Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes (27 page)

There were brawls in Ireland, in Belfast and Londonderry, fistfights and minor riots in Manhattan, as people tried to take account of an unusual event that all knew to be an injustice: the assassination of a Pope who had spoken out for justice for humanity and the individual. The Pope had asked for “Peace” in his last moments, and it seemed that humankind hated itself for striking the Pope down, for allowing his death to happen. But ostensibly, the riots and squabbles were over abortion versus the anti-abortionists, for instance, rather specific issues.

Only a very few wealthy men with private armies in South America and elsewhere won against the workers, physically speaking, and managed to smile and to tell one another verbally or by their attitudes that they had done “the right thing” against “militant Communists.” But the core of the revolution was in the core of the Catholic Church, and that was changed forever. The workers might be back at work, but their conditions were better now, and the workers had a confidence that the landowners lacked. Of course, liberation theology priests and priests who had not mingled in such strife before had come out in such force and number, no state would have dared to try to shoot them, lock them up or even shut them up. European liberals were behind them, and so was the majority of the United Nations.

The reverberations of the two Red Slipper speeches went on for more than a year, like the after-rumbles of a volcanic eruption. Thousands lost their lives, many in truly peaceful street marches, which were misinterpreted by armed policemen and scared soldiers. Some said the toll of the dead was over two million. The Catholic Church had to yield on its anti-birth control and its anti-abortion stands, which it did in a passive way, by saying nothing when priests spoke out to their followers, and when the Pill and other means of contraception became easily obtainable in Ireland, for example. Doctors quietly began performing abortions, especially when both husband and wife desired one, and when word spread that local priests and bishops did not protest.

It was said and confirmed that attendance in Catholic churches increased markedly in America and France.

Now there was a new pope, John XXIV, elected just five days after the death of Sixtus VI. Pope John XXIV was keeping quiet, building his image still, after a year, as a tolerant but still devout Catholic. Meanwhile the usually rigid Vatican Curia and various bishops showed themselves capable of metaphysical and logical acrobatics and contortions, as they endeavored to explain Sixtus VI’s utterances as both interpretations of old and established dogma and aberrations of Pope Sixtus’s thoughts, attributable to the Pope’s exposure to heat in Mexico and Colombia and to an unusual swelling of his right great toe which gave him pain, a fact to which his physician Dr. Franco Maggini could testify.

The “red slipper fad” was just that, said
L’Osservatore Romano,
a fad which would die down, unworthy of the notice of dedicated men of God. Perhaps
L’Osservatore
wished it had not contributed even this much to red slipper publicity, because the fad did not die down, and little red slippers of all sizes proved themselves popular and decorative when a ring was fastened to them and they were worn around the neck, or as pins on women’s blouses, or as tiny pins on men’s lapels. Though revolutionary, the red slipper said, “I am a believer still.”

President Buck Jones Rallies and Waves the Flag

Sunday was a devilish day at the White House, starting at 9 a.m. The President and the First Lady were in Washington, DC, which was exceptional, as Friday noon they usually took off via helicopter and jet to their Arizona spread, a big ranch called the Lucky Buck, and did not return until Monday afternoon.

This weekend, there had been a crisis, in fact two crises, one foreign and one domestic. In the past week, it had been discovered that the “Administration” had been selling arms to both sides in a Middle East conflict, after having pledged not to sell to either side. The President had been assured that no one was going to blow this scenario, because
both
sides were benefiting, weren’t they, and an awful lot of American arms dealers and middlemen were benefiting too. It could go on forever, was the attitude of Buck’s closest advisers, because that war between the two Gulf oil states had been going on for eight years now. Both sides held a few Americans as hostages, nearly fifty altogether, and it was hoped by Buck and his Administration that arms deliveries would soften the two countries up, make them more inclined to release their American prisoners. Then a member of Buck’s own team, Fulton J. Phipps (known as Phippy), had blown it in what appeared to be an unpremeditated slip in a news interview. “. . . Since they’re being supplied by us . . .” had been Phippy’s phrase. What? Supplied what by us? Phippy had said, still blandly, “Arms.” Fulton J. Phipps, forty-seven years old, had been a career government service man all his life, had been “a close aide” to a couple of presidents in years past, had done some speech writing, knew everyone in Washington and was generally liked.

