Scare Tactics

by Farris, John

  Kinsaker moved slowly through the sunlight that intersected his desk and approached a door-front cabinet. Watching him, Practice recalled a brief conversation he had had with Governor Guthrie not long ago. He had made some sort of slighting remark about Kinsaker, and Guthrie looked up at him tiredly in the dwindling hours of the night.

  “I don’t think you have a right to think of him in that way,” Guthrie said, then softened his tone. “The Major can be mean, and he can be kind, but for all the contradictions, his kindness is no less real than his unattractive qualities. Let’s remember that.”

  The Major opened one of the cabinet doors and light from the windows shone on the liquor decanters massed on a shelf inside. Probably, Jim thought, there was a small refrigerator in the closet hard by the liquor supply. Gracious living, he told himself, his nerves chased by a spook of annoyance as the Major turned to him.

  “What will you have, Mr. Practice?” he said, his hand gripping the shelf below the array of cut-glass bottles, no expression in his narrow eyes.

  Practice spent a few moments carefully shaping up his cigarette, taking perverse satisfaction in letting the Major wait for his answer.

  “You know all about me, Major. I assume that, anyway, because I don’t carry any secrets of my own around with me. You know when I was weaned and where I was baptized and how many girls I coaxed up into the barn loft before I was fifteen years old. I work for John Guthrie, and that’s all in the Blue Book, sixty-two thousand dollars a year, which is two thousand dollars more than the Governor himself makes. You know these things about me, so you know I can’t drink. That’s the first thing you must know about me.”

  “Then I won’t drink, either,” the Major said, turning away from the cabinet and closing the doors. He moved slowly, precisely, but with an underlying gracefulness and ease.

  “Go ahead, it’s nothing to me.”

  Practice had slipped into the drawling habits of speech that he adopted unthinkingly when under duress, or annoyed, because he had allowed the man to goad him, to try him. He had come to listen, he reminded himself; no more.

  He struck a match and held it to his cigarette, then broke the match. Because the chair was just out of arm’s reach of the desk and an ashtray, he kept the match, toying with it. For some reason he didn’t want to get up out of the chair, go to the desk, and deposit the match; the notion of standing, stepping, then turning, and turning again to sit in the rather low chair seemed awkward, obscurely humiliating. Which could explain why the chair had been placed at that particular point, where a man might sit and talk with Major Kinsaker and feel as isolated from him as if he were in the next room.

  Without appearing to notice the match, the Major walked around his desk and picked up the ashtray, handing it to Practice, who set it on one of the wide armrests of the chair. The Major continued unhurriedly to the far side of the room with an air of reflection and detachment, and Practice turned his head to follow his progress for a few moments.

  He was aware again of something remotely demonic about the man; another age and the Major might have made a first-class sorcerer. But he sensed now a part of what Guthrie had been trying to tell him, that Major Kinsaker was far from the malevolent, grasping man he was sometimes made out to be. His attitude was one of willful loneliness, apartness, perhaps with a faint distaste for but enchantment with the lives of ordinary men. The Major’s family, among the original settlers of the state, had been wealthy for generations. Besides the Osage Bank, Kinsaker owned land, utilities, and diversified industry. He lived in a comfortable house in the oldest part of town, owned one car, rarely traveled outside the state, and had been married only for a short time. Practice had a hunch that his chief inspiration was a craving for intrigue. The dikes were crumbling all around him, but he didn’t act like a man about to get his feet wet or be drowned.

  The far wall of the Major’s office was blank, except for a series of framed photographs of a young girl—as an infant in a snowsuit, as a child astride a Shetland pony which the Major held by the halter, as a blooming thirteen-year-old. They were the first pictures Practice had ever seen of Major Kinsaker’s daughter, Molly. Shortly after her thirteenth birthday Molly had died after a fall from a horse; her death had been an almost fatal blow to the Major.

  “I know many things about you,” Kinsaker said. “I’ve looked into your beginnings. By the way, your father is married again. The girl is seventeen—and you have another half brother.”

