God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Page 8

  "I--I suppose I should say goodbye," said Sylvia guiltily. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  "That would be up to your doctor to say."

  "Give--give my love to everyone."

  "I will, I will."

  "Tell them I dream about them all the time."

  "That will make them proud."

  "Congratulate Mary Moody on her twins."

  "I will. I'll be baptizing them tomorrow."

  "Baptizing?" This was something new

  Mushari rolled his eyes.

  "I--I didn't know you--you did things like that," said Sylvia carefully.

  Mushari was gratified to hear the anxiety in her voice. It meant to him that Eliot's lunacy was not stabilized, but was about to make the great leap forward into religion.

  "I couldn't get out of it," said Eliot. "She insisted on it, and nobody else would do it."

  "Oh." Sylvia relaxed.

  Mushari did not register disappointment. The baptism would hold up very well in court as evidence that Eliot thought of himself as a Messiah.

  "I told her," said Eliot, and Mushari's mind, which was equipped with ratchets, declined to accept this evidence, "that I wasn't a religious person by any stretch of the imagination. I told her nothing I did would count in Heaven, but she insisted just the same."

  "What will you say? What will you do?"

  "Oh--I don't know." Eliot's sorrow and exhaustion dropped away for a moment as he became enchanted by the problem. A birdy little smile played over his lips. "Go over to her shack, I guess. Sprinkle some water on the babies, say, 'Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies--: " 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' "

  8

  IT WAS AGREED that night that Eliot and Sylvia should meet for a final farewell in the Bluebird Room of the Marott Hotel in Indianapolis, three nights hence. This was a tremendously dangerous thing for two such sick and loving people to do. The agreement was reached in a chaos of murmurs and whispers and little cries of loneliness that came at the close of the telephone conversation.

  "Oh, Eliot, should we?"

  "I think we have to."

  "Have to," she echoed.

  "Don't you feel it--that--that we have to?"

  "Yes."

  "It's life."

  Sylvia wagged her head. "Oh, damn love-- damn love."

  "This will be nice. I promise."

  "I promise, too."

  "I'll get a new suit."

  "Please don't--not on my account."

  "On account of the Bluebird Room, then."

  "Good night."

  "I love you, Sylvia. Good night."

  There was a pause.

  "Good night, Eliot."

  "I love you."

  "Good night. I'm frightened. Good night."

  This conversation was a worry to Norman Mushari, who restored the telephone with which he had been eavesdropping to its cradle. It was crucial to his plans that Sylvia not get pregnant by Eliot. A child in her womb would have an unbreakable claim to control of the Foundation, whether Eliot was crazy or not. And it was Mushari's dream that control should go to Eliot's second cousin, Fred Rosewater, in Pisquontuit, Rhode Island.

  Fred knew nothing of this, didn't even know for certain that he was related to the Indiana Rosewaters. The Indiana Rosewaters knew about him only because McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee, being thorough, had hired a genealogist and a detective to find out who their closest relatives bearing the name Rosewater were. Fred's dossier in the law firm's confidential files was fat, as was Fred, but the investigation had been discreet. Fred never imagined that he might be tapped for wealth and glory.

  So, on the morning after Eliot and Sylvia agreed to meet, Fred felt like an ordinary or less-than-ordinary man, whose prospects were poor. He came out of the Pisquontuit Drug Store, squinted in the sunlight, took three deep breaths, went into the Pisquontuit News Store next door. He was a portly man, aslop with coffee, gravid with Danish pastry.

  Poor, lugubrious Fred spent his mornings seeking insurance prospects in the drugstore, which was the coffee house of the rich, and the news store, which was the coffee house of the poor. He was the only man in town who had coffee in both places.

  Fred bellied up to the news store's lunch counter, beamed at a carpenter and two plumbers sitting there. He climbed aboard a stool, and his great behind made the cushion seem no larger than a marshmallow.

  "Coffee and Danish, Mr. Rosewater?" said the not-very-clean idiot girl behind the counter.

