The Plant Read online

  Am I speaking of telepathy? Yes... and no. It might be fairer to say that I am speaking of a kind of passive psychokinesis. Dogs shy away from people with cancer; they smell it on them. So, at least, claims my dear old Aunt Olympia. In the same way I smelled Detweiller all over that box, and now I understand Kenton's upset better and have a good deal more sympathy for him. I think Carlos Detweiller must be dangerously insane... but the plant itself is no deadly nightshade or belladonna or Adder Toadstool (although it may have been any or all of those things in Detweiller's feverish mind, I suppose). It's only a very small and very tired-looking common ivy in a red clay pot.

  If not for the “nigger reaction” (Floyd Walker)-or the “human reaction” (his brother Riddley)-I might really have dumped the thing... but after that fit of the shakes, it seemed to me I had to go through with opening the package or deem myself less a man. I did so, in spite of any number of gruesome images-high explosive rigged to special pressure-tapes, noxious floods of black widow spiders, a litter of baby copperheads. And there it was, just a small ivy-plant with yellow-edged leaves (four of them) nodding from one tired, sagging stem. The soil itself is waxy brown. It smells swampy and unpleasant.

  There was a little plastic sign stuck in the earth which read:

  HI!

  MY NAME IS ZENITH

  I AM A GIFT TO JOHN

  FROM ROBERTA

  It was that flash of fear which drove me to open the package. Similarly, it's that same flash which has decided me against making sure that Kenton gets it after all, which would have been easy enough to do (“Dat plant, Mist Kenton? Oh, drat! I g'iss I fo'got whatchoo said. I am de mos f'gitten'est man!”). Let the ripples end; let him forget Detweiller, if that's what he wants. I've put Zenith the Common Ivy on a shelf in my janitorial-cum-mailroom cubicle-a shelf well above Kenton's eye-level (not that he stops in much anyway, unlike Gelb with his dice fixation). I'll keep it until it dies, and then I really will dump it down the incinerator chute. That will be the end of Detweiller fo sho.

  Got fifty pages done on the novel over the weekend.

  Gelb now owes me $75. 40.

  From The New York Post, page 1, March 4, 1981: INSANE GENERAL ESCAPES OAK COVE ASYLUM, KILLS THREE!!

  (Special to the Post) Major General (ret.) Anthony R. Hecksler, known to the commandos and partisans who followed him across France during World War II as “Iron-Guts” Hecksler, escaped from Oak Cove Asylum late last night, stabbing two orderlies and a nurse to death in his bid for freedom.

  General Hecksler was remanded to Oak Cove in the small upstate town of Cutlersville twenty-seven months ago, following his acquittal, by reason of insanity, on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and assault with intent to kill. His victim was Albany bus driver Herman T. Schneur, whom Hecksler claimed in a signed statement to be “one of the twelve North American foremen of the antichrist.”

  The Oak Cove dead have been identified as Norman Ableson, twenty-six; John Piet, forty; and Alicia Penbroke, thirty-four.

  State Police Lieutenant Arthur P. Ford was surprisingly gloomy when asked if he expected to recapture General Hecksler quickly. “We hope for a quick arrest, naturally,” he said, “but this is a man who trained guerilla units in World War II and in Korea, and who was consulted on more than one occasion by General Westmoreland in Viet Nam. He's seventytwo now, but still strong and amazingly agile, as his escape from Oak Cove shows.”

  Ford indicated he was referring to Hecksler's probable method of escape-a leap from a second floor window in the Oak Cove Administration Wing to the garden below (see photographs on pages 2, 3, and Center Section).

  Ford went on to caution everyone within the immediate area to be on the lookout for the mad General, whom he described as “extremely clever, extremely dangerous, and extremely paranoid.”

  In a brief press interview, Ellen K. Moors, the doctor in charge of Hecksler's case, agreed. “He had a great many enemies,” she said, “or so he imagined. His paranoid delusions were extremely complex, but he never lost track of the score. He was, in his way, a model inmate... but he never lost track of the score.”

  A source close to the investigation says Hecksler may have stabbed Ableson, Piet, and Pembroke to death with a pair of barber's shears. The source told the Post that there was no outcry; all three were stabbed in the throat, commando-style.

