REACTION AT GENESSEE
San Francisco, Dec. 18
—Private aircraft flew in from all over the country throughout the night bringing top Genessee management to the city. The executive personnel have been closeted in meetings, attempting to unravel the mystery behind the tragic events of yesterday in Washington. One significant result of these conferences is the emergence of Louis Riggs as the apparent spokesman for Genessee Industries’ San Francisco Division, considered the company’s headquarters. Riggs, a combat veteran of Vietnam, is the young economist who was Goddard’s chief aide and top accountant. Insiders say that Riggs had for weeks been concerned over his superior’s erratic behavior; that the young aide had privately sent a number of confidential memoranda to other top-level management personnel stating his concerns. It was also revealed that Riggs will fly to Washington for a meeting with the newly sworn-in President.
It had begun.
And Andrew Trevayne knew he could not let it continue. He could not bear witness to the cataclysm without raising an anguished voice, without letting the country know.
But the country was in panic; the world was in panic. He could not compound that hysteria with his anguish.
That much he knew.
He knew also that he could not react as his wife had reacted, as his children had.
His daughter. His son.
The lost, bewildered guardians of tomorrow.
The girl had been the first to bring the news. Both children were home for the holidays, and both had been out separately: Pam involved with Christmas shopping, Steve with other young men his age, regreeting one another, exaggerating their first semesters. Andy and Phyllis had been in the downstairs study quietly making plans for getting away in January.
Phyllis insisted on the Caribbean; a hot country where Andy could spend hours on his beloved ocean, sailing around the islands, letting the warm winds ease the hurt and the anger. They’d take a house in St. Martin; they’d use some of their well-advertised money to help heal the wounds.
The door of the study was open, the only sound the hum of the wall vacuum being used by Lillian somewhere upstairs.
They’d both heard the crash of the front door, the hysterical sobs through the cries for help.
Cries for a mother and father. For somebody.
They’d raced out of the study, up the stairs, and seen their daughter standing in the hallway, tears streaming down her face, her eyes afraid.
«Pam! For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?»
«Oh, God! God! You don’t know?»
«Know?»
«Turn on the radio. Call somebody. He was killed!»
«Who?»
«The President was killed! He was killed!»
«Oh, my God.» Phyllis spoke inaudibly as she turned to her husband and searched his face; Andrew instinctively reached for her. The unspoken statements—questions—were too clear, too intimate, too filled with agony and personal fear to surface the words.
«Why? Why?»
Pamela Trevayne was screaming.
Andrew released his wife and silently, gently commanded her to go to their daughter. He walked rapidly into the living room, to the telephone.
There was nothing anyone could tell him but the terrible facts, the unbelievable narrative. Nearly every private line he knew in Washington was busy. The few that weren’t had no time for him; the government of the United States had to function, had to secure its continuity at all costs.
The television and radio stations suspended all broadcasts and commercial breaks as harried announcers began their fugues of repetition. Several news analysts wept openly, others betrayed angers that came close to outright condemnation of their vast, silent audiences. A number of the self-hustlers—second rate politicians, third-rate journalists, a few pompous, pontificating articulators of academia—were by chance «in the studios» or «on the other end of the line,» ready to make their bids for immediate recognition, spreading their tasteless perceptions and admonitions on a numbed public only too willing to be taught in its moment of confusion.
Trevayne left a single network station—the least irresponsible, he thought—on several sets throughout the house. He went to Pam’s room, thinking Phyllis would be there. She wasn’t. Pam was talking quietly with Lillian; the maid had been weeping, and the girl was comforting the older woman, conversely regaining her own control as she did so.
Andrew closed his daughter’s bedroom door and walked down the hall to his and Phyllis’ room. His wife sat by the window, the light of early night filtering through the woods, reflected up from the water.
Darkness was coming.
He went to her and knelt beside the chair. She stared at him, and he knew then that she knew what he was going to do before he did.
And she was terrified.
Steven Trevayne stood by the fireplace, his hands black with ash, the poker beside him, resting on the brick below the mantel. No one had thought to light a fire, and the fact seemed to annoy him. He had mixed new kindling with nearly burnt logs and held the Cape Cod lighter underneath the grate, oblivious to the heat and the dirt of the fireplace.
He was alone and looked over at the television set, its volume low, on only to impart whatever new information there might be.
The Vice President of the United States had just taken his hand off a Bible; he was now the world’s most powerful man. He was President.
An old man.
They were all old men. No matter the years, their dates of birth. Old men, tired men, deceitful men.
«That’s a good idea. The fire,» said Andrew quietly, walking into the living room.
«Yeah,» answered the boy without looking up, turning his head back toward the expanding flames. Then, just as abruptly, he stepped away from the fireplace and started for the hallway.
«Where are you going?»
«Out. Do you mind?»
«Of course not. It’s a time to do nothing. Except, perhaps, think.»
«Please cut the bromides, Dad.»
«I will if you’ll stop being childish. And sullen. I didn’t pull the trigger, even symbolically.»
The boy stopped and looked at his father. «I know you didn’t. Maybe it would have been better if you had…»
«I find that a contemptible statement.»
«… ‘even symbolically.’ … For Christ’s sake, then you would have done something!»
«That’s off-base. You don’t know what you’re saying.»
«‘Off-base’? What’s on-base? You were there! You’ve been there for months. What did you do, Dad? Were you on-base? On target?… Goddamn it. Somebody thought. Somebody did a terrible, lousy, rotten, fucking thing, and everybody’s going to pay for it!»
«Are you endorsing the act?» Trevayne shouted, confused; he was as close to striking his son as he could ever recall.
«Jesus, no! Do you?»
Trevayne gripped his hands in front of him, the muscles in his arms and shoulders taut. He wanted the boy to leave. To run. Quickly.
«If that hurts, it’s because that killing took place in your ball park.»
«He was insane, a maniac. It’s isolated. You’re being unfair.»
«Nobody thought so until yesterday. Nobody had any big files on him; he wasn’t on anybody’s list. No one detained him anywhere; they just gave him millions and millions to keep on building the goddamn machine.»
«That’s asinine. You’re trying to create a label out of one warped clump of insanity. Use your head, Steve. You’re better than that.»
The boy paused; his silence was the stillness of grief and bewilderment. «Maybe labels are the only things that make sense right now… And you lose, Dad. I’m sorry.»