The Soviet Union ‘regretted the crisis in the United States of America, but unfortunately had no surplus foodstuffs to spare.’ The Vice-President ripped up their telegram, but conceded that at least they had shown the good grace not to mention the Afghanistan grain embargo.
At seven o’clock on Thursday morning, the Vice-President announced on television that the sale of all canned foodstuffs was banned, although he was humane enough to suggest that ‘those who have no other food whatsoever’, and who were obliged to eat canned foods, should ‘exhaustively inspect the exterior of any can for pinholes, possibly concealed by wax.’ Over seventy-six new cases of botulism had been reported during the night, all of them fatal.
For the first time in its history, Time magazine was published that week with a black border around its cover, instead of its traditional red. It was probably appropriate, because it was the last-ever edition. Its cover story: Famine, USA.
Federal experts now estimated that even the best-stocked American homes had only sufficient usable foodstuffs to carry their families through three more weeks. Most poorer urban families, however, were down to their last few cans – and now cans were under suspicion, too, they virtually had no food to eat at all.
Heavily-guarded food distribution centres were set up in the major cities, giving out packages that had been flown into New York, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle, and Chicago from Britain and Denmark. American families who just two weeks ago had been eating steak, sweet potatoes, corn, fresh fruit, and any variety of ice-cream they wanted, now found themselves reduced to dried eggs, British chocolate, malt extract, margarine, and small cans of Danish processed pork. In Houston, three men were shot by National Guardsmen when they tried to break into the food distribution centre on Harrisburg Boulevard with machine-guns.
Time said, ‘This week, Americans are feeling their first real pangs of hunger. After only two weeks of blight and catastrophe, they are actually beginning to understand what it means to go without.’
During the three hours that followed the Vice-President’s announcement of a ban on canned foods, there were more than 17,000 suicides or attempted suicides throughout the United States. The Harvard psychologist Dr Leo Wolpers called it ‘the Total Despair syndrome.’ He said: ‘People have lost their confidence in tomorrow.’
Hundreds of thousands of Americans tried to escape the country by boat and a harrassed Coastguard spent hours trying to turn back dinghies and catamarans and fishing smacks, all overloaded with desperate people with suitcases. Many of the boats were so overcrowded that they sank as soon as they reached the open sea. The Boston Globe printed on its back page, without caption and without comment, two photographs side by side – one of the Vietnamese boat people and one of the American boat people.
In the House, Representative George Meacher of Tennessee asked in an emotional speech how this ‘magnificent democracy of ours, founded on liberty, freedom, and honour, could be brought low in two weeks by a virus, an isotope, and a disease of the gut?’ Nobody could answer him.
Looting, homicide, arson, rape, and cases of ‘crazy and suicidal driving’ were reported ‘by the thousand.’ Most police forces could do nothing more than patrol the streets and try to keep their cities and suburbs as quiet as possible. A woman died in childbirth on the sidewalk outside the Waldorf-Astoria in New York because there were no doctors available, no ambulances, and most of Park Avenue was blocked with abandoned cars. In San Quentin prison, eighty-six inmates who attempted to escape because they were mad with hunger were shot dead. Two half-naked teenage girls from respectable Back Bay families were found wandering around downtown Boston in a state of shock after being kidnapped from outside their homes and raped more than twenty times each by marauding white hoodlums.
Thursday was the day that most newspapers stopped printing, that the last few gas stations closed down, that power blackouts began to darken thousands of square miles of the eastern seaboard. There was a terrible wildness in the air, a terrible panic, that nobody who lived through the first days of the famine could ever forget. One journalist remembered climbing Coit Tower in San Francisco and staring out for hours over a city that ‘flowered with foes, and echoed with shots, and howled with the sirens of the helpless police.’ Above everything, though, he said ‘I could hear the cries and shrieks of a people who felt as if they had been abandoned by democracy, abandoned by capitalism, abandoned by peace, and abandoned by plenty… a people who more than anything else felt they had been deserted by God.’
