The Last Western (62 page)

A tall, tattered man whose face had been destroyed by a grenade tossed by an unknown enemy in a war that had been waged for the freedom of unknown persons, wriggled up through the crowd like a snake, begging unintelligibly for a miracle.

Willie put his hand on the plastic shield that the doctors had fashioned as a make-believe face for the man.

The man immediately touched the shell, and the people nearby crowded around him to see if a miracle had happened. When the man knew that no miracle had happened, he lurched forward and grabbed Willie’s arm. The car began to move again, and a policeman pushed the plastic-faced man away.

“My brother,” Willie cried, but the man was already receding behind a cluster of blue uniforms. The car glided forward into an elevator. A door came down suddenly, and they were swiftly borne up to the roof of the complex.

When they reached the roof ball park, the driver motioned to two guards standing beside an enormous door. One of the guards touched a button and the door went up and the green carpet of the field spread out before them.

The driver turned around and spoke to Benjamin.

“He can be picked off from anywhere out there.”

Willie stared at the unreal field.

“You have got to get down,” Felder said. “The man says it is dangerous.”

The surface of the field was too green. The crowd sounds, continuous and muffled, were like a growl. In the distance the name REGENT shone through the haze in faint blue lights.

“To those who love God,” said Willie, “no harm—” He started to faint again.

Benjamin pushed the button, lowering the seat a little, and the car slipped forward into the field.

The crowd, seeing the car, came to its feet, roaring and shrieking and screaming the name of Willie.

There were flags and banners in the stands, and placards and crude signs. People shouted slogans and catchwords that referred to L-Day.

In Willie the sensation of detachment and disjunction deepened, and the people did not seem to be people but only pictures of people—perhaps, he thought, they had become pictures from watching pictures so much; and their shouting, perhaps it was a recording.

“The President,” Felder or someone said, and the car came to a stop.

“Still the third,” said Willie, looking up at the red, white and blue helicopters floating above the roof park. Then clutching Grayson’s arm, he said, “I’ve got to talk to Clio!”

Grayson turned to Felder. “He is in no condition to—”

Felder, standing up and leaning over the jump seat, brought his face very close to Willie’s. “Get hold of yourself. You are a sign. You cannot give up.”

Willie saw Felder distinctly, but it was a man he did not know.

“It is the third. I am losing control,” he said. “Nothing on the pitches.”

Over the protest of Grayson and Benjamin, Felder half carried, half pushed Willie out of the car. Joto caught him.

“I am a sign,” Willie said to Father Benjamin.

He was moving now, with their support, to a cluster of smiling men wearing flags and other insignia in the lapels of their coats and holding papers in their hands. There was a little platform in the center of the field. There were microphones.

“The real,” said Benjamin. “Let it enter you.”

Willie tried to understand these words but got lost in the remarkable whiteness of Benjamin’s beard. The men, the platform, the stadium itself went up and down quickly before his eyes as he stepped uncertainly across the Plasti-Grass.

The memory of the office came to him. He peered up at the stands where the artificial people waved their arms and shouted in faraway voices. The wind was suddenly cold.

“Where is the office?” he asked a man whose smile he remembered from somewhere.

“Brother Holiness!” George Doveland Goldenblade exclaimed. “It wasn’t the videophone—it’s
you
, your
color
—is it something
inside
you or what?”

“Where’s Clio?”

“The President? Why, he’s right over here, Father Brother. It’s
Clyde
Shryker but—well, most people call him Mr. President. Brotherhood, you have turned the color of a yam, which is not right even for an Oriental nigra, or whatever you were before.”

“You’re Mr. Goldenblade,” said Willie.

Goldenblade started. “You think I’d send a clone here—to this?”

“I am a sign, Mr. Goldenblade,” said Willie.

Goldenblade inspected Willie’s face, his own face blotching a little and working itself back and forth into a snarling grin. “I don’t know as I get your meaning there, Holiness,” he said.

