Farmer, Philip Jose - Father Carmody 00.4

by A Few Miles (v2. 1)

  The owner of the YE OLDE ARIZONA LOGHAUS stood in the doorway and barred Brer John’s entrance.

  "No looting!” he shouted. "I'll kill the first man that tries to come in!” He held in his big meaty hands a butcher's cleaver.

  Brer John halted and said, between gasps, "I've no wish to loot, my friend. I ran to see if I could help.”

  “No help needed,” said the owner, still holding his cleaver poised. "I had a fire a couple years ago, and the mob broke in and stole everything before the cops could get here. I'll have no more of that.”

  Brer John felt himself pushed from behind. He looked over his shoulder and saw that he was being urged forward by the pressure of many men and women behind him. Obviously, they wanted to burst in and steal everything they could lay their hands on and wreck the eathouse before the police arrived. It was the custom when anything broke down in the city, an expression of the resentment they felt at their hemmed-in lives and at the non-human representatives of the authorities.

  The owner stepped back inside the doorway and shouted, “So help me, I’ll split the skull of the first man or woman who tries to get in!”

  The mob yelled with fury, and it snarled at him for having the effrontery to spoil their sport. It thrust forth a pseudopod of force, and Brer John found himself, willy-nilly, the vanguard and vicar of violence.

  Luckily, at that moment, the shadow of the fire engine fell on the crowd, and the next moment a spray of foam drenched them. They fell back, panting, the oxygen suddenly cut from around their noses and mouths. Brer John himself almost strangled before he could fight his way out of the foam that roiled hipdeep around him.

  Immediately afterwards, the copcars, sirens screaming, slid down out of the sky. And the cops poured out of the cars, light gleaming from the metal rings of their legs and round metal chests and the living black eyes, wet in the dead metal faces, moving back and forth. Their voices roared above the crowd's, and in a short time they had returned order to the park. The firemen walked into the eathouse, and in ten minutes came out. Most of them took off in their fire engines; one company stayed behind to clean up the foam. A lone cop recorded a report from the owner, and then he, too, left.

  The owner was a short dark beefy man of about fifty. He had a thick black walrus moustache, through which he cursed fluently and loudly in American, Lingo, and Mexican for five minutes. Then he began locking the doors of the eathouse.

  Bren John, one of the few people who had remained to watch, said, “Why are you closing? Hasn't the place been cleaned up?”

  He was not really worried about why; he hoped that somehow he would be able to get a meal from the man. His stomach had been growling like a starving dog for half an hour.

  “Oh, it’s clean enough,” said the man. “But the autochef is out of order. It started smoking; that's why I called the firemen.”

  “Can't you have it repaired?” said Brer John.

  “Not until I sign a new contract with the Electrical Maintenance Union," growled the man. "And that I won't do. They’re on strike now for higher wages. Well, I don’t give a damn. I’ll go out of business before I deal with them. Or wait until my brother Juan gets here from Mexico. He’s an electronics tech; he's going into business with me, and he can keep the autochef going. But he won’t get here until next week. When he does, we’ll show the bastards.”

  "It just so happens,” said Brer John, grinning, his mouth watering at the thought of all the goodies within, "that I am an electronics expert, among other things. I could repair the chef for you.”

  The man looked at him from under thick brows. "And just what's in it for you?”

  "A good meal,” said Brer John. "And enough busfare and taxi fare to get me to the spaceport.”

  The man looked around, then said, "Ain't you worried about the union? They’ll be down on us like a bus whose antigrav has given out.”

  Brer John hesitated. The growling of his belly was loud. He said, "I don’t wish to be called a scab. But if it is true that your brother is going to fix it anyway, then I see no harm in repairing the machinery a few days before he gets here. Besides, I’m hungry.”

  "O.K.” said the owner. "It’s your funeral. But I oughta warn you that there’s a picket stationed in the kitchen.”

  "Will he resort to violence?” asked Brer John.

  The owner took the cigar oat of his mouth and stared at the brother. Then he said, "Where you been all your life?”

