The War for the Lot

by Sterling Lanier

  "I'm a deacon over to our Congregational church in town," said John, seeing his glance. "There's some old and sick folks as don't get out much and I bring them a little garden sass and plants and flowers now and again. Cheers them up, to eat fresh-growed food and see things coming up as if they was growing outside. Your grandpa don't mind, 'cause he knows I grow enough for us and them, too. As a matter of fact, your grandma, Mrs. March, done the same when she was alive, poor lady. So it's kind of a house custom, you might say."

  Alec was interested and asked what a deacon was, as the big station wagon rolled down the long driveway under the dripping trees. They chatted about this and other matters until the town's central green, with its bronze Minuteman, was reached. The whole drive had only taken a few minutes, and Alec was surprised to find out how close Mill Run village actually was to The Lot.

  They bought groceries from a long list provided by Lou and then went calling. Most of the people they visited were elderly, except for one younger woman surrounded by swarms of rather tattered-looking children. One old lady gave Alec a sugar cookie and told him that he looked exactly like his father. She also told him that his grandmother was still remembered and missed. "She was a real saint," said the old lady, adding in typical New England fashion, something which was quite lost on Alec, "in spite of being Episcopal."

  Finally, all had been visited and John said they could now go home. Light rain was still coming down but the sun seemed to be trying to get through high above.

  As John started the car, Alec said, "John, Lou said there was a town dump they were going to turn into a shopping center or something. Could I see it? I've never seen a real dump before."

  "Kids always want to see something nobody ever thought of asking about," said John, eyeing him aslant. "Now what in tarnation do you want to see the town disgrace for? We've been trying to get the selectmen to vote that mess out of here for ten years now and you act like it was a national monument."

  "Well," said Alec, "maybe there won't be any when I grow up. Maybe they'll all be extinct. Then I'll never see one. Couldn't we, anyway?"

  "So be it, if you really want to," said John, shaking his head. "Mightn't be a bad idea at that. If you ever get to be president, you can keep all the dumps in the country from getting out of hand."

  They drove a short distance down a pleasant tree-shaded lane, and turned a sharp corner onto another road, which brought them to a dirt track running away from town. A little way down, beyond a small signpost, lay the village dump, and the smell of it caught Alec's nose even before it came into sight. On reaching the edge of it, they parked.

  It was an ugly sight, even softened by the rain, but also fascinating to Alec. A swollen mound of debris bulging out to about the area of an acre or more, it was built up of garbage, rotten automobile tires and rusty tin cans. Small fires smoked here and there, spitting out greasy, gray smoke as the raindrops hit them. Parts and bodies of old, abandoned cars lay about in various places at the edge. The whole scene was inexpressibly sad and disgusting, especially after the lovely country town with its neat gardens, green lawns, and white houses.

  Nevertheless, it was not without interest. Abandoned toys lay here and there. Alec noticed a broken tricycle, some tot's abandoned vehicle, and near it a headless doll. A refuse heap of human civilization, like those of the ancient past, it accurately reflected the lives of the people who had thrown their unwanted and used-up belongings here.

  And somewhere near it or under it lay the stronghold of the rats! A more evil-appearing castle or fortress would be hard to imagine, the boy reflected.

  Looking over his shoulder, Alec could see the church steeple and realized that the town was really quite close.

  "That's right," said John, seeing his look. "People are just plain lazy. They been using this place since the whole town only had ten people in it and the town's grown out right to the dump now. Even so, we had to get up a petition before them stubborn selectmen would do anything."

  "Aren't they going to build something here, some new buildings, Lou said?"

