The Thomas Berryman Number

An old air conditioner on the attic floor threw off water like an ice cube. The cold drops splashed down on Berryman’s crew cut.

He rapped on the door three or four times and called out Bert Poole’s name in a loud, clear voice. Then, when there was no answer, he pulled the hook out of the rotting door frame and walked inside to investigate for himself.

The back shed held the odor of a cellar full of bad apples. It got worse as Berryman passed into the kitchen. It was as if a horse was dead somewhere. Maybe mice behind the stove, Berryman thought.

There was no one in the apartment. In fact, there was hardly anything there. There were unpaid bills in the kitchen: Southern Bell; Electric; Cain-Sloan Department Stores. Cain-Sloan was threatening to repossess furniture from Poole.

A blackseated toilet was clogged, and the bathroom smelled like an outhouse.

A brownstained, blue-striped mattress was the main living room furniture. That and a chintzy brown vinyl recliner stood out in the room. One tall lamp with a picture of Martin Luther King safety-pinned to its shade was standing next to the front door.

There were looseleaf papers scattered all over the floor, and there was a leather traveling bag, the kind of expensive carryall that athletes bring to basketball games.

Berryman made himself comfortable against the wall. He sat on the gritty mattress, and held the leather bag in his lap.

It was filled with balled striped shirts and Ivy League–style ties; there were some boxer shorts and crusty socks. There was a stenciled T-shirt that said UNCLE BERT LOVES YOU. At the bottom of the bag, folded in a pair of chinos, he found a long .44 magnum pistol. Berryman set it out on the mattress.

As he waited for Poole, he read what had been written on some of the looseleaf papers.

One neatly handwritten page started:

My name is Bertram Poole. I was born in Memphis in 1948. My parents are Southern Baptist. Very good Xtians. Very good people…

Other papers were litanies of sentimental observations about different types of Americans. There were also passages about life in what Poole called the South of America.

One curious juxtaposition read:

My dad is a professor at Vanderbilt University. Once, he sent me to Baylor University. I was really too slow to keep up with the fast, mathematical people there. I think Dad pulled strings to get me accepted. He didn’t want me to miss out on my puberty rites.

In 1966

Time

magazine named me Man of the Year. I was the “25 and under generation.”

Another page started:

I

would not like to die of loneliness. I think people may have done that. But no thank you.

Sometimes, I feel I am unconnected with the world. I’ve either dreamed or read of people bumping into other people in crowds. To make certain they were connected. I’ve never actually done this. But I’ve thought about it enough times.

Berryman read the next paper several times.

I am obsessed with the idea of killing an important man.

I am also preoccupied with getting even with Mayor Horn. He turns out to be another heartless thug. People deserve better than that phony. That carbon copy.

He has life by the tail People by the tail, too.

I talked to Dad about obsession. Not about specifics of course, just in general.

He says that all great men are, what you might call, obsessed. He doesn’t say that I’m a great man. He tells me not to worry about it.

We went to the Divinity School cafeteria one time and ate with a very famous man in the economics department. “Yes, young Bert,” he said to me, “I am very obsessed with statistics.”