by Max Shulman
“Never!” thundered Jefferson, the cords popping out on his neck. “Never!”
“For heaven’s sake, Uncle Jefferson, too much anything might hurt you—apples, milk, even vitamins.”
The old man opened his mouth to shout again, but suddenly he closed it. A flicker of interest danced over his eyes. He addressed Lee quietly: “What did you say, sonny?”
“I said too much anything might hurt you,” Lee repeated.
“Apples?” asked Jefferson. “Milk? Vitamins?”
“Why, sure,” said Lee.
Jefferson turned to Noah Fenster. “Fenster, you’re a chemist. Is this true?”
“Well, not normally, of course,” answered Mr. Fenster, “but in excessive amounts, I’d have to say yes.”
“How come?” asked Jefferson. His voice was calm, but there was a mounting brightness in his eyes.
“In the case of apples,” said Mr. Fenster, “they are generally sprayed with pesticide, which is a poison. Milk is a prime source of cholesterol and, in many areas, it also contains a heavy concentration of strontium-90. Even vitamins, in a massive overdose, have been known to kill people.”
“Well, well,” said Jefferson thoughtfully. “Go on, Fenster, tell me some more stuff that’ll poison you.”
“Practically anything, if you take too much of it.”
“Water?”
“Yes, provided the fluorine level is above the permissible limit.”
“Bread?”
“Possibly. It depends on the bleach and the emulsifiers.”
“What’s that?”
“Additives,” explained Mr. Fenster. “Almost any food you eat today has a certain amount of chemicals added to it. To begin with, there’s fertilizers to make it grow. Then there’s pesticides to keep the bugs off. Then when the food gets processed, there’s additives—coloring agents, flavoring agents, softeners, preservatives, things like that. They’re all chemicals, and they’re all poisonous if you go beyond the allowable levels.”
“But don’t the government keep a watch on all this?”
“Golly, Uncle Jefferson,” said Lee impatiently, “what’s all this talk about food? Let’s get back to my plan.”
“Shut up, you Arnold Benedict,” said Jefferson. “Go ahead, Fenster. What about the government?”
“Yes,” said Fenster, “FDA—that’s the Food and Drug Administration—sets the permissible dose for all the chemicals that go into our food, but there’s some who say FDA is much too lenient.”
“Who says so?” asked Jefferson sharply.
“Well, of course, the health food addicts—”
Jefferson made a gesture of dismissal. “Scratch them. Bunch of nuts. Probably Communists too … What I want to know is does anybody reliable knock FDA.”
“Oh, yes. Rather a large number of doctors, scientists, nutritionists, chemists. For example, a few years back a woman named Rachel Carson, a highly respected biologist, wrote a book called Silent Spring in which she claimed our food is loaded with deadly pesticides.”
“People believe this book?”
“Quite a few, including the President’s Science Advisory Committee.”
“But nobody stopped eating, did they?”
Mr. Fenster began a little smile, thinking perhaps Jefferson was making a joke. But Jefferson’s face was serious—in fact, glazed. He turned abruptly away from Mr. Fenster and walked to a chair in the corner of the room. Completely oblivious of his guests, he sat as though sculpted by Rodin, thinking silently, furiously, passionately.
Everyone watched with astonishment, but they stayed quiet, not daring to intrude on such monumental concentration. Their astonishment doubled when, after a moment, Virgil, who was seated on the piano bench with Boo, suddenly assumed precisely the same look and the same pose as old Jefferson.
Fully five minutes went by while the Tatums, father and son, were locked in their separate reveries. The only sound in the room was the steady, rhythmic glug of Jack Daniel’s from the bottle to the glottis of Nineteen Meyers.
It was Boo who spoke first. “Virgil,” she whispered, plucking at his sleeve, “what’s going on?”
“Hush,” said Virgil absently.
“I will not hush,” said Boo. “What are you thinking about? What’s Uncle Jefferson thinking about?”