  "Yep," said John. "Nothing so nice as a park, but better than this anyway. Trees don't pay taxes, and that's all them selectmen can think about, more taxes. They're going to bury all this muck by bulldozing it into that hollow over there. That'll fill in an old cave full of garbage and vermin that's supposed to be hidden just down the slope. They'll level that little hill next and then they can take dirt and spread it over the whole area and make a foundation. On top of that goes a new gas station, cleaning establishment and drugstore, all in nice, new, shiny, concrete buildings. Personally, I'd rather have trees, but when I made the suggestion, Old Caleb Wilson looked at me like I was crazy. Still, it'll be better than this mess, full of filth and rats. Some of the boys has come out here at night and plinked at the rats with their .22 rifles. Don't get many, though. The rats learned to lay low after a little of that. Rats is smart."

  "Why don't they come and kill all the rats with guns?" said Alec. "Or maybe poison them?"

  "Well, you're sure in a bloodthirsty mood," said John. "Sonny, even if the whole town come out here, they'd maybe shoot three rats between them. Them rat holes are all over this dirty mess and all through the hill and the hollow beyond. You might get a lot with poison gas pumped in the holes, the way I hear tell they do on ships, but there's so many holes that most of the rats would get away anyhow. Poisoning em would cost a fortune.

  "No, the best way to get rid of rats is to get rid of the dump. A few will always be around. Nobody ever figured out how to get rid of all the rats in creation. But most of them will light out and go somewhere else."

  The boy felt suddenly cold. Indeed, the rats would go somewhere else. And he had a good idea where, even if John did not! Somehow, in some arcane manner, the rats had learned or guessed what was going to happen to the dump. And they must have taken very careful steps to locate new territory in which to settle.

  "Well, you seen all you want?" asked John, switching on the engine. "You can say you saw the worst little town dump in all the whole Nutmeg State. That makes you an expert on dumps." The car turned and they headed back.

  Alec saw that he was expected to smile, but his heart wasn't in it. The fact that adult humans, with rifles and even poison gas, were so pessimistic about their ability to destroy rats discouraged him greatly. What on earth could one boy and a lot of woods animals do if grownups were unable to do much? He thought for a moment of enlisting John in the cause, but it was only a passing thought. It would be easy to give up all responsibility, stop worrying, let a grownup take over. But as soon as the thought appeared, Alec dismissed it. The trust had been laid upon him. If an adult could have done the job, one would have been selected. He would just have to work it out himself. He sighed as he thought of all the problems. He had to learn so much more so quickly.

  The rain was now only a mist, and the sun had actually come through in places and lit the black, glistening asphalt ahead of them and the trees on either side. As the big car approached the stretch of road leading to The Lot, Alec watched the sides of the road carefully. The station wagon was cruising along a section of state forest which lay directly between The Lot and the Mill Run dump, and it had occurred to the boy that he had better start learning how the land lay. He wondered if the rats, when they came, would be smart enough to circle The Lot and come from the west or south, rather than come directly from the east.

  As the car rolled up the long drive, Alec sat silent, thinking of battles and what he knew about them. In early school grades, he had learned about Paul Revere, the battle of Bunker Hill, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," and such matters as that. From the conversation of his parents and other adults, he had picked up bits and pieces about World War II and the other later wars that plagued the world. But it didn't help much. The rats didn't wear red coats like the old British used to, there were no guns (or anyone to shoot them) and no planes, ships, helicopters or atom bombs, either. It was all very disco
uraging. How could he find out more about real battles and how they were fought?

  Then he suddenly thought of his grandfather. Professor March knew almost everything in the world, reflected Alec. Perhaps he could be asked for help in such a way that he would have no idea what the reason behind the questioning was.

  The station wagon came to a stop in front of the house, abruptly jolting him out of his reflections.

  "Hope you liked your ride," said John. "You seemed pretty quiet on the way back. That dump get you down a bit, maybe?" he asked shrewdly.

  "Yes, it did," said Alec hastily. "It seemed awfully dark and gloomy and full of lost, broken things. But I really enjoyed myself. Thanks a lot for the ride."

  "Any time," said John, reflecting to himself that the boy was a deep one.

  Meanwhile, Alec had run up the two front steps and gone in the door. The idea of getting hold of his grandfather at once had seized him, and he was determined to extract as much information as he could immediately. The rain had entirely stopped. The wind had died and sunlight sparkled on drops of water gleaming on every bush, tree and blade of grass.

