First Papers (74 page)

There was one other thing he had not noticed before. A sheaf of pages, stapled together at the upper left corner, came into view as Edmonds shifted one pile of dossiers. It was several pages in length. It was headed by a single word,
ORGANIZATIONS.

The sight of it stiffened Evander Paige’s spirit; it remobilized his forces. This was familiar, increasingly so in recent times. Whereas a man’s attachment to or membership in any club or organization used to be a matter for his private interest alone, in the years since war had begun in Europe, some such handy little compendium had come more and more into favor with the enforcers of anything, in or out of context, in or out of testimony, in or out of a court of law. This was not entirely new in America; before the Civil War, lists of the Abolitionist damned began to crop up in the hands of pro-Slavery groups, but they had been secret guides for secret intelligence, used in stealth. Not right out in public. Not with official approval.

“If possible,” Evan said to Edmonds, as the other glanced up, “I should like to see the charges which caused this action.”

“You’ll hear them when he’s arraigned.”

“Will that be soon? The question of bail—”

“You’ll have to wait your turn.” Edmonds returned to the man seated beside him.

In the smallest matter, Edmonds would be hostile, Evan decided, had been already, would go on being. He already had “testimony” against Garry: his lists doubtless told him that Garry sent in five dollars a year to the Free Speech League, another five to the American Union Against Militarism, perhaps that he went out of his way to travel to New York and attend the Church of the Messiah and listen to the Reverend John Haynes Holmes.

He went back to the Detention Room and told Garry about the warrant. He did not minimize it. “But that’s impossible,” Garry said, and he answered, “I know it is.” He went off to the telephone again, calling his office once more and also the Civil Liberties Bureau, checking up on his right to be shown the actual charges, grateful in each case to hear that judicious attempts would be made to reach people who might ask Edmonds to speed up and loosen up.

At three he went back to Garry once more, and for the first time told him what might he ahead if they were still waiting when the office closed for the night. He saw Garry blink, but neither went on with the subject. Half an hour later Garry was summoned by Edmonds and, with routine formality, put through a preliminary questioning. Whether any outside persuasion had come to bear was not clear. Edmonds still declined to inform “the accused” of the charges leading to the Federal complaint. “He isn’t arraigned as yet,” he said. “At that time, his attorney may see them privately.” Garry went back to the Detention Room, but Edmonds was already dealing with another case. Again Evan waited.

It was ten minutes to five when the arraignment itself occurred, before a U. S. Commissioner, and Evan was at last given a folder, told that it could not be removed from the premises, that it must be read in the presence of a deputy who would see that nothing was mutilated or removed.

Evan began to read; within seconds the pitch and plunge began again. Apart from the usual documentation of Garry’s life, from birth to his arrest that morning, there were four letters accusing him of disloyalty and treachery to the United States in its time of war, letters from four different people, sent at varying times during the three months since April 6th, sent either to the Attorney General in Washington, or to the Department of Justice in New York.

The first was from somebody Evan had never heard of, a Victoria Alston: “… and so I think it my duty to report that Mr. Garrett Paige ridicules our Commander-in-Chief, calls him soapy, and mealy-mouthed for declaring war on Germany, and constantly embarrasses people who are patriotic and proud of it… heard him say that the war is against the word of our Savior, and that the Conscription Act is against all our traditions…”

It ran on for three pages, and Evan hurried through the rest of it and turned to the next. This at least was not signed by an unknown, nor did it startle him as much. It was from Robert Grintzer, whom Garry talked about with irony. “The king and queen of England are self-conscious about Teck and Battenberg, why shouldn’t Grintzer be about Grintzer?”

“… my clear duty, since it goes against the grain of any American with red blood in his veins. Garrett Paige stated, before witnesses, that the Conscription Act ‘got his goat’ and that it was unconstitutional, and that he would not obey it. He ridiculed our hostess’ brother-in-law for enlisting and…”

The letter also told of an evening when “a German-born chemist, Otto Ohrmann, with a constant stream of information from a brother with Krupp in Germany, drew from Paige the avowal that he was a pacifist, and that the war was for big profits, that ‘the Bible permitted killing for profit.’”

