A Town Is Drowning

by Frederik Pohl

  “Keep on forgetting it,” said Groff. “That isn’t why I’m asking.”

  Brayer looked at him thoughtfully and shrugged. “You think Chesbro’s homing in on something? Maybe you’re right. He’s thick as thieves with old Akslund, all right, and I’d swear they never saw each other before today. The congressman’s all hotted up about a regional disaster-relief agency. He’s been sending out statements and messages—right through our own radio; I read some of them. One of them went right to the White House, boy. He’s asking for a billion dollars grant.’

  ‘

  “And I suppose Artie Chesbro wants to have something to say about spending it?’

  ‘

  The chief said slowly, “Wouldn’t you?”

  “No!” said Groff, suddenly hot. “What’s the matter with you, Brayer? You know this Chesbro—Starkman knows him. He’s a cheap angle-shooting county politician. Not even your own county, for God’s sake! I came up here to start a factory—maybe not a very big factory, compared to Ford or R.C.A., but the biggest damned factory I ever tried to start; and Chesbro was in on the ground floor ahead of me, trying to steal my factory site for some two-bit deal of his own. You think he cares about Hebertown? You think he’s going to worry about whether the right people get the right money, or whether the area makes a recovery from this? He cares about Artie Chesbro, and that’s all!”

  “Now, hold on a minute, boy—”

  “Hold on, hell! If Henry Starkman wasn’t half-dead, he wouldn’t let Chesbro get away with this! What right have you got to—”

  “Hold on, boy!” The old man was suddenly erect, forceful. “You don’t have to tell me what Henry likes and doesn’t like. Forty-one years we’ve been friends, and between us we pretty near run this town. And you know what’s been happening? Every year a couple more buildings off the tax rolls, every year another couple thousand dollars short in collections. Chesbro? Sure, boy. He’s out for number one. But I saw that message that went to the White House. It said a billion dollars. God, man—do you know what any part of a billion dollars would mean to Hebertown?”

  He glared at Groff without speaking for a moment. Then he leaned back and rubbed his eyes wearily. “A billion dollars,” he said, and it was like a prayer.

  The little ranch house had been perfectly untouched by the flood; it was well uphill on Sullivan Street. Representative Akslund worked comfortably through the day in the pine-paneled den. His work consisted mostly of conversation with Artie Chesbro while Sharon sat by and took notes by candlelight. Agreement was reached, a statement was signed, the old man yawned politely and shuffled off to the master bedroom. “You release this to the network,” he said from the door. “The wire services can take it off the air. Good night.”

  And Sharon and Chesbro raced to the school.

  “Damn it,” said Chesbro peevishly. The mobile broadcasting truck was gone. They scurried around with flashlights; Sharon found a state trooper who thought he remembered seeing it heading down toward the roped-off area at the foot of River Street. The houses there were either down or abandoned, and the only permitted persons were national guardsmen, theoretically patrolling against looters.

  “Hello,” said Mickey Groff. Sharon Froman jumped and turned around.

  She said, projecting throatily, “Mickey! Thank heaven. It’s good to see you, Mickey. We were worried.”

  Artie Chesbro caught her eye and slid away. Sharon said gaily, “Hasn’t this been a day? We haven’t slept ten minutes altogether since we saw you last. Luckily I’m a writer.” She lifted her briefcase with a smile.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “We writers have our little secrets,” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder, strolling him away.

  “Where’d Chesbro go?”

  “He’ll be back,” Sharon assured him. “Buy me a cup of coffee and tell me what’s been going on.”

  “Buying” a cup of coffee consisted of rinsing out a cup and ladling black coffee out of the tarry stew that had been bubbling over a gasoline flame for six hours. Groff let himself be steered and took a sip of the coffee. It was awful, but it was coffee. He said, “I’ve been helping out around here as best I could. So has Chesbro’s wife, and so has Mrs. Goudeket. And you?”

  Sharon said with a quiet pride, “We’ve been doing our share, believe me. We’ve spent the whole day with Congressman Akslund. He just went to bed a few minutes ago.

  “Alone?” Mickey Groff asked.

