Sweet Land Stories Read online

  I don’t know, Molloy said.

  The old woman spoke again and shook her fist. The girl remonstrated with her.

  What does she say?

  She is stupid, I hate her when she is like this.

  The girl began to cry: She says the Devil came to us as a señorita and took my mama and papa to hell.

  The two of them, the old woman and the girl, were both crying now.

  Molloy went through the little kitchen and opened the back door. There in the hazy sun was a formal garden with brick-edged flowerbeds, shrubs, small sculpted trees, grass as perfect as a putting green, and a small rock pool. It was very beautiful, a composition.

  The girl had followed him.

  Molloy said, Is Señor Guzman a gardener?

  Yes, for Mr. Stevens.

  Stevens, the chairman of the power company?

  What is the power company?

  Utilicon.

  Sí, of course the Utilicon, the girl said, tears running down her cheeks.

  Before he left, he took down a phone number from a pad beside the wall phone: in faded ink, el médico.

  HE FOUND THE Beauregard City Library and read Glenn Stevens’s c.v. in Who’s Who. It was a long entry. Utilicon’s nuclear and coal plants provided power for five states. Molloy was more interested in the personal data: Stevens, sixty-three, was a widower. He had sired one child, a daughter. Christina.

  Molloy got into his car and drove to the Stevens estate and was admitted by a gatekeeper. Several hundred yards down a winding driveway were the front steps.

  I THOUGHT THIS was all settled, Glenn Stevens said as he strode into the room. Molloy stood. The man was well over six feet. He had graying blond hair combed in pompadour style, a ruddy complexion, and a deep voice. He wore white ducks and a pale yellow cashmere sweater and loafers with no socks.

  Just tidying up some loose ends, Molloy said. He had waited twenty minutes to be received. The Stevens library was paneled in walnut. Settings of big leather chairs, polished refectory tables with the major papers and magazines laid out in neat rows. The french windows opened onto a deep stone terrace with potted trees and balusters wound with white flattened flowers.

  But the books in the scantily stocked shelves—the Durants’ Story of Philosophy, the collected works of Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon memoirs, Henry Kissinger memoirs, and ancient best-sellers in Book-of-the-Month-Club editions—were not up to scratch.

  I didn’t know the Bureau was involved, Stevens said. Nobody told me that. Molloy was about to reply when a man young man in pinstripes and carrying a briefcase came into the room. As fast as I could, he said, mopping his brow.

  I thought I’d better have counsel present, Glenn Stevens said, and sat down in a leather armchair.

  OUR CONCERN IS we were told the Bureau had been called off.

  That’s true, Molloy said. The incident is not only closed, it never happened.

  You have to understand that Mr. Stevens would never embarrass the President, whom he admires as no other man. Or do anything to bring disrepute to the great office he holds.

  I do understand.

  Mr. Stevens was one of the President’s earliest supporters. But more than that, the two men are old friends. The President regards Mr. Stevens almost as a brother.

  I can understand that too, Molloy said.

  And he has shown the tact and grace and compassion so typical of him in assuring Mr. Stevens that nothing of consequence has happened and that their relationship is unchanged.

  Molloy nodded.

  So why are you here? the lawyer said.

  This is a family matter, Stevens chimed in. And while it may be extremely painful for me personally, it is only that, and if the President understands, why can’t the damn FBI?

  Mr. Stevens, Molloy said, we do understand that this is a family matter. It has been judged as such and sealed. Nobody is building a case here. But you must understand a serious breach of security occurred that calls into question not only the Bureau’s methods but the Secret Service’s as well. We have to see that such a thing never occurs again, because next time it may not be a family matter. We would not be fulfilling our mission were we to be as casual about the President’s safety as the President.

  So what do you want?

  I would like to interview Miss Christina Stevens.

  Absolutely not, Mr. Stevens! the lawyer said.

  Sir, we’re not interested in her motives, the whys or wherefores. Molloy flashed an ingratiating smile and continued: But she pulled something off that I, as a professional, have to admire. I just want to know how she did it, how this young woman all by herself managed to leave egg on the faces of the best in the business. I know it’s been difficult for you, but considering it purely as a feat, it was quite something, wouldn’t you say?

  She betrayed my trust, Stevens said hoarsely.

  Mr. Stevens means his daughter is not well, the lawyer said.

  Look, sir, sure she did. But there will be an internal investigation of our procedures. And I’m sure you appreciate how it is with company men—we have to cover our ass.

  OUT ON THE gravel driveway at the bottom of the steps the lawyer gave Molloy his card. Anything else, from now on, you deal with me direct. No more unscheduled visits, Agent Molloy, agreed?

  Where is this place?

  Do you know Houston?

  Not very well.

  When you get there, give them a call and they’ll lead you in. It’s no mystery, you know.

  What is?

  How she did it. One look at Chrissie Stevens and you’ll understand.

  The lawyer was smiling as he drove off.

