The Essential Ellison Part 122

He runs out of the house and for hours, till it is very dark and very late, he lies in the tall gra.s.s in the empty lots behind the street where he and his dog played. He watches the old woman' s house, and he feels something he has never felt this powerfully before. He feels the need to do something, to make her pay for her terrible deed, to get even.

Finally, when it is past midnight and all the lights are out on the street, when all the people who have been looking for him have returned to their homes, he crawls into her backyard. Hanging on the clothesline is a rug beater.

The little boy steals the rug beater and takes it deep into the empty lots, and with his bare hands he digs a deep hole and he throws the rug beater into it. He spits on the implement and covers it over with dirt. He sits there for a while, burning with rage and frustration and that feeling he never felt before even remotely this powerfully. And then he goes home to sleep.

Come with me back up the silken cord, to the man who was that little boy in that Ohio summer in the 1940s.

Now he is an adult. He learns that a great monolithic corporation has stolen his work, that they have taken that work and altered it and put their own names on it and it is out there in the world, labeled theirs. He feels that powerful emotion he knew as a little boy, that he has known frequently as he slogged through the quicksand of the present, pulling the silken cord of memory behind him. He feels the feeling of helplessness and rage at midnight, and he cannot sleep.

So he activates the time mechanism and he takes their rug beater away from them and he buries it and spits on the grave.

He sues them in Federal District Court and wins the largest plagiarism judgment in the history of this new city where he lives.

The dog' s name was Puddles. The plagiarism suit was culminated in April of 1980 and the little boy won $337,000.

That old woman has been dead for more than thirty years, but neither the burial of a rug beater nor her leavetaking from this world have diminished the need for vengeance in the soul of that little boy who lives inside the time machine.

Ibsen said, " To live is to war with trolls."

The most potent weapon in that ongoing conflict is the anger generated by the need for revenge.

It is also the most crippling, enfeebling, destructive and potentially berserk weapon in the human a.r.s.enal. Directed intelligently, coolly, constructively, it brings a balance to the universe, redresses wrongs, prevents ulcers and helps one maintain a sense of self-respect. Allowed to run amuck, it kills those at whom it is aimed and, like a rifle clogged with dirt, blows up in the face of he or she who aimed it.

In a book published January 1983, social psychologist and journalist Carol Tavris suggests venting one' s anger for the purpose of getting rid of it is a fallacious, though long-held, belief. More often, she contends in ANGER: THE MISUNDERSTOOD EMOTION, " it remains and creates an unhealthy habit pattern of easy arousability without getting at solutions."

Physiologically and psychologically, the negative effects of anger can be cataclysmic. The Monday morning statistics on the sudden spur-of-the-moment use of snubby Sat.u.r.day Night Specials in neighborhood bars are b.l.o.o.d.y verification of that. But even Tavris agrees that anger, " if understood and channeled properly...is a useful tool for righting both personal and larger social wrongs." "

And, contrariwise to Tavris' s conclusions, studies by University of Chicago psychologist Morton A. Lieberman in 1973 indicate that people are more likely to survive into a ripe old age if they are grouchy and pugnacious, two of the early warning signs of a talent for intelligent venting of anger through revenge.

In one study, Lieberman interviewed 85 people between the ages of 63 and 91 who, at the beginning of the experiment, were on the waiting lists of three Chicago homes for the aged. All were physically and mentally well before admission to the homes. One year later, 62 of the original sample were interviewed again (23 were unavailable because of death, illness or unwillingness to continue partic.i.p.ating in the study). Lieberman found that 44 of the subjects had survived the stress of relocation intact, while the rest had deteriorated markedly.

The intact group turned out to share nine traits: high activity, aggression, narcissistic body images, authoritarian personalities, high status drive, distrust of others, disregard for others' viewpoints, a tendency to blame others and a resistance to blaming themselves.

In short, a compendium of those qualities we are told are most loathsome. Angry, cantankerous, impossible to be around, the sort of people who make your back teeth itch...but determined to live their lives. Maybe it' s true: the good die young.

