Джеффри Арчер - Tell Tale - Stories

Her supervisor had told her on numerous occasions that if she wanted to be a writer she would have to get some experience of life, especially other people’s lives, and although her driver didn’t look an obvious candidate to expand her horizons, there was only one way she was going to find out.

“Thanks for stopping,” she said. “My name’s Kelley.”

“John,” he replied, taking one hand off the wheel to shake hands with her. The rough hands of a farm laborer, was her first thought. “What are you majoring in, Kelley?” he asked.

“Modern American literature.”

“There hasn’t been much of that lately,” he suggested. “But then times are a changin’. When I was at Stanford, there were no women on the campus, even at night.”

Kelley was surprised that John had been to Stanford. “What degree did you take, sir?”

“John,” he insisted. “It’s bad enough being old, without being reminded of the fact by a young woman.” She laughed. “I studied English literature, like you. Mark Twain, Herman Melville, James Thurber, Longfellow, but I’m afraid I flunked out. Never took my degree, which I still bitterly regret.”

Kelley gave him another look and wondered if the car would ever move out of third gear. She was just about to ask why he flunked out, when he said, “And who are now considered to be the modern giants of American literature, dare I ask?”

“Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bellow, and Faulkner,” she replied.

“Do you have a favorite?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the road ahead.

“Yes I do. I read The Grapes of Wrath when I was twelve years old, and I consider it to be one of the great novels of the twentieth century. ‘ And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed .’”

“I’m impressed,” he said. “Although my favorite will always be Of Mice and Men .”

“‘ Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella, ’” said Kelley, “‘ Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella .’”

“I don’t think you’ll be flunking your exams,” said John with a chuckle, which gave Kelley the opportunity to begin her interrogation.

“So what did you do after you left Stanford?”

“My father wanted me to work on his farm back in Monterey, which I managed for a couple of years, but it just wasn’t me, so I rebelled and got a job as a tour guide at Lake Tahoe.”

“That must have been fun.”

“Sure was. Lots of dames, but the pay was lousy. So my friend Ed and I decided to travel up and down the California coast collecting biological specimens, but that didn’t turn out to be very lucrative either.”

“Did you try and look for something more permanent after that?” asked Kelley.

“No, can’t pretend I did. Well, at least not until war broke out, when I got a job as a war correspondent on the Herald Tribune .”

“Wow, that must have been exciting,” said Kelley. “Right there among the action, and then reporting everything you’d seen to the folks back home.”

“That was the problem. I got too close to the action and ended up with a whole barrel of shotgun up my backside, and had to be shipped back to the States. So I lost my job at the Trib, along with my first wife.”

“Your first wife?”

“Did I forget to mention Carol?” he said. “She lasted thirteen years before she was replaced by Gwyn, who only managed five. But to do her justice, which is quite difficult, she gave me two great sons.”

“So what happened once you’d fully recovered from your wounds?”

“I began working with some of the immigrants who were flooding into California after the war. I’m from German stock myself, so I knew what they were going through, and felt a lot of sympathy for them.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing ever since?”

“No, no. When Johnson decided to invade Vietnam, the Trib offered me my old job back. Seems they couldn’t find too many people who considered being shipped off to ’Nam a good career move.”

Kelley laughed. “But at least this time you survived.”

“Well, I would have done if the CIA hadn’t asked me to work for them at the same time.”

“Am I allowed to ask what you did for them?” she said, looking more closely at the old man.

“Wrote one version of what was going on in ’Nam for the Trib, while letting the CIA know what was really happening. But then I had an advantage over my colleagues that only the CIA knew about.”

Kelley would have asked how come, but John answered her question before she could speak.

“Both my sons, John Jr. and Thomas, were serving in the front line, so I was getting information my fellow hacks weren’t.”

“The Trib must have loved that.”

“I’m afraid not,” said John. “The editor sacked me the minute he found out I was workin’ for the CIA. Said I’d forfeited my journalistic integrity and gone native, not to mention the fact I was being paid by two masters.”

Kelley was spellbound.

“And to be fair,” he continued, “I couldn’t disagree with them. And in any case, I was gettin’ more and more disillusioned by what was happening in ’Nam, and even began to question whether we still occupied the moral high ground.”

“So what did you do when you got back home this time?” asked Kelley, who was beginning to consider the trip was every bit as exciting as the journey she’d experienced with the fellow who’d spent a day fishing with President Roosevelt.

“When I got home,” John continued, “I discovered my second wife had shacked up with some other fella. Can’t say I blame her. Not that I was single for too long, because soon after I married Elaine. I can only tell you one thing I know for sure, Kelley, three wives is more than enough for any man.”

“So what did you do next?” asked Kelley, aware it wouldn’t be too long before they reached the university campus.

“Elaine and I went down South, where I wrote about the Civil Rights movement for any rag that was willing to print my views. But unfortunately I got myself into trouble again when I locked horns with J. Edgar Hoover and refused to cooperate with the FBI, and tell them what I’d found out following my meetings with Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. In fact Hoover got so angry, he tried to label me a communist. But this time he couldn’t make it stick, so he amused himself by having the IRS audit me every year.”

“You met Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy?”

“Sure did. And John Kennedy come to that, God rest his soul.”

On hearing that he’d actually met JFK, Kelley suddenly had so many more questions she wanted to ask, but she could now see the university’s Hoover Tower becoming larger by the minute.

“What an amazing life you’ve led,” said Kelley, who was disappointed the journey was coming to an end.

“I fear I may have made it sound more exciting than it really was,” said John. “But then an old man’s reminiscences cannot always be relied on. So, Kelley, what are you going to do with your life?”

“I want to be a writer,” she told him. “My dream is that in fifty years’ time, students studying modern American literature at Stanford will include the name of Kelley Ragland.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” said John. “But if you’ll allow an old man to give you a piece of advice, don’t be in too much of a hurry to write the Great American Novel. Get as much experience of the world and people as you can before you sit down and put pen to paper,” he added as he brought the car to a stuttering halt outside the college gates. “I can promise you, Kelley, you won’t regret it.”