  He found the Professor in the library as expected, working at his cluttered desk. The old man was delighted to see him.

  "I understand you have made your first trip into town," he observed, looking at his young grandson with affection. "Hardly a roaring metropolis like New York, but infinitely more restful. Fresh air, too. What did you see anything interesting?"

  "Oh, lots of things," said Alec vaguely. "Nothing special. That's not why I came in here, though. Grandpa, I've been thinking about what you said last night, all about King Richard and the way people fought battles in the Middle Ages, and all that. And I got interested because I wondered what people did when they didn't even have swords and spears and battle-axes and things. How did they fight then? Can you fight well if you don't even know how to hit people with a sword or even a stick? Did the ancient people fight battles without any of those things? Do you have to have swords at least before you can have a war?"

  The Professor was very pleased, both with his grandchild and also, truth to tell, with himself. The old man had been afraid that it would be boring for a youngster to listen all summer to someone of his advanced age. The Professor beamed. Alec saw that he had pleased him somehow, and felt better about his hope of getting some useful information.

  "Now then, Alec, you want to know whether people fought organized wars before the invention of tools and weapons. Do I understand you clearly?"

  "That's right," said the boy. "How did they fight? What did they do if they wanted something other people had and hadn't any spears or knives or anything to fight them with?"

  "Well, my boy, this is rather hard to say. You see, there aren't any people in the world today who are so primitive that they have no weapons. The Australian aborigines are pretty far down the cultural scale. But even they have spears, and they invented boomerangs, those curved things that come back when you throw them. The South African Bushmen use bows and poisoned arrows, and they, too, are very primitive.

  "Going back into the remote past, the cave men the Neanderthalers and the Magdalenian people called Cro-Magnons they all used weapons, beautifully-made ones at that. Even the so-called apemen used sticks and bones and stone tools, mostly crude hand axes. So you see, if even the most primitive humans had weapons, your question becomes almost impossible to answer. Weapons and humans seem to go together, unfortunately, and always have."

  Alec reflected. He was sure that his grandfather had some vital information, if he could only think of the right way to ask him. There just had to be some way of getting it. Something the old man had just said came back to him.

  "Grandpa, you said the apemen had tools. But how about the apes themselves? Do gorillas have sticks and things out in the jungle where they live, to fight with? I've seen them at the Bronx Zoo, but all they had was a ball and an old car tire."

  "Well, if you must leave the human level, there are some analogies, I suppose," said Professor March, in an interested voice. "Gorillas have no tools, although I have read recently that some chimpanzees do use sticks to extract white ants from their nests for food. And neither chimpanzees nor gorillas fight wars. They are, fortunately for their own souls, not 'intelligent' enough, if that is the right word." He looked away, over Alec's head and stared blankly at the bookcase, obviously thinking.

  "Baboons do fight in packs though. They have regular territories, just like countries only much smaller than ours, of course, and they defend these from other baboons. Some of the reports, I believe, speak of hundreds of them, real armies, having pitched battles. Is that what you wanted to know?" he asked the boy.

  "Well, I guess so," said Alec. "Actually, I mean, what I want to know is how they fight. Do they send out scouts, and well, set traps for each other? Stuff like that?"

  "I'm afraid my memory's not too strong on the intimate details of baboon military campaigns," chuckled Professor March. "I guess they probably do something of the sort. They are rather intelligent brutes, and a great nuisance to farmers in Africa, if my recollections serve." He paused and looked sharply at the boy. "What are you really after, Alec? This seems to be very important to you. You haven't smiled once since you came in here."

  Alec shifted nervously and scuffed one sneaker on the faded oriental rug. He could not meet his grandfather's piercing eye.

