Fling and Other Stories

by John Hersey

  SECOND PANEL

  Here the iron guerrilla is seen leaning forward near the flap-mouthed metal slot marked NITE DEPOSIT BOX on the front of the bank, next to the main entrance. One can assume that there has been action since the first panel—more running, thumb pressure on the TALK button of the Raider, a four-syllable report, OKAY SO FAR, and other such fantastic doings. But the beauty part of seeing life as a comic strip is just this. If life looks like anything to your average everyday male or female person, it looks like a series of discrete, zapped instants. Dullness, click, dullness, click, dullness dullness, click, dullness, click. A lot of the time it is just dullness dullness dullness dullness dullness. In his appreciation of the comic-strip vision of life, however, the iron guerrilla has in mind high-energy passages like the present one, in which dullness is reduced to tolerable time periods, or panels.

  In following a panoramic strip, as any comics addict knows, it is obligatory to see the main character in a close-up. The iron guerrilla’s face is in profile. He is a looker. Somewhat the Steve McQueen type, but darker. Macho jaw, poet’s eyes. At the present time he has a hyped expression. Face of the last two strides of a sixty-yard dash, this man is ahead, he is going to win, he sees the tape. He is having a radical high, he is stoned on the fitness of what he is doing. There is a fine wrinkle of pathos stretching from near his right nostril down to the near right corner of his mouth, which suggests an occasional dark sneaky suspicion in The Kleen Krazy’s mind that he is, or may be, a sad-ass. Mostly, though, the face is lit up with a really creamy euphoria: this is the interface with the Enemy.

  Now we can also see another face, that of the clock on the bomb. It reads six-twenty-two. Your faithful follower of this particular strip knows this means ante meridiem. Even an iron guerrilla with a clean-shaven chin doesn’t go around doing bombs at six-twenty-two in the evening, when the People’s metabolism is revved up and they are milling in the streets. Nowhere in the first two panels has there been any clue about what day of the week it is, but again, any Iron Guerrilla freak knows it has to be Sunday morning to do a bomb on a bank. You don’t want any fragging here; it is the institution, not its exploited personnel, that you want to prang. Since it is this light at this hour, it has to be something like springtime at Boston’s latitude, which, according to The Kleen Krazy, ought to be 42°20´ N. In fact, the dateline of the paper at the top of the funnies page tells the reader that it is April 1, 1969. It is April Fools’ Day. A day for pranks—or, in other words, prangs. The guerrilla in this early-morning-in-Beantown panel is stuffing the infernal machine in the NITE DEPOSIT BOX. This is the first joke of the strip. A four-panel comic strip needs two laughs: a little one to set up the big one, and then the big one to justify all this artwork. This panel has the first joke. It is the anticipatory boffo. The guerrilla is making a big deposit in the piggy bank. Above The Kleen Krazy’s head as he slips the business to the deposit-twat is a thought balloon. What indicates that this is a thought balloon rather than a speech balloon, of course, is that instead of the usual pointed lead-out to the balloon from the character’s head, there is a series of small bubblelike circles drifting away from his head toward the main balloon. In the thought balloon are printed the words of the iron guerrilla’s thought at this moment: IT IS HYPOCRITICAL TO BE AGAINST VIOLENCE PER SE. WE TEND TO BE AGAINST VIOLENCE ONLY WHEN ITS USE RUNS COUNTER TO OUR PERCEIVED VALUES. THIS IS A GOOD BOMB. Har-de-har. The device just fits the deposit slot. It has obviously been designed to fit this very slot. The iron guerrilla leans forward. On his face is this look of political orgasm. The good bomb is going into the bad bank.

