NOW THE SUN BEGAN to descend, slowly at first as if it were unwilling to give up the promise of the morning, and then in a headlong thrust toward the distant hills, the heat rising off the floor of the desert, blistering the pavement of the highway, bathing the colorless dunes in sudden refractions of violet light. The shifting crowds of people outside the camp, no longer repopulated by late arrivals, began to disperse. They came together in one last vicarious enthusiasm at the approach of a studio car, which scarcely acknowledged the witnesses as it turned quickly off the highway and moved toward the tents and trucks and trailer houses.
Several teenagers in the crowd thought they had recognized Greg Calhoun in the car, but they could not be sure. Several others said a little girl’s head was visible next to the young man in the backseat; they were fairly certain about the little girl.
Studio employees sat under the big mess tent, talking together at the wooden picnic tables, puncturing cold cans of beer and passing them around. Others showered in newly constructed stalls near the tent and talked about driving into the nearest town for the evening. Edmund Shavers was going into town to watch the rushes. There was an ancient theater in the town — open only on weekends — at which he had arranged to have the rushes run. Shavers wore fresh khakis and examined his face in the marble bathroom of the trailer house he shared with Vicki McGown. Vicki examined her face at her dressing table in the other end of the trailer. She felt curiously void of any feeling. She was not a calculating person; most of the time she was pushed along on impulse. Now she waited for something, anything, an idea or an event, to seize her.
In another trailer Sarah Lehman stood in her shower stall and watched the beads of water move down her marvelous little breasts. Here in the pink-tiled privacy of herself she was not reminded of any of the people around her. She could have been in her own shower in her own bathroom in her own apartment, anywhere away from the moment. She had not wanted to come here; she had not wanted to stay: now she wished she could remain in the shower stall with the mist falling on her perfumed body. Jay McGown lay on his bed in the adjoining room and listened to the water running in Sarah’s quarters. He had fallen asleep thinking of Vicki, had dreamed of her fitfully, none of which he could remember on awakening, but still thinking of her now he concentrated on the sound of the water running in Sarah’s apartment. He tried to picture the way Sarah might look in the shower stall; but she kept looking like Vicki.
Arthur Fenstemaker was on the telephone again. His wife lay asleep on the bed and shifted in the covers only when the Governor raised his voice. His wife lay asleep wearing only a half-slip. Arthur Fenstemaker wanted to move over to the bed and put his hand along the sweet curve of his wife’s neck and shoulders, but he could not get off the phone.
“… Well a lie will go round the world several times, my friend, while truth is tying its shoelaces.”
“Well it’s a bad business — it’s —”
“How many members of the Legislature went down to hear that nigger-baitin’ son of a bitch?”
“Well we ain’t learnin’ nothin’ on the telephone. See if you can get an advance copy of his speech and call me back …”
In the studio car Gregory Calhoun (né Rabinowitz) put on a miner’s helmet. He turned to the little girl.
“How does it look, Annie?”
The little girl giggled, shifting sideways in the seat and reaching for the helmet. Greg Calhoun took off the miner’s helmet and set it on the little girl’s head. Now she laughed aloud and clapped her hands together.
“But what are you going to do with it?” she said. “Are you going to wear it in the picture?”
“If they’ll let me. What it’s really for, though, is for jackrabbits.”
The little girl thought this was hysterically funny.
“Jackrabbits!”
“Jackrabbits. Not these little Easter bunnies you read about in your picture books, but ugly, buggy, long-legged jackrabbits. Jackrabbits bug me, Annie. I’m goin’ to shoot ’em all dead.”
“With the helmet? You can’t shoot a rabbit with a helmet.”
“With a gun. A forty-five gun. I wear the helmet at night so I can see the rabbits in the dark.”
“You’ve got forty-five guns?”
“No, no. A forty-five automatic. That’s a type of pistol. I just bought it. And the helmet. For the rabbits.”
“Are there rabbits out there?” Victoria Anne McGown looked out the window, at the scarlet sun and the range of mountains miles away and the strange pile of tents and trailers up ahead.
“There are ten thousand jackrabbits out there, Annie. You can bet your life on that. You can smell ’em. You smell ’em?”
“Smell rabbits?”
“In their native habitat. They smell worse than the rabbits. The habitats.”
“My mother’s an actress,” the little girl said abruptly.
“Oh no she isn’t. You shouldn’t go around talking like that.”
“She is too! She is an actress. That’s what —”
“No, no, you’re getting it all mixed up. Your mother’s a star. Your mother’s a moom-pitcher star!”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”
“Are you an actress?” Victoria Anne McGown asked.
“Yes. I’m an actress,” Greg Calhoun said.
“You’re not a star?”
“No. I’m an actress.”
The little girl subsided and the two of them sat quietly as the studio car moved toward the trailer houses. Edmund Shavers sat in an aluminum folding chair in front of his trailer, and he pulled himself out of it as the car approached.
“You’re early,” Shavers said. “I wasn’t expecting you until — what the hell is that on your head, Greg?”
“It’s a miner’s helmet,” Victoria Anne said. “A miner’s helmet for shooting jackrabbits — only you shoot the rabbits with forty-five guns. You can smell the rabbits out here.” She turned toward the young man. “You smell any rabbits, Gregory?”
“I smell ’em. Out there ruttin’ around … You smell ’em, Edmund?”
Shavers looked around him in brief confusion. “What? There aren’t any — Hey, Victoria Anne, we’ve got a big surprise for you.” He bent down toward the little girl, taking hold of her hands.
“Have you got some jackrabbits?”
“No … No jackrabbits. Something else though. Your father. Your father’s here, and I bet he wants to see you.”
