Wonderingly, the six hundred officers and men formed on the parade ground, many still in hospital whites. They were young M.D. first lieutenants grinding out their drafted service wearily. They were male R.N.'s with their big perennial bitch that they were lucky to get a rocker while a woman of equal training automatically got a gold bar. They were corporals who knew one end of a hypodermic needle from another, pharmacists who ached to inventory their own stock of trusses, penicillin, candy bars, yo-yo's and bulk vanilla ice cream in their own corner stores again, privates and recruits who could swing a sledge or mop a corridor. They were a handful of majors and lieutenant colonels who were honest-to-God career military surgeons passionately interested in the problems and possibilities of their work. On the parade ground the division surgeon reminded them of something. It was that they were trained to move into a given bare field and turn it, in two hours, into a functioning, five-hundred-bed hospital.
They dispersed to almost-forgotten warehouses where they broke out field medical chests of instruments and medicine. They found again the long coiled snakes of green treated canvas, tons of it, the 500 litters, and the thousand tent pegs, big and small, and the jointed tent poles and the miles of rope, each piece in its place, and the sledges to drive the pegs, and the Coleman lanterns to hang on the poles. The trucks of the quartermaster battalion backed up and the tiny handful of field-grade officers buzzed everywhere, yelling and cajoling and consulting loading lists, and trucks were unloaded and reloaded a dozen times in some cases to get the right load in its right place in the line of convoy.
The engineers had finished an overlay strip map of the route by then, and mimeographs began to spin out copies for the quartermaster drivers. An MP platoon moved out in a truck and one man was dropped at each tricky intersection to wave the convoy through. Each MP had a couple of K-rations with him, because he'd be busy long into the night; as the convoy went past the rearmost men they'd be picked up in the truck and leap-frogged ahead of the foremost men to the next tricky intersections.
The water trucks went as a matter of course, but it took a flash of genius for somebody to realize that the area would be short of gas, and this got the infantry into it. A puzzled rifle company found itself yanked off the firing range and assigned to the mysterious chore of filling five-gallon jerry cans with gas from the pumps of the division motor pool and stacking them solid in three six-by-sixes.
It took a flash of West Point tradition for the division band to be massed at the camp gate when the 432nd rolled off shortly before sunset. The division commander was there; the band oompahed and he impassively took the salute from the startled doctors in the command cars. A few of the enlisted men of the battalion rolling past remembered vaguely about crossing the arms and sitting at attention. There wasn't a man there who was not, though they'd hoot at the word, inspired by the ancient tradition of the field music and the ancient greeting they were exchanging with the tough old pro who was sending them on their way.
They rolled for six hours, until their tailbones were bruised and their bladders ready to burst, along highway and detour and miserable blacktop. It was dark soon, but the sound of some of the bridges they rumbled over scared them silly. K-rations and canteen water staved off the boredom, and so did banter when they crept through the towns.
They arrived eventually at the field the engineer officer had spotted from his division plane and stiffly went about turning the field into a five-hundred-bed hospital. It took cursing and coaxing, and five men, utterly out of condition, doubled up clutching at brand-new hernias while they manhandled the tons of canvas and pegs and poles. Another was doping off in the dark and a truck backed over him, killing him. The casualty rate for the operation was one per cent, which was not bad.
While the tents rose in the headlights' glare the officers in their jeeps and command cars were spreading out to the stricken communities. One of them found Hebertown, two miles away.
The young lieutenant, for a few hours not wearily grinding through his period of drafted service, said to Chief Brayer, "We're prepared to take over your entire medical load. Who's in charge on the medical side?"
The police chief said to one of his men wearily, "Get Dr. Soames. Good news for him."
But Soames had seen the jeep and medics in it. He burst in and roared: "Tench-hut!" Automatically the lieutenant popped to. "Suck in that gut!" Soames snarled, and then broke into relieved, hysterical laughter. "My God, you looked funny as hell," he wheezed at the officer. "Haven't had so much fun since we bribed the cooks to serve the division surgeon fricassee of haemoangioma!"
The lieutenant looked a little green and asked stiffly, "How many cases have you, doctor?"
"Ninety-five, shavetail. Take 'em away. We're all beat to our socks here. The town medics, the emergency people they flew in—we're beat." Dr. Soames sagged into a chair and seemed to lose interest.
The lieutenant went outside to his jeep and told the signal corps man with the SCR 6300: "Ambulance-fitted trucks for ninety-five cases. I'll check 'em over and get them classified."
Mrs. Goudeket and Polly Chesbro had, semi-automatically, fallen into the routine of the improvised hospital. For hours they had been doling out rationed water, mopping brows, jumping to the "Here-you" of the handful of nurses and doctors, cleaning up vomit and blood, dumping and washing ducks and bedpans. Mrs. Goudeket first saw the brisk new lieutenant talking crisply to an exhausted nurse.
"That one," she said. "He isn't tired."
Polly said wanly, "That's nice." She wasn't listening, particularly. She'd come to the hospital in the first place to keep an eye on the burgess, but he was off in an upper room, what they humorously called the "quiet" ward because there was, in fact, fractionally less noise and confusion there than on the lower level. She hadn't seen him for hours.
Mrs. Goudeket insisted, "Look, darling. There's another one. Maybe another ambulance came in?"
"That's nice," said Polly, escaping. They were moving two of the patients again, and it was her sector of the floor. The patients were carried off in litters—new green ones, Polly noticed wearily; maybe there was another ambulance in. Strip the cots, bundle the bedding, scrounge through the stacks of afghans and torn sheets and quilted comforters for something to make a new bed with, turn down the covers and help the new patient in.
But there wasn't any new patient, not for either of the beds.
Two pink-faced kids in clean green fatigues brushed by her and set a litter down next to the bed with the eleven-year-old boy in it. Polly started to warn them about his probable fractured ribs; he had been under most of a frame dwelling for eight hours before he was found. But they seemed to know what they were doing; they rolled him gently to one side, slipped the litter under, rolled him gently back.
She watched them carrying him away. Funny. A lot of the patients were going away, carried by these frighteningly expert, incredibly fresh new people.
It had to be true. Help had arrived—help in quantities, enough to meet the need.
Polly stood up straight. "That's nice," she said dizzily, and pitched headfirst across the bed she was stripping down.
Dick McCue, young and healthy and very tired after toting the burgess in, had slept twelve hours, awakening in darkness in the school gymnasium. A child was crying on one of the other litters and a weary mother was trying to soothe it. McCue was enormously hungry; his last "meal" had been a cup of syrupy coffee before he staggered into the improvised dormitory and passed out; his last before that had been breakfast on cheese crackers in the gas station. His stomach was actively growling.
He headed for a dim door, stumbling over litters and bundles of personal possessions; he was cursed a couple of times.
The dark corridor outside was lighted at its end, and he emerged into the school lobby full of men with homemade armbands. From somewhere came a tantalizing smell of coffee.
He asked one of the brassarded men. "Just coffee here," the man said. "Nearest food's the diner up the hill. Can't miss it; it's lit."
And the diner did stand out like a bonfire by virtue of one pressure lamp. He found a cop there to keep order and a chipper waitress who looked at him, grinned and set out a bowl of breakfast food, crunched open a can of condensed milk with the corner of a cleaver and poured the whole can into the bowl. "Sugar," she said, and shoved the dispenser at him.
