The Other Horseman

by Philip Wylie

  I'll look into it--immediately."

  "Of course, you can do something," Mrs. Bailey answered, sniffling, but comforted. "It's such a waste! Biff was just getting ready to hunt for the right job!"

  Jimmie glanced at his frantic mother, his frowning father, and his sister, who seemed to be undergoing mixed emotions. Then he brought his gaze ''I'm not scared," Biff said harshly. He met Jimmie's eyes, and Jimmie knew that was the truth. "But I'll be everlastingly damned if I'm going to spend a year of my life marching around with a lot of Boy Scouts, getting up at the crack of dawn, doing day labor, eating swill--just because Franklin Delano Roosevelt says there's an emergency! And that's flat!"

  Mrs. Bailey added her explanation. "I told Biff he should do something when he wrote out the application--or whatever you call it. He was bound to get an 'A' rating.

  Maybe we can do something about his physical examination."

  "I'm a football player," Biff said coldly.

  His mother answered, "Still, we must know the examining physician--whoever it is. Laddy Bedford got put way back because of his heart, though I never heard before about his having heart trouble. There must be some loophole, somewhere." She seemed to see a stoniness in Jimmie's stare. She added, "It isn't as if we really needed an army!

  As if we'd been invaded, or anything! Besides, there still isn't enough equipment to drill with for half the boys that they've already taken. They shouldn't call any more until they have the things.

  And even Congress almost had sense enough, last summer, to put a stop to it!"

  Jimmie said, "That's a devil of a mood to show a guy who's about to join the army."

  She said, "Jimmie!"

  Mr. Bailey pontificated. "Now, James, this is something that demands thought.

  Thought--and possible action. A boy like Biff is too valuable to be put in the infantry.

  And the time for raising a militia hasn't come, even if the president does create it later.

  You're fresh from other people's battles. You'll have to Jet us work this out in the way most suitable to Americans in America."

  "Biff's going," Jimmie said bluntly.

  Biff whirled. "Says who?"

  "Says me, Biff." Jimmie was very quiet.

  "You think you can make me?"

  "Yeah."

  "How?"

  Jimmie shrugged. He was still sitting at his place. He picked up the letter. "Here.

  It tells you to report. You'll pass the physical, because you have the constitution of a buffalo. So-you'll go. If you"--he spoke still more quietly--"or Dad, or Mother, or anybody tries to weasel on this, I'll go before the draft board or committee--or whatever it is--and report the whole unselfish and patriotic conversation we have just been having here! I promise you!"

  He stopped there--because Biff slugged him. He hit from the floor, with all his might. Biff was also sitting. Otherwise the blow would have downed Jimmie. It caught him on the cheekbone. It made a nasty sound. Sarah screamed. Biff grabbed his fist and rubbed it. He said, "I'll run this show! You interfere--and that's just a sample! I'll about kill you!" His voice was shaking.

  Jimmie lowered his head a moment. The first fierce pain died away. The sparks stopped floating. He put his hand up to his cheek and rubbed hard. His palm was bloodied. He took out his handkerchief, dipped it in his tumbler, and pressed it against the cut bruise. "I didn't see that one coming," he said, finally. "You better always throw 'em without warning me. You're a husky boy, Biff. But I've been training in the home guard for nearly two years. If you ever slug me again I'll lay you cold. If you want to fight fair--

  come on outside. Do you?"

  Biff said nothing.

  Mrs. Bailey was weeping voluminously. Her husband was staring rabidly at his sons. Sarah sat still, shivering. The telephone rang. Westcott came in. He was astonished by the tableau. He showed it only slightly. "For you, Mrs. Bailey. It's Mrs. Wilson."

  "I can't possibly--" said Mrs. Bailey. Then she gulped. "Mrs. Wilson!" She rose.

  While she was away no one said a word.

  When she came back her face was pasty and her eyes were bleak. "The p-p-party tonight is off," she said hollowly. "Off-because of Jimmie's views. That's the real truth.

  Mrs. Wilson is telling people--except us, of course--that she's been taken very ill, all of a sudden." She sat down and burst into tears again. "Now, everything's ruined."

