They passed a house with a broken back. A towering poplar, surely the pride of the owner once, had stood in his front yard. The flood water had come; it had loosened the soil to the consistency of porridge; the tree had tilted a little, leaned; its wide shallow root system had given way and the trunk had crashed across the roof, caving and crumpling it in.
There was a house with black, dead eyes. Somehow fire had started; candles, or a fireplace carelessly laid for warmth when the electrically fanned oil heater clicked silent. The innards of the house had burned, and the fireman had not come. There was a pathetic pile of furniture outside, but where the people were you couldn't tell.
There was a house that, in all that chaotic destruction, had survived unscathed. Its windows had their glass, its doors were neatly locked, there were two spindly iron chairs on the porch. And then you looked and saw that it rested in the middle of a road, where the water had let it drop.
But it was the smell that hurt. You could imagine a hurt town mending itself and growing again. But this stench from the river bottoms was the stink of death. "I'll bet," said Artie Chesbro with a dreamer's eyes, "you could pick up any mortgage in town for five cents on the dollar today."
Dr. Soames was the town's only specialist. He had built a white Georgian house and a three-car garage out of something less than a quarter of a cubic foot of the human female anatomy. He was an expert on every fold and canal from thelabium minusto the hydatid of Morgagni, and of the hundred and four babies born in the borough of Hebertown and surrounding territory in the past twelve months, he had delivered ninety-three. They told scandalous anecdotes about his extra-official life—"Mrs. Hoglund? Hoglund? Oh, I didn't recognize you with your pants up"—and there had been a suggestion at the County Medical Association that some of his most profitable pregnancies were not permitted to come to term. But there was no human being in Hebertown and environs who doubted that Dr. Soames was the greatest doctor on earth.
And what good was he doing now, he demanded silently, swabbing alcohol on the morning's twenty-fifth rump to ready it for the needle.
He sighed and jabbed home the needle of yellowish fluid. The kid jumped and howled; Dr. Soames's hand was not as dexterous with injections as it might once have been. They were working themselves into a coma, all three of the doctors, with routine shots against typhoid and penicillin to keep the sniffles of the kids from getting worse; but any ambulance driver could have done as much. What these people needed—homes; help; money—was not in their little black bags.
"Dr. Soames!" Chief of Police Brayer was coming into the school's gym. The tired old face looked worried—almost panicked; Soames had thought the time for panic was over. "They're bringing Henry in, Doctor. He looks bad."
The burgess came in, under clean blankets, on an aluminum-frame stretcher at last. Soames took a quick look. Fever; coma; and the unmistakable racking, hard-fought breaths. Pneumonia? "Wake up Doctor Brandeis," he ordered; but he found a hypodermic and loaded it without waiting.
The other doctor's eyes were bleary when he staggered in, but there wasn't much doubt. "Pneumonites, all right," he said, auscultating the burgess's chest. "We ought to have oxygen, Frank." Chief Brayer listened to the doctors. He cut in, "Don't we have any oxygen?" Soames shook his head; and Brayer remembered. The oxygen was there, all right, in the firehouse, where it was handy for the pumpers to take along in case of drowning or asphyxiation or any of the other things Hebertown called out its fire department for; but it wasn't handy at all in case of floods, since the firehouse was in the Borough Hall. You couldn't even see the roof yet, though the water had gone down.
He blundered out of the room and buttonholed one of the other volunteers. "Who've we got who can swim underwater?" he demanded. "We have to get the oxygen out of the firehouse—Henry needs it."
They found a couple of high-school kids, on the swimming team, and they went down to survey the drowned-out hall. The water had slowed enough to put a boat out; they rowed down Front Street, over the back yards of the cottages, into the River Road. "Must be around here," Brayer said doubtfully, staring at the muddy water. "Some of the houses got moved, I guess...."
It wasn't there. One of the boys eventually went down, but only for a moment. He came up sputtering and grunting, his eyes squeezed tight; when they got him into the boat and he could talk coherently again he said, "Sorry, Mr. Brayer. Maybe there's still some of the firehouse down there. But that isn't water, it's plain mud. Even if I had a face mask, I couldn't see—and I don't have a face mask." They took him back to the school to have his eyes looked after. Chief Brayer leaned dizzily against the door frame, watching Dr. Brandeis bathing the kid's eyes. What, he wondered, was Hebertown going to be like without Henry?
Mickey Groff woke up. They must have given me a shot of something, he thought clearly, and sat up.
A girl in a white uniform with gold bars at the collar leaned over him and said, "You ought to go back to sleep. You've only had about two hours."
He shook his head. "How's the old man?"
"Which one?"
"Starkman—the burgess." But she didn't know the name. Groff stood up and staggered to a chair. What was an army nurse doing here, he wondered. Wings and a bar; maybe they'd flown in help from outside.
Somebody helped him to a garage, empty of cars, with duckboards laid over the mud on the floor; there was a sort of emergency feeding station organized there and he got hot coffee laced with thick canned milk, syrupy with sugar. He went out in the sunshine and drank it gratefully.
Sunshine!
He slowly accepted the fact that it wasn't raining any more. The sky was spotty with clouds, but there was a lot of blue.
"Mr. Groff." He tried to get to his feet; it was Artie Chesbro's wife. She stopped him.
"Where's everybody?" he asked.
"Sleeping, mostly. Except my husband, who is out looking for orphans to rob. Have you seen Henry?"
He blinked. "Henry?"
"The burgess. Mr. Starkman." He shook his head. She said gently, "I've been with him all morning. If they don't get help for him soon—"
He noticed that her eyes were unaccountably filled with tears. "I thought I saw an army nurse—"
"Yes. But they didn't have oxygen, and that's what he needs. It's on its way, I guess, or anyway they say it is." She looked at the coffee. "Wait a minute. I want some of that."
Mickey Groff looked after her and sighed. Now, why was she mothering the old man? And what was that "orphans to rob" remark? It had been fairly obvious that she and her husband were not cut from the same bolt, but was it possible for her to see her husband that clearly, and keep on living with him?
He was beginning to wonder whether he shouldn't get up and start somehow helping out when she came back and sat beside him. She was humming to herself, he noticed, and glanced at her curiously; evidently she wasn't so upset after all.
"I knew," she said, dreamily swirling the coffee around in the mug to stir it, "that two of us would go. It is the difference between six and eight."
"The what?"
She laughed as if a child had done something clever. "I knew you weren't a student of the Great Science," she said cheerfully. "There are perfect numbers, and imperfect numbers; the imperfect numbers are—imperfect, and the worst of them are the deficient ones. Eight is an imperfect number, you see." She grinned at him. "You think I've flipped," she commented.
"Well, I wouldn't say—"
"But you'd think it. No matter, Mickey—do you mind if I call you Mickey? I'm quite sane—I have the advantage of you, you see, because I have my diploma to prove it." She sipped her coffee. "That's what makes Artie so mad," she said pleasantly. "He got me committed to the Haven, and they kept me there for nearly a year; and now when he threatens to tell people I'm crazy I don't have to worry, because six perfectly fine psychiatrists agree that I'm not."