"Thanks." He poured sugar on and began to spoon down the cloying mixture as fast as he could.
"Another?" the waitress asked when he was done.
He patted his stomach experimentally. "I guess not," he said. "You have any coffee?"
"Coming up." She slapped a mugful at him and he sipped it down.
"Better," he said. "How much?"
"For free," she said. She assumed a Greek accent. "Mr. Padopolous says, America's so good to him this is his chance to say thank you."
"Well, thank Mr. Padopolous for me when he gets back."
He walked out into the dark and bummed a cigarette from the cop. After a deep drag he told him, "I'm a transient. In town by accident."
"You're lucky," the cop said sourly. "I live here."
"Yeah. Well—I mean, is there anything I can do?"
The cop shrugged. "Not much. Help's getting here, lots of it. The army rolled in a hospital and the governor sent a battalion of National Guards. One of them's supposed to show up here and relieve me so I can get some sleep." He yawned tremendously and sat down on the diner steps. "My advice to you, get some sleep and in the morning they'll have something fixed up for you. Maybe those army trucks'll get you where you want to go."
Dick said, "Thanks," and walked off. Well, he'd missed it. Slept right through it.
The cop called after him, "Hey, kid. Not toward River Street. The Guard sent a sound truck around. Unsafe buildings, wide-open warehouses and stores. They're patrolling with guns. Got it?"
"Got it," said the too-late hero. "Thanks." He turned right and walked on. He'd be able to find the school again; it was the only place in town, maybe the only place for miles, withtwolights in front, one shining through the door and the other hung to a spike in a phone pole outside where the motor-pool man guarded a weird collection of vehicles.
He rambled down one dark street cursing inwardly. He was sure the big, dynamic Mickey Groff hadn't slept through it, had seized the chance for leadership and heroism.
Quite suddenly his chance arrived and he almost walked right past it. Two writhing figures in a doorway, a woman and a man in a silent, deadly struggle. He had one arm around her head and his paw over her mouth; her dress was torn down the front.
It flashed through his head. He was about to Defend the Virtue of a Maiden against the assault of a Lust-Maddened, Drink-Crazed Human Beast. Chivalry stuff.
He grabbed the man's shoulder and heaved, but his heart wasn't in it.
A fist flailed from nowhere and smashed him high on the right cheek, hard enough to make an icy area of numbness for a moment and then—hell's own pain. From that moment his heart was in it. While the woman, shoved aside, lay on the ground panting, he waded into the man. After the first few blows it was no longer a fight but first-degree assault. He battered the man to the ground and stood over him grimly, his chest heaving. "You want any more?" he croaked.
The man mumbled something. It could have been "no."
He looked around for the woman; she was reeling down the street, one arm propping her against the wall. A couple came scurrying past, stared at her and gave her a wide berth. He hastened after her. "Can I help you?" he asked.
She said sluggishly, "Went to see if my sister was—no. Jus' go away. Thanks, and everything. But leave me alone. Please."
He backed off and watched her slowly make her way down the street. She turned a corner and he crossed the street to see. She painfully climbed the steps of a frame house with a porch, went inside and the great adventure was over.
Except for the damnable aching of his cheekbone.
In Hollywood, he thought sourly, it would have been just the beginning. The boy and the girl meet cute and you take it from there. In real life you save them from rape and they don't want to have anything to do with you. She was probably embarrassed, horribly so, and wanted no part of anybody who had seen her with her dress torn, about to be violated.
As he walked he constructed a face-saving fantasy about another maiden who might be less preoccupied and more grateful, but it was uphill work. His cheek was very bad, and it occurred to him that it might be more than a bruise; people did get fractures there. Also he seemed to have broken a knuckle.
The hero business didn't pay very well.
He turned around and headed back for the school. Maybe he could find a doctor there to take a look at his face; he was by then almost sure he could feel bones grating when he worked his jaw.
It was a panel truck, like any other panel truck you might see except for the name on the side and the thirty-meter whip antenna sticking up from the roof. It parked out in front of the schoolhouse and Mickey Groff stepped outside to see what was going on.Federal Broadcasting System Mobile Unit Four, he read. One of the men in the front seat wore headphones, was talking into a hand microphone.
It was nearly two o'clock in the morning. Hell of a fat audience they'll have to listen to them now, thought Groff. It didn't occur to him that all over the country listeners were staying up past their bedtimes for just such eyewitness, on-the-spot accounts as this.
Chief Brayer came out and said, "You still here? Get some sleep."
It was good advice for the chief too, Groff thought. He was too old a man for this sort of carrying-on. The national guardsmen had taken over the problems of patrolling the flooded-out, burned-out areas, and most of the temporary deputies had turned in their guns and armbands. But Groff wasn't sleepy. He was tired, dead-sick tired, but he wasn't sleepy.
He said, "Chief, what was Artie Chesbro doing with the congressman?"
Brayer rubbed his chin. "I forgot you and him were competitors," he said, almost apologetically.
"Keep on forgetting it," said Groff. "That isn't why I'm asking."
Brayer looked at him thoughtfully and shrugged. "You think Chesbro's horning in on something? Maybe you're right. He's thick as thieves with old Akslund, all right, and I'd swear they never saw each other before today. The congressman's all hotted up about a regional disaster-relief agency. He's been sending out statements and messages—right through our own radio; I read some of them. One of them went right to the White House, boy. He's asking for a billion dollars grant."
"And I suppose Artie Chesbro wants to have something to say about spending it?"
The chief said slowly, "Wouldn't you?"
"No!" said Groff, suddenly hot. "What's the matter with you, Brayer? You know this Chesbro—Starkman knows him. He's a cheap angle-shooting county politician. Not even your own county, for God's sake! I came up here to start a factory—maybe not a very big factory, compared to Ford or R.C.A., but the biggest damned factory I ever tried to start; and Chesbro was in on the ground floor ahead of me, trying to steal my factory site for some two-bit deal of his own. You think he cares about Hebertown? You think he's going to worry about whether the right people get the right money, or whether the area makes a recovery from this? He cares about Artie Chesbro, and that's all!"
"Now, hold on a minute, boy—"
"Hold on, hell! If Henry Starkman wasn't half-dead, he wouldn't let Chesbro get away with this! What right have you got to—"
"Hold on, boy!" The old man was suddenly erect, forceful. "You don't have to tell me what Henry likes and doesn't like. Forty-one years we've been friends, and between us we pretty near run this town. And you know what's been happening? Every year a couple more buildings off the tax rolls, every year another couple thousand dollars short in collections. Chesbro? Sure, boy. He's out for number one. But I saw that message that went to the White House. It said a billion dollars. God, man—do you know what any part of a billion dollars would mean to Hebertown?"
He glared at Groff without speaking for a moment. Then he leaned back and rubbed his eyes wearily. "A billion dollars," he said, and it was like a prayer.
The little ranch house had been perfectly untouched by the flood; it was well uphill on Sullivan Street. Representative Akslund worked comfortably through the day in the pine-paneled den. His work consisted mostly of conversation with Artie Chesbro while Sharon sat by and took notes by candlelight. Agreement was reached, a statement was signed, the old man yawned politely and shuffled off to the master bedroom. "You release this to the network," he said from the door. "The wire services can take it off the air. Good night."