  CHAPTER IV

  JIMMIE WALKED to the paint works. His mother, emerging from her woebegone condition for a single, considerate moment, had offered a car for him to drive.

  He had preferred to walk. It wasn't much more than a mile to the plant; and Jimmie was used to walking. He hadn't bothered to tell his mother that he was used to walking now.

  He had felt too inert and too wounded--wantonly wounded--to take the trouble to remind her that he had just come from England, where there was a hideous war and people walked places whenever they could. No more use turning the screw, driving the barb.

  Something had happened to his family in the six years of his absence. They'd lost something--heart, guts, reason, even great chunks of knowledge--and all they had left were glass brick walls, automobiles, cocktails, bad tempers.

  He tramped through the pretty part of town, the hill part, squirting the slush vindictively; he entered the shabbier section with less spattering steps, as if the poorer people had more delicate sensibilities, or as if they were fellow sufferers rather than the authors of his fury. The ugliness of the rows of frame houses, painted in the most repugnant shades of yellow and green and brown, stung like a rebuke; nobody taught the poor people anything; they couldn't learn for themselves; even if they learned, they couldn't do much about their learning, because they were poor. His father would call these people--the women hanging out clothes in the back yards, the old men stealing kindling from the railroad right-of-way--by the single name of Labor. His father would call what was going on inside Jimmie's mind Communistic. But Jimmie wasn't thinking about economics--he wasn't thinking at all; he was only feeling--and his feelings were raw as his right cheek, and as unpleasant to behold.

  At the Corinth Works he was given a pass by the boss's secretary, Miss Melrose, and shown to the lab that had been made ready for his coming. A big lab, a good lab, a fairly dramatic lab. Too intricate for the layman's eyes it was like the insides of a great engine, made of glass. He kicked off his overshoes, hung his hat on the spout of a retort, put on a brand new rubber apron, and walked around, reading the labels on hundreds of bottles, cocking his eye, now and again, to note that the old man had so much imagination, and so much money for chemicals. The apparatus was magnificent. The layout could not be improved. Light poured from windows high overhead, all around the room--twenty or more, big and opaque, so no one could watch the alchemy in progress.

  The place was air-conditioned.

  Jimmie sighed and sat down on a stool. Here was one spot-one niche in the hostile Midwestern city, in the unfamiliar world of America--where he was going to be perfectly at home.

  Old Cholmondeley, he thought, would give his right eye for this joint. Percy would give his other arm. Well, this was America. In America--they had everything. He wondered which of the pressing problems he would start on. His wonderment took his thoughts a long way--to the heart of the battle in Europe; he tried to weigh the relative strategic values of succeeding here, or succeeding there--if he should succeed at all.

  Finally, grunting, he walked to a rack of test tubes, took one down, poured into it some powdered iron, looked at it for a full five minutes, set it back in the rack, picked up a pencil that had never been used, and commenced to write a prodigality of equations on long sheets of yellow paper.

  He was studying these when his door pushed open. Because Miss Melrose had said no one would disturb him unless he rang, Jimmie knew who had opened his door.

  "'Lo, Willie," he said.

  "How do you like it?"

  "Don't need to answer, do I? If my brain was as sound
as your lab we'd have the war won in a week!"

  Mr. Corinth chuckled soundlessly. He sat down on another stool and squinted for some time at his employee. "Who hit you?"

  "My brother." The response was complacent. "Uh-huh. Biff's got a bad temper.

  War, eh?"

  "Domestic relations," Jimmie answered, smiling ruefully, "seem to hinge on international relations."

  "Out here in the West they do, anyhow. They ought to draft that puppy pretty soon."

  "They did."

  Mr. Corinth pulled on his white mustache, apparently to hide a smile. "SO he hit you. Did you see it coming?"

  Jimmie had been studying his equations again. He looked up, not with irritation, but in a way that showed his preoccupation. "No."

  "Thought not." The old man yawned and stretched. "Jimmie, put the foolscap away. I want to talk."

