‘We want you to look healthy and rural,’ said the director.
‘Even though I’m destitute, and my crops have been wiped out?’ asked Ed.
‘Listen – people don’t want to be reminded of The Grapes of Wrath. They don’t want haggard sharecroppers. They want a healthy, friendly, young fellow who’s been hit by a tragic bolt from the blue.’
‘Would you like me to endorse somebody’s breakfast cereal at the same time?’ Ed had asked, sarcastically.
‘Just read what’s on the cards and sound as if you mean it,’ retorted the director. ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t smile.’
Ed was placed against a background of bare wooden floorboards and walls with only Andrew Wyeth’s severe painting of Dil Huey Farm behind him. The director had asked him to run through his words, and he had haltingly obliged. What had made it worse was that he had known all along he was never going to say them.
I’m a Kansas wheat farmer. You’ve just heard Senator Shearson Jones asking for help on our behalf. All I want to say is that in Kansas we’re not the kind to go begging. We wouldn’t be asking for your assistance if we hadn’t been struck by the worst natural crop disaster for nigh on forty years. It’s hit us hard, and it’s hit us fast, and there was no way in the world we could have stopped it.
I want you to contribute to the Kansas Blight Crisis Appeal because my fellow wheat farmers and I want to go on growing wheat for this great country of ours. Every dollar you give will be sowed in the Kansas soil like a seed, and out of it we’ll be able to harvest a new economic strength and fine cereal foods for future generations of Americans.
I give you this personal promise. We’re tough, hardworking people. We don’t normally ask for handouts. And with the donation you send us, we’ll work ten times as hard as usual to make sure that we get back on our feet again fast. Thank you for listening. My name’s Ed Hardesty.
‘This is gibberish,’ said Ed, as the lighting technician came across the floor and tilted his head slightly to one side.
‘Face that way,’ said the technician. ‘If you face the way you were, your nose looks shapeless.’
‘If I face the other way, I can’t read the gibberish.’
‘You may think it’s gibberish,’ said the director. ‘But if you write sense for television, it comes out sounding weird. The first criterion is it has to sound like sense. Whether it is or not, that’s irrelevant.’
‘All right,’ said Ed. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t create any difficulties. If he created difficulties, they might not ask him to speak on the broadcast. The lighting technician switched off the spots, and he saw swimming coloured shapes in front of his eyes.
A few minutes before air time, Shearson Jones appeared, wearing a dark grey suit that would have swamped Orson Welles. He lowered himself carefully into a leather-backed throne of a chair, and the make-up lady fussed around him and mopped away the perspiration which had popped out on his forehead and around his mouth.
‘These lights are goddamned hot,’ he complained. ‘I feel like I’m losing pounds, just sitting here.’
Ed waited in the cool and the shadow behind the lights. He watched quietly as the television people straightened Shearson’s lapels, and shifted a potted yucca a few inches to the left, so that it wouldn’t look as if it was growing out of Shearson’s head. He was so tense and intent on what was going on that he didn’t notice Della approach him from behind until she put her arm around him.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Are you nervous?’
He looked down at her. She was dressed in blue jeans, a pink T-shirt, and no bra. Her nipples showed through the thin cotton.
There’s no reason to be nervous,’ said Ed. ‘It’s all written out on the cards for me. All I have to do is read it.’
‘But you’re still nervous?’
‘A little.’
She glanced around, to see if there was anybody standing close. Then she said, ‘I overheard you.’
‘You overheard me?’ he asked her. ‘What are you talking about? When?’
‘I overheard you talking to Karen on the balcony.’
Ed looked at her closely. She didn’t look away. Her eyes searched into his just as deeply, and with just as much intensity, as his were searching into hers.
‘What did you hear?’ he asked her.
‘Everything,’ she said.
‘You heard what I said about this broadcast?’
She nodded.
