The Daredevils

by Gary Amdahl

  Charles waved his hands to dispel Jules. “Flux, he shouted. Flux. First you have Heraclitus, who says everything is constantly changing and then you have Parmenides who says nothing ever changes. Plato—who, you’re right, Jules, had to keep them close to his vest because he was born and raised amongst tyrants at war—Plato says there is one world of unchanging perfect forms and ideas, and another one, the one we live in, that knows only corruption and degradation. That is to say, this world isn’t the real one and all changes occurring in it are for the worse. But here we are. How can we make most of the people happy most of the time? Communism. The leaders live like the slaves, which is to say, not badly. Wealth and poverty are both corruptions of the Original Happiness. But because I’m educated, I get to be a leader. I get to be a leader because my father was a leader. My son will be a leader because I was a leader. But if my son doesn’t measure up, boom, he’s not a leader anymore. He’s a soldier or a worker. Vera grows up as a button worker but shows such incredible intellectual vibrancy everybody agrees: she should be a leader! Voilà. Vera’s a leader. Vera and I are trained to think it virtuous to die in battle. We are trained to be clever and savage. We can’t listen to sad music or imitate inferior people, like in a play, or listen to poetry in which the gods are mocked. The gods are corrupt to be sure, but they come from God. We ought not raise our voices. We cannot indulge in unchecked laughter.” Here he laughed in an unchecked way, somewhat comically, somewhat hysterically. “No sorrowful Lydian tunes, no relaxing Ionian tunes: only Dorian and Phrygian for, respectively, courage and temperance. Can’t eat fish. Meat must be roasted. No sauces. No confectionery. We will never need doctors. We must experience enchantments, e.g., terrors that do not truly terrify, bad pleasures that do seduce the will. ‘Worlds on worlds are rolling ever, from creation to decay, like the bubbles on a river, sparkling, bursting, borne away.’ All of our efforts must go toward keeping ourselves still and quiet and sparkling until we burst or are borne away. And I’m saying, yes, Plato’s got it right, this is not the real world, everything’s changing, and all change is for the worse. But I am exempt because I have been inspired by a god. I am bidden to cause change. Eros and Dionysus will see me through. You anarchists are merely confused—at best confused, at worst hypocritical—eccentrics.”

  He felt no remorse the following morning. His head ached, and he was embarrassed by some of the things he had said, but on the whole he believed he had released something in himself that had been imprisoned. But when he arrived—riding a horse—at the shop to pick up Vera for their date, he found the unnamed woman standing in the shade under the awning. She started to say something, but stopped when Vera tapped on the glass behind her and waved at them. Charles waved and smiled at Vera, then returned his gaze to the woman, not so much encouraging her to say what she had to say, as daring her. But the woman said nothing. She refused to look away, but would say nothing.

  The Minot party was once again parked at the end of a long line of limousines on a dirt road that led to a clearing deep in the Presidio. Charles arrived with a woman nobody knew and whom nobody sought to know—apparently one of his actresses. Even if she hadn’t had stitches and bruises on her face and been the subject of rumors relating her to terrorist factions within San Francisco’s radical labor organizations she would have been ignored. His family had attended opening night and been wholly caught up, they said, in the enthusiasm—and Mother had been quoted in the Chronicle saying she was “delighted but not at all surprised” at her son’s accomplishment. Amelia had been quoted in the Examiner, where she insisted that he could not be more proud of her brother, while her husband laughed off suggestions that theater had no place in a social gospel. Alexander and Andrew assured the critics from the Call and the Bee that everyone in the capital knew about what a treat the production was, and how there was serious talk of bringing it to Sacramento. Al, who was Governor Hiram Johnson’s Chief of Staff (they had come together in ‘08, when Father took a bullet in the Ruef and Schmitz graft prosecutions and Johnson took over the lead, and stayed together when Al helped run the VP side of the 1912 Bull Moose run—and he had Huguenot blood as well, endearing him to Mother), Al went so far, with enthusiasm he admitted was somewhat calculated, as to say that “The American” exemplified everything progressive politics in California stood for. And Charles’s younger brothers had been at nearly every show the first two weeks of the run, putting their arms around the shoulders of all the actresses, hanging on them, resting their heads against their necks while they applied their makeup, staring raptly into the mirrored eyes and quickly becoming part of pre-show superstition. Little charming rich boys: How long would they last in this pristine state? But it was pointedly not spoken of during either breakfast or dinner. Mother had made it clear that she had neither the time nor the inclination for any conversation along those lines, she hadn’t the strength, and that had been that.

