(1961) The Chapman Report (7 page)

“Hello?”

“Katie, doll? It’s Ted.”

She was not sure if she was pleased or troubled, “Ted, how are you? When did you get in?”

“Five minutes ago. I’m still in Operations. I had to hear your voice before I got tied up with Metzgar.”

“Was it fun?”

“Where I was stuck, North Africa looked like Carswell Base in Texas.”

“You didn’t even get to see Livingston or a Mau Mau?”

“I got to see the PX. Period. How have you been? Missed me?”

“Of course.”

She had not missed him, really. When Ted had informed her, two weeks before, that he had to represent Radcone in a test flight to Africa, sponsored by Strategic Air Command, she had been relieved. Ever since Boynton’s death sixteen months ago, Ted Dyson had been a visitor and a friend. Ted had known Boy, as he and most of America liked to call Boynton Ballard, long before Kathleen had known him. Ted and Boynton flirted with MIGs over the Yalu, wing to wing. Immediately after, Ted had gone to work for J. R. Metzgar and Radcone Aircraft in Van Nuys, and later, following a great blare of publicity when Boynton had joined him there as a test pilot, Ted always proudly claimed part of the credit for snaring him.

After Kathleen had married Boynton, it was Ted Dyson who was retained as number one bachelor friend-to run an occasional household errand, fill in when there was a female visitor from New York, escort Kathleen to a play when Boynton was busy. It was natural that when Boynton was killed, Ted would appear as official family mourner. The entire nation, Metzgar, the President in the White House, mourned, but Ted had seniority. At first, he had appeared irregularly, out of respect for Kathleen’s grief, but making her aware always that he was hovering near and need only be summoned. Then, gradually, in the sixteen months past, a subtle change had overtaken Ted Dyson. As friend of the hero, he was also heir to the hero’s mantle. He was elevated to the position of Radcone’s first test pilot and trouble shooter, Boynton’s job. He was recipient of some of Boynton’s old glory and attention. And soon, as Kathleen perceived it, he began to think himself the only male capable of possessing and satisfying Boynton’s widow. He was the successor and began to conduct himself as such. His appearances were more regular. His familiarity was more aggressive. And on their last date, just before the African trip, emboldened as he was by several drinks, he kissed Kathleen good night as they stood inside the door and then somehow found her breasts with his hands. But she had moved quickly away, and he had not pursued her. It was tacitly understood, by both, that he had drunk too much. And now he was back.

“… so that’s the way I think it’s going to work out,” he was saying.

She had not heard a word. “That’s fine, Ted,” she said quickly.

“Well, anyway, I’m going to be here, and I’ve got a lot to tell you. When can I see you?”

“I … I don’t know. I’ve been so busy-“

“So now you’ll be busier.”

Before she could think of what to say, she heard the noisy approach of a car in the driveway. It puzzled her. “Ted, one sec, there’s someone here. I’ll be right back.”

Rising hastily from the table, she went to the window and peered outside. A battered station wagon was moving around the circular drive to her entrance. The car was familiar, and then, as it braked to a halt, she recognized the driver. At once, she remembered. Last night, James Scoville had telephoned just as Grace Waterton came calling. In haste and confusion, she had consented to let Scoville drop by in the morning. He had said that he wanted only a few minutes. Something about straightening out several points in the fourth chapter.

Kathleen hurried back to the telephone. “Ted, I’m sorry. It’s Jim Scoville. I promised to help him this morning.”

“Hasn’t he finished that book yet?”

“It takes time.”

“Well, what about our date?”

She knew that she would have to see him. Until three weeks ago it had been painless enough, sometimes even welcome, for it gave her companionship at the movies. If Ted had only not spoiled it by making a pass at her. But he had been drunk. “All right,” she said. “Thursday. Join Deirdre and me for dinner. We can go to a show after.”

“Swell, Katie. Until then.”

Scoville was rapping the brass door knocker discreetly. After a troubled glance at the list of names, Kathleen hurried to the door and admitted the writer.

“Hello, Jim,” she said. “I really should have called you. I’m all tied up this morning.”

“It’ll only be a minute,” he said in his apologetic way.

“Well, if it’s only that-“

“No more. I finished chapter four, and there’s just the matter of verifying some dates and straightening out a couple of inconsistencies.”

