Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  “It’s so sad,” she said. “Trying to make up for everything before you go.”

  “He was—peaceful about it,” said Marshall, remembering how strange it felt to stand in that place with the old man, someone he had never known, this very courtly, heart-weak gentleman with the unsteady, tottering walk and the broken smile. The only image of him that the boy had carried with him out of childhood was a blur: someone in a dark green fatigue jacket—army issue, circa 1940—making a trail through drifting snow around a big, rotund, bearlike snowman, everything gauzy-looking in the swirl of flakes, the shape of his father there, hands in the pockets of the green jacket, a pipe jutting from his mouth trailing smoke, leading several neighborhood children and Marshall in some game lost to memory now—some improvisation that had arrived in the happy blush of an unexpected gift: a snow day, a nature-enforced holiday from school and work—counting steps, slogging through the trodden snow, circling the enormous, still figure with the red woolen cap on its featureless round head. No matter how hard he tried, Marshall could not see the face of the man in the dark green jacket—only the jacket, and the skinny legs, the boots, the faces of the other children, whose names he had forgotten long ago. It was as if the face were obscured by the roiling mist of snow, still falling, still sifting down in the wind.

  “It’s so sad,” Alice said.

  “What?”

  “Your father. Stop daydreaming.”

  “He didn’t—didn’t seem to want a lot more than he’d had,” Marshall said.

  “Why haven’t you ever told me this?” she demanded. “That the two of you came here. We’ve been on this street before. Don’t you think about it every time you come by here?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “And you never thought to tell me about it? You’re so phlegmatic about some things.”

  He didn’t know the word, and he didn’t want her to know he didn’t know it. He raised one eyebrow, as if to accept this description of himself, and kept silent.

  This was a long walk, and normally provided him with opportunities to explore and to watch people, or to wander into the drugstores, to browse among the magazines and paperback books in their metal racks. It was amazing how completely people looked through you in the streets of a large city. You could walk among them like an invisible guest from another world, observing everyone. He thought of mentioning something about this, but she began talking about the election, how there was no danger that Goldwater would actually be elected president. Marshall quickened his pace, crossing Fifteenth Street, and she hurried along at his side, talking. “My father gets so mad at me because I make jokes about the name—a person can’t help his name, I guess.” She sang, “Every time I pee, I see, Goldwater,” and then laughed. “Actually I liked that thing he said in his acceptance speech at the convention—that stuff about moderation and extremism something and something—it was an interesting way to look at it—”

  “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” Marshall said.

  “You have the best memory of anyone I know.”

  He felt as though he were probably quite extraordinary. Along with being phlegmatic. He couldn’t wait to get to his dictionary, at home.

  “I don’t know how anybody can remember anything,” she said. “I certainly can’t.”

  The sidewalk was crowded, and the whoosh and rush of cars sounded all around them. He was attuned to everything. At the beginning of himself. It felt that way sometimes, and it was a pleasant feeling. He was an aggregate of possibility. He walked along, watching the fluid, moving world around him. Lights made shimmery ponds of reflection in the road surface and shone in the windows of passing cars. A black limousine with big tailfins went speeding by, and Alice wondered aloud if it was Johnson. No, Johnson was in New England, campaigning.

  Decorations girded the tops of the streetlamps lining F Street—little cones of white light, suggesting the shape of Christmas trees. Through the efforts of the new First Lady, there had been money appropriated for renovations on the street, and the decorations were part of a recent ceremony. The city would probably leave the decorations there, now, through the holidays. Beyond the newly paved street, far off in the waning afternoon, a siren wailed. They went on up Fifteenth and over to Lafayette Park, past stacks of wooden planks that in early January would be used to begin building bleachers for someone’s inaugural parade. In the park, all the trees were heavy with the mist, the green washing out of them, and there was a gloomy, abandoned look to the patches of leaf-littered grass. The statues seemed to rise out of the dark in their striving, radiant with mist. She had taken hold of his arm, talking about the needlelike rain, and the lights along F Street, her father, who always made such a big fuss every year. Wouldn’t it be nice, she said, to arrange a double date: Marshall and Alice, with Marshall’s mother and Alice’s father. “Don’t you think so?”

  “My mother wouldn’t go on a blind date,” Marshall told her. “And your father doesn’t like me.”

  “How can you say that? You only met him once.”

  As they were leaving the park, a man approached them, wearing a signboard. “Hey, kid,” he said. “Wait—where you going?” He took hold of Marshall’s sleeve. “You think this is a democracy, kid? Do you? This is not a democracy.” The signboard said US OUT OF UN. There were more words below this, but they were unreadable, washing out in the rain. “What’s your name, kid? I seen you coming through here before, hunh? What’s your name?”

  “What’s yours?” Marshall said. “I’ve seen you here before, too. I come through here every Monday and Wednesday.”

  “My name is Walter Winchell. I never seen you before.”

  “You’re not Walter Winchell.”

  “Bet me.” The man held out his hand.

  Marshall looked at him. “That’s my name, too.”

