The Legacy (38 page)

“I had to be in town,” he lied, and then retracted the lie. “No, I didn't have to be here. I came up to talk to you. Can we have lunch?”

She hesitated for just a moment, then nodded and said, “Of course, Carson. Talking anywhere in this shambles would be impossible. Give me just a moment to tie up a few loose ends and get my jacket, and I'll be with you.”

Barbara felt a need to stretch her legs, so they walked down the hill to the Embarcadero, and then to Gino's on Jones Street. It was a fine, cool day, windy enough to raise little whitecaps across the bay yet pleasant enough to fill the Embarcadero with tourists. Walking with Barbara, Carson felt a sudden and elated sense of freedom, like a small boy indulging in truancy, freedom laced with just enough guilt to give it added zest. The clean, sweet Pacific air, the great, wide vista of the bay, the colors of the summer dresses of the tourists and the white houses climbing the marvelous hills — all of it filled him with exuberance. “Why don't I live here?” he asked Barbara. “Why do I live in that smog-filled city in the south?”

“Rhetorical questions never call for an answer, do they? I imagine every tourist on the Embarcadero asks the same thing. Our population doesn't increase.”

“You don't want it to. You're the most clannish people in the country with the loveliest city in the country, and you want to keep it just as it is.”

In the restaurant, studying Carson's tanned, youthful face, Barbara asked him, “Why did you come here, Carson?”

“To give you this.” He took a check out of his pocket and handed it to her.

“What is this?”

“The price of your advertisement.”

“You mean you're not going to run it?”

“Of course we're going to run it. You'll see it in tomorrow's paper.”

“Then this,” she said, staring at the check. “I don't understand this at all. Why are you giving it to me?”

“Because I don't want you to pay for an ad in my paper.”

“Why not? You run a business, not a charity.”

“Let's just say it's my contribution. You do take contributions. Your advertisement asks for them.”

“Yes, we do take contributions,” Barbara said slowly. “From people who sympathize with what we are trying to do.”

“I didn't know you had conditions.”

“I am only trying to understand why you are giving me a very large amount of money. Your paper has fudged on this filthy war. You've found all sorts of reasons not to denounce it. You use that unspeakable phrase ‘the body count' every day, as if we were killing flies, not people.”

“Yes, that's true.”

“Then why?”

“Couldn't you put it down to the fact that I loathe Lyndon Baines Johnson and that stable of male whores who work for him?”

“Because he's a Democrat and the Devrons are true dyed-in-the-wool Republicans.”

“Is that really what you think of me?”

“No. No, I'm sorry I said that. It was rude and undeserved.”

“Will you take the check?”

“Of course I will,” Barbara said, smiling. “You're a dear, Carson.” She put the check in her purse. “This and anything else you want to add to it. I have no scruples about that. In spite of that beehive of activity you just saw, we are poverty-stricken. We spend money much faster than it comes in. We're running that ad in the New York
Times
and in the Washington
Post.
We've taken a hundred radio spots, and we've printed a hundred thousand bumper stickers and two hundred thousand leaflets. We have a volunteer office in New York and another in Chicago, and we're going to open branches in Los Angeles and in Washington. We supply them all with material. Last week, we spent eighteen hundred dollars on postage alone. My sister-in-law Sally, who was once a film star and who has dreamed for years of some way to get out of being a Napa housewife, is traveling around the country, doing TV interviews and talking about what we are trying to do. That meant hiring a public relations outfit to arrange the interviews and paying her way as well. That's only the flashy stuff. The real thing is our correspondence, and I haven't even touched on that. We are getting five hundred letters a day, and we think that in another month it may be a thousand.”

“And you did that all yourself?”

“Never, never, Carson.” She shook her head with annoyance. “What you saw in my house was a light day. When the weather's as good as this, most volunteers don't come in. But we have volunteers, dozens of them, and they're wonderful, simply wonderful.”

“I've never seen you like this. I've never seen you so excited about anything.”