Mickey Groff said weakly, "That's very nice, Mrs.—Polly, I mean."
She said seriously, "You mustn't think that the Great Science is one of these crackpot cultist affairs. I know gematry has a bad name, but you'd be astonished at the great minds that have worked on it. Fermat, Bachet—back as far as Diophantos, in fact. Why, if you'd just—oh, please, Mickey." She touched his arm as he started to move. "I'll stop. This isn't the time to talk about important things."
"Important."
"This," she said, "is a time for shallow, surfacy affairs, a time when distractions come crowding in and cannot be ignored. One such distraction is that Mr. Starkman is dying and needs oxygen."
"I have an idea," he said. "Come on."
There was a boy of fourteen standing by with a handkerchief tied around his left arm, an improvised brassard. "Son," Groff said, "do you go to the junior high?"
"Yes."
"The burgess, Mr. Starkman, needs oxygen and they can't get at the firehouse tanks. It occurred to me that there might be some in the school—those little tanks they call lecture bottles that they use for demonstrations in chemistry classes."
"I haven't taken chem yet, mister, I don't know," the boy said unhappily.
"Are there any teachers here?"
"Yes sir! Mr. Holtz the math teacher's making the coffee back there."
Groff approached Holtz, a small, harried man. Holtz listened and said: "Not in the junior high, no. No lecture demonstrations, just recitation and lab. But the senior high across the river would have some. My good friend Mr. Anderson lectures there and he believes in making it spectacular. Yes; they would have lecture flasks. I'd guide you there if I weren't assigned. Perhaps you can find somebody—"
Groff decided he would not. These people were working at top capacity now. He could do the job on his own.
Groff and Polly picked their way through the silt to the river bank. A rowboat manned by two husky youngsters with the improvised brassards was unloading a weeping woman and a silent child.
"Get to the school," one of them told her in an important, basically uncertain voice. "They'll take care of you there. They've got nurses and everything."
She walked off clutching the child's hand, still weeping.
The kids looked after her, round-eyed. They told Groff: "That's Mrs. Vostek. Her husband drowned. We just found her sitting on her porch crying. Maybe she's gone crazy."
"Can you get us across the river? We want to get into the high school and look for oxygen bottles. The sick cases need it."
"That's what we're here for, mister!"
Good kids....
On the other bank, perilously attained, the kids pointed Groff and Polly in the right direction and took aboard two grim brassarded men who carried a limp, moaning girl of ten between them.
The other side of the river was the older part of town; the inevitable slum had grown up there. Here in the streets and on the steps they saw drunken men and women with blank despair in their eyes tilting bottles skyward. One of them drained his bottle and yelled: "To hell with it!" and hurled the empty through the plate-glass window of a silt-choked little magazine-and-candy store. A man, not young, sitting in the store came charging out with a sawed-off ball bat in his hands, swinging. "You cheap rotten bum!" he yelled. "Things aren't bad enough, you have to make them worse!"
While the drunk stared stupidly, Groff rushed between them and caught the wrists of the man with the bat. "Easy," he said. "For God's sake, you'll kill him with that thing."
The drunk came to life. "Let him kill," he yelled. "What's the damn difference now? No job, no house, no furniture. Let him kill!" But he reeled off down the street while Groff held the furious man.
"Stupid bastard," the proprietor swore. "I'll give him bottles. Three-fifty he owes me, I'll give him bottles!" Then the fight suddenly evaporated out of him. Groff let go and they walked on, looking back to see him shamble into his store again and sit down with the bat across his knees.
They passed a bar, and there was no nonsense about that. Two men who looked like brothers stood grimly at the door. Each had a shotgun over his arm. When Groff and Polly walked by they shifted the guns a little and said nothing.
A corner grocery had become a sort of involuntary relief station. There was a long unruly line leading to the door. The grocer stood there; behind him in the store his wife was bringing up canned goods, bottled pop, everything. The grocer, sweating and afraid, was handing out the food and drink to the sullen people as they passed.
"Please," he was saying, "I haven't got time to write this down. Please remember what you take and come around and settle when things clear up."
After a fashion he was avoiding the sack of his store.
The high school was an old red brick building, smaller than the new junior high across the river. Groff marched up the steps and tried the door. "Bloody hell," he said. "Locked, of course."
She pointed. "There's an open window."
They climbed in and found themselves in the principal's office. Three men with sledge hammers and crow-bars were knocking the knob off the safe. They turned menacingly.
"Go ahead." Groff shrugged. "I can't stop you."
"Get the hell out of here," one of them said.
"We came to get some oxygen," Polly said. "For the sick people across the river."
"Sick people? Okay."
They went into the corridor and wandered from room to room; on the second floor they found an old-fashioned lecture theater, bowl-shaped with steep rows of seats focusing on a laboratory bench piped for water and gas. There was a promising-looking door behind it.
It was locked. Groff kicked at the door and swore with pain; the building was old-fashioned brick and its woodwork was old-fashioned golden oak, the stuff you can hardly drive a nail into. He trudged down to the office again. The three men were gone; the door of the safe swung open. They had left one sledge; somehow he had expected to find all the tools dropped, but apparently they were going to work their way methodically through every safe they could find.
He returned with the sledge and bashed at the golden-oak door until its latch sprung and it swung open. It was the storeroom for lecture supplies and the gas flasks were neatly stacked on the top shelf. There was a complete carton of a dozen twelve-inch cylinders marked O2and another carton with eight cylinders.
"Thank God," he said. "Let's go."
The things were horribly heavy.
As they retraced their way to the river bank they were stopped three times by loungers collected in groups of half a dozen and had to show them the cartons' contents and explain that it was for the sick people across the river.
There was a long wait before they could hail one of the boats passing back and forth; finally a rowboat with a roaring outboard motor pulled up. Two men with American Legion caps manned it. They explained their mission and were taken aboard. One of the Legionnaires asked: "How are things in Old Town?"
"Breaking up fast," Groff said.
The man understood perfectly. "The goons," he said, nodding. "There's talk about sending in the National Guard," he said. "Meanwhile I guess it's our problem."
He took the heavier carton from Groff when they reached the river bank and Groff took Polly's; together they walked to the gymnasium where Harry Starkman lay.
One of the doctors—Brandeis?—looked at the lecture bottles dully, took one and shambled over to the burgess's litter. He drew the blanket over Starkman's face, slipped the bottle under and cracked the needle valve for a few hissing minutes, then checked the old man's pulse.
"Very good," he said at last to Groff and Polly. "There's something to hope for now. Now clear out, you two. Find something useful to do."
"There's going to be trouble in Old Town tonight," Groff said. "And it may spill over here."
Polly, preoccupied, said, "The number is still imperfect. Two of us will have to go. I do hope it won't be you, Mickey."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There was a solid line of cars, bumper to bumper, on the northbound side of the highway. It ended against a roadblock consisting of two state troopers, one standing in the middle of the lane with a double-barreled shotgun over his arm, the other by the roadside where he could look into the cars. Their patrol car was pulled over on the soggy shoulder, its motor idling.
A new Lincoln with a middle-aged man at the wheel was next.
