Silas Timberman (17 page)

It was only when he parked at Amsterdam's place that the bubble burst. So, it would form and burst again and again; for he was in a process of trying to understand the most complex and contradictory experience of his entire life. When he had gone to Chicago with no money, it was only a simple accident and the solution was as simple, even if there was a moment of despair; he had only to return to his point of origin, and there, undisturbed and unchanged, he would find the source of his security; and in a similar manner, he kept thinking now that there was some avenue, some road back to his point of origin. Again and again, this thought process would take place in his mind, but each time it would become more unsubstantial, even as it dwindled now as he rang Ike Amsterdam's doorbell.

This was the cottage that the Amsterdams had moved into after the last of their three children had married and moved off to Emporia, Kansas, a small, four-room frame house, white, with green trim, with a V-shaped roof that slanted down over a stone and frame porch. It was a very common type of house, the kind that can be seen in great numbers on the streets of any small middle-western town, and it was located just off campus, down the hill and at the edge of Clemington. The neighborhood was not very good any more, middle-class once, but now an area of workers and boarding houses; but this had never troubled the Amsterdams. Silas remembered Mrs. Amsterdam very well, a white-haired, gentle lady, wholly devoted to her husband, ministering to his every need and voicing no opinions contrary to his own; and to some extent he was surprised by the manner in which Ike Amsterdam took her death, his immobilizing grief, his long period of shock and retreat. He became an old man overnight and grew no older, but seemingly younger as he fought his way back from sorrow. It was then that Silas realized for the first time that either he or Myra would go through a similar experience. Since then, Amsterdam had lived on in the cottage with a housekeeper who came in each morning and left each evening. He had remarked to Silas once that he had no intentions of ever living anywhere else, for the place was more than enough for any and all of his needs.

Edna Crawford answered the door. “Hello, Silas,” she said. “You're the seventh and last—seven sinners shall break bread together. Do you know where that's from? Well, never mind. Do you know what I said to the young man who gave me the subpoena?—I said, Young man, aren't you ashamed to be doing this? I'm just doing my duty, he answered me. Duty, I said, duty be hanged! You're an errand boy for Thomas Brannigan, more's the shame!”

The others greeted him as he came into the parlor with its threadbare Persian scatter-rugs, its worn Victorian furniture and its disarray of books, newspapers, magazines and knick-knacks. Ike Amsterdam shook his hand warmly, and steered him to a chair. Federman grinned at him, the tiny, crippled man's eyes sparkling, he more than any of the others seemingly at last in his own element where he could satisfy his own need to give battle. Brady sat in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe, apparently relaxed and contemplative as always, while Hartman Spencer sat at the ancient upright piano, tapping out
The Gypsy Trail
from a tattered piece of sheet-music. Kaplin, less at ease than the others, more sensitive to the agony of a future, turned the pages of a magazine without reading or seeing. Edna Crawford poured beer for Silas.

“Or would you rather have tea? I was just making up my mind whether to make tea.”

“This is fine,” Silas said, realizing that suddenly he was comfortable, relaxed, at ease with the rest of them here. He had known all of them for a long time, but he had never really been a part of them—or of any group, not precisely in this way. Now they were a part of him. They shared that ancient, knitting element of mankind, trouble, and it occurred to Silas that they shared it well. It brought out qualities. On and off, with a war in between, he had seen Edna Crawford around campus for some twenty years, a tall, prim, restrained New England maiden lady who was the last one in the world he would ever have put into such a situation as this. Yet here she was, matter of factly, at ease in the situation and making each of them a little more at ease. So with Federman; he had never done more than greet the man, always walled off from him by the pity deformity engendered; but now pity was inconceivable. It seemed quite natural that Federman should be talking about Brannigan, detailing his life, background and point of view as if he had only yesterday made a study of the man. Silas listened. Yesterday, Brannigan had been only a name—an unimportant name at that; tonight, he was a part of Silas' life—how important, Silas would soon find out.