  Sharon looked at him with cold resentment. “That’s an unpleasant remark, Groff,” she said thinly. “If that’s the way you intend to talk, I’ll leave you alone.” She turned her back on him and walked haughtily away.

  Anyway, Artie Chesbro was already out of sight; there was no chance that Groff could find him before he reached the mobile unit.

  Poor Mickey Groff, thought Sharon with deep and sincere sympathy, he would take it hard when he heard Chesbro had Congressman Akslund’s backing to head the Emergency Relief Committee. But he had had his chance. He had seen her first, but he had chosen to throw in his lot with Mrs. Goudeket and that fantastic Chesbro woman; and she had gone over to the better man.

  Poor Mickey Groff, Sharon thought comfortably. Maybe some other time…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mrs. Goudeket tottered into the marble lobby of the schoolhouse. A flaring pressure lamp threw grotesque shadows against the polished walls and the room was almost empty. Some men dozed over their card tables and desks. Outside the last of the ambulance-fitted six-by-sixes was rolling noisily away with the last of the casualties.

  Chief Brayer’s head snapped up from a nodding doze as she cleared her throat.

  “Chief?” Mrs. Goudeket said timidly. “Just a few hours since I asked, but I think things have changed a lot, hah?”

  He focused on her with difficulty and said at last, “Oh. The lady from the hotel.”

  “Goudeket’s Green Acres,” she said automatically, with pride. “I was thinking that now maybe things are more under control, hah? So maybe you could spare me a car, some gas. I have to get back, look over my property—” If it still is my property, the thought came, unwelcome.

  “A car?”

  Mrs. Goudeket was exasperated. “You heard. A car! Look, if it makes you feel better, I could take some people with me. You need shelter? I have room. Believe me, by now I bet I have more room than you can imagine. We have food, too.” Food for the booked-solid week, which would now be a week of hundred-per-cent cancellations and empty tables.

  Chief Brayer looked wearily interested. “Yes,” he said absently, “you would have food. All right. I yelled at you before, didn’t I? I’m sorry—”

  She shrugged. “No apologies, please. Your language—But you meant well. You were busy.”

  “We needed the cars.” he said doggedly. “We had to keep them for an emergency, you see. That’s all that counted. In case there was a fire or a burglary, the cars had to be here.”

  “Don’t explain. Please, do I get a car? I’ll be careful. I could write out a check, leave a deposit—’

  ’ She had almost said five hundred dollars. “A hundred dollars?”

  “Don’t have to.” Like a man in a slow-motion movie he hauled a memo pad across the desk, hoisted a pen from his uniform coat pocket. He wrote painfully. “Give this to Mr. Cioni—you know where the cars are? Across the street? All right. How far do you have to go?”

  She threw up her hands. “Who knows? Always before it was seventeen miles. Now we have to go around and around—who knows?” There was an edge to her voice.

  “Tell him I said to give you a half a tank of gas.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Goudeket.

  Across the street, three trucks and four pleasure cars, one of them with the tires flat. The motor pool. A civilian in charge, and in the back a national guardsman with a gun.

  The man in charge of the motor pool studied the note with a flashlight whose beam was fading to orange. He looked at
her doubtfully. “You going to drive it?”

  “Don’t worry, mister,” she snapped. “Do you want to see my license?”

  “Me? Nah.” He pottered over to a ‘47 Dodge sedan and copied the plate number on the chief’s note. “Give me your address, lady?”

  She did. He copied it down with the license number. “Sign,” he said, and she did. Mr. Cioni copied the data onto another sheet, signed it and carefully put the original chit in his pocket. He gave her his copy. “This is your trip ticket,” he said. “In case you get stopped by a state trooper, this proves you didn’t steal the car. We hope.”

  Now garrulous, he added: “She’s yours. I don’t know if this is legal, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? At least we got records. After things are straightened out I guess somebody’ll get in touch with you to return the car.”

  She misread his fatigue and his nerves as suspicion. She said haughtily, “Young fella, at Goudeket’s Green Acres we have a fleet of late-model cars and station wagons. And to be very frank with you, if a guest should drive up in a forty-seven car in this condition, the room clerk would discover that his reservation had not been received, believe me.” Almost she believed it, in the heat of the moment. Almost Goudeket’s Green Acres was the Concord or the Grossinger’s they had meant it for.