  "Okay!" He smiled indulgently and tossed down the pencil.

  "Plenty of time for chemistry. Time goes on forever, and chemistry's part of it.

  Not enough time for people on the other hand, no matter what. I like to feel the fellows working for me are in the proper mood. It's my hunch that the mood you're in is everything. You can come over to this glass maze week after week and figure out how to pick an atom off here and stick it on yonder; but if you're in the wrong mood you never get any valuable answers. On the other hand, you can go out and lie pie-eyed drunk in the gutter for a month and come in here for one day, and if you feel hot you can discover more than ten men in ten lifetimes. Funny!"

  "Still," Jimmie said, "I don't propose to try the inspirational method of the gutter."

  "Plenty sore, aren't you?"

  Jimmie was going to deny that. But he said, "Yes. Plenty."

  "Well, when people are sore it's because they're afraid. Every damn' solitary time.

  Maybe not afraid of exactly what they seem to be sore at--but afraid of something behind it. What do you think you're afraid of, at this point?"

  "Afraid?" He laughed unsympathetically. "Nothing."

  "Sure you are. Scared dizzy. You love your family, Jimmie. You're that kind of an egg. As loyal as a darned dog. And you've blown 'em high as kites, I bet. Started scenes--

  Biff hit you at breakfast? I thought so. You're scared--but I'll let you figure out of what.

  You know, Jimmie, you have a lot to catch up on."

  "Evidently."

  "Think about that--for one thing."

  Jimmie suddenly had a mental picture of his father, reading the morning paper. "If your psychology is sound--if rage is a sign of fear--then my old man must be about dead of fright these days!" He described the passionate perusal.

  Mr. Corinth snorted. "Yes, there's men doing that all over the country. Sore at the president because they're scared of what he'll do. But that's not the main thing these days.

  That'll wash--one way or another--according to what the majority of the American people think they want. It's what they think they want that matters. What their attitude is. Hitler's propaganda fellows understand that. Jimmie, how many times do you believe you can change your mind and still keep believing in yourself?" The younger man cocked an eyebrow. "I don't get it."

  "Well, suppose--" Mr. Corinth took out a large linen handkerchief. "Suppose I said this was black. You think it's white. But suppose I finally convince you it's black. All right. I've reversed your attitude once. Now. Suppose somebody else comes along and makes you realize it's white again. That's twice your opinion has changed.

  "Now. You're going along thinking it's a white handkerchief. But suppose--just for the hell of it--that the underside of this darned thing really is black. And suppose you can see a reflection of that side in a mirror. And suppose, also, it happens to be a matter of life and death importance to you that the whole handkerchief should be black. And suppose I--who have already convinced you once that it was black--start to work on you again. You have a motive for thinking this whole thing is black. I tell you it is--and prove it, let's say, by phoney physics. Let's say, you've always pretended to know a lot about physics--though you don't. Suppose, also, a lot of men who are leaders in your field--not all, but a lot--start saying this handkerchief of mine is all black. What do you do now?

  "Naturally, you get convinced again that the darned thing is as black as the Ace of Spades on both sides. Why? Because you've made that mistake once. Because you have a dire personal need to think it's all black. And because the big shots above you say it's black. Jimmie--that's the most important thing in the world today. That's what's the matter with your family. They can't start all over again with the basic facts, line 'em up impartially, change their opinions for about the fifth time, and come up once more, finally and for all, with the true bill of goods!"

  "That just states the problem. How do you solve it?"

  The old man tipped his stool back against a high table and peered at Jimmie. "You know your family. You know your country--or, at least, what your country has stood for in the past. 'We hold all men to be created free and equal.' That sort of stuff. You solve their problem. I'll help you out, though. For years I've been pasting up scrapbooks of things I thought were important. All sorts of things. Newspaper clippings and items from magazines. Pages from books--most whole books only do have a couple of worth-while pages in 'em. My scrapbooks aren't perfect--they missed a lot--but I'll lend 'em to you.

  They'll help you catch up on your American history."

  "I need to," Jimmie said.

