I didn’t like the music they were playing so we ended up with the news, the shooting of the Indian premier. The man who shot him was in custody and being interrogated; a state funeral was scheduled for the next morning. Most of the coverage wondered how the killer got through state security, close enough to fire at close range-and speculated about the next premier.
There was the usual parade of all-male candidates but the headline was the premier’s daughter, a woman speaking with an eerie serenity (and Oxford English) to what sounded like a pretty unruly crowd. She proclaimed herself her father’s successor and said she would be meeting with party officials that afternoon to claim control. The experts didn’t think much of her-Western-educated and an engineer, an attractive face to put on the party, possibly, but untested and not ready for the hurly-burly of Asian politics, they concluded. Probably gone in a week, with the pack of experts and male politicians scrambling to take advantage.
At the end of this, I realized we weren’t swerving or speeding any more. We were holding our place in traffic, maintaining a mere 60 miles an hour, Mr. Dulles more focused on the radio than I was. All he said was, “We need the newspapers.”
We pulled off at the next exit and he bought every newspaper they had. “Read,” he ordered as we pulled back onto the highway.
“Read what?”
“The headlines. Everything. I’ll tell you what I’m interested in.”
This was a torture. My mouth wasn’t used to three words in a row. It wasn’t used to two. Now he had me reading paragraphs. The muscles just weren’t in shape; the sounds were garbled half the time. I couldn’t figure out how he could understand what I was saying but he would bark at me to keep going every time I paused.
The headlines were the usuaclass="underline" Gridlock in Washington, each side blaming the other, embargos and sanctions against our favorite enemies, unemployment and gas prices up, sales and real estate booming, some expert says now’s the time to buy something or other, if you’ve got any money. None of that did much for Mr. Dulles though he was paying attention to every line. Then I got to: POWERPLANT MISHAP ‘ONE-TIME GLITCH,’ SAYS OPERATOR.
“Read me that,” he said immediately. And somehow, with him focusing on me, I could.
“Second Sun Energy, operators of the Biggs Hollow nuclear powerplant, called yesterday’s radiation leaks ‘minor and harmless’ and blamed them on improperly calibrated instruments. State regulators, however, expressed concern at instrument readings that indicated a meltdown, leading to the plant venting radiation and the evacuation of three surrounding towns. After a ‘thorough and rigorous’ examination of the plant, no actual problems were found. ‘Instrument readings,’ said a source close to the state regulatory authority, ‘have to be foolproof. A false reading can cause as much chaos as a real crisis, as this incident proves.’ ”
“Tear that out,” Dulles said. “Keep reading.”
It took a while to find something else that appealed to him: MAYOR RESIGNS AFTER BIZARRE VIDEO SURFACES was the headline. “Read that,” he said.
“Greta Kobel, Mayor of Copenhagen for twenty-four years, resigned today after a bizarre video surfaced on the Internet. The clip, which documented what her spokesperson called ‘a momentary breakdown,’ shows Mayor Kobel barking, clawing at the podium and spouting gibberish and racial slurs to an audience of Japanese businessmen at a reception yesterday. Among her statements was one characterizing Hindus as ‘the dogs of the world,’ which sparked riots in several countries last night. A statement from the Mayor’s office said she apologized for her behavior and called it ‘inexplicable, as the views expressed are not true to my own feelings or views. I take responsibility for my actions without, frankly, understanding them.” The Mayor announced that she was resigning, effective Friday, to seek counseling and medical treatment. Longtime friends and critics alike characterized the incident as out-of-character. Mayor Kobel has won numerous prizes throughout her stewardship for open government and human rights.”
“Tear that out too,” he said. “If there are pictures, keep them.”
“What’s in common?” I asked, tearing. “The Mayor of Copenhagen and a nuclear plant in Tennessee?”
“There’s our turnoff,” he said and I saw the sign to merge onto 95. He pulled into the right lane and we waited in traffic for the exit.
Savannah was hot, hot like they’d set the whole place on fire. The trees sagged under the weight of their own perspiration. Do trees sweat? I don’t care; these seemed to. Sweating trees, steaming brick houses from before the Civil War, swans and geese battling for position on a pond in the park as we drove by in slow traffic. Mr. Dulles wasn’t much at city driving either, from what I could tell-we would circle the same area several times before lighting out in a different direction.
“You lost?”
“No.”
“Why’re you circling?”
“Do you have an address? Or just ‘Mark Tauber, Savannah Georgia’?”
“That’s all I’ve got.”
“Then have a little patience.”
Each new direction led to dingier and dingier neighborhoods. In heat like this, most everything looked washed-out but I couldn’t miss the missing shingles on the roofs, the cars with missing fenders and the bars over the street-level windows. After about twenty minutes of this, we hit an area where the streets were flat-out empty, scary empty.
And then I looked over and he was driving with his eyes closed.
I grabbed for the wheel but he threw his hand out to block me. “I’m okay,” he said.
“Your eyes are closed.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No it’s not. I’m driving with somebody who thinks they can drive with their eyes closed. That’s not okay.”
He actually laughed at that but didn’t open his eyes. “We have three houses between us and the corner,” he said and that was true. “There’s a blue pickup parked at the corner but we’ve got plenty of space to miss it.” I checked to see if his eyes were slitted open, if he was peeking. He wasn’t. “We’ll make the left turn at the corner coming up. I’ll wait to see if the red Ford let’s us go first.” I could see the corner coming up-there was no Ford there. Then, as I watched, it pulled up and waited for us. “There’s a silver Nissan SUV parked around the corner with a flat tire on the rear passenger side. There are two garbage cans-black and brown, in that order-lined up on the sidewalk a bit beyond it.” He started to hum to himself some odd off-key trance kind of a tune.
We turned past the Ford and onto the street, passing the silver Nissan with the flat on the passenger side and the garbage cans, black and brown in order. And then he swerved around the garbage can lid that blew into the street-still without opening his eyes-and I gave up trying to think. It wasn’t that I disbelieved-I couldn’t get a handle on what I was disbelieving.
“Okay?” he asked, eyes still shut, as though that settled something.
“No,” I answered because I didn’t know how to form a question. “Mr. Dulles-”
“Call me Max,” he said and that was okay but I still didn’t know what to say.
This neighborhood was about a century-and-a-half dingier than the last one. We had started with picturesque dingy and had now descended to watch-your-back, all-the-neighbors-have-guns dingy. Several of the houses looked abandoned; the store on the corner was boarded up solid. A few old people came out to take laundry off the line or walk the dog but they kept a close eye on approaching cars.
When Mr. Dulles pulled to the curb, all at once, there was the tune he’d been humming, tinkling off the wind chimes on the porch. “Your Mr. Tauber lives in the second house from the end,” he said. “He’s not expecting company.” He looked around, like he was surveying the neighborhood, except there was almost no one on the street. “We’ll walk directly from the car to his place,” he said, as if I needed any prompting. He was planning on leaving me here?