  MOLLOY STAYED that night at the Houston Marriott, eating room service and watching CNN. He liked the bureau chief here but didn’t want to have to answer for himself. What he did was put in a call to Washington—a lady friend from his bachelor days, a style writer for the Post, who had since moved up in marital increments to her present life as a Georgetown power hostess.

  The gal has quite a history, Molloy. Isn’t this a little late for your midlife crisis?

  You’ll be discreet, I know, Molloy said.

  Chrissie Stevens is a flake. She was riding pillion with a Hell’s Angel at the age of fourteen. Then she found religion, Zen wouldn’t you know, and spent a couple of years in Katmandu in some filthy ashram. Oh, and she lived in Milan for a year with some Italian polo player till she dumped him, or he dumped her. You want more?

  Please.

  Not just once has she been in for detox at Betty Ford. That’s the talk, anyway. You know my theory?

  Tell me.

  Lives to pay Daddy back for the life he’s provided her. I mean, that may be her true passion—they are really a very intense couple, Glenn and his daughter Chrissie. But you know what’s most remarkable?

  No.

  You sit across from her at the dinner table and she is spectacular. A vestal virgin, not a sign of wear and tear. Brian, she has the most beautiful skin you can imagine, coloring I would die for. Goes to show.

  THE PHONE NUMBER Molloy had found in the Guzman kitchen was for the office of a Dr. Leighton, a pulmonologist, one of three associates in a clinic a few blocks from the Texas General medical complex. The waiting room was packed, aluminum walkers and strollers abounding: women with children on their laps, the elderly, both black and white, clutching their inhalators. Three TV sets hung from the walls. Eyes were cast upward—a chorus of labored breathing and bawling children blocked out the sound. It was a world of eyes sunk in hollow sockets.

  A nurse, turning pale at the sight of Molloy’s credentials, had him wait in an examining room. Molloy sat in a side chair next to a white metal cabinet on which sat racks of vials, boxes of plastic gloves. On the facing wall, a four-color laminated diagram of the human lungs and bronchia. In a corner, on the other side of the examining table, a boxy looking machine hung with a flexible tube and mask. Nothing out of place, everything immaculate.

  Dr. Leighton
came in, equally immaculate in his white coat over a blue shirt and tie. He was a bit stiff, but quite composed and professorial-looking behind wire-framed glasses. He leaned back against a windowsill and with his arms folded looked as fresh as if he had not been tending all morning to an office full of people who had trouble catching their breath. Molloy remarked on the crowd.

  Yes, well, the smog has been worse than usual. You put enough nitrogen oxide into a summer day and the phones light up.

  I wanted to ask you about the Guzman boy who died last week, Molloy said. I understand he was your patient.

  Am I obligated to talk with you?

  No, sir. Do you know a Christina or Chrissie Stevens?

  The doctor thought a moment. A sigh. What would you like me to say—what is it you want to hear? The boy suffered terribly. On days like this, he was not allowed to go to school. He tried so hard to be brave, to control his terror, as if it was unmanly. He was a great kid. The more scared he was, the more he tried to smile. In this last attack, they rushed him up here—Chrissie and the priest and the boy’s father—and I put him on intubation. I couldn’t reverse it. He died on me. Roberto didn’t need a respirator, he needed another planet.

  CHRISSIE STEVENS had been checked in to the Helmut Eisley Institute, a sanitarium for the very wealthy.

  Molloy found her in the large, sunny lounge to the right of the entrance hall. She was seated on a sofa, her legs tucked under her, her sandals on the carpet. He had not expected someone this petite. She was the size of a preteen, a boyishly slim young woman with straight blond hair parted in the middle. Her elbow propped on the sofa arm, her chin resting on her hand, she was posed as if thinking about Molloy as she stared at him.

  But don’t you people travel in twos? she said with a languid smile.

  Not all the time, Molloy said.

  Behind her, standing in attendance, was a very young Marine in olive drab too warm for the climate. He had the flat-top haircut, the ramrod posture, the rows of ribbons, of a recruitment poster.

  This is my friend Corporal Tom Furman.

  When the corporal put his hand on her shoulder, she reached back and covered his hand.

  Tom is visiting. He just flew in today.

  Where are you stationed, son?

  When he didn’t answer, Chrissie Stevens said, You can tell him. Go ahead—nothing’s going to happen. It’s been decided.

  Sir, I’m posted at the White House.

  Well, Molloy said, that’s a plum assignment. Does it come with the luck of the draw or is it saved for the very exceptional?

  Sir, yes. We’re chosen I suppose, sir.

  Ah me, ah me, Chrissie Stevens said. Can we all sit down, please? Pull up a chair for Agent Molloy and you sit beside me here, she said to the Marine as she patted the sofa cushion.

  And so the two men sat as directed. Molloy hadn’t anticipated Chrissie Stevens as a Southern belle. But she was very much that. His own daughters, straightforward field-hockey types, would have taken an instant dislike to her.