‘You haven’t told Shearson? Or have you?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Why not? You silenced Dr Benson quick enough. I called him this morning and he’s been taken into a clinic to dry out again.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry?’ Ed said. ‘That guy spent years weaning himself off the bottle. Now you’ve probably ruined his life, as well as his career.’
‘Yes,’ said Della. ‘But you can believe me when I tell you he’s going to be fully compensated.’
‘By whom? Blue Cross doesn’t cover you for alcoholism.’
Della reached out and held Ed’s wrist, the gentle but persuasive way that a friend does. ‘I’m sorry about Dr Benson,’ she said. ‘But there’s something a whole lot more important at stake here. In fact, it’s so important that I have to ask you not to say anything today except what’s on the cards.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ demanded Ed. ‘Do you have any idea what’s going on? What Shearson Jones is doing? Do you have any idea what kind of a disaster we’re facing here? I mean – every crop in every state is blighted. Can you understand what that’s going to mean?’
‘The news is going to break out anyway,’ said Della. ‘But right now, I want to keep this Blight Crisis Appeal going for just two or three more days.’
‘For what? For Shearson Jones to make himself two or three million dollars richer?’
‘Precisely.’
Ed lifted her hand away from his wrist. ‘In that case, you can count me out. I wouldn’t give that fat slob a subway token.’
‘Ed,’ said Della, ‘I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’
Ed slowly turned his head and stared at her. ‘Now I know you’re joking,’ he said. ‘You just want me to go out there and speak my words like a good little boy, so that Shearson and you can get away with as much loot as possible.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Why should I? You certainly don’t look like an FBI agent. Do you have a badge?’
‘Back in Washington, yes.’
‘Well, that’s convenient,’ said Ed.
‘Ed,’ insisted Della, ‘you have to believe me. We’ve been trying to catch Shearson Jones red-handed for nearly two years. Now, we’ve got ourselves a chance.’
‘So why did you silence Dr Benson?’ asked Ed.
‘I had to. I didn’t want to, but I had to. None of the appeal money has been transferred to Shearson’s private accounts yet, and until that happens, he isn’t guilty of anything. He told me to keep Dr Benson quiet and that’s just what I did, in the most harmless way I could think of. I had to keep his confidence.’
Ed looked at her again. At the curly red hair, and the soft shining lips, and the huge breasts.
‘You’re an FBI agent?’ he asked her. ‘I don’t believe it. Eliot Ness always wore pinstripe suits.’
‘I was chosen for my looks. I worked on the Miami pornography scam a couple of years ago. It’s the kind of work I do best.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Ed,’ said Della, ‘you don’t have to believe me. But if you don’t, Shearson Jones could escape from this whole set-up scot-free.’
Ed closed his eyes for a moment. He knew what his urgent duty was: to stand up in front of those television cameras and tell as many people as possible what was going on. They were voters, and citizens, and human beings, and they had a right to know. Yet if Della was telling the truth and she did work for the FBI, it was equally important that he didn’t blow
her carefully-arranged scam and warn Shearson Jones off. After all, she had actually given her body to Shearson Jones for the sake of a watertight arrest, and Ed wasn’t the kind of man who thought that was an easy or an offhand thing for a woman to do, even a woman like Della McIntosh.
He opened his eyes. Della was still looking at him intently.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not. If you’re really an FBI agent, why didn’t you tell me this last night?’
She gave an ironic smile. ‘I was always told that it was impolite to talk with your mouth full.’
‘I mean seriously.’
‘Because I wasn’t sure of you,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t sure how you were going to react. And because I was making love to you. That’s all.’
Ed said, ‘I don’t know if that’s enough. Not to convince me of what you are, anyway, and what you’re doing here.’ Della gave him a long, level look. ‘In that case, you’d better go out in front of those cameras and say just what your conscience dictates.’
Ed said quietly, ‘I think I’m going to have to.’ Surprisingly, Della had tears in her eyes. Ed could see them sparkling in the back light from the television floods. ‘The goddamned wretched thing about it is. I’ve fallen in love with you,’ she said. That’s the goddamned wretched thing about it.’
