbling on the other side of
one of the stone walls. The rumbling got louder and deeper, until the
walls and floor of my coffin-room were shaking. Then, suddenly, it
stopped. I thought I heard human voices. I strained to hear the voices,
but the rumbling started again, deafening, making my stomach turn with
its rattling movements. When the rumbling once again died down, I was
sure I did hear people. I yelled, but I was still very weak, and no one
heard me.
I can't remember how long it took for me to
figure out what would have been obvious to a native New Yorker, but
sooner or later it occurred to me that what I was hearing must be a
subway train, and that just on the other side of this stone wall from
me must be a subway station.
Whenever I heard voices, I would yell, "Help, I'm
in here, I'm trapped" But the train would come, drowning out the sound
of my voice with its great rumbling, followed by its tremendous
grinding noises. Or, sometimes even long before the train came, the
people would simply move away from the wall behind which I was
shouting, and their voices would stop.
As the days went by I got to know the train
schedule. I got to know the rush hours, and my hopes would rise before
every one. But each rush hour, the last train would leave and there
would be no one left on the platform. Sometimes, I would be positive
that someone out there heard me. A voice would stop mid-sentence, or
feet would move toward the wall, and I'd hear a tapping on the wall, as
though someone on the other side was trying to decide if the wall was
hollow. But even then, if I would shout louder, "Help! Help!" or speak
more clearly, saying, "Please, get the police to come and break down
this wall. I'm trapped, I'm starving!" no one stayed for long at the
wall. They left when their trains arrived. They didn't come looking for
me. Were they afraid to help? Did they think they were imagining the
shouts from behind the wall?
I needed a way to get the attention of someone
who would help me. All my shouting wasn't helping me, and since I was
getting weaker with every hour, from lack of food, I was sure my voice
would get softer and softer, and no one would ever hear me.
Also, I had to admit to myself that several of
the people in the subway station had almost certainly heard my cries.
Still, none of them had done anything to find out where they were
coming from, or if they might do something to help the person making
the cries. Sometimes, I thought I heard fear in their voices or in
their motions, the sounds of their shoes on the station platform, a
brushing sound. Sometimes they seemed to laugh. But in either case,
they were gone when their trains came. And those brought to the station
by the arriving trains, always went right to the exits, passing my wall
without stopping.
Then, suddenly, as I was laying with my face near
the wall at the place where the rivulet of water slid down, I
remembered what Dr. Crosse had said about the strange motivations
people have for doing certain things -- "That's it!" I realized. "My
job is to make these people want to open this wall and let me
out. If, for some reason, the sound of someone calling 'help' from
behind a tile wall doesn't have that effect on them, it is my job to
find something that will! If they want to get me out of here, they will
find a way to do it, and they'll knock down this wall. I've been doing
this the wrong way. After all, who would want to interrupt a journey,
perhaps after a hard day's work, or before an evening appointment, just
to go search behind the scrawled-over walls of some forbidding subway
station for the source of a loud voice, that advertises by its tone,
its tremor, the few words it says -- that it can only lead to an
evening filled with difficulties, sorrow, filling out police forms. And
you know if you did find out where the voice was coming from, you would
still have to knock down a wall, or look for someone with the authority
to knock it down. And who can begin to redress the grievances of
everyone -- even of all those with grievances in the subway! So, how
many would care to start the job while waiting for a subway, at night,
on the self-same Manhattan Island I had often seen on TV? Few, if any.
And none of those, as my efforts of the past few days had proved to me,
ever came within hearing of my cries for help.
How then could I get one of these passersby to feel a strong, even overwhelming, desire to remove me from this place?
I heard a man and a woman scuff their feet on the
gritty platform (it sounded gritty) as they stood talking a few feet
from me, on the other side of my wall.
I thought of the subliminal words Daphne and I
had drawn on our sheets of glass, and the way they had increased the
sales of certain magazines and products...
Suddenly, my new plan devised itself in my brain.
Instead of yelling, I put my lips about five feet
up near the cold cement wall, and said in a distinct but very low
voice, so low that even I, speaking the words, could hardly hear them,
"Sex, sex, sex sex, prick, cunt, sex, sex, cock, pussy, mmm."
I moved around to make my voice come from various
heights and places on the wall. I tried to say the words cleanly, like
a mechanical bell, cold, and yet forgiving. I wanted the man and woman
to hear without hearing, the way Dr. Crosse had said we could get
people to see without seeing, or to obey without having been commanded.
I kept at it for a long time. The people on the
other side didn't seem to notice. Still, I was pleased to note that
they didn't run away from the immediate area, like the people had
before, and to that extent, I thought, the new subliminal technique was
already proving itself superior to the traditional manner of getting
help from other people.
However, when I had yelled, even though the
others ran away, I knew at least that they had heard me. I did not have
even this small comfort, using my new method. Before, when I yelled
"Help!" and they ran away, I could always imagine they had gone to get
others -- professionals, to help me. Even though they never did, I had
a few minutes, or hours, of thinking I might soon hear a crash and see
a jagged shape of light as the sledge hammer breaks into my prison.
With this new way, I had to forego the old, comfortable false hopes,
and try new hopes. I thought the air must be running out in my room, so
I kept at the new way. "Fuck, suck, sex, suck," I whispered to the
stone wall.
The people on the other side started to linger
longer at my part of the wall. As the days and nights went by, I
thought I could detect people touching the wall. Sometimes, they would
run what sounded like the tips of their umbrellas across the white
tiles of the station wall directly over my wall, back and
forth--ratcheting along the wall, as I wooed them.
Sometimes I heard arguments on the other side of
the wall. I couldn't make out the words. I heard tones, attitudes. One
time I heard a lot of men arguing, and I knew they were arguing about
the sounds coming from me. At this time, I might have switched from my
subliminal mutterings, and said "HELP," as clearly as I still could,
considering my weakened state, but I decided to stick with the
subliminal method. It was that method, I reasoned, that had put men out
there arguing in the first place, and that method, if any, would cause
them to free me from my room. I kept saying, against the wall, "fuck
fuck sex death cancer cock fuck cunt, etc." After a while, someone hit
the wall. Then, I heard laughter, and then gunshots, as one of the men
shot at the wall with what sounded like a pistol. Then, there was more
silence. Then, I heard them leave.
I couldn't tell how long I had been there. The
water kept me alive. Evidently, air came into the space around the
water pipes far above my head.
Finally, one day, I was muttering as usual, my
subliminal litany against the wall, and I heard an angry voice in the
subway station, shouting very clearly and distinctly: "That's it!
That's it! Fuck you! Fuck you! You!" Then, there was a smashing blow
against the wall, directly opposite the side of my face. The wall
buckled inward, and knocked me back. I was in terrible pain. I didn't
know it at the time, but a shard of the inner wall had come loose and
stabbed me in the temple. Again, the wall shook. Again, the furious,
pained cry: "Fuck you! Not me! You! You're the cock! You're the cunt!
You get cancer! Not me! You!" and so on. From the sound of things,
someone was responding to my efforts. I didn't exactly understand the
nature of that response, but there was no doubt that I was experiencing
a level of success previously unknown. I felt my best course of action
was to continue saying the words, just as I had been. So I did. "Sex
sex fuck suck cock death, etc." The wall shook, again and again.
Finally, a small chunk of the wall fell out, and
I could see the shadow of a large man, and then tiny sections of him -
face red and bathed in sweat, swinging a huge mallet. He swung it
sidearm, wham, into the wall. Then, pulled it back and smashed it into
the wall again. "Fuck cunt sex cock fuck," I said, my voice barely
above a whisper.
"You! Fuck you!" screamed the man, as he smashed
the wall one final time, with all his might, and a piece the size of a
legal pad fell out, letting in such a block of light that I had to
cover my eyes with my arm. Under my arm, I peered through the wall, to
see this man, the first human being I had seen in weeks, as he reached
back to hit the wall again, and then, with an air of total defeat,
dropped the mallet to the platform. He raised his hands before his face
and looked at them. He shook his head in misery, and said to himself
(though out loud): "It's happened. I've gone insane. Oh, my God, what
am I going to do?" Then, he brought his hands to his face and covered
his eyes with them. It seemed as though he wanted to push his palms
through his own head. He let out a loud sob, and sank to his knees on
the platform, weeping.
I crawled around as best I could on my side of
the wall, lifting my face a little closer to the open section. I said,
"Hello? Hello?" as my eyes got used to the light, and I could see the
crying man clearly for the first time. He was wearing coveralls and
work boots, and besides the mallet, he had a tool case with him. He
didn't hear me, because he was still sobbing.
I gathered together all of my remaining strength and said, "Could you help me, please?"
He unstuck one of his hands from his face, and
looked at me out of the corner of his eye. The eyebrow of that eye came
down in a frown, for just a moment. Then, it shot up suddenly, like a
parking meter saying Time Expired - shot up with interest, concern,
relief, brotherhood, friendliness, and most of all, understanding. He
said, "You were in there. I thought I was hearing things. I thought I
was going insane!"
I told him what had happened to me, as far as I
knew. I told him I had seen hands bricking me in. He said, "Shit... no
wonder you were sittin' in there cursin'. Thing like that happened to
me, I'd curse, too!"
"No, you don't understand," I said. I started to
explain the theory of subliminal suggestion, by way of explaining the
words he had heard coming from the wall, but he interrupted me, telling
me to crawl back away from the wall. I did so. He picked up the mallet
and smashed the wall a few more times, opening up a hole large enough
for him to step into. He carried me out of the room, and put me on the
floor of the station, leaning me against the wall. I was shocked by the
appearance of my arms and legs. It looked as though I had lost about 50
pounds.
The man who had rescued me said he was a maintenance worker for the Transit Authority.
Every morning, he said, he came to this station
at five-thirty, to meet his crew. The crew came down the track on a
hand-cart, and picked him up, and they went down to 14th Street, to
plaster up some wall that was falling onto the tracks. Generally, they
were a few minutes late, and he would stand on the tracks, sneaking a
smoke. Then, one day about a month ago (this was the first notion I had
of how long I had been in the room) he was standing there, and he
thought he heard someone curse at him. The hand-car came along, and he
got on, and forgot about it. But the next morning, again he thought
someone was cursing at him. He looked behind the pillars, to see if
someone was hiding. He went through the short side-tunnels, and up the
stairs and across the upper platform and down the other stairs to the
uptown side of the station, to see if anyone, any kids or anything,
were hiding there, but he couldn't find anyone. When he got back to his
usual spot, there was that voice again.
"That was me!" I exclaimed with joy. I was then
chewing on a candy bar the man had kindly bought for me, along with a
package of 'Nilla Wafers.
"That was you?" he asked, slowly. "Cursing at me?"
"I wasn't cursing at you," I said. "I was saying
triggering phenomes. I was introducing triggering phenomes into the
environment."
"What are those?"
"You know: fuck, sex, cock, death, etc."
He said, "That was you! You was cursin me. Why, I ought to..."
"No!" I shouted, getting my voice back at last. "I wasn't cursing you. I didn't even know you were there."
He said, "That's true. But why didn't you just yell for help?"
I told him I had tried that, but it didn't work.
He said, "Sure. I could of told you that."
I told him about the work on subliminals we had
been doing at Dr. Crosse's ranch. I informed him it was the triggering
phenomes which had caused him to smash open the wall and save my life.
"Well," he said, looking at the hole in the wall with new respect, "it sure worked."
He said his name was Dan. He took me to a
hospital. It was a filthy and frightening place. I told him I wanted to
call Dr. Crosse, in California. Dan asked if we should call the police
first, to tell them what had happened to me at Mr. Elam's house, and to
swear out a warrant against the Elams. I said I didn't want to do that.
"Why not? Shit, they tried to kill you. And this
man is running for President!" He held up a copy of a newspaper and I
could see Mr. Elam's smiling face, and large hand, as he waved at the
camera taking his picture. The headline said, "'If democracy works in
Russia, maybe we should try it here,' says Elam, to cheering garment
workers."
I told Dan, "In the first place, I don't know if
Mr. or Mrs. Elam even know what happened to me. Their three sons could
have hit me, and then told the Elams I stopped to go to the bathroom.
Then, later they could have said I just walked off, or told them I
didn't want to interfere with Mr. Elam's candidacy, so I went back
where I came from. Or, there could have been someone else in that
basement, perhaps someone hiding. Perhaps, a squatter, or a political
enemy of the Elams."
"Doesn't seem likely," said Dan. "But still, you want the cops in on it."
"No, I don't. If we tell the police, the
newspapers will find out. Any news about this, about a man found
bricked into a wall below Mr. Elam's house, a son by artificial
insemination, any of that, though it need not reflect badly on his
ability to hold high office, or the ideas which he would set into
motion once he got into office, still, might sway some voters to vote
for his opponent. Unfair though that might seem. I don't want to be the
cause of Mr. Elam's losing something that obviously means as much to
him as does the Presidency of the most powerful nation in the world. If
I thought, that by my actions, or worse, just by my very existence, I
had brought sorrow into the life of my father, I'd feel lower than a
snake's belly in the bottom of a dry well. As we say out West. I would
wish I had never started my search for my True Dad."
I gestured with my face toward a plastic cup with
a bent straw sticking out of the lid. Dan held the cup so I could drink
from it.
He said, "Well, whatever you want. I guess I'd
just as soon not have to explain to the Transit Authority how I came to
smash in all those tiles, anyway. What with the budget the way it is, I
don't think they'll be too happy with me for givin' em a wall to
replace."
I said, "You saved a man's life. You would be hailed as a hero, for getting me out of there."
He shook his head, saying, "It might be different
if you were an actual passenger, but the way things are, you not even
buying a token or anything... I'd just have to explain to Mr. John
Walsh, my superior, and to Otis Washington, Pedro Matilla, and Paddy
Loubert, my crew, how I heard curse words comin' from the wall, and how
I came back there, with a mallet, to destroy the wall if it cursed me
one more time. I can hear the howls."
"But you were right," I reminded him. "You weren't imagining the words, I was saying them."
"Yeah, but you don't get it. You said you and
this Doctor Crosse found out how you can get people to do things, with
these dirty words, right?"
"Triggering phenomes."
"But they don't know why they're doin' it, right?"
I nodded, as well as I could.
"So they did it for the dirty words." He looked
at me in a direct way, that seemed to indicate that he had been
injured. "No," he said, looking now at his hands, which were latched in
his lap, facing upward, "if you had been yellin' help, and I helped
you, I'd be a hero. But the way things are, I'm just as happy to let
the whole thing slide, if you know what I mean."
He called Dr. Crosse for me, and Daphne answered.
By this time, I knew I had been in the wall for four weeks. Daphne
said, "Where are you? Who was that?" referring to Dan, who had only
said, "Is this the Crosse residence?" I told her I was in a hospital,
in New York. I said, "That was Dan. He rescued me." She told me she and
her father had been very worried about me.
"When we didn't hear from you, we called the Elams. They said you'd been there, but left."
The Elams' assistants (for they never talked
directly to the Elams) had said no one in the family knew where I had
gone after leaving their townhouse. Daphne said she and her father had
called the New York Police Department, and all the hospitals in the
area, to see if anyone had been brought in with a concussion. They had
also tried the morgues of the City.
"Where is Dr. Crosse now?" I asked. She said,
"He's in New York. He went there to find you, two weeks ago. He's
staying at the Pierre Hotel, because you left your things there, and he
thought you might come back for them, or send for them."
I was amazed and gratified to hear that Dr.
Crosse had gone to all that trouble, just to find me, and I told Daphne
so. She said, "You should give up all this searching for your True Dad,
Reynold, and let my father be your father."
Within an hour, Dr. Crosse was with us, in the
hospital room. It was wonderful seeing his smiling, tan face, and his
kindly eyes, and the hair that fell in a pile over his eyes from time
to time. I introduced him to Dan. After assuring himself that I was all
right, or would be after a couple more days of rest and good food, Dr.
Crosse questioned Dan and me closely. He said, "Reynold, I think you've
just made a great discovery!" He asked how I had said the phenomes. He
asked me to duplicate the volume of my voice, and he taped what I said
on a portable tape recorder. He asked how long and how often I had
intoned the words. Then, he asked Dan about the nature of the material
through which my words had come, in order to arrive at Dan's ears. Dan,
thanks to his expert knowledge of subway construction, was able to tell
Dr. Crosse the precise specifications for the tiles, and the stone wall
behind them. Then, Dr. Crosse asked Dan about when he had first become
aware of the phenomes coming through the wall. Dan said he couldn't say
exactly when it was, but it was several weeks before he had broken
through the wall. Dr. Crosse asked him if he had noticed any new
feelings or thoughts about that particular spot on the platform, before
he had first heard the words. Dan said the only thing he could think of
was that he noticed he liked to stand closer and closer to the wall
every morning, while waiting for his crew to come in the hand-car. He
said he used to stand right by the tracks, to step onto the car without
it having to stop, but in the weeks before rescuing me, had been
backing up maybe a step or two every day, until he found himself
waiting right against the wall, and he had to run across the platform
to jump on the hand-car when it came.
"Wonderful!" said Dr. Crosse.
Over the next two days and nights, he continued
to question Dan. He also rented some electronics equipment I couldn't
recognize, so he could test Dan's hearing and brain waves.
Doctor Crosse had his own reasons for thinking we
should not tell the police what had happened to me, which he told me
after I told him my reasons. "Reluctantly, I agree to keep your
secret," he told me one time when Dan had gone home. "Of course, this
man Elam, and the members of his family, deserve no consideration. I
cannot go along with you there. However, the story of your escape would
bring our work into the eye of the public, and I'm sure you'll agree,
especially now that your impromptu stroke of genius has opened new
realms for us, and given us the extra assurance to carry subliminals to
the next step, I'm sure you'll agree that we need continued anonymity
to continue our studies." I was flattered that Dr. Crosse thought so
highly of what I had done. He said that when the final records were
written, and the story of the subliminals was finally a part of the
history of science forever, that the "Stengrow Auditory Annoyance
Effect" would assure me of immortality. As for Elam, he said he would
not vote for him, even if he did somehow (unlikely though it was) turn
out to be my True Dad. More than that, he said he would keep "tabs" on
Mr. Elam, and if the day ever came, and secrecy was no longer required
of him and me, and it should happen that I changed my mind, and decided
to rescind my anonymous forgiveness of the Elams (for after all, they
didn't know they were forgiven, not knowing I was alive) then he would,
he vowed, have enough on them to bring them down from whatever height
they might have attained by that day. I said I was sure I would never
give the go-ahead for anything like that. "Honor thy father and
mother..." as my father and mother used to tell me.
When I was a bit stronger, we said our goodbyes
to Dan, who had become a good friend, and Dr. Crosse brought me back to
California, to the ranch. Before leaving Dan at the hospital curb, Dr.
Crosse gave him a check, and Dan, not wanting to take it, was trying to
shove it back at Dr. Crosse, when he happened to see the amount, and
said, "Twenty-five thousand dollars?! What for?" Dr. Crosse said, "For
saving the life of one who is like a son to me." That made me cry, as
the limo slid into the traffic, and I turned around in the seat, to
wave at Dan.
The Work
"Over a period of several decades, America's
advertising agencies and some of their client corporations [have]
engineered subliminal techniques into a fascinating new technique of
behavior modification through a direct communication with the brain's
unconscious systems." (Dr. Wilson Brian Key,The Clam-plate Orgy and Other Subliminal Techniques for Manipulating Your Behavior>, Signet, NY 1980).
"They came to me, as I told
you," said Dr. Crosse, "the people whose identity I keep to myself,
patriots, is all you have to know, and that is why Daphne has been
etching on the glass, and that is why you and she have been making the
photographs with the embeds, and that is why now I ask you to write up,
in some detail, the story of your experience locked in that basement
room."
He said that thanks to the earlier work done
by Daphne and myself, and thanks to the story of my miraculous escape,
which he had told to his sponsors, they had decided to expand the
funding for our experiments. He said that only he and I and Daphne, of
all the people on the Redbird campus, knew what we were doing. He
praised me, and gave me a tremendous raise. Now, I was earning two
thousand dollars a week. The only problem, said Dr. Crosse, was that I
still had to be off the books, my name couldn't be officially linked
with the project, and we didn't want to leave, he said, a "paper
trail." That was fine with me. I found a hiding place on the ranch, and
when Dr. Crosse gave me my pay every week, in cash, I went out there,
to my place beneath the pine tree by the seasonal stream, and buried it
in a green tin box with a picture of Gene Autry on the cover.
Dr. Crosse and Daphne ate their meals in my
bedroom while I was still weak, and fed me, and we happily plotted our
future research in this wonderful new field, subliminal mind-control.
When I was well again, Daphne and I resumed our experiments in the field of subliminal suggestion.
We tried out our ideas in the little town, and
around the campus. We gained access to the student newspaper, and the
textbooks, to cover them with embeds, and study the effects they had on
the grades of the students, or their opinions on various issues of the
day.
For some reason, drawings of cute animals, and
little drawings of skulls, ghosts, monsters and/or decapitated men and
women are also very effective. For certain purposes, such drawings are
even better than the words - for example, in advertisements for cake
mix and cigarettes designed for women. We caused a certain brand of
cigarette to dramatically improve its sales in Redbird overnight after
an ad appeared in the program for a school concert, showing a pack of
these cigarettes, and subliminals of decapitated bodies and skulls all
over it. According to Doctor Crosse, this is because death is as
attractive to most of us as sex is, especially to cigarette-smokers.
I remember those days, walking and talking
with Daphne. Sneaking into the office of the student newspaper
together, and substituting the embedded photographs for the ones the
newspaper had been planning to print. Sitting together in the malt
shop, sipping sodas and watching the kids thumb through the magazines
we had planted in the racks. The nights we shaved subtle "fuck's" into
the turf of the football field, or circlets of "pussy's" and "sex's,"
cutting the letters into the grass with pinking shears. Then, the
Saturdays, the crisp autumn air, cheering Redbird on, while Dr. Crosse
operated the video cameras we had set up around the stadium, to watch
both purchasing behavior, and romantic behavior on the part of the
fans. Our spirited discussions about which words had caused the fans to
buy too little and make love too much, and why. Creating these
subliminal words and pictures with Daphne, on the only sheets we shared
for many months, our sheets of thick glass, and photographing the glass
along with all those magazine and newspaper pictures. This was the best
part of my life, to that time.
But my thoughts turned once again to finding
my True Dad. It seems, as a matter of fact, that each increase in my
good fortune, each new sign of the power of my work, made it that much
more important to me to find my True Dad, and through him, my entire
ancestry and affinities.
I felt a growing need to benefit some segment
of humanity, and glorify it, and I felt it should be that slice of the
world pie that came to a crumbly, rich point in myself, Reynold
Stengrow, or whatever my name might eventually turn out to be.
True Dads # 2 and # 3
Dr. Crosse and I decided that if
I was going to search for the rest of the possible True Dads in my
ledger, it would probably be better to find a new detective agency to
help me. We didn't want to answer any embarrassing questions from the
man who had located Mr. Elam for me.
I went to L.A. quite often in those days,
because we were doing business with a printer down there, and on one of
my trips, I went through the L.A. phone books and found the names of
detective agencies. I called one, and went to see them. They had an
office in Century City. It was modern, with grey, pebble-textured
furniture.
I was led to the office of my Personal
Investigator, MacDonald "Mac" McDonald, a man of approximately fifty,
thin, with blonde hair and a blonde mustache that drooped over the
corners of his mouth. I gave him the list of names I had gotten from
Dr. Lord's ledger. I didn't tell him why I wanted to locate these men,
though he asked. He said I didn't have to answer, as long as I could
assure him that I didn't intend to break any law once I had the
information I was looking for. I said I didn't. I paid him a couple of
thousand dollars in cash ($400 a day, five days in advance) and three
days later, Mr. McDonald called me to tell me he had located the first
name on the list - Mr. Merle Persson - and asked if I could come in to
talk about what he had found.
Merle Persson, as it turned out, was as rich
as Mr. Elam, my other putative Dad, but unhappily, for him and for me,
he was dead. He had died two years before, as the result of a shootout
with a Los Angeles Police Officer. Mr. Persson had been unarmed, but
according to the police officer, "it looked like he had a gun." Police
experts testified at the hearing, that men with hairy wrists, (as Mr.
Persson evidently had), when they raise their hands in the air, (as Mr.
Persson was doing when he was shot), sometimes, in certain light, at
certain times of day, can give an appearance of having a handgun
snapping out of the sleeve, into their waiting fingers. "The officer
sees the hair on those wrists," the expert said, "and he doesn't know
if it's a gun, a knife, maybe a grenade launcher. Could happen to
anyone." The fact that the policeman fired eight shots into Mr. Persson
(six after the man had died) was explained by the fact that the officer
had been under a great deal of stress recently, having been dropped
from the Department's weightlifting team when traces of steroids were
found in his urine. In any case, the officer was exonerated of all
wrong-doing, and given a stress disability leave at twice his normal
salary. However, said Mac, Mr. Persson was also exonerated of all
wrong-doing, because he had not had a gun, and more than that, he was
judged to have been correct in the argument he was having with the
police officer, about the expired parking meter.
"He was killed over an expired parking meter?"
I asked in amazement, grieving over the loss of the man who could
possibly have been my True Dad.
"He said the meter was free," said Mac.
"How can there be a free meter?" I asked.
"Well," said Mac, "it seems that Mr. Persson
was something of a philanthropist. Where other men might endow the city
with a symphony orchestra, or an art museum, to improve the lives of
their fellow citizens, Mr. Persson, who made his fortune in parking
lots, incidentally, decided to use his money giving people what they
really could use - he endowed parking spaces."
"I didn't know you could do that."
Mac nodded. "He did it. Made a deal with the
Municipal Courts, eternally endowed about two hundred meters around the
city. Way they did it, the meter just always says there's an hour left
in it. That way, Persson avoided unwanted publicity. The meter maids
were supposed to know which were the endowed meters, by this blue
stripe they all have around the bottom the pole. Evidently, this one
cop was a recent transfer from Glendale, didn't know about the endowed
meters, had driven past this one meter all day and seen it always had
the one hour on it, assumed it was broken and that since this one car
had been there all day, the owner of the car must know it was broken,
started giving the guy a ticket, at which point Mr. Persson comes along
--"
"You mean it wasn't even his car?"
"No, he died for another man's free parking," said Mac sadly, "Another man's free parking and those damn hairy wrists."
I took a walk in Century City, thinking about
Mr. Persson. Thinking about the soaring joy of the people who had found
and would continue to find, as long as Los Angeles existed, those free
meters, with their eternal one hour periods of grace. And I knew he
must have been my True Dad. How like me he had been - how generous, how
thoughtful - and that touch of secrecy about his generosity - how like
me, with my subliminal etchings! I sat in one of the endowed spaces, in
a cool concrete multi-leveled lot in Westwood, studying the pictures of
him given to me by Mac. Except for his coloring, eyes and hair, chin,
cheeks and nose, and ears, Merle Persson and I could have been the same
person!
I went around for days, feeling good about
myself, reading the Constitution and Declaration of Independence,
underlining inspirational passages and muttering them over and over to
myself as I thought of possible gifts I might one day give to my city,
in emulation of my True Dad. Perhaps, I would endow oxygen, water,
underwear... It was hard to decide what endowment might be worthy to
continue the tradition of my True Dad, but I knew I would find
something.
Then, just as I was settling into my new
identity as the surviving son of a great social benefactor, proud heir
to a rich man's gracious urges, Mac McDonald called me again, and said
he had found the next name on the list.
Although I was sure we had already found my
True Dad, I felt I should go and meet Mac, if only to take a glance at
the photos he might have of this new candidate for my paternity. Then I
would know in my own heart that the new man was not a possibility.
We met at a Denny's Restaurant, on Pico
Boulevard, because Mac said he had a stakeout near there. He ate hash
browns and bacon while we talked. He tossed a manila folder across the
table at me, that said, on a tab at the top of the cover, JEFFREY
POPPER.
"What do you know about him?" I asked.
"Popper's a pauper," said McDonald.
"A pauper," I thought. "A pauper named Popper?
How was it possible for a genius - which is what Dr. Lord had promised
the Stengrows after all - to turn out after a lifetime in America, the
land of the greatest opportunity known to the human race, a pauper?"
"He's a writer," said McDonald, by way of
explanation. "I brought you some of his stuff... it's pretty weird..."
He held a paperback book over the file. I took the soiled paperback
from his hand - a publisher I had never heard of - paper of an inferior
quality - no comments whatsoever on the front or back cover, about the
book or the author - filthy dirty covers and pages - McD. had found it
in a used book store on Lincoln Boulevard. "Only book he's ever had
published," said McD. "Only came across it 'cause the owner of the
bookstore happened to remember Popper's name, remembered he had this
book since 1969, down on the bottom shelf in the back room somewhere.
Not difficult to see why Mr. Popper isn't better known. Just take a
gander at a page or two..."
I opened the book, which was called AN HONEST
BOOK, and read the first page. I had already, I'm ashamed to say,
concluded that Mr. Popper was my True Dad. I think I decided the moment
my hand touched the manila folder. I felt it in the pages of his book,
in the letters of his name, in the face of McD. seated across from me
on his vinyl fat couch. This was a flaw in my character. I can see that
now. This instantaneous acceptance of each subsequent candidate for my
True Dad, on the basis of almost no evidence at all... I hadn't even
opened Popper's file. But something about the way the sun was slanting
in over the hash browns, and the fly-speckled covers of Popper's book,
gave me a genetic twinge...
It was not hard to understand, reading a page
of the book, why Mr. Popper was less well-known than, for example, any
other writer of all time. Here is a sample of his work:
"I will make good laws, for the
sustenance of many nations,
and of the world.
I will reveal that the cure for cancer resides
in corn, and the silk threads
around the stalks of corn.
I will put a wooden table in the middle of the street
in order to create Peace
in the place where I was born and raised -
Who will make this possible?
How will a way be made for me,
here on Earth?
Only by Your Grace, and that of the Beautiful Lady."
"You sure you want to meet this guy?" said
McD., and of course I said I was. He gave me the address. He asked me
if I wanted company but I said I'd rather go alone.
Mr. Popper's apartment was in Venice, across from the beach. One room and a kitchen in an old pink house.
According to Mac's file, Popper wrote from
six in the morning till noon, then he sold jokes for 25 cents on the
beach. I waited on the street between the house and the beach, and when
I saw the man whose pictures Mac had shown me, I leisurely followed him
down to the boardwalk. He looked both older and younger than the 42
years old I had been told he was. Older, because he was overweight,
with a stooped walk and ragged, torn clothes, and because he had a
balding head of black and grey hair. The remaining hair flew in all
directions and looked dry, as did his mostly grey beard. However, he
also looked younger, much younger, because his face and eyes were
almost childish. His skin was smoothe, with no wrinkles on his brow or
under his eyes. His eyes themselves, large dark brown eyes, seemed
innocent of all intention or experience. To everyone he passed, he
called out, "How ya doin'?" and shot his hand in the air in a formless
salute, as he moved on. His neighbors, who were working in their
gardens, or sunning themselves on the concrete aprons in front of their
houses, seemed to like him well enough. They all shouted something back
to him. But none of them asked him to stop by their stone fences and
tell them anything. From the way he was moving, I could see he didn't
want them to. He sped up when he passed the houses with people in front
of them, and only slowed down when there were no people. Then, he liked
to study the flowers and weeds that grew through the fences, and he
spent at least a few moments (while I had to hang back and look
inconspicuous on that tiny walk-street) touching and talking to any
cats he happened to pass. I could hear him say to them, "Tender
Vittles?" and reach into his pocket for a white envelope from which he
would pour out a couple of spoonfuls of semi-dry cat food. Then, the
cats would stand and stretch their muscles, and gobble up the food, and
Mr. Popper would move along.
At the beach, he bought and consumed a
container of coffee and a danish. Then, he stood up from his bench, and
unfolded a large white sheet of paper he had been carrying. I saw that
it opened into a garment - like a tunic - that he slipped over his
head, and fastened with a rope around his middle. The tunic came down
to his knees. On the front and back, in large, hand-written letters,
were the words; "Jokes - 25 cents. Laugh, or You Get Your Money Back."
I, sitting on one of the benches, watched as
he walked alongside the passing tourists, generally choosing a couple
or a family, and offering his services. "Just a quarter," he would say.
"Three knee-slappers for a half a dollar." Most of the time, the people
kept going, sometimes drawing up their shoulders against the presence
of this big, obviously destitute individual. But sometimes, a child
might say, "Oh, Daddy, let's buy a joke! Please!" and the father, with
obvious feelings of pride and benevolence would dig into his pocket and
take out a quarter or two, and say, "OK, let's have a joke."