During Thursday, the phone rang again and again at the Snowmans’ house on Topanga Canyon. Nobody answered it until late on Thursday evening, when a motorcycle cop who had been checking houses for squatters and looters picked it up and said, ‘They’ve all gone. This is the police.’
‘Are they all right?’ asked the voice at the other end.
‘Who knows, friend? We’ve got chaos here, a bad brush foe burning. They could be anyplace at all.’
‘Nobody’s left a forwarding address?’
The cop gave a cursory look around. ‘Not that I can see,’ he said. ‘It looks like they just lit out. They didn’t even lock the doors.’
There was a pause, and then the voice said, ‘Can you do me a favour?’
‘Sure, you name it.’
‘Can you write on the wall someplace that Ed Hardesty called, from South Burlington Farm in Kansas, and that I’m going to try to make my way to LA?’
The cop took out his pencil and jotted the message down. ‘South Burlington?’ he asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘Okay, then, I got you. I’ll do that.’
‘Thanks a whole lot. If this situation ever mends itself, come around to the house you’re at and claim yourself a case of whisky.’
The cop grinned. ‘To tell you the truth. I’m a vodka man.’
Ten
Ed carefully set the telephone back in its cradle, and looked across the living-room at Karen. Then, while she watched him, he stood up and walked to the window, staring out at the front yard of South Burlington Farm the same way he used to when he was a boy.
‘Well?’ asked Karen. ‘Weren’t they there?’
‘That was a cop,’ Ed told her, taking out a cigarette and lighting it slowly. He breathed out smoke. ‘He said the house was empty. Even the doors had been left unlocked.’
‘They’ve probably gone to stay somewhere safer,’ Karen suggested. ‘The way I heard it on the news, a whole lot of people are banding together to protect themselves from looters, and Hell’s Angels, and people like that. Maybe they’ve found some kind of sanctuary.’
Ed leaned against the window-pane. Outside, the sun was gradually eating its way into the roof of the stables opposite, and the sky had flushed the colour of ripe strawberries. To a city dweller, an evening like this on a Kansas wheat farm would have looked idyllic. To a farmer, the overwhelming silence, right in the peak of the early harvesting season, was ominous. The tractors were all parked and covered with tarps; the stables were empty and quiet. A single door banged and banged in the warm breeze that had risen on the prairie.
‘I used to believe that this was God’s own country,’ said Ed. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’
Karen said nothing, but came across to stand beside him. She was wearing a pale blue blouse that belonged to Season, and a pair of Season’s baggy denim jeans. Her hair was drawn back, the way Season often drew hers back, and tied with a ribbon.
‘You’ll find them,’ she said, gently. ‘You know you will.’ Ed looked at her. ‘Yes,’ he said, unconvinced.
At that moment, Della came down from the bathroom, showered and smelling of Goya talcum. She had dressed herself in one of Ed’s green gingham shirts, with the sleeves rolled up, and the front unbuttoned right the way down to her navel. She had washed her hair, and it was wet and combed Sha-Na-Na style.
‘I just looked in on Shearson,’ she said. ‘He’s sleeping.’
‘Again?’ asked Karen.<
br />
‘I think he’s trying to retreat from reality,’ Della remarked. She went to the cocktail cabinet and, uninvited, poured herself a bourbon. Ed said, ‘Help yourself to a drink,’ but his sarcasm didn’t faze her in the least. She came to the window and possessively curled her arm around his waist, and kissed him on the cheek. Karen gave them both a tight lemon-at-the-party kind of a smile.
‘Shearson can’t imagine a world without food,’ said Della. ‘Therefore, he’s decided to withdraw from it completely until it all gets back to normal. If this famine goes on, he’ll probably sleep like a baby until he dies of starvation in his bed.’
‘How’s Peter?’ asked Karen.
Della swallowed bourbon. ‘Peter’s okay. I think he’s got used to the idea that he’s going to be better off if he cooperates. Peter’s enough of a political manager to know what kind of a jam he’s in. In his case, I think a little plea-bargaining is going to go a long way.’