  "Mmmm. I'll send the books over to your house. Maybe your family'll peek into

  'em. They'll remind them of a lot they've overlooked."

  Jimmie grinned. "I bet."

  Mr. Corinth took a cigar from his disreputable waistcoat pocket and struck a match. He puffed ruminatively. "Your people--most people--don't realize what has happened to them. It's so big, so abrupt, so demanding of enormous mental change, that they can't realize. Takes more time than they're willing to take to think. More intellectual honesty than your father or your mother are in the habit of using. I don't believe either Roosevelt or Churchill ever understood exactly what's happened to all of us on this planet. I mean about this isolation business. When folks do understand what has happened, this word 'isolation' just about won't exist any more."

  Mr. Corinth stared at Jimmie. "In the case of crime or danger there is only one question important to a human. That isn't--How big is the danger, or, How terrible? It's--

  How faraway is it? Only, Jimmie, there're two kinds of 'faraway.' One is--How far in distance? The other is--How far in time? The murder and rape of a few thousand Chinese is pretty faraway in distance. So is the German Army--in spite of the cruising range of bombers. That reassures people. But they aren't any distance away in time! Even with the telegraph, distance in time was still distance. It took time to get the messages translated and printed in the newspapers. But with the radio that's all gone. We're isolated in distance, only a few hours, all over the world. And in time, not at all--any more, ever!"

  "I never thought of that," Jimmie said. "Not that way."

  "Nope. People don't. I pick up my radio. I hear the AA going in London. Shrapnel hitting the roof where the announcer stands. Fire crackling. Bombs screeching. I think--

  Well, that's London and it's faraway. But I can't think--That's something that happened. I know darn' well it's something happening right here and now! There's the trouble. It isn't history. It's present tense. Therefore, my conscience won't let me overlook it. My instinct is to do something about it because it's going on now! If I still try to tell myself it's faraway I feel I'm a hypocrite. I feel that I'm an accessory to the whole bloody affair. I am--in the sense that I haven't the excuse of isolation in time any more. Particeps criminis, the law calls it. That is, if you're going down the street and you see a robbery take place and you don't try to do anything about it the law can punish you. You're an accessory. That's what radio makes the whole world: accessories before, during, and after the rotten crimes now going on. Not
eyewitnesses, earwitnesses, which is just as damning."

  "Not to my family," Jimmie answered grimly. "Not to them! They think we're safe. They call the destruction of a continent a 'European quarrel.' They say I'm a

  'warmonger.' I'm not, because I don't plan in any way to profit by war--which IS what the word really means. They say I'm an interventionist. I'm not, because my reason for wanting to help is not to high-pressure somebody else's war, but to do a long-range job of saving our own skin. They say I'm pro-British which I am--though the reason is, the English have changed. Before the war I was almost anti-English. Munich made me sick.

  But England changed! My family says England betrayed France in the end. Actually--in the end--England offered France an even-Stephen union with the British Empire--a thing which would have caused every tory in the country to shoot himself, three years before!

  They made that offer, to keep France from betraying herself. Oh--the hell with my family!"

  Mr. Corinth smoked. His eyes were as near to twinkling as their opacity permitted. "I know your family. Listening to their radios they feel like accessories to all the crimes. But to stop the crimes--means war, maybe. To go to war means--well, a terrible risk. Perhaps it means they'll lose their money, their clothes, their cars, their house with the new glass brick panels, maybe Biff's life, maybe yours. Maybe, even, their own. They will all tell you that Hitler can never touch America. They even say he cannot cross the English Channel--though he crossed it often enough in the air. They will say that Muskogewan can never be harmed. Then, when a little time has passed, and the discussion warms, they will recommend staying out of war tin order to save the lives of Muskogewan's innocent women and children.' Oh, they contradict themselves--people like your mother and father! But they talk very much and very loudly, because they are talking nonsense--and their consciences know it. They realize, at the very least, that they are refusing to answer a moral demand. Refusing, because they fear the cost will be high.

  That means I hey are putting a money value on their own characters. To admit that out loud, would destroy them. So they deny it; inevitably, they contradict themselves."