“Very well.” She nodded. “Let’s sit down. Do you need paper?”

“No, no. I have everything.”

They went to the arrangement around the Biedemeir pear wood tea table. Kathleen sat on the sofa, and Scoville lowered himself to the edge of the turquoise chair, tugging a wad of yellow paper from his sport coat pocket and finding a ball point pen which he clicked open.

“How’s the book going?” asked Kathleen.

“I think I can finish in two months.”

“That’s fast.”

“Yes. I guess I’m enthused. Sonia had to force me to bed at midnight last night.”

Kathleen had a kind of acquaintance affection for James Scoville. He was so knocked about and unobtrusive. He gave the impression of being almost six foot-the manner of his head pulled into worn, hunched shoulders, protectively, like a tortoise, made accurate estimates of his height impossible. He had dull, ash-blond hair, a bland, freckled face that seemed Albino pink, watery eyes, and receding chin, and his clothes always appeared as if he had slept in them. It was Metzgar of Radcone Aircraft who had arranged for Scoville to do the biography of Boynton.

Metzgar was wealthy and important, but like all sedentary men who had risen through use of desk and telephone, he worshiped men of action. Although he had hired Boynton, he knew that Boynton did not work for him. Boynton was his own man and respected no channels except those direct to God. This, as well as Boynton’s reckless courage (in most men, born of fear, but in Boynton’s case; as Kathleen alone knew, born of insensitivity and a curious, egotistical, divine sense that he was too young and too needed to be touched by death), made Metzgar his suppliant.

When Boynton had gone down in flames, in the experimental jet, crashing and disintegrating on the baking desert near Victorville, Metzgar (and he not alone) refused to accept this evidence of his idol’s mortality. To keep him alive, forever living in the dreams of others, Metzgar conceived of the biography. Promising a renowned Manhattan publisher a guaranteed purchase of five thousand copies in advance (to be distributed among customers and Air Force personnel), Metzgar made the book a reality. Then he cast about for the proper writer. He wanted no word juggler who would intrude his own personality into this testament to greatness. He wanted merely a human conveyor belt to take the product, package it, and pass it on to the public. Screening writers that he had bought and used, he recalled

James Scoville. He remembered that Scoville had produced several competent articles about Radcone, and since he remembered Scoville’s work and not his face or personality, he knew that he was the man. He brought Scoville in from his beach home in Venice (once, delivering some old letters, Kathleen had visited the flimsy little house and found it pitifully underfurnished and inadequate, and had been uncomfortable in the presence of the writer’s wife, a gaunt, witchlike girl in gypsy clothes), and then Metzgar offered Scoville the assignment. He was to have three thousand dollars from the publisher, and three thousand more from Metzgar.

Dazzled by the largest sum he had ever known, Scoville listened to Metzgar’s briefing and was prepared to write as Metzgar pleased. There was left only the formality of Kathleen’s co-operation. Everything in her resisted it, but in the end, she knew that Metzgar -and the million like him-must have their monument. Two weeks of evenings before a tape recorder, along with letters and clippings, gave the writer all that he needed from Kathleen. Now he was writing like the furies, and if all went well, he would soon be able to remove wife and self to a more commodious tract bungalow in San Fernando Valley. Kathleen liked Scoville. Perhaps because he was hardly a man.

“Maybe next time we can work longer,” she said regretfully. “It’s just that our club-our women here-are going to be interviewed by Dr. George G. Chapman, and I’m on the committee to let them know.”

Scoville lifted his head, his eyes blinking. His face betrayed minor horror. “Dr. Chapman? You mean he’s going to interview you?”

“Why, yes, of course-all of us,” said Kathleen, somewhat taken aback. “But you can’t!” he blurted. Kathleen was completely at a loss. “Why not?” “It’s not right. You’re not just anybody. You’re-well, you were married to Boynton Ballard. It’s not-it wouldn’t be proper to tell some stranger your private life with him!’ He mouthed him as he might Yahveh.

