“ … gay rats …”
He lurched forward in his chair and concentrated on the monitors and held up his forefinger so Mary Cary would do the same. The tall, rangy one, the one right across the table from Jimmy Lowe, the one with the strange last name, Ziggefoos, had just uttered the expression “gay rats,” which in their patois, he knew by now, would mean
gay rights.
“ … they nebber tale you what the hale they deeud fo’ they got that way. You jes see some may’shated sommitch with a fo’-day growth a beard and his cheeks lack this here”—he hollowed his cheeks and rolled his eyes up into his head—“lucking lack Jesus Christ and talking abaout AIDS’n gay rats.”
“Fuckin’ A,” said Jimmy Lowe.
“I mean, sheeut,” said Ziggefoos, “they act lack they jes flat out got sick fum ever‘buddy calling’em quairs or sump’m. Wasn’t nothing they
deeud
, natcherly.”
“Fuckin’ A wale told,” said Jimmy Lowe.
The third one spoke up, the small, wiry, dark-haired one, the runt of the trio, the one named Flory. “Member ‘at little Franch feller come overt
ob
stickle course last munt with that fust bunch a UN trainees? Olivy-yay? I ever tale you what h’it was he called ‘em? Be talking about some gladiola, and he’d say, ‘He ain’t fum our parish.’”
“Ain’t fum our parish?” said Jimmy Lowe. “What’s’at spose mean?”
“It means—ovairn France everbuddy’s
Cath
’lic? And ever‘buddy’s in one p’tickler
parish
er’nudder? Y’unnerstan’? So him‘n’me, one time we seen Holcombe lane the ballin’ sun out back at the Far Department with his shirt unbuttoned taking a goddayum
sun
bath, and Olivy-yay, he don’t even know the sucker, but he’s spishus rat away, and he says to me, he says, ‘He ain’t fum our parish.’”
Holcombe
! Irv’s central nervous system went on red alert. He leaned forward even farther and held up both hands toward the monitors as if
he were Atlas ready to catch the world. Holcombe had been one of Randy Valentine’s closest friends at Fort Bragg. Even Mary Cary seemed to sense the three boys were now entering a minefield. She had leaned forward from out of her perfect sitting posture.
Up on the two screens, the tall one, Ziggefoos, didn’t intend to get sidetracked by Flory and his “not from our parish.” He took a swallow of beer and said, “An’ all’em shows on teevee, an’ all’is sheeut abaout ‘the gay lifestyle’? The wust thang they gon’ show you is, they gon’ show you a couple lesbians dancing or sump’m lack’at’eh. Jewer see two faggots dancing on teevee or kissing each other on’a lips? Hale, no. Ain’ gonna show you any a
that
sheeut.”
“Fuckin’ A wale told, Ziggy.”
“Oncet my old man rented us a hotel room somers up near the pier at Myrtle Beach,” Ziggefoos said, “an’ rat next doe’s this
bow
adin haouse or sump’m lack’at’eh, and abaout five o’clock in the moaning? —when it’s jes starting to geeut lat?—me’n’ my brother, we kin hear somebuddy grunting and squealing on the roof of the
bow
adin’ haouse, and we tuck a luck out the winder, and there’s two guys upair on the slope a the roof, unnerneath one a them great big ol’ teevee earls they used to have?—nekkid as a pair a jaybuds, and one
uv
’em’s jes buggering the living sheeut out th‘other’n. Me’n’my brother, we didn’t even know what they was doing. So we woke up the ol’ man, and he tuck a luck out the winder, and he says, ‘Jesus H. Christ godalmighty dog, boys, them’s faggots.’ Next thang you know, the fust two
uv
’em’s finished, and they go daown this little hatchway they got upair in the roof, and rat away two more
uv
’em pop up, buck nekkid just lack the fust two, and they’s lane on the roof, and one
uv
’m’s rubbing some kinda all on th’other’n’s butt. And the ol’ man, he’s smoking, I mean he’s flat out on far by now, he’s so mad, and he yales out, ‘Hey, you faggots! I’m gonna caount to ten, and if you ain’t off’n’at roof, you best be growing some wangs,’cause they’s gonna be a load a 12-gauge
bud
shot haidin’ up yo’ ayus!’ Well, I mean I wisht I’d a had a cam’ra and some fi’m, the way them faggots set to scrambling up the roof and diving down that hatchway. Come to find out that haouse was packed fulla
them fucking guys. They got ‘em hanging on hooks in’eh, they’s so many uv‘em, and they prolly been coming up on that roof all night long takin’ tons unnerneath that big ol’ teevee earl. And ‘at’s what I’m talking abaout. That’s what they ain’t abaout to tale you when they’s talking about gay rats and legal madge between homoseckshuls and all’at sheeut.”
