The Wapshot Scandal (24 page)

“Talk to me, talk to me,” the old lady asked. “Please just say something, anything.”

Coverly turned and nodded to her, but his tongue was so swollen with fear that he could not make a sound. He worked it around desperately in his mouth to stir up some lubrication. The other passengers were still, and on they rocketed through the dark—sixty-five or seventy strangers, their noses pressed against the turmoil of death. What would be its mode? Fire? Should they, like the martyrs, inhale the flames to shorten the agony? Would they be truncated, beheaded, mutilated and scattered over three miles of farmland? Would they be ejaculated into the darkness and yet not lose consciousness during the dreadful fall to earth? Would they be drowned, and while drowning display their last talent for inhumanity in trampling one another at the flooding bulkheads? It was the darkness that gave him most pain. The shadow of a bridge or a building can fall across our spirit with all the weight of a piece of bad news, and it was the darkness that seemed to compromise his spirit. All he wanted then was to see some light, a patch of blue sky. A woman, sitting forward, began to sing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” It was a common church soprano, feminine, decent, raised once a week in the company of her neighbors. “E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,” she sang, “still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. . . .”

A man across the aisle took up the hymn, joined quickly by several others, and when Coverly remembered the words, he sang:

Though like a wanderer,
Weary and lone,
Darkness comes over me,
My rest a stone. . . .

Joe Burner and the old lady were singing, and those who didn’t know the words came in strong on the refrain. The bulkhead door opened, and there was the thief. He wore a felt hat and a black handkerchief tied over his face with holes cut for the eyes. It was, except for the felt hat, the ancient mask of the headsman. He wore black rubber gloves and carried a plastic wastebasket to collect their valuables. Coverly roared:

There let my way appear,
Steps into heaven,
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given. . . .

They sang more in rebelliousness than in piety; they sang because it was something to do. And merely in having found something to do they had confounded the claim that they were helpless. They had found themselves, and this accounted for the extraordinary force and volume of their voices. Coverly stripped off his wristwatch and dropped his wallet into the basket. Then the thief, with his black-gloved hands, lifted the briefcase out of Coverly’s lap. Coverly let out a groan of dismay and might have grabbed at the case had not Burner and the old lady turned on him faces so contorted with horror that he fell back into his seat. When the thief had robbed the last of them, he turned back to the bulkhead, staggering a little against the motion of the plane—a disadvantage that made his figure seem familiar and harmless. They sang:

Then with my waking thoughts,
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stormy griefs,
Altars I’ll raise. . . .

“Thank you for your cooperation,” said the public-address system. “We will make an unscheduled landing in West Franklin in about eleven minutes. Please fasten your seat belts and observe the no-smoking signal.”

The clouds outside the ports began to lighten, to turn from gray to white, and then they sailed free into the blue sky of late afternoon. The old lady dried her tears and smiled. To lessen the pain of his confusion Coverly suddenly concluded that the briefcase had contained an electric toothbrush and a pair of silk pajamas. Joe Burner made the sign of the cross. The plane was losing altitude rapidly, and then below them they could see the roofs of a city that seemed like the handiwork of a marvelously humble people going about useful tasks and raising their children in goodness and charity. The moment when they ceased to be airborne passed with a thump and a roar of the reverse jets, and out of the ports they could see that international wilderness that hedges airstrips. Scrub grass and weeds, a vegetable slum, struggled in the sandy bottom soil that formed the banks of an oily creek. Someone shouted, “There they
go
!” Two passengers opened the bulkhead. There were confused voices, and when someone asked for information, the complexity of human relationships so swiftly re-established itself that those who knew what was going on pridefully refused to communicate with those who didn’t and the first man into the forward cabin spoke to them with condescension. “If you’ll quiet down for a minute,” said he, “I’ll tell you what we know. We’ve released the crew and the captain has made radio contact with the police. The thieves got away. That’s all I can tell you now.”

