Wild Cards

by George R. R. Martin

Earl knew his history. Me, I just read the papers.

  Over a period of two weeks Mr. Holmes worked out a basis for negotiation, and then David Harstein came into the room and soon Chen and Mao were grinning at each other like old school buddies at a reunion, and in a marathon negotiating session China was formally partitioned. The KMT and the PLA were ordered to be friends and lay down their arms.

  It all fell apart within days. The generalissimo, who had no doubt been told of our perfidy by ex-Colonel Perón, denounced the agreement and returned to save China. Lin Biao never stopped marching south. And after a series of colossal battles, the certified genius of the generalissimo ended up on an island guarded by the U.S. fleet—along with Juan Perón and his blond hooker, who had to move again.

  Mr. Holmes told me that when he flew back across the Pacific with the partition in his pocket, while the agreement unraveled behind him and the cheering crowds in Hong Kong and Manila and Oahu and San Francisco grew ever smaller, he kept remembering Neville Chamberlain and his little piece of paper, and how Chamberlain's “peace in Europe” turned into conflagration, and Chamberlain into history's dupe, the sad example of a man who meant well but who had too much hope, and trusted too much in men more experienced in treachery than he.

  Mr. Holmes was no different. He didn't realize that while he'd gone on living and working for the same ideals, for democracy and liberalism and fairness and integration, the world was changing around him, and that because he didn't change with the world the world was going to hammer him into the dust.

  At this point the public were still inclined to forgive us, but they remembered that we'd disappointed them. Their enthusiasm was a little lessened.

  And maybe the time for the Four Aces had passed. The big war criminals had been caught, fascism was on the run, and we had discovered our limitations in Czechoslovakia and China.

  When Stalin blockaded Berlin, Earl and I flew in. I was in my combat fatigues again, Earl in his leather jacket. He flew patrols over the Russian wire, and the Army gave me a jeep and a driver to play with. Eventually Stalin backed down.

  But our activities were shifting toward the personal. Blythe was going off to scientific conferences all over the world, and spent most of the rest of her time with Tachyon. Earl was marching in civil rights demonstrations and speaking all over the country. Mr. Holmes and David Harstein went to work, in that election year, for the candidacy of Henry Wallace.

  I spoke alongside Earl at Urban League meetings, and to help out Mr. Holmes I said a few nice things for Mr. Wallace, and I got paid a lot of money for driving the latest-model Chrysler and for talking about Americanism.

  After the election I went to Hollywood to work for Louis Mayer. The money was more incredible than anything I'd ever dreamed, and I was getting bored with kicking around Mr. Holmes's apartment. I left most of my stuff in the apartment, figuring it wouldn't be long before I'd be back.

  I was pulling down ten thousand per week, and I'd acquired an agent and an accountant and a secretary to answer the phone and someone to handle my publicity; all I had to do at this point was take acting and dance lessons. I didn't actually have to work yet, because they were having script problems with my picture. They'd never had to write a screenplay around a blond superman before.

  The script they eventually came up with was based loosely on our adventures in Argentina, and it was called Golden Boy. They paid Clifford Odets a lot of money to use that title, and considering what happened to Odets and me later, that linking had a certain irony.

  When they gave the script to me, I didn't care for it. I was the hero, which was just fine with me. They actually called me “John Brown.” But the Harstein character had been turned into a minister's son from Montana, and the Archibald Holmes character, instead of being a politician from Virginia, had become an FBI agent. The worst part was the Earl Sanderson character—he'd become a cipher, a black flunky who was only in a few scenes, and then only to take orders from John Brown and reply with a crisp, “Yes, sir,” and a salute. I called up the studio to talk about this.

  “We can't put him in too many scenes,” I was told. “Otherwise we can't cut him out for the Southern version.”

  I asked my executive producer what he was talking about.

  “If we release a picture in the South, we can't have colored people in it, or the exhibitors won't show it. We write the scenes so that we can release a Southern version by cutting out all the scenes with niggers.”

