I Walk the Dead Beat
People have been slipping out of this world in occupational clusters, I’ve
noticed, for years. Four journalists passed their deadline one day, and
their obits filled a whole corner of the paper. What news sent them over
the edge? How often do you see two great old actresses take their bows, or
two major-league pitchers strike out together? Often enough to spook. Some
days sculptors are called, some days pioneer cartoonists. A New York Times
editor threw up his hands on June 13, 2004, and ran two almost perfectly
parallel stories under one headline: winners of the medal of honor from
two eras die; both men saved fellow marines.
It is more than coincidence, and certainly more than the vigilance of an
editor on the graveyard shift. It’s supernatural. I thrilled recently to a
pair of obituaries for Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in Pooh, and
John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet in Pooh; the two had gone silent a day
apart. I keep them next to my clip from October 25, 1986, the day the New
York Times ran side-by-side obituaries for the scientist who isolated
vitamin C and the scientist who isolated vitamin K. One was ninety-three;
the other ninety-two. One died on a Wednesday, one on a Thursday. One’s
farewell ran three columns, one ran two. One extracted the vitamin from
tons of cattle adrenals scooped from the Chicago slaughterhouses, and also
from paprika. One extracted female hormones from tons of sow ovaries. Make
something of these differences if you dare. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and
Edward Adelbert Doisy, Sr., Dr. C and Dr. K respectively, both Nobel Prize
winners, left the world together.
Did they get the idea from John Adams and Thomas Jefferson? In 1826, the
second and third presidents of the United States died in harmony on July
4, exactly fifty years after they signed the Declaration of Independence.
The New-York American wrote:
By a coincidence marvellous and enviable, THOMAS JEFFERSON in like
manner with his great compeer, John Adams, breathed his last on the 4th
of July. Emphatically may we say, with a Boston paper, had the horses
and the chariot of fire descended to take up the patriarchs, it might
have been more wonderful, but not more glorious. We remember nothing in
the annals of man so striking, so beautiful, as the death of these two
“time-honoured” patriots, on the jubilee of that freedom, which they
devoted themselves and all that was dear to them, to proclaim and
establish. It cannot all be chance.
No, surely it cannot all be chance. These are mystical forces, and what
better place to find them at work than in the obituaries?
Such coincidences don’t occur every day, but it wouldn’t take you a week
to begin a creative collection. A veteran UPI photographer and a veteran
AP photographer. A professor of theology, a pastor, and a nun. An author
named Arthur, an architect named Aaron, and an artist named Alois. Two
obstetricians. The inventor of alternate-side-of-the-street parking and
one of the founders of Evelyn Wood’s course in alternate-word reading. The
service industry of Hollywood – a hairdresser, a caterer, and a costume
designer. Princess Diana and Mother Teresa! Cary Grant and Desi Arnaz. The
head of the tiniest kingdom in the world, the Vatican (Pope John Paul II),
and the leader of the second-tiniest kingdom in the world, Monaco (Prince
Rainier).
This is not craziness. It’s careful newspaper reading. Each day, after I
read, I wash the newsprint off my hands and think about universal
harmonies. I think about things I haven’t thought about since childhood,
such as guardian angels. I used to believe we each walked around with a
sort of ghost of ourself guiding and watching over us. Is it possible that
instead of a guardian angel we each have a double, a guarantee that our
work gets done? If we’re the sort who isolates alphabet vitamins, there
are two of us, just in case. If we are the voice of Tigger, the voice of
Piglet backs us up.
A friend of mine used to collect “bus plunge” headlines. You’d be amazed
how easy these are to collect. Buses plunge over cliffs and into canyons
across the world, and newspaper editors seem resigned to the sameness and
predictability of such a universal death. Nearly every headline reads, so
many killed in such and such country’s bus plunge. Once, the New York
Times reported 10 die in brazil bus plunge, though it wasn’t even a bus
that plunged. It was a truck. But the convention persists.
I think of bus plunges as the generic passing. Many of us took the plunge
yesterday. What did we have in common? We happened to be riding the same
bus. Perhaps the bus is literal – ten of us over a precipice in a south
Brazilian state. Or perhaps it is metaphoric – an imaginary bus that on
Saturday encapsulates two vitamin scientists and on Sunday bears a cargo
of handmaidens to Hollywood.
The bus is an attempt to grasp the unthinkable, of course: one day we’re
riding along on the highway; the next, we plunge out of sight. Who knows
who might be sitting beside us? Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox’s
seatmate was Watergate counsel Sam Dash. Lawrence Welk’s trumpeter and his
accordion player played a duet out the door. The queen of the Netherlands
and the king of the frozen french fry left the party together. The
editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists went off with the
lead guitarist for a rock group called the Blasters. I clipped them all.
The New York Times comes each morning in a blue plastic wrapper, and never
fails to deliver news of the important dead. Every day is new; every day
is fraught with significance. I arrange my cup of tea, prop up my
slippers. I open the not-yet-smudged pages of newsprint. Obituaries are
history as it is happening. I know one of …
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Dead Beat
by Marilyn Johnson Excerpted by permission.
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HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-06-075875-9
