“Which I sent back. I don’t want your money. Henry didn’t leave me a fortune, far from it, but he provided well enough so I can meet the taxes on my home.”
The commissioner, at last, frowned. He glanced around at the kids, who, unlike him, were now smiling. He stared at Ganesh. “Is that him?” he half whispered to Chief Halstead.
“Yes, that’s him,” said the chief.
“Are you from India, son?” the commissioner asked Ganesh.
“Yes, honored sir.”
The euphemism took the man back for a moment, as if he considered the possibility of the boy making fun of him. “So now you’re living with your aunt. Well. We are going to provide both of you a nice apartment in town, along with a handsome payment for this house. I suspect the money will see you through college.”
Ganesh said nothing.
Nervously the commissioner cleared his throat and turned back to the woman. “Everyone whose property has been appropriated has accepted the fact. Your neighbor, for example.” He waved at the land to the left of the house.
“The owner is an absentee landlord who lives in the East,” Aunt Betty said disdainfully. “With no stake in this town, in the place he owned here. But what about the hamburger drive-in in the lot next to his? What about appropriating the drive-in?”
“There is a simple explanation, Mrs. Strepski —”
“Because the food chain is holding on to that property with the idea of building something on it later — or selling it at a high price!”
“There is a simple explanation, Mrs. Strepski, which I know you have heard more than once. That property does not lie in the path of the proposed route.”
“Then reroute the highway.”
She moves with the power of two, thought Ganesh.
The commissioner was not scowling. Briskly he handed the notebook to Aunt Betty. “I urge you to study this. An intelligent woman like yourself will see the good sense in putting aside private concerns for the public good.” On impulse, it seemed, the commissioner swiveled around in the chair to look directly at Ganesh. “Well, son, how do you like America?”
“It is nice, honored sir. But we are not leaving this house.”
The commissioner got to his feet, unable to conceal his annoyance. “We have no desire to hurt you and your aunt —” He glanced at the other kids. “Any of you. But even in America you can’t always do as you please. I understand you have threatened to go on a fast.”
“We have begun it, honored sir.”
“Then do as you please.” Flanked by the policemen he strode off the porch and turned on the cement walk to squint in the sunlight at the Satyagrahis. “We won’t carry you off the property. We are not savages. But you can’t fast forever.” He gave Aunt Betty a deep frown. “When you’re ready to leave, let us know and we will put you up in a hotel, Mrs. Strepski.” He glanced again at Ganesh. “You and your nephew.”
Everyone watched the three men walk in measured, self-conscious strides to the limousine and drive off. When the car had disappeared, someone laughed and called out to Ganesh, “Hey, you don’t call the guy ‘honored sir’!”
Tom Carrington bent over and clapped Ganesh on the shoulder with a big hand. “You’re making news. How did they know you were from India, unless they nosed around?”
Ganesh, sitting on the top step, smiled, but he was thinking about something important: the Satyagrahis had won the first round, because the commissioner maintained they would not be removed bodily from the house. The authorities did not want to create a fuss by having a bunch of kids carried off someone’s property and go home and refuse to eat. So the commissioner and the policemen had decided against the action they originally threatened to take.
Having explained this victory to the others, Ganesh sat back against a porch pillar and wished that Rama were here to share the triumph of a method of protest that had wrested India from British rule.
“So that,” murmured Lucy Smith, “is how Satyagraha works.”
*
They lived on this success for a day, but it was not enough to satisfy them. Although they pretended that the fast didn’t bother them much, it was having an effect, an effect increasing hourly. The Satyagrahis, to allay their pain, played card games with fierce concentration, often quarreling and sometimes forgetting whose turn it was. Others gaped dumbly at television. Some could not sit still for more than a few minutes, but restlessly strolled in the yard, kicking at tufts of grass, pulling leaves from a maple tree, glaring at one another. When the sun went down, they crowded onto the porch and talked, at first aimlessly, mechanically, about anything — about kids and teachers at school, the usual gossip. Then, as night deepened, their nervousness ceased, and they spoke thoughtfully of the future, far more intimately than they had ever done at school or parties. Lucy Smith wanted to be a doctor, Tom Carrington — predictably — a pro basketball player. And then Brad Hoover, a squat, muscular boy with a thick nose, divulged his hidden desire to become a film actor. At school they would have hooted at the idea — short, heavyset Brad — but here, with hunger gnawing at their insides like a rat, none of them laughed. Brad admitted he would be neither tall nor handsome, but not every actor was. Sometimes what counted was the ability to speak lines. Every night at home he recited Shakespeare in front of a mirror. There was a respectful silence until Helen Soderstrom, who wanted to become a teacher, reminded them that the Academy Award had been won once by someone not much taller than Brad.
The Satyagrahis did not stay up late, professing to be tired. Brad took the first guard duty. In the bedroom they shared, Tom fell quickly to sleep, while Ganesh sat up thinking of the day — how slow moving and difficult it had been, like a day in the village when a heat wave sent the temperature above 110 degrees, stunning life into submission while at the same time rattling nerves, shortening tempers.
There was a faint knock at the door. Aunt Betty wanted him to go to her room for a talk.
