The Plant. Part 33

"John's enemy is dead. So is Herb's. I think they killed each other."

That wasn't what she thought, not exactly, but I took her by the arm and lead her back toward the door. The only thing I wanted right then was to get her off the street. People were looking at us strangely, and not because she's white and I'm black. And people who see a crying woman on a sunny Sat.u.r.day afternoon are apt to remember her, even in a city where instant amnesia is the rule rather than the exception.

"The rest of them are up there," she said, "but I forgot my d.a.m.ned keys. I'd just decided to go across to Smiler's and try calling them when you showed up. Thank G.o.d you did."

"Thank G.o.d I did," I agreed, and used my keys to let us into the lobby.

We smelled it as soon as we got off on Five, and in the Zenith House reception area, it was strong enough to knock you down. A spicy aroma. And green. Sandra was clutching my hand hard enough to hurt.

"h.e.l.lo?" I called. "Is anyone here?"

Nothing for a moment. Then I heard Wade say, "It's Riddley." To which Porter replied, "Don't be an a.s.s." To which Gelb replied, "Yes. It is."

"Are you guys all right?" Sandra asked. She still had me by my hand and was dragging me toward the hall. At first I didn't want to go...and then I did.

We got around LaShonda's desk and there they were. At first I hardly noticed them, though. The only thing I had eyes for was the plant. No more tired, bedraggled little ivy in a pot. The Brazilian rainforest has been transplanted to Park Avenue South. It was everywhere.

"Riddley," Kenton said with obvious relief. "Sandra."

"What are you doing here, Riddley?" Gelb asked. "I thought you weren't coming back until the middle of next week."

"My plans changed," I said. "I got in on the train less than an hour ago."

"What happened to your accent?" Porter asked. He was standing there with that crazy plant growing all around his feet, caressing his ankles, for G.o.d's sake, and looking at me with beetle-browed suspicion. At me with suspicion!

"That's it," Sandra breathed. "That's what's different."

I freed my hand from her grip, feeling that I might need my fingers in reasonable working order before the day was done. The picture (a picture, anyway) was coming clear in my head: a kind of silent movie, in fact. I was getting some of it from them and some of it from Zenith.

The suspicion had left Herb Porter's face. It was only my lack of accent which had bothered him, not me. What I felt as we stood there amid that green madness was a sense of family, a sense of all I had missed down in Alabama, and I embraced it. Away from the plant it is still possible to question, to mistrust. Within its range of influence? Never. These were my brothers, Sandra my sister (although the relations.h.i.+p between she and I is admittedly an incestuous one). And the plant? Our father, which art in Zenith. Color-white, black, green-was just then the least important thing about us. This afternoon it was us against the world.

"I wouldn't go in your office just this minute, Sandra," Roger said. "Mr. Detweiller is currently in residence. And he ain't pretty."

"The General?" she asked.

"The plant took him," John replied, and at that moment Zenith spat back the remaining bits of Hecksler it had decided it couldn't digest, perhaps conveying them all the way from the back of the office. The stuff hit the carpet in a rainy, metallic tinkle. There was a pocket watch, the chain it had been on (in three pieces), a belt buckle, a very small plastic box, and several tiny pieces of metal. Herb and Bill picked all this stuff up.

"Good Lord," Bill said, looking at the box. "It's his pacemaker."

"And these are surgical pins," Herb said. "The kind orthopedic surgeons use to hold bones together."

"All right," Wade said. "Let's a.s.sume that the plant is taking care of the General's corpse. I think it's clear we can dispose of his remaining...accessories...with no trouble, should we choose to. Detweiller's attache case, too."

"What do you think is in it?" Sandra asked.

"I don't want to know. The question is what to do with his body. I'm on record as saying we shouldn't feed it to the plant. I think it's had all the...all the nourishment it needs."

"All that's safe for it to have," John said.

"Maybe more," Bill added.