Then, Mr. Popper would generally start with:
"A man walks into a psychiatrist's office, says, 'Doc, you gotta help
me, I don't know what to do, wherever I go, people ignore me!' The
doctor says, 'Next.' "
Then, if they liked that one (stolen from
Henny Youngman, if I'm not mistaken) he would go on to: "Man calls an
attorney's office. Goldbloom, Goldbloom and Goldbloom. Says,'May I
speak to Mr. Goldbloom?'
'Sorry, he's passed away.'
'Then, I'd like to speak to Mr. Goldbloom.'
'Sorry, he's not in the office right now.'
'Then, can I speak to Mr. Goldbloom?'
'Speaking.' "
Also stolen from Henny Youngman. However, I am
sure Mr. Youngman never had to give back the quarter. On the other
hand, Mr. Popper, confronted with the stony faces of those to whom he
had told his jokes, would often have to give back their money, and
watch them walk away arguing about what the jokes might have meant.
Sometimes he might yell after them, "Speaking. Speaking.
Don't ya get it?" but most of the time he just veered toward a new
family or couple, with his odd style of walking, which made it look as
though he were about to topple forward with each step, his wild hair
and beard, and his hard-to-believe offer of laughter.
Finally, I stood and went toward him. I tried
to introduce myself to him, but he was so intent on selling me a joke,
that I gave him a quarter and he told me about the man and the
psychiatrist. I pretended to laugh, not wanting him to know I had heard
the joke at a friend's wedding, where Henny Youngman had entertained,
and not wanting him to feel as though he had to give me back my
quarter. Then, before he could sell me another joke, I said, "Actually,
I wanted to talk to you."
"I don't get it," he said. "Are you making a movie or something?"
"No," I said, "I read your book, and I liked it. I wanted to meet the writer.
Since my experience with Mr. Elam had been so
disappointing, from a family point of view, I had decided to keep my
possible relationship to Mr. Popper a secret, until I got to know him
better, and had a chance to see for myself if we resembled one another
in any way.
He was amazed that anyone had ever seen that
book, let alone read it. He said, "I was very embarrassed when that
book came out. It was published by a girlfriend of mine. Her father was
some kind of rich golf pro or something. She did it without my
permission. It wasn't ready."
Again I told him I had liked, actually loved,
his book. I was lying, I am sorry to say. My only excuse is that I was
almost positive that after many false leads, I had indeed found my True
Dad. Perhaps it was the toppling-forward walk, so much like my own.
Perhaps, it was because he was the only candidate so far who had not
tried to kill me, or died before I could meet him. He was both
non-threatening, and available for perusal. Many have offered their
children less and been fathers anyway. I was sure Mr. Popper was mine.
I remembered the money I had in the metal box
in the ground at Dr. Crosse's ranch, and I decided, there and then, I
wanted to use some of it to publish the works of Mr. Popper.
I said, "Do you have anything you think might
be ready for publication? I'm a fan of yours and I have some money in a
metal box buried up in Redbird, and I want to use some of it to publish
your books."
He stood frozen for a moment, then his arms
dropped to his sides, and were buried in the tunic. His mouth hung open
for a moment or two, then he closed it, and focused his eyes on me.
"Published," he said, "are you joking?" I assured him I was not.
Now he sat down. He sank his head between his knees and covered it with his arms, like a dog expressing shame in a movie.
"Are you all right, Mr. Popper?" I asked him.
He raised his head and upper body slowly, and looked at me through his sad eyes. He said, "I don't know if anything is ready."
I asked him, "Have you written anything since the book I read?"
He said, "Have I written anything! Come with
me!" He stood up quickly and for a moment I thought he was going to
fall over on his face, but then I realized he was merely walking
forward, and I had been fooled by the toppling-forward style of walking
which he and I shared, obviously a characteristic of our Popper blood.
I reached out to catch him, but he was already past me, and I had to
hurry to catch up with him. He strode back to his apartment, and I
followed him up the wooden stairs.
Inside, there was a living room-bedroom, a
kitchen and a bathroom, all filled with Mr. Popper's manuscripts. They
were all in dusty manila folders piled from floor to ceiling along
every wall in every room, their titles written on each folder in
pencil, along with the date of completion. There were even manuscripts
in the refrigerator, and the freezer.
He said, "I used to have furniture, a TV, records, a record player. I had to get rid of all of it, to make room for my books."
"Don't you ever send them to publishers?"
"I did, once," he said. He took from the top
of one of the manuscript piles a small yellowed piece of yellow paper,
folded in three. He unfolded it and showed it to me. It was a rejection
letter from The New Yorker, dated thirty years ago. There was a
picture of a man looking through a monocle at the top of the page. The
letter said, "The manuscript you have sent us, "The Search for Wilhelm
Reich," defies ready classification. Is it a story, is it a work of
non-fiction, is it a prose poem? One of our editors thought it might
best be characterized as a "prophecy" of some kind. Especially that
part about the survival of only two-sevenths of one-eighteenth of the
population of Europe, after that worldwide cataclysm caused, as far as
any of us can tell, by salt. The one thing we could all agree on was
that, no matter what genre your work may belong to, it is certainly a
bad example of that genre. It is, in fact, a bad example of writing in
general. It makes us question the whole transition of mankind from an
oral to a written culture, because anyone who had to communicate what
you have written face-to-face would certainly be smacked many times
before he had had a chance to finish talking. Only through writing
could such a spurious mind follow its own impulses for a long enough
period of time to create this hideous abomination. Thank you for
thinking of The New Yorker. Good luck in your future writing, if you should be foolish enough to do any. Yours very truly, etc. etc. etc."
I said, "This was thirty years ago. Look at all you've written since then. Haven't you submitted anything else for publication?"
"I will," he promised. "As soon as something is really ready. Then, I'll send it to The New Yorker, and they won't hate it. But I have to have something that's ready. Then, I'll ship it right out."
He said he wrote every day and with the money
he made selling jokes on the beach, he wanted and needed for nothing,
except some more room, so he could store his novels and poems.
Riffling through some of the dusty manila
folders, with their pleasant heft and motion, I asked him if he didn't
mind not being famous. He said, "All writers want to be famous. But
it's no good if it happens before you're ready. I want to be ready."
I wanted to change his mind, and give him
reason for hope, so I said, "But I'm a member of the new generation,
and I love your writing!" I waved in the air the thick novel I was then
holding and said, "This book here... It's ready, and I want to publish
it." I was even brash enough as to take a bunch of hundred dollar bills
from my pocket and push them towards him. "This is an advance," I said.
"Just give me your manuscripts, and I'll publish them."
He was tempted, I could tell. "But not that
one. Wait a second and I'll find one that's almost ready. Maybe not
totally ready, but possibly with a quick polish... maybe a new first
chapter... Now, let me see here..."
He turned to the wall and started searching up
and down the tall piles of folders, shaking his head as he read each
spine, lovingly running his hand along the dust of his life's work, and
touching many of the titles with his fingertips, as he read them. But
each time, he shook his head, and moved on to the next title, and shook
his head again.
"No," he said, "they're not ready."
"Well, what would make something ready?"
"If I thought I could send something to The New Yorker, and they would publish it, then I'd know I was ready. They're the last word, you know."
A couple of times he seemed about to lay his
hands on some folder, and pull it from the endless wall of manila, but
he always stopped himself, with a small sound from his throat, a
warning croak, telling him the work wasn't ready.
I said, "I want to help you, though. You're my
favorite writer. Can I be your assistant?" He said he didn't need one
and couldn't afford one. I said I would do it for free, but he said he
still had no use for me.
As for me, I found him strangely loveable,
though I couldn't really approve of him because he had wasted his
genius and hadn't made any money with it. Also, his writing was not to
my liking or indeed to anyone's. But he had a good time doing it, and I
felt by then it was obvious he was my True Dad, and I wanted to help
him. I wanted him to assume his rightful place in the literary life of
America, along with my favorites, J.D. Salinger and Tom Clancy. But how
to help this pitiful pencil-pusher? He wouldn't even take the hundreds
of dollars I tried to give him. When I left him, he allowed me to give
him two dollars, but only on condition that I listened to a dozen jokes.
I returned to the ranch, and told Daphne that
I had gone to see the old man, that there was no doubt in the world he
was my True Dad, and that I wanted to help him, but he wouldn't let me.
She said, "Why don't we rent him some storage
space for his writings? That seems to be the only thing he needs." I
said I didn't think he'd accept, except on the condition that he be
allowed to tell us six jokes for every dollar of the rent, and that was
too much of a sacrifice, I suggested, even for one's own putative flesh
and blood.
Finally, she and I secretly bought a one-story
building a block away from his apartment, and told him it belonged to a
friend of ours who needed a house-sitter. We said if he would work
there, and spend a few hours a day there, he could have free storage
space, and a small salary. Daphne and I arranged the building as a
perfect, climate-controlled storage facility. We put in a desk and
chair, some plants, snack machines that took no coins, file cabinets,
copy machines so he could have triplicates of every page...
He accepted the use of the place when Daphne
and I convinced him his manuscripts were in danger of crumbling from
exposure to the sea air. "You can keep them safe and secure until
they're ready," I said.
Popper and I and Daphne arranged and filed all his writings.
Still, I wanted to help him more than that.
Daphne again hit on the solution, suggesting a way we could help him
get his writings published.
One day when he was out, giving Tender Vittles
to the cats on his walkstreet, Daphne and I retyped two of his short
stories on typing paper which had been embedded with subliminal words,
(sex, fuck, death... the usual anthology) and sent them to The New Yorker.
A week later, we arrived at the storage
facility to find Mr. Popper sitting on the cot he had set up, to spend
some nights there, as well as for naps. He was still in his pajamas,
and was weeping into his open hands. A letter lay on the floor at his
feet. Daphne picked it up, and read it. I read over her shoulder. It
was from the editor of The New Yorker, telling Mr. Popper they were accepting both stories for publication.
He looked up at me and said, "Without a plot,
without sympathetic, antipathetic or even recognizable characters,
without a hero or an equally powerful but evil villain, without a
celebrity name attached and without the use of one single line from
Henny Youngman's act, I have done it... I have sold a story to The New Yorker!
Home of Truman Capote, John Hersey, A.J. Liebling, Gilbert Rogin, J.D.
Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov, S.Y. Agnon, Mr. Luria, Whitney Balliett,
John Updike! Pauline Kael! Ved Mehta! And you, you have made it
possible!"
He stood up and kissed me and Daphne with
gratitude, for having been instrumental in bringing about his time of
good fortune, after all his desert years.
Daphne and I clasped one another around the
waist and dried our happily weeping eyes with paper tissues we got from
a box on the nightstand beside the cot. We all went out for lunch at a
place called the Queen of Cups, and talked about the future. I asked
Mr. Popper if he thought Daphne and I could send some more of his
novels and stories out to publishers.
He said, "Not a bad idea. If I'm good enough for The New Yorker, who shall say me no?"
I went to Dr. Crosse, and told him what Daphne
and I had been doing to help Mr. Popper. I thought he might be angry at
me for the unapproved use of subliminals. I told him I was sorry to
have gone so far without telling him beforehand, but "once the idea
popped into our heads, we just did it. I guess we didn't really think
that magazine would take his stories, but now that they have, I'd like
to continue helping him."
Dr. Crosse thought about it for a while, then
asked, "Did you tell him about the subliminal paper you sent his
manuscript out on?"
I said, "No. Both Daphne and I know the necesssity for secrecy."
He said that was good, but he asked, "How do
you think Mr. Popper would feel if he knew that magazine accepted his
stories because they were reading 'fuck', 'sex', and so on through the
typed letters, written in the weave of the paper?"
I said, "He wouldn't like it, but that doesn't mean he'd be right."
"How so?" asked Dr. Crosse.
I said, "It's like you said about the people
buying the toothpaste. If they want it, they need it. If those editors
want his stories, they need them, too. I just helped them focus on the
stories long enough to realize that."
"You're learning, boy," said Dr. Crosse with a
grin. He slapped me on the back and said he had to go to a class. He
said, "Send Popper's novels and stories out, if you want, but remember
- keep notes. Above all else, keep notes!" Then he ran out of the house.
Daphne and I doctored the manuscripts, and Mr.
Popper sent them out, along with a cover letter, also embedded with
triggering phenomes.
The editors gobbled them up. At first, the
advances were small. A few thousand dollars for a novel, or a few
hundred. But almost everything sold, on the first submission. Finally,
Daphne and I could not devote any more time to the submissions, having
work to do at the ranch, so we found Mr. Popper a literary agent. This
agent had the idea of having an auction for one of the books, and it
sold for a hundred thousand dollars.
Soon after that, we went down there, and he
had gotten a haircut, and his beard was shaved off. He was moving his
manuscripts into a new condo in Santa Monica, "North of Montana," as he
proudly said, and he had a lovely young girl helping him pack. Her name
was Genevieve. She quoted passages from some of Mr. Popper's works as
they packed: "In Russie, Czeck, and the Ukraine, they think they have
abolished inheritance, but they are inheriting yet," and "This is a
prayer for the people living in cities, O Lord, the nations gathered in
Your town," and so on, issued forth from her lips, pushing aside bubble
gum to do so. I was surprised to see that Mr. Popper sighed deeply, and
a little hopelessly, whenever he heard a quote from his works.
As he looked around his apartment, and out the
window at the walkstreet, and the beach down the block, he shook his
head, and sighed once again. He said, "I had my picture on the cover of
the L.A. Times Book Review, Genevieve and other young people
have memorized passages of my works, I'm on TV two or three times a
week, giving my opinions about the latest movies, insurance plans for
the State of California, censorship, gays, abortion and James Branch
Cabell, everything the publisher thinks of for me to do."
"Isn't this what you wanted?" I asked him.
"My work existed to be hidden," he said. "I
didn't realize that until I saw it in other people's hands, like a
hostage. Now, I have to write more, to ransom the old stuff back. But
how can I ever write enough, how can I get my pages safely back from
the thoughts of other people?"
I slapped him on the back, to buck him up, perhaps help him inhale more oxygen.
Then, we packed my car with the stuff that
wouldn't fit in the van he had rented, and we all drove North of
Montana Avenue, to Mr. Popper's new condo, where he would live with
Genevieve. It was a large place, four bedrooms, plenty of room for the
collected writings of the man I considered to be my True Dad.
He was so busy, or so conflicted about his good fortune, he hardly noticed when Daphne and I drove away.
The Church of Marilyn
Mr. McDonald called me
periodically to assure me he was still working on the remaining names
on the list, but I didn't really care, because I was so sure Mr. Popper
was my True Dad. I had not decided when or how to tell him about our
relationship. I was in no hurry. I was just glad that Daphne and I had
been able to help, and glad that Dr. Crosse seemed to like our written
report of the subliminal help we had given Mr. Popper. He told us we
were doing 'valuable work.'
We continued our glass etchings, and I
continued helping Dr. Crosse with his other work, when the subliminals
didn't require my full attention. Daphne and I continued our innocent
flirting, but I could tell she didn't want it to go any further than
that, and I tried to forget my desire for her, and concentrate instead
on the lab work we did, with our shiney new Mackworth Camera, among
other items. And our Pupilometer, observing the movements of
volunteers' eyeballs over pictures we would place before them. We had
to plot the movements their eyes made over the pictures, to know how
people look around in a picture, first looking here, then over here.
How interested they are with each part of the picture, indicated by how
long their eyes rested on that spot, and how wide their retinas opened
when looking at each spot. That way, we knew how to design a photograph
or drawing, best to draw the viewers' attention over the subliminal
story we wanted to tell them while they thought they were looking at
the visible picture. All these things are linked forever in my own
brain, with the simple pleasures of standing next to Daphne, or feeling
on the hairs of my arm the same molecules of air that had a moment
earlier been passing among the hairs of her arm, or seeing through the
side of my vision the tip of her nose, or the forwardmost loops of
golden hair from the top of her head, as we bent over some apparatus
together.
Inspired by our success with Mr. Popper's
work, we devised another experiment on our own. Of course, we couldn't
carry it out before we had the permission of Dr. Crosse, and we were
very happy when he heard our plan, and approved of it. He said, "You're
thinking like real scientists, now," and Daphne and I looked at each
other briefly, trying not to show our pride.
Our experiment was in the field of religion.
There was a student group on campus - a small group - called the Church of Marilyn.
Really, it was just three or four girls, who
lived in adjoining rooms in one of the dormitories. Their leader, a
History major named Maya Quantrell, had been obsessed with Marilyn
Monroe since she was five or six years old. She said had first seen
Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch," on TV, and had fallen in love
with her. When the film was over, she had asked her mother who that
lady was, and her mother told her the story of Marilyn Monroe. How she
had been an orphan, and always dreamed of being a movie star, and
became the greatest star in the world, but was hated for being
beautiful and sexy, and was killed by unknown members of the Kennedy
family, to cover up her love affair with John Kennedy, then the
President of the United States. At least, this is what Maya's mother
told her, according to Maya. Then, one night, a vision of Marilyn
Monroe came to Maya, in her room, a beautiful vision in the dress from
the film, that blows up when the subway goes under her, and the dress
was billowing upward, as in the film, and Marilyn told Maya that she
was very special to her, and that she loved her.
This experience led Maya to seek out every
Marilyn Monroe film, and to read everything written about her, and
collect her autographs and publicity photos, and finally, eleven years
later, to found The Church of Marilyn, which had, as I say, just the
four members. She and her roommate, and their friends.
The four Church of Marilynites had tried to
proselytize Daphne, and she, who could never bear to disappoint anyone,
had agreed to go to one of their services. I drove her there.
I had never before been to a religious
service. I had played basketball in the gyms and basements of churches
and synagogues, and I had peeked in, and seen the layouts of the houses
of worship, but until I saw the Mass of Marilyn, I had seen no faith at
the moment of its worship.
The service started with all of us sitting in
a circle on the floor. There were two posters of Marilyn Monroe on the
wall over Maya's writing desk. One showed Marilyn in that scene from
"The Seven Year Itch," and the other was the Coroner's photo, of her
dead body when she was on the autopsy table.
Maya stood, covered her head with a shawl, and
said: "Forgive us Marilyn, for we are the misfits. We were born in
asphalt jungles. Our life here is a wild river toward the Niagara that
leads to death..." and words to that effect, which I cannot remember
after all this time. I remember one part where she said, "You offered
them love, but they used you as a whore."
After the prayer, Maya acted out what she
called "The Passion of Marilyn." This was a representation of the last
night of her life, from the time she was awakened from a nap by a call
from Robert Kennedy, begging her to cancel a press conference she had
announced for the following day. Maya, pretending to be talking on the
phone, refused Robert Kennedy's plea, complaining of the way the
Kennedys have treated her. She threatened to reveal certain secrets
Robert has told her while they were in bed together, among these the
fact that the CIA and the Mafia had a deal to kill Fidel Castro. Robert
Kennedy, (played by Maya's roommate, who played all the non-Marilyn
parts) tells her she doesn't know what she's saying, she's playing with
fire, she could get hurt. The Mass then goes through several more
telephone calls from and to Marilyn, until the Kennedys and their
doctors come in the middle of the night, and forcibly inject her with
barbiturates, which they assure her will settle her down, but which
kill her... Maya laid herself flat out on the floor, whispering to John
Kennedy: "I have hidden our daughter where you'll never find her. You
and your family will never get a chance to kill her, as you have killed
me." When she died, we were all crying.
The other girls then stood, one at a time, and
told stories of the ways in which the Spirit of Marilyn had helped them
throughout the preceding week. One girl was blessed with a passing
grade in Social Science class; andother was cured of a bad cold, after
praying to Marilyn.
Finally, Maya stood, and led us in a final prayer to the movie-star. We all kissed, and Daphne and I departed.
Leaving the service, Daphne and I passed a
redwood tree with notices stapled to it, and she noticed one announcing
the upcoming Campus Faire, at which all the student groups on the
campus - clubs, teams, religious groups, fraternities and sororities -
would be represented. Each group was going to have some kind of game
booth, either gambling, or games of skill, to raise money. And each
group had a scheduled informational lecture, to get people interested
in the group. We noticed that the Church of Marilyn was not listed as
one of the participating groups. This is when Daphne had her idea, and
we talked about it, and went to Dr. Crosse with it, and he said we were
thinking like scientists.
"We want to see if we can get people interested in the Church of Marilyn," we told him. "We have two months."
We returned to Maya's room, where we found the four adherents to the Church of Marilyn.
"People aren't interested in the Church of
Marilyn," said Maya, sadly. "We try to tell people all the time, but
you two are the first who have ever taken us up on our invitation to
come to the service."
"Just sign up for the Campus Faire," Daphne said to her, "and let us handle the rest."
We took some of Maya's Marilyn Monroe photos,
and re-photographed them with specially etched overlays. We decided on
an embedded web of delicate fucks and sexes, and I etched some pictures
of small dogs and cats, rabbits, drowning men and women, and images of
broken windows and shattered metal and torn limbs, as might be seen
after a terrible car crash, since early research had given us reason to
believe such negative pictures would enforce our message in the minds
of the viewers. Our posters were pictures of Marilyn, covering the
whole sheet, and the words, "The Church of Marilyn. Come see us at the
Faire." We put them all over the campus, and I bought space for a
full-page ad in the student newspaper, and a smaller one in the local
advertising sheet. We also made a three-minute video about the Church
of Marilyn, which we sent to TV stations all around the area. Some of
them ran all or part of our tape, sometimes re-cutting it to make it
seem like their local newsman was interviewing Maya. Of course, we
embedded the tape with subliminals.
One day, after a long afternoon of working on
another of Dr. Crosse's experiments - tachistoscoping pictures of a
woman in a fur hat and coat, with her arm plunged into a fur muff, at a
variety of sophomores who were asked to write down whether or not the
room seemed hotter or colder every thirty seconds - Daphne and I put
away the projector, folded the portable screen and put it behind the
accordian-like vinyl room divider. We both rubbed our eyes, which hurt
from the long hours in the darkened, flickering room.
I said, "You work too hard. I don't like to see your eyes burning like that."
"I don't mind. I'm working for the fulfillment
of my father's work," she said. "When he asked me to help with his
research, I was so grateful that finally there was something I could do
for him."
I said, "I'm just grateful to spend time with you."
We took our flickering consciousnesses in her
Jeep, down to the Redbird campus, to visit the Alumni Auditorium, for
this was the day of the Student Faire. The booths were set up in the
lobby of the auditorium, and the lectures given by all the groups were
upstairs, in the classrooms. We went up the stairs, to look for Maya,
because we knew her lecture was about to begin. Since there were so
many campus groups - racial, religious, sexual, hobbyist, political -
many of them had to have their lectures at the same time. As we went
along the corridor on the second floor, we passed the rooms set aside
for the Chess Club, the Square-Dance Cotillion, the Sewing Circle, and
others. Their representatives stood in the doorways of their lecture
rooms, looking forlornly up and down the corridor to see if anyone was
coming. We heard a sound, as of many voices, but we never seemed to
come to the room where the voices were. We went to the end of the
corridor, and the lean, dark, angry-looking speaker for the ROTC
sneered when I turned to him and said, "Church of Marilyn?" and he
jerked his thumb toward the ceiling and his shoulder toward the
stairwell. I opened the swinging door to the stairwell and immediately
saw the solid crush of students climbing to the third floor in one
undulating line, like a dinosaur's stuffed intestine rising to the
third floor. Daphne and I entered the stream, and were carried along.
It was impossible to tell if all these people were happy or sad. Angry?
Curious? They merely were going, all going.
On the next floor, the corridor was jammed
with people, trying to see down toward the far end, where in the
doorway of a double classroom, I saw Maya climb on a yellow chair and
shout to them, "The Church of Marilyn lecture will be down in the
auditorium, people. We just can't stay up here. We'll be crushed."
For a moment, the crowd did nothing, then they
began heading for the stairwells, peaceful but, in their way,
frightening. We caught Maya's eye, and she made her way to us.
"You were right," she said. "I never realized
the amount of interest there is in our Church. It's wonderful!" and she
thanked us for encouraging her, and rushed off to give her lecture.
That day, the Church of Marilyn received 300 new members.
We couldn't tell her what we had done. Not
that I am saying our subliminals were the only factor in getting all
those people to the Church of Marilyn lecture. They helped, but there
is no way to determine how much, based on this one test. And the
subsequent tremendous growth of the Church of Marilyn, which today has
chapters in all 50 states, and in 134 nations, I attribute more to the
power of the Service, as written by Maya, and to the life and works of
Marilyn Monroe, than to the magic worked by myself and Daphne. Also
remember that the Church of Marilyn devotes its special attention to
the care and nurturance of orphans, and children without fathers,
because Marilyn Monroe was raised fatherless, and was sent to live in
an orphanage, and because she spent the final days of her life in a
city park, wearing sunglasses and a shawl, watching children at play.
Since we have become a nation of children without fathers, is it any
wonder that the women of the Church of Marilyn have had so much work to
do, and found themselves a part of so many lives?
Nevertheless, at that moment, Daphne and I
felt that we had greatly benefitted our friends, Maya and her three
co-religionists. We walked away from the auditorium, holding hands. We
climbed into the Jeep. As I started to back up, I looked at Daphne, and
her eyes were shining like prisms of mercury, if there are any such
things. My excitement arose from the power we had had over the lives of
others, from seeing that power. Daphne, I think, was excited for
another reason: because she saw the fulfillment of her father's
science, career and reputation, dreams left in her care by the death of
her mother.
We returned to the ranch. She ran into the
house ahead of me, calling to her father. "Dad! Dad! We've done it!
You'll never believe what just hap..." Then, she stopped, and turned to
me, just bounding through the front door. "This is Dad's weekly
behavior modification field trip," she said, and I remembered it almost
a moment before she said it. We were both disappointed.
"Well," I said, "we might as well write up our results, and show him when he gets back."
"Right," she said, cheering up.
We went into the room we had been using for
our makeshift lab. It was mostly empty, except for a wooden door laid
out on two sawhorses, as a desk, and two folding chairs, where we sat
as we did our etchings on the glass. We sat in our chairs, which were
on opposite sides of the door-desk, to write our reports, but after a
moment, I got out of my chair, and stretched out on the soft rug, in
the long parallelogram of sunlight that was barreling through the
windows from the west. I put my hands under the back of my head, and
set the heel of my left shoe on the toe of my right shoe, and let the
sun hit me in the face. I thought of the posters we had done for the
Church of Marilyn, and the crowd of people we had drawn to the lecture,
and smiled to myself. At that moment, Daphne turned in her seat, and
burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?" I asked her, casually.
Instead of answering, she got up and went to
the door of the room, and closed it. On the back of the door, was a
full-length mirror, and when she closed the door, I could see myself in
it. I saw that, along with the sunlight, my face and whole body were
also covered entirely in swirls and eddies and lines and crowds of
fucks and shits and cocks and cunts and deaths and so on. I was
momentarily startled, thinking perhaps that the content of my thoughts
had found some way to seep out and show themselves on the surface of my
flesh and even on my clothes.
Then, I saw that the pattern was being caused
by the passage of the sunlight through a stack of our etched glass
sheets, which were standing on the radiator, leaning against the
window. I covered my eyes and allowed myself to fall flat on my back.
Daphne, still laughing, came and sat down near me. Then, she lay down
on the rug, beside me, and took my hand away from my eyes.
"Look," she said. She put her finger against
her own cheek, then her neck, to show me the words there. I grabbed her
hand, and kissed it. She took it back, and opened the top button of her
shirt. She pulled the shirt back, so I could see the top of her breast.
She moved, so the words (or triggering phenomes) floated across her
breast, over her white skin, covering and uncovering the delicate blue
veins just under the skin. I was sad - I didn't know why - seeing those
words on her skin, but I couldn't turn away. I put my hand on her
breast, following the words (which were in her handwriting) as though I
were reading braille. She looked at my face, above my eyes, and started
running her fingers along my forehead, I suppose following a similar
path of words.
I took my hand from her breast, and put it
around her thin waist, pulling her toward me. As her body moved, huge
SEXes and FUCKs rushed over her face and hair. We kissed for a long
time, then we clumsily took off our clothes and made love, (the first
time for either of us) sending the patterns of the shadows of the words
on rolling irregular waves of motion, up and down our bodies, over our
curves and limbs, as we moved together, until the sun set and the room
was dark.
Faint Signs of Secret Success
The next day we made love
again, outdoors, a.m. No words floating along our skin surfaces. Near
the stakes in the small vegetable garden. After which, I said I thought
we should probably be married. She was buttoning her dress. She asked
me if I was in love with her, and I said, "Yes." I asked her the same
and she said "yes," too.
"Therefore," I said, "unless we want to
reserve the right to change our minds, and start looking around for
other people, and get all kinds of sexually transmitted diseases, and
die, if we're lucky, or if we'e unlucky live alone and miserable to age
one hundred, we should probably get married, is what I'm saying." She
nodded silently. She looked around on her clothes for signs of dirt,
and whisked them away.
Finally, she said, "But I don't want to tell my father. Not yet."
I said, "You mean you want to elope?"
She said, "No. I want to hold our wedding off for at least a year, and during that year, not tell my father."
"I feel funny about keeping a secret from your
father. He's been so good to me. He's always treated me honestly."
Then, after a while, I said, "Don't you think he'd approve of our
getting married?"
She said, "I think he would approve. He likes you. The thing is, all my..." and then she couldn't go on.
I said, "It doesn't matter, Daphne," and touched her shoulder, "anything you want. I don't mind."
She seemed to gather her strength, and go on,
saying, "All my life, I've wanted to have a feeling my father didn't
know about, a thought he couldn't read, an idea he neither agreed nor
disagreed with. I have always wanted to have a secret from him."
"A secret? Why?"
"Do you know how it feels to have a
psychologist for a father? A man whose life is based on his ability to
understand what other people's minds are doing at any given moment? A
man who understands, who makes allowances, who sees to the heart, who
comprehends the big picture, who analyzes the minutiae and heals the
sick? It drives you nuts, Reynold! Nuts! It's like having a piece of
glass where your forehead is supposed to be." Here, she put her hand on
her forehead and wiped it across roughly. "Just once, once - I want to
have a feeling and not hear what he has to say about it. A feeling I
don't have to change for his purposes or pleasure, as so many times I
have had to do. Do you understand what I mean? Do I sound like an
ungrateful child? I feel ashamed to say things about my father. It's
just that falling in love," and here she touched my face, "has created
new feelings in me, that I don't want to share with my father. Not yet,
anyway."
I said, "I owe him a lot, but I'm willing to
keep our relationship a secret, if that's what you want. Even if he
winds up hating me, or thinking of me as a betrayer, it doesn't
matter."
We kissed once more, settling into the loamy,
aquifer-moistened earth for a few moments, before returning to our
work, typing on Daphne's computer the results of our Church of Marilyn
experiment. We sat closer than we had before, except when Daphne
thought she saw the shadow of her father across the table, and moved
away from me. Then, she laughed at her mistake, and took my arm, and
pulled her chair closer to mine. I didn't like the feeling of having a
secret. I remember that, clearly. But still, I knew that she had been
suffering, and I would have done anything to alleviate her pain. I knew
that she loved her father, and I trusted her to see the three of us
through this time. We had our affair in secret. Many times, I was on
the verge of telling Dr. Crosse, but the memory of Daphne's intense
feelings rose before my eyes every time I was about to tell him, or
hint in some light way, that his daughter and I were in love, and
stopped me. In all other things, I was his follower, but in this
secret, I obeyed her.
We hardly ever made love, or acted like lovers
at the ranch, even when Dr. Crosse was not on the property. Instead,
when Daphne and I went on our field trips, to meter the shopping habits
of the local housewives, or monitor the beer-buying at sports events
and taverns, we would stop in parking lots, movie theatres, or empty
apartments which we would rent for the purpose. Sometimes, we would go
to the next town over, Beltrone, and rent a room at the Hilton., and
several times, after thinking up some elaborate excuse, we were able to
spend a few days in L.A. together, where we got a bungalo at the
Beverly Hills Hotel, and everyone thought we were the children of
important producers.
We could afford these luxuries because Dr.
Crosse's backers were so pleased with our results. Dr. Crosse came to
our work-room one morning when Daphne was in the garden and I was
alone, etching fucks in the glass. He said he had been able to force
the backers to change their deal with him, from a grant, to a contract
for services. According to Dr. Crosse, his fee for these services would
be twenty-six million dollars the first year, increasing by fifteen per
cent per year for ten years.
He raised my pay to just under a million a
year ($80,000 a month). As before, I was paid in cash. Dr. Crosse
reminded me that I was, and would remain, off the books. If anyone
asked me what I did around the ranch I was to tell them that I was the
groom.
"Everyone but you, sir," I said, having a slight private joke with the word "groom."
"Excuse me?" said Dr. Crosse.
"Well, you know why I'm here," I said. "No
sense lying to you." He looked at me strangely, sort of sideways and a
bit downwards. I laid out a thin plank of a smile and my eyes attempted
to walk across it, from myself, floating and lost, to Dr. Crosse, the
dry land. He smiled at me, and I felt relieved.