And Sharon and Chesbro raced to the school.
"Damn it," said Chesbro peevishly. The mobile broadcasting truck was gone. They scurried around with flashlights; Sharon found a state trooper who thought he remembered seeing it heading down toward the roped-off area at the foot of River Street. The houses there were either down or abandoned, and the only permitted persons were national guardsmen, theoretically patrolling against looters.
"Hello," said Mickey Groff. Sharon Froman jumped and turned around.
She said, projecting throatily, "Mickey! Thank heaven. It's good to see you, Mickey. We were worried."
Artie Chesbro caught her eye and slid away. Sharon said gaily, "Hasn't this been a day? We haven't slept ten minutes altogether since we saw you last. Luckily I'm a writer." She lifted her briefcase with a smile.
"What's that got to do with it?"
"We writers have our little secrets," she said. She put her hand on his shoulder, strolling him away.
"Where'd Chesbro go?"
"He'll be back," Sharon assured him. "Buy me a cup of coffee and tell me what's been going on."
"Buying" a cup of coffee consisted of rinsing out a cup and ladling black coffee out of the tarry stew that had been bubbling over a gasoline flame for six hours. Groff let himself be steered and took a sip of the coffee. It was awful, but it was coffee. He said, "I've been helping out around here as best I could. So has Chesbro's wife, and so has Mrs. Goudeket. And you?"
Sharon said with a quiet pride, "We've been doing our share, believe me. We've spent the whole day with Congressman Akslund. He just went to bed a few minutes ago."
"Alone?" Mickey Groff asked.
Sharon looked at him with cold resentment. "That's an unpleasant remark, Groff," she said thinly. "If that's the way you intend to talk, I'll leave you alone." She turned her back on him and walked haughtily away.
Anyway, Artie Chesbro was already out of sight; there was no chance that Groff could find him before he reached the mobile unit.
Poor Mickey Groff, thought Sharon with deep and sincere sympathy, he would take it hard when he heard Chesbro had Congressman Akslund's backing to head the Emergency Relief Committee. But he had had his chance. He had seen her first, but he had chosen to throw in his lot with Mrs. Goudeket and that fantastic Chesbro woman; and she had gone over to the better man.
Poor Mickey Groff, Sharon thought comfortably. Maybe some other time....
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mrs. Goudeket tottered into the marble lobby of the schoolhouse. A flaring pressure lamp threw grotesque shadows against the polished walls and the room was almost empty. Some men dozed over their card tables and desks. Outside the last of the ambulance-fitted six-by-sixes was rolling noisily away with the last of the casualties.
Chief Brayer's head snapped up from a nodding doze as she cleared her throat.
"Chief?" Mrs. Goudeket said timidly. "Just a few hours since I asked, but I think things have changed a lot, hah?"
He focused on her with difficulty and said at last, "Oh. The lady from the hotel."
"Goudeket's Green Acres," she said automatically, with pride. "I was thinking that now maybe things are more under control, hah? So maybe you could spare me a car, some gas. I have to get back, look over my property—" If it still is my property, the thought came, unwelcome.
"A car?"
Mrs. Goudeket was exasperated. "You heard. A car! Look, if it makes you feel better, I could take some people with me. You need shelter? I have room. Believe me, by now I bet I have more room than you can imagine. We have food, too." Food for the booked-solid week, which would now be a week of hundred-per-cent cancellations and empty tables.
Chief Brayer looked wearily interested. "Yes," he said absently, "you would have food. All right. I yelled at you before, didn't I? I'm sorry—"
She shrugged. "No apologies, please. Your language—But you meant well. You were busy."
"We needed the cars," he said doggedly. "We had to keep them for an emergency, you see. That's all that counted. In case there was a fire or a burglary, the cars had to be here."
"Don't explain. Please, do I get a car? I'll be careful. I could write out a check, leave a deposit—" She had almost said five hundred dollars. "A hundred dollars?"
"Don't have to." Like a man in a slow-motion movie he hauled a memo pad across the desk, hoisted a pen from his uniform coat pocket. He wrote painfully. "Give this to Mr. Cioni—you know where the cars are? Across the street? All right. How far do you have to go?"
She threw up her hands. "Who knows? Always before it was seventeen miles. Now we have to go around and around—who knows?" There was an edge to her voice.
"Tell him I said to give you a half a tank of gas."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Goudeket.
Across the street, three trucks and four pleasure cars, one of them with the tires flat. The motor pool. A civilian in charge, and in the back a national guardsman with a gun.
The man in charge of the motor pool studied the note with a flashlight whose beam was fading to orange. He looked at her doubtfully. "You going to drive it?"
"Don't worry, mister," she snapped. "Do you want to see my license?"
"Me? Nah." He pottered over to a '47 Dodge sedan and copied the plate number on the chief's note. "Give me your address, lady?"
She did. He copied it down with the license number. "Sign," he said, and she did. Mr. Cioni copied the data onto another sheet, signed it and carefully put the original chit in his pocket. He gave her his copy. "This is your trip ticket," he said. "In case you get stopped by a state trooper, this proves you didn't steal the car. We hope."
Now garrulous, he added: "She's yours. I don't know if this is legal, but it makes sense, doesn't it? At least we got records. After things are straightened out I guess somebody'll get in touch with you to return the car."
She misread his fatigue and his nerves as suspicion. She said haughtily, "Young fella, at Goudeket's Green Acres we have a fleet of late-model cars and station wagons. And to be very frank with you, if a guest should drive up in a forty-seven car in this condition, the room clerk would discover that his reservation had not been received, believe me." Almost she believed it, in the heat of the moment. Almost Goudeket's Green Acres was the Concord or the Grossinger's they had meant it for.
The aspersion passed clean through the weary ears of Mr. Cioni.
"I guess that's right," he said. "Good luck."
"Please, you should give me a half a tank of gas. Mr. Brayer said so." She looked pointedly at the stack of jerry cans that had been dumped by one of the quartermaster trucks.
Mr. Cioni wearily climbed into the car, snapped on the dash light and turned the key. The gas needle stayed on zero. Mrs. Goudeket inhaled triumphantly.
He banged the dial with the heel of his hand and watched it creep joltingly up to the halfway mark. He said to nobody, "I know these babies." He said to Mrs. Goudeket, "You got your half a tank. Good luck."
She said, "Watch nobody else takes my car, will you? I'll get my friends."
Her feet were killing her. Across the street, back into the schoolhouse, up the stairs.
She hiked wearily into the deserted "quiet ward," where Polly Chesbro was sprawled on one stained cot and Dick McCue, looking like the returned stray cat he was, on another.
She shook him gently. "Your face better, Dick?"
He sneered experimentally. "I guess so." He yawned, and that did hurt; but not too much. "I thought maybe it was a broken bone, but it just hurts on the skin now. I'll live." He was feeling pretty cheerful. The disappointing parts of his Rout of the Drunken Beast were dropping out of his recollection. He said, "Did you get the car, Mrs. G.?"
