Chapter 10 from R.M. Dolin’s novel, the Dangling Conversation
WES
“The thing is Mandy, and I speak from incalculable experience, life kicks you in the teeth and mires you in mud, you learn nothing’s as it seems, and is far afield from where it appears to be. One minute you’re skipping down the yellow brick road naively happy, and in an instant, through no fault of your own, you’re in this surreal sort of hell with no power to alter any of the bullshit going down. Another cold hard truth you learn along the way is when you piss the wrong people off, punishment is maliciously without mercy.
“I don’t look it, but I was someone once, not someone you’d know like an athlete or actor, but someone who made a difference, and then, well then, I just happened to be the wrong guy in the wrong moment; and when powerful people need to make their negligence someone else’s fault, any expendable patsy will do. Then boom! In an instant your most cherished dreams are forever banished from existence; that’s the cold hard reality of how this lopsided world turns.
“A dream that dies is worse than death because you’re left languishing in the aftermath; and that’s the God’s honest truth. You ask me about dreams as if we’re owed rainbows and unicorns, and it could be if not for the evils that live in other’s souls. Dark sinister souls devoid of compassion, empathy, or any sense of right and wrong. If I could give you any advice, it’s that you should always look through what you’re being told because the bigger the promise the louder the lie.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here, ya know, not now, and certainly not for the rest of my life; yet here I am and here on this park bench I shall remain. I had a dream once, not much different than yours, a nice double-wide five miles north of Key West and eighty-some miles south of Key Largo in this beautiful retirement village on the Atlantic side of a key; a place called Sunny Side Resort, the kind of place you glide through your final chapters. I rent this place along a canal running through the center of the village where every house has a deck extending into the canal with an impressive fishing boat moored to the side. My plan is to stay for a month to see if I fit in and if me and Florida can come to some kind of understanding. The folks there are amazing, guys would troll down the canal in the morning on their way to fish the bay and just invite me along, they had no idea who I was or even if I fished, I think though, they have unspoken rule that no one should ever be alone. It’s too easy, ya know, becoming isolated, if not for you I’d sit here in silence every night. Just imagine a place where people are all friendly neighbors and actually care about you.
“One night this Polish lady from Buffalo and her husband Carl invite me over for happy hour. She serves this incredible Polish beer, the best beer I ever had, she then tells me all about Dingus Day, which apparently is a huge deal back in Buffalo. In return I tell her about Palinski Day in Chicago. Before you know it, we’re talking about Easter Lamb Cakes and butter molded to look like lambs. Carl’s one lucky-ass dude, even if it does seem he’s got one foot in the grave.
“I like Sunny Side so much I put in an offer on this property at the outer edge of Windy Point where the canal opens up into the bay. I sit there a few mornings to get a feel for the overall vibe while agonizing about whether this will be my final destination. Dawn off the deck is like magic, to my left is a calm bay that boils with fish going after noseeums. Straight out is a sunrise that makes you take pictures because you’ve never seen anything so amazing; the sun cracks over the horizon awakening miles upon miles of calm open water in a way that make you think you’re staring into the face of eternity. In the evening dolphins and sharks come right up the edge of my deck to snack on crabs and all day long the tarpon roll and jump along the canal teasing me to try one more time to hook them.
“I still taste sweet salt air and feel the warm way a sea breeze relaxes weary bones. Death was everywhere though, I mean everyone was either grieving or about to be, and yet, they’re filled with optimistic joy, they’d taken all the shit life could throw at them and survived; everything after that is just happy hour. Sometimes I find myself gazing into the east to see if our hazy smog’s cleared up enough to capture a horizon. But no, no sunrises left in my life, that’s what fate’s decided, because as soon as I got home to start planning my new life, the incident happened, and after that, nothing was ever the same.”
MANDY
“My Dad talked of such things; not always, but there’d be times when he’d go dark. I’d ask Mom about it, but she’d just say to let him be. We were that kind of family, you know, one that pleasantly ignores stuff to avoid uncomfortable conversations. I never knew what triggered it or drove him to such an unsettled state; it was something though, some he kept buried deep inside, a secret that was never exercised. Is that a thing with all guys or are you and my Dad just cut from the same cloth?
“He had this innate sense of right and wrong mixed with this foolish belief he had to stand against injustice. He was strong that way, he used to say a man not willing to lay down his life for you is not worth marrying because he has no core beliefs. This is my struggle with Henry, he doesn’t have core beliefs, nothing at least he’d lay down his life for. He speaks profoundly about philosophy but it’s devoid of wisdom. He says shit like a man must constantly assess situations and adjust based on evolving circumstances; it’s the utter opposite of my Dad.
