A Flash of Green (36 page)

“Maybe … a little.”

“So let’s look at the facts. I think these figures are close. There are seventeen hundred and sixty-one daily newspapers in this country. Sixty-one of them are in cities with more than one newspaper. The other seventeen hundred are monopoly papers. The
Record-Journal
is a monopoly paper. Now here is the crazy thing about a monopoly paper. It is the only form of monopoly not subject to regulation. Regulation would be interference with the freedom of the press. The A.N.P.A. would never let that happen. So, in seventeen hundred cities of America, including this one, the publisher decides exactly what he will give the public. We present the cheapest, dullest possible coverage of national and international news, and all the bargain syndicate items. In contrast, our local news coverage is maybe a little better than average. But the publishers—Ben Killian included—look on news as a tiresome but necessary evil, and they resent the public for expecting it. It’s the only game in town, Kat, and its main, basic, primary, unchangeable purpose is to sell advertising and make money. Follow me?”

“Yes,” she said hesitantly.

“Actually this is a better paper than the average, because Ben Killian doesn’t have any particularly strong opinions. Our political stance is conservative Democrat on a local level, Republican on national issues, which precisely reflects the point of view of the advertisers. Suppose, as is true in many unhappy areas, Ben Killian was a confirmed John Bircher, a witch-hunter, an oppressor of every variety of liberal thought and viewpoint. Then, with no regulatory checkrein, no holds barred, he could make happen here what has been happening in, for example, Boulder, Colorado. He could have an outraged citizenship, indomitably ignorant, purging their community of everything which did not fit their standards of mediocrity. But Ben and Borklund have merely the simple touching desire to make the maximum amount of money with the minimum fuss. To do this, the paper must go along with the viewpoints of the advertisers. So, if Ben showed any sign of deviation, it is natural that the advertisers would arrange to move against him in the direct way of cutting their budgets for newspaper advertising as much as they dare. Because they can’t cut it completely and survive themselves, they move against him in other ways, through the pressure they can generate through their indirect control of the agencies of local government. Clear?”

“It sounds so … cut and dried.”

“It is. The only thing about that zoning thing which surprises me is that Ben hesitated so long they had to use it. And there’s nothing there I can use, certainly. I work for Ben Killian. I am an agent of his policy. What if I want to expose this whole mess? What do I do? Go on the air? He owns thirty percent of WKPC. And the men who own WEVT in the south county are certainly not interested in giving me a platform. I can’t use Ben’s paper to expose him. I couldn’t get it past Borklund. Can I quit and go
someplace else and expose the whole conspiracy? The next town I go to would have another monopoly publisher, and a readership vastly uninterested in what happens in Palm County. Do I start my own paper here? I don’t have the million dollars required, and if I did have it and did get a paper going, neither paper would be profitable because the shopping area is too small. Do I still sound sophomoric?”

“No, Jimmy.”

“So it’s a little late for me to change professions, Kat. I have to go right on living with this lady I thought was so exciting. I’m an assistant advertising salesman. If I call myself a pimp, I sound too dramatically cynical, I guess. Put it this way. She isn’t what I thought she was, but I’m used to living with her now. I’m good at what I have to do. If somebody else did it, it wouldn’t be done as well, and the lady would be that much worse off. But don’t ask for crusades, Kat. No lance, no armor, no horse. We come out strongly in favor of motherhood once a year, in May. We’re in favor of peace, education, public health, the right to work, church-going, weak unions, lower taxes …”

“And filling Grassy Bay.”

“You have the picture.”

“If you’d
tried
to depress me, I don’t think you could have done a better job, darn it.”

“You won’t be really depressed until you see tomorrow’s paper.”

“I can hardly wait. The thing that gets me, Jimmy, there’s just no way to … to present the other side of this to the people.”

“Not when the other team controls the communications.”

“I hear the kids coming. Thanks for the lecture, Jimmy.”

“I should have given it to you a long time ago. But I guess I wanted your good opinion. I wanted you to think of me as the fearless journalist, fighting for truth and beauty.”