"Of course," she said, surprised. "Why not? Things have quieted down. They have time for a reasonable request from an important local business proprietor." He looked at her sharply, but there was no expression on her face. For the first time it occurred to Dick McCue that here was a woman, not so very smart, not so very young, capable of being wrong, capable of having foolish hopes. She thought she was still an important local business proprietor. A ramshackle summer hotel. They folded by the hundreds, year after year; it didn't take a flood to put them out of business. The flood was only the mercy bullet through the blindfold, after the man was down.
Polly was awake. She said, "Mrs. Goudeket, it's nice of you to offer to take us in, but—"
"But?" repeated Mrs. Goudeket. "What but?"
Polly Chesbro said, "I don't want to leave Mr. Starkman."
Mrs. Goudeket snapped angrily, "He's your father, maybe? A whole hospital they bring in on trucks to take care of him, and you can't trust the doctors to fix him up? So stay, Mrs. Chesbro! Hang around the old man some more, make a fool out of yourself. But I have to get to work!"
She glared furiously at the other woman, trembling with anger. Polly Chesbro was wiser than she; Polly felt the anger, and knew it was directed not at herself but at something inside the old lady. Polly said perceptively, "Don't worry, Mrs. Goudeket. Everything always works out."
The old lady was crying. Dick McCue stared in wonder as Polly Chesbro put her arms around the woman and protected her from the harsh surrounding world.
After a moment Mrs. Goudeket pushed herself away, sniffing. "You have a Kleenex?" she inquired, embarrassed. "I don't know what got into me, Polly. Please, you have to excuse—"
"There's nothing to excuse," said Polly Chesbro. "We're all worn out."
"No, not worn out. Tired, yes. Sick, maybe." Mrs. Goudeket wiped her streaming nose and said dismally, "Ever since Sam died it's slave, slave, slave. You know what Sam said? Every year. 'Next year we go to the Holy Land, why not?' And always I found a reason. So we kept on with the hotel, and it killed him." She patted Polly's arm absently. "Worn out is from a summer with the guests complaining about the food and changing their rooms. From something like this flood you only get tired."
Mrs. Goudeket pulled herself together after a while. Polly left her, and then came back. "Mr. Starkman's wife is with him," she reported. "I suppose I might as well go with you, Mrs. Goudeket—if the offer's still open."
"Open? Of course it's still open. And Mr. Starkman?"
"Much better. They think he'll be all right now." Polly Chesbro's expression was grave and joyous. They'd pulled the old man through; and Bess Starkman had been more than grateful for Polly's help to her husband. Polly said, "Let's get the others."
"Others?" Mrs. Goudeket demanded suspiciously.
"Mr. Groff and Arthur—and Miss Froman."
Mrs. Goudeket looked mutinous. "Mr. Groff is perfectly welcome to come if he is so inclined," she said. "Likewise Mr. Chesbro. But as for Miss Froman, believe me, Polly, I know her better than you. She'll get along wherever she is, trust her, but it isn't going to be at Goudeket's Green Acres."
Dick McCue explained, "Goudeket's Green Acres hashadMiss Froman."
Polly was stubborn and silent, but she went down the stairs with them uncomplainingly.
They found the three in the ground-floor cloakroom where coffee had been dispensed through the day. Mickey Groff was the gray-looking one. Sharon and Artie Chesbro seemed to have tapped some source of strength and wakefulness not given to ordinary humans.
Mrs. Goudeket announced flatly, "I've got a car, to go to my place, Goudeket's Green Acres. I think it is a good idea if you all come with me. Here is finished; they have the army now, and plenty of doctors, National Guard, everything. Why should we be a burden? I have plenty of room for—"
She hesitated; the words didn't want to come out. She glowered at them: Big, solid Groff; big, sly Chesbro; soiled, amused-by-it-all Sharon Froman.Yenta, she thought scathingly. Dirty, low female—but still she needs help. As I may need help some day. As from the Mountain we were told to give help.
She said with difficulty, "That means everybody, naturally."
Sharon caroled, "Why, Mrs. Goudeket, you've forgiven your naughty little girl!"
So full of energy and joy! Mrs. Goudeket muttered angrily to herself, but all she said out loud was, "Well, yes or no?"
Artie Chesbro said cheerfully, "That's very nice of you, Mrs. Goudeket. I think I'd better stay in Hebertown, though—some important things to take care of. There's a radio truck around somewhere and I want to—"
Sharon interrupted loudly, with a warning look, "Mr. Chesbro means Congressman Akslund has left him some work to do. Anyway, Mrs. Goudeket—"
Oh, she was arch! And no sleep, marveled Mrs. Goudeket—"much as I'dloveto join your little party and share the finest of accommodations for which your hotel is noted, there are big things to be done. So thanks, but no thanks."
"Fine," said Mrs. Goudeket. "Stay here with your big things. Now before somebody steals my car, we better go." She folded the trip ticket from the motor pool and put it down on the table next to Dick McCue. Mickey Groff said, "Wait a minute, Mrs. Goudeket. What are these 'big things?'"
Chesbro laughed. "Groff, does Macy's tell Gimbel's? I tell you what. You want the Swanscomb place, right?" He shrugged generously. "It's yours. I won't buck you."
"If you won't buck me it's because you don't want it any more," Groff said. "You're after bigger game. What would that be, Chesbro? A finger in a billion-dollar pie? A chance to spread federal funds around the way you want to? Maybe the break you've been waiting for?"
Chesbro said fretfully, "Now Mickey,please. Why can't you be reasonable? You're an outlander here, you've got nothing to do with the community. You want to move in with your nickel factory? Go ahead. I won't stand in your way. I'll even help you. But you can't do anything with the federal grants, because you don't have the connections, because you don't have the information about who needs what, because you aren't local and wouldn't be allowed to come within smelling distance of it in the first place. Why not live and let live?"
He was open and honest, Groff saw—as open and honest as the likes of Artie Chesbro ever knew how to be. You work your side of the street, he was saying, and I'll work mine. Under the ethical stands of Artie Chesbro he had made an honorable proposal. It would never have occurred to him to entertain propositions like—
Federal funds are money in trust—
A time of catastrophe is not a time to feather one's nest—
Or even—
A businessman who opposes what you want to do is not necessarily a jealous rival.
There simply was no handle, Groff thought, by which you could get hold of the man. He was completely out of touch. Off in a kind of a dream. It was almost as if he was drunk; but that, of course, was impossible—liquor would have put him out on his feet in seconds.
Polly Chesbro said suddenly, "What did you want the radio truck for?"
Artie looked alarmed. "Now, honey, don't you get mixed up in—"
She said, "Artie, I know how your mind works. Did you think if you got on the radio and told them that you and the congressman were handling relief here, that would keep him from backing out? Did you think everybody in the country would be listening—at this time of the morning!—and that would make it official?"
"They're recording," Artie Chesbro said sullenly. "They're going to rebroadcast in the morning. I already talked to one of the men from the network."
Dick McCue said, "Mr. Chesbro, it's nothing to me one way or another. But there's a curfew, you know. You can't go running around out there tonight."
Artie Chesbro's expression was petulant. "Leave me alone, will you? I know what I'm doing!"
Polly Chesbro folded her hands and looked at him. "Artie, don't you ever learn?" Her expression was gentle, her voice was calm—even warm, Groff thought, with a sudden shock that was almost jealousy. "Remember the television station?"
