The Masters of Atlantis (17 page)

Nor could the Indiana editors, who gave the announcement only a brief mention in their newspapers, those who gave it a mention at all.

“Don't worry,” said Popper. “They'll have to take notice when the book comes out. They'll have to provide full coverage when you start making your speeches around the state.”

Within a week the writing of the book was done, Polton's manuscript delivered. Popper changed the title to
Hoosier Wizard,
with the subtitle of
Conversations with Mr. Jimmerson,
and whisked the pages away to a job printer before the Master could look them over. His work finished and the balance of his $1,200 fee in hand—paid by Fanny Jimmerson—W.W. Polton moved on, this elfin artist in elevated bootees, anxious to begin work on a new Vince Beaudine thriller he had sketched out in his head while listening to Mr. Jimmerson, or pretending to do so.

“It was all so fast,” said Mr. Jimmerson.

“Time is short,” said Popper.

He spoke of “seeing the book through the press,” and with the Gnomon Press no longer in existence, the Letts scattered, he had the printing and binding contracted out on a low-bid basis.

He did not speak of paying for it. Popper claimed to have a rich wife and, as Mr. Jimmerson remembered it, had suggested that he would underwrite both the book and the campaign, and yet now when the matter of financing came up, he went vague, saying only that his affairs out West were “unsettled.” He seemed to be short even of pocket money. Again Fanny Jimmerson had to foot the bill—$7,000 for 21,000 copies of
Hoosier Wizard.
But that was the end of it, she said. They could expect nothing more from her in the way of subsidies for these Gnomon projects.

Popper told Mr. Jimmerson not to worry. “Funds will be rolling in soon from book sales and campaign contributions. You're going to love this biography, sir. I read it at a sitting. Dub has done a beautiful job. When you consider how little time he had.”

They were in the Red Room. Mr. Jimmerson received his freshly minted copy of the book with trembling eagerness. His life in print for all the world to study! He turned through the pages, stopping here and there to read a bit. His conversation, he saw, had been rendered very freely. He could not, in fact, recall having made any of these preposterous statements, nor could he recognize himself in Polton's portrait of the Master of Gnomons.

“Corpulent genius” was fair enough. “Viselike grip” was good. It was pleasing to see his oyster eyes described as “two live coals.” The fellow had a touch, all right, but how had he come up with such things as “the absolute powers of a Sultan” and “the sacred macaws of Tamputocco” and “Peruvian metals unknown to science” and “the Master awash in his oversize bathtub” and “likes to work with young people” and “a spray of spittle”? Why was he, Lamar Jimmerson, who never raised his voice, shown to be expressing opinions he had never held in such an exclamatory way that droplets of saliva flew from his lips?

And why was there no mention, that he could find, of Hermes Trismegistus or the Jimmerson Spiral? Why was his name repeatedly misspelled? What was all this about the big bathtubs? Why was so little space devoted to the exposition of his thought and so much space given over to Maceo—“the brooding darky”—who was presented falsely as that popular figure of melodrama, the sinister servant? Where did Polton get the idea that there was a gong in the Temple?

Popper said, “Why don't you read it later, sir? It's probably not fair to the book, just dipping into it at random like that.”

“He keeps going on about Peru, Austin. I know nothing whatever about Peru, its major cities, its principal exports, let alone its secrets. I was expecting something—”

“Something quite different, I know. Don't worry, sir, yours is a perfectly normal reaction. The blanching, the starting eyes, the rapid breathing, the hand groping about for support. You should see your face. It's alarming, I know, like hearing your voice on a machine for the first time, but you'll get used to it. This is the way these things are done now. Some of that stuff you mustn't take too much to heart. We have to allow the writer his little fillips. He has to keep the readers moving along. Lazy bums, most of them, as you well know, and fainthearted to boot. A little diversion before nodding off is all those bozos are looking for. You must try to see it as a whole.”

“Then you think it's a good book?”

