Fellow Travelers (14 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

March 19, 1954

Whenever the radio played “Secret Love,” Tim believed for a few moments that he had something in common with other Americans in the throes of romance. The song had been riding the airwaves for weeks, and it made him feel more normal than furtive, at least until Doris Day reached the tune’s happy ending. Right now, late on a Friday night when he was home alone working, the song seemed more than he could stand, so he turned the dial and arrived, almost immediately, at the sound of Joe McCarthy, speaking live from Milwaukee about the Democratic party’s “twenty years of treason, twenty years of betrayal.” Along with roars of approval from a hotel banquet room, the microphones were picking up traces of a “Joe Must Go!” chant from the opposing rally outside.

“Tonight,” McCarthy intoned, “I shall place before the greatest of all juries, the American people, an indictment of twenty counts, picked at random.”

The “m” buzzed through the mesh of the Philco.

McCarthy’s text and the protesting chant competed like the parallel columns Tim was constructing on a legal pad. The crux of the charges and countercharges already seemed pretty clear to the public: the army, through its secretary Robert Stevens and counsel John Adams, was claiming that all sorts of extravagant pressure had been brought to bear by Senator McCarthy and Roy Cohn to make Private David Schine’s life in the service a kind of holiday; on the contrary, the senator and Cohn continued to assert that the army was holding Schine “hostage”—preventing him from continuing to assist the committee and threatening the young man with overseas duty as a means of getting McCarthy to call off his probe into the army’s tolerance of subversives at Fort Monmouth.

But if the crux was clear, a farrago of detail still swirled underneath it. Tim looked at the columns he was composing for Tommy McIntyre and Senator Potter, and wondered if he’d ever master their contradictions:

Sitting amidst piles of newspapers from the past two weeks, Tim decided that the whole thing was impossible, like some assignment from the nuns requiring you to cross-connect the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Cardinal Virtues. Was Cohn in love with Schine, or was Adams in love with money? A week ago, Tommy McIntyre had had Tim compose Senator Potter’s statement demanding that everybody be put under oath to sort things out, and four days after that, meeting in executive session, the committee had agreed—beginning in a few weeks, in front of television cameras—to investigate itself.

Tim was growing accustomed to the circularity of all this, and to the possibility that truth might be reachable only by riding on wheels within wheels. Did McCarthy have something on Tommy McIntyre (
“Everybody’s people come from someplace”
), and did Tommy also have something on Potter? Something to account for his ever-greater command of the senator’s office? Since the afternoon when the three of them experienced McCarthy’s wrath and bonhomie, Tommy had been so busy that Tim had had no chance to question the older man about his political past. When McIntyre slowed down enough for even a short snatch of conversation, he talked in riddles, sententiae, and snippets of poetry.

Closing his eyes and breathing in the woody aroma of the hardware store below, Tim tried to reestablish the concentration required for his parallel columns, but was stopped by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

“You need a TV, Skippy.”

As soon as he came in, Fuller pointed to the radio, from which McCarthy’s consonants continued to buzz. Slightly and thrillingly drunk, he sat down on the edge of the desk and nodded toward an especially ugly picture of Cohn in the
Evening Star.
“Without a TV,” said Fuller, “you missed him on
Meet the Press
last Sunday. Trust me: he’s not as sweet as he looks.”

He took off his suit jacket—all the warm, nearly spring night required—and extracted from it a white card, which he handed to Tim. “For your information,” he said. “Forwarded from Bar Harbor by the paterfamilias.” The card invited the holder to the Maine state Republican convention, set for the first and second of April. “According to Father,” Fuller explained, “your Mr. Jones’s supporters are urging that he be allowed to speak to the delegates along with ‘Magrit.’” He pronounced Mrs. Smith’s name with an old Mainer’s accent.

Tim mentioned the latest that he’d heard in the office. “Jones is now giving speeches that refer to himself as a ‘member of the committee’! He used to just say he ‘sat in’ once in a while.”