"Why do you want to get through, mister?" the trooper demanded. He had long ago given up the time-consuming request for registration and operator's permit.
The man was flustered. "I have some friends in Newtown," he said. "I thought maybe there was something I could do for them—"
The trooper glanced into the back of the car. Empty. "You haven't got anything they need," he said. "Turn around and go home."
Meekly the man U-turned around the trooper in the road and sped south.
The next car was a tired, top-down convertible with two young couples who might have been high-school seniors, college freshmen or young working stiffs. The driver explained, too glibly, indicating the girl by his side: "Her mother lives in Bradley, so she got me to drive her in. You know the railroads and buses aren't running, officer."
But the girl giggled.
"Where does she live in Bradley?" asked the trooper. The girl hesitated and took a deep breath before beginning to lie. The trooper gave a weary shushing gesture. "Skip it," he said. "Turn around and go home. This is no circus."
The driver began to bluster. "I've got a license, I can drive where I want—"
"Turn around and go home," the trooper said. "If you keep arguing I'll run you in for obstructing traffic. If you're stupid enough to proceed down that road, Schultz there will fire one warning shot and will then blow your goddam head off. Move."
The boy roared his motor spitefully to say the things he didn't dare say, let up suddenly on his clutch and spun around the patrolman with the shotgun in a U-turn.
The next car was black and driven by a man in black. Its rear and the seat beside the driver were filled with cartons; the trunk lid was half-up, tied by a rope to the bumper over more cartons.
"I'm from the Beaver Run Meeting of the Society of Friends," the man said quietly. "We've gathered some things they may need in there. Medicine, bandages, Sterno, flashlights."
The trooper hesitated. "We're supposed to accept contributions and turn you back, then a truck comes and takes them in. But I haven't seen any truck and I don't know whether there's going to be one or if it was just talk. You look as if you can take care of yourself, mister. Go on in and don't get hurt." He called to the trooper in the road: "Let him through."
"Thank you," said the Quaker, and drove on at a careful thirty-five miles per hour.
Down the southbound lane, the deserted left strip of the highway, a big car purred, slowing obediently to a stop at the outraged shout of the trooper. The old man who was driving said nothing; the young woman with him put out her head and called, "Dr. Buloff, Factoryville, New York. Are there any instructions?"
The trooper backed around the car and read the New York plates. The second two characters were MD. He said to the old man, "Just go in and free-lance, doc. They can use you."
"Thank you, officer," the old man said with a good trace of German accent, and the car purred on.
In rapid succession three imbeciles followed the doctor's example of using the southbound lane. All were sightseers, and all were turned back with curses.
The next car in line was a '39 Ford driven by a white-faced young man with the jitters and a narrow mustache. He had identification papers ready in his sweating hand. "John C. Barshay," he said precisely. "As you can see from the address on this envelope I live at 437 Olney Street, Newtown. I work in New York City and come home weekends. My wife—I haven't been able to get through on the phone." His voice was rising hysterically. "I demand to be let through, officer!"
"Calm down," the trooper said gently. "Of course you can get through. We're not here to stop people like you. I hope everything's all right."
The young man fought his way back to composure. "Thank you, officer," he said precisely, and drove on.
Then there was a phenomenon, a car comingfromthe flooded area. It was coming fast until the driver, presumably, could see that the hassle up ahead was a roadblock and then it stopped and began to wheel around.
"Hold 'em, Schultzie!" the trooper yelled at his partner with the shotgun. He leaped into the idling patrol car, spun its wheels for an instant in the soft shoulder and then zoomed free down the highway. The other car had barely finished its turn; he had it crowded off the road in seconds. He got out with his gun drawn and a casual bead on the head of the unshaven, slack-jawed man in the driver's seat. "Get out with your hands up," he said, his body shielded behind the front of his car.
The driver got out, dull-eyed.
"Turn around."
He did, and the trooper frisked him. There were things in his pockets, none of them gun-size. The trooper, from behind, pulled out watches, a costly new spinning reel and some rhinestone rings and necklaces.
The back of the car was filled with new suits and dresses, some crumpled and mud-stained. The trooper lifted the trunk lid and found shiny new appliances—a pressure-cooker, a steam iron, a handsome floor fan, a sandwich grill, a rotisserie.
"Is this car yours?" the trooper asked interestedly.
"No," the man mumbled.
"You'll be sorry for this day's work, boy," the trooper promised. "Keep your back turned."
He rolled up the windows, took the car keys from the ignition and locked it up. With the man beside him he drove back to the roadblock and prodded him out with his gun.
"Looter," he said to his partner. "Stolen car locked up down there, full of plunder. Watch him." To the man he said: "Stand over there and don't try to run or you'll get killed. Now, who's next?"
"Press," said a jaunty young man in a convertible, showing a card quickly.
"Do that again," the officer requested. Reluctantly the young man did. The officer read aloud: "The Zeidler News Service requests that police and fire officials extend all press courtesies to its representative George E. Neumann." He grinned. "Back to Pittsburgh, Mr. George E. Neumann."
The young man shrugged and wheeled his car around.
The next two cars were, or appeared to be, driven by legitimate relatives of people in the flood area; at least they were filled with sensible supplies. The trooper passed them. The next was a year-old Dodge sedan with an oldish driver and a youngish passenger. "Haggarty," the driver said. "New YorkDaily Globe. This is Vince Ruffino, my photographer. The press card." It was a little green folder with picture—an embossed city seal through it—thumbprint, description, and the signature of the police commissioner. "Fire badge," said Haggarty, flipping open a leather folder. "Okay?"
"Okay," the trooper said, and waved them on.
The line of waiting cars was beginning to break up. The number of people turned back and the sour replies they had called as they passed those still in line explained it.
Another vehicle coming away from the flood area, fast. It had a cardboard sign with a red cross on it stuck in the windshield. A station wagon, full.
The trooper at the checkpoint paused to watch. The driver of the station wagon stopped by the trooper with the shotgun, spoke to him for a minute, nodded and slid into gear again. The trooper at the check point stared at the faces inside the station wagon, some drawn, some nervously exuberant, as it went past.
The trooper with the shotgun was walking down the road toward him. "Transients," he said. "They're getting them out."
The other trooper said hesitantly, "Did—did you ask—"
"Yeah. They haven't found anybody answering your wife's description, not that the driver knew about anyway. She'll be all right."
"Sure. Thanks." The trooper with the shotgun turned and walked back. His partner sighed and moved on to the car at the head of the line. It was stretched out of sight again.
"You want me to stop for any of this?"
The photographer said, "Nope. I'll wait until we get in the town. But jeez, it's pretty beat up, isn't it?"
Jay Haggarty nodded and concentrated on his driving. One of the beat-up elements of the landscape was the road they were on. Water had scoured gravel out from under the surfacing in places, and there were potholes; water had rushed across the road in a flood in other places, and left mud and debris.
