of terror and dried excrement on the buttocks was there, also, and if you wanted to think hard on it you could fill your lungs and catch the sweet-sour gray smell of death.
The Senator shook hands cheerfully from bed to bed, and each time he found a man from Texas he made several banal remarks while the cameras whirred away. A few of the men were bored or irritated at seeing another politician, but the majority of them grinned with their boyish, old men’s faces, propped themselves up on their elbows with cigarettes between their fingers, and listened to the Senator’s thanks about the job they were doing. Only one time did he have trouble, and that was with a Negro Marine who’d had an arm amputated at the shoulder. The Negro’s eyes were bloodshot, and I saw a bottle of paregoric sticking out from under his pillow.
“Don’t thank me for nothing,
The cameras stopped whirring, and the Senator smiled and walked to the next bed as though the Negro and his anger were there only as the result of some chance accident not worth considering seriously. Then the cameras started working again, the two newsmen were back to their coverage, and the Marine pulled out his bottle of paregoric and unscrewed the cap by flipping it around with one thumb. His bloodshot eyes continued to stare into the Senator’s back.
At the end of each ward the Senator made a speech, and I wondered how many times he had made it in the same wards during World War II and the Korean War. He had probably changed some of the language to suit the particular cause and geographic conquest involved, but the content must have been the same: The people at home support you boys. We’re proud of the American fighting man and the sacrifices he’s made to defend democracy against Communist aggression. You’ve taken up the standard that can only be held by the brave, and we’re not going to let anyone dishonor that standard. It’s been bought at too dear a price…
And on and on.
As I watched him I remembered sitting in a similar ward in 1953 after the last pieces of splintered lead had been removed from my legs, and listening to a state representative make almost the same speech. I didn’t remember his name, or even what he looked like, but he and the Senator were much alike, because in the intense emotional moment of their delivery they believed they had fought the same battles as the men lying before them, felt the same aching lung-rushing gasp when they were hit, bled into the same dark soil, and had fallen through the same endless morphine deliriums in a battalion aid station.
But the Senator had one better. After all the hackneyed patriotic justifications for losing part of one’s life, he outdid himself:
“I bet you boys aren’t burning your draft cards!”
And they replied in unison, one hundred strong:
“NO SIR!”
The Senator went through the doorway with the three hospital administrators, who all the time had been smiling as though they were showing off a nursery of hothouse plants, and one of the newsmen turned his camera on me.
“Get that goddamn thing out of my face,” I said.
He didn’t hear me over the electric noise of his machine, or he didn’t believe what he’d heard, and he kept the lens pointed at the center of my forehead.
“I mean it, pal. I’ll break it against the wall.”
He lowered his camera slowly with his mouth partly open and stared at me. He didn’t know what he had done wrong, and all the reasons for his presence there in the hospital were evaporating before him. I don’t know what my face looked like then, with the cut on my temple and my slightly swollen eye, but evidently it was enough to make a graduate of the Texas University School of Journalism wince. He dropped his eyes to the camera and began adjusting the lens as though the light had changed in the last ten seconds.
“I had a car accident this week and I don’t want any of the guys at the country club thinking my wife hit me in the head with a shoe,” I said. I laughed and touched him on the arm.
He smiled, and I saw that his pasteboard frame of reference was secure again. He walked into the next ward after the Senator, and I thought, I hope that thirty-thousand-dollar house in the Fort Worth suburbs will be worth it all, buddy.
Later, back in the Cadillac, with the sun steaming off the hood, I poured a half glass of straight bourbon and took two deep swallows. The yellow haze outside was worse now, and the air-conditioning vents were dripping with moisture.
“That Negro soldier should be brought to the attention of his commanding officer,” Williams said.
“He was a Marine,” I said.
“Regardless, there’s no excuse for a remark like that,” he said.
So you’re a propriety man as well, I thought.
“It’s nothing,” the Senator said. “His attitudes will change back to normal with time. I’ve seen many others like him.”
“I didn’t like it,” Williams said.
“Maybe he doesn’t care to be part of the science of prosthesis,” I said. “Provided they can fit something on that stub.”
Williams looked at me steadily with his opaque, pale face. For just a second his fingertips ticked on his thigh. I knew that if I could have looked into his eyes I would have seen flames and grotesque mouths wide with silent screams.
“Do you like that brand of bourbon, Mr. Holland? I’d like to send you a case of it,” he said.
“Thanks. I’m a Jack Daniel’s man myself, and I get it on order straight from Lynchburg.”
“You must have a very good relationship with the whiskey manufacturers, then.”
I smoked a cigar and finished my drink in silence while we moved through the late traffic toward the downtown district. When I noticed that Williams was irritated by the smoke I made a point of leaving the cigar butt only partly extinguished in the ashtray. Originally, the Senator had planned for the three of us to have dinner together, one of those charcoal steak and white linen and pleasant conversation affairs that the Senator was fond of; but now it was understood between us that Williams should be dropped off at the Hilton, where he kept a permanent suite.
He stepped out of the car onto the sidewalk and bent over to shake hands with me through the open door. In the hot air there was a tinge of his perspiration mixed with the scent of talcum and cologne. The shadow of the building made his skin look synthetic and dead. His sunglasses tipped forward a moment, and I caught a flash of color like burned iron.
“Another time, Mr. Holland.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
We drove to the airport and I waited for the Senator to begin his subtle dissection. I was even looking forward to it. I felt the whiskey in my head now, and I would have liked an extension of last week’s tennis match. But he surprised me completely. His attack came down an entirely different street, and I realized then that he probably disliked Williams even more than I did, although for different reasons.
“You weren’t in a car accident last week, Hack. You were put in jail with several members of that Mexican farm union.”
I had to wait a moment on that one.
“The sheriff could have charged you with attempted assault on a law officer.”
“Your office reaches much farther than I thought, Senator.”
“You might also know that I made sure the story wouldn’t reach the wire services.”
“As a longtime friend of our family you probably also know that I’ve had other adventures of this sort.”
“Another one like it could end your career in Texas.”
“I don’t think either one of us believes that, Senator.”
“I’m not talking about a drunken escapade. If you involve yourself with a radical movement, you’ll find yourself on the ticket as an independent. The party won’t support you. I don’t think your father would enjoy the idea of your associating yourself with people who are trying to destroy our society, either.”
He was after the vulnerable parts now.
“It always seemed to me that my father’s work with the New Deal was considered pretty radical at the time,” I said. “However, I don’t have any connection with the United Farm Workers. I was trying to help a friend