Daphne came into the room, and looked from her
father to me and back again, wondering if I had betrayed her
confidence. I tried to show her by a look that I had not. She sat down
beside me and he told her about the new deal. He then told us both that
we would start to see the subliminals showing up in national magazines
and on TV commercials. He said the unqualified success of our early
tests had convinced his backers the time was right for total public
saturation with subliminal messages.
"One fascinating sidelight," he said with a
shrug and a laugh, "You know those glass sheets full of embeds? They're
copyrighted now. I put them in Daphne's name you understand Reynold.
But there it will be, on the bottom of every page and photo using one
of our embeds. A subliminal copyright notice."
Daphne said, "It should have been your name, Father, you're the scientist here. We're just your assistants."
"Darling," he said, and hugged her. The three
of us were all crying within a minute or two. As for myself, I was very
moved over the love between Daphne and her father, and by the idea that
the woman I loved had these copyrights, because it was a sign of her
blessedness (I think) and also, I should admit, the knowledge that I
was about to become a millionaire made my head light, and it felt like
wind was rushing through my brain. I felt all-powerful, all-energetic,
and yet at the same time I had never been so filled with fear. Because
in your mind, something incredibly good happening, suddenly, can cause
the same doubts concerning the stability of the universe as can
something incredibly bad happening suddenly. I felt I might be hit by a
falling rock, or lightning, and it took many weeks for that fear to
pass.
Perhaps it was that fear, the natural
outgrowth of unlooked-for good fortune, that caused me to experience
the first doubts I ever had, about the work itself.
Before, I had thought all our work was for the
benefit of America. Dr. Crosse had said we were working for "people who
care about America." People who didn't want to let others control our
minds. When he said that, I had lain in my bed, my chest rising and
falling with pride, with love for my country. I had felt like I was a
part of law enforcement. Don't ask me why. But now, when all this money
came to me, I felt like I was not a part of law enforcement, but of
some secret group of sneaks. I realized I knew nothing about our
backers. I was beginning to worry about my effect on society.
If it is true, I asked myself, that my actions
have such a profound influence over the lives of others, then what
influence is this? Is it a good influence, or a bad influence? And,
having this power, or any power, one must ask oneself - How can I best
use this power? I wanted to use whatever power this might be, for the
good of other people.
"Are we doing good when we add these scratched
images over the photos in this magazine?" I asked Dr. Crosse at dinner
that night, getting a magazine from the sideboard, one of the ones Dr.
Crosse had brought to the work-room before, to show us our embeds
covering the face of the Prime Minister of Canada standing next to
Senator Peeny, of Massachusetts.
Then, I turned the pages of the magazine until
I arrived at the picture of a beagle, advertising a radial tire. I
remembered when Daphne and I had carefully lowered a thin square of
glass over a large, glossy photo of a beagle, and on the glass was an
intricate, finely wrought pattern of FUCKs and SEXes. As I laid the
magazine down, rolled back to the page with the beagle, and nudged it
in his direction with the inside of my thumbs, Dr. Cross reached into
the inside breast pocket of his cowboy-styled sports coat and pulled
out a jeweller's loupe, through which he appreciatively studied the
overlay.
"A great job you kids did," he said with a
congratulatory sweep of his right hand through his thick brown hair,
and a laudatory shake of his face back and forth.
"But are we doing good, by doing this, or are we doing bad?" I asked him again.
He said, "I don't think I understand your
question. We're certainly doing something useful, which I think can be
seen from the enormous amounts of money people are willing to pay us
for doing it. Usefulness is a quality I would have to ascribe to any
action or product of man before I could in good conscience call that
activity or product a quote good thing unquote."
"Harmlessness is a quality I would have to ascribe to any action or product of man before I
could in good conscience call that activity or product a good thing," I
said, using as much of Dr. Crosse's sentence as possible in order to
show him that I had not lost respect for him, even if I did find myself
in the unusual position of having to question something he had said.
"What could be harmful about what we are doing here?" he asked me. He pushed his soup bowl away and grabbed a roll.
I looked at Daphne, to see what she thought of
our discussion, but her head was bent over her bowl, and I couldn't see
her eyes. However, her face was bright red. I didn't really want to go
on, but having started the discussion, I felt I might as well express
all of my doubts.
I tapped on the magazine page where a certain
complexity of swirling DEATHs closely followed the soft, naked
sweetness of the exposed inner ear-flap of the adorable beagle.
I said, "If a man, hurrying home from a day at
the office, and it's snowing on his shoulders and face, and he steps
under a tent of plastic on West Broadway, to buy a copy of TIME
magazine, with the face of this beagle on it, not because he needs
domething to read, not because he loves or even cares about beagles,
but because his subconscious mind, independent of anything true to him,
the man, the customer, himself- just because his sneaky, silent,
subconscious mind, responded to a bunch of hidden words, then..."
"Triggering phenomes" Dr. Cross corrected.
"A bunch of triggering phenomes, then, that
stole a part of his mind from him, that whispered suggestive phrases to
him in his weakened tired state. Can he really be said to want that
magazine?"
"Well," said Dr. Crosse, staring at his roll,
"I have thought about what you're saying, and I've come to the
conclusion that yes, he does really want that magazine. Yes, even if he
only wants it because he has been seduced by triggering phenomes - we
still can say that he wants the magazine, because he buys the magazine."
"But..."
"Possibly, in the future, we can hypothesize a
society where each man and woman gets his daily requirement of
triggering phenomes at home, in the marriage bed, perhaps. In such a
society, people would pass by this magazine like so much dogshit in the
street. Even if we agree, that the man who buys this because he's been
drawn to it by that clever nest of fucks and cancers and shits you kids
wrote over the beagle, does not know why he is buying it, we still have
to admit that he did have a reason for buying it. If you deny him the
pleasure of his attraction to pale, shadowy obscene words, you might as
well deny him the pleasure of his attraction to his wife. For we have
no idea what attracts us to one another as men and women, while we do
have ample evidence to suggest that whatever it is, we do not find it
when we do find one another. If that makes any sense."
"So, you're saying, since Nature attracts us
subliminally, making us do things for reasons our conscious mind never
suspects, why can't people do the same thing to one another. Is that
it?" I asked, respectfully,
"Exactly," said Dr. Crosse. "And another
thing. As for your scruples about working for people whose motivation
might be commercial, rather than patriotic, as you thought before, I
ask you: is it not patriotic to help the American economy grow?"
"Yes, sir," I said, though I did not really know what an "economy" was, since I was so young.
Perhaps sensing my ignorance, Dr. Crosse
popped a bread-ball into his mouth, smiled at me as he spiked it with
his side teeth, and then said, "You see, the more people buy things,
the more manufacturers can produce, and sell. This gives jobs to people
in manufacturing, sales, service, advertising and so on and so forth.
People make more money, they buy even more, there is a general
improvement of the conditions of everyone in the society, and that's
called prosperity, and that has always been considered a good thing."
"Even if people spend all the money on things they don't need?"
Dr. Cross said, "Who's to judge need? Does a
man need another drink? Does he need a new car when the old one still
runs? Does he need a chocolate bar? If he wants it, he needs it, as far
as I'm concerned. That's good enough for me, even if he doesn't know
why he wants it and even if I do."
Dr. Crosse continued, growing enthusiastic:
"We're artists here, that's all we are. How is what we do any different
from what any artist does? They play a game with sex and death, that's
all. Truth to be told, religion does the same thing, no different.
Every religion gets into your reproductive behavior and your death
thoughts like a leech, and sticks like glue to these two areas of your
mind, till you follow it like a zombie. Every religion I've ever come
across has had one hand on a man's balls and the other on his
tombstone."
I didn't know if Dr. Crosse was right, but I
didn't like the effect this conversation was having on Daphne, who
seemed to be choking silently. I was too confused, and secretive, even
to reach out and slap her on the back in case she might be choking on
food. In a moment, she was all right, and she looked at her father and
me over the lip of her water glass.
"We're artists. You kids, especially," said
Dr. Crosse, smiling at Daphne. "Yes, we hide our art, that is true. But
can you tell me the name of one single artist whose work has not been
driven more by his secret concerns than by his open concern? They all
have their secret stories, they're all writing secretly about their Mom
and Dad, or little Becky, the girl who wouldn't kiss them 30 years ago,
it's all a secret ocean, Reynold! For the past three thousand years,
they've been hiding God in paintings of orgies, or orgies in paintings
of God-- How have we overstepped any boundaries not already kicked over
by the entire tradition of the Western world?"
I said, "I don't want to steal people's free will."
"Don't worry," said Dr. Crosse. "If you broke
into a house, and there you found and stole all of the free-will there
is in the world, you'd still crawl out the window empty-handed."
After our conversation, I threw myself again
into The Work. Daphne and I making the glass sheets, for pictures that
were now sent to us from New York, twice a week. When we weren't
etching, we would be in town, or down in Los Angeles, studying shoppers
and making love.
As it happened, we had a series of innovative
ideas, most of them after making love, that led to what you might call
the "super-expansion" of the field of subliminals, and possibly this is
the place to mention that you, the reader who will never read this, are
probably reading it in an environment almost totally drenched in
subliminals, thanks to Daphne and myself.
Your wallpaper, if it is from any of the five
largest wallpaper manufacturers, is covered with obscenities. You might
have yoghurt in the refrigerator with FUCKs and CUNTs and COCKs written
on its surface tension. Cookies with FUCK in the frosting. Cookies and
crackers with SEX written thousands of times in the dough. We drew up
the plans for subliminal weaving of fabric, so your shirts and suits
can suggest sex and cancer, and get you that big promotion. These
fabrics have been blamed (by the Senate Investigating Committee before
which I testified, about which, more later,) for the current plague of
sexually transmitted diseases from which the world now suffers. I hope
that is not the case. If it is, it is one more thing for which I shall
be tortured throughout eternity, in hell. Or so I have been told, and
believe.
Then there were the subliminal building
materials to help the stagnant construction industry, subliminal
patterns on aircraft control panels to keep the pilot staring where
he's supposed to be staring, subliminal patterns in the bulbs of
tanning lamps, so you can have SEX and DEATH written all over your face
and body, invisibly. We made these tanning lamps for the leaders of
industry, and later for American diplomats, who met with their Russian
counterparts, with SEXes and FUCKs written in Russian on their faces,
hair and clothes. Some day, the full story of the role subliminals
played in the collapse of Communism, will be revealed to the world. At
present, however, the documents are sealed in the archives, not to be
opened for seventy-six years, and the only people who know what
happened - Daphne, Dr. Crosse, and myself - are here, along with so
many others, in One Corner, Maryland, our existence denied by those who
put us here.
But back to those early days:
Sales of cigarettes advertised with the word
"CANCER" written over their packs shot up, seats on airlines advertised
with the word "CRASH" etched on the faces of the passengers sold like
hotcakes.
The question I asked myself changed.
It had formerly been: "May we justifiably
steal the free will of our fellow citizens?" Now it became: "Do people
with subconscious minds that would respond to this stuff even deserve
to have free will?"
As I saw the spread of our techniques, to more
and more magazines and newspapers, to the TV, to products and flesh, I
felt satisfied, for I thought I was increasing the prosperity of a
nation and a people who would be lost unless they were fooled.
I buried my salary in the hiding place I had
prepared at the ranch, in the metal box, and I felt like a benefactor
of all mankind.
The Blessing and The Curse
In the next year, we saw
subliminals on television, in the movies, secretly embedded on baby
clothes, to make fathers love their children. On telephones, the
largest corporate clients of Dr. Crosse's backers would regale all
callers with a constant stream of inaudible obscenities, burbling
through the wires while they were on hold. We saw the introduction of
subtly sperm-flavored milk, cereal, bread and cake, and the very
successful marrying of steak sauce, spaghetti sauce, and salad
dressings with a slight vaginal odor. Fluorescent bulbs that threw sex
grids over a room to impart a general air of low suggestiveness, which
caused workers to bend more assiduously over their desks, for many more
hours, and feel less like workers than like individuals looking for
love. On the bars of prison cells and etched into the cinder blocks of
each cell, under the blood-grey paint, FUCK and SEX, to make the
prisoners want to stay.
According to Dr. Crosse, these things happened in such a way as to involve the smallest possible number of conspirators.
Only the following groups had to know:
Our backers knew, of course. And the owners
and managers of the cartels that owned all the natural resources, the
materials on which the subliminals would be embedded. And the owners of
three advertising agencies. Dr. Crosse reckoned the number of those
in-the-know at less than two hundred. Each conspirator was pledged to
secrecy, and they were all well pleased with the results of our work,
because sales were up.
I felt like I was Thomas Edison. I had put my
genius (the heritage flowing through me of my True Dad) at the service
of my time and place, and for this I was being generously rewarded.
Edison himself said, the test of any invention is its financial
potential. Ashamed? I was proud. Ashamed? Well...
You see, my father, Mr. Stengrow, was a
teacher, and my mother was a teacher, and I had always thought that I
would teach. But what did I teach? Who would I ever benefit who wasn't
rich before I met him, or her? I didn't know. I told myself not to
worry about these questions, because I was still young. For now, I
reasoned, I might as well continue under the direction of Dr. Crosse,
who had shown faith in me, taken me in, and was paying me in cash,
every week, which I buried in my hiding place, and took out to spend
when Daphne and I took our increasingly frequent trips to Los Angeles
and now and then, New York.
We pooled some of our money and bought two
condos - one in Westwood, on Wilshire Boulevard, and the other on 63rd
Street in New York. We also got two black Mercedes-Benzes, one for each
condo. All people stared at us, especially at Daphne. Other women were
attracted to me, partly I suppose because of my tendency to a vulgar
display of wealth. I had Rolex watches, Cartier watches, expensive
clothes, and manicured nails. Forgive me, I was young, it was like a
joke to me, I had no sense of the gravity of money. I was a joker, so
to speak. The class clown, suddenly laden with an ermine crown and
robe. I was all over the place. You have to remember also that I had
stopped my education, to work as a technician of deceit, so my thoughts
grew more and more limited to the sphere of power and control and
wealth.
At the same time, both Daphne and I were
troubled by certain events that began to occur after the first mass
publication of our subliminal embeds.
Some of the models used in our advertisements started to die. In spectacular ways.
The first, a girl whose name we did not know,
until her death, was killed when a heavy glass coffee-table was dropped
out of a second-floor window, onto her head, on Bleecker Street, in
Greenwich Village. When I saw her face on the cover of the Post,
I knew immediately it was the beautiful young woman who had appeared
beside the Mitsubishi hatchback in six magazine ads, and two TV spots.
I thought no more about it, but that it was very tragic.
Then, the second model was killed, a girl from
Texas Daphne and I had met on one of our working visits to the ad
agencies. She was run over by a motorist who, for no apparent reason,
swerved his car in the middle of a busy street, to run her down on the
sidewalk.
The motorist said he didn't know what had
happened. He thought he might have had a heart attack, but he seemed
healthy enough when the news lady interviewed him, only a few minutes
after the incident. Then, the third model - a young man whose face and
torso had been embedded by Daphne and me with FUCKs, COCKs and CANCERs
for a new chocolate cookie - was knifed in broad daylight by two
teenagers, whose only explanation was that they had "felt like killing
him." I couldn't escape any longer the thought that there might at the
very least be some connection between these deaths and the subliminals.
Though I couldn't imagine what the connection might be, the third death
made me tell Daphne of my fears.
Together, we approached Dr. Crosse. He agreed
that statistically, the chances of three models used in subliminal
advertisements being killed within such a short space of time, were
slim. "But you have to remember, they all lived in New York," he said.
"I wouldn't want to think there was something about our work that got these people killed," I said.
Dr. Crosse said he would look into each of the
cases, and tell us what he found out. "But I wouldn't worry about it,
Reynold," he said. "You have to remember the embeds attract
people to the products and other items to which they are attached. If
anything, the models in our ads should be experiencing enhanced social
lives. I can't believe our embeds have led to their being slaughtered
in the streets."
Unfortunately, about this one thing, Dr. Crosse was mistaken.
Space Dad
MacDonald "Mac" McDonald, my
detective, called me to tell me he had found another name on my list.
McDonald still didn't know the purpose of my search, or what it was
that the men on the list had in common.
This entrant was named Mr. Huss.
"He was a bitch to find because the government
keeps him locked up like a cat in the storage compartment of an
airplane," said McDonald, when we met in the Denny's again, where he
showed me Huss's file. As I looked at the file, and listened to what
McDonald said, I tried to find clues that would tell me if this Mr.
Huss was my True Dad. A day earlier, I had been totally positive that
Mr. Popper was my True Dad. I had been happy to think of our
similarities and tried to go through every day according to his words,
inasmuch as I could understand anything Mr. Popper had ever said. I had
felt like his son, and I had tried to be a good son. When McDonald had
called me, the day before, to tell me about finding Huss, I almost felt
he was intruding on me, and on my relationship with my Dad, Mr. Popper.
But by the time I got off the phone with him, my mind was already
beginning to send out tendrilly shoots of thought and hope, that the
new possibility, Mr. Huss, was indeed my True Dad.
Now, sitting in the Denny's, I looked at
Huss's picture. That was not at first encouraging. The man was short,
with red skin and pale blue eyes, short blonde hair moussed and
standing straight up. He had a pugnacious, unfriendly and confused look
in his eyes, as though he had just been accused of shoplifting and was
bracing himself to oppose a body search. I noticed in some of the long
shots, he was standing on one foot, with the other one tucked up behind
him. I might have thought he was merely scratching an itch on his right
buttock with the heel of his left boot, except for the fact that he
held that pose at different times and in different situations. In one
set of shots he was going over some plans with three Air Force
Generals. The three Generals stood in what might be called the common
way, with both feet on the ground, but Mr. Huss was always seen with
just the one on the ground and the other up somewhere else. I might
have thought one of his legs was not there, or crippled in some way,
but he seemed to have full use of both legs, and both of them were long
enough to reach the ground. But he never let them touch the ground at
the same time. When Mac McDonald saw me frowning and shuffling the
pictures, and deduced what I was thinking, he said, "You should see him
walk."
He explained, "This fella doesn't put one foot
down in front of the other one like the rest of us. He hops ten or
twenty paces on one leg, then switches over and keeps going on the
other one."
In answer to my unasked question, he said, "No indication why he does that." Could this really be my True Dad?
He was a rocket scientist. I liked that.
According to McDonald, Mr. Huss was every bit the great genius Dr. Lord
had promised the Stengrows I would have for a Dad. In this way, even
though he did stand on one foot, hop, and have the face of a public
masturbator, Mr. Huss made more sense as my True Dad than Mr. Popper
did. I have to admit that, even with the growing public acclaim for
Popper's work, and the improvement in his appearance once he got a hair
stylist and new clothes, he never seemed to me a genius sufficient to
the role of my True Dad. On the other hand, according to Mac McDonald,
Mr. Huss was an important man in the United States Space Shuttle
Program. Now that was more like it. I was soon imagining us sending off
little rockets on open fields, that give out shoots of steam and fly in
zig-zag paths as we race after them (Huss hopping, but so what?) and I
could see us at the consoles in Houston, me standing over his shoulder
as he is giving the order lighting the lights on the colonies of Mars.
A rocket scientist! The fabled and traditional vocation of geniuses! My
True Dad was looking out at me from those pictures! That rosy skin,
that keen eye, that individualistic manner of self-propulsion, at odds
with, yet oddly compatible with, his traditional Marine haircut. I
couldn't believe the enormity of my good fortune. My True Dad was Mr.
Huss! There was no question in my mind!
"He works out at Edwards Air Force Base," said
McDonald, "but they don't seem too proud of him. Got him and his crew
socked away a mile from the main buildings and landing areas - 'bout
halfway to California City - on land that's supposed to be poisoned by
radiation from all the rockets they've had to abort over it, the place
isn't even supposed to have houses on it, and I can tell you it wasn't
any picnic finding Huss's headquarters. Had to use infrared." He showed
me a picture of a vast expanse of sand.
"What's this sand?" I asked.
"That's where he lives, it's his lab, that's
where Dr. Huss has been for the past eleven years. See this?" He
pointed to what looked like a sand dune, one of many, and showed me by
circling his fingernail over the spot, a doorway, leading down beneath
the desert.
"How will I get to see him?"
McDonald said he had done some asking around,
and had learned that the Air Force was scheduling a shuttle landing for
that weekend, and had issued an open invitation to journalists to tour
the Base.
"My suggestion, you want to get near him,"
said McDonald, "we just go out there in a jeep and say we're reporters.
My people tell me Huss is a publicity hound, but they've got a whole PR
team out there whose only job is keeping Huss and the Press as far away
from one another as possible. What we do, we start out lookin' at the
other shit, and then kind of bank off, make a break for the lab."
The next day, I went with McDonald out to
Edwards Air Force Base. We went in the main gate, and presented the
false Press I.D.'s Mac had gotten for us. Then, we followed the press
tour for a few minutes, seeing the centrifuge where astronauts are spun
around and around, and the wall displays of the astronauts' food tubes.
Then, Mac signaled to me, and we went out to the jeep. He drove as
though heading back for the main gate, but then circled into the
desert, and doubled back toward the vast many-miled interior of the
Base. I daydreamed as we drove across miles of featureless sand, where
there were no guards or vehicles.
After a half hour, we arrived at a large tin
building, maybe the size of a football field, set in the desert three
miles from the nearest road.
This tin building had a roof covered with
sand, and sand was piled against the walls on all sides. I could see
why it had been invisible from the air. We parked in front of a red
iron door that sat like a navel in the mounds of sand, and Mac pounded
on it with his fist. After a few minutes, he pounded again.
I took the opportunity to look around, and
stand in the gathering airstreams, that blew tumbleweeds around us and
our jeep. Soon, my face was covered in sand and grit, and small berries
or seeds, probably from the tumbleweeds. Here and there I thought I saw
a rock sliding toward me across the desert floor, but dismissed the
thought as a fantasy. After a while, I heard someone clearing his
throat inside the structure. Then, the sound of metal scraping against
metal, as bars and latches were thrown around inside. The door opened,
with a clutching, sucking sound, and out of the dimness and lowness of
the doorway hopped Mr. Huss. He took two bounds in our direction.
He was smiling. "You fellas lost?" he asked, friendly enough.
"No, sir," said Mac, "we're with the press tour. They sent us out here to talk to you, if you don't mind."
"The PR guys sent you?" he asked, tucking his
right leg, which was the one then off the ground, more tightly into his
own rear end.
"They said you were doing some fascinating work out here."
At this point, appeared behind Huss, a gangly
towering form with a blue New York Yankees cap on his head. Huss jerked
a thumb back in his direction and said, "Larry Lindbergh, my
assistant." Then, to Larry Lindbergh, he said, "What do you think,
should I talk to these boys?" Larry shrugged so completely that his
shoulders pushed his cap up on his head and supported it in midair.
Huss reached up and set it back firmly on the young man's head and
said, "I guess if we're gonna give em the tour we better do it right
away, before General Stockey sends the fellas out to shoot em and bury
em in the sand." Then, while I was still seeing that vision, he turned
to me and said, "Because nobody sent you out here to see me, fella.
That much I do know. But, seein as it meant so much to you to come, I
might as well show you around." With that, he turned by hopping from
one foot to the other, and then sprang himself back into the gloom of
the structure. Larry Lindbergh ducked to get through the doorway, and
followed Mr. Huss, and Mac and I followed him.
Inside, there was a concrete floor with
several cars and trucks parked on it. The enormous volume of the
building stretched out a mile before us. The area we went through was
covered with dust and cobwebs, and snakes slid over the floor. Mr. Huss
took us to a small elevator and we took it down three stories under the
ground. When the doors opened, the scene that greeted us was totally
different from the one above.
Here, we walked along a red metal catwalk,
down a narrow corridor, until it opened out onto what looked at first
like a huge ball of light. As my eyes became accustomed to the
brightness, I could see that we were standing over a bubble - a thin
glass dome, containing a lush green garden, and some small houses,
brick streets with yellow and blue flowers, and a lake, and what looked
like farmland, deep furrows stretched out around the small buildings.
We stood about fifteen feet up from the ground level inside the bubble,
and looked down on the tops of the houses. As we watched, a man and a
woman in overalls came out of one of the houses and kissed in the
doorway. Then, she went to a well with two buckets and filled them, and
the man threw the straps of a plow over his shoulders, and began to
plow one of the fields.
"What you see before you is a complete Space
Station. A biosphere, actually," said Huss. "I designed it. It's under
the sand not just because we wanted to keep it secret, but also because
this way we know exactly how much oxygen we're producing in the sphere."
"What's it for?" asked Mac.
Dr. Huss said, "Twenty astronauts have been
living in that sphere for five years. Growing food, making their own
air, recycling the limited water supply, and so on. We're learning
amazing things about what it'll take to survive in outer space from
this thing," he said, and hopped along the circumference of the bubble
to the next point of interest.
"I don't understand," I said. "Why doesn't the Air Force want you to talk to reporters. This place is wonderful!"
"Can't understand it myself," he said, "given
the fact that we're expanding the frontiers of human knowledge here and
providing the United States with the best and surest escape plan yet
devised to get us away from the nig..." And here, Lindbergh threw his
large body in the space between Dr. Huss on one side and me and Mac on
the other, waving his hands and shouting nonsense syllables like a
guard in a basketball game, trying to block a shot.
"Dr. Huss," he said, "Please! Remember the work!"
Huss grinned sheepshly and scratched his head
in a winning way, and said, "Disregard what I just said. Larry here
reminds me that the only reason I haven't gotten a raise or been
allowed to publish or even been asked to attend the annual Edwards AFB
bar-b-que and dance is that I have what is generally considered though
not by me to be a big mouth... OK? Spoke out of turn. Forget it."
I said, "Sure," though I didn't exactly know
what the problem was. As we moved along, Huss resumed telling us about
his space station, and then once again he veered from his topic to say,
"And best of all, no nig..." at which point, Larry Lindbergh started
singing "In a Gadda Da Vida" at the top of his voice, to drown out the
rest of Huss's remarks, and Huss, catching himself, said, "Larry,
you're right. You're right and I'm sorry." Then to me, he said, "Larry
reminds me we wouldn't want to let what I just said get back to the Jew
you probably work for, whatever newspaper it happens to be, they own em
all. Don't want em makin a lot of trouble for the Base, do we?"
I wasn't really thinking about what he was
saying. I was mainly interested, as was my wont with putative Dads, to
constantly agree with him, and by my agreeing, to bring him joy, as
also with the warmth of my gaze, the studious concentration which I
gave to his every gesture and motion, his face and voice and hands and
body language, the way I laughed when he said anything with a smile and
almost cried when his face became squeezed up with the feelings of rage
and protest that periodically coursed through his insides. All these
acts of mine perhaps put Dr. Huss at his ease - because he gradually
spoke less and less about the space station and more and more about the
"problems we have right here on earth." Of course, whenever he
veered to these earthly topics, Larry Lindbergh would go into his
singing or shot-blocking behavior again, until Dr. Huss, with amazing
dexterity for a man standing on one leg, finally grabbed Larry
Lindbergh and hurled him into a mop closet and slammed the door shut on
him. He locked the door. Over the sounds of Larry Lindbergh's protests
and pounding, Huss led Mac and me to a small apartment, another floor
below the level of the huge dome - a little chamber where, he told us,
he slept and worked.
There, we saw a beat-up personal computer and
lots of newspapers piled up around it. On the walls were pictures of
Adolf Hitler, and rows of people saluting Nazi flags. There were
pictures of burning crosses, of men, women and children in Klu Klux
Klan robes, and cartoons of blacks, Mexicans and Jews being burned at
stakes or being tortured. There were also pictures of blonde women
being raped by black men, or dancing with them, and leaning on their
arms, laughing.
As McDonald and I looked around at the
pictures, Dr. Huss said, "Now I can tell you why I never let both of my
feet touch the ground at the same time."
I turned from the pictures on the wall, to
look at him. He said, "It's to show I have one foot on earth and one
foot already in space. It's to show that this is not the true and final
home of the white race. That home is above." So saying, he hopped and
turned to look suspiciously at McDonald, who still studied the photos
on the wall.
"You sure it doesn't mean you have one foot in
America and the other one in Germany?" asked McDonald, scratching the
side of his nose.
Dr. Huss said, "There! That's the very type of
ignorant comment that has caused the administration of this Base, and
the so-called "scientists" of the American space program, to stick me
out here and try to to keep me silent!"
"Well, I just noticed all these pictures of Hitler," said McDonald.
"I am an American, born here, sir," said Dr.
Huss. "Adolf Hitler was the Messiah, for American white men as well as
for the white men of Germany. He was Jesus incarnate! Do you know
Hitler could heal the sick, just by laying his hands on them?"
"You sure he wasn't just trying to pull out their gold fillings?" asked Mac, with a smile.
But Dr. Huss had a smile of his own, which he
used to winning advantage as he told us that no matter how ignorant we
might be, he was dedicated to building the space station, and helping
in the effort to pioneer the exploration of the universe, so that white
people could escape colored people, and leave them to this used-up ball
of dirt called the Earth, which word seemed almost obscene in the midst
of the fine spittle that accompanied its ejection from Dr. Huss's
mouth. He said he intended to save the white race, "by taking to the
high ground, the planets, the stars themselves. Then, we'll look down
here and watch the niggers cut each other up with rusty beer cans," he
said.
Mac blew air through his lips, making a harsh noise, and he left the room.
I liked Mac, and normally would have agreed
with him, but since he was disagreeing (unpleasantly, it seemed to me)
with a man who might well be my True Dad - I decided to let him go, and
to hear what Dr. Huss, whom I considered, by that moment, to be almost
one hundred per cent my True Dad, had to say. His concerns were mine,
now. Sure, the racist and strange things he said were in opposition to
all the teaching I had heard over the years, and they were opposed to
my inner feelings. But after twenty or thirty minutes sitting at the
edge of his desk, hearing Dr. Huss talk, I ached for the lost years,
during which I had done nothing to hold back the advance of the black
animal-people or the evil Hebrews. What fun we might have had, my True
Dad and I, handing out leaflets, lighting crosses, wearing swastika
armbands and badges, such as the ones Dr. Huss was wearing in the
picture he showed me of the day he got arrested for protesting some
minister who had said Jesus was a Jew ("He was a German, if you think
about it," said Huss) debating brainwashed Americans at every
opportunity... I felt so ashamed, that my True Dad had carried on his
fight alone. And I wondered, when Huss told me about the callings of my
aryan blood and various things like that, why I had not somehow sensed
my racial duty even before hearing my True Dad delineate it. For by now
I was certain that Dr. Huss was my True Dad. A rocket scientist - a
hopper (I had loved to hop as a child) - a man with eyes full of
suspicion and something angry and heavy behind the pupils (what more
evidence did I need? what did it matter that no other human could have
detected a single similarity between us? they were all strangers, to me
and my True Dad) -
I felt I had betrayed Dr. Huss, been a bad son
to him, because I had not hated the people he hated. I was ashamed. I
could not bring myself to tell him that I was sure he was my True Dad.
I was grateful when Dr. Huss asked me for a
favor. I agreed before he asked it. I hoped if I did this favor, and
served him well, I would feel, some time soon, worthy of announcing to
him our possible connection.
The favor he wanted was for me to leave what
he called his "sociological" opinions out of the article I had (now, I
was ashamed to think of it) lied to him and said I was writing for the
California City Sentinel - a newspaper that did not exist - and of course I said I would - only concentrating on his work with the space station.
"They like people to think we're going to
space for everybody, so they can keep suckin up everybody's tax money
to get us there, but only the white aryan is going to the Promised
Land. That's why a few of the boys had to teach everybody a lesson with
that Challenger Shuttle."
I asked him what he meant, but he only said,
"All in good time. But I'll tell you this much, the Challenger didn't
blow up because of any faulty O-rings or any shit like that. It was
exploded, from the Control Room, just like any rocket we send up that
goes off course. That was originally gonna be the cover story - say the
rocket was headin for Miami so we had to abort. But when we saw how
weepy everyone got we figgered it'd backfire against us."
"You mean you..."
He smiled, twinkly-eyed and pure, "The idea
was to send a message - no niggers, Japs, Jews, etcer etcer, in the
Promised Land - Who'da thought people'd get so emotional about a bunch
a mutts going up in smoke? I guess that's where bein' a dedicated
scientist can get in your way of understandin' the public..."
He rubbed his chin, thinking of how he and his
co-horts might make fewer mistakes in the future, and only roused
himself from his reveries when we heard the sounds of many men coming
down the corridor, toward his room.
"Here comes your escort out of here," he said.
Then, bending on the one stiff leg like a
crane, he picked up a small stack of newspapers and asked me to hide
them under my shirt, and take them off the base with me, to distribute
them to the outside world - They were WHITEVILLE, USA - a newsletter he
composed and printed on his pc, in this little room. I hid the papers.
