Majestic (34 page)

It was going to be possible to dance with Charles Burleson.

Chapter Twenty-four

Will stared at a laconic report from Eighth Air Force Command. Seven pilots had set out. Five had returned.

One had lost his engine and spun his plane into the ground. Another had attacked the disk and disappeared, plane and all.

He dropped the report on his desk. At this point he felt that he could not go on. They had broken him.

In those days they understood nothing of the motives of the others. According to Will it is now theorized that they will try to take certain souls to their absolute limits, to literally shatter them so that they can become free of all the ingrained ideas that had imprisoned them.

It is a testament to Will's strength that he did not go mad or, as happened in a number of other cases, commit suicide. Instead he took action on his own behalf.

Maybe he didn't choose the perfect response. But it was the best he could manage: he ran.

Will and his father had shared many peaceful hours on the trout streams of upstate New York.

Herbert Stone had passed his membership in the Trout Valley Club on to his son. Will realized that he could get on a train and be at the club by midmorning. It was nearly ten. The late express would leave for New York in half an hour. He put his papers in his safe and locked it. On his desk he left a terse note that he'd gone fishing. No phone number, no address.

He intended to tell Hilly his plans personally. He picked up the phone and dialed the admiral's home number.

Two rings and Hilly answered.

Will put down the telephone. He told himself he'd call when he arrived at the club. He packed a bag full of cotton shirts and canvas fishing duds. Most of his gear was at the club, so he didn't need to worry about carrying an eight-foot fly rod on the train. I looked at pictures of Will in those days. There are only three, all taken of other people. His appearance is always incidental.

He was an excellent dresser. His suits were tailor-made and he had a Panama hat. He must have looked the image of a well-heeled businessman as he left his apartment building for Union Station.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's "Night Flyer" had a drawing room available through to Poughkeepsie. He engaged it and made a long-distance call to the garage in Poughkeepsie where he and his dad used to rent cars.

Since his father's death in 1945 Will had not been able to visit the club. So this journey was not simply an escape from intolerable pressure, it was also an attempt to come to terms with deep grief, and perhaps even to reconnect with the only love Wilfred Stone had ever known.

Sitting back in the cab, he remembers feeling as if life itself had suddenly returned to him. He enjoyed the geniality of the cab driver, of that old, self-confident America.

Our America is a ship in a dark ocean.

"Have a good day?" the cabby asked.

"Good enough."

"Y'know, I just don't remember it got this hot during the war. I think all the gunfire overseas broke up the air and made it cool."

"It's sweltering."

"You're sure?" He gave an easy laugh. "Here we are," he said.

When Will casually described his train trip to me my heart practically broke. What we have lost!

He was welcomed onto the shiny black train by the sleeping-car porter, lie took his bag and showed him to his drawing room. "You'll want that suit ironed," he said looking at Will's wrinkled seersucker. "Just put it in the door when you're ready."

He inspected the room and the lavatory, then pulled clown the bed and smoothed the blanket. "Would you like an immediate makeup, sir?"

"I think I'll read in the club car for a while after we get started."

"Well, sir, there's a midnight snack in the dining car starting at eleven. Or I can bring you something in here if you prefer."

The train pulled out at 10:29 on the dot. Will let fifteen minutes pass and then made his way to the club car at the back. He didn't expect to find anybody there but lonely commercial travelers, but there was always that pebble of hope.

He ordered a sidecar and a pack of Luckies. LSMFT - "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco." Also stood for

"Lord Save Me From Truman."

He sat with the commercial travelers watching the lights of Maryland flash past and dreaming idly of Her, the woman he hoped would soon walk in and take the chair beside him. She would be dressed in navy, with dark hose and high, high heels. On her head would be a pillbox hat and around her neck a discreet but expensive string of pearls. She would be perfectly made up right down to her spectacularly red lips and fingernails. She would order a Manhattan and lean back sipping it and smoking.

