The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (87 page)

 

 

Later that evening when they were undressing for bed Anne noticed that Yale
was unusually quiet and subdued. "Okay, chum . . . you said no secrets
in this marriage. Tell Cynthia and me what happened in Peoples McGroaty's
office."

 

 

Yale didn't answer her immediately. He watched Cynthia bending over,
trying to touch her toes without bending her knees. He grinned and patted
her on the rump. "You'll never make it, Cindar." He bent over and looked
into her flushed face. "My, what big breasts you have!" He grinned at her.

 

 

Anne was flopped on the bed indolently reading the
Midhaven Herald
.
"I hope you like that newspaper," Yale said finally, "Because as of this
afternoon Challenge Inc. owns it!"

 

 

They both squealed and stared at him. He told them that Peoples had refused
to print Pat's advertisement. He had been terribly shocked by it. He told
Yale that he regretted it but he doubted whether it was good policy for the
paper or himself to be too closely associated with Challenge or with any
of them in the future.

 

 

"I didn't understand what he meant at first," Yale told them, "but
finally the pieces fit together. Peoples borrowed heavily to put in
new presses. Pat is on the Board of Directors of the bank that has the
loan. That's not all. Randall and Foxon's department store practically
support the paper with their advertising. An hour after Peoples told Pat
that he wouldn't print the advertisement, Randall and Foxon's cancelled
their advertising for the next week."

 

 

Yale shrugged. "When I suggested to Peoples that he sell the paper to
Challenge, he thought it was a wonderful idea. I told you, kids, the
loudest voice in this culture is the one that speaks with money behind
it. Peoples is still editor, but Challenge owns the paper."

 

 

"That means you'll refuse Pat's ad?" Cynthia said, relieved.

 

 

"On the contrary, I telephoned Bert Walsh and told him that it would be
published as scheduled."

 

 

"Oh, no!" Anne fairly shrieked. "You can't let it be published! You just
can't! What do you think will happen to Harry Cohen? He'll be ruined!
Don't you understand? The way that ad is written Harry can't deny it.
Nothing he can say will explain himself to all those people at Marratt.
And what about us?" Anne looked at Yale, alarmed. "We are in that ad.
What is going to happen when they read all that stuff about swimming naked
. . . and our bigamy? Yale . . . it was one thing when we knew that your
father was going to have that advertisement in the paper, and there was
nothing we could do about it. Now that you could stop it if you wanted
to . . . it's nothing but suicide to let it run."

 

 

Yale tried to tell them that accepting the ad was the only way out. "Just
because Challenge owns the paper doesn't mean a thing. We need the revenue
from the advertisers. I'm not ready to have the paper run at a loss. In
fact, buying the paper was simply a way of getting Peoples off the spot."

 

 

"What about Harry Cohen?" Cynthia demanded. "He's your friend, too."

 

 

"I know it," Yale acknowledged. "But what you are forgetting is that
in the long run Peoples would have had to run that ad. So Harry would
have been cornered anyway. The way it is now we can try to counteract
the whole thing with a big front page editorial. Challenge will have
the voice to explain itself and defend Harry."

 

 

They stayed awake most of the night, arguing. Yale couldn't convince
either Cynthia or Anne that what he was doing was sound. Cynthia told
him that she thought he had gone crazy. He was having delusions if he
thought he could let their private life become an open book.

 

 

"There's a law against it, Yale," Anne said, tears in her eyes. "I looked
it up. If anyone takes it into their head to complain, you could be put
in jail." She told him that Agatha was right. He must think he was God.

 

 

Yale looked at her with indignation. "Well, I'll be damned. Go ahead! Both
of you . . . complain! That'll be just dandy. I hope you both enjoy life
without me." He looked so forlorn that Cynthia couldn't help smiling.

 

 

"Okay," Anne said. "You think you've won . . . but at least we'll have
each other. You'll get pretty lonely by yourself in a cell."

