The Plant Page 8

  I expect to speak to Ruth tonight. By exercising all of my willpower I have managed to hold off on calling her, expecting each day that she must call me. Maddening images of her and the odious Toby Anderson cavorting together-the locale which keeps recurring is a hot-tub. So I'll call her. So much for willpower.

  If I had a return address for Carlos Detweiller I think I'd drop him a postcard: “Dear Carlos-I know all about covening the powers of Hell. Your Ob'd Servant, Poop-Shit Kenton.”

  Why I bother to write all this crud down, or why I keep plowing through the stacks of old unreturned manuscripts in the mailroom next to Riddley's janitorial closet, are both mysteries to me.

  March 23, 1981

  My call to Ruth was an utter disaster. Why I should be sitting here and writing about it when I don't even want to think about it defies reason. Perversity upon perversity. Actually, I do know-I have some dim idea that if I write it down it will lose some of its power over me... so let me by all means confess, but the less said, the better.

  Have I written here that I cry very easily? I think so, but I haven't the heart to actually look back and see. Well, I cried. Maybe that says it all. Or maybe it doesn't. I guess it doesn't. I had spent the day-the last two or three days, actually-telling myself that I would not a.) cry, or b.) beg her to come back. I ended up doing c.) both. I've had a lot of gruff locker room chats with myself over the last couple of days (and mostly sleepless nights) on the subject of Pride. As in, “Even after everything else is gone, a man's got his Pride.” I would draw some lonely comfort from this thought and fantasize myself as Paul Newman-that scene in Cool Hand Luke where he sits in his cell after his mother's death, playing his banjo and crying soundlessly. Heart-rending, but cool, definitely cool.

  Well, my cool lasted just about four minutes after hearing her voice and having a sudden total remembrance of Ruthsomething like an imagistic tattoo. What I'm saying is that I didn't know how gone she was until I heard her say “Hello? John?”-just those two words-and had this searing 360 degree memory of Ruth-God, how here she was when she was here!

  Even after everything else is gone, a man's got his Pride? Samson might have had similar sentiments about his hair.

  Anyway, I cried and I begged and after a little while she cried and in the end she had to hang up to get rid of me. Or maybe the odious Toby-I never heard him but am somehow sure he was in the room with her; I could almost smell his Brut cologne-picked the phone out of her hand and did her hanging up for her. So they could discuss his love-ring, or their June wedding, or perhaps so he could mingle his tears with hers. Bitter-bitter-I know. But I've discovered that even after Pride has gone, a man's got his Bitterness.

  Did I discover anything else this evening? Yes, I think so. That it is over-genuinely and completely over. Will this stop me from calling her again and debasing myself even further (if that is possible)? I don't know. I hope so-God, I do. And there's always the possibility that she'll change her phone number. In fact, I think that's even a probability, given tonight's festivities.

  So what is there for me now? Work, I guess-work, work, and more work. I'm tunneling my way steadily into the logjam of manuscripts in the mailroom-unsolicited scripts which were never returned, for one reason or another (after all, it says right in the boiler-plate that we accept no responsibility for such orphan children). I don't really expect to find the next Flowers in the Attic in there, or a budding John Saul or Rosemary Rogers, but if Roger was wrong about that, he was sublimely right about something much more important-the work is keeping me sane.

  Pride... then Bitterness... then Work.

  Oh, fuck it. I'm going to go out, buy myself a bottle of bourbon, and get shitty-ass drunk. This is John Kenton, signing off and going for the long bomb.