  "It's just, well, I got to know about war, that's all! I thought you could tell me how two sides fight a war, and it would be simpler if I left out all the weapons and guns and things, so I could understand what a general does, or somebody that tells soldiers what to do and where to go." He looked anxiously up at the white head above him. "That's all, honest."

  The Professor sat back, satisfied. "I see now," he said. "What you want to know are the principles of war. And of course you didn't know how to ask, so you did it this way. Not a bad way, either. Do you know for a moment I had a crazy mental picture of an army of animals marching in ranks!" Fortunately for Alec, this last observation was made while Dr. March was lighting his pipe, so he could not see his grandson's face.

  "The actual principles, the basic ideas which govern any war, are very old indeed. And very simple, too, at least to talk about or describe. It's putting them into practice that's the hard part. Most of them were written down by the Chinese two thousand years before Christ.

  "One very successful American general, named Forrest, who had no formal military training but who learned all by himself exactly what to do, once said that success in battle meant 'fustest with the mostest'. What he meant was, get to a key position with more men than the enemy has in the same place. Somebody else, I forget just who, said, 'Hit 'em where they ain't!' He meant that the place to strike hard was where the enemy least expected you. If the enemy was watching and guarding the north end of some valley, say, then you should attack the south end.

  "Other successful military men have said other things. Napoleon said that the pursuit of a beaten enemy must be instantaneous and pressing. He said that if a beaten army were followed, constantly attacked and harassed by cavalry or light troops and given no chance to recover, it would then be totally destroyed and never able to re-form and fight again. Is this the sort of thing you wanted to know?"

  Alec's brown eyes were shining. "Yes, that's it! That's just what I need. Do you know more? What happens when an army is coming and you know pretty well where, but not when? How do you fight them if you have less soldiers than they do?"

  Smiling at Alec's enthusiasm, Professor March continued. "It seems to me that if you knew where the enemy was coming at you, half the problem would be solved. You could pick the place you wanted to fight. For instance, suppose there was a narrow place, like a mountain pass, that he had to come through. You could block it in front and attack from both sides."

  "But how?" asked the boy.

  "Look, Alec. I've told you the basis. It's simple really. There almost always is a defensible obstacle. If not a mo
untain pass, then a swamp or a wide river. If the ground is in the enemy's favor, perhaps flat with no obstacles or defenses, why then you retreat or advance, go back or forward, to a place where there are obstacles and defenses. If the enemy knows what you're doing, you have to be careful. If not, it's pretty easy."

  "I get it," said Alec thoughtfully. "You wait until the enemy comes to you, where you're waiting for them, in the best place to fight."

  "Exactly," said Professor March, blowing a large smoke ring.

  "But how do you do that?" said Alec, puzzled. "I don't see what you can do to make them come just one way and not others, unless they just happen to, by mistake or something."

  "I'll tell you," said his grandfather, "and you'll see how easy it is, or rather, how easy it looks. If the enemy is smart, it may not be so easy to do! Still, suppose an enemy army is marching on your country. You want them to come only one way, and no other. So you could start rumors. You let them know that the other ways are guarded. You move men around to all the other places and make them look as strong as possible. And you make the one special place look weak. You keep the men you have there hidden and any defenses concealed. Then you hope. Often, it works. If it doesn't, you must wait until they actually begin to march. Then you attack continuously, but with only a few men, called skirmishers or scouts. You may add more men to them if you can and if it's needed or called for. You try to make any other route so unappealing and difficult that the enemy will half drift, half be driven, into the one way you want. How's that?"

  "Great! That's wonderful! But what about time, Grandpa? Suppose you're not sure when the enemy will come? What do you do then?"

  "That's difficult," said Professor March. "You could get into trouble. But there are people in every army called intelligence officers. They are the ones who try to find out what the enemy will do. Now, your intelligence men will do their best to find out how and when the enemy will move. And each army gets news from spies, too, people who live in the enemy country and pretend to be part of the enemy. Sometimes they help a lot; sometimes their news is too late or wrong. But I suppose that's not what you wanted. You just want the beginning principles, eh?"