Tornado Pratt (8 page)

“Well, when I’m junior senator for Illinois—”

Or, from Harvey:

“It’s been plausibly suggested that a truly great man is not one
who gets things done but one who can find people to get things done. So, never be afraid to delegate, Tomado.”

We were continually hinting at some great enterprise, sipping whisky and laughing till our balls shook. Finally, Nat caught on and asked:

“Just what are you two hatching?”

“Hatching?” grinned Harvey, winking at me. “Surely, he’s told you, my dear?”

“Told me what?”

“Why we’ve decided that Tornado is to rule the world.”

“Oh, he never bores me with trifles.”

“We’re quite serious. The world has been misgoverned for thousands of years. If the runes were deciphered we’d probably find it had been misgoverned for tens of thousands of years. Well, we’ve decided it’s time for a change, haven’t we, Tornado?”

We kept it up for some time, Horace, piloting me through imaginary campaigns and coups d’état, ecstatic mobs and assassins’ bullets, conventions and assemblies until, the prize within our grasp, we bitched the whole thing up by exploding with laughter.

And yet at the time, Horace, and ever since to this waning day here at Timesend, I wasn’t sure if we were serious or not. Perhaps all that was missing was one jab of daring and right now the world would be mourning the impending loss of its first wise ruler.

The Lister kid had a pony and, although the Lister kid was only about eight, he could gallop that little horse. All afternoon, I’d been fooling around with the Lister kid. We’d swum in the creek and we’d shot us a few squirrels in the woods and then we’d finished up with a little private rodeo for Nat, who was watching from our bedroom window.

Nat and I were down there, spending a few days on the Lister spread, so that Clarence Lister, who was an alderman, and I could discuss my forthcoming election campaign. I was thinking of standing for the US senate but it never got off the ground. That afternoon we’d just settled down to discussions when Clarence received a phone call from the city that there’d been a big hotel fire. So he’d been compelled to high-tail it back into town. Lorna Lister was also away and so that only left the kids, Malcolm, aged about two, who had a coloured woman to look after him, and Tommy, the eight year old with the pony.

After the sport, I left Tommy and went up to our suite for a
shower. Under that shower, I kept chuckling to myself,
remembering
different events from the afternoon and calling them out to Nat, like:

“You know what that kid said, after he came off for the second time? He picked himself up, shook his head and shouted: ‘now, come on, horse, one of us has gotta make concessions.’ Going to grow up to be a politician like his old man, I guess. He’s a real smart kid, though. I misplaced the gun and—Nat? What is it? My love, why are you crying?”

She was standing by the window, Horace, tears coursing down her cheeks. I was still dripping from the shower and had nothing on but I bounded over and took her in my arms.

“What’s happened? What is it?”

I was totally mystified, Horace, because we’d been having a fine time and it was high spring and the world was shot through with flowers.

“I’m sorry, Tornado! I’m sorry! Oh God, I’m sorry!”

“What about? Nat? What the hell have you got to be sorry about?”

My first thought, Horace, was that she’d been messing around with some guy but then I realized that there were no males present older than five. Anyhow, I never seriously suspected Nat of that ever.

In the end she told me what it was, Horace. Nat was weeping because she hadn’t yet become pregnant, because she was afraid that she was barren and that I was longing to have a son. This belief had gained strength that afternoon from my enthusiasm for the Lister kid who, I have to admit, was exactly the kind of son I would have desired if I had been on the look-out for sons. I comforted Nat but, while doing so, I turned the matter over in my mind and realized that Nat’s passionate outburst must have been building up for a long time. She admitted that she had been concerned for more than a year about her failure to conceive. Odd thing, Horace, but somehow it had never impinged upon me that she wasn’t conceiving. I knew we’d given up taking precautions a long time ago but, without considering it with any attention, I’d kind of felt that somehow Nat had contrived it that she wouldn’t get caught out. What I mean is, it had never for one moment occurred to me that there might be the slightest thing wrong with either of us. But now Nat pleaded:

“Let’s consult a doctor, Tornado. Let’s find out if there’s
anything
the matter?”