“It is quite true,” Federman was saying, “that as Hart points out, the man is not the committee chairman. Brannigan is a Republican, and short of a Republican victory in 1952, he will not be chairman. But don't under-estimate him. He's planning on that chairmanship, and on a lot more too, and he's working toward it. And in good part, that's how we come into the picture. Consider Brannigan; in some ways, he's unique, and there hasn't been a similar rise to power in American politics in our time. After the war—and he was discharged from the army under most dubious circumstances—he started in as a petty mail-order operator in pornography and the more blatant type of anti-Semitism. In fact, the story goes that he picked up a job lot of the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion and got his start with that. He also acquired the rights to one of the more notorious sex films. You would think with a background like that, a career in the Senate would be difficult, but they evidently needed Someone with his peculiar qualifications, and they threw him into Congress in 'forty-six and into the Senate in 'forty-eight. One can only speculate on how these things are done and what is behind them, but the fact of the matter is that Brannigan hasn't disappointed them. He got onto the Committee on Internal Expenditures, strong-armed and blackmailed his way into a key power position, and then stretched the authority of the committee so that it can investigate practically anything it chooses—anything that by any stretch of the imagination gets or has once gotten any sort of government fiscal support. With Clemington, it could be the gymnasium and stadium that were built with WPA funds, or it could be our generalized tax exemption.”

“Or the fact that we have ROTC,” Brady put in. “I agree with you that he can stretch internal expenditures to cover us, but I don't know that he's the selecting hand. My own suspicion would be that Cabot wrote down seven names and sent them in for the wheels to roll on. I still can't quite accept the fact that Brannigan's any more than a convenient tool they've created—a whip to cut at the Democrats in preparation for 'fifty-two and the presidential year. The fact remains that until now, it's been the House Committee on Un-American Activities that's been doing most of the organized witch-hunting in education.”

“California and New York would bear that out,” Spencer said. “Why all this personal emphasis on Brannigan?”

“Because we're going to have to deal with Brannigan, and because Brannigan is something new and more important than this House Committee. Do you remember Huey Long? Well, Brannigan is less and more than he was—and in more appropriate times. Brannigan is heading for the top, and he's going to allow nothing to stand in the way of his reaching it. He's already shown what his methods are, slander, force, blackmail, lies—bigger and bigger lies every day, a smashing, driving, calculated attack that has them all dazed, even the boys who put him there. When he discovered that anti-Semitism wasn't the proper key to unlock the door, he dropped that like a hot potato and began to build fences with the Jews. He didn't repeat Hitler's error; he put his saddle on communism, and he's determined to ride it until he's number one man in this country.”

“Granting that,” Amsterdam put in, “let's keep our perspective. We're small game for him. We're seven more or less obscure teachers in a middle-western college. He's not going to shake the world with us.”

“Silas is hardly obscure at this point,” Edna Crawford put in. “He and Mark Twain have shaken the world a little already.”

“Still obscure,” Silas said. “A thing like that lives its life for twenty-four hours and no more.”

“May the Lord preserve us, you've all become shrinking violets, hiding your lights under the proverbial bushel,” Edna Crawford laughed. “Six men more eager to convince themselves that they are utterly inconsequential, I've never met up with, and I'm not too old to be pleasantly surprised. But you know, you can't saw sawdust, and Clemington is not just a middle-western college, but the twelfth largest university in America. Hart and Ike and Leon are not just teachers, but among the top dozen astro-physicists in the world, and Lawrence there, I am told, is an internationally known and respected authority on pre-Chaucerian English Literature. I won't wave Alec's flag; we all know about it, and yesterday, the
Chicago Tribune
wrote its third editorial on the case of Silas Timberman. Lest I seem unduly modest, the Edna Crawford manual of home-making is in its seventeenth edition. Go along with the lot of you! I know very little about politics, and about Brannigan, I have only the unsavory necessities of knowledge not denied to any American who doesn't avoid the newspapers. But I do know this—that this affair is no offhand matter. Ike is already suspended, and when we return from Washington, we shall all be in that same unenviable position. Why does a university rob itself of seven leading faculty members—or why does the government do it? Suppose you tell us, Alec?”

