The Other Horseman Page 12

"You gotta have poison gas! Plenty. In storage. On hand. Ready to use. And you gotta have soldiers and aviators trained to use it. Here's why. If you're all set--with plenty of it-

  -your enemy will never try it on you. If you're not, your enemy is bound to pour it on you. Make myself clear?"

  A lean, enormously tall man with a cubical face and icy gray eyes that looked familiar to Jimmie--came to his feet. "I say--that statement is rationalized! Does this twirp believe Muskogewan is going to be gassed? Does he realize that, for a community like ours, making poison gas is intolerable! An affront! A crime! There was a time"--the hard face softened briefly--"when I respected Willie Corinth. Loved him, almost. That time is past. Willie's a criminal."

  Jimmie interrupted. "Do you gentlemen imagine you can interrupt the activities of my firm?"

  There was a silence, a muttering, and several of the twenty-odd men swore. "Tell him," somebody said.

  The very tall man was still standing. "My name is Wilson," he said frigidly to Jimmie. "Yes, we do. I don't think your knowing will stop us in any way. It happens, for one thing, through certain arrangements, that we can call a strike in your plant, at will.

  That is, arrange to have one called. It also happens that certain buildings on the grounds were mortgaged to--various persons--by Willie Corinth during the depression. We have bought those mortgages. No doubt Willie could pay them off. We could make the reacquisition of the structures a long process, I believe. There are certain other moves we could make--local ordinances passed and enforced--which would automatically render this particular function of the factory impossible. Am I clear?"

  "Yeah," Jimmie said. He looked at the aggressive faces. "Very. I don't know how much of this is true and how much is a crummy boast. I don't know to what extent you can interfere with a plant working for the government. Some, no doubt. The right of people like you to make monkeys out of the majority is the very damn' right that I'm busy defending! But let me remind you of something. You call yourselves 'opposition.'

  Gentlemen, sabotage is not--'opposition.'' Jimmie sat down.

  Mr. Murton's mustache wiggled. The men palavered, sotto voce. Mr. Wilson said,

  "Quiet!" He breathed hard and his eyes rocked in their sockets. "Do you recall the name of the man, Jimmie, who sold out to the British--as you have? The name was--Benedict Arnold."

  Jimmie was twenty-eight years old, not fifty or sixty, like most of the men in the room. He was tired. He was spiritually raw from a number of small injuries. He looked at the towering man who had insulted him; his brain leaped and flashed, as if fireworks were going off inside his skull. His eyes roved from the face of Audrey's father to the other faces and back to the big man. He began to speak:

  "The Wehrmacht," he said unevenly, "the Hitler war machine, may indeed fall apart, somehow--someday. Next year. In five years. America may never hear or feel the fall of a bomb. In that case, America's problem will be economic. Stuck with arms, the machines for making arms, the debt they cost--in a world that is a ruin. As you men say, it may never literally become our war. All we will face will be--shambles. But you are the people, or the heirs of the people, who pushed the oxcarts out here to Muskogewan. The people who settled the Eastern coasts, whipped the British, pushed on to the Mississippi basin--and the far West. The people who made, in a couple of centuries, the greatest, strongest, finest, most whistling damn' civilization in the history of man! You fought every nation that tried to clear you out of the sea, or poach on your land, and you--some of you sitting right here--as little as twenty-five years ago took German slugs, to give Democracy a chance! You failed once. So you quit. Won't try again! Is that--our heritage? To quit flat after one half-try?"

  Someone said, loudly, but behind his hand, "Siddown!"

  "Let me finish," Jimmie answered. "I know, the most savage and scientific military machine of all time has got its eye, and its hate, glued on you and me. But that isn't why I want to fight. I know we all love things, and have a lot of 'em; and I know we might lose 'em all, in a year--or two--or five. You sit here and think you know. But I do know! I've seen the other guys' show. You haven't." Jimmie pulled up his pant-leg and raised his knee. From his kneecap to his sock ran a corded, scarlet scar. "I've even felt it a little. But that isn't why I want to fight, either: not my own, personal hatred. It takes two to make a quarrel, gentlemen. But only one to launch a conquest. That's what's going on!

  My enemy isn't an idea, or a nation, or an economic system. It's the rottenest thing in man-in you-in me. It's greed. Greed that reaches out with no mercy, no humanity, no law-for the purpose of feeding itself. Stuffing itself. I fight thai, wherever, whenever, and however I see it. I fight it in Hitler. I fight it in you."