A man in a leather windbreaker yelled at them to slow down, and Haggarty obediently put his foot on the brake. He followed the man's instructions and they crawled across what had recently been a four-million-dollar toll-bridge. It seemed to be vibrating as they crossed it, Haggarty had to remind himself that they wouldn't have been allowed on it if it weren't safe. The river was within two feet of the surface of the roadway, and there was an uneven thudding as flotsam rammed into the accumulated tangle on the upstream side.
They passed between the empty toll booths and headed for Hebertown.
Haggarty said, "I was here just before the war, Vince. Nice, quiet little town. It doesn't look as if it's been built up much since then."
Ruffino said, "Who the hell would want to build a house around here? You wake up some morning and you're under water. Give me Passaic."
There was a second roadblock just before the sign that said:Entering Hebertown. Haggarty showed his card and leaned out of the window to ask where the emergency relief headquarters was. The directions turned out to be pretty complicated: It's straight down Center Street, only you can't get through there—trees across the road. So turn left on Maple, but you won't be able to take the bridge at White Street because it's blocked off; go three blocks further and cross on the highway bridge. Then you'll have to watch out for soft pavement on Locust....
Ruffino said, unbelievingly, "Jeez, Jay, it's worse here than it was down by the river. Do you mean that little creek had enough water in it to do all this?" He stared at the little gray stream that flowed under the highway bridge, and at the twisted, half-collapsed warehouses and storefronts that were easily five feet above water level.
"It's the little streams that do the damage," Haggarty told him. "Once the water gets into the rivers it's all right. It can flow away. But you see how close these buildings are set to the creek here? As soon as the water came up a couple of feet it clobbered them."
He stopped, because the photographer was opening the door of the parked car and no longer listening. It was as good a place to get started as any. Haggarty pulled over to the curb, locked the ignition and got out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mrs. Goudeket caught up with Polly and Groff. "So long I slept," she said, panting. "They wouldn't wake me up. How's Mr. Starkman?"
"They think he'll be all right for a while, anyway," said Mickey Groff. "There's a whole field hospital coming in, somebody said. If he holds out until then he's got a good chance."
"Thank God," said Mrs. Goudeket, beaming. "And Mr. Chesbro?"
Polly Chesbro said cheerfully, "I haven't seen him all day."
Mrs. Goudeket looked at her appraisingly. All she said was, "I guess he's pretty busy."
Mickey Groff coughed. "Uh, the diner up the hill is in business, Mrs. Goudeket. We were just about to go up and get something to eat. Would you like to come along?"
"Why not? Then I got to find a car to get back to the hotel. Imagine," she laughed. "One hundred and sixty guests, and the only one there to keep an eye on them is Dave Wax. Believe me, Goudeket's Green Acres is one place they'll never come back to again!" She was very gay about it, Groff thought.... If you didn't look too closely. He had a sudden picture in his mind of what the last twenty-four hours meant to Goudeket's Green Acres and to Mrs. Goudeket herself. One hundred and sixty guests. At, say, five dollars per day per head. Over eight hundred dollars a day; and out of that you could pay for the putting green and the swimming pool, pay the salaries of the cooks, trumpet player and chambermaids and busboys, pay the installments on the mortgage and the electric bill. And squeeze out a profit; enough to keep you for a year on what you made in a summer. But, although your one hundred and sixty guests could cancel themselves out overnight, reservations or no reservations, you couldn't cancel the trumpet player or the mortgage or the putting green....
They had to wait in line, but they finally got a booth in the diner. The menu was soup, sandwiches, and stew—apparently slapped together in a hurry out of what would otherwise have spoiled in the refrigerator. There still was no power; evidently the diner was operating its stoves on bottled gas.
But it tasted good to all three of them. Outside the diner again, with coffee in cartons for Groff and Polly Chesbro for them to drink at their leisure, Mrs. Goudeket said, "Listen, what are you going to do now? You still have business here, Mickey?"
Groff shrugged. "That's what I came up for. But I doubt I can do anything about it today."
"So stay overnight at Goudeket's Green Acres," she said hospitably.
"You think we can get back there?"
"Must be somebody with a car. I can pay."
Groff looked around. There were a lot of cars, and not many of them were going. As he watched, a big sedan chugging down the road with a load of dirty-faced children coughed and stopped. A man in a Legion cap, red-eyed and bearded, got out and wearily opened the door for the kids. They apathetically began to trudge down the hill to the temporary hospital.
"Out of gas," Groff said. "They're all running out of gas."
And then one car that was not out of gas, a low-slung sports job, came rocketing along the road, took a turn too fast and skidded on the mud-slick street. Its fishtail swerved left into a fire hydrant with a crash that made the dishes behind the diner counter rattle. On the rebound the car's remaining energy sent it nosing to the right through the plate window of a clothing store. By then it was burning fiercely from the tail. Two figures, dark in the glare of burning gas, spilled frantically from the bucket seats and flailed their way through the smoke and jagged glass.
"Come on!" Groff yelled, a general invitation to perhaps half a dozen weary, red-eyed men standing about with coffee cartons of their own. They ran for the smoky blaze; it beat fiercely against Groff's forehead and cheeks. He found himself almost racing crazily into the flames before he stopped. Groff peered into the holocaust and saw nothing.
A man tugged his arm, drawing him back a couple of yards. The man said, preoccupied: "That was Ed von Lutz's little car. A Porsche. Ed's got a garage, he had that thing for advertising."
Groff said, watching two people die, "Why's he racing it around town?"
"Oh, that wasn't Ed," the man told him. "Ed got killed in his garage hours ago. Water undermined the sills and footing, he was in there trying to straighten up and then the floor gave way and his air-compressor storage tank rolled over him. That wasn't Ed. That must of been some crazy kid that's been hanging around thinking about the little sports car ever since he got it in, and he thought this was his chance for a free ride. I guess that was his girl with him."
The quick, fierce gasoline flame was burning itself out; now the blaze had passed to the clothes on display, the fixtures, the shelves. The building was a long brick row, not battered by the worst of the current but horribly soiled. The clothing store was the central one of seven shops; there were apartments upstairs.
"Let's get the burning stuff out before it spreads," Groff said grimly. He walked into the smoke and, holding his breath, came out with a smoldering armful of suits off a rack. He dumped them in the gutter, where they charred and stank.
"Axes," a man sighed. "Hardware store around the corner."
"I'll get 'em," shouted Mrs. Goudeket, trotting off. "Save the man's stock. Don't let the fire spread."
The next half hour was a nightmare of chopping and prying at burning wood, dashing out for smokefree air when you had got a little ahead of the flames. Groff burned his left forearm when he brushed once against the still-blistering frame of the car. Midway through the job somebody covered the two charred figures from the car with a pair of topcoats each and they carried them out and laid them on the curb. Later they were gone; somebody, Groff never knew who, had taken them to the temporary morgue in the M.E. church basement.
He woke once from his daze of chopping and prying to find Polly Chesbro pulling on him. "They're stealing everything, Mickey," she said insistently. "Can't you stop them?"
Groff looked around. The store was gutted, the fire only an evil smoulder here and there. He coughed and walked out, sidling around the twisted, blackened little car with the bashed-in tail. He breathed fresh air outside; to his surprise it was late afternoon.