  “I was gone from Earth quite a few years,” said Brer John. "And my life here on Earth has been quite cloistered since my return.”

  He did not think it necessary to add that the first year had been spent at John Hopkins, where he had been undergoing rehabilitation therapy after surrendering himself to the police.

  The owner shrugged and led Brer John through the dining rooms into the kitchen. There he pointed at a large painting hanging from the wall, Trudeau’s Morning On Antares 11. "Looks like a picture,” he said. "It’s the picket. A TV receiver. The union monitors it from its headquarters. Once they see you working on the chef, they’ll be down on us like the wolf on the fooled.”

  "I don’t wish to suggest anything illegal or unethical,” said Brer John. "But what would happen if we—I—turned off the picket's power?”

  "You can’t turn it off unless you was to smash it,” said the owner gloomily. "The power switch is remote-controlled by the union.”

  "What about hanging a sheet over it?” said Brer John.

  "An alarm would go off at union headquarters,” replied the owner. “And I’d be hauled off to jail by one of those stinking zombie cops. It’s against the law for me to interfere with the vision of the picket in any wray. I even have to keep the lights on in the kitchen day and night. And what’s worse, I have to pay the light bill, not the ____ing union.”

  The use of the four-letter word did not bother Brer John. Such words had long ago ceased to be equated with vulgarity or immorality; it made no difference whether one used words of English or Latin origin in describing bodily functions or as expletives. Twenty-third century culture, however, did have other taboo words, and the owner could have offended Brer John by using them.

  The brother asked for pliers, cutters, a screwdriver, and insulating tape. Then he stuck his head into the hole left by the removal of the wall-panels by the firemen. The ower began pacing back and forth, his big cigar puffing like signals sent by an Indian frantically asking for money from home.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t ought to of let you start doing this,” he said. “The union’ll have its goon squad on the way. Maybe they’ll try to wreck the place. Maybe they’ll start a lawsuit against me. It ain’t as if you was my brother fixing that damn chef. They can't do nothing if the repairman is part-owner of the place.”

  Brer John wished he had insisted upon being fed before beginning work. His stomach rumbled louder than ever, and his intestines felt as if they had turned cannibal.

  “Why not call a cop?” he said. “He can maintain order.”

  “I hate those metal-bellied zombies,” said the owner. “So does any decent man. It’s got so people won’t call a cop unless they absolutely have to. People are beginning to take the law in their own hands 'cause they hate to deal with the cops. I’d rather have the joint wrecked and pay for it than ask them damn zombies for help.”

  “Impersonal uncorruptible law enforcement has always been an ideal,” said Brer John. “So, now we have it . . .”

  “Brer John, if you wasn’t a man of the cloth, I’d tell you where to stick it,” said the owner. “But you get the message. Say, tell me, how come you monks are called Brer instead of Brother?”

  “Because that is the way our founder, St. Jairus, pronounced brother,” said Brer John. “He was born on the planet of Hawaiki, where the Polynesian colonists developed their own brand of American. Ah, here’s the trouble! Burned-out transformer in the high voltage power supply. Lucky for us the malfunction is so obvious. Maybe not so lucky unless we can replace t
he transformer. Do you have spare parts? Or do you, I suppose, depend upon the maintenance men to supply the parts?"

  The owner grinned and said, "Usually I do. But my brother phoned me and said to lay in all the parts I'd need before the union caught on he was coming. You see, once they knew I was using him, the union’d fix it up with the suppliers in L.A. not to sell me any stuff. Oh, those bastards! One way or another, they’ll turn off your switch!"

  "Ah well, they must ensure their living, too," said Brer John. “There’s something to be said for both sides in a labor-management dispute."

  "The hell there is!" said the owner, clamping down on his cigar. "Besides, I ain’t no management. I'm a proprietor who has to pay highway robbery prices to keep my electronic stuff going, that's what.”

  "Show me where you keep those parts," said Brer John.

  He paused. A loud knocking had penetrated the kitchen from the front of the eathouse.