  I was astonished. I never knew they did things like that. “Look,” I said. “I've made speeches in front of the NAACP and Urban League. I was in Newsweek with Mary McLeod Bethune. I can't be seen to be a party to this.”

  The voice coming over the phone turned nasty. “Look at your contract, Mr. Braun. You don't have script approval.”

  “I don't want to approve the script. I just want a script that recognizes certain facts about my life. If I do this script, my credibility will be gone. You're fucking with my image, here!”

  After that it turned unpleasant. I made certain threats and the executive producer made certain threats. I got a call from my accountant telling me what would happen if the ten grand per week stopped coming, and my agent told me I had no legal right to object to any of this.

  Finally I called Earl and told him what was going on. “What did you say they were paying you?” he asked.

  I told him again.

  “Look,” he said. “What you do in Hollywood is your business. But you're new there, and you're an unknown commodity to them. You want to stand up for the right, that's good. But if you walk, you won't do me or the Urban League any good. Stay in the business and get some clout, then use it. And if you feel guilty, the NAACP can always use some of that ten grand per week.”

  So there it was. My agent patched up an understanding with the studio to the effect that I was to be consulted on script changes. I succeeded in getting the FBI dropped from the script, leaving the Holmes character without any set governmental affiliation, and I tried to make the Sanderson character a little more interesting.

  I watched the rushes, and they were good. I liked my acting—it was relaxed, anyway, and I even got to step in front of a speeding Mercedes and watch it bounce off my chest. It was done with special effects.

  The picture went into the can, and I went from a three-martini lunch into the wrap party without stopping to sober up. Three days later I woke up in Tijuana with a splitting headache and a suspicion that I'd just done something foolish. The pretty little blonde sharing the pillow told me what it was. We'd just got married. When she was in the bath I had to look at the marriage license to find out her name was Kim Wolfe. She was a minor starlet from Georgia who'd been scuffling around Hollywood for six years.

  After some aspirin and a few belts of tequila, marriage didn't seem like a half-bad idea. Maybe it was time, with my new career and all, that I settled down.

  I bought Ronald Colman's old pseudo-English country house on Summit Drive in Beverly Hills, and I moved in with Kim, and our two secretaries, Kim's hairdresser, our two chauffeurs, our two live-in maids . . . suddenly I had all these people on salary, and I wasn't quite sure where they came from.

  The next picture was The Rickenbacker Story. Victor Fleming was going to direct, with Fredric March as Pershing and June Allyson as the nurse I was supposed to fall in love with. Dewey Martin, of all people, was to play Richthofen, whose Teutonic breast I was going to shoot full of American lead—never mind that the real Richthofen was shot down by someone else. The picture was going to be filmed in Ireland, with an enormous budget and hundreds of extras. I insisted on learning how to fly, so I could do some of the stunts myself. I called Earl long-distance about that.

  “Hey,” I said. “I finally learned how to fly.”

  “Some farm boys,” he said, “just take a while.”

  “Victor Fleming's gonna make me an ace.”

  “Jack.” His voice was amused. “You're already an ace.”

  Which stopped
me up short, because somehow in all the activity I'd forgotten that it wasn't MGM who made me a star. “You've got a point, there,” I said.

  “You should come to New York a little more often,” Earl said. “Figure out what's happening in the real world.”

  “Yeah. I'll do that. We'll talk about flying.”

  “We'll do that.”

  I stopped by New York for three days on my way to Ireland. Kim wasn't with me—she'd gotten work, thanks to me, and had been loaned to Warner Brothers for a picture. She was very Southern anyway, and the one time she'd been with Earl she'd been very uncomfortable, and so I didn't mind she wasn't there.

  I was in Ireland for seven months—the weather was so bad the shooting took forever. I met Kim in London twice, for a week each time, but the rest of the time I was on my own. I was faithful, after my fashion, which meant that I didn't sleep with any one girl more than twice in a row. I became a good enough pilot so that the stunt pilots actually complimented me a few times.

