The Carpetbaggers (92 page)

That was the doctor talking, not the woman. I looked up at her face as she snipped and unwound, snipped and uncovered, until all the bandage was gone and I felt as naked as a newborn baby, with a strange coolness on my cheeks. I tried to see myself reflected in her eyes but they were calm and expressionless, impersonal and professionally detached. I felt her fingers press against my cheek, the flesh under my chin, smooth the hair back from my temples. "Close your eyes."

I closed them. I felt her fingers touch the lids lightly. "Open."

I opened them. Her face was still quiet and unrevealing. "Smile," she said. "Like this." She made with a wide, humorless grin that was a slapstick parody of her usual warm smile.

I grinned. I grinned until the tiny pains that came to my cheeks began to burn like hell. And still I grinned.

"O.K.," she said, suddenly smiling now. Really smiling. "You can stop now."

I stopped and stared up at her. "How is it, Doc?" I tried to keep it light. "Pretty horrible?"

"It's not bad," she said noncommittally. "You were never a raving beauty, you know." She picked up a mirror from the cart. "Here. See for yourself."

I didn't look at the mirror. I didn't want to see myself just yet. "Can I have a cigarette first, Doc?"

Silently she put the mirror back on the cart and took a package of cigarettes from her coat pocket. She sat down on the edge of my bed, put one in her mouth, lit it, then passed it to me. I could taste the faint sweetness of her lipstick as I drew the smoke into me.

"You were cut pretty badly when Winthrop pushed you through that port. But fortunately— "

"You knew about that?" I asked, interrupting. "About Amos, I mean. How did you find out?"

"From you. While you were under the anesthetic. We kept getting the story in fragments, along with the fragments of glass we were picking out of your face. Fortunately, none of your important facial muscles were severely damaged. It was largely a matter of surface lesions. We were able to make the necessary skin grafts quickly. And successfully, I might add."

I held out my hand. "I’ll take the mirror now, Doc."

She took my cigarette and handed me the mirror. I raised it and when I looked into it, I felt a chill go through me.

"Doc," I said hoarsely. "I look exactly like my father!"

She took the mirror from my hand and I looked up at her. She was smiling. "Do you, Jonas? But that's the way you've always looked."

* * *

Later that morning, Robair brought me the papers. They were filled with the story of Japan's capitulation. I glanced at them carelessly and tossed them aside. "Can I get you something else to read, Mr. Jonas?"

"No," I said. "No, thanks. I just don't feel much like reading."

"All right, Mr. Jonas. Maybe you'd like to sleep some." He moved toward the door.

"Robair."

"Yes, Mr. Jonas?"

"Did I— " I hesitated, my fingers automatically touching my cheek. "Did I always look like this?"

His white teeth flashed in a smile. "Yes, Mr. Jonas."

"Like my father?"

"Like his spittin' image."

I was silent. Strange how all your life you tried not to be like someone, only to learn that you'd been stamped indelibly by the blood that ran in your veins.

"Is there anything else, Mr. Jonas?"

I looked up at Robair and shook my head. "I'll try to sleep now."

I leaned back against the pillow and closed my eyes. I heard the door close and gradually the noise from the street faded to the periphery of my consciousness. I slept. It seemed to me I'd been sleeping a great deal lately. As if I was trying to catch up on all the sleep I'd denied myself for the past few hundred years. But I could not have slept long before I became aware that someone was in the room.

I opened my eyes. Jennie was standing next to my bed, looking down at me. When she saw my eyes open, she smiled. "Hello, Jonas."

"I was sleeping," I said, like a child just waking from a nap. "I was dreaming something foolish. I was dreaming I was hundreds of years old."

"It was a happy dream, then. I’m glad. Happy dreams will help you get well faster."

I raised myself up on one elbow and the pulleys squeaked as I reached for the cigarettes on the table next to the bed. Quickly she fluffed the pillows and moved them in behind me to support my back. I dragged on the cigarette. The smoke drove the sleep from my brain.

"In another few weeks, they'll have the cast off your leg and you can go home."