  "Coffee and Danish sounds real good," Fred agreed heartily. "On a morning like this, by God, coffee and Danish sounds real good."

  About Pisquontuit: It was pronounced "Pawn-it" by those who loved it, and "Piss-on-it" by those who didn't. There had once been an Indian chief named Pisquontuit.

  Pisquontuit wore an apron, lived, as did his people, on clams, raspberries, and rose hips. Agriculture was news to Chief Pisquontuit. So, for that matter, were wampum, feather ornaments, and the bow and arrow.

  Alcohol was the best news of all. Pisquontuit drank himself to death in 1638.

  Four thousand moons later, the village that made his name immortal was populated by two hundred very wealthy families and by a thousand ordinary families whose breadwinners served, in one way and another, the rich.

  The lives led there were nearly all paltry, lacking in subtlety, wisdom, wit or invention--were precisely as pointless and unhappy as lives led in Rosewater, Indiana. Inherited millions did not help. Nor did the arts and sciences.

  Fred Rosewater was a good sailor and had attended Princeton University, so he was welcomed into the homes of the rich, though, for Pisquontuit, he was gruesomely poor. His home was a sordid little brown-shingle carpenter's special, a mile from the glittering waterfront.

  Poor Fred worked like hell for the few dollars he brought home once in a while. He was working now, beaming at the carpenter and the two plumbers in the news store. The three workmen were reading a scandalous tabloid, a national weekly dealing with murder, sex, pets, and children--mutilated children, more often than not. It was called The American Investigator, "The World's Most Sparkling Newspaper." The Investigator was to the news store what The Wall Street Journal was to the drugstore.

  "Improving your minds as usual, I see," Fred observed. He said it with the lightness of fruitcake.

  The workmen had an uneasy respect for Fred. They tried to be cynical about what he sold, but they knew in their hearts that he was offering the only get-rich-quick scheme that was open to them: to insure themselves and die soon. And it was Fred's gloomy secret that without such people, tantalized by such a proposition, he would not have a dime. All of his business was with the working class. His cavorting with the sailboat rajahs next door was bluster, bluff. It impressed the poor to think that Fred sold insurance to the canny rich, too, but it was not true. The estate plans of the rich were made in banks and law offices far, far away.

  "What's the foreign news today?" Fred inquired. This was another joke about The Investigator.

  The carpenter held up the front page for Fred to see. The page was well filled by a headline and a picture of a fine looking young woman. The headline said this:

  I WANT A MAN WHO

  CAN GIVE ME A

  GENIUS BABY!

  The girl was a showgirl. Her name was Randy Herald.

  "I'd be pleased to help the lady with her problem," said Fred, lightly again.

  "My God," said the carpenter, cocking his head and gnashing his teeth, "wouldn't anybody?"

  "You think I'm serious?" Fred sneered at Randy Herald. "I wouldn't trade my bride for twenty thousand Randy Heralds!" He was calculatingly maudlin now. "And I don't think you guys would trade your brides, either." To Fred, a bride was any woman with an insurable husband.

  "I know your brides," he continued, "and any one of you w
ould be crazy to trade." He nodded. "We are four lucky guys sitting here, and we'd better not forget it. Four wonderful brides we've got, boys, and we'd damn well better stop and thank God for 'em from time to time."

  Fred stirred his coffee. "I wouldn't be anything without my bride, and I know it." His bride was named Caroline. Caroline was the mother of an unattractive, fat little boy, poor little Franklin Rosewater. Caroline had taken lately to drinking lunch with a rich Lesbian named Amanita Buntline.

  "I've done what I can for her," Fred declared. "God knows it isn't enough. Nothing could be enough." There was a real lump in his throat. He knew that lump had to be there and it had to be real, or he wouldn't sell any insurance. "It's something, though, something even a poor man can do for his bride."

  Fred rolled his eyes mooningly. He was worth forty-two thousand dollars dead.

