Undertow Page 9

  “I guess it’s an unfair question,” Barnstable said. “We’ll just have to see how our strategy unfolds, but we can, at least, use the traditional measuring devices.” He turned to Al Simon. “Today’s Monday. In one week I’d like a poll taken, on a national level, with a state breakout. I want to know how the senator stands in peoples’ minds. Not a presidential preference poll, although I have a feeling Harris and Gallup will do it. I’m looking for some fix on his lowest ebb. I figure that time will bring him up again. And our people, particularly our money people, have got to see recovery—tangible recovery. We’ll do it maybe three weeks from now, then three months.”

  “We’ll need some strategy to hold them in line during that period,” Kessler pointed out. “In any event, our financial situation is thrown all out of whack. I’ll have to check all the accounts and start really watching the buck. I have a feeling that our contributions will dry up for the next few months. We may even have to cut payroll, although to do so would indicate that we were hurting. You’ve got to look like a winner if you want backing, and Max Schwartz must be persuaded to stick with us.”

  “And, Davis,” Barnstable said. “I really would like a running analysis from you on the efforts of our media strategy, in addition to the poll material. Put two or three of your brightest guys on it and come up with, say, a daily verbal report for the next two weeks. Nothing elaborate. Just the parameters. But nothing, absolutely nothing, in writing.”

  “Should be no trouble,” Davis said.

  “Another important point is security,” Barnstable said. “Let’s not stretch this operation beyond what is manageable security-wise. A leak from any of us, no matter how inadvertent, could be damaging. So, please.” He paused. “Do I have to say more?”

  The meeting broke up. Henry Davis found the typewriter, rolled up his sleeves, and began pecking away at the statement. Outside, the crowd seemed to be gathering in numbers. Curiosity about other people’s misfortunes is a powerful force.

  There was something eerie about everything that was happening. Besides, it was happening so damned fast that it was hard to get a fix on it, hard to get your bearings. But the thing that was really annoying me was that the whole episode was losing its human dimension—at least, to me. We talked. We analyzed. We came up with strategies. But everything seemed so remote from—let’s call it humanness. It seemed so unmanageable. Maybe I was just pissed-off because we weren’t in control. We had been in control for so long, and suddenly we were floating on tides over which only the cosmic force had control. Cosmic force—Christ, is that me talking?

  XVII

  From somewhere far away, through heavy layers of unconscious fog, Ernie Rowell could hear the flat, even voice emerge talking about the weather being partly cloudy; and then his eyes blinked open into the darkness. He seemed to emerge from one of those deep blackout sleeps, because it took him a long moment to find his bearings, replete with the beginnings of panic, lapping at the edges of his mind.

  The warm, silken flesh of Ellen’s body restored his confidence. He was at Ellen’s. It was five-thirty in the morning, still black as pitch, and he had to get his ass out of this safe cocoon and into the cavernous city room at the Washington Chronicle.

  “This is cruel and inhuman treatment,” he hissed, pressing close to Ellen, cupping her right breast, then teasing the nipple. The nipple hardened. Ellen stirred.

  “Something to remember me by,” he whispered, then cleared his naked body of the covers, hoping the chill would encourage his awakening.

  “Off to fight the windmills,” he cried, bounding out of bed.

  He dressed in the half-light, poking around on his hands and knees for his undershorts and socks, misplaced in the heat of urges that had washed over them last night. It was good, he remembered, and then sadly recalled that it could have been a great Sunday—a languid morning of sex, coffee, croissants, the New York Times and the Chronicle, then later bicycling across Memorial Bridge along the Potomac. He found his clothes and dressed.

  Peering back at him through the mirror, he saw himself—a roundish face, the beginning of a whiskey bloat, hair curly and falling in sloppy ringlets over the ears, eyes myopic in their gold-rimmed lenses. As always, he was missing his collar stays, and his shirt had the look of long, hard use emphasized by the badly knotted tie, slightly stained. Ellen, in their six months together, had tried to unslop him, but he unfailingly fell apart by the end of his day, which always finished when the bureaucracy’s began. When everyone was fresh, he was stale.

