Free Cat's Pajamas by James Morrow Page B

we should go to hell, and twenty-one already knew they had the disease, though they were astonished that we’d gleaned the fact from mere circumstantial evidence.
    John Wayne himself was the last person I wanted to talk to, but Stuart argued that we had no other choice. We’d been unable to locate Linwood Dunn, who did the on-location special effects, and Duke might very well have a clue.
    I hadn’t spoken with the old buzzard in nine years, but our conversation was barely a minute underway before we were trading verbal barrages. True to form, this was not a fond sparring-match between mutually admiring colleagues but a full-blown war of the Weltanschauungen, the West Coast patriot versus the East Coast pinko, the brave-heart conservative versus the bleeding-heart liberal. According to Duke’s inside sources, President Jimmy Carter was about to issue a plenary pardon to the Vietnam War draft evaders. Naturally I thought this was a marvelous idea, and I told Duke as much. John Wayne—the same John Wayne who’d declined to don a military uniform during World War II, fearing that a prolonged stint in the armed forces would decelerate his burgeoning career—responded by asserting that once again Mr. Peanut Head was skirting the bounds of treason.
    Changing the subject, I told Duke about my leukemia ordeal, and how this had ultimately led Stuart to connect the Nevada A-bomb tests with the Conqueror company’s astonishingly high cancer rate. Predictably enough, Duke did not warm to the theory, with its implicit indictment of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and other institutions dear to his heart, and when I used the phrase “Howard Hughes hibakusha,” he threatened to hang up.
    â€œWe need to find Linwood Dunn,” I said. “We think he’s at risk.”
    In a matter of seconds Duke located his Rolodex and looked up Linwood’s unlisted phone number. I wrote the digits on the back of a stray New Republic.
    â€œWell, Egghead, I suppose it can’t hurt for Lin to see the medics, but this doesn’t mean I buy your nutty idea,” said Duke. “Howard Hughes is a true American.”
    He should have said Howard Hughes was a true American, because even as we spoke the seventy-year-old codeine addict was dying of kidney failure in Houston.
    â€œYou may have just saved Lin’s life,” I said.
    â€œPossibly,” said Duke. “Interesting you should get in touch, Egghead. I was about to give you a call. I’m thinking of shooting a picture in your neck of the woods next year, and there’s a real sweet part in it for you.”
    I drew the receiver away from my ear, cupped the mouthpiece, and caught Stuart’s attention with my glance. “He wants me in his next movie,” I said in a coherent whisper.
    â€œGo for it,” said Stuart. “We need the money.”
    I lifted my hand from the mouthpiece and told Duke, “I’ll take any role except your mother.”
    â€œGood,” he said. “You’ll be playing my grandmother.” He chuckled. “That’s a joke, Egghead. I have you down for my mentor, a retired school teacher. We finish principal photography on The Shootist in two weeks, and then I’m off to New York, scouting locations. We’ll have dinner at the Waldorf, okay?”
    â€œSure, Duke.”
    Later that day, Stuart and I telephoned Linwood Dunn.
    â€œYou folks may have saved my life,” he said.
    I’m probably being unfair to Duke. Yes, his primitive politics infuriated me, but unlike most of his hidebound friends he was not a thoughtless man. He enjoyed a certain salutary distance from himself. Of his magnum opus, The Alamo, he once told a reporter, “There’s more to that movie than my damn conservative attitude,” and I have to agree. Beneath its superficial jingoist coating, and beneath the layer of genuine jingoism under that, The Alamo exudes an offbeat and rather