  “I’m not interested in my father,” Practice said, disliking the sour taste in his mouth; disliking the Major, who knew his life by the inch, his every stupidity and failure. “I haven’t seen or spoken to him for twenty years.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Kinsaker replied, still without emphasis in his voice.

  “What do you want, Major?”

  Practice’s bluntness provoked a frown. “I know about you—your promise and your failure. But I’d like to know more; I’d like to understand your relationship with John Guthrie. Why does he trust you and no one else?”

  “We’ve never put it into words, Major.”

  Kinsaker came toward him, then changed direction and stood over his desk, a hand on the ornamental lamp that was suspended above it. “Two men are trying to kill each other,” he said. “You stand between them, through no choice of your own. Possibly you could help them.”

  “I don’t think so,” Practice said.

  His tone seemed to disrupt Kinsaker’s thoughts, and he turned again to the windows and the warmth of the sun.

  “John Guthrie is mistaken if he thinks he can hold the reins of the party and hold office effectively at the same time. It can’t be done. From what I’ve seen lately he’s overburdened already, very nearly a spent man, with half of his political life ahead of him. His only possible achievement will be such a severe disunity, such a chaotic reversal of loyalties, that the party will literally explode under the pressure of its internal quarrels. There may be no hope of peace for another fifty years. And fifty years is only about half the time it took, Mr. Practice, for my father and me to build our party from nothing to what it represents today.”

  “Your party is an anachronism,” Practice said. “Even a man as popular as Guthrie will have his hands full building a winning ticket for the next election.”

  “Leaving my personal feelings aside for the moment, I think John Guthrie is a brilliant politician with an erratic streak in him. He’s willfully, unaccountably being a fool. He doesn’t understand power or the party. I hoped that we could be in some accord once he was elected Governor, but he takes no man’s advice, except that of certain irresponsible and politically ignorant men even younger than him-nelf.” The Major paused, nearly trembling with outrage. “He’s like a child-god playing with lightning. He’s going to burn us all badly, for no reason except an almost psychopathic rejection of me that I’ve done nothing to deserve.” Practice blinked, fascinated by the glimpse of the molten core of the man. Then he found his voice.

  “What about those personal feelings you mentioned, Major?”

  “They have nothing to do with my politics.”

  “Which is hard to believe. You see, Major, I don’t recognize John Guthrie at all when you talk about him. And I’ve seen him almost every day for six years—”

  “I’m John Guthrie’s godfather,” the old man said, cutting him off. “His family and mine have been interlinked for two hundred years. I was, at one time, the only older friend he had. He trusted me as he now trusts you. I taught him to ride, to shoot, and to drink. I taught him a few things about responsibility, duty, and honor. When he had calmed down and burned away some of his excess energy in his own pursuits, when he was ready for grooming, I planned his political future. I can only say, when he won’t speak to me or admit me to his house, that I’ve been betrayed.”

  “And yet you spoke as if you might be killing him. What did you mean?”

  A vein scrawled on the Major’s right temple was throbbing in an ugly w
ay. “I gave him the lightning. And he can’t let go of it.” He faced Practice squarely. “I’d like to think that you see this, too, that you’re disturbed. He is, he must be, your friend. I’ve said nothing to you I wouldn’t say to the Governor, if I had his permission to see him. If he were here, I’d ask him why he had to hurt me. I’d hope we could have the matter out and arrive at a workable compromise. Perhaps—but there’s been too much bitterness. Compromise is the best we could hope for. The worst ...” He lowered his head slowly. Where his face had been hard before, it was now granite. “The worst is upon us because of John Guthrie’s insensibility. I will defend myself.”

  “How can you do that, Major? He whooped it up when he was younger, but he didn’t make any fatal mistakes. You couldn’t break Guthrie with scandal, or you would have done it by now. That’s as much a part of politics in this state as a goat roast. For what it’s worth to you, I have a suggestion: challenge John Guthrie to a duel.”

  The yellowed eyes didn’t waver. “Are you as big a fool as he is?”

