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{and that's the truth} dixon hearne They say I’m lying, but I’m not. I never told a lie in my life, and that’s the truth. It’s Ruthie mostly, her going behind me like some kind of reporter and retracting everything I say. It’s been like this ever since Carly Simon wrote that song about me. You know the one, the song people say she wrote about Warren Beatty. That song was about me from start to end. But I never made too much of it because there’s just no use toying with emotions. Besides, a person like me hasn’t got time to deal with trivial things. My work at the White House and the Pentagon keep me pretty busy. I’m on the road quite a bit, or on my way to Paris or Moscow – or Rome to meet with the Pope. I was just there last month – Rome, that is – to help the new Pope out on a matter. You know, he calls on me when he needs advice on how to handle certain things. I don’t mind a bit, seeing as how I get the best room in the Vatican and meals thrown in. I just consider it payment on a ticket to you know where. I had to cut my trip short, though, when I got a call from Hollywood. Stephen Spielberg – you might have heard of him. He’d seen me on stage a few years back – in New York, you know – and wanted to pitch me a role in his new movie. I must say it was a surprise, but I flew out to talk to the man. It was a big blockbuster of a movie, all about the life of Albert Einstein, and I knew right off I was his man. I don’t mean to brag, but Albert and me go way back. I helped him out with his work before the War, when him and Oppenheimer was still floundering around trying to find a way to split the atom to make a bomb. It was actually my idea, but the two put up such a fuss I just let them have the glory. What good’s a favor if you take credit for it, I always say. I’m just not one to gloat. That’s how come you won’t find my face in any of his pictures. Poor Albert. What a wonderful man to be so slow. Oh well, that’s water under the bridge, but I can’t wait to get started on that movie. I asked for that Stockard Channing to be my co-star. She’s got a smart mouth, but I have to say she’s a good actress. Only, I’m drawing the line on any bedroom scenes. Not that I’m not up to it, just that I’m a private person and always have been. You might have heard about me turning down the role of Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar. I had the body for it, but I just didn’t want to be typecast like what happened to Marlon Brando. Not that I have a thing against him, mind you. In fact, I was his first acting coach, back in Michigan. It was the summer Joe McCarthy started that campaign to burn all the Pinkos at the stake. I had some time on my hands – between military missions – and Marlon needed my help. He thanked me till the day he died, you know, for getting him into the picture business and off the streets. Oh, I knew them all in those days, all the hot shots and movers in the business. My phone rang day and night with calls from the coast. I still regret turning down the role of Moses, but that’s another story. Just know that Charlie Heston was not my dear friend Cecil B.’s first choice. I was just too busy with White House and FBI matters right then. My FBI days – I’m still in, you know – were mostly working with the Air Force on national security things. How I got involved was kind of a fluke, really. After I reported my UFO encounter back in 1948, it was clear to Washington that we’d better do something. That was my second encounter, not the one when I was taken hostage. That was later and a bit scary. I know you heard it on the radio or saw it in the papers. They had pictures of six or seven spaceships flying around the White House. 1952, it was. I can tell you to the month and week because I was right there inside one of them things myself. The Congress was meeting day and night at that time, fighting with the Pentagon over what to do in Korea. Some said blow it off the map, but I didn’t agree and spoke up. And Ike agreed with me, naturally, but you can see why the spaceships were buzzing the capitol. They wanted to see if WWIII was about to start. Anyway, I stayed on with the Air Force a while, to help them look into things. I even gave the project a name: Project Bluebook. You might have heard of that, too, with all the weirdoes and crackpot reports in those days. That’s why I wouldn’t appear in any of them outer space movies for Hollywood, on account of my being undercover and all. Oh, I was offered many a role, what with all my inside knowledge about things, but I turned them down flat. Especially after the CIA came knocking on my door wanting me to help my country. How could I say no when they kept on begging. And next thing I knew, they put me in charge of the whole shebang and flew me off to Russia to look for double agents and military secrets. I’d never been so tired in my life, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t mind one bit conversing with Kruschev. No sir. Nikita wasn’t half bad if you knew how to handle him, although I didn’t appreciate him taking off his smelly shoe to