Then faintly, faintly, they heard the sirens approaching over the airstrip. The first to come was a fire crew, who put a ladder up against the door and got it open. Next to come were the police, who told them they were all under arrest. “You’re going to be let off in lots of ten,” one of the policemen said. “You’re going to be questioned.” He was gruff, but they were magnanimous. They were alive, and no incivility could disturb them. The police then began to count them off in lots. The ladder of the fire truck was the only way of getting down from the plane, and the older passengers mounted this querulously, their faces working with pain. Those who waited seemed immersed in the passivity of some military process; seemed to suffer that suspense of discernment and responsibility that overtakes any line of soldiers. Coverly was No. 7 in the last lot. A gust of dusty wind blew against his clothing as he went down the ladder. A policeman took him by the arm, a touch he bitterly and instantly resented, and it was all he could do to keep from flinging the man’s arm off. He was put with his group into a closed police van with barred windows.

A policeman took him again by the arm when he left the van and again he had to struggle to control himself. What was this testiness of his flesh? he wondered. Why did he loathe this stranger’s touch? Rising before him was the Central Police Headquarters—a yellow-brick building with a few halfhearted architectural flourishes and a few declarations of innocent love written in chalk on the walls. The wind blew dust and papers around his feet. Inside he found himself in the alarming and dreary atmosphere of wrongdoing. It was a passage into a world to which he had been granted merely a squint—that area of violence he glimpsed when he spread newspapers on the porch floor before he painted the screens. Roslyn man shoots wife and five children. . . . Murdered child found in furnace. . . . They had all been here, and had left in the air a palpable smell of their bewilderment and dismay, their claims of innocence. He was led to an elevator and taken up six flights. The policeman said nothing. He was breathing heavily. Asthma? Coverly wondered. Excitement? Haste?

“Do you have asthma?” he asked.

“You answer the questions,” the policeman said.

He led Coverly down a corridor like the corridor in some depressing schoolhouse and put him in a room no bigger than a closet, where there was a wooden table, a chair, a glass of water and a questionnaire. The policeman shut the door, and Coverly sat down and looked at the questions.

Are you the head of a household? he was asked. Are you divorced? Widowed? Separated? How many television sets do you own? How many cars? Do you have a current passport? How often do you take a bath? Are you a college graduate? High school? Grammar school? Do you know the meaning of “marsupial”; “seditious”; “recondite”; “dialectical materialism”? Is your house heated by oil? Gas? Coal? How many rooms? If you were forced to debase the American flag or the Holy Bible, what would be your choice? Are you in favor of the federal income tax? Do you believe in the International Communist Conspiracy? Do you love your mother? Are you afraid of lightning? Are you for the continuation of atmospheric testing? Do you have a savings account? Checking account? What is your total indebtedness? Do you own a mortgage? If you are a man, would you classify your sexual organs as being size 1, 2, 3 or 4? What is your religious affiliation? Do you believe John Foster Dulles is in Heaven? Hell? Limbo? Do you often entertain? Are you often entertained? Do you consider yourself to be liked? Well liked? Popular? Are the following men living or dead: John Maynard Keynes. Norman Vincent Peale. Karl Marx. Oscar Wilde. Jack Dempsey. Do you say your prayers each night? . . .

Coverly attacked these questions—and there were thousands of them—with the intentness of a guilty sinner. He had given his watch to the thief, and had no idea of how long it took him to fill out the questionnaire. When he was done, he shouted, “Hullo. I’m finished. Let me out of here.” He tried the door and found it open. The corridor was empty. It was night, and the window at the end of the hall showed a dark sky. He carried his questionnaire to the elevator and rang. As he stepped out of the elevator on the street floor, he saw a policeman sitting at a desk. “I lost something very valuable, very important,” Coverly said.

“That’s what they all say,” the policeman said.

“What do I do now?” asked Coverly. “I’ve answered all the questions. What do I do now?”

“Go home,” the policeman said. “I suppose you want some money?”

“I do,” Coverly said.

“You’re all getting a hundred from the insurance company,” the policeman said. “You can put in a claim later if you’ve lost more.” He counted out ten ten-dollar bills and looked at his watch. “The Chicago train comes through in about twenty minutes. There’s a cab stand at the corner. I don’t suppose you’ll want to fly again for a while. None of the others did.”