The pile of clothes from the store was dwindling before his eyes. People were picking it over and grabbing; Mrs. Goudeket was screaming at them: "Leave the man's stock alone! I'll—I'll—" She took an axe and made a feeble pass at a man in mechanic's coveralls. He shoved her hard and sent her sprawling. Polly Chesbro began to curse the man fluently; he ignored her as if she were a buzzing fly. Groff went and picked up the gasping old woman. "You hurt?" he asked.
She rubbed her behind and shook her head, glaring murderously. "Loafers," she said. "Bums without brains to run a business themselves. Look at them!"
Groff looked at them. From the wrong side of the tracks—river in this town. Sick, neurotic faces, shrill neurotic voices as they squabbled over tidbits like carrion crows. Feeble slum types, most of them, but a few of the gorillas that every slum produces in defiance of malnutrition. Men, women and gorillas, there were about a dozen of them. This was his cue to deliver a ringing oration on the rights of property and shame them away from the only chance most of them would ever have at an eighty-five dollar suit or topcoat.
He took up Mrs. Goudeket's axe and walked purposefully toward the carrion crows. "Break it up!" he yelled hoarsely. "If you can't do anything useful you can go home and not make any more trouble."
The gorilla who had shoved Mrs. Goudeket looked at him appraisingly, picked up the bundle of clothes he had neatly laid aside and walked off with them in his arms. There was a nice charcoal-gray single-breasted suit on top.
"Put those down!" Groff snarled. The man just kept walking. There was a crackle of laughter from the others around the pile. Where were the decent people, Groff wondered angrily. They were on the fringes and they were waiting. Their world was balanced on a razor's edge, and they dared not breathe. Let it tip one way and looting would tilt again to law and order; let it tip the other and looting would tilt over into murder.
Groff balanced the doubled-bitted axe in his right hand and hurled it at the departing gorilla. It flew like an arrow; its flat top thudded into the small of the man's back. He fell, howling, on the soft bundle of clothes he embraced. Groff walked up to him and rolled him over with his foot. The man cursed him and Groff drew back his foot for a kick at his bullet head. The man stopped instantly, glaring. "Go home," Groff told him.
The decent people on the fringes had come to life. They cried to the carrion crows: "Go home. Leave the man's stock where it is. Get back where you belong."
And it worked, because it was still daylight.
On the way back to the school, the GHQ of the town, Groff and Polly Chesbro and Mrs. Goudeket saw again the ruin and the despair, and something new: hatred. A couple railed at a man standing on his porch that he had plenty of room, that they had to have a place to sleep, theyknewhe had plenty of room—but the man grinned hatred at them and calmly shook his head.
"That," said Polly Chesbro in a low voice, "could be the paying off of an ancient score. The couple in the mud could be Mr. and Mrs. Town Banker, suddenly poor because they haven't a bed, and the man on the porch could be the village bum, owes everybody in town, brink of financial disaster, but suddenly rich because he has a bed. This is the day of jubilee, Groff, the day of leveling."
They passed a house canted off its foundations; they saw a man calmly building a rubbish fire against one corner of it and almost went on, so natural did it seem. His eyes were bright when he looked up, and he seemed only a little offended when they kicked his fire apart.
"It's the insurance," he explained. "Twelve thousand dollars, fire with extended coverage. You know what it'll cost me to get this straightened up? Rent a crane, a big gang of men with hydraulic jacks, a week's work easing the house back on the footings, and then everything will be sprung, the whole house'll have to be replastered. Five thousand dollars, easy, and I haven't got it. So I figured, we're covered for fire, make a clean start, the kids are grown now and we don't need a place this size—" Of the adjoining houses he had not thought at all.
They walked him down to the school; he chattered volubly all the way, quite unhinged. Polly efficiently vanished in search of a doctor with a needleful of morphine, and eventually she led one of the army medics toward them.
The arsonist snapped to and said crisply, "Sir, these civilians tried to prevent me from carrying out my mission. If you ask me, they're Krauts."
The medic led him away, protesting.
Artie Chesbro said worriedly, "Sharon, are you sure Akslund's coming here? None of these dopes seem to know anything."
Sharon Froman said, "Positive. This is the only road in from the north. He'll have to stop at the check point even if he is a congressman." She paused, added, "The captain who told me was the detachment communications officer. He got it right off the radio himself." She gave Chesbro a smile of good fellowship. It never hurt to remind a man how helpful you were being.
Chesbro sighed, "I'm getting tired of waiting here, all the same. These tinhorn heroes are getting under my skin. The next idiot that wants to know if I'll help out with the salvage squads or let them take this car for emergency duty gets a tire-iron across the face."
Sharon said sympathetically, "You'd think they'd know enough to leave you alone, wouldn't you?" There was a siren scream from down the road, and they both sat up straight to look. But it was only an ambulance; it slowed briefly at the roadblock, the troopers waved it by and it sped away.
Sharon took out a cigarette and pressed the dashboard lighter; then she remembered it didn't work and lit the cigarette with a match. It wasn't much of a car they were in; but it was the best car Chesbro had been able to rent for what money he had in his pocket. And naturally he wouldn't have been able to do it by himself, she thought comfortably. She was the one who had learned that Representative Akslund was coming into the disaster area on an inspection tour; she was the one who had located the car; and she was the one who had put the idea in Chesbro's head of meeting the congressman and riding with him. Nicely done, Sharon, she told herself; and the best part of all was that she had succeeded in making him think it was his own idea.
"I wonder how Polly's making out," Chesbro said.
Sharon permitted herself a frown, her face turned away. She said gaily, "Probably loving every minute of it, Arthur. It must be pretty exciting for her. Anyway," she added blandly, "Mickey Groff's probably taking good care of her."
"Mickey Groff?" He looked at her with surprise. "Polly?"
Sharon said, "Well, hedidseem rather interested—"
Chesbro shook his head. "Oh, no. You don't know Polly. Believe me, men aren't her—" He hesitated, and said, "Believe me, she has too much sense to get involved with a two-bit operator like him. She's loyal, Sharon. Absolutely loyal to me." He was silent for a moment and then, without looking at the girl, he said, "Polly's a funny kid. She isn't, uh,normal, if you know what I mean, like you'd think a wife would be—but she's loyal. Absolutely."
Sharon Froman took a deep, quiet breath. Ah-ha, Mr. Chesbro, she thought to herself with satisfaction, the wife isn't quite normal, eh? Somehow or other she doesn't respond when you get that urge, and the years go by, and then you notice that you aren't getting the urge as often—as far as she's concerned at any rate. So after a while you don't even worry when she's off with another man.
Sharon nodded wisely to herself. Just the way it had been with Hesch and his first wife. She'd made a man out of Hesch, even if he had finally let her down, and she could make a man out of this unpromising lout too—
The unpromising lout sat up sharply. "Hey," he yelled, "something's coming! It's got a state-police escort. Maybe it's Akslund!"
The congressman was on the best of terms with the Air Force—possibly because he held appointments on three appropriations committees. The Air Force had been delighted to fly him up from Washington that morning, and had been eager to fly him right into the disaster area in a helicopter; but Representative Akslund himself had put his foot down about that. Transport planes were one thing; helicopters were something else. So the last fifteen miles of his trip were in a car furnished through the courtesy of the state police.
