Accident Prone: A Novel Read online

contained. The smell of coffee and cream, however, would remain for days. Thankfully the IBM had remained unscathed, as it sat in on the far end of her desk. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.

  It wouldn’t be until later that Marion realized that some of the stuff had spilled onto her work clothes. She had no money to do the laundry until at least Saturday, and today was Tuesday. She hoped the smell of coffee wouldn’t make her sick. Marion hated coffee: the smell, the taste and everything about it. She also wasn’t too fond of the people who drank it either, as they tended to be on the more pretentious side. No, she preferred to get her caffeine fix from a nice bottle of Coke. And thank God that Coca Cola had given up on the whole New Coke campaign and had brought back the good stuff.

  Mercifully, by the time Marion had finished cleaning her desk it was time to go home.

  Marion knew it was coming. So, she sat in her car and waited. At first it was just crying, but soon she began to pound on the steering wheel. And when that wasn’t enough she began punching the radio as hard as she could. The radio broke from its frame and wires dangled from the dash.

  Breathing hard but her rage spent, Marion leaned back in her seat. The knuckles on her right hand were bruised, which would make it very hard to do her job for the next two or three days.

  She opened and closed her right hand in slow painful bursts.

  Marion looked up and there she was. The woman! It would be so easy, Marion thought, to turn on the car and run that little bitch down big glasses and all. More than likely the woman had been watching the entire time as Marion had her meltdown. Had she enjoyed the show? The woman smirked as she looked directly at Marion.

  Marion’s hand reached down and touched the car keys. She ignored the pain in her right hand and turned the key. The engine roared into life.

  Perhaps sensing something was wrong, the woman frowned and quickly walked away.

  Marion reached over and turned off the engine.

  She sobbed for another half hour before she finally went home.

  Marion knew that this would not be the end of it.

  Valerie was just getting started.

  Article IV: The Conqueror

  Yes sir, the Duke’s daddy had been a real American hero. In fact, Donald Lewis was right up there with “Tail Gunner” Joe McCarthy as one of this country’s greatest heroes.

  Back in the 1950s, the Duke’s daddy had an important job with the State Department. It was his job to make sure the Commies didn’t sneak onto the airwaves and spread their anti-American propaganda to the Masses. The 50s were a good time, a safe time, a time when the world made sense. It was a time when America stood as an example to the free world. Now-a-days the world is in shambles. The Commies practically flaunt their anti-American garbage and the ignorant masses eat it up with a spoon. It was so bad that the Duke couldn’t even watch TV anymore. About the only safe thing left on the airwaves was Monday Night Football.

  Back then the Commies had to be sneaky because people like the Duke’s daddy were there to watch out for us and protect us from getting the wrong ideas.

  “The writers were the worse,” the Duke’s daddy confessed in a rare moment of sobriety. “We’d get these writers we damn well knew were Commies but still wanted to write for TV or the motion pictures. They had even admitted to it to the Committee. Can you believe that, Duke? They had admitted it to Congress, and all they would get is a slap on the wrist.”

  The Duke shook his head in disbelief.

  “You know what they would do? They’d continued to churn out their Commie garbage then hire one of their friends or a family member to act as front, just so they could sell that crap to Hollywood. We weren’t stupid. We knew what was going on. What we should have done was round up every one of those Commie bastards and blow their heads off. Stop that shit at the source, you know.”

  The Duke nodded. He knew, and loved his daddy for it.

  “Problem was Eisenhower was a pussy. He didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger.”

  The Duke’s daddy was a very passionate man, and sometimes a very violent one, but the Duke knew deep down that all his daddy wanted to do was keep America safe. That’s why he was a hero.

  And like our Lord and Savior, his daddy had been crucified for trying to do the right thing. The Commies must have known that his daddy was hot on their trail. So they conspired against him. That’s the way the Duke figured it, anyway.

