Mr. Adam (6 page)

“What you mean,” I interrupted, “is that there wouldn't be any future for the nation—or the world. Maybe that's why the President wants me, and not you, to handle Adam.”

I shouldn't have said it, I guess, but I couldn't resist. Phelps-Smythe glared at me. I hoped he would have a stroke, but he didn't. Behind his desk Pumphrey began to nibble nervously at the edge of his lips.

“The War Department,” Phelps-Smythe continued, “wishes a
written release of all responsibility for the safety and protection of Adam. The War Department wishes this release immediately, because we intend to withdraw our guards and security patrols from the Shoreham at 6 o'clock this evening.”

“So that's where you've got Adam caged up?” I said.

Pumphrey didn't pay any attention. “Is the War Department going to make anything public on this?” he asked Phelps-Smythe.

“Naturally.”

“But it's liable to start a lot of controversy.”

“That is not the fault of the War Department!”

Pumphrey sagged like a toy balloon from which enough air has escaped so that it is no longer round and shining. “Very well,” he sighed. “I'll send the release round to your office, Colonel, as soon as I get a chance to dictate and sign it.”

“Thank you,” said Phelps-Smythe, and left. I could have sworn he clicked his heels.

Immediately Klutz turned to Pumphrey. “I'd better find Nate,” he said. “This looks like trouble.”

It turned out that Nate was Gableman, the Assistant Director for Public Relations, a dark and cadaverous young man with his hair two inches longer than the barber ordinarily allows, and fingernails that matched his hair, both in length and color. His eyes ran over me in quick speculation and appraisal, he listened to Pumphrey's account of what had happened thus far, and he said, “I should have been cut in on this right away. What do you think a Public Relations man is for?”

“I'm sorry, Nate,” Pumphrey said. “But it happened so fast.”

“You haven't written that memorandum for Phelps-Smythe yet?”

“Oh, no. He just left.”

Gableman's dark eyes came alive behind his spectacles. “Okay,” he said. “We'll move in a hurry. I'll get out a special press release right away. You hold that memorandum until I'm ready. We'll get our story out first.”

“What is our story, Nate?” Pumphrey asked.

“Why, it's very simple. Abel Pumphrey, Director of the National Re-fertilization Project, today announced that N.R.P. had taken over complete personal control of Mr. Adam from the War Department, at the President's request. You see, that puts the onus on the War Department. They can't buck the President. He's Commander in Chief. Then we say that Mr. Adam wasn't getting sufficient personal freedom under present conditions. He should have all the rights and freedoms of every other American. That gets us in good with the Liberals. Then we say that Steve Smith here has been appointed a Special Assistant to Mr. Pumphrey and entrusted with the safety of Adam. Smith and Adam are personal friends—you are, aren't you?”

“Hardly old friends,” I said.

“Well, anyway, personal friends. That shows we have Adam's best interests at heart.”

I could see that Gableman was a pretty smooth customer around the edges. He may have learned all his newspapering as a government press agent, but he was an expert in mimeograph warfare. “We might also hint,” he went on, “just to get in a dig at the War Department, that Adam hasn't been doing so hot under the previous arrangement.”

“Oh, I wouldn't do that!” Pumphrey protested. “It might bounce back on us as well as the War Department.”

“I should say not,” said Klutz.

“It could start rumors,” said Pumphrey. “It could start a panic. Why you ought to see the letters I get from really big businessmen—I mean the very biggest—on the importance of Adam. Do you know what would happen if anything happened to Adam? Why the insurance companies would go bust. The effect on the market—inconceivable—”

“Okay,” Gableman agreed. “I hadn't considered that angle. I'll get to work.”

Klutz wanted me to take a look at my office, complete with
secretary, but I insisted on seeing Adam immediately. Pumphrey told me there would be plenty of room for me in Adam's suite. There would be plenty of room for a company of Marines, I gathered from the description.

