Bring Me Children

by David Martin

  Nine seconds into this item, John Lyon sobs.

  His immediate reaction is embarrassed surprise, as if he had just belched. Lyon closes his mouth and forcibly presses his lips together, which only increase the pressure of what has come alive inside of him, clawing to get out, unavoidable, irresistible, and finally escaping, rendering Lyon quite helpless as he sits behind the news desk and sobs a second time, those wet eyes now over-flowing with tears, his face gripped by what seems to millions of television viewers a sadness altogether soul-deep, wretched, inconsolable.

  But then, incredibly, Lyon steels himself against this emotional firestorm and stumbles through a few more sentences about the murder of children before the director finally manages — mercifully — to cut away to a commercial.

  Members of the crew rush to Lyon’s side.

  “John!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He is doubled up as if in pain, still sobbing.

  “John! Is it your heart?”

  Having rushed to the set from the control booth, Nancy Greene is kneeling beside him with her hands on his left arm. “Let me help you up, John. Come on, we have to move you someplace where you can lie down.” Actually her assignment is to get Lyon the hell off the set before the commercial ends. She signals to a sound technician to grab Lyon’s other arm. But they can’t get him to stand. Greene steps back and calls for more help.

  Lyon’s removal from the set turns out to be an effort requiring four producers and crew members who finally half-carry, half-drag him away. Not that he is resisting them. It’s just that John Lyon is crying so hard he can’t hold himself upright.

  CHAPTER 3

  A few miles from the studio, a sixty-two-year-old black woman sits staring at her television screen. Claire Cept is astonished that the sign she’s been waiting for has been delivered with such clarity. The heartbreaking anguish that John Lyon suffered when he started to tell that story about murdered children is an undeniable message from eighteen babies lying in their graves in West Virginia. It was those babies who made John Lyon break down and sob — so that Claire Cept won’t forget them, won’t ever give up.

  For the longest time she just sits there staring at the television even though nothing has registered with her since Lyon’s distressed face left that screen. The way he cried! You hardly ever see a man cry like that, at least not on television. Not for real.

  As Claire Cept thinks about the pain Mr. Lyon must have been suffering, large tears well in the corners of her eyes and run down her cheeks. He feels the same way I do! She must talk to him.

  But Claire Cept has had considerable experience in the difficulty of trying to meet people in power, people who are famous. She knows what will happen if she shows up at the studio and asks to see John Lyon. The receptionist will listen impatiently for a few seconds and then dismiss her. If Claire Cept doesn’t leave, security will be called. There are government and newspaper offices in New York City where Claire Cept is so notoriously well-known she can’t even get past the front door.

  But her experience in these matters has also led her to certain directories and other underground sources of information about famous people — where they live, for example.

  Claire Cept struggles up from her easy chair and walks into the tiny kitchen where she puts a pan on the stove and places in it two blocks of paraffin. While the paraffin is melting she gathers together her papers and places them in a nine-by-twelve envelope. Then she begins writing notes and instructions.

  Later that evening she searches the back of a closet until she finds a small wooden box that cost her a hundred and fifty dollars. It is six inches long, three inches wide, two inches deep, painted white. The box has been fashioned from wood stolen from the coffin of a man who killed his twelve-year-old niece with a hammer and was himself shot in both eyes by his own brother, the girl’s father.

  Into that powerful box Claire Cept places a paraffin figure adorned with feathers, wrapped with colored string and human hair, and covered all over with the letter Q, which she has cut out of newspapers and magazines. She shakes dirt from a quart jar, sprinkling it on the figure, the dirt collected from the graves of those eighteen children down in West Virginia. Claire Cept has a dozen jars of this dirt in her closet.

  She uses string to secure the top on the white wooden box, wrapping the string longways and sideways, tying elaborate knots.

  When she finishes writing the last of her notes and instructions, she places them in the envelope along with the other papers. Before sealing this envelope, Claire Cept sprinkles in a handful of salt.

  All the rest of that night she prays.