  THIRD PANEL

  This is where the big joke comes. At the center of the panel are three letters. Each one is as tall as Kareem going up for a tip-off. P!…O!…W! A subsidiary joke to the panel’s hyperjoke is that these letters might stand for Prisoner of War. Radiating around from these letters is a representation of your average big-time Alamogordo megaton bust-out. Whew, it is a funky bang. Jagged lines. Bold. Electric. White space at the center denoting great thermal jism and vitality. Ringed about above this chrysanthemum of energy are bits and pieces of social history. Chunks of masonry and safe-deposit boxes flying outward, dollar bills, small change, government bonds, stock certificates, South African investments, contracts to jell napalm, letters to the Rockefellers, savings-bank passbooks of Nguyen Cao Ky and Ferdinand Marcos and Chiang Kai-shek’s oldest son. Chilean copper-mine shares. Pentagon escrow accounts, and various other kinds of triple-entry shit—or shite, as The Kleen Krazy would have it. Beautiful. In the lower left-hand corner of the panel there can be seen just the jeaned leg of a man running away. On the foot is a desert boot wrapped around with dirty adhesive tape. Because, except for this leg, the iron guerrilla has made an exit from this panel, he cannot see what has happened behind him when the shite hit the fan. He can only imagine it. But then the whole strip is in his imagination. He is running away.

  FOURTH PANEL

  In the final panel he is still running. We cannot see a street sign, but he appears to have turned a corner because we now see him from the rear. He is running away from the surface of the page. Again his haste is frozen. (We recall that the entire strip is in his head. Actually running, he is psyched into immobility.) His back is straight. The right foot, the one we have seen marked with adhesive tape, is extended forward and is hidden by his left leg or his torso—the view is slightly from above; the left foot, reaching back toward the page level and the imaginary reader’s eye, is turned somewhat in and is on a line with his right buttock. This suggests a touch of bowleggedness, which in turn insinuates in the viewer’s mind a rush of sympathy for one who really does appear to be a sad-ass on the run. The washed hair is fixed in mid-bounce. Because this is a rear view, we of course cannot see the iron guerrilla’s face, but we have one clue to its expression. There is a balloon up to the right of the fleeing Krazy’s head. Bubbles float between the head and the balloon. This is the magic of a comic strip. We are given insight into the character’s mental processes without hearing a single word or seeing a facial change of any kind. In the balloon are these words: JEEZUS, THAT WAS TOO CLOSE! DID SOME “FRIEND” TAMPER WITH THE TIMER? IM GETTING PARANOID AS FUGG. The comic-strip buff will translate this into a simpler thought: Am I the fool on this first of April, 1969?

  In the distance, beyond and to the left of the running iron guerrilla, at the corner of the next block, we see a female figure. We can tell it is a woman by the curving lines in the denim shirt that could not possibly be pockets. Also there is something about the hips. Otherwise—jeans, shirt, Gorky cap, hair—the figure might be interchangeable with that of the main character. This woman is in a posture of extreme elation. Obviously she has heard the beautiful big bang. She has her arms raised in a V-for-Victory sign (in one hand is a walkie-talkie—ah! was she guerrilla’s lookout, possibly Logo One?)—precisely the gesture—this is incredible—precisely the gesture the strip buff would often have seen Nixon making on the tube. As he stepped out of the plane onto the platform of the landing stairway. Out of a car. In front of a crowd. With his shoulders hunched up as only an ex-third-stringer on the Whittier College football team would hunch. The shoulders of this woman have this same hunch. How come an urban guerrilla is mimicking the Total Nix? This anomaly can only be attributed to the phenomenon known as transcultural media pollution—like an anthropologist exploring deepest bush in Zaire comes across a native tyke in a Yellow Submarine T-shirt. These things happen.

