Lightning Rods - By Helen DeWitt Page 0,101

that the program offers genuine opportunities to the right individuals. What’s more, the successful marriage of a former lightning rod and one of the country’s richest men, a self-confessed heavy lightning rod user, shows that the facility is not necessarily damaging to the private lives of participants. And even the bitterest enemies of the program admit that the sex scandals of the late twentieth century seem to be a thing of the past. The lightning rods achieved exactly what Walter hoped they would achieve: They took the lid off the pressure cooker. Insiders at the Department of Homeland Security, moreover, have voiced unqualified admiration for this safeguard to our imperilled democracy.

On the other hand, the successful lightning rods were all pretty exceptional individuals. Joe’s original quest for the woman in a thousand was an apt one. He might have added to that a quest for the man in a thousand who could see the work in the same light: In spite of several media campaigns to re-educate the public, most men continue to be uncomfortable with women in their family making this kind of contribution to the corporate environment. Critics argued that the vast numbers of women involved in the program inevitably placed pressure on people who are not exceptional and couldn’t be expected to be. In fact, some people took this to the extreme of arguing that it should never have been decriminalized in the first place.

There is a streak of Puritanism in the American psyche that goes right straight back to the Pilgrims, and that streak has been an unmitigated blessing to the American criminal since time immemorial. What these critics fail to recognize is that if a demand exists for a service, and you criminalize that service, the only people who benefit are organized crime. As it happened, however, Joe was working hand in glove with Walter Pike, and as everyone knows, organized crime doesn’t stand a chance when the FBI is on the job.

Joe had stopped worrying about the legalities, or rather he had stopped thinking he might one day have to start worrying about the legalities, as soon as he and Walter shook hands on the deal. And in fact Joe had nothing to worry about.

Walter had nothing but praise for Joe’s outreach work among the Christian community. He was equally supportive of Joe’s plans to develop a service for people who were uncomfortable with the concept of a lightning rod. He reiterated that Joe had nothing to worry about, and as it turned out Walter was as good as his word.

To insist on a strict observance of the written law over the laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger would be absurdly sacrificing the end to the means—nobody puts these things better than Thomas Jefferson, and Walter was second to none in admiration for our third President. Still, there’s no point going around looking for trouble. Nobody at the FBI likes breaking the law unnecessarily. In the long term, if inappropriate legislation happens to be in place, the simplest thing is to just get rid of it and replace it with something feasible. It’s just a matter of knowing who to call.

There are pieces of legislation which would leave everyone better off which would be political suicide for a politician to be seen to vote for, let alone propose.

Every politician knows that. Luckily, over the years ways have been found to get around one of the drawbacks of a democratic system. For example, a good way to get around the problem of the vote is to tack the piece of legislation on as a clause in some other piece of legislation, something everyone would want to be seen to vote for, like Hurricane Disaster Relief. Hurricane Disaster Relief is a good example, as a matter of fact, because everyone is going to realize you have to get something like that passed into law with a minimum of delay, you wouldn’t expect someone to hold up a bill like that nitpicking at this or that amendment.

That just leaves the politician who has to put his John Hancock on the actual proposal that is going to get tacked on. A tried-and-true method of getting around this problem is to frame the language of the bill in such a way that it does not specifically mention the thing that would be political suicide. A skilled politician knows how to express himself so that the language will permit a desirable set of events to fall within the law, without allowing it to appear that he anticipated anything of the kind.

If something is in the interests of national security a man with the good of his country at heart will do things he might not do for purely personal gain. A member of Senator Johnson’s staff drew up an amendment relating to Vending Machines and Workplace Stress Reduction, so that it was ready to spring into action at the first suitable opportunity. He included a school milk provision just to be on the safe side.

It sometimes happens that nature is not as dramatic as we might like her to be. For some reason there just weren’t any floods or other natural disasters of a scale to hit the national press. He was beginning to think he was going to have to tack it onto a Fisheries and Forestry act, which was always a possible—sometimes you can get away with slipping the legislation into something so boring you wouldn’t expect anyone to read it. But luckily a small hurricane swept in out of the Gulf of Mexico in the nick of time. The Vending Machines and School Milk Amendment got quickly added to the Hurricane Ethel Disaster Relief Bill, which was rushed right through out of concern for the victims of Hurricane Ethel.

There’s an old Chinese saying: Politics is the art of the possible.

That’s true as far as it goes. But there’s something else that’s important to remember. The father of our country said it best, so we’ll let George Washington have the last word.

In America anything is possible.

Acknowledgments

David Levene introduced me to The Producers. Mel Brooks wrote “Springtime for Hitler.” I’m especially grateful to Jeffrey Yang and the staff at New Directions for their enthusiastic support, and to Edward Orloff for excellent business advice: I wish more agents were like him.

Copyright © 2011 by Helen DeWitt

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

An excerpt from Lightning Rods was originally published in n+1.

e-ISBN: 1978-0-8112-1952-5

Cover design: Steve Attardo / Rodrigo Corral Design

First published clothbound in 2011. First e-book publication 2011.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DeWitt, Helen, 1957–

Lightning rods / Helen DeWitt. —1st American cloth ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8112-1943-3 (hardcover: acid-free paper)

1. Corporate culture—United States—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3554.E92945L54 2012

813'.54—dc22

2011010644

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

1. Failure Is Always the Best Way to Learn

2. The Numbers Game

3. Trial Balloons

4. As Fur as You Kin Go

5. Troubleshooting

6. A Fine Romance

7. A Higher Power

8. The Future Is Ours

Acknowledgments

Copyright