by Jerry
“You mean,” said Taylor, “that you told the truth. Even when it cost you your job. The business world, not only here, but all over the world is not ready for that truth. The businessman still clings to the city myth, to the myth of salesmanship. In time to come he will realize he doesn’t need the city, that service and honest values will bring him more substantial business than salesmanship ever did.”
“I’ve wondered, Webster, just what made you do what you did?”
“I was sick of it,” said Webster. “Sick of watching men blundering along with their eyes tight shut. Sick of seeing an old tradition being kept alive when it should have been laid away. Sick of King’s simpering civic enthusiasm when all cause for enthusiasm had vanished.”
Taylor nodded. “Webster, do you think you could adjust human beings?”
Webster merely stared.
“I mean it,” said Taylor. “The world committee has been doing it for years, quietly, unobtrusively. Even many of the people who have been adjusted don’t know they have been adjusted.
“Changes such as have come since the creation of the world committee following the war has meant much human maladjustment. The advent of workable atomic power took jobs away from hundreds of thousands. They had to be trained and guided into new jobs, some with the new atomics, some into other lines of work. The advent of tank farming swept the farmers off their land. They, perhaps, have supplied us with our greatest problem, for other than the special knowledge needed to grow crops and handle animals, they had no skills. Most of them had no wish for acquiring skills. Most of them were bitterly resentful of having been forced from the livelihood which they inherited from their forebears. And being natural individualists, they offered the toughest psychological problems of any other class.”
“Many of them,” declared Webster, “still are at loose ends. There’s a hundred or more of them squatting out in the houses, living from hand to mouth. Shooting a few rabbits and a few squirrels, doing some fishing, raising vegetables and picking wild fruit. Engaging in a little petty thievery now and then and doing occasional begging on the uptown streets.”
“You know these people?” asked Taylor.
“I know some of them,” said Webster. “One of them brings me squirrels and rabbits on occasions. To make up for it, he bums ammunition money.”
“They’d resent being adjusted, wouldn’t they?”
“Violently,” said Webster.
“You know a farmer by the name of Ole Johnson? Still sticking to his farm, still unreconstructed?” Webster nodded.
“What if you tried to adjust him?”
“He’d run me off the farm,” said Webster.
“Men like Ole and the Squatters,” said Taylor, “are our special problems now. Most of the rest of the world is fairly well adjusted, fairly well settled into the groove of the present. Some of them are doing a lot of moaning about the past, but that’s just for effect. You couldn’t drive them back to their old ways of life.
“Years ago, with the advent of atomics, in fact, the world committee faced a hard decision. Should changes that spelled progress in the world be brought about gradually to allow the people to adjust themselves naturally, or should they be developed as quickly as possible, with the committee aiding in the necessary human adjustment? It was decided, rightly or wrongly, that progress should come first, regardless of its effect upon the people. The decision in the main has proven a wise one.
“We knew, of course, that in many instances, this readjustment could not be made too openly. In some cases, as in large groups of workers who had been displaced, it was possible, but in most individual cases, such as our friend Ole, it was not. These people must be helped to find themselves in this new world, but they must not know that they’re being helped. To let them know would destroy confidence and dignity, and human dignity is the keystone of any civilization.
“I knew, of course, about the readjustments made within industry itself,” said Webster, “but I had not heard of the individual cases.”
“We could not advertise it,” Taylor said. “It’s practically undercover.”
“But why are you telling me all this now?”
“Because we’d like you to come in with us. Have a hand at adjusting Ole to start with. Maybe see what could be done about the Squatters next.”
“I don’t know—” said Webster. “We’d been waiting for you to come in,” said Taylor. “We knew you’d finally have to come here. Any chance you might have had at any kind of job would have been queered by King. He passed the word along. You’re blackballed by every Chamber of Commerce and every civic group in the world today.”
“Probably I have no choice,” said Webster.
“We don’t want you to feel that way about it,” Taylor said. “Take a while to think it over, then come back. Even if you don’t want the job we’ll find you another one—in spite of King.”
Outside the office, Webster found a scarecrow figure waiting him. It was Levi Lewis, snaggle-toothed grin wiped off, rifle under his arm.
“Some of the boys said they seen you go in here,” he explained. “So I waited for you.”
“What’s the trouble,” Webster asked. For Levi’s face spoke eloquently of trouble.
“It’s them police,” said Levi. He spat disgustedly.
“The police,” said Webster, and his heart sank as he said the words. For he knew what the trouble was.
“Yeah,” said Levi. “They’re fixing to burn us out.”
“So the council finally gave in,” said Webster, face grim.
“I just came from police headquarters,” declared Levi. “I told them they better go easy. I told them there’d be guts strewed all over the place if they tried it. I got the boys posted all around the place with orders not to shoot till they’re sure of hitting.”