"Unbelievable," he murmured—but enunciating every syllable crisply and clearly. "It looks as if a war had been fought over every inch of this lovely countryside. I estimate the damage I have already seen is in the millions." Out of the corner of his eye he observed that the AP man who had tagged along wasn't writing anything down. Disappointing; but Akslund was too old a hand to try to hint about it. The AP man would be with him for a good many hours yet. There was plenty of time for direct quotes.
The police car ahead sounded its siren. The congressman craned his neck.
"Road block," the driver explained. "They'll pass us right through, sir."
But they didn't. The driver of the car ahead stuck out his arm and semaphored a stop; the congressman's chauffeur braked sharp and smooth, and stopped a yard away from the other car's bumper.
A state trooper on point duty walked over and said, "Sorry to hold you up, sir. You can pass, of course, but there's a man here who says he—"
Artie Chesbro appeared, panting. He stuck his hand in the open window. "Good to see you again, Halmer," he said. "I'm Artie Chesbro. State delegation. Perhaps you remember our little chat at the Waldorf last year—the fund dinner."
Representative Akslund opened the matchless filing case in his head and riffled through the cards. He remembered. "Glad to see you again, Chesbro. Are you in this mess?"
"Up to my eyebrows. From the very start. There were eight of us trapped in a building all night long; one was killed by gasoline fumes, another's in the hospital with pneumonia this minute. But that's not the point. I've been thinking heavily about relief and reconstruction, Halmer, and I've developed some ideas I'd like to share with you. Mind if I come along?"
Representative Akslund noticed that the AP man was scribbling at last. Eight trapped all night, one dead, one dying. This Chesbro knew what he was talking about. His interests were medium-big and diversified, said theChesbrocard in Akslund's head; he'd be able to give him the sound businessman's viewpoint. Akslund knew he had to move fast; the first public figure to hit the headlines and newscasts with a formal plan would skim the publicity cream. How to be a statesman-humanitarian in one easy lesson. Chesbro would save him time.
"Get in," he told Artie.
"Room for my assistant, Miss Froman?" Artie asked.
"Of course, Chesbro. I need facts and I need them fast."
Artie waved the come-on to Sharon in the car on the shoulder.
She reached into the back of the car for her manuscript briefcase and gaily ran for the limousine. She didn't even bother to lock up the car, which Artie had rented with a solemn promise that he'd return it to the garage in exactly two hours. It would get back to the man somehow, she thought contentedly. Big things were happening now; no time for trivia.
The AP man leaned forward and asked: "C-H-E-S-B-R-O?"
"Right. Arthur Chesbro, of Summit. I own a piece of the Hebertown newspaper, I have some real estate, I'm interested in broadcasting. Thirty-nine years old."
"Veteran?"
"Ah, I was a consultant to the War Manpower Commission; I wasn't actually in the service."
"Who's the man who died?"
"Sam Zehedi, Z-E-H-E-D-I, I think it goes. A grocer, about thirty. We were holed up in a filling station on State Highway 7, just two carloads of people who couldn't get through the flood. The sick man is, I'm sorry to say, my very dear friend Henry Starkman, the Burgess of Hebertown. In the morning when we realized he had pneumonia we carried him about twelve miles into town. He's in that improvised hospital they have there. When I saw him last his condition was poor. He is about sixty-five. He was in my car when we got stopped; we were looking at conditions and making plans. On a small scale, what Mr. Akslund is here for." Cue to Sharon!
Sharon said to the congressman, "The networks are probably trying to get mobile broadcasting units in right now. They should be set up and sending by midnight. By morning they'll have all they need to lead the disaster strong in the breakfast newscasts."
It was a reminder that they had better get down to brass tacks on a concrete proposal for relief and reconstruction. Dramatically issued from the site of the flood, it would be unbeatable.
They were rolling slowly into Hebertown proper.
Artie said to the driver, "Drive around for a while."
"Yes," said Akslund. "Show me everything."
Sharon added: "Drop me off at the school. I'll get the police chief to find a room for us somehow. We'll have work to do."
"Lots of it," Akslund said thoughtfully, looking through the window at the wreckage.
No cars!
Mrs. Goudeket rubbed her forehead thoughtfully. She had tried two garages, and no cars for rent. Chief Brayer, they said. He hadcommandeeredthem, if you please, had them driven to a "motor pool." The couple of cars going through the streets that she had flagged down were "on missions." See Chief Brayer.
Well, she would see this new dictator, this Hitler of Hebertown. She reached the schoolhouse, and there, sure enough, was the motor pool in the teachers' parking lot across the street—a strange collection of vehicles ranging from a two-ton farm truck to somebody's little Rambler. There was a man with a clipboard at a table, on guard.
She sniffed and walked into the marble lobby of the school, which was crowded and noisy with the talk of fifty busy people. There were two uniformed men at card tables; one was in a fireman's queer, boxy uniform cap and the other must be this Brayer.
He was talking to a boy scout—at a time like this!—but she waited until he was finished. Then she burst out, "I've got to have a car. I'm Mrs. S. Goudeket of Goudeket's Green Acres. I've got to get back to my place. Now."
The mustached old man looked up. "Sorry, ma'am," he said. "We need all the cars for public service. Maybe later after some help comes in. Why don't you—"
"Did you hear who I am?" she yelled.
"I don't give a damn who you are," he yelled back, standing up. "The town is drowning. People are sick. People are looting and burning. We're trying to hold it together for a few hours until help comes. Don't come here grabbing for a car. Go and find something useful to do. They need help in the hospital, people to make beds and carry slops. You can do that, or if you don't want to do that you can at least get out of everybody's way!"
He sat down and turned to a man wearing a handkerchief around his arm and immediately was in thoughtful, intense conversation with him.
Mrs. Goudeket recoiled a step, then walked slowly from the lobby.
Maybe—maybe he was right. There was Polly, waiting for her.
She said to the girl, "No cars. We should go work in the hospital they set up for a while, Polly. They need help."
Polly Chesbro nodded. Together they walked to the improvised excuse for a hospital.
Mrs. Goudeket was thinking: Mr. Goudeket wouldn't have stormed up to that busy old man. He would have seen that making beds in the hospital right now is more important than whether Green Acres is in the black this year. Mr. Goudeket may have been right about more things than I ever knew before....
She wondered idly how the orange groves in Palestine for which they had donated year after year were growing.
Ten minutes later Sharon was at the desk, telling Chief Brayer: "You've got to. He's the head of three committees. He can turn the faucet and a million, five million dollars runs into Hebertown. Or he can leave the faucet shut. Think of your town, Chief!"
Brayer sighed and wished Henry were there. At last he beckoned to one of the deputies and said, "Take two men. Go to the new Fielding place, that little ranch-house thing on Sullivan. Turn everybody out. We need it for Congressman Akslund and his, uh, staff. Leave a man there to see that nobody sneaks back in. Better leave a man there as long as the Congressman's there, for a guard and in case there are any messages."
