The Ninth Wave

by Eugene Burdick

  The political parties went into dull, self-conscious action. Like a common, harmless, little-noticed weed the party apparatus worked throughout the state. At the ends of the apparatus, like tiny hairlike projections, were the precinct clubs. The weed stirred and held teas, rallies, debates, fund-raising bazaars, and issued statements. Some of the branches of the weed were tobacco stained and bourbon nourished, and flourished. Some were bright with summer chiffon dresses and warm bosoms and were nourished on tea and Scotch shortbread and operated in Beverly Hills and the Marina. Some of the hairlike projections were stiff with doctrine and lived in an atmosphere of books, lectures, crew cuts and undergraduate enthusiasm at UCLA, Stanford and Berkeley. The swaying, barely moving tips of the weed were linked by thicker branches to the clubs, county committees and the higher branches.

  The political weed stirred in the state, unnoticed and quiet. It talked to itseft and ate itself and influenced no one.

  And in the interstices of the weed, in the black private earth between the growth, never public, were the things that nourished the weed and kept it barely alive.

  There was, for example, Ben Adams, a coffee-colored Negro, with a knobby head, neat small ears and a voice smooth and unctuous from singing in the Baptist choir. In his eighteenth year he walked down Central Avenue in Los Angeles and listened to a speaker standing on the back of a big red Chevvy truck. The speaker reminded the audience of what the Democrats and F.D.R. had done for the Negro and the Democratic platform for an FEPC, and his voice soared with enthusiasm for the natural identity between the Negro and the Democratic Party. And as Ben Adams looked at the black, brown, creamy, brown and tan faces and as he watched them nod agreement, somewhere inside his head a tiny worm of hatred stirred, a feeling that he was not like them, a wish to be unlike them and different. And quietly, very privately, Ben Adams became a Republican and when he was twenty-one he voted Republican. Of course, without telling anyone and belonging all the time to the Central Avenue Young Democratic Club and even selling tickets to the barbecues and dances.

  And there was Joe Wilson of Burlingame, San Francisco Peninsula, who was once Jere Wilzweski of Pittsburgh. He had come from Pittsburgh to demonstrate a new puddling process at the Bethlehem plant in South San Francisco. He had stayed and been promoted and one day even gotten a white-collar job and then, during the expansion of the war, he became an executive. The Wilzweskis moved down the Peninsula to Burlingame, and one of the things they discovered was that everyone in the block, all of the barbecue-pit owners, the mechanical-lawnmower owners, the Chrysler and Mercury owners, the commuters, the Peninsulates, the Fortune-reading people, were Republican. And so the Wilzweskis quietly changed their registration and put a Dewey sticker on their car and eagerly said harsh things about Truman and, finally, even began to reconstruct their memory of Roosevelt and remembered him as socialist, father of much-marrying children, fomenter of discontent, upsetter of the peace, and heard and believed that Eleanor had never loved him.

  And there was Enos Deer, father of three, milk-truck driver, Mason, champion bowler in the Dairy-Bakery-Poultry League, owner of a Ford, a vacationer at Yosemite Park for two weeks of each year, a twenty-year resident of San Bernardino. He had never known a politician and he hated them all. He voted Democratic because his father had once winked at him and said, "Can't tell, Enos, what would happen if you stepped inside the booth, pulled the curtain behind you, and voted for a Republican. You, son, you vote Democratic." And Enos did.

  And there was Alden Ethridge, chief clerk at Pacific Mutual Life Insurance in Los Angeles. He was a Christian Scientist, had never taken a drink in his life, wore cheap clothes that looked somehow like those tailor-made for insurance executives, subscribed to the 'Saturday Review,' married Esther who was thin and faintly aristocratic looking because of her leanness, had no children, started fourteen International Correspondence School courses and never finished one, read books on "Salesmanship," drove a Plymouth, was a seaman in the Navy in World War II for three months and then obtained a medical discharge because of asthma, belonged to Book-of-the-Month. When he was first employed by Pacific Mutual he heard a vice-president say, "If we ever get him out, him and Harry Hopkins and Ickes and the rest of those socialist bastards, if we do that we'll have prosperity in this country again. We'll have businessmen in power. We'll have common sense in Washington. But we won't because too many of the common people vote Democratic."

  And Alden Ethridge squared his thin shoulders, put a determined tough grin on his sallow city pale face and voted Republican and never again thought of politics. Except when it occurred to him that he was most uncommon.

  The billboards went up throughout the state. Big red and white signs with men ten feet tall on them and, occasionally, the faces of their families. Each billboard cost $80 a month. The throwaways, costing only three for a penny, began to circulate. The mailing pieces went out. Newspaper space was bought. Television time was purchased for $450 per half hour. From parts of the political weed rumors and information flowed and died before they got far.

  And nobody listened. Dimly, vaguely, offhandedly they made up their minds. In a casual or antic or sullen or irritated or happy or euphoric mood they arose and went to vote. Five million of them. Their moods and intentions collided, coincided, reciprocated, canceled out and strengthened. Mysteriously, intuