The Daredevils (37 page)

“It means a great deal,” said Vera.

“Thank you,” said Amelia.

“Not at all,” said Gus.

“I'm glad Uncle Tom doesn't have to squat.”

“Please forgive me if I say this as plainly as I can.”

“Nothing would please me more than plain speech.”

“It is astonishing to think that my husband can advise the president on spiritual matters one day and speak to you the next.”

“Ah now, Amelia,” said Pastor Tom.

“Don't you agree, Vera?”

“I do agree. It is astonishing.”

“It's because he sees—because we see, and that is a very inclusive we—that there is in fact a good deal of common ground between some of what is talked about in radical political circles and some of what is preached from pulpits.”

“I have no trouble believing that is so.”

Pastor Tom leaned in and spoke over folded hands.

“Vera, I'm going to continue speaking plainly, in the great tradition my wife has laid down here today. We don't think people like you should be tarred and feathered.”

“What do you say to that, Miss Vera?” asked Gus.

“Can't say fairer than that, can you, Miss Vera,” said Tony.

“Boys, I am bowled over, I tell you. Bowled over.”

“Not run out of town on a rail, not hunted down and arrested and deported because of your political affiliations. This is a free country. You can peaceably assemble every which way. You don't have to come down the aisle and be born again in Christ. But those beliefs that are essential to Christian practice—or rather ought to be—can make this country better, stronger, and more beautiful in exactly the same ways that those beliefs that are essential to anarchist practice do. I dare say—”

“That Jesus Christ was an anarchist, yes, I do see that.”

“You're going to imply that we are being naïve and unsophisticated,” said Amelia, “in our idealism. Aren't you, my dear?”

“Yes, my dear,” said Vera, “I am.”

“But you are forgetting that my husband has the ear of the president.”

“My dear ear,” said Gus.

“Your ear, dear?” asked Tony.

“I'm not forgetting that. Whether he does or does not is not the point. Whether he does or does not makes no difference.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so.”

“I'm sorry to say so, but really!”

“I think you are caught in some kind of current or tide that is sweeping you toward apathy and nihilism.”

Charles laughed. Everyone stopped and looked at him.

“I'll let Gus and Tony speak for me,” he said.

But neither Gus nor Tony were up to it, falling abruptly back into the stupid little rich boys they were afraid they truly were.

“I believe in acting,” said Vera.

“Propaganda of the deed?” asked Andrew.

“I don't see how propaganda is necessarily related to deeds. I have no control over how my deeds are heard and seen. Any intention I have is very likely to be the first to be destroyed in the maelstrom of consequence.”

“My husband does not act? My father does not act? The president does not act?”

“I have no faith in their action.”

“Oh, I see! Only in your own?”

“Not even in my own. I have no expectation whatsoever that acts will be anything but show and tell. That was what drew me to your brother and what kept me near him when his babble threatened to drive me away.”

“Show. And tell,” repeated Amelia. “Have I got that right? Life is show and tell?”

“Yes. If you want to live, you show and you tell. That is what living is all about.”

“I never put it that way,” said Charles, “because I never saw it that way, but that is exactly right.”

“Your Jesus Christ was fully alive, as I define life: he showed and told what it occurred to him to show and tell, freely and with commitment. In that way he was indeed an anarchist, but I can't see the comparison going much further. He suffered to the extent that he had expectations, and that, too, now that I mention it, is something he shares with anarchists and nearly everybody on the planet. The social gospel you espouse and that you say he espoused—”

“Are you capitalizing that ‘H' in your mind, Vera?” asked Gus.

“Do you see letters in your mind, Vera, when you talk?” asked Tony.

“—has no relation whatsoever to . . . how shall I say, Gus, Tony? To the timeless exigencies of the finding and the keeping of political power.”

“Took the—” said Gus.

“—words right out of my mouth,” said Tony.

“Our words.”

“Our mouths.”

“Political power is also on my mind,” said Andrew.

The table once more fell silent.

