by Max Shulman
“Yes,” said Ira, “another good point.”
“And if you ain’t convinced yet, let me give you the clincher. Objection No. 5: economic. Do you know that out of every $10,000 we spend to fluoridate our water, $9,975 goes for flushing toilets, sprinkling the lawn, washing clothes, and like that? Only twenty-five dollars out of every ten thousand is for drinking! I rest my case.”
“Quite a case.”
“Thank you. So now will you go away and let me work before them dentists put us all in the hospital?”
Making his rounds one day, Ira dropped in on Linden-Evarts at the cultural anthropology department. He found him presiding over a small seminar composed entirely of Negro students: three young men seated on one side of the table, three coeds on the other, Linden-Evarts at the head.
“Ah, Shapian, come in, come in,” beckoned Linden-Evarts. “Students, this is Ira Shapian, a television lackey. Shapian, I’d like you to meet Lucy Swift, Mary Groves, and Helen McDermott on this side of the table; and on the other side Jim King, Ed Riley, and Phil Tolliver.”
“Hi, kids,” said Ira with a friendly smile. “Professor, please forgive my busting in on your class, but I’m trying to cover as much as I can of Acanthus in the tv show. I was thinking maybe I’d find something here I could put on television.”
“You won’t,” said Linden-Evarts positively. “And I’ll tell you why. Two reasons: first, because I am not the kind of man who is invited to make television appearances. It is, in fact, generally agreed that I have the personality of a piss-ant.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Ira demurred politely.
“Yes, you would,” said the professor.
“On second thought,” said Ira, “you’re right. I would.”
“That’s better,” said Linden-Evarts. “Now add to my obnoxious manner the subject under discussion here, and it becomes quite obvious that the work being done in this department is no fit matter for the pap machine called television.”
“Do you mind if I listen awhile and judge for myself?” asked Ira.
Linden-Evarts shrugged. “As you like,” he said and indicated an empty chair at the foot of the table.
Ira sat. The professor addressed his seminar. “Now then, class, let us continue. I was saying before Shapian interrupted that I am chairman of the board of trustees of the William Lloyd Garrison Foundation. In a few weeks we will be picking the recipient of our annual Community Relations Award. Among the leading candidates is Jefferson Tatum.” He turned to one of the students. “Phil, how would you vote on old Tatum?”
“I would vote a big loud no!” said Phil vehemently. “Mr. Tatum doesn’t care anything about Negroes. He is nothing but a tokenist—a shrewd tokenist, I grant you, but a tokenist. His only concern is to keep his town nice and quiet and tractable.”
Linden-Evarts quickly surveyed the other students. “Do you all feel the same?”
Everyone nodded.
“Your position has merit,” allowed the professor. “Tatum is, without question, a tokenist. Still, how can one ignore all he has given to Acanthus College and the town of Owens Mill?”
“Now you’ve said it!” cried Jim, slamming both fists down on the table. “Mr. Tatum gives. Whatever Negroes have achieved in this college and in this town has been the result of Mr. Tatum’s bounty.… Well, we don’t want it that way. We don’t want things given to us. We don’t want to depend on any man’s generosity. We have rights, legal and moral, and all we ask is what the laws of God and man say we’re entitled to!”
There were shouts of assent from all the undergrads.
“Bravely spoken,” said Linden-Evarts with a tolerant smile. “All right then, let me propose another candidate for the Garrison Award. How about Governor Wallace of Alabama?”
The students looked bewildered, as did Ira.
“Why not?” continued Linden-Evarts. “Has any man’s conduct done more to unite the Negro community in America? Isn’t that worthy of recognition?”
“Look, Professor,” said Lucy, “I thought this was a serious discussion.”
“Oh, I’m serious all right,” Linden-Evarts assured her. “However, I see you are not persuaded by my reasoning. Very well, we’ll scratch Governor Wallace along with Jefferson Tatum. I will try another name on you: Senator Mansfield of Montana.”