  From the journals of Riddley Walker

  3/25/81

  After what seems like ten weeks of unadulterated excitement—all of it the unhealthiest variety—things at Zenith House seem to have finally settled back into their accustomed drone. Porter sneaks into Jackson's office and sniffs the seat of her office chair during the five-minute period which comes every morning between ten and ten-thirty when the seat is vacant (it is during this half-hour each morning that Ms. Jackson removes herself and a copy of either Vogue or Better Homes and Gardens to the ladies' bog, where she has her daily dump); Gelb has resumed his surreptitious visits to the Riddley Walker Casino and after a rash double-or-nothing proposal earlier this week now owes me $192. 50; Herb Porter, after his brief fugue, has once again mounted into the seat of the great political locomotive which he imagines only himself, of all the earth's billions, really capable of driving; and I have resumed these pages after a three-week hiatus in which I have peacefully swept dirt by day and spread narrative by night—and if that is not pomposity masquerading as eloquence, then nothing is.

  But the accustomed drone is not quite the same as before, is it? There are two principal reasons for this. One is down the hall and one is right here in my little janitorial cubby... or perhaps it's only in my head. I would give a great deal to know which, and please believe me that my tongue is nowhere near my cheek when I say so. The change down the hall is, of course, John Kenton. The change in here (or in my head) is Zenith the Common Ivy.

  Herb Porter doesn't realize that anything at all is wrong with Kenton. Bill Gelb has noticed but doesn't care. It was Sandra Jackson who asked me yesterday if I had any idea why John had suddenly decided to go through every old manuscript in that corner of the mailroom I think of as The Isle of Forgotten Novels.

  “No ma'am!” I said. “I sho don't!”

  “Well, I wish he'd stop,” she said. She popped open her compact, peered into it, and began to poke at her hair with an afro comb. “I can't even go in there anymore without sneezing until I'm just about blue. Everything's covered with dust and all that dry creepy stuff that comes out when those cheap padded mailers tear open. You must hate it in there.”

  “It sh

  From the dispatches of Iron-Guts Hecksler

  Apr 1 81 0600 hrs Pk Ave So NYC

  City successfully infiltrated. Objective in view. Not this very moment of course. My current location=alley behind Smiler's Market, corner Pk & 32nd. Workplace of Designated Jew almost directly across from my bivouac. Disguised as “Crazy Guitar Gertie” and worked like a charm. No gun but good knife in plastic bag #1 of “homeless person” crap. 2 foremen of the Antichrist working at Satan's House of Zenith showed up 1730 hours yesterday afternoon. One (code name ROGER DODGER) went into market. Bought garlic by smell. Supposed to improve sex-life, HA!! Other (code name JOHN THE BAPTIST) waited outside. Back to me. Could have killed him with no problem. One quick slash. Jugular and carotid. Old commando move. This old dog remembers all his old tricks. Didn't, of course. Must wait for Designated Jew. If others stay out of my way, they may live. If they don't, they will certainly die. No prisoners. BAPTIST gave me two dollars. Cheapskate! Best plan still seems to wait until weekend (i. e. Apr 4–5) and then infiltrate building. Lie low inside until Monday morning (i. e. Apr 6). Of course D. J. may come along before then but cowards travel in packs. Will do you no good D. J. In the end, your meat is mine, HA! “Beaches are sandy, some shores are rocky, I'm going to ventilate, A Designated Mockie.” More dreams of CARLOS (code name DESIGNATED SPIC). I think he is close. Wish I had a picture. Must be crafty. Guitar & wig=good props. DAY OF THE GENERAL instead of DAY OF THE JACKAL, HA!! Guitar needs new strings. Still play pretty well & still sing “like a bird in a tree.” Got suppositories. Dropped load. Can think more clearly in spite of brain-killing transmissions.

  Must now play waiting game.

  Not the first time.

  Over and out.

  From The New York Times, April 1, 1981 Page B-1, National Report

  COMMUTER CRASH KILLS 7 IN R. I.

  By James Whitney

  Special to The Times

  CENTRAL FALLS, RHODE ISLAND: A Cessna 404 Titan commuter airplane owned and operated by Ocean State Airwa
ys crashed shortly after takeoff from Barker Field in this small Rhode Island city yesterday afternoon, killing both pilots and all five passengers. Ocean State Airways has been running shuttle flights to New York City's LaGuardia since 1977. OCA Flight 14 was airborne for less than two minutes when it crashed in a vacant lot only a quarter of a mile from its takeoff point. Witnesses said the aircraft banked low over a warehouse, narrowly missing the roof, just before going down.

