Page 76 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Yes, oh my god, get on with it.”
“Anti-war protesters had a rally. Tens of thousands of them, including the weirdo wing of the anti-war movement.”
“You’re the weirdo wing of the anti-war movement,” Patrick points out. “I’m the weirdo wing of the anti-war movement.”
“Your point? Anyway, the mayor of Chicago orders the police to enforce a curfew, and thousands of cops show up in riot gear, throwing tear gas into the crowd, chasing protesters with clubsas they run away. And it was all on TV. Television reporters got beaten up. Television reporters!”
“Who was nominated?” Patrick asks.
Susan wrinkles her nose. “Humphrey. Did you two seriously not even turn on the news?” She glances at the pile of newspapers on Patrick’s desk, perfectly folded and blatantly untouched.
Patrick doesn’t look at Nathaniel. Instead, he flips through the newspapers, only reading the headlines. It’s all unsettling but familiar. Not just the police being violent—Patrick isn’t ever going to be surprised by that. Last month some cops in Washington Square Park tried to arrest a boy who climbed a tree to get his pet squirrel. It was a Sunday and the park was crowded, but the police ran into the crowd with clubs, supposedly in order to disperse the people who gathered to defend the kid. What surprised Patrick was that this all happened over a squirrel, rather than race or the war. But it didn’t really have anything to do with the squirrel, just like he isn’t sure that what happened in Chicago was entirely because of the war. The war is the main thing, but the people on the other side aren’t justforthe war: they’re against people protesting. They’re fighting for the status quo, or maybe an imaginary past where nobody complained and people kept to their places.
He can’t imagine Nathaniel having been one of those people. Nathaniel probably wasn’t, not exactly. It sounds like he tried to disappear into the rules, to use conformity as a kind of camouflage, and got too caught up in his disappearing act to mistrust what was happening around him. Patrick doubts he would have liked Nathaniel very much if they’d met a few years ago.
Patrick always scorned Michael for being such a rule follower. The rules were all made for people like Michael; of course he liked them. Maybe if Patrick’s life had gonea little differently—a little softer, a little smoother—he might have been the same way. He crosses the street at crosswalks. He’s scrupulous about sales tax. But he’s spent ten years enthusiastically committing a felony whenever he touches a man. It’s difficult to retain much respect for the rule of law when he can’t live a fairly sedate life without committing a crime. This country has made him a criminal; it took his brother’s life and would have taken his own life too. He has nothing to say to anyone who thinks he should wave the flag anyway.
And yet—Patrick still believes the United States is worth something, despite Hiroshima, despite the Ku Klux Klan, despite this war and despite practically every page of every newspaper on the desk in front of him. He believes it, not because it’s true, but because he wants it to be true, because he wants to believe the people in the streets and the people in this building will come out on top. He wants to believe that enough people want to do the right thing.
He doesn’t know if that’s delusional. He doesn’t know if that’s what Nathaniel thought, too. But he does know you can assume the worst of someone and also help them be better; he’s spent ten years looking after people who might steal his typewriter or pull a knife on him. That’s basically how he’ll feel going into the voting booth this fall. Christ. He scrubs a hand over his beard.
“Susan,” he hears Nathaniel say. “I need to tell you something.”
* * *
Patrick stays behind his desk, Eleanor in his lap, while Nathaniel tells Susan the truth, feeling like he’s watching his house burn to the ground. It’s not that he thought Susan would take it well, butas Nathaniel talks, Susan draws away: she straightens her back, takes a step toward the door.
When Nathaniel’s done, Susan turns to Patrick, her face blank. “How long have you known?”
“Since Nathaniel’s birthday.”
“And you’re fine with it,” she says, not a question.
Patrick hesitates, shifting Eleanor in his lap. “I know I will be.”
“Just to be clear,” Susan says, turning her attention back to Nathaniel. “We’re talking about the same CIA that buys foreign elections, organizes coups, and infiltrates American student groups, right?”
“Right.”
“All that was in the news a year before you showed up here. So you didn’t suddenly learn that you were working for the bad guys and hand in your two week notice.”
Nathaniel swallows. “No.”
“So, why did you quit?” she asks.
“I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It wasn’t just things happening in other parts of the agency, it was work they were asking me to do. And I couldn’t.”
“What were they asking you to do?”
“It’s probably classified,” Patrick says.
“Do I look like I care,” Susan says, at the same time Nathaniel says, “I couldn’t care less.” Then they both look embarrassed.
“They’re spying on Americans, on American soil,” Nathaniel says. “That was the last straw.”
“What was the first straw?”
Nathaniel looks surprised, like maybe he hasn’t thought about it before. “The Bay of Pigs. No, that’s not right. That’s what it should have been. I don’t know. I don’t actually know.” Now he looks troubled. “Listen,” he says, “I came here because I was cold and confused. I wasn’t planning on this.” He lets out a strangledlaugh. “How could I have been? I knew it would ruin everything when you found out, but I stayed anyway. I’m sorry for that.”