And Will would say hello. She'd laugh, raise her eyebrows and say something like "again," and they'd be off to the conversational races.

An impressively tall blond man came in instead, and took her chair. When the waiter came up he asked for a glass of plain water without ice. He sat erect, staring straight ahead. Like Will, he wore a seersucker suit.

Oddly, there was a conventioneer's tag on the lapel, but no name. Will knew nothing of artificial bodies. He never imagined that a group of them were on a mission that involved him.

"Warm evening," Will said.

The man slowly turned his head. Will recalls a twinkle of laughter in his eyes, that and a seriousness. His eyes were violet, quite startling. Will was fascinated, and he introduced himself. "I'm Wilfred Stone," he said.

"Going up to the City?"

"Where are you going?"

"Actually, I'm off to do a little fishing."

"Where?"

"On the Beaverkill. I'm a member of the Trout Valley Club - "

The man got up and left without a word. Of course, he had obtained the information he had come for.

Mildly perplexed at his odd behavior, Will watched him stride out of the car. He finished his drink while the Baltimore passengers were boarding, then went to the library at the end of the car and picked up a best-seller. He believes it was The Story of Mrs. Murphy. It proved to be a study of a woman's life rendered in the most meticulous detail. Normally he would have turned away from such a book, but he found himself desperately eager to participate in another, more normal life. Her loves, pregnancies, hopes, her happiness and sadness - he drank of it all like a thirsty man at a mirage.

The Story of Mrs. Murphy took him through the late supper of eggs and bacon. He followed it with a brandy Alexander and a cigar.

He sipped his Alexander and nursed his cigar through the midnight hour. Finally he returned to his room. The porter had opened the bed and laid out his pajamas, slippers and robe. He called for a final cognac and retired with the book.

In the distance the whistle wailed and the bells of guarded crossings sounded through the rolling, muted night.

He awoke in a vague way while they were stopped in New York and his sleeping car was being attached to the "Broadway."

As they pulled out of Penn Station the porter woke him. He shaved and went to the dining car, where he had breakfast as morning light glimmered on the Hudson.

He left the train in Poughkeepsie, a troubled man in a freshly pressed linen suit. He knew it would only be a matter of a day or so before Hilly found him and called him back. But he needed this time, had to have it.

Even at nine-thirty the day was already steel-blue and hot. As he walked up the hill to Van Alter's Garage to get his rented Ford, he felt himself sweating into the suit.

He guided the car down to the Hudson ferry and crossed to the country side of the water. There was a yacht flying up the river, and a couple of excursion steamers were dashing along with flags snapping and ladies holding down their summer dresses.

West of the river the hills rose wild. "Dad," he said into the throbbing privacy of the car.

"Never attack your enemies, Wilfred. Confuse them." So his father would say. "If a man accuses you of a crime of which you are innocent, you may be sure it is what he would do in the same circumstances." He was wise. "Never sign a contract with any man with whom a handshake would not suffice."

Silent tears appeared in the corners of Will's eyes when he talked about his father. I could never find out quite why his grief had stayed with him for all these years. Their relationship must not have been complete. I suppose that Herbert Stone lived on in his son.

After he died Will had discovered that his father had done undercover work for the Treasury Department for years. He was flabbergasted. It was his father's contacts in the secret intelligence community that had led to Will's OSS appointment.

To Will's knowledge his father had never kissed him.

Will arrived in Roscoe at eleven-thirty, passing the Roscoe Inn, the scene of many a fisherman's evening, then turning off onto the narrow road that led up the kill to the home of the Trout Valley Club.

The club was housed in a rambling Catskills mansion with enormous porches. In those days Ann and Jack Slater ran the place for the membership, keeping it open from March through October.

Before writing this chapter I took Will's journey. I will pass over without comment my experience on Amtrak -

not because it was bad, but because it made me long for the wonderful rail journey Will had so casually described.