  He bent over the sleeping figure and blew in her ear. She stirred, lifted a bare arm from under the covers, and stroked his head.

  “Be back by three,” he said, kissing her earlobe.

  “You’ll know where to find me.”

  “Don’t bother to dress.”

  “Ummm.” Her hand dropped and she sailed off to sleep again.

  From her apartment on New Hampshire Avenue, he began the four block walk to the Chronicle. The streets were empty and the lights still on as he quickly walked east, conscious always of the fear that, despite his protestations to himself, danger lurked in these streets. Such exaggerated fear will destroy our cities, his head would say, but somewhere at the base of his spine he was still afraid.

  But he did enjoy walking down deserted streets. Even when he lived in New York, walking at odd hours from his apartment at First and Sixtieth to the New York News, there was the same feeling of delicious aloneness and, at the same time, omnipotence, as if the city and all that was in it belonged to him, was his to do with what he wished.

  And if he really could do what he wished, he would erase the filth and decay, inanimate and human, and make the world one big festival of life, perhaps complete with rock bands and pot and good vibes and love—like Woodstock, where he had been, and which was the high point the absolute high point, of his twenty-six years. His mind stubbornly refused to inhibit the intensity of the memory. It was like an instant playback, complete with smells, sights, feelings, all that mass of humanness, his heart racing in tandem with the sweet electric joy of the scene, an ocean of throbbing life.

  Even now, years later, the memory recharged him, with its assurance, and most of all, its hope. We must never again be bullshitted. We are the generation that will unite the world. God, was he proud of his generation. We taught the bastards a little religion. We rammed it to them because of their stinking war. We made them see how pollution was strangling the country—not just smoke or sewage or physical waste, but the other pollution, the pollution of lies, deception, and bullshit. Of course, the bastards had not yet learned their lesson, but the denouement was coming, because he and all that generation were moving in on them, eating, like termites, into the very foundations of the system, like a vast underground army. And he was one termite burrowing into the media. He knew who his comrades were and they knew him. They spoke in signals—symbols—and collected acts of faith like stamps or coins.

  Six months at the Chronicle had shaken, but not yet wholly obliterated, his faith that the movement’s center was holding. But his faith, like Job’s, had been sorely tried. He saw venality and deception on a grand scale in the panorama of events that cascaded over the lens of his vision with ever-increasing velocity. And yet through the gushing, trembling white water, he could see, still see, some pure blue sky. Toilers in the movement were still to be found, standing like missed targets in a shooting gallery. They were in the back row to be sure, but there they were, writing speeches, influencing political policy, criticizing, putting the liars down, burrowing in.

  Was he measuring up? The question gnawed at him, a constant irritation. There was always that conscience reading terror that he was walking the thin line between copping out and making out. He had come a long way from Williamsport, P.A. where the old ethic had sunk its roots from the courthouse in the square to the very center of the earth’s guts, where it had found some magnetic mother lode. For no matter how far he and all the sons and daughters of Will
iamsport, P.A., had strayed from that place in the square, they could always feel the pulling power of that magnetic force. And it made them feel guilty, because they had left the town to the termites. But even through the guilt, they secretly longed for it, knowing, at the same time, that it was gone.

  No matter what events had intervened, the good old American fantasy of returning to the faded main street of Williamsport, P.A. on a great white charger, preceded by the high school band and the good old boys of the American Legion, with all the good citizens of town lining both sides of the street and his mom and dad up there on the reviewing stand along with the mayor and Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Jim and the rest of them, still had the power to crowd out all the new dreams. When he was weakest—like the time his first by-line popped up on the Chronicle—he felt, he truly felt, that he would do almost anything to get more and more recognition, and hang the movement, for that one glorious moment on the White Charger down Main Street in Williamsport, P.A.