 

 

 

 

 

 

12

 

 

Lying in bed on a Sunday morning a few weeks later with Yale sleeping
against her breast, Anne watched the rain beating against their bedroom
window. Cynthia was asleep, her face buried in Yale's shoulder. About
five-thirty, just as the sky was getting grey, she had pattered into
Yale's bedroom, shook Anne gently, and whispered that she was lonesome.
Anne grinned at her understandingly and motioned to her to get into bed
beside Yale. Yale continued to sleep, oblivious to both of them.

 

 

Without actually discussing it, Anne knew that in the past weeks she
and Cynthia had drawn closer to each other than either of them had
thought possible. In place of their former banter which often served
to cover their embarrassment at their sharing of Yale's affections,
was a new tenderness, and an uninhibited admission of their love and
desires. Cynthia, admitting her need this chill morning to be with
them, was tacitly saying to Anne that she would be equally welcome some
future morning.

 

 

It was an achievement, Anne thought. They had transcended the inviolability
with which centuries of mankind had endowed the one-to-one human
relationship, and had become aware that the very uniqueness and wonder
of their arms and legs, of their mouths and eyes, of Yale's penis and
their vaginas, of their eating and digesting, and of their urinating
and defecating, were all small wonders beside the ineffable miracle of
being able to individually and together appreciate their humanity. It
was comparable, by any judgment, to God resting on the seventh day and
declaring his satisfaction. When men appreciated men weren't they gods
themselves?

 

 

As she watched the rain through half closed eyes, Anne tried to assimilate
the events of the past few weeks. They had, all three of them, matured
rapidly under the vast pressures. Two people couldn't enclose space, Anne
thought, but three could. Marriage should be for three or four, a movement
through life as a wedge or square containing its own built-in strength.

 

 

But according to law their relationship was a crime against the state.
A crime against a society which could tolerate individual hatred and war;
a crime against a society which could close its eyes to a divorce rate
that was practically polygamy or polyandry depending from whose point
of view you examined it; a crime against society for three human beings
to make a supreme intellectual effort to love each other.

 

 

Anne remembered when Yale had received the telephone call from Ralph Baker,
the district attorney of Buxton County. It was the Monday after that insane
week-end when Harry Cohen's house had been burned to the ground, and she
and Cynthia had been attacked at the supermarket. Anne had walked into
Yale's office as he put the phone in the cradle. His face was grim and
drawn. Anne suddenly realized that Yale had lost weight. She remembered
that he had tried to be light-hearted.

 

 

"The forces of darkness are really out to crush Challenge," he said wearily.
"That was the district attorney. He is issuing a warrant against one Yale
Marratt charging him with unlawful cohabitation. Bigamy." Yale's first
reaction was not to tell Cynthia. "After everything else that's happened
in the past two days she will just worry herself silly."

 

 

Anne sat on the edge of his desk. "She'll know, Yale. You can't keep
it from her. You may be able to keep it out of the
Midhaven Herald
,
but this will be a national story. It's just the kind of thing that a
lot of people are waiting for. Something to make Challenge look like
one of those crazy cults that usually get started in California." Anne
smiled. "Most of them are run by some kind of bearded bigamist who claims
that he is a Yoga."

 

 

After she said it Anne was sorry. She saw the hurt expression on Yale's
face. "I'm not a bigamist, Anne," he said slowly. "If you think I am
then you have missed the point."

 

 

Anne put her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry, honey. After all,
I helped write the Seventh Commandment. 'Challenge believes that any
human problem (hence all problems known to man) can be solved in an
atmosphere of love; and the existence of hate as an emotion should be
extirpated from man's relationships and be considered the greatest evil
confronting civilization."

 

 

But only the bald fact, and not the philosophy, had seeped through to the
district attorney's office. Freed on bail, Yale demanded to know who had
lodged the complaint. Telling Anne and Cynthia later, Yale was disgusted.

