by Max Shulman
She hesitated briefly, then nodded and resumed her seat.
“You too, Harry,” said Ira to Clendennon. “Please accept my apologies. I didn’t mean to make a scene.”
“Don’t give it a thought, Ira baby,” smiled Clendennon, squeezing Ira’s shoulder. “It’s just like I said before, you’ve got a big hate on for yourself. What you need is a purification—a big project, a real challenge, something to give you back your self-respect. And it just happens I’ve got it for you. Here—” he shoved the contract toward Ira—“look over this list: Oedipus Rex, the atomic sub, Puerto Rico, NASA, CIA, the heroin traffic. Just tell me what you want.”
“What I want is to see you on the street with a tin cup,” said Ira.
A ball of unease began to grow in Clendennon’s belly, but he clung to his composure. “All right, pussycat, forget the list. Is there anything you would particularly like to do?”
“Yes,” answered Ira. “I would particularly like to see you on the street with a tin cup.”
Clendennon’s mind, fighting panic, began to function furiously. Somehow, somewhere, there had to be a project that would tempt Ira. But what? He rummaged frantically; nothing came to light. Then, finally, a thought struck him—a thin, dismal thought, but a thought.
“Listen,” he said apologetically, “here’s another idea, not exactly sensational, but let’s see how you react.”
“I hate it,” said Ira.
Clendennon pressed on: “We’re scheduling a sixty-minute special on the dangers in food additives. It’s coming out of this college Jefferson Tatum owns—Acanthus, it’s called—which I’m told has been turned into a first-class school.”
Ira had a sudden curious sensation as of a fresh wind dispelling a filthy yellow fog. Acanthus, he thought, his heart leaping. Acanthus. Owens Mill. Boo … Yes, Boo. Purification. To hold Boo again—golden, salving, cleansing Boo.
“Give me your pen, Clendennon,” he said, and as Polly and Clendennon looked on, each mystified, Ira signed the contract.
Chapter 11
Virgil Tatum was seated behind his desk at Acanthus College and Jefferson Tatum was seated in a chair nearby when Ira Shapian entered the office.
Virgil rushed forward with a delighted smile. “Ira! Damn, it’s good to clap eyes on you again!”
“And you,” answered Ira, seizing Virgil’s hand, his delight as honest as Virgil’s own. “Unbelievable! Eighteen years since I’ve seen you, and you haven’t gotten one day older!”
“Look who’s talking! Why, you actually look younger!”
“Thank you,” said Ira. “On behalf of my tailor, my masseur, and my orthodontist, thank you.”
“How’s that lovely Polly?” asked Virgil.
“Polly? Oh, fine, fine.”
“Still gorgeous?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Lucky pup!” said Virgil, regarding Ira with something akin to envy. “What a piece of work that Polly is! Pal, I hope you know what a rare woman you married: beauty, brains, spirit, guts, patience, kindness—in fact, everything a man dreams about!”
“Listen,” said Ira, “this could be your chance. I’ll be tied up for several weeks in Owens Mill. Maybe now’s the time for you to fly West and try your luck with Polly.”
“Don’t tempt me,” said Virgil. “I might forget I’m your friend.”
“Hate to interrupt,” said Jefferson, standing with fixed smile and extended hand, “but how do?”
“I believe you’ve met my father,” said Virgil. “Pa, you remember Ira Shapian. He was stationed here during the war.”
“Surely,” said Jefferson. “You boys done a hell of a job. Not one enemy attack all the time you were in Owens Mill.”
Ira grinned. “Yes, I remember you, Mr. Tatum. Virgil and I are lying to each other, but you really haven’t changed.”
“Nothing like bourbon whisky and Tatum Cigarettes to keep the roses in your cheeks,” said Jefferson.
“Pa’s going to show you around the campus,” said Virgil. “I’m sorry I can’t do it myself, but I’ve got a faculty meeting.”
“Perfectly all right.”
“But we’ll meet back here at noon for lunch, okay?”
“Fine.”
Virgil paused a moment. “Look, Ira, I hope you don’t mind, but the whole town’s been buzzing about your coming down. I asked a few of your old friends to join us for lunch.”
A drum-roll of excitement started under Ira’s breastbone. “Marvelous,” he said with exactly the right measure of enthusiasm. “Who’s coming?”