  The owner scowled and said, "They’re here. But they can't get in unless I unlock the doors. Or they bust ’em down.”

  He hurried into a room behind the kitchen. Brer John followed, and there he picked out the transformer he needed. When he came back into the kitchen, the knocking was louder and more furious.

  "Do you intend to let them in?” asked Brer John.

  "If I don't, they’ll kick the door open," said the owner. "And I can’t do a damn thing about it. According to the law, they got a perfect right to make sure nobody except the owner fixes up the electronic equipment. And they’re trying to get a law passed to keep a man from doing that."

  "Yes, it’s true that a man has increasingly little liberty and rights," said Brer John. "On Earth, that is. That is why the individualist and nonconformist leave Earth in such great numbers for the frontier planets.”

  He paused, frowned as if he were thinking deeply, and said, "Perhaps that is why I am being sent to Wildenwooly.” He sighed and added, “Though it looks as if I may not be getting there.”

  He turned to the open panel and said, "You keep them out as long as you can without resorting to violence. Perhaps, by the time they get here, I can hacre this repaired.”

  It did not take him long, for the transformer needed only to be clipped onto the circuit board and the terminals plugged in. He laughed. It was so simple that the owner, if he had taken the time to examine the situation, could easily have done the repair work himself. But he, like many, thought of electronics as being such a highly mysterious and complex science, that he needed an expert. Though there were many things that only a highly trained technician could troubleshoot, this was not one of them.

  He withdrew the upper part of his body from the opening just in time to see the owner being pushed by four maintenance men into the kitchen. These were dressed in scarlet coveralls and electric-blue caps and wore their emblems on their chests and backs, a lightning streak crossed by a screwdriver.

  On seeing Brer John they halted in astonishment; apparently they had not seen him on the picket but had been told to go to Ye Olde Arizona Loghaus and stop the scab.

  Their leader, a six-foot-six man with the protruding brows and thick jaw of a pugilist, stepped forward. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, brother," he said. "But you better have a good reason."

  Another man, shorter than the first but broader, said, "Perhaps the Father didn’t know what he was doing?"

  The big man whirled on the broad man. "He ain’t no Father!" he snarled. "If you was one of our faith, you’d know that. He’s a monk or a friar or a lay brother, something like that. But he ain’t no priest!”

  "I’m a lay brother of the Order of St. Jairus," said Brer John. "Brer John is the name."

  "Well, Brer John," said the big man. "Maybe you’ve been shut up behind those walls so long meditating that you don’t know that you’re scabbing on us, taking the bread out of our mouths.”

  "I knew what I was doing," said Brer John. "By not fixing the autochef, I was taking the bread out of this man’s mouth —," he pointed to the owner. "And I was also depriving many people of the chance to get away from those ghastly soulless clutch cafeterias."

  "All this capitalist has to do is pay us what we want, and he can feed as many people as he can handle," snarled the big man.

  ‘Well,’’ said Brer John, "the trouble has been fixed."

  The big man turned purple and clenched his fists.

  “Shame on you,” said Brer John. "You are ready to strike a man of your own faith, a member of a holy order, too. And yet that man—’’ he pointed to the broad man— "a man of another faith, if any, is ready to take a reasonable attitude."

  "He’s one of them damn Universal Light people,” said the big man. “Always ready to consider the other fellow’s side, even if it’s to his own injury."

  "Then the more shame to you," said Brer John.

  "I didn’t come here to be shamed!" roared the big man. "I come here to get rid of a sneaky little scab hiding behind a robel More shame to you, I say!"

  "And just what do you propose to do?” said Brer John. He was shaking all over, not from fear of injury but from the fear that he might lose his self-control and attack the big man. And thus betray his own principles. Not to mention the principles of the order to which he belonged. What if they heard of this incident! What would they say, what action take?

  "I propose first to throw you out,” said the big man. “And then I propose to take out that transformer you put in.”

  "You can’t do that!” bellowed the owner. "What’s done is done!”