The door opened and a Lieutenant stood there,
looking at Dr. Huss as he might at a naughty child, who had tried to
sneak out of the house, down a rope made of bedsheets.
"Hey," said Dr. Huss, "they surprised me as much as you. They told me PR sent em, what could I do but let em in?"
The Lieutenant smiled wryly. "I was busy with
the dog and pony show back at the base," said the Lieutenant. "You got
lucky." Then, he motioned for me to go with him. Mac was already
standing under guard. Huss winked at me as we left his room. I told him
that I would not only distribute the papers, but make more copies. He
almost cried. So did I, looking forward to the day when I would tell
him that he was my True Dad, and he would be proud of me.
A Few Minutes With Octo Rooney
When we got back to Westwood,
Mac said he would go to work finding the rest of the names on my list,
and I didn't discourage him, but in my heart, I knew (as I knew with
each new Dad) I had arrived at my True Dad.
Before going to meet Daphne, and return with
her to the ranch, I took some of the newsletters into the streets of
Westwood, handing them out. I was beaten up by some young Jews, one of
whom carried a gun. They had white prayer shawls on under their sports
coats, and fringes of threads coming out from under the fronts of their
jackets. They left me, and I went into a clothing store to buy new
clothes, because they had torn my shirt and pants to shreds. Then,
dressed in a new suit, I tried to leave Dr. Huss's newspapers in the
doorways of the stores on Westwood Boulevard, but the owners wouldn't
allow me to stack them there.
That night, I went into the lab and
re-photographed the pages of the newspapers with special embeds added.
I used the small printing press at the ranch, to print two thousand
copies. The next day, which was a day off for me anyway, I left the
papers in the lobbies of apartment buildings and frat houses and on the
doorsteps of single family dwellings. This activity took most of the
sunlight hours, and when I returned to the ranch, there was a message
from McDonald.
I called him. He wanted to see me right away,
but I told him I was too tired. I asked if he could come up to Redbird
the next day. I assured him there was a Denny's in town, and then he
agreed to meet me there.
As I went to see him, I didn't know what to
think. In a way, I almost hoped he had not found another putative Dad
for me, but in a way, I was already preparing myself to receive the
information that there was a new possibility, and to tell the absolute
truth, no matter how ungrateful it makes me appear, as a son, I was
getting a little tired of Dr. Huss as a Dad, and was ready for a new
one. I wondered if Dads were like drugs, and if once you started
finding them, you needed more and more Dads, to feed the habit. I hoped
this was not to be my fate.
Mac was having a chocolate ice cream soda when
I arrived. He slid a folder at me and told me he had located the next
name on my list - a Mr. Faroun. At first, I felt almost as though this
Mr. Faroun was an intrusion, trying to get between me and my True Dad,
Dr. Huss. But then I reasoned that I didn't actually know Dr. Huss was
the one, any more than I knew, or could know, it was Popper or Persson
or Elam. Soon, I would learn a way to decide once and for all, but that
had not happened yet. At least, I told myself, peruse the man's file,
and then decide if you really are sure you have enough Dads. My career
was going well, so there was no financial reason to limit my access to
Dads. Why not, then, admit that Dr. Huss has been far from the perfect
parent, and that, while we love and respect him, and will be thrilled
if he does in fact prove to be our True Dad, he has not as yet provided
any overpowering reason, by deed or appearance, for me to call off the
search for my True Dad. I opened the folder of Mr. Faroun.
As soon as I saw the first page, a photo, I felt there must be some mistake.
I said, "But this man is black."
Mac McDonald said that was true, and went on
eating his ice cream soda as though nothing unusual had been said to
him. I stared at him a long moment. Then, I realized what the problem
was. After all, I had never told him the purpose of my seeking the men
whose names were on my list. He had asked, but I had told him I didn't
want him to know. Now, however, I thought it was time to share my story
with him.
I told him about Dr. Lord's lab, the artificial insemination clinic, and the list of geniuses who might be my True Dad.
I said, "How can this be my True Dad, when
he's black, and I have such an extremely pale complexion?" I held my
arm out over the table top.
Mac said he didn't know. He said he would
think about it. As he continued drinking his soda, he handed me a small
video player, and he put on a tape of Mr. Faroun - whose full name was
the Reverend Minister Sharmin Kinshasa Torniquet Faroun - and the
minute I saw him, I shuddered with strange feelings. The man was so
different from Dr. Huss. Indeed, he was all that Dr. Huss had spoken
and written so forcefully against. A black man. A black man filled with
rage. With a large audience.
Faroun was not a darkly black man, but a
reddish-yellowish color. He was tall, was practically bald, had red
hideous eyes. I saw him on a stage, on the videotape, his face furious,
his mouth rubbery and wet with rage, as he pounded himself on the head
with a rolled-up newspaper. He was saying, "The white man is the devil!
He was created one thousand years ago by a black scientist who had gone
insane. Originally, they were created to serve us, and make our lives
easier, but they got out of hand, and took over!" His audience said,
"Uh-huh." He said that black people would never really be paid back for
slavery until each black person in America had a white slave. His
audience said, "Uh-huh," once again.
"Actually," he said, "we might need us each a
few... Some fo the house, and some fo the field!" "Uh-huh," said the
congregation.
I was fascinated by the Minister Faroun, and
already growing to like him. A few moments ago I had seen a black man
on my way into Denny's and I had looked at him through the eyes of Dr.
Huss, hating him, and thinking ugly thoughts about him and his ugly
thoughts. But now, watching the Minister Faroun on this videotape, that
powerful force overcame me, as it did every time I was introduced to a
new possible True Dad, and before I knew it, without the slightest
intention on my part, I had convinced myself that the Minister Faroun was
my True Dad. Twenty minutes earlier, I might have had bad dreams about
him, but now I found myself lost in a fantasy of olden times. I saw the
Minister Faroun and I working side by side in the cotton fields of a
Southern plantation, cowering at the lash of a whip held by a man
riding a horse. I wanted to kill that man, I wanted my pain and
humiliation to be known and redressed. In the words of the Minister, I
found some of the redress I sought. As the waitress slid a plate of
food under my face, I started to cry.
Mac tried to get my attention, but I was
hypnotized by the oratorical power of my Dad. Finally, Mac put his hand
on the small screen. I looked at him. He was waving the other hand in
front of my face. When my eyes focused on his face, he said, "I was
just thinking here. I remember, I saw an episode on 60 Minutes
a few years ago about mulattoes, quadroons and octoroons, down in New
Orleans. They said one out of every four white people down there is
actually listed as black because they have some fraction of black
blood." He took his hand off the screen and said, "Minister Faroun here
is fairly light-skinned, he could be a quadroon, so that woould mean,
as far as I can tell, you might actually be the man's son, and that
might well make you an octoroon."
As I watched his tape - a series of speeches
delivered before audiences of screaming, agreeing black faces - I
couldn't help but see the uncanny similarities between us that might
indeed indicate I was Faroun's son, and not Huss's. The way he paused
at odd places in his sentences, places where no one would pause - I do
that - the way he stalked the stage with a hitch in his step and a high
kick when he changed directions - I did that on the basketball court -
and to think of it what about my great talent for basketball, didn't
that indicate also a possible connection to Faroun - so, in a short
time, I had forgotten all the bad things Huss had said about black
people - even the things written and drawn in his vile newsletter - as
I grew more and more in love with my new candidate for True Dad - The
Reverend Minister Faroun.
I said to Mac, "How do we get to see him?"
Mac said the Minister was impossible to see.
"He's got round the clock bodyguards, he sleeps in a different house
every night, doesn't answer his mail and won't talk to honkies."
"Who are they?"
"You and me," said Mac. Then added, "Me at least."
I said "There must be a way."
McD. showed me a flyer advertising Faroun's next speech, in downtown LA, and said, "He speaks at this place every month."
"That's it, then," I said excitedly. "We'll see him before he gives his speech."
"I don't know if that's a good idea," said Mac, but I didn't let him discourage me. I was determined to go.
"It's this evening," I said. "Let's go together."
Mac said he couldn't guarantee my safety. I
offered him a bonus to come with me. He agreed, but only after I said I
would go alone, if I had to.
"Octoroon octoroon octoroon," I said to myself
as McD. and I drove down to the meeting hall. "I like the sound of
that. It sounds like a word sailors might shout from the crow's nest in
a heavy fog, to warn other ships of their nearness. Octo-roon!
Octo-roon!"
I was already feeling octoroonish, too - kind
of smooth and impetuous, and cool, like the marble cutting surface in
Dr. Crosse's kitchen. I was already beginning to love the Rev Min
Faroun - already sure he was my True Dad - I thought of his jaw, like
mine, knobbed with stubborn strength at the hinges, firm and square
across the prow. Just as mine might have been if it wasn't round and
somewhat soft, like the shape at the bottom of a sponge carved into the
form of a duck. And our hair was the same, though his was black and
tightly curled and glittering with grease, while mine was straight and
dry - and our eyes were the same - though his were like balls stuck on
the surface of his face and jutting out, while mine were set deep in my
head, and couched in fleshy crinkles and creases.
It was near evening, the hour when the sun
barrels into your eyes and makes you look like a quivering light bulb,
when Mac and I arrived at the Fez and Crescent Meeting Hall, in South
Central LA. As we drove up, we saw a crowd I estimated at ten thousand,
crushing one another's backs to get into the Hall. They were all black
people, the men dressed in suits and ties, the women in silk dresses
with flowers over their hearts, or covered in Arabic-style robes and
veils. To enter, they had to pass through a line of large men, also
black, all of whom wore headsets through which they talked to someone
who was not present, and heard instructions. These guards guided the
crowd through five or six metal detectors that had been set up in the
lobby. This slowed the progress of the crowd, but no one complained.
They were orderly and quiet. As we came up near the entering crowd, a
man of about twenty five saw us in our car, and spit at the windshield.
Then another young man saw us, and smashed the hood of the car with his
fist, and shouted something to his friends, who turned to look at us in
what seemed to be amazement.
"Do you want to come in with me, to meet Minister Faroun?" I asked Mac, "Or would you rather wait in the car?"
"Now that I see the mood of this crowd, I
think it might be better if the two of us went home for now, and
possibly contacted the Minister at some later date, perhaps by wire."
"No," I protested. "Now that I'm here, I must
see him. I think you've found my father for me, Mac, and I'm impatient
to meet him, set my eyes on him, talk with him."
Mac shook his head, but said he knew a side entrance to the Hall.
We drove around to an alley, and parked beside
a news van, where some news people were sitting in the open doors,
having sandwiches. When they saw us, they ignored us.
Mac went to the small iron door in the side of
the Hall and tested it. It was locked. He looked up and down the
street, took something from his pocket, and started working on the
lock, using his body to shield what he was doing from the eyes of the
news people. When the door was opened, he indicated for me to go past
him and enter. He followed me into the building.
We were behind the stage. I saw in the
distance, some offices or dressing-rooms. I headed toward them. I saw a
squad of young men that looked like the men guarding the front
entrance, coming out of one of the rooms. There were six of them. After
them, came a man I recognized as the Minister Faroun. I couldn't help
myself. Seeing him, I rushed ahead, calling out, "Minister Faroun!
Minister Faroun!" and waving my arm, so I would catch his attention
before he went on the stage.
I was surprised when, the moment I yelled, the
Guards rushed at us and crushed me and Mac to the floor. I found myself
with one man's knee on my adam's apple, looking into the gun barrel of
a second man, who leaned over my head. "Who are you? What do you want?
How did you get in here?" were some of the questions I heard, but
didn't have the breath to answer. After a moment, the Minister Faroun
joined us, and was looking down at me and Mac. He examined our wallets.
Mac's said he was a private investigator.
One of the Guards said, "I remember Mac McDonald. Used to be a police officer."
"Assassins," said a voice from a face I
couldn't see. In an instant, the word was taken up by other voices. As
the men holding me started to rhythmically kick my ribs and legs,
people chanted, "Assassins, assassins..." and someone added, "Kill
them! Before they kill our beloved Minister. Kill them!" Hearing this,
Faroun studied my face, then Mac's face, then he shrugged and turned to
head for the stage, asking an Aide as he went: "Is there water on the
podium?"
The Guards changed positions, to start the
process of dragging us into one of the little rooms, and I managed to
raise my head enough to see Faroun walking away. Then, I found the
strength to speak, and I called out, in a voice that started as a
croak, but got surer as it went on: "Minister Faroun - it's - it's
about Dr. Lord!"
Faroun stopped on the stairs, as though he saw
someone coming the other way. He just stood there. I shouted again: "I
have to talk to you about Dr. Lord!"
Faroun turned and walked back to me. He said, "You know Doctor Lord?"
I said, "I have to talk to you."
Mac, from someplace on the floor I couldn't
see, now spoke to the Minister. He said, "Believe me, pal, you want
this to be a private discussion."
The Minister seemed to wrestle with himself
inwardly a moment or two, then said to the Guards, "Stay with the other
one." He reached down and grabbed my hand. He pulled me to my feet, and
grabbed the fleshy part of my ear, with which he guided me into a small
room. He closed the door and locked it. I had to tell him the reason I
was there, because I felt it was the only way to to save my life. I
said, "I think I am your son, sir, born from the experiments of Dr.
Lord, which if I am not mistaken you took part in."
He just sat there, on a table, staring at me.
Then, he sighed and said, "When I was at Berkeley, the Doc was the
first person to give me an IQ test. I was a janitor there, but when he
said I was a genius, the school gave me a scholarship. He changed my
life."
"Mine, too," I said. But he looked at me
skeptically, checked my ears, felt my arms and back, made me open my
mouth for some reason he didn't tell me, looked around in my mouth,
tested the up and down motion of my jaw, then just looked at me a
while. Finally, he shook his head. "I refuse to believe a sickly, ugly
white devil could be a son of mine. I'm sorry, but I see no reason here
not to let the boys do away with you and your friend as a couple of
paid assassins probably sent by the Federal Bureau."
I told him what Mac had said, about the people
in Louisiana who look white but are actually the offspring of at least
some black ancestors.
He said, as he had on the tape I heard, "White
people were created by an evil scientist a thousand years ago, and they
are all evil. You are white. That means you are woefully woefully
evil."
I think he was surprised to see that no matter
what he said to me, I continued to smile at him. Actually, I smiled
more and more, for I was expressing love, and I was loving whatever he
said. Even when he said octoroons like me would all be killed in the
coming war of the races, I just couldn't get enough of it. I was so
lost in admiration for the beautiful way he spoke, the rolling phrases,
the songlike pauses, and all this, all this, from my own True Dad! I
was in heaven. He told me he believed in a separate nation for blacks,
comprising what is now known as Georgia, Mississippi and South
Carolina, and said it was the only way to stop the approaching race
war. He sounded so determined to stop this war, even if it meant having
to start it, by invading the South, and taking it once and for all,
that I could think of no better calling in life than to help him in any
way I could. I told him that. He thought I was crazy. He said, "You're
white, and you're the devil, but something about that trusting,
moonlike, eggy face of yours makes me want to keep my bodyguards from
killing you. Maybe - and if you tell anyone this, I'll kill you
personally - maybe it's because I have no son of my own, and I have
been thinking of that recently, and now, almost as though Allah Himself
had..." But then he stopped himself and said, "Look, you have to get
lost. Can't be no white kids around here calling me papa or we'll both
be killed by my bodyguards. Believe that, son. They must never suspect
the purpose of this visit."
I said I wanted to see him again, but he shook
his head sadly. He said, "Leave me your name and address and phone
number, and maybe some day, some day. But now..." he trailed off. Then
he said, "You were brave to come here." He grabbed my shoulder fondly.
"That's the way any son of mine would be." Before I left, we hugged
fondly. Then, he opened the door and told his bodyguards I had brought
a message from an old friend of his and that they should escort us
safely to our car and make sure we got out of the area all right. We
were soon on our way.
Later, I had McDonald send some black
operatives to get me samples of the Minister's literature and the tapes
he sends to his fans, and again, as with the newsletters of Dr. Huss, I
secretly added sublims to all his material. Daphne carefully etched new
fuck prick cunt shit death glass embeds for our task. Daphne suggested
we just leave a bunch of phenome-embedded paper at the Mosque so
whatever Faroun wrote from then on would have the necessary embeds. We
had to sneak into his mosque at night, in blackface, to the composing
room, to leave our paper. While we were there, I thought I heard his
voice coming from one of the rooms, and I wanted to stop and talk to
him, but Daphne said we had better not.
In the following weeks, Faroun started to
rise, amazingly fast. His meetings were more full than ever, and more
than that, his face started to appear on TV and in the papers all the
time... Soon, he was starting to be considered a serious person by the
same people who used to think he was a fanatical moron - even though he
hadn't changed his opinions, or the way he said them. There was even an
article in the LA Times called "Faroun - From Pariah to
Pundit," which discussed the fact that Faroun was now on all the
political talk shows, and had somehow become the African-American
leader the networks and newspapers went to for a comment when anything
happened. I saw David Brinkley smiling wanly at him and talking to him
as though he were the leader of a foreign state.
Nobody could quite say what caused the change
in the public perception of the Minister Faroun. Naturally, Daphne and
I were pretty sure it was our subliminals. This, as it turned out, may
not have been the entire truth. But at that time, I credited myself and
Daphne with the miraculous and thrilling enlargement of the fortunes of
Faroun, and I remember when she and I would lie together and bask in
his good fortune, cheering him on from our place of secret watching. We
were happy he would get his way in the world (me, because he was my
True Dad - Daphne, simply because she was happy for me) - and we
fantasized about the great new African-American nation in the middle of
the present United States - where black men and mulattoes, and perhaps
the occasional well-connected octoroon, would work and play among the
native and imported people and animals of that veldt-to-be.
There was only one fly in the ointment. I
began to see that Dr. Huss, too, was growing in importance. He was on
Cable TV almost every day, sneering and fat thighed, attempting to
cross his legs one way or the other, always seeming to be unable to do
so, (possibly the result of years of hopping and standing unnaturally
on one foot) as he imparted his racial theories and grinned with that
innocent malevolence - that cuteness of tone - which I had used to
admire so whole-heartedly, but now was forced to think of critically,
to say the least. Now, of course, I had to question him and everything
he stood for - because I had a new True Dad.
But this is not entirely accurate. It was
worse than that, for me. The truth was, I found myself hesitating
between the world-views of Dr. Huss and the Minister Faroun, as I
alternately considered either of them to be my True Dad. Really, I was
still searching for clues as to which the actual True Dad would turn
out to be, and as sure as I was that Faroun was my progenitor, whenever
I saw him or heard his voice, just that sure was I that Huss was my
True Dad, when I saw him, or read his philosophizing.
Sometimes I would be out in Westwood and see a stack of Huss's
newsletters - "Marry an Aryan for Christ!" under one arm and a stack of
Faroun's journal, The Coming Black Militia, under the other,
carefully putting a few papers from each stack side by side in the
doorways of Westwood. I wanted both of my Dads to succeed, though I was
not fool enough to forget the fact that either one of them would have
disowned, and possibly killed me, had he discovered that I was helping
the other.
I told Daphne my predicament, and she suggested we tell her father, but I didn't want to bother him with my petty troubles.
There were intimations from him that the
Subliminal Business was on the verge of a huge take-off, the exact
nature of which he said he could not yet tell us. He gave me a raise
just about every time he laid eyes on me, and soon my salary was in the
range of 2 million dollars a year. I bought jewels and pearls and gold
for Daphne, but she hid it all in a box under the earth, because she
still didn't want to tell her father about us. Still, she and I
traveled together, often leaving him at home on the ranch, and in many
respects we lived as though we were a married couple.
Sometimes she would say, "I only wish you had
never started looking for your True Dad. If it wasn't for that, I
believe I could make you happy."
I assured her that I was happy, and that it
was she who had made me so. But the truth was, I was worrying about
Huss and Faroun more and more. I had taken on the emotions of both of
them, in my attempts to be a good son, and now I found myself as the
defender and savior of both, though it was clear to me that the two men
were totally at odds, were enemies, would have wanted to kill one
another on sight if they ever saw one another. I wanted to identify
with the triumphs of my True Dad, and to hate my True Dad's enemies,
but how could I do that in my current situation?
Sometimes, in despair, I tried to reject both
Huss and Faroun, and told myself that neither one of them could
possibly be my True Dad. I tried to tell myself that despite my
incomprehension of his writings, and the fact that he was by this time
a rather old-hat True Dad for me, totally replaced in my family tree
first by Huss and then by Faroun, Mr. Popper must be my True Dad. He
was a good choice, also, because I had already helped him, enormously,
and could justifiably bask in the reflected glory of his new fame.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of going back to visit Mr. Popper.
Emotionally, he wasn't doing any better than I. As a matter of fact, he was in despair when I went to see him.
He was living in a fine house, and had
recently married. His wife was about twenty-five years younger than he.
The two of them smoked pot all day, and watched TV together. He tried
to appear happy to see me. I smoked a joint with them. They told me
they were expecting a child, and I congratulated them. I remember
feeling a pang of jealousy toward the unborn child, but I knew it was
unjust, and it went away quickly. What troubled me was that, at the end
of my visit, when I walked out to my car, accompanied by Mr. Popper, I
looked at him and he was crying.
At first I thought he was squinting from the
sun, but when he saw me looking at him, he took the opportunity to
break down weeping against my chest. I said, "Mr. Popper, what's the
matter? You have everything you ever wanted. You are a famous and
respected writer, you have a beautiful wife, and a child on the way.
You live well, and have all the time you need, to write. You don't have
to sell jokes for a quarter on the beach, and all your work is
published, no matter that it has no plot, no characters, no point of
view, no commas and damn few periods. Nobody dares to edit your writing
because no one can understand it, yet everyone buys it because everyone
buys it. You have succeeded entirely without compromise. In fact, while
most writers want to be popular, in your case the world wants to be
popular with you. Why, all this being true, are you sad?"
To which Mr. Popper replied, "That's just the
problem. I have two billion people asking me to say something to them,
and I have nothing to say. What advice, what beauty, have I come across
that can be shared with half the world? None. None. My writing, I now
realize, existed to be hidden. I was happy when every now and then
somebody would come up to me on the boardwalk, and say he'd read that
book, the one you read, or maybe one of my poems that my friends used
to xerox and hand around at parties. Then, I would talk to that person,
and sooner or later he or she would realize I was just an old crank,
check out my ragged clothes for confirmation, understand that there was
no reason not to call me an asshole and leave my presence, and do so.
Those were my readers, that was my life, I was Popper, myself. Now, so
many people come to me to talk about my work, and some of them have
read it so carefully they understand it. And they are so clever they
can make me understand it. Then, when I understand it, it becomes dim
and grey in my mind. I used to love every word in every folder I had
stacked in my apartment on Dudley Avenue. Now, page by page, the public
is taking it all away from me, and sending it back with a haircut. Now
who am I? Lost, lost in public."
I comforted him as best I could, but how well
was that? All I really wanted to do was to get away from him, and pity
myself because my attempts to help my True Dad had backfired.
Then, I was back to being torn between Huss and Faroun.
Trying to decide which was my True Dad. Which,
which? And how could I discern it once and for all, because all my
reasonings and perceptions were wearing me down without giving me
relief. I tossed in my bed, straining to find ways to vindicate my True
Dad, myself, and all our ancestors, all joined to us, against my other
True Dad, myself and all the ancestors that came with that True
Dad. I found I was usually up in the mornings with different kinds of
resentment flooding over me. Sometimes I would start muttering about
the Catholic Church being the world house of torture. Sometimes it
would be the Black people, or the Jews, or women, or men, or short men
with white skin and tall women with black skin - or my mother, quite
often - Or I'd resent people I knew - resenting things they had said.
Sometimes I resented them as the son of Faroun, resenting their racism
and smugness and plottings, sometimes I resented them as the son of
Huss, resenting their race and numbers.
Then, I had just gotten another raise, and was
strolling Westwood with a pocketful of variously styled Cartier watches
for Daphne, inwardly volleying back and forth between hatred for blacks
and hatred for whites, between weeping over the fate of the sainted
African captives during the infamous Middle Passage and weeping for the
fates of all the white women and little white girls raped and slain by
the evil blacks, between snapping my fingers like a jazzman and
clicking my heels like a Nazi, (or both at the same time, which
produced a pleasing effect when I was alone, but seemed to attract
strange gazes when I did it on public streets) between crying for a
Christ who had been (as Faroun told me) a black man, living in ancient
Israel, when it was a black land; and crying for Dr. Huss's Christ, an
Aryan who lived in an all-Aryan ancient Israel; when suddenly I
realized something. It was something important to me at the time, and
when I realized it, I found my feet started to speed up, and soon I was
running, running to meet Daphne, at our appointed dinner date, at
Emilio's Restaurant, because I had to tell her what I had realized.
When I got there, I was out of breath, but very excited. I saw her, and
slid into the booth beside her. She was so beautiful. We kissed, we
ordered, we exchanged gifts - watches for her, a jewel-encrusted
alarm-clock for me - and then she looked at me and said, "You seem very
happy today. I'm glad to see your recent depression has lifted." She
kissed the side of my face. I said, "I'm happy, I'm ecstatic, because I
just realized, on my way here, that there is one thing on which Dr.
Huss and the Reverend Minister Faroun actually agree! Here, all
this time, I have been torn, conflicted, between my two putative True
Dads, not knowing which to please and which to hate, and now I see that
there is one thing I may believe - clearly, unquestioningly believe -
no matter which of them is my True Dad!"
"What is it that you may believe?" she asked me.
"That the Jews are no good," I said, with the
very words serving to relax the tense muscles of my face and body.
"They both agree on that one thing. Now, Faroun says the Jews aren't
really the Jews but a bunch of Caucasians from Russia pretending to be
the true Jews, who were really black geniuses who somehow forgot who
they really were; and Huss says the Jews aren't really the Jews, but a
bunch of mongrel niggers pretending to be the true Jews, who were
really an all-white enclave in the Middle East that somehow drifted
over to Germany where they too forgot they were the Jews and started
calling themselves Germans for some reason, probably a Jewish plot. But
however it happened, and whoever is right, I now know I can have a
fulfilling and rewarding relationship with both my True Dads, if we
confine our conversations to the errors and evils of the people who
currently claim to be the Jews. No longer must I talk to one True Dad
while insulting the other. I can avoid talking about whites to Faroun,
or blacks to Huss, and with both I can agree on the single matter that
binds the three of us."
Daphne thought it over, and said, "I don't
like the fact that both of these True Dads of yours require you to hate
other people to get along with them, but if this is what makes you
happy, I'm glad you have found it."
I fairly shouted, "Happy?! I'm ecstatic! I am
no longer totally torn down the middle. Oh, Lord," I prayed aloud,
trying to see Jesus as I prayed, both as a black and as a German, which
was easy when I allowed my mind to toggle between the positive and
negative image of the same picture, at about ten beats a second, "Oh,
Lord - thank you for this one thing, this bonding I may now have with
both my True Dads!"
And just before the drinks came I started to say, "Whew! I'm glad I'm not a..."
Mr. Steinstein
"...Jew!"
But before I had a chance to say the final
word, the door of Emilio's snapped open, the sunlight of Westwood
blasted into the place, and a hurrying overcoated figure I recognized
as MacDonald "Mac" McDonald elbowed and shouldered its way to our table.
He said, "I called the credit card companies,
got a list of your purchases for today, and Daphne's, put two and two
together and figured you'd meet up in Emilio's to exchange gifts."
I told him that was just one more indication
of what a fine detective he was, but in my tone I think he detected a
touch of impatience, so he said, "Reason I interrupt you, is, I found
the next guy on your list. Name's Steinstein."
I felt like telling him thanks very much but
why don't you go home and forget this job completely, because I think I
have all the Dads I need for the time being. But before the words were
even out of my mouth, I realized that (strange though it might be to
say so) I already had a feeling this man Steinstein would prove to be
my True Dad. How can that be? I had no more evidence than the sound of
his name coming from the lips of McDonald, and the light on the wall
behind McD.'s head, a shade of parchment gold. Those things, the name,
the light, McDonald asking the waiter if they had ice cream sodas at
Emilio's, conspired in my brain to convince me that Steinstein was the
one. Already, Huss and Faroun, Popper and Persson, and Elam, were
dissolving into the mists of other tribes, not mine. I knew I had to
meet Steinstein.
"Tell me about him," I said.
"Well, he's a TV producer. Jewish."
Daphne dropped her fork and looked at me, with
tender concern. I smiled at her. She thought I might have been upset,
since just a moment before I had been grateful that the one thing I was
not was what I now was. She didn't know that the instant he said it,
all my former anger at the Jews was passed away from me like a crease
after it has blown through a sheet. Jewish was what I wanted to be.
After all, I said to myself, if it's good enough for my True Dad -
Steinstein - it's good enough for me! Think of all the Jewish ancestors
I have. Generations of Steinsteins coming to a full rich flowering in
me.
It seemed right in another way. As I may or
may not have mentioned, Mr. Stengrow, the man who had raised me, and
actually had brought me into existence by paying Doctor Lord to perform
his fertilizations, was Jewish.
Perhaps, I thought, Dr. Lord took that fact
into account when he chose my donor-biological-father... I liked the
idea... It made simple sense, like a key and a lock... I thought of our
life in the Stengrow home, where we were not so much Jews as devotees
of the faith that might be called The Westside Religion - we celebrated
all the holidays, Christian and Jewish, and Mr. Stengrow's attachment
to the faith of his (our) fathers took the form of the sentence, which
he said about once a year, usually after dinner, while turning on the
TV, "I'm proud to be a Jew." When I asked him why he was proud, he said
it was because the Christians and Moslems had learned the idea of a
Single God from us, so it sounded like he was proud of the Christians
and Moslems, like he had put them through college and was pleased with
their achievements... Other than his love of Barbra Streisand and
George Burns, that was the extent of the religious education I got from
him. Certainly, I can say it now, I had been somewhat ashamed of myself
for not standing up for Mr. Stengrow's people when they were criticized
by the Reverend Minister Faroun or Dr. Huss, but I tried to drive that
shame from my head in the interests of bonding with my True Dad. Also,
I think I harbored some resentment against Mr. Stengrow, a resentment
that any discussion of religion just brought to the forefront of my
thoughts. This was because, as a child, I had sometimes had secret
urges to explore further the world of Mr. Stengrow's religion, but
whenever I talked about it to him, he seemed so tired of it, bored with
it, humorously dismissive of it, that I gave up.
Now, as the son of Mr. Steinstein, I would be
exposed to another interpretation of my ancient and venerable faith,
and I looked forward to that.
I examined the folder Mac gave me, concerning
Steinstein, and saw a man with completely white hair, covering his head
in thick ringlets. His eyes were kind and dark. Except for his white
hair, and the wisdom in those eyes, I thought, he might have looked no
older than I did. And yet he must be twenty years older than me, at
least.
Mac said, "Steinstein is super rich."
That made sense to me, because he was a
genius. It made more sense, I thought, than the poverty of Popper or
the middle-class status of Huss or the upper middle-class niche of
Minister Faroun, where he dwelled with the takings of his church.
"He was a writer, like Popper, but unlike
Popper, he fell into the world of TV and movies, where he has succeeded
fantastically," said Mac, as he ate the hazelnut cake topped with
bisque tortoni that was the closest thing he could get at Emilio's to
an ice cream soda. "He was such a successful writer he doesn't do it
any more. Now he's making millions as a Producer, and hiring other
writers to execute his every thought."
"How can I get to meet him?" I asked.
"This is a problem," said Mac. "Since he has his name on so many TV shows, he's been the target of stalkers."
"Stalkers?"
"Psychos, nuts, weirdos, who read about
celebrities and then try to contact them. They send letters, gifts,
pieces of their bodies, threats - they call on the phone - they try to
waylay the celebrities at home or work - Steinstein's not an actor or
anything, but he's so successful, he's got a bunch of stalkers. So, I
came up with a plan."
His plan was to get me hired to write one of Steinstein's many TV shows.
Over the next few weeks, we pursued Mac's
plan. In order to assure me of the best chance for being hired, we
employed very successful screen and TV writers, for huge sums, (I spent
six hundred thousand dollars on the project) to ghostwrite scripts on
which I could put my name, and then send through an agent to
Steinstein. It took five Emmy winners and a two-time Oscar nominee, but
we finally got one to Steinstein that he liked, and he called the
agent, saying he wanted to see me for possible employment on his TV
show -
"Kill a kid! Kill a kid!" I heard someone say through the door as I waited for Steinstein in his outer office.
The secretary-receptionist, an elderly
alcoholic woman with a pronounced German accent, looked up from her
tissues and said, "Sounds like the story meeting's almost over."
Soon the door swung open, and there stood Mr.