  Claire Cept was reared in the Pentecostal church, converted to Catholicism in her forties, and has practiced hoodoo since the age of thirteen. Covering all the bases, she used to joke to friends back when she could still joke about these things, back before she began losing her mind — before she found out about the eighteen children.

  After completing her seventh Rosary, Claire Cept opens a shoebox containing her most powerful gris-gris. Reaching in, she selects a bone from the ring finger of a man who died on the gallows the year she was born. He was innocent.

  If she can’t get past the security desk at John Lyon’s apartment, she’ll wait for him out on the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER 4

  Not until three days later — June 27, a Wednesday — does John Lyon’s mortification recede enough that he is able to face another human being, in this case his agent.

  If Lyon’s reliability was his singular asset to the network, then obviously the on-camera breakdown has made him a profoundly useless employee. But what hurts Lyon even more is his personal humiliation.

  Ever since leaving newspapers for television some twenty years ago he has maintained a keen sense of personal dignity, priding himself on never sucking up to management, panting after celebrity, or maneuvering for promotions and choice assignments. He knows that this superior attitude has kept him off the fast track and, yes, he also knows that his attitude has earned him a nickname — His Lordship. But Lyon can’t change this image he has of himself — private, reserved, dignified. It’s been with him too long.

  It’s the way he acted when he was fourteen years old and had a friend over for dinner. They were both home from boarding school and the dinner was formal, always a formal dinner whenever father was in residence. Lyon’s mother came into the dining room perfectly coiffed, tastefully made up, a single strand of pearls, a brocaded blouse that belonged to her grandmother, and wearing absolutely nothing from the waist down. Lyon’s classmate gave out with a nervous laugh and then caught himself, turning bright red, unable to take his eyes off the fifty-year-old woman’s copse. Lyon’s father didn’t miss a beat, telling his daughter, “Millicent, take your mother up to her room.” Lyon’s mother, meanwhile, reacted with surprise, as if it were her husband who was being irrational. “But, Ronald, I haven’t eaten yet.” Lyon’s father refused to acknowledge her. “Millicent.” And then when Millie returned to the table, the four of them completed dinner in a silence that weighed tons.

  When leaving the Lyon household that evening, the classmate wanted to say something. An expression of sympathy, perhaps, or questions to satisfy his curiosity. But Lyon would entertain no comments or inquiries. He simply shook his friend’s hand and bid him goodbye, quickly closing the door, ending their friendship. Even at fourteen, John Lyon was using an image of himself — private, reserved, dignified — as protection.

  Sunday afternoon he lost that self-image in the worst possible way.

  “At least you haven’t been fired,” his agent, James Tapp, is telling him during their evening meeting at Lyon’s apartment. “In fact, you have a strong sympathy factor going for you.”

  “Pity, you mean.” In the past three days Lyon has received a stack of faxes and an hour’s worth of messages on his answering machine. “My colleagues are always thrilled when a potential competitor is gelded.”

  Tapp does not say what
he is thinking, that viewers consider Lyon aloof, management thinks he’s pompous, and Lyon lost his status as a potential competitor years ago. Instead, Tapp tries to put the best possible spin on the matter. “The network will come across as heartless if they fire a guy whose only sin is crying over murdered children,” he tells Lyon. “Did you see the editorial in The Atlanta Constitution? Says that after so many years of watching newscasters deliver the worst possible news in a manner devoid of any emotion it was almost ‘refreshing’ to see one of them finally put a human face on tragedy. And People has called twice now —”

  “I am not going to be interviewed by People magazine. I am not going to be among that weekly lineup of people taking their grief and personal problems and addictions public. Pitiful.”

  “Odd attitude for a newsman.”

  “I’m not a newsman, James. I haven’t been a newsman since I left the Trib. It’s the producers and correspondents and camera crews who assemble and report the news. I just read it.”

  Tapp is nodding but not agreeing. He’s heard this rap from Lyon before and finds it tiresome.

  In his twenties Lyon was a reporter for the Chicago Tribune where he wrote a series of articles about unsafe nursing homes, winning a Pulitzer, and he can’t let go of this attitude that his newspaper work was superior to anything he’s done in television. Tapp knows, however, that the truth lies in the opposite direction entirely: it is newspaper people who are inferior in power and prestige to their counterparts on television, and this assertion is easy enough to measure — you just count it out in dollars.