“Thingswere simpler for you and Dad, your generation knew right from wrong, you knew what you believed, what you were willing to defend and even die for. Our generation’s untested, we’re taught to not have beliefs and because of that we’re fraught with conflict and confusion that feeds an unsettled frustration; it’s ironic really, and it casts us in this continual state of boiling to unrest. We protest this and wage campaigns against that, but what we’re really saying is we’re adrift without moorings or anchors. I wish I knew Henry better; and that’s not really even it, I wish Henry was more like my Dad; more like you.”
WES
“The callous rat bastards killed my dream without conscience, with a cold uncaring zest that seemed like some bizarre form of counting coup. Maybe that’s how it works in the corporate world, but it’s not supposed to be that way in my world. That’s my sin, my naïve belief that in the pursuit of things that benefit humanity, there should be some modicum of nobility. Since you brought up dads, my Dad likes to remind me that only fools and children believe in the nobility of their fellow man, in the end, he says, men always act in their self-interest; and in that pursuit, they don’t give a rat’s ass who they have to screw over. Whether driven by greed, hubris, or survival, they can only be counted on to act toward one constant: their self-interest, everyone and everything else be damned.
“In killing my dream they laid me bare to the emptiness of my void, left to search for meaning or explanation, or even justice, but finding none. Where does one go to question the callousness of corporations or their lack of integrity. Where does one find justice in a world framed by executioners who practice their profession with glee.
“Integrity, or lack thereof, is part and parcel emblematic of the cancerous nature of power and the ease in which it corrupts. A man should be permitted to face his accusers; those who would kill his dream; to look them in the eye and see into the slimy nature of their soul. But that’s not the way the world rolls, there is always the person behind the person who pretends to lend a sympathetic ear, and I’ve spent years trying to sort through who’s the bigger sinner.
“My fault is being born a hundred years too late; a Dakota prairie cowboy talking truth to power, a man not backing down in the face of injustice. My fault is that there is no place in the modern world for relics like me; someone believing honest work is rewarded with honest respect, who honors things like integrity and commitment. The problem I cannot solve is that the world’s run by those who assess each situation and base decisions on what’s expedient and in their self-interest rather than what’s right or in everyone’s best interest.
“Therat bastards exploit the shit out of you when it suits their needs then discard you like leftovers when you’re no longer expedient. A discard, something less than a cigarette butt from a stolen smoke, or the dredges from the bottom of an old bottle of wine. So, sit back my newfound friend as I tell you a tale of Machiavellian betrayal that’ll challenge all you have been brainwashed to believe; and more importantly, to trust.”
MANDY
“Now you’re channeling my Dad and to be honest, it’s a bit weird. He was a tool & die guy in a tool & die shop; small potatoes huh. No big-time doctor or powerful politician, he freaken machined and stamped metal parts; blue collar through and through, all the way down to the cans of Coors he drank on weekends. But he was special, and his crew felt the same, they’d be over playing poker and would call him Houdini – said he was a magician when it came to the things he could make his machines do. Everything was good then, hard days that gave way to relaxing weekends; he always spent time with me and Mom, then back to the grind on Monday.
“Sometimes they’d make him work double shifts for weeks on end with no days off. But it wasn’t all bad, once a contract milestone had been met, they’d give him an entire week off; and he wouldn’t waste it. No sir, he’d been in the kitchen each morning I came down fixing my breakfast and allowing Mom to sleep in, then he’d drive me to school in his old step-side Studebaker pickup. My girlfriends were jealous, they never said anything, but I knew they were. Not because I came to school in a rusted-up Studebaker, but because he would drive right up to the front of my high school to drop me off, there was no getting let out a block away like they made their Mom’s do. Lots of boys were interested in Dad’s old truck, but not the kind of guys you’d bring home; at least that’s what I thought then. In retrospect, they were probably exactly the guys I should have brought home for my Dad to meet.
“I was just about to graduate when things went south, a self-absorbed brat not interested in anything unrelated to me. I never fully understood what happened, and mostly I try not to think about it; sometimes though, I have regrets. I could see Dad pulling away, first a little, then a little bit more. What I’ve reconstructed in my postmortem is that there was this defense contract, a huge deal for his small tool & die company; they overpromised and relied too much on the magic only my Dad could deliver. As deadlines came and went, with fines and penalties mounting, they pushed him and pressured him until he was past exhaustion. They used him, then kicked him to the curb like an empty tuna can. For years they pretended to care about him, but when the pressures of profit got too big, he became expendable, just another consumable in their production run.