“Of course, there’s nothing the matter, my love. And you know something? I’m still not ready to welcome a child.”

“But you’ll want one some day, won’t you, Tornado? Oh yes, you must have a son.”

“There’ll be time enough—”

“But there won’t! If there is something wrong—if my—my tubes are blocked, which I think is what goes wrong with tubes whatever they are—they might get—well, all cemented up if we don’t do something about it. Let’s go to a doctor, Titch.”

“No—”

“But—”

“I said, no!”

The ferocity in my voice took me by surprise, Horace, and later I tried to analyse why I had reacted so violently to Nat’s suggestion. It was true that I wasn’t desperate to have kids but it was also true that I wouldn’t have minded if she’d whispered to me one day that she was pregnant. So why did I snarl at her when she suggested we get checked out? That was it, Horace! Checked out! Me! Tornado Pratt! Or his lady-queen, my wife! Checked out, like a specimen, like an object! At the thought, a crimson cloud of rage boiled up around my head. Goddamm it, when I wanted babies, I would make babies. When I was ready to secure my lineage and succession, I would smite my lady with my staff and she would gush forth children. The idea of being helped by a doctor to found my own dynasty was humiliating. Firmly, but no longer ferociously, I amplified:

“No doctors, Nat. When the time comes to have a baby, we’ll have a baby but we’re not going to any quack and I don’t want to hear another thing about it.”

She saw that I meant it, Horace, and she never did raise the subject again but I could tell that she often brooded about her empty womb. Funny thing is, Horace, my lady was a true lady. She was the daughter of an English marquis and yet she was totally free of the electric pride that made me crackle with rage when brushed by some suggestion that seemed to demean me. She had no objections to being helped by doctors or indeed by anyone. Half a year or so later, I said to her, with a wry smile:

“Okay, honey, I guess we’re not going to make it on our own. I’m talking about kids. See if you can get us the name of a good doctor.”

And that, Horace, is how we came to encounter Dr Ezra Schumacher. He was a skinny Jew and when I first saw him, he
made me think of the joker in a pack of cards. He had a
tremendous
, angular nose, a face as thin as a trout’s and bulging eyes. I frowned at the thought of such a freak poking about in Nat’s secret innards. And I said to him:

“Okay, Doc, before we start the tests I’d like to have your views.”

“You would, huh?” asked Schumacher, goggling at me and chomping on gum. “Did you bring a chicken?”

“How do you mean?”

“Haruspication.”

“What?”

“Reading the guts. You know, you kill the chicken, pull out the guts and then you can read the future from them. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

He went on gazing at me, Horace, out of his huge pop eyes and I began to feel hostility grow inside me. I could tell he was kidding me and it jarred my pride. He continued:

“If you’re not interested in haruspication and you’re not interested in medicine, then why have you come?”

“Now look, Doctor, I want—”

“You want to hear my views on your case. Before I’ve examined you—either of you. But until I’ve examined you, I haven’t got any views on your case. I’m a medical man not a soothsayer. Let me ask you something, Mr Pratt, do you know what the pancreas is?”

“Part of the innards.”

“Eloquently put, Mr Pratt. Could you possibly state, in a few succinct words, what the pancreas does?”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Neither could most people—outside the medical profession. I wonder if you know what the liver does—or the spleen? You probably realize that the heart beats, but I wonder if you could draw me a diagram of the heart, Mr Pratt? In my experience, most people know less about the inside of their bodies than they do about the inside of their cars. This is very strange, really, because you’d think it would be a subject dear to them. Now I know quite a bit about the insides of people, Mr Pratt, and what I know has suggested to me how much I don’t know. I believe you’re a millionaire, Mr Pratt?”

I didn’t like this wise-cracking freak, Horace, and I made no reply.