 

 

Baker had grinned at him sarcastically. "Trouble with your generation is
they don't have any respect for the law. Bigamy is a crime in this state
and in practically every civilized Christian country. We don't need any
complainants. You can just say that it's the State of Connecticut against
Yale Marratt. We've had a bellyful of trouble around here because of you,
young fellow. You've stirred up religious prejudices. You've made the
young bucks around here so damned sex conscious that they think their
brains are between their legs. What's more, my phone is ringing all day
long with ministers, priests, and rabbis as well as just plain citizens
asking why I don't have your book censored, or just complaining about
your morals. Don't think that because you own the
Midhaven Herald
you
can make your own censorship either. You started to challenge people. Now
you've got to accept the fact that society is able to cook your goose,
if it wants to. A bigamy charge seems just as good as any way to stop
you." Baker smirked. "Although I understand there are some people around
here that think they might eventually get you on an income tax charge."

 

 

Cynthia tried to be optimistic when they told her. She suggested that,
since neither of his wives was complaining, it would be impossible for
anyone to prove a bigamous relationship. She had grinned at Yale. "We're
living together just like a brother and his two sisters."

 

 

But Baker had sneered at him. "You've got those sexy-looking fillies
living right with you in the same house, haven't you? Everyone in Midhaven
knows that you are screwing them both. We don't go for your attitude,
Marratt. There are even people around here that think you are subversive
. . . out to destroy our government. It's pure crap to preach this love
mankind bunk while the rest of the world is hating our guts. This Challenge
business of yours is creating too much of a stink. It's time that someone
put a spoke in your wheel." Baker made some further remark about certain
wise young men who were raiding established businesses like the Latham
Shipyards, and then running them to the ground. Yale suspected that
either Alfred Latham or maybe even Pat was behind the charges.

 

 

With only three weeks before he would be brought to trial, Yale called
Saul Angle and told him the story. "I'm a corporation lawyer," Angle said.
"It's completely out of my field." Yale asked him if he were afraid.
Saul had sounded angry. "I told you it was a pipe dream. Don't try to
involve me in it." Saul told him that he would call back. The next day
he was still irascible. "Okay, I'm a sucker. I'll probably be sorry I
ever heard your name. If you aren't afraid of having a Jew defend you,
I'll take your case." Saul had arrived in Midhaven a few days later with
his wife and was staying with them now.

 

 

 

 

Sleepily, trying to refocus the swift events of the past few weeks and
evaluate them in some kind of perspective, Anne couldn't help thinking of
Harry and Sarah Cohen. She wondered what they were doing and where they
had gone. She knew that both Yale and Cynthia were deeply disturbed by
the loss of Harry's friendship. Yale had once said, "The intellectuals,
or what they are now calling them, the eggheads, have much in common
with the Jews. The intellectuals are a minority, too. They have ideas in
advance of the masses, and hence stir up suspicion and distrust because
they worship at different altars."

 

 

Yale knew that he was responsible. If Harry Cohen had never known Yale
Marratt, he would be in Midhaven now leading his union. Remembering the
wild ride to Helltown, the night after Pat's advertisement had been
printed, Anne shuddered. When they received the telephone call that
vandals had set fire to Harry's house, and it wasn't known where the
Cohcns were . . . that maybe they were inside the house . . . Yale had
turned pale. Anne knew that he was remembering the way Harry had talked
to him, and was blaming himself.

 

 

The last time that they had seen Harry was the night before the
advertisement had appeared in the
Midhaven Herald
. Yale had called him
and told him that he wanted to talk with him and Sarah. Ralph Weeks had
driven over in the Buick station wagon to pick them up. Yale had also
telephoned Peoples McGroaty. He arrived a few minutes after Harry and
Sarah, and shook hands glumly with them.

 

 

Without preliminaries Yale had handed them galley proofs of the
advertisement. Sarah read it with a sharp intake of breath. Harry looked
suddenly shrunken and older. He stared at Yale with a defeated expression
on his face.