  In his early thirties, thin and high-strung, a shark at making deals, Tapp walks around the living room repeatedly sitting and standing as he talks to his client. “The right kind of article in People could be the first step in saving your career,” Tapp insists. “The network will not fire you, I’m pretty sure of that. But unfortunately your contract is up August first, five weeks from now, and I don’t think they’re going to renew. Probably offer a severance package with extended medical coverage.”

  Lyon translates “extended medical coverage” as psychiatric care. Does this mean network management thinks he’s gone insane? Lyon doesn’t feel insane, no voices or delusions or night sweats. Except for the breakdown itself and then the quite understandable embarrassment he’s suffered these past three days, Lyon considers himself perfectly normal. He has no idea why his emotions slipped out of control Sunday afternoon, but he’s certainly not insane. Then again, if you’re insane, do you know it?

  “I did get a call from a publisher,” Tapp is saying, “who wanted to know if you had any special interest in children as murder victims, for a book project.”

  Just like Tapp, Lyon thinks, to call a book a book project. Lyon shakes his head.

  “Does that mean no? We’re talking a hundred thousand dollar advance.”

  Lyon mutters something about the gruesome bastards in publishing, recognizing again the bitterness that’s become so intimate a part of his outlook lately.

  “There is one possible solution to this entire mess,” Tapp says, pacing the room. “Now please don’t interrupt until you’ve heard me out. First you talk to People and tell them you’ve been a hard-assed journalist all your professional life, forced to take on a tough veneer as protection against all the shit you’ve seen, winning a Pulitzer for exposing the rat-infested firetraps that old people were forced to live in back in Chicago. But when you came to that story about murdered children Sunday afternoon, your cold, cold exterior finally melted. But now you don’t care. Sure, crying on the air is going to hurt you professionally, but for godssakes you’re a human being with feelings. Then you give People this exclusive: you’re accepting a book contract to expose the horror of children as murder victims, donating the entire advance to some appropriate charity. If there isn’t one for murdered children, we’ll start it up ourselves.

  “After the article comes out, I put you on the talk show circuit. You appear with experts, show photographs, put a human face on the cold statistics. Here it is, John, here’s why the plan works — the entire focus of what happened Sunday afternoon gets changed, away from you and directed to this issue of little kids getting knocked off, their murders falsified as accidents or illnesses. You’re protected because any criticism of you comes off as cold-heartedness toward little murdered children.

  “Then I go to the network and say, hey, let’s not waste all this publicity, how about John doing a special on children as murder victims? If they won’t do it, one of the other networks will. You win a couple awards, bingo, you’re back on network salary, all is forgiven, happy ending, fade-out.”

  Lyon sits there absorbing everything he’s heard. When he finally speaks he does so in the measured tones he uses to deliver the gravest of news to the viewing audience. “I don’t think I want to work with you anymore, James.”

  “What?”

  “The strategy you just outlined is reprehensible, it’s dishonest and —”

  “Okay, then what do you suggest I go to the network with? Please put John back on the air and he’ll try real hard not to bust out crying again?”

  “You’re not going to the network with anything, not on my behalf. You’re fired.”

  Tapp’s eyes grow large. “Fired?” Then he smiles. “John, you don’t understand. You’re at the end of your career. You blubbered and sobbed on national television and had to be dragged off a set. If you don’t do something dramatic to change the current perception of you, you’ll never work in television again — not network, not local, not even PBS. The fact that I didn’t immediately drop you as a client is testimony to my loyalty, my generosity. And now you think you’re firing me? You got it all wrong, John. You got it backwards. You fire your agent when you’re at the top of your career, when you no longer want to be associated with someone who knew you from the old days. At the bottom of your career is when your agent fires you.”

  Lyon stands and walks to the door of his apartment, opening it for Tapp. “Let’s consider this a mutual firing then, shall we?”

