The Dick Gibson Show (22 page)

“The bird wouldn’t leave me—don’t ask me why—so I sat with it in my lap and waited till morning, and all that night I could think of no plan.

“Just after dawn I heard the soldiers getting up and Sansoni organizing them, telling them what to look for. There was a heavy mist and I couldn’t see them very well. I examined my chest where the bird had bit me and thought of the dodo’s extinct germs working in my blood.

“Finally I stood up. The bird was in my arms. ‘The search is over,’ I shouted. ‘I have it. It’s mine.’

“A Japanese came out of the fog and smiled and called out to the others. I could hear the word go round the forest. They were about two hundred feet from me when Collins pushed through the vanguard. Though I had thought him dead, I was not surprised to see him. I was very detached about everything.

“‘You found it?’ he yelled.

“I held it up.

“‘They’ll take it. Run. Go on—get going.’

“‘They can’t shoot. You said so yourself.’

“‘
Run!’

“The Japanese were still coming toward me. They were only twenty-five yards away now.

“‘
They’re going to take the bird!’
Collins screamed.

“They were fifty feet off.

“‘Kill it,’ he yelled.

“‘What?’

“‘
Kill
the damn thing. They mustn’t have it.
Kill it!’

“‘
What good will that do?’

“‘That’s an order, Sergeant.’ Collins was pointing his pistol at me. ‘Kill it or I’ll kill you.’

“‘It bit me,’ I said lazily.

“‘
Kill
it.’ The Japanese had stopped where they were. They were looking first at Collins, then at me. ‘Kill it, Goddamn you.
Kill it!’

“‘I have no gun.’ The loudness of my voice surprised me.

“Sansoni began to plead with me. ‘If you let it live we’ll treat you as a prisoner. My word. Geneva conventions. My word on that. Sergeant.’

“‘
Kill it,’
Collins screamed. ‘Kill it, or I
promise
I’ll shoot you.’ He reached into his pocket, pulled out something black and threw it toward me. He was very excited. ‘Here,’ he shouted. ‘Pick up the knife. Wring its neck. Cut its throat.’

“‘Please, my dear Sergeant,’ Sansoni said. ‘We’ll let you off. We’ll allow you both to return to the garrison. All we want is the dodo.’

“‘I’m going to count to three, Sergeant,’ Collins yelled. ‘I’ll shoot you. I swear it.’

“The knife had landed at my feet. ‘One …’ Collins shouted. ‘
Two
…’

“I bent down and picked up the knife. I turned it in my hand and examined it. I opened it.

“‘
Good,’
Collins said. ‘They mustn’t get their hands on it. Remember what we’re fighting for.’

“‘It’s only a bird. Everybody. Hey, it’s only a bird.’

“‘Kill it!’

“I slit its throat. I heard them gasp. It was as if I’d pressed the blade to their own throats.

“‘Ah,’ Collins sighed.

“I looked down. Its blood was all over me. The Japanese were weeping. Holding the bird against my breast, I started walking toward them. ‘It’s only a bird,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see? It’s just a bird.’

“Then the bird was in the air!
They fell away from me. Collins was shrieking, they all were. The bird was in the air and the soldiers screamed. Some tried not to look at me, but they couldn’t turn away their heads. The bird came down against my breast and then rose again—higher this time. And then, falling again, it rose a third time. The Japanese were keening with grief and ecstasy. I moved toward them and they hid from me.

“‘It’s the miracle!’ Collins screamed. ‘Oh, my God, it’s the miracle! I didn’t want them to have it. I didn’t want them to have their symbol. I never thought … Oh, Jesus, it’s the miracle.’

“Now the bird fell. I reached out my arms and it settled against my breast for the last time. I carried it to its nest and placed it inside the spongy ring. When I turned I saw that the Japanese had lined up on two sides, making a sort of aisle in the forest. I walked through them. Collins fell in beside me, crying. The soldiers threw down their weapons and I could hear them murmuring.
Rosichicho,
they were saying. Invincible—I was invincible. When we were a few hundred yards past, I heard a sudden burst of machine-gun fire. It was the garrison. They charged into the forest and killed them all—every last Japanese. They’ve been clearing them out on the other islands too; the battle’s been raging for two days now. Casualties are enormous, on the British side as well. I, of course, am
rosichicho.

“Oh, by now I think I’ve pieced together what’s happened here. Why Collins and I were assigned to Mauritius. It was the equipment, wasn’t it? It was a test of the equipment. Am I getting warm? You wanted to check its range, and you picked a place where not much was happening in the event these broadcasts were intercepted. They were
meant
to be meaningless. It was our presence on the plane from Lisbon that attracted the enemy. They sent men to check up on us. That’s when they discovered the dodo and sent for the ornithologist. Then they sent out more men because they figured we knew about the bird too. Then we built up our forces to match theirs. But it was all
meant
to be meaningless. But that’s very hard, you know? Meaning is everywhere, even in Mauritius.

“Collins is dead. Everyone is. ‘Dead as a dodo.’ We have that expression. I, of course, am
rosichicho.

“Only don’t bet on it. I tossed the bird. I flung him up myself. With my wrists. It’s all in the wrists.”

Part II

Hartford Daily Intelligencer
Tuesday, March 3, 1959

12:00 Midnight

WGR      Witching Hours (Music & News)
WHCN   The Dick Gibson Show (Talk)
WLLD    The World Tmrw

Dick’s guests that night were Dr. Jack Patterson, Associate Professor of English at Hartford Community College; Bernard Perk, a pharmacist, probably the ablest proponent of fluoridation in all New England; Pepper Steep of the Pepper Steep Charm School; and rounding out the panel, Mel Son, the Amherst disc jockey whose experiences with the powerful Democratic machine when he’d tried to run for state office had once earned him Special Guest status. They’d all been on the show before but only Mel had ever been the Special Guest, it being a principle with Dick to choose his panels from the community—panelists were, after all, something like jurors and, as such, surrogates for the audience—but to import his Special Guests from outside.