The third letter was from Sidney Barclay. Evan paused over the name. Barclay? But Garry had left Aldrich in 1914!

“… and because he was such a radical during the years when he was in our employ, I was interested in his attitude toward the manufacture of vital war materiel now. Under oath, in court, I will supply the names of those I checked with, co-workers in his current employment. He still talks the same way about manufacturing the wherewithal for our victory in the field or on the seas.

“… further suggest examining a fellow chemist, Otto Friederich Ohrmann, still employed by us, a citizen, but with one brother in the German Army and one in the employ of Krupp Munitions. Ohrmann still sees Garrett Paige often, and does not refute statements that Paige is a pacifist to this day…”

Again Ohrmann, Evan thought, again Krupp, tacked on to all the rest. One expects it only of saloon patriots, corner clowns, and one is always wrong. He closed his eyes for an instant, and Woodrow Wilson’s words came to him, offstage, from the wings of memory. “Once lead this people into war and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance … the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the Courts, the policeman, the man in the streets.”

The very fiber, Evan thought. He began on the final letter. This was on the stationery of the Department of History of Yale University, and was signed Ronald Yates. Typed under the signature were the words, “Assistant Professor, now on leave for service with the U. S. Navy.”

“… do not imply that he would betray his country in the specific sense, but it is clear that he cannot distinguish between giving an opinion and conducting an insidious campaign of counterpropaganda to the entire war effort … therefore I feel it my duty to suggest that he be directly questioned as to his loyalty to the war effort, and if necessary be kept from further spreading his disloyal and disturbing negatives to dozens of men he works with, most of whom are young enough to be of military age.”

Yates the historian. The Wilson-supporter, the man of liberal views. Yates also wrote of his duty. Each one of the four wrote of his duty to inform; not one spoke of a free man’s right to think and speak.

It’s going to be a dirty case, Evan thought. He wished he could take notes on the letters; he would be stopped if he tried. Quickly he went through them again, memorizing phrases, repeating names. Then he returned the folder and once more went down the hall.

Garry was astounded, then furious. “Who’s Victoria Alston?” Evan asked.

“Vicky—she’s Molloy’s secretary. I hardly know her.”

Evan told him of her letter. How many of her phrases he could repeat, how her whimper came through! “What’s this about calling the President soapy, or mealy-mouthed?”

“I never did,” Garry said flatly. “Oh, God, wait—there was one morning … Some saccharine headline somewhere about fighting the war with love in your heart. It was the paper I called soapy, the headline, I made it clearer than daylight, I—” He broke off and then asked, “Are they all like that? Who else?”

“I’m afraid so. The worst of it is that even under oath, people like this usually will be just as twisted as this.”

Garry said dully, “Who else wrote?”

Swiftly Evan gave him the gist of each letter, and just as swiftly Garry produced at least one point to refute or confound the accuser. Evan pocketed each in his mind; each was a peg to hang later questioning on.

“It’s nasty,” he said, his voice strong. “But given elementary justice, there should be a solid case, and even with all of the delays, there should be complete acquittal.”

Garry looked at him, and Evan said, “I’ll try again, about bail. Remember what I said.”

He hurried back to Edmonds. A man with a pad was asking questions and jotting down replies, another was sorting out the dossiers and folders, restacking them into smaller piles. Evan interrupted.

“There isn’t much time,” he said, “to attend to this matter of bail.”

“It’s way past time,” Edmonds said briefly, looking at the wall clock and then at his own watch. “No judge is going to hang around waiting until after six. For tonight he’ll be remanded to The Tombs.”

Far off in the blackness, a bell clanged and Garry jumped and woke. There was no stir, no light around him; he had dreamed it. Except at first he had slept only in wisps and tatters; that first hour had been like anesthesia, unqualified, blessed. Then memory jolted back and he had lain on his bunk, staring, as if the air in the cell were a visible thing.

Again he saw his father’s face when he came back from Edmonds for the last time; it told him before words did. For half the afternoon, he had known the day would end in defeat and jail; they had both known it, but neither had wanted to admit it to the other.