“My father? Oh good! I want to see him because I don’t remember what he looks like!”
“I don’t remember what mine looks like either,” Greg Calhoun said.
Jay heard the voices, but not-listening, lying on the chenille bedspread trying not to think, conscious of only himself in the gathering darkness of the trailer, conscious of the weight of his body on the bed, the feeling gone out of his arms and legs, not-listening and not-thinking, the voices did not really come to him.
There was that old Mexican.
There was that old Mexican who must have symbolized all he’d left undone, all the forgotten promises and vague resolves. So many promises to himself and to others and so much promise. Before he had turned away, shifting his horizons from the murderous social forces around him to the narrow perspectives of inward observation and dislike. Now there was only a certain vapidity of the spirit. Once there had been so many alternatives. There had been the commitment; the French would call it that. There had been that old Mexican, and the next day at the tennis courts, bending down at the water fountain, mopping his face with a clean-white towel, examining the specks of clay clinging to the dampness of his legs, the picture of the old Mexican stooping in the headlights of the car, showing his broken smile, had come to him again. He remembered looking around the courts, at the other young people, brown skin, white shorts, all of it seeming gorgeous; and the old Mexican pissing in the rain. Ten years ahead in time Mr. and Mrs. Jay McGown would have been entertaining at LaGloria Country Club. He remembered thinking that, and making the promise, no, they won’t; no they won’t. There was the commitment, and it was easy afterwards because he had all the gifts, all the graces, all the emotional and mental equipment, to get the job done.
Before the balls conspired to disable the intellect.
Coming back from California he had thought it might be possible to be seized by some of the old enthusiasms. All the bright young people were coming home to help Arthur Fenstemaker, all the dedicated people moving together to put the man in office and bring in the new day. But he had not really been seized by any of it — not the way Sarah was, back from Wellesley for the summer with all those shrill ideas in her head; not the way any of the others were, caught up in the crazy rush of a “crusade,” most of them a little envious of Jay as a former student body president and of the intimacy with Arthur Fenstemaker such dead glories gave him.
None of the old urgency was there. It was all a little flat — an ashes in the mouth. There was that old Mexican, but the memory of him was dim in his head now, diluted by his own despair. Dear Mister Governor, the letter said, we live on a farm and dont make any money and we have a beautiful little girl who has the palsy. She cant do anything for herself, she cant talk or is able to hold up her head, and she likes to hear music and take baths. It costs us a thousand dollars a year in treatments, and that’s more than we make some years. I cant stand the thought of putting her away, but …
Was there a limit on your sympathy or a boundary to despair? How did you involve yourself in mankind? If there was anything to what the Frenchmen were saying, that each is guilty toward each for everything, then perhaps there was something to the rest of it — that all are bound to each other in suffering and in love. Jay hoped not; he was sorry if it were true. There wasn’t enough in him now to go around.
But was this being honest with himself? Somewhere off in the boondocks of his reason the idea rebelled. Another toadying up to the horror that had been consuming him. How much, for example, was there of Arthur Fenstemaker to go around?
There was Kermit Abrams who had come to see him the week before. Mad Kermit — brilliant, mercurial, quixotic Kermit had come to the Capitol, his red beard blazing, seeking him out as if to get in touch with reality. When did Mad Kermit come? The day Arthur got Victoria on the telephone, the afternoon of which he and Sarah had gone to the apartment and — Mad Kermit came that day; there was plenty of Kermit to go around; there always had been, even at college. I mean man let’s do something, Kermit and his red beard and awful breath and worn-over shoes, like I mean what are you doing?
I’ve been up all night, Jay told him, working on a speech for the Governor. I’ve —
I mean if you’d just listen to me, gate, just take me serious, we can end the cold war, usher in the new age of ecumenical progress and peace, and — Jay, man, was your wife a good lay? Tell me that. I mean —
I’ve been up all night, Jay explained to him wearily, working on this speech the Governor’s supposed to give before the Jaycees. I’ve been trying to get some applause lines in, and I’ve been up all night, and —
I often wondered, Mad Kermit said, what liberal politicians like you stay up all night for. I always thought it was to get milk for the slum kids —
And Kermit had gone raging through the halls of the Capitol building, down the front steps and past the portico and through the park and hanged himself with a coathanger in his apartment closet two days later. There was that business with Sarah in the afternoon; there was Arthur Fenstemaker on the phone with Victoria and Jay talking with the little girl later on … Victoria Anne? How are you sweetheart this is your daddy … Your father … Yes I know I’m in Texas … I’m calling from Texas … How are you honey … Your father, yes that’s right … Are you coming out here to see me? Wait … Wai — Hello … Victoria Anne, hi sweetie, are you — Your mother? Where’s your mother? Out … where? Her picture took … taken.
Daddy, she had said to him, I know what you are Daddy I heard someone say … I heard someone say you’re a prick, Daddy, why are you a prick, Daddy, is that like an iceprick or a toothprick? Yes I’m coming to visit you goodbye Daddy.
There had been Kermit before that and the business with Sarah afterwards. Why did Kermit — Kermit couldn’t understand that while he was out drowning the slum kids in milk it was up to Jay and the Governor to work at it more realistically and see that there were simply no more slums. Why couldn’t he understand that?
There was that old Mexican.
There —
He pulled himself off the bed and felt his way across the darkened room in the trailer house to answer the knocking at the door. Vicki was standing there — he could see Sarah’s face across the narrow entrance way looking out at them from her bedroom — and next to Vicki was Shavers, holding the hand of a little brown-haired girl, and next to her was a good-looking young man wearing a miner’s helmet.