“I am excited about it. When we started, it was only a sop to my conscience. In my wildest dreams, I never thought it could work like this.”

“But where does the money come from? It must be costing you a fortune.”

“It is. My mother gave me fifty thousand dollars.”

“Your mother? You're telling me that the dowager queen of Russian Hill gave fifty thousand dollars to an antiwar organization?”

“That's exactly what I am telling you. And it's not tax-deductible. Those rats at the Internal Revenue Service will not give us a tax-deductible status, so raising money is like pulling teeth. I've never been in anything like this before, and believe me, it's a total education.”

“But your mother?”

“I know. I put up twenty thousand dollars of my own money, and I think that shamed her into it.”

“Where the devil did you get twenty thousand dollars?”

“My book is selling like mad. I don't need the money. Other friends of mine put up almost a hundred thousand more, and some money comes in every day, dollar bills, five-dollar bills. A woman in Kansas whose son died in Vietnam sent us his back pay, which she received from the army, over a thousand dollars. And a young woman who works with us — her name is Carla Truaz, she's a Chicano — put in her savings, four hundred and twelve dollars. I call that blessed money.”

The food came; Carson sat staring at Barbara in amazement. “Please eat,” she told him. “You've just enriched me, so my afternoon is well spent. And we've talked enough about me. I haven't seen you since your marriage.”

“No, you haven't.”

“I'm sure she's a wonderful person.”

“That's specious, Barbara. You've never met her.”

“Are you unhappy, Carson?”

“I'm dutifully married, and I have a nine-month-old son, so I've paid my dues to the Devrons,” he said bitterly. “If you feel that I've been disloyal by using your advertisement as an excuse to come up here, you're probably right. In what remains of our ethics, disloyalty is less frowned upon than infidelity. I wanted to see you. I desperately wanted to see you.”

“I'm sorry, Carson. I'm so damned sorry.”

“The thing is,” he said hopelessly, “that I'm fond of her. She's a decent person.”

“And very beautiful,” Barbara said. “I saw her picture in the paper.”

“Yes, she's good-looking.”

“And if she could see us here, Carson, she would be very rightfully puzzled by your attraction to a scrawny middle-aged woman, whose hair is rapidly turning gray.”

“You're not scrawny.”

“Bless your heart, Carson, dear man. I love you very much. I always will. That doesn't change. Only fools and egotists believe that love must be reserved to one person.”

“Thank you, Barbara,” he said quietly.

“And now, will you eat your lunch?”

“Absolutely. One thing, I'd like to send someone up to do a story on your organization.”

“Sure. Why not? We want all the publicity we can get, good or bad.”

“It will be good.”

Austin Campbell was a Texan, of whom it was said that he had no other ambition than to serve the President. In his prior life as a private citizen, he had amassed many millions of dollars in the oil business, and being an old and trusted friend of the President, he was in a unique position to aid him. He had a small office in the White House, ready access to the President, and to use the newspaper cliché, he maintained a very low profile. He was a stout, jolly man with many chins and a small pug nose, given to wide-brimmed Stetsons and expensive high-heeled boots. Tom Lavette's knowledge of Campbell was limited. He had never met him, but from all he had heard of the man, he had reason to respect him. When Campbell's secretary called from Washington and suggested that Campbell, who would be on the West Coast, would like to meet with Mr. Lavette, Tom readily agreed.

Campbell came into Tom's office with a country boy's expression of respect and admiration. He shook hands with Tom warmly and then looked around the oversized, expensively furnished office. “Well, this is something,” he said approvingly. “Down there in Washington, they give me a little cubbyhole a man can't properly blow his nose in. I like that Jackson Pollock you got over there,” pointing to an enormous canvas on one wall. “It is a Pollock?”

“It is, yes,” telling himself, “Careful. Don't be taken in by the cowboy boots.”

Campbell walked to the big picture windows that opened to a view of the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Marin County hills. “Well now, this is something. This is one damn fine little city you got here, Tom. You don't mind my calling you Tom?”