“Why he didn’t quit, I don’t know. Why is it men feel such a sense of loyalty and obligation to their jobs? With his talent he could have worked anywhere; until he couldn’t. I’m not sure what happened, but he did finally quit, or was fired, I don’t know, it’s always shrouded in mystery. What I do know is that he never worked at another tool & die job again. That really weighed on him, something from which he never really recovered and was certainly never the same. I’ve never cared so much about a job that I’d let it ruin me, I mean, it’s just a job. This is where Henry might be right, a little context would have gone a long way to helping my Dad.
“I never said sorry, never spoke about my admiration, not for anything spectacular; I mean he never walked on the moon or won a world series, but he was my Dad, and a damn good Dad at that. I wish things had been different, what I wouldn’t give to comfort him, to lay beside him with my head on his chest as he retells one of his many stories one more time; to make the hell they put him through just some small amount milder. But you can’t go back, so the darkness of his darkness is now a dark cloud that blocks my sun. I wish-, I wish Henry could see life through my history, I mean he could be right, but his wisdom is a wisdom he didn’t earn; he lacks the scars that would otherwise balance his beliefs. I would like to ask him to explain what happens when a man is pushed to the point where he becomes unrecognizable to himself, and then have him enlighten me with context.
“What this world needs are more tool & die workers; men and women who make magic on their machines. Fine folks who can be relied on, and who in return can reasonably expect the world to act with integrity and show some respect.”
WES
“I respect your Dad, he understood about setting aside what’s best for himself to meet higher obligations, like family and society. Unfortunately, such men are dinosaurs heading toward extinction; it’s a shame, a real sad-ass pity. You nailed it though; the problem comes down to wavering commitments to necessary truths. You can’t completely fault guys like Henry though, they’re the output of corporations and governments being allowed to abuse and exploit workers without consequence. Not that standing up against wrongs ever got me anything other than pain and suffering, but ya have to be willing to say to hell with consequence. The young guys though, they’re cut from a softer cloth; they’ve been trained to take whatever abuse is tossed on them regardless of how irrational or toxic things become. They strip once strong men of dignity and self-respect until they’re hollowed into a shell of shallow compliance to the point where right and wrong cease having utility, or even expectation; and that’s a shame, a real sad-ass shame.
“It was the same for me as your Dad, Nadia was back in my life when things turned south, but she’s a story for another night. I was struggling with my job at the State Department; they’d lost sight of their mission and in this super surreal sense, their morality. I started there to serve my country but over time, it became this deal where if you didn’t swear allegiance to left-wing ideals and progressive politics, they made your life a living hell. I’m as apolitical as they come, but that didn’t matter; things got so toxic I dreaded going to bed at night because all I had to look forward to was waking up to even more toxic shit.
“I wasn’t going to quit though, I figured on gutting it out until retirement, but then the unthinkable happened. There was this woman, isn’t that how all good stories start; she was a very prominent and powerful politician, the wife of someone even more powerful and prominent. She was caught stealing classified documents, something anyone else would be tossed in jail for; but what’s her punishment for treason and espionage, absolutely nothing, not a God-damn thing. And it wasn’t just her, it was the culture, all the big wigs circled the wagons to protect her; even those who could and should step in to preserve some sense of justice abdicated. That’s the horrible truth about how the world rolls, those in power do whatever they want, break any law they want, commit any act they want regardless of who gets harmed, and it’s just not right.
“Ultimately each of us has to decide what we’re gonna do? Henry might consider the context and weigh that against the need for a paycheck, but I can’t, it’s not the calculus of a Dakota prairie cowboy. I tried, I kept my head down falsely assuming I could step outside the toxic culture, but it’s not possible, not when the culture demands allegiance. So, I quit, like anyone would; the bottom line is there’s no context when it comes to a nation’s security, you miss handle documents, people get hurt, and the guilty should be held accountable; but that’s not how the world rolls. I never regretted my decision to leave, even in the aftermath of all that followed.
“I moved over to the food and drug administration and had been there about a year, the work was good; I mean overseeing the safety of people’s health is a much different ballgame than overseeing the security of nations, but I had purpose. It felt like I was doing good and making a difference; that’s important, ya know; to feel like you matter in the grinding gears of government. There was a freshness at FDA, and I’d recaptured my eagerness for work; I can’t say why, but that’s important to men like me. And most important, the place wasn’t toxic, at least not like the State Department.