Artie whined, "Honey, I told you a thousand times—"
"You were all set to make a million dollars out of television," she said. "Remember? Only you wouldn't wait for the F.C.C. to grant the license. 'We'll start building,' you said, 'and then they won't have the guts to turn us down.' Only they did. You never got that construction permit. What was it my father put up? Fifteen thousand dollars? And you lost it all, remember?"
"Honey! These people don't want to hear—"
"Then there was the drive-in theater. You only got five thousand out of my father for that. But that went down the drain, too, like all your other million-dollar ideas. What was it that time? You figured you could buck the motion-picture projectionists' union? And then—"
Mickey Groff cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me, Polly. You're embarrassing everybody."
Polly laughed gently. "I'm sorry. But really, I hate to see my husband go off like this again."
Groff said to Chesbro, "Like I say, I don't want to butt in; but remember what McCue said about the curfew, Chesbro. I happen to have been around when the national guardsmen got their orders; I wouldn't go out there if I were you."
Mrs. Goudeket said heavily, "That's right, Mr. Chesbro. I was down by the motor-pool place, and they've got guns and—"
"Now you just listen to me!" It was Sharon Froman, her eyes flashing, her face a Valkyrie face. "Arthur Chesbro knows what he's doing, and it isn't up to any of us to try to stop him! You make me sick, all of you. I spent the whole day with Arthur and Congressman Akslund and, believe me, the congressman knows Arthur understands how to do things. And if Arthur's all right with the congressman, I don't see why he shouldn't be all right with a wet-behind-the-ears kid—" Dick McCue's jaw dropped open—"or a fat old biddy—" Mrs. Goudeket began to sputter—"or a mental case—" Polly Chesbro only nodded judiciously, but Mickey Groff sat up straight and cut in.
"Just a minute, Miss Froman!" he started; but he couldn't make himself heard. They were all talking at once—
To Sharon Froman. Nobody paying any attention to Artie Chesbro at all.
By the time anyone got around to paying attention to Artie, he wasn't there.
He closed the door quietly behind him and walked out the main door, nodding pleasantly to the guardsman, across the street to the car pool. It was all going so well, he thought dreamily, so very well. He even managed a little wry chuckle of amusement about the silly spectacle his wife had made of herself. That silly old business of the television station! That ridiculous story about the drive-in theater! But he could afford good-humoredly to overlook her raking up those long dead scores, because everything was going very well indeed.
Curfew? Not a problem, he thought with satisfaction, not as long as he had been wise and clever enough to pick up Mrs. Goudeket's trip ticket. The car was his now—he'd just have to say Mrs. Goudeket had sent him. He wouldn't be on foot for any length of time, and no one would bother him in the car, with a regulation trip ticket. The whole world was well within his grasp, he realized with satisfaction and joy.
And it was due at least in part to Sharon Froman. He nodded to himself in the darkness, picking his way carefully down the slippery street. She had written the official announcement of the plan for a Tri-State Emergency Allocations Supervisory Board that he and the congressman—with Sharon Froman—had cooked up.
Artie Chesbro chuckled out loud. Why, it was even Sharon who had been so resourceful about the matter of the benzedrine. He had been pretty near passed out with fatigue early in the day, even before the congressman had arrived; and she had produced, out of what she gaily called her "kit of writing tools," the little bottle of ten-grain tablets that had waked him up, sharpened his brain, made it possible for him to work on through the endlessly exhausting day.
A fine girl. A great acquisition. They would go far together, thought Artie Chesbro, stumbling dreamily down the misty street, filled with the sense of power, alive with the joy of achievement—coked to the eyebrows.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mr. Cioni saw the man approach jauntily. Who, he wondered, can be full of bounce at this hour—one of the new people from the field hospital? But as the man came into the cone of light from the shaded Coleman lantern he saw that the fellow wasn't army, that he wore in fact the uniform of an old-timer who had been through the day and a half on the spot. The uniform was a stained and shapeless suit, mud-caked shoes, red eyes and a growth of beard.
"I'm Mr. Chesbro," the man said to Mr. Cioni. "I've come to pick up the car allotted to Mrs. Goudeket."
"The hotel lady? She said she'd be back herself."
Chesbro smiled and handed over the trip ticket. "She's exhausted. I'll pick her up and drive."
"I see. It's that Dodge. Be careful."
Artie almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of advice from this nobody tohim, confidant of Akslund, Johnny on the most wonderful spot imaginable.
He drove off. River Street? Yes; the broadcasters were at River Street. He turned left and heard faintly a shout from the little nobody of the motor pool.
A fragment of the Rubaiyat—nowtherewas a poem, not like those jumbled things Polly wrote!—drifted by.Would we not shatter it to bits, and then remold it closer to the heart's desire?Which was exactly what was going to happen. He had never really had a big chance before, but by waiting and building and sending out his lines of communication he had survived until the big chance came along. The county was shattered to bits, and he would remold it. It wouldn't look like much to an outsider—Akslund. To Akslund and his staff he would seem a disinterested and patriotic businessman working his guts out with no hope of personal gain to reconstruct the smitten area.
He had better start thinking about his lists.
The five walked into the motor pool. Mrs. Goudeket stared blankly at the empty space where the Dodge had been. She said to Mr. Cioni hopefully, "You moved it? Into the street?"
Mr. Cioni looked sick. "Guy had your trip ticket," he said. "Mr.—Cheese?"
"Chesbro," Dick McCue said. "Rat bastard Chesbro, to be exact."
"Just resourceful," grinned Sharon Froman. "He'll be back. Let's wait. He just wants to get the statement out to the country. Time's important, you know. He's got to hit the morning papers and newscasts." And I, she thought comfortably, pointed that out to him. The boy's geared to a country-weekly tempo, but he's got talent all the same.
Mrs. Goudeket said something long, eloquent and heartfelt in Yiddish. Groff, the New Yorker, got the gist. It was a prayer that Artie Chesbro die of cholera upside-down with his head stuck in the ground like a radish and worms eating out his ears.
His lists. There would be two of them, one of people to get the nod and the other of people to get the nix.
"A sound businessman and a hard worker, that boy. Built his place up from nothing. Guts and brains, the kind of man we want to help first—fast. I know his stock and his turnover, and I'd say fifty thousand would set him on his feet again. Of course he's the kind who'll consider it a debt of honor, won't rest until it's clear...."
And the other. "Um. Yes. Know the man well. We've got to help him, of course, but I wouldn't put him at the top of the list. Thevitalservices have got to be restored first, of course. I know people need (shoes, gasoline, bread, hardware) but it's my feeling that a more efficient man should be assisted first. We don't want any free riders and we don't want to subsidize chaotic competition in the first month."
No indeed. We want to organize the area. A nod to Flaherty, the fuel man whose note I hold. A nix to Greenlease, the hardware man who unpatriotically carries his current obligations and improvement loans in Philadelphia. A nod to Erpco Feed, who buy their sacks from my very good friend and associate Don Rider, who is under my thumb because of his lease. A nix to Fowling, the appliance wholesaler who won't use my trucks when he's in my territory. A man who doesn't encourage local business is asking for trouble, and this is his chance to get it. An emphatic nod to Rorty and his skinny new wholesaling business; in a year he'll pass Fowling and I'll be in the driver's seat.
