The Plant (6 page)

Jackson; brighter than that crap-shooting, Ivy League tie-wearing devil William Gelb;
far
brighter than Herbert Porter (Porter, as previously noted, is not above wandering into Ms. Jackson’s office after she has left for the day and sniffing the seat of her office chair—a strange man, but be it not for me to judge), and the only one of the staff who
might
be capable of recognizing a commercial book if it came within his purview. Right now he is eaten up with guilt and embarrassment over
l’affaire Detweiller,
and can see only that he made a rather comic
faux pas.
He would be incapable of seeing that his decision to even
look
at the Detweiller book demonstrated that his editorial ears are still open, and still attuned to that sweet-est of all tones—the celestial notes of Sweda cash registers in drugstores and book emporia ringing up sales, even if it was pointed out to him.

Incapable of seeing that it proves he’s still trying.

The others have given up.

Anyway, here is this enchanting memo—between its lines I hear a man whose nerve is temporarily shot, a man who
might
be capable of facing a lion but who now cannot even look at a mouse; a man who is,in consequence, shrieking “Eeeek! Get rid of it! Get rid of it!” and swatting at it with the handiest broom, which in
dis
case jus happen t’be Riddley, who dus’ de awfishes an wipe de windows an delivah de mail. Yassuh, Mist Kenton, I git rid of it fo you! I sholy goan get rid of dat hoodoo Solrac woman’s package if she sen one!

Maybe.

On the other hand, maybe John Kenton should have to face up to the consequences of his own actions—swat his own mouse. After all, if you don’t swat your own, maybe you never really know what a harmless little thing a mouse is...and is it not possible that Kenton’s useful days as an editor may be over if he cannot stare down such occasional crazies as Carlos “Roberta” Detweiller?

I shall ponder the matter. I think there is a very good chance no package will come, but I’ll ponder it all the same.

45

2/27/81

Something from the mysterious “Roberta Solrac” actually came today! I didn’t know whether to be amused or disgusted by my own reaction, which was staring,elemental gut-terror followed by an almost insane urge to put the thing down the incinerator, exactly as Kenton’s note had instructed. The
physicality
of my reaction as soon as my eye fell on the return address and connected the name there with Kenton’s memo was striking. I had a sudden spasm of shudders. Goosebumps raced up my back.I heard a clear, ringing tone in my ears, and I could feel the hair stiff-ening on my head.

This symphony of physiological atavism lasted no more than five seconds and then it subsided—but it left me as shaken as a sudden deep lance of pain in the area of the heart. Floyd would sneer and call it “a nigger reaction,” but it was no such thing. It was a
human
reaction. Not to the thing itself—the contents of the package were something of an anticlimax after all the sound and fury—but, I am convinced, to the hands which placed the lid on the small white cardboard box in which the plant came; the hands which tied twine around that box and then cut a brown paper shopping bag in which to wrap the box for mailing, the hands which taped and labelled and carried. Detweiller’s hands.

Am I speaking of telepathy? Yes...and no. It might be fairer to say that I am speaking of a kind of passive psychokinesis.Dogs shy away from people with cancer; they smell it on them. So, at least, claims my dear old Aunt Olympia.In the same way I smelled Detweiller all over that box,and now I understand Kenton’s upset better and have a good deal more sympathy for him. I think Carlos Detweiller must be dangerously insane...but the plant itself is no deadly nightshade or belladonna or Adder Toadstool (although it may have been any or all of those things in Detweiller’s feverish mind, I suppose). It’s only a very small and very tired-looking common ivy in a red clay pot.

46

If not for the “nigger reaction” (Floyd Walker)—or the “human reaction” (his brother Riddley)—I might really have dumped the thing...but after that fit of the shakes,it seemed to me I had to go through with opening the package or deem myself less a man. I did so, in spite of any number of gruesome images—high explosive rigged to special pressure-tapes, noxious floods of black widow spiders, a litter of baby copperheads. And there it was, just a small ivy-plant with yellow-edged leaves (four of them) nodding from one tired, sagging stem. The soil itself is waxy brown. It smells swampy and unpleasant.

