The Plant (18 page)

morning (i.e. Apr 6). Of course D.J. may come along before then but cowards travel in packs. Will do you no good D.J. In the end, your meat is mine, HA! “Beaches are sandy, some shores are rocky, I’m going to venti-late, A Designated Mockie.” More dreams of CARLOS (code name DESIGNATED SPIC). I think he is close. Wish I had a picture. Must be crafty.

Guitar & wig=good props. DAY OF THE GENERAL instead of DAY OF

THE JACKAL, HA!! Guitar needs new strings. Still play pretty well & still sing “like a bird in a tree.” Got suppositories. Dropped load. Can think more clearly in spite of brain-killing transmissions.

Must now play waiting game.

Not the first time.

Over and out.

136

From
The New York Times,
April 1, 1981

Page B-1, National Report

COMMUTER CRASH KILLS 7 IN R.I.

piston engines. The make has an excellent

safety record overall, and the aircraft which

By James Whitney

crashed had less than 9000 hours on its clock,

Special to The Times

according to Ocean State Airways President

George Ferguson. Officials from the Civil

CENTRAL FALLS, RHODE ISLAND: A

Aeronautics Board (CAB) and the Federal

Cessna 404 Titan commuter airplane owned

Aviation Administration (FAA) have launched

and operated by Ocean State Airways crashed

a joint investigation of the crash.

shortly after takeoff from Barker Field in this Killed in the accident, the first in Ocean

small Rhode Island city yesterday afternoon,

State’s four-year history, were John Chester—

killing both pilots and all five passengers.

ton, the pilot, and Avery Goldstein, the co—

Ocean State Airways has been running shut—

pilot, both of Pawtucket. Robert Weiner, Tina

tle flights to New York City’s LaGuardia

Barfield, and Dallas Mayr have been identified

since 1977. OCA Flight 14 was airborne for

as three of the downed aircraft’s five passen—

less than two minutes when it crashed in a

gers. The identities of the other two, thought to vacant lot only a quarter of a mile from its

have been husband and wife, have been with—

takeoff point. Witnesses said the aircraft

held pending notification of next of kin.

banked low over a warehouse, narrowly miss—

Ocean State Airways is most commonly

ing the roof, just before going down.

used by passengers connecting with larger

“Whatever was wrong must have gone

airlines operating out of LaGuardia Airport.

wrong right away,” said Myron Howe, who

According to Mr. Ferguson, OSA has sus—

was cutting weeds between Barker Field’s

pended operations at least until the end of the two runways when the accident occurred.

week and perhaps longer. “I’m devastated by

“He got upstairs and then he tried to come on

this,” he said. “I’ve flown that particular craft back. I heard one engine cut out, then the

many times, and would have sworn there

other. I saw both props were dead. He missed

wasn’t a safer plane in the skies, large or

the warehouse, and he missed the access

small. I flew it down from Boston myself on

road, but then he went in hard.”

Monday, and everything was fine with it then.

Preliminary reports indicate no mainte—

I don’t have any idea what could have caused

nance problems with the C404, which is pow—

both engines to shut down the way they did.

ered by two 375 horsepower turbo-charged

One, possibly, but not both.”

137

From John Kenton’s diary

April 1, 1981

There’s an old Chinese curse which goes, “May you live in interesting times.” I think it must have been especially aimed at folks who keep diaries (and if they follow Roger’s edict, that number will soon be increased by three: Bill Gelb, Sandra Jackson, and Herb “Give Me The World And Let Me Boss It” Porter). I sat here in my little home office—which is actually just a corner of the kitchen to which I have added a shelf and a bright light—pounding the keys of my typewriter for nearly five hours last night.

Won’t be that long tonight; among other things, I have a manuscript to read.

And I am going to read it, I think. The dozen or so pages I got through on my way home have pretty well convinced me that this is the one I’ve been looking for all along, without even really knowing it.

But at least one person of my recent acquaintance won’t be reading it.

