The Bonfire of the Vanities (40 page)

“Whadda we want?”

“Jus-tice!”

“Whadda we get?”

“Ra-cism!”

Buck turned the bullhorn toward the crowd. He wanted to get their voices into the act.

“
WHADDA WE WANT
?”

Nothing came back. In the best of moods, they watched the show.

Buck answered his own question: “
JUS-TICE
.”

“
WHADDA WE GET
?”

Nothing.

“
RA-CISM
!”

“
OKAY! WHADDA WE WANT
?”

Nothing.

“
BROTHERS AND SISTERS
,” said Buck, the red bullhorn in front of his face. “
Our brother, our neighbor, Henry Lamb, he was struck down…by a hit-and-run driver…and the hospital…they don’t do nothing for him…and the cops and the D.A.…they can’t be bothered…Henry’s at death’s door…and they don’t care…Henry’s an honor student…and they say, ‘So what?’…’cause he’s poor, he’s from the project…’cause he’s black…So why are we here, brothers and sisters?…To make Chuck do the right thing!
”

That brought some appreciative laughter from the crowd.

“
To get justice for our brother, Henry Lamb!
” Buck continued. “
Okay
.
SO WHADDA WE WANT
?”

“Justice,” said voices from the crowd.

“
AND WHADDA WE GET
?”

Laughter and stares.

The laughter came from six or eight boys in their early teens who were shoving and bumping one another, struggling to occupy a position just behind Buck. That would put them in a direct line with the eye of the camera, whose mesmerizing red light was now on.

“Who’s Chuck?” asked Kramer.

“Chuck is Charlie,” said Martin, “and Charlie is The Man, and speaking for The Man, I’d like to get my hands on that big shitcake.”

“You see those signs?” asked Kramer. “
WEISS JUSTICE IS WHITE JUSTICE AND QUIT STALLING, ABE
!?”

“Yeah.”

“If they show that on TV, Weiss’s gonna fucking freak out.”

“ ’S’already freaked out, if you ask me,” said Goldberg. “Look at this bullshit.”

From where Kramer, Goldberg, and Martin stood, the scene across the street was a curious little theater-in-the-round. The play concerned the Media. Beneath the towering spire of a TV van, three dozen figures, two dozen of them white, marched about in a small oval, carrying signs. Eleven people, two of them black, nine of them white, attended them, in order to bring their thin voices and felt-tip-marker messages to a city of seven million: a man with a bullhorn, a woman with a tote bag, a fluffy-haired TV announcer, a cameraman and a soundman attached to the van by umbilical cords, two technicians visible inside the open sliding doors of the van, the van driver, two newspaper photographers and two newspaper reporters with notebooks in their hands, one of them still lurching to port every now and again. An audience of two or three hundred souls was packed in around them, enjoying the spectacle.

“Okay,” said Martin, “time to start talking to witnesses.” He started walking across the street, toward the crowd.

“Hey, Marty,” said Goldberg. “Be cool. Okay?”

Took the words right out of Kramer’s mouth. This was not the ideal setting for trying to demonstrate Irish machismo to the world. He had a horrible vision of Martin taking the bullhorn from the man with the earring and trying to stuff it down his throat before the assembled residents of the Poe Towers.

The three of them, Kramer, Martin, and Goldberg, were halfway across the street when the pickets and the crowd suddenly got religion. They began making a real racket. Buck was bellowing something on the bullhorn. The cameraman’s high-tech proboscis was weaving this way and that. From somewhere a tall figure had appeared, a man with a black suit and a terrific stiff white collar and a black necktie with white stripes. With him was a small black woman wearing a dark dress with a luster, like silk or satin. It was Reverend Bacon and Mrs. Lamb.

Sherman was halfway across the marble floor of the entry gallery when he saw Judy, sitting in the library. She was sitting in the wing chair, with a magazine on her lap, watching television. She looked up at him. What was that look? It was surprise, not warmth. If she would give him even a hint of warmth, he would go straight in and
—and tell her!
Oh yes? Tell her what? Tell her…about the debacle in the office at least, about the way Arnold Parch had talked to him and, worse,
looked
at him! The others, too! As if…He avoided forming in words what they must have thought of him. His disappearance, the collapse of the gold-backed bond scheme—and then tell her the rest, too? Had she by now seen a newspaper article about a Mercedes…RF…But there was not a hint of warmth. There was only surprise. It was six o’clock. He hadn’t been home this early in a long time…There was only surprise in that sad thin face with the corona of soft brown hair.

