by Mo Rocca
The New York Tribune was abolitionist Horace Greeley’s paper. It disappeared over eighty years ago, merging with the New York Herald.
“The New York Tribune?”
“That’s right. They said my book didn’t hold a candle to Jenny Lind’s children’s book. Even back then it was all about celebrity children’s books. To think they gave a rave to a book about an opera-singing duck with laryngitis. So the duck had to miss a couple of performances. Big whoop.”
I was tired of ignoring the strange clues Helen kept dropping. Unless she was demented—and that was a distinct possibility—she had something to tell me.
“Helen,” I said, “I need you to tell me the truth. When did you write that story about Miss Pussy?”
She looked me right in the eyes. “You don’t want to know. You know why? Because it would destroy you!”
“That’s not true!” I said.
“All right,” she shrugged. “Then I’ll tell you.”
She took a few steps back and brought her hands up to the top button on her blouse. Suddenly she looked so vulnerable. I thought of the scene in Yentl when Barbra Streisand reveals to Mandy Patinkin that she is in fact a woman. (I wondered for a moment how Helen would sound on “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” It required a wider range than “Getting to Know You.” I wondered also why Mandy Patinkin was cast in a movie musical and never allowed to sing in it.)
But Helen’s revelation was far more shocking. As she opened her blouse—and I was preparing my It’s-not-you-it’s-me-but-I’m-really-very-flattered speech—I saw not flesh but what looked like a coat of feathers.
“Oh no, oh my God, Helen”—I was breathless—“are you . . . are you . . . ?”
“Yes, Mo,” she said, her eyes moistening with tears. “I am. I’m a turkey buzzard.”
15
Bird of a Nation
The turkey buzzard. Cathartes aura. I knew from my passing familiarity with nonpresidential animals that the turkey buzzard is the cousin of the California condor. The remarkable thing about the turkey buzzard (known to some as a turkey vulture) is its great lifespan. Some were known to live as many as 118 years. It has an extraordinary sense of smell. Contrary to popular belief, it has no relationship to a turkey. It simply has a similar-looking neck and red head, both destitute of feathers and sparsely covered with short black hair. (Helen apparently was blessed with more hair than normal on her head. As for her crop, it was barely visible. She might have had some work done.)
The turkey buzzard is found throughout most of the United States, mostly in the South and in maritime regions, but never farther east or north of New Jersey. It is a social animal and feeds on all sorts of food, with a preference for sucking the eggs and devouring the young of other birds, especially herons. It also eats other turkey buzzards, but only if they are already dead.
Its plumage is blackish brown, its tail purplish, its eyes brown. Although it is known for a startling appearance up close, with badly diseased skin around its eyes (here once again Helen was apparently blessed by good genes), it is equally renowned by a beauty in flight matched by few other birds, with a glorious wingspan of, on average, six feet four inches.
Beyond that I knew very little.
“I must confess, Helen, I don’t know what to say.”
By now she had taken off her skirt and shaken out her tail of twelve broad straight feathers.
Portrait of a young Helen.
“Excuse me, dear. It’s awfully uncomfortable keeping all that crammed inside a girdle. Now let’s have that talk: As you might have guessed, I’m older than you think.”
“Well, exactly how—?”
“Mind your manners. I might be a different species, but I’m still a female. Some turkey buzzards live to be around 120. Let’s just say I’m older than the average.
“My story really begins in August 1805. I was very young—you could have counted the number of times I’d molted on one claw at that point. I lived with the Shoshone Indians in an area called the Lehmi Pass, just along the Idaho-Montana border. Imagine Ruby Ridge, but less commercial. The Indians called the cliff I perched on Solemn Heath.”
“The Lehmi Pass. That’s where Lewis and Clark trekked, looking for the headwaters of the Columbia River,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Well, they never would have found them, if not for their Indian guide Sacagawea. Sacagawea led those two boys and their corps of discovery to our camp in search of horses. That was the only way they’d be able to cross the Rockies before they’d catch their death of cold. Someone really should have told them to pack warmer clothes.”