  “Walter Winchell?”

  “No, my name is Walter.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, kid.” The man turned to Alice. “Excuse the language, miss.”

  “That is really my name,” Marshall said. “Would you like to see my driver’s license?”

  The man regarded him, as if to gauge his level of seriousness. Then he nodded. “Yeah. Why not.”

  “His name is Walter,” Alice said. “I can vouch for him.”

  “Lemme see it,” said the man.

  “First, admit you’re not Walter Winchell,” Alice said.

  The man frowned. “I can’t help what somebody else’s name is, sweetie. I’m not the radio guy.” He turned to Marshall. “Now let me see what you got.”

  Marshall produced the license, and held it up for the man to see. The man took his wrist, held the license closer to his face, turning so that it would catch the light of a streetlamp. Marshall turned with him. It was as if they were moving slowly through the steps of a dance.

  “I can’t—” the man said. “I can’t make it out—”

  “It says ‘Walter,’” Marshall said. “See?”

  The man said, “Where? Come over here in the light.” He pulled Marshall with him to the corner, directly under the lamp. He still held the young man’s wrist, and he stared at the license. “I can’t read it—the glare on the plastic. Can you get it out of the plastic?”

  Marshall tried to pull the card out of its slip. His hands were getting wet.

  “Here,” the man said. “Let me.”

  Marshall handed it to him. The man tried for a moment to remove the little card, then held the whole thing up to the light again. “You got anything else with your name on it?”

  “It’s right there,” Marshall said. “What’s the matter with your eyes?”

  The man suddenly thrust it at him. “Agh. I’ll take your word for it. I can’t read it in this light.”

  “It says ‘Walter,’” the young man said, putting it back in his wallet.

  “Okay,” the man said. “What do you want, a medal? You reckonize me. And maybe I reckonize you
, too. So what. There’s no money in your wallet.”

  “Do you want money?” Marshall asked him. “Is there something I can do? I’d like to help you.”

  “Shit,” the man said, turning away. “Kid’s crazy.”

  “Do you want some money?” Marshall asked him, trying to reach under his raincoat.

  The man took him by the arms. “Look, I don’t want your money. Leave it where it is. All right?” He patted Marshall’s shoulders and stepped back, almost danced back, bowing and shaking his head. “Jesus.”

  Marshall let Alice pull him along, looking back at the man, who kept watching him, then turned and seemed to hurry out of sight.

  “My God, what’re you thinking of when you pull this stuff?” Alice said.

  “I’m thinking of giving to the poor,” he told her.

  She said, “Saint Francis in Italian pointy-toed shoes.”

  “Well, isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do?”

  “The Bible doesn’t say anything about giving to people with signboards on, I know it. I’ve read enough of it to know that.”

  They crossed H Street and made their way toward Eighteenth. Cars and buses were lined up at a stoplight, and the two of them hurried across. In the headlights, you could see how hard it was misting.

  “Want to eat at Wheaton’s?” she asked. “I always used to stop at Wheaton’s.”

  “On Eighteenth. Me, too. I mean, I do now.”

  “The one just down from Saint Matt’s.”

  Marshall said, “I don’t call it that.”

  “I didn’t think I was being disrespectful,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “It’s fine.”

  “You got quiet. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he told her.

  “Okay,” she said simply. They went on in silence for a time. And then she began talking about the folk craze—the Kingston Trio, whom she had seen in concert, and the Modern Folk Quartet, and Bob Dylan, which she pronounced Dye-lan. Dye-lan and Joan Baez were going together, and she had a music magazine, Folkworld, that showed them sitting next to each other in a circle of people, at some gathering in Carmel. Young people were doing dramatic things all over the country, and she said the knowledge of that filled her with an ache, a desire to get on with things. “We’re going to do a sit-in down in Pope’s Creek this week sometime,” she said. “It hasn’t been decided yet.”

  “I don’t like the Beatles,” Marshall told her. “All they have is that mop hair. They don’t have any real talent. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”

  “Do you like Dye-lan?”

  “I don’t really know that much about him. He wrote that Peter, Paul and Mary song. Isn’t it pronounced like the guy in Gunsmoke?”

  “No, it’s Dye-lan, I’m sure. Because he writes about death a lot. You should hear him sing. He sounds like a ninety-year-old man, and he’s only my age.”

  “I like Peter, Paul and Mary. The Kingston Trio. And Judy Collins.”

  They went on, up Eighteenth Street. In the shop windows, there were photographs of Kennedy. Some were still draped in black cloth, or in the folds of the American flag, or red-white-and-blue crepe. They were mostly candid shots—Kennedy concentrating on something, writing, staring off, listening, a young man burdened with the cares of office. Public places all across the country were being named for him, and merchants sold recordings of his speeches, books about his life—his heroism, his wit, his pain, his courage.

  “Time is such a funny thing,” Alice said. “It feels like he lived forever ago, doesn’t it?”

