The Plant

2/23/81

Like a stone thrown into a large and stagnant pond, the Detweiller affair has caused any number of ripples at my place of employment. I thought that all of them had gone by; yet this afternoon one more rolled past, and who is to say even that one will be the last?

I have included a Xerox of an exceedingly curious memo I received from Kenton at 2:35 P. M. plus my own reply (the memo came just after Gelb left, in something of a huff; why he should have been in a huff eludes me since today he brought his own dice and I did him the courtesy of not even checking them, but Ah g'iss Ah woan nevuh understand dese white folks). I think I have covered the Detweiller affair to a nicety in these pages, but I should add that it never surprised me in the least that Kenton was the one to bring Detweiller, the rogue comet, into the erratic (and, I fear, degenerating) orbit of Zenith House.

He is brighter than Sandra Jackson; brighter than that crapshooting, Ivy League tie-wearing devil William Gelb; far brighter than Herbert Porter (Porter, as previously noted, is not above wandering into Ms. Jackson's office after she has left for the day and sniffing the seat of her office chair-a strange man, but be it not for me to judge), and the only one of the staff who might be capable of recognizing a commercial book if it came within his purview. Right now he is eaten up with guilt and embarrassment over l'affaire Detweiller, and can see only that he made a rather comic faux pas. He would be incapable of seeing that his decision to even look at the Detweiller book demonstrated that his editorial ears are still open, and still attuned to that sweetest of all tones-the celestial notes of Sweda cash registers in drugstores and book emporia ringing up sales, even if it was pointed out to him.

Incapable of seeing that it proves he's still trying.

The others have given up.

Anyway, here is this enchanting memo-between its lines I hear a man whose nerve is temporarily shot, a man who might be capable of facing a lion but who now cannot even look at a mouse; a man who is, in consequence, shrieking “Eeeek! Get rid of it! Get rid of it!” and swatting at it with the handiest broom, which in dis case jus happen t'be Riddley, who dus' de awfishes an wipe de windows an delivah de mail. Yassuh, Mist Kenton, I git rid of it fo you! I sholy goan get rid of dat hoodoo Solrac woman's package if she sen one!

Maybe.

On the other hand, maybe John Kenton should have to face up to the consequences of his own actions-swat his own mouse. After all, if you don't swat your own, maybe you never really know what a harmless little thing a mouse is... and is it not possible that Kenton's useful days as an editor may be over if he cannot stare down such occasional crazies as Carlos “Roberta” Detweiller?

I shall ponder the matter. I think there is a very good chance no package will come, but I'll ponder it all the same.

2/27/81

Something from the mysterious “Roberta Solrac” actually came today! I didn't know whether to be amused or disgusted by my own reaction, which was staring, elemental gut-terror followed by an almost insane urge to put the thing down the incinerator, exactly as Kenton's note had instructed. The physicality of my reaction as soon as my eye fell on the return address and connected the name there with Kenton's memo was striking. I had a sudden spasm of shudders. Goosebumps raced up my back. I heard a clear, ringing tone in my ears, and I could feel the hair stiffening on my head. This symphony of physiological atavism lasted no more than five seconds and then it subsided-but it left me as shaken as a sudden deep lance of pain in the area of the heart. Floyd would sneer and call it “a nigger reaction,” but it was no such thing. It was a human reaction. Not to the thing itself-the contents of the package were something of an anticlimax after all the sound and fury-but, I am convinced, to the hands which placed the lid on the small white cardboard box in which the plant came; the hands which tied twine around that box and then cut a brown paper shopping bag in which to wrap the box for mailing, the hands which taped and labelled and carried. Detweiller's hands.

Am I speaking of telepathy? Yes... and no. It might be fairer to say that I am speaking of a kind of passive psychokinesis. Dogs shy away from people with cancer; they smell it on them. So, at least, claims my dear old Aunt Olympia. In the same way I smelled Detweiller all over that box, and now I understand Kenton's upset better and have a good deal more sympathy for him. I think Carlos Detweiller must be dangerously insane... but the plant itself is no deadly nightshade or belladonna or Adder Toadstool (although it may have been any or all of those things in Detweiller's feverish mind, I suppose). It's only a very small and very tired-looking common ivy in a red clay pot.

If not for the “nigger reaction” (Floyd Walker)-or the “human reaction” (his brother Riddley)-I might really have dumped the thing... but after that fit of the shakes, it seemed to me I had to go through with opening the package or deem myself less a man. I did so, in spite of any number of gruesome images-high explosive rigged to special pressure-tapes, noxious floods of black widow spiders, a litter of baby copperheads. And there it was, just a small ivy-plant with yellow-edged leaves (four of them) nodding from one tired, sagging stem. The soil itself is waxy brown. It smells swampy and unpleasant.

There was a little plastic sign stuck in the earth which read:

HI!

MY NAME IS ZENITH

I AM A GIFT TO JOHN

FROM ROBERTA

It was that flash of fear which drove me to open the package. Similarly, it's that same flash which has decided me against making sure that Kenton gets it after all, which would have been easy enough to do (“Dat plant, Mist Kenton? Oh, drat! I g'iss I fo'got whatchoo said. I am de mos f'gitten'est man!”). Let the ripples end; let him forget Detweiller, if that's what he wants. I've put Zenith the Common Ivy on a shelf in my janitorial-cum-mailroom cubicle-a shelf well above Kenton's eye-level (not that he stops in much anyway, unlike Gelb with his dice fixation). I'll keep it until it dies, and then I really will dump it down the incinerator chute. That will be the end of Detweiller fo sho.

Got fifty pages done on the novel over the weekend.

Gelb now owes me $75. 40.