by Howard Fast
“Do I feel better?” Myra said. “Do I feel better? Oh, my God—my God—” She began to cry now, sat down at the table and put her face in her hands, and wept without stopping, her whole body racked with her sobbing, crying as if her heart would break, not thinking or worrying any more, but just letting herself weep it through until it was done and out.…
* * *
MacAllister came to dinner, and he charmed Brian by making a fantastic bird that bobbed its head and flapped its wings, and he delighted the girls with a story of his first love at the age of twelve in Emporia, Kansas, and he held them all with odds and ends out of a long, varied and colorful career. “Jails,” he said to Myra, “are only frightening until you’ve been in one. Do you agree, Silas?”
The one night in the county jail on a hard cot had not made too much of an impression on Silas. He was also concerned about talking in front of the children. But MacAllister assured him, “It’s the only way. You can’t hide anything from them. Get it out in the open and it’ll lose its edge.”
Perhaps he was right. MacAllister told them how, when a judge, he had always tried to get out of sending men to jail. He had forced drunken drivers to write on a blackboard, “I will not drink and drive,” ten thousand times. He sat up nights think-of ways to punish and teach simultaneously—“To what end, I don’t know,” he admitted. “When something’s wrong, its wrongness goes all the way down to the bottom and all the way up to the top. Where do you begin? Take Freddie Johnson, the Commissioner. Essentially, he’s a decent human being. He has a heart, and he’s not lost to pity and love. But because he’s afraid to be dumped out of his job, he sits and listens to a little snotnose read him the law—”
After the children had gone to bed, he sat with Myra and Silas, drinking whisky very modestly and talking about the case. “The first thing to decide,” he pointed out, “is whether or not you want me for a lawyer.”
“Isn’t that decided?” Myra asked. “After what you did—”
“I did nothing,” he interrupted. “The thunder and the shouting haven’t even been scratched. We face a good deal, a trial in a Federal District Court, an appeal—and maybe, if everything else fails, an attempt to get to the Supreme Court. Or maybe we lick it right at the beginning with argument, although I doubt that. Silas has a lot at stake, ten years of his life, if they should decide to give him the maximum. You can’t trifle with that.”
“But I still can’t understand why they picked him.”
“Why not? Isn’t his case typical of a hundred cases? Thinking becomes dangerous, and one of the most dangerous sources of thought are the schools. You have to control the schools, and that means controlling the teachers and what they teach. It’s true that if you simply voice a threat, most teachers will perform to schedule. But there are always a good many like you and the others, enough to throw a monkey wrench in the works and to make more trouble than they want to have. They don’t want that kind of trouble yet—not concentration camps and gangs of hoodlums; that would be too suggestive of other places where this has happened. They want to do it polite and quietly, with the full trappings of law and order and due process—and then be able to say to the people, look how we’re protecting you from these dangerous elements that want to subvert us! And why not Silas Timberman? Didn’t he scorn Cabot’s civilian defense, and lay us all open to being wiped out by the Russians? Didn’t he teach communist doctrine? Didn’t he lie?”
“No, he did not,” Myra said.
“Prove it.”
“We will prove it to a jury, and a jury is twelve ordinary men and women, and why shouldn’t they believe Si?”
“Because they are not twelve ordinary men and women—and because this is not the first political trial in America. There have been a good many, and the one jury that dared to disagree and not bring in a verdict of guilty was threatened and hounded and abused until the poor damned jurors wished they had never been born. Not that I won’t fight this to win, if you decide I should represent you, but without illusions. It takes a hero to be an honest juror these days, to face the hounding of the FBI, to face the intimidations flung from every side—and your average juror is not a hero.”
“About representing me,” Silas said, “that’s decided, if you want to. I don’t know a better lawyer.”
“I do, but they cost more money. Don’t jump to conclusions, Silas. You see here a beat-up, reformed politician, who saw a little light and wrecked his career with it, who drinks too much and stays in the Bar Association by the skin of his teeth. Of course you can get better counsel, if you want that?”
“Will it change the outcome?” Myra wanted to know.
“Will it? It might—I have to admit that. Then, it might not. It will cost a lot of money, and in the end, it might be no different, or even worse. I get annoyed with myself, but I’m not the worst lawyer, not by any means. I just want to give you the whole picture. I used to know a lawyer in New York, a labor lawyer and a damned wonderful man who had tried more cases like this than you could shake a stick at, and he was fond of telling the story of three labor leaders who were indicted for sedition. The first of the three got himself eminent counsel, as they call it, a big corporation lawyer, and he was found guilty and given five years. The second labor leader hired my friend, the labor lawyer, and he also was found guilty and got five years. The third labor leader said, a plague on both your houses; and he defended himself—and he was found guilty and got five years. So there you are.”
“I’ll stick with you.”
“All right. You could do worse. Now, just to clear the air—one or two things. Are you a communist?”
“No.”
“Ever been one?”
“No.”
“Ever thought of it, been around it? Were you in the Young Communist League? Ever join any organizations?”