  “I saw him once,” Marshall told her. “On a lunch hour. Summer before last. His hair was so reddish with the sun on it. It surprised me. I remember being surprised by the redness in it. I’ve been reading his speeches.”

  “The way you read. It amazes me that you got bad grades.”

  “I read fast, too,” he said.

  “Kennedy could read more than a thousand words a minute.”

  “I’m like that,” he hurried to say.

  “I’ve never thought you seemed like the type to be in radio.”

  “What type is that?” he said.

  “Oh, sort of talky—you know. With a big voice. Like my dad. Some of the people he brings over.”

  “I had a teacher tell me I should be in radio,” he said. “When I was in the eleventh grade. My mother works with him now. Mr. Atwater.”

  “Well,” she said. “Radio’s not for you.”

  “I’ve decided that,” he said.

  “Right. You’re going to be president.”

  “It’s a little early to talk about that.” He was very pleased.

  “I told you my dad met Kennedy a couple times. He has friends who knew Kennedy pretty well. One interviewed Kennedy on TV, with Cronkite and the others.”

  “My father went to school with Mitchell Brightman,” he told her.

  “That’s him,” Alice said, delighted. “That’s the one.”

  At Wheaton’s they hesitated. The counter was crowded and noisy, and a man near the door was smoking a thick, black cigar that Alice said took her breath away. In the harsh light of the drugstore entrance, Marshall saw the small hairs growing at the corners of her lips. He looked away. They were going to have to wait a few minutes for a seat.

  “I think I’m going to have an ice cream sundae,” he said.

  “You and sundaes. Didn’t you have one for lunch yesterday?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  She had begun to speak before he was finished. “One day I’d like to talk to your mother about your diet.”

  “I don’t think you’d get very far,” he said.

  “I still say she and my father would like each other.”

  “Maybe I’ll have chili,” he said, wanting to change the subject.

  Alice breathed, then turned to the man with the cigar, a coffee-colored older man with a darker place on the side of his face and a red patch in his very close-cropped, wiry hair. “Would you please put that out, sir? It’s choking me.”

  “No,” the man said, all good nature.

  “It’s so strong.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I didn’t send for you. And I ain’t keeping you here, either, Missy.”

  Marshall felt as if he should say something to defend her, but then the moment passed. Alice started into the store, and he followed, glancing back at the man with the cigar, who still smiled, blowing smoke.

  “Some people,” she said. “I don’t feel very good, now.”

  There were no seats at the counter. This part of the store smelled of perfume and wet clothes and the cooking meat on the griddle. Faintly, there came the odor of the cigar. Two women got up from the counter and lifted full shopping bags, moving away.

  “Well?” Walter asked. “Shall we stay or go?”

  Alice moved to the counter, sat down, and, removing her light raincoat, draped it across her lap. He left his on, taking his own seat, and tried to get the waiter’s attention. The waiter was pouring coffee for a customer at the other end of the counter. Two men were arguing over a typed page one of them held.

  “It’s specious,” the one man said. He had gray hair at his temples, and wore wire-framed glasses and a three-piece blue suit with a darker blue tie. “It’s specious,” he said again.

  Marshall made a mental note to look up the word, along with “phlegmatic,” and to be alert for the chance to use both of them in context. The man in the brown suit was an egghead, no doubt. At work, there was a man who had been to Harvard, and the mailroom employees called him an egghead. His hair was also graying at the temples, as if knowledge caused the physical change. The mailroom employees uttered the word with something bordering on disdain, and yet Marshall had read in separate places that Franklin Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson were eggheads; he had seen it used in descriptions of Kennedy, as well, and he was certain that it was meant in those contexts to suggest sophistication and intellectual prowess. No picture o
f Roosevelt showed gray hair at the temples, and of course the whole idea was insane. Marshall wondered at his own ability to wander far afield, and to spend himself on such meaningless mental junk.

  Alice shifted in her seat. “I’m starving.”

  “You just said you weren’t hungry.”

  “I did?” She frowned. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings back there.”

  “When?” he said.

  “Saying ‘Saint Matt’s,’ like that. I should be more careful.”

  “It didn’t hurt my feelings.”

  “As you know, I’m not anything,” she said. “Actually, my father’s sort of agnostic. I mean, he believes God exists but he doesn’t think about it at all. It’s like that, sort of. So we never went to any churches, and I’m deprived. What’s it like to be something?”

  He didn’t know how to answer. He shrugged, turned and signaled the waiter again, without success. Opposite them, in the mirror, his own ill-defined features looked back, a boy’s skinny face. A face that still wouldn’t produce enough whiskers to require him to shave, though he shaved anyway, three times a week. He saw Alice watching him.

  “You go to church every Sunday,” she said. “I think I’d like that.”

  “I used to go every day,” he told her.

  “Every day?”

  “Almost. I missed sometimes in the week. But not much. I’d say a prayer that I’d wake up in time, and I did every morning, just at the right time. I didn’t always get up, though. If it was especially bad out, I’d go back to sleep. I thought I was going to seminary, you know. I’m sure I told you that.”