“You can’t do that, Levi,” said Webster, sharply.
“I can’t!” retorted Levi. “I done it already. They drove us off the farms, forced us to sell because we couldn’t make a living. And they aren’t driving us no farther. We either stay here or we die here. And the only way they’ll burn us out is when there’s no one left to stop them.”
He shucked up his pants and spat again.
“And we ain’t the only ones that feel that way,” he declared. “Gramp is out there with us.”
“Gramp!”
“Sure, Gramp. The old guy that lives with you. He’s sort of taken over as our commanding general. Says he remembers tricks from the war them police have never heard of. He sent some of the boys over to one of them Legion halls to swipe a cannon. Says he knows where we can get some shells for it from the museum. Says we’ll get it all set up and then send word that if the police make a move we’ll shell the loop.”
“Look, Levi, will you do something for me?”
“Sure will, Mr. Webster.”
“Will you go in and ask for a Mr. Taylor. Insist on seeing him. Tell him I’m already on the job.”
“Sure will, but where are you going?”
“Pm going up to the city hall.”
“Sure you don’t want me along?”
“No,” declared Webster. “I’ll do better alone. And, Levi—”
“Yes.”
“Tell Gramp to hold up his artillery. Don’t shoot unless he has to—but if he has, to lay it on the line.”
“The mayor is busy,” said Raymond Brown, his secretary.
“That’s what you think,” said Webster, starting for the door.
“You can’t go in there, Webster,” yelled Brown.
He leaped from his chair, came charging around the desk, reaching for Webster. Webster swung broadside with his arm, caught Brown across the chest, swept him back against the desk. The desk skidded and Brown waved his arms, lost his balance, thudded to the floor.
Webster jerked open the mayor’s door.
The mayor’s feet thumped off his desk. “I told Brown—” he said.
Webster nodded. “And Brown told me. What’s
the matter, Carter. Afraid King might find out I was here? Afraid of being corrupted by some good ideas?”
“What do you want?” snapped Carter.
“I understand the police are going to burn the houses
“That’s right,” declared the mayor, righteously. “They’re a menace to the community.”
“What community?”
“Look here, Webster—”
“You know there’s no community. Just a few of you lousy politicians who stick around so you can claim residence, so you can be sure of being elected every year and drag down your salaries. It’s getting to the point where all you have to do is vote for one another. The people who work in the stores and shops, even those who do the meanest jobs in the factories, don’t live inside the city limits. The businessmen quit the city long ago. They do business here, but they aren’t residents.”
“But this is still a city,” declared the mayor.
“I didn’t come to argue that with you,” said Webster. “I came to try to make you see that you’re doing wrong by burning those houses. Even if you don’t realize it, the houses are homes to people who have no other homes. People who have come to this city to seek sanctuary, who have found refuge with us. In a measure, they are our responsibility.”
“They’re not our responsibility,” gritted the mayor. “Whatever happens to them is their own hard luck. We didn’t ask them here. We don’t want them here. They contribute nothing to the community. You’re going to tell me they’re misfits. Well, can I help that? You’re going to say they can’t find jobs. And I’ll tell you they could find jobs if they tried to find them. There’s work to be done, there’s always work to be done. They’ve been filled up with this new world talk and they figure it’s up to someone to find the place that suits them and the job that suits them.”
“You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Webster.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out then when it cost me something. I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a care what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.”
“Get out of here,” screamed Carter. “Get out before I have the cops come and throw you out.”
“You forget,” said Webster, “that I came in to talk about the houses.”
“It won’t do you any good,” snarled Carter. “You can stand and talk until doomsday for all the good it does. Those houses burn. That’s final.”
“How would you like to see the loop a mass of nibble?” asked Webster.
“Your comparison,” said Carter, “is grotesque.”
“I wasn’t talking about comparisons,” said Webster.
“You weren’t—” The mayor stared at him. “What were you talking about then?”
“Only this,” said Webster. “The second the first torch touches the houses, the first shell will land on the city hall. And the second one will hit the First National. They’ll go on down the line, the biggest targets first.”
Carter gaped. Then a flush of anger crawled from his throat up into his face.
“It won’t work, Webster,” he snapped. “You can’t bluff me. Any cock-and-bull story like that—”
“It’s no cock-and-bull story,” declared Webster. “Those men have cannons out there. Pieces from in front of Legion halls, from the museums. And they have men who know how to work them. They wouldn’t need them, really. It’s practically point-blank range. Like shooting the broad side of a barn.” Carter reached for the radio, but Webster stopped him with an upraised hand.