  He lowered his voice. "You say, America should defend itself. Show me where there is a defense on earth left--except attack! You say, we should mind our own business. I say, we never did and never will! When the American people built up this continent from edge to edge, and even before, Americans went to every cockeyed end of the earth--Timbuktu and Samarkand--and sold the natives sewing machines and phonographs, built oil refineries for 'em, taught 'em to play baseball! And still more Americans were sent--by you--and still are--to teach the heathen to wear breeches and sing 'Onward, Christian Soldiers.' Hundreds of thousands of Americans! Millions, over the decades--meddling with every man and woman and child on earth! Not meddling them into some bloody empire. Just meddling for trade and the right to teach. Isolation?

  We're the most interventionist damn' people in the history of time! Only thing is--have we still got the guts to intervene in Hell?"

  That was when his father rose, sweaty, shaking, and cleared his throat three times before he could speak, and said, "Son, you can leave my house, now. I won't stand for any of that sort of corrupt talk any more. Nor your mother. She said so the other night.

  Get going!"

  Most of the men applauded Jimmie's father. Not all--but most.

  So Jimmie walked out of the living room, through the hall, out the front door, and down the street.

  He rented a guest room at the club--and he sent for his things.

  CHAPTER X

  HE WAS SITTING, one evening, in the library of the club, when Mr. Wilson entered. Jimmie was certain that Audrey's father saw and recognized him, but Mr. Wilson did not stamp out of the room, as some of the members had. Instead, he leaned on one of the periodical tables, his long arms stretched crutch-stiff, and he seemed to glance, covertly, at Jimmie in the corner with his book. To Jimmie--who could not help watching, because he believed he was being watched--it seemed as if the old man's lantern jaw wobbled a little, as if his skin was whiter, as if his falcon eyes were only pretending to read the headlines scattered along the table. Because such behavior was surely foreign to Mr. Wilson, and because Jimmie himself was blue and lonely in this exile, he tried to look accessible. He lighted a cigarette and crossed his legs casually and nodded when the old man glanced at him again. Mr. Wilson immediately came over to the corner and sat down. He said, not too truculently, "Hi, there, Jimmie."

  "Good evening, Mr. Wilson."

  "Your dad was pretty rough on you the other day."

  Jimmie remembered that Audrey had said she lived under the same duress, that she, too, might be thrown out of her home--for an even smaller cause. For merely being seen alone with him. He looked at the other man with ironic eyes. "I'm surprised to hear you say so!"

  Mr. Wilson did not, of course, appreciate the innuendo. He thought that the younger man merely referred to the argument about war which had split apart so many close ties in the town. "You made quite a ringing speech," he answered. "Mind if I smoke with you?"

  "Not a bit. Have a cigarette?"

  "Thanks. No." Mr. Wilson took from his pocket a cigar in a metal container. He uncapped it, bit the cigar, and struck a match. By its light, bright in the gloomy recess, Jimmie could see that he was trembling. "I mean--" he puffed--"I agree with a lot you said. I'm a practical man, though. I don't bel
ieve you can ever sell your bill of goods to the American people. If I did I'd be on your side of this. Whip Hitler--and then take over the world's business! Nice project!"

  "It isn't exactly--"

  Mr. Wilson waved. "I know. You have a more idealistic notion. It would amount to that practically, though, if it came to be. Which it won't. And I liked what you said about courage. One thing I admire. That's the only disadvantage of some of my friends on the America Forever Committee. They're there because they're scared. I hate that."

  "It's a point." A silence fell. "Jimmie, how'd you get that scar?" The younger man fidgeted. "I didn't mean to be theatrical."

  "Darned effective, anyway. How'd it happen?"

  Jimmie peered out over the night-hung golf course. "Hunk of flying glass. Bomb."

  Mr. Wilson grunted. He seemed eager for the whole story. He leaned forward, to ask again. But his pride or some other factor restrained him. He sat back and smoked for a long time. Once, he looked directly at Jimmie and smiled, amiably, unsurely.

  "You underrate your father," he said suddenly.

  "Do I?" Jimmie was not displeased.

  "He's a good banker."

  "Everybody says so."