  (Related story P. 12)

  From the journals of Riddley Walker

  3/5/81

  What a difference a day makes!

  Yesterday Herb Porter was his usual self-fat, slovenly, smoking a cigar as he stood by the water-cooler, explaining to Kenton and Gelb how the great train of the world would run if he, Herbert Porter, were the engineer. The man is a walking Reader's Digest of rabbit-punch solutions, a compendium of declarative answers which are delivered amid the effluvium of cigar smoke and exquisitely bad breath. Close the borders and keep out the spies and wetbacks! End abortion on demand! Build more prisons! Upgrade possession of marijuana to a felony once again! Sell biochemical stocks! Buy cable-TV issues!

  He is, in his way-or was, until today-a wonderful man: rounded and perfect in his assurances, plated with prejudices, caprisoned about with cant, and possessed of just enough native wit to hold a job in a place like this, Porter is an evocation of the Great American Median. Even his occasional surreptitious expeditions into Sandra Jackson's office to sniff the seat of her chair please me-an endearing little loophole in the walking castle of complacency that is Massa Po'tuh.

  Oh, but today! What a different Herbert Porter crept into my janitorial cubbyhole today! The complacent, ruddy face had become pallid and trembling. The blue eyes shifted so regularly from side to side that Porter looked like a man watching a tennis match even when he was trying to stare right at me. His lips were so shiny with spittle that they looked almost varnished. And while he was of course still fat, he also looked as if he had somehow lost his surface tension-as if the essential Herb Porter had shrunk away from the borders of his skin, leaving that skin to sag in places where it had been previously stretched smooth.

  “He's out,” Porter whispered.

  “Who's dat, Mist Po'tuh?” I asked. I was genuinely curious; I could not imagine what mighty sling or engine could have breached such a gap in Castle Herbert. Although I suppose I should have guessed.

  He proffered me the paper-the Post, of course. He's the only one around here who reads it. Kenton and Wade read the Times, Gelb and Jackson bring the Times but secretly read the Daily News (the hand that rocks the cradle may rule the world, but de han which empty de white folks' wastebaskets know de secrets of de worl), but the Post was made for fellows such as Herb Porter. He plays Wingo religiously and says if he ever wins a bundle he is going to buy a Winnebago, paint the word WINGOBAGO on the side, and tour the country.

  I took it, opened it, and read the headline.

  “The General's escaped,” he whispered. His eyes stopped bouncing back and forth for a moment and he stared at me in dismay and utter horror. “It's as if that damned Detweiller cursed us. The General's escaped and I rejected his book!”

  “Now, now, Mist Po'tuh,” I said. “Ain't no need to take on so. Man lak dis prob'ly got fo-five dozen scores to settle befo he git to you.”

  “But I could be number one,” he whispered. “After all, I rejected his goddam book.”

  It was true, and it is ironic how two such fundamentally different men as Kenton and Porter have managed to get themselves into exactly the same situation this late wintereach the target of a rejected author (Detweiller's rejection a bit more dramatic than that of the Major-General, granted, but that was indubitably Detweiller's own fault) who just happens to be insane. The difference-I know it, even if no one else does (and I believe Roger Wade might)-is that, while Kenton thought there might actually be the germ of a book in Detweiller's obsession, Porter knew better concerning the General's. But Porter is one of those men who has read omnivorously-and vicariously-about World War II, that Pickett's Charge
of western man (western white man) in the 20th century, and he knew who Hecksler was... in a war filled with military celebrities Hecksler was, granted, of the Hollywood Squares type (if you see what I mean), but to Porter he was somebody. So he asked to see the completed manuscript of Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers in spite of the abysmal outline, thereby encouraging a man who was, by the quality and content of his own written words, a palpable psychotic. I felt that the result and his present terror, although unforeseen, were partly his own fault.

  I allowed as how it was true that he could be number one on the General's hit list (if indeed the poor madman is doing anything other than cowering in drainage ditches or scouring alley garbage cans for offal at this point), but reiterated that I thought it unlikely. I added that he might well be caught before he could get within fifty miles of New York City even if he had decided to come after Porter, and finished by telling him that many psychotics released suddenly into an uncontrolled environment took their own lives... although I did not say so in exactly those words.