  “Whatever was wrong must have gone wrong right away,” said Myron Howe, who was cutting weeds between Barker Field's two runways when the accident occurred. “He got upstairs and then he tried to come on back. I heard one engine cut out, then the other. I saw both props were dead. He missed the warehouse, and he missed the access road, but then he went in hard.” Preliminary reports indicate no maintenance problems with the C404, which is powered by two 375 horsepower turbo-charged piston engines. The make has an excellent safety record overall, and the aircraft which crashed had less than 9000 hours on its clock, according to Ocean State Airways President George Ferguson. Officials from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have launched a joint investigation of the crash.

  Killed in the accident, the first in Ocean State's four-year history, were John Chesterton, the pilot, and Avery Goldstein, the co-pilot, both of Pawtucket. Robert Weiner, Tina Barfield, and Dallas Mayr have been identified as three of the downed aircraft's five passengers. The identities of the other two, thought to have been husband and wife, have been withheld pending notification of next of kin.

  Ocean State Airways is most commonly used by passengers connecting with larger airlines operating out of LaGuardia Airport. According to Mr. Ferguson, OSA has suspended operations at least until the end of the week and perhaps longer. “I'm devastated by this,” he said. “I've flown that particular craft many times, and would have sworn there wasn't a safer plane in the skies, large or small. I flew it down from Boston myself on Monday, and everything was fine with it then. I don't have any idea what could have caused both engines to shut down the way they did. One, possibly, but not both.”

  From John Kenton's diary

  April 1, 1981

  There's an old Chinese curse which goes, “May you live in interesting times.” I think it must have been especially aimed at folks who keep diaries (and if they follow Roger's edict, that number will soon be increased by three: Bill Gelb, Sandra Jackson, and Herb “Give Me The World And Let Me Boss It” Porter). I sat here in my little home office—which is actually just a corner of the kitchen to which I have added a shelf and a bright light—pounding the keys of my typewriter for nearly five hours last night. Won't be that long tonight; among other things, I have a manuscript to read. And I am going to read it, I think. The dozen or so pages I got through on my way home have pretty well convinced me that this is the one I've been looking for all along, without even really knowing it.

  But at least one person of my recent acquaintance won't be reading it. Not even if it's as great as Great Expectations. (Not that it will be; I have to keep reminding myself that I work at Zenith House, not Random House.) Poor woman. I don't know if she was telling the exact truth about wanting to do us a Good Turn, but even if she was lying through her teeth, no one should have to die like that, dropped out of the sky and crushed to death in a burning steel tube.

  I arrived at work even earlier today, wanting to check the mail room. OUIJA says stop wasting your time, she told me. The one you're looking for is in the purple box on the bottom shelf. Way in the corner. I wanted to check that corner even before I put on the coffee. And to get another look at Zenith the ivy, while I was down there.

  At first I thought I'd beaten Roger this time, because there was no clack-clack from his typewriter. But the light was on, and when I peeked in the open door of his office, there he was, just sitting behind his desk and looking out at the street.

  “Morning, boss,” I said. I thought he'd be ready and raring to go, but he just sat there in a semi-slump, pale and disheveled, as if he'd spent the whole night tossing and turning.

  “I told you not to encourage her,” he said without turning from the window.

  I walked over and looked out. The old lady with the guitar, the wild white hair, and the sign about letting Jesus grow in your heart was over there in front of Smiler's again. I couldn't hear what she was singing, at least. There was that much.

  “You look like you had a tough night,” I said.

  “Tougher morning. You seen the Times?”

  I had, as a matter of fact—the front page, anyway. There was the usual report on Reagan's condition, the usual stuff about unrest in the mideast, the usual corruption-in-government story, and the usual bottom-of-the-page command to support the Fresh Air Fund. Nothing that struck me as of any immediate concern. Nevertheless, I felt a little stirring of the hairs on the back of my neck.