As one who, early in life, had occasion to be bathed in the glow of sophocles' s perception, " If you have committed iniquity, you must expect to suffer; for vengeance, with its sacred light, shines upon you," I have learned much about anger and revenge. (There are those academics who, worrying my writings over thirty years like a puppy with a Christmas slipper, have opined that the four most basic subjects underlying the stories and essays are courage, love, ethics and revenge. Who am I to dispute those who make their living from such minute a.n.a.lyses?) And from this well of experience, I have ladled up some ground rules for the effective implementation of your anger and barbaric need for vengeance, accompanied by suitable anecdotes showing spirited everyday uses. Them as has weak tummies should leave now.

RULE ONE: Never use the H-bomb first.

Seek redress in stages of increasing intensity. First, appeal to the offender' s sense of right, of fairness. Point out- as has Mortimer Adler- that anything you perceive as your due, as owing to you, must be understood as owing and due to everyone else. Sweet reason, amelioration, courtesy should be the first step.

When that fails, go to the next level. Suggest alternate courses of action. Do not mention mayhem. That' s a howitzer. Try public outrage, advis.e.m.e.nts to the local mediums of news, calling his/her mommy or spouse.

When you are thoroughly ignored, or if the popular phrase, " Screw off, Puke-For-Brains!" has been leveled against you, go directly to level three, Small Claims Court. There, for a few dollars, you can get satisfaction if you' ve got the goods on the culprit. In Small Claims, attorneys are not permitted (which is a wonderfulness not even the best restaurants in town can boast).

If the situation is one that does not entail recoupment in the legal sense, if it' s a personal affront, or if it' s a matter that cannot be settled on this most facilitated level of the judicial system, and if you' ve gotten nowhere but angrier- a stage you can easily detect by looking in the mirror-if your eyes are starting from your head, your face is the color of most of a Brian De Palma movie, and your hands keep twitching as if there were a neck between them-then go for the Bomb.

The Bomb can be anything from signing up the creep for a million mail order catalogues and magazine subscriptions to kidnapping children. But eschew the Bomb until you' ve read the rest of these rules. Because...

RULE TWO: Take your time about getting even.

What' s the rush? The creep will be busy shafting others, will be kept nicely occupied ravaging the rest of the human race till you get to him/her. Letting some time elapse gives your target an opportunity to think s/he got away with it. In vengeance circles we call this lulling the yotz into a false sense of security. Also, it makes it less likely that you' ll get tagged with the blame for whatever horror finally befalls the deserving degenerate.

Before we move on to Rule 3, allow me to give you a cla.s.sic use of the incremental intensification of anger, culminating in the use of the Bomb.

A number of years ago it was the iniquitous practice of many paperback publishers to bind into their t.i.tles slick-paper sheets that featured cigarette and liquor advertis.e.m.e.nts. While I figure it' s anybody' s right to cauterize their angst by any means they deem appropriate, up to and including cigarettes, booze, cocaine and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g chickens in the windows of The May Co., I' d as lief they didn' t get encouraged in such practices by books with my name on them. And so it was written into my contracts that no such ads could be bound into my books without my written permission. At first, this caused some grumping from the publishers, whose anthracite souls were so tainted that they thought they' d win me over by telling me that I' d receive a pittance from such ads. I attempted to explain to them that making money off that kind of moral turpitude made it even grungier, but they couldn' t quite pa.r.s.e that one. Nonetheless, I made it, as they say, a deal-breaker; and got my way.

Several years later, when one of my books with that publisher was reprinted, I discovered the new edition was festooned with cancer stick advertising. Not to put too fine a point on it, I went through the cottage cheese.

First I demanded that all copies of the book be recalled and pulped, and a new edition be released. I made this demand through my editor, a nice woman with limited power in such matters. She made the demand in my behalf and was told to forget it. That was phase one.