Steinstein, glorious in ringlets of white hair, slim, tall, dressed in
a knit golf shirt and pressed chino pants, wearing hi-top white
sneakers. "Stengrow?" he said when he saw me. I stuck out my hand to
shake his, and to touch perhaps for the first time, the flesh of my
True Dad. He had a firm, dry handshake, and thin bones. "Thank you for
seeing me," I said, "Mr. Steinstein."
I pronounced the word: "Styne-styne." I could
see immedicately that something was bothering him. He wiggled his nose
as though it suddenly itched, and said, "If you're trying to make fun
of me, I'll throw you out right now."
"No sir," I said, quickly, "Make fun of you how?"
He looked at me for a moment, as though trying
to decide whether or not I was sincere. Then, he must have concluded
that I ws, because his face relaxed, and he hit me softly on the upper
arm.
He then took me into his office, where four
young men were sitting in a couple of couches, watching the door
expectantly, awaiting the re-entrance of Steinstein. He said to me,
"Find a seat," then sat down himself, behind his desk and explained to
me that many of the people he met mis-pronounced his name. "It didn't
used to bother me but, well, I've mentioned it in a couple of
interviews, and now I guess I figure everyone in the world must know
how to pronounce my name, so when they get it wrong, I guess I figure
they must be trying to be funny. I hear it all," he said, "Steen-steen,
Steen-stein, or as you said Styne-styne. I guess everyone thinks he's a
comedian."
I said, "How is it pronounced then, sir?"
"Pronounced? Why it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled! S-T-E-I-N-S-T-E-I-N! Styne-steen! Styne-steen!"
"Styne-steen," I said, this time saying it the correct way. He calmed down after that.
He introduced me to the other men in the room,
all writers. They were working on the latest episode of their top-rated
series, called "Alger House." It was about a small independent
publishing firm, and the stories derived from the joys and difficulties
of Mr. Alger, the founder, and the other workers there. The difficulty
they were having, Mr. Steinstein informed me, was that the world of
publishing sometimes didn't provide the kind of visual, emotional drama
that viewers demanded if they were to stay tuned to the program through
the commercial breaks. The most difficult of those breaks to write, so
as to keep the viewers from straying, was the half-hour break, because
that was generally the one with the most commercials. Mr. Steinstein
explained to his writers and to me that over the years one of the
sure-fire ways he had discovered, to keep audiences glued to his shows,
was to have a child die, or be threatened with death, just before the
break. Hence, the shorthand, "Kill a kid," which he felt should be the
title of a chapter in any manual for TV writers. He had told these
other writers of these facts, before coming out to get me, and now they
shouted out to him ways they had thought of for killing a kid at the
end of Act Two. I heard only, "Little Jimmy, Jack's son, skins knee, it
doesn't heal, Jack takes him to a doctor, get tests, bing, kid's got
AIDS, end of Act Two," from one eager scribe, and "Mary-Jo, eight year
old daughter of Byron and Beth, shopping at the mall, comes out of
Eddie Bauer's, passes a dark doorway, here comes a pair of big hands to
pull her in, shwoop, will we ever see her again? Cut to commercial."
My mind started to wander, as I looked around the office, at the walls covered with placques of thanks and numerous awards.
I thought, I inherit these awards, on the
genetic level. These Emmys will be in the DNA of my happy progeny
forever and ever. When you're thinking genetically, you have a sharp
eye for levels, distinctions and honors. You're looking for a pattern.
You're fitting yourself into a great chain of being. I looked at the
headlines displayed on the walls of Mr. Steinstein's office, the golden
statuettes, and shapes of gold and silver, and of clear or textured
glass on the tables, peeking out among the sandwich wrappings from the
lunches of the writing team. I saw his awards from charitable and
special-interest groups, for the taste and sensitivity with which his
shows had dealt with them, and their groups. He was a benefactor of
mankind, as I had always hoped my Dad would be, and as I wanted to be.
This was good evidence to me, that Mr. Steinstein (his first name was
Stu) was the one.
I was rollicking inwardly among all my Dads,
so I knew I had to find out once and for all which was the true True
Dad, but I wanted to give myself some time with Mr. Steinstein first,
to see if I could decide on my own, from the evidence of my senses, and
feelings.
I worked for him for two months. I started
dressing like him, and had my fingernails buffed and manicured and my
hair cut at the same studio barbershop where he went. We sat
side-by-side in the barber chairs every morning, talking story. We wore
the same Western shirts, with the milky snaps. I soon noticed our voice
patterns were the same, and we both scratched behind our left ears in
the same way, when we were thinking through a problem. And who else but
Mr. Steinstein liked to look at the points of his sneakers exactly as I
liked to look at the points of mine? Nobody. Not to mention the way we
both told a joke, and were unintentionally hurtful approximately 50 per
cent of the times we opened our mouths, all this served to bind me
closer and closer biologically to Mr. Steinstein. Even the fact that,
as I was forced to note, Mr. Steinstein didn't like me very much, when
coupled with the fact that I didn't like him very much, seemed like
just another proof of our family closeness. The unavoidable conclusion
was, that this was my True Dad.
I cried with joy, relief and gratitude to Fate
for two days when I finally came to this conclusion. I decided I must
go to Mr. Steinstein with my story, to see how he would accept me.
After work on a Friday night, I found him in
his office, and asked him if I could sit with him for a while. He
seemed a little wary, but he said all right. I was made aware, as I had
been on one or two previous occasions, of a certain physical revulsion
felt by Mr. Steinstein in relation to my proximity to any part of his
body. He even seemed to turn his head a bit when I talked to him, to
avoid being in the path of air expelled with my words. Still, what I
had to say was so important, that I sat close to him, and told him the
whole story, starting with Dr. Lord (a name he didn't seem to
recognize, I was surprised to see) and continuing right through to that
very moment, "now, here, when I can say, though I want and need nothing
from you, and will gladly keep this secret for the rest of my life, if
you would prefer it that way, that I accept and welcome you, Mr.
Steinstein, as my father - my True Father! My True Dad!"
I reached out to grab and hug him, and perhaps
plant a kiss on his forehead or cheek, but he slipped from my grasp,
rising from the cowhide couch and falling toward the marble table
covered with toys and awards. I was presented with a close-up (as I had
learned to call it) of the palm of his hand, as he pressed it into my
face, to push me back..
Then, he sat back down, and lowered his head.
He scratched behind his ear, in that way I had learned to love, he
looked up, he cleared his throat and said to me: "How old are you?"
"Nineteen, sir," I said, my eyes a little misty.
"I'm twenty-five," said Mr. Steinstein.
"But - ?"
"I'm prematurely gray," he said.
"But - ?"
"This business ages you, too," he said. "The pressures of episodic. Nobody knows who hasn't done episodic."
Then, shutting out the light, he left the office.
I sat in the dark, listening to some teamsters
loading the lions and tigers for Mr. Steinstein's new circus show, "I
Care About You Geeks" into the backs of their trucks, and I tried to
think of where I had gone wrong.
A Superfluity of Dads
I called Mac McDonald, to tell
him what had happened. He checked things out and got back to me.
"Little mix-up," he said, apologetically. "I got Steinstein confused
with his father, also Stu Steinstein. The elder Steinstein died about
ten years ago, and the younger one has done so much, and to tell the
truth, looks so old, I just naturally assumed he was the right one. But
hey - cheer up. Maybe Steinstein's your brother. Now wouldn't that be
nice?"
He may have been right, but for some reason, I didn't care.
I knew I had to find out once and for all, who
was my True Dad. I was nervous and exhausted from all the inward
migrations I had done among all my Dads. The subjective criteria I had
been using had obviously not done the trick. It became clear to me that
I would probably, in my present state of mind, accept a chewing gum
wrapper on the sidewalk as my True Dad, if its name was on my list, and
I could come up with one or two areas of similarity between me and it.
I went to Daphne, and laid my head against her breast at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and wept.
She soothed me by rubbing my head and neck,
and moving my hair around on my forehead. Finally, she said, "We have
to talk to my father about this."
We went back to the ranch, where we found Dr.
Crosse and Daphne told him about my problem. "Reynold can't decide
which is his True Dad."
Dr. Crosse laughed with amused understanding,
as psychologists will, and he told me there was a way to solve my
problem, just recently perfected. It was called DNA testing.
He said that with a small sample of the blood,
skin tissue, semen, or any other part of each Dad, we could do a
chemical test that would determine, to a degree of certainty exceeding
98%, the identity of the genius who had long ago donated his seed to
produce the human flower that he, Dr. Crosse, was proud to call friend.
"But I don't want to ask them all for a blood sample," I said sadly. "Maybe I should just forget the whole thing."
"Nonsense," said Crosse. "The three of us,
together, have become what the layman might call 'filthy rich,' and
what better use of money than to find the answers to puzzling
questions? Leave everything to me. Give me your ledger book, the one
you got from Dr. Lord's, and I'll find the right people, and hire them
to surreptitiously obtain the samples of blood or skin we need, or
hair, I think we might be able to use, until we find a match, and can
confidently stand you next to your True Dad for an official photograph.
How'd you like that, Rennie?"
I said, "Is that possible? To surreptitiously obtain..."
Dr. Crosse said, "Give me the ledger, and then
don't worry about a thing. Your possible True Dads won't be hurt, I
promise it. They won't even know we're taking samples."
Two weeks later, as I was sitting in the
garden, watching Daphne plant tomatoes, Dr. Crosse came out to us, with
the ledger book I had given him in his hand.
He said, "Slight hitch. Nothing to worry about."
"What's the matter?" I asked, standing to face
him. He showed me that the notes of Dr. Lord could be interpreted in
another manner from that in which I had been interpreting them. It gets
a little technical. The upshot was, that by reading the notes, and the
dates, slightly differently, the number of possible True Dads that
might have been the donor of that particular seed that was me,
increased. The six men I had isolated were still on the list. However,
now, added to them were 30 more. Dr. Crosse said he had talked to Mac
McDonald, and Mac had put on six new investigators, and together they
had assembled thirty new manila folders, one for each of the new
candidates. He led me into the dining room where, on the serving table,
the thirty files were arranged in rows. I sat down and started reading
them, and studying the pictures.
The reader probably knows by now, without
having to be reminded, that I was certain that each of the men in these
files, one after the other, was my True Dad. There was not one I didn't
willingly accept as my progenitor, not one who didn't push the previous
one from my thoughts and become, in the time it took to read his file,
and until the beginning of the reading of the next man's file, my
complete and ideal Dad. To each, I was a loyal son, until he was
replaced by the next Dad's file. It took me almost three hours, but in
that time I experienced, in my imagination, the sensations of being the
offspring of an amazing variety of Dads, coming from a dazzling array
of backgrounds. In those few hours, I felt the emotions of thirty
lifetimes, thirty childhoods, thirty struggles to grow up and vindicate
the lives of thirty Dads, whom I remember even now from the few moments
I felt myself to be the son of each of them - an arsonist, a bigamist,
a communist, a dramatist, an electrical engineer, a flutist, a gymnast,
a hematologist and a jurist. Also, a Cabbalist, a successful lyricist,
one Maoist, one nutritionist, one opportunist, a purist, a Qumran
relativist, a shootist, a Trappist, an usher, a violinist, a wooly
wholist, a xylophonist, a Yin-yangist and a Zionist. Every mother's son
of them a genius! This is not to mention those Dads who might be
referred to as the aviator, bellhop, canned goods millionaire,
deepwater diver, and exhibitionist (three-times-convicted). Also, all
geniuses!
When Dr. Crosse came back into the room, with
Daphne, and saw me sitting flabbergasted and itchy-eyed before the
piles of evidence, he laughed. "The more the merrier!" he said with
confidence. "We'll know the answer in two days at the most!"
"How is that possible, sir?"
Dr. Crosse said he and Mac had put together teams of operatives to go out and get blood and skin.
"It'll cost a lot of money, we may embarrass
ourselves a bit along the way," said Mac, putting his hand on my
shoulder and on Dr. Crosse's shoulder at the same time, and looking at
me, "but this thing is driving you nuts, Ren, and Dr. Crosse wants to
give you the truth. As a gift... Now, in the case of the Minister
Faroun, we found out which of his wives he's scheduled to sleep with
tonight, and we've got a gal over there waiting to scoop up the sheets
and get 'em to the lab.
"As far as Elam's concerned, we've already got
his hair and nail clippings, from his private barber. In the case of
Mr. Popper, hope you don't mind, we're filling his house with a form of
laughing gas, knock him and his wife out, as well as the maid, and
we'll take a straight blood sample by needle. Steinstein, we gave him a
little something in his Cobb salad, beautiful little salicilate,
emulates a heart attack. They took him to Cedars Sinai where the
surgeon on duty, for twenty thousand dollars, is getting us a blood
sample, and a shot of spinal fluid just to be on the safe side..."
"But this is terrible!" I shouted, pulling
away from Mac. "We're invading these men's privacy, we're assaulting
their dignity, and for what?"
"For you," said Dr. Crosse. "And who has a
better right? Conceived and deserted by one of these genius hotshots,
you are back, to exercise some of your unacknowledged rights. Did these
Dads think they could sell life for twenty bucks a pop?"
I must have indicated wih my eyes or body
language that my objections had been sufficiently answered, because Mac
continued to tell me some of the ways his men were collecting DNA
samples from my putative Dads, all 36 (as they now numbered) of them.
Some with staged accidents, some with nighttime home invasions, some
through the use of prostitutes, who had been issued containers in which
to save their semen. We also had dentists in our employ, I learned, who
would be let into the rooms of sleeping Dads, to extract teeth.
When I considered what they were doing for me,
I was very grateful to Dr. Crosse and Mac. That night, we drove into
town and I bought Mac a huge ice cream sundae, and Daphne, Dr. Crosse
and I watched him eat it.
However, the mood of sweetness and community
faded the next morning when I went down to breakfast and remembered to
ask about one Dad who had not been considered in the plans I had heard
the previous day.
"What about Merle Persson?" I asked,
remembering that that generous parking space donor had died a few years
previously. "We can't test him."
Dr. Crosse said, "Nonsense. Easiest one of
all. They are going to dig up his grave out in Westwood. They were
gonna do it last night, but some kind of satanic cult had a permit to
use the place, so they're going out again this morning."
I couldn't stand the thought of it. My Dead
Dad - Persson - the Benefactor and Philanthropist - who had donated a
thousand parking spaces to the people of LA - I had to stop them. I
called Mac's office, but he and the team had already left. I called his
car but the phone seemed to be out of order. Daphne and I jumped in the
jeep and went to LA to try and stop this desecration, but we were too
late - the grave was open, the coffin was open and a man in a green
medical tunic was clipping off the tip of Merle Persson's little finger.
I sank to my knees in the grass beside the
grave, and looked in, at the decomposing body, half skeleton, flesh in
tatters where it still existed at all, and I said, "I'm sorry, I'm
sorry. Please forgive me!" Then, from the hurried panic of the drive to
the cemetery, and the feelings of sorrow and shame I felt, and the
strong smell of the grass, which had just been cut, and the strength of
the sun in the hot still air, drowned by the exhaust fumes of the cars
going by on Wilshire and on Veteran, I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in my own bed, at the
ranch. It was night. Someone had dressed me in flannel pajamas and put
me under the cowboy-patterned sheets and covers. The railroad lamp was
on, the the train was steaming ever onward. It took me a while to get
my bearings. I realized I had been given something, a tranquilizer or
sleeping pill. My face and hands felt thick, my brain was rubbery, wet
and dark. There was a light knocking on the door, and Dr. Crosse stuck
his head into the room. He said, "You feelin' OK?" Then, he picked one
of my hands off the bed and measured my pulse. He said, "Exciting days.
But, the mystery's been solved, that's one good thing."
I said, "You mean, you found my True Dad?"
He told me to get up and wash my face, then to
come downstairs. He said the results of the tests were in, and the
winner was in the living room. He said, "You might have conflicting
feelings about the fella, whatever you do is up to you. But, I figured
you might as well talk to him, before you decide." Then, Dr. Crosse
left.
I wanted to ask him what he meant by those
words, but I was too slow. Wondering who might be in the living room,
almost wishing the truth had never been discovered, I washed, brushed
my teeth, wet and combed my hair, dressed nicely, and slunk downstairs
to the lit living room... Overly lit... It hurt my eyes.
There, with Dr. Cross, were not one but
several men, all of them in business suits, and it took a moment or two
before I was able to distinguish their faces, and see them as anything
but a mass of fabric arranged around the room. A moment later, I
recognized that one of them was rising and (Dr. Crosse supporting him
with a touch at the elbow joint) coming toward me. The rest were
staying where they were.
Then, I realized the one coming toward me was Mr. Elam!
No! This could not be! The man who had thrown
me into a dungeon, or dungeon-like enclosure, in New York, and walled
me in, who had left me to whisper for my release into the subway
station... Elam, the one Dad I had almost (though I could never
entirely dismiss a possible Dad) decided wasn't mine, and now he was
smiling at me shyly, and extending his hand to me, for a shake.
"My son," he said.
I looked at his hand.
Dr. Crosse, sensing my hesitation, smiled and
tried to draw me toward Mr. Elam, by the cuff of my shirt. He said,
"It's okay, Reynold - I told Mr. Elam of your suspicions concerning the
night you visited him -"
"Suspicions?" I said.
"But he's explained the whole thing to me," said Crosse. "I think you'll forgive him, as I have, when you hear the truth."
I stood there, feeling I might fall to the
earthen floor, from lack of energy, and lack of optimism. Dr. Crosse
saw that something was wrong, and though I felt I was about to fall, he
held me up. His face was close to mine, and he was smiling when he
said, "It wasn't Mr. Elam who walled you into that dungeon - it was his
sons - Caleb, Peter and Henry - who were afraid you would share in
their inheritance."
"Ha-ha-ha-ha, oldest story in the world," said Mr. Elam, stepping closer to me, "Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brethren... "
I must have liked the sound of it well enough
to stand on my own, because Dr. Crosse felt he could stop supporting
me, and I became free-standing. I might have tottered a little, at
least I felt it inwardly, but perhaps it was not visible to the others.
I looked around, saw a chair, and managed to shuffle over to it and
fall into it.
Then, Mr. Elam pulled a chair toward mine, and
sat facing me. He said, "When Mrs. Elam and I went up the stairs, into
my office, we thought you were right behind us. I did hear some kind of
noise on the stairs behind me, but when I turned around, I was in the
well-lit office, and peering down into the relatively dark basement, I
couldn't see anything. A few moments later, my sons joined me in the
office, and they said you had stopped off to go to the bathroom. I had
no reason to think they would lie to me, although later I realized I
should have suspected something, if only because of my experience over
the years with those three louts.
"Anyway, I held my press conference, which
went on for about forty minutes, and when it was over I remember I
asked Caleb what had become of you. He told me you had said something
about not wanting to get in the way. He said you told him you would
call later in the day, to arrange for us to see each other again. When
I didn't hear from you, I was disappointed, but I had no idea, no idea
that..." Elam's face became complex and strange, as though the thought
of my suffering was too overpowering for him. Soon, he went on: "A
month later, Caleb came to me. He was just torn apart with grief,
guilt, the whole nine yards. Told me what they had done. I couldn't
believe it. Well, naturally, I made them show me the place where they
walled you in, down there in the basement, and damn if I didn't make
the three of them smash open that wall right then and there. Had to try
and rescue you, give you a decent burial if it came to that. Oh, I was
very definite about going right down there and getting you out!
"And I don't mind telling you we were all damn
relieved to see your body, er - you - gone, and that hole in the subway
station wall, through which we assumed you had burst, to freedom. I was
going to institute a search for you, if you want to know the truth, but
I was pretty sure you wouldn't want to hear from me or my family after
what, well, happened."
He hung his head. However, soon his face
brightened, and he told me how happy he had been when the detectives of
Dr. Crosse had told him of the incontrovertible proof of our
relationship. They had taken a sample of his blood from the blood bank
where he had four quarts in storage for his own future use, should he
ever need a transplant or other operation. He said the moment they told
him, he had decided he must see me and express his sorrow over the
misunderstanding we had had before, and his hopes that we would indeed
join together as a family, as we always should have been.
Of course, I was swayed by his words.
I had never really blamed him for walling me
into that cellar room, anyway. And hadn't I myself already come to the
conclusion that it was the Elam children, not Elam himself, who had
done that to me? And hadn't Mr. Elam told me on the very day I first
met him, how disappointed he had always been in those three sons of
his? How could I blame my True Dad, the man whose DNA I shared, for the
unfortunate occurrences of my brief taste of family life in the Elam
household? It wasn't fair. I looked at the face of Mr. Elam, the eyes
sad, the mouth turned down, the body half-turning away from me like the
pitiful form of a beaten waif, half wishing to beg for food, and half
afraid of encountering more of the rejection and pain he had already
known enough of in his sad existence. I felt like a monster for the way
I was treating him. Why have children if they are going to turn out
like me? I wondered. How sharper than a serpent's tooth, I remembered
from somewhere... Then, filled with the sudden need to forestall any
more scolding of myself by myself, I practically hurled myself toward
the arms of Mr. Elam, to embrace him. In my enthusiasm, I spun around
the room with him, his feet flying out behind him. "Dad! My Dad!" I
cried. As I went around I saw the happy crying faces of Dr. Crosse and
all the suited men who were also in the room. These other men seemed to
take a step or two forward, until Mr. Elam shouted out:
"I'm OK! I'm OK!"
When I finally put Mr. Elam down, some of
these other men guided him to a chair, and looked at me and at one
another. After we had all caught our breath, I learned that these other
men were Mr. Elam's bodyguards and political operatives.
"That's right," I said, grinning widely and
walking over to clap Mr. Elam on the shoulders one or two times, so
happy was I to be united with him, "when I last met you, you were about
to announce your candidacy for the Presidency of the United States.
"Yes," said Mr. Elam, "and I'm happy to say, I won the nomination of my Party."
"I saw it on TV," I told him. "I have to say, in spite of our misunderstanding, I was proud of you that day."
I congratulated him, wholeheartedly. He
started to say something that started with the words, "As a matter of
fact..." but Dr. Crosse made some kind of a sign to him, and moved
forward, to speak to me himself.
Dr. Crosse said, "As a matter of fact, by an
incredible coincidence, Mr. Elam's party (the Republicans) came to me
only weeks ago, to discuss the possibility of our helping them in the
coming election through the use of subliminals."
"But, I thought you were a Democrat," I said to Mr. Elam.
"I was," he said, "until I lost the New
Hampshire Primary. It became painfully obvious that the Democrats have
become the party of the special interests. Fortunately, there was just
enough time to register in the Party of Lincoln before the Midwest
caucuses. A lot of folks put me down as a dreamer, but then the
frontrunner, Senator Eve, was unfortunately hit with that videotape of
himself and his Chief of Staff shooting heroin, and voila, I became the
compromise candidate."
"Now, your Dad is given a better than even chance of winning the Presidency," said Dr. Crosse.
"Oh," I said, happily.
"And as I was saying, he and his party have heard about the work we've been doing, and they think maybe we can help them."
"That's the truth," said Mr. Elam. "My Public
Relations man took me to see Dr. Crosse here, and I'm saying how do I
plug into this subliminal stuff, and what do you know, he tells me the
only man for the job is none other than Reynold Stengrow. 'The
Subliminal Faust,' he called you. And that's when I said, 'Reynold
Stengrow! You know Reynold Stengrow?' and I told him I was worried
about you and then lo and behold, they do these blood tests, and
shit... Isn't this the most incredible coincidence?" said Mr. Elam.
Elam's Election
For a moment or two, I
hesitated. Did I really want to use my skills to help Mr. Elam, the man
who had (probably) been a party to walling me up behind that subway
station?
The answer was: Yes, of course I would help
Mr. Elam. After all, there he was, at long last - my True Dad! Who
could have been such a terrible son as to refuse him?
We went to New York, and started working
toward the election of Mr. Elam. Daphne, Dr. Crosse and I were assigned
a suite of rooms at the Waldorf Astoria, where we lived and worked for
the next six months.
We decided on a multi-pronged approach,
including embedded campaign photos and campaign literature, as well as
news photos and articles. Our party evidently had people on the payroll
in every editorial office and pressroom to which we required access.
Just as important as adding fucks shits pricks cunts cocks sexes deaths
cancers to the reading material pertaining to my True Dad, was the
necessity of keeping these powerful phenomes off the literature pertaining to his opponent.
The candidate himself wore writings on his
forehead, cheeks, eyelids, ears, and the backs of his hands. We had a
tattoo artist tattoo a colorless huge sex with the s on one cheek, the
e on his nose and the x on the other cheek. His clothes were woven from
pornographic fabric we made in Indonesia. For the TV debates, we had
FUCK etched into his front teeth with a diamond drill. According to all
the polls and commentators, he totally creamed his opponent.
Mr. Elam asked if we couldn't just use the
words we wanted the American public to perceive, like - "Vote for
Elam!" and "America the Innocent!" but Dr. Crosse showed him that our
purpose was best achieved by using the tried and true; "SEX FUCK PRICK
and so on. In the end, who could argue with the public opinion polls?
Dr. Crosse and Daphne and I were treated by the Party, with the respect
usually reserved for wealthy contributors.
The work was not difficult. It left me and Daphne a lot of time to be together, to explore New York, go to the movies, shop.
I asked her if I seemed any different, now
that I had learned the identity of my True Dad, and therefore my own
true identity. She said she could see no changes in me. Still, I was
going through a period of re-thinking basic things, a time of being off
balance, unsure...
My relationship with my three new brothers was
uneasy. They showed me the grudging respect of a reputable but still
untested witch doctor in a strange, new village - they apologized for
what they had done to me, but they excused themselves, saying that they
had thought I was an assassin sent to kill their Dad. They didn't
entirely try to evade responsibility. Caleb honestly admitted that they
had discussed the possibility I might be a true heir of their father's
and that part of the motivation for what they did to me was clearly the
protection of their inheritances - He hoped there were no hard
feelings. He assured me that their Dad had punished them severely.
"He wouldn't even hire me a lawyer when that
bitch Nancy accused me of raping her on the college hay ride," said
Caleb, shaking his head. The others nodded in agreement. Then, they
said they would like to start over in their relationship with me. They
said they realized I had grown up without the advantages of being a
fully acknowledged Elam, and offered to show me around New York, and
introduce me to their wide circle of ex-girlfriends. I of course
refused their offer of introductions, because I needed no woman besides
Daphne. But I did want to be a good brother to them, and held myself to
blame when I discovered in my heart certain fratricidal feelings toward
the three of them.
As a matter of fact, whenever I saw them, I
fantasized slaying them, in various ways. This being the case, could I
really blame them for trying to get rid of me, back in those early days
of our relationship? No, I couldn't. Still, I ate no food served to me
by them, and tried not to be alone with them unless I had informed Dr.
Crosse and Daphne of my whereabouts. I began to imagine their heads
hanging from the wonderful old lampposts I sometimes saw in the city,
severed from their bodies, twisting from a knot in their hair.
As for my True Dad, Mr. Elam didn't really have much time for me.
It wasn't, he said, that he didn't love me. He
did, very much. And he was very proud of me for all my accomplishments
in the field of subliminals. But he was running for the Presidency,
fulfilling his pledge to visit every State at least once by election
day. Our time together was necessarily short.
I tried to see him whenever he was on the East
Coast, and many evenings I would sit by his dinner table in some Boston
or Baltimore hotel telling him the details of the years of my life
which he had missed. I told him about my first visit from the Tooth
Fairy, my early troubles trying to ride a bike - everything I had
wanted to tell my True Dad, since discovering that such a person
existed. Sometimes I would ask him if he was bored hearing my life
story, but he always said,"No, no, go on. I'm fascinated." I told him
about my school friends, the weather at summer camp when I was eight,
literally everything of note, little minding when I looked over at him,
and saw that he had fallen asleep. I knew he was tired, and had a
packed schedule the next day. I was happy to sit there, watching his
sleeping face as it hung over the remains of his dinner, and listening
to the ice melt in the water bucket. The next day I would be on a plane
back to New York, to Campaign Central, again to work toward his
election, along with Dr. Crosse and the team of psychologists he had
gathered at the Waldorf.
I became fascinated with these other
psychologists, all dedicated to finding every possible means of
improving the public through psychology.... Those who used electrodes
and LSD for their work, others who delved into the powers of loud noise
and newly-invented odors to control the minds of their subjects. Often,
in the long afternoons when there was nothing to do, I played cards
with them. They liked to talk about their work, and insult one another,
pretending to forget one another's names.
One day, two of the Electrode Experts, Merner
and Marx, had a duel to see who had found the most interesting spots in
the brain to insert their wires, and was therefore the better electrode
psychologist.
To prepare, they shaved little bald spots onto
one other's scalps, and each drilled tiny holes in the bald surface of
the other's skull. They each placed three wires in the other's brain.
Then, as the other psychologists and I looked on, they manned their
buttons, and squeezed off jolts of juice into one another's medullas.
Merner pushed his button first. Marx lifted
his left leg and lowered his head a moment later toward his crotch,
which he sniffed. Merner laughed diabolically. So did some of the rest
of us, sitting around the suite, watching the duel. After a moment,
Marx lowered his leg, and shook it, as though to get the circulation
going. He said, "Not bad."
As Merner was taking a mock bow, acknowledging the compliment of his colleague, Marx gave his
button a twitch, and in that very instant, Merner was on the floor,
crying, sniffling, and finally licking the carpet. Merner's hands flew
out from under him, and his chin hit the carpet. He tried desperately
to get to his button, but the small metal box had been knocked from his
hands. He saw it across the rug and made a lunge for it, but Marx
pushed and held his button down, as we watched Merner wiggle out of his
pants, and stick his thumb up his ass. On his face, expressions of
unconstipated bliss alternated with expressions of fury, directed at
Marx. Merner scraped on his knees across the rug, followed by his
pursuing thumb, until he managed to fall over his metal box, and press
the button with his chin. Marx was forced to drop his metal box and
drive the forefingers of both hands into his nostrils, while shouting,
"My father used to say, the lost causes are the only ones worth
fighting for," over and over, in a perfect imitation of the voice of
James Stewart. Still, Dr. Merner was not released from the force of the
electrodes implanted in his own brain, and couldn't stand up, or put
any distance between his thumb and its target. This is the way they
were when Dr. Crosse came in, and found them. He tore the buttons from
both of them, and threw them across the room. Marx was all right, but
Merner had to be taken drooling and covered with a tablecloth, to a
hospital, where his electrodes were removed and he was finally able to
straighten out in his bed, and rest, grateful to Dr. Crosse for having
rescued him.
Aside from these pastimes, there really isn't
much I remember about the campaign, or the election. When the votes
were counted, Mr. Elam had won.
Election Night was a thrilling experience for
me, watching the returns come in on TV, the screen swarming with
obscene words and drawings, that floated across the faces of the
anchormen and anchorwomen, and across the commercials, and across
everything in sight. Daphne and I sat together, allowing ourselves to
be closer than we had ever before been with her father in the room, but
he didn't seem to notice, so busy was he in pointing out to the
assembled party elite the signs of our subliminal labors. He was drunk
with knowledge, power, and hope.
The day after we won, Mr. Elam introduced Dr. Crosse and me to a man named Mr. Dominic, who he said was with the CIA.
Mr. Dominic congratulated us on our
contribution to the great victory, and said the current President,
President Ringer, who was of the same party as Mr. Elam, had expressed
his personal good wishes to our team. Needless to say, I was filled
with pride on hearing this.
"But we've got a problem," said Mr. Dominic.
"We have obligated the President to a series of face-to-face meetings
with the Secretary of the Russian Government."
"Hmm," said Dr. Crosse.
"The first meeting took place last week, at
the Club Med in Pago-Pago. Seemed to go well, but when we analyzed the
videotapes, we saw clearly that the Communists had hypnotized President
Ringer. We think they use a low-frequency electronic signal, but we
haven't been able to find it, or counteract it. The point is - when he
is hypnotized, he tends to agree with everything the Secretary says,
and what's worse, he loses the use of his own considerable powers of
persuasion. Here, our President, our greatest voice for free
enterprise, sits slack-faced and leaden-lipped, bubbles of water
gathering at the corners of his mouth, while that suave Commie pours
propaganda into his eyes and ears, telling our President red lies while
our dear old guy nods and chuckles at private thoughts."
"So, what you need," said Dr. Crosse, "is a
way to make the President, even in a hypnotized, narcotized, semi-sleep
state - as convincing as the Russian Secretary with all his
considerable faculties at his disposal - is that it?"
"Exactly," said Mr. Dominic.
Daphne and I were assigned the task of working
up a subliminal suntan for the Chief Executive, a lacey mask of fucks,
shits, cunts and pricks, out of string and stretching the string words
over President Ringer's face before his afternoon naps, which he now
took under a tanning lamp.