Once there, she came straight to the point. “I would rather quit, Jeffrey, than see these kids so hungry. The house is not worth it. They try not to show what they feel, but I know. If anyone goes on with the fast, it will be me and me alone.”
Wearily Ganesh sat in a chair and looked at his aunt, whose hair was in rollers. “They would never forgive you.”
“For letting them live normally again? They wouldn’t forgive me for letting them eat? Why, I almost streamed looking at them today. Hunger is a horrible thing — horrible.”
For a moment Ganesh almost said, “Yes, I have seen it every day of my life in India.” Instead he argued that it would not be fair of her to take away their chance to help. Without waiting for a reply — as if taking for granted that his argument prevailed — Ganesh got up and left the room. Halfway down the hall, he stopped and listened. He had just passed the portrait of his grandfather, who was posed holding a law book at a desk. Had the painting spoken? Of course not. Yet Ganesh had a sense of the old man’s presence in the corridor, as if Aunt Betty and his own father were small children skipping along between its two walls, in the heavy wake of a thickset man carrying a huge law book.
*
The next day was very difficult. Hunger peaked; everyone felt snappish, irritable, often at the edge of panic, and they sat and rose and sat again, making the porch their complete space. The old television sat in the parlor, unused. In late morning a boy asked to speak to Ganesh alone, away from the porch, in the yard.
This boy, Ralph Carlson, a member of the wrestling team, hemmed and hawed, as he stood with Ganesh near a rose bush. Finally he explained that his parents had phoned and wanted him to come home, because they were leaving town for a while and needed him to go along.
It was clear that the boy wanted to go. And why not? If Ganesh had parents to go somewhere with, perhaps he would have left, perhaps he would have chucked the principles of Satyagraha. He didn’t know. He would never know. If he said his commitment was too strong for that, it might be a lie. All he did know was that
Ralph Carlson had made a choice, one he must respect. After all, Ralph had given him four days of his life. That was more than some people ever gave anyone.
Impulsively Ganesh reached out and gripped Ralph’s muscular arm. “Thank you for coming.”
“It isn’t that I don’t want to stay. I do —” Ralph’s voice trailed off in embarrassment. Then, without glancing at the crowd on the porch, he turned and walked out of the yard.
When Ganesh returned to the porch, Lucy Smith frowned at him bitterly. “So Ralph left us,” she said.
“He was having to.”
“Really?” She gave him an ironic smile. “I happen to know his parents have a cottage on the lake they go to every summer. He was just waiting around for them to call him.”
“Here comes someone,” Tom called out.
She was a blonde, perhaps in her twenties, wearing slacks and a varicolored blouse, carrying a large shoulder bag. Even without make-up she was pretty. Smiling, she walked through the invisible barrier and placed one foot on the bottom porch step. Leaning forward, she handed a card to Tom Carrington.
Kids crowded around to read it: “Sally Kane. The Express.”
“What is the Express?” asked Ganesh.
“Biggest newspaper in the state,” someone said, looking curiously at the pretty woman.
“I want to meet the boy from India,” said Sally Kane with a smile. “That must be you,” she pointed at Ganesh, “if you don’t know the Express.” Then she asked him to take a little walk with her in the yard. Ganesh agreed and they strolled past the wilted tulip bed, under a large spreading oak, and stood in the shade.
“This is a nice house,” Miss Kane said, appraising the tall clapboard sides, the iron-cast rooster poised above the roof and turning lazily in a gentle breeze. She studied a row of poplars along the left side of the yard, a small vegetable garden in the back.
“It is to me a beautiful house,” Ganesh said emphatically.
“You engineered this sit-in, am I right?”
“It is no sit-in, ma’am. It is Satyagraha.”
Unslinging the shoulder bag, Miss Kane sat on the ground and patted the grass beside her. “Sit here and tell me about it.”
Ganesh did. In the idiom still clinging to his speech from the village, he explained that Satyagraha is not passive resistance or weakness, but direct action, the purpose being to confront an opponent with the demand that he make a choice. It is a means of achieving agreement by assuming that your oppressor can change over to your way of thinking. Another basic assumption is that you too learn, by examining your own motives, whether they are worthwhile or not. Ultimately Satyagraha ends in mutual liberation.
Ganesh concluded, “That is what we are doing. Like that.”
Miss Kane put down the pad on which she was writing. “Who taught you this?”
“My father. But most Indians are knowing it.”
“A lot of people have criticized Gandhi. They say he was too idealistic.”
Ganesh shrugged.
“Doesn’t their criticism matter to you?”
“Not for the house.”
“What makes this Satyagraha actually work?”
“Self-control,” Ganesh replied without hesitation.
“You think you have that?”
Ganesh nodded.
“And so now you and those other kids are on a serious fast. It is serious, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. We take only water.”
“How did you convince them to undergo such a thing?”
“I told them the house was all my aunt and I were having in the world. And they believed.”
The reporter stared thoughtfully at the freckle-faced boy. “Well, Jeffrey Moore, in my opinion you don’t stand a chance. Yet the word is out around the capital. You’ve been heard sufficiently for my paper to send me down here for an interview. So — who knows?” The young woman got to her feet and stared at the other kids lolling on the porch. “A fast is painful, isn’t it, Jeffrey.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your aunt is fasting too?” she added. “It could be dangerous for her.”
