Walker Percy - Lost in the Cosmos

CALVIN: Sexual preference? (Puzzled, he turns for help to the Confederate officer and the Cosmic stranger. They shrug)

DONAHUE (holding mike to the officer) : How about you, sir? Your name is—

CONFEDERATE OFFICER: Colonel John Pelham, C.S.A., commander of the horse artillery under General Stuart.

PENNY: He’s cute.

AUDIENCE: (Laughter)

DONAHUE: You heard it all in the green room, Colonel. What ‘dya think?

COLONEL PELHAM (in a soft Alabama accent) : What do I think of what, sir?

DONAHUE: Of what you heard in the green room.

PELHAM: Of the way these folks act and talk? Well, I don’t think much of it, sir.

DONAHUE: How do you mean, Colonel?

PELHAM: That’s not the way people should talk or act. Where I come from, we’d call them white trash. That’s no way to talk if you’re a man or a woman. A gentleman knows how to treat women. He knows because he knows himself, who he is, what his obligations are. And he discharges them. But after all, you won the war, so if that’s the way you want to act, that’s your affair. At least, we can be sure of one thing.

DONAHUE: What’s that, Colonel?

PELHAM: We’re not sorry we fought.

DONAHUE: I see. Then you agree with the reverend, I mean Reverend Calvin here.

PELHAM: Well, I respect his religious beliefs. But I never thought much about religion one way or the other. In fact, I don’t think religion has much to do with whether a man does right. A West Point man is an officer and a gentleman, religion or no religion. I have nothing against religion. In fact, when we studied medieval history at West Point, I remember admiring Richard Coeur de Lion and his recapturing Acre and the holy places. I remember thinking: I would have fought for him, just as I fought for Lee and the South.

Applause from the audience. Calvin puts them off, but this handsome officer reminds them of Rhett Butler — Clark Gable, or rather Ashley Wilkes — Leslie Howard.

DONAHUE (drifting off, frowning; something is amiss but he can’t put his finger on it. What is Steve Allen up to? He shakes his head, blinks) : You said it, Colonel. Okay. Where were we? (Turning to Cosmic stranger) We’re running a little long. Can you make it brief, Harry — Mr. President, or whoever you are? Oh boy.

THE COSMIC STRANGER (stands stiffly, hands at his sides, and begins speaking briskly, very much in the style of the late Raymond Gram Swing) : I will be brief. I have taken this human form through a holographic technique unknown to you in order to make myself understood to you.

Hear this. I have a message. Whether you heed it or not is your affair.

I have nothing to say to you about God or the Confederacy, whatever that is — I assume it is not the G2V Confederacy in this arm of the galaxy — though I could speak about God, but it is too late for you, and I am not here to do that.

We are not interested in the varieties of your sexual behavior, except as a symptom of a more important disorder.

It is this disorder which concerns us and which we do not fully understand.

As a consequence of this disorder, you are a potential threat to all civilizations in the G2V region of the galaxy. Throughout G2V you are known variously and jokingly as the Ds or the DDs or the DLs, that is, the ding-a-lings or the death-dealers or the death-lovers. Of all the species here and in all of G2V, you are the only one which is by nature sentimental, murderous, self-hating, and self-destructive.

You are two superpowers here. The other is hopeless, has already succumbed, and is a death society. It is a living death and an agent for the propagation of death.

You are scarcely better — there is a glimmer of hope for you — but that is of no interest to me.

If the two of you destroy each other, as appears likely, it is of no consequence to us. To tell you the truth, G2V will breathe a sigh of relief.

The danger is that you may not destroy each other and that your present crude technology may constitute a threat to G2V in the future.

I am here to tell you three things: what is going to happen, what I am going to do, and what you can do.

Here’s what will happen. Within the next twenty-four hours, your last war will begin. There will occur a twenty-megaton airburst one mile above the University of Chicago, the very site where your first chain reaction was produced. Every American city and town will be hit. You will lose plus-minus 160 million immediately, plus-minus 50 million later.

Here’s what I am going to do. I have been commissioned to collect a specimen of DD and return with it so that we can study it toward the end of determining the nature of your disorder. Accordingly, I propose to take this young person referred to as Penny — for two reasons. One, she is perhaps still young enough not to have become hopeless. Two, she is pregnant and so we will have a chance to rear a DD in an environment free of your noxious influence. Then perhaps we can determine whether your disorder is a result of some peculiar earth environmental factor or whether you are a malignant sport, a genetic accident, the consequence of what you would have called, quite accurately, in an earlier time an MD— mutatio diabolica, a diabolical mutation.

Finally, here’s what you can do. It is of no consequence to us whether you do it or not, because you will no longer be a threat to anyone. This is only a small gesture of goodwill to a remnant of you who may survive and who may have the chance to start all over — though you will probably repeat the same mistake. We have been students of your climatology for years. I have here a current read-out and prediction of the prevailing wind directions and fallout patterns for the next two weeks. It so happens that the place nearest you which will escape all effects of both blast and fallout is the community of Lost Cove, Tennessee. We do not anticipate a stampede to Tennessee. Our projection is that very few of you here and you out there in radio land will attach credibility to this message. But the few of you who do may wish to use this information. There is a cave there, corn, grits, collard greens, and smoked sausage in abundance.

That is the end of my message. Penny—

DONAHUE: We’re long! We’re long! Heavy! Steve, I’ll get you for this. Oh boy. Don’t forget, folks, tomorrow we got surrogate partners and a Kinsey panel — come back — you can’t win ‘em all—'bye! Grits. I dunno.

AUDIENCE: (Applause)

Cut to station break, Secure Card 65 commercial, Alpo, Carefree Panty Shields, and Mentholatum, then The Price Is Right.

Question: If you heard this Donahue Show, would you head for Lost Cove, Tennessee?

(a) Yes

(b) No

(CHECK ONE)

*Abigail Van Buren, The Best of Dear Abby (New York: Andrews and McMeel, 1981), p. 242.

EVERYONE REMEMBERS WHERE he was and what he was doing when he heard the news of the Kennedy assassination — or, if he is old enough, Pearl Harbor.

Why?

The self deceives itself by saying that it is natural that such terrible events should be etched in the memory.

It is not so simple.