“If you have no expectations of change, and we must assume ‘change for the better,' why act? And if you do act, how do you handle the consequences?” asked Andrew.

“The charge of apathy, again,” said Vera. “Soon to be followed as if perforce by charges of nihilism.”

“I see,” said Andrew, “that you have an alternative, and that would be a kind of serenity that we are learning to associate with oriental . . . wisdom.”

“Don't stick out your front teeth, boys, please,” said Pastor Tom.

“And please don't try out your comic Chinese accents,” said Amelia.

“Father does all the time,” said Gus.

“He really does enter into the spirit of it,” said Tony.

“Niggers and Jews too,” said Gus.

“All in good fun,” said Tony.

The table once again observed a moment of silence. In it, genuine uncertainty could be seen in the eyes of Gus and Tony. It was as if Tony had asked a question instead of making a declaration. For everyone but Vera, it was an unparalleled, perhaps precedent-setting moment in their growth.

“Is there solace in your serenity?” asked Andrew. “I wonder if you have replaced the solace of the warm, flawed, human God with a cold inhuman serenity?”

“There's nothing inhuman about it,” said Charles.

“I couldn't replace a solace I never knew, could I?” asked Vera.

“I need a replacement!” said Andrew, abruptly and loudly. “I need a replacement for God and I need a replacement for the religion of progressive politics! My life is neither godless nor anarchic but I am in very deep despair.”

Charles was caught off guard: “Despair?”

“Everything I worked for—everything we've worked for, Al, Father, me, Teddy, Hi, even you, here, I suppose, if I understood the setup—it's all a lie. Big, fat lie. I'm an idiot for having played along. And quite an asshole as I did. You have to be an asshole if you're in politics, but you don't have to be an idiot. I chose to be an idiot. An idiot and an asshole in the service of a Big, Fat Lie.”

“Andrew,” said Pastor Tom. “No, now, come on.”

“I don't know what made me say that.”

“We never know what makes us say things,” said Charles, “if you stop and think about it.”

“Come again?” asked Andrew.

“We can point to provocations and causes but we never truly know what our next thought or speech will be until it's over. Even when we have a script. I mean a ‘real life script.' Examine it for yourself. Don't take my word for it.”

“That is utterly beside the point,” snapped Amelia. “Are you actually trying to suggest that when a bomb explodes we don't know what to
think
?”

“Yes. But I am only suggesting it. A bomb is a good example, the perfect example, of how reality may have holes ripped in it, exposing a truer, deeper
reality: you don't see it coming, you don't plan on it, it makes your little dreams of control seem childish, and in its wake your thoughts and shouts
seem
as unpremeditated as they in fact
are.
”

“Well,” said Andrew, “I don't know about any of that. Chick may be right, he may be whistling in the dark, he may be wrong, he may be perversely wrong, he may be dead wrong. I don't know.”

“Your brain is too busy protecting its Little Andrew in the eternal present that it can only make decisions after the fact. The apprehension of cause and effect exists only in the past. President Brain can only
register
the changes as they occur—slightly
after
they occur. It's an illusion of the brain to think it can
make
changes.”

“Again I must say, reacting helplessly to your thrust, that I just don't know.”

“I don't know either, Andy. I say only that I think about the possibility.”

“But why,” asked Pastor Tom, “have you turned so suddenly and decisively away from your ideals? From the shared ideals of millions of people? People from all walks of—from anarchists to Christians, from peasants to presidents! Whatever they don't have in common, they at least have progressivism!”

“No,” said Vera, “I have to interrupt: anarchists and Christians do not have shared goals, nor do peasants and presidents.”

“Not even in theory,” said Charles, “not even at an ideal source.”

“You are surrounded by the best minds, and most effective leaders, in the Progressive and Social Gospel Movements! I mean, what caused it?”

Dejection was suddenly and dramatically upon him. He began to answer, but stopped, shook his head. Then:

“I don't know who I am, much less what I am to do.”

Charles and Vera exchanged a glance.

“They're the same thing,” said Vera.