Felder, Benjamin, Grayson, Truman and Joto were shaking hands with the stiff smiling men, who seemed to Willie to be made of wax. A figure in scarlet detached itself from the group and came to where Willie and Goldenblade were standing.

“I’m sorry things were so mixed up at the airport, your Holiness,” Archbishop McCool said. “Gol-
l
ee.”

“Do you know where Clio is?”

“Clio?”

“
Clyde
,” Goldenblade said sharply. “But call him Mr. President.”

“Are you feeling all right, Your Holiness?” said McCool.

“I am a sign,” said Willie.

Goldenblade, taking Willie’s arm impatiently, said, “Come on, Father Brother, the President has a speech to give. It’s gonna be hell to pay if this crowd don’t get… .”

Into the circle of officials, who stood uneasily with the disreputable Servants, Goldenblade led Willie, dragging him along like a reluctant child.

“President Shryker, may I present the pope, the head of the Catholic church, a very close personal friend and a good old boy from Texas.”

A pink-faced, pleasant-looking man, President Shryker smiled aggressively.

“Your Holiness knows the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, I am told,” said the President through many white teeth. “Chief Justice Harlowe Judge.”

Chief Justice Judge, standing in the row of dignitaries, waved an invisible nightstick at Willie.

“How-yah, Holiness?”

“Do you know where they put Clio?” Willie said to the President.

The President’s face fell immediately into a maze of question marks.

“For goodness sake, Holiness,” whispered Goldenblade.

An aide nudged the President to a microphone. Eyeing Willie nervously, Shryker began to speak.

“Welcome to the United States, Your Holiness. May the flag of freedom, reason and justice fly forever over the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

The President’s voice carried to the vast throngs in Regent Stadium, and by radio and TV to the world. As he spoke, the President kept looking at Willie, whose dazed expression perplexed him, so that the words that came out now bore no similarity whatever to the speech that had been prepared for him.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were goals established by our Founding Fathers,” said the President, trying to collect his thoughts. It seemed to him that the pope might indeed be disarranged, as several of his advisors had warned him. It occurred to him also that the pope might be drugged or seriously ill. Smiling even more aggressively, he plunged forward with his speech.

“Here in our country, which of course is your country, we have a beautiful old folk song which says
This is My Country
. I think of that beloved song today when I look upon this great assembly of Americans who are proud that this country is theirs—which is to say
ours
. My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,” the President said, still smiling and trying to figure out what he should do if Willie should run amok as some churchman in Rome had done only yesterday, he had been informed, “which of course is the fundamental faith of my land, your land, her land, our land, their land, which all adds up to—amok.”

The officials of the city of New York and the aides of the President who were standing around the platform shifted their gaze from Willie to Clyde Shryker even as Shryker continued to search Willie’s face for some sign of sanity.

“This great land of ours—yours—whoever’s—is the land of Jefferson, Disney, Henry Ford.”

“Is that man babbling or is that man babbling?” Goldenblade muttered into the ear of his brotherin-law, General Maxwell A. Harrison, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood ramrod straight by his side.

“Of Thomas Edison, Saint Billy Graham, Samuel Goldwyn.”

“By God, he is babbling, Maxie!” said Goldenblade, verging near a microphone.

Moving only his lower jaw, not even looking at his brotherin-law, Maxwell Harrison replied, “Te logo rumi tegurithi.”

Goldenblade’s face purpled.

“Jesus Horatio Christ!” he groaned, and lifted a hand to his brow.

“And of course,” President Shryker continued, pondering a possible route of escape in case of violence, “it is the land of that great American, Jesus Horatio Christ.”

To Willie, President Shryker seemed a cardboard cutout figure that someone had brought into the park for a game or festival of some sort. Or maybe it was an ad.

He did not hear any of President Shryker’s words, though he was aware of a sharp metallic ringing that came from the speakers at the top of the grandstand.

What game was it
? he wondered.
Had Mr. Regent arranged to have this figure brought here as a joke?

There were other figures behind the cutout man. Were they men or were they cutouts too?