“Not many. I know how tight your schedule is. I just asked a few of the Owenses.”
“Fine, fine,” said Ira. Then, casually: “Will Boo be here?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I invited her, but she said she couldn’t make it.”
The drumming in Ira’s chest slowed to dirge tempo. “Too bad,” he said, keeping his tone light. “How is she?”
“Boo? There now is the one who doesn’t change, except maybe to get more beautiful.”
The drumming segued into bolero rhythm. “Yes, I remember,” he said with an elaborately faint smile. “Nice-looking girl. It seems to me somebody—I forget who—told me she never remarried after that Navy flier got killed in the war. Can that be true?”
“It is.”
“Seems impossible,” said Ira.
“Seems insoluble,” said Virgil.
“It’s going on half past ten,” said Jefferson, “and I’m thinking Mr. Shapian might maybe like to have a look at the college, seeing as how he flew all the way out here from Hollywood, California, to do a show about us on the television.”
Ira and Virgil wrenched themselves back to the here and now. “Of course,” said Virgil. “See you at noon, Ira.”
“Right.”
“Be sure to give Ira a good look around,” Virgil instructed his father. “Lots of interesting new things at Acanthus.”
“So I hear,” said Ira. “In fact, they tell me you’ve passed a kind of miracle.”
“That’s it—a miracle!” exclaimed Jefferson. “Wait till you see our school of nutrition and public health. A real piss-cutter!”
“And all our other schools,” added Virgil. “Fine arts, humanities, history, economics—”
“Yes, sir,” interrupted Jefferson, “we have gone and made us a real crackerjack of a college.… But wait, Mr. Shapian, just wait till you see the prize in the crackerjack! I mean the school of nutrition and public health. Come, sonny.”
He herded Ira out of the administration building and onto an oak-shaded quadrangle. Three sides of the quadrangle were bounded by the standard structures of Academe—Gothic arches, leaded panes, red brick draped with ivy. On the fourth side there stood, anomalously, a long, low, contemporary slab of glass and aluminum. It was toward this building that Jefferson steered Ira.
“Kind of a shame Boo couldn’t make it for lunch today,” said Ira as they walked. “Not sick or anything?”
“No, just busy,” Jefferson answered. “You remember Boo and all her fancy projects.”
“Yes,” said Ira, “I remember Boo and all her fancy projects.”
Sweatered students carrying books, tweeded teachers carrying briefcases hurried or sauntered along the paths that crisscrossed the quadrangle. Suddenly, heading toward Ira and Jefferson, a bicycle appeared—a high, ancient, well-used bicycle of English manufacture. Hunched over the handlebars, his stumpy legs churning vigorously, was a pink, twinkly bald man with suede patches on his elbows. He braked the bike to a squealing stop. “Morning, Tatum!” he cried with a jocular toss of his head at Jefferson.
Jefferson glowered silently.
The cyclist examined Ira. “And who is this swarthy gentleman with the porcelain front teeth?” he asked.
Ira waited for Jefferson to make the introduction, but the old man stood in rocklike silence. “I’m Ira Shapian,” said Ira.
“Ah, yes, the television person! Heard all about you. Linden-Eva
rts is my name. Cultural anthropology.”
“Well, well!” said Ira, impressed. “A great pleasure, sir. I’ve admired your work for many years.”
“Thank you,” said Linden-Evarts, beaming on Ira. “But it’s all been finger exercises so far. The big work lies ahead.” He winked at Jefferson. “Eh, Tatum?”
Jefferson made a rumbling sound.
“May I ask what you’re up to?” said Ira to Linden-Evarts.
“What I am up to, young man, is far and away the most pungent enterprise going on at this yeasty new university. I, Shapian, am endeavoring to discover how this anachronism—” he pointed a thumb at Jefferson—“continues to hold the children of Ham in bondage. Has this old oak—” indicating Jefferson again—“truly bowed before the winds of change? Or is he, as I suspect, only giving a clever imitation? Negroes are in open insurrection everywhere in America, but here in Owens Mill all is serene. Why, Shapian? How does the tyrant pacify the populace? Piquant question, eh? Well, there is an answer, and I shall not rest until I know it. Good-bye, sir. Good-bye, old oak.”
