Mr. Adam

CHAPTER 3

The history of Homer Adam, until the day he became the world’s lone post-Mississippi father, would not have earned him more than a three-paragraph obituary in his home-town newspaper, even if he had died an unusual and violent death.

He was born in Hyannis, Nebraska, a small but prosperous cattle town. His great-grandfather had crossed the plains in a covered wagon (something of which the editorial writers made much when the repopulation schemes were being considered). His grandfather was a cattleman, and his father was a wholesale grocer.

As a boy he was rather shy, and spent more time collecting stamps and Indian artifacts than he did playing football or riding and hunting. “You see,” he confided in me, “I was much too tall for my age. The older, but smaller boys used to beat me up. I think it gave me an inferiority complex.”

He wanted to be an archeologist, but his parents didn’t think it was practical. He compromised on geology, and they sent him to the Colorado School of Mines, where his record was good enough to get him a job with the Guggenheims immediately after graduation. When war came, the Draft Board doctors, examining his gangling form, at first classified him as 4-F, but he probably would have attained 1-A eventually had not the government found a use for his special qualifications and dispatched him to Australia.

Living in a little mining town planted in the desert near Alice Springs made him homesick, and he became a prodigious letter writer. He wrote all his letters to Mary Ellen Kopp, a secretary in the Guggenheims’ New York office. When he returned from Australia they were married, after a suitable engagement period.

These were the main facts, as he gave them to me while we sat in the living room of the gatehouse, waiting for his baby to arrive. However, they were not the principal things I wanted to know, but the birth of the Adam daughter interrupted my questioning.

It was not until much later—after Mr. Adam had seen his baby, and Marge had gone back to our West Tenth Street apartment (because there would be no room for her in the gatehouse that night) and I had peeped in on the mother and baby—that I found an opportunity to ask Homer the really pertinent questions.

We were sitting in the living room, and I had shoved another highball into Homer’s hand, and had complimented him on both his wife and his child. Mary Ellen was a buxom, lusty young woman who, Dr. Blandy assured me, had gone through childbirth with considerable fortitude. “It was simple,” he said, “as popping a peanut out of the shell.” And the baby, as newborn babies go, could be classified as cute.

“I’m sorry,” I explained, “that I have to ask all these questions at this time. I know—and it’s quite natural too—that you’re excited and upset. But it will save you a lot of trouble in the end, because you’ll only have to answer them one time. All the reporters in New York will descend on this place before long, and I don’t know who else besides, and if you give me all the answers I can handle them. This way, it won’t bother you or your wife.”

Homer shuddered, like a tall, thin, unkempt pine in a fitful breeze, and swallowed his drink. “Why did this have to happen to me?” he moaned.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” I said. “You’re a very lucky and remarkable man. Why, you’re the luckiest guy on earth.”

“But what I cannot figure out,” Homer said, “is how it happened. Please give me another drink. I think I ought to get tight, because you see I’m scared.”

I poured him another drink, more rye than soda. He took a swallow and choked on it, water filling his eyes. “Easy!” I cautioned. “Just tell me, where were you on the day Mississippi exploded?”

“In Colorado,” Homer replied. “The boss sent me to investigate the possibility of reopening some old silver and lead workings.”

“Exactly where in Colorado?”

“Well, near Leadville. I spent the whole day in the lowest level of Eldorado No. 2. You know that’s one of the deepest shafts in the world. Certainly the deepest lead workings. I was very much surprised when I went into Leadville that night—it was a Sunday—and they told me about the flash in the sky, and later I heard on the radio about the explosion.”

I didn’t have to know as much about physics as Professor Pell to guess the reason for Homer Adam’s miracle. “When the explosion came,” I said, “you were probably completely shielded from the world by lead?”

Mr. Adam considered this. “Yes,” he said finally, “I suppose I was. The lead and silver ore in the lowest level is as rich as you’ll find anywhere in the world. Hardly economical, though, because of—”

“Let’s forget about it, from the mining viewpoint,” I suggested. “Let’s consider it from the viewpoint of the rays from the explosion.”

“If lead protects you against radioactive rays,” said Homer, “I suppose I was better protected, more than a mile down there, than any other man in the world.”

“It certainly seems so,” I said, “considering the known facts. Was there,” I asked hopefully, wondering whether any other still potent males existed, “anybody else down there with you?”

“Oh, no,” Homer replied. “You see Eldorado No. 2 has been abandoned for a generation or more. There are watchmen at the mine, but they only operate the elevators, and guard the machinery, and inspect the shafts for drainage. They rarely go into the lower levels.”

The next few days, I would just as soon forget. It was like the Dionne quintuplets all over again, except that in this case it was the father, not the mother, in the center ring. There were other considerable differences, and one of them was that every human being, without exception, had a vital interest in Mr. Adam. I describe it inadequately. For the human race, the welfare and future of Mr. Adam was literally a matter of life and death.

I was hounded, harassed, heckled, harried, quizzed, questioned, cross-examined, badgered, and browbeaten by the ladies and gentlemen of my own profession until I did not know which end was up, or care much.