“She will be doing it anyway.”
“Aren’t you concerned for her welfare?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” Ganesh said quietly.
The woman reporter studied him a long time: his blond hair, his light blue eyes, his freckles. “Good luck,” she said finally. “Good luck, Jeffrey Moore — and I mean it.”
*
Throughout the rest of the day people strolled past the gate, some leaning on the fence to squint curiously at the fasters. There were two camps among the spectators: those for and those against Mrs. Strepski, her Indian nephew, and the town kids helping them. Some people figured they were a bunch of lawbreakers having summer fun. Others thought it was unfair to destroy such a lovely house, one of the oldest in town. And for what? For a sheet of concrete on which motorists would have new opportunities for killing one another. Some people thought of the additional cost of changing blueprints and initiating a new purchase of land. Others felt the state had been highhanded in dealing with the rights of ordinary citizens, and it was time to put a stop to such dictatorial practices. So the controversy continued along the length of the white picket fence until darkness set in; even then a parade of cars, idling slowly down the street, let the fasters know that the town was now fully aware of Satyagraha.
That evening, about the time there should have been dinner, Culver Williamson abruptly turned belligerent. He was a popular boy, a fine athlete, a good student whose sudden outburst surprised everyone. He yelled through the humid darkness at Ganesh.
“This is crazy! What in hell am I doing here? Tell me!”
When Ganesh did not reply, Culver repeated the question angrily. “Come on, tell me! What is this? I’m sitting here hour after hour unable to think of anything but food. For what?”
“Because you are thinking it is worthwhile,” Ganesh said coolly.
“Worthwhile?” Culver snorted in derision. “What’s worthwhile about sitting on the porch of an old house waiting to get so hungry we all go home — and the house is torn down? It doesn’t make sense. Who decided we would do it? You?”
“If you are not deciding for yourself, you must leave.”
Culver was silent a few moments, absorbing those blunt words. Then in the faint starlight he addressed all of the fasters. “I don’t know how the rest feel, but with me it was an adventure at the start. Right?”
Others murmured in agreement.
“But it’s not anymore.”
“Yeah,” someone said. “Right. It sure isn’t.”
“Then what is it?”
No one, not even Ganesh, answered. In a little while, one by one, the Satyagrahis left the porch for their rooms.
“Culver,” said Ganesh, rising. “You are having the first guard duty.”
At one o’clock in the morning, Culver came upstairs and woke Tom to take the next shift.
Ganesh was awake, listening.
“Are you okay?” Tom asked in a nervous whisper.
“Sure I’m okay,” said Culver. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I think everyone was glad you asked those questions,” said Tom.
“You think so?” Culver sounded relieved.
“They were questions everyone wanted to ask.”
“Nobody thought I was a quitter or anything?”
“Nobody,” Tom assured him.
“Because when you come down to it,” Culver announced tensely, “I bet I would be one of the last to leave.”
Ganesh closed his eyes and sighed, finally able to sleep.
*
During the next day there were more communications with parents, who realized that the “adventure at the Strepski house” was lasting longer than they had anticipated. Either they called or came up the front lawn with questions. Are you all right? Are you eating well? (A question the Satyagrahis evaded, since they had agreed not to divulge the fast
until it was so firmly established they could not give it up.) Are you having a good time? Have the authorities bothered you? So this is Ganesh! Hello, Ganesh.
But secrecy about the fast ended that afternoon, when a neighbor brought over to the house the latest edition of the Express. Everyone crowded around to read the story, which appeared on the front page under the caption:
YOUNG PEOPLE
DEFEND HOUSE
The first part of the article was a factual account of the situation. The following lines ended the article:
It is the first such incident in this state since the 1960 sit-ins at the university. One of the young defenders objected to the term “sit-in,” because of its connotation of willful rebellion. Instead, he called it a method of arriving at a true state of affairs. The idea is to appeal to the conscience of people in power. But late yesterday State Highway Commissioner Walton reaffirmed the government’s legal right to take possession of the Strepski property and suggested that steps are being taken to assert that right. The governor was not available for comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, the youthful defenders have vowed to fast until the authorities have a change of heart. The youngsters are now into their fifth day of a severe fast, taking nothing but plain water.
The last paragraph had the parents hurrying to the house or calling anxiously on the phone. It was okay to sit on a porch, but they didn’t want the health of their children tampered with. Yet each parent faced silence and determination; the Satyagrahis had put five whole days of suffering into this house and therefore their commitment was formidable, unlike anything their parents had expected from them. Only one Satyagrahi was persuaded to leave — an underweight boy with a history of illness. He left, however, only when the other kids joined his parents in urging him to go. Ganesh assured him that every day, morning and night, they would phone him and offer a detailed account of what was happening. This promise counted more with the boy than all the pleading. So he got his overnight bag and left — but slowly. Almost every step down the cement walk, he turned and waved at his companions, with his parents silent and humble, matching his dilatory pace all the way to their car.
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