  Meanwhile an incommunicado, possibly sequestered Vera had broken cover and asked to be taken to a Preparedness Day cavalry drill. Charles dismissed out of hand a feeling on his part that he deserved to know where she had been and simply stared at her with baffled longing. If he had understood her in the least way, he would have pressed her, but he did not. He believed he loved her.

  “Why in the world would you want to see a Preparedness Day cavalry drill?”

  “I want to actually see this man Keogh. The man who represents United Railroad. I’ve hated him blindly for so long. I want to make a man out of him.”

  Vera smiled.

  “You won’t roll a bomb under his carriage, will you . . .?”

  “I am not a violent person. Surely you have understood that much.”

  She let her fingers play lightly, as they might have when they were exploring the pseudo-Delsarte, over her wounds.

  “If I recall correctly, you took the name ‘Vera’ in honor of—”

  “I was foolishly attracted to the idea of frail little women murdering tyrants when I was younger. I have changed my mind. And look, if you want to the know the truth—”

  “Why in the world would you think I wanted anything but to know the—”

  “—Vera is my real name, my given name.”

  “Well that is just very strange that you should tell me it was assumed, then.”

  Vera sighed and smiled. Hadn’t the strangeness of things been apparent from the very beginning? And who, after all, was Charles to speak disparagingly of such a condition?

  Charles felt like Hardy’s obscure Jude, confronting the nervously enigmatic Sue Bridehead, and was reminded of the literary opinions of the tall, fair man at Vera’s salon.

  “Who was the tall, fair man attending your evening? Hates Hardy.”

  “I don’t know. A visitor from New York. He’s come to help with . . . with something I don’t know enough about to speak of. I didn’t meet him. I don’t know what he does.”

  Charles felt even more like Jude, and it surprised him: to think of himself as one who did not, could not understand, who was obscure for all his charm and wealth.

  Charles had promised her a show and said that his family pretending to not see her was just the beginning. They watched Amelia as she went into the trailer they’d towed behind the Mountain Wagon, and backed her horse out, taking no nonsense from him though he was clearly in a mood for much nonsense, hopping about like a big cat and chuckling and bumping people around. She saddled him and said his name softly and sweetly over and over again, just for the pleasure it gave them both, then mounted him, and trotted off. The drills were again taking place at the far end of the clearing; occasionally a band of cavaliers would thunder toward them, turn as if barrel racing, and thunder back.

  The drills looked, at that distance, formless, an amateur polo match, and Charles tried to interest himself and Vera in the picnic food, opening several bottles of wine and wondering if he might drink a little, or a lot, of it. He could clearly feel that within himself some kind of wall had been breached. Because Ver
a was nervous and increasingly awkward in her gestures and speech, he poured them each a big glass. They walked a few steps away to the shade of a big spreading tree and drank the wine slowly, Charles saying a few inane things about its character, Vera agog then outraged at its price, drinking it defiantly as if it were water. When they were done, he returned to the basket, refilled the glasses, and walked back to the tree. They clinked glasses and smiled at each other. His brother-in-law, the robust, handsome Thomas, man of God but manly man as well, a man for genial living as well as serene acknowledgement of the life to come, was back in town for a brief stay, and was quick to demonstrate that his calling in no way prevented his being judicious about the quality of wine his family and friends might moderately, or even a little immoderately, indulge in. Had not Jesus spent a good deal of miraculous force in changing water to wine at the wedding feast in Cana? If some now wanted a savior who would change wine to water, he, the Reverend Thomas Grant Ruggles, was not among them. Many friends streamed past, enjoyed a glass of wine, and complimented both Thomas and Charles—pointedly or casually ignoring Vera according to their social skills—on their accomplishments, so different in nature and practice but so similar in purpose, as the nation moved toward war.