Not even if it’s as great as Great Expectations. (Not that it will be; I have to keep reminding myself that I work at Zenith House, not Random House.) Poor woman. I don’t know if she was telling the exact truth about wanting to do us a Good Turn, but even if she was lying through her teeth, no one should have to die like that, dropped out of the sky and crushed to death in a burning steel tube.

I arrived at work even earlier today, wanting to check the mail room.

OUIJA says stop wasting your time, she told me. The one you’re looking for is in the purple box on the bottom shelf. Way in the corner. I wanted to check that corner even before I put on the coffee. And to get another look at Zenith the ivy, while I was down there.

At first I thought I’d beaten Roger this time, because there was no clack-clack from his typewriter. But the light was on, and when I peeked in the 138

open door of his office, there he was, just sitting behind his desk and looking out at the street.

“Morning, boss,” I said. I thought he’d be ready and raring to go, but he just sat there in a semi-slump, pale and disheveled, as if he’d spent the whole night tossing and turning.

“I told you not to encourage her,” he said without turning from the window.

I walked over and looked out. The old lady with the guitar, the wild white hair, and the sign about letting Jesus grow in your heart was over there in front of Smiler’s again. I couldn’t hear what she was singing, at least.

There was that much.

“You look like you had a tough night,” I said.

“Tougher morning. You seen the Times?”

I had, as a matter of fact—the front page, anyway. There was the usual report on Reagan’s condition, the usual stuff about unrest in the mideast, the usual corruption-in-government story, and the usual bottom-of-the-page command to support the Fresh Air Fund. Nothing that struck me as of any immediate concern. Nevertheless, I felt a little stirring of the hairs on the back of my neck.

The Times was sitting folded over in the OUT half of Roger’s IN/OUT

basket. I took it.

“First page of the B section,” he said, still looking out the window. At the bum, presumably...or do you call a female of the species a bumette?

I turned to the National Report and saw a picture of an airplane—what was left of one, anyway—in a weedy field littered with cast-off engine parts.

In the background, a bunch of people were standing behind a cyclone fence and gawking. I scanned the headline and knew at once.

“Barfield?” I asked.

“Barfield,” he agreed.

“Christ!”

“Christ had nothing to do with it.”

I scanned the piece without really reading it, just looking for her name.

139

And there she was: Tina Barfield of Central Falls, source of that old adage

“if you play around the buzz-saw too long, sooner or later someone is gonna get cut.” Or burned alive in a Cessna Titan, she should have added.

“She said she’d be safe from Carlos if she did a genuine Good Turn,”

Roger said. “That might lead some to deduce that what she did us was just the opposite.”

“I believed her about that,” I said. I think I was telling the truth, but whether I was or wasn’t, I didn’t want Roger deciding to uproot the ivy growing in Riddley’s closet because of what had happened to Tina Barfield.

Shocked as I was, I didn’t want that. Then I saw—or maybe intuited—that Roger’s mind wasn’t running that way, and I relaxed a little.

“Actually, I did, too,” he said. “She was at least trying to do a Good Turn.”

“Maybe she just didn’t do it soon enough,” I said.

He nodded. “Maybe that was it. I read the short story she mentioned, by the way—the one by Jerome Bixby.”

“‘It’s a Good Life.’”

“Right. By the time I’d read two pages, I recognized it as the basis of a famous Twilight Zone episode starring Billy Mumy. What the hell ever happened to Billy Mumy?”

I didn’t give Shit One about what happened to Billy Mumy, but thought it might be a bad idea to say so.

“The story’s about a little boy who’s a super-psychic. He destroys the whole world, apparently, except for his own little circle of friends and rela-tives. Those people he holds hostage, killing them if they dare to cross him in any way.”

I remembered the episode. The little kid hadn’t pulled out anyone’s heart or caused any planes to crash, but he’d turned one character—his big brother or maybe a neighbor—into a jack-in-the-box. And when he made a mess, he simply sent it away into the cornfield.

“Based on that, can you imagine what living with Carlos must have been like?” Roger asked me.

“What are we going to do, Roger?”

140

He turned from the window then and looked at me straight on.

Frightened—I was, too—but determined. I respected him for that. And I respect myself, too.