  Tapp steps into the hallway before turning for his parting shot. “My plan would have put you back on television, but I didn’t mention that it had one requirement — that you go see a psychiatrist. I wasn’t about to put my credibility on the line by trying to resurrect the career of someone who really has lost his marbles. And that’s still my advice, John. Go see a shrink. Immediately.”

  Lyon closes the door.

  It’s a little after ten that evening when he sits down with a Scotch whiskey and his regrets. Firing Tapp was morally satisfying but stupid. What Lyon really wanted Tapp to do was ask the network if he could come back on board as a producer — real reporting again, off-air, off-camera — but now Lyon has no one who can speak to the network on his behalf.

  Got to take a walk. Been holed up and hiding in this apartment for three days now, Lyon thinks, and if I don’t get some air, I will go crazy.

  As the elevator glides downward, Lyon tries to convince himself that all is not necessarily lost. Go to the network brass in person … no, go to a psychiatrist first, get the doctor to write an opinion that Sunday’s episode was caused by overwork or underwork or whatever it was caused by, but in any case it was an isolated incidence and will never, ever be repeated. Then go to the network brass, show them the psychiatrist’s opinion, offer to take some off-camera duties at a salary cut … no, don’t propose a salary cut, they’ll smell that like blood in the water. He wishes he had discussed this with Tapp. Okay, offer to work at the same salary but without a contract until my emotional stability is reestablished …

  The elevator stops on the ground floor and Lyon steps out thinking maybe this is exactly what he needs at age fifty, something to fire up his competitive spirit and burn away the nagging self-pity he’s been prone to recently. Hell, back when he worked for newspapers and during his first decade and a half in television, Lyon was a hotshot. Maybe his entire problem is that he’s been in a rut lately, and
then a few months ago he turned fifty and his best friend Tommy Door died …

  When Lyon reaches the apartment building’s front door he is glad to see the rain, which should keep pedestrians distracted enough not to recognize him. Walking through the rain will clear his head, Lyon is convinced of it.

  The doorman greets him in the usual obsequious manner, asking Lyon if he wants an umbrella.

  “Thanks, Jonathan, but it’s not raining that hard.” Then Lyon hurries out, not giving the doorman a chance to say anything about Sunday’s program.

  As soon as Lyon reaches the sidewalk, a woman approaches him. She looks to be in her sixties, dressed in a ratty, torn raincoat, carrying a small cardboard box under one arm, her face very black — African black. As she reaches her free hand toward Lyon, he tries to sidestep her but the woman manages to latch that gnarled hand onto Lyon’s arm.

  He goes into a pocket and brings out a dollar, but when Lyon tries to give it to the woman she looks at the bill as if she has no idea what it is. In fact she allows the dollar to flutter to the sidewalk and then begins tugging on Lyon’s arm to make him look at her.

  He pulls his arm free.

  “Those children need to be avenged,” she says, her face puffy, eyes opened alarmingly wide.

  “Hey you!” the doorman hollers, rushing out into the light rain and interposing himself between the woman and Lyon. “Go on get out of here or I’ll call the cops on ya!” Then he turns his head toward Lyon. “She’s been hanging around since Monday morning, wanting to come up and see you. I’ve run her off half a dozen times myself.”

  Lyon nods and backs away. “Thank you, Jonathan.” He walks quickly, turning once to see Jonathan herding the woman down the sidewalk in the opposite direction.

  Lyon sets a brisk pace, shoulders hunched, the collar of his Barbour jacket up, protecting himself more from being recognized than from the warm rain. He starts thinking about what he’ll do if his contract isn’t renewed in August, running through a quick tabulation of the money he’s saved over the years, the property he’s bought, the money and property he’s inherited. I’ll survive this just fine, he decides. At least I won’t be like those other men whose positions were eliminated in all the cutbacks of the past few years, men with children in private schools, with wives who defined themselves through shopping, with three or four mortgages and a dozen different credit card bills. Thank God I don’t have obligations. Those men were suicidal when they got the axe, but all I have to do is support myself, I don’t have anyone burdening me, I don’t have anyone …