“I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I approve of every single word. Frankly speaking, and just between us, there is more than one passage in there that I don't understand. I know for a fact that Dub has worked in some odds and ends he had left over from a book he did on South America, but that's a common practice now, I'm told, widely accepted, and really, when you get right down to it, where's the harm? I will say this. That work has its own Polton integrity. Give it some time. Believe me,
Hoosier Wizard
will grow on you. I'll tell you something else. It's going to make some people sit up.”

But the thing that made them sit up was not
Hoosier Wizard
; it was a paragraph toward the end of the campaign statement that had gone unread until now. This was the dread Paragraph 34, which declared that Governor Jimmerson, upon taking office, would move quickly to sponsor legislation that would close all the nursing homes and old folks homes in the state, and further, would force all householders in Indiana, rich and poor alike, to take in their aged parents and care for them at home “until death should supervene and they be carried away in the course of nature.”

The first person to see the threat, and perhaps the only one ever to read the entire document, was the editor of a labor union bulletin in nearby Gary, a man with a keen eye for the sleeper clause in a contract. He sounded the alert by way of a front-page editorial in his paper, with the headline A NUT FOR GOVERNOR? The editorial began with these words: “Who does this guy Jimmerson think he is anyway?” and closed with these: “Let's show this bum where he gets off!”

Others took up the cry. A tide of fear rolled across the state. The householders had visions of their old mothers and fathers suddenly appearing on their doorsteps in cracked shoes, sheaves of medical prescriptions in hand, their goods tied up in bulging pasteboard boxes at their feet.

The daily newspapers were unanimous in denouncing the proposal, calling it “hasty” and “zany” and “ultimately, when all is said and done, not in the best interests of our elder citizens.” The chairmen of the Republican and Democratic parties called it “a gross imposition” and “just a terrible idea.” In Indianapolis the Kleagle of the Wabash Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan told reporters he was looking over bus schedules in preparation for dispatching a small flogging squad to Burnette “to give this Mr. Jimmerson the whipping of his life.”
The Thunderbolt,
monthly organ of the Communist Party, said, “L. Jimmerson is perhaps the least progressive of all the candidates and there is really nothing to be done with such a hyena except string him up by the heels like B. Mussolini.” In country club bars there was angry murmuring and threats of taking to the streets in gangs to protest the Jimmerson family relocation scheme.

Popper said nothing. He was in and out of the Temple. Inside, Mr. Jimmerson glided about as usual with a big book in his hand, looking things up. He seldom read the political news in his paper and so was unaware of the furor, until the afternoon the man came to put in the new telephone. The first call to come through to the Temple was a death threat, taken by the telephone installer, who passed on the gist of the message. Wrong number, Mr. Jimmerson assumed, for why should anyone want to “rip his belly open.” But then there were more calls, all from strangers and all abusive, and at the end of the day he knew he had done something to annoy a good many people out there.

But what? What were they talking about? Was this another of Sydney Hen's terror campaigns? Had Sydney broken out of Mexico? Perhaps these people were just disappointed buyers of
Hoosier Wizard.
If so, sales must have been brisk indeed, to judge from the number of infuriated callers.

“It'll blow over in a few days,” said Popper. “A tempest in a teapot. I wouldn't worry about it. I've already sent out corrections to the papers.”

“Some of those people sounded serious.”

“All bluster. People who make threats never actually do anything.”

They were in the Red Room. Mr. Jimmerson was looking over some of his old lecture material. He got a whiff of something off Popper's breath that he couldn't identify. It was rum. Popper's face was flushed. He hurriedly explained about the offending paragraph in the position paper.

“Then it's not
Hoosier Wizard
?”

“Not at all. It hasn't really taken off yet. I doubt if we have sold four copies. This is something else altogether. But it's old news and fading fast. Let me tell you what I have lined up for us.

“Fanny didn't think it was a very good book.”

“Did she just skim through it?”

“I don't know. She said she couldn't see where all the money went.”

“Hoosier Wizard
is not a woman's book, sir. But that's not what this fuss is all about. It's about this Paragraph 34 that would close all the nursing homes. You told me how slack they were in rotating Mr. Bates on his bed. I simply expressed your concern and suggested a remedy. No real harm done. I've already repudiated it. I explained that it was just a trial balloon. That's yesterday's news and we must put it behind us. Here, let me tell you about my coup. I've lined up a major speaking engagement for us. On the twenty-fourth—mark your calendar—we kick off the campaign with a speech at Rainbow Falls State Park. You'll be addressing the Busy Bees.”

