A Long Line of Dead Men (2 page)

"I don't know. No one knows. There are vague references to clubs of thirty-one in various arcane histories down through the centuries. My own research suggests that the first club of thirty-one was an offshoot of Freemasonry over four hundred years ago, but it is arguable on the basis of a section in the Code of Hammurabi that a club of thirty-one had been established in ancient Babylonia, and that another, or perhaps a branch of the same one, existed among the Essene Jews at the time of Christ. One source indicates that Mozart was a member of such a club, and similar rumors have surfaced involving Benjamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, and Dr. Samuel Johnson. There's no way of knowing how many clubs have sprung up over the years, and how many chains have maintained their continuity across the generations.

"The structure is simple enough. Thirty-one men of honorable character pledge themselves to assemble annually on the first Thursday in May. They take food and drink, they report on the changes the year has brought to their lives, and they note with reverence the passing of those members claimed by death. Each year we read the names of the dead.

"When there is one man left of the thirty-one, he does as I have done. He finds thirty ideal candidates for membership and brings them all together on an appointed evening. He reads, as I have read to you, the names of his thirty departed brothers. He burns the list of names, closing one chapter, opening another.

"And so we go on, my brothers. We go on."

According to Lewis Hildebrand, the most memorable thing about Homer Champney was his intensity. He had retired years before that night in '61, had sold the small manufacturing firm he'd founded and was evidently quite comfortably fixed. But he had started out in sales, and Hildebrand had no trouble believing he'd been a successful salesman. Something made you hang on every word he spoke, and the longer he talked the more fervent he became, and the more you wanted to hear what he had to say.

"You are not well acquainted with one another," he told them. "Perhaps you knew one or two of the people in this room before tonight. There might even be as many as three or four you count as friends. Prior friendships aside, it is unlikely that much of your lifelong social circle will be found in this room. Because this organization, this structure, is not concerned with friendship in the usual sense. It is not about social interaction or mutual advantage. We are not here to trade stock tips or sell each other insurance. We are closely yoked, my brothers, but we walk a very narrow path toward an extremely specific goal. We mark one another's progress on the long march to the grave.

"The demands of membership are small. There are no monthly meetings to attend, no committees on which to serve. There's no membership card to carry, no dues to pay beyond your proportionate share of the cost of the annual dinner. Your only commitment, and I ask that you be utterly committed to it, is your annual attendance on the first Thursday in May.

"There will be years when you may not wish to show up, when attendance seems inconvenient in the extreme. I urge you to regard this one commitment as unalterable. Some of you will have moved away fromNew York, and may find the prospect of an annual return burdensome. And there may be times when you think of the club itself as silly, as something you have outgrown, as a part of your life you would prefer to cast aside.

"Do not do it! The club of thirty-one plays a very small part in any member's life. It takes up but one night a year. And yet it gives our lives a focus that other men never know. My young brothers, you are links in a chain that reaches back unbroken to the founding of this republic, and you are part of a tradition with its roots in ancientBabylon. Every man in this room, every man ever born, spends his life approaching his death. Every day he takes another step in death's direction. It is a hard road to walk alone, a much easier road to walk in good company.

"And, if your path is the longest and you should turn out to be the last to finish, you have one further obligation. It will be up to you to find thirty young men, thirty fine men of promise, and bring them together as I have brought you together, to forge one more link in the chain."

Repeating Champney's words three decades later, Lewis Hildebrand seemed a little embarrassed by them. He said that they probably sounded silly, but not when you heard Homer Champney say them.

The old man's energy was contagious, he said. You caught his fever, but it wasn't just a matter of getting swept up in his enthusiasm. Later on, when you'd had a chance to cool off, you still bought what he'd sold you. Because he'd somehow made you understand something you never would have seen otherwise.

"There's one further part of the evening's program," Champney told them. "We'll go around the room. Each man in turn will stand up and tell us four things about himself. His name, his present age, the most interesting fact he can tell about himself, and how he feels now, right now, about embarking on this great journey with his thirty fellows.