But now Phippy was sticking to his story, that America was now and had been supplying “quite a lot of armaments” in the war between these two countries, whereas Buck and his pals had decided to say (and had) that only a few renegade arms suppliers had been selling to both sides or either side, that it had not been and was not government policy to do so. Phippy’s gaffe, if gaffe it was, had been compared in the newspapers to Butterfield’s in saying casually that Nixon’s conversations with his staff on the Watergate matter were “of course on tape.” After that remark, everyone had started clamoring to hear the tapes.

So the public wanted to hear more about the arms sales, because it appeared that the “wrong side,” or the more anti-American and extremist side in the Gulf war, was now winning because of the advantage of more USA-made tanks than the other side had or had bought. This was the fanatical side that shouldn’t win, in the opinion of most heads of state everywhere, certainly of Western European countries. In brief, in the past week the United States had made an ass and a liar of itself. The world was laughing, when it was not deploring and worrying about the future.

And little Millie Jones (she was diminutive compared to tall and burly Buck) had fairly blown her mind in the past days, trying to protect her husband. God knew she was loyal! “Sack Phippy!” she had screamed within hearing of the White House servants, several journalists and members of Fulton J. Phipps’s team, as it were, nice guys who liked Phippy and liked the President too.

Now it was Sunday morning, and Buck was still asking Millie the same question: had she held “a little press conference” around 5:30 p.m. Saturday and repeated her anti-Phipps sentiments, or not? Millie wasn’t saying, maybe, Buck thought, because she couldn’t remember. But he hadn’t lost his interest in trying to jog her memory. There was a lot else she might have said in the one-or two-minute talk that she might have had with reporters. The fact was, Millie often took a Scotch to sooth her nerves. This had even been hinted at in the press, and
in vino veritas
was often true even if the speaker forgets having said what was said. Consequently, the press loved to get Millie alone, even for half a minute. And Buck and the household staff and the secretaries always tried to steer Millie clear of the press, with their short, surprise questions that so often got answers.

The situation was especially painful to Buck Jones on that Sunday morning at exactly ten minutes to 11, when a White House limousine deposited him and Millie and two gorillas before the steps of a Presbyterian church, in time for 11 o’clock service. The theme this morning was “What Can
You
Do for
God
?” according to a bulletin board outside.

“Head up!” Buck whispered. “And
smile
!” He needn’t have said the latter, because his wife’s smile was stitched on. Face-liftings. He held her arm firmly under his, and nodded and smiled at a snapping press photographer.

“You’re hurting my
hand
!” Millie said.

“Shush,” the President whispered. Millie might have staggered without his rigid arm under hers. Buck thought the press might comment on their closeness, saying they looked like newlyweds, which would be all to the good.

“If you want to know what I said yesterday,” Millie murmured into her narrow mink coat collar, “I said—things wouldn’t be
so
bad, if there hadn’t been so many
elements
trying to cover up.”

“Elements?” the President whispered, alert.

“Well, okay,
people—
damn them! They’re trying to cover up to protect
themselves
.”

“
Well, isn’t that normal?” Buck muttered, starting to focus his eyes and his famous smile on a church officer who was shaking the hands of people entering. “
Our
pleasure!” Buck said in response to whatever the official said, which he hadn’t caught. “Bless you!”