One of the figures moved then, and Willie recognized Father Benjamin. Father Benjamin was coming toward him but in a slow-motion imitation of his usual method of walking.

You are going to pass out
, he said to himself.
No
, he said,
you cannot do that; they don’t want you to do that.

Try to sort this out.

Now—now—this is the ball park.

I am not in a dream.

There is some sort of ceremony going on. We were in a plane. Then we came through the people.

This cardboard figure
—and at that point the cardboard figure pronounced the name of Christ and Willie came to quickly.

This is a man
, he thought.
He wants to pray.

Father Benjamin was a few feet away, moving so slowly that he was many still pictures of himself, one upon another, as if someone had taken hundreds of pictures of him to show as a demonstration of an old man walking.

As the name of the Anointed One went into Willie’s heart, his hands moved spontaneously to take the hands of this prayerful stranger who stood before him.

“Huh-uh, huh-uh, huh-uh,” said the President, and backed off the platform.

General Maxwell Harrison, as if on cue, stepped between the pope and the President.

Grabbing Willie’s hands, he said in a solemn voice, “Te liri morganatha lu miri soo.”

Like an ancient incantation, the
Only-Therefore
hymn of G. D. Goldenblade drifted through the microphones:
hum, humm, hummm… .

In the glass booth high above the field, the veteran newscaster Zack Taylor provided a commentary on the proceedings.

And so, as you’ve just seen and heard, ladies and gentlemen, the President has concluded his address of—ah, welcome—a most warm, albeit informal address we must say—and now General Harrison, acting in behalf of our military forces around the world, has added his welcome—in a liturgical gesture of some sort which our advisors tell us is part of the revised Roman rite for the greeting of a pontiff in a sports arena. The language, we are told, is Syro-Chaldean or Aramaic—or possibly Croatian. Our research staff is busy at the moment trying to establish just what language it is exactly. But whatever the language, the gesture of the general’s clutching the pope’s hands was most moving.

So far the pope himself has said nothing. As you can see, His Holiness appears to be somewhat fatigued. We have been told that the pope has been fasting for the success of L-Day for many weeks now—how long we don’t know.

Personally, if I may be so blunt, ladies and gentlemen, the pope looks like a very old colored gentleman today—a far cry from the youthful miracle pitcher whose games we had the pleasure of commenting on just a few short years ago.

It is indeed hard to believe that this is the same person.

Now … now you see one of the papal aides talking to him—an old priest with a flowing white beard, dressed as indeed all the visitors are dressed—in—what would appear to be—some sort of sackcloth. Our vestment research department has been trying to dig out the dope on the garb, and I want to assure our viewing audience here and around the world that when we find out what the pope is wearing, we’ll pass it along pronto.

We want to remind you that this entire telecast is being brought to you by Doveblade Communications, which has forgone all commercial messages during this special telecast. The president and chairman of Doveblade Communications, Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade, is on your screen, standing to the right of the ensemble. The gentleman who would appear to be holding his—that is, placing his hand over his—the man with his hand (cough). Mr. Goldenblade is at the right there.

It’s chilly here in New York today, folks, with the weather holding at about twenty-eight degrees and with a strong easterly wind. However the emotion generated in Regent Park is such that hearts are warm indeed, if we may say.

Whether or not the pope will speak at this time, we don’t know. It would be reasonable to expect him to make some sort of response to the warm and gracious words of President Shryker. But—

But now, the pope is turning—and walking away.

You see it, ladies and gentlemen, the pope with his aides seems to be heading for the limousine.

Yes—yes. The pope is definitely leaving this great stadium. The crowd—the crowd, as you can hear, is beginning to react.

We here—we here in the broadcasting booth are at a loss to explain the pope’s sudden departure.

But as you see for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, the pope and his entourage are getting into their car.

The crowd, very stormy now… .

Truman had taken the wheel of the limousine. Felder was in the seat beside him.

“That way,” said Felder, pointing to an open elevator in the left field corner of the park.