There was a little plastic sign stuck in the earth which read: H I !

M Y N A M E I S Z E N I T H

I A M A G I F T T O J O H N

F R O M R O B E R T A

It was that flash of fear which drove me to open the package.

Similarly, it’s that same flash which has decided me against making sure that Kenton gets it after all, which would have been easy enough to do (“
Dat
plant, Mist Kenton? Oh,
drat!
I g’iss I fo’got whatchoo said. I am de mos
f ’gitten’est
man!”). Let the ripples end; let him forget Detweiller, if that’s what he wants. I’ve put Zenith the Common Ivy on a shelf in my janitorial-cum-mailroom cubicle—a shelf well above Kenton’s eye-level (not that he stops in much anyway, unlike Gelb with his dice fixation). I’ll keep it until it dies, and then I really
will
dump it down the incinerator chute. That will be the end of Detweiller
fo sho.

Got fifty pages done on the novel over the weekend.

Gelb now owes me $75.40.

47

From
The New York Post,
page 1, March 4, 1981:
INSANE GENERAL ESCAPES OAK COVE ASYLUM,

KILLS THREE!!

(Special to the
Post
) Major General (ret.) now, but still strong and amazingly agile, as

Anthony R. Hecksler, known to the comman—

his escape from Oak Cove shows.”

dos and partisans who followed him across

Ford indicated he was referring to Hecksler’s

France during World War II as “Iron-Guts”

probable method of escape—a leap from a

Hecksler, escaped from Oak Cove Asylum late

second floor window in the Oak Cove Admin—

last night, stabbing two orderlies and a nurse

istration Wing to the garden below (see photo death in his bid for freedom.

tographs on pages 2, 3, and Center Section).

General Hecksler was remanded to Oak

Ford went on to caution everyone within the

Cove in the small upstate town of Cutlersville

immediate area to be on the lookout for the

twenty-seven months ago, following his

mad General, whom he described as “extreme—

acquittal, by reason of insanity, on charges of ly clever, extremely dangerous, and extremely

assault with a deadly weapon and assault with

paranoid.”

intent to kill. His victim was Albany bus dri—

In a brief press interview, Ellen K. Moors,

ver Herman T. Schneur, whom Hecksler

the doctor in charge of Hecksler’s case,

claimed in a signed statement to be “one of the agreed. “He had a great many enemies,” she

twelve North American foremen of the

said, “or so he imagined. His paranoid delu—

antichrist.”

sions were extremely complex, but he never

The Oak Cove dead have been identified as

lost track of the score. He was, in his way, a

Norman Ableson, twenty-six; John Piet, forty;

model inmate...but he never lost track of the

and Alicia Penbroke, thirty-four.

score.”

State Police Lieutenant Arthur P. Ford was

A source close to the investigation says

surprisingly gloomy when asked if he expect—

Hecksler may have stabbed Ableson, Piet, and

ed to recapture General Hecksler quickly. “We

Pembroke to death with a pair of barber’s

hope for a quick arrest, naturally,” he said,

shears. The source told the
Post
that there was

“but this is a man who trained guerilla units in no outcry; all three were stabbed in the throat, World War II and in Korea, and who was con-commando-style.

sulted on more than one occasion by General

Westmoreland in Viet Nam. He’s seventy-two

(Related story p. 12)

48

From the journals of Riddley Walker

3/5/81

What a difference a day makes!

Yesterday Herb Porter was his usual self—fat, slovenly, smoking a cigar as he stood by the water-cooler, explaining to Kenton and Gelb how the great train of the world would run if he, Herbert Porter, were the engineer. The man is a walking
Reader’s Digest
of rabbit-punch solutions, a compendium of declarative answers which are delivered amid the efflu-vium of cigar smoke and exquisitely bad breath. Close the borders and keep out the spies and wetbacks! End abortion on demand! Build more prisons! Upgrade possession of marijuana to a felony once again! Sell bio-chemical stocks! Buy cable-TV issues!