  “Duels have always been fought over what is petty and trite and unbecoming in human nature—over nothing. The two of you, as far as I can see, are deadlocked over the vanity that passes for honor in your school. Give him the party, if that’s what he wants, Major. Don’t wait for him to take it all away from you. You’re too old to go down so bitter; it isn’t pretty, it isn’t graceful, and it doesn’t suit you. Respect yourself. Get out and let John Guthrie play with his lightning. Because it doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. Because with all your tradition and dignity and estates by the Mississippi, you don’t mean a damn thing and neither does he as long as you insist on vindicating this measly little power shuffle. It’s embarrassing, like seeing a couple of kids wet their pants in public. What’s it good for? The felicitations of stupid, dishonest, and greedy men who aren’t good enough to eat dinner on your back porch. No matter what happens, Major, the Kinsaker name and the Guthrie name are going to reek. Whatever’s between the two of you—and it’s got to be more than anyone’s saying—let it go, or shoot it out, just the two of you, and have done.”

  “How do you let go of a man who has you by the throat?” the Major asked, in a lower tone, with a grim hint of humor.

  “Maybe you try to buy off the second-best man,” Practice suggested.

  For an aging man, the Major moved lithely, his fist raised; and Practice, somewhat astonished, merely sat still under the threat of that fist. Then, slowly, the Major lowered his hand.

  “I thought we could talk,” he said harshly, “without cupidity or postures. Is it comfortable for you to distort everything? Is it the only way you can live? We have nothing in common, sir, no. way to speak to each other.”

  “I’m sorry for wasting your time, Major. You asked me to come.”

  “I don’t think our time is wasted. Perhaps you might be able to say you know more about me than you did, and in your relationship—whatever it is—with our Governor, such knowledge may be useful to you and to him. And I know about you, sir. What was elusive and unfocused is clearer now. You have a certain hollow ring, an insincerity that belies your physical directness. Your angers and disillusionments burn themselves out at the greatest depths, where they cause the least pain.”

  “I’m not partial to pain,” Practice said, stubbornly meeting the Major’s eyes, resenting him and the implied superiority in his “sir,” yet at the same time feeling oddly craven. “Who is?”

  “Perhaps I am,” the Major said, and for a moment his eyes seemed to clear. “Because I’ve deliberately sought it, in an area you find sordid and futile. Perhaps I’ve found all human relationships sordid and futile, but I haven’t denied them. Pain has made me cautious, temperate, wiser than I might otherwise have been. But you never searched for pain.”

  “I didn’t have to. I was born barefoot and running, and I stayed a runner. My old man kept my head knotted until I was old enough to take his club away.” He shoved his way up beside the Major then, making room for himself, and they stood eye-to-eye, Practice feeling rude and sad and exposed. “Have you ever known an alcoholic, Major?” he asked.

  “I’ve known men who drank themselves to death.”

  “I mean men who haven’t had that privilege. Those who don’t take the stuff anymore. A man like that is a sort of monk, with his own monastery, nobody inside but himself. The sun is high up in the windows, higher than he can touch, but at certain times of the day a little pool of it lies on the floor where he passes on his way from morning to evening prayer. It’s a queer, dim, chilly but oddly satisfying experience, Major. It’s not like life, though, don’t make that error. It’s no more of life than the existence you seem to have led. I suppose I’ve said too much, so I apologize for my assumptions. In a way I like you. In a way you scare the hell out of me. I didn’t think that was possible any longer.” He paused, feeling a little exhausted with the effort of talking to a man who looked at him with the motionless, fierce expression of a bird of prey. “Do I worry you as much as I did before you called me up here?” he added with a meaningless smile.

  “I’m afraid,” the Major said, in the gentlest tone he had used all afternoon, “you don’t even interest me anymore.”

  • 2 •

  The interview had left Practice edgy and displeased with himself, and all the virtues of a fine spring afternoon couldn’t help him forget the sense of foreboding the Major had seeded in him. A special sort of man, Practice thought, who had created himself and was sadly lacking for company. I will defend myself, he had said. I will defend what I must be.

