Fellow Travelers (11 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

December 23, 1953

At 6:05 a.m., the radio was saying that Cardinal Spellman, Catholic vicar of the armed forces, had departed for Korea to say Christmas Mass for the troops. On the Formica table near Tim’s bowl of cereal lay the current issue of
The Nation,
which he’d been making himself read last night. Kenneth Woodforde’s short sarcastic article on the Potter hearings argued that the Hollywood Ten might now be making a fine sentimental film about the forced march to Taejon if they hadn’t been blacklisted from practicing their profession.

Since the atrocities testimony, Tim had more strongly than ever felt himself part of a great moral battle, and more and more he wondered how Hawkins, stationed at its international center, could exempt himself from the fray with the handful of liberal nostrums and jokes he uttered whenever Tim tried to draw him out on the subject. An attempt to discuss his encounter with Woodforde, for example, had resulted in Hawk’s telling him only to “stay away from reporters. They dress worse than McCarthy.”

Tim opened a box containing the cheap necktie, monogrammed with a huge, loud “F,” that he’d bought the other night on Fourteenth Street. He would tell Hawk that the “F” stood for “Farouk,” not “Fuller.” The deposed Egyptian king was back in the papers now that his gaudy possessions were about to be auctioned off to help pay for the Aswan Dam, and a sketch that Tim had gotten up early to finish—of Hawk as a sultan surrounded by prostrate secretaries and ambassadors, each peeling him a grape or fanning him with palms—would go into the box with the tie. Tim drew well enough to have once thought about going to art school, and he’d felt a wonderful contentment while illustrating Hawk late last night, even if he’d had to work from memory. (Would he ever possess a photograph?)

He planned to deliver the tie before Hawk left for work. He knew he would be taking a risk by coming unannounced, and was certain there would be no present for him in return. But he could not face the trip home for Christmas without seeing Hawk once more.

There had been no question of buying a real gift. Any present that seemed to express deep feelings instead of high spirits might invite Hawk’s disapproval. As it was, once Tim boarded the bus to Foggy Bottom, he worried about even this silly tie.

Traveling across the city, whose early commuter traffic was moving mostly in the opposite direction, he calculated how much time he had left to get to Hawkins’ apartment, give him the gift, and then make it back to his own office on Capitol Hill. The time was tighter than he would like, but even so, he got off the bus in Farragut Square, in front of the Army and Navy Club, a few blocks from his destination. He liked to approach the apartment on foot, to walk down I Street savoring his own apprehension along with new details of his beloved’s neighborhood. All too soon, he was there, at the front door of the building, able to avoid the downstairs buzzer by slipping in behind a meter man.

He had hoped to surprise Hawkins while he was still in bed, to find him wearing striped pajama bottoms and no top. But instead he was up, already in a shirt and tie. He’d been reading the paper at the kitchen table and seemed neither angry nor startled to find company at the door. Was there a chance he was pleased? He motioned Tim in, pointing to a story in the paper. “Have you sent a Christmas card home, Skippy? Even Guy Burgess has written his mother. From where is unclear, but he’s let old Mum know he’s still alive.”

“I’ll be seeing mine when I get back to New York tomorrow.”

“I go up to Bar Harbor tonight. Not a
safe
harbor, either, with such a large gathering of the paternal clan in the offing. Before New Year’s everyone will be wishing they’d spent the week somewhere warmer and with somebody else.” He pressed the trash container’s little foot pedal and scraped the remains of his plate into the can. “I should have arranged to go to Bermuda, with you.”

Tim was thrilled beyond measure. Anyone would have told him this was only a pleasantry.
But it’s the thought that counts,
he heard himself thinking.

Hawkins poured him some orange juice while glancing back at the story on Burgess, the British spy.

Say you’ll miss me,
thought Tim.
All
his thoughts were racing; all of them were upping the ante. Finally, he leaned over and kissed him. “Merry Christmas, Hawk. Here.” He handed him the gift.

Hawkins smiled at the box’s shape. “You may have noticed I already have one of these on.” He sat down at the table. “Should I open it now?”

“Later’s okay.” Tim suddenly didn’t care about the dangers of rejection, about all the unspoken protocols and endless calculations of risk. He climbed onto Hawk’s lap and began kissing his face and neck with the desperate greed he always imagined the darkness hid.