“Have they all finished?” Coverly asked.

“We’re holding a few,” the man said.

“Well, thank you,” Coverly said, and walked out of the building into a dark street in the town of West Franklin, feeling in its dust, heat, distant noise and the anonymity of its colored lights the essence of his loneliness. There was a newsstand at the corner, and a cab parked there. He bought a paper. “Disqualified Pilot Robs Jet In Midair,” he read. “A Great Plane Robbery took place at 4:16 this afternoon over the Rockies . . .” He got into the cab and said, “You know, I was in that plane robbery this afternoon.”

“You’re the sixth fare who’s told me that,” the driver said. “Where to?”

“The station,” Coverly said.

CHAPTER XX

It was late the next afternoon when Coverly finally made his way from Chicago back to Talifer. He went to Cameron’s office at once but he was kept waiting nearly an hour. Now and then he could hear the old man’s voice, through the closed door, raised in anger. “You’ll never get a Goddamned man on the Goddamned moon,” he was shouting. When Coverly was finally let in, Cameron was alone. “I’ve lost your briefcase,” Coverly said.

“Oh, yes,” the doctor said. He smiled his unfortunate smile. Then it was a toothbrush and some pajamas, Coverly thought. It was nothing, after all!

“There was a robbery on the plane coming West,” Coverly said.

“I don’t understand,” Cameron said. The light of his smile was undiminished.

“I have a newspaper here,” Coverly said. He showed Cameron the paper he had bought in West Franklin. “They took everything. Our watches, wallets, your briefcase.”

“Who took it?” Cameron asked. His smile seemed to brighten.

“The thieves, the robbers. I suppose you might call them pirates.”

“Where did they take it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Cameron left his desk and went to the window, putting his back to Coverly. Was he laughing? Coverly thought so. He had duped the enemy. The briefcase had been empty! Then Coverly saw that he was not laughing at all. These were the painful convulsions of bewilderment and misery; but what did he cry for? His reputation, his absent-mindedness, his position; for the world itself that he could see outside his window, the ruined farm and the gantry line? Coverly had no means of consoling him and stood in a keen agony of his own, watching Cameron, who seemed then small and old, racked by these uncontrollable muscular spasms. “I’m sorry, sir,” Coverly said. “Get the hell out of here,” Cameron muttered and Coverly left.

It was closing time and the bus he took home was crowded. He tried to judge himself along traditional lines. Had he refused to yield up the briefcase he might have wrecked the plane and killed them all; but mightn’t this have been for the best? What could he anticipate or what could he look back upon with any calm? When he went back to work in the morning what office would he report to? What had Cameron wanted of him in the first place? What sense could he make of the old man sobbing at his window? Would Betsey, when he got home, be watching TV? Would his little son be in tears? Would there be any supper? Some vision of St. Botolphs in the light of a summer evening appeared to him. It was that hour when the housewives called their children in for supper with those small bells that used to be used for summoning servants to the table. Silver or not, they all had a silvery note and Coverly recalled this silvery ringing now from all the back stoops of Boat Street and River Street, calling children in from the banks of the river.

His own place was brightly lighted. Betsey ran into his arms when he entered the house. “I just been hoping and praying, sweetie, that you’d get home for supper,” she said, “and now my prayers are answered, my prayers are answered. We’ve been asked out to dinner!” Coverly could not work this in with anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours and he settled for a mode of emotional and intellectual improvisation. He was tired but it would have been cruel to frustrate Betsey’s only invitation. He kissed his son, tossed him into the air a few times and made a strong drink. “This nice woman,” Betsey said, “her name is Winifred Brinkley, well, she came to the house collecting money for the Heart Drive and I told her, I just told her that I thought this was the lonesomest place on the face of the earth. I just didn’t care who knew it. She then told me she thought it was lonesome too and that wouldn’t we like to come to a little dinner party at her house tonight. So then I told her you were in Atlantic City and I didn’t know when you would return but I just prayed and prayed that you’d get back in time and here you are!”