Then I had my literary agent in New York brace them. He went beyond the editor to a lesser executive. He was told to forget it. That was phase two.

Then I called the lesser executive, and was told to forget it. Phase three. He suggested I broach the subject to one of the Great Potentates At The Top. I did so, and was told...

That was phase four. Followed in rapid succession by phases five, six and seven: appeal from my attorney who was TTFI; threat from my attorney who was TTFI; appeal by a bestselling author who also published with that house, who was a close friend of mine, as an end-run attempting to avoid sturm und drang. He, too, was TTFI. When phase seven culminated with the a.s.surance by the publisher to my attorney that if we chose to break the contract, we could sue for however many hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours it took to file in New York, but it would be a useless effort because before the case ever came to trial all those books would be sold, so in effect it was being TTFI.

At that point, since it was obvious the books would not be recalled, revenge took the form of demanding all rights to the t.i.tle be returned to me. In other words, they had breached contract and the book was not theirs to sell any longer.

Guess what I was told by the Publisher? Do the song TTFI strike a familiar note?

At that point even my agent and my attorney told me there was nothing to be done about it.

They did not understand the powerful pull of rug beaters from the past. Nothing to be done? Wrong...and wrong.

Effortlessly I slipped into my guerilla warfare mode and embarked on phase eight, secure in the self-righteous knowledge that I had explored every possible avenue of arbitration. If it would cost a fortune to extricate my book from their clutches, then I would do it in another way: I would make their lives a living h.e.l.l. I swore that when I got through with them, the arrogant egg suckers would gladly revert the rights...they would beg me to take the rights back.

And thereupon began a program of terror the P.L.O. would have admired.

Which brings me to RULE THREE: If you want revenge against a monolithic business structure, don' t bother with the schleppers on the bottom who are thrown into the fray as cannon-fodder just to delay you and turn you aside from the real culprits.

There was no' point in hara.s.sing my editor. She was merely an employee without decision power. What I needed was the rock damming the stream. The upper level policymaker who had TTFI. Judicious inquiry netted me a name. The Comptroller of the publishing house. So I requested reversion of rights directly from him. TTFI. (This laborious litany of essentially boring attempts to strike reason into their hearts is proffered merely to flense your mind of any doubt that every rational means for settlement of an ugly situation was tried. It is necessary that those who observe your vendetta perceive that you have followed RULE FOUR: Don' t look like a maniac to outsiders. Cover your berserk activities so they appear sane and considered. Make the final recourse to the Bomb seem an inevitability caused by their intransigence, arrogance and stupidity.) Comptroller didn' t return my phone calls. Comptroller didn' t answer my letter of the 13th. Comptroller didn' t respond to my telegram asking for reply to my letter of the 13th. I began mailing him bricks.

Until a few years ago, it was possible to send bills back to the phone company and MasterCharge without a stamp on the envelope. You may remember those halcyon days. It was paid for on the other end.

I started sending the Comptroller bricks. Two hundred and thirteen of them, average of ten a day; neatly wrapped in brown butcher' s paper off a long roll I purchased. Got friends to do the same from other cities. Each one addressed personally to the Comptroller. Couldn' t tell those neat little rectangular parcels of portentous weight were just bricks...till they were opened. Hundreds of bricks. No return address. No message. Just bricks. Personal: to the Comptroller. Deliver by Hand. Rush! Deadline Material! Hand Cancel. Do Not Crush! Fragile!

Then I stepped up the process. (RULE FIVE: Try to have some fun with your revenge. By making it seem antic, it will weigh in your favor when the authorities come for you. I was only foolin' around, Inspector. Your Honor, I submit my client was just out of his tree with foolishness; please don' t hang him.) After the first two hundred and thirteen, I sent forty a week. At the end of the month- having heard from friends that their mailings had been substantial and how long did I want them to continue this madness- I sent a small note to the Comptroller on Donny Osmond stationery- sometime remind me to tell you the hideous facts surrounding my gaining possession of Donny Osmond stationery- which missive said simply, " Now you have enough to build a safety bunker that may withstand my huffing and puffing. Or would you rather revert the rights to my book? Charmingly, Harlan Ellison."