Ed said, ‘Della—’ but she turned quickly away and walked back across the television cables, and out through the door that led to the side verandah. Ed felt tempted to follow, but he could hear that Shearson was almost finished with his introductory speech, and he knew that the television people would be calling him forward in a minute or two.
The director twisted around in his folding-chair, caught Ed’s eye, and pointed towards the place where Ed was supposed to stand. Ed nodded, and tippy-toed across the floor. As if in a dream, he could hear Shearson Jones saying ‘… and now… I want you to meet one of the farmers I’ve been talking about… one of the hardworking, strong-willed Kansas wheat growers who have had to fight against this terrible and unprecedented disaster alone and single-handed… with only their guts and their know-how to rely on…’
*
It was discovered by chance. It could have remained hidden, and nobody would ever have known, not until it was far too late. Although, by the time it was found, it was far too late anyway. The damage had been done.
The grain ship City of Belleville was docked at St Louis, Missouri, taking on a cargo of hard wheat for Europe. It was Sunday afternoon, a few minutes after five o’clock, and Ed Hardesty had already started speaking on the television. Not that the stevedores at Jefferson Docks cared very much – they were too busy on overtime, loading thousands of tons of grain from the wharfside silos into the City of Belleville’s holds. The shipment was already a week overdue and the men had been promised double time if they caught up on the lost seven days.
The ship’s first mate was a tough, bullet-headed little man from Milwaukee. His shore friends called him ‘German’. His ship friends called him ‘Square’, because of his shape. His real name was Herman Heller, a second-generation immigrant whose only surviving relative, his dotty father, now sang off-key Lieder in a Wisconsin nursing-home.
Herman Heller was standing at the ship’s rail smoking his pipe and watching the pale brown river roll by. Here in St Louis, the weather was humid and uncomfortable, and there was a dark stain of sweat down the back of Herman’s light blue T-shirt. He was thinking about a woman he knew in New Orleans – a quiet, jolly woman with a big nose who ran a delicatessen on the south side of the city. She had a husband who was confined to a wheelchair, and she didn’t ask anything of Herman but vigorous humping when he was there and suggestive letters when he wasn’t. Herman was good at suggestive letters. The woman’s blutwurst was unsurpassed.
Herman was deep in his reverie when Dan Bashnik came up to the bridge in his red woolly hat and held up what appeared to be a black metal baton. ‘Square,’ he said. ‘Take a look at this.’
Herman took out his pipe. ‘What’s that? Where’d you find it?’
‘Number One hold. It was just lying there on top of the grain.’
Herman held out his hand for it. Dan Bashnik passed it over, and watched while Herman inspected it. Herman hefted it in his palm, then twisted it around, and finally sniffed it to see if it smelled of anything.
‘What do you make of it?’ asked Dan.
‘I don’t know. Never seen anything like it. Maybe it’s part of a grain sorting machine, got itself loose.’
‘You going to hand it in?’
‘Sure, it’s no use to me.’
Dan wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Well, if there’s any kind of reward for it, don’t forget who found it.’
‘I should forget my friend, Dan Bashnik?’
‘You’d forget your own mother if it meant the difference between two bucks and ten.’
Herman jammed his pipe back between his pecan-coloured teeth. ‘Just fuck off, Bashnik. If there’s anything in it. I’ll make sure you get your share.’
He opened the door to the bridge and laid the black metal baton on the varnished shelf beside the maps of the Mississippi. It stayed there all afternoon and all evening, until Herman went ashore to check the cargo inventory and the bills of lading. Then – almost as an afterthought – he shoved it into the pocket of his windbreaker.
It was dark as Herman made his way down the gangplank to the dockside. There was the whinnying of cranes, and the clatter of fork-lift trucks, and the odd cold echoing sound of warehouses and water and ships. Herman walked across to the offices with the steady plod of a man who has been doing the same thing for twenty years at somebody else’s expense. He looked neither right nor left.