"Thanks, Chief," Sharon said warmly. "You're doing the right thing. I'll just wait here; they'll pick me up. And can you let us have a guide to show us the way to the house?"
"Sure," said Brayer. "God, it must be smooth to be a congressman!"
They had dropped off the AP man, and Artie could talk freely. "Another thing I didn't want to say in front of him, Halmer, is the Southern angle. Those Democrats from Dixie are going to be swarming around the valley offering sites and tax write-offs and hell knows what to persuade damaged industries to relocate. This means you build up the Democratic South and drain strength out of our state. Unemployment and discontent. We're G.O.P. here, but not by such a margin that a sharp local depression couldn't put the state over the line. The cities, frankly, we lost last time but we have the counties as of now. If the valley isn't saved, Halmer, it might cost us a senator—and you know what that would mean. Knocking off Bolling and his sixteen years of seniority and the committee appointments that go with it would be a very serious thing for us nationally. I'm not exaggerating when I say that a large, prompt injection of cash is vital to everything you and I stand for."
Akslund hooded his wise old eyes and nodded.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Polly Chesbro went through the ranks of litters to the one on which the burgess lay. A nurse in the pinstriped cotton fatigue uniform had shoved a thermometer under his tongue and was looking at her watch.
"How is he, Lieutenant?" Polly asked.
The nurse whipped out the thermometer, read it, jotted down a figure on her clipboard and said, "Holding his own. Excuse me." She shook down the thermometer, popped it into a glass that held many thermometers, picked out another one and slipped it under the tongue of the person in the next litter, a girl of ten with a dry, burning face and dry, burning eyes.
In the marble lobby of the schoolhouse Mickey Groff was studying an extraordinary organization that had sprung up within a very few hours. Card tables had been set up and conference tables dragged from offices and classrooms. For an ad-hoc government with the wires out you wanted everything under one roof, in one room, instead of scattered through a town hall. When a man came to you with trouble you could fix, this way there was no phone to pick up; this way you called across the room and things happened fast.
There were two main centers around the fire chief and the police chief. They retained roughly their old jurisdictions, respectively over the destructiveness of nature and the cussedness of man. While Groff watched, a woman came coolly to the fire chief in her turn to say that her undermined house was beginning to sag and she had twenty refugees. They had gone out into the street, could he find places for them? And, as an afterthought, could they do anything about the house? The fire chief called to three boy scouts, part of his combined field force and housing records. One knew a big thirteen-room place on the outskirts which, when he last checked, had only twelve people in it. Thirteen rooms. Space for twenty more. And the house?
"George," the fire chief called to a brassarded man, "get some people, a dozen if you can, and see if you can do anything about Mrs. Comden's place. She says it's beginning to lean badly. Be a pity to see it go now."
George, an electric-company rigger, said, "What kind of a house, Mrs. Comden? How big? Which way's it going?"
"Frame. Two-story, eight rooms. It's going into the street, maybe gone by now, I don't know."
"What's in the back yard? Do you have a back yard?"
She passed her hand vaguely across her forehead, brushing back her hair. "Back yard? Just a back yard. A vegetable garden..."
"Good," said George with satisfaction. "I know where there's some wire rope and oil drums. We'll dig in the drums for deadmen and anchor the house to them with the rope. I'll need a truck, Chief."
"You get a car," the chief said. "Sorry." He scribbled a note which would go to the guardian of the improvised motor pool outside. George walked off with it slowly, collecting waiting men. He picked them big and burly. The woman trailed apathetically after. The chief was already engaged with a man who wanted a gang to clear away snapped and fallen electrical cables which would set his house afire—and, as an afterthought, the neighborhood it was in—the instant current came through again. He got two men with axes and a felling saw to cut away the fallen tree that had brought down the cables.
It was getting dim in the marble lobby, in spite of the tall windows. On a couple of the card tables candles stuck in their own wax were being lit; across the room somebody was pumping up a Coleman lamp. It lit, in a dazzling green-white flare, and the gloom was gone for a while.
On the police chief's side the reports were more bitter. "Goons from across the river, Red. So far they're just hanging around and talking it up, but they've got bottles. It's just a matter of time before they get brave enough to smash my window and grab the furs. There's a dozen of them and I've got to have at least six men. So help me, if I don't get six men I'm going to kill the first drunken s.o.b. that makes a move at our place. I've got my brother there with the shotgun now—"
"Skip the rest, Pete. You and your brother are two able-bodied men and you've got a shotgun. You don't need any help."
"I don'twantto blast 'em!" the furrier wailed. "Why do we hire you guys, anyway?"
"We're spread too thin, Pete. We'll send the patrol car past and put a scare into your friends, but don't expect us to tie up six men for every shop on Broad Street. We're spread too thin and we have to keep moving. Matter of fact, I ought to let your brother handle the store himself and deputize you right here and now."
"No you don't, Red!" The man backed away and was gone.
A wide-eyed scout darted up and gave old Red the three-fingered salute. "Big fight, Chief, down on the river, foot of Sullivan. I don't know what it's about, maybe one of the boats—"
The chief yelled at two waiting men in Legion caps: "Take a car. They're trying to take over one of the ferries at Sullivan Street. Break it up and keep patrolling the river. We've got to keep the boats in our hands." The men stolidly moved off to the car pool.
Mickey Groff knew by then where he'd be useful. He went up to the chief's table and said, "I'd like to be deputized."
The old man stared at him. "And go looting with a badge? Who're you, mister? I haven't seen you in town before."
"Mickey Groff. From New York. I came in to see your burgess about taking over the old Swanscomb Mill for a factory of mine."
"Groff. Henry talked about your offer. All right—Groff." The old man suddenly grinned. "Think I'll even trust you with a gun. Know how to use one?"
"Yes. The army."
The chief snorted. "Army! I hoped you might be a hunter. Well, maybe you'll do. Put up your hand."
Groff did.
In a rapid mumble the old man asked him whether he swore to uphold and defend the laws and constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, so help him God. Groff said he would, and the old man said he hereby appointed him a special deputy policeman of the Borough of Hebertown. "And," he added, "I sure hope this is legal because I've been doing it all day. Sign your name on this list. Clarence, give this man a thirty-eight. Have you got a handkerchief, mister? No? Clarence, give the man a clean handkerchief to tie around his arm."
He clanked down an enormous revolver and five cartridges on the table.
"Five?" Groff asked.
"Army!" the chief snorted. "The chamber under the hammer is kept empty in civilian life, Groff. Let me see you load it."
Fishing in his memory, Groff broke the revolver, set the safety, loaded it and closed it, being very careful where he pointed the thing.
The chief said, "I guess I won't have to take it back after all. Now you stick around and wait. Talk to Murphy over there. He's been a deputy before this."
Murphy was small and quiet. He volunteered that he was a plumber and that there'd be a lot of work for him after all this was over. He showed Groff how to carry his pistol in the waistband of his pants and said cautioningly, "Of course we ain't going to use them, you understand."