Came a call from my editor, frenzied and trembling with a tone that indicated Great Forces Were About To Be Unleashed. Please stop annoying the Comptroller, I was advised. Wrong...and wrong. Tell the Comptroller, I said to her, that if he does not come off his high horse and release my book, I will not only mail him the rest of the s.h.i.thouse, but I will see him in it! She sighed, knowing I wasn' t bluffing, and went away.

RULE SIX: Make sure they know you' re capable of anything. Make sure they understand that you are slightly deranged and are incapable of bluffing. Make them understand this is war.

A touch of paranoia doesn' t hurt, either. I had used rubber gloves when packing the bricks. No prints. They' ll never get me, Dutch!

But the Comptroller was that unbeatable combination of arrogant position of authority and stupidity for the long view, and he would not revert the rights. Phase nine was entered.

I know a lot of strange people. Perhaps you, too, know a lot of strange people. One of the strange people I know is a hit man. Sadly, he is not a first rank hit man. He is of the wrong ethnic background. He is a Lithuanian. Yes, I know it is to laugh: a Lithuanian hit man. But one does the best one can. He' s a wonderful guy most of the time, but he is surely one of the world' s most inept pistoleros. He once shot off two toes on his left foot. Don' t ask.

He calls himself Sandor. That isn' t his real name, but Sandor will do nicely for this recounting. I called Sandor and asked him a favor. He owed me one. (Ask me sometime to tell you about the Stuckey' s Pecan Shop, the limping waitress, the twenty gallon milk can and how Sandor came to be in my debt.) I found a photo of the Comptroller in a back issue of Publishers Weekly, gave Sandor the address of the publishing house, and asked him merely to throw the Fear of Death into the Comptroller without harming even a hair on his aging head.

Well, about a week later Sandor calls (collect) and tells me what happened: first of all, it' s the killing heat of summer and Sandor is wearing a heavy topcoat when he accosts the Comptroller on the street outside the publishing house in Manhattan. Picture, if you will, this six foot three inch tall, pockmarked, very pale, sweating penguin with a voice steeped at the bottom of a bourbon bottle. Now imagine yourself coming out of your office building at the end of a wearying day, lugging your cabretta-grain attache case, not looking forward to the train ride back to New Roch.e.l.le, and suddenly this apparition is walking along beside you, with his powerful arm draped over your shoulder, and he' s whispering in your ear, " Your son' s name is Michael, your daughter' s name is Michele; she goes to the Cadwaller School on Long Island, he is up at Harvard; you live on Grove Avenue in Larchmont, you got a lousy old-fashioned Dictograph alarm system; and if it is that you catch my drift, Sunny Jim, and if you come home tonight and find their foreheads nailed to the living room wall, you will understand why you should revert the rights to Ellison' s book; otherwise I cut off your head with a potato peeler and mail the hairy thing C.O.D. to your family."

And he vanished into the crowd.

Next day I get a call from my editor, who is hysterical. What are you doing to this old man!?! He' s got a heart condition!?! Are you crazy!?!

So I wrote the Comptroller a letter. My mother had only recently died of a heart condition, and I felt it was in the interests of the commonweal to apprise him of recent statistics on coronaries, the best hospitals in the area for such conditions, a Xerox copy of an article from the Journal of the AMA on the latest Pacemaker research; you know, the kind of data a man concerned about his health might need in an emergency. I did not write it on Donny Osmond stationery. When dealing with serious subjects, frivolity should be eschewed.

Got to hand it to him. The Comptroller was a worthy adversary. True grit. He would not cave in. I felt a swelling respect for his tenacity in the face of such loathsome behavior. Got another call from my editor. In tears. The word please was repeated many times. I said all it took to make me go away was a letter of reversion of rights. She said she' d make one more appeal. The response: TTFI.