The students paused, pondered, exchanged looks of general approbation. “He’s a good man,” said Mary, summing up for her colleagues.
“He’s a fine man,” said Linden-Evarts. “He’s a decent man, an intelligent man, an enlightened man. His heart is in the right place. The only trouble is, he is not even remotely in the running for the Garrison Award.”
“Why not?” asked Helen.
“Why should he be?” countered Linden-Evarts. “How difficult is it to be an equalitarian when you are the Senator from Montana, a place where, if you look diligently, you will find perhaps fifty Negro families in the entire state? No, students, forget about Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey and McGee of Wyoming. The Garrison Award is not for people who have so little to lose.”
“I don’t follow your thinking, Professor,” said Ed.
“No, none of you does. And the reason you don’t is that you are all cursed with the principal affliction of youth: you are not terribly bright.”
“Sir,” said Mary, “I would like to say I resent that.”
Linden-Evarts chuckled. “That’s your problem, my dear. I do not retreat from my statement: you are no more intelligent than any other members of your generation. Surely, you cannot believe that a black skin is an automatic guarantee of wisdom?”
“Now I resent that!” declared Ed.
“Resent and be damned,” said Linden-Evarts cheerfully. “You are young and therefore foolish. If not, why would you be wasting time on these countless, aimless protest marches, these ridiculous prostrations on highways and bridges?”
“I see,” said Lucy bitterly. “What you’re saying is for us to put the handkerchiefs back on our heads and keep turning the other cheek.”
“I am saying no such thing,” denied Linden-Evarts. “I believe you should holler when you’re hurt, fight when you’re abused. Go to court for even the slightest infraction of your civil rights. Boycott bus lines, restaurants, stores, and factories that are segregated in any way whatever. But, in the name of common sense, will you stop these ridiculous, random, disorganized marches and demonstrations? For your own good, use the time instead to do a little calm, patient planning.”
“Calm! Patient!” Jim spat the words out like two foul things. “You talk about calm and patient when one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation we’re still being treated like animals!”
“Anybody here taking American history?” asked the professor.
They nodded.
“Then you know that long before the Emancipation Proclamation there was in this country a political group called the Know-Nothing Party. Their platform was charmingly simple: keep all Catholics out of public office. And from 1830 to 1856 the Know-Nothings held the balance of power in the federal Congress and the state legislatures. Yet in 1961 John F. Kennedy, rest his soul, moved into the White House.”
“White House, yes,” said Phil indignantly. “Sure, we finally got a Catholic President, but he was white, and don’t you forget it. How long, do you suppose, before we get a black President?”
“I don’t know, but we surely will.” Linden-Evarts’ tone was serenely confident.
The students hooted.
Linden-Evarts smiled faintly, sadly. “This will astound you, but I know exactly how you feel. Fact is, I wouldn’t have much respect for you if you felt different. Kids are full of ideals, and patience isn’t one of them. You want everything to happen right now. Well, it’s a crying shame, but that’s not the way the world moves. Little steps, my starry-eyed young friends, that’s the cadence. Tiny steps. Sometimes imperceptible steps. But forward steps: there’s the encouraging thing.”
“You mean fo
rward steps like in Birmingham?” asked Helen mockingly.
“I am acquainted with Birmingham,” answered Linden-Evarts without heat. “And I know about Chicago and Harlem too. But I also know that the armed forces are desegregated today. I know there are black men making policy on Capitol Hill and in the Executive Branch. I know the Supreme Court has said that separate can never be equal. I know we have an FEPC, a civil rights division in the Justice Department, and a whole battery of presidential powers to stop discrimination.”
Mary scoffed. “And what good are all these things?”