  Porter regarded me suspiciously for a moment and then said, “Riddley-don't take offense at this—”

  “Nawsah!”

  “Have you really been to college?”

  “Yassah!”

  “And you took psychology courses?”

  “Yassah, I sho did.”

  “Abnormal psychology?”

  “Yassah, and I'se pow'ful familier wid de suicidial syndrome associated wid de paranoid-psychotic personality! Why, dat Gen'l Hecksler could be slittin' his wrists or garglin' wid a lightbulb even while we's heah talkin, Mist Po'tuh!”

  He looked at me for a long time and then said, “If you've been to college, Riddley, why do you talk that way?”

  “What way is dat, Mist Po-tuh?”

  He regarded me for a moment longer and then said, “Never mind.” He leaned close-close enough so I could smell cheap cigars, hair tonic, and the graywater stench of fear. “Can you get me a gun?”

  For a moment I was literally without a response-which is like saying (Floyd would, anyway) that China was for a moment without manpower. I had an idea that he had changed the subject completely, and that what I had heard as Can you get me a gun? had actually been Can you get me some fun, as in ho. Definition of a ho: dahk-skin woman who do it fo money on account of de food-stamps is gone and de las fix be cookin in de spoon. My response was to either fall down, shrieking wildly with laughter, or to throttle him until his face was as purple as his tie. Then, belatedly, I began to understand he really had said gun... but in the meantime he had taken the overload in my mental switchboard for refusal. His face fell.

  “You're sure?” he asked. “I thought that up there in Harlem—”

  “Ah lives in Dobbs Ferry, Mist' Po'tuh!”

  He merely waved this aside, as if we both knew my Dobbs Ferry address was just a convenient fiction I maintained-that I might even actually go there after work, but of course was drawn back to the velvety reaches beyond 110th as soon as the sun went down.

  “Ah g'iss I could git you a gun, Mist' Po'tuh, suh,” I said, “but it wouldn't be no better or wuss'n one you could git yo'sef-a . 32... maybe a . 38...” I winked at him. “And a gun you buy under de countuh in a bah, cain't never tell it ain't goan blow up in yo face fust time you pulls de triggah!”

  “I don't want anything like that, anyway,” Porter said morosely. “I want something with a laser sight. And exploding bullets. Did you ever see Day of the Jackal, Riddley?”

  “Yassah, and it sho was fine!”

  “When he shot the watermelon... plowch!” Porter tossed his arms wide to indicate how the watermelon had exploded when the assassin tried an exploding bullet on it in The Day of the Jackal, and one of his hands struck the ivy sent to Kenton by the mysterious Roberta Solrac. I had all but forgotten it, although it's been less than two weeks since I put it up there. I tried to assure Porter again that he was probably far from the top of Hecksler's perhaps infinite list of pet paranoias, and that the man was, after all, seventy-two.

  “You don't know some of the stuff he did in Big Two,” Porter said, his eyes beginning to move hauntedly from side to side again. “If those guys who hired the Jackal had hired Hecksler instead, DeGaulle never would have died in the rack.” He wandered off then, and I was glad to see him go. The smell of cigars was beginning to make me feel mildly ill. I took down Zenith the Common Ivy and looked at him (it is ridiculous to assign a male pronoun to an ivy, and yet I did it automatically-I, who usually write with the shrewish care of a French petit bourgeoise housewife picking over fruit in the marketplace). I began this entry by saying what a difference a day makes. In the case of Zenith the Common Ivy, what a difference five days has made. The sagging stem has straightened and thickened, the four yellowish leaves have become almost wholly green, and two new ones have begun to unfurl. All of this with absolutely no help from me at all. I watered it and noticed two other things about my good old buddy Zenith-first, it's even put out its first tendril-it barely reaches to the lip of the cheap plastic pot, but it's there-and second, that swampy, unpleasant smell seems to have disappeared. In fact both the plant and the soil in which he is potted smell quite sweet.