Groff, who had his doubts about it, said he understood and watched while a battery-operated receiver-transmitter on another of the card tables came to life under the ministrations of a sixteen-year-old boy. The fire chief and the police chief both charged over; so after a while did a doctor from the outside when the word reached him. The three tried simultaneously to dictate messages to the bulldozed teen-ager.
The fire chief wanted chemical trucks sent in, as many as could be rounded up. The police chief wanted National Guardsmen, at least a battalion. The doctor wanted to know where the hell the goddam army field hospital was. It was an interesting fight and Mickey Groff was sorry when a trouble call came in and he and Murphy missed the end of it.
The man in the Legion cap said, "You best give me that gun, fella. I can handle it."
"So can I," said Mickey Groff. He wasn't nasty about it; but the man in the Legion cap shrugged and let it go. "This the place?" Groff asked as the car stopped.
"This is the place." The Legionnaire scowled worriedly. "They took all the boats across the river. You see anything over there?"
Groff got out of the car and looked. It was full dark now, and the river was wide. There were lights of some kind on the opposite bank, but he couldn't have told you what they were. Flashlights and electric lanterns, most likely.
But they looked a little bit close.
Groff ordered, "Turn the car to the right. Put the brights on." The Legionnaire cramped the wheels around and inched forward. He kicked the button of the highway-beam headlights.
"They're coming, all right," said Groff. Shapes were lying on the water, punctuated with hand lights.
"Sons of bitches," said the Legionnaire bitterly. "Now there'll be hell to pay. Four of us against every goddam goon on the river—and Harry and me ain't even got guns."
"Take it easy, Walt," Murphy said. But in the reflection from the headlights Groff could see his face was worried.
Murphy, who had appointed himself in charge of the detail, sent the Legionnaire named Walt after the Legionnaire named Harry; and he disposed them as best he could. Groff got the place of honor—he had a gun. He was put on the end of a little loading jetty; Murphy took a position on a floating landing platform; Walt and Harry were left to stand by the car, to keep the lights on the boats.
And the boats came on, four of them, put-putting through the water in convoy formation. Funny, thought Groff abstractedly; if I were them I'd come ashore upstream a little way. This is the natural place for deputies to be waiting for them. If they used their heads they'd know that, and they'd come ashore somewhere else—
He thanked his lucky stars that the goons evidently were not using their heads.
Harry, behind the wheel of the car, was making a fantastic amount of racket grinding gears, racing the motor, shifting back and forth to pick out one boat after another with the headlights. Damn fool, thought Groff aggrievedly. He could hardly hear the deputy named Murphy shouting at the approaching boats. There was some kind of answer from them, but he couldn't make that out at all.
But they were getting close.
Groff carefully dropped to one knee, rested his hand with the revolver in it on the railing of the jetty, and took aim at the lead boat. How long had it been since he'd fired the pistol-dismounted qualifying range? Nearly fifteen years, he guessed; it was in the first few months of basic training, and always after that it had been a carbine or an M-1.
Somebody was coming up behind him.
Good God, he thought, they've made another landing! He started to turn.
It was the man Walt, grabbing for the gun. "Leggo, you!" he panted, clutching at the revolver. "If you're too yellow to shoot let me have it!"
Walt was no kid; he was in his late fifties at the least. But he was big and solid, and Groff was off balance. For a moment he staggered at the end of the jetty, Walt leaning on him....
They both went in.
The water was cold and the current was fast. What became of the revolver Groff didn't know. He broke surface, spluttering and choking.
Walt was splashing right beside him. "Help me!" he bawled. "For God's sake, help me! I can't swim!"
Groff had one bitter moment of temptation—let him drown! cried his subconscious. But then the decision was out of his hands. Walt flailed toward him and caught him. Groff went under, choking; he struggled upward, carrying the panicky man with him, got a breath, went under again—
The next time he came to the surface someone was there to grab him.
The goons! Instinctively he tried to fight free, but somebody in the boat had a good grip on his arm. They hauled him in, and another boat had Walt.
"You all right?" one of the men in the boat demanded anxiously. Groff said dizzily, "Sure. But—"
"Take it easy," said the man in the boat. "We'll take you up to the emergency center. We figured you people'd need some help, so after we got things under control on our side we came on over." He said proudly, "They thought I was nuts, keeping after everybody to join the Civil Defense squads. I guess they'll change their minds now!"
Chief Brayer was looking a little ashamed of himself, but he recovered quickly. All the men from the other side of the river had guns; all of them were personally vouched for by the Civil Defense man; they made valuable reinforcements for the exhausted deputies Brayer had been swearing in.
They found dry clothes for Groff, and Brayer put him in charge of the dispatcher's desk to give him a chance to warm up. It had turned windy with nightfall.
There was a commotion outside, and a couple of state troopers came in. Groff looked past them; there was a dignified-looking old man, somebody of importance, by the way the troopers stood by him.
And with him were Artie Chesbro and Sharon Froman.
Groff stood up to get a better look. Chesbro glanced around the room, caught Groff's eye, looked away, gave him a fishy smile, spoke to the dignified-looking old man, and shepherded him out of the room, along with Chief Brayer and a couple of other top men.
Something didn't smell good. Groff called another deputy over and asked him to take care of the desk. He walked over to one of the troopers and said: "Who's that you came in with?"
The trooper said, "Congressman Akslund, that's the old guy. The other fellow's some kind of local big shot, I guess. You ought to know him better than me."
Local big shot.
Mickey Groff looked thoughtfully at the door Chesbro and the congressman and the village elders had gone out through.
Back at the filling station. The night Zehedi had died. What was Sharon Froman selling Chesbro? "A big regional organization to fight back against the inroads of the South. You and me, Mr. Chesbro."
You and me—and Congressman Akslund, it looked like.
Mickey Groff shook his head, half-enraged, half-admiring. You had to hand it to Chesbro; he always kept his eye on the ball.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
By midnight the United States Army was working one of its accustomed miracles.
It involved a number of things, starting with a phone call at noon from the White House to Fort Lowder, New Jersey. A major general commanding a division in training there said to the phone call, "Yes sir," and after he hung up, to his one-star assistant commander, "Excellent training for the 432nd, Jim. Get it done." The brigadier made some calls and then he and the C.G. finished their lunch serenely. The calls whipped Fort Lowder to a froth of activity that looked senseless at first; an engineer officer took off like a bat out of hell in one of the division's light planes and soared over the flood valley 175 miles away, swooped low over promising field after field, and returned. Leaves were canceled for the division's quartermaster battalion of two-and-a-half-ton, six-by-six trucks. Ordnance mechanics of the division's heavy maintenance company swarmed like maggots around a dozen red-lined vehicles under orders to get them rolling at any cost. Warehouses were skillfully looted of parts by ordnance sergeants while ordnance lieutenants engaged guards in casual conversations that ended when they got the high sign that all was well. And the cause of all the activity, the 432nd field-hospital battalion, which had almost forgotten that itwasa field-hospital battalion, got the pitch by early afternoon. Long broken up into their training-camp formation, scattered through dispensaries and the base hospital, they were abruptly reminded of their battle mission by an announcement over the base PA system by the division surgeon, their commander.