“More good than Malcolm X,” replied Linden-Evarts quietly. “More good than Adam Powell and all the other fishers in troubled waters. What too many of you lose sight of, my dusky countrymen, is that when the smoke clears—and it finally will—you are going to have to live alongside your white neighbors. We are Americans, every single one of us, and America is, first and foremost, a melting pot. It did not get that way because the pot welcomed every new ingredient—quite the contrary—but because the pot understood, sooner or later, that it could make a richer stew if it took in some exotic arrivals like Irishmen and Italians and Greeks and Jews. You Negroes have not been invited into the pot yet, but I would remind you of something: there is no lid on the pot and there never was. With patience, courage, and steady, intelligent pressure, you too will be asked to jump in someday. In fact, though you’ll deny it hotly, it’s already beginning to happen.”
Now the conversation was loud, disorganized, and passionate. Linden-Evarts leaned back and grinned at Ira. “Well, Shapian, how much of this stuff can you use on television?”
“Are you kidding?” replied Ira. “If I put a discussion like this on the air, within minutes I would be picketed by the NAACP, the Urban League, the White Citizens Council, the Civil Liberties Union, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, CORE, SNICK, the Ku Klux Klan, the Americans for Democratic Action, and possibly the Miss Rheingold Pageant.
“Good-bye, Shapian,” said Linden-Evarts. “Come back if you should have a sudden attack of courage.”
“Courage? Me?” sighed Ira, departing. “Hah!”
Some nights later Ira rented a car and drove out to Boo’s beach house, where he made love to her before the driftwood fire. He found the lovemaking curiously unsatisfactory—well, perhaps not unsatisfactory, but certainly less than rapturous. If coition could be rated on a scale of 1 to 10, this particular encounter would be marked about 6—6.5 at the outside.
For an Ira-Boo match this represented a very low score. In previous meets Ira had chalked up many a 10 and never lower than a 9. But this night a troubled mind had dulled the edge of ecstasy. A host of specters hung over him: the rapidly approaching date of the telecast, the parting with Boo, the return to Hollywood, the dismalness beyond.
Silently he put on his clothes and sat and lit a cigarette and stared into the driftwood flames.
For a long time Boo watched him intently, then said, “I love it when you’re moody, darling. Your eyes are like a storm—a beautiful, black, flashing storm.”
Ira patted her knee absently.
“Brood, my dark angel, brood,” said Boo. “And should you want to talk, I’m here.”
Ira nodded.
Twenty mute minutes passed.
He turned to her and seemed about to speak.
“Yes, love?” she said gently.
He shook his head in despair. “I don’t know where to start.”
“I hesitate to intrude, but I think I can help,” she offered.
“Please.”
“You’re thinking it’s only three more weeks until you do your television show.”
“Yes.”
“And then you must leave me.”
“I love you, Boo!” he cried and plunged his face into her breast.
“And I love you, Ira,” she answered, stroking his hair. “And that is the thought that must sustain us—not the parting, but the love. Not the separation, but these wonderful, golden, unexpected days we have had together.”
“I am not comforted,” said Ira.
“Poor darling,” said Boo.
He rose. “Let’s put on some sweaters and walk on the beach.”
“Yes, dear.”
Silently, hand in hand, they walked along the shore. A cold wind tumbled off the sea. The angry tide pursued but never caught their feet. Ira pondered.
Boo is right, he thought. I am sad because the time to say good-bye is almost here. I am sad because this flawless interlude is ending. The nights with Boo have been bliss. The days of honest work at an honest trade have made me feel like a man again, like a mover and shaker, and not just a tentacle of Clendennon. In three weeks all of this will be taken from me, and I am sad.
But that is not all of my sadness. I grieve as much for what is approaching as I do for what is receding. After ineffable rapture with Boo, I am returning to strained civility with Polly. After the truth and toil of making a television show, I am returning to sit behind a desk and nice for a living. I am leaving glory for ashes, verity for tinsel, a mountaintop for a bog.
Ira turned and looked at Boo’s face, at the handsome, patrician lines jutting cleanly into the wind. Oh, God! he thought, if only I could hold her strength and beauty forever! She would renew me; she would rekindle the flame long doused by the combination of Hollywood and Clendennon and lovelessness and deals and defaults and trumpery. I would use my talents fearlessly again. I would make tough, uncompromising television shows, shows that goaded and illuminated, shows about important topics like poverty and disease and corruption and the most urgent of all problems, race relations. I would, by God, go to work for Linus Calloway in Birmingham! Yes! I would wrench myself from the gold-baited trap of commercial television and take that job with Linus. I would fight for the right. I would!