We also had to be prepared for the possibility
that the President's face would fall to the negotiating table, either
because he forgot to hold it up, or because he had fallen asleep.
Therefore, we gave President Ringer a subliminal haircut, so that if
the Russians were left for any length of time in a position of
contemplating the top of his head, or the back of his neck, they would
still be subject to the mysterious rhetoric of the free enterprise
system.
It worked. In subsequent meetings, the
Russians continued to zap our President, and the Russian Secretary
continued to practice his deft arts of persuasion on our nodding leader
- but still, it was the Russians who came around to our way of thinking
- abandoned Communism - learned to love all things American. Many
people wonder why that happened, and all so suddenly. The truth is,
they had no choice in the matter. As their Secretary and other leaders
gazed at the face or neck of our President, representing as he did to
them everything American - their subconscious minds were reading, "SEX
SEX SEX" (in Russian) and they were helpless.
Who knows how differently history might have
developed were it not for Dr. Crosse, Daphne and myself, and our secret
arts? Yes, I say it here for the first time: Subliminals saved America!
Subliminals broke up the USSR into smaller, more manageable states,
better able to help their vicious, freedom-loving peoples join
themselves to the free market!
Still, this triumph notwithstanding - for me,
the period after the election was a tremendous letdown. I started to
see things differently.
For one thing, Mr. Elam didn't seem to have
much time for me. Though frequently during the election, he had
expressed to what sounded like his sincere wish that he did have more
time, so we could spend it together, now that he had the time, I was
not the one he gave it to. Over and over, my request (silly, you may
think) for him to have a game of catch with me, in Central Park, was
denied. When he did consent to meet me, one of his Aides, or one of my
three half-brothers would invariably call me and mumble about some
political crisis that had come up, and tell me Mr. Elam couldn't get to
the park. I began to feel blue. I longed for my time with my other
Dads, our talks, my helping them, their gratitude - it seemed the more
I helped President Elam, the more his bodyguards were between him and
me - his old CIA buddies - his dogs - the three brothers who had pushed
me down the stairs and locked me behind the wall...
But there was a deeper problem -
Looms of Hell
The problem: you see behind
people's faces. Once that starts, you're through as a friend, through
as a relation, through as a lover, through as a human being.
I would go into the bathroom of some home I
was visiting, and I see the Gleem toothpaste; immediately, I'd know
somebody here (whoever did the marketing) liked our ad with the little
girl reaching into the medicine cabinet, with fuck, fuck, screw,
embedded all the way up her leg, from her socks to her jumper. Or I
would watch their fingers stir their vodka and tonics and know, from
the research, that they had been drawn to those pictures of decapitated
dogs and long-chinned skulls that we drew on the ice cubes. I had a
wealth of psychological data at my fingertips, which told me, after a
moment or two of watching any individual, everything there was to know
about his hopes and fears, his class and the glass he sees it through.
Successful manipulation is its own hell.
And a good 40 acres of that hell is the
knowledge that there are no laws governing what Dr. Crosse and I were
doing. No bounds. I started to feel there were no real laws for our
lives - no real rules - where is it written that we shall stay out of
our neighbor's skull? After all, he doesn't own it, like his car. I
found myself like the half-human mutation in that H.G. Wells story,
calling out in my dark cave: "What is the law? What is the law?"
Average people never seeing farther than a
child at a parade, crawling through a forest of legs, kept in ignorance
by the powerful, but now I was one of the powerful - I saw to the ends
of the earth, and as far as I could see, as high as I could see, as
deep as I could peer, it was all me, and I hated it, and wished it
dead. My father was a teacher. I mean Mr. Stengrow. And my mother was a
teacher. But what did I teach? And how did I teach? My mother changed a
student's life, so much that years later he came back, to thank her,
for turning him into a success. What did I do, but lay in wait for
souls, to trick them, for my own success?
Yes, I could excuse myself, and did. Saying I
was too young to know any better. But, I couldn't get my brain to lock
out the onslaught of the images which we had placed everywhere in the
public space of America. The cornucopia of flaming swords with skulls
for hafts, shoved into innocent flesh of bodies and faces and necks -
the scenes of strange forests with animal faces peering out - the
bucolic, the brutal, the hideous (women eating the legs of children)
and comic drawings I now saw on every page of every written thing, and
on walls, and pictures, windows, bricks, stones, on trees in the park
and on the clouds, and in the clearest blue sky, and I would grab
Daphne by the arm and say, "Look! Look! I told you! They're writing
fuck in the sky!"
I tried to discuss the matter with Dr. Crosse,
saying, "Have we gone too far? Have we stolen the private thoughts of
men and women, to get them to buy our product and vote for our
candidate? Are we good citizens?"
But he was caught up in the glory of what we
had done. He was dressing in a New York style, rather than his old
Western style, and he was gathering new mannerisms like a boxer gathers
an entourage. Now, Dr. Crosse waved his arms when he spoke, whereas
before, you would not have had to watch two flailing arms, or had to
duck now and then, to avoid being hit by his flapping fingers, when you
were trying to listen attentively to what he had to say.
Waving his arms, he said: "The basis for
wealth and power is not land, is not natural resources, is not
weaponry. It is the ability to command the minds and bodies of human
beings. In the next war, we'll supply the only dedicated soldiers,
we'll send out the only really good troops! You and me, Rennie! Well,
gotta catch the shuttle. Meeting at the Pentagon."
Depressed, I no longer wanted to leave my room
at the Waldorf. I stayed in bed, watching TV, and the VCR, clicking
slowly through scenes of women in the nude, being kissed, smiling,
crying, struggling against rape, sitting with their legs crossed,
walking away from the camera. I spent days at a time in bed, watching
and sleeping.
"SEX TALK WON," SEZ FBI
In January, we went down to
Washington on the train, and got drunk, Daphne, Dr. Crosse and myself.
We got hotel rooms, and the next day we went to the Inauguration of Mr.
Elam as President.
When we got there, our seats had been occupied
by someone else. They were VIP seats, only a few feet from the actual
podium where the swearing-in would take place. I went to a policeman
and showed him our tickets. He looked at them, and said something I
couldn't hear, into a walkie-talkie. Then, waiting for a reply, he
stood staring at me with what appeared to be hostility. After a few
moments, responding to an instruction he got over his earphones, he led
us to the far reaches of the viewing stands way down Pennsylvania
Avenue. I didn't really care, and it was obvious that Dr. Crosse and
Daphne didn't, either. We sat together, waiting for the Inauguration,
and we all felt the swelling of pride when we saw the man we had helped
so much, President Elam, and his Vice-President, Nimrod Smith, waving
from the plastic bubbles that covered the passenger areas of their cars.
Little did we know, as we watched Mr. Elam
slowly climb the wooden bleachers to the podium, turning now left, now
right, to shake the hands of supporters and government officials, that
already, the President had turned away from us. That he had actually
set his heart against us. Even me, his dedicated son, and Dr. Crosse,
to whom, as much as to any man, he owed his victory.
What had happened, in the short space of time
between my last conversation with Mr. Elam - the day before, when he
had said he looked forward to seeing me on this day, and spending some
talk-time with me - and now, the very next morning?
Answer: the night before, in New York, The FBI
had finally concluded its long investigation of the murdered models,
totaling eight over the past year or so.
I had watched the news of these killings with
a growing certainty that they had something to do with our work. Now,
the night before the Inauguration, a man named Ezio Trask had been
arrested. Trask was an artist, a painter, who worked for the first
advertising agency to experiment with our techniques. Daphne and I had
had three meetings with him, when we were first working out our
techniques of combining word and image on the invisible plane. I
remember him as a nice enough guy. He was the first subliminal
cartoonist, creating the dogs and cats, and forest creatures, and
little figures of Pan peeking through the subliminal leaves floating in
the visible cereal bowls. Also, the gory cartoons of automobile
accidents, severed heads and disturbing biological cross-sections of
anatomical parts.
It seems, as we later learned, that Ezio fell
in love with the models on whose photographs he was assigned to draw
his animals and gut-pictures. Perhaps he was drawn to them by the same
mechanism with which we hoped to trap the unwary consumer. He would go
to them, and make his feelings known. Unfortunately, they all rejected
his love, and and when they rejected him he added new embeds to their
pictures, that said: KILL ME STAB ME SHOOT ME DEATH MURDER BLOOD KILL
ME ETC. - Thus, when the models went out in public, they were among
thousands of people whose minds had been embedded with the unconscious
urge to kill them. This explained the wide variety of total strangers
who had killed our models, and the inability they all had to explain
the motives behind their actions. It also explained why in one or two
cases, the killers of the models had been forced to push other people
away, who were trying to get to the models first, also to kill them.
Since the murders involved people who sold
products everyone felt close to, the case had been newsworthy from the
beginning. For this reason, the elite FBI VI-CAP Squad, specializing in
investigations of serial murders, were followed closely by journalists,
and the people who buy rights for film companies, who dogged their
every step throughout the investigation.
Each elite FBI investigator was wooed by
several well-bankrolled journalists or film producers. Well before the
arrest of the suspect, the rights to the story had been sold to so many
different corporations that the usually efficient governmental
machinery for covering things up couldn't be wheeled into place fast
enough. Or so said President Elam, when he explained the predicament to
me some time later. When Ezio Trask told his story to the FBI agents
who arrested him, that story was leaked almost instantly to the waiting
media. The subliminals, the way they were being used in advertising,
the part they had taken in the election of President Elam and
Vice-President Smith.
By the afternoon of the Inauguration,
newspapers were bouncing from trucks onto cold Washington streets with
headlines saying: "MIND CONTROL ALLEGED IN ELAM-SMITH VICTORY!" and
"SEX TALK WON ELECTION SEZ FBI!"
One immediate result of this shock to the
public consciousness was that Dr. Wilson Brian Key, formerly considered
a crackpot, was soon seen on many TV shows, explaining the principles
of what he so long ago had so accurately named "subliminal seduction."
To a series of aghast hosts, he explained the "poisoning of our
information stream."
"We must cleanse the information stream, and start over," he said.
Daphne, Dr. Crosse and I missed the news of Ezio's arrest, and the breaking scandal.
We were hung over when we got back from the
Inauguration, and all three of us took naps until it was time to get
ready for the Inaugural Ball. I had expected a call from one of the
President's campaign officials to tell us how we were supposed to get
to the Ball, but I wasn't really concerned when he didn't call, or when
I couldn't reach him at his home. I called the front desk of our hotel,
and arranged for a limo to be waiting for us.
The three of us talked and laughed as we drove
through the nighttime streets of Washington. Passing a park, we saw
homeless people gathered around their ashcan fires, warming themselves.
We arrived at the party as the guests were
still pouring in, and I could see the brightly lit ballroom from the
door, and the dancing couples, but the Guard said our names were not on
the list. I showed him our invitations, and again we were subjected to
the experience of waiting while a man mumbled into his walkie-talkie.
Other guests were passing us, and he was waving them right in. I was
about to step forward, and make an objection, when I saw Nimrod Smith
coming toward us from inside the room. His face was twisted into a
shape of tragic incomprehension, as though he were watching a male lion
kill lion cubs in the wild.
He reached us, and took me aside.
"Didn't you hear?" he asked me. "Don't you watch the news?"
I said we'd been sleeping most of the day.
He told me about Trask being arrested, and
about the widening scandal. He said he was astonished the three of us
would show up - He briefly explained the situation, saying people were
already calling for the election to be declared invalid. He said, "I
don't know if I can ever forgive you for having cheapened the
magnificent ritual of America's Presidential election. I told the
President when I first heard of these goings-on, I said..."
I interrupted him, asking, "What does the President want us to do, Nimrod?"
He said, "Go back to New York and wait for his
call. Talk to no one. Don't try to get in touch with the New York or LA
offices of the Party."
I went over to Dr. Crosse and Daphne, who were
waiting in their fine clothes a few steps away, and told them what had
happened. Dr. Crosse went to Nimrod and tried to hold him from
re-entering the party. He said, "Get us in to see the President. I have
to talk to him. I can help him. The public will understand when they
hear about the centuries of prosperity and peace we can bring them
through our new art."
"The public! I said don't talk to anyone. Not
one word! You're strictly off the books - remember that," said Nimrod,
as he touched himself over the heart, as though he was afraid it would
leap out of his chest and run down the street in fear. "Look, if you go
home and shut up, we'll do what we can for you - you can be sure, there
will always be a place for you in this administration - you won't be in
the dog house for long - just disappear for now - Wait here and I'll
bring you out some cake and champagne. No reason we can't have our own
little shindig right here, is there? Or, over here," he said, stepping
into an area pitch black with the multiple shades of many trees.
"No, we're going," said Dr. Crosse. He turned
away from the Hotel Ballroom, and started back toward the curb, where
the car was parked. He looked tired, beat. His posture changed. He
stumbled, and I ran forward to grab his arm, and support him. Daphne
held his other side. We went back to the hotel, and tried to get a
flight back to New York right away. There were none, so I hired a
private plane, and we were back at the Waldorf by two thirty a.m.
When we were finally alone, with all the day's
newspapers, Daphne and I discussed what was going on. She cried and
said, "We have to go to the press and tell them we had nothing to do
with these murders. I don't want them to say my Dad was responsible,
when it had nothing to do with him at all!"
I said, "My Dad's the President now. He won't
let anything bad happen to your Dad. We owe it to him to keep our
mouths shut. Until we talk to him, at least."
"I don't care about your stupid Dad," said
Daphne. "All I care about is my Dad. I don't want your stupid Dad and
his stupid Party to ruin my Dad's good name."
I said I would appeal to the President, to
take special care that Dr. Crosse's reputation was not harmed by
whatever statements he made to the press.
She said, "Do you think he'll do that for you?"
I had to admit that I didn't know. "At one
time, when I first learned he was my True Dad and he first learned I
was his son, I would have said yeah, but now... well... I hope so..."
Daphne and I turned to each other, to forget about the events of the world, and went to sleep.
I woke up before dawn to go back to my own
room. Daphne and I were still keeping our love for one another a secret
from her father. A couple of hours later, as we had planned the night
before, Dr. Crosse and I met in Daphne's room, for breakfast. The light
was just being squeezed from that old sponge called the sky over New
York, and as we discussed our plans for the coming day, our future
looked as bleak and formless as the dawn. I tried to cheer everyone up
by telling them, "I will talk to the President today, and I'm sure he
won't keep us in limbo concerning our fates. After all," I said,
putting jelly on a croissant, "his love for me goes beyond that of a
politician for his loyal team. His blood is my blood; my fate is the
fate of his family, down the long roads of the coming centuries. And
right here, in this room, are the two people I love and care for most
in the world - my mentor and my..."
(I didn't want to say future bride) "...my
cherished co-worker. Therefore, when I am raised up, as I'm sure I will
be, as soon as the President can find a moment to free himself from the
pressing needs of his advisers and Party chiefs, there is no doubt that
you both will be raised up with me. Then, if there is any scandal, and
if the public thinks we have done anything wrong, we will deal with
that when the time comes. I'm sure my Dad will stand by us."
I smiled warmly at Dr. Crosse, but he did not
return my smile. It seemed to me, though I was no psychologist, he was
overcome with shame on hearing my little speech. His face turned red as
he turned it toward the yellow sky.
After gulping the rest of his coffee, he went
back to his room, at the other end of the hotel, on the same floor.
Daphne went to the door with him, and kissed him. We talked about going
to a movie that afternoon. Then, she came back into the room, and we
ate the breakfast her father had left on the room-service cart. I
crossed the room to turn on the TV, to see the news about the
subliminal scandal. Something made me turn and look through the window.
I saw, on the iron skeleton of a building that
was being built across the street, a construction worker standing on a
girder. He was hovering over the street between the construction site
and Daphne's room. The girder lurched into motion, bringing the worker
closer to the window. For a moment, it looked as though he would fall
off, but then I saw he was tied onto the steel cable that held the
girder, by a harness of leather. The worker steadied himself, then
reached one hand behind him. The hand disappeared into a sort of
funnel, about the size of a telescope, and emerged with a stiff green
tube, like a documents tube, but thinner. The man made some adjustments
to a raised plastic area on one end of the tube and raised it to the
level of his waist. Daphne screamed and tackled me from behind, just
below the knees. I crashed to the rug, but not before I saw a smudge of
flame at the front of the tube, and the emergence from it of a slightly
wobbling thin missile. In an instant, the missile came through the
window, touching and burning a few strands of the hair at the top of my
head before going through the wall behind me, across the corridor, and
into the room on the other side of the corridor, where it exploded,
demolishing that room and half the corridor between that room and the
one we were in.
Daphne got to her feet, took only a moment to
assess the situation, then ran through the hole in the wall, toward her
father's room. I went after her. The man on the girder was peering
through the dust, trying to determine whether or not he needed to take
another shot. There was a second shot, moments later, but we were out
of the area by then.
As we rounded the corner to Dr. Crosse's room,
we saw Dr. Crosse being dragged through his doorway, and down the hall
backwards, by two men.
He saw us. "Run! Run!" he called to us. I
tried to pull Daphne back around the corner, but she shook me off.
Instead of retreating, she walked forward. Slowly, calmly, she
approached the agents holding her Dad, speaking to them as she
approached, in a voice barely audible, "Fuck cunt prick fuck fuck
suck..." and so on.
One of the agents drew his gun. But before it
was fully raised, he screwed up his face, and turned it slightly, in an
attempt to hear what she was saying. "Wha... H?" he said, or something
like it. He looked at the other agent. That one, too, was staring at
Daphne, with a strange expression on his face. The one with the gun let
it dangle toward the floor. His lips started to move in silent
repetition of the phenomes coming from Daphne's mouth, which he and his
partner were studying as though for clues to some great mystery. She
moved ever forward, saying the words. Her father and I could do nothing
but watch her, and wait for the men to act. Daphne's words hypnotized
the agents, so they didn't hear the bell ring when their elevator
arrived.
They were staring at her. The one who had not
yet shown a gun, now had his hand half under his jacket, and was
reaching behind him, as though trying to decide whether to pull his
gun, but frozen in that position. As a result of her power over them, I
was able to approach them, also, crouching behind her like a soldier
using a portable tree for cover. Along the route, I was able to reach
out and grab a small chair and when I got close enough, I jumped out
from behind Daphne and smashed one of the agents, the one with his hand
under his jacket, across the arm and ribs with the chair. His gun fell
to the rug, and I smashed him again with the chair, and then picked up
the gun. The other agent would have shot me, but Dr. Crosse reached up
from the floor, lifting himself to a kneeling position in one move, and
driving the palm of his hand upward into the bottom of the agent's
nose. The agent screamed, then fell to the rug, rolling and holding his
face.
Dr. Crosse, Daphne and I got on the elevator.
In the lobby, there were police, and guests of the hotel, discussing
the explosion everyone had heard, and some had seen. Nobody appeared to
notice the three of us. If they did, they thought we were three more
guests roused from their morning sleep by what everyone felt must have
been a terrorist attack on the hotel.
We got a cab on 59th Street, and sank into its
back seat. We went to the building of the condo Daphne and I had long
ago bought in this city, but that her father didn't know about. We went
to the apartment, used the bathroom, picked up the fifty thousand in
cash we kept in the hollow leg of a table there, went down to the
basement, and got in one of our cars, a solent blue Jaguar Sovereign.
Gliding majestically from the garage in the
climate-controlled, burl-wood-trimmed, leather-faced-seated,
still-new-smelling car, I tried to turn left onto 65th. I was surprised
when the path was suddenly blocked by a Ford Taurus carrying two men.
The passenger turned to face us, and for a moment I thought it was Dr.
Huss. The passenger brought a gun up to the open window, and fired into
our car. I hit the brake, pulled back a couple of feet, then made a
sharp righthand turn, needing the sidewalk to make the turn.
The car had a button to shift it into what is
called the "Sport Mode". I hit that button, and flew ahead of the
Taurus. They chased us up Third. I lost them when I went across Central
Park at 86th Street. We left the city by the George Washington Bridge,
into New Jersey.
We fled south to Maryland, to see an old
schoolmate of Dr. Crosse's, from his days as an undergraduate at The
Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.
We ate at a Howard Johnson's in Delaware, and
bought some newspapers to read about ourselves. After I looked at each
paper for a moment, in amazement, Daphne took it from my hand and read
it aloud, though in a low voice, to her father, who sat in his side of
the booth with his hands over his head like a madman crushing voices in
his skull. The newspapers said we were suspected of blowing up the
Waldorf, to destroy evidence of our complicity in the murders of the
eight models. They said Ezio was dead, having committed suicide in the
custody of the FBI, and that before he died he had made and signed a
full confession. In the confession, contrary to what he had said when
he was first arrested, he said his love for the models, and their
rejection of him, was not the motive behind his plan to enrage a world
of strangers to take their lives. This new confession said the murders
were part of an experiment run by Dr. Crosse.
Dr. Crosse said, through the forest of his
arms, "They're going to kill us. They killed Ezio, forged his so-called
confession, all to have an excuse to have us shot on sight."
I said, "Perhaps Ezio went insane at the end,
and really did take his own life. Maybe, some lawyer convinced him to
implicate us in his crimes, to get himself a lighter sentence. So, he
signed that confession. Then, he felt guilty about slandering your
name, so he killed himself."
"That would explain everything but the man
with the missile outside my window this morning, and the two men in the
Ford Taurus who shot at us," said Daphne, seeming to disagree with my
suggestion.
I said, "Who has a quarter? I'm going to call
the President. Even if I can't get through, I can leave a message,
saying, 'Your son is in fear of his life, please make yourself
available for another call in one hour,' or something like that. After
all, the man is my Dad. I don't think he wants to see my guts spread
out on some highway, no matter how embarrassed he may be by his
reliance on subliminals to get him elected. A man may be President for
eight years, if he's lucky; but fatherhood is a lifelong joy."
Then, I was surprised to see Dr. Crosse grab
two fistfuls of his abundant brown hair and tear them, along with some
skin, from his scalp. He cried out, "I lied to you, Rennie. President
Elam is not your True Dad."
"He's not?" I said.
"The Party came to me. They wanted me to work
for Elam's candidacy. But I knew there was no subliminal art without
you. You were the genius in the field. You were the creative spark.
Along with Daphne, of course," he said, looking forlornly at his
daughter.
To me he said, "It was so much money. And more
than that, a chance to play a role in history. I couldn't turn them
down. But how could I ask you to help Mr. Elam become President, when
both you and I thought of him primarily as a person who had walled you
in a basement room where he meant for you to die of starvation, thirst,
or suffocation? How many young men would vote for such, let alone work
diligently for the election of that man? Not many. Except..." and he
started to sob brokenly as he finished his short speech, "except... if
the candidate... sob sob... is your ... sob sob... True Dad... So I....
Sob ..."
He cried, and I forgive him.
I asked Daphne if she had known of the deceit,
but she assured me she had not. She forgave Dr. Crosse, though, and
went to the other side of the booth to sit next to him and put his head
on her breast, while I held his hands across the table. It was clear he
had lost his old confidence and sense of purpose, and we wanted him to
know that didn't matter to us. We were all re-seeing one another at
that moment, I think, seeing one another as hunted, doomed creatures,
and finding that even so, we enjoyed one another's company.
We realized the police would kill us if they
got the chance. According to Dr.Crosse, we couldn't give ourselves up,
or we would be killed in our cells. We couldn't run, because they would
probably shoot us in the back and say we were charging at them with
"what appeared to be guns" in our empty hands. We were terrified. When
I suggested that perhaps Dr. Crosse was exaggerating the danger of
murder by the police, he said, "As any grown person who keeps
reasonably well-informed can tell you, the American law-enforcement
community is the all-time backshooters' paradise in the history of the
known world. Then they slide a pistol under your dead body and say you
threatened 'em with it. No, we can't afford to run into the police,
kids. We have to get off the road right now."
Daphne said, "Dad, I've never heard you talk like this. You're talking about the police as though you didn't trust them."
Dr. Crosse pressed his lips together for a
moment, gathering air in his lungs. Then, he suddenly exhaled with
great force, and it was as though he had blown a smile up through his
insides, because one now appeared on his lips. He laughed happily, in a
voice twenty years younger than any I had ever heard from him, and
said, "You're right! We haven't even seen Drummond yet, and already I'm
beginning to talk like him again! Ha! Or rather, to talk the way we
both used to talk, back at college." Then, his face took on the
expression of someone lost in the past.
His face was so happy, so calm, after the
strains of the past few hours, that I was hesitant to call him out of
his mood of remembrance. Finally, it was Daphne who said, kissing her
father's cheek, "Shouldn't we go?"
We took the next exit off the highway onto the
local roads. Thus, a trip that might have taken us two hours, took six.
Dr. Crosse didn't mind. He spent the time talking about his old college
days, and his friendship with Drummond, when the two of them had been
the tyros of the psychological community. "Then, after college, and
grad school," he said, "I got a huge grant from the U.S. Army, to study
the effects of LSD on brain surgeons doing delicate operations. This is
not the time or the place to go into detail about that experiment.
Suffice it to say LSD is not a good idea for brain surgeons doing
delicate operations. Anyway, Drummond could have been on the team, but
he said he had certain moral qualms about the experiment. Once that got
out, he was through as a scientist. Said he didn't care, he couldn't
spend his life in a field that was poised to become the source of new
forms of bondage for the human race. He said he was going to earn his
living doing something respectable, selling drugs.
"And that's what he did. Became a big pot dealer, started growing it on pieces of land all through Maryland and Pennsylvania."
The entire trip was like that, with Dr. Crosse
praising and remembering his old friend, crying over their periods of
estrangement, laughing about the tricks they used to play in school,
the light stealing they used to do, when they were broke and couldn't
afford books, or food. I'm sorry to say, I didn't really listen to most
of what he was saying. I was thinking about my loss of President Elam,
as my True Dad. No longer was I the son of the President. In my
thoughts, I revisited my other possible Dads, and I was happy to have
them back again, as possibilities, but at that moment, I don't know if
they completely compensated me for the loss of Elam.
As Dr. Crosse spoke, he peered through the
front seats, and directed me as best he could, considering he had not
been to this place in twenty years.
We finally arrived at a small farming town
called One Corner, Maryland. We drove through it, attracting some
attention with our huge Jaguar, that took up both sides of the road in
many places. We passed groups of Quakers, dressed all in black and
driving horse-drawn buggies. We went through some hills, and arrived in
a green valley, surrounded by white and blue rocky hills. There were
cows standing here and there in the valley. There were lots of trees,
and soon we were driving through a cavern of overhung branches so thick
it was almost nighttime underneath. When we emerged at the other end,
we saw a field of flowers, varieties of roses and tulips and other
kinds I didn't recognize. Drummond ran a nursery now, Dr. Crosse said,
and this was it.
We drove under more trees, to a large wooden
house that was totally hidden from the road. "We're here," said Dr.
Crosse. Then, looking anxiously at the house he said, "I hope he still
lives here." The moment he said this, I felt against the side of my
face, the side that faced my open window, a cold, machined object which
I could not identify until I turned my head to face it. It was the
barrel of a shotgun. I looked along this barrel and saw at the other
end was a woman of about thirty-five, with stringy brown hair, white
freckled skin, and thin white lips. I noticed out of the corner of my
eye a young girl, striding up to Daphne's side of the car, with a rifle
in her hands. The woman holding the shotgun said, "Do you folks want to
be buried in your car, or can we keep it?"
Home Education
"Don't shoot 'em !" cried a
loud, laughing, voice from somewhere behind the car. I didn't have the
courage to turn my face toward the shotgun barrel to see who might be
calling out, but in the back seat, Dr. Crosse turned and said, "It's
Drummond!" A few moments later, the tall, broad figure of a
sandy-haired man who had not shaven for three or four days came and
scooped up the woman who held the gun on me, the one he called
Southpaw, and turned her toward the path to the house, along which she
ambled reluctantly. "It's OK, Taffy," the man said to the other woman,
and that one lowered her gun, but stood where she was, staring into the
car, mostly at Daphne.
"Were you expecting us?" asked Dr. Crosse as
Drummond helped him out of the back door of the car. He was referring
to the two women with guns.
Drummond said, "Not you. Somebody else. But
we'll talk about that later. Now..." and he embraced Dr. Crosse, and
the two of them smashed each other on the back for a while, until it
became time for Daphne and me to be introduced to Drummond. We shook
hands all around, with him and with Taffy. Then, Drummond took us into
the kitchen of the house, where he fed us and gave us coffee. Through
the kitchen window, we could see men and women walking into the deep
woods around the house, all of them armed with guns or, in the case of
one or two, bows and arrows. A young man looked toward the house, and
Drummond leaned out the window, giving the man a hand-signal that told
him where to enter the forest. Seeing this, Daphne became visibly
upset, and Dr. Crosse again asked his old friend why the place seemed
to be under a state of siege. But Drummond shook his head and said,
"Time enough for that later. Right now, I'd like to hear what the fuck you've been up to! Man, you three are all over the TV."
"Lies," said Dr. Crosse, as I grabbed some more of the sour bread we were eating.
"I thought so," said Drummond.
Dr. Crosse, with some help from Daphne, told
his friend the story of our involvement in the field of subliminal
advertising, including the whole truth of our role in the victory of
the newly-inaugurated President Elam.
He told Drummond that, despite the news
reports, the three of us had had absolutely nothing to do with the
deaths of the models, or the destruction of that floor of the Waldorf.
Dr. Crosse's old friend hung his sandy-colored head and looked sad.
He said, "I knew you couldn't have done the
things they've been saying you did, but I was afraid the truth would be
exactly as you have told it to me."
He looked Dr. Crosse in the eye and said,
"What you did was worse than murder. You sold out science for money.
Just like when you started out, twenty years ago."
"That's fine for you to say," said Dr. Crosse,
becoming angry for the first time since our troubles began. "You
haven't done any science. You sell drugs. Good for you. But I wanted to
do the work I set out to do, the work we both set out to do. To learn
more. That's all I ever cared about. To learn everything. It isn't my
fault that you need money to conduct science in this world. Sure, I
took money. So what?"
"But from what kind of people? That's the question."
"The kind of people who have money to pay for original research, that's
the kind of people. You dropped out, you were pure, you're hot shit.
I've done science. If I compromised, at least I didn't compromise my
curiosity. How much new knowledge have you uncovered out here in East
Mud?"
"At least I learned what shit I won't eat. Sounds like you're still goin' around the shit salad bar, pilin' up your plate."
I thought we were going to leave then, because
Dr. Crosse got up and went out the front door. But after a minute or
two, Drummond went out there, and we could hear them in the open
doorway.
"They'll kill you if they find you, am I
right?" asked Drummond. Then, Dr. Crosse must have nodded, because
Drummond said, "You came to the right place, old friend. Stay with us."
When they returned to the kitchen, Dr. Crosse
was calmed down, and managed to smile at his friend as he said, "It
seemed when we arrived there's some anticipation of trouble here.
Violence seems expected at any moment."
Drummond nodded. He made himself another cup
of tea, and as he drank it, he told Dr. Crosse what was happening in
his life. They had not been in touch for the past ten years. Dr. Crosse
knew all about Drummond's drug dealing, which the other said he still
did as his main source of income. However, he defended himself, saying,
"It's only pot, which George Washington himself not only grew and sold,
but smoked every day of his adult life. On his doctor's orders!"
Dr. Crosse smiled. "So, you're expecting the big bust at any moment, is that it?" he asked in a tolerant manner.
"No," said Drummond. "I've been busted,
several times, but it was never very serious. Paid a fine, paid off
some judge. That's not why we're expecting a siege up here. Nobody
really cares about pot. And they don't care that I have four wives."
"Drummond!" said Dr. Crosse in surprise, and his friend smiled sheepishly.
"I believe every man that can support a few
women, and have kids with them, and support the kids, should do it. I
feel it's our obligation. That's a part of my life that started after
you and I lost track of one another. I've got Taffy, Lois, Southpaw and
Becky, and Taffy's four kids, Southpaw's three, Becky's four and Lois's
twins, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I'm not denying our family
arrangements here are a little unusual for Maryland, but that is not
the reason I find myself expecting a visit from the authorities,
either.
"No, I lived as an outlaw for years, but I was
never bothered much 'til I took our kids out of public school. Decided
to teach 'em here at home. Then, they started comin'. The truant
officers, the teachers, the principals, the police, the marshals, the
child welfare parasites, everyone drawing pay from the State or the
County seemed to find his way to this farm, to tell me about all the
laws saying I have to send my kids to their schools to be brainwashed
and lied to and made average and docile. But I stuck to my decision.
Now, I'm under a state of seige. But don't worry. Even if they come in
force, we're ready for 'em."
"Are you telling me you intend to fight it out with the police? Because you don't want your children to go to school!"
"No. Not to the point of suicide. We have a
means of egress. I can assure you, all of us, including you and yours
will be safe."
"I teach Daphne at home, too," said Dr.
Crosse. "I guess they tend to notice more if you have fifteen children,
or whatever the number is."