  Fred was often asked, of course, whether he was related to the famous Senator Rosewater. Fred's self-effacing, ignorant reply was along the lines of, "Somewhere, somehow, I guess--way, way back." Like most Americans of modest means, Fred knew nothing about his ancestors.

  There was this to know:

  The Rhode Island branch of the Rosewater family was descended from George Rosewater, younger brother of the infamous Noah. When the Civil War came, George raised a company of Indiana riflemen, marched off with them to join the nearly legendary Black Hat Brigade. Under George's command was Noah's substitute, the Rosewater village idiot, Fletcher Moon. Moon was blown to hamburger by Stonewall Jackson's artillery at Second Bull Run.

  During the retreat through the mud toward Alexandria, Captain Rosewater took time out to write his brother Noah this note:

  Fletcher Moon kept up his end of the deal to the utmost of his ability. If you are put out about your considerable investment in him being used up so quickly, I suggest you write General Pope for a partial refund. Wish you were here.

  George

  To which Noah replied:

  I am sorry about Fletcher Moon, but, as the Bible says, "A deal is a deal." Enclosed find some routine legal papers for you to sign. They empower me to run your half of the farm and the saw factory until your return, etc., etc. We are undergoing great privations here at home. Everything is going to the troops. A word of appreciation from the troops would be much appreciated.

  Noah.

  By the time of Antietam, George Rosewater had become a Lieutenant Colonel, and had, curiously, lost the little fingers from both hands. At Antietam, he had his horse shot out from under him, advanced on foot, grabbed the regimental colors from a dying boy, found himself holding only a shattered staff when Confederate cannister carried the colors away. He pressed on, killed a man with the staff. At the moment he was doing the killing, one of his own men fired off a musket that still had its ramrod jammed down the bore. The explosion blinded Colonel Rosewater for life.

  George returned to Rosewater County a blind brevet brigadier. People found him remarkably cheerful. And his cheerfulness did not seem to fade one iota when it was explained to him by bankers and lawyers, who kindly offered to be his eyes, that he didn't own anything any more, that he had signed everything over to Noah. Noah, unfortunately, was not in town to explain things in person to George. Business required that he spend most of his time in Washington, New York and Philadelphia.

  "Well," said George, still smiling, smiling, smiling, "as the Bible tells us in no uncertain terms, 'Business is business.' "

  The lawyers and bankers felt somewhat cheated, since George didn't seem to be drawing any sort of moral from what should have been an important experience in almost any man's life. One lawyer, who had been looking forward to pointing out the moral when George got mad, couldn't restrain himself from pointing it out anyway, even though George was laughing: "People should always read things before they sign them."

  "You can bet your boots," said George, "that from now on I will."

  George Rosewater obviously wasn't a well man when he came back from the war, for no well man, having lost his eyes and his patrimony, would have laughed so much. And a well man, particularly if he were a general and a hero, might have taken some vigorous legal steps to compel his brother to return his property. But George filed no suit. He did not wait for Noah to return to Rosewater County, and he did not go East to find him. In fact, he and Noah were never to meet or communicate again.

  He paid a call, wearing the full regalia of a brigadier, to each Rosewater County household that had given him a boy or boys to command, praising them all, mourning with all his heart for the boys who were wounded or dead. Noah Rosewater's brick mansion was being built at that time. One morning the workmen found the brigadier's uniform nailed to the front door as though it were an animal skin nailed to a barn door to dry.

  As far as Rosewater County was concerned, George Rosewater had disappeared forever.

  George went East like a vagabond, not to find and kill his brother, but to seek work in Providence, Rhode Island. He had heard that a broom factory was being opened there. It was to be staffed by Union veterans who were blind.

  What he had heard was true. There was such a factory, founded by Castor Buntline, who was neither a veteran nor blind. Buntline perceived correctly that blind veterans would make very agreeable employees, that Buntline himself would gain a place in history as a humanitarian, and that no Northern patriot, for several years after the war, anyway, would use anything but a Buntline Union Beacon Broom. Thus was the great Buntline fortune begun. And, with broom profits, Castor Buntline and his spastic son Elihu went carpetbagging, became tobacco kings.