It seemed impossible even to me, because I was about to pack it in, fearing I might Go Too Far, when phase ten- more awful than anything that went before- presented itself to me inadvertently.

I had a gopher problem at my home. Nasty little hummers would come out in the morning and eat anything that couldn' t run away from them. So I called in the landscape exterminating company, and at enormous expense found they couldn' t do a d.a.m.ned thing. But we did get one little devil. There he was, half-in, half-out of his hole, dead as Reagan' s concern for the poor, his little lips skinned back from his vicious teeth in a ghastly death rictus, the little clawed paws reaching up for life, eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled back in his skull. We' re talking yuccchh here, folks.

I mailed the dead gopher to the Comptroller.

Fourth cla.s.s mail.

With Ted Cog swell' s brilliantly vomitous recipe for braised gopher stew.

Fourth cla.s.s mail.

It took about two weeks to reach the publishing house. I' m told by the time it hit the Chicago shunting station it was elegant. What Pasolini used to call Mondo Pukeo.

Got a call from my editor. Inarticulate. Crazed. Foaming and screaming about having had to fumigate the entire mail room of the publishing company. Three days later, my book was reverted.

Save the Bomb, or the gopher, until the very last moment.

RULE SEVEN: Your target will inevitably provide you with the means to get even.

They make mistakes. I know a guy who was getting a series of crank phone calls from a jerk that went on for about six months. Five and six a day. Hauled him dripping out of the shower, interrupted him in the throes of lovemaking, annoyed him when he was working, woke him from depths of sleep at four in the morning, drove his family nuts. The suffering guy bit his lip, bided his time, and waited. Inevitably, the jerk made the error of calling collect, using the name of someone the hara.s.sed guy knew, and when he accepted the call and realized it was the jerk, he had the operator hold the line open, got the number calling, fed it back through friends at the phone company who advised him it was a private school in Colorado Springs, Colorado, called the number back, got another student who said, " Oh, yeah, it was Jimmy X (a fict.i.tious name) using the phone a minute ago." This guy I know took a plane to Colorado, rented a car, drove out to the school, located the kid and beat the c.r.a.p out of him.

Now that' s revenge.

RULE EIGHT: It' s not enough merely to get even. You have to get a little better. That' s called " the vigorish." It is the interest taken out of you in mental anguish, discomfort, lousy feelings, theft of a piece of your self- respect.

Which ties into RULE NINE: An eye for an eye is the best yardstick for revenge. If someone steals your watch, you don' t shoot him in the head. That' s not even up. It' s, pardon the expression, overkill. But an eye for an eye is okay, if you add an eyelid as vigorish.

And finally, RULE TEN, and this one is important, gang. There are some people one should never screw with.

There is the wife of a friend of mine for whom I have substantial loathing. Not only because of the kind of person she is, but because of the kind of person she' s turned my friend into. Yet I would rather have my nose hairs burned out with a Bic lighter than mess with her. Even were I to win the war, I would go to my grave with her teeth in my throat.

The pa.s.sion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine.

They are the ones who have never given up the search for Dr. Mengele. They are the ones who think like a ninja. They are dangerous and know no bounds. They are little boys whose dogs have been ga.s.sed, and their example is one a rational person seeking redress in anger should never forget.

Because in a very real way, they are doomed to live in perpetual fire. As they have driven in the spikes, so too have they been condemned to bear the stigmata of their own wounds.

And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote: " ...there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a c.h.i.n.k in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment."

An Edge in My Voice, Installment 55 (19 December 1982) They killed him because he cared too much. He hurt no one but himself, and no doubt his dedication had driven him past the point of socially acceptable behavior; but his death brings shame to us as a nation, because it demonstrates that both common sense and compa.s.sion have been leached out of our national character to a degree heart rending to consider. We are, finally, no better than Richard Nixon, who went to the windows of the White House, saw hundreds of thousands ma.s.sed in the streets to protest, snickered, and went back to watch the Super Bowl.

