The Fourth Hand

been told.

The twenty-four-hour international channel had a summer intern program—in lieu of a salary, college kids were promised an “authentic experience.” But even for free, couldn’t the interns manage to do more than collect these stories of stupid and funny deaths? Somewhere down south, a young soldier had died of injuries sustained in a three-story fall; he had been engaged in a spitting contest at the time. (A true story.) A British farmer’s wife had been charged by sheep and driven off a cliff in the north of England. (Also true.)

The all-news network had long indulged a collegiate sense of humor, which was synonymous with a collegiate sense of death. In short, no context. Life was a joke; death was the final gag. In meeting after meeting, Wallingford could imagine Wharton or Sabina saying: “Let the lion guy do it.”

As for what better news Wallingford wanted to hear from Mary Shanahan, it was simply that she wasn’t pregnant. For that news, or its opposite, Wallingford understood that he would have to wait.

He wasn’t good at waiting, which in this case produced some good results. He decided to inquire about other jobs in journalism. People said that the so-called educational network (they meant PBS) was boring, but—especially when it comes to the news—boring isn’t the worst thing you can be.

The PBS affiliate for Green Bay was in Madison, Wisconsin, where the university was. Wallingford wrote to Wisconsin Public Television and told them what he had in mind—he wanted to create a news-analysis show. He proposed examining the lack of context in the news that was reported, especially on television. He said he would demonstrate that often there was more interesting news behind the news; and that the news that was reported was not necessarily the news that should have been reported.

Wallingford wrote: “It takes time to develop a complex or complicated story; what works best on TV are stories that don’t take a lot of time. Disasters are not only sensational—they happen immediately. Especially on television, immediacy works best. I mean ‘best’ from a marketing point of view, which is not necessarily good for the news.”

He sent his curriculum vitae and a similar proposal for a news-analysis show to the public-television stations in Milwaukee and St. Paul, as well as the two publictelevision stations in Chicago. But why did he focus on the Midwest, when Mrs. Clausen had said that she would live anywhere with him— if she chose to live with him at all?

He had taped the photo of her and little Otto to the mirror in his office dressing room. When Mary Shanahan saw it, she looked closely at both the child and his mother, but more closely at Doris, and cattily observed: “Nice mustache.”

It was true that Doris Clausen had the faintest, softest down on her upper lip. Wallingford was indignant that Mary had called this super-soft place a mustache!

Because of his own warped sensibilities, and his overfamiliarity with a certain kind of New Yorker, Patrick decided that Doris Clausen should not be moved too far from Wisconsin. There was something about the Midwest in her that Wallingford loved.

If Mrs. Clausen moved to New York, one of those newsroom women would persuade her to get a wax job on her upper lip! Something that Patrick adored about Doris would be lost. Therefore, Wallingford wrote only to a very few PBS

affiliates in the Midwest; he stayed as close to Green Bay as he could. While he was at it, he didn’t stop with noncommercial television stations. The only radio he ever listened to was public radio. He loved NPR, and there were NPR stations everywhere. There were two in Green Bay and two in Madison; he sent his proposal for a news- analysis show to all four of them, in addition to NPR

affiliates in Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Paul. (There was even an NPR station in Appleton, Wisconsin, Doris Clausen’s hometown, but Patrick resisted applying for a job there.)

As August came and went—it was now nearly gone—Wallingford had another idea. All the Big Ten universities, or most of them, had to have graduate programs in journalism. The Medill School of Journalism, at Northwestern, was famous. He sent his proposal for a news-analysis course there, as well as to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Wallingford was on a roll about the unreported context of the news. He ranted, but effectively, on how trivializing to the real news the news that was reported had become. It was not only his subject; Patrick Wallingford was his argument’s bestknown example. Who better than the lion guy to address the sensationalizing of petty sorrows, while the underlying context, which was the terminal illness of the world, remained unrevealed?

And the best way to lose a job was not to wait to be fired. Wasn’t the best way to be offered another job and then quit ? Wallingford was overlooking the fact that, if they fired him, they would have to renegotiate the remainder of his contract. Regardless, it surprised Mary Shanahan when Patrick popped his head— just his head—into her office and cheerfully said to her: “Okay. I accept.”

“Accept what, Pat?”

“Two years, same salary, occasional reporting from the field—per my approval of the field assignment, of course. I accept.”

“You do ?”

“Have a nice day, Mary,” Patrick told her.

Just let them try to find a field assignment he’d accept! Wallingford not only intended to make them fire him; he fully expected to have a new job lined up and waiting for him when they pulled the fucking trigger. (And to think he’d once had no capacity for long-range scheming.)

They didn’t wait long to suggest the next field assignment. You could just see them thinking: How could the lion guy resist this one? They wanted Wallingford to go to Jerusalem. Talk about disaster-man territory! Journalists love Jerusalem—no shortage of the bizarre-as-commonplace there.

There’d been a double car bombing. At around 5:30P.M. Israeli time on Sunday, September 5, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing the terrorists who were transporting the bombs to their designated targets. The bombs exploded because the terrorists had set them on daylight-saving time; three weeks before, Israel had prematurely switched to standard time. The terrorists, who must have assembled the bombs in a Palestinian-controlled area, were the victims of the Palestinians refusing to accept what they called “Zionist time.” The drivers of the cars carrying the bombs had changed their watches, but not the bombs, to Israeli time.

While the all-news network found it funny that such self-serious madmen had been detonated by their own dumb mistake, Wallingford did not. The madmen may have deserved to die, but terrorism in Israel was no joke; it trivialized the gravity of the tensions in that country to call this klutzy accident news. More people would die in other car bombings, which wouldn’t be funny. And once again the context of the story was missing—that is, why the Israelis had switched from daylight-saving to standard time prematurely.

The change had been intended to accommodate the period of penitential prayers. The Selihoth (literally, pardons) are prayers for forgiveness; the prayer-poems of repentance are a continuation of the Psalms. (The suffering of Israel in the various lands of the Dispersion is their principal theme.) These prayers have been incorporated into the liturgy to be recited on special occasions, and on the days preceding Rosh Hashanah; they give utterance to the feelings of the worshiper who has repented and now pleads for mercy.

While in Israel the time of day had been changed to accommodate these prayers of atonement, the enemies of the Jews had nonetheless conspired to kill them. That was the context, which made the double car bombing more than a comedy of errors; it was not a comedy at all. In Jerusalem, this was an almost ordinary vignette, both recalling and foreshadowing a tableau of bombings. But to Mary and the all-news network, it was a tale of terrorists getting their just deserts—nothing more.

“You must want me to turn this down. Is that it, Mary?” Patrick asked. “And if I turn down enough items like these, then you can fire me with impunity.”

“We thought it was an interesting story. Right up your alley,” was all Mary would say.

He was burning bridges faster than they could build new ones; it was an exciting but unresolved time. When he wasn’t actively engaged in trying to lose his job, he was reading The English Patient and dreaming of Doris Clausen. Surely she would have been enchanted, as he was, by Almasy’s inquiring of Madox about “the name of that hollow at the base of a woman’s neck.” Almasy asks: “What is it, does it have an official name?” To which Madox mutters, “Pull yourself together.” Later, pointing his finger at a spot near his own Adam’s