I should step in here just long enough to say that, although I am presenting all of this as spoken conversation, a good part of it was mind to mind. I can't remember which was which, and wouldn't know how to express the difference, anyway. I'm not sure it even matters. What I remember most clearly was a sense of absurd happiness. After nine months of pus.h.i.+ng a broom or the mail-cart, I was attending my first editorial meeting. Because isn't that what we were doing? Editing the situation, or preparing to?

"We could call the cops," Roger said, and when Bill and John both started to protest, he raised his hand to stop them. "I'm just articulating the idea. They wouldn't see the plant, we know that."

"But they might feel it," Sandra said, clearly dismayed. "And Roger-"

"Zenith might decide to lunch on one of them," I finished for her.

" Filet de flic, the special of the day. He might not be able to help himself. Or itself. Zenith may or may not be our true friend, but it's essentially a man-eater. It would behoove us to remember that."

I have to admit I found the way Herb Porter was looking at me rather delicious. It was as if, while visiting the zoo, he'd heard one of the monkeys begin to recite Shakespeare.

"Let's cut to the chase," John said. "Roger, may I?"

Roger nodded a.s.sent.

"We've gotten this raggedy-a.s.s publis.h.i.+ng company to the edge of

something," John said, "and I'm not talking about mere financial solvency. I'm talking about financial success. With Last Survivor, the joke book, and the General book, we're not just going to make a noise in the publis.h.i.+ng industry; we're going to create a G.o.ddam sonic boom that'll startle the s.h.i.+t out of everyone. A lot of people are going to turn around and take notice. And for me, that's not even the best of it. The best is that we're going to stick it to those a.s.sholes at Apex."

"Tell it!" Bill cried savagely, and that gave me a s.h.i.+ver. It was what Sophie had said to my sister Maddy, when Maddy accused me of playing n.i.g.g.e.r up in New York. Like hearing a ghost, in other words. Because that's what my family is to me now, all of them. Ghosts.

"It took magic to make the turnaround possible," John continued, "and I admit that. But all of publis.h.i.+ng is a kind of magic, isn't it? And not just publis.h.i.+ng. Any company that successfully brokers the creative arts to the public is magic. It's spinning straw into gold. Look at us, for Christ's sake! Accountants by day, dreamers by night-"

"And bulls.h.i.+tters in the afternoon," Herb put in. "Don't forget that." "Maybe you could get back to the point, John," Roger agreed. "The point is no cops," John said harshly. And, I felt, with admirable

brevity. "No outsiders. That ivy is helping us clean up our mess, and we're going to clean up its mess."

"Dead people, though," Sandra said. She looked quite pale, and when she reached out for my hand again, I let her take it. I was glad for the touch myself. "We're talking about dead people."

"We're talking about a couple of dead loonies who killed each other," Herb said. "Besides, only one corpse."

There was a moment of silence as we dealt with that. I think it was the crucial moment. Because, down deep, we all knew that, while the General might have killed Carlos, Zenith had taken care of Hecksler.

"Nothing bad happened here," Bill said, as if to himself.

"You got that right," Herb said. "Anyone want to defend the position that the world is worse off because those two jagoffs are no longer in it?"

A moment's silence, and then John Kenton said: "If we're not going to feed Detweiller to the plant, how are we going to get rid of him?"

Bill Gelb said: "I have an idea."

"If that's true," Roger said, "then this might be a good time to spill it."

From Bill Gelb's Diary 4/5/81.

There were some doubts at first, but I'll tell you one thing: mind-reading cuts through a lot of bulls.h.i.+t, the emotional as well as the plain old everyday problems people have trying to communicate by word of mouth. I'm pretty sure that what got through to them was my confidence, my sense that I had the right idea and that we could carry it off. It was the way I felt in the park, shooting dice with the rest of the yuppie sc.u.m. I only wish I'd gotten to the poker game. Oh well, there'll be another time.

Besides, I did get to Paramus.