  Amelia cantered back and forth across the clearing, getting Jolly to rear up once or twice when people she despised came too close—friends who, she suspected, frowned not only on her husband’s carefree indulgence of wine, on her brother’s theater—on her and Mother’s theater, as they had each contributed significant sums during the fund drive—no matter the beneficial effect it was clearly having on the spirit of the city, but who she suspected thought terrible things about her after she had fallen from Jolly and been seen in the arms of Durwood Keogh. Keogh was one of her great and dear father’s most certain enemies! No one need to be told that again! And while she supported Father’s wish to put all that behind them and unite as the country joined the European war, she had made her feelings plain to the gallant captain, and extricated herself from his ministrations as soon as he had been able. If she had been seen laughing, that was because her nerves were bad—had always been bad and were getting worse, after what seemed like decided improvement when she had been working so hard in the city’s hospitals.

  Some of her closer, truer friends who were also horseback joined her and they sat their mounts while Thomas with studied meekness handed up glasses of wine and little sandwiches, describing the wine as he did so perhaps too lengthily and fulsomely, as her friends pursed their mouths and raised their eyebrows in suppressed fits of giggling. Then quite suddenly, for many of them had become lost in the wine, Durwood Keogh was upon them. He dismounted and smiled boyishly as he made his way to the picnic basket. Thomas, smiling broadly and shrugging off some of the meekness in favor of hale heartiness, poured the playboy a glass of wine, and watched with mock incredulity as Keogh downed it in two or three gulps. Everyone laughed. It was impossible to dislike Keogh on that level. He was sweaty and dirty and tanned and robust and impeccably dressed. He smacked his lips and indicated he wouldn’t mind another.

  Glass in hand, he came and stood over to where Charles and Vera were stretched out in seeming indolence. Charles lay with a blade of grass in his mouth and an empty glass balanced on his breastbone, head propped on two thick pillows, embroidered pillows, the design spreading out from his head like a kind of intricate halo, dense with signs and codes. Vera reclined next to him, impulsively, for show, running her fingers through his hair.

  “I enjoyed your show,” said Keogh. “Really did. I don’t see enough theater but I know what I like and I thought your show was first-rate.”

  Wondering where Father was and hoping Keogh might go on a little too long and seem foolish, Charles said nothing until a silence had grown all around them.

  “Well, thank you,” he said at last, dismissively. “Did you really think so?”

  Keogh now paused. “Yes,” he said. “I did indeed.”

  “Thank you for saying so.”

  Gus and Tony, who were trying to climb the tree, collapsed snickering.

  “We ought to talk sometime,” said Keogh.

  Charles, surprised, smiled defensively and shook his head. Vera sat up.

  “I know you think—everybody here thinks—that that would be tantamount to treason, but it isn’t.”

  “What ought we talk about?” Charles spread his hands to suggest he had no idea.

  Keogh spoke calmly. “Your brothers are in Sacramento, and no doubt they will get to Washington soon enough. But there are hopes building around you that are of another order. Is that not so? Come now. You shake your head and I think your modesty is genuine but that doesn’t change a thing. Your father is able and strong and resourceful and—”

  “Captain Keogh, please don’t tell me what my father is.”

  “Very well. I will tell you what I am, and that is, if not your friend, at least not your enemy. You must think I hate your family and dream only of revenge, but that is not so. We want to see you do well, just as your father and his friends do. That is all I wanted to say to you, but you see of course that it’s quite a lot. Too much, perhaps, eh? Enough said, then. We’ve got a war to prepare for! Are you going to wait for the declaration? I hear rumors that you may have some interesting work to do in where was it? Minnesota? The Dakotas?”

