Time and a Ticket

by Peter Benchley

  I looked across the dry, flat plains, and for a moment all I could see were tiny clouds on the horizon. Then, slowly, the clouds began to take shape; each one was the sharp, pinkish-white top of a snow-covered mountain. They seemed to glow against the crisp blue of the early morning sky, a hundred, two hundred miles away. The line of peaks seemed endless, miniscule spikes on the horizon that disappeared off to the north and curved out of sight to the east. It was not that you could see some of them and not others, the farthest ones, but rather that the farther away the peaks were, the more they looked like small clouds, until you were sure that the farthest away couldn't be mountains.

  We went inside and had cornflakes and tangerines.

  Roger Engstrom is a farmer from Iowa. He had been working on his father's farm when he got the idea of joining the Peace Corps. He had never traveled much, and he thought this might be a way to see the world. Also, he was interested in seeing how other people farmed. And he knew that with his knowledge of fertilizers, modern farming techniques, and of the land, he could be of some help to these people. Roger is the ideal Peace Corps representative. He is well-trained, interested, dedicated. He has grown up in the country and is used to country living. He does not pine for the theater, for movies, for magazines or books. He derives a great deal of pleasure from nature. He is kind, relatively uncomplicated, and direct. And perhaps most important of all, he is patient.

  There were five of us—Roger, Arthur, an Indian supervisor for agricultural affairs of the area, Charlie and myself. We rode through Ludhiana and started east along the paved road. Just before we left the town, I glanced to the right at a large gulch, about six feet below the level of the land, a hundred or so feet long and fifty feet wide. In the center of the gulch a pack of vultures flapped and clawed and ripped away at something that was lying in their midst. All around were the dried bones of cattle.

  "It's a cow," said Roger. "The Indians won't eat the meat, so when the things die, they throw them here for the vultures."

  I was startled. "They still stick to that no meat policy? All of them?"

  "Pretty nearly. We got a pamphlet the other day. Said in 1956 India had one fourth of all the world's cattle—one hundred and fifty-six million head, plus forty-four million head of water buffalo. Damn things eat all the grain and put a big hole in the economy. And the Indians won't eat a one of them. They ask for grain aid instead."

  "But why don't they sell them?"

  "They use them for milk. When the milk runs out, they let them run around eating garbage, so they're no good for meat by then. Besides, there's still some religious feeling about it. You'll never see an Indian kill a cow. Beat the hell out of them now and then, but never kill them."

  The thought was infuriating. "For God's sake, don't they—"

  "It's what they believe," said Roger, "and you can't mess around with their beliefs. Not if you want to get anywhere with them."

  It was a long ride, and with every push on the pedals the day got hotter. The heat rose visibly from the road, and under every tree, groups of Indians lay in the grass. About six miles outside Ludhiana we turned left on a rutted road. In the distance, two houses stood in a clump of trees. As we approached, we could see children walking in and out of the trees, carrying trays of what looked like clay on their heads. I asked Roger what they were doing.

  "Carrying cow manure," he said. "They collect it fresh and put it in piles to dry. It's fertilizer and fuel for them. I've been trying to get them to bury it until they need it, because that way they'll retain all the minerals. Now they just set it out to dry, and all the nutrients dry out of it."

  The farmyard was small. It sat on the bank of a stream that ran a thin trickle of murky brown water past the houses. The main house was on the right. It was long and low, two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom-living room. Ten yards from the house was a wall, against which fifteen head of cattle were lying tethered out of the sun. In the center of the yard a pile of manure patties baked in the sun. A huge pile of fresh manure sat on the bank of the stream, and two little girls scooped traysful and took them to the center pile and patted it into cakes. Across the stream were the fields.

  The farmer came out to greet us. He was a tall, strong-looking, bearded Sikh, and he wore gold-rimmed glasses. He welcomed Roger with a warm soc-city-agdh, then greeted us formally, with the palms-together gesture.