“I’ll retain that delusion anyhow, Jimmy, because … well, I know you would if you could.”

After Wing had finished talking with Kat, he had a cautious euphoria which he could not identify. He knew he should dress quickly and take his copy into town, but he did not want to disturb this feeling of well-being until he could be certain what caused it. He stretched out on his bed, naked, resting the icy ring of the beer can against his belly. At first he thought it was due entirely to Kat and to his awareness of her. She had said she was stretched out across her bed. He had visualized her in a manner he knew was inaccurate. He had made it night at her house, and put a weak lamp beyond her, and dressed her in a diaphanous hip-length nightgown, ribboned at her throat, her hair ruffled, her face softened by desire as she spoke to him.…

Like in high school, he thought irritably. Sex visions. All the hot swarming preludes to masturbation. You’re supposed to be grown up, lover boy. You are supposed to have arrived at that male adult condition which has learned that strangers are never very good in bed together, and that the similarities shared by all women are of more moment than the differences between them.

No, it was not the familiar compulsion which had given him these moments of something which felt like a cousin to happiness. He felt as if he had been released, freed of some weight which had been pressing against him. He began to wonder, with increasing conviction, if it was merely the result of having expressed his own attitude toward his work. He realized he had never talked in precisely that way to anyone, about what he felt and believed. He had tried to tell Gloria, but she had thought, each time, he was just in a bad mood and needed cheering up. He had argued it with Brian Haas, but Brian’s disenchantment was so
much more thorough than his own that he generally found himself defending a position he could not believe.

In stating his position to Katherine Hubble, he had felt as though he were striking a pose with her, presenting a faulty image of himself, but the pretense had been the reality he had been suppressing. And he had experienced the familiar phenomenon of self-illumination which comes through turning thoughts into words.

But as he tried to find the reasons for his sense of well-being, it had faded to where it was too faint to identify. His head was propped up on two pillows. He looked down along his body, still lean, but softened by the sedentary years, looked at the ruff of tan-blond hair on his chest, the slight bulge of pallid belly with the dimpled umbilical knot, at the nested peduncular sex, at the slight sheen of perspiration on the long flaccid legs. My unloved engine, he thought, idling along, working its gas-bag lungs, clenching its heart in resting rhythm, burning what it wants and making rubbish of the rest—while way up here, behind the wet lenses to see with, behind the fleshy bulge of the air intake, and behind that dual-purpose orifice which can make howling and grunting sounds and also grind matter small enough to go down the pipes, the gray jelly makes its pictures, its plans, its excuses and confusions, arrogantly ignoring its dependence on the engine which carries it about, ignoring all the dutiful, clever combustions and hydraulics, the thermostats and maintenance and repair procedures, the churning and pulsating and secreting which never stop until it all stops. Perhaps then, as the last bright picture fades, the final emotion sustained by the bone-cased jelly is indignation that the faithless engine has quit. Perhaps its last word is W
AIT
!

The phone rang. It was Harmon at the paper saying, “Borklund says to say he’s wondering about the Palmland stuff.”

“I’m just now tying it to the pigeon.”

“Huh?”

“Tell J.J. it’s Pulitzer material.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve done it as a long dialogue between an empty bay and a sexy bulldozer.”

“Chrissake, Wing, what he wants to know is when are you bringing it in here?”

“Tell him to look up. I’m probably standing in front of him right now.”

“Huh?”

Wing hung up, dressed quickly and headed for the mainland.

Eighteen

WHEN JIMMY WING PARKED
in the field beside Elmo’s Lemon Ridge home a little before eleven there were at least forty cars in the area. As he walked through the gate he could hear music that was almost drowned by the interwoven, incomprehensible texture of loud conversations, whoops, laughter. When he could see the pool area from the path, he saw that it was packed with people, most of them standing, most of them in large conversational groups. All the landscape, pool and apron lights were on. There were more people in the workshop, where the bar was set up. There was no uniformity of dress. A half dozen people were swimming. As he walked slowly down toward the screen doors, he saw women in shorts and halters talking to women in strapless cocktail dresses.