Tom shook his head, controlling his annoyance. The first-name gambit was a ploy he despised. It was a cop trick. Call a man by his first name and you break down the first barrier to a stranger.

“Would you like a drink?” Tom asked him.

“Well, just a touch of bourbon, a little branch water. No ice.”

Tom pressed a button that brought a bar out of the wall, made Campbell the drink, took nothing for himself, with the explanation that it was too early in the day, and then sat on the edge of his desk, while Campbell made himself comfortable in a black leather Eames chair.

“Thomas,” Campbell said, “the President thought we might have a little chat. We both know you're a strong man in the opposition party, but then the President met your daddy some years back and he has fond memories of Big Dan Lavette, so just let's put the party thing aside for one minute. The President's carrying a big burden, a mighty big burden. No one wants to end this Vietnam business more than he does, but God Almighty, it has to be ended leaving us with a passel of honor and dignity and without handing Southeast Asia over lock, stock, and barrel to those slant-eyed bastards in China. So how do you suppose he feels with our best and finest over there, laying down their lives and being knifed in the back on the home front?”

“It's a difficult situation,” Tom agreed.

“Damn difficult, with those college kids going crazy all over the country and with Fulbright putting a knife in his back and twisting it. Well, that comes with the job, but now there's a new boy in town. Or should I say a new girl? How do you deal with motherhood? It's like apple pie or Coca-Cola. But this time, it's like a damn plague.” He paused and looked at Tom questioningly, inviting a response.

“I don't quite follow you,” Tom said deliberately.

“I'm talking about your sister's organization, since you want me to spell it out. It's called Mothers for Peace.”

“Yes, I've heard of it. I can't imagine it's large enough to be bothersome. There are other antiwar organizations.”

“Tom, it is bothersome. More than that, it's a goddamn pain in the ass. It may have started out as some kind of chickenshit quilting party here in your town, but now it's sure as hell all over the country and spreading like the measles. They've even opened an office just a hoot and a holler away from the White House. Now —”

Tom started to interrupt him, but Campbell brushed his words aside. “Now you just listen a moment, Tom. These biddies are putting a rod right up our ass. We can deal with the kids and we can deal with the commies, but this mother thing hurts. We want it stopped. You've been in the game, and I don't have to hand you any bullshit.”

“And just how do you expect me to stop it?”

“It's your sister.”

Tom smiled for the first time since Campbell had entered his office. “Do you know my sister?”

“I have not had that pleasure.”

“If you had, you would understand that she's not amenable to pressure. I have no influence over her, none whatsoever.”

“Well then, I would respectfully suggest that you change that situation.”

“How?”

“That, son, is your problem.”

“Mr. Campbell, I'm fifty-four. How old are you?”

“Oh, I got five or six years on you.”

“Not enough to be my father,” Tom said coldly. “I resent being called son, by you or anyone. I resent first names, used by people I have never met before.”

Campbell studied him thoughtfully, then nodded. “All right, Mr. Lavette. I must have considered I was down home. I guess you got your own ways here, and since we are going to be cold and snotty, just let me say my piece and go. You run a considerable fleet of tankers.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small notebook. “In the past twelve months,” he said, leafing through the pages, “you have delivered to Vietnam, under army contract, some three hundred and eighty million dollars of petroleum, fuel oil, and gasoline. There is also a cargo item, apart from the petroleum — runs to sixty-two million.

That's a nice piece of business, Mr. Lavette. Just think about it.” And with that, he got up, smiled, and walked out of Tom's office.

That evening, at dinner, Tom related the incident to his wife, Lucy. The years had not dealt too well with Lucy; she was four years older than Tom, a tall, dry, thin-lipped woman. Their marriage was strangely loveless, each grudgingly giving the other something deeply felt and needed. She was his mother, and with her he was no longer the firm tycoon, the mover of mountains, the cold and unapproachable Thomas Lavette, but very often a suppliant child, wavering between dependence and hatred; and she was his unhappily tolerated rock and support. She comforted him now, regarding him with a mixture of affection and contempt.