  "Come," he said to us. "I must show you my prize."

  We walked across the yard to where a new red tractor was standing under a tree.

  "Is it fixed?" asked Roger.

  "Just today," said the farmer. "I think it runs well now." He turned to us. "You like it?"

  "Beautiful," I said.

  "Great," said Charlie, hoping, as did I, that these were suitable adjectives for tractors.

  "It is Polish," said the farmer. "Good machines, but very hard to repair. When they sent them to us, they did not send many spare parts."

  "How many farmers have tractors?" asked Charlie.

  "Very, very few," said Roger. "This man is one of the most successful farmers in the Punjab. He actually makes money now, about a thousand dollars a year, net, which isn't bad when you consider that the average per capita annual income in India is sixty-six dollars. Most farmers have to eat a lot of what they produce, and trade the rest for clothes."

  Roger and the farmer led the way across the stream into the fields.

  "Look at this wheat," he said. It looked just like regular wheat to me. "This is fine wheat, tall, big, and very healthy. You see how close together it grows, how many stalks in, say, a square foot. On fifty acres this man grows more than twice as much wheat as his neighbor, who has a hundred and fifty acres."

  "How?"

  "He uses modern fertilizers and chemicals, builds up the land instead of letting it use itself up after a year or two. What I'm trying to do is get the other farmers in the area to follow his example. I think we're inching forward a little bit, but my God, it's a slow process."

  "Why? Don't they see what can be done? And if so, why don't they do it?"

  "Take this man's neighbor for an example," said Roger. We were walking along a strip of border land between the two properties. "Now look at this wheat." We looked, and there was indeed a difference. The wheat was thin and short, and where the first farmer had fifty stalks, this man had perhaps fifteen, and they were sickly. "I'll tell you about our crusade with this guy," he said, pointing to the wheat.

  When the group first arrived, Roger had searched for one farmer who was using new methods. He had found him, the man whose farm we were visiting, and had helped him further, suggesting new devices and new fertilizers. His premise was that since this man was admired by the other farmers, they might be persuaded to try the same methods. Roger went to the farm nearby and talked to the farmer there. The conversation had gone something like this:

  "I cannot afford to buy all the fertilizers you suggest," said the farmer. "I make barely enough to feed my family as it is."

  "I understand that, sir," said Roger, "but if you start little by little, trying the new materials on even one acre, your production will gradually rise, and you will be able to afford more."

  "But suppose I put all this money into it, and it doesn't work. Where am I then?"

  "But it will work. Don't you see what it did for your neighbor?"

  "It worked for him, but how can you guarantee that it will work for me?"

  "I assure you, sir, it will work."

  "How do I know that? Suppose it doesn't. Then I'm without all that money. Besides, suppose the locusts come again, as they did three years ago. What then? Can you keep the locusts away?"

  "No, I can't."

  "So I put all the money into it, even if it does work, and the locusts come and eat me out. If they come now, it is bad enough. But how much worse if I spend more money on the crop! If you give me the fertilizers, I will try them."

  "I can't afford to give you all the fertilizers, but if you buy them, I'll help you with
them."

  "So I must take your word that they will work, spend all the money, and get no guarantee. No. I cannot do that. I am not a rich man."

  "I can do one thing," said Roger. "If you lend me one strip of your land, a small one, I'll buy fertilizer and chemicals for it, and I'll plant it myself. Then you can see if it works or not."

  The farmer thought for a moment. "But if it does not work, then I am without the crop from that land. I cannot afford to waste any crop."

  "But it will work. I'm not asking you to give me your land, only to let me plant it in a new way, so you can see for yourself."

  "I will think about it," said the farmer.

  Four days later the farmer agreed, and Roger set about planting the strip of land.