I rented a Taurus in Poughkeepsie and drove to Roscoe. I found the former location of the Trout Valley Club, and even the place where Will had fished - and had himself been so deftly caught.

The club has been torn down, but its view of the Beaverkill was unparalleled. From that hill one can see at least three miles of water, and each of those miles can tell a thousand stories.

This place, this stream, was the birthplace of American fly-fishing. I am no fisherman, but when I went to Roscoe and saw that dancing water, I was captured a little by the romance of it.

Will lived that romance. "Mr. Stone," said Ann Slater as he climbed the steps. "Mr. Stone, I can hardly believe my eyes. I thought you'd moved away."

"You can't move away from the Beaverkill."

"I know that and you know that. But people do try."

He found that his gear had been kept in perfect condition. His fine Orvis rod was supple and his reel oiled. His lines and flies were ready for him. His heart ached when he looked into his tackle box. All of his father's best flies had been moved in, and some of his older or less successful ones discarded. The rest of his father's gear had been discreetly removed from their cabinet.

"Mr. Dette came in and rearranged your flies," Ann said. This man was one of the most famous flytiers in the Catskills, and a longtime personal friend of Herb Stone. His daughter still runs Dette's Flies.

Will walked back to the kitchen where Jack was preparing lunch for the four club members who were there.

Upon entering this place he really felt as if he had left the outside world and all of its difficulties behind. "I hope there's a good hatch," he said as he entered the kitchen.

"My Lord, Wilfred Stone. I thought this place was getting toney at last. Guess I was mistaken."

"What's for lunch, Jack - rat stew?"

"Well, the other fellas are having a little beef stew. But I can fry you up a couple of rats if you want to catch them. I think there are some living in the bottom of your cabinet."

"I'll take beef stew."

"As far as hatches are concerned, we had quite a big hatch last night, and they took some fish this morning with caddis."

"How's the evening action been?"

"Well, if there's a hatch going its pretty good just after sunset. Nine would be about right tonight."

"That suits me. I'm going to spend the day loafing and then I'll fish."

After lunch Ann put the radio on the porch and brought Will a pitcher of lemonade and the Herald Tribune. The club had a good aerial, so he was able to pick up many of the New York City stations. He remembered only that he used to listen to WQXR. I looked up an old radio log in the library and found that he would have heard a program called Tom Scott Songs at that hour.

The Trib was full of Truman and the Russians and the Marshall Plan. Will found it strangely thrilling to read the public doings of the President, knowing so much of his most secret affairs.

It was also extremely painful. He finally turned to the "Thronton Burgess Nature Story." I also looked that up.

Will had read about the summer habits of the martin.

Nobody disturbed him, which was as well; he could not have spoken without sobbing aloud. He was a man without emotional resources.

Exactly in the state the visitors wanted him, in other words.

Once a large, black sedan drove slowly past the house. The other fishermen appeared. They were nobody Will knew and he has forgotten all but the idiotic nicknames by which they introduced themselves: Whisker, Pootie and Boy. They had no fish, and the luncheon talk was of throwbacks, big ones hanging under logs and better days.

As far as Will was concerned, he had left the others in Los Alamos He could not have been more wrong.

Part Four

THE FLOWER

Except a corn of wheat fall into

the ground and die, it abideth alone;

but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

- John, 12:24

Chapter Twenty-five

The Chronicle of Wilfred Stone

The Beaverkill at the turn of evening: mist rising, the rocky bed muttering with the water's many voices. I had gotten well into an isolated stretch and was just making my first cast when I saw a figure standing on the bank.

I was astonished because of who it was: a largish blond in a white dress printed all over with yellow primroses. She could have been the twin of the oddball I'd seen on the train.

She hung back in the bushes, her hands flittering nervously along her sides. Was she embarrassed by her dowdy outfit?

She had distracted me enough to ruin my firstrcast. The fly dropped into swift water.