Silence, three full seconds of dead silence that seem to crawl on forever, as the face of Jack Barron stares out from the screen, the eyes like a pair of open wounds, windows into the soul within, hurt eyes, strangely humble eyes, and yet with a certain open defiance, a guileless defiance with no defenses but the truth. And in that very open and defenseless defiance, the certainty of the truth behind.
An unbearable moment of human reality leaping out from the flat phosphor-dot pattern of the screen…
And then suddenly the moment passes, and a certain hardness returns to Barron’s face (but a hardness made poignant by the knowledge of the softness behind it), and purposefulness comes back into his eyes.
“Only one more thing to tell you, friends,” he says, “and then you’ll have the whole ugly truth. Now you know what Bennie did for me; the question is, what was I supposed to do for him?”
The grainy gray face of Benedict Howards appears in the lower-left quarter of the screen, and now Barron is not a victim but an inquisitor as he stares down at him.
“What about it, Howards?” Barron says. “Do you tell them or do I? Go ahead, tell them! Tell ’em how you’ve been buying up children, tell ’em how many Congressmen you got in your hip pocket, tell ’em your plans for the next Democratic convention. And tell ’em what you wanted me for, tell ’em what I was supposed to do for you.”
Howards’ face expands to fill three-quarters of the screen, with Barron in the upper righthand corner, his eyes flaying the gray image like whips.
“No! No!” Howards screams. “You got it all wrong, don’t understand, no one understands, gotta push the fading black circle back forever… Life is all I want; I’m on the side of life against death! Senators, Congressmen, Governors, President—gotta be on the side of life, not the side of the fading black circle closing in eviscerated niggers vultures’ beaks up nose down throat choking away life in tubes and bottles—”
Howards is suddenly compressed into the lower lefthand corner of the screen, screaming silently as Jack Barron ignores him, stares straight out from the screen, says:
“That’s where it’s at, folks. All I was supposed to do is lie to you. Tell enough lies to get that Freezer Bill passed, and then help Bennie elect his tame President—and guess which party he has bought? I may stink to high heaven with Foundation BO, but half the Democrats in Congress stink worse than I do. I can’t name names, but just maybe now some of ’em’ll have the guts poor Ted Hennering had and stand up and be counted. And if they don’t… well, just read a list of the Congressmen who support the Foundation Bill. Can’t sue the Congressional Record for libel!”
Now Howards’ face fills the entire screen, his eyes glazed and rolling, little flecks of spittle spraying from his trembling lips as Barron’s voice-over begins to almost chant: “You’re a dead man, Bennie. Dead… dead… dead. You’re gonna fry till you die. Till they kill you dead. Dead… dead… dead…”
“Nooooooo!” Howards screams. “I’ll get you get you all kill you buy you own you destroy you forces of the fading black circle nobody kills Benedict Howards, Senators, Governors, Congressmen, kill ’em all own ’em all kill… Nobody kills Benedict Howards! Nobody, never, young and strong and…”
Howards’ mad eyes stare straight out from the screen, and his screaming becomes harsh, clipped, savage.
“Barron! Barron! I’ll get you, Barron! Kill you! Kill you! Kill!”
From nowhere, a great gray fist suddenly fills the entire screen—and then the whole screen goes dead, a scintillating field of speckled gray and white static and over it an electric serpent hiss.
Just the dead screen and the hissing static for a beat, then the gray field of random electric impulses is pushed up into the upper-righthand corner as if by the hand of Jack Barron, who fills the rest of the screen in a head-and-shoulders shot, pointing to the square of hissing nothingness (like the random non-being of the grave) with his eyes.
“You, out there, you suckers, you!” he shouts. “Look at the thing you made! We all made Benedict Howards, we always make our Benedict Howards, because there’ll always be men who know the Big Secret: we can all be bought. Who wants to die? Who wants to live in a rat-trap? Who wants to eat garbage? They know it, and they suck on it—politicians! Power-junkies, giving you just enough to keep you bought with Welfare and Medicare and Niggercare and nice-sounding lies; crumbs from the table, is all! Just enough to cool it, and not a crumb more. Hold your noses and take a good look around you for a change—we’ve got a thousand little Benedict Howards calling themselves Governors, Congressmen, Senators, Presidents. And the only difference between them and Howards is that they’re not in his league, they’re pikers. What are you gonna do about it? Sit on your fat asses like you always have? Or maybe go out and get yours—anybody with a kid can get a piece of change for his bod. A lot more than thirty pieces of silver. Well, suckers, had enough? Or are you gonna let it go on and on and on till you die? Just remember, though, when you die now, baby, you die alone.”
Barron pauses, and almost laughs the old inside-joke laugh as he says the next words with the old endearing bad-boy shrug: “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to wait some more to get your licks folks—till after this word from our palpitating sponsor.”
Epilogue
Never… never… never kill me, Barren! No no no no one kills Benedict Howards, Your Honor! Buy you, Your Honor, kill you own you with the power of life against death, Your Honor… make you immortal, Your Honor… Barren’s on the side of the fading black circle, Your Honor… I’m innocent, on the side of life, Your Honor… No one kills Benedict Howards, Your Honor! No one! Young and strong and healthy soft-skinned women in air-cooled circles of power Los Angeles, Dallas, Vegas, New York, Washington, forever, Your Honor…
Benedict Howards paced the small room endlessly; planning, scheming, mumbling threats to himself. It was a pretty bare room, not quite what he was accustomed to, but not really very much like a prison cell either. Yeah, he thought, maybe those goddamn lawyers knew what they were doing after all.
“My client is obviously mentally incapable of standing trial at this time.”
See, Barren, even you couldn’t do it! Nobody can do it, nobody kills Benedict Howards! Young and strong and healthy for the next million years! Forever! No electric chair, no prison, just a nice public sanitarium commitment until those goddamn expensive lawyers figure out a way to get me off scott-free. And they will, they said they would, promised me they would! They got all the time in the world to get me off, got a million years (’… paranoid delusions…’), got enough time to breed me lawyers (’… semi-hallucinatory state…’), yeah, breed whole new races of the bastards (’… incapable of standing trial… is to be confined in a hospital for the criminally insane until such time as he may be deemed mentally competent to stand trial…’), controlled mutation whole new races of purebred lawyers can kill that murder indictment and then I can get out of here, when it’s safe.
Benedict Howards insane! What a joke! Joke on Jack Barren, Senators, Congressmen, President, Your Honor. You prick, Your Honor, I didn’t even have to buy you, Your Honor, you could’ve lived forever, Your Honor, but you cretin you, you did just what my lawyers wanted you to, put me here where the fading-black-circle electric chair can’t get at me, never get at me, while my lawyers hold it back, push it back, keep it back for a million years.
All they gotta do is quash that murder indictment, and the next day I walk right out of here, ’cause I’m not crazy, Benedict Howards is the sanest man in the world, saner than a man, better than a man, immortal like a god…