  Even his knowing that the fantasy was a mendacious myth could not cool its ardor. It was like some lustful temptation that would never, could never, be consummated. And if what was happening, was really happening, then Main Street, and all the Main Streets of America would be, or had become, little more than a stagnant, open sewer with all the dead dreams of the national pride scumming the top.

  He truly believed that it was his generation above all, who had first seen the stagnation take hold; had seen it in the obscenity of the men who ruled their lives, bullshitting them with their artful little tricks, pandering to the prejudices that had been put inside them by their fathers.

  Tell us the truth, by God, his generation had shouted. He could still hear the sound of it through the din of the shooting gallery. And hearing it so clearly made him sure again that he was still among the standing targets. He prayed that he had the strength to remain standing, for he could now see the casualties of his sweet generation flopped over beside him, falling daily. Someone, he was sure, would emerge to lead them, to galvanize them into a force that would strike back, a spearhead right into the barrels of their guns.

  Those we lose, we lose. Fuck ’em! Natural genetic selection. He hoped he would find the strength to stay angry.

  Sometimes he had to dig far, far back to find that pure anger again—maybe even as far as the funeral of Hank Petrucci, who came back from Vietnam in a telegram. They all went to the service at the Catholic church, which smelled of wet stones. The sound of Mrs. Petrucci’s wailing drowning out the priest’s intonations seemed to heighten the frustration and futility of the service, since there was no flag-draped coffin at the time and a piece of the grief was handed around to each of them like communion wafers. It was not the memory of old Hank, pumping gas, fixing cars, greasing up his crew cut, strutting around town in his leather jacket with all those shiny buttons, dumb and cocky but alive, that sustained the anger. Only later, after the service had locked itself in the memory bank, when people talked about it and wrote about it in the papers and put flags at half mast and added another gold star to the memorial plaque in the town square that it began to sink in that none of them really knew why Hank Petrucci had hung up his oil streaked jeans and had his ass blown to bits.

  Mr. Petrucci’s gas station had become a shrine to Hank with a gold star hanging in the office window and pictures of Hank in uniform and other memorabilia on the dirty walls—a track medal from Junior High, a copy of the telegram of death, even a picture of himself and Hank when they were kids, before divergent aspirations intervened. He even understood when Mr. Petrucci treated him like crap when he came by the station during a Penn State recess with his long hair and wire-rimmed glasses, “Hank would’ve kicked you dumb hippies right ina labonz,” he had mumbled.

  “Hey, Mr. Petrucci, it’s me, Ernie.”

  “Hey Ern, whyn’t you cutcha hair. Don’t be like dem bums. Goddam commie shits.”

  It was being a pariah in those early days that pushed them in among their own kind, the kids about his age, to whom Vietnam was a sword of Damocles and, above all, definitely not worth dying for. What the fear of this foreign death had done was to open their eyes and shake them loose and make them promise themselves that the big boys would never again move them around like chess pieces. “Don’t trust the bastards” became the slogan.

  Sometimes, he had all he could do to hear it again through the earsplitting roar of later considerations—earning a living, thinking of the future, knowing that the thirties were coming up fast and seeing his contemporaries flop over into the stagnant pool of the middle class with its view of America as a clipped front lawn and two squirts of an aerosol deodorant.

  In the city room, the night city editor clacked away at his typewriter, doing the assignment sheet for later in the morning when the bulk of the staff would arrive. Ernie Rowell went to his desk at the far end of the room, lit a cigarette, and uncovered the hot, black coffee that he had bought at the vending machine near the elevators. He picked up the phone and dialed the night city editor.

  “What’s on?”

  “I got some routine rewrite jobs. Get off your ass and walk over here.”

  He put the phone down and laughed. That Brady was one mean son-of-a-bitch, a relic of the old school although he was not yet fifty. But he was taught the old ways by the Hecht and MacArthur types and looked on the crowd of newly arrived long-haired men and women with their funny glasses as putrid dung.

  “Snotty, wet-behind-the-ear crud,” he would say, tempting them to bite at the bait. As Ernie walked over to him, container in hand, cigarette dangling from his lips, he could hear the hoarse bell of the wire service bulletin.