  When the footsore, amiable General George Rosewater arrived at the broom factory, Castor Buntline wrote to Washington, confirmed that George was a general, hired George at a very good salary, made him foreman, and named the whiskbrooms the factory was making after him. The brand name entered ordinary speech for a little while. A "General Rosewater" was a whiskbroom.

  And blind George was given a fourteen-year-old girl, an orphan named Faith Merrihue, who was to be his eyes and his messenger. When she was sixteen, George married her.

  And George begat Abraham, who became a Congregationalist minister. Abraham went as a missionary to the Congo, where he met and married Lavinia Waters, the daughter of another missionary, an Illinois Baptist.

  In the jungle, Abraham begat Merrihue. Lavinia died at Merrihue's birth. Little Merrihue was nursed on the milk of a Bantu.

  And Abraham and little Merrihue returned to Rhode Island. Abraham accepted the call to the Congregationalist pulpit in the little fishing village of Pisquontuit. He bought a little house, and with that house came one hundred ten acres of scruffy, sandy woodlot. It was a triangular lot. The hypotenuse of the triangle lay on the shore of Pisquontuit Harbor.

  Merrihue, the Parson's son, became a realtor, divided his father's land into lots. He married Cynthia Niles Rumfoord, a minor heiress, invested much of her money in pavement and streetlights and sewers. He made a fortune, lost it, and his wife's fortune, too, in the crash of 1929.

  He blew his brains out.

  But, before he did that, he wrote a family history and he begat poor Fred, the insurance man.

  Sons of suicides seldom do well.

  Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly incurious about the past and numbly certain about the future to this grisly extent: they suspect that they, too, will probably kill themselves.

  The syndrome was surely Fred's. And to it he added twitches, aversions and listlessnesses special to his own case. He had heard the shot that killed his father, had seen his father with a big piece of his head blown away, with the manuscript of the family history in his lap.

  Fred had the manuscript, which he had never read, which he never wanted to read. It was on top of a jelly cupboard in the cellar of Fred's home. That was where he kept the rat poison, too.

  Now poor Fred Rosewater was in the news store, continuing
to talk to the carpenter and the two plumbers about brides. "Ned--" he said to the carpenter, "we've both done something for our brides, anyway." The carpenter was worth twenty thousand dollars dead, thanks to Fred. He could think of little else but suicide whenever premium time rolled around.

  "And we can forget all about saving, too," said Fred. "That's all taken care of--automatically."

  "Yup," said Ned.

  There was a waterlogged silence. The two uninsured plumbers, gay and lecherous moments before, were lifeless now.

  "With a simple stroke of the pen," Fred reminded the carpenter, "we've created sizable estates. That's the miracle of life insurance. That's the least we can do for our brides."

  The plumbers slid off their stools. Fred was not dismayed to see them go. They would be taking their consciences with them wherever they went--and they would be coming back to the news store again and again.

  And whenever they came back, there would be Fred.

  "You know what my greatest satisfaction is in my profession?" Fred asked the carpenter.

  "Nope."

  "It comes when I have a bride come up to me and say, 'I don't know how the children and I can ever thank you enough for what you've done. God bless you, Mr. Rosewater.' "

  9

  THE CARPENTER slunk away from Fred Rosewater, too, leaving a copy of The American Investigator behind. Fred went through an elaborate pantomime of ennui, demonstrated to anyone who might be watching that he was a man with absolutely nothing to read, a sleepy man, possibly hung over, and that he was likely to seize any reading matter at all, like a man in a dream.

  "Uff, uff, uff," he yawned. He stretched out his arms, gathered the paper in.

  There seemed to be only one other person in the store, the girl behind the lunch counter. "Really now--" he said to her, "who are the idiots who read this garbage, anyway?"

  The girl might have responded truthfully that Fred himself read it from cover to cover every week. But, being an idiot herself, she noticed practically nothing. "Search me," she said.