  Practice walked the two blocks to the Governor’s mansion, twirling his hat on his fist, and as he reached the grounds, the clock in the city tower chimed four. A flock of starlings flew low over the mansion and out across the river, their wingtips like jet velvet as they passed through the nearly invisible rays of the sun.

  He walked slowly up the drive of the mansion, knowing that the Governor was probably upstairs, but not wanting to see him just yet. He would be unpleasantly tense because A.B. Sharp was reportedly going to make one of his rare appearances at the Governor’s Day Dinner that night, and John Guthrie badly needed Sharp’s support in his struggle with the Major. But Sharp was old, and his ties, though tenuous, were with Kinsaker. Sharp apparently was disposed to smooth out the intraparty dispute without taking sides. That was all Practice had been able to learn, although he had applied himself diligently to the problem of A.B. Sharp for several weeks.

  One of the mansion shepherds, a tawny yellow brute, was stalking moles in the soft earth beside the stone wall at the edge of the bluff, and Practice paused to rub behind the dog’s ears. He boosted himself up to a seat on the wall.

  From there he could see out over the river and well up the valley, where the river was running high. Despite the exhalation of lavender, rosebud and white dogwood blossoms, the crocus and the iris and early tulips in the flower beds that sectioned the lawn, he could smell faintly the fresh coat of white paint on the outer walls of the eighty-year-old mansion. He gazed up at the Victorian roof, where the sun was striking against the copper rain gutters and shingle trim, and then at the cool-looking, high, bent windows, warped like water in their bays.

  The mansion occupied a small part of one of the many hills of the capital city. It was built almost too close to the edge of the bluff, below which ran mainline railroad tracks and the silt-thickened river. Years ago steam locomotives had thrown up enough smoke and soot to make the mansion a thoroughly unpleasant place to live, but John Guthrie had seen to it that the old and neglected place was restored and improved before he moved in as Governor. Opposite the mansion, on the next hill, was the Capitol building, nearly a replica of the one in Washington, particularly in regard to the massive dome, which rose high above the city and its hills. In between the mansion and the Capitol was parkland, which slanted down into the earth-fold between two hills. On the bank of the river was an old shoe factory, but the factory didn’t obscure the Govern
or’s view when he looked out of his bedroom-study window on the third floor. Across the way was the Capitol, floodlighted by night and white as salt.

  Christopher Guthrie, the Governor’s six-year-old, came around the corner of the mansion, his head a golden red beside the long, knuckled shadow of an elm. He and Practice saw each other, but with the sure knowledge of good friends, made no fuss in recognition.

  Chris looked back over his shoulder, then reached up on tiptoe to place something in the bole of the elm. The shepherd crossed in leisurely fashion to the boy, with his heavy curved tail swinging, and Chris sank both hands into the ample skin of the dog’s nape, tugging furiously.

  “C’mon, Josh, you’ll give it away.”

  The dog turned his head and grinned at Chris. Then, alerted by the gray shape of a squirrel in the rose arbor, went loping off with his nose down.

  Chris sauntered in Practice’s direction, pausing to give a redbud tree a good shaking. The lavender petals whirled silently down through depths of sunlight that sluiced through the tight lacing of branches above. The lawn was almost buried under fallen petals, and Chris squatted, giving them a stir with his forefinger.

  “Lucy’ll give you heck for shaking that tree,” Practice observed.

  “Did she see me?”

  “She doesn’t have to see you.”

  Chris looked up, his face very still, a quizzical turn to his lips. His eyes were deep blue, almost lidless, penetrating. He shook his head furiously at a wandering bee.

  “I’m tired of playing with Lucy,” he complained. “Let’s go shoot something. When are you going to take me to the fort?”

  “What fort?”

  “Near school.”

  “Oh. That’s no fort, Tiger Hunter. It’s part of the old prison. Nothing inside but rats.”

  “We could shoot rats.”

  “I’d take you,” Practice said, “but your dad and I are working tonight.” He decided to have a cigarette.