Turn nobody down, he cautioned himself. Merely postpone, and postpone, and postpone. And eventually there will be no more money left and the nixed will find themselves in a poor competitive position and a little later they'll find they're broke and out of business. And the people in business will be my men.
I will have approximately one hundred operations tied to me, covering every phase of manufacturing, real estate, wholesaling, retailing, distribution and finance in the area. I'll trade with myself, supply myself, transport myself and finance myself and anybody who tries to move in will never know what hit him. It will be positively pathetic if anybody tries to compete with Artie Chesbro.
The car crept slowly along the littered road toward River Street. His thinking had never been so clear and lightning-fast—and his heart had never thudded so alarmingly. The benzedrine, he supposed. Well, you use things for what they're worth and take the incidental consequences like a man.
A big man. First the valley area, perhaps a year to consolidate it. Then move down- and upriver, slowly at first. But he knew the pace always accelerated. The bigger you get the faster you grow. Rockefeller, Morgan, Zeckendorf, Odlum—they all had started somewhere. This was his somewhere. Artie Chesbro considered quietly that he'd be running the state by 1959. If there was a war, knock a year off the timetable. Wars were good business for a good businessman.
And, he thought quietly, with the clarity of benzedrine, they pruned the human tree.
An eighteen-year-old sprig of the human tree, Luther G. Bayswater, was walking slowly down River Street with a feeling of intense unreality enveloping him.
It seemed frightfully queer that he should have a helmet on his head, heavy boots with two-buckle flaps on his feet and around his waist a full cartridge belt with a first-aid kit, a bayonet and a canteen hitched to it. Queerest of all was the rifle slung on his right shoulder, whose sling he held in the fork between thumb and fore-finger like a hick eternally about to snap his gallus.
Luther was a private in the National Guard because his mother had a confused notion that this would keep him from overseas service, ever. Somebody had told her so. She missed her little boy, she said, when he was away on summer training and she didn't like the idea of him going through the dark streets—so late, and in strange neighborhoods!—for his armory sessions, but she comfortably reported that it was all worthwhile for her to have her peace of mind about Luther not having to go overseas.
His mother was at that moment in bed with a high fever induced by the phone call from the company clerk that had mobilized Luther.
His mission—unreal!—as given him by the hardware merchant who was his platoon leader was to cover two blocks of River Street like a cop on a beat.
"It isn't interior guard duty," the lieutenant explained. "None of that halt-advance-officer-of-the-day-post-number-four stuff. Just make like a cop and don't let any monkey-business happen. Fire a warning shot if you have to. And, ah—" The lieutenant was embarrassed. "If you have to, uh, shootatanybody, aim for the legs. Any questions?" There were questions, a world of questions, but Luther wasn't sure what they were. And besides the hardware-lieutenant was in a hurry to get back to Company, where the captain was waiting for an explanation of why the platoon sergeant had been found to have his pockets stuffed with half-pint liquor bottles.
Private Bayswater saw lights and heard a motor running and, in his state of acute disbelief in what was around him, stood stock-still for most of a minute, staring at the vehicle. It was parked at the foot of Wharf Avenue, a panel truck. By and by he made out that it was a radio broadcasting truck, and remembered that the lieutenant had told him it was in the area. Perfectly all right.
He stayed near it; it was less lonesome there. Until by and by Private Bayswater became conscious of a nagging yearning for a smoke.
Luther didn't smoke much, because his mother had proved to him, with graphs and charts and doctors' reports, that terrible things went on in the lungs of men who smoked cigarettes. But he wanted a cigarette bad. And anyway, there wasn't anyone around. Everybody in town knew that the National Guard was patrolling, with orders to shoot if they had to. Nobody would be stupid enough to try anything. Nobody had—and he'd been on duty for nearly an hour.
He leaned against a sagging warehouse-front experimentally, and it didn't sag any more than before. He bounced on the steps, and though they shook it didn't seem likely he would fall through. He stepped inside, closed the door as nearly as it would go, and greedily tore the paper on the pack getting a cigarette out.
Cupping the cigarette, he looked out of an unglassed window and was pleased to find that he could observe the streets as well from in here as from outside. Fantastic! It was the first good chance he had had to look over the damage done to Hebertown. He wondered briefly about what kind of people were crazy enough to build their houses in a place like this, where the water could come up and do what had been done to these, but Luther Bayswater was not much given to worry about other people's troubles—
And besides, he heard a noise.
It sounded like a door slamming. Car door? But he could see the panel truck. Nobody was moving there. The two men were still inside, busy about whatever they had to be busy about, or else just waiting for daybreak and their first direct broadcast. A door in one of the buildings?
Maybe. Luther Bayswater wished he had been listening more attentively. A door slamming in a building—that might be just the wind, of course. But if it wasn't the wind, it was one of the hazy mythological figures called looters that he was supposed to be on the lookout for.
He swore a tepid oath, ground out his cigarette and opened the door. It made a frightful racket; he hadn't noticed anything of the kind when he came into the building.
The noise scared him. He unslung the rifle and gripped it in the approved port-arms position, crosswise over his chest, one hand comfortingly near the trigger guard; and he stepped out into the inimical street.
Somebody was moving, not near the radio truck but in the other direction; someone who seemed to be trying to stay out of sight, moving in and out of the shelter of the buildings.
Luther Bayswater pulled the bolt of the rifle back. It made a tiny, unmenacing sound—he'd hoped it would crash through the streets like a thunderbolt and send the terrified criminal fleeing. He raised it to his shoulder and called waveringly: "Halt! Who's there?" Perfectly safe; there was no chance the gun would go off and make him appear an idiot, not as long as he didn't close the bolt.
The figure stumbled and ducked out of sight. Baffled, Luther lowered the rifle, which was wearingly heavy. Almost absent-mindedly he shoved the bolt home—still perfectly safe, still nothing that would make him look ridiculous, for he knew enough to keep his finger off the trigger. He cleared his throat and called again: "Come out of there! I see you!"
Fantastic cowboys-and-Indians scene! Luther couldn't help feeling embarrassed at how badly he was doing his part of it. Suppose the man did come out? Suppose he came running at him, with a knife or a pistol, and Luther was standing there flatfooted and gapmouthed, trailing the gun? He brought the butt up to his shoulder, snapped up the range leaf, curled his finger lightly through the trigger guard—perfectly, perfectly safe; these Springfields took a good heavy tug to go off—and as meticulously as on any qualifying range laid the bead of the front sight between the V-edges of the rear, just at knee level, just where the man had been. He waited.
Good-humoredly, Artie Chesbro shrugged and parked the car. He got out and started to walk down the rubbly street; there was no sense trying to drive down here, where the river had swept beams and bottles and cinder-blocks helter-skelter across the pavement; he had decided that the third time he had spotted something in his way and wildly swerved the wheel, and hit something else instead. He thought detachedly that perhaps his reflexes were a touch overstimulated by the benzedrine. Amusing. But it didn't in the least matter, not when he could see everything in the clear luminous light the benzedrine gave.
He tripped over something, stepped down on something else that rolled, and stumbled almost into one of the buildings. Careful, he warned himself, suppressing a chuckle. Why, it was almost like getting a load on! But without any of the disadvantages, because he certainly wasn't slowed down or incapacitated in the least; he could feel it.
