“Good Lord,” Charlie said.
“There’s a lesson there, of course,” Smith said. “When a rat pokes his head up from the sewer, he needs to be hit on the head with a shovel immediately. You cannot just sit back and think, Well, it’s just one rat or That’s somebody else’s problem. Because it’s never just one rat, and it eventually becomes your problem.” And with that, she patted Charlie on the arm again. “Well, I’ll go back to my seat now. Lovely to run into you, Charlie.”
With a wave of her hand, the senator nodded good-bye to Charlie and he watched as she slowly, steadily made her way to the rear of the train.
A train delay in Wilmington, Delaware, and a midtown Manhattan traffic jam prevented Charlie from ringing his parents’ doorbell until just after ten p.m. Standing at the top of the front stoop, he could hear his father stumbling down the brownstone stairs before the door swung open to reveal the man himself. He met his son with a scowl and a powerful aromatic punch of scotch.
“Your mother’s asleep,” he snarled by way of greeting. Charlie knew well this side of his father—three sheets to the wind, obviously had a bad day at work but wouldn’t want to talk about it, tired, surly. “You could have called first.”
Winston Marder’s paternal instincts were strong enough for him to reach for Charlie’s briefcase and carry it up to the living room on the second floor, where a television set provided the only illumination. “Murrow’s going after McCarthy,” his father said. Charlie sat on the couch, and together the two watched as Murrow, in his calm and careful way, eviscerated the Wisconsin Republican, destroying his lies one by one, from the relatively inconsequential ones to a blatantly misleading claim McCarthy had made about Adlai Stevenson toward the end of the 1952 presidential campaign.
“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve,” Murrow intoned at the end of the broadcast. “The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’”
Murrow ended the broadcast with his signature “Good night and good luck.”
Winston Marder emitted a sound that was something between a snore and a scoff. Charlie looked at him, surprised, having been impressed by Murrow’s monologue, though he did wonder what had taken the journalist so long. Plenty of his peers had been going after McCarthy for years. Muckraking columnist Drew Pearson had been such a persistent critic, rumor had it, that McCarthy had once punched him so hard he’d flown into the air. Journalist Jack Anderson had written a scathing investigative biography of McCarthy in 1952, and one year later cartoonist Walt Kelly started mocking the Wisconsin senator in his popular Pogo comic strip, depicting him as a menacing, shotgun-toting bobcat with disdain for social mores and the U.S. Constitution. Still, Charlie knew Murrow’s taking such a stand was significant. These words were coming from a dignified journalist on the giant platform he enjoyed, the cautious, highly rated CBS. Everyone has his own timeline for heroism, Charlie supposed.
“So?” Charlie asked.
“McCarthy’s a drunk but he’s not wrong about everything,” said Winston. “Alger Hiss was a spy. The Rosenbergs were spies. There are Soviet spies throughout the government. In the schools, in universities. Yeah, McCarthy’s a blowhard and a liar, but isn’t the Communist menace a bigger deal than whatever nonsense he says at rallies? I guess I just don’t see why everyone is giving McCarthy much attention. Just ignore him.”
“He’s impossible to ignore. He’s become this…planet…blocking the sun. And whatever points he makes that have validity are blotted out by his indecency and his lies and his predilection to smear. On the Hill, he’s all they talk about. Kefauver, Margaret Chase Smith.”
“Of course, he’s embarrassing. But even when Smith gave her big fancy speech attacking McCarthy, she noted the Truman administration had been sitting on their asses and doing nothing while Commies began swarming the U.S. like locusts.” He paused and looked more carefully at Charlie. “Did you not even pack a bag? Just the briefcase?”
“Yeah, this trip is a little spur-of-the-moment.” He didn’t mention Margaret’s current whereabouts, since he knew his folks wouldn’t approve.
Winston lifted himself out of his chair with a groan and began shuffling toward his study. His earlier irritation at Charlie’s surprise late arrival had apparently subsided.
“Come on in for a nightcap if you want.”
Winston’s study was where he kept his most important documents, as well as a giant floor globe and his collection of nineteenth-century books, most of them focused on the presidency and assassination of Abraham Lincoln and on the life of Teddy Roosevelt. As his dad occupied himself at the side table where decanters held his scotch and bourbon, Charlie took in the comforting scent of the room: cigar smoke and ancient texts and his dad’s musky cologne. When he was a boy, this room had seemed to hold all the secrets of adulthood: serious men in serious trouble and whispered agreements and handshakes like vise grips and the lingering menace of debts owed.
“Estes tells me you seem to be getting along better now,” Winston Marder said, handing Charlie a tumbler containing two fingers of bourbon and one ice cube. He sank into his chair, a walnut Victorian parlor armchair with intricately carved designs resembling tassels. The nineteenth-century antique creaked beneath his weight, which was increasing around his middle as he approached sixty.
“I suppose,” said Charlie, “that depends on how one defines getting along better. Doing things other people want me to that I’m not particularly proud of—yes, I’m doing more of that. Passing on files to the McCarthy Committee and participating in the great comic-book hearing.”
Winston Marder chuckled and Charlie suppressed a sigh of irritation. “Yes, I suppose that’s how I would define it at this stage of your nascent political career. You’re not getting anything for yourself?”
“I asked Chairman Carlin if he would block a permit for a chemical plant in Harlem. Negro friend of mine asked me to help him with that.”
Winston’s eyes lit up. “That was you? I heard about that. Adam Powell is furious. General Kinetics too. No matter. Now Harley Staggers and Bob Mollohan are fighting over which pocket of Appalachia the plant should move to.” Staggers and Mollohan were West Virginia Democrats, aggressive seekers of the federal dole and anything else that might improve the plight of their impoverished constituents. Charlie would have liked to bask in his father’s approval, but he could only stare grimly into the glass in his hands.
“What’s eating you?”
Charlie paused before admitting, “I hadn’t really thought about the fact that whatever ill effects come from this chemical plant will now be inflicted on other people.”
Winston’s smile was part amusement, part acknowledgment of the injustice of the world. “Yep. That’s how it works, Charlie.” He yawned, looking like a lion growling. Charlie wished he could be comforted by his father’s benevolent world-weariness; instead, he found himself fighting a mounting sense of frustrated indignation. He needed direction, not aphorisms.
“Chairman Carlin wants me to co-sponsor the farm bill with him. He’s trying to use me to co-opt the other veterans and any other skeptical Yankees.”
“That’s good. Nothing wrong with having a record farmers can like. Costs you nothing and could pay off later. How about Estes’s latest project, these Nuremberg Trials for Bugs Bunny? You set that up for him?”
“Yep, next month at the Foley Square Courthouse.”
“Ever the good soldier.”