“They got their horses, right?”
“And they got me. Truth is, I was bored hanging out all day on a perch. It’s no place for a young buzzard with ambition. So I followed Sac. And let me tell you, she was an inspiration. She wasn’t only guiding the expedition. She had to deal with a baby, a whiny French husband, and Meriwether Lewis. Lewis was a nice young man, but he could be very gloomy.”
“Well, yes,” I broke in, “he ended up killing himself. So, Helen, I bet you were a big help.”
“Mainly I helped keep everyone on track along the treacherous Lolo Trail. Those were the roughest eleven days of my life, aside from my trip to China with Nixon. Bad moo shoo,” she explained.
“But I thought turkey buzzards can eat anything,” I said.
“I hope you haven’t been reading that Audubon crap,” she snapped. “Let me tell you something. Ornithologists don’t know jack. They’re the used-car salesmen of animal scientists. Got it?”
“Uh, sure.”
“But I digress. We all spent the winter of 1805–6 on the Oregon coast. It was horrible. Constant raining, constant flooding. I haven’t been back to the beach since. But being with Sacagawea made it all worth it. Lewis and Clark might have had greatness in them, but they couldn’t have done it without the guidance of Sacagawea.”
“Wait a sec, Helen, I get that you’re a turkey buzzard. In retrospect it seems obvious. But why has everyone all these years thought that you’re Lebanese?”
“I haven’t a clue. It might be because I’ve always liked chickpeas—that winter, Sacagawea and I used to mash them up and spread it on bread. We couldn’t afford yeast since we’d spent all our wampum on horses, so the bread was unleavened.”
“You were making hummus and pita bread?”
“Is that what the kids are calling it? All I know is that when my colleagues saw me eating it in the pressroom, they started calling me Lebanese. It only became awkward once, in 1992, when Jamie Farr attended the White House Correspondents Dinner.”
“Okay, so back to the story. How did you get to Washington?”
“Well, Lewis and Clark sent a couple of grizzly bears back to Washington, D.C. I had nothing else to do, so I hitched a ride. Never share a buggy with two grizzlies,” she said with a knowing glance.
“Washington was just a big old swamp back then,” she continued, “trash festering in open landfills. It was delicious! Of course, Jefferson was President, which was a delight. He was so intellectually curious. You know about Dick the mockingbird.”
I knew that after Buzzy the sheepdog, Dick was Jefferson’s favorite pet. He would perch on the President’s shoulder and sing along as Jefferson played his violin. So what?
“Such a nice Jewish bird,” Helen said. “Of course Jefferson didn’t know that until he found Dick’s yarmulke hidden in the Monticello dumbwaiter. Then the two became the best of friends. Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in honor of him. And Dick got the President hooked on klezmer.”
“Jefferson played klezmer on his violin?” I asked.
“You want that I should tell you the story? Stop interrupting. Oy.”
Then Helen started sounding more cautious. “You know, back then pets were treated . . . differently . . . with more respect. Being an animal myself, and one with a real interest in politics, I was naturally interested in, well, presidential pets.”
She continued carefully. “So I started researching, gathering articles and artifacts, doing some writing”—she gestured with her wing toward her cabinet and bookcases—“documenting the presidential pets. But eventually it became, well, unacceptable for a turkey buzzard to ask questions. So I went underground, so to speak. Then in 1943 I reemerged as Helen Thomas. And since the Kennedy administration I’ve covered the White House.”
My head was spinning. “So since 1806 you’ve lived in D.C.? You never went back home, even for a visit?”
“No, dear. And I still think about Solemn Heath every day.”
It suddenly occurred to me: “Solemn Heath! That’s an anagram for ‘Helen Thomas’!”
“You’re good.”
Then impulsively I asked, “Helen, I have to ask, in all the time you’ve been here, have you ever been a presidential pet yourself?”