“It’s bad news,” his father had said, cursing himself for letting it happen. He turned aside for a moment, whether to hide his face or give Garry a chance to set his own in order, there was no way of knowing.

“Let me have your car keys,” he said then. “I’ll get it tonight and keep it in the garage at home.”

“Read the letter, if you still want. Send it in.” Already the letter seemed another world, another life. He had trouble detaching the two car keys from the others on his key ring. He wanted to ask what it would be like in The Tombs, what they would do, whether they would question him. But he said nothing. Down on the street, an ambulance siren wailed, and the sound engulfed him in melancholy, unlike anything he had ever felt.

“For one day they can put bail off,” his father said, “but not for two. You’ll be out tomorrow. If you can still believe me.”

The words came back now, but at the time he had heard them with his eardrums only. By then he was intent on the door from the corridor. It was opening, revealing four armed men, letting them into the room. They went first to the slumped figures on the chairs up front, separating, one guard to one man. Then the fourth came back toward them.

“Which one of you is Paige?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Then let’s get moving.”

Without a word to his father, without a word from him, he moved off alongside the guard. At the door, he glanced back. The way his father had looked came back to him and he gripped the iron railing at each side of his cot.

He tried to think of the warrant, the letters, but he kept seeing faces. Bob Grintzer’s face came to him, and then Barclay’s; he saw Vicky’s flush of rage that he had misinterpreted, and then suddenly he was back in the cottage that first summer on Mt. Desert, with Proff Yates reproving Hank or Peter Stiles for taking on about how he had voted. “I voted for Wilson myself,” Proff had told them, “and a man in the history department voted for Eugene V. Debs.”

Could war change a man from that Proff Yates to this one? Sitting at a desk somewhere, finding it his duty to write this letter? That entire scene at the cottage, every word, every gesture, was still clear, but the man himself was no longer the same man—

Wait. Hold it. Something’s wrong. It wasn’t that way, it’s not true, it’s twisted around.

Garry lay rigid. What was twisted? What was eluding him, slipping off the edge of his mind just as he came near it? He had to know; he would never sleep until he did know. Start at the beginning, start with the minute you and Letty got there—

Letty, he thought, and for the first time thought of whether she would hear about this, and how soon. The newspapers were so full of wartime arrests, wartime suspects, of draft-plotting and draft-dodging cases; there had been such a haul in the Detention Room today. Poor Letty, he thought, the shop, all those people she cares about.

Start at the beginning. Again he saw the dinner table at Mt. Desert and again heard Proff—

That was it. He didn’t hear Proff, he couldn’t hear Proff. Proff Yates was not there. The weekend was over, and Connie Yates had stayed on for a few days, but her husband had gone back to New Haven. It was Connie who said it, Connie, quoting Proff, to restore the situation. “Ron did vote for Wilson, and an instructor in the department did vote for Debs—so there!”

And he heard his own laugh, and his “Thanks, Connie. I knew Gene Debs polled more than my one vote.”

Yet just now he had been positive it was Proff; that he could still hear Proff himself saying it. He would have taken any oath on any witness stand and sworn it. If he had been in court just now, if the question had been tossed at him, an answer demanded, he would have given that answer and never had time for his uneasy feeling that something was wrong. The next question would have been tossed at him too soon.

Evidence, he thought. Evidence under oath, about what a man said, the syllables he used, the tone of voice, the intent and meaning. Dear God, it’s so easy to be wrong. But it still is evidence to pile up in a letter, to send off to authorities. Evidence to convict a man with.

It was late in the evening before Evan told Alida. Until then she knew only that he was detained “on a case,” and might not be home until ten.

Then she saw him drive up in Garry’s old Ford, and she ran out to the curb. “What’s wrong, dear?” she asked and heard her voice tremble.

Standing out there in the street, Evan told her of the day, step after step, withholding nothing. As she listened she leaned on the car for support; she saw the way its headlamps lit up the lower branches of the trees and heard the buzzing of insects at the circles of lighted glass. When he told her of Garry’s going off to The Tombs, she turned away from him and wept. He put his arm tightly around her, saying nothing.