Don DeLillo - Americana

"Yes," Weede Denney said. "It would be almost as good as Ruby shooting Oswald."

The room relaxed, appreciating the jagged wit of this remark, and we all painted one more kill on Weede's already impressive fuselage. He lowered his barber chair two hydraulic notches and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. Mrs. Kling, his secretary, came in then with a large breakfast tray and began distributing the coffee. I watched the construction workers in the building across the street. Richter Janes was sitting next to me, waiting for the coffee to reach him.

"Most of the high-steel men in this city are Mohawks," he said. "They all live out in Brooklyn someplace. There's a whole colony out there. They specialize in the high dangerous stuff. Any building more than thirty stories, you know those are Mohawks you see up there."

"It must have something to do with their inherent catlike agility and superb sense of balance," I said.

We were whispering for some reason.

"There was an Indian in my fraternity back at school. Nicest, quietest guy you'd ever want to meet."

"What was his time for the hundred?"

"Let's break bread some time," Richter said. "I'd like to pick your brain on a project of mine. I've been hearing good things about you."

"From whom?" I said.

"Word gets around," he whispered mysteriously.

Mrs. Kling left and the meeting resumed. At the network, people were always telling other people they had heard good things about them. It was part of the company's unofficial program of relentless cordiality. And since our business by its nature was committed to the very flexible logic of trends, there always came the time when the bearer of glad tidings became the recipient. Each of us, sooner or later, became a trend in himself; each had his week-long cycle of glory. Richter Janes' remark suggested that this might be the beginning of the David Bell trend. Richter himself had been a trend only a few months before; during his trend, which lasted a week or so, people popped into my office or sidled up to me in the corridor on a number of occasions to comment on what a good job Richter Janes was doing, how many good things they had heard about him, and how they had told him, just that morning, about some of the good things they had heard. I was never able to figure out how these trends started, who started them, or how the word spread. They seemed spontaneous enough and I found it hard to believe that top management would devise the whole thing, designate a trend-man of the month, someone whose morale needed boosting, and then instruct paid trendsetters to make spot remarks and chance comments concerning the good things they had heard about him. Up to that point I had never been a trend and had never felt any particular need to be one. Almost everyone sitting in Weede's office at that moment had been a trend at some time or another, but never, as far as I knew, more than once. In a given year there were usually nine or ten trend people. The trends ended as they had begun, with mystifying suddenness, and the person who had just been trendexed seemed a bit forlorn when it was all over, the gloss and neon gone, the numbers filed away, all the screens snowing and the airwaves bent with static.

"Quincy and Dave," Weede said. "Ball's in your court."

There was fatherly amusement in his voice. Apparently the destruction of Walter Faye had put him in good spirits. I had no idea what I was going to say since I had accomplished absolutely nothing all week. I thought I might simply paraphrase my remarks of the previous meeting, hedging and improvising as I went along, but there wasn't much chance of making that kind of escape. It had been tried hundreds of times and everyone was familiar with the clawprints and scent.

"Quincy, why don't you start the ball rolling?" I said.

"The Navaho project."

"The Navaho project," I said.

"There are long- and short-range problems," Quincy said. "Who's going out there, for how long, and will the Indians cooperate? I've been in touch with the Bureau of Indian Affairs."

"We both have."

"They'd like to know more before they commit."

"The Indians don't want pity," I said. "They want dignity."

"I got the same impression. We must have talked to some of the same people."

"They don't want pity in any shape or form. They want dignity. I think Richter can tell us more about that. Richter actually knows an Indian. Old fraternity brother."

"We're not actually in touch anymore. It's been more than fifteen years since college and I didn't really know the gentleman all that well. He was a nice quiet boy. I definitely remember that much about him. He was five-ten or eleven, weighed about one-sixty, lean as a whip, not an ounce of fat on him. He wasn't actually copper-colored if I remember correctly. If I remember correctly he was actually only three-eighths Indian. Three-eighths or four-eighths Indian. Crow I think he was. Crow or Blackfoot. But he was definitely one of the nicest, quietest fellas you'd ever want to meet. That much I'm sure about. It's absolutely vivid in my mind."

"Would you say this man wanted pity or dignity?"

"Dignity, Dave. There's not the slightest doubt in my mind. It was definitely dignity."

"Go, Quincy," I said.

"The thing of it is: Who's going out there, when, and for how long? If we want blizzards we want to get cracking. We want to get this thing nailed to the mast before any more grass grows under our feet."

"I've been in almost constant touch with the weather bureau," I said. "I'm trying to pin them down on some kind of long-range forecast for that sector of the country."

"What sector?" Jones Perkins said.

"Where the Navahos are."

"Where are they?"

"Quincy, you're the geography expert."

"Look, it's not as though we'll have any trouble finding them. The reservation is bigger than some states. It's even bigger than some countries, some of the smaller postage-stamp kingdoms in Europe. There's no doubt in my mind that it's bigger than Monaco for instance."

"Central Park is bigger than Monaco," Reeves Chubb said.

"Cocksucker," Quincy muttered.

"It's out around Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and/or Colorado, " Paul Joyner said. "I happen to know that for a fact."

"Right," I said. "And as I understand it the area has some fine cliff dwellings and pueblo ruins that we can use as natural backdrops. Monument Valley, in point of fact, lies right within the boundaries of the reservation, or so I've been led to believe. It's a stark, beautiful, moonscape-type place."

"Why do we want blizzards?" Warburton said.

"We want to show that despite all the problems, they're making progress. Blizzards are one of the problems."

"I shouldn't have thought you'd need a blizzard. Poverty and disease speak eloquently in their own right."

"It can't do any harm," Quincy said.

"Ted may have a point," I said. "The other major thing that pertains to me directly is the 'Soliloquy' thing. Everything is fine on that score. The show has been an airtight lead-pipe cinch from the very outset. Critics have loved it, by and large, and mail has been running four-to-one pro."

"I've never liked that title much," Reeves Chubb said. "It's pseudo something or other. I brought it up at dinner the other evening. We have some house guests out and I wanted to get their thinking on it. I taped the whole discussion in case you, Dave, or you, Quincy, wanted to hear it. They're an extremely well-informed couple. Kate and Phil Thomforde. He's done things with McAndrew at Amherst."

"Weede thought up the title."

"Did I?" Weede said. "One of my less resounding successes apparently, at least as far as Mr. Chubb is concerned. Regrettably, Dave, I don't think the program will survive. Sometimes it's difficult to break new ground without getting dirt in somebody's eye. The sponsor has chosen not to renew and there's been no interest elsewhere. Dave, you know I always go to bat for my people and I assure you this instance was no exception. I tried my damnedest to get Larry Livingston upstairs to convince Stennis to let the network pick up the tab. Livingston said quite frankly-and you have to admire his honesty-that the show is a crashing bore. He said there was no point in seeing Stennis about it because Stennis-and this mustn't go any further than this room-Stennis has problems of an entirely different kind. The show was good. I say that unequivocally. But Chip Moerdler over at Brite-Write said it wasn't selling any ballpoint pens. In this business you have to learn to expect disappointments. But don't go away mad, David. We have every intention of putting your not inconsiderable talents to further and better use. I'll be telling you more about this as soon as the Navahos are in the can."