  And so this is the end of today’s strip. The hook. We have had a glimpse of the Mysterious Woman. The iron-guerrilla buff will find it hard to wait for tomorrow’s panels. Here in the trashed-bank payoff panel the central character is running away from the imaginary reader (but because drawn, remember, he is frozen—as if, one might guess, with a terrorist’s terror, or it may even be that self-doubt paralyzes him). He is running toward a female “accomplice.” Thinking suspicious thoughts. The reader is allo
wed to have thoughts, too. Is paranoia paranoia when there probably has been and surely will be real danger? Is the Mysterious Woman an undercover agent of the FBI? Was her mimicking of the Nix shrug unconscious transcultural media pollution, after all, or was it deliberate—a sign to the knowing reader? And followers of the strip will long have been wondering: Who really is the iron guerrilla? Is he a genuine folk hero? Or is he a Harvard sophomore? What Calvinist chromosomes make him so kleen that he cannot utter a straightforward oath? Are fugg and shite aspects of idealism? Is the sole of his right shoe really loose or did he put the adhesive tape around it just to make his mother angry? Now that we think of it, is the FBI agent perhaps a senior at Radcliffe (later also to be known as “Harvard”)? On a deeper level of significance, has Trust been pranged? Has History swerved in Her course? Has the iron guerrilla struck a significant blow against defoliation in Southeast Asia? Are the Rockefellers trembling in their boots? Will we have peace in our time? As all good comic-strip loyalists must do, we must take a look tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.

  Affinities

  Bailiff Esposito unlocked the door from the jail, and Clerk Cherevoy went through to get the night list and copies of police reports and prior records. This always took time; there were rituals of deploring to be got through with the duty lieutenant. Joel Avered sat down in the jury box to wait.

  During arraignment sessions, Joel had come to think of the jury box as his office. There was no assigned place for bondsmen in the Pit—as everyone referred to the ancient courtroom—and sometimes he felt like an extra thumb, especially first thing in the morning. Still, he was pleased with himself for being on hand so early. There were six bondsmen in the city, and he could honestly say that none worked at the job as hard as he. Three were Catholics, two were Jews, and he was the surprise White Anglo-Saxon Protestant entry. Joel took some ragging, but he was not ashamed to talk about, and adhere to, the celebrated work ethic of his persuasion. Sarah often complained, when his phone rang at three o’clock in the morning and he would arise groaning and dress groaning and drive all the way into town to get a client out of jail, that being married to him was like being married to a doctor. Joel liked that. He hated to see young people locked up, especially for the first time. An unhealthy environment. All those who were obliged to appear in court knew that there was one bail bondsman who would take the trouble to get a postponement and chase them down if they forgot to show up for trial, so they wouldn’t have to forfeit their bond. Joel Avered was famous in the part of Treehampstead known as “the Valley.” He could walk there alone at night, along the worst streets, Congress Avenue, Framwell, Cahoon—“Hey Mist’ Aved, who you lookin’ for?” He had learned not to let himself be invited into bars; there were too many poor people who wanted to buy Joel Avered a drink.

  Alexander Cherevoy came back from the lockup carrying his sheaf of papers. With his mouth gathered into a bud of self-importance, he walked right past the jury box. Joel knew enough not to make a move. The clerk went to his desk and got out some file folders, and he began typing names on gummed labels, licking the labels with a wide, whitish tongue, and sticking them on the tabs of the folders; afterward he inserted police reports and prior-record sheets into the appropriate folders. Joel knew just how long it would take before the clerk would break off this work and call out, “Oh jeez, Avered, you wanted to see the list. Sorry, fella. Pick up.”

  At this summons, Joel went to the clerk’s desk, took the sheet of onion-skin paper from the clerk’s hand, and carried it back to the jury box.

  This morning there were seven Found Intoxicateds, two Motor Vehicles bad enough for jail arrest, one Soliciting, two Breaking & Enterings with Larceny, three Possessions, a Welfare Fraud, a Failure to Support, and several Disorderlies. A thin morning, unless the Larcenies turned out to be plums; it would depend on what had been taken.

  He went down the list again, reading the particulars, and this time one of the items jumped out at him. He had never seen such a charge before.

  Samson Honniger, B & E/grand larc, theft of dog.