  When I got back to California, I spent two weeks at Palm Springs with Kim. Golden Boy was going to premiere in two months. On my last day at the Springs, I'd just climbed out of the swimming pool when a congressional aide, sweating in a suit and tie, walked up to me and handed me a pink slip.

  It was subpoena. I was to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities bright and early on Tuesday. The very next day.

  I was more annoyed than anything. I figured they obviously had the wrong Jack Braun. I called up Metro and talked to someone in the legal department. He surprised me by saying, “Oh, we thought you'd get the subpoena sometime soon.”

  “Wait a minute. How'd you know?”

  There was a second's uncomfortable silence. “Our policy is to cooperate with the FBI. Look, we'll have one of our attorneys meet you in Washington. Just tell the committee what you know and you can be back in California next week.”

  “Hey,” I said. “What's the FBI got to do with it? And why didn't you tell me this was coming? And what the hell does the committee think I know, anyway?”

  “Something about China,” the man said. “That was what the investigators were asking us about, anyway.”

  I slammed the phone down and called Mr. Holmes. He and Earl and David had gotten their subpoenas earlier in the day and had been trying to reach me ever since, but couldn't get ahold of me in Palm Springs.

  “They're going to try to break the Aces, farm boy,” Earl said. “You'd better get the first flight east. We've got to talk.”

  I made arrangements, and then Kim walked in, dressed in her tennis whites, just back from her lesson. She looked better in sweat than any woman I'd ever known.

  “What's wrong?” she said. I just pointed at the pink slip.

  Kim's reaction was fast, and it surprised me. “Don't do what the Ten did,” she said quickly. “They consulted with each other and took a hard-line defense, and none of them have worked since.” She reached for the phone. “Let me call the studio. We've got to get you a lawyer.”

  I watched her as she picked up the phone and began to dial. A chill hand touched the back of my neck.

  “I wish I knew what was going on,” I said.

  But I knew. I knew even then, and my knowledge had a precision and a clarity that was terrifying. All I could think about was how I wished I couldn't see the choices quite so clearly.

  To me, the Fear had come late. HUAC first went after Hollywood in '47, with the Hollywood Ten. Supposedly the committee was investigating Communist infiltration of the film industry—a ridiculous notion on the face of it, since no Communists were going to get any propaganda in the pictures without the express knowledge and permission of people like Mr. Mayer and the Brothers Warner. The Ten were all current or former Communists, and they and their lawyers agreed on a defense based on the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.

  The committee rode over them like a herd of buffalo over a bed of daisies. The Ten were given contempt-of-Congress citations for their refusal to cooperate, and after their appeals ran out years later, they ended up in prison.

  The Ten had figured the First Amendment would protect them, that the contempt citations would be thrown out of court within a few weeks at the most. Instead the appeals went on for years, and the Ten went to the slammer, and during that time none of them could find a job.

  The blacklist came into existence. My old friends, the American Legion, who had learned somewhat more subtle tactics since going after the Holiday Association with axe handles, published a list of known or suspected Communists so that no one employer had any excuse for hiring anyone on the list. If he hired someone, he became suspect himself, and his name could be added to the list.

  None of those called before HUAC had ever committed a crime, as defined by law, nor were they ever accused of crimes. They were not being investigated for criminal activity, but for associations. HUAC had no constitutional mandate to investigate these people, the blacklist was illegal, the evidence introduced at the committee sessions was largely hearsay and inadmissible in a court of law . . . none of it mattered. It happened anyway.

  HUAC had been silent for a while, partly because their chairman, Parnell, had gotten tossed into the slammer for padding his payroll, partly because the Hollywood Ten appeals were still going through the court. But they'd gotten hungry for all that great publicity they'd gotten when they went after Hollywood, and the public had been whipped into a frenzy with the Rosenberg trials and the Alger Hiss case, so they concluded that the time was right for another splashy investigation.

  HUAC's new chairman, John S. Wood of Georgia, decided to go after the biggest game on the planet.

  Us.

  My MGM attorney met me at the Washington airport. “I'd advise you not to talk with Mr. Holmes or Mr. Sanderson,” he said.