From the journals of Riddley Walker 4/5/81 (continued) The truck was an old rattletrap, the winds.h.i.+eld milky around the edges; the heater didn't work and the springs were shot; the seats were lumpy and the stink of cooking exhaust came up through the floorboards, presumably from a defective exhaust-pipe or manifold. But the toll-taker on the GW never even looked at us twice, so I considered it a beautiful thing. Also, the radio worked. When I turned it on, the first thing I got was John Denver: "Gee it's great to be back home again! Sometimes this old farm seems like a long-lost friend..."

"Please," Bill said. "Do you have to?"

"I like it," I said, and began tapping my feet. Between us was a medium-sized paper bag with the Smiler's logo on it. Inside it were those few of the General's effects which Zenith found indigestible. The Mad Florist's briefcase was under the seat, giving off some very nasty vibrations. And no, I do not believe that was just my imagination.

"You like this? Riddley, I don't make reference to your color lightly, but don't Afro-American gentlemen such as yourself usually enjoy folks like Marvin Gaye? The Temptations? The Stylistics? James Brown? Arthur Conley? Otis Redding?"

I thought of telling him that Otis Redding was as dead as the fellow in the back of the rattly old panel truck in which we were currently crossing the Hudson River, then decided to keep my mouth shut on that score.

"I happen to enjoy this particular tune." In fact, I did. "Look outside, Bill. The moon's coming up on one side and the sun's going down on the other. It's what my Mama used to call double delight."

"I was very sorry to hear about your Mama, Riddley," he said, and I blessed him for that. Inside my head, however, where he could no longer hear the blessing. Not once we got away from the building where Zenith the common ivy now holds court.

"Thank you, Bill."

"Did she...you know, did she suffer?"

"No. I don't believe she did."

"Good. That's good."

"Yes," I said.

The John Denver song ended and was replaced by something infinitely worse: Sammy Davis Jr. singing about the candyman. Who can take a rainbow, dip it in a dream? Shuddering, I turned the radio off again. But the John Denver song lingered in my head: Gee it's good to be back home again.

We alit on the Jersey side, me in the pa.s.senger seat and Bill behind the wheel of the old truck with the fading Holsum Bread stickers on the sides. He had borrowed it from a friend, who hopefully has no idea of what we were transporting, rolled up in an old rug-remnant which Herb Porter found in the supply closet.

When, some hours before, Bill finished outlining his plan, Roger asked: "Who's going to go with you, Bill? You can't do it alone."

"I will," I said.

"You?" John asked. "But you're-" He stopped there, but we were still on the fifth floor, still in Zenith's presence, and we all heard the continuation of his thought: -only the janitor!

"Not any more, he's not," Roger said. "I'm hereby hiring you in an executive capacity, Riddley. If you want it, that is."

I gave him my Number One n.i.g.g.e.r Jim smile, the one which features roughly two thousand huge white teeth. "I'se gwine to be an edituh in dis heah fine c.u.mp'ny? Why, sho! Sho! Dat'd be purty good!"

"But not if you talk like that," John said.

"I'se gwine try to do bettah! Try to improve mah dictive qualities, as well!"

"This smells like bribery to me," Sandra said. She squeezed my hand and looked at Roger with mistrusting eyes.

"You know better," Roger said, and of course she did. That sense of family was too strong to deny. G.o.d only knows what's ahead of us, but we're in it together. Of that there can no longer be any doubt.

"What are you going to pay him with?" Herb wanted to know. "Smiler's Extra Value coupons? Enders will never approve another editor's salary. And if he finds out you're promoting the janitor, he'll s.h.i.+t."

"For payroll purposes, Riddley will continue in his janitorial capacity for the time being," Roger said. He sounded perfectly serene, perfectly sure of himself. "Later, we're going to have all the money we need to pay him a full salary. Riddley, how does $35,000 a year sound to you? Retroactive to today, April 4, 1981?"

"Goodness-graciousme! I be de flas.h.i.+es' n.i.g.g.a in de Cotton Club!"

"It sounds fine to me, too," John said, "since it's five a year more than I am currently making."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Roger said. "You, Herb, Bill, and Sandra are being raised to...let's see...fortyfive a year."