I tell you his name because it has been just two weeks since Wednesday, December 8th, and already you' ve forgotten who he was: his name was Norman Mayer, he was a mad saint, and he loved us enough to die for our sins.

He was the man in the blue jumpsuit and motorcycle helmet who, at 9:30 AM, Eastern Standard Time, drove his white 1979 Ford van up close to the main entrance of the Washington Monument, stepped out, and began a ten-hour act of humanism that culminated at 7:23 PM with his needless death.

Professionally-lettered on the side of Norman Mayer' s van was a placard that read #1 PRIORITY: BAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

He drove past the Park Service rangers, a little more than two weeks before Christmas, the time of celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace, and he handed one of them who had come running a manila envelope on the outside of which was written his determination to speak only to a reporter. He told the ranger he had 1000 lbs. of TNT in the van, and if we didn' t begin a " national dialogue" on the threat of nuclear weapons, he would reduce the 555-foot-high obelisk to " a pile of rocks." He held in his gloved hands what the saturation tv coverage kept referring to as " an ominous black control box."

It was, in fact, a harmless joystick mechanism used to fly model airplanes. There was no " radio gear in the knapsack."

There was not, as any fool with common sense knew from 9:30 AM on, even one stick of TNT in that van. Nor, as simple logic would have shown, was there ever a moment' s danger from " the menacing terrorist who held the Monument hostage."

Everything he did, from the moment he pulled up to the obelisk, till the moment he lay handcuffed to the steering wheel of his van, shot four times and dying from a bullet wound in the head, was the action of a compa.s.sionate man who understood just how b.l.o.o.d.y we have become. And who gave his life to prove the point.

At seven AM Los Angeles time on that Wednesday morning, after having written all night and being unable to sleep, I was tuned to Ted Turner' s Cable News Network, as the first live on-site pictures of the " emergency" broke in on regular telecasting. I saw the van tight to the main entrance of the Monument, I listened to the explanation of what had happened, was happening, and the first thought that came to me was, " It' s a bluff. He hasn' t got any dynamite in that truck!" I knew it. Common sense dictated the conclusion; it didn' t take a Sherlock Holmes and deductive logic to know the truth. Everything the man in the black helmet did led one' s reason to the conclusion. It was a bluff.

Within an hour of the start of the siege, the police and FBI knew who he was. They knew he was an old man, 66, and deeply committed to the banishment of nuclear weapons. They knew he was no international terrorist, no crazed killer, just a wild old man trying to make a point. More important, they knew that a half ton of TNT would barely scratch the surface of the Monument. But property is more important than human life.

He demanded nothing for himself. No ransom, no great sum of money, no fast plane to take him' out of the country, no release of Red Brigade a.s.sa.s.sins. He merely wanted us to talk. He just wanted to plead with us to expand the dialogue. He was as one with the millions across the world who have marched and pleaded this last year. Marched and pleaded for the right of the human race to live out its days without the mushroom- shaped shadow blighting our joy. Yes, he was an extremist; yes, he was bereft of his senses; but he did not deserve to die.

Within a few hours his actions bespoke that intention. Had there been a scintilla of compa.s.sion, rather than macho posturing, in any of the authorities handling the situation, it need not have ended as it did. But there was none. Not on the part of a.s.sociated Press reporter Steve Komarow, who spoke to him five times; not on the part of Capt. Robert Hines, commander of the Park Service police, who preened and pontificated before tv cameras like one of those satraps on a road repair crew who is given the red flag to stop traffic and becomes a martinet with that puny power; not on the part of the White House advisors who moved Ronald Reagan' s luncheon out of the room facing the Monument. And not on the part of our n.o.ble President who, like Richard Nixon, saw what was going on and shrugged, and ignored his responsibility.

And when, shortly after seven o' clock that night, Norman Mayer came to his senses and was terribly frightened by his own boldness, and tried to flee, to return to the anonymity from which he had emerged...they blew him away. When the first FBI special agent reached the van, the old man was lying there mumbling, " They shot me in the head."