"I'll begin, although I've probably covered all four points already. Let me see. My name is Homer Gray Champney. I'm eighty-five years old. The most interesting thing I can think of about me, aside from my being the surviving member of the club's last chapter, is that I attended the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 and shook the hand of President William McKinley less than an hour before he was assassinated by that anarchist, and what was his name? Czolgosz, of course, Leon Czolgosz. Who could forget that poor misguided wretch?

"And how do I feel about what we're doing tonight? Well, boys, I'm excited. I'm passing the torch and I know I'm placing it in good and capable hands. Ever since the last man of the old group died, ever since I got the word, I've had the most awful fear of dying before I could carry on my mission. So it's a great load off my mind, and a feeling of, oh, of a great beginning.

"But I'm running off at the mouth. Four sentences, really, is all that's required, name, age, fact, and feeling. We'll start at this table, I think, with you, Ken, and we'll just go around..."

"I'm Kendall McGarry, I'm twenty-four, and the most interesting fact about me is that an ancestor of mine signed the Declaration of Independence. I don't know how I feel about joining the club. Excited, I guess, and also that it's a big step, although I don't know why it should be. I mean, it's just one night a year..."

"John Youngdahl, twenty-seven. The most interesting...well, just about the only fact about me I can think of these days is I'm getting married a week from Sunday. That's got my head so scrambled I can't tell you how I feel about anything, but I have to say I'm glad to be here, and to be a part of all this..."

"I'm Bob Berk. That's B-e-r-k, not B-u-r-k-e, so I'm Jewish, not Irish, and I don't know why I seem to feel compelled to mention that. Maybe that's the most interesting thing about me. Not that I'm Jewish, but that it's the first thing out of my mouth. Oh, I'm twenty-five, and how do I feel? Like you all belong here and I don't, but that's how I always feel, and I'm probably not the only person here who feels that way, right? Or maybe I am, I don't know..."

"Brian O'Hara, and that's with an apostrophe and a capital H, so I'm Irish, not Japanese..."

"I'm Lewis Hildebrand. I'm twenty-five. I don't know if its interesting, but I'm one-eighth Cherokee. As for how I feel, I can hardly say how I feel. I have the sense of being a part of something much larger than myself, something that started before me and will extend beyond my lifetime..."

"I'm Gordon Walser, age thirty. I'm an account executive at Stilwell Reade and Young, but if that's the most interesting thing about me I'm in troubleWell, here's something hardly anybody knows about me. I was born with a sixth finger on each hand. I had surgery when I was six months old. You can see the scar on the left hand but not on the right..."

"I'm James Severance... I don't know what's interesting about me. Maybe the most interesting thing is that I'm here with all of you right now. I don't know what I'm doing here, but it sort of feels like a turning point..."

"My name's Bob Ripley, and I've heard all the Believe It or Not jokes...One thought I had before I got here tonight is that it's morbid to have a club of people who are just waiting to die. But that's not how it feels at all. I agree with Lew, I have the sense that I've become a part of something important..."

"... know it's superstitious, but the thought keeps coming to me that forcing ourselves to be aware of the inevitability of death will just make it come along sooner..."

"... a car accident the night of high school graduation. There were six of us in my best friend's Chevy Impala and everybody else was killed. I got a broken collarbone and a couple of superficial cuts. That's the most interesting thing about me, and it's also how I feel about tonight. See, that was eight years ago, and I've had death on my mind ever since..."

"... I think the only way to describe how I feel is to say that the only other time I felt anything like this was the night my baby daughter was born..."

Thirty men, ranging in age from twenty-two to thirty-two. All of them white, all of them living in or aroundNew York City. They'd all had some college, and most had graduated. More than half were married. More than a third had children. One or two were divorced.

Now, thirty-two years later, more than half of them were dead.