This was correct. The Army hadn't yet withdrawn its security patrols when I arrived at the Shoreham. There was an armored car, and two weapon carriers mounting .50 calibre machine guns, strategically placed in the hotel's driveway. It turned out that Adam occupied the entire fifth floor of F wing. I had some trouble getting up there, because there were MP's posted in all the hallways and at the elevators, but the captain in charge had been informed I was on the way, and he finally agreed to let me go up a few minutes before six, when the Army's Operation Adam officially ended.

I found Adam in the living room customarily given over to the Duke of Windsor, visiting Indian rajahs, and presidents from the banana republics. For a hotel it is quite a room, gaudy with modern paintings, cream-colored furniture, and silky white rugs. Magazines and newspapers were tossed about it, however, so that at this moment it resembled the picnic grounds in Central Park at the end of a summer Sunday. On a folding serving table was an enormous tray loaded with lobster salad, shrimp, hors d'oeuvres, and pastries, all resting in untouched and pristine glory on heavy silver. A stuffed shirt of a voice, which sounded like Kaltenborn, boomed out of a wall radio like a muffled drum.

I saw a mop of red hair protruding over the back of an armchair. It was Adam. He was not asleep, nor could he be classified as being awake. He appeared to be in a half-comatose state, slumped in upon himself like a daddy longlegs at rest, his eyes glazed, and his mouth slack and open. Then he saw me, wobbled to his feet, and held out his hand. I admit I was shocked. He looked like one of those walking skeletons after seven years in Dachau. He said, “Steve! You finally got here. Jesus, I'm glad to see a human face!”

I tried to conceal my surprise at his wretched appearance. “Take it easy,” I said. “From now on things are going to change. Let's have a drink.”

“Oh, I'm not allowed to drink,” said Homer. “Nothing but eggnogs. I get sick when I think of eggnogs. I'll never be able to look a hen in the face again.”

“From now on,” I told him, “you can have anything you damn well please—anything at all.”

“Really?” he said. “Honest to God?” It was pretty pathetic. His hands were shaking, and tears had started into his eyes.

“You're damn right.” I picked up a telephone, called room service, and ordered a case of rye. If ever a bundle of nerves needed alcoholic relaxation, it was Homer Adam.

He began to tell me the tale. “They treated me like a prize puppy dog. They wouldn't let me off this floor, except when they came to put me on exhibit. Then they'd dress me up, and lead me around to a party where I didn't know anybody, and show me off like I deserved the blue ribbon. I'm not a freak! I'm a normal human being.”

“I'll say,” I agreed.

“They'd discuss me like I was a stud horse—right in front of my face. How long I could be expected to produce, and whether they should inject testosterone, and stuff like that. It was embarrassing. You don't wonder I've been off my feed?”

“No, I don't wonder at all.”

The rye arrived, and I poured Homer a big slug. He kept on talking, and I encouraged him. I'm no psychologist, but it was apparent there was a lot he had to get off his chest. It was part of the cure.

Finally he said, “I don't mind doing what I can. I suppose it's my duty. But they've got no right to keep me away from my family.” His eyes misted again, like the eyes of a child who has been needlessly and wantonly injured. “I don't know if I ought to talk about it. It's sort of personal, Steve.”

“You go ahead and talk, Homer,” I said. “You tell me every little tiny thing. I'm here to listen.”

“Well, it's me and Mary Ellen. She's the only girl I ever had. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.” I didn't smile.

Homer poured himself a drink. I could see that what he had to say needed priming. I didn't try to hurry him. “When I say I never had a girl except Mary Ellen I mean it literally,” he continued finally. “I mean she's the only woman I've ever been with—slept with. I always thought I was funny-looking, because when I was a kid girls laughed at me on account of I was so tall and thin. I guess I was funny-looking. Anyway, I never had the guts to make a pass at a girl—never in all my life.”

The full implication of what he was saying began to sink in. Nature, in a final touch of irony, had picked an inhibited and sex-shy man to become the new father of his country. To some men the thought of possessing the entire female population as a private harem—even if most of the conception would be of necessity by remote control—would have been enormously satisfying to their ego. But to Homer it must have been sheer horror. It was this that had frightened him into his present decline, more than being jailed in the Shoreham's luxury, or being trotted around to Washington's most important salons, and placed on exhibition. “Go ahead and talk, Homer,” I urged him.

