Silas Timberman

by Howard Fast

  Nor were they too interested in what Mr. Ward had to say. They knew what their role was to be, and they felt that Mr. Ward was needlessly reiterating the obvious. When Mr. Ward was dramatic, contrasting two types of communist, the one who operated in the deepest secrecy and the other who emerged from hiding to rescue the first, they were appreciative of his dramatic eloquence; but they sat apathetically through his long review of what he had proved.…

  The judge sensed their mood, and he shortened the charge he had prepared. He told them gently that under American law, all men were innocent until proven guilty; but then he told them firmly what their duties were, if, after weighing the evidence, they should decide that the defendant was guilty. He pointed out to them what a responsibility they bore—and how they were, in the most essential sense, the pillars of justice in a free world. There were two counts in the indictment, he reminded them. The defendant could be found innocent on both, or guilty on one, or guilty on both—and then he spoke of the gravity of the crime of perjury, the gravity of the communist menace—the gravity of concealment by those who would destroy.

  And then he sent them forth to the jury room.…

  Silas stood in the corridor and smoked, talking to no one, desiring to talk to no one. The court attendants and the newspaper men were making a twenty-five cent book on the time the jury would be out, and Silas was aroused from his reverie by a young reporter’s estimate of forty-five minutes. It seemed an incredible guess, until the jury returned in exactly thirty-five minutes with a decision of guilty on both counts.

  The judge set Friday, two days away, for the sentencing, and ordered the defendant not to leave Washington during the intervening time. But graciously, with a flushed and happy Mr. Ward sharing his graciousness, he agreed that the present bail should be continued.

  * * *

  His first reaction was to have no reaction. When Brady had been thrown into jail, Silas felt the cut of it deep into his own heart, and all of him longed toward Brady, to take off Brady’s back this burden that he himself had imposed. But now, for himself, there was no immediate reaction or hurt, and he wondered what had happened to his sensations, his sensitivities, his fears.

  He knew that he had to call Myra, that she had to hear it from him and not from anyone else—and he wanted to be alone. He told MacAllister that he wanted to be alone, that he would meet him and Masterson back at the hotel. Then he went to a telephone booth in the courthouse and called Myra and told her.

  “My darling,” she said. Only that.

  “I have until Friday,” he said. “But I can’t leave Washington.”

  “Then I’ll come.”

  He tried to tell her that she should not come. The fare was so much, and they had already spent such a large part of the little money they had. And who would she leave the children with?

  “The children will be all right. Silas, Silas—let me come. I want to come. Don’t worry about the money. I’ll get Selma or someone to stay with the children, and there’s a plane from Indianapolis at eleven. Let me come—please.”

  “If you want to, then come,” he said. He told her about Brady, but she already knew, and he found himself wondering why she couldn’t be concerned for Brady as he was. He walked back to the hotel, feeling that he was walking in a dream. Surely, it was a dream. It was a dream, and he was a small boy walking through the night. He came to the hotel.

  When he entered his room, Elbert Masterson rose and came forward and took his hands MacAllister was sprawled on a bed, staring at the ceiling. “Silas,” the pastor said, “how can I tell what I feel for you?”

  “I never thanked you properly,” Silas replied.

  “Don’t thank me. I am an old man going into a long, hard battle. Silas, my son, are you afraid?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I tell myself that I must not be afraid, because today I was afraid. I will not be afraid, Silas, and neither must you. Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return. Does an old man’s love and support and friendship help?”

  Silas looked up at him with tears in his eyes.

  “That’s not to be ashamed of. Who are the tears for?”

  “Not for myself,” Silas thought, “not for Myra or the kids.” And he said to Masterson, “For knowing that there are men like you and Brady in my own land. I was lost until you made me remember that. I was like a little boy walking in the night. Now I’m all right. Myra is coming here.”

  “Shall I remain here? Can I help you?”

  “I don’t need any help now,” Silas smiled. “Myra is coming. I’ll be all right.” He went over to MacAllister then and told him to clean up, so that they could have dinner. MacAllister didn’t move.

  “Get up, Mac,” Silas said.

  Still he didn’t move, and Silas said, “Didn’t you hear the pastor? Get up, God damn you, and be glad for the fight!” MacAllister sat up and suddenly began to weep. “Stop it,” Silas said gently. “Stop it. Go in and wash. Then we’ll eat.”

  They all felt better at dinner, and they were all ravenously hungry. They ate and listened to Masterson’s account of his arguments with Brady on the plane. The old man was a fine story teller, and he was obviously taken with Brady, filled with love and admiration for Brady.

  After dinner, Silas took another room for himself and Myra, and then Masterson packed and rode with Silas to the airport. By now, Silas felt that he had taken this ride numberless times—but after Masterson had left, he was lonely and found the time he had to wait endless and tedious. He smoked half a pack of cigarettes and drank three cups of coffee before Myra’s plane landed—but then he had her in his arms, and the time of waiting was forgotten and everything else was gone, and the only reality was this woman who was like himself and part of him. Not the least of what he had learned was how to love.

  * * *

  When the judge asked Silas whether he had anything to say before sentence was passed upon him, Silas turned to look at Myra, and somehow she had known that he would turn around and was waiting for his glance with that look upon her face that was so much and wonderfully a part of her, an expression that told him that he was known and wanted. Whatever happened, Myra would be all right—and so would he, so would he.