“Sure I thought of it—who didn’t in the ’thirties? During the Spanish War, I made some contributions, nothing to be proud of but I didn’t have any money at all then. Two dollars here, five there. If I knew communists then, they’ve moved elsewhere. I’ve signed statements occasionally—I don’t even remember how many or when. I knew a communist in the army. He was a decent fellow, and we used to argue a good deal. My father knew some communists up in Minnesota—lumber workers. They were Finns. My father liked them. I remember he used to say that all the Finns in Minnesota were communists and that’s why things were so bad in Finland. But he never became a communist. I don’t know why. In his place, I would have, I think—but he didn’t like politics. Here—now—well, I don’t know. I’ve decided it’s a rotten game, guessing who is a communist and who isn’t. I suppose I know some, but I can’t see that it matters, and I can’t say that I’m sure.”
“All right. Next point—”
They were still at it at midnight, when MacAllister rose to leave, armed with a bundle of notes. By then, Silas was confirmed in his decision and glad for it. He decided that he liked MacAllister even more than he had thought.
CHAPTER NINE
Monday: January 27, 1951
THE TRIAL
CHAPTER NINE
THE TRIAL
MacAllister sat on one of the twin beds and watched Silas move restlessly around the little room. “This is his hard time,” MacAllister thought. “It will never again be as hard as it is now.” And Silas told himself angrily, “Why doesn’t he tell me to go to bed? Why doesn’t he tell me to go out and watch a movie? Why in hell’s name does he sit there like that?”
The room was committed to memory; it had been waiting eternally for men like these. It had buff walls and twin beds, two dressers, one easy chair, two straight-backed chairs, and two racks for suitcases. The toilet was spotlessly clean, and there was a little cardboard box for razor blades. There was a disposable soft paper scarf to shine shoes with. They thought of everything.
“Let’s go over part of it,” Silas suggested.
“Let’s not. What happens when you study an hour before the exam? We�
�ve done everything that can be done—and maybe more. Do you play cards, Silas?”
He hadn’t played since the war, and he smiled at the suggestion, and MacAllister thought, “That’s better,” and said aloud, “I’ll play you two cents casino and a nickel for the big diamond. O.K.?”
“O.K.,” Silas agreed.
They played for about a half-hour, and then Silas found himself losing interest, unable to concentrate on the simple mechanics of this simplest of card games.
“Rummy?” MacAllister asked.
Silas tossed in the cards and asked how long the trial would last, nor did MacAllister remind him that he had asked this question twenty times before.
“No way to tell, Silas. Maybe a week, give or take a few days. Tomorrow, we’ll make motions, start picking the jury. We might be through with it next Monday or Tuesday—but-who knows? As far as we know, they have only one real witness, Bob Allen. Even if they call Dave Cann to lay the basis for Allen’s testimony, that won’t take long. The hell with that, Silas! Let’s not talk about it any more. How about a walk and a cup of coffee?”
It was better than sitting in the hotel room. They put on their hats and coats and went down into the brisk, biting January night. They turned up their collars, and plodded along the dark, dimly lit streets. It was still an hour and a half to midnight, yet the broad avenues were completely deserted, the long, white government buildings standing like ghostly sepulchers.
“This is a silent, lonesome city at night,” MacAllister observed. “It makes you feel that when the offices close, life goes away—no life of its own. Yet I think it has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the whole nation. It’s an uneasy city. I don’t feel good here.”
“Yet some of it is very beautiful.”
“I don’t know. Fear shrinks beauty, and this place is full of fear. I used to think that nothing in the whole world could be as grand and fine as the memorial for Abe Lincoln, but I don’t know now. I think it was Gandhi who once said that the Taj Mahal was built with the tears of the Indian people—and I never looked at a picture of it after that without thinking of what he said, and it wasn’t beautiful any more. In almost any city, you feel something, the nature of it, the mood, the quality—call it what you will. But what do you feel here?”
“I don’t know,” Silas said.
“Neither do I. Maybe in a week from now, we’ll both be able to answer that question. Silas, it’s a funny thing—but I feel good about you. I’m glad I’m in this. I’m glad I know you. It’s done a lot for me. For one thing, I’ve cut out the drink for the duration of this trial. Afterwards—well, who the hell knows, but this has given me something to bite into. You know when I began to like you, Silas?”
It embarrassed Silas to have another man state flatly that he liked him. He had lived too long in a place where affection between men was never expressed. He didn’t know what to answer, and simply shook his head.
“When you busted loose down here,” MacAllister went on. “When you wouldn’t look at me—and I could almost hear you thinking, I’m going to fight these bastards—if I die for it, I’m going to fight them! My eyes opened, or maybe my heart opened. I had been watching a line of people crawl before those damned committees, crawl and whine how they hated the reds and how they never were and never had been, or were sorry that they were, because when they had been, they were young and foolish and please forgive them for ever thinking or dreaming or breathing, or wanting to do anything decent, or having a decent impulse or a decent thought, and how they hated the reds more than anyone hated them, and so on ad nauseum. And here’s a quiet college prof, a skinny, long-headed, long-nosed guy with glasses, who looks mild enough to run if a dog barks—and he gives it back to them, straight and level and no holds barred. Ah, Jesus, that was good! And maybe the good Lord will forgive us, if for a thousand cowards and scoundrels, we produce one brave and honest man. Anyway, that’s how I felt.”