Somebody yelled at him. Artie Chesbro paused thoughtfully to listen—what had the man said?—and became conscious of the deeper, louder thudding of his heart. Possibly that fourth tablet had been one too many, he admitted; better get this over with and rest for a while. A touch concerned—after all, he didn't want to be too exhausted for the big day tomorrow—he stepped forward to see what the man wanted.
He ran right into something he hadn't seen. It shoved him back on the ground, brutally strong, remorselessly hard. Damn it, he thought, gasping—It didn't hurt, though, not for a moment. And then it did hurt, very much. And then neither it nor anything else ever hurt again....
The private was sobbing: "Ididaim for the knees, Lieutenant! He wouldn't stop! Itoldhim! I thought he was a looter, like you said, and Ididaim for the knees...."
The company commander leaned in front of the lights of the weapons carrier and crooked a finger at the lieutenant. He was holding the private's M-17, pointing to the sights. The leaf was set for a hundred yards; the shot had been not more than twenty-five.
A bullet leaving a rifle goes up before it goes down; the line of sight is straight, the line of trajectory curves in a parabola; an aim that would be dead-on at a hundred yards will strike high at twenty-five. Not very high. About as high as the difference between a man's knees and the middle of his chest.
The company commander looked significantly at the lieutenant, and snapped the sighting leaf closed. "You did your duty," he told the private. "All right. Let's clean up here," he told the others gathered round.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"The skunk's never coming back," Dick McCue said bitterly. His face was hurting again. He wanted to lie down again in his comfortable room at Goudeket's Green Acres, horror and fatigue far behind.
Mrs. Goudeket didn't even hear. She had taken her place on the one good chair, near the door, and she was waiting for the moment when Artie Chesbro, the thief of cars, should walk back inside. That, thought Mickey Groff, would be a moment to watch. Chesbro had been asking for it for a long time. It would be a pleasure to see the old lady taking him apart.
He thought wrong.
The old lady sighed and said, "How long now? A day and a half I been away from Goudeket's Green Acres, and all the time I been worried sick. You know something? Now I'm not worried."
Mickey Groff said, "That's right, Mrs. Goudeket. There's nothing to worry about. Everything's all right there, you'll see."
She looked at him surprised. "All right? Nah." She shook her head. "All wrong, you mean. Believe me, Mickey, I know what can happen to a place like Goudeket's Green Acres when it should only rain three days in a row, much less something like this. Goudeket's Green Acres is finished. What's the sense trying to kid myself? I should know better."
Groff looked at her uncomfortably. But she didn't seem panicky, didn't seem on the verge of despair. She was calm enough for six. He said, "What are you going to do?"
She leaned forward and patted him. "I'm going to sell, Mickey," she announced. "You think I'm doing the right thing? No, don't tell me—I'm going to do it anyhow. My husband, Mr. Goudeket, he was always after me to sell and go to Palestine. 'Sell, Mrs. Goudeket,' he'd say—always I kept the hotel in my name, you see—'sell and let's live a little.' And every time I'd say next year, next year. Now—it's next year. I'm sixty-three years old, Mickey. It's time I took it easy for a while." She brooded silently. "Why should I lie?" she asked. "Sixty-six."
Mickey Groff said reassuringly, "I think it's the right thing to do. You'll like it in Israel. Nice climate, plenty of things going on, a whole new country rising out of the desert—"
She looked at him incredulously. "Mickey, a nice climate? Nice with the Egyptians raining down out the sky like clouds in their jet airplanes? Please, I'm not a child; if I go there I give up nice things in order to be with my people. But it's what Mr. Goudeket wanted, and I stole it from him, so now I'll go. I can sell Goudeket's Green Acres likethat." She snapped her fingers proudly. "Only—why didn't I do it while Mr. Goudeket was still alive?"
A light truck banged past the schoolhouse down toward the river, and almost immediately another followed. Dick McCue said curiously, "Something going on? IthoughtI heard shooting."
"There's plenty going on, Dicky," Sharon Froman informed him kindly. "Things are very busy around here tonight. But you wouldn't understand."
No one paid any attention to her. After a moment she laughed and lit a cigarette. Clods, she thought with gentle contempt. Naturally they were jealous of her and of Artie Chesbro. There were two kinds of people. One kind was the doers—herself, that is; and along with her such other persons as she temporarily dragged along to heights of accomplishment and success. The other kind was everybody else. Not even her worst enemy, she mused, trickling smoke out of her nostrils—not even Hesch, or Paul, or Bert, or any of the others she had temporarily blessed with her help and presence before withdrawing—not any of them could deny that she had moved fast and successfully this day.
Polly Chesbro got up and crossed over to Mickey Groff. "May I have one ofyourcigarettes?" she asked.
"Sure." Groff lit it for her.
She said, "What are you going to do now, Mickey? After things clear up a little, I mean."
He hesitated. The question had not occurred to him for some time. "Go ahead as planned, I guess. Chief Brayer said the Swanscomb place wasn't damaged, and your husband seems to have given up the idea of making a warehouse out of it."
She laughed, not maliciously. "I wonder if he remembers that he signed a lease on it," she said.
"Lease?"
She nodded. "There were a couple of men from Ohio in to see him last week. He drew up a lease on the spot, and they paid him a binder."
Groff said, "Hell. Well, that was pretty stupid of him, but if it's a matter of getting—him—in trouble I suppose I could find some other—"
"Get Artie in trouble? Small chance, Mickey. He lands on his feet. And if he doesn't, he always has the family money to bail him out—my family, that is. What you really mean is you'd back out in order to do me a favor, isn't it? Don't answer. It wouldn't be a favor, Mickey. I decided a long time ago that I couldn't mother Artie. I had to let him get in his own scrapes and get out by himself, if he could get out. It hasn't made a man of him yet, but there's always the chance it may."
She tipped the ash of her cigarette neatly into a thick china saucer. "Stay around, Mickey," she said. "All of us need people like you around here. For much more than business."
A quality in her voice touched him, deeper perhaps than she had intended, deeper than he could remember being touched before. Responsibility. That was the word. Someone had to help. And it was something very different from ego that made him think too: Someone has to lead.
Dick McCue heaved himself to his feet. His whole head was hurting now, and he was feeling savage. "I'm going to hit up the chief for another trip ticket, Mrs. Goudeket," he announced. "Half an hour's long enough to wait for the b—for Mr. Chesbro."
"Why not?" said Mrs. Goudeket. She went with him. Groff could hear the discussion clear from the cloakroom; but they won their point. They came back with another scribbled slip of paper, and the whole party headed for the motor pool—even Sharon, though no one had asked her.
There was somebody down by the motor pool.
As they drew close another little truck came up, making a convoy of three of them, and the driver of one of them hopped out, heading for the motor pool's Coleman lamp. The driver was a captain, and upset about something; he said to Mr. Cioni, "I understand there's a temporary morgue somewhere around here."
"Basement of the Methodist Church," Cioni said, absently walking over to the open jeep. "That's at—"
He had leaned over to peer at what was huddled in the back of the jeep. He crossed himself and stared at Mrs. Goudeket. "Here's the guy that got your car, lady!" he called.