The first thing I did was borrow a technique that had proved successful in war coverage. I instituted a photographic pool system. This simply meant that instead of dozens of photographers swarming over the gatehouse, one still photographer and one newsreel cameraman were chosen by lot. They made pictures for all companies, newspapers, and agencies.

I arranged press conferences for Homer Adam, Mary Ellen, Dr. Blandy, and Mrs. Brundidge, the tight-lipped trained nurse who took a Scottish general attitude of disapproval regarding all these proceedings. Mrs. Brundidge was even persuaded to exhibit the baby (named Eleanor, for the mother was a firm Democrat). At the same time I managed to furnish the AP with enough exclusive material to keep J.C. Pogey satisfied, and yet not so much that other newspapermen would raise a beef that would exclude me from my strategic post in the gatehouse. Altogether, as I was to learn, I made a pretty satisfactory public relations counsel.

The press conferences, as can be imagined, were largely biological, but how else can a story like this be handled?

Shy as he was, and awkward, standing first on one leg and then on the other like a peculiar species of redheaded crane, Homer sometimes exhibited unexpected spunk and wit. Like when a sly, cynical, harridan from one of the tabloids asked him: “Now, Mr. Adam, not that it’s wrong, but did you and your wife by any chance have premarital relations?”

Homer took a breath and replied, without anger: “You use awfully big words, ma’am. If you mean did we sleep together before we were married, the answer is no.”

She jumped, and the other reporters laughed, and this annoyed her, and she said: “I was only endeavoring to discover whether this child might not have been the result of an exceptionally long pregnancy.”

“That would have been sort of difficult,” said Homer, “because almost up to the very day we were married Mary Ellen was in New York, and I was in Colorado.”

“Well,” said this unwholesome adjective artist, “there is also such a thing as extra-marital relationships!”

I had the answer to that one, but I wanted to see the creature hang herself, so for the moment I remained quiet. Homer stood very still, his long, bony hands white and twisting, and no color in his face. Then Mike Burgin, from the Times, said: “Look, madame”—and the way he pronounced “madame” left no doubt as to what sort of madame he meant—“I think you are out of line, and anyway this kid has already got red hair just like her father.”

“My desk,” the dough-faced witch alibied, “told me to ask.”

“Well, just so your desk will not work itself into a lather,” I interrupted, “tell your desk that we have already run complete blood tests, and Homer Adam is undoubtedly the pappy.”

After the press was reasonably satisfied, the Army moved in. The American Army, when it has a war to fight, is an aggressive, eager, brainy, and enormously efficient organization. But when there is no war, the Army is something less than that. I suspect that its higher echelons are staffed, except for the professional soldiers, by gentlemen fearful of facing the competition of civilian life, officers to whom the barracks has become a nice, safe refuge.

The Army moved in first, with a platoon of Military Police dispatched from Fort Totten, after the Tarrytown Police Department, overworked and bewildered, sent out urgent distress signals. The MP’s found a job to do, and they did it. They kept traffic moving outside the estate, and they shooed away the over-inquisitive who climbed fences, and sometimes frightened Mrs. Brundidge by staring through the kitchen windows, bug-eyed, while she mixed Eleanor’s formula.

Perhaps their most arduous and interesting chore was acting as buffers, between Homer Adam and the teen-age girls who had, en masse, deserted a crooner known as “The Larynx,” and a screen actor called “The Leer.” Why it was no man can explain, but the photographs of Homer Adam definitely registered sex appeal to excitable, half-matured, single females. Until the MP’s established a cordon sanitaire around the estate, their uninhibited tactics frightened Homer into the shakes, alarmed Mary Ellen, and disturbed the baby’s digestion. They shocked Homer into the shattering knowledge that he was no longer—and probably never would be again—a private citizen enjoying the Fifth Freedom—Privacy.

But with the arrival of Colonel Merle Phelps-Smythe at Rosemere, Homer began to understand fully his future role in the national, and possibly the world scene.

Homer and I were playing gin and Blandy was kibitzing when the colonel put his riding boots and spurs through the door. “Who’s in charge here?” he boomed. “I’m here to see Mr. Adam!”

“Why nobody’s in charge,” Homer said, rising derrick-like, “but I’m Adam.”

“Well, now, that’s why I’m here,” Phelps-Smythe explained. “I’m here just exactly for that reason—because nobody’s in charge. That’s why the Army sent me to take over.” He stated his name with some formality, and added: “I am the personal aide and Public Relations Officer of the Commanding General, Eastern Defense Command, Zone of the Interior. From now on”—he poked a fat forefinger at Homer’s throat—“you are under the protection of the Eastern Defense Command. General Kipp is personally responsible for your safety, and I am personally responsible to General Kipp.”

He glared at Blandy and me as if he had just, single-handed and above and beyond the call of duty, saved Homer Adam from violence at our hands. I glared back. There is nothing a Smith abhors so thoroughly as a hyphenated Smythe.