  “Yes,” he said to the judge, “I think I must say something. I don’t know what sentence you have decided on, or whether anything I say can influence that. It doesn’t matter. I have something to say, and I must say it. I always felt that I was not a very important person, no more important than millions of Americans who live quietly and the quietly. And it always seemed to me that was all I wanted in the world, to live quietly and decently and to raise my children. I love my wife, and I love my children a great deal—and I tried to give them a kind of happiness and security I never knew myself when I was a child. I suppose a lot of people try to do that, and I think we made a good home. I wasn’t very ambitious. I tried to be a good teacher, and perhaps I was a good one, if only because I like to teach and I like what happens to people who learn and who come to know things that they did not know before. I say all this and perhaps bore you a little with the commonplace of it, because this is all that I was. I think that I am more than that now.

  “I kept thinking that things were happening to me and to my family, cruel, senseless things—but I see now that these things did not just happen, nor were they without meaning. I signed a peace petition to outlaw the atom bomb. I am glad I signed it. I hate war, and I hate people who make war and death. I am an American. This is not something I willed. This is what I am and must be—and I must live according to this. Two atom bombs were dropped, and thousands of innocent people, people not too unlike myself and my family, were burned and blown to death—and I share part of the responsibility for that. I will never be a part of such a thing again. I thought it was just a whim on my part that I would not indulge a thing called civil defense—but it was not a whim, and there is only one defense, to do away with war and the men who make war.

  “I did not li
e. I did not perjure myself. I have committed no crime in our legal code—but I did commit a crime in the eyes of the men who rule this nation. My crime was that I would not accept a tyranny over the minds of men—that I would not scream and howl for a mad and senseless war, that I would not traduce my own mind, my reason, my learning, and my heritage—for which many men have died. I would not and I will not.

  “I don’t want to go to prison. I want to go back to my family—who need me as much as I need them. But if I must go to prison to fight this unholy horror that has settled down upon my land, then I will. I am not unimportant. I used to think that I was. But no man is unimportant, Your Honor. You can laugh at me later and send me to prison and tell your friends how easy it was to convict one rather simple school teacher; but that will not change what was done in this courtroom or make it any less a burden for you and every other man in this city to bear. You are letting loose a horror that will destroy you as surely as you attempted to destroy me—with one difference. I am indestructable. That is not egotism. I am a humble man, perhaps too humble; but I am on the side of life, and you are on the side of death.

  “Now I want—to thank you for listening to me. In a calmer moment, I might not have said all this in just this way. But I am not very calm, and I had to say it.”

  The judge had listened patiently. He nodded when Silas had finished. In the whole courtroom, there were only the marshals, the judge’s attendant, the clerk, Myra and MacAllister. He did not mind what Silas had said. He felt magnanimous as he told Silas,

  “Since this was a first offense and in the light of your war record, I have decided to sentence you to three years in a federal prison, a year and a half for each count on which you were found guilty, the sentences to run consecutively.…”

  They let Myra come over to him as they handcuffed him, and they let her kiss him. There were no words they had to say to each other now; for what had been, the words had been said. For what would be, there were no words yet—only the knowledge that wherever they were, they would be more and more closely knit together. In that way, for them, it was not an end, but another beginning.

  New York City

  April 1954

  A BIOGRAPHY OF

  HOWARD FAST

  Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

  Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

  Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

  Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

  Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of Spartacus inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published April Morning, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography Being Red (1990) and the New York Times bestseller The Immigrants (1977).

  Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

  Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.

  Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir Being Red, Fast wrote that he and his brother "had no childhood." As a result of their mother's death in 1923 and their father's absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the Bronx Home News. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. "My brother was like a rock," he wrote, "and without him I surely would have perished."

  A copy of Fast's military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM, Esquire, and Coronet. He also contributed scripts to Voice of America, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.

  Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. "Everyone worked at the prison," said Fast during a 1998 interview, "and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America." Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: "I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these thing
s can be properly invented. So that was my prison."

  Fast with his wife Bette and their two children, Jonathan and Rachel, in 1952. The family has a long history of literary achievement. Bette's father founded the Hudson County News Company. Jonathan Fast would go on to become a successful popular novelist, as would his daughter, Molly, whose mother, Erica Jong, is the author of the groundbreaking feminist novel Fear of Flying. (Photo courtesy of Lotte Jacobi.)

  Fast at a bookstand during his campaign for Congress in 1952. He ran on the American Labor Party ticket for the twenty-third congressional district in the Bronx. Although Fast remained a committed leftist his entire life, he looked back on his foray into national politics with a bit of amusement. "I got a disease, which is called 'candidateitis,'" he told Donald Swaim in a 1990 radio interview. "And this disease takes hold of your mind, and it convinces you that your winning an election is important, very often the most important thing on earth. And it grips you to a point that you're ready to kill to win that election." He concluded: "I was soundly defeated, but it was a fascinating experience."

  In 1953, the Soviet Union awarded Fast the International Peace Prize. This photo from the ceremony shows the performer, publisher, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson delivering a speech before presenting Fast (seated, second from left) with the prestigious award. Robeson and Fast came to know each other through their participation in leftist political causes during the 1940s and were friends for many years. Like Fast, Robeson was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era and invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions. This led to Robeson's work being banned in the United States, a situation that Robeson, unlike Fast, never completely overcame. In a late interview Fast cited Robeson as one of the forgotten heroes of the twentieth century. "Paul," he said, "was an extraordinary man." Also shown (from left to right): Essie Robeson, Mrs. Mellisk, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Rachel Fast, and Bette Fast. (Photo courtesy of Julius Lazarus and the author.)