He stopped in the shadows to look at the composition of the group. He picked out the Palmland Development people, and many of the younger faces in the Palm County Democratic Party.
He saw some of the wheels of the Palm County Chamber of Commerce, and a mixed bag of businessmen, those who might be the ones to benefit most quickly from a project to build eight hundred upper-income homes. One couple was leaving. The woman looked wan, tottering and drunk, and the man looked both concerned and angry. It was evident the party had been in process for a long time, and was showing exceptional vitality.

He looked for Elmo and did not see him. He saw Dellie Bliss on the far side of the pool. As he worked his way slowly through the throng, nodding to friends, acknowledging greetings, he saw Dellie leave the people she had been talking to. He hurried and caught up with her.

“Well, hi, Jimmy!” she said.

“Hello, Dellie. Pretty festive around here?”

“Isn’t it a mess? It sort of just grew. That’s the kind of parties you find around
this
house. I was just going to check and see if I ought to have more food brought down from the house, but I can tell you there isn’t much left up there. If you’re looking for Elmo, you come with me. I think he’s in by the bar.”

Inside the workshop the music was louder than the voices. Inside a circle of spectators, Buck Flake was proving he could lie down on the floor and get up again without spilling any of the full drink balanced on his forehead.

Elmo saw Wing and left the circle and came over to him. They moved out of the doorway to talk. “How much is the paper doing?”

“Headline and half of page one, half of page two, one whole page of pictures and about eight little specials scattered around.”

“Fine! It’s been big on the radio all day too.”

“What’s the party? Premature celebration?”

“Keep the voice way down, Jimmy boy. Way down. Get a
drink. You’re way behind. This’ll start to thin out some. You circulate and listen to the happy folk. We’ll talk a little later on.”

Jimmy carried a stiff drink out toward the pool. He admired a tanned and lovely back and, as the woman turned, he realized it was Eloise Cable, in a deceptively simple sun-back dress. She was standing with Leroy Shannard, Martin Cable and young Connie Merry, the wife of the county attorney. Jimmy joined the small group. They all greeted him.

Martin said, “Tell me, Jimmy. You were there. Did I give the impression the bank was already behind this Palmland project?”

“That’s not the way I reported it. There were a lot of ifs and whereases. Anyhow, Borklund got a copy of your statement and it’s running on page three, I think, word for word.”

“People seem unable to listen,” Martin said gloomily. “It’s a delicate situation. Palmland has absolutely nothing worth loaning money on until they have title to the bay bottom.”

“How about the sterling character of the participants?” Leroy asked lazily.

“Oh, each of you could borrow a certain amount on signature alone, of course,” Martin said humorlessly, “but it wouldn’t be nearly enough.”

“You worry too much, dear,” Eloise said.

“I couldn’t go around obligating the bank like that,” Martin said.

“We know that,” Leroy said. “Everybody understands. And we appreciate your making that statement for us.”

“Martin was glad to do it,” Eloise said. She smiled at Leroy. Jimmy could see no meaningful emphasis in her smile or her expression. She looked hearty, handsome, confident and utterly relaxed.

“Maybe they could raise money by having Buck Flake put that up for collateral,” Connie Merry said, looking across the pool.

“Put what up?” Eloise asked. “Oh, is that the one? In the little orange dress?”

“That’s the one,” Connie said.

The orange dress was short, beltless and sleeveless, with a scoop neck. It made a striking color combination with her heavy silver hair. Each time she turned and moved, the dress clung for a moment to the warm lines of her strong young body.

“There is collateral the bank would like to accept, but cannot,” Martin said with heavy-handed humor.

“I saw her and wondered who she was. I’d heard about Mr. Flake’s … interest in her. I didn’t put two and two together. Got his nerve bringing her to a thing like this, hasn’t he?”

“He brought one of his salesmen along too,” Leroy said. “That’s supposed to make it all right. But it doesn’t make it all right with Dellie and Elmo. Not at this kind of a deal. Buck realizes that, so he’s been drinking to keep up his spirits. In spite of his knowing he’s just making certain Betty will hear about it from some dear friend, he has to keep showing her off around town.”