“Even though I was a solid four years from retirement, I was already collecting brochures for my southern Florida dream. Nadia was keen on the Keys, I mean it wasn’t the south of France, but warm water beaches are warm water beaches, but, as I said, that’s a story for another night.
MANDY
“I left home during Dad’s troubles; eighteen and all grown up, ready to see the world. I kept in touch, but to be honest I mostly talked to Mom; she wasn’t one to burden me with whatever was going on at home. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, children grow up and move on, create new worlds with new world problems. Are we supposed to stay prisoners of the past, and what could I have done anyway; once you get caught in the cogs of life there really isn’t much anyone can do. When I got divorced, there was no medication Mom could put on my pain, she couldn’t shoulder my sorrow or alleviate the many tragic downsides I had to endure; somethings you just have to get through on your own.
“I’m not saying you have to get through stuff alone, and it’s certainly comforting to have a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to, but in the end, that doesn’t change the journey you have to endure. It’s like running a marathon, there’s all kinds of people along the race urging you on or providing drinks and snacks to keep your energy up; it would be hard if not impossible to finish without their help, but in the end, you still have to run 26.2 miles on your own and all their support doesn’t eliminate a single step.
“I don’t know what I could have done to help my Dad, but the one thing I do know is that he wanted me to get on with my life. He wanted me out there building my future; he told me so many times. But what if he didn’t really mean it, what if what he was really saying was that he wanted his little girl to come home, to make his life feel complete and meaningful once more? I don’t know, yet I feel guilty; maybe not guilt, that implies I did something immoral or criminal and I didn’t. It’s just that I get this sadness sometimes, a sense I should have stayed home longer. I mean look at how things turned out, certainly I would have done no worse staying home till I was older. I don’t know, I suppose none of us does. We’re probably not supposed to. My Dad had his shit, you have yours, and I have mine, who doesn’t, that’s the takeaway.”
WES
“I saw it coming, I really did, my downfall was failing to see it for what it was. It’s like watching a dust devil in the distance not knowing it’s a category five tornado bearing down on you. I’d been tasked with doing an approval analysis for a new vaccine, but not just any vaccine, it was like nothing that had ever been proposed; a very different delivery platform, one destined to be controversial. During the pandemic, big Pharma and big government discovered the endless stream of profit potential available in vaccines; like California gold to the forty-niner’s, an endless supply of nuggets waiting to be had. Think about the annual flu shot that maybe five million people take if you can beg and coerce them; contrast that with a vaccine you can mandate three-hundred-and-fifty million people take; perhaps multiple times a year if you set up a convincing marketing strategy. There are billions, even trillions in the new mandated vaccine industry.
“It’s little wonder every pharmaceutical research lab is racing to not only hit the market early, but with such a splash their vaccine becomes number one; trillions, just waiting to be had. So, it falls on me to conduct a review of the blind study data and generate a statistical summary or the results, with special emphasis on notable side effects. I’m under tremendous pressure from the bigwigs to wrap things up and finalize my report, and because of that, I’m working long days that stretch deep into the night. I’m pouring over the data one night and start sensing something odd, not consciously at first, and not having any real clue what it might be; something just feels out of place. As an engineer, I’m fluent in the language of numbers and how they speak in absolute truths. In some situations, numbers are expected to be uniform and in others objectively random; you expect numbers to cluster around certain asymptotes and to always contains outliers; this data had those behaviors, but something about how they presented caused me to dig deeper; that’s were things went off the rail.
“The more I dig the more unsettled I get and first thing the next morning, I brief management about my concerns and ask what I should do. They don’t seem worried, which is odd; in fact, they’re dismissively nonchalant over the whole deal and flippantly instruct me to send my data file back to the pharmaceutical company and let them explain things. So, I reach out to my pharmaceutical company contact and we start swapping data files back and forth, which is another something that’s odd because the FDA never shares internal files with drug companies. If Big Pharma learns how we analyze data, they’ll figure out ways to game the system.
“What me and my pharmaceutical company contact discover rather quickly is that the data he filed with his application for approval, is not the data I’m analyzing. At this point he and I understand we’re staring at Pandora’s box about to have a peek inside. Neither of us is sure what to do but agreed in a mutually assured destruction kind of way, we need to have each other’s back. Within hours my pharmaceutical contact, in complete cover your ass mode, produces irrefutable evidence that he properly filed the correct data, which means the problem is somewhere inside the FDA; and by problem, I mean likely criminal activity.