  “Don't be ridiculous.”

  “They're going to try to get you to take a First or Fifth Amendment defense,” the lawyer said. “The First Amendment defense won't work—it's been turned down on every appeal. The Fifth is a defense against self-incrimination, and unless you've actually done something illegal, you can't use it unless you want to appear guilty.”

  “And you won't work, Jack,” Kim said. “Metro won't even release your pictures. The American Legion would picket them all over the country.”

  “How do I know that I'll work if I talk?” I said. “All you have to do to get on the blacklist is be called, for crissake.”

  “I've been authorized to tell you from Mr. Mayer,” the lawyer said, “that you will remain in his employ if you cooperate with the committee.”

  I shook my head. “I'm talking with Mr. Holmes tonight.” I grinned at them. “We're the Aces, for heaven's sake. If we can't beat some hick congressman from Georgia, we don't deserve to work.”

  So I met Mr. Holmes, Earl, and David at the Statler. Kim said I was being unreasonable and stayed away.

  There was a disagreement right from the start. Earl said that the committee had no right to call us in the first place, and that we should simply refuse to cooperate. Mr. Holmes said that we couldn't just concede the fight then and there, that we should defend ourselves in front of the committee—that we had nothing to hide. Earl told him that a kangaroo court was no place to conduct a reasoned defense. David just wanted to give his pheromones a crack at the committee. “The hell with it,” I said. “I'll take the First. Free speech and association is something every American understands.”

  Which I didn't believe for a second, by the way. I just felt that I had to say something optimistic.

  I wasn't called that first day—I loitered with David and Earl in the lobby, pacing and gnawing my knuckles, while Mr. Holmes and his attorney played Canute and tried to keep the acid, evil tide from eating the flesh from their bones. David kept trying to talk his way past the guards, but he didn't have any luck—the guards outside were willing to let him come in, but the ones inside the committee room weren't exposed to his pheromones and kept shutting
him out.

  The media were allowed in, of course. HUAC liked to parade its virtue before the newsreel cameras, and the newsreels gave the circus full play.

  I didn't know what was going on inside until Mr. Holmes came out. He walked like a man who had a stroke, one foot carefully in front of the other. He was gray. His hands trembled, and he leaned on the arm of his attorney. He looked as if he'd aged twenty years in just a few hours. Earl and David ran up to him, but all I could do was stare in terror as the others helped him down the corridor.

  The Fear had me by the neck.

  * * *

  Earl and Blythe put Mr. Holmes in his car, and then Earl waited for my MGM limousine to drive up, and he got into the back with us. Kim looked pouty, squeezed into the corner so he wouldn't touch her, and refused even to say hello.

  “Well, I was right,” he said. “We shouldn't have cooperated with those bastards at all.”

  I was still stunned from what I'd seen in the corridor. “I can't figure out why the hell they're doing this.”

  He fixed me with an amused glance. “Farm boys,” he said, a resigned comment on the universe, and then shook his head. “You've got to hit them over the head with a shovel to get them to pay attention.”

  Kim sniffed. Earl didn't give any indication he'd heard.

  “They're power-hungry, farm boy,” he said. “And they've been kept out of power by Roosevelt and Truman for a lot of years. They're going to get it back, and they're drumming up this hysteria to do it. Look at the Four Aces and what do you see? A Negro Communist, a Jewish liberal, an F.D.R. liberal, a woman living in sin. Add Tachyon and you've got an alien who's subverting not just the country but our chromosomes. There are probably others as powerful that nobody knows about. And they've all got unearthly powers, so who knows what they're up to? And they're not controlled by the government, they're following some kind of liberal political agenda, so that threatens the power base of most of the people on the committee right there.

  “The way I figure it, the government has their own ace talents by now, people we haven't heard of. That means we can be done without—we're too independent and we're politically unsound. China and Czechoslovakia and the names of the other aces—that's an excuse. The point is that if they can break us right in public, they prove they can break anybody. It'll be a reign of terror that will last a generation. Not anyone, not even the President, will be immune.”