Virgil emerged from his trance. He sat up straight on the piano bench. On his face there was a wide, happy grin. “What was it you asked?” he said to Boo.
“I asked what you and your father were thinking about.”
“And I shall tell you,” said Virgil, his grin widening. “My father is thinking that he might have found himself a black hat.… And me—” he laughed aloud, pulled Boo to him, and planted an exuberant kiss on her cheek—“me, I’m thinking I might have found one too!”
Chapter 4
Jefferson came out of his trance only a few seconds after Virgil did. His eyes swept the room, seeking his son. He found Virgil looking directly at him. The old man tilted his head toward the door of the lodge, indicating he wanted to see Virgil outside. Virgil nodded acknowledgment. “Excuse me, honey,” he said to Boo. He kissed her again, loud and hard, and rose and joined his father in the clear air outdoors.
They did not speak. They sat down side by side on a big tree stump. They sat easily, calmly, like two riverboat gamblers each holding four of a kind.
“Boy,” said Jefferson casually, “I got kind of an idea.”
“About a black hat?” asked Virgil, just as casually.
Jefferson shot him a respectful look. “You ahead of me, boy?”
“Not ahead, Pa. Just with you. You’re thinking food could be the black hat.”
“Why not? It’s all poison, ain’t it?”
“Well, it can be.”
“Damn right it can! You heard what my chemist said about all them scientists who claim our food is poison. But people don’t seem to get worked up about it, and I’ll tell you why: because food ain’t like cigarettes. I mean food’s got a good name. I mean you never heard of nobody sneaking behind the barn to have their first slice of bread, did you?”
“So you think you can give food a bad name.”
“I know I can! I’ll show that so-called Surgeon General a thing or two about scaring people! I’m going to blast food! I’m going to rip it to pieces! I’m going to do such a smear job on food that this country will end up thinking the safest thing you can put in your mouth is a cigarette!”
“But to make this anti-food crusade convincing,” said Virgil, “you’ll need some scientific backing—which is where I come in.”
“Say, you are with me,” said Jefferson admiringly.
“Right on top of you, Pa. I see it all now. You want me to take the chemistry department at Acanthus College and put them to work finding the poisons in food.”
“Right!”
“Right. And then you’ll get your high-pressure publicity boys to spread the word all over the country!”
“On the television, that’s where I’ll put it! Dab smack on the television where even the idiots who can’t read will get the message!”
“Great!”
“Yeah! And people will get so nervous they won’t just start smoking again, they’ll start chain-smoking!”
“Brilliant idea, Pa. Too bad it won’t work.”
The elation oozed out of Jefferson’s face. “Why not?”
“Two reasons: first, no network would carry such a program unless they had someone from the food industry to present their side of the argument. After all, the networks sell a hell of a lot more time to food companies than to cigarette makers.”
“Boy, don’t you think I know that? Sure, they’ll have somebody on the program to take the defensive, and that suits me just perfect! I’d like somebody else on the defensive for a change. Me, I want to attack! Because that’s what folks believe—the attack, not the defense!”
“Probably true,” agreed Virgil. “But that doesn’t begin to answer my second objection.
You’ll need scientific research to back up the charges you intend to make against food. Where’s this research coming from?”
“Why, you said it yourself, boy: Acanthus College.”
“And that’s why you’re stone-cold dead,” said Virgil. “Acanthus College is without doubt the rectum of the academic world. Who is going to believe any scientific report coming out of a school with the lowest admission standards, the poorest scholarship level, the highest teacher incompetence, the oldest equipment, the smallest library, the thinnest curriculum, and the fewest textbooks in the United States of America?”
“That bad, huh?” said Jefferson morosely.
“Well, Harvard it’s not.”
“Hey!” cried Jefferson, brightening. “That’s it! If them reports come out of Harvard, people will believe ’em. So why don’t I give Harvard the money and start ’em working?”
“You can give Harvard money, Pa, but you can’t tell them how to use it.”
“Oh,” said Jefferson. “Yale?”