  "Now," said Roger, "we have to wait and see if he'll take up the example and buy his own when this one works. He may just sit back and be happy with the little extra the strip will bring him. He's got another problem I'm working on now. A lot of his land is practically useless because of a huge salt deposit. The land has been mistreated for so long that it has all become too salty. I could get rid of the salt in a matter of weeks, but we go through the same rigmarole. I have to supply and plant the first chemicals, prove to him I'm not trying to cut his throat, before he'll even think about trying something new."

  "I'd go nuts," said Charlie. "Don't you get frustrated?"

  "It's hard," said Roger. "They have four crops a year here, where we have one, and they could produce God knows how many times more than they do. But," he shrugged his shoulders and smiled, "you can't blame them, really. A stranger walks in and tells them he's going to help them, if only they'll shell out a lot of money they don't have. I know

  I'd be wary if someone came to me with a proposition like that. I'd think he was some sort of carpetbagger."

  We made a five-mile circle of the farms in the area, skidding and falling on the ruts in the narrow dirt roads. At each farm, we were offered (and had to accept) a cup of the milk-tea mixture. And at each farm we went through five minutes of platitudes. Before we turned back toward the main road, Roger stopped us in front of eight long rows of watermelons. We walked down the second row and stood near the end. Elsewhere in the row the plants were well up. Here they had barely begun.

  "This is another beauty," said Roger. "All the farmers have always used compost as fertilizer for the watermelons. It's the best you can get, and it's done a good job for them. But somehow one man got hold of all the compost supplies for the area, and now he sits on his ass in Ludhiana and controls prices. He can get whatever he asks, of course, and what he asks is about twice what the stuff is worth—easily twice what the farmers can comfortably afford. But they have to buy from him."

  "Isn't there anything else they can use?" asked Charlie.

  "Yes, and here's the problem. I went to the watermelon farmer and told him I could suggest certain chemical fertilizers that would do just as good a job and that would be far cheaper for him in the long run. They'd be better for the land, too. I got the same reaction the wheat farmer gave me: how do I know it will work, what guarantees can you give me? I persuaded him to give me part of one of his rows so I could prove it to him. I planted the stuff, and now the damn things aren't growing." He pointed to the tiny beginnings of the plants. "They will grow, but they'll take a little longer than the others, because for one thing, they were planted a little later. I have quite a time convincing the farmer of that, though. He comes along and sees his plants bigger than mine, and he immediately concludes that my fertilizer is crummy. I don't mind that so much as that I think he now figures I was trying to put something over on him. If I can make him wait and reserve judgment, I may win. If he starts parading around the countryside telling all his neighbors that I tried to con him, then all the progress I've made will be shot. I could show them a four-ton watermelon, and they'd spit in my eye."

  That night we had an early dinner. It was Thursday, and members of groups from other towns were beginning to arrive for the weekend. A soccer game was scheduled for Saturday, Peace Corps vs. the local engineering school, and they hoped to have all twenty-six Peace Corps people there for the weekend. They were setting up metal cots and Indian webbed beds in every available corner, and someone had been sent into Ludhiana for beer. It cost about eighty cents a quart, so it was treated like gold.

  After dinner, Roger and Paul offered to drive us into Ludhiana on the backs of their motorbikes. We packed, and gingerly arranged ourselves on the luggage racks, clutching our suitcases and trying somehow to hold on. When we got to the train station, we found that the train would be more than an hour late. Roger and Paul refused to leave, so we spent the hour riding the motorbikes in tight circles around the station. This was stopped when I got arrested for going the wrong way through an alley, and the Peace Corps's reputation was only saved from the ignominy of being discovered with as yet unregistered vehicles by a lot of talk and someone offering to buy the policeman a cup of tea. He laughed, and we had many society-agahs, and Charlie and I got on the train.

  That night an old man asked if he could sleep on the floor of our compartment. He was a very polite, nice-looking old man, and we were sorry to have to refuse.