He kept walking toward her. He would go in the library, anyway. He would sit down in the other armchair and watch television, too. That had been silently agreed upon. The two of them could sit together in the library and read or watch television. That way they could go through the frozen motions of being a family, for Campbell’s benefit as much as anything else, without having to talk.

“Daddy!”

He turned around. Campbell was coming toward him from the door that led to the kitchen. She had a glorious smile on her face. It nearly broke his heart.

“Hello, sweetheart.” He put his hands under her armpits and swept her up off the floor and wrapped his arms around her. She put her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, and she said, “Daddy! Guess what I made!”

“What?”

“A rabbit.”

“You did? A rabbit?”

“I’ll show you.” She started wriggling, to get down.

“You’ll show me?” He didn’t want to see her rabbit, not now, but the obligation to seem enthusiastic overwhelmed him. He let her slither to the floor.

“Come on!” She took him by the hand and began pulling with terrific force. She pulled him off balance.

“Hey! Where are we going?”

“Come on! It’s in the kitchen!” Towing him toward the kitchen, she now leaned so far over that almost the entire weight of her body hung from his hand, which held hers.

“Hey! Watch it. You’re gonna fall down, sweetheart.”

“
Come…on!
” He lurched behind her, ground between his fears and his love for a six-year-old who wanted to show him a rabbit.

The doorway led into a short hallway, lined with closets, and then into the butler’s pantry, lined with glass-front cabinets containing sparkling battalions of crystal, and stainless-steel sinks. The cabinets, with their beadings, muntins, mullions, cornices—he couldn’t remember all the terms—had cost thousands
…thousands…
The
passion
Judy had put into these
…things…
The way they had spent money…Hemorrhaging money…

And now they were in the kitchen. More cabinets, cornices, stainless steel, tiles, spotlights, the Sub-Zero, the Vulcan—all of it the best Judy’s endless research could find, all of it endlessly expensive, hemorrhaging and hemorrhaging…Bonita was by the Vulcan stove.

“Hi, Mr. McCoy.”

“Hello, Bonita.”

Lucille, the maid, was sitting on a stool by a counter, drinking a cup of coffee.

“Mr. McCoy.”

“Why, hello, Lucille.” Hadn’t seen her in ages; hadn’t been home early enough. He should have something to say to her, since it had been so long, but he couldn’t think of a thing except for how sad it all was. They were proceeding with their routines, secure in their belief that everything was the way it always had been.

“Over here, Daddy,” Campbell kept pulling. She didn’t want him to get sidetracked talking to Bonita and Lucille.

“Campbell!” said Bonita. “Don’t pull your daddy like that!”

Sherman smiled and felt ineffectual. Campbell ignored her. Then she stopped pulling.

“Bonita’s gonna bake it for me. So it’ll be hard.”

There was the rabbit. It was on a white Formica-topped table. Sherman stared. He could scarcely believe it. It was an astonishingly good rabbit, made of clay. It was primitive in execution, but the head was cocked to one side and the ears were set at expressive angles and the legs were spread out in an unconventional pose, as bunnies went, and the massing and proportion of the haunches was excellent. The animal seemed startled.

“Sweetheart! You did this?”

Very proud: “Yes.”

“Where?”

“In school.”

“All by yourself?”

“Yes. For real life.”

“Well, Campbell—this is a beautiful rabbit! I’m very proud of you! You’re so talented!”

Very timid: “I know.”

All at once he wanted to cry. A startled bunny. To think of what it meant to be able to
wish
, in this world, to make a bunny rabbit and then to
do
it in all innocence, in all confidence that the world would receive it with love and tenderness and admiration—to think of what she
assumed
at the age of six, namely, that this was the nature of the world and that her mommy and daddy—her
daddy
!—made it that way and of course would never let it be any other way.

“Let’s show it to Mommy,” he said.

“She saw it.”