“NO!!” she shot back. The question jarred her, but she quickly reined it in. “No, dear. What on earth would ever make you think that? I’ve always been an . . . observer.”
“I’m sorry to ask such a personal question, Helen. It’s just that your story is so amazing. You’ve got to write it down. You could get a killer advance.”
She looked at me intently. “No, Mo. My story can never be told. In fact no one can know the truth about me. It could endanger all of this.” Again she indicated her archives. “You must keep this secret and anything else I tell you, at least for now. Right now just listen and learn. This story is big—bigger than a single President and his dog, cat, bobcat, or giraffe.”
“Giraffe?! Who had a giraffe?”
“Chet Arthur. It was just an overnight guest. He was a strange guy. But that’s not my point. My point is, you must be careful.”
Helen looked so scared. In such a short time we’d come so far. I instinctively reached out and grabbed her claw.
“Of course Helen, your secret is safe with me.”
She glanced down. “You know, Mo, I’ve been through a lot. It’s not just the way the press office has treated me or even the other members of the press corps.” Her beak was trembling now.
“What is it, Helen?”
“Please, don’t speak. Right now I just need you to stay with me.”
16
The Age of Jackass
The next morning I awoke in Helen’s bed. If Marlin Perkins and Jacqueline Susann had collaborated on a novel, I was living it. Stranger still, this was all happening without the popping of any pills. (Prevacid doesn’t count.)
The mattress was actually a futon, one of the only pieces of furniture from the twentieth century, and it was surprisingly comfortable. Helen had picked it up from Mike Deaver’s yard sale in 1985.
Helen had already gone. I sat up, wiped the sleep from my eyes, spat out some feathers, and looked for my glasses. I was nearly blind without them, so I wasn’t sure what was causing the rustling sound that came from high up in Helen’s bookshelves. I looked over and saw a short whitish figure atop a ladder busily filing away volumes. It looked like the great historian Arthur Schlesinger—if he had floppy ears.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” I said, clearing my throat and fumbling for my specs.
“Well, hello, my boy,” he said matter-of-factly, in a slightly British accent. “Your spectacles are on Madame’s nightstand.”
They were there, right next to a jar of paraffin emulsion, which Helen used to waterproof her feathers. (Helen specially ordered this beauty product from Crayola.) Once I got my glasses on, I could focus on the gentleman in the stacks.
Or should I say gentle dog? It was the beagle who’d spoken cryptically to me at Laurie’s book party, from inside the kennel. But now he was wearing a red bow tie and round, dark-rimmed glasses. He looked exactly like the character Mr. Peabody from my favorite Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon spin-off, Peabody’s Improbable History.
In fact it was Mr. Peabody!
“MY GOD, YOU’RE Mr. Peabody. What are you doing here?”
“It’s really quite simple. I work for Madame,” he said, descending from the ladder. “I’ve been her loyal assistant and archivist for a long time. I overheard everything last night . . . unfortunately,” he added drolly. “Now that you and she have become so familiar, shall we say, I suppose I can be more forthcoming.”
As cartoon fans everywhere knew, Mr. Peabody used to educate Sherman, the bespectacled boy he’d adopted, with trips in his WABAC time machine. Had he taken Helen for a ride in it?
“No, Mo, I no longer try to meddle with history. I’m now devoted to aiding Madame in her quest to recall history as it really was and preserve it for the future. Those who cannot remember the past—”
I wasn’t interested in discussing Santayana. I had more pressing concerns. “Right, right, Mr. Peabody. So whatever happened to Sherman? You two were such a great team.”
“Well, after I took the boy back in time for a visit with Professor Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago, Sherman fell under the spell of the nascent neocon movement. I lost contact with him soon after. Today he can be seen on George Stephanopolous’s struggling Sunday morning program.”
Mr. Peabody
“Sherman is George Will?!”
“Yes, that is his nom de punditry, I’ve been told.”