Tonight his Special Guest was the psychologist Edmond Behr- Bleibtreau. Behr-Bleibtreau did the flying saucer bit from the mass- hysteria angle but was also known for his advocacy of the psychic phenomena people, as well as for some of the new things. As Dick understood it from the little of Behr-Bleibtreau’s book that he had read, the man’s major emphasis was the old business of mind over matter, though Behr-Bleibtreau called mind “will.” Dick had heard that he was a very forceful man, as formidable as any guest on late- night radio. It was also said that he sometimes used his knowledge of psychology in unusual, if unspecified, ways. Despite the expense, Dick considered himself lucky to get him. Special Guests were not paid, but some of them, though they probably collected again from the organizations they represented or from their publishers, insisted on “expenses.” Behr-Bleibtreau had presented the station with a bill for his first-class air fare from Los Angeles, and even though the man had been with Long John Nebel on WOR in New York the previous night, WHCN had agreed to pay it. They were also picking up the tab for his Holiday Inn suite. Everything would come out of Dick’s tiny budget for the show. For a month or so there’d probably be nothing left over for the loners, those characters who’d written no books and represented no organizations and who really needed to be helped out with expenses. When he’d told Behr-Bleibtreau this, the man had patted his arm to reassure him. “In that case,” he said, “I shall have to give you a good show. Something very special.”

Several others, guests of the guests, were in the studio. They had begun to gather about a half-hour before air time. Jack Patterson had left his wife, Rose, at home to listen to him on the radio and had a girl friend with him, one of his students probably, an Annette something. One reason he came on the program was that it gave him someplace to go when he was deceiving Rose. Bernard Perk had brought his son and daughter-in-law, in from Chicago on a visit. Pepper Steep came with her sister and Mel Son had brought Victor Ash, the man who had defeated him in the primary. After the election they had become good friends. Even Edmond Behr-Bleibtreau had brought guests, a man and a middle-aged woman in an enormously long fur coat which looked as if it might have been made up for someone a full foot taller than herself. Neither of Behr-Bleibtreau’s guests had been introduced to Dick. They were all seated in a single row of theater seats along the wall opposite the control booth.

“Do you think anyone else will drop in?” Dick asked his panel. “I have to know so Jerry can phone in the order for our sandwiches.”

Behr-Bleibtreau held up his hand. “I expect someone.” He hesitated. “He may come and he may not.”

Dick opened his microphone and told his engineer to order for fifteen people. Then he explained the ground rules to his guests and obtained mike levels from each of them. “Bernie Perk,” he said, “you don’t speak that softly. Let’s hear your reaction to Jack Patterson here when Jack says that fluoridation not only doesn’t prevent tooth decay but causes cancer of the jaw.” Bernie Perk gave an exaggerated groan and the panel laughed, even Behr-Bleibtreau. “The most important thing,” Dick said, “is that you don’t all speak at once. I’ll recognize you either by looking at you directly or by calling your name. These mikes compensate for the different power levels of your voices, so everything comes at the listener at equal strength. If you speak when someone else is talking, it just sounds like babble. Nothing’s more frustrating for the listener.”

The panel knew all this, but he went through it for his guests’ guests, owing them insights. He was only sorry that the show was so much what it seemed. Those who came to the house of magic were entitled to secrets. Besides, he loved the people who saw him work. The capsule-like character of the studio, the heavy drapes hung down over solid, windowless walls, and the long voyage to dawn created in him a special sense of intimacy, as though what they were about to do together was just a little dangerous. Even more than the people who watched him work he loved the people he worked with. They were comrades. For him it was as if all place—
all
place—was ridiculous, a comedown, all studios makeshift, the material world itself existing only as obstacle, curiously unamiable, so that, remembered later, the night they worked together became some turned corner of the life. (A sense, up all night, of emergency, national crises kicked around the anchor desk.) There had been a thousand such comrades in the fourteen years since the war, the seven years he had been doing late-night talk shows. And all place
was
ridiculous, wayside, all towns tank, for him anyway. Though his voice had been heard everywhere by now, he had never been network (unless you counted the small, queer regional networks: the Billy Lee Network in Texas and the Southwest, Heartlands Broadcasting, the Mid-Atlantic Company, Gulfcoast Broadcasting System, the Northwest’s Big Sky Company), never coast-to-coast.

“We’ll be here five hours,” he said. “It’s a long time till five o’clock.” He turned to Behr-Bleibtreau. “The world looks strange when you’ve been in a studio all night and go outside. If we all last, I’ll take you to breakfast.” Now he turned to his guests’ guests. “As I say, it’s a long time till five o’clock. If any of you
absolutely
has to sack out there’s a cot in my office, and another in Jerry’s. Some nights I wish
I
could go lie down.” This wasn’t true; there had never been a show which he hadn’t wished would go on longer. Babble or not, for him the greatest moments had been when, losing their tempers or caught up in their ideas, they all spoke at once; in that instant he would feel himself physically touched by their speech, centripetally held by their cross-talk. Nor was he ever nervous, save in some impersonal sense, as now, anxious for the chemistry to be correct, like someone hoping that the fish are biting. If it all went well, if Behr-Bleibtreau found the panel to his taste—not provincial, sufficiently challenging to bother with— something could happen. A truth, or something better than a truth. “I’m here merely to moderate,” he said. “I myself am not controversial.” He was, to use Madam Modred’s term, “a control.”