“That's the only lesson of the little stage set that came apart at the seams.”

“To be is to do,” said Gus.

“To do is to be,” said Tony.

“Do be a do-bee, and don't be a don't-bee.”

“Doo-be doo-be doooo.”

“A do-bee and a don't-bee,” said Amelia. “Every once in a while I am reminded of how young you boys actually are.”

“Look here, Chick,” said Andrew.

“I'm looking, Andy.”

“You're working for the governor here, right? Burnquist sits on the MCPS, right?”

“Yes. I think of him as the ‘Affable Man.' There is a ‘Triangular Man' and a ‘Silver Man of Wrath' as well.”

“McGee and the AG, right? Hilton?”

“You know them, I see.”

“Of course I do. I was helping Father.”

“You've remarked their names.”

“Of course I have.”

“More than I have done. They are characters without names. Some day, if their legend lives on, their characteristics will give rise to new, truer names, in some language related to ours but indecipherable. Nonsense sounds with meaning forced willy-nilly upon them.”

“Yes. Let me clear my throat and try to move on to a thought, an actual train of thought that I see coming around the bend.”

“You didn't know you were going to put it so colorfully until the words came tumbling out.”

“Woo-woo!” shouted Gus.

“Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga,” said Tony.

“Again,” said Charles. “Who could have predicted the arabesques and rim shots of our wee brothers?”

“Two incidents,” said Andrew. “One in the south of the state, in Rock County, Luverne is the town, I believe. Another in the north, Duluth, the port on Lake Superior. Wheat growing and wheat shipping. Nonpartisan League and railroads connecting the two, with stops along the way for the Equity League, two quarreling factions of the IWW, the Minnesota Socialist Party—”

“Featuring the mayor of Minneapolis,” said Charles.

“Featuring the mayor of Minneapolis,” agreed Andrew. “The Minnesota Farmer-Labour camp, and our substantial progressive presence. And God knows who else.”

“Or possibly Vera.”

Pregnant pause.

“I do not know,” said Vera.

“Everybody take a deep breath and relax,” said Charles.

“What Vera knows—” Andrew began.

“I say that to all my actors,” interrupted Charles.

“I don't know who's more annoying here: you or Gus and Tony.”

“What happened in Luverne?”

“Elderly farmer with ties to the NPL was escorted out of the state—Rock County borders Iowa, very near—”

“I know where it is,” said Charles. “I've been there.”

“—very near South Dakota as well. Ruffians drove him to Iowa and left him in a field. He came back to help his sons with planting and was tarred and feathered.”

“And in Duluth . . .?”

“An immigrant from Finland felt that, because he wasn't yet a citizen, he was exempt from the draft. He was tarred and feathered. Then hanged.”

“The old man in Luverne survived?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know what's worse: being tarred and feathered or un-tarred and un-feathered. Some fellows who've been tarred and feathered might prefer to be hanged.”

Andrew smiled. “You sound very much like Father when you talk like that.”

“Speaking of Father talking, what does he have to say about Luverne and Duluth? I take it he knows . . .?”

“I'm not sure that he does.”

“I missed the connection,” sighed Amelia, “between Luverne and Duluth
and, well, say Father, for starters, and . . . all your ‘characters,' Charles. And the . . . what's the word,
organizations
that, um . . .
Vera
. . . is . . . how shall I say . . .
associated with
. . .?”

“Try that one more time without the hesitation, the lack of confidence, the implicit burden of the heavy, dense veil you choose to wear over your hostility, and I'll see if I can make a little more sense of it.”

“What's the connection between Father, mob violence, and terrorists?”

“Jesus Christ?” asked Gus.

Charles, at long last, exploded with laughter.

“Well, hush my mouth,” said Tony.

“By Jove, I think he's got it!” Charles chuckled and sputtered. A few more high-pitched yelps shot out of his mouth, followed by descending ha-ha-has, and finishing up with low, round ho-ho-hoes, each phase of his laughter exploring a new facet of his delight.