  “Rip that,” Brady yelled at a copy boy who was busy slitting through a mountain of handouts. The boy, eager to please, rushed to the wire room, tore off the copy, and brought it to the city desk, reading it as he came.

  “Shit,” he said. “Senator James got a problem.”

  Brady read the copy and whistled. He handed it to Ernie Rowell.

  “How do you read that, hot shot?” he asked.

  “I read it as a good story,” Ernie said, his stomach tightening. People from the movement were banking on James. Christ! He could be their man.

  “So the cocksucker finally got caught,” Brady said, his eyes glistening, enjoying the moment. He sat back and put his hands behind his head. Here was one focus of his bitterness, Ernie thought. Scratch Brady and you’d find a bigot, a hater. The whole world was too dumb for a heavy failure like Brady. Perhaps that was why he never made it at the Chronicle. After all, Chuck Chalmers, the executive editor, was James’s friend and politically the Chronicle and James were right in line.

  “I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” Ernie said.

  “Outing—see the word outing?” Brady said. “What do you think that means?”

  “I still say it’s not conclusive.” You cynical bastard, Ernie thought.

  Brady smiled and dialed the phone.

  “Chuckie baby will have to call the shots on this one.”

  Brady played it straight with Chalmers. He read him the copy, then looked up at Ernie Rowell.

  “Ernie Rowell’s here. He could get up there in two and a half, maybe three hours by car. I’m sure we could pick up wire photos. Okay, we’ll send our own photographer. Here, Rowell, talk to Mr. Chalmers.”

  It had all happened so fast. Ernie felt his voice waver.

  “I want you to call me personally just as soon as you get the lay of the land. We’ll probably put a few reporters on it once we see how the story is rolling. I know you can handle it, Ernie,” said Chalmers.

  “I’m sure I can.”

  “But keep in close touch with me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How do you personally feel about the senator?”

  “Very good vibes.”

  “Good.” There was a pause. “Boy, that son-of-a-bitch at the White House will enjoy this one
with his morning Sanka,” Chalmers said. Then he hung up.

  “Okay, Rowell, start rolling.”

  “I’m off,” He started to leave.

  “And don’t get your cock caught in your zipper.”

  It wasn’t until he picked up his car and was heading out toward the Beltway that he began to think of that parting remark of Brady’s. He wants me to discover the worst, he thought. Some people are happiest when helping to increase other people’s misfortune. But then again, Brady was a professional, and the business had made him a cynic. Or was it simply that Brady hated the paper, hated his failure, hated himself, like all the pigs in this country, all the rest of the unfeeling bastards that run the system?

  He checked himself. It wasn’t professional. His job was to write the truth and let the chips fall where they may. No matter how it hurt. And so what if the Senator was shacking up with a broad over the weekend. What’s wrong with that? Hell, he understood. It took the pressure off. It was healthy. He thought of Ellen, her lush naked body tucked away between the sheets. The movement would understand.

  But would the others? There’s the rub, he thought. Middle class morality. No, the country wasn’t quite ready to have a cocksman at its helm. He enjoyed the pun. Not that we didn’t have one before. He shook off the thought. It was corroding his objectivity. He was first and foremost a journalist, a reporter for America’s most powerful newspaper. He must take this responsibility seriously. Besides, for a young reporter, this was the opportunity one fantasized about. He flicked on his radio to WAYE and let the rock music soothe him.

  “I’m gonna be as objective as hell,” he said aloud, pressing hard on the accelerator, “no matter how much it hurts.”

  XVIII

  Don slept for two hours. By the time he had put himself together, the crowd in front of the beach house was enormous. The television boys had arrived. I counted six crews, not to mention the nest of still photographers and a growing cluster of seedy looking reporter types. The area around them was littered with coffee containers and sandwich wrappers, the inevitable trademark of the traveling press. Thankfully, there weren’t any vendors of souvenirs. Ordinarily, the crowd of news hawks would have been a welcome sight, but in the cold greyness of this particular morning, they were depressing.