By the time I met Lewis Hildebrand, thirty-two years and six weeks after he became a member of the club of thirty-one, he had lost a lot of hair in front and thickened considerably through the middle. His blond hair, parted on the side and slicked back, was silver at the temples. He had a broad, intelligent face, large hands, a firm but unaggressive grip. His suit, blue with a chalk stripe, must have cost a thousand dollars. His wristwatch was a twenty-dollar Timex.

He had called me late the previous afternoon at my hotel room. I still had the room, although for a little over a year I'd been living with Elaine in an apartment directly across the street. The hotel room was supposed to be my office, although it was by no means a convenient place to meet clients. But I'd lived alone in it for a good many years. I seemed to be reluctant to let go of it.

He told me his name and said he'd got mine from Irwin Meisner. "I'd like to talk to you," he said. "Do you suppose we could meet for lunch? And is tomorrow too soon?"

"Tomorrow's fine," I said, "but if it's something extremely urgent I could make time this evening."

"It's not that urgent. I'm not sure it's urgent at all. But it's very much on my mind, and I don't want to put it off." He might have been talking about his annual physical, or an appointment with his dentist. "Do you know the Addison Club? On East Sixty-seventh? And shall we say twelve-thirty?"

The Addison Club, named for Joseph Addison, the eighteenth-century essayist, occupies a five-story limestone town-house on the south side ofSixty-seventh Street between Park andLexington avenues. Hildebrand had stationed himself within earshot of the reception desk, and when I gave my name to the uniformed attendant he came over and introduced himself. In the first-floor dining room, he rejected the first table we were offered and chose one in the far corner.

"San Giorgio on the rocks with a twist," he told the waiter. To me he said, "Do you like San Giorgio? I always have it here because not many restaurants stock it. Do you know it? It's basically an Italian dry vermouth with some unusual herbs steeped in it. It's very light. I'm afraid the days of the lunchtime martinis are over for me."

"I'll have to try it sometime," I said. "Today, though, I think I'll have a Perrier."

He apologized in advance for the food. "It's a nice room, isn't it? And of course they don't hurry you, and with the tables so far apart and half of them empty, well, I thought we might be glad of the privacy. The kitchen's not too bad if you stay with the basics. I usually have a mixed grill."

"That sounds good."

"And a green salad?"

"Fine."

He wrote out the order and handed the card to the waiter. "Private clubs," he said. "An endangered species. TheAddison is presumably a club for authors and journalists, but the membership for years now has run largely to people in advertising and publishing. These days I think they'll pretty much take you if you've got a pulse and a checkbook and no major felony convictions. I joined about fifteen years ago when my wife and I moved up toStamford,Connecticut. There were a lot of nights when I would work late and miss the last train and have to stay over. Hotels cost a fortune, and I always felt like a shady character checking in without luggage. They have rooms on the top floor here, very reasonable and available at short notice. I'd been thinking about joining anyway, and that gave me an incentive."

"So you live inConnecticut?"

He shook his head. "We moved back five years ago when our youngest boy finished college. Well, dropped out of it, I should say. We're living half a dozen blocks from here, and I can walk to work on a day like today. It's beautiful out, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well,New York in June. I've never been toParis in April, but I understand it's apt to be wet and dreary. May's a lot nicer there, but the song works better with April in it. You need the extra syllable. ButNew York in June, you can see why they'd write songs about it."

When the waiter brought our food Hildebrand asked me if I'd like a beer with it. I said I was fine. He said, "I'll have one of the nonalcoholic beers. I forget which ones you stock. Do you have O'Doul's?"

They did, and he said he'd have one, and looked at me expectantly. I shook my head. The nonalcoholic beers and wines all have at least a trace of alcohol. Whether it's enough to affect a sober alcoholic is an open question, but the people I've known in AA who insisted they could drink Moussy or O'Doul's or Sharp's with impunity all wound up picking up something stronger sooner or later.