"I hope so, Jennie," I said.

Suddenly, I realized she wasn't wearing her hospital white. "This is the first time I've seen you in a black veil, Jennie. Is it something special?"

"No, Jonas. This is what I always wear, except when I'm on duty in the hospital."

"Then this is your day off?"

"There are no days off in the service of Our Saviour," she said simply. "No, Jonas, I've come to say good-by."

"Good-by? But I don't understand. You said it would be a few weeks before I— "

"I'm going away, Jonas."

I stared up at her stupidly. "Going away?"

"Yes, Jonas," she said quietly. "I’ve only been here at Mercy Hospital until I could get transportation to the Philippines. We're rebuilding a hospital there that was destroyed in the war. Now I am free to leave, by plane."

"But you can't, Jennie," I said. "You can't leave the people you know, the language you speak. You'll be a stranger there, you'll be alone."

Her fingers touched the crucifix hanging from the black leather cincture beneath her garment. A quiet look of calm deepened in her gray eyes. "I am never alone," she said simply. "He is always with me."

"You don't have to, Jennie," I said. I took the pamphlet that I'd found on the table by my bed and opened it. "You've only made a temporary profession. You can resign any time you want. There's still a three-year probationary period before you take your final vows. You don't belong here, Jennie. It's only because you were hurt and angry. You're much too young and beautiful to hide your life away behind a black veil."

She still did not answer.

"Don't you understand what I’m saying, Jennie? I want you to come back where you belong."

She closed her eyes slowly and when she opened them, they were misted with tears. But when she spoke, her voice was steady with the sureness of her knowledge and faith. "It's you who don't understand, Jonas," she said. "I have no place to which I desire to return, for it is here, in His house, that I belong."

I started to speak but she raised her hand gently. "You think I came to Him out of hurt and anger? You're wrong," she said quietly. "One does not run from life to God, one runs to God for life. All my years I sought Him, without knowing what I was seeking. The love I found out there was a mere mockery of what I knew love could be; the charity I gave was but the smallest fraction of the charity in me to give; the mercy I showed was nothing compared with His mercy within me. Here, in His house and in His work, I have found a greater love than any I have ever known. Through His love, I have found security and contentment and happiness, in accordance with His divine will."

She paused for a moment, looking down at the crucifix in her fingers. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear and untroubled. "Is there anything in this world, Jonas, that can offer more than God?"

I didn't answer.

Slowly she held out her left hand toward me. I looked down and saw the heavy silver ring on her third finger. "He has invited me into His house," she said softly, "and I have taken His ring to wear so that I may dwell in His glory forever."

I took her hand and pressed my lips to the ring. I felt her fingers brush my hair lightly, then she moved to the foot of my bed, where she turned to look at me. "I shall think of you often, my friend," she said gently. "And I shall pray for you."

I was silent as I ground my cigarette out. There was a beauty in Jennie's eyes that had never been there before. "Thank you, Sister," I said quietly.

Without another word, she turned and went out the door. I stared down at the foot of the bed where she had stood, but now even the ghost of her was gone.

I turned my face into the pillow and cried.

I left the hospital early in September. I was sitting in the wheel chair, watching Robair pack the last of my things into the valise, when the door opened. "Hi, Junior."

"Nevada! What are you doing way down here?"

"Came to carry you home."

I laughed. Funny how you can go along for years hardly thinking about someone, then all of a sudden be so glad to see him. "You didn't have to do that," I said. "Robair could have managed all right."

"I asked him to come up, Mr. Jonas. I figured it would be like old times. It gets mighty lonely out there at the ranch with nothing to do."

"An' I figured I could use a vacation," Nevada said. "The war's over an' the show's closed down for the winter. And there's nothin' Martha likes better than to do a little invalidin'. She's down there now, gittin' things ready for us."

I looked at the two of them and grinned. "It's a put-up job, huh?"

"That's right," Nevada said. He came over behind the wheel chair. "Ready?"

Robair closed the valise and snapped it shut. "All set, Mr. Nevada."