Was Millie teasing him, and hadn’t said anything? The President couldn’t concentrate on the sermon for thinking about this. Didn’t matter, he didn’t have to comment on the sermon to the preacher. He was thinking that Millie’s off-the-record comments weren’t always reported at once, but rather sprung a day or a week later, when it suited the press. They’d snidely insulted her three weeks ago, when she had given a somewhat befuddled speech before an audience in a Philadelphia college’s indoor sports arena. She’d been half an hour late and had started reading the same page twice, until a female secretary had stepped up and turned the page. This had been attributed to over-zealousness in the anti-drug cause by one newspaper that had been shown to Buck, but Phippy—loyal and serious Phippy, twenty years Buck’s junior—had said this might be sarcastic, and had told Buck that another paper had said that Millie simply preferred alcohol to drugs. A jocular columnist had already used this idea for a funny article. Buck boycotted this columnist, along with one cartoonist who was widely syndicated.

“Amen!”

They were out again, smiling, shaking a few hands.

Monday tomorrow, Buck was thinking. By this time tomorrow the Special Investigating Committee (SIC) would have been in session more than two hours. Their job was “to get to the bottom” of how at least four hundred million dollars’ worth of armaments, tanks and airplanes, and maybe more, could have got to two adjacent but opposing countries in the past year. The President was trying to confine it to a year, but it had been going on for three or four years. Phippy knew that too, Buck recalled, as Phippy was one of his old-timers from the beginning of his administration. Of course, half a dozen other top men knew too, but—and Buck had to admire them for this—they had so determined
not
to know about these arms sales, that they really didn’t know. They hadn’t simply forgotten, they’d never known, no, it was complete news to them. That was Buck Jones’s idea of professional politicians, the kind of guys the country needed! And, for Pete’s sake, look at the
money
! Armaments were made to he
sold—
and maybe used, too. So what were these Jesus Christs yelping about?

“Let me go!” Millie said at the limousine.

He’d been squeezing her hand too hard again. Buck came to, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

A photographer or two snapped. Good.

After lunch, a couple of the President’s closest aides, one a speechwriter and the other a secretary-right arm, came into the living-room with notes.

“These are the dates to remember, sir. You’ve seen them before, but if there’s any question—if you’d like to look at them again—” Richard Coombes, thirtyish, a small-town boy on the way up and Buck’s secretary-right arm, smiled reassuringly at the President.

Buck glanced at the three-by-five cards, a size which went easily into a jacket pocket. The first card said: ONE, underlined in red, and below that, the first date of the first arms shipment that Buck knew of. About contents and price of first shipment,
YOU DON’T KNOW BECAUSE YOU WEREN’T TOLD EXACTLY
. Card
TWO
reminded him that his main source of information had been John B. Sprague, his Secretary of State. Sprague was the nearest Buck had on his staff to a Rock of Gibraltar. Sprague was one of the precious few who could look a man in the eye and deny knowing something that they did know. Sprague was probably lie-detector-proof.

“Okay,” said Buck, glancing at the rest.

“You’re sure?”

“If I’m not certain, I’ll call you back.” The fact was, Buck was getting sleepy. He liked a nap after lunch. He dismissed his speechwriter also, but as the two men were walking toward the door, the President said, “I don’t have to make a speech tomorrow, do I, Pete?”

Pete White, the speechwriter, turned. “No, sir, but I wrote half a page, kind of good wishes and summing up for the end of the hearing tomorrow morning.”

“Later, maybe. Phippy’s going to do most of the talking. Get on to Phippy.”

“I think he’s well briefed, sir. Mr. Sprague and I spent all morning with him.”

“Did you now! Good! Excellent!”

The President was soon asleep in houseshoes, pajamas, a dressing gown, in a large easy chair, feet extended toward the fireplace. He had a dream about Communists. He pushed a button or two, and the power of America was unleashed by land, sea and air. Colorful bomb blasts lit up a tropical landscape somewhere in South or maybe Central America, and people got sizzled, blown to bits. All the Commies were killed, and the Americans emerged smiling, no one dead, no one smiling more broadly than himself—Buck—as he congratulated the American heroes on nationwide television and hung medals round their necks.