“Thanks,” Silas managed to say. He felt very full, and there were no words he could think of to say how he felt.
“Well, there it is,” MacAllister said, pointing across the street they had come to—pointing to where a low building stood, dim and formless in the night, a great flight of stone steps—the hallmark of a public building in Washington—poking forward from its deep shadows.
“The courthouse?”
“Federal District Court, Silas. First time you’ve seen it?”
“I think so.”
They stood there in the night, looking at the dark, shadowed building.
* * *
Silas had come to realize that nothing except the fact is completely descriptive of the fact. Like many thoughtful people, he anticipated an experience and lived through it imaginatively before it happened; but nothing he anticipated was just like the trial itself: His own and long-standing picture of a courtroom portrayed a place of austere dignity and almost frozen calm—in which the scales of justice were delicately balanced and objectively observed; but the fact was immediately and apparently different. The Federal District Court gave the appearance of one of the busiest places in Washington, a building too small for the services required of it, swarming with activity, its corridors filled with curious spectators, inquisitive tourists, newspaper men, veniremen, FBI agents, police in plain clothes and police in uniform, lawyers, clients, bondsmen—a beehive of motley and diversified activity, in which the routine was hardly disturbed by a teacher from Clemington.
He sat in one of the spectator’s seats in Judge Alvin Calent’s courtroom, and watched the jury being chosen. Even now nothing happened as he had anticipated or would have imagined; and his thinking, molded by half-forgotten Hollywood films, and novels of various sorts read over the past twenty years, found little enough that was familiar. The courtroom had recently been given a fresh coat of light green paint; the Venetian blinds let in slatted trickles of sunshine; the judge yawned frequently as he rocked his big swivel chair behind his desk. The judge was a southerner, with a voice as soft as honey, a portly man with a round, fleshy face, a small nose, and the calmly aloof expression of a priest. A few newspaper men poked their heads in, but did not remain for this part of the proceedings. Two chunky, bored marshals sat slackly alongside of the two doors to the courtroom. The clerk picked his nose furtively and stared at the ceiling, and the stenographer sat with his pencil poised, a lean, half-starved whippet. MacAllister held a long, whispered consultation with the government attorney, a tall man of about thirty, whose name was Horace Ward, whose face was singularly devoid of expression, and who had the look, under his close-cropped hair, of a football player recently out of training; and then both of them continued their whispered consultation with the judge.
The jury panel was the area of hope, the plain people who would judge the evidence and find Silas guilty or not guilty; but there was nothing in their faces for him to read or bite into; and they sat as if there was total agreement among them that neither by expression nor by motion should they indicate the content of their human minds or their immortal souls. They were neatly dressed and pointedly minding their own business, men and women, neither the very young nor the very old, but aged from thirty to fifty, about one in five of them colored. All of them might have been trained to avoid Silas’ eyes, to conceal from him any shred of hope, any dream or flight of fancy or deep passion for justice—or this might have been his imagination entirely, for when he asked MacAllister what the lawyer thought of the panel, MacAllister shrugged and said,
“You never know. The only thing you can put your finger on is that all except four are government employees and those four are probably related to government employees.”
“And the government is the prosecutor—”
“My dear Silas, the government is also the judge and the marshals at the door. Try to remember that this is a company town—one industry, one boss, government. Nothing particularly new in that. It just depends on what kind of a government you’re dealing with, and where you yourself sit.
As a matter of fact, suppose you sit at the table with me, and we’ll do our little exercise in human nature together.”
There began to run through Silas’ mind an annoying refrain, “Oh, I am the cook and the captain too, and the mate of the Nancy Brig, and the bo’sun tight and the midshipmite and the crew of the captain’s gig.…”
* * *
“What is your occupation, sir?” asked MacAllister.
“Typesetter.”
“And where do you work?”
“At the Government Printing Office.”
“And how long have you worked there?”
“Eighteen years.”
“Are you married?”
“I am.”
“Does your wife work?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you tell me where she works and what she does?”
“She is a filing clerk, employed by the Department of Commerce.”
“Have you any other relatives in government employment?”
“Yes, sir. Two daughters, one in the Commerce Department and one in the State Department. My sister works in the bindery of the Government Printing Office. You’re not interested in more distant relatives, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” MacAllister sighed, and walked back to where Silas sat and leaned down to him and said, “Well, my friend, we have four challenges left, and I don’t think it matters a tinker’s damn.”
“This one,” Silas grinned ruefully, “he not only seems to work for the government, he seems to be the government.”
“Want me to knock him off?”
