In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien
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—J. W. Appel and G. W. Beebe (Professors of Psychiatry)
It wasn’t just the war that made him what he was. That’s too easy. It was everything—his whole nature… But I can’t stress enough that he was always very well behaved, always thoughtful toward others, a nice boy. At the funeral he just couldn’t help it. I wanted to yell, too. Even now I’ll go out to my husband’s grave and stare at that stupid stone and yell Why, why, why!
—Eleanor K. Wade
You know, I think politics and magic were almost the same thing for him. Transformations—that’s part of it—trying to change things. When you think about it, magicians and politicians are basically control freaks. [Laughter] I should know, right?
—Anthony L. (Tony) Carbo
The capacity to appear to do what is manifestly impossible will give you a considerable feeling of personal power and can help make you a fascinating and amusing personality.15
—Robert Parrish (The Magician’s Handbook)
Pouring out affection, [Lyndon Johnson] asked—over and over, in every letter, in fact, that survives—that the affection be reciprocated.16
—Robert A. Caro (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)
There surely never lived a man with whom love was a more critical matter than it is with me.17
—Woodrow Wilson
When his father died, John hardly even cried, but he seemed very, very angry. I can’t blame him. I was angry, too. I mean—you know—I kept asking myself, Why? It didn’t make sense. His father had problems with alcohol, that’s true, but there was something else beneath it, like this huge sadness I never understood. The sadness caused the drinking, not the other way around. I think that’s why his father ended up going into the garage that day … Anyway, John didn’t cry much. He threw a few tantrums, I remember that. Yelling and so on. At the funeral. Awfully loud yelling.
—Eleanor K. Wade
After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment. Physiological arousal continues unabated.18
—Judith Herman (Trauma and Recovery)
It wasn’t insomnia exactly. John could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but then, bang, he’d wake up after ten or twenty minutes. He couldn’t stay asleep. It was as if he were on guard against something, tensed up, waiting for … well, I don’t know what.
—Eleanor K. Wade
Sometimes I am a bit ashamed of myself when I think how few friends I have amidst a host of acquaintances. Plenty of people offer me their friendship; but, partly because I am reserved and shy, and partly because I am fastidious and have a narrow, uncatholic taste in friends, I reject the offer in almost every case; and then am dismayed to look about and see how few persons in the world stand near me and know me as I am.19
—Woodrow Wilson
Show me a politician, I’ll show you an unhappy childhood. Same for magicians.
—Anthony L. (Tony) Carbo
My mother was a saint.20
—Richard M. Nixon
I remember Kathy telling me how he’d wake up screaming sometimes. Foul language, which I won’t repeat. In fact, I’d rather not say anything at all.
—Patricia S. Hood
For some reason Mr. Wade threw away that old iron teakettle. I fished it out of the trash myself. I mean, it was a perfectly good teakettle.
—Ruth Rasmussen
The fucker did something ugly.
—Vincent R. (Vinny) Pearson
Vinny’s the theory man. I deal in facts. The case is wide open.21
—Arthur J. Lux (Sheriff, Lake of the Woods County)
12. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965; reprint, New York: Perennial Library, 1990), pp. 21–22.
13. Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 7.
14. J. W. Appel and G. W. Beebe, “Preventive Psychiatry: An Epidemiological Approach,” Journal of the American Medical Association 131 (1946), p. 1470.
15. Robert Parrish, The Magician’s Handbook (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1944), p. 10.
16. Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 228.
17. Woodrow Wilson, in Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (1948; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 310.
18. Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p. 35.
19. Woodrow Wilson, in Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition, pp. 310–311.
20. Richard M. Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), p. 1088.
21. Yes, and I’m a theory man too. Biographer, historian, medium—call me what you want—but even after four years of hard labor I’m left with little more than supposition and possibility. John Wade was a magician; he did not give away many tricks. Moreover, there are certain mysteries that weave through life itself, human motive and human desire. Even much of what might appear to be fact in this narrative—action, word, thought—must ultimately be viewed as a diligent but still imaginative reconstruction of events. I have tried, of course, to be faithful to the evidence. Yet evidence is not truth. It is only evident. In any case, Kathy Wade is forever missing, and if you require solutions, you will have to look beyond these pages. Or read a different book.
When he was a boy, John Wade’s hobby was magic. In the basement, where he practiced in front of a stand-up mirror, he made his mother’s silk scarves change color. He cut his father’s best tie with scissors and restored it whole. He placed a penny in the palm of his hand, made his hand into a fist, made the penny into a white mouse.
This was not