Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

He favored requiring all heads of state to be mothers with six or more draft-age children. He wanted to mount a massive national effort to save the schools, to be funded by “downsizing” the federal establishment. He would have applied capital punishment with vigor because it has the dual advantage of reducing the criminal population and providing the average malefactor with the attention he desires.

My father was sexually active, and many of the women who drifted through his life would no doubt have been shocked to read his appraisals of their performances:

Lisa: screams and groans and bites a lot, but can’t act well enough to carry it off. Down deep, where it counts, she is about as wild and uninhibited as a good phone directory.

Michele: probably better than an old movie.

Martie: woman doesn’t know when to quit. Would wear out a jackhammer.

I have of course fictionalized the names.

The pages were also full of antireligious views: for reasons never clear to me, he believed Methodist ministers to be uniformly a pack of scoundrels. This was especially odd in that he had never had any connection that I knew of with that church. The average congressman , he wrote during the late 80’s, is roughly equal in moral content to a Methodist preacher. The Creator himself did not escape criticism: The world is such a misbegotten wreck that it is impossible to believe any self-respecting deity would accept the blame for it. And: If there is a career more attractive to scoundrels and frauds than professional politics, it must be the Methodist ministry.

Perhaps I violated an ethic in reading my father’s diary. I wish now that I had not. But the charm and vitality of his observations, his obvious appetite for life, his Olympian assaults against those he considered frauds and halfwits, were irresistible. Once started, I could not stop. And I began to realize how little I had appreciated him during his lifetime.

I started seriously reading the diary at about the time I’d given up hope that he might have survived. I’d seen the final entries and knew that he planned to be in Atlantic City, the worst possible place. But there was the chance that he might have been sidetracked, gone somewhere else, been delayed by a woman. I know better now.

The first entry was dated July 16, 1961. It spells out the rationale behind the diary, which was that he hoped his “occasional ruminations” would one day be of general interest. (My father was never afflicted with modesty.) He also revealed an ambition to become an essayist, and believed that a daily account of his reflections would be a priceless aid to such an endeavor. I should add, parenthetically, that his ambitions came to nothing. If he ever actually tried to compile a manuscript, I have no knowledge of it.

Six days later, he recorded my birth. And, in another week, the death of my mother. He seldom mentioned her to me, but the diary gave over a dozen pages of cramped handwriting to reminiscences of their early years together, and of his conviction that, were it not for his responsibilities (by which I gathered he was talking about me), his life had become worthless. Judging from the diary, he never after seriously considered marriage although, as I mentioned, there were many women. I was aware of his escapades, of course, while I was growing up. And I was baffled: my father’s appearance was rather ordinary. He was also short and, when I was a teen-ager, beginning to lose his hair. It was hard to see what brought that endless supply of women to his door. I don’t know yet.

By the time I had read into the late ’70’s, I noticed an odd trend. There are passages, and implications, which are unsettling. My father was, if anything, a rationalist. And I could sense his increasing dismay at events which he could not explain. I began to read more intently, and eventually found it impossible to lay the book aside. I will never forget the cold, rainswept evening during which I came back to the final entry. And read it in the frantic glare of what had gone before.

Now I don’t know what to make of it. The only possible conclusion is that the diary is a fabrication. It has to be. Yet I do not see how that is possible. My wife, after she finished it, suggested we burn it.

I have not been able to bring myself to do that. Nor can I simply pretend it does not exist. Consequently, without taking a position on the matter, I have had the pertinent entries privately printed, in order to make them available to a small group of my friends whose judgment I trust. Perhaps someone among them will be able to offer a rational explanation.

One final note: the “Rob” who figures so prominently in this narrative was Orin R. Robinson, who served 1958-60 in the Far East with my father. Curiously, they seem not to have been close friends until after the chance meeting in the Minneapolis airport described in the first entry in the Extract below. My father, incidentally, was on his way to Fargo, pursuing a young woman of his acquaintance.

(ATTACHMENT)

Being Extracts from the Diary of Samuel H. Coswell

Minneapolis, Friday, November 22, 1963

Black day. The President is dead.

I was having lunch with Rob. First time I’d seen him since Navy days on the McCusker . Hell of a reunion. We were sitting in a dark little place off Washington Avenue, all electric candles and checkerboard tablecloths and bare hardwood floors. A waitress had filled our glasses with Chianti and set the bottle down. We were already deep into reminiscing about old friends and old times, and Rob swept up his glass with a flourish and raised it toward the light. “Here’s to you, Sam,” he said, “I’ve missed you,” and in that brief hesitation, when one tastes the moment before the wine, I became aware of raised voices.

Chair legs scraped the floor. “—Shot him—” someone said. The words hung in the still air, whispered, almost disembodied. Then Kennedy’s name. Doors banged, and traffic sounds got loud. Outside, a postal truck pulled up beside a mailbox.

There were bits and pieces of conversation. “How badly hurt?” “—They get the guy?” “Be fine. Can’t kill—” “ What time is it? Is the stock market still open?”

They brought out a television and we watched the early reports and learned the worst. “Not much of a reunion,” I told Rob.

He lives in L.A. We’d met at the airport, both passing through. He’s an aircraft design consultant, and he was on his way home from Chicago. We got to talking, decided not to miss the opportunity, and rearranged our flight schedules. Which was how we came to be eating a late lunch together when the news came from Dallas.

We walked back to our Sheraton and pushed into the bar. The TV threw a pale glare over the crowd, which kept getting bigger. Nobody said much. Cronkite reported that a police officer had been shot, and then he was back a few minutes later to tell us that a suspect had been captured in a movie theater. Name’s Oswald. Nobody seems to know anything about him. I guess we’ll start getting some answers tomorrow. Meantime, there’s a lot of talk about a conspiracy. And we now have Lyndon Johnson.

I’m surprised this has hit me so hard. I’ve never been high on Kennedy. Although, as politicians go, he was likable. But it will be harder to run the Republic if presidents have to go into hiding.

Rob is up one floor. We’d originally planned to have breakfast together. He has an early flight, though, and I don’t think either of us feels much like socializing. My own flight’s at noon. So I will sleep late. And maybe one day we’ll meet again in some other airport.

Fargo, Saturday, November 23, 1963