  "Wait a minute,” said Brer John to the owner. "No use getting upset, Let them take the transformer out. You can put it back in yourself, and there’s not a thing they can do.”

  Again the big man purpled, and his eyes bulged out. “He will like hell!” he said. “If the picket sees him do anything like that, or even try to, we’ll be down on him like the roof of the city fell in!”

  “There ain’t a thing you can do about it,” said the owner, smiling smugly. “Go ahead. Take the transformer out. Ill just stand here and watch how you do it so's I’d know how to, too.”

  "He’s right,” said the broad man. "We can’t do a thing if the trouble’s that simple.”

  “Say, who’s side you on?” roared the big man. "You a scab?”

  “No. I just want to be legal,” said the broad man. “Anyway, we can hire human pickets to picket the place.”

  "Are you out of your skull?” said the big man. "You know the Human Picket Union just upped their hourly rates, and we can’t afford to hire any. And we don’t have enough men of our own to spare for picketing. Besides, them damn pickets are pushing through a law to make it illegal for anybody except a picket union member to picket. The nerve of them guys!”

  Brer John smiled and shook his head and tsk-tsked.

  "I’m warning you!” shouted the big man, shaking his fist in the direction of the owner and Brer John. "If you re-repair the autochef, you won’t have an eathouse to run!”

  The owner, whose own face had been purpling, suddenly jumped on the big man and bowled him over. The two went down together, locked in furious, if not deadly, combat. Another of the goon squad took a poke at Brer John. Brer John ducked, and before he coud think, his reflexes took over. He threw up his left to block the fellow's punch, and seeing him wide open, slammed him in the belly with a hard right.

  A fierce joy ran through him. Before he could recollect what he should be doing, he had done what should not. Excellent student of karate, judo, sabate, akrantu, and vispexurun, and veteran of a hundred bar-room and back alley brawls, be went into action like a maddened lynx mother who thought her kittens were in danger. A chop of the palm-edge against a neck, a thrust of stiff fingers into a soft gut, a hard heel of a foot against a chin, a knee in the groin and an elbow in the throat, and all except the big man were out of the fight. Following the Biblical precept of saving the best for the last, Brer John incapacitated the big man by pulling him from the owner and working him
over with palm, fingers, knee, foot, and elbow. The big man went down like a tree attacked by a thousand woodpeckers.

  The owner struggled to his feet and was astonished to see Brer John on his knees, eyes closed, praying.

  "What’s the matter?” said the owner. "You hurt?"

  "Not physically,” said Brer John, getting to his feet. He did not believe in long prayers when they were informal. "I am hurt because I failed."

  "Failed?" said the owner, looking around at the unconscious or groaning men. "Did one of them get away?"

  "No,” said Brer John. "Only it should be I who am on the floor, not they. I lost my temper, and also my self-respect. I should have let them do what they wanted to with me but never lifted a finger.”

  “---------- P cried the owner. "Look at it this way. You saved these men from being murderers! Believe me, they’d have had to kill me before I would have let them mess up my autochef. No, you’ve done them, and me, a great service. Though I don’t know what's going to happen once they go back to headquarters. There’ll be hell to pay.”

  "There usually is,” said Brer John. "What will you do?”

  "Don’t say that,” said the owner. "The last time you asked that, we had a free-for-all. But I’ll tell you what. I’m going to drag these goons out—and I could use some help from you—and then I'm going to lock the door, and then, much as I hate to have anything to do with those metal-bellies, I’m going to call the cops. They can station a flatfoot here and keep the goons from bombing or wrecking the place. I’ll say that much for the zombies, they can’t be scared by threats or influence.”

  Brer John began helping the owner carry the men out of the eat-house. They had, however, no sooner placed the four on the sidewalk and locked the door than they heard the siren of a police car.

  “I have to go now,” said Brer John. "I can’t afford to have my name on the police records or in the papers. My superiors would frown on such unfavorable publicity. And it wouldn’t do me any good either,” he added, thinking of his pre-Christian days. It was possible that he might be taken back to John Hopkins for further observation.