Virgil shook his head. “No, Pa. Nor Princeton, nor M.I.T., nor Cal Tech. There’s only one place you can run the show, and that’s at Acanthus, and how are you going to get a legitimate scientist to come to Acanthus?”
“Boy, listen to me. I swear I ain’t looking to pull a swindle. I don’t want to disadvantage potatoes or beans or anything else. All I want is honest facts from honest men. Ain’t there no possible way we can get some of ’em down to Acanthus?”
This was the question Virgil had been waiting for; this was the trap he was itching to spring. “Well, there might be, Pa,” he said, managing to keep the eagerness out of his voice. His face, however, betrayed him.
The old man’s sharp eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I don’t like the look of you, boy,” he said.
Virgil put on his most innocent stare. “Oh? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Jefferson, “but maybe you better give me a kiss because I think you’re about to screw me.”
Virgil abandoned deception. “All right, Pa, I do have a plot in mind, but it’s for your good as well as mine.”
“Let’s hear.”
“I can get you the chemists and nutritionists you want, if you’ll do one simple thing: you must turn Acanthus into a decent, respectable, bona fide college.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Well, first we’ve got to raise our College Board scores to the Ivy League level.”
“Okay, I’ll do it. I don’t know what the hell it means, but I’ll do it.”
“Second, you have to clean out those fossils on the faculty and bring in a bunch of new men—big men, big names. This means raiding Harvard, Stanford, Chicago—places like that.”
“You’re saying I got to offer ’em more money. Okay, money I’ve got. What’s next?”
“Wait a minute. I’m not through talking about the faculty. It takes more than a few chemists to make a top college. You need to go after the best men in the humanities too.”
“What’s that? Never mind, you got it. Go ahead.”
“Also the best men in the arts, the social sciences, the languages, the classics, and so forth.”
“Fine, fine. Proceed.”
“I want a library that will compare with Widener.”
“I’ll buy you Widener. Next?”
“Desegregation.”
Jefferson frowned. “Don’t push your luck, boy.”
“This is important, Pa. Most of the teachers we want have strong convictions on the subject. We’ll need real desegregation, not the way you did it in Owens Mill—nine Negroes in the high school and twelve in the grammar school.”
“All right. How many do you want in Acanthus?”
Virgil took a deep breath. “Five hundred,” he said.
Jefferson was silent for a long moment. Then he said calmly, “Boy, I suppose you thought I’d yell and holler and carry on.”
“Yes, sir,” said Virgil truthfully.
“I’m surprised. Don’t you know your old Pa? Are you forgetting I was the first man in the cigarette business to put black foremen in charge of white workers? Are you forgetting I desegregated all the buses, hotels, restaurants, and movie shows in Owens Mill without anybody ever asked me to?”
“That’s true.”
“And wasn’t it just last month I got a plaque for racial tolerance from them Hebes at B’nai B’rith?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And ain’t it practically a dead certain cinch that the William Lloyd Garrison Foundation, which is the oldest and most respected race relations outfit in the country, is going to give their annual Community Relations Award to Owens Mill this year?”
“Yes, Pa,” said Virgil. “Then I can have five hundred Negroes at Acanthus?”
“You can have fifty.”
“All right,” said Virgil promptly.
Jefferson gave him a puzzled look. “Ain’t you going to argue?”
“No, sir. I was figuring I’d get twenty-five,” replied Virgil.
“Damn,” said the old man sadly. “To think of wasting a mind like yours in a college! Well, go on. What’s next?”
Virgil swallowed. “You won’t like this.”
“I ain’t liked a goddam thing so far. Let’s have it.”
Virgil swallowed again. “No more football.”
Jefferson blinked. “You know, boy, for a minute there I thought you said no more football.”
“No more football,” Virgil repeated, mustering strength. “No more Nineteen Meyers. As long as that big-necked baboon is around, Acanthus is going to be a joke. No self-respecting teacher—or student, for that matter—will come near the place. So make up your mind, Pa: you can have either a football team or a black hat.”
Jefferson smiled mirthlessly. “You been waiting a long time for this moment, ain’t you, Virgil?”
“I won’t he to you. Yes. But I’m telling you a plain fact: it’s Nineteen or the black hat, one.”
“Don’t leave me no choice, does it?”
“I’m sorry, Pa.”
“Like hell you are.”
“Like hell I am,” Virgil agreed.
“Okay,” said Jefferson. “What else?”
“That’s it.”
“Well—” said Jefferson.
“Well?” said Virgil.
“Done,” said Jefferson.
“Done,” said Virgil and shook his father’s hand.
Chapter 5
Polly Shapian hung up the telephone and turned to her sons, Ezra and Leo, who stood on the flagstone patio of the Bel Air house, each holding a surfboard. The boys were naked except for skintight, iridescent, latex swim trunks. Their bodies, mantled with rippling muscles, shone like burnished copper. The tips of their dark hair had been sun-washed to the color of maize. Their black eyes, fixed on Polly, were motionless with hope held in abeyance. Twin frowns creased their tiny brows.
“Your father says he can’t take you to Long Beach,” Polly reported.
They sighed and continued to stare at Polly, their eyes now quite empty of hope.
Polly looked at their sweet, silent, dumb, disappointed faces and felt the usual rush of guilt. “See here,” she said defensively, “your father is a busy man. He’s running a network, remember?”
“We know, Ma,” said Ezra without rancor.
“It’s okay,” said Leo in the same tone.
Polly’s guilt mounted. “And you know you can’t have my car,” she continued. “I have a million things to do today.”
“It’s okay, Ma,” said Leo.
“Sure,” said Ezra.
Their gaze was steady, obedient, and stricken, like two well-trained hounds who have been told they cannot come to the hunt.
“Oh, take my car!” cried Polly, utterly routed. “I’ll get a cab or something. Take my car. Take it, take it!”
Big white smiles lighted the twins’ faces.
“You’re a great American,” said Ezra.
“You’re a hundr
ed percent,” said Leo.
They leaned over to kiss her, but she pulled away irritably. “Get going,” she snapped. “And try very hard not to drop my car in the ocean, will you? And when you come home—if you come home—I want you to clean your room, understand?”
“Yes, Ma,” they said and ran ecstatically from the patio.
Polly looked after their great, tawny, disappearing bodies, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to do some thinking. She did her thinking as she did everything else—con brio. She was a small, swift, graceful woman, never at rest. Her hands were dexterous and eloquent. Her legs—not long—were rounded, shapely, and utile: light when she danced, certain when she walked, strong and thrusting when she made love. Her hair was russet, healthy, glistening. Her skin was dark, not swarthy like Ira’s, but black Celtic with an underlay of high color. Her face—mobile mouth, short nose, unterrified chin, clear brow, flashing blue eyes—could range from Giaconda serenity (rare) to spark-showing outrage (frequent).
Expression chased expression across her face as she smoked and paced and thought. Why had she given the twins her car? A clout in the chops is what they deserved after dropping their Austin-Healey in the drink last night, and after bringing home those sickening report cards the previous semester, and after all the other numberless, endless, reasonless displays of stupidity. Yet, instead of forty lashes, or even a thorough chewing-out, she had given them her car. Why?
A possible explanation occurred to her. She was remembering a lecture on child psychology she had heard some weeks ago at UCLA. (What with Ira seldom getting home from the office before ten P.M., Polly had had to choose between night courses at UCLA or taking a lover; the second had, upon consideration, seemed less entertaining.) The lecture Polly recalled had been delivered by a youngish man with tweeds, thick glasses, thin hair, and a pitying manner toward anyone who questioned his propositions. When children go wrong, he had said in a way that brooked no rebuttal, always blame the parents. Misbehavior in children is nothing more than unconscious wish-fulfillment in parents. Parents—on an unconscious level, of course—seduce children into acting out their own suppressed desires.