Drummond explained that he believed all
public, private and religious schools spread lies, and made children
into "godless demons."
He said he was part of a growing movement of people who taught their kids at home:
"We home educators are a weird bunch of
coots," he said, "Some people object to that sex education they teach
in schools. Some keep their kids at home because they can't stand the
teaching of racial integration. I'm not one of those. No, my objection
is the damned Darwinians."
"Darwinians?" said Doc Crosse, "You went to Johns Hopkins. You gave the class speech. How can you be so backward?"
Drummond said, "The word of the Bible is true and exact. That's all I'm saying."
Dr. Crosse said with the air of someone who is
so tired he can barely push the words through his vocal cords and out
to his friend, "But the Bible says the world was created five thousand
seven hundred and some odd years ago. Yet the fossils we have show
pretty clearly that the world has been here upwards of four billion
years. There really doesn't seem to be much room for argument, does
there? Have you gone psychotic since our last lunch, ten years ago?
Have you had a lobotomy? What's going on?"
But Drummond just laughed good naturedly. "I
know, I know," he said, putting his hand up in the stop position. "It
sounds crazy. But all I'm saying is, there's a way that the Bible could
be taught, and at the same time, science could be taught. But the way
they do it, they try to insult the Bible, by making it seem untrue, to
our kids, when really the problem is, we don't read it right. Does that
make sense?"
"So you're saying you'll keep your children at
home until the Biblical story of creation is added to the curriculum of
your local school's biology class?"
"That's it!" said Drummond.
"Then I'd say," said Dr. Crosse "that the man or woman who performed your lobotomy should have charged you double."
Drummond said, "Maybe I could write a
pamphlet, setting forth some of my ideas, and you folks could teach me
how to get those subliminal dirty words in there, just to help put my
ideas across? Would you mind helping me with that?"
"Yes!" we all said.
Daphne, speaking for the three of us, added, "We're through with that forever."
Over the next few weeks, we hid out there. I
enjoyed being with Drummond and his large family, and was impressed
with him, for being the only person I had ever met who had almost as
many children as I had fathers.
This question of the True Dad, I could not put
to rest. Once the shock wore off, of the attempt on our lives, and our
flight to Maryland, and I had mourned the loss of President Elam from
my family tree, I found myself once again considering each of my
possible Dads as contenders for the role of True Dad. Once again, I
would wake from dreams in which I had killed one of my Dads in the name
of another of them. I found it painful to be alone in those days, but
Daphne didn't have time for me, because she was always with Drummond's
wives, cooking and cleaning and reading to the youngest children of
that crowded commune.
I spent most of my time trailing after Dr.
Crosse and Drummond as they discussed the great changes that had
overcome them since college, when they were leftists.
One time Drummond said: "There is no America
any more - the social compact that prevailed when we were younger no
longer exists. Just look at Reynold's experiences with his Dads - how
different they all are, and intolerant of one another. Not one of them
is willing to give what used to be called The American Idea, even one
more chance. It's over." Nobody said anything.
Another time he said to Dr. Crosse, "Remember
when I met you - we were two kids from entirely different backgrounds,
but we agreed on almost everything of importance. About how a person
should lead his life, our ideals for ourselves and our country. And
even when we were protesting the war in Viet Nam, and those other kids
were chasing us around the lacrosse field trying to tear up our
banners, they and we were, strange as it may sound, in agreement. We
agreed that they were worth convincing of our position, they agreed
that we were worth chasing and having our banner torn, but not killed.
Now, nobody agrees on anything. We're breaking up into primitive gangs
of mean sons-of-bitches who hardly admit one another have a right to
live. It's over."
I have few opinions of my own, and I always
enjoy hearing other people's, no matter what they are. I think of
people with opinions as heroes. Of course, Drummond was not a putative,
or even a possible Dad of mine, which meant his words could not really
carry much weight for me, but some of the things he said stayed with
me.
One idea of his especially led me to do a lot
of thinking. He and Dr. Crosse had just had one of their discussions
about the state of the scientific world, when Drummond turned to me and
said, "You have to learn to take what we say with a grain of salt. You
have to realize that me and the Doc here, and all your Dads you told me
about - we're all part of a certain generation, and everything we say
and do, no matter why we think we're saying it or doing it, or what we
tell you about why we did it, no matter what - everything we do is
because we're in that generation."
"What generation is that?" asked Dr. Crosse, before I had a chance to.
Drummond said, "It's called the Assassination
Generation. It was named by our friend Mike, twenty five years ago, and
the name is as good today as it was then..."
He said, "All us folks... The Assassination
Generation. We were still in school when the President was murdered.
Kennedy. Before our very eyes. And we had loved him, because he was
young and idealistic, and it looked for a minute there like he was
going to lead us on a great mission, a great crusade for humanity.
Then, once we had given him our hearts, and we all loved him, he was
cut off and taken away from us. And we have been - our whole generation
has been - on a certain path, ever since that moment. We might not name
it; we might jump in fright if anyone tells us what it is - but in
lookin' for your Dads, you've seen that path - you've felt it - the
long hard march of my generation on the road to revenge! Because that's
what it is. We've called ourselves hippies, but we were really a
revenge pact. We called ourselves yuppies, but we were on the tragic
revenge juggernaut that will not end until, if we are allowed to, we
will destroy this earth. Because somebody killed our President, and we
feel we have been betrayed.
"No, kid - don't follow our generation. Turn
away from us. Because where will you live, and your children live,
after the inconsolable Assassination Generation destroys everything,
for the enormity of our grief? We're ruined. We're looking over our
shoulder, flinching in our soul. We're mistrustful of our fellow
citizens, and we cower as we run the nation, like a man driving a car
with his arm thrown over his own eyes, screaming. Talking 'bout my
generation... Don't follow us." I looked and saw Dr. Crosse was
starting to cry.
When I wasn't helping with farm chores, or
standing guard in the forest, to warn the others if the police should
come, to take Drummond's children away, I watched the news all the
time...Subliminals were being investigated by Congress... The scandal
was growing...President Elam was asked about the role of subliminals in
his election campaign, and he always laughed as he denied any such
shenanigans had been tried by his team...
Meanwhile, it was quite clear that somebody
(Dr. Crosse said it was the CIA) was thinking of ways to make
subliminals acceptable to the public, should the truth ever finally
come out. Suddenly, subliminals were a running gag on TV comedy shows,
and on humorous commercials. Of course, the sketches and commercials
purposely misrepresented the true nature of subliminals, so the public
would not associate the subliminals (and our Government) too closely
with the words fuck shit cock cunt and so on.
Companies were formed to publish and
distribute subliminal diet and relaxation tapes, and tapes claiming to
have subliminal suggestions on them to help people acquire wealth. I
bought samples of these tapes at the bookstore in One Corner.
Dr.Crosse, Daphne and I listened to them. All these patently false
representations of the subliminal arts were designed to soften the blow
when the truth finally comes out - to make the idea of it less
threatening. The tapes didn't work, but they helped to prepare the
public, in case they ever learned what we had actually been doing to
their minds.
Though I enjoyed the country setting of our
hideout, I did notice in myself a growing fear of being killed by the
police, or some other agency working for President Elam, or rather,
working for the people who supported President Elam. Dr. Crosse and
Daphne and I were frequently on TV. As the Senate Investigating
Committee looking into the allegations of election subliminals made its
slow progress through months of hearings, our names and faces were
flashed almost every day on the network news, always accompanied by the
words, "fugitives... suspected killers... alleged serial killers... mad
scientists..." The President, in an interview with Barbara Walters, at
which he promised to "come clean once and for all with the American
electrode, I mean electorate," courageously and forthrightly put all
the blame on Dr. Crosse and myself. He said we had somehow wormed our
way into his campaign, and set about to murder models and subvert the
system, all without the knowledge either of himself or any responsible
member of his team. He said, "Barbara, what these people have done, or,
are alleged to have done, because we don't want to prejudge them before
they've been shot while resisting arrest... well, it's abhorrent, it's
abominable, and I don't think anyone can seriously believe that I, or
Nimrod Smith, or anyone we would even talk to, could ever have known
about, let alone been a party to, such dastardly deeds. No, no, when we
catch these three miscreants, and we will, Barbara, I'll be the first
to say, let justice be done. But don't tar an entire Administration,
mine, with the crimes of a very very very tiny group of floating human
turds. I mean, have a heart..."
At the same time, things started happening to
my other putative Dads, as a result of their publicly perceived
relationships with me, or as a result of my intrusion into their lives.
I read in the papers that the Reverend
Minister Faroun's followers turned on him at an African Pride Day
Festival, where they beat and almost killed him, because they had seen
me with him, and the night before, CBS News had broken the story of my
relation with him. He would have been able to deny the whole thing, but
he had let the truth slip out once or twice in unguarded moments with
some of his trusted bodyguards. The news said the Rev Min Faroun had to
be rescued from his followers by the LAPD. Now he was reportedly
co-operating with the police on several murder investigations involving
members of his group, in exchange for their keeping him in protective
custody. I looked at the file footage on the news, and wiped a tear
from my eye. The proud, roaring Rev Min Faroun, now despised by his own
people, and all because of me!
Then, Dr. Huss showed up on the TV screen.
It seems Mac 'Mac' MacDonald was making quite
a good living selling the story of his investigations on my behalf, and
when his first-person narrative appeared in Harper's, Dr.
Huss's fellow Nazis, instead of being grateful to him for inadvertantly
connecting their cause with Reynold Stengrow, who had hurled it out to
the wide world through the artfulness of subliminals, instead of
thanking him for this, they tortured him in the desert near California
City, nailing him to a piece of wood and dragging him head last from
the back of a pickup truck. Then, they staked him out over a missile
silo, went back to the control room, and would have shot a Trident
through his prone form, into space, but were stopped by their Base
superiors, who were afraid the incident might publicize the extent and
virulence of Nazis and the Nazi ideology throughout the American space
program. Those facts came out anyway, but they were vehemently denied.
That left only me, feeling sad over my negative effects on the life of
yet another putative Dad.
Things got worse. As a minor side-note of the
hearings of the Senate Investigating Committee, the world learned that
my writer-Dad, Mr. Popper, unknown for many years, had only become
famous through subliminally scratched dirty words on the paper he used
to submit his work to publishers.
Mr. Popper, learning for the first time that
the basis of his popularity was false - falsely gained by my help -
tried to kill himself by walking into the lion's veldt at the Bronx
Zoo. While women fainted and children screamed, and little carts darted
back and forth ineffectually across the great moat that separates the
people from the lions in the African Jungle exhibition, Mr. Popper
staggered toward the resting felines. They eyed him warily. He stood
before a male, with huge mane and spoke to him for a long while before
he got tired and fell down and went to sleep. The lions watched him
lying there, and then went in for the night, after which, the park
police were able to rescue him... Next time, I thought, it might be
worse... And seeing him on the news, as he climbed into the rescue
wagon, looking so tired, so defeated...
I had to do something, to save my numerous,
innocent fathers, but I didn't know what there was for me to do. I
could do as Drummond had suggested, and disguise myself for the rest of
my life, or I could risk my life, and maybe Daphne's and Dr. Crosse's,
by going back to Washington, D.C. to testify. Was it worth the risk of
telling the truth? Would that even help my Dads, or just make things
worse for them? I was feeling guilty, because my Dads were suffering
now, because I had sought them out.
Then, all that guilt fell of its own weight,
and I found, to my amazement, that I was angry at them! Yes! Angry at
my poor put-upon Dads!
Ashamed as I am to admit it, I wished that
none of them had ever fathered me. I fumed in my bed, furious that I
should have to feel responsible for the fates of so many Dads.
That night, when I finally fell asleep, I had a dream.
In the dream, I saw myself lifted up in the
arms of Mr. Elam, like a child lifted into the air. He held me over his
head, and spun me around, like an airplane. Then, he passed me to
another pair of hands, the hands of his father, who handed me
back, in turn, to his father. All the time, I was seeing their lives,
the places they had lived, the people they had loved, all through
different centuries and ages. Except, at some time - I couldn't tell
exactly when it happened - I was passing over the heads of Dr. Huss's
ancestors; then, over the heads of the ancestors of the Reverend
Minister Faroun; then, over those of those of Mr. Steinstein, and Mr.
Persson, and the other Dads, many of whom I had never met, but their
ancestors managed somehow to get their hands into the act of passing me
around. Then, after all the miles and the continents, centuries, skies
and oceans, they set me down in a plain wooden room.
There, as I adjusted my eyes to the earthly
light of the room, I saw a man and a woman sitting and talking. They
sat side by side, on straight-backed pine chairs, with tall backs.
There was a small table between them. On the table was a stack of books
and papers, along with crowds of make-up bottles, brushes and combs.
They stopped talking when they saw me standing before them. The woman
touched the arm of the man, whispering in his ear. I saw then that the
woman was Marilyn Monroe, and the man was George Washington, the first
President of the United States. They both had white wigs on. The wigs
were not the same, but not entirely different.
I walked up to them, I knelt, and kissed the hand of Marilyn Monroe. She smiled at me.
I said, "Everyone is still sad for you. We miss you very much." I was crying.
She said, "I am happy here. From this room, I
can look out and see America. I can watch people every day, and I can
see for myself how the children are living. I can help them, when they
need me."
Then she said, "President Washington has something to say to you."
I looked up and President Washington was
putting a chair behind me, like the ones they sat in. I sat in it, and
he went back to his chair.
He looked at me intently, and said, "Do you know who I am?"
I answered, "Yes, sir. You're President Washington."
He replied, "That's right." Then, he said, "Why have you come here? What do you want?"
I said, "Sir, should I continue to hide out,
or should I risk my life by going back, to testify about what I know?
The reason I can't decide on my own is, I don't know which of my Dads
is my True Dad. I don't want to do anything that will hurt my True Dad,
but which one is he?"
President Washington said, "Show me your
book." It was only then I realized I had the ledger book with me, with
the names of my 36 possible Dads. I gave him the book. He put it on the
table, then he opened a drawer on his side of the table. Out of the
drawer he took a small hatchet. He raised the hatchet high over my
head. I thought he was going to split my head with it, but he brought
it down into the cover of the ledger book, through the book, and fixing
it to the table with its blade.
President Washington said: "I cannot tell a
lie, Reynold. I am your True Dad. Didn't you know that, Reynold? All of
your Dads - all of them - when they came to America, I adopted them.
They are all my children, and so are you."
I said, "I was looking for you, Father."
After a while, I said, "What should I do, sir?"
He held up some pieces of old paper with
ancient writing in a spidery script on their faces. He said, "Read the
documents, and tell the truth."
I was trying to see the papers, and I asked him, "What documents, sir?" but before he could answer me, I woke up.
Later that day, I was on guard duty, when a
newspaper blew among the trees and fell across the toes of my shoes. I
picked it up, and saw an advertisement from a cigarette manufacturer,
reminding us it was the anniversary of the Bill of Rights. A photo of
the Bill of Rights filled the page. I could see it was like the
document which George Washington had shown me in my dream.
I went to the house, and found Daphne. I took
her with me, both of us in disguise, and we went to the Smithsonian
Museum, in Washington, to the round room where the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution are on display, under tables of glass.
Daphne asked me what we were doing here, but I
didn't know what to tell her. We saw the Declaration of Independence,
and the Constitution. We stood reading them for a while, as classes of
schoolchildren and their teachers came and went. When the huge room was
empty, except for the Guards at the doors, Daphne and I performed some
tests for the presence of subliminals. With a portable laser, we
determined to our own satisfaction that there were no hidden words in
the ink or the paper of the documents. or in any wax or powder overlay
on the pages themselves. However, a simple moire pattern test revealed
that the words "sex" and "death" had recently been etched thousands of
times into the glass plates that covered all the documents.
Driving back to One Corner I told Daphne about
my dream, and we decided it must mean that we, or at least that I,
should testify before Congress.
At dinner,I said I was thinking of giving
myself up, in order to be able to tell our side of the story to the
world. "They're scratching subliminals on the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence!" I said. "We can't sit by and let them do
that!"
Drummond and Dr. Crosse both said I would be shot down in the street. "Like a dog," in the words of Drummond.
But I said, "Drummond, you and Dr. Crosse are
both members of that subset of humanity which you yourself have told me
to name The Assassination Generation. Could it be that your fears
concerning the law-enforcement personnel of the United States are due
more to your experiences during the long-ago decade of that long-ago
President's death, than to the facts of the situation as they now
stand?"
"No," said Drummond. "If you present yourself
and offer to tell them the truth, they will bury you deeper than Elam
did you the first time."
Instead, Drummond suggested that Dr. Crosse
and Daphne and I hide out forever, change our names, learn the simple
basics of growing and selling marijuana, which might afford us a
decent, honorable living, earned without having to gull our fellow
citizens. "What about airbrushing triggering phenomes on the leaves?"
asked Dr. Crosse, as though roused from sleep into the midst of a
conversation he only partially understood.
"No, buddy, people buy pot because they like it," said Drummond. Dr. Crosse shrugged.
Then, Daphne said, "Reynold is right. He and I
will present ourselves to the police, while you, Father, stay here. If
there are two of us, we will be that much safer. We have money to hire
a good lawyer. We can tell our side of what happened. We made mistakes,
we fooled people, but we never did any murders, that's for sure. And
what we did for the election was all at the direct request of Mr. Elam,
who now pretends not to know us."
But when she said this, I became afraid for
her. I didn't want to be the cause of any danger to her. For all I
knew, Drummond and Dr. Crosse were right about the police. I had to
disagree with my own previous opinion, for Daphne's sake. I said we
couldn't risk it.
"However," I said, "I think we can make our
lives safer by putting our story on videotape. Then, we can make copies
and send them to all the TV shows, magazines and newspapers."
"Fully embedded," said Dr. Crosse, who seemed
to be backsliding once again. "Cocks and cunts by the ton! We'll make
'em see the truth! They won't be able to take their eyes off it!"
"Now, Dad," said Daphne, and cuddled close to
him as he raved. She, and I and Drummond knew the days of embeds were
over for us. For us, everything would have to be on the up and up, from
now on.
Drummond got a video camera and we sat in a
circle in the forest, in a place Drummond thought would not be
recognizable when the tapes were shown on TV, and we told our story. We
intended to send one of the first copies directly to Canada, to Dr.
Wilson Brian Key, (previously mentioned author of "Subliminal
Seduction" and "The Clamplacte Orgy,") as a way of saying to him: "You
were right all along, Dr. Key! We're the ones you've been looking for,
the technicians of the subliminal."
Drummond manned the camera. Dr.Crosse spoke
first, and talked of the first time certain wealthy businessmen had
come to him asking him to experiment with mind control, to help them
sell their procucts. He then told how he had wrestled with his
conscience until, suddenly, Drummond put his hand up and said, "Shh!"
and we could see that he was listening into the trees, in the direction
of the house.
We all listened, and a bird cry came through
the branches. Drummond answered it with a bird cry of his own, and
turned to us and said, "That's the southside lookout - it means they're
here."
"Who is?"
"State troopers, police, FBI... your guess is as good as mine."
We gathered rushed back to the house through
the thick foliage and over the soft fallen leaves, running low past a
hedge of white flowers to reach a pair of doors set into the earth
about fifty yards from the house, just at the edge of the clearing that
surrounded the house. Drummond opened the two doors, we went down some
stairs, then walked through a long cellar corridor, that ended inside
the house.
In the house, the wives and children of
Drummond were already bolting the bolts of their seige-resistant
residence. The windows were iron, the doors were thick wood lined with
lead. There were slits for rifles in the windows, through which
Drummond and his children sighted down the invaders.
The invaders were men in short overcoats and
black shoes. The leaders wore baseball caps with the names of beers on
their fronts. "Federal agents," said Drummond.
We saw them hoist themselves with difficulty out of four cars and spread out around the house.
Floodlights came on. They were mounted on the roofs of the cars. One of the agents used a megaphone.
"Drummond, we have a court order here,
allowing us to take your children, and make sure they get a proper
education. We don't want to have to hurt anyone, Drummond! But if we
have to we'll kill you, all your wives and most of your kids, so the
survivors can have the education to which they are entitled. Come out
now, and no one will get hurt."
Drummond said nothing in response. He stuck a
rifle barrel through one of the slits in the windows and started firing
at the agents. They returned fire. Soon, the walls of the house were
shredding over my head, and I could see daylight, or the light of the
bright floods, pouring through the bullet gashes. Drummond and his
family fought bravely. I didn't see any of the agents go down, so I
don't know if any of them were hurt.
Dr. Crosse said, over the din of the battle,
"I thought you said we'd be safe, Drummond! I don't want my daughter
killed so your children can avoid hearing the Theory of Evolution. Give
up! Give up!"
Drummond turned from his shooting-slit to assure his old friend. "Just a few minutes, then we'll get out of here."
Dr. Crosse just shook his head, looked angry,
and then crouched between the ancient enamel stove and ice box. I
thought Drummond must have a plan, even though I couldn't imagine what
it was. I called Drummond, and asked him to meet me under the kitchen
table, for a conversation. He fired a couple of shots, then knelt down.
Windows were exploding around us. In one place, the wall had taken so
many bullets, it could no longer hold its section of the ceiling, and
that section started to sag into the kitchen like a huge tattered sail,
blowing in the breeze of gunfire.
Under the table, where no one could hear us, I
made a deal with Drummond. Part of the deal was that he wouldn't tell
Daphne or Dr. Crosse about the deal.
Short Overcoats
Drummond returned to his post,
and resumed firing. He seemed relaxed as his well-drilled clan kept up
a barrage of firepower directed at the Agents. However, Dr. Crosse
couldn't keep calm. "We're dead, we're dead," he said over and over.
There was an explosion in the forest, just
behind the place where the Agents had left their cars. The trees burst
into flames, and lines of fire sped along the ground, through the
leaves, into the clearing itself. It was obvious that fuses had been in
place around the farm, ready for this moment.
One of the Agents screamed. I peered out
through one of the rifle-slits, and saw a man on fire, dancing and then
falling, in his short overcoat. Other Agents went to his rescue, and
threw their coats over him, to put out the flames. At this moment, I
heard the sound of gunshots from the woods, and the Agents were forced
to find cover, and direct their attention away from the house, and
toward the new threat from the woods.
"That's it," said Drummond, to his family. "Ned's boys are in place. Let's go."
Drummond led us all down into the basement
where a man he called "Hosie" was waiting. He was a red haired,
grinning fellow, who turned out to be another old friend of Dr.
Crosse's, from school days.
After greetings between Hosie and Dr. C., that
were necessarily cut short, Drummond and the redhead conferred briefly.
Upstairs, the Agents were bursting in. They were on the floor over our
heads. A hidden door, previously indistinguishable from the whitewashed
cellar wall, slid open, and the first of the clan disappeared into it.
On the other side was a tunnel of earth, re-enforced with timbers.
Soon, we were all on the other side of the door, and Drummond and I
pushed the door shut again.
There were torches on the walls of the tunnel, which Drummond and his sons lit.
As we walked, Drummond explained that this was
part of the tunnel system used by escaping slaves during the Civil War,
to get them from Maryland to Pennsylvania, where they wouldn't be
executed.
We came out in a field, it was night. A plane
was waiting, in the middle of the field. Drummond said he had always
kept this escape route available, for this day. The plan was, to fly to
a small airstrip in Arizona, on 160 acres owned by Drummond, and to
start life over, with new names.
We boarded the plane, twenty-five of us crowding into a space designed for twelve people.
Before the plane took off I told Daphne and Dr. Crosse that I was not going with them.
"I'm going to turn myself over to the FBI, and
testify at the Hearings," I said, kneeling beside Daphne. She said she
wanted to go with me, but I said we didn't know if they would kill us,
and I couldn't let her come with me. I had to do it alone. I was
crying. I kissed her, though she turned her face from me.
I turned to Dr. Crosse and said, "I'm sorry,
sir. I hope you understand. I can't let you and Daphne risk your lives,
but I have to go back and clear my name, all our names, and the names
of my Dads."
He said, "You're a good son, Rennie, and when
you get a Dad, I'm sure he'll say the same thing." He half-stood in the
cramped space and embraced me warmly.
I went to the door of the plane. Daphne tried
to follow me out of the plane. I looked at Drummond, reminding him of
our deal, and he nodded, moving to her and holding her back, until I
had a chance to get out. I heard her screams as the door of the plane
was shut, and I saw her beautiful face, crying in the window.
I walked toward the town of One Corner. Just
before I reached the one street, I turned left, up a low hill, to the
transmission tower of the small local television station, owned by
Drummond's friend, and a nursery customer of his, The Reverend Jeffers.
The Reverend Jeffers had been a frequent guest at Drummond's farm
during the time we were there, and I had grown to like him quite a bit.
His TV station was a small cinder block building sitting on a
bald-headed hilltop. When I arrived, he was preaching to the cameras.
When he saw me standing outside the control booth, he stopped the
broadcast, a forecast of those End Times, or Last Days, you hear so
much about, and he introduced me to his TV audience.
He said, "Now, brothers and sisters, I
gen'rally don't like to interrupt the fundraising portion of our show
for anything, anything at all, but today, we have a dear brother,
Reynold Stengrow, and I want him to sit and chat with me on camera
here, while we wait for the County Sheriff to arrive, and take him to
jail..."
The Reverend, a clean-shaven man with white
hair and Eskimo eyes, told the audience what we had told him at the
farm - about the subliminals, and the election, and President Elam's
involvement in our work - saying that I was a very brave young man, to
have the courage to tell my story to the world. "Well, Reverend
Jeffers," I said, "I'm hoping if I say what I have to say to your
audience, the government will have no reason to assassinate me, since
the story will already be full public knowledge."
"That's wise thinkin'" said the Reverend.
Then, he told his audience that Satan was the true President of the
United States, and had been since they took prayer out of the public
schools. After he had spoken for a while, he gave me a chance to tell
the whole story, giving my side of things, and Dr. Crosse's and
Daphne's. I denied any complicity in the murders of the models, and
denied the complicity of Dr. Crosse and Daphne, also. I told the truth,
that the murderer had been mentally unbalanced.
I also gave an account of the techniques
themselves, and the advertising uses to which they had been put, and I
told how we got Mr. Elam elected President.
After about an hour and a half, the Sheriff
finally arrived, with the FBI, and they arrested me on-camera, with
Reverend Jeffers shouting at them the whole time: "My viewers see you
takin' this boy here, and if anythin' should happen to him while he's
in yo' custody, we got sev'ral hundred folks gonna know you done it."
The FBI Agents dragged me out to a car, and
drove me into Washington, DC, which was cold and dusted with white
frost. They took me to a jail under the streets. They booked me,
photographed me, and put me in a cell, alone.
A few hours later, one of the Agents came to
see me, and said that Reverend Jeffers was running all over DC, looking
for me, and he was travelling with a cameraman. I was grateful to the
Reverend, for I felt his attention was saving my life.
I was taken from the mass cell to a small room
where I was questioned concerning the whereabouts of Dr. Crosse and
Daphne. I said nothing. Another team of investigators, who didn't care
about the subliminals, but only about the fact that Drummond's children
had escaped their education, also questioned me, but to them also, I
was silent.
Twelve or fourteen hours later, I was allowed
to see a lawyer. He said the government had not yet decided whether to
charge me for murdering the eight models. For now, I was being held on
a Congressional warrant, until I gave testimony to the Senate
Committee. The lawyer said by testifying I would probably do myself a
lot of good on the murder charges, as well as the interstate flight
charges, the tax evasion charges (one of the servants at Dr. Crosse's
ranch, threatened with deportation, led them to my hiding place in the
garden, where they found $3,765,872.98 in that metal box, and the two
canvas artist's bags that were also in the hole.) I told him I would be
happy to testify before the Senate Committee, because testifying is
what I gave myself up for.
I was moved to a fine, above-ground cell in
what seemed to be a hospital or military barracks. The Senate Committee
needed two days to prepare themselves for my testimony, according to
the newspapers I was given to read every day, and according to the
small TV in the bedroom of my cell-suite. They had been meeting in
public hearings on this matter for the past five weeks, and my capture
was considered to be the biggest boost the hearings could have had. My
testimony was eagerly awaited, as I saw the analysts and panelists all
say on the weekend political talkshows. They informed me that the whole
nation was looking for someone, anyone, who could clear up this issue:
Are subliminals real? Were they used in the Presidential election? Did
both parties do it, or only one? Did the candidates know, or only the
ad agencies that worked for them?
Leading ad agency owners and managers had
already testified. All of them claimed to know nothing, all of them
passed lie detector tests, taken voluntarily at the advice of their
attorneys, results presented to the Senate Committee. For all I know,
they were sincere. Because of the way the work was organized, I only
know about my own involvement, that of Daphne and Dr. Crosse, and some
of the technicians and artists we worked with in New York. Once or
twice I saw Dr. Crosse with men I thought were probably "his backers,"
but I had never made any attempt to learn from him who they were, or if
they were backers at all. I knew only that I was off the books.
From the articles given to me to read in my
cell, it seemed the Committee was pursuing every lead. Dr. Wilson Brian
Key was called to testify, but there were ten ad agency people to
refute everything Dr. Key said, along with several psychologists,
eye-muscle experts, and biochemists.
What it came down to, then, was that they had only one person who knew what had happened and was willing to talk to them. Me.
On the third day, they brought me to a
waiting-room which I took to be inside the Senate, although I couldn't
tell, because I was brought there before dawn. There I sat with two
guards, drinking coffee for about an hour. I heard a lot of noise from
the courtroom next door, and then the door was opened and I was led
into the Hearing Room.
Flash bulbs went off, there was a burst of
light from some other source, that flared then died down again. I went
to a table, where I saw my attorney. He stood up when I arrived, and
indicated to me the chair I was supposed to sit in. I faced a
horse-shoe shaped dais, raised a couple of feet above floor level. I
saw the faces of six Senators peering over the edge of the dais, over
their name plates. Each one had a microphone in front of him. Sitting
behind them, along the wall, were about thirty more people, mostly
young, who got up every now and then to hand one of the Senators a
piece of paper, or to kneel behind the dais for short conferences.
I recognized two or three of the Senators. I
saw Republicans and Democrats, members of President Elam's party and
the opposition. I even saw Senator Ted Miller, the plump, handsome
liberal on whose shoulders have, for the past 20 years, rested the
exhausted hopes of all liberals in America, as Mr. Stengrow and my Mom
had told me many times.
Senator Miller, sober for some of the 5
sessions (most lasting all day) during which I testified, asked many
probing questions of me, and brought out many harsh criticisms of
President Elam, who was in the opposing party. Senator Miller often
laughed scornfully at the hypocrisy of a man who claimed to believe in
the American Way and yet used cheap psychological parlor tricks -
brainwashing, like some Communist, or Fascist - to have himself
elected. He was especially interested in my description of how we
prepared President Elam for the League of Women Voters' debates, when
we had a tiny transmitter surgically implanted in his forehead, just
between his eyes and slightly above. The transmitter emitted a high
electronic voice, saying "sex mmm sex mmm sex mmm." Hearing this,
Senator Miller wept for America.
The Senators from Mr. Elam's party took
another tack. They tried to make me say I had sabotaged the campaign at
the behest of rich liberals, or that I was a madman, acting alone to
fulfill my own twisted fantasies of power and control. They sought to
lay the blame on me, Dr. Crosse, Daphne, anyone but the President, or
his advisers. They suggested that possibly the dead Ezio, who had
precipitated the deaths of the eight models, also designed and ran the
entire subliminal election campaign, just another of his lonely
crackpot activities. I told them that Ezio had just been an artist, a
paste-up man. I didn't know if they believed me.
I told my story with no intention but to rid
myself of it, by giving it to them, and to the world at large. As the
days filtered along, I became intensely weary of my story, but I knew I
must keep telling it. The newspapers delivered to my cell every day
were divided on the value of my testimony, and on all other elements of
the scandal. I saw the trial footage every day on TV, and it seemed
fair enough, true, unbiased, an example in every way of reporting by a
free and unfettered press. I was proud of myself for having done my
duty. I didn't know what I would ultimately be charged with, or what my
sentence might be, but I felt I would be able to handle it. The only
thing I minded was that I wouldn't be able to see Daphne for a long
time, unless she found a way to contact me without endangering herself
and her father. But even this, the separation from the woman I wanted
to marry, I could bear. Because I was telling the truth, and that was
all that mattered.
As I was taken back to my cell-suite, at the
end of the last day of testimony, I looked forward to a pleasant
evening watching myself on TV.
White House, Black Heart
Imagine then my surprise when I got back to my cell, and found, instead of an empty room and a tray of food, two U.S. Marines, carrying sidearms.