  The Times was sitting folded over in the OUT half of Roger's IN/OUT basket. I took it.

  “First page of the B section,” he said, still looking out the window. At the bum, presumably... or do you call a female of the species a bumette?

  I turned to the National Report and saw a picture of an airplane—what was left of one, anyway—in a weedy field littered with cast-off engine parts. In the background, a bunch of people were standing behind a cyclone fence and gawking. I scanned the headline and knew at once.

  “Barfield?” I asked.

  “Barfield,” he agreed.

  “Christ!”

  “Christ had nothing to do with it.”

  I scanned the piece without really reading it, just looking for her name. And there she was: Tina Barfield of Central Falls, source of that old adage “if you play around the buzz-saw too long, sooner or later someone is gonna get cut.” Or burned alive in a Cessna Titan, she should have added.

  “She said she'd be safe from Carlos if she did a genuine Good Turn,” Roger said. “That might lead some to deduce that what she did us was just the opposite.”

  “I believed her about that,” I said. I think I was telling the truth, but whether I was or wasn't, I didn't want Roger deciding to uproot the ivy growing in Riddley's closet because of what had happened to Tina Barfield. Shocked as I was, I didn't want that. Then I saw—or maybe intuited—that Roger's mind wasn't running that way, and I relaxed a little.

  “Actually, I did, too,” he said. “She was at least trying to do a Good Turn.”

  “Maybe she just didn't do it soon enough,” I said.

  He nodded. “Maybe that was it. I read the short story she mentioned, by the way—the one by Jerome Bixby.”

  “'It's a Good Life. '”

  “Right. By the time I'd read two pages, I recognized it as the basis of a famous Twilight Zone episode starring Billy Mumy. What the hell ever happened to Billy Mumy?”

  I didn't give Shit One about what happened to Billy Mumy, but thought it might be a bad idea to say so.

  “The story's about a little boy who's a super-psychic. He destroys the whole world, apparently, except for his own little circle of friends and relatives. Those people he holds hostage, killing them if they dare to cross him in any way.”

  I remembered the episode. The little kid hadn't pulled out anyone's heart or caused any planes to crash, but he'd turned one character—his big brother or maybe a neighbor—into a jack-in-the-box. And when he made a mess, he simply sent it away into the cornfield.

  “Based on that, can you imagine what living with Carlos must have been like?” Roger asked me.

  “What are we going to do, Roger?”

  He turned from the window then and looked at me straight on. Frightened—I was, too—but determined. I respected him for that. And I respect myself, too.

  I think.

  “We're going to make Zenith House into a profitable concern if we can,” he said, “and then we're going to jam about nine gallons of black ink in Harlow Enders's eye. I don't know if that plant is really a modern-day version of Jack's beanstalk
or not, but if it is, we're going to climb it and get the golden harp, the golden goose, and all the gold doubloons we can carry. Agreed?”

  I stuck out my hand. “Agreed, boss.”

  He shook it. I haven't had many fine moments before nine in the morning, at least not as an adult, but that was one of them.

  “We're also going to be careful,” he said. “Agreed there?”

  “Agreed.” It's only tonight, dear diary, that I realize what you're left with if you take the a out of agreed. I would be telling less than the truth if I didn't say that sort of haunts me.

  We talked a little more. I wanted to go down and check on Zenith; Roger suggested we wait for Bill, Herb, and Sandra, then do it together.

  LaShonda Evans came in before they did, complaining that the reception area smelled funny. Roger sympathized, suggested it might be mildew in the carpet, and authorized a petty-cash expenditure for a can of Glade, which can be purchased in the Smiler's across the street. He also suggested that she leave the editors pretty much alone for the next couple of months; they were all going to be working hard, he said, trying to live up to the parent company's expectations. He didn't say “unrealistic expectations,” but some people can convey a great deal with no more than a certain tone of voice, and Roger is one of them.