Jimmy Lowe was nodding his approval of all this. Then he leaned over the table toward Ziggefoos and looked this way and that, to make sure nobody was eavesdropping, and he said, “You just put yer fainger on it, old buddy.”
Irv held his breath. It was beautiful. The kid had leaned over the table so he could lower his voice and not be overheard, but that had brought his mouth no more than six inches from the microphone hidden in the little lamp. At that range it would pick up a whisper.
“Anybuddy saw what I saw in—” He cut it off, as if a cautious impulse made him not want to say where. “Anybuddy woulda done what I deeud, er leastways they’d a wanted to. Soon’s I walked inair and I looked unner that tallit doe and I seen that guy’s knees on the flow, and I hud these two guys going,
‘Unnnnnh, unnnnnh, unnnnnh.’”
Even in the middle of it, in the middle of these words for which he had been lying in wait for two and a half weeks, Irv was aware of the sleazy throb of the Country Metal music in the background and the secretive sibilance of the kid’s near-whisper—and—
perfection!
—it was the perfect audio background! No one with all the money and time and imagination in the world could have dreamed up anything better!
“—I mean, I knew ‘zackly what h’it was. And when I walked overt the tallit and stood up on tippytoe and looked daown over the doe and seen it was a feller fum my own goddayum cump‘ny daown on his fucking knees gobblin’ at whangus sticking thew’at hole in the
par
tition—I mean, I saw some kind a rayud, and ‘at was when I kicked inny doe. Broke’at little metal tab rat off’n it.”
Ziggefoos, also leaning in, right into the mike, put on just the beginning of a smile. “Summitch mussa wunner what the hale hit him.”
“Whole goddayum doe hit him, I reckon. That summitch, he was lane upside the wall when I grabbed him.”
And now little Flory had leaned in over the table, too. “And you nebber deeud see the other guy?” he asked.
“Nebber seen him t‘all,” said Jimmy Lowe. “Speck he hauled ayus real fayust,’cause whan y‘all come in’eh, y’all nebber seen nobuddy coming out.”
“That’s rat,” said Flory.
Then the three boys, still huddled over the table, looked at one another reflectively and solemnly, as if to say, “Maybe we’d better not talk about it anymore.”
An impulse like an alarm surged through Irv’s central nervous system and up his brain stem, and the significance of what he’d just heard swept over him even before he could sort it out logically.
They had just hanged themselves.
He looked at Mary Cary, and she was already staring at him. The same dawn was breaking over her. Her over-made-up eyes were open wide, her too-big lips were parted slightly, and a wondering, halfquestioning smile was beginning to form on her big, broad face.
That’s it, isn’t it? They’ve just hanged themselves?
Oh, that they had! They’d just confessed the actual motive: homophobia. They’d just established the fact that the killing began with an unprovoked, blind-sided assault. And they’d revealed the fact that there existed an as-yet-unidentified witness to the beginning of the attack.
Irv’s mind raced on ahead. A victory for justice—oh yes! But it would be a lot more than that.
Long after the three young rednecks had departed the DMZ and the live field feed was finished, Irv remained there in the cubicle and insisted that Mary Cary review the tape with him, over and over. He was soaring. He called Ferretti, down in Fayetteville, and he went over it with him, the same things, like a hero exulting after a battle.
The nice thing was that Mary Cary seemed almost as euphoric as he was. Perhaps she could already see how terrific this was going to make her look on
Day & Night
. Perhaps she could see herself depicted as the heroine who broke the Fort Bragg gay-bashing case, which was not inconceivable. But for the moment he didn’t even care. At this moment hers was the only face he could look into and see the reflection of his triumph.