A short, bitter laugh spurted from Ira’s lips.
“What, my darling?” asked Boo.
“I was having a dream,” said Ira. “A lovely, impossible dream.”
“Are you sure it’s impossible?” she said.
“I’m sure,” he replied. Then he paused. Was it impossible? “Sit,” he said and pulled Boo down beside him on a rock.
He cerebrated furiously. What obstacles stood between him and the dream?
Well, first there was Polly. But she was not, in truth, an obstacle. All Ira had to say was, “I want a divorce,” and she would promptly reply, “You got it.” Polly, bless her spunky soul and body, was never one to stay where she was not wanted.
Okay, so much for Polly. Next obstacle: the Star Spangled Broadcasting Network. A real obstacle, this one. You can’t say “I want a divorce” to a network, especially after you’ve just signed a new contract. For the next seven years Ira belonged to Star Spangled, unless, of course, Star Spangled decided to fire him for some reason.
Ira’s eyes glowed with inspiration, for suddenly he knew a reason why Star Spangled would fire him—a beautifully simple reason, a simply beautiful reason. In three weeks he was going to do the Acanthus telecast live, on the spot, precisely as it happened. If, during the show, he could slip in a few words so rapidly that nobody would have time to cut him off the air—and he knew precisely the words and the place to insert them—then not only would Ira get fired from Star Spangled, but he would be totally and forever unemployable in any area of commercial television anywhere!
And, thought Ira with a chuckle, it would not only be himself who was stoned out of commercial tv. The ultimate responsibility for the Acanthus telecast rested on Clendennon; thus if Ira pulled down the temple, Clendennon would be buried in the rubble right alongside him! Ah, what a heart-warming prospect! What a darling consummation!
“Why are you smiling, Ira?” asked Boo.
“Shh,” said Ira.
“Yes, dear,” said Boo.
Ira resumed thinking. Two obstacles down—Polly and Star Spangled—and one more to go. And this was the steepest of all: where to work after he had outlawed himself from commerc
ial television. Sure, he could take the job with Linus Calloway, but what about the salary, five thousand paltry dollars a year? How in God’s name could he get along on such short money? There would be alimony for Polly. There would be the twins to support. There would be Boo as his new wife.
A fresh idea came to Ira, an ignoble, loathsome idea which he rejected as soon as it arrived. But it would not stay rejected. It returned and kept returning until at last Ira spoke. “Boo,” he said, “how much money have you got?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Scads, I’m sure.” Then, suddenly concerned, she grasped Ira’s hand. “Why, darling? Do you need some?”
“No. Oh, no.”
“You’re sure?” she said, searching his eyes. “Please tell me if you do. You’re welcome to all I have.”
“Hmm,” said Ira, rubbing his chin.
“There’s a checkbook in the beach house. Shall we go in?”
“Boo, I’ve got something very important to ask you and you must be absolutely honest. Would you still love me if I accepted money from you? I don’t mean just once or twice. I mean regularly and systematically for the rest of our lives.”
She looked at him with unfeigned bewilderment. “I don’t understand, Ira. Of course I’d still love you. What’s money got to do with love? If I have something you want or need, then my greatest joy is to give it to you. Don’t you know that?”
“Kiss me, Boo, and then I’ve got one more thing to ask.”
She gave him her lips, then withdrew to await the query. “Yes, dear?”
“We’ve never talked about the race problem, Boo. I’d like to know where you stand.”
Her brows knit. “You really are full of riddles tonight. Race problem, you say? What race problem, Ira? There’s only one race, the human race, and God grant we all recognize it soon.”
“Kiss me again, and this time good.”
She kissed him good.
“Thank you,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She rose with him. “Don’t you have any more questions?”