“It would probably be unfair to accuse you of just shuffling
papers, Mr Pratt. I know that getting anywhere in this world means you have to be smarter than thousands of other guys who would be in your place if they could. I’m sure you have a sound grasp of your field. Nevertheless, will you believe me when I say that the units with which you operate are as static as stones and as inert as lead compared to the cells and tissues of the human body? You see, Mr Pratt, even after exhaustive physical examination by an A-1 diagnostician like myself, even after laboratory tests, it is still a challenge to know just what is going on inside a particular human body. This is because a man—and, of course, a woman too—is not a crude assembly of inert parts like a car or even a watch but a dynamic assembly of individually dynamic parts. Each sub-division of the whole is itself a living entity. The simplest statement a doctor can make may be contradicted by the human body’s almost infinite capacity for surprising. I have seen three doctors pronounce dead a man who lived to study medicine. I have seen infected wounds heal without treatment and gaping wounds appear, for no apparent reason, in healthy tissue. I have even seen Indians think themselves to death because a medicine man told them they would die. Now it is possible that when I examine you, I will find
manifest
and obvious reasons for your failure to have a child. But I may also find that the results of all the tests I make are
inconclusive
and that it is beyond my skill to help. I will be patient and I will attempt, as long as any hope remains, to find the impediment so it can be mended. But I will not, and cannot, Mr Pratt, offer any views at all until I have made an examination.”

And, cool as peppermint, Horace, he ushers Nat into his consulting-room. By that time, Horace, I had already thawed somewhat towards this voluble, gum-chewing doctor and
subsequently
he became a close friend of mine. And that is just the reason I’ve been telling you all this, Horace. Something has gone wrong with my head and the only person who can put it right is Ezra Schumacher, who was known as “Chuck” to his friends. I had a cable from him this morning, stating: dear old buddy, should you happen to get a stroke today, send for me at once. So what I want you to do right now, Horace, is cable Ezra Schumacher—sometimes we called him “Chuck”—to hustle out here and vanquish the crimson armies that are storming the citadel of my life. Ezra has the modern weapons that can lick them.

You see—did I mention? I had some scheme for going into politics.
Seems inconceivable now, Horace, that I could have—still I did—back about nineteen twenty-eight—thought I’d get me elected junior senator for Illinois and then maybe—then what? Become maybe—maybe President—and then change—some good and—why didn’t I? Because—because—oh God! Nat began to die. So it was not just Pratt’s time of pain but also

First thing she just began to get sick if we stayed out drinking. She might get a pain in the stomach. At first, I didn’t believe her. I thought she was just pretending in order to get me home and away from the booze. All my life, Horace, I have shown a tendency to drink too much. My strong constitution has normally protected me from the adverse effects although it is possible that the reason I have been struck down on this atoll is because I have softened my arteries with alcohol. Before, I was in fine shape, very vigorous for a man of seventy-two and quite capable of screwing two dames in one day. But now the blood-fountain has erupted in my brain and must drown the personality of Tornado Pratt.

So one day, when we were having a party in a circus ring, Nat started complaining about the pain. Supposing she was feigning the disorder, I just snapped to some stooge: “get my car” and then I sent Nat home alone in the car, making it clear to her, in a kindly but firm way, that I did not believe her and had caught on that she was just trying to stop me drinking. But that was one of the most fantastic parties I ever gave, Horace, and you couldn’t have dragged me away with a team.

Imagine an elephant with a
bar
on its back! We had that. Imagine police captains swigging bootleg gin on a flying trapeze. I saw it that night. Imagine a United States’ congressman in a clown’s baggy pants and painted red nose volleying custard pies at a supreme Court judge. It happened on that occasion. Imagine a hundred glittering girls wafting through the air in silver pants and bras. Cost fifty thousand bucks that party, Horace. Everyone behaved like a nut with that fierce determination to let go which is only shown by those who normally have to keep a rigid grip on their outlines. I danced with a lion and dove a hundred feet into a net. I drank maybe a quart of imported scotch and it turned my brain into a furnace of delight. So I was not sympathetic when Nat said she had a pain and I sent her home with the chauffeur.

After that evening, she didn’t complain much, because of her desire not to upset me and it was about three months later I
noticed she was white and biting her lip. My heart took a dive and I rushed her to Schumacher. I could see he knew there was something wrong but he couldn’t come up with the answer at first and he tried to reassure me. Then, about a month later, he first got it to show up on an X-ray. Nat had cancer of the stomach.