“One of the beautiful parts,” she was saying, “is when the sort of rangy-looking one—Ziggy, is it?—when he wakes up, and he’s just a boy, I guess, and he sees the two gays on the roof, and he wakes up his father, and his father says, ‘Boys, them’s faggots,’ and he threatens to shoot them with budshot. Speaking of which, whatta you suppose budshot is?”
“Birdshot,” said Irv. “After you listen to these characters for two or three nights, something very bad happens to your brain and you actually begin understanding what they’re saying.” He was feeling so good, he didn’t even mean it as a rebuke for her reluctance, up until now, to take part in the two and a half weeks of surveillance. “A bud is a bird, a bub is a bulb, a bum is a bomb, a far is a fire, a tar is a tire, an earl is an aerial—I mean, I’ve been sitting here for two and a half weeks. I could write you a lexicological introduction to Florida Panhandle illiteracy.”
“Well, thank God
you
know what they’re saying!” said Mary Cary. Irv liked that. “But anyway,” she continued, “I think that whole business of the father saying they’re
faggots
and he’s gonna
shoot the faggots
—I think that’s a very important part of what we’ve got here, because it shows how homophobia is implanted, father to son, one generation to another. I mean, it’s a straight line from that scene in a hotel room ten or fifteen years ago to the scene in the men’s room where Valentine is killed. An absolutely straight line, Q.E.D. There it is.”
Irv reflected for a moment. “You’re right, you’re right. It definitely makes the point. But I’m not sure how much of that stuff about the roof we can use, if any.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I mean it’s … it’s so
gross
. I’m not sure how much of it we can get on the air in a prime-time network show. But there’s something else. It puts anal intercourse in such a vulgar light. I mean, all this about one man
lubricating
—the thing is, you could make ordinary heterosexual intercourse sound disgusting, too, depending on who you let describe it. Hell, you could turn
Romeo and Juliet
into a couple of dogs in the park, if you really wanted to get graphic about it. And frankly, we’ve got a similar problem with the scene in the men’s room.”
“Whattaya mean?”
“I mean I don’t wanna be the one who broadcasts to 50 million people this homophobic maniac’s claim that Randy Valentine was committing fellatio in a men’s room. And all that stuff about a hole in a partition—
eeeeyah
, it’s not even relevant.”
“Not relevant?”
“What’s it got to do with whether or not one man is justified in killing another for no good reason?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with it,” said Mary Cary, “but I don’t see how we can touch that tape. It’s probably
evidence
. It could end up evidence in a trial, in court.”
“It can still be evidence. But for
Day & Night
we edit it.”
“How, Irv? That’s the most crucial part of the whole tape!”
“That’s the beauty of having two cameras going,” said Irv.
He didn’t have to explain it to her. If you had just one camera, and it was on someone who was talking, and you tried to edit something out, you would get a blip, no matter how carefully you did it, because the person would have moved, if only ever so slightly, from the moment you cut the tape to the moment you spliced it again. With two cameras you could just switch from one angle to the other at the cut, and the viewer would never know anything had been left out. On newsmagazine shows like
Day & Night
, this was standard practice whenever you wanted to eliminate something that was awkward or inconvenient.
“Well, I suppose we can
do
it,
tech
nically,” said Mary Cary, “but I think we’d be asking for a whole lot of trouble.”
Irv merely smiled. The truth was, he wasn’t even worrying about the problem any longer. Something else she had said, a phrase she had used a moment ago—“evidence in a trial, in court”—had just begun to register. The very idea gave him a warm, rosy rush. If the tape became the centerpiece of a successful criminal prosecution, then
everything
would come out … the whole story of how he, Irv Durtscher, had broken the case … of how he, Irv Durtscher, and not the celebrated face on the screen, actually created
Day & Night
and ran it and was its mind and soul … of how he, Irv Durtscher, was the Sergei Eisenstein, the Federico Fellini of this new art form, this new moral weapon, television journalism … of how he, Irv Durtscher—
He, Irv Durtscher, let his eyes pan over the studio around him, over the now-glassy gray screens of the two monitors right in front of him and the screens of all the monitors on the wall of the control room just beyond the cubicle. These were his palettes in the new art, the monitor screens of the control rooms where the producers practiced their magic. And perhaps it would come to pass …
Day & Night
would become
Irv Durtscher Presents …
The titles, the theme music, and then the world-renowned face and roundish form of—