Kathleen stared at Scoville and understood at once. He, too, like Metzgar, like the faceless public, had a hungry need to believe in Someone. Authentic heroes were few, because they usually lived too long. A German, Goethe probably, had once said, “Every hero becomes a bore at last,” and it was true. But to be a hero and be snuffed out at the peak of burning, this promised immortality. And, somehow, because she had been hero’s chattel, Kathleen must be preserved by the cult, buried in the tomb with him, sanctified. Willing or not, his purity and virtue, and the quality that was more than merely mortal, must continue to reside in her. And so she perceived Scoville’s pain. If she disclosed to a stranger the animal habits of the hero, the mean details of fornication, she profaned a sacred memory by showing that he had been like ordinary men, with base needs and weaknesses of the flesh.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Scoville, head pulled in and bent, busily examining his blank yellow paper. She wondered what he would think if he even faintly conceived what was really in her head. For she was thinking of that slate-gray, late afternoon, sixteen months ago, when man had died and hero had been born.

She had wept, of course, and fleetingly felt leaden sorrow. But if there were a scale upon which to weigh emotion, the sorrow was no heavier than she felt at the death of a distant Hungarian in an embattled street, a Peruvian in a faraway train wreck, a child found lifeless in a Bel-Air swimming pool. The sorrow had been that which grieved over the human condition; the unfairness of the life-promise that held out so much alive and then withdrew it so quickly. This was her sorrow, and this only. But as for the man, the one whose name and child she bore, the tears she had shed were not tears of love but tears of relief. Who would understand that?

“Maybe you’re right,” she said to Scoville at last. “Now what were the questions you wanted to ask?”

THEY BRACED THEMSELVES against the lurching of the train as it scraped around a curve, and then, as it seemed to shake itself straight again and pick up speed beneath them, the iron wheels clacking rhythmically on the rails, they relaxed once more.

They had been proofing the results of the week of sampling in East St. Louis, and now they were nearing the end of a five-minute recess, smoking in silence, making sporadic, inconsequential comments, waiting to resume.

Paul Radford sucked noisily at his straight-stemmed pipe, then realized the tobacco was burned out, and began to empty the white ash into the wall tray. “Do you really think Los Angeles will wrap it up?” he asked.

Across the way, Dr. George G. Chapman looked up from the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I don’t know for sure, Paul. Probably. We had a wire from that woman-Mrs. Waterton-president of the … the …” He tried to remember. There had been so many.

“The Briars’ Women’s Association,” said Dr. Horace Van Duesen.

Dr. Chapman nodded. “Yes, that’s it; she promised a hundred per cent turnout.”

“It never works out that way,” said Cass Miller sourly.

Dr. Chapman frowned. “It might. But let’s say we get seven per cent response-I think we’ve been averaging close to that well, that would be sufficient. We can cancel the optional engagement in San Francisco. We can just call it quits on the interviews and settle down to the paper work.” He forced a smile. “I guess you boys would like that?”

There was no response. Paul Radford slowly rubbed the warm bowl of his pipe. Horace Van Duesen removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, held them up to the light, put them on again. Cass Miller chewed steadily at his gum, staring down at the worn carpeting.

Dr. Chapman sighed. “All right,” he said, running a hand across his flat, slick gray hair, “all right, let’s get back to the proofing.”

For a moment longer, his eyes held on the three younger men cramped in the gray and green train bedroom that smelled, of the now familiar smell of paint and metal. He could see the boredom and inattention on their faces, but he determinedly ignored this and, once more, bent his eyes closely to the typed manuscript in his hand. It was difficult focusing on the figures in the dim yellow overhead train light.

“Now, then, we’ve incorporated the East St. Louis sampling. That means-according to what I have here-we’ve interviewed 3,107 women to date.” He glanced at Paul, as he usually did. “Correct?”

“Correct,” repeated Paul, consulting the yellow pages in his hand. To Paul’s right, Cass and Horace also looked fixedly at the papers in their laps and tiredly nodded their agreement.

“All right,” said Dr. Chapman. “Now, let’s check this carefully. It’ll save us a good deal of drudgery when we get home.” He shifted slightly in his chair, brought the manuscript closer to his face, and began to read aloud in a low, uncritical monotone. “Question.’ Do you feel any sexual desire at the sight of the male genitalia? Answer. Fourteen per cent feel strong desire, thirty-nine per cent feel a slight desire, six per cent say it depends on the entire physique of the man, forty-one per cent feel nothing at all.” Dr. Chapman lifted his head, pleased. “Significant,” he said. “Especially when you recollect our figures on male response to female nudity in the bachelor survey. Paul, make a note on that. I want to draw the analogy when I write the final report.”