He is, in his way—or was, until today—a wonderful man: rounded and perfect in his assurances, plated with prejudices, caprisoned about with cant, and possessed of just enough native wit to hold a job in a place like this, Porter is an evocation of the Great American Median. Even his occasional surreptitious expeditions into Sandra Jackson’s office to sniff the seat of her chair please me—an endearing little loophole in the walking castle of complacency that is Massa Po’tuh.

Oh, but today! What a different Herbert Porter crept into my janitorial cubbyhole today! The complacent, ruddy face had become pallid and trembling. The blue eyes shifted so regularly from side to side that Porter looked like a man watching a tennis match even when he was trying to stare right at me. His lips were so shiny with spittle that they looked almost varnished. And while he was of course still fat, he also looked as if he had somehow lost his surface tension—as if the essential Herb Porter had shrunk away from the borders of his skin, leaving that skin to sag in places where it had been previously stretched smooth.

“He’s out,” Porter whispered.

49

“Who’s dat, Mist Po’tuh?” I asked. I was genuinely curious; I could not imagine what mighty sling or engine could have breached such a gap in Castle Herbert. Although I suppose I should have guessed.

He proffered me the paper—the
Post,
of course. He’s the only one around here who reads it. Kenton and Wade read the
Times,
Gelb and Jackson
bring
the
Times
but secretly read the
Daily News
(the hand that rocks the cradle may rule the world, but de han which empty de white folks’ wastebaskets know de
secrets
of de worl), but the
Post
was made for fellows such as Herb Porter. He plays Wingo religiously and says if he ever wins a bundle he is going to buy a Winnebago, paint the word
W I N G O B A G O
on the side, and tour the country.

I took it, opened it, and read the headline.

“The General’s escaped,” he whispered. His eyes stopped bouncing back and forth for a moment and he stared at me in dismay and utter horror. “It’s as if that damned Detweiller cursed us. The General’s escaped
and I rejected his book
!”

“Now, now, Mist Po’tuh,” I said. “Ain’t no need to take on so. Man lak dis prob’ly got fo-five dozen scores to settle befo he git to you.”

“But I could be number one,” he whispered. “After all, I rejected his goddam
book
.”

It was true,and it is ironic how two such fundamentally different men as Kenton and Porter have managed to get themselves into exactly the same situation this late winter—each the target of a rejected author (Detweiller’s rejection a bit more dramatic than that of the Major-General, granted, but that was indubitably Detweiller’s own fault) who just happens to be insane.The difference—I know it,even if no one else does (and I believe Roger Wade might)—is that, while Kenton thought there might actually be the germ of a book in Detweiller’s obsession, Porter knew better concerning the General’s. But Porter is one of those men who has read o m n ivo ro u s ly—and vicariously—about Wo rld War II, that Picke t t ’ s Charge of western man (western
white
man) in the 20th century, and he 50

knew who Hecksler was...in a war filled with military celebrities Hecksler was, granted, of the Hollywood Squares type (if you see what I mean),but to Porter he was
somebody
. So he asked to see the completed manuscript of
Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers
in spite of the abysmal outline, thereby encouraging a man who was, by the quality and content of his own written words, a palpable psychotic. I felt that the result and his present terror, although unforeseen, were partly his own fault.

I allowed as how it was true that he could be number one on the General’s hit list (if indeed the poor madman is doing anything other than cowering in drainage ditches or scouring alley garbage cans for offal at this point), but reiterated that I thought it unlikely. I added that he might well be caught before he could get within fifty miles of New York City even if he had decided to come after Porter, and finished by telling him that many psychotics released suddenly into an uncontrolled environment took their own lives...although I did not say so in exactly those words.

Po r ter re ga rded me suspiciously for a moment and then said,

“Riddley—don’t take offense at this—”

“Nawsah!”

“Have you
really
been to college?”

“
Yassah!
”

“And you took psychology courses?”

“Yassah, I sho did.”

“
Abnormal
psychology?”

“Yassah, and I’se pow’ful familier wid de suicidial syndrome associated wid de paranoid-psychotic personality! Why, dat Gen’l Hecksler could be slittin’ his wrists or garglin’ wid a lightbulb even while we’s heah talkin, Mist Po’tuh!”