One of the St Louis safety inspectors was in the office when Herman walked in, a white-faced young man with a John Denver haircut and an immature moustache. He was smoking a cigarette and flicking through a girlie magazine. Errol Marx of the grain company was there too, a shaven-headed black man with heavy-rimmed eyeglasses.
‘You ready to leave?’ asked Marx.
‘Just as soon as we clear the paperwork,’ Herman told him.
Marx reached for his clipboard, took out a ballpen, and sniffed. ‘It took you long enough to get that goddamned grain on board,’ he said.
Herman didn’t answer. He did his job at one pace and one pace only, and that was Heller’s pace. If anybody objected, that was tough tits. He reached into his pocket for his matches.
The safety inspector said, ‘It’s unfair, you know. All these magazines are full of white girls. Only one or two black girls. Don’t you think that’s discrimination?’
Marx ticked off a column of figures. ‘They don’t have black girls because black men don’t need to read magazines,’ he said. ‘Black men get all the tail they want for real.’
‘Oh, bullshit,’ said the safety inspector. ‘Just because I fancy looking at some black ass now and again.’
‘Well, here’s something else to look at,’ said Herman, taking the black metal baton out of his pocket. ‘One of my guys found it in the wheat. A real toothbreaker, huh?’
The safety inspector peered at the baton for a moment, frowned, and then slowly put down his magazine.
‘Put it down,’ he said, in a cautious voice.
‘Why? What’s it going to do? Blow up? It hasn’t blown up yet.’
‘Put it down,’ insisted the safety inspector.
Herman, puzzled, laid the baton down on the desk. Errol inspected it through his spectacles, poked it with the end of his pencil, and said, ‘What the hell is it?’
‘I should be asking you that,’ said the safety inspector. ‘It came out of your wheat. Now, just you wait here for a while. I want to go get something. And make sure you don’t touch that thing any more.’
Herman shrugged at Errol, and told the safety inspector, ‘Okay. You’re the boss.’
They waited in silence for nearly five minutes. Herman packe
d his pipe again, and lit it, and the small office was clouded with aromatic smoke. Errol Marx sneezed twice, and then blew his nose on a Kleenex. ‘You don’t object to my smoking, do you?’ asked Herman, rhetorically.
Eventually, the safety inspector came back. As he came through the door, he was unzipping a black plastic carrying case, and taking out a grey rectangular instrument with a white calibrated dial.
‘What goes on here?’ asked Errol. ‘What the hell’s that thing?’
‘You never seen a geiger counter before?’ asked the safety inspector.
‘Geiger counter? Like, for radioactivity? You mean that thing could be radioactive?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m checking.’
The safety inspector switched the geiger counter on. Immediately, without him having to hold it anywhere near the black baton, it began to click as loudly and wildly as a migration of locusts.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said the safety inspector, switching it off. ‘What’s wrong?’ demanded Herman. ‘What is that thing? What goes on here?’
The safety inspector didn’t answer him. Instead, he picked up Errol Marx’s telephone and dialled a number. Errol glanced at Herman and shrugged as the safety inspector waited to get through. They both watched him biting his lips in anxiety.
At last, someone answered. The safety inspector said, ‘Fred? It’s Nelson. Listen, I’m sorry to call you now, but I’ve got myself a red alert down here. No, nothing like that. We’ve got the City of Belleville here, loading up with wheat from number seven silo, and some from number eight. Well, one of the crew members came into Errol Marx’s office a few minutes ago with something they’d turned up in the wheat. I kind of recognised it – I mean. I’ve seen something like it before in science magazines so I checked it over with the geiger counter. Yes, right – and it went way off the scale. I’m sure of it, Fred, no mistakes possible. Right. Well – we’re going to need the fire department down here, I guess, and an ambulance, and someone who knows something about radiation. Sure, I’ll have the ship and the dockside sealed off right away.’
Famine Page 20
