Anyway, here is this enchanting memo — between its lines I hear a man whose nerve is temporarily shot, a man who might be capable of facing a lion but who now cannot even look at a mouse; a man who is, in consequence, shrieking “Eeeek! Get rid of it! Get rid of it!” and swatting at it with the handiest broom, which in dis case jus happen t’be Riddley, who dus’ de awfishes an wipe de windows an delivah de mail. Yassuh, Mist Kenton, I git rid of it fo you! I sholy goan get rid of dat hoodoo Solrac woman’s package if she sen one!
Maybe.
On the other hand, maybe John Kenton should have to face up to the consequences of his own actions — swat his own mouse. After all, if you don’t swat your own, maybe you never really know what a harmless little thing a mouse is…and is it not possible that Kenton’s useful days as an editor may be over if he cannot stare down such occasional crazies as Carlos “Roberta” Detweiller?
I shall ponder the matter. I think there is a very good chance no package will come, but I’ll ponder it all the same.
2/27/81
Something from the mysterious “Roberta Solrac” actually came today! I didn’t know whether to be amused or disgusted by my own reaction, which was staring, elemental gut-terror followed by an almost insane urge to put the thing down the incinerator, exactly as Kenton’s note had instructed. The physicality of my reaction as soon as my eye fell on the return address and connected the name there with Kenton’s memo was striking. I had a sudden spasm of shudders. Goosebumps raced up my back. I heard a clear, ringing tone in my ears, and I could feel the hair stiffening on my head. This symphony of physiological atavism lasted no more than five seconds and then it subsided — but it left me as shaken as a sudden deep lance of pain in the area of the heart. Floyd would sneer and call it “a nigger reaction,” but it was no such thing. It was a human reaction. Not to the thing itself — the contents of the package were something of an anticlimax after all the sound and fury — but, I am convinced, to the hands which placed the lid on the small white cardboard box in which the plant came; the hands which tied twine around that box and then cut a brown paper shopping bag in which to wrap the box for mailing, the hands which taped and labelled and carried. Detweiller’s hands.
Am I speaking of telepathy? Yes…and no. It might be fairer to say that I am speaking of a kind of passive psychokinesis. Dogs shy away from people with cancer; they smell it on them. So, at least, claims my dear old Aunt Olympia. In the same way I smelled Detweiller all over that box, and now I understand Kenton’s upset better and have a good deal more sympathy for him. I think Carlos Detweiller must be dangerously insane…but the plant itself is no deadly nightshade or belladonna or Adder Toadstool (although it may have been any or all of those things in Detweiller’s feverish mind, I suppose). It’s only a very small and very tired-looking common ivy in a red clay pot.
If not for the “nigger reaction” (Floyd Walker) — or the “human reaction” (his brother Riddley) — I might really have dumped the thing…but after that fit of the shakes, it seemed to me I had to go through with opening the package or deem myself less a man. I did so, in spite of any number of gruesome images — high explosive rigged to special pressure-tapes, noxious floods of black widow spiders, a litter of baby copperheads. And there it was, just a small ivy-plant with yellow-edged leaves (four of them) nodding from one tired, sagging stem. The soil itself is waxy brown. It smells swampy and unpleasant.
There was a little plastic sign stuck in the earth which read:
HI!
MY NAME IS ZENITH
I AM A GIFT TO JOHN
FROM ROBERTA
It was that flash of fear which drove me to open the package. Similarly, it’s that same flash which has decided me against making sure that Kenton gets it after all, which would have been easy enough to do (“Dat plant, Mist Kenton? Oh, drat! I g’iss I fo’got whatchoo said. I am de mos f’gitten’est man!”). Let the ripples end; let him forget Detweiller, if that’s what he wants. I’ve put Zenith the Common Ivy on a shelf in my janitorial-cum- mailroom cubicle — a shelf well above Kenton’s eye-level (not that he stops in much anyway, unlike Gelb with his dice fixation). I’ll keep it until it dies, and then I really will dump it down the incinerator chute. That will be the end of Detweiller fo sho.
Got fifty pages done on the novel over the weekend.
Gelb now owes me $75.40.
From The New York Post, page 1, March 4, 1981:
INSANE GENERAL ESCAPES OAK COVE ASYLUM, KILLS THREE!!
(Special to the Post) Major General (ret.) Anthony R. Hecksler, known to the commandos and partisans who followed him across France during World War II as “Iron-Guts” Hecksler, escaped from Oak Cove Asylum late last night, stabbing two orderlies and a nurse to death in his bid for freedom.
General Hecksler was remanded to Oak Cove in the small upstate town of Cutlersville twenty-seven months ago, following his acquittal, by reason of insanity, on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and assault with intent to kill. His victim was Albany bus driver Herman T. Schneur, whom Hecksler claimed in a signed statement to be “one of the twelve North American foremen of the antichrist.”
The Oak Cove dead have been identified as Norman Ableson, twenty-six; John Piet, forty; and Alicia Penbroke, thirty-four.
State Police Lieutenant Arthur P. Ford was surprisingly gloomy when asked if he expected to recapture General Hecksler quickly. “We hope for a quick arrest, naturally,” he said, “but this is a man who trained guerilla units in World War II and in Korea, and who was consulted on more than one occasion by General Westmoreland in Viet Nam. He’s seventy-two now, but still strong and amazingly agile, as his escape from Oak Cove shows.”
Ford indicated he was referring to Hecksler’s probable method of escape — a leap from a second floor window in the Oak Cove Administration Wing to the garden below (see photographs on pages 2, 3, and Center Section).
Ford went on to caution everyone within the immediate area to be on the lookout for the mad General, whom he described as “extremely clever, extremely dangerous, and extremely paranoid.”
In a brief press interview, Ellen K. Moors, the doctor in charge of Hecksler’s case, agreed. “He had a great many enemies,” she said, “or so he imagined. His paranoid delusions were extremely complex, but he never lost track of the score. He was, in his way, a model inmate…but he never lost track of the score.”
A source close to the investigation says Hecksler may have stabbed Ableson, Piet, and Pembroke to death with a pair of barber’s shears. The source told the Post that there was no outcry; all three were stabbed in the throat, commando-style.
(Related story P. 12)
From the journals of Riddley Walker
3/5/81
What a difference a day makes!
Yesterday Herb Porter was his usual self — fat, slovenly, smoking a cigar as he stood by the water-cooler, explaining to Kenton and Gelb how the great train of the world would run if he, Herbert Porter, were the engineer. The man is a walking Reader’s Digest of rabbit-punch solutions, a compendium of declarative answers which are delivered amid the effluvium of cigar smoke and exquisitely bad breath. Close the borders and keep out the spies and wetbacks! End abortion on demand! Build more prisons! Upgrade possession of marijuana to a felony once again! Sell biochemical stocks! Buy cable-TV issues!
He is, in his way — or was, until today — a wonderful man: rounded and perfect in his assurances, plated with prejudices, caprisoned about with cant, and possessed of just enough native wit to hold a job in a place like this, Porter is an evocation of the Great American Median. Even his occasional surreptitious expeditions into Sandra Jackson’s office to sniff the seat of her chair please me — an endearing little loophole in the walking castle of complacency that is Massa Po’tuh.
Oh, but today! What a different Herbert Porter crept into my janitorial cubbyhole today! The complacent, ruddy face had become pallid and trembling. The blue eyes shifted so regularly from side to side that Porter looked like a man watching a tennis match even when he was trying to stare right at me. His lips were so shiny with