  The aspersion passed clean through the weary ears of Mr. Cioni.

  “I guess that’s right,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Please, you should give me a half a tank of gas. Mr. Brayer said so.” She looked pointedly at the stack of jerry cans that had been dumped by one of the quartermaster trucks.

  Mr. Cioni wearily climbed into the car, snapped on the dash light and turned the key. The gas needle stayed on zero. Mrs. Goudeket inhaled triumphantly.

  He banged the dial with the heel of his hand and watched it creep jokingly up to the halfway mark. He said to nobody, “I know these babies.” He said to Mrs. Goudeket, “You got your half a tank. Good luck.”

  She said, “Watch nobody else takes my car, will you? I’ll get my friends.”

  Her feet were killing her. Across the street, back into the schoolhouse, up the stairs.

  She hiked wearily into the deserted “quiet ward,” where Polly Chesbro was sprawled on one stained cot and Dick McCue, looking like the returned stray cat he was, on another.

  She shook him gently. “Your face better, Dick?”

  He sneered experimentally. “I guess so.” He yawned, and that did hurt; but not too much. “I. thought maybe it was a broken bone, but it just hurts on the skin now. I’ll live.” He was feeling pretty cheerful. The disappointing parts of his Rout of the Drunken Beast were dropping out of his recollection. He said, “Did you get the car, Mrs. G.?”

  “Of course,” she said, surprised. “Why not? Things have quieted down. They have time for a reasonable request from an important local business proprietor.” He looked at her sharply, but there was no expression on her face. For the first time it occurred to Dick McCue that here was a woman, not so very smart, not so very young, capable of being wrong, capable of having foolish hopes. She thought she was still an important local business proprietor. A ramshackle summer hotel. They folded by the hundreds, year after year; it didn’t take a flood to put them out of business. The flood was only the mercy bullet through the blindfold, after the man was down.

  Polly was awake. She said, “Mrs. Goudeket, it’s nice of you to offer to take us in, but—”

  “But?” repeated Mrs. Goudeket. “What but?”

  Polly Chesbro said, “I don’t want to leave Mr. Starkman.”

  Mrs. Goudeket snapped angrily, “He’s your father, maybe? A whole hospital they bring in on trucks to take care of him, and you can’t trust the doctors to fix him up? So stay, Mrs. Chesbro! Hang around the old man some more, make a fool out of yourself. But I have to get to work!”

  She glared furiously at the other woman, trembling with anger. Polly Chesbro was wiser than she; Polly felt the anger, and knew it was directed not at herself but at something inside the old lady. Polly said perceptively, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Goudeket. Everything always works out.”

  The old lady was crying. Dick McCue stared in wonder as Polly Chesbro put her arms around the woman and protected her from the harsh surrounding world.

  After a moment Mrs. Goudeket pushed herself away, sniffing. “You have a Kleenex?” she inquired, embarrassed. “I don’t know what got into me, Polly. Please, you have to excuse—”

  “There’s nothing to excuse,” said Polly Chesbro. “We’re all worn out.”

  “No, not worn out. Tired, yes. Sick, maybe.” Mrs. Goudeket wiped her streaming nose and said dismally, “Ever since Sam died it’s slave, slave, slave. You know what Sam said? Every year. ‘Next year we go to the Holy Land, why not?’ And always I found a reason. So we kept on with the hotel, and it killed him.” She patted Polly’s arm absently. “Worn out is from a summer with the guests complaining about the food and changing their rooms. From something like this flood you only get tired.”

  Mrs. Goudeket pulled herself together after a while. Polly left her, and then came back. “Mr. Starkman’s wife is with him,” she reported. “I suppose I might as well go with you, Mrs. Goudeket—if the offer’s still open.”

  “Open? Of course it’s still open. And Mr. Starkman?”

  “Much better. They think he’ll be all right now.” Polly Chesbro’s expression was grave and joyous. They’d pulled the old man through; and Bess Starkman had been more than grateful for Polly’s help to her husband. Polly said, “Let’s get the others.”