pound the podium and shake it in our faces. I let him know it later, too, on our ski trip. Now, you’re not gonna believe this, but that’s the very week-end I met Jonas – the man that discovered the polio vaccine. Just to let you in on a little secret, it wasn’t him that discovered it at all. It was me. Jonas called me up insisting that I spend the rest of my vacation at his place, when all he really wanted was to pick my brain. He’d been trying to develop a cure for bone spurs and bunions – something that would melt them completely away – so many people were decrepit with them. Especially women. Anyway, I finally agreed, but only on the condition that I have full run of his laboratory. I had a natural talent for medical research, and before you know it I’d put together a concoction that cured tuberculosis. You’d know that if you read the medical magazines. But that wasn’t all I came up with. Have you ever heard of gel caps? That was my idea, too, only there was a mix-up at the patent office, and a drug company laid claim to it. Naturally I filed a law suit, ready to take it all the way to the Supreme Court, but my lawyers – who ain’t half as smart as me – said to let it go. So, I packed up and headed back to D.C. and my White House work, and Jonas later got his face on the cover of Time and Look magazines, along with his syringe and a big grin. You’ll find me in the medical journals, where us researchers belong – if the Secret Service hasn’t had my name and pictures cut out. When I get to feeling low sometimes, I look back at all the things I’ve done. Sometimes, I take out my hula hoop – which, by the way, I invented – and just act silly. It makes me think of the day back in Hollywood when Walt Disney and I came up with a wonderful idea to build a place where people could act silly all they wanted. He insisted on calling it Ernest Teller (my alias) Park, but I’ve never been one to blow my own horn. No sir, I told him we would call it Disneyland, and that was that. And you can still act silly there 365 days a year. I guess I’ve been blessed, what with so many important people in my life, but to tell you the truth, I like the simple folks, too. Simple folks are just people who don’t want the microphone. And they don’t try to steal your thunder, either. That Mother Teresa was a simple person, and she sure didn’t have a pack of rabid, story-hungry reporters barking at her heels the way poor Princess Diana did. I think it’s because she wasn’t a very snappy dresser. Or have any affairs. But if she had been a snappier dresser or had a little something on the side, the whole world might still be prostrate with grief for her, too. Not that I had a thing against the Princess. In fact, I was the very person that advised her to break away from the pack. I knew when I went to their wedding that her and Charlie were ill-matched – and said so. But it was only later, when she came to me again for advice, that she took it and finally quit the royal family. Naturally, I had some explaining to do to Elizabeth – her being my old friend and boyhood sweetheart. To this day, she can’t keep her hands off me when we’re in the same room. That’s why I only show up for funerals and public events anymore. I’m still knee-deep in CIA work, none of which I can share with you right now, but I can tell you there’s a lot of visitors here trying to phone home – if you get my drift. And that’s why I stay with the CIA. Somebody with good sense has to be in charge or next thing you know it’ll look like the Congress. Not to say they’re all nuts over there, just the ones that start with letters A to Z. Oh yeah, and Teddy Kennedy, too. I wouldn’t say a word against Teddy if it wasn’t for that time he bit me when I went to Boston to help his daddy out with a financial deal. Old Joe Kennedy was a smart business man, but he got himself into trouble one time and called me to come bail him out. And being a better businessman than him – and smarter – I just called in a favor or two and bada-bing bada-boom – matter settled. Old Joe kept his side business, and I flew off to Cuba for Carnival. And I came back to the biggest mess you can imagine, what with Hitler all over the newspaper. That man stole the specs for a new tank I developed for the Pentagon and then used it against us. You might have heard about it – he called it the Panzer. I resolved right then and there to sue him, too, after the war was over, but he managed to dodge it, as you can well see. Oh Lord, here she comes – Ruthie Legree, with my afternoon dose. I wish I could talk to you a little longer. Oh, there’s so much to tell, but Ruthie’ll come right behind me and take back every word of it. I think it makes her feel important – if not a bit jealous – being around someone as famous as me, even though I never was one to blow my own horn. I just let her enjoy it while she can. She still tries to hop my bones every time I come to full stop. But I’ll tell you once more before you go. Lean in close. Next time you look up in the sky at night and wonder if there’s anybody out there – there is. Only a few of us know that for a fact, and we ain’t talking. |