“I report back to management thinking this is no big deal, now that I have the proper file I can complete my analysis. Apparently though, I’m not seeing the bigger picture because management is all spun up about the preliminary report they pressured me to release two days earlier; a report based on the faulty data. Turns out this is huge deal because once out there, it quickly goes up the food chain and now can’t be retracted; there will always be a trail leading back to whoever or whatever was responsible for the screw-up.
“As you might imagine, an investigation is opened, and a narrative quietly develops portraying me as suspect number one. With trillions at stake and corruption the obvious catalyst, these are troubling times for me, very troubling times.
“The investigation’s intense and drags on for months; the immense scrutiny I’m under is only countered by the methodical way I’m being isolated, left out on an island with no idea what’s really going on. All I have is management assurance that everything’s okay and soon the matter will be resolved. But it isn’t, weeks turn into months and my sense of isolation intensifies. Finally, the internal investigation concludes that I’ve done nothing wrong. Suddenly the dark cloud of suspicion that had been hanging over me for months is lifted; or so I think. They wouldn’t tell me where or how the data was changed, and to be honest, I don’t really care; all that matters is that I’ve been cleared.
“There’s always another shoe to drop though, never forget that, and when you’re at the bottom of the food chain, that shoe drops on you. Back in the day between high school and college I worked as a plumber, there was this old guy on the crew who takes me aside one day and says, “you only need to know two things, son, to be plumber, shit flows downhill and paydays on Friday.” Well at the FDA, shit definitely flows downhill, and it’s about to start piling around me.
“The deal with any organization, especially a government one, is their need to project an aura of infallibility, which means when they screw up, someone needs to be sacrificed; and for this negligent malfeasance, that someone is me. A deep dive into the causal factors for why my data was faulty reveals that the software the FDA purchased for converting industry data files into FDA formats, based on a lowest bid contract, had errors that went undetected for years.
“That should further exonerate me, right, only it doesn’t; suddenly the narrative shifts and has less to do with me and my data and more about the preliminary report I’d been pressured to release and the Pandora Box that opened. If this was just about my data, they’d easily fix things by un-approving the application and rerunning the analysis; only they can’t because that would call attention to their much larger screw up. My analysis can’t be fixed because issuing a revised report calls attention to years’ worth of the FDA approving drugs based on faulty data due to the error in their file formatting software. So, nothing is done; imagine the shitstorm that would result and the impact it would have on the nation’s sense of health care security if it came to light that countless drugs were approved based on faulty data. The lawsuits alone would be staggering, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg because the public panic cause by their sudden lack of trust in all drugs is incalculable.
“There are only two options the bigwigs for protecting their lofty salaries and bonuses, admit negligence and do what they can to recover, which would be the honorable thing, or cover-up their maleficence by burning a sacrificial scapegoat at the stake. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know they choose option two, and I’m the goat. When powerful people come after you, they don’t just destroy the piece of you they need to vanquish, its complete annihilation, the full nuclear option. For their plan to work, they can’t just quietly fire me, or force me into an early retirement; they need a dramatic and vengeful exorcism, something that destroys me to the point I can not only never work again, but that so no one would ever believe me if I tried to fight back.
“Like you pointed out, your Dad and me are cut from a different cloth and when confronted with injustice, loss of livelihood, and decimation of my professional reputation, I fight back; and that’s when they bring the hammer down. They hit me with an entire ensemble package, most of which I expected, things like saying what I did was intentional or that I was the negligent one. The piece of their ensemble I didn’t see coming was getting a psychologist to paint me as some sort of unhinged wacko capable of lashing out in dangerous ways and fabricating accusations; while nothing could have been farther from the truth, when you’re in power, you control the narrative and taking prisoners is not an option when casualties are required. The thing is, they need to snuff me out in a way I never resurface regardless of how insignificant my role in this offense was; the longer I’m around the more I inspire other timid travelers, and that does not benefit those in power.
“They take everything, leaving me with no means to recover, restart, or rebuild. They destroy my professional reputation, shame me in front of my peers, and ensure I’m unemployable; no one in government or industry wants anything to do with me when they’re finished. I’m discredited to the point that even if I go public with what happened, no one will believe me. Along with everything else, they take my Florida dream, and that was the harshest nail they drove into my coffin. But the final chapter is far from finished and when the truth of what really happened is finally told, justice will have its reckoning. Until then, this park bench is all I have; at the end of the day, Mandy, a dream that dies is worse than death because you’re left to languish in the aftermath.”