  Later, Charlie and I talked often of the Peace Corps representatives we had met, and the more we talked, the more we realized that they are truly an impressive lot. These are people who are giving up a great deal: time, money, comfort, fun, relaxation, and whatever luxury most Americans can afford. They are away from their families and their friends, away from language and customs that have been the most basic of securities all their lives.

  Materially, the returns are meager. The salary, most of which is saved for them, is small, about a thousand dollars a year. But they are fed and sheltered and supplied with whatever tools they need. They have an opportunity to travel when their tour of duty is over, and most of that travel will be paid for by the government. Aside from those rewards, no one can say what each individual gets out of his two years. He learns a great deal about many things, about new people, new thoughts, a new way of life. But how he matures, what sense of accomplishment he feels, how his life will be changed when he returns, all these are the variables.

  Regardless of anything else he may feel, the Peace Corps representative has a right to be proud. Not all of what he has accomplished is tangible, but all of it is important. If he has helped one farmer to have a better life, that in itself is enough to be proud of. If he has, as he hopes, shown a group of people how to support themselves, how to be independent of other people's aid, all the better. But he is doing more. He is educating people, and thus releasing them from the vicious slavery that ignorance imposes.

  13

  EVEN before we left the United States, Charlie and I had agreed on one thing: no matter where in the world we went, no matter if our route took us over Mongolia and the North Pole, we were eventually going to get to an island in the South Seas, a "tropical paradise," where we could loll on a white beach beneath swaying palms and fish for our dinner on the coral reefs, where we could commune with nature and cleanse ourselves of the scales of civilization.

  Charlie's first thought was Tahiti, but I, displaying worldly wisdom acquired from a magazine article, told him that because of jet travel, new hotels had sprung up, pictures were being filmed there, and the island was nothing like what he imagined it to be. Bora-Bora, the island near Tahiti, was better, more natural, but even it was uttering its death rattle as a tropical paradise and undergoing a rebirth as a child of the age of Hilton.

  One night I was looking through a copy of Horizon, and I found a piece about the five last unspoiled areas in the world. Picture after picture showed lush tropical islands with white sand beaches and swaying palms, but most of them were more than a thousand dollars' flight out of our way. Then suddenly I saw our place. A full-page color picture showed the most beautiful beach I had ever seen, with white sand, curling breakers, and the bluest water in the world, on the edge of a rich, green jung
le. The caption told us that the name of the place was Galle, on the southern tip of Ceylon and well within our reach.

  However hot it got in India and Pakistan, however much we suffered through dust and dirt and discomfort, we were always buoyed by the thought of Galle, with its clear skies and gentle breezes. We were like Buddhists trudging through life with only one goal, Nirvana, when every care would cease and the milk and honey would start to flow.

  When we landed in Ceylon, it was a hundred and ten and humid. We stumbled off the plane into the airport bus, and collapsed for the hour's ride into Colombo. "Some tropical paradise," said Charlie.

  "Don't give up yet," I said. "Look out the window." Even here on the outskirts of the capital of the country, there were deep jungles and thatched huts and mango and banana trees. And if we looked closely, we could see the sea through the trees. As soon as we got to the hotel, we went downstairs to make plans to go to Galle.

  Galle itself, said the concierge, had no beach: it was a fishing town, mostly walled in, with some narrow strips of sand beach, but not many. Where we wanted to go was Hik-kaduwa, next to Galle.

  "The name isn't important," said Charlie. "We'll take it."

  "There is one problem," said the concierge. "I don't think you can get a reservation."

  "Reservation?" I said. "Reservation for what, the beach?"

  "No. There's only one place to stay, a government rest-house, and it's usually full."

  "We can sleep in a shack," said Charlie. "We don't need a hotel or a resthouse."

  "A shack? Where are you going to find a shack?"

  Charlie shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe one of the natives will rent us one."

  "Rent you his home? That's all they have, you know. It's a small, poor village. Anyway, you wouldn't want to live in one of their houses."