  What happened was this. Every morning the Duke’s daddy would get a list of actors' names that were scheduled to appear on TV that night. His daddy would check the names to make sure they weren’t known Communists or, worse, Communist sympathizers. He would cross off the names that had been blacklisted and send the approved list back to his boss. His boss would them inform the studios. The studios, in turn, would race to find replacements, and by the afternoon would submit a second list. Those names had to be checked too, and the approved names were passed along back to the studios. Usually after about the third or fourth time the list would be approved without any changes, that night real Americans could rest assured that the people they saw on TV were good and honest folks.

  One day his daddy was hard at work when a name he didn’t recognize came across his desk.

  Imogene Collins.

  His daddy dutifully looked up the name in Red Channels, that brave magazine that listed all suspected Commies operating in Los Angeles and New York. The name was not there. Next, he called up a fiend over at HUAC to see if this Imogene Collins was scheduled to appear before the Committee. But nobody over there had heard of her either. Still the Duke’s daddy suspected there was something not right about Miss Imogene Collins, so when in doubt cross it out. His daddy was very thorough.

  He crossed out a few more names and submitted the list. This time nothing happened. Usually a second list would come across his desk just before lunch. While he waited, his daddy spent the time updating his files with names supplied by his contacts at HUAC. Just before lunch, as his daddy told it, his boss came to his office.

  “Donald.” His boss said.

  “Sir,” his daddy responded.

  “I need to talk to you about Imogene Collins. Did you cross her name off the list?”

  “That’s right. Suspected Communist.”

  His boss shook his head and then informed his employee: “Imogene Collins is a five year old girl.”

  “What!”

  “Imogene Collins has never acted before. She won a contest to appear on the Arthur Godfrey show tonight.”

  “Her parents, then!” His daddy snapped.

  “Imogene Collins is a ward of the State.”

  It’s been said that at that moment his daddy’s face went ashen white.

  “It’s a trick! I’ve been setup!”

  “Donald. You’re fired...”

  The Duke’s daddy fell on hard times after that. He’d go from bar to bar, and gin bottle to gin bottle, telling anyone who’d listen all about how the whore Imogene Collins had set him up.

  It wasn’t long after that, that some Jew lawyer took down Joe McCarthy. And, without any real heroes left to fight the good fight up in Washington, America fell into chaos.

  The Duke did learn one important lesson from his daddy, though. He learned that all little girls are whores.

  Article V: “And the days go by...”

  Marion felt all used up. It was like she was just going through the motions.

  As she sat waiting in the visiting area of Sweet Rock Correctional Center, she wondered if this was all that life had to offer.

  There had been more trouble. Nothing direct, but still an effective campaign was being waged against her.

  The beginning of the week had started out bright. Gail had shown her how to use the IBM; to her great surprise Marion picked up the concepts of the machine within about ten minutes. The machine was surprisingly easy to use. It was so much better than the typewriter. To correct a mistake on a typewriter you had to hope that this was a typew
riter with a correction ribbon, hope that the ribbon wasn’t worn out, that it didn’t smudge or rip the paper, and failing that you had to roll the paper out of the typewriter just enough so you could apply whiteout, wait for the whiteout to dry, then do your best to line up the paper back to where it was before, praying that it wasn’t either too high or too low.

  With the IBM a simple push of the button and your mistakes disappeared. The only thing she needed to remember was to save her work onto a floppy disk: a thin piece of plastic about the size of a half sheet of paper. Marion marveled at it all. What an amazing world we live in.

  Gail was so impressed that she wondered out loud if maybe Marion might like to teach some of the others in the office how to use the machine. Gail was probably half joking, and normally something like that would have sent Marion running for the hill. But, for the briefest moment, something clicked inside of Marion, and she thought to herself that maybe she could.

  Sensing that Marion was like a kid with a new toy, Gail left her to play.

  “Don’t worry about doing too much. Just familiarize yourself with the machine.” Gail told her. “And above all else don’t worry if you mess something up. It shouldn’t be that hard to fix.”

  That last bit was a great relief to Marion. By the time Gail came back to check on her progress, she had finished most of her work.

  “Once I got the hang of it, I just couldn’t stop,” Marion confessed, and handed over her floppy. Gail was shocked.

  “I’ll