  Given the first part of Keogh’s speech (which Charles flat did not believe, political plans for him having been abandoned years ago) the second seemed—to him, at least, if not to anyone else in the group—so loaded with venom he could hear a ghostly Amelia warning him about it in a whisper, a whisper he thought he could hear so clearly he looked over at her, seeing her look back at him with intense meaning. It occurred to him, in the shape of an inarguably attractive idea, if not necessarily a good one, that he might knock Keogh down, right then and there, that he might advance fearlessly into the man’s range and knock the sonofabitch down, and stand for a moment over him in contempt. And because he was learning to be an actor in the most dangerous sense, he felt his body preparing itself. But this was, fortunately or unfortunately, only one sequence of thought and action at work in him, and he could not help but admit, conversationally and politely, as was his usual wont, that he saw it was his duty to fight, that the only way he could reconcile a life of wealth and privilege was to sacrifice it for those who had neither, at which point Vera interrupted with an air of frank wisdom, saying it was the duty of the poor to have their vitality sucked out of them as a class with their personal blood as it sprayed out on battlefields, she would say it if nobody else there had the nerve. She was ignored, of course, and Charles continued, saying that if war was not declared soon, he would indeed go to Minnesota. It appeared to be his duty.

  “A duty,” said Keogh, “and maybe something of a pleasure. A serious pleasure, to be sure, and possibly dangerous, but a pleasure just the same for a young man. No, no, I understand. But don’t get tied down by anything that might happen in Minnesota. We’ll be in it. Less than a year. We’ll all go together, give the Kaiser a good old-fashioned American kick in the ass. What do you say, Charles old man?”

  Inexplicably, he grinned. He hadn’t wanted to give anybody the impression that he liked the idea of sanctioned violence any more than he did unsanctioned violence, but he did not want to go on talking to Durwood Keogh, and a grin seemed the way to end it. He grinned and shook his head.

  Pastor Tom and Amelia and their friends had helplessly formed a circle and were watching Charles, Vera, and Keogh rather breathlessly, while behind them horses raised and lowered their great heads, their eyes black and their gazes miles away. Only Amelia’s bristle-maned Appaloosa showed crazed rims of white.

  News that he had escorted a woman nobody knew to one of Captain Keogh’s cavalry drill picnics was quickly united to gossip that he had been seen at a gathering of anarchists in the Latin Quarter. More unfortunately, it coincided as well with the shooting death of a policeman, by “an anarchist, a Russian
anarchist,” no less, with ties to forgers and, even more sensationally, white slavers. Permutations of the gossip and newspaper accounts occurred rapidly and unpredictably. They ranged from the patently ridiculous—Charles Minot was the white slaver and cop-killer—to the undeniably true: Charles Minot had attended Vera Kolessina’s self-styled “romantic and revolutionary” salon. But when he arrived at the shop the next day to take Vera once more to the Sutro Baths—just an ordinary fun-loving, life-loving young couple—and see, more professionally now, the line clear but porous, if she was ready to return to her role (which had been taken on admirably, as if almost always the case, by an understudy) she could not be found. Cool but imperious, he demanded news of her whereabouts from everybody he saw, but nobody he knew was to be found, either. He went without asking leave of the boy at the cash register—one of the Italians he had seen that first day?—who opened his mouth and raised his hand but said nothing and did not move, through the greasy red curtain, down the aisle of parts, and down the stairs into the basement. No one was there, either. He came back up and apologized to the boy for his rudeness. Then he stood outside, back against the window, scanning the street. After a few minutes, someone tapped the glass behind his head, and he turned, thinking it would be Vera’s face in the gloom he saw, as it had been the day before, but it was the Italian boy’s. He came outside and told Charles that he should not seek to find Vera. Warren Farnsworth had heard about the cavalry picnic and threatened to kill both of them if he found them together. The boy was quick to assure Charles that Warren would do no such thing, that he was a sad and passionate alcoholic but no killer, that he had had many opportunities for what everybody seemed to agree would be good murders, but had eschewed them all, flatly, without second thoughts. He would gladly break the kneecap of a scab, and facilitate acts of sabotage, but drew a very clear and porous line. Nevertheless, Vera was hiding. She did not want to see him, and had explicitly asked him to convey that wish with whatever emphasis it might require to penetrate his arrogant skull. His words, signore, his words! She was nobody’s girl and was sick to death of men in any case. What astonished Charles, when he went over it later, was how little he was moved by Vera’s rejection, how little he feared Farnsworth’s wrath. The boy asked him if he liked morphine and Charles said that he did not especially, but would get back to him.