  "I mean good, Jimmie. Not just technically. Good--inside. Shrewd, but not a widow-and-orphan squeezer. Tough, maybe, on people who can stand it. Not on the rest.

  When they had that bank holiday your dad got his bank open before I did mine-and I was racing the old son-of-a-gun. Smart. I suppose in his personal safe he's got a hundred thousand dollars' worth of paper he's taken over in the last thirty years. Loans people made that they couldn't pay. He's proud of the condition of that bank. And I wonder--I wonder if you ever heard that there were maybe a couple of hundred men in business in this town who would be out of business if your old man hadn't taken some pretty wildcat chances on them--especially in the depression? Did you know that?"

  "No," said Jimmie. "Probably never thought a man could have loyalty to a bank."

  "I never thought much about his bank at all. I was never interested in it."

  "A man can get to a bank the way he can to an idea--or a woman. Or a religion, even. Then, if something crosses up his bank, he thinks whatever crossed it up is criminal, depraved, and illegal."

  Jimmie sighed. "I wish he'd loosened up more, then! He never showed me any sentimental side. I heard he had one--from Biff--once. But I never saw it."

  "You just said you weren't interested."

  Jimmie grinned sadly. "That's right. I did."

  There was another stillness. A man in a distant corner rattled a newspaper.

  Billiard balls clicked in the next room. Jimmie looked with curiosity at the big, gaunt man. Mr. Corinth had said, once, that he ought to meet Mr. Wilson. But the picture of her father Audrey had painted was one of absolutist bigotry. Nothing like this. The man in the opposite chair seemed mellow; he was striking a chord in Jimmie's nature that Jimmie would not have believed him able to comprehend.

  Mr. Wilson reacted to the silent appraisal. "Don't know exactly why I came over this way. I admire a tough adversary. Maybe I was trying to soften you up."

  "You did. Quite a lot."

  The older man mused. "You're smart, too, Jimmie. You know, I almost wish--

  sometimes--that I were young again. Free of all my standard opinions. Free of belief.

  Free of responsibility." He laughed at himself. "Damn it, I'd probably be in the RAF--or some other crazy thing!"

  It was easy to warm Jimmie's heart. Mr. Wilson's words had done that. Jimmie leaned forward eagerly and said, "I'll bet you would!"

  "What's it like?"

  "Like? What's what like?"

  "Why, the RAF."

  "Oh." Jimmie momentarily suspected this was blood lust, like his mother's--and knew it was not and unbent. "Like nothing you ever saw on earth before! Remember Churchill--the lines about: Never have so many owed so much to so few? It's like that. In a quiet way. It's holy--if you know what I mean. Without seeming so. Seeming, on the contrary, to be unholy. They have religion, too."

  "A lot of 'em die."

  "They all die," Jimmie answered. Mr. Wilson fumbled his cigar, grabbed at it, showered sparks on himself, and beat them out. Jimmie waited. "That is--in two different ways, they do. They die every day, in their minds. You can say a brave man dies only once, but it's more the other way around. A man with imagination, facing death repeatedly, seeing people die, dies with them every time. And it takes a lot of imagination to fly a battle plane."

  "Whaddaya mean?"

  "Intelligence. Spirit. Quick, inventive brains. They skim the best--the very best--

  off the population. They give them the best they can make, in the labs and shops. Those boys--they know what they're doing. They have to. They see each other go down in streaks of fire--alive. They fly each other back home--wounded--in bombers. Their chore is appalling--for a sensitive man. Maybe it's the very unthinkableness of it that makes it possible for the sensitive, bright ones to do it. Sort of a challenge. The hardest challenge you can put to a person. So--they take it up, and lick it, and kid about it afterward.

  Rather--in between. That's the other way they die."

  "I'm afraid I don't follow you."

  "I mean, not one of them is alive--the way you and I are right here now. Not one can be--till the war's over. The day it is over, those who happen to remain alive will find it out. That's all."

  "I see. You know a lot about the RAF."

  "Everybody--in England--thinks about them a lot. Everybody owes 'em--whatever they happen to have."

  "Know any?"

  Jimmie smiled. "Yeah. There was a field not very far from our lab. We made some special stuff for them to drop on Germany--now and then. Trial stuff. I used to--I got to be pals with a bunch of them."

  "I see."

  "They could tell you things!"