“Is that the lawyers' club?”

“The very exclusive lawyers' club. Their annual retreat. It wasn't an easy booking, I can tell you, and we must make the best of it.”

“I've never been to Rainbow Falls. They say you have to watch your step down there on those slick rocks.”

“Right here, see, two-thirty p.m., which was to have been free time, they've penciled you in on their program, between these seminars on ‘Making the Worse Cause Appear the Better' and ‘Systematic Estate Looting and No One the Wiser.' This is the break I've been looking for. It's a wonderful opportunity.”

“Will it be safe? Fanny thinks I should stay in the Temple for a while.”

“Perfectly safe. A woodland setting, a secluded lodge, a select audience. Oh, they may be put off a bit at losing their free time. I suppose some of them would prefer to be out on the links knocking a ball around and telling off-color stories, but remember, these men are senior attorneys and distinguished members of the bench. We don't have to fear catcalls or gunplay. They won't be hurling buns at you. They won't try to hoot you down and drive you from the podium. These Busy Bees have clout and money and we're going to need some of those people in our camp.”

“All the newspaper articles about Rainbow Falls mention that slippery footing. It seems there's some kind of green stuff growing on those wet rocks down there.”

“Yes, but you understand, sir, we're not going down there for a dip. We won't have time to wade the shallows with our trousers rolled up and our shoes in our hands. We're going down there to cultivate some of the most important men in the state. We need to stake out some key ground early. Wasn't it Bismarck who said, ‘He who holds the—something or other—controls the—something else'? Controls the whole thing, you see. It was Bismarck or one of those boys with a spike on his hat.”

“Kaiser Bill had a spike on his helmet. One of his arms was withered, you know, but I forget which one.”

“We'll need a good strong speech. But not too strong. We don't want to overwhelm our audience the first shake out of the box. A light note won't be amiss, not in your opening remarks. An open, friendly tone. There's no telling what weird notions they have about us out there.”

“Did you say two-thirty?”

“At two-thirty on the twenty-fourth, yes, sir. But I think we should leave early and allow some time for a little ‘Let's get acquainted' session when we get there.”

“That's when I have my nap. What about my nap?”

“You can sleep in the car. Maceo will drive us down in the Buick. Will it run, by the way? I've noticed weeds and flowers growing around the tires.”

“We don't use it much.”

Mr. Jimmerson had begun to move his papers about and hold them up to his eyes. “I've been looking over some of my old talks here, Austin. It's surprising how well they have stood the test of time, if I do say so myself. What do you think about giving them ‘Gold, the Celestial Fire Congealed'? That was always well received.”

“It would go right over their heads, sir. Something with broad appeal is what we want for the Busy Bees. Not too much about Atlantis. These men are clever but they are not attuned to higher thought.”

“How about ‘A Stroll Through History'?”

“Your survey of eleven civilizations? There won't be enough time. They're only giving us about twenty-three minutes and we'll want to leave a little cushion at the end for a question period. But not too much of a cushion.”

“‘Gnomonism Today'?”

“I don't think so.
Hoosier Wizard
gives us Mr. Jimmerson the Master of Gnomons. Out there on the stump we want to present Mr. Jimmerson the man. Our theme is change. ‘Why not Mr. Jimmerson for a change?' That's our pitch. Let's try to work up something along those lines.”

OVER THE following weekend Miss Naomi Hine made five trips across town in her little green Crosley car. She was moving her things into the Gnomon Temple. This was the beginning of the new arrangement, whereby the Temple, or part of it, was to become a rooming house, or “guest lodge,” as Fanny Jimmerson put it. With some paying guests, she had determined, the big place could pay its own way and thus relieve her of a financial burden. The Gnomon Society, now little more than a corporate ghost, remained the nominal owner, but Fanny felt free to make these dispositions since it was she who had paid the bills for so many years.