  She was strikingly attractive, very pale, with high cheekbones and gray eyes. But what was mesmeric was her voice. That was where the vestal-virgin effect came from. She had a child’s soft Southern lilt, and when she lowered her eyes, her long blond lashes falling like a veil over them, it was as if she had to examine in her mind the things she was saying to make sure they were correct, and the effect of an ethereal modesty was complete.

  I’m not here of my own volition, Agent Molloy. Apparently I’ve done something for which the only possible explanation is that I’ve gone off the deep end. But if that is true, what other questions are left to ask?

  I have just a few.

  Though it’s not at all bad here, she said, turning to the corporal. They fatten you up and give you a pill that makes you not care about anything much. They stand there until they see you swallow it. I’m out to pasture right now. Are my words slurred? I mean, why not, why not, you can dream your life away, she said with her sad smile. That’s not so bad, is it?

  Molloy said: Did you know that the boy’s parents are faced with deportation?

  Clearly, she didn’t.

  But I think that can be stopped, he said. I think there’s a way to see that it doesn’t happen.

  She was silent. Then she mumbled something that he couldn’t hear.

  I beg your pardon?

  Deport me, Agent Molloy. Send me anywhere. Send me to Devil’s Island. I’m ready. I want nothing more to do with this place. I mean, why here rather than anywhere else? It’s all the same, it’s all horribly awful.

  Molloy waited.

  Oh Lord, she said, they always win, don’t they. They are very skillful. It didn’t come out quite as we planned—we are such amateurs—but even if it had, I suppose they would have known how to handle it. I just thought maybe this could restore them, put them back among us. It would be a kind of shock treatment if they felt the connection, for even just a moment, that this had something to do with them, the gentlemen who run things? That’s all I wanted. What redemption for little Chrissie if she could put a tincture of shame into their hearts. Of course I know they didn’t give our gardener’s son the asthma he was born with. And after all they didn’t force his family to live where the air smells like burning tires. And I know Daddy and his exalted friends are not in their personal nature violent and would never lift a hand against a child. But, you see, they are configured gentlemen. Am I wrong to want to include you, Agent Molloy? Are you not one of the configured gentlemen?

  Configured in what way?

  Configured to win. And fuck all else.

  Her Marine reached over and held her hand.

  What do you think? Chrissie Stevens said. Am I making sense? Or am I the family disgrace my father says I am?

  The both of them were looking at Molloy now. They made a handsome couple.

  Would you like some refreshment, Agent Molloy? There’s a bell over there—they bring tea.

  BACK AT HIS desk in Washington, Molloy caught up on the cases that he’d left when the call came in about the dead child in the Rose Garden. One of the cases, a possible racketeering indictment, was really hot, but as he sat there he found his mind wandering. His office was a glass-partitioned cubicle. It looked out on the central office of lined-up desks where the secretaries and less senior agents worked away. There was a nice hum of energy coming through to him as phones rang and people went briskly about their business, but Molloy couldn’t avoid feeling that he was looking at a roomful of children. Certainly everyone out there was at least twenty years younger. Younger, leaner, less tired.

  This is what he did: He put in a call to Peter Herrick at the Office of Domestic Policy and quietly told him, though not in so many words, that if the parents of the dead child were not released by the INS and allowed to return home, he, Molloy, would see to it that the entire incident became known to every American who watched television or read a newspaper.

  Molloy then sat at his computer and composed a letter of resignation.

  The last thing he did before he turned out the lights and went home to his wife was to write, by hand, a letter to Roberto Guzman’s parents. He said in the letter that Roberto’s grave might be unmarked but that he rested in peace at the Arlington National Cemetery among others who had died for their country.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  E. L. DOCTOROW’s work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, and The Waterworks. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives and works in New York.

  Also by E. L. Doctorow

  WELCOME TO HARD TIMES

  BIG AS LIFE

  THE BOOK OF DANIEL

/>   RAGTIME

  DRINKS BEFORE DINNER (play)

  LOON LAKE

  LIVES OF THE POETS

  WORLD’S FAIR

  BILLY BATHGATE

  JACK LONDON, HEMINGWAY,

  AND THE CONSTITUTION (essays)

  THE WATERWORKS

  CITY OF GOD

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by E. L. Doctorow

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

  and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  The following stories were originally published in The New Yorker:

  ”A House in the Plains” (June 18, 2001), “Baby Wilson” (March 25, 2002), “Jolene” (December 23, 2002, and December 30, 2002), and “Walter John Harmon”

  (May 12, 2003). Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003 by E. L. Doctorow.

  “Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden” was originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2004 issue. Copyright © 2004 by E. L. Doctorow.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Doctorow, E. L.

  [Short stories. Selections]

  Sweet Land Stories / E. L. Doctorow

  p. cm.

  Contents: A house on the plains—Baby Wilson—Jolene : a life—Walter John Harmon—Child, dead, in the rose garden.

  1. United States—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3554.O3F58 2004

  813′.54—dc22 2003058780