  Jimmie began to tell those things. For half an hour--because of the ardent attention of his listener, because of his unexpected proffer of something very much like friendliness--Jimmie talked. He hadn't told any of those tales in America. It did him good to unburden himself. For half an hour, in that corner of a clubroom, flack broke, machine guns stuttered, bombs screamed, motors droned and coughed, men died, men lived to tell of death, planes made their runs across the black and ruined ribs of cities embossed upon their incandescent streets, and the old man hung on the words of the young one.

  When Jimmie stopped, apologetically, Mr. Wilson said, "You sound as if you'd seen it."

  "Yeah."

  "I mean--personally."

  "Yeah."

  A pause. "You can't be saying--!"

  Jimmie chuckled. "A few times. After all, they had to have an expert along occasionally to observe the effect of that 'special stuff' I talked about. Don't get me wrong! I never had any of that night-after-night, week-in-and-out grind. That's the killer.

  Just a few--oh, hell! A few junkets. As passenger. Deluxe trips. I wish--"

  The older man leaned forward. His face was strange. "That--that wound on your leg!"

  Jimmie reddened. He was going to lie again, but he changed his mind. Sooner or later they'd all know, anyway. The people in England did. His friends. Whatnot. The hell with it. He said, casually, "Not window glass, no. But what the deuce! What's the dif? A scratch--that's all. Somebody who gets clipped with a splinter from the leg of a--a billiard table is clipped as bad as somebody that gets it out of a muzzle on a Messerschmitt, isn't he?"

  Without answering, Mr. Wilson rose and walked away. Jimmie watched him--

  hurt, again--until he realized he was corning back. He brought a magazine. He spread it out on Jimmie's knees. He switched on a bridge lamp. It was a picture magazine, and he had turned to a spread of photographs of night fighters getting ready for action somewhere in England. He put his long forefinger on one of the pictures. "These birds are Canadians. See that chap--fourth from the left? The one with the bum haircomb? In the caption it says his name is Lawrence W
ilton. My son--ran away--when he was fifteen.

  That's--my son."

  CHAPTER XI

  MR. CORINTH HAD fallen into the habit of "barging over to the club"

  occasionally in the evenings, when he and Jimmie were not staying late at the laboratory.

  He liked to sit in a wicker chair on the glassed--in sun porch--surrounded by Jimmie, and anybody else who cared to listen--and expound topics of the day, or the ages. He said that his resumption of "social life" was inevitable and a sign of senescence. Jimmie knew the real cause. Mr. Corinth came because he was worried about his colleague--about Jimmie.

  And Jimmie was worried about himself. All the locks in all the doors of his life had been turned--if the one door of hard work could be excepted.

  He did riot see his father and mother at all. They had sent word that his presence at the club prevented them from coming there, and they had made sure that the bearer of the news also conveyed their resentment. But Jimmie felt too numb to budge. He had not seen Audrey, nor talked to Mr. Corinth about her. In spite of their intimacy Audrey's name had become mysteriously taboo. His criticism of Biff's behavior with the pretty nurse had led to a rapid deterioration of their burgeoning relationship. He did not see his sister either, because he now regarded her with contempt. She had abandoned her beloved Harry when she had learned that he was a quarter "non-Aryan," and yet she had gone on mourning him in a revolting indulgence of self-pity. Mr. Wilson's friendship, if it had ever been proffered, had been withdrawn. He nodded to Jimmie when they encountered each other, or waved a finger, in a way that looked amiable enough but did not invite further intimacy.

  He had at first taken a considerable lift from their talk. Mr. Wilson was, no doubt, all that Audrey had said-bigoted, cruel, a tyrant at home, a fanatic about the behavior of his son and daughter. But Mr. Wilson was more. He was very subtle in his dealings with human beings. He had brought Jimmie around to satisfying a hunger for knowledge about the RAF by flattery, and by a still better trick: by granting to Jimmie the recognition due a valorous antagonist. Jimmie had talked--it must have been brutal to some part of the old man; he'd fumbled his cigar once, but, as soon as Mr. Wilson's curiosity had been satisfied, he had cast Jimmie aside. Because he was Audrey's father, Jimmie thought that by understanding Mr. Wilson he might learn about Audrey. So, in spite of a disillusionment, Jimmie had hoped to see more of the father of the night fighter and of the audacious woman.