With a merry wave he pedaled away.
Ira looked curiously at Jefferson. “I don’t mean to pry, Mr. Tatum, but you are still picking up the tab at Acanthus?”
“Every penny,” said Jefferson, tight-lipped.
“And you’re letting Linden-Evarts go ahead with his project?”
Jefferson smiled painfully. “It’s what they call academic freedom,” he said. Then, as the vast glass slab loomed before them, the pain in the old man’s face sweetened into joy. “Here she is,” he said proudly. “Five hundred feet of windows and all Thermopane. Every lab air-conditioned, triple-filtered, and irradiated. Newest, best, most expensive equipment in the whole wide world. Finest teachers, finest students, finest everything … Mr. Shapian, won’t you come into our school of nutrition and public health?”
He swung open a huge glass door and gallantly extended his palm, inviting Ira to enter. They walked into a stark, spotless, rubber-tiled lobby, adorned only by a single bust of Asclepiades. “To your right,” said Jefferson, indicating a door marked “OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR.” He knocked, and they entered.
Dr. Clara Silenko, seated at her desk in a white smock, raised her handsome head. “Good morning, Tatum,” she said.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning!” chirped Jefferson. “Dr. Silenko, I’d like to make you acquainted with Mr. Ira Shapian, the famous television producer from Hollywood, California. Mr. Shapian, this here is Dr. Clara Silenko, M.D. Johns Hopkins, Ph.D. Harvard.”
Dr. Silenko exchanged greetings with Ira and turned to Jefferson. “Well, Tatum, where shall we start?”
“Right here,” answered Jefferson. “Tell Mr. Shapian what that is.”
He pointed to a work-table beside Dr. Silenko’s desk. There, held in a clamp, was a two-foot length of painted board. The paint was scaled, chipped, blistered, and, in some spots, was flaked away completely.
“That is an ordinary piece of siding,” she said to Ira, “which was painted with a good grade of commercial enamel and allowed to dry thoroughly. For the last month I have been coating the board each morning with a two percent solution of polyoxyethylene monostearate. You can see what has happened to the paint.”
“I can see,” said Ira. “But what is polyoxyethylene monostearate?”
“It’s an additive—specifically, an emulsifier—that is used very widely in the manufacture of cake mixes, candies, dill pickles, vitamin capsules, peanut butter, sweet rolls, doughnuts, cakes, pies, and any number of pastries.”
“You hear that, Mr. Shapian?” cried Jefferson. “Did you hear that? The whole goddam country is filling its belly with paint remover!”
Ira’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You mean to say the Food and Drug Administration allows this?”
“FDA!” sneered Jefferson. “Why, it’s a blot, man. It’s a blot and a shame and a disgrace and a puke.… Come on, Doctor, show Mr. Shapian some of the stuff FDA allows.”
“Follow me, please,” said Dr. Silenko and led them to a lab where row on row of wire cages contained colonies of white mice. Students and technicians moved among the cages, some making observations, some writing notes, some giving injections, some refilling food troughs.
Dr. Silenko stopped in front of a cage where a group of mice lay puny and listless, their tiny rib cages projecting gauntly.
“Good God!” exclaimed Ira. “What’s the matter with them?”
“Cancer of the bladder,” replied the doctor. “We’ve been feeding them beta-naphthylamine.”
“Which is?”
“A dye commonly used to color butter and oleomargarine.”
“And,” added Jefferson, “certified by FDA! Cancer peddlers, that’s all they are! Plain cancer peddlers!”
“Now, Tatum,” said Dr. Silenko soothingly.
But Jefferson would not be pacified. “You said it yourself, Doctor,” he insisted. “How many food dyes has FDA certified?”
“Seven.”
“And how many of them seven can give you cancer?”
“We’ve proved five so far.”
“Namely?”
“Yellow AB and Yellow OB—both beta-naphthylamine; you see the results on these mice. Now observe the lesions on the mice in the next cage. These are skin cancers caused by Blue No. 1, Green No. 2, and Green No. 3—all dyes certified for use in candy, ice cream, jellies, and puddings.”
Jefferson pressed on. “All right, so much for the dyes. Now let’s get to that gluey stuff with the long name.”