“That's about all, except that I want Mary Ellen now more than I've ever wanted anything in all my life. I need her, Steve. I've got to have her!”

I thought to myself that if Homer's mother still lived it would be his mother, in all likelihood, whom he would want. I tried to remember what I had read about how an Œdipus complex is transferred. “They haven't let you see Mary Ellen?”

“Gosh, no. I begged them to let me go to Tarrytown for a day or
two, or to let her come down here. Mrs. Brundidge could take care of the baby all right. But Colonel Phelps-Smythe and Mr. Klutz said absolutely not.”

I wondered what was wrong with them, which shows how naive I was at the time. “Don't worry, Homer, I'll get it fixed up,” I promised. For the first time, he smiled. He positively grinned. “Let's have another drink,” I suggested, “and then tackle that dinner over there, and then let's go down to the Blue Room and look around.”

“Sure!” he said. “Sure!”

He attacked the lobster as if he were starving, which I am quite sure he was, and ate most of the shrimp, and wolfed three of the pastries. I didn't do much talking. I kept trying to reconstruct the first ten years of his life in Hyannis, Nebraska. I saw a gangling kid, preyed upon by smaller but older boys, running to his mother for protection. I saw an overgrown high school sophomore teased by the girls, and not understanding that their teasing was as much invitation as anything else. I saw a lonesome youth escaping into archeology, and finally geology, who worked hard and earnestly so that in his mind there would be nothing else but his work. Finally I saw a grown man who had thrust human relationships into the well of his subconscious—a man whose marriage was probably the passionate seeking for a second mother to whom to run whenever he encountered the frightening facts of life.

This was the man chosen to re-populate the earth! I wasn't at all sure that I should arrange for him to see Mary Ellen. Perhaps he should see her for a day or two, but certainly he should not be with her constantly. A different therapy was indicated. “You know, Homer,” I said, “what you told me about your personal life was very impressive. I suppose you know by now that you were mistaken. I should think you would be very attractive to women.”

“Oh, no!” he said emphatically.

“I would think so.”

“But why should I be?”

“Well, you're young, and you're tall. All the movie actors are tall. Look at Gary Cooper.”

“Yes. But they're not so thin.”

“Well, look at Frank Sinatra. Anyway, you've got a good frame. All you have to do is put some flesh on it.”

Homer considered this. “I looked pretty good,” he admitted, “when I was in Australia. Lots of fresh air, and exercise. I felt good, too, and ate well. I haven't had a bit of exercise since I've been in this darn prison.”

“We'll fix that,” I promised. “Now go shave, and put on a fresh shirt, and I'll take you out of this prison and show you how life is being lived, at the moment.”

Ten seconds after we entered the Blue Room I discovered that acting as shepherd to Homer Adam would have complications, for Homer was no ordinary white sheep who could fade into the flock. If you are some six and one-half feet tall, and your hair flames like a stop light, and you are constructed on the general lines of a flagpole, and if in addition you are the most talked of mortal on earth, and your features are familiar to everyone who has seen a newspaper, then it is very hard to be inconspicuous.

When we turned up at the Blue Room and asked for a table, Pierre, the headwaiter, recognized Adam and almost did nip-ups. He bobbed us to a ringside table, swept away a notice that it was reserved, and then fluttered over our order for a couple of drinks. Barnee, the bandmaster, craned his neck, missed a beat, the trumpet went astray, and the rhythm scattered like a covey of quail. Nobody seemed to notice.

The band pulled itself together, and the music again took form. People were staring. If Homer had been a pink Bengal tiger, he could not have caused more of a sensation. I noticed that the dancing couples were converging towards us. Strangely, the women were maneuvering the men.

The music stopped, and there was absolute silence. Ordinarily, when the music isn't playing in a night spot it is still pretty noisy, what with the tinkle of glass and china, political and business arguments, the throaty sound of verbal lovemaking, and occasional laughter. But this time when the music stopped there was no sound at all. Then buzzing began, like a swarm of bees, but not exactly. It had a strange timbre to it. Finally I realized it was from three or four hundred women all whispering at once.