  “Others?” Mrs. Goudeket demanded suspiciously.

  “Mr. Groff and Arthur—and Miss Froman.”

  Mrs. Goudeket looked mutinous. “Mr. Groff is perfectly welcome to come if he is so inclined,” she said. “Likewise Mr. Chesbro. But as for Miss Froman, believe me, Polly, I know her better than you. She’ll get along wherever she is, trust her, but it isn’t going to be at Goudeket’s Green Acres.”

  Dick McCue explained, “Goudeket’s Green Acres has had Miss Froman.”

  Polly was stubborn and silent, but she went down the stairs with them uncomplainingly.

  They found the three in the ground-floor cloakroom where coffee had been dispensed through the day. Mickey Groff was the gray-looking one. Sharon and Artie Chesbro seemed to have tapped some source of strength and wakefulness not given to ordinary humans.

  Mrs. Goudeket announced flatly, “I’ve got a car, to go to my place, Goudeket’s Green Acres. I think it is a good idea if you all come with me. Here is finished; they have the army now, and plenty of doctors, National Guard, everything. Why should we be a burden? I have plenty of room for—”

  She hesitated; the words didn’t want to come out. She glowered at them: Big, solid Groff; big, sly Chesbro; soiled, amused-by-it-all Sharon Froman. Yenta, she thought scathingly. Dirty, low female—but still she needs help. As I may need help some day. As from the Mountain we were told to give help.

  She said with difficulty, “That means everybody, naturally.”

  Sharon caroled, “Why, Mrs. Goudeket, you’ve forgiven your naughty little girl!”

  So full of energy and joy! Mrs. Goudeket muttered angrily to herself, but all she said out loud was, “Well, yes or no?”

  Artie Chesbro said cheerfully, “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Goudeket. I think I’d better stay in Heber-town, though—some important things to take care of. There’s a radio truck around somewhere and I want to—”

  Sharon interrupted loudly, with a warning look, “Mr. Chesbro means Congressman Akslund has left him some work to do. Anyway, Mrs. Goudeket—’

  ‘

  Oh, she was arch! And no sleep, marveled Mrs. Goudeket—“much as I’d love to join your little party and share the finest of accommodations for which your hotel is noted, there are big things to be done. So thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Fine,” said Mrs. Goudeket. “Stay here with your big things. Now before somebody steals my car, we bette
r go.” She folded the trip ticket from the motor pool and put it down on the table next to Dick McCue. Mickey Groff said, “Wait a minute, Mrs. Goudeket. What are these ‘big things?’”

  Chesbro laughed. “Groff, does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s? I tell you what. You want the Swanscomb place, right?” He shrugged generously. “It’s yours. I won’t buck you.” “If you won’t buck me it’s because you don’t want it any more,” Groff said. “You’re after bigger game. What would that be, Chesbro? A finger in a billion-dollar pie? A chance to spread federal funds around the way you want to? Maybe the break you’ve been waiting for?” Chesbro said fretfully, “Now Mickey, please. Why can’t you be reasonable? You’re an outlander here, you’ve got nothing to do with the community. You want to move in with your nickel factory? Go ahead. I won’t stand in your way. I’ll even help you. But you can’t do anything with the federal grants, because you don’t have the connections, because you don’t have the information about who needs what, because you aren’t local and wouldn’t be allowed to come within smelling distance of it in the first place. Why not live and let live?”

  He was open and honest, Groff saw—as open and honest as the likes of Artie Chesbro ever knew how to be. You work your side of the street, he was saying, and I’ll work mine. Under the ethical stands of Artie Chesbro he had made an honorable proposal. It would never have occurred to him to entertain propositions like—

  Federal funds are money in trust—

  A time of catastrophe is not a time to feather one’s nest—

  Or even—

  A businessman who opposes what you want to do is not necessarily a jealous rival.

  There simply was no handle, Groff thought, by which you could get hold of the man. He was completely out of touch. Off in a kind of a dream. It was almost as if he was drunk; but that, of course, was impossible—liquor would have put him out on his feet in seconds.

  Polly Chesbro said suddenly, “What did you want the radio truck for?”