“Better think a minute, Carter, before you go flying off the handle. You’re on a spot. Go ahead with your plan and you have a battle on your hands. The houses may burn but the loop is wrecked. The business men will have your scalp for that.”
Carter’s hand retreated from the radio.
From far away came the sharp crack of a rifle.
“Better call them off,” warned Webster.
Carter’s face twisted with indecision.
Another rifle shot, another and another.
“Pretty soon,” said Webster, “it will have gone too far. So far that you can’t stop it.”
A thudding blast rattled the windows of the room. Carter leaped from his chair.
Webster felt the blood drain from his head, felt suddenly cold and weak. But he fought to keep his face straight and his voice calm.
Carter was staring out the window, like a man of stone.
“I’m afraid,” said Webster, “that it’s gone too far already.”
The radio on the desk chirped insistently, red light flashing.
Carter reached out a trembling hand and snapped it on.
“Carter,” a voice was saying. “Carter. Carter.”
Webster recognized that voice—the bull-throated tone of Police Chief Jim Maxwell.
“What is it?” asked Carter.
“They had a big gun,” said Maxwell. “It exploded when they tried to fire it. Ammunition no good, I guess.”
“One gun?” asked Carter. “Only one gun?”
“I don’t see any others.”
“I heard rifle fire,” said Carter.
“Yeah, they did some shooting at us. Wounded a couple of the boys. But they’ve pulled back now. Deeper into the brush. No shooting now.”
“O. K.,” said Carter, “go ahead and start the fires.”
Webster started forward. “Ask him, ask him—”
But Carter clicked the switch and the radio went dead.
“What was it you wanted to ask?”
“Nothing,” said Webster. “Nothing that amounted to anything.”
He couldn’t tell Carter that Gramp had been the one who knew about firing big guns. Couldn’t tell him that when the gun exploded Gramp had been there.
He’d have to get out of here, get over to the gun as quickly as possible.
“It was a good bluff, Webster,” Carter was saying. “A good bluff, but it petered out.”
The mayor turned to the window that faced toward the houses.
“No more firing,” he said. “They gave up quick.”
“You’ll be lucky,” snapped Webster, “if six of your policemen come back alive. Those men with the rifles are out in the brush and they can pick the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards.”
Feet pounded in the corridor outside, two pairs of feet racing toward the door.
The mayor whirled from his window and Webster pivoted around.
“Gramp!” he yelled.
“Hi, Johnny,” puffed Gramp, skidding to a stop.
The man behind Gramp was a young man and he was waving something in his hand—a sheaf of papers that rustled as he waved them.
“What do you want?” asked the mayor.
“Plenty,” said Gramp.
He stood for a moment, catching back his breath, said between puffs:
“Meet my friend, Henry Adams.”
“A
dams?” asked the mayor. “Sure,” said Gramp. “His granddaddy used to live here. Out on Twenty-seventh Street.”
“Oh,” said the mayor and it was as if someone had smacked him with a brick. “Oh, you mean F.J. Adams.”
“Bet your boots,” said Gramp. “Him and me, we marched into Berlin together. Used to keep me awake nights telling me about his boy back home.”
Carter nodded to Henry Adams. “As mayor of the city,” he said, trying to regain some of his dignity, “I welcome you to—”
“It’s not a particularly fitting welcome,” Adams said. “I understand you are burning my property.”
“Your property!” The mayor choked and his eyes stared in disbelief at the sheaf of papers Adams waved at him.
“Yeah, his property,” shrilled Gramp. “He just bought it. We just come from the treasurer’s office. Paid all the back taxes and penalties and all the other things you legal thieves thought up to slap against them houses.”
“But, but—” the mayor was grasping for words, gasping for breath. “Not all of it. Perhaps just the old Adams property.”
“Lock, stock and barrel,” said Gramp, triumphantly.
“And now,” said Adams to the mayor, “if you would kindly tell your men to stop destroying my property.”
Carter bent over the desk and fumbled at the radio, his hands suddenly all thumbs.
“Maxwell,” he shouted. “Maxwell. Maxwell.”
“What do you want?” Maxwell yelled back.
“Stop setting those fires,” yelled Carter. “Start putting them out. Call out the fire department. Do anything. But stop those fires.”
“Cripes,” said Maxwell, “I wish you’d make up your mind.”
“You do what I tell you,” screamed the mayor. “You put out those fires.”
“All right,” said Maxwell. “All right. Keep your shirt on. But the boys won’t like it. They won’t like getting shot at to do something you change your mind about.” Carter straightened from the radio.
“Let me assure you, Mr. Adams,” he said, “that this is all a big mistake.”
“It is,” Adams declared solemnly. “A very great mistake, mayor. The biggest one you ever made.”
For a moment the two of them stood there, looking across the room at one another.