Fuller flipped through the stack of newspapers on the desk until he found Monday’s
Washington Post.
“Good boy,” he said. “Glad to see you’re sometimes trading up from the
Star,
if only a small bit.” As Hawkins looked for the correct page, Tim considered the praise he’d just been given, which was really a piece of the tutelage that sometimes confused him—as when Hawkins suggested he get himself something better than the Van Heusen shirt he’d regarded as a splurge to begin with.

“Here it is,” said Hawkins, pointing to a column by the Alsop brothers, Joseph and Stewart. “‘The uncensored Adams chronology is also understood to contain an indication that Cohn was receiving substantial financial assistance from Schine, while he was threatening to “wreck the army” in order to make his rich friend’s life more comfortable.’”

“That’s not true,” said Tim. “It’s Adams who was interested in money. I think.”

“Then what
is
the truth?” asked Fuller. “Where Cohn is concerned.”

“Cohn is in love with Schine.” Tim was struck by the difficulty of just saying it.

“Good,” said Hawkins. “Our little boy is growing up. But read on.” He pointed to the column’s next sentence and handed the paper to Tim, who read from it aloud:

“‘This financial dependence would help to explain Cohn’s feverish desire to be of service to Schine. It does not explain the strength of Cohn’s apparent hold on McCarthy.’”

Tim looked up, confused. “It’s true,” he said, “that McCarthy doesn’t speak very well of Schine unless Cohn is around.”

“Think harder, Timothy.”

Tim put down the newspaper. “It gives me a headache. I’ve been trying to figure out what McCarthy has on McIntyre and what McIntyre has on Potter.” He walked over to Fuller and kissed him. “I know what they could all have on me.”

Hawkins lightly kissed him back and let him sit on his lap. “I could tell you what I’ve got on Joe Alsop,” he whispered, thinking of the spring day last year when the elder, unmarried brother of the columnist duo had first leered in his direction at the coat check of the Sulgrave Club. The card that came around the following morning had read more like a mash note than a luncheon invitation.

“You’re as bad as Tommy McIntyre,” said Tim, who believed Fuller was kidding. “The only thing I want to have on you are these.” He pointed to his lips, before kissing Hawk’s neck.

“Just remember, Skippy. The only thing that counts in all this is what anybody has on McCarthy. Got that?” He gently deposited him back in the desk chair, as if Tim, freshly instructed, could now return to work.

For the past week and a half, Tim had wanted to tell Hawkins about his ten minutes in McCarthy’s office. But after the night of the Murrow program, when Hawkins seemed to keep him at arm’s length, he had forced himself not to come around; he’d made himself wait for Hawkins’ appearance here. He now wanted to say “I’m glad you came over,” but it was too simple and direct, somehow even more honest than the kisses he’d planted.

“I need to believe,” he explained instead, “that there’s still at least a chance Adams and Stevens could be the worst ones in all this. Maybe they’re
not
worthy of the soldiers they’re in charge of. Maybe they
were
trying to stop the Fort Monmouth investigation—you know, because they’re bureaucrats trying to protect themselves.”

He knew, as he spoke, that his dread of McCarthy must be showing in his face, as it had started doing months ago in front of Kenneth Woodforde. He further knew, as his eyes darted to the parallel lists, that the “McCarthy Memoranda,” especially the communications from Cohn, had the too-good-to-be-true smoothness of forgery.
We’ve got typewriters, too.

“Where have you been?” he asked Hawkins, willing to risk humiliation if it would extract him from the conundrum of McCarthy.

“Out with the dullest crowd imaginable.”

“Was the brewer there?” He knew that Hawkins didn’t think much of Mary Johnson’s fiancé; he also knew Hawk wasn’t about to answer for the whole last ten days.

Fuller shook his head. “No brewer. Two former classmates. Plus one wife, one girlfriend.”

