One Mukluk

(continued)

By Barry G. Gale

"Also," Hockenhokey asked me at a later date, "how do you know that Adams didn't serve in Vietnam?"

I said because that is what Adams told me, time and time again, and we compared notes with regard to how we each sought to stay out of Vietnam. That's how.

Hockenhokey said: "OK."

"Also, don't you know, Harvey," Higgensem told me over some Fijian coconut clam twisters at Randy Randyman's Blind Person's Snack Bar on the 5th floor of the Marmalade on a cold Wednesday morning about a month after Adams disappeared, "that when anyone whom you like dies, he is ipso facto a Vietnam Veteran?"

I said I never thought of it that way, and I had never heard of that happening.

"Yeah," Higgensem continued, "and I bet that Arlington National Cemetery goes along with it. That place is probably full of the graves of guys whom lots of people liked."

Speaking of Randy Randyman, whom I know we weren't speaking of, but I'm not sure how good your memory is, when I told him of Adams's disappearance, he said rather oddly, or perhaps not so oddly after all, that he was sorry about the news, but he had to admit that he never remembered seeing the man.

By the way, millions of people attended Adams's funeral. I thought about ten million or so, but Drumrole, who always disagrees with me, even if he agrees with me, if you know what I mean, thought that I was exaggerating. He thought it was more in the range of eight or nine million. I didn't see any utility in arguing the point.

Within a few days of Adams's disappearance, Senator Can'tbe, who was chair of the Senate Committee on Science, Technology and Assorted Other Stuff and who knew Adams, albeit slightly, issued a press release saying that Adams's death was the most disturbing thing that he had ever seen and was probably the most disturbing thing that had happened since the last most disturbing thing that happened the previous week. And that he felt certain that most of the Senate was as disturbed as he was, and perhaps some senators were even more disturbed than he was, though he said that would be hard to imagine, based on just how disturbed he really was.

"And there weren't any senators who just felt concerned?" I asked Can'tbe's attractive special assistant, Miss Sitwell, in a telephone conversation I had with her about a week after Adams's funeral.

"Well," she admitted, in her extremely high-pitched but sweet voice, "maybe just a few, but they don't count."

MeisterHEISTER, the feared and hated chief of DOST Security, announced through the DOST public address system that, based on what had happened to Adams, if, in fact, anything had happened to Adams, and he indicated that Security was looking into the matter now, that for the time being Security would make every effort possible to keep an eye on things. That, yes, they would definitely try to keep an eye on things, and that nobody need worry. That announcement immediately caused widespread panic in the endless and cavernous corridors, basements, sub-basements and sub-sub-basements of the Marmalade Building, with the sad result that three more DOST employees committed suicide and were added to the temporary morgue at Randy Randyman's, which DOST management had set up two years before to handle the increasing number of DOST employees who regularly committed suicide.

I had lunch with my erudite colleague Taylor-Mailer a few weeks after the funeral, and he told me that he had given Adams's disappearance not a little thought, or at least thought not a little about it, he added with something approaching deep bewilderment, as was his custom to do, and he concluded it was a question of defaults for Adams and me, that really defined the differences between us. Why he thought it was important to define the differences between us, I have no idea, but I attributed it to Taylor-Mailer's apparently endless need to come up with theories about just everything. Anyway, Adams's default, according to T-M, was challenge; mine was accommodation. At times Adams could be accommodating; at times I could be challenging. In the end, we always returned to who we really were. That's why, Taylor-Mailer said, I might be able to convince Adams for a day or two of the value of finding some middle ground with regard to trying to find something meaningful to do at DOST, but not for long. There was no middle ground for Adams — for very long.

I thought about what Taylor-Mailer said for a few seconds and, having come to no conclusion as to whether he was right or wrong, though I instinctively felt he was probably more right than wrong, I told him I'd have to think about what he said some more.

"What did you say, Harvey?" is what he shouted, a rustic-looking man in large blue farm overalls and wearing a worn beige cowboy hat said on the TV news some six months after Adams disappeared. "I hear it as clearly today as I did on that warm and sultry night six months ago."

But Adams disappeared in the dead of winter, when, in Washington, all the streets were nearly deserted. I did not know what to make of this man's recollection, so, in good U.S. government bureaucratic fashion, I made absolutely nothing of it.