“Because the lark is worth the price,” Brady said quietly.

“I don't give up that easily!” Federman snapped.

“None of us does, Leon. But we also face reality.”

“And I still say this is Brannigan and Brannigan's own lust for power and publicity.”

“That and a little more—for after all, we are not first. Brannigan is a Johnny-come-lately here, for it has already happened at New York University, at Columbia and at California, to mention only three. I think we should defend ourselves, not try to unspin this web,” Brady went on gently. “We can't know whether Cabot turned us in, or what his purposes are, or what goes on in any of the smoke-filled rooms in a variety of places, or what transpires in the nasty dreams of a Brannigan—all fruitless speculation, don't you see? Our immediate concern is ourselves, and thereby our families, friends, the rest of the faculty—and in a broader sense, the people of this land. I suppose that's pompously put, and I'm indebted to Silas' remarks the other day, but it remains a sort of indisputable truism. Where the devil is your lawyer, Ike?”

But MacAllister, the lawyer, did not arrive until almost eleven o'clock, an hour later, and then he did not come alone, but with another man, a thin, dark, tired-looking man with somber black eyes, whom he introduced as Mike Leslie, president of the local union at Instul Works, the big radio and television plant in Indianapolis. MacAllister, a small, fat, round-faced, red-faced and cheerful-looking man, as friendly and easy in his ways as a successful salesman, apologized for being late and explained that Leslie had driven him over.

“Of course, I'm glad he came, and I'd trust him with my life—which I do, considering the way he drives—do you mind if he stays and listens?”

They said they didn't mind. MacAllister already knew Amsterdam, Brady and Federman, and he met the others in a business-like, brisk manner, rubbing his hands, grinning at each in turn. “Glad to know you. Pleased. The honor is all mine, sir.” Amsterdam saw Silas staring at him with something akin to disbelief, and leaned over to mutter, “Just take it easy, son. That's not only one of the smartest lawyers in the state, but one of the very few honest ones. Two terms in the criminal courts upstate—as judge. He has his ways, but he's a damn good lawyer. Let him do it his own way.” He had just bowed formally to Edna Crawford. “My dear, had I known there was a woman concerned, I would not have come at this ungodly hour.”

“Will you have a glass of beer?” she asked flatly—deflating him momentarily.

“A little whisky—just a drop. I'll be talking a good deal, I suspect.” “I suspect so,” she nodded. Then he collected their subpoenas, compared them and read each thoroughly but quickly. Then he stood up at the piano, hooked an elbow onto, the top, and began a barrage of short, pointed questions, going from person to person, seemingly at random at first, but then with an emerging pattern.

“You'll forgive the personalities,” he said at one point. “Perhaps you all know each other pretty well already. I assure you, you'll know each other a lot better before you're finished. You're all in this together. Will you stay together?”

He looked from face to face, and one by one, they nodded.

“That's important—that's the key to the whole question. You will see why. Now let's see what we have. To begin, seven subpoenas from a senate investigating committee Seven. Are there no others on campus?”

“As far as we know,” Ike Amsterdam answered.

“I made a few calls outside of our group here,” said Brady. “Of course, there's no practical way to check the whole faculty—we have a large one—yet I think by now, one of us would have heard.”

“Unless it was important for you not to know.”

“How?”

“Let that go, and we'll deal with it later, when the time comes,” He finished his whisky, and looked appealingly at Edna Crawford, who refilled his glass. “Ah—can't stand the taste of my mouth after I been talking a while. Yackety-yack—the curse of my profession. All right, we go on the basis of you seven. Let's see what I've learned. All of you liberals—one degree or another. All friends, give or take a social point here or there. Some very close, some a companionship of letters, so as to speak, but you make a group.”

“Not really,” Federman said. “We make parts of a number of groups. It would be a sorry state of things, even at Clemington, if only seven of the faculty could be accused of logic or contemplation. There are others—”