  * * *

  —

  The word “dog” jolted Joel. His folk memory had long since endowed this room, which was two stories high and had a temple-like austerity, with hints of Judgment Day. The jury box consisted of a brace of pews ransacked, he would have sworn, from some old Congregational church. The flaking ceiling far overhead was supported by half a dozen slender steel stanchions like the soaring pillars of a cathedral. The judge’s bench was to Joel’s right, a raised wooden cockpit which resembled a pulpit. Up the wall behind him were tall, narrow sash windows with Gothic peaks; they could be thought of as stained-glass windows, for their lights were tinted with grime that must have been ancient as sin in the polluted days and nights of the Oak City. It had always seemed to Joel that human souls were in transaction here, and the sudden involvement of an animal—would its soul be in the balance, too?—was somehow disturbing.

  Joel took the list back to the clerk’s desk. He had to stand and wait, because the clerk and the bailiff were chatting. Alexander Cherevoy was tall, wore gray suits, and had the sallow complexion and fine wrinkles of some endocrinal imbalance; Sal Esposito was short and swarthy, wore blue suits with an enameled American flag in the buttonhole, and was a living sculpture in pasta. Between them, Joel had long ago observed, these two set the tone of the Pit. Judges, prosecutors, public defenders, bondsmen, probation officers, bail commissioners—all of them came and went, but Cherevoy and Esposito were eternal. They were, Joel had once thought, like the figures he had seen in pictures of fountains in Rome—grand, dramatic, watery, ferocious. The tone they maintained was one of disapproval. You could read in their faces that in Fifth Circuit Court things were getting worse from day to day, and even from hour to hour. The clerk laughed more than the bailiff did, but the laughter of both seemed scornful to Joel. Both were courteous to defendants, and toward black culprits their manners were always especially impeccable, but their courtesy had in it the distance from this world of galaxies of ice and fire. Any kind word they spoke to any defendant less than twenty-five years old, black or white, rang with the hollow sound of the rule of law. Bestowing on Joel the same courtesy they showed to criminals, they drew him now into their little chat.

  Alexander Cherevoy’s passion was the accumulation of trophies received from what seemed to be a horde of postcard-exchangers all over the world, people who networked collectors’ addresses and sent cards to total strangers in foreign countries expecting due return. He had been asking Sal Esposito to translate one he had received the day before, and now he passed it to Joel without a word. It showed a black-and-white picture of the Hotel Sphinx in Cairo. On the other side it had an ornate Egyptian stamp, was addressed to Onorevole Giudice Alessandro Cherevoy, in care of the courthouse, and bore this message: “Ecco il più squisito albergo egiziano. La mia cugina Maria Francesca Sottotavole m’ha mandato da Livorno il Suo indirizzo. Sia gentilissimo, Onorevole Giudice Cherevoy, e mi manda per posta una bella carta postale da Treehampstead, Connecticut. Buona fortuna e mille grazie.” The signature was so weedy with flourishes as to be almost illegible, but the return address of this Italian devotee of collectibles living in a Cairo suburb was meticulously printed.

  “ ‘Giudice,’ ” Joel said. “Doesn’t that mean ‘Judge’?”

  “Yeah,” Sal Esposito said. “This fellow went and gave Alex a promotion.”

  Cherevoy asked (rather angrily, it seemed to Joel), “Where’d you learn Italian?”

  Joel felt apologetic. “So many of my clients…Just a smattering.” He thought it best to change the subject. “I was wondering, could I see the report on Honniger—the Honniger on this list?”

  Cherevoy made a pair of pliers of his right thumb and forefinger and snatched the card away from Joel. “Come on, Avered. You know I’m not allowed to show you the papers beforehand. What’s the matter with you this morning?”

/>   Joel retired to his “office.” A few minutes later, when the bailiff had left the Pit on some errand, the clerk stepped over to Joel and handed him the Honniger report. “You should know by now,” Cherevoy said, “not to ask special favors in front of other people.”