Mr. Peabody continued. “In any event, I grew tired of time travel. It struck me as entirely too gimmicky. Then I heard about the work that Madame was doing.”
Mr. Peabody’s was a voice I implicitly trusted. While some questions had been answered the night before, I was still hazy on the mystery of Helen’s fixation with all the Presidents’ pets. Could she possibly believe that any President had had a significant relationship with a pet? Maybe Helen was just a little too long in the gobbler.
“So much has been thrown at me so quickly,” I said. “I want to understand.”
Mr. Peabody filed away a biography of William Henry Harrison’s cow Sukey, then grabbed a tray of scones and began serving me breakfast as he started in on his lecture.
“Harry Truman, our thirty-third President, once said, ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ The old haberdasher was known for being blunt. There is no greater example of his bluntness than that statement. A true friend tells you what you need to know—supports you, yes, but helps keep you on the right path in life when you begin to stray. This is what pets have done for almost all of our Presidents. Coffee?”
“Please. Well, all the Presidents have had pets,” I said. “All except Millard Fillmore.”
At the mention of Millard Fillmore, Mr. Peabody flashed a startled look at me, then regained his train of thought and continued pouring. “The pets, in short, have humanized our Chief Executives when they ran the risk of losing touch with the people they serve. No leader, after all, can possibly serve his people without sensible counsel. And the human advisors are all too often dehumanizing forces.”
I wasn’t much for New Ageism, but as a former Manhattanite I was certainly used to friends who treated their pets like children. Doggie birthday parties, dog mitzvahs even, had become de rigueur in some circles. This was no weirder.
“Fair enough,” I said, taking a sip and noticing that I was being served on official Franklin Pierce White House china, one of my favorite among the rococo-revival presidential patterns. “I can see how a pet can make a person gentler. Thank you.” Mr. Peabody had just finished slicing a honeydew melon for me. “Pets lower blood pressure,” I continued. “And if they’re really adorable they can make you giggle—”
Mr. Peabody cut me off and looked grave. “It’s more than that, my boy. From the founding of the republic White House pets have lent vital perspective. They’ve helped define the nature of the presidency itself,” he added dramatically.
“Okay, you’re getting a little out there,” I said.
“Oh ye of little faith. Let’s st
art at the very beginning then. Frittata?”
“If it’s not too much trouble. Can you make it with egg whites only?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Peabody, apparently an expert multitasker, began scrambling and explaining. “George Washington and the presidency. You remember that Washington was more god than man when he arrived at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May of 1787. The executive office was undefined and in danger of becoming kinglike.”
“That’s true,” I concurred. “The very next month Alexander Hamilton gave a speech at the convention proposing that the President be chosen for life.”
“Right you are, my boy,” confirmed Mr. Peabody. “Then you likely know that John Adams wanted Washington to be referred to as ‘His Majesty, the President.’ Even worse he went on record singing the praises of hereditary succession.”
“Yes,” I said, “but Washington was never going to go for any of that. He modeled himself after the great Cincinnatus,” I said, referring of course to the fifth-century BC warrior who rescued Rome, then returned to his simple farm life when the job was finished. “Even though Washington could have assumed dictatorial power he rejected it at every turn. Just like Cincinnatus, he walked away from it.”
“If you were a dog, I would throw you a bone . . . IF you had answered completely. The truth is, Washington was influenced by something much more immediate, namely the goings-on at his beloved estate, Mount Vernon. Careful, the plate’s hot.”
“Thank you, it looks delicious. What does Mount Vernon have to do with this?”
“It was at Mount Vernon,” continued Mr. Peabody, “that General Washington, in his quest to create a line of ‘super mules,’ imported a blue-blooded donkey to mate with his mares. The donkey, named Royal Gift, was a present from the King of Spain. And this Andalusian ass occupied a stable right next to General W’s trusty steed Nelson.”
“Nelson was Washington’s beloved horse throughout the Revolutionary War,” I said. “He was even with him at Valley Forge.”