“Hey, hey,” whispered Hawkins, making a token effort to push him away. “My own juvenile delinquent. Careful you don’t wind up in
that
Senate investigation.”

“That’s me,” said Tim, kissing him some more and loosening the necktie that must have cost twenty times more than the one in the box. “I’m your hoodlum, your little j.d.”

“Complete with switchblade,” said Hawkins, feeling Tim’s hard-on through his Sanforized trousers.

In another minute they were on the bed, shirts off, pants open. Tim forced himself to keep one eye on the clock, though his frantic ardor ensured that things would be over quickly. His tongue was soon moving along the thin line of hair that ran down Hawk’s stomach to the waistband of his jockey shorts. As Tim sucked him, Hawkins tousled his hair and softly moaned, not for the first time, “You’re the best,” a phrase that always excited Tim, even if the competition it implied was more disquieting than complimentary.

He wanted Hawk to climax in his mouth, but soon found himself being lifted up, brought face-to-face with the man he loved, a man who wanted to kiss him—as if aware that this was what he truly needed to be soothed. With their tongues pressed together, he came all over Hawkins’ stomach and chest.

The next kiss he received—for all the devastating tenderness of the one before—could not have been more perfunctory. “Time and tide,” said Hawkins, cheerfully, looking down at his own torso, from which he’d gently displaced Tim. “And I do mean tide.” He got up to get a towel.

Tim lay in the bed, scarcely daring to breathe. This last kiss had put him back in his place, turned the ecstasy stale, and plunged him into a welter of self-loathing. He watched Hawk towel off and rebutton his shirt in front of the bathroom mirror. Knowing he’d soon be crying, unless he held in the tears by force of will, he grabbed for something on the night table. He wanted anything small that he could squeeze in his hand to distract himself, the way one forgets a pain in one place by introducing another somewhere else. He realized what object he’d picked up—a pair of cuff links, hooked together—only after he’d finished squeezing the metal as hard as he could and opened his hand to have a look.

Hawkins returned to sit on the edge of the bed. “Put your shirt back on,” he said.

Tim obeyed, while Hawkins went and got a pair of scissors that he used to cut off the white buttons at Tim’s wrists. After making two small slits to match the buttonholes, he proceeded to refasten the sleeves with the cuff links he’d seen Tim squeezing.

The silence and the gestures seemed ritualistic. Were the cuff links meant to be a return present, Hawk’s way of saying “I didn’t have time to shop”? Should he be insulted? Either way, he
wanted
them. They were proof, testimony to their union, a more elegant exhibition of it than the bottle of milk Hawk had brought with him that night to Capitol Hill, and which he’d never thrown away.

And yet—a horrible thought—what if the cuff links were someone else’s? Left behind like that pair of galoshes? Tim could almost hear the stranger and Hawk laughing, as the jewelry clinked onto the night table just before some drunken dawn.

But then he saw the initials cut into the silver: HF.

Hawkins let go of his wrists and looked into his eyes. And then Tim understood: these were his reward for not crying, for not making the scene he’d been on the verge of making. He touched the cuff links, trying to enjoy the feeling that he was branded, owned; trying to appreciate the small bit of recklessness required of Hawk to give them. Wearing them would entail a measure of daring, too: what would he say if someone read the initials? His mind proceeded to construct the sort of fast little lie that people like himself learned to construct a dozen times a day.
They’re not real silver. A Maryknoll nun gave them to me when I made a donation. The “HF” stands for “have faith.”

“I’m going to be late, Skippy.” Hawkins got up and walked to the door, leaving him to show himself out.

Within fifteen minutes, Fuller was at the department. Inside Congressional Relations, a bottle of Kentucky bourbon—a gift of the bureau chief—sat atop each desk. On Mary Johnson’s blotter there was also a tiny box, no bigger than two inches wide and high. A ring from the brewer, Fuller supposed, as soon as he saw it.

“He snuck in here around eight-fifteen,” said Beverly Phillips. “An odd way to propose, no? Maybe he wants us to be cheering her on, telling her to accept.”

“And we’ll do just that,” said Fuller. “Won’t we, Miss Lightfoot? Marriage being such a grand institution? Something everybody ought to enjoy?”