I think.

“We’re going to make Zenith House into a profitable concern if we can,” he said, “and then we’re going to jam about nine gallons of black ink in Harlow Enders’s eye. I don’t know if that plant is really a modern-day version of Jack’s beanstalk or not, but if it is, we’re going to climb it and get the golden harp, the golden goose, and all the gold doubloons we can carry.

Agreed?”

I stuck out my hand. “Agreed, boss.”

He shook it. I haven’t had many fine moments before nine in the morning, at least not as an adult, but that was one of them.

“We’re also going to be careful,” he said. “Agreed there?”

“Agreed.” It’s only tonight, dear diary, that I realize what you’re left with if you take the a out of agreed. I would be telling less than the truth if I didn’t say that sort of haunts me.

We talked a little more. I wanted to go down and check on Zenith; Roger suggested we wait for Bill, Herb, and Sandra, then do it together.

LaShonda Evans came in before they did, complaining that the reception area smelled funny. Roger sympathized, suggested it might be mildew in the carpet, and authorized a petty-cash expenditure for a can of Glade, which can be purchased in the Smiler’s across the street. He also suggested that she leave the editors pretty much alone for the next couple of months; they were all going to be working hard, he said, trying to live up to the parent company’s expectations. He didn’t say “unrealistic expectations,” but some people can convey a great deal with no more than a certain tone of voice, and Roger is one of them.

“It’s my policy not to go any further than right here, Mr. Wade,” she said, standing in the door of Roger’s office and speaking with great dignity.

“You’re okay…and so are you, Mr. Kenton…most of the time…”

I thanked her. I’ve discovered that after your girl has dropped you for 141

some West Coast smoothie who probably knows Tai Chi and has been rolphed as est-ed to a nicety, even left-handed compliments sound pretty good.

“…but those other three are a little on the weird side.”

With that, LaShonda left. I imagine she had calls to make, a few of which might even have to do with the publishing business. Roger looked at me, amused, and further rumpled his disarranged hair. “She didn’t know what the smell was,” he said.

“I don’t think LaShonda spends a lot of time in the kitchen.”

“When you look like LaShonda, I doubt if you need to,” Roger said.

“The only time you smell garlic is when the waiter brings your Shrimp Mediterranean.”

“Meanwhile,” I said, “there’s Glade. And the garlic-smell will be gone before long, anyway. Unless, of course, you’re either a bloodhound or a supernatural houseplant.”

We looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing. Maybe just because Tina Barfield was dead and we were alive. Not very nice, I know, but the day brightened from that point on; that much, at least, I’m sure of.

Roger had left little notes on Herb’s, Sandra’s, and Bill’s desks. By nine-thirty we were all gathered in Roger’s office, which doubles as our editorial conference room. Roger began by saying that he thought both Herb and Sandra had been aided in their inspirations, and with no more preamble than that, he told them the story of our trip to Rhode Island. I helped as much as I could. We both tried to express how strange our visit to the greenhouse had been, how otherworldly, and I believe all three of them understood most of that. When it came to Norville Keen, however, I don’t think either Roger or I really got the point across.

Bill and Herb were sitting side by side on the floor, as they often do during our editorial conferences, drinking coffee, and I saw them exchange a glance of the kind in which eyeballs rolling heavenward play a crucial part.

I thought about trying to press the point, then didn’t. If I may misquote the wisdom of Norville Keen:“You can’t believe in a zombie unless you’ve seen that zombie.”

142

Roger finished the job by handing Bill that day’s B section of The New York Times. We waited as it made the rounds.

“Oh, poor woman,” Sandra said. She had dragged in her office chair and was sitting in it with her knees primly together. No sitting on the floor for Mr. and Mrs. Jackson’s little girl. “I never fly unless I have to. It’s much more dangerous than they let on.”

“This is crap,” Bill said. “I mean, I love you, Roger, but this really is crap. You’ve been under pressure—you too, John, especially since you got the gate from your girlfriend—and you guys’ve just…I don’t know…let your imaginations run away with you.”