The doctor did not congratulate him. He ‘said, “You’ve got your degree, Brubacker. If you’ve come to me for advice, I’d suggest that you avoid the academic life, especially in the Negro schools. I know what you should do. You may get nowhere, but I would like to see you try one of the Four-A advertising and public, relations firms, with a view to becoming a motivational research man. It’s time one Negro was working in the higher levels of Madison Avenue, I believe.”
Brubacker listened respectfully, and when it was time for him to reply he said: “Dr. Flowers, I’m very grateful of course for everything you’ve done. I sincerely wish I could- Dr. Flowers, I want to do research. I sent you my dissertation, but that’s only the beginning-“
Myrion Flowers turned to the right filing card in his mind and said icily, “The Correlation of Toposcop-ic Displays, Beta-Wave Amplitudes and Perception of Musical Chord Progressions in 1,107 Unselected Adolescents. Very well. You now have your sandwich board with ‘P,’ ‘H’ and ‘D’ painted on it, fore and aft. I expect that you will now proceed to the job for which you have been trained.”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to show you a-“
“I do not,” said Dr. Flowers, “want you to be a beloved old George Washington Carver humbly bending over his reports and test tubes. Academic research is of no immediate importance.”
“No, sir. I-“
“The power centers of America,” said Dr. Flowers, “are government, where our friend Mr. Wilkins is ably operating, and the executive levels of the large corporations, where I am attempting to achieve what is necessary. I want you to be an executive in a large corporation, Brubacker. You have been trained for that purpose. It is now perhaps barely possible for you to obtain a foothold. It is inconceivable to me that you will not make the effort, neither for me or for your people.”
Brubacker looked at him in misery, and at last put his face into his hands. His shoulders shook.
Dr. Flowers said scornfully: “I take it you are declining to make that effort. Good-bye, Brubacker. I do not want to see you again.”
The young man stumbled from the room, carrying a large pigskin valise which he had not been permitted to open.
As he had expected to overwhelm his benefactor with what he had accomplished he had made no plans for this situation. He could think only of returning to the university he had just left where, perhaps, before his little money ran out, he might obtain a grant. There was not really much hope of that. He had filed no proposals and sought no advice.
It did not help his mood when the overnight coach to Chicago was filling up in Grand Central. He was among the first and took a window seat. Thereafter the empty place beside him was spotted gladly by luggage-burdened matrons, Ivy-League-clad youngsters, harrumphing paper-box salesmen-gladly spotted- and then uncomfortably skimmed past when they discovered that to occupy it they would have to sit next to the gorilla-rapist-illiterate-tapdancer-mugger-men-ace who happened to be Dr. Ensal Brubacker.
But he was spared loneliness at the very last. The fellow who did drop delightedly into the seat beside him as the train began to move was One of His Own Kind. That is, he was unwashed, unlettered, a quarter drunk on liquor that had never known a tax stamp, and agonizingly high-spirited. He spoke such pure Harlem jive that Brubacker could not understand one word in twenty.
But politeness and a terror of appearing superior forced Brubacker to accept, at 125th Street, a choking swallow from the flat half-pint bottle his seamate carried. And both of these things, plus an unsupportable sense of something lost, caused him to accept his seatmate’s later offer of more paralyzing pleasures. In ten months Brubacker was dead, in Lexington, Kentucky, of pneumonia incurred while kicking the heroin habit, leaving behind him a badly puzzled staff doctor. “They’ll say everything in withdrawal,” he confided to his wife, “but I wonder how this one ever heard the word ‘cryptesthesia.’”
It was about a month after that that Myrion Flowers received the package containing Brubacker’s effects. There had been no one else to send them to.
He was shaken, that controlled man. He had seen many folk-gods of his people go the same route, but they were fighters, entertainers or revivalists; he had not expected it of a young, brilliant university graduate. For that reason he did not immediately throw the junk away, but mused over it for some minutes. His next visitor found him with a silvery-coppery sort of helmet in his hands.
Flowers’s next visitor was a former Corporation Counsel to the City of New York. By attending Dr. Powell’s church and having Dr. Flowers take care of his health he kept a well-placed foot in both the principal political camps of the city. He no longer much needed political support, but Flowers had pulled him through one coronary and he was too old to change doctors. “What have you got there, Myrion?” he asked.
Flowers looked up and said precisely, “If I can believe the notes of the man who made it, it is a receiver and amplifier for beta-wave oscillations.”
The Corporation Counsel groaned, “God preserve me from the medical mind. What’s that in English?” But he was surprised to see the expression of wondering awe that came onto Flowers’s withered face.
“It reads thoughts,” Flowers whispered.
The Corporation Counsel at once clutched his chest, but found no pain. He complained testily, “You’re joking.”
“I don’t think I am, Wilmot. The man who constructed this device had all the appropriate dignities -summa cum laude, Dean’s List, interviewed by mail by nearly thirty prospective employers. Before they found out the color of his skin, of course. No,” he said reflectively, “I don’t think I’m joking, but there’s one way to find out.”
He lifted the helmet toward his head. The Corporation counsel cried out, “Damn you, Myrion, don’t do that!”
Flowers paused. “Are you afraid I’ll read your mind and learn your secrets?”
“At my time of life? When you’re my doctor? No, Myrion, but you ought to know I have a bad heart. I don’t want you electrocuted in front of my eyes. Besides, what the devil does a Negro want with a machine that will tell him what people are thinking? Isn’t guessing bad enough for you?”
Myrion Flowers chose to ignore the latter part of what his patient had said. “I don’t expect it to electrocute me, and I don’t expect this will affect your heart, Wilmot. In any event, I don’t propose to be wondering about this thing for any length of time, I don’t want to try it when I’m alone and there’s no one else here.” He plopped the steel bowl on his head. It fit badly and was very heavy. An extension cord hung from it, and without pausing Flowers plugged it into a wall socket by his chair.
The helmet whined faintly and Flowers leaped to his feet. He screamed.
The Corporation Counsel moved rapidly enough to make himself gasp. He snatched the helmet from Flowers’s head, caught him by the shoulders and lowered him into his chair again. “You all right?” he growled.
Flowers shuddered epileptically and then controlled himself. “Thank you, Wilmot. I hope you haven’t damaged Dr. Brubacker’s device.” And then suddenly, “It hit me all at once. It hurt!”
He breathed sharply and sat up.
From one of his desk drawers he took a physicians’ sample bottle of pills and swallowed one without water. “Everyone was screaming at once,” he said. He started to replace the pills, then saw the Corporation Counsel holding his chest and mutely offered him one^
Then he seemed startled.
He looked into his visitor’s eyes. “I can still hear you.”