“How about you?” asked Tim. “Did you go with a girl?”

“Of course,” said Fuller.

The girls never made Tim feel jealous; the ease with which they were pressed into service—like handkerchiefs taken from a drawer—only added to Hawkins’ allure.

“Did you know Schine?” The question had only now occurred to Tim. “When you were at Harvard?”

“Ever so slightly. We overlapped—so not to speak—for a year or two. He would have fit right in with tonight’s crowd.”

“He’s not your type, right?” said Tim, hoping his teasing would provoke a measure of the same.

“Nor is Cohn his. Private Schine likes the ladies. Your buddy Roy is going to wear out his lawyer’s larynx barking up that particular tree.”

“Yeah,” said Tim, amorous once more. He got up from the desk in search of a kiss. “You like them shorter, skinnier. With a few freckles. A stammer.” He buried his head against Hawkins’ shoulder.

“Easy, Timmy, it’s a school night.”

He felt immediate despair: if Hawk really wanted to go to bed with him, there would be, he knew, no consideration less important than the clock.

“I hate working Saturdays,” he managed to complain. “It’s only those ancient bachelors like Senator Russell who enjoy them. They get so lonely in their hotel rooms they wish everyone would come in on
Sundays.
” He paused, hoping that Hawk would reconsider, would sigh forbearingly, then laugh, then throw him down on the blue bedspread. But nothing. “Don’t you have to work tomorrow, too?”

Hawkins shook his head. “Middle rank has its privileges.” Since his triumph over McLeod, he’d come in fewer Saturday mornings than he’d missed. “In my case, the night is young.”

“Take me out into it.” Tim knew his smile must look as desperate as any flashed by a politician behind in the polls. “Make me the drunk version of your type. One spiked
dulce de leche
and the spectacles come flying off. The stammer disappears.”
Be here with me at seven in the morning. Force me to stay in bed another hour. Keep me from going to Mass and being the only Catechumen there, the one who sits in the back no longer daring to take Communion.

Fuller smiled but didn’t move. After a long moment, he at last said: “All those things—skinny boy, freckles, specs, stammer—they’re certainly a
part
of my type.”

Tim warmed with encouragement. “I can supply the rest of it, too.”

Hawk tugged on his ear. “Let’s go
find
the rest of it.”

Tim looked around, comically, to his left and then right and then behind, as if trying to spot the rest of himself.

“Let’s go out and find it
together,
” Hawkins said, his voice lower than before. He put his arm over Tim’s shoulder. “Maybe the two of us can become the three of us.”

Tim felt the back of his neck flush.

Hawkins tried for a lighter touch. “
You
know,” he joked. “Like Joe and Roy and Dave. What do you say?”

Tim crossed the room and stood at the sink. “No, Mr. Fuller.” They were the words he’d said at this same spot five months ago, but this time there was no chance of their being a sin, mortal or venial; they contained no lie.

What he said next might have been a line from a movie, except for the excruciating effort it took to summon the words: “Get out and don’t come back.”

Fuller straightened the papers he’d displaced in sitting down on the desk. Ten seconds later, the door had closed and Tim could hear the ex–track star’s light, heedless descent of the stairs.

Out on the street, Fuller walked west, wondering where he could catch a cab on the deserted Hill. He passed a telephone booth and thought of calling Mary Johnson, who probably was out with the brewer, which was too bad, because he remained curious about something. He wanted to ask her what credit one got for giving something up when Lent was halfway through. Did you get more if the renunciation was meant to be for good, to go beyond Easter?
I did what you told me to,
he wanted to say. He’d devised the stratagem himself, but had carried it out for the reason she’d suggested.
Wouldn’t sooner rather than later hurt him less?

Now that he’d done his good deed, he was—what, precisely? Angry? Sad? He dismissed the questions and kept walking, not in the direction of a bar, but toward home, where tonight, for once, he’d intended going all along.