‘You still think you’re going to be able to bring Shearson to court?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Della. ‘But until I get orders to the contrary, he’s under arrest charged with fraud and misappropriation of funds and more federal bank offences than you can mention. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.’ Peter Kaiser appeared in the doorway, dressed in an ill-fitting short-sleeved shirt in bright orange, and a pair of creased khaki slacks that were too wide around the waistband and three inches too short around his ankles. ‘Well, well,’ said Karen. ‘How’s Waikiki beach today?’ Peter didn’t even answer. He sat himself on the end of the sofa, clutching himself as if he was beginning to feel the cold, and looked steadfastly miserable.
‘You want a drink?’ asked Ed. ‘There’s some bourbon left, or a little sherry.’
‘No. No, thanks,’ Peter told him.
Della said, ‘You’re not in cell block eleven yet, Peter. Don’t look so unhappy.’
Peter looked up. ‘You think I’m unhappy because of that? You think your half-assed threats of arraignment mean anything at all? You can stick your arraignment, right where the camel stuck his dates. I’m worried about my mother, if you must know. I tried to call her this morning, but all the lines to Washington are out.’
‘I got through to LA just now,’ said Ed. ‘Maybe they’re only out for an hour or two.’
‘What do you care?’ asked Peter.
Ed stared at him. ‘I care because I have people of my own to think of, just the way you’re thinking about your mother. Now, have a drink, for Christ’s sake, and stop looking so damned depressed.’
They had been staying at South Burlington Farm since early Tuesday afternoon, and the tension between them hadn’t been improved by the rapidly-worsening famine bulletins on the television. There was sufficient canned and frozen food at the farm to keep them going for another week or two, if they were lucky, but after that they knew they were going to be out on their own. They had hoped to be able to stay for a month, but the President’s announcement on Wednesday evening had meant that over sixty per cent of their food had had to be thrown away. Ed had opened all the suspected cans and dug the food into the ground, in case they were tempted to open them later, when they were hungrier, and far less anxious about the risks of botulism.
On Tuesday morning, after capturing Shearson, they had stopped just outside of Fall River at a roadside diner, where Della had put in a call to the FBI office in Wichita. There had been no reply, she said; so she had tried calling Kansas City. The bureau chief there had told her not to risk bringing Senator Jones across country to Kansas City until the famine situation had ‘normalised itself. He had warned her not to try handing him over in Wichita, either since there had been fierce demonstrations and looting in the centre of town, and the Mayor had declared an area bounded by 13th Street to the north. Hillside Avenue to the east. Pawnee Avenue to the south, and the Highway 81 bypass to the west, totally under 24-hour curfew and a shoot-on-sight regulation for anyone found on the streets.
Ed had painstakingly bypassed Wichita by driving south on 77 to Winfield, and cutting across home to Kingman County through Wellington and Harper. Shearson had sat in the back, sweating and complaining; Karen had fallen asleep with her head against the Chevy wagon’s window. Peter Kaiser from time to time had said, ‘This is completely illegal, you know. We have the right of habeas corpus. Even derelicts have the right of habeas corpus.’
Della, still holding the pump-gun across her knees, had said, ‘I hope you’re not trying to tell me that you’re as good as derelicts. Even derelicts live their lives by some kind of a moral code.’
Shearson had grumbled, ‘Don’t women make you ill. A rotten woman is as bad for your stomach as a rotten steamer.’
Ed had been nervous, approaching the ranch again. He had wondered for one hopeless moment if Season and Sally had made it back to Kansas, but he knew damned well that there were no flights from California, or anywhere else for that matter. He had also wondered, more realistically, if the farm had been looted while he was away, or burned by vengeful neighbours who had seen his Sunday-evening broadcast and assumed that he had somehow been involved in Shearson’s Blight Crisis scam himself; or if Willard and Dyson and Jack Marowitz had decided to abandon the farm and head for the city.
He had stopped at the gates to South Burlington. A large, crudely-scrawled notice-board had been erected by the farm insignia, proclaiming: PRIVATE LAND – TRESPASSERS SHOT. He had driven the Chevy Suburban a short way along the dusty entrance-road, and then stopped, flashing his headlamps and sounding his horn.
Slowly, keeping the wagon covered with a shotgun, Dyson Kane had emerged from behind the nearby fence.