Miss Lightfoot looked up from what she was typing to give him a thin, defiant smile, as if signaling that she would have to bear his presence here only a little while longer. Victory would be hers.

Fuller saw Mary enter the office, and he managed to halt her near the front door. Walking her back out to the hall, he said: “You’ve got a present on your desk from Mr. Right.”

“I’ve been expecting it,” she replied. She seemed calm, neither displeased nor especially happy.

“You’re not going to let him take you away from all this, are you?”

She looked straight at Fuller. “Are we on speaking terms yet?” They had exchanged hardly a word since the party on Saturday.

“You can decide that within the next hour,” said Fuller. “I’ll be out of the office on a
date
with Mr. Right.”

Mary looked puzzled.

“McLeod. The
real
Mr. Right.”

“Oh, Fuller.”

He saw her sudden look of concern. Clearly they
were
speaking. “The summons arrived yesterday,” he explained.

Revulsion crossed her face. “Miss Lightfoot?”

He nodded. “I’m due in Room M304. I’m sure your friend Baumeister is familiar with it.”

“Does Mr. Morton know?” she asked.

“The boss is always the
last
to know. I don’t believe they tell him until after they’ve told the wife. Their idea of fair play.”

An elevator ride and several hundred feet of waxed corridor brought him to M304, the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, whose name always sounded to Fuller like a CIA front: the little publishing house in Vienna, the art dealer in Rome. The office he entered had walls similar in color to those in his own, but there were no partitions and, it appeared, no secretary. On a small table between two chairs rested the department’s
Investigative Manual
and several mimeographed copies of Scott McLeod’s August 8 speech to the American Legion in Topeka: “I have attempted very frankly and honestly to face the issue of sexual perversion—the practice of sodomy—in the State Department,” he had assured his audience, promising the Legionnaires that in trying to replace those discharged from federal service, he would be looking for men “well-grounded in the moral principles which have made our democratic republic a model form of government.”

“Mr. Fuller,” said a voice emerging from the wall intercom. “I’m Fred Traband. Please step into Room M305. And please leave your coat out there.”

Fuller entered the inner office and shook hands with Mr. Traband, who immediately made it clear that there was nothing miscellaneous about the Miscellaneous M Unit. “I’m the special agent in charge of sexual-deviation investigations,” he said, as matter-of-factly as if he were introducing himself as a budget analyst. “We believe we have reason to ask you a series of questions,” he continued, without actually giving the reason. Miss Lightfoot’s privacy, it seemed, must be protected.

“Sit down, Mr. Fuller, and let me be frank. Eighty percent of these sessions end with the admission of at least one proscribed behavior by the interviewee.”

Fuller said nothing. He succeeded, without much effort, in looking courteous, as if he were listening to a purser explain the exchange rates for the next port of call.

“Security,” said Mr. Traband, “is endangered by more than covert disloyalty, Mr. Fuller. The moral perversion and emotional immaturity inherent in homosexual behavior make those who engage in it targets of blackmail by anyone seeking to undermine the government of the United States. Moreover, that same perversion and immaturity are a danger to the homosexual’s fellow employees. As I suspect you know, the Hoey Committee, whose investigation of sodomy within the State Department led to the reconstitution of this bureau, concluded that ‘one homosexual can pollute an entire government office.’”

Fuller neither nodded nor shook his head, though Mr. Traband looked as if he expected a flood of personal confession. When none occurred, he made a request: “Mr. Fuller, please get up and walk across the room.”

Fuller obliged and then returned to his seat.

“Again,” said Traband.

When Fuller had finished his second walk, Traband gave him a newspaper and asked him to read a small story that he’d seemed to pick at random.

Fuller recited: “‘President Eisenhower revealed in his State of the Union message last January that he favors some form of home rule for the District. The pres—’”

“Thank you, Mr. Fuller, that’s enough.” Traband passed an open book across the desk. “This paragraph, please. The second-to-last one on the page.”

Fuller picked up the book and looked at the spine—
Of Human Bondage
—before he commenced reading aloud: “‘Philip opened a large cupboard filled with dresses and, stepping in, took as many of them as he could in his arms and buried his face in them. They smelt of the scent his mother used. Then he pulled open the drawers, filled with his mother’s things, and looked at them: there were lavender bags among the linen, and their scent was fresh and pleasant. The strangeness of—’”