“I bet she loved it.”

The very timid voice: “I know.”

“Well, let’s both show it to her.”

“Bonita has to bake it. So it’ll be hard.”

“Well, I want to go tell Mommy how much
I
like it.” With a show of gusto, he swept Campbell up into his arms and threw her over his shoulder. She took this as a great game.

“Daddy!”

“Campbell, you’re getting so
big
! Soon I won’t be able to carry you like a sack of meal anymore. Low bridge! We’re going through the door.”

Amid much giggling and wriggling, he carried her across the marble floor, to the library. Judy looked up sharply.

“Campbell, don’t make Daddy carry you. You’re too big for that.”

With just a touch of defiance: “I didn’t
make
him.”

“We were just playing,” said Sherman. “Did you see Campbell’s rabbit? Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes. It’s lovely.” She turned her head back toward the television set.

“I’m
really impressed
. I think we’ve got an extremely talented little girl on our hands.”

No reply.

Sherman lowered Campbell from his shoulder down into his arms, as if she were a baby, and then sat in the armchair and settled her on his lap. Campbell moved around to get more comfortable and snuggled up against him, and he put his arms around her. They looked at the television screen.

The news was on. An announcer’s voice. A blur of black faces. A picket sign:
ACTION—NOW
!

“What are they doing, Daddy?”

“It looks like a demonstration, sweetheart.”

Another sign:
WEISS JUSTICE IS WHITE JUSTICE
.

Weiss?

“What’s a demonstration?” Campbell sat up in his lap and looked at him when she asked the question, obscuring his view of the screen. He tried to look around her.

“What’s a demonstration?”

Distractedly, trying to keep one eye on the screen: “Uh…it’s a—sometimes when people get angry about something, they make some signs and they march around with them.”

HIT’N’RUN’N’LIE TO THE PEOPLE
!

Hit and run!

“What do they get angry about?”

“Just a minute, sweetheart.”

“What do they get angry about, Daddy?”

“Almost anything.” Sherman was now leaning far to the left, in order to see the screen. He had to hold tight to Campbell’s waist to keep from spilling her off his lap.

“But what?”

“Well, let’s see.”

Campbell turned her head toward the screen but immediately turned back. There was only some man talking, some black man, very tall, dressed in a black jacket and a white shirt and a striped tie, standing next to a thin black woman in a dark dress. There was a huge cluster of black faces crowded in behind them. Boys with smirks on their faces kept popping out from behind them and staring into the camera.

“When a young man like Henry Lamb,” the man was saying, “an honor student, an outstanding young man, when a young man like Henry Lamb comes into the hospital with acute cerebral concussion and they treat him for a broken wrist…see…when his mother gives the Police Department and the district attorney a description of the car that struck him down, a description of that car…see…and they do nothing, they drag their feet—”

“Daddy, let’s go back to the kitchen. Bonita’s gonna bake my rabbit.”

“In a second—”

“—to our people is, ‘We don’t care. Your young people, your honor students, your hopes don’t count, don’t matter at all’ …see…That’s the message. But we care, and we’re not gonna stand still, and we’re not gonna be silent. If the power structure don’t want to do nothing—”

Campbell slid off Sherman’s lap and grabbed his right wrist with both hands and began pulling. “Come on, Daddy.”

The face of the thin black woman rilled the screen. Tears rolled down her cheeks. A fluffy-haired young white man was on the screen with a microphone at his lips. There was a whole universe of black faces behind him and more boys mugging for the camera.

“—that as yet unidentified Mercedes-Benz sedan with a license plate beginning with RE, RF, RB, or RP. And just as Reverend Bacon maintains that a message is coming through to this community from the authorities, these protesters have a message for them: ‘If you don’t launch a full-scale investigation, we’ll do it ourselves.’ This is Robert Corso,
THE LIVE
1, in the Bronx.”

“Daddy!” She was pulling on him so hard the chair began to tip.

“RF?” Judy had turned to look at Sherman. “
Ours
begins with RF, doesn’t it?”

Now! Tell her!

“Daddy! Come on! I wanna bake the rabbit!”

There was no concern in Judy’s face. She was merely surprised by the coincidence; so surprised, she had initiated a conversation.