‘Dyson!’ Ed had shouted out. ‘It’s me! Ed! I brought a few friends along with me!’
‘Friends, he calls us,’ Shearson had remarked, with heavy irony. ‘They’re very droll these farmers, aren’t they, as well as mischievous.’
Dyson had taken a few suspicious steps nearer. ‘They really friends?’ he had asked. ‘None of those people are holding a gun on you, are they?’
‘It’s all okay,’ Ed had answered. ‘Look-this is Mrs Della McIntosh. She came around at the weekend.’
Dyson had walked right up to the side of the wagon and taken a look inside. ‘Well, now,’ he had said, reaching across to shake Ed’s hand. ‘And isn’t that Senator Shearson Jones you’ve got in back?’
‘That’s right,’ Ed had told him. ‘I’ll tell you all about it up at the farm. You want a ride?’
‘It’ll have to be later,’ Dyson explained. ‘I’m on guard duty right now. We had two or three pretty nasty bunches of looters around yesterday afternoon. They’re looking for anything they can lay their hands on – particularly livestock. They’re all armed, too, and if things get any worse I reckon they’re going to start killing people.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘You’ve got something to drink out here? Do you want me to send some sandwiches down?’
‘I could go a couple of BLTs,’ smiled Dyson. ‘Unfortunately, we don’t have any L and we’re all out of Ts. But you can send one of the kids down with a round of B.’
‘You’ve got it,’ Ed had said, and driven the wagon the rest of the way up to the farmhouse, with red dust trailing from the wheels.
Apart from occasional bands of scavengers. South Burlington Farm hadn’t seen much of the disastrous rioting and burning that had scarred America on Sunday evening and Monday morning. Kansas wheat farmers, those who lived on their spreads, were quiet and reserved and dogged, and they met disaster with quiet God-fearing bitterness, rather than hysteria. Out here in Kingman County, there had been too many droughts and too many lost crops for folks to panic when they heard there were tough times up ahead.
Still, Willard had taken sensible precautions. As well as arranging a guard-duty roster, he had brought in some of the farmworkers from outlying houses, and given them temporary accommodation in his own cottage, and in the apartments over the stables and the garages which used to be occupied
by stable-boys, in the days before motor-tractors and Jeeps. He had put Jack Marowitz in charge of rationing, and Jack had divided up the remaining food supplies on the farm according to their nutritional value and the size of the farmworkers’ families. Four families had chosen to leave, and join their relatives in Hutchinson and Emporia and Lehigh; and since most of the acreage was blackened now, and rotting, and there wasn’t the slightest prospect of a harvest, even a drastically reduced one, Willard had given all of them permission to go. In all. South Burlington Farm had been left with twenty-three men, women, and children, apart from Ed, Della, Karen, Peter Kaiser, and the obese and slumbering senior senator for Kansas.
Ed had called his mother in Independence five times, hoping to get her to join them, but each time the phone had rung and rung and nobody had answered. He had had to give up.
Peter Kaiser said, ‘You can’t hold us here for ever, you know. Sooner or later you’re going to have to do something positive.’
‘That’s for Della to decide,’ Ed told him. ‘She represents the law around here.’
‘It doesn’t matter to me if she represents the International House of Pancakes. She can’t legally hold us without formal charges and without giving us the chance to call a lawyer.’
Ed crushed his cigarette out in an ashtray that had been given to him in New York by Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. ‘Where else are you going to go?’ he demanded. ‘Out there – where people are tearing each other to shreds for the sake of a few cans of baked beans?’
‘I have to get back to Washington,’ Peter protested, sulkily. ‘I have to get back and there isn’t a damn thing you can do to stop me.’
‘Talk sense, for Christ’s sake,’ Ed told him, ‘If there was any kind of law and order out there – don’t you seriously think that someone would have come looking for Senator Jones by now? A senator disappears, nobody knows where he is, and it’s hardly even mentioned on the news. It’s a jungle outside of this farm, Mr Habeas Corpus Kaiser, and a bright young man like you ought to have the sense to realise it.’
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