"Artie!" gasped Polly Chesbro. She sped to the jeep and unbelievingly lifted the head on its stiffening neck, staring into the blank face.
The captain, his nerves twanging through his voice, snapped, "Please don't give us any trouble, lady. This is no business of yours."
Groff said, "He's her husband."
The officer lamely said, "I'm sorry. Very sorry." And then, defensively, "A warning shot was fired. He didn't stop. This area is under full martial law and the sound truck announced it to everybody—" He saw that she wasn't listening, was staring in disbelief. He got out of the jeep and lit a cigarette and waited.
Groff beckoned him to one side. "What happened?" he asked.
"Shot for looting," the captain said brusquely. "He was in a roped-off prohibited area. He didn't halt. The kid was absolutely right."
"Kid?" asked Groff. The captain had told him more than he had intended to, and realized it now. "Somebody panicked?"
"Who are you, mister?" the captain asked.
"Not a reporter. I've got a factory in Brooklyn. I knew the man."
"Close friend?"
"Hated his guts."
The captain was shocked and reacted with the truth. "As a matter of fact," he said in a low voice, "maybe it shouldn't have happened. But we're legally in the clear. Was he important?"
"Very. But I don't think you'll find anybody who'll press an investigation."
The captain took a deep, relieved drag on his cigarette and flipped it away. "What about his wife?" he asked. "Is she going to keep this stuff up?"
"I'll do what I can," Groff said. He went over to the jeep and the staring woman.
"Polly," he said.
She turned and told him in a dry, controlled voice: "I'm all right. It's just so strange to think that it's—over. Him and his bragging, him and his plans, him and his tramps. It's over. I suppose you miss a tumor when they cut it out of you. That's the way I miss him." She sagged against Groff in a half-faint. He led her to a chair where she sat like a stick. The captain, in a businesslike way, asked Cioni, "Just where's this church?"
Cioni told him and the jeep rolled away.
"No, no, no," Sharon Froman was saying faintly.
Then she smiled and said to Groff: "Girl backed the wrong horse, didn't she? Mickey, how'd you like to meet Congressman Akslund first thing in the morning? Artie's gone, one with the martyrs, but Akslund's still going to need expert advice on the reconstruction. I've got an in there."
"Keep it," said Groff, and put his arm around Polly.
She turned to Dick McCue. Her smile was becoming ghastly. She said, "Got a kind word for an old friend, Dick? We've had some fun together. Shall bygones be bygones?"
"No," said Dick McCue. "If you keep bothering me I'll take out your upper plate and step on it."
Her hand flew to her mouth. There was a bark of laughter from Mrs. Goudeket. "You thought nobody knew? You thought you could see through everybody, Miss Sharon Froman, but nobody could see through you? We all know you have an upper plate. We all know you'll never finish your book or hold a man. We all see through you because we all see through each other, but we know also that we're seen through. That makes us sometimes kind to each other—we have to be. But you, you have to think you're perfect and that if anybody sees anything less than perfect in you it's because they're fools."
The '47 Dodge rolled slowly into the motor pool. A scared young voice asked: "Is this the place I'm supposed to leave the car?"
"I guess so," Mr. Cioni said.
The young soldier climbed out wearily. "Boy," he said, and wiped his brow. "I'm supposed to wait here until they come by on patrol and pick me up."
Groff moved out of earshot of the women. "Hear about the shooting?" he asked quietly.
The soldier shuddered. "Heck, I'm the guy that did it. Had no choice. A cop shoots if somebody runs and doesn't stop, doesn't he? Well, I was supposed to be a cop." And he added defensively and illogically, "How could I check the sighting leaf in the dark?"
That told the story. Of course he could have checked the sighting leaf in the dark by the clicks if he had known enough about it. Artie Chesbro, struck down in full career by a quarter-trained child who had not meant to kill. Something—God? Chance? Compensation?—had laid a finger briefly on the balances and dressed them. The world was saved from Artie Chesbro—until the next one came along.
"Get in the car," Mrs. Goudeket grunted, sliding behind the wheel.
"Come on, Polly," Groff said. She leaned against him on the short walk; a certain excitement—compounded of a feeling for her and of a sense of challenging opportunity—began to tingle through him. She sensed it and smiled; it would be nice, she thought. In the back of the car she dropped her head on his shoulder and was asleep.
Dick McCue got in beside Mrs. Goudeket and slammed the door.
"Mrs. G.?" asked Sharon Froman. "You can'tmeanthis?"
Mrs. Goudeket snorted, put the car in gear and ground off down the road to Goudeket's Green Acres.
"Bitch," said Sharon softly. She walked over to the motor pool man. "You're Mr. Cioni, aren't you? Somebody said you were a plumbing engineer."
"Just a plumber," said Mr. Cioni modestly, but flattered.
"There's going to be a lot of work for you before long."
"Oughtta do pretty well out of it. The shop's hardly touched. My wife, thank God, hardly knew it was happening. She's an invalid."
"How terrible! But shouldn't somebody be taking care of her? I'm a sort of practical nurse, you know—"
"Well, say, that would be—"
Sharon Froman was very tired. Even while she moved through the pickup ritual for perhaps the twentieth time a crazy, spinning maggot grew in her head that she really ought to throw herself on the ground and scream; it was the only sensible thing to do. With a great deal of effort she resisted and forced out the foolish idea, knowing it would come back.
Mrs. Goudeket twisted the wheel of the car hard, to avoid a fallen telephone pole. "Such a thing, such a thing," she muttered as she avoided the muddy shoulder.
"Only a telephone pole, Mrs. G.," said Dick McCue.
"No, I meant that no-good, that Sharon, that there should be a girl like that." She shook her head.
"And always will be," said Groff, with Polly's head pleasantly pressing his shoulder, her nearness making him feel confident and quiet. "But that's not what's important. The Sharons and the—the—"—he didn't utter Chesbro's name because Polly might not be asleep—"the others, they're the ones the pessimists and cynics are always thinking about, pointing at, making a thing of. But I'm going to remember something else out of all this. Starkman. That doctor almost ready to drop on his feet. The kids who did the diving. All the dozens and dozens who weretherewhen they were needed. Fast. With both hands and with everything they had."
"It's a fact," said Dick McCue. "It's as if when things are okay, everyone just sort of buys and sells and takes care of his own and locks the front door. But when there's a real jam they, I don't know, they get bigger. Most of them, anyway."
"Yep," said Groff quietly. "That's why, in spite of the unholy mess, this town isn't licked. That's why, even though I could forget Hebertown and locate somewhere else, I don't think I'm going to. Maybe I ought to have my head examined, but I'm sort of—proud of this place."
"You going to be welcome," said Mrs. Goudeket, smiling at the clearing road ahead. "You going to be very welcome."
A Savage Flood Changed Their World
It was a pleasant little town in the Northeast. It had never been hurricane country. When they heard that Diane was coming, they couldn't really believe it would harm them. And the hurricane itself didn't touch them.
But the rains caused by the hurricane ravaged their little town as viciously as the worst artillery attack could have done.
This is a powerful and tremendously graphic novel of people trapped in that town: and how they learned what a flood really means.
And how they found out what they themselves were like.
THIS IS AN ORIGINAL NOVEL—NOT A REPRINT. PRINTED IN U.S.A.