"Let's go, then," Nevada said, and started the wheel chair through the door.

"We have to stop off at Burbank," I said, looking back at him. "Mac has a flock of papers for me to sign." I might be laid up, but business went on.

Buzz Dalton had an ICA charter waiting for us at the San Diego airport. We were at Burbank by two o'clock that afternoon. McAllister got up and came around his desk when they wheeled me into his office. "You know, this is the first time I can remember seeing you sit down."

I laughed. "Make the most of it. The doctors say I’ll be moving around as good as new in a couple of weeks."

"Well, meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage of it. Push him around behind the desk, fellows. I've got the pen ready."

It was almost four o'clock when I'd signed the last of a stack of documents. I looked up wearily. "So what else is new?"

Mac looked at me. He walked over to a table against the wall. "This is," he said, and took the cover off something that looked like a radio with a window in it.

"What is it?"

"It's the first product of the Cord Electronics Company," he said proudly. "We knocked it out in the converted radar division. It's a television set."

"Television?" I asked.

"Pictures broadcast through the air like radio," he said. "It's picked up on that screen, like home movies."

"Oh, that's the thing that Dumont was kicking around before the war. It doesn't work."

"Does now," Mac said. "It's the next big thing. All the radio and electronics companies are going into it. RCA, Columbia, Emerson, IT&T, GE, Philco. All of them. Want to see how it works?"

"Sure."

He walked over and picked up the phone. "Get me the lab." He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll have them put something on," he said.

A moment later, he went over to the set and turned a knob. A light flashed behind the window, then settled into a series of circles and lines. Gradually, letters came into view.

CORD ELECTRONICS PRESENTS 

Suddenly, the card was replaced by a picture, a Western scene with a man riding a horse toward the camera. The camera dollied in real close on the face and I saw it was Nevada. I recognized the scene, too. It was the chase scene from
The Renegade
. For five minutes, we watched the scene in silence.

"Well, I’ll be damned," Nevada said, when it was over.

I looked across at Robair. There was an expression of rapt wonder on his face. He looked at me. "There's what I call a miracle, Mr. Jonas," he said softly. "Now I can watch a movie in my own home without goin' to sit in no nigger heaven."

"So that's why they all want to buy my old pictures," Nevada said.

I looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"You know those ninety-odd pictures we made and I own now?"

I nodded.

"People been after me to sell 'em. Offered me good money for 'em, too. Five thousand dollars each."

I stared at him. "One thing I learned in the picture business," I said. "Never sell outright what you can get a percentage on."

"You mean rent it to 'em like I do to a theater?"

"That's right," I said. "I know those broadcasting companies. If they'll buy it for five, they plan to make fifty out of it."

"I'm no good at big deals like that," Nevada said. "Would you be willin' to handle it for me, Mac?"

"I don't know, Nevada. I'm no agent."

"Go ahead and do it, Mac," I said. "Remember what you told me about making a point where it counts?"

He smiled suddenly. "O.K., Nevada."

Suddenly, I was tired. I slumped back in my chair. Robair was at my side instantly. "You all right, Mr. Jonas?"

"I’m just tired," I said.

"Maybe you better stay at the apartment tonight. We can go on out to the ranch in the morning."

I looked at Robair. The idea of getting into a bed was very appealing. My ass was sore from the wheel chair.

"I'll order a car," Mac said, picking up the phone. "You can drop me at the studio on your way into town. I've got some work to finish up there."

My mind kept working all the time we rode toward the studio. When the car stopped at the gates, suddenly everything was clear to me.

"We'll have to do something about a replacement for Bonner," Mac said, getting out. "It isn't good business having a lawyer run a studio. I don't know anything about motion pictures."

I stared at him thoughtfully. He was right, of course. But then, who did? Only David, and he was gone. I didn't care any more. There were no pictures left in me, no one I wanted to place up there on the screen for all the world to see. And back in the office I'd just left, there was a little box with a picture window and soon it would be in every home. Rich or poor. That little box was really going to chew up film, like the theaters had never been able to. But I still didn't care.