Old man Sharp’s lawyers had lodged a multimillion-dollar damage suit against the dye manufacturer, a case that would probably drag on for three years and then be settled out of court. No matter; the suit provided a forum from which to make the public aware that the fault—the totally temporary fault, the completely harmless fault—had not been that of the Sharp Company.
Nonetheless, Sharp stock had tumbled sharply on the Big Board. It had since made up less than half the original drop. The cereals themselves had shown a sudden dip in sales but had since made up most of the ground that had been lost after Zingers showed its treacherous red face. Sharp’s All-Grain Blend, in fact, was doing better than ever before.
So there was nothing wrong here, right?
Wrong. So wrong.
The Sharp Cereal Professor was what was wrong. The poor guy would never be able to make a comeback. After the scare come the laughs, and the Professor, with his sober mien and his schoolroom surroundings, had been literally laughed to death.
George Carlin, in his nightclub routine: “Yeah, it’s a crazy world. Crazy world.” Carlin bends his head over his mike for a moment, meditating, and then looks up again. “The Reagan guys are doing their campaign shit on TV, right? Russians are getting ahead of us in the arms race. The Russians are turning out missiles by the thousands, right? So Jimmy gets on TV to do one of his spots, and he says, ‘My fellow Americans, the day the Russians get ahead of us in the arms race will be the day the youth of America shits red.’ ”
Big laugh from the audience.
“So Ronnie gets on the phone to Jimmy, and he says, ‘Mr.
President, what did Amy have for breakfast?’”
A gigantic laugh from the audience. Carlin pauses. The real punchline is then delivered in a low, insinuating tone:
“Nooope . . . nothing wrong here.”
The audience roars its approval, applauds wildly. Carlin shakes his head sadly. “Red shit, man. Wow. Dig on it awhile.”
That was the problem. George Carlin was the problem. Bob Hope was the problem. Johnny Carson was the problem. Steve Martin was the problem. Every barbershop wit in America was the problem.
And then, consider this: Sharp stock had gone down nine and had only rebounded four and a quarter. The shareholders were going to be hollering for somebody’s head. Let’s see . . . whose do we give them? Who had the bright idea of the Sharp Cereal Professor in the first place? How about those guys as the most eligible? Never mind the fact that the Professor had been on for four years before the Zingers debacle. Never mind the fact that when the Sharp Cereal Professor (and his cohorts the Cookie Sharpshooter and George and Gracie) had come on the scene, Sharp stock had been three and a quarter points lower than it was now.
Never mind all that. Mind this instead: Just the fact, just the public announcement in the trades that Ad Worx had lost the Sharp account—just that would probably cause shares to bob up another point and a half to two points. And when a new ad campaign actually began, investors would take it as a sign that the old woes were finally behind the company, and the stock might creep up another point.
Of course, Vic thought, stirring Sweet ’n Low into his coffee, that was only theory. And even if the theory turned out to be true, both he and Roger believed that a short-run gain for Sharp would be more than offset if a new ad campaign, hastily thrown together by people who didn’t know the Sharp Company as he and Roger did, or the competitive cereal market in general, didn’t do the job.
And suddenly that new slant, that fresh angle, popped into his mind. It came unbidden and unexpected. His coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth and his eyes widened. In his mind he saw two men—perhaps him and Roger, perhaps old man Sharp and his ageing kid—filling in a grave, Their spades were flying. A lantern flickered fitfully in the windy night. Rain was drizzling down. These corporate sextons threw an occasional furtive glance behind them. It was a burial by night, a covert act performed in the darkness. They were burying the Sharp Cereal Professor in secret, and that was wrong.
“Wrong,” he muttered aloud.
Sure it was. Because if they buried him in the dead of night, he could never say what he