And no one has protested the violence. He deserved it. He was a threat. He was a terrorist and we can' t bargain with terrorists. " We couldn' t take a chance he' d be driving around Washington in a van full of TNT," is the standard explanation for his death.

But common sense would have informed the conclusion that there was no threat, that there was no TNT. Common sense and a dollop of human compa.s.sion would have softened that killing posture. Had he been a man with death in his heart, he would not have walked into the Monument at 9:30 and told all the tourists, " Please leave quietly." He would have held them as hostages. He would have kept those seven people trapped at the top of the obelisk. He would have threatened the SWAT teams with instant explosion of the mythical TNT if those seven people tried to walk down the 555-foot structure. But he didn' t. He asked that they be escorted from the Monument by Park Service rangers, and some of them even nodded to him as they pa.s.sed him. He nodded back. I saw it on the news.

Did the police and the FBI even seek the advice of a good psychologist? Did any of them sit and sum up the realities...not the maybes and the what-ifs...just the realities of what Norman Mayer was doing? Nowhere in the reports do we hear of such action being taken. Just the gunslinging bravado of the O.K. Corral. Ending in the hail of rifle fire that killed old, crazily-committed Norman Mayer.

Were we not one with Richard Nixon, someone would have said, simply, " He wants to make his point. He wants to be heard." And in my deranged fantasy I see them telling Ronald Reagan that one of his people is in pain, is hurting with fear so much for the rest of his species that he wants a chat. And Ronald Reagan would have said, " I understand. Let' s take a walk." And he would have crossed that short distance across the Mall, and he would have walked up to Norman Mayer, and he would have said, " Mr. Mayer, I understand what you' re trying to do; but this isn' t the way to do it. You' re scaring people, Mr. Mayer. And you' re getting yourself in terrible trouble." And Norman Mayer would have been so amazed that for the first time his existence had been validated, that he would have put aside that pathetic model airplane control box, and he would have walked back to the White House for a cup of tea and a quiet conversation with the leader of his nation, who had demonstrated that even the least of his countrymen was worth postponing lunch.

But that' s a fantasy. And kindness is a fantasy. And common sense in the face of c.o.c.ked guns is a fantasy. We are a nation of SWAT teams and too little open conversation.

I know I am foolish to suggest Ronald Reagan might have had the personal courage to end the " emergency" by bold leadership. I hear the snickers and the repeated phrase, " We couldn' t take a chance," even though they knew they were in no danger of the bluff being genuinely threatening. I know I am alone in feeling that there was something n.o.ble and courageous and infinitely humane in Norman Mayer' s act. Nonetheless, I have cried for him since I saw them open fire on his van.

And I cannot but consider the irony of his having died so near a monument to the President who said, " If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

SANE is worried that Norman Mayer' s strange behavior might " tarnish the image of the entire antinuclear movement," but in every progression of social reform, from Joan of Arc to Martin Luther King, Jr., it is the mad endeavor of a John Brown or a spartacus that demonstrates the depth of angst most of us can only pay faint obeisance to.

Norman Mayer was presented to us by tv and by the authorities as a bad man. He had been arrested in Hong Kong in 1976 for trying to smuggle a small amount of marijuana; he was a drifter and a low cla.s.s hotel handyman; he had been jailed for civil disobedience distributing antinuclear leaflets on college campuses in Miami Beach; he had tried to buy dynamite in Kentucky; he was a deranged fanatic. All that may be so...and common sense tells me it is so. But as I see Ronald Reagan seeking to discredit the Antinuclear Movement in this country and across the planet, I cannot fight back the certain knowledge that Norman Mayer was a Great American. He died as he lived, futilely; but at least for me his death was a martyrdom that illuminates with a sickly pallor the cowardice and inhumanity, the inflexibility and disregard for the plight of our people that keynotes Reagan' s administration and the Imperial Presidencies that have preceded it.