I would not have liked this hyphenated Smythe in any case. He had, somehow, without the aid of a single combat decoration, made his chest resemble a triple rainbow. He wore the Victory Ribbon from that old war, the pre-Pearl Harbor ribbon, and the American, European, and Asiatic Theater ribbons. But since no battle stars bloomed on these ribbons, they appeared to me like the gaudy hotel stickers that the tourists of the thirties exhibited on their luggage after doing Europe in three weeks. In addition, he wore various exotic decorations that I vaguely associated with Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and the World’s Fair. Under these, dangled ladders of shooting badges, indicating that he was a second-class pistol shot from the back of a horse, and a fair to middling rifle shot, prone. There was an unidentified sunburst on the right side of his stomach, just where the fat would be oozing out from under the ribs, had it not been for his obvious girdle.

“How,” I inquired, “does the Eastern Defense Command go about taking over Mr. Adam?”

“In the first place—” the Colonel began, and then said: “You’re that AP man who has been messing up the publicity. Who authorized you to be here anyway?”

“Me,” said Homer meekly. “I did.”

Blandy laughed. “And isn’t this Mr. Adam’s house?” he asked.

For a moment Phelps-Smythe was repulsed by this unexpected show of resistance, but he quickly recovered.

“In the first place,” he said, “perhaps you do not know it, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff have decided, in the national interest, that Mr. Adam is vital, strategic government property. The Joint Chiefs felt themselves authorized in making this decision on the basis of future national defense.”

“Congress,” logically concluded Dr. Blandy, “has been demanding that the Administration do something about poor Homer, here, and that was the only thing they could think up to do.”

Homer sat down, his mild blue eyes blinking. “But I don’t wish to be taken over,” he protested. “I just want to be left alone with Mary Ellen and the baby. Is it my fault that all the rest of you are sterile?”

Phelps-Smythe put his hand on Homer’s drooping shoulder. “Now, my boy,” he said, “remember this is in the national interest. Consider—you are just as much a military secret as the atomic bomb.”

“Please don’t mention atomic bombs,” I said, remembering what Mississippi had done to our future, “I’m allergic to them.”

“Besides,” the colonel went on, ignoring me, “your wife and child will be taken care of until the present emergency is over. Funds have already been provided.”

“I’m not going to leave Mary Ellen and the baby!” said Homer with some determination. “That, I simply won’t do!”

“You won’t have to leave immediately. You don’t have to go to Washington until the hearings.”

“What hearings?”

“The Congressional hearings on what to do with you. You see, the Joint Chiefs have simply declared you are vital and strategic. The War Department was entrusted with your safety, and my commanding general was given the job. But your final disposition will not be decided until after the Congressional hearings.”

Homer looked dazed and helpless. “I see,” he murmured.

“You’re pretty lucky at that,” said the colonel. “At first, we were going to put you down with the gold in Fort Knox. But the Surgeon General decided it might be bad for your health. Now that I’ve seen you in person, I think he was probably right. You weren’t in the Army, were you?”

“No,” said Homer. “I wasn’t in the Army. The FEA sent me to Australia to locate quartz crystals. They were needed for radar.”

“Well,” said the colonel, “it’s too bad you weren’t in the Army, but I guess that radar tieup will show you’re okay. I mean you weren’t a conscientious objector, anyway.”

“No, I wasn’t a conscientious objector. Please, can I go upstairs and see Mary Ellen?”

“Well, make it snappy,” the colonel ordered. “I’ve got a lot of papers for you to fill out. Incidentally, I’m taking you out to dinner tonight. My commanding general wants to meet you.”

I caught the next train back to the city. I found J.C. in his office and told him that the Army had taken over, and my extra-curricular activities in Tarrytown had come to an end. I also told him I felt pretty sorry for Homer Adam.

“You’ll feel sorrier,” observed J.C., “when you see what happens to him in Washington!”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You’ve been too close to things in Tarrytown,” J.C. surmised, “to keep up on what’s been happening. First of all, there’s a tug-of-war going on between the National Research Council and the National Re-fertilization Project as to who will get Adam.”

“What do you mean, get him?”

“Well, both outfits think they can use Adam to start our birth rate going again. They’ve hinted at all sorts of schemes. Some of them don’t sound completely unreasonable. At least they’re no more unreasonable than what has already happened to us.”

“Poor Adam!”

“That isn’t all. There’s a battle going on between Congress and an Inter-Departmental Committee as to who will decide policy on Adam. And that isn’t all, either, because there is a quite powerful group which feels that the question of Adam is international, rather than national, and should be turned over to the United Nations.”

“Quite a story, wasn’t it,” I mentioned, hinting at a bonus.

J.C. got that faraway look in his eyes, staring out over the masonry filled with pride that rises from the rock of Manhattan. “Quite a little fuss,” he said. “We are indeed blind and naive if we believe that in this universe we will find living, feeling, happy, hurting, thinking creatures on this tiny sphere alone—this speck of an earth revolving around a dim star we call the sun, which is not even part of a constellation.

“It is as if an ant heap had been stamped down, and all the ants within cried that the world had come to an end.”

Sometimes J.C. gave me the shivers.