  Perhaps it's a psychic ivy. If General Hecksler shows up here at good old 490 Park, I must be sure to ask him, hee-hee! Got twenty pages done on the novel this week-not much, but think (hope!) I am approaching the halfway point. Gelb, who had a modest run of luck yesterday, tried to push it today-this was about an hour before Porter hopped in, looking for armaments. Gelb now owes me $81. 50.

  March 8, 1981

  Dear Ruth,

  Just lately you've been harder to reach on the phone than the President of the United States-I swear to God I'm getting to hate your answering machine! I must confess that tonightthe third night of “Hi, this is Ruth and I can't come to the phone right now, but...”-I got a little nervous and called the other number you gave me-the super. If he hadn't told me he'd seen you going out around five with a big load of books under your arm, I think I might have asked him to check and make sure you were okay. I know, I know, it's just the time difference, but things have gotten so paranoid here lately that you wouldn't believe it. Paranoid? Weird is a better word, maybe. We'll probably talk before you receive this, making ninety per cent of this letter obsolete (unless I send it Federal Express, which makes long distance look like an austerity measure), but if I don't narrate it by some means or other I think I may explode. I understand from Herb Porter, who is nearly apoplectic (a condition I sympathize with more than I would heretofore have believed, following l'affair Detweiller), that General Hecksler's escape and the murders which attended it have made the national news the last two nights, but I assume you haven't seen it-or didn't make the connection-or I would have heard from you via Ma Tinkerbell ere now (prolix as ever, you see-would that I could be as succinct as Zenith's faithful custodian Riddley!). If you haven't heard, the enclosed Post clipping (I didn't bother to include the centerfold photo of the asylum with the obligatory dotted line marking the dotty General's likely route of escape and the obligatory X's marking the locations of his victims) will bring you up to date as quickly and luridly as possible.

  You may remember that I mentioned Hecksler to you in a letter only six weeks ago-something like that, anyway. Herb rejected his book, Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers, and provoked a barrage of paranoid hate-mail. Joking aside, his bloody escape has created a real atmosphere of unease here at Z. H. I had a drink with Roger Wade after work tonight in Four Fathers (Roger claims that the owner, a genial man named Ginelli with a soft voice and these odd, gleeful eyes, is a mafioso) and told him about Herb's visit to me that afternoon. I pointed out to Herb that it was ridiculous for him to be as frightened as he obviously is (it's sort of funny-under his steely Joe Pyne Exterior, the resident Neanderthal turns out to be Walter Mitty after all) and Herb agreed. Then, after a certain amount of patently artificial small talk, he asked me if I knew where he could get a gun. Mystified-sometimes you
r ob'dt correspondent is amazingly slow in making the obvious connections, m'dear-I mentioned the sporting goods store five blocks from here, at Park and 32nd.

  “No,” he said impatiently. “I don't want a shotgun or anything like that.” Here he lowered his voice. “I want something I can carry around with me.”

  Roger nodded and said Herb had been into his office around two, feeling him out on the same subject.

  “What did you say?” I asked him.

  “I reminded him that the penalties for carrying concealed weapons without a permit in this state are damned severe,” Roger said. “At which point Herb drew himself up to his full height [which is, Ruth, about five-seven] and said, 'A man doesn't need a permit to protect himself, Roger. '”

  “And then?”

  “Then he walked out. And tried you. Probably tried Bill Gelb as well.”

  “Don't forget Riddley,” I said.

  “Ah, yes-and Riddley.”

  “Who might just be able to help him.”

  Roger ordered another bourbon, and I was thinking how much older than his actual forty-five he is coming to look when he suddenly grinned that boyish, winning grin that so charmed you when you first met him at that cocktail party in June of '80-the one at Gahan and Nancy Wilson's place in Connecticut, do you remember? “Have you seen Sandra Jackson's new toy?” he asked. “She's the one Herb should have gone to for black market munitions.” Roger actually laughed out loud, a sound I have heard from him very seldom in the last eight months or so. Hearing it made me realize again, Ruth, how much I like and respect him-he could have been a really great editor somewhere-perhaps even in the Maxwell Perkins league. It seems a shame that he's ended up piloting such a leaky craft as Zenith House.