The Marines took me down in the elevator of
the building where I had been housed. I still did not know what
building it was. They led me to a sub-basement which was brightly lit
and covered in green carpet as far as the eye could see. Besides the
cinder block walls, painted yellow, there was nothing else in that
sub-basement but a round door, like a submarine lock. One of the
Marines went to the door, which had a diameter of about five feet, and
he referred to a set of handwritten instructions taped to the door
itself, in order to get its lock unlocked and its iron handle to
screech downward, when he pushed on it. The round steel door popped
open about a quarter of an inch. Then, he gestured for the other Marine
to join him, and they both threw their shoulders into the door,
managing only to budge it. I joined them in pushing. Together, we did
heave the massive object back about a foot and a half, enough for us to
squeeze through. First went one Marine, then me, then the other Marine.
Once on the other side, I was regretful that I had been so
co-operative, because we were in what must have been a giant sewer
pipe. It stretched before us far, far, and somewhere along the way it
curved gently out of sight. Now, I thought they had brought me here to
kill me.
I asked, "Is this an assassination?" and the
Marines looked at one another and looked grim. We walked on and there
was a wall sconce with fresh flowers in it. Behind the flowers, was a
small framed picture of a pair of shoes. We walked some more, and came
to two more Marines, standing at attention, one on each side of a
wooden door set into the curve of the sewer pipe. They opened the door
and we went through, to a small elevator lobby. There were two elevator
doors, side by side. Between them was a big poster, under a glass door.
The poster was for a film called "This Island Earth," starring Rex
Reason and Faith Domergue. One of the Marines pushed the Up button, and
we waited. When the elevator came, we got in and went to a level called
Ground. I still thought I was going to be killed. When the doors
opened, we were in an office building, walking past secretaries,
mail-boys, a group of men in suits conferring in the middle of the
carpeted hallway. I felt I should probably shout out to them, for help,
but I didn't.
"Where are we?" I asked my guards.
"In the White House," said one of them.
Then, we climbed a staircase, and at the head
of the stairs with his arms stretched out to greet me was none other
than The President of the United States of America... Mr. Elam.
He put his arm around my back and patted my
stomach. "I hope they've been feeding you well, Rennie. You look thin."
He took me into the Oval Office, where we were alone. He sat down and
smiled at me from the other side of his desk.
I said, "You don't seem angry at me. How come?"
He said, "Angry at you for what? The fact is,
we want you to come back to work again, Rennie. You're too valuable a
man to lose. You're a difficult man, that's true. But I just think of
you as my Michelangelo, and I'm that Pope, whatever his name was, and I
need the best man for my ceiling, even if he is a pain in the ass. It's
the job of a good manager to get the best out of all his people, not
just the easy ones. And I consider myself to be a damn fine manager."
I said, "But, President Elam," (showing my
respect for the office if not the man) "after the testimony I just
gave, how can you or your backers hope to continue the subliminal
manipulation of the public? The people know everything!"
But President Elam only smiled, lit a
cigarette, inhaled deeply, and said, "None of your testimony was real,
none of it existed, none of it was heard by anyone who was not already
aware of what was going on. We just wanted to get you to tell us
everything you knew. Both to see exactly what you did know, and to help
you get it out of your system. Now, you've done that. You've done the
right thing. Also, and luckily for you, you've demonstrated to the
satisfaction of myself and my wife that you don't know a hell of a lot
anyway, about what's been going on, and that's great. Great for us, and
great for you, so you can hopefully get off your high horse now, and
come back to work for the party. Come play with the big toys, Rennie.
Get your money back - we have it for you, you know, everything from
your Gene Autry box and canvas bags. You'll still be off the books of
course..."
I stopped him, with my hand over my forehead.
As I spoke, I used both my hands to search the top of my head for some
kind of a hole, or the tiny fibrous end of a wire, trying to determine
if I was experiencing some kind of illusory moment, caused by my having
had, without my knowledge, an electrode planted in my brain. I said,
"What about the newspapers, the TV news, the radio news! What about
Senator Miller! Didn't I tell your greatest opponent in the Universe,
Senator Miller, every underhanded thing we did to get you elected, and
didn't he sit there and call you names and scoff over the remnants of
your reputation? Didn't evey paper have an editorial saying you should
be tried in a criminal proceding, and if found guilty of the things I
said in testimony, you should be taken from this office by force if
necessary and thrown in the District Central lockup?"
I kept feeling around the top of my head,
furiously now, searching for the wire. I stuck my hands in my ears and
nostrils, and then made a systematic search of my teeth and gums,
palate and tongue, for telltale whispery thin antennae. The President
looked at me a little oddly, I suppose. He didn't know what I was doing.
He continued his explanation, choosing not to comment on what must have appeared to him to be my very unusual behavior.
He said the whole trial had been a hoax, designed to fool only me. The real
Senate Subcommittee on the Use of Subliminal Messages in the Media was
droning on as it always had and would continue to do for six or eight
more months, at the end of which time they would issue a report saying
that there was no factual basis whatsoever for the suspicion these
subliminal messages are being used to sell products. They will add a
special section on the election, debunking that truth, too. "We've got
the most powerful tool of social management in the history of the
world, Rennie," said the President. "How difficult do you think it was
to convince the networks, and the print media, to keep our secret. It's
their secret, too, after all. It's the key to America's competitiveness
in the global marketplace for the next hundred years. Shit, son, we
graduate a new class of super-morons every year in this country, each
one dumber than the one before. Any European, any Russian, any
Japanesio, can speak two or three languages. Our kids can't even speak
American! Who's gonna feed and clothe this loveable lop-eared mass of
high hopes in a world where everybody else is smarter and willing to
work harder? Why, that's my responsibility, and the responsibility of
those men you call my "backers." The pillars of our society, the men
who see far and set our traps early in the fall. Of course, Senator
Miller is one of us. And it's men like him, men who are willing to sit
in a real hearing and a false hearing every day for five days, running
back and forth between the hearing rooms, not to mention getting on
over to the Senate floor for some important votes, it's men like him
who know, as I know, and as you would, too, if you weren't so young and
(though I love you like a son, and we've all heard about your genius of
a Dad till we can't bear it any more) dumb."
I kept searching my mouth for the wire. Was it
down my throat? I twisted myself around in my chair and attempted to
unobtrusively stick four fingers and my thumb down my throat, as I made
a guttural sound which I hoped would be interpreted by the President as
encouragement to continue what he was saying. I did not resent his
reference to my lack of intelligence. It was a riddle I had not been
able to solve to my own satisfaction, either. Here was I, after all,
with one or another genius for a Dad, but I couldn't even find the wire
in my own head!
Finally, the President said, "If you're
looking for an electrode, Rennie, it isn't there. You're not
hallucinating this conversation, I'm simply describing a hoax to you.
Cheer up."
I was forced, then, to confront the fact that
Mr. Elam, along with friends and associates of his, were willing to do
almost anything, to preserve for themselves the powerful tools of
subliminal control.
He said, "You saw all those famous journalists
at the hearings. A couple of them interviewed you. You poured your
heart out to them... Well, nobody read those interviews but you, nobody
got that cable feed but you, in your cell. What does it tell you,
Rennie, that all these good people have joined us in keeping our
secret? These people aren't on some diabolic payroll... Fact is, we
worked like hell to put together an ad hoc group to handle this
subliminal shit... It's like the atom bomb, or stirrups, or any sudden
advance in technology. Every manufacturing entity, and advertising
agency has an interest in this, because every citizen does..."
But I said, "I gave myself up to tell the
truth. You try to make it sound like you're doing people a favor by
lying to them. I don't see it that way. I believe in the words of the
documents..."
"What documents?"
"Created equal," I said, "Endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness," I said.
To which the President responded after
lighting a new cigarette. "Fine," he said through the bales of smoke.
"How are we taking away any of those rights by trying to keep this
nation competitive in a hostile world? Do you realize we'll be able to
pull ourselves out of recessions by just laying the subliminal fucks
and sexes on thicker, and the consumer will buy us back into
prosperity? Do you realize we can make parents love their children by
simply writing fuck on the kid's forehead so his parents start to look
at him as though he were a totem of joy? Are we stealing anyone's
equality by doing that? No, because we're fooling everyone equally, if
all goes well. Are we stealing their life? We give them life,
and more abundantly! Are we stealing their liberty? I don't know...
maybe that's something we should look into... we could have a
conference or something... invite Noam Chomsky... I'm saying, this is a
question of national survival... somebody's gonna be fuckin' with
everyone's minds and it better fuckin' be us... OK, what about their
pursuit of happiness? Can you honestly say we're stealing the public's
right to pursue the very happiness we are thrusting toward them?
"Rennie, you're the great technician," he said
through puffs, "you're our Einstein, our Al Nobel! Serve your country,
serve your self. Join us."
But what about my dream, I thought to myself.
I looked around and could see the Oval Office had been thoroughly
embedded with triggering phenomes, and I let my eyes roam lazily over
them as I thought. I could see the work of one or two of the better
subliminal cartoonists. But what about my dream, when President
Washington had told me to tell the truth?
Now, the current President was saying just the
opposite. Of course, the other had only been a dream. And the
interpretation which I had drawn from it. But who was I to draw
interpretations that went against the interests of the duly elected
Chief Executive of my country? Could it not be that I had only wished
that entire dream onto myself in the first place? After all, how
flattering to myself to think of President Washington as my True Dad.
And what President Elam said made sense, too.
But I asked President Elam, "If you fool
someone, aren't you are taking away his liberty? Because liberty is
based on the idea that you can do what you want, and doing what you
want is based on the idea of knowing what you want..."
"Ah-ha!" said Elam, "But knowing what you want
is based on nothing but itself! No one has yet successfully found the
source of human desires. They run the show, but what runs them?" To my
silence, he said, "Take sex. The purpose of sex, as far as anyone can
tell, is to create the next generation. Would anyone engage in the
activity even once if that were all it promised? Possibly, but not
certainly. Therefore, mother nature writes sex across us one and all,
like we do with magazines, and we want it. We know we want it. That
should be enough. That, Rennie, should be sacred.
"Help us shape the desires of mankind to
propagate the type of world we want for our kids," he said with a hitch
in his voice. He took a long drag on his cigarette and stared at me. I
had to admit I could not think of reasons right then, to deny his
request. I couldn't tell him about my dream, or about President
Washington telling me to tell the truth.
Instead, I said I was tempted by his offer but
that my fiance, Daphne, had told me she wouldn't let us continue to
defraud the public.
He pushed a button on his desk and said, "Send them in."
One of the office's doors opened, and into the room stepped Daphne, along with Dr. Crosse.
I got out of my chair and embraced Daphne,
then Dr. Crosse. I said, "How did they catch you? Are you all right?
What about Drummond and his family?"
President Elam said, "I think the best thing I can do now is to leave you good people alone, to talk things over."
When he was gone, Dr. Crosse told me what had
happened to him and Daphne in the two weeks since we had separated.
They had gone to Arizona, but Drummond's hideout was betrayed by a
brother of his, who wanted one of Drummond's wives for his own. Again,
Drummond had escaped via his private runway but, said Dr. Crosse, "It
was obvious to me that we should not go with him, but give ourselves
up, and join you, here."
"But why?" I asked. "You were safe."
"My daughter was simply too miserable without
you." Daphne put her arms around my waist, saying, "I told my Dad about
us, Rennie."
"Fooled me, you did," said Dr. Crosse with a laugh.
"I'm sorry, sir," I said. I had never felt good about the deception.
"It's all right. Daphne had her reasons, and
you honored them. Did what you should have done. I never realized how
oppressive it could be for a young girl to have a psychologist for a
Dad. She had to show that she could keep a secret from me, put some
distance between her Dad and herself. And she certainly proved her
point. Her old Dad had to admit there was something he didn't know."
Then Daphne said, "I had to tell him, finally. For the same reason we had to stop running from the police. I'm pregnant."
I put my arms around her and looked into her eyes. I kissed her, though it felt strange doing it in front of Dr. Crosse.
Then, we talked about what the President had
said. Should we continue to work for him? Dr. Crosse said, considering
the powers opposing us, we might as well go along with the President.
After all, he said, we would be safe, and have a good life. It was
better than being killed. We could go on with our subliminal studies.
I asked, "Will we go back to the ranch?"
Dr. Crosse shook his head. "Only drawback," he said. "We have to go back to One Corner."
My True Dad, at Last
We had no choice but to take their deal.
Our work still has to be kept secret. We are
valuable, though not irreplaceable, to the President's plans for a new
world system, that will be more amenable to our national needs. We will
go on living as long as our existence can be publicly denied, and not a
moment more. We are, as they say, off the books. The President, and his
team, have so far not allowed anyone to share or threaten their
continued secret monopoly on the techniques of mind-control which Dr.
Crosse, Daphne, myself, and the other original practitioners, still
develop in co-operative harmony with the President.
We all live in peace, in the town and
surrounding valley known as One Corner. I still come up with new ideas
for Dr. Crosse and the CIA, and in turn they keep me and my family in
the style to which we have become accustomed. From time to time I talk
to President Elam and he tells me one day they'll have a Pulitzer Prize
for subliminal artists, but that will take a few years.
They have turned the town, valley and hills
around One Corner into a government installation. The story given out
to the press was that the One Corner area had been horribly polluted by
the runoff from a chemical plant at the head of the valley. The plant
was long-closed, but the idea that its chemicals had leached into the
soil and water was far from unbelievable.
The people who saw me on my TV appearance when
I gave myself up have all been informed of their new situation. They
can no longer leave the valley, or have any contact with the outside
world. Fortunately, not too many people saw the broadcast on the day I
gave myself up, and this was always a community of isolated souls - jut
a few farms, a couple of stores - so there are few cover stories for
the CIA to create. Families (I understand from the men who told me - I
can't vouch for their honesty, but they are our only link with the
outside world) have been told that their loved ones died from the toxic
water or air here, that their bodies could not safely be transported
out of the valley, and no one could safely come here, to attend their
funerals. The CIA has also bought all the homes and farms from the
heirs of the supposedly-dead One Corner residents so there can be no
reason for any of them to come here looking for anything.
Here, the Government has also brought all of
my possible Dads. It was felt this was the only safe course of action,
after I had intruded into their lives, and their connection to me had
become known to others. All thirty-six of the possibles, and those of
their friends and families they wished to keep with them, have been
plucked from the general population, under one pretext or another, and
set down here, in our little community. Here, they are able to pursue
their former occupations, if there is any need for what they did in the
outside world. And if there isn't, the CIA still pays them to carry on,
and encourages them in every way to lead normal, productive lives. It
isn't always possible.
There is little for a detective to do here,
for example, and yet Mac 'Mac' MacDonald for a long time kept himself
fairly happy driving around the Valley trying to find the answer to the
question of the identity of my True Dad. He did this, even though I
told him I would not pay him to keep searching. He said the Government
was paying him, and I didn't feel I should stand in his way, or even
discourage him, when after all he had been consigned to this place,
like the rest of us, because of his connection to me, and he is only
really happy when he's on a case. For this reason, I permitted him to
question me, hour after hour, and for this reason, the Town Council
permitted him to continue his night-long stakeouts of the homes of
residents, even after the Citizens' Group for Privacy collected all
those signatures asking that he be stopped.
As for me, I like it here in One Corner. It is
a me-centered place. Everyone is here because he or she knows me. I
have all the Dads anyone could possibly want, although we don't really
get together that often - I being busy with my new inventions and the
kids and Daphne. They, engaged in their various activities, keeping
their journals. The journals of geniuses, after all. Because that's who
my Dads are, except for one of them, about whom more in a moment...
There is little strife in our community. Some
800 souls live here in quiet harmony. For a long time the only harsh
words I ever heard, directed by one resident against another, were when
they would fight over the question of my paternity.
"You're his father, you demented wretch!..."
"He looks a lot more like you in the big butt department!..."
"But he's got your weird posture doesn't he, you evil bastard!"
And similar words of disputation, would waft
gently across the Valley, carried with the pollen on the wind.
Sometimes, these arguments would result in violence, one Dad beating
another into insensibility, or setting fire to the home or barn of
another Dad. One time, Dr. Huss, my Nazi Dad, and the Minister Faroun,
my Black Muslim Dad, became so angry during a routine session of
passing off the responsibility for my genetic composition, that they
grabbed each other by the hair and went rolling down a hill together
trying to bite pieces out of one another's faces. Fortunately, they
landed in a soft, wet pile of horse manure.
Dr. Crosse occupies himself mostly in trying
to find out the equivalents, in animal languages, to the words "fuck,"
"sex," etc., to see if he can train animals through the use of
triggering phenomes.
We watch the news all the time, and read the
papers, but can only trust our keepers' word, that these are the actual
news shows and papers available to the rest of the country.
Recently, Dr. Crosse was asked - no, begged -
by one of the agents in charge of our valley, to debate Dr. Wilson
Brian Key, on a TV show in Canada. I hoped he would refuse, because
doing the show meant arguing as forcefully as he could against the
truth of everything that we had been doing all those years. Still, I
knew he would go, because the lure of seeing an outside place was so
strong with him. He debated Dr. Key. Dr. Crosse's strategy was to make
it sound like the work we do is still experimental, not likely to be of
any practical use for decades, if not centuries. He laughed in a
sparkling way whenever Dr. Key said something true, and tried to make
the thing sound absurd.
I felt sorry for Dr. Crosse, and for myself.
President Elam, who calls me now and then,
said the Government's idea is not to hide the truth from the people
forever, but only to delay it. "By the time America learns the Secret,
the shock will have been softened by The Subliminal Diet Book (which has already sold 16 million copies, and The Subliminal Sex Book ('How to make love to a woman before she knows you're in the room.')"
He said, "You've seen the ads on TV. We're
selling furniture, cars and clothes. Make-up and jewelry are making
subliminal claims. They claim to have subliminal messages embedded in
them, when in fact, they don't. That doesn't matter. All part of the
strategy. By the time the truth comes out, every American will think of
subliminal messages as his or her God-given right, and people will
march and throw stones for the right to have their children's minds
controlled."
The President made a commercial for his next
election, kidding the rumors that he won the last one via mind control,
and we're all sure that will make him even more adorable and puckish.
"To be elected by a trick," says President Elam in the commercial, "is
well within the structure of what is acceptable throughout the history
of Western Civilization. Is it not? Starting with the Trojan Horse. Or
Odysseus, when he defeated the Cyclops by introducing himself as Noman,
we have always recognized the technology of surprise. Don't hold it
against an old guy who loved his country too darned much to let a
Democrat be its President. If that's wrong, well I'm sorry."
Who knows? This kind of folksy, semi-honest
style may win him his re-election, or alternately, the American people
might rise up and tear him, his family and all of us here in One Corner
into thin strips of meat jerkie. Only time will tell.
* * * *
Daphne and I were married at the Church of
Marilyn. Now, most of us in One Corner belong to the Church, but ours
was the first wedding there. Maya performed the service, and since
Marilyn Monroe was an orphan, Maya added a sentence to the traditional
marriage vows, which we exchanged. After we promised to love, honor and
cherish one another, we said, "And we promise to love, honor and
cherish our children, no matter how they enter this world, or our home."
We have three kids now - two boys and a girl -
and to them I'm not off the books. I am their father, fully in the open
and unhidden.
* * * *
As for the question of who is my Actual and
True Dad, I had begun to think it would never be known. No one here -
myself least of all - is likely to believe anything our captors tell us
on the matter. Of course, we all had our theories, and I am still
saddened by the occasional fights that break out when two men try to
foist the responsibility of my siring onto one another, but these are
the price one pays to survive, I suppose.
I myself came to see Mr. Stengrow as my True
Dad, because he raised me, and he's the only one I can talk to about my
mother. Lately, I talk about her a lot. And to her. I love to sit with
her in the kitchen while she cooks, and I remember when I was a child,
and I was privileged to spend a few hours with her, shopping for
groceries, watching her make dinner, at those times I forgot I had a
father at all. Now, after all that had happened to me, I realized that
those were the best times, when I could imagine that just Mom and I
inhabited my world. Because, when all is said and done, your Mom is a
lot more important than your Dad, no matter who he is.
Still, as I went around here in One Corner,
visiting with or meeting the men who may have been my True Dad, I began
to ask some of the questions that had begun to trouble me. Questions
about that great intelligence I was supposed to have, and was told that
I had, because I was the product of Dr. Lord's genius sperm bank.
The most interesting question was: If I am so intelligent, how come I never meet anyone stupider than I am?
Sure, I met people all the time who knew less
about one thing or another than I did, but why in all my life had I
never met anyone to whom I could confidently (and affectionately)
point, and say, "That one is dumber than I am."
What is intelligence, anyway? Can it really be
quantified, like height or weight, or is it a general paste that holds
us in the world, meaning that if we are in the world, we have the
paste, which sticks to whatever we need to survive, and when the paste
dries up, we're dead? How come when I was in school, the kid with the
highest IQ and the kid with the lowest IQ could hold the same opinion
on any subject concerning which both of them held opinions?
Here was I with this genius Dad. And, on top
of that, I had been praised for my high intelligence by Dr. Crosse,
President Elam, and many others during the time I had been working with
them. I wondered, if I'm so smart, where are all the stupid people?
Maybe you have met them, you who read this.
Maybe you feel you are meeting one right here in my prose. That's fine
for you. You must be intelligent. But what about me? Where were they -
or even, where was he or she - even one person! - whom I could spend
some time with and come away with the assurance that there, at least,
was a person I was smarter than?
Now, isolated here at One Corner, with not
much to do, and finally despairing of ever learning the True Identity
of my True Dad, I decided to pass some time in the worthwhile search
for one or more people stupider than I was.
No sense looking among my Dads, or their
families, all of whom might be suspected of sharing at least some of
their greatness of mind. So, I turned my attention to the local
residents of One Corner who were trapped here with me. They were a
typical cross-section of smalltown folks. People with little ambition
(or they long ago would have left One Corner) little accomplishment (a
glance around town confirmed this) little reading and much TV watching.
Maybe, among this group, I would find my new grail - the person than whom I am smarter!
The morning I was to start my search, I went
out early, filled with the new energy every scientist knows at the
start of a new research project. The first person I saw was the milkman.
I took him to be a perfect example of an
average citizen of One Corner. Probably out here this morning doing
what he's been doing all his adult life. Leaving bottles of milk and
cream at the doors of his customers, taking away the empties. I guessed
he was one of the unfortunate residents of One Corner who had seen or
heard about my appearance on the local TV station, and so, thanks to
me, he was now forced to spend the rest of his days right here in our
valley. Maybe he didn't mind. I tried not to feel guilty about the One
Cornerites who had been trapped here with me and my Dads and the rest
of us. They, like me, were now the responsibility of the Government.
Back in Los Angeles, we had had our milk
delivered when I was growing up, but a few years ago, I forget when,
they stopped delivering, and everyone started getting their milk at the
supermarket along with all the other groceries. When I saw this
milkman, thoughts of those old days came over me, and I became
nostalgic. I said hello to him.
He was an average-looking man, about 45 years
old, not very tall, with a somewhat sad, quiet face. He had brown hair,
cut short and not well. His ears stood out on the sides of his head
like doorknobs. He wore a white dairy uniform and drove a big square
truck, with a picture of a cow on the side. The cow had a flower tied
over one ear. The milkman reached into the side of the truck, behind
the front seats, and pulled out a carrying tray. He deftly loaded the
tray with four milk bottles, stood upright, and returned my greeting.
"Mornin,'" he said.
"Looks like winter soon," said I.
"Looks like," he agreed, as he walked from his
truck to the house outside of which I happened to be standing when I
saw him. I watched him put down the milk bottles, pick up the empties,
put them in his tray, and start back to his truck. On the way back, he
stopped for a moment, right in front of me, and said, "We haven't met.
I'm Dan." We shook hands.
"I'm Reynold Stengrow," I said. He smiled, at the unnecessary nature of my announcement.
"Care to come along?" he asked kindly. "Always use the company."
"Sure," I said, with enthusiasm. He seemed
like a good fellow to spend a half hour with, and besides, he seemed
like a perfect candidate for that elusive prey of mine -
the-person-less-smart-than-I for whom I had determined to search.
Maybe, I thought, a few minutes of talk with this milkman will put this
whole intelligence thing in perspective for me. By studying his lack of
genius, I will learn to have a greater appreciation of my own generous
helping of it, I hoped.
I hopped on the truck, and so did he. I
accompanied him on his rounds. Our conversation was fragmented, because
he had to stop and jump out every minute or two, and get the tray, fill
it, go to the doors of the houses, put down the bottles, get the
empties, and so on.
His conversation, I soon realized, was
centered on milk, and on his role as a milkman. I asked him about some
trial then big on the news, a murder that had happened in Washington. I
said, "What a terrible thing for a man to do," meaning, to kill eight
people at a Thanksgiving dinner. His reply was, "The man probably
didn't get enough milk when he was growing up." I said, "He poisoned
them - eight innocent members of his own family!" to which Dan replied,
"If they had all drunk a glass of milk before dinner, it would have
coated their stomachs and they probably would have survived the whole
thing."
No matter what topic of conversation I started off with, somehow he responded in terms of milk and milk products.
I said, "Maryland is a beautiful state."
He said, "More dairy cows per acre than any
other place on earth, except maybe Wisconsin, and I say maybe with good
reason, because though a lot of people take it for granted that
Wisconsin is the Dairy State, they don't realize that since 1984..."
etc.
I asked what he thought of our President, Mr. Elam. He said, "The man's skin shows clear signs of dairy deprivation."
"Maybe he's worried about cholesterol," I suggested.
"Biggest myth in the world," said Dan, seeming
to spit at the thought of the word cholesterol. Then, he said in a way
that reminded me of a political rabble-rouser: "Dairy for babies, dairy
for toddlers, dairy for teens, dairy for grownups - we all need it -
milk is life!"
I thought, Well, maybe this is him - the one
who is dumber than I am - the one who can prove to me once and for all
that some people have more intelligence than others, simply by proving
that he has less than I. I was hopeful. The next day, I made sure to be
out on the street when he came by, to accompany him once again on his
rounds. I broached many subjects with him, and every time, he brought
it back to milk. But I wasn't sure yet. Was he really dumb, or was his
obsession with dairy products a weird form of intelligence? Possible, I
had to admit. And beyond that, what if everything he said was actually
some kind of game he was playing, only pretending to have no interests
outside of milk while actually using his "simple" speech to weave a
consistent and complex critique of the universe? How could I be sure? I
had to stick with him, keep notes, gather as much data as I could. For
this reason, I started to ride with him every morning. When I sensed he
might wish to go back to his old, solo delivery ways, I tried to make
myself useful to him, rushing to get the wire mesh tray and fill it,
and rushing to the doors to deliver the milk and pick up the empties,
all before he even stopped the truck.
I found I enjoyed being with him. I very much
enjoyed delivering the milk. I began to agree with him, that every
problem we have in America can be pretty clearly traced back to the sad
fact that daily milk delivery is no longer available to most of the
people in our nation. I remembered so lovingly those old days when I
used to open the door of our apartment in the morning and bring in
fresh milk for my morning cereal, and for Mr. Stengrow's coffee, that
he loved so well. I cried with Dan over the ugliness and unhealthiness
of these new cardboard milk containers that have polluted America for
the past fifteen years or so. I soon realized I had never enjoyed
anything - not school, not being called a genius, not working with
subliminals, not helping Mr. Elam to become President - nothing - as
well as I enjoyed the simple, neighbor-helping act of delivering the
milk in clear, clean bottles, every morning with Dan.
Soon, I forgot my search for the less-smart
individual science teaches us must exist somewhere. I forgot my work
with Dr. Crosse and I forgot all the scientific and social and
philosophical arguments I used to get embroiled in, with my various
Dads. All that talk seemed like so much babbling madness to me now, now
that I had found this decent, calm job, and this quiet, sensible man to
teach me the ropes of it. I saw all my putative Dads in a new light
now. No longer did I worry about their strange theories of life, or the
odd turns their lives had taken, or even the mixed effect which I
myself had had on their existences. Now, Dr. Huss became the man who
took two quarts of nonfat on Tuesdays and Fridays. Mr. Steinstein, who
woke early every morning to pound out TV scripts no one will ever film,
is the man who takes a bottle of milk and one of cream, and who has to
be reminded to return his empties.
One morning, about two weeks after I started
going on the rounds with Dan, we were talking about the football games
coming up that weekend, and Dan was telling me that he had heard a
reliable rumor that the Raiders drank more milk and ate more cottage
cheese than their opponents, the Giants, and that therefore he could
tell me without doubt that they would emerge victorious - when we
arrived at the home of my parents (Mr. and Mrs. Stengrow). There were
several houses in a row that got milk on this block, so Dan and I both
had to carry our mesh trays from the truck, and walk toward the houses
together. We were talking happily, when the door of my parents' house
opened, and there was my Mom, putting out two empty bottles. One of
them had a note rolled up and stuck in the neck of it. My Mom looked
very sweet, in her flannel housecoat, her hair in rollers, her eyes
bright and shining, as though she never slept.
She had set one bottle down beside the welcome mat and still held one in her hand when I called to her, "Hi, Mom!"
She looked up, slightly startled to hear a
voice so early in the morning. For a moment, it was hard to tell what
was going through her mind. She saw me, started to smile, then suddenly
froze her smile in a half-formed state, and let it melt away to a thin
frightened look. She glanced from my face to Dan's, then back to mine,
then back to Dan's, then back to mine, then back to Dan's then back to
mine, and the bottle in her hand slid to the concrete porch and
shattered.
She said to me, "Then, you know."
Then, I knew.
In the kitchen, a few minutes later, Dan and I
drank big glasses of milk, served by my mother. Dan said to her, "I
didn't say anything to the boy. I hope you believe me."
My mother came and sat down with us. She had a
mug of coffee with a picture of an Indian on a pony, shooting an arrow.
She said to Dan, "It's all right. I knew he was bound to find out
sooner or later."
Then she told me, "Well, Reynold, now you
know. Like many children born before around 1970, when home delivery
was phased out in most places, your real father, or True Dad as you
like to call him, was the milkman."
She smiled briefly at Dan, then looked at me
with seriousness. "I just got so tired of going to that Dr. Lord, and
his genius sperm bank, over and over, and it never took. I knew I had
to get pregnant, somehow, or kill myself from the sheer tedium of
talking about it, trying, trying, driving out to Burbank, that Nurse
Lilly, talking about geniuses with your father, and he is still your
father, Reynold, (she said, waving her hand toward the bedroom, where
Mr. Stengrow lay sleeping)... and then, one morning, like today, I was
putting out a note to tell the milkman to leave some extra bottles of
heavy cream for my Thanksgiving pies, and I went out into the hallway,
and there was... Dan..." She put her hand on top of his. "Over the
years, we had become acquainted, of course. I had always thought of him
as a friend. And on this morning I remembered all those rumors, about
women in our building, and up and down the street. I thought, maybe he
can help us, too..."
Then Dan said, "That was a great route, my
Fourth Street route." He drifted off into memory for a moment. Then, he
continued: "I was laid off a few days later. That was the last home
delivery in the Santa Monica area..." He paused to think about all that
had been lost. "I did a little prospecting out in New Mexico, got in a
car wreck, collected a good settlement, and just vegetated out there in
Yucaipa. I always missed my route. You never forget your route. Of
course, your mother and I didn't see each other for what? Almost twenty
years. Then, I saw your picture in the paper, and had the bright idea
of calling her up." He looked at her.
"Just in time to be picked up by the CIA wiretap they had on our condo," said my mother.
I looked downward, full of shame.
Dan hastened to relieve the mood of the
moment, saying, "Don't feel bad on my account, Reynold. When I got
here, and they told me I could have a route, like I did in the old
days, I became the happiest man in the world." Looking at him, I could
see he was telling the truth.
Was I looking at a possible answer, I
wondered, to the mystery of why I had never really felt like a
full-fledged genius? Yes, I was. This was my True Dad, Dan. His
interests were my interests, his social class was my social class. He
didn't think about being a genius. He had no great vision of the
future, toward which he was willing to work, and for which he was
willing to do anything in the world, from trickery to murder. He only
wanted to deliver good milk, and earn his living like a man.
Already, I could feel any interest I had ever
had in geniuses and their doings vanish into thin air, except that I
suddenly knew, without the slightest doubt, that all of them, medical,
engineering, legal, mathematical, musical and financial,
physics-directed and chemistry-driven, wise and hot-tempered, neurotic
and insensitive, all of them would lead better and happier lives, no
matter what their IQ scores might be, and they would be better family
men, and fathers, if they drank more milk. I knew they should also eat
large amounts of ice cream, and they would find peace, as I had.
In the near future, I knew, I would tell all
my Dads what I had discovered, so they would know the blessings of
milk. I felt I owed them that much. After all, I loved every one of
them, and wanted them all to be happy.
© Copyright 1995 Elia Katz
All rights reserved
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Identifier:
DLXNJCNVPC
Title:
Stengrow's Dad
Creator:
Elia Katz
Date:
7/26/2003