“Carboxymethyl cellulose?”
“That’s the one.”
“Used principally in cheeses, salad dressings, and canned fruit. Definitely carcinogenic.”
“Thank you. Now the other one with the long name, the sooty one you find in bacon and ham and all kinds of smoked meats?”
“Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.”
“Carcinogen?”
“No question.”
“Good! Would you run through a few more carcinogens, please, ma’am?”
“Well, there’s paraffin, which is used to preserve apples.”
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away!” snorted Jefferson. “Hah!”
“There are the pesticide residues you find in meat. Ironically, the most expensive cuts of meat, the ones marbled with fat, are the most likely to retain pesticides.”
“You getting all this, Mr. Shapian?” asked Jefferson.
“What I’m getting is a little sick,” replied Ira.
“And who would not?” said the old man righteously. “The nerve of them little pantywaists in Washington, every one of ’em on the public tit.… Oh, excuse me, ma’am.”
“You’re excused,” said Dr. Silenko.
Jefferson resumed: “The nerve of ’em, I say, the ungodly gall of them little clock-punchers to accuse cigarettes of giving people cancer when they’re the real cancer merchants in this country!”
“Aha!” said Ira quietly, for suddenly a truth came clear to him. All the way from Hollywood to Owens Mill, in those rare moments when he was not thinking of Boo, he had speculated on Jefferson Tatum’s motives: Why had a rough old buzzard like Jefferson spent millions to make a first-class university out of Acanthus? Why was he spending another bundle of money to buy sixty minutes of prime television time for a public service show? Now, in a flash, Ira saw and understood the whole plot.
Foxy old grandpa, thought Ira admiringly. Shrewd old gut fighter! But, thought Ira, there were rules in this fight. If old Tatum was under the impression he was going to have everything his way, he had better be disabused of the notion, and quickly. Equal time for both sides was a cardinal law of television, and unless Jefferson was prepared to agree, Ira intended to kill the program here and now.
“Mr. Tatum,” said Ira with a careful smile, “these are very interesting things I’m learning from you and Dr. Silenko.”
“Oh, there’s lots more, sonny. Not just cancer, but heart tro
uble and breakbone fever and the dry heaves and any other misery you might name. We are getting poisoned to death, and worse every year. Every year new poisons, new additives, new chemicals—tons and tons—more, always more. And that’s what you’re gonna show people on the television, ain’t you, Mr. Shapian?”
“Oh, yes, that’s what I’m going to show people on the television. But you understand, of course, there will also be a rebuttal, that I mean to present both sides of the argument?”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Jefferson piously.
“And whoever rebuts,” continued Ira, “is likely to have some pretty sharp questions. In fact, I can think of one right now.”
“Go ahead, sonny. Ask the pretty lady doctor. My money’s on her.”
“All right, Dr. Silenko. It’s an obvious question. If it’s true that Americans are eating all these poisons, why are we living so much longer than we used to live, say, fifty years ago?”
“I will give you an obvious answer to your obvious question,” said Dr. Silenko. “Today, because of better sanitation, better housing, better doctors, better hospitals, better surgery, better medication, we are keeping people alive who wouldn’t have stood a chance fifty years ago.”
“Is that bad?”
“Is it good? Sure, life is good, if by ‘life’ you mean health and vigor. But America has become a nation of invalids. Let me cite figures. Nearly one-half our population—and I include babies—are suffering from some sort of chronic disease. In the United States at last report there were a total of 88,959,534 registered cases of chronic illness. Some more figures: in the seven years from June, 1947, to June, 1955, 4,321,000 young men were called up by their draft boards; out of that number, 2,248,000—fifty-two percent—were rejected as unfit. That is an increase of eleven percent over World War II, an increase of twenty-one percent over World War I.… The signs are written large, Mr. Shapian: America is getting sicker by the day.”
“And you blame it all on food?”
“Most of it. The body is a machine designed to be fueled by certain natural nutrients, not by chemicals. Add chemicals, and the machine simply won’t function as it should. Oh, yes, you can be kept alive, but how? By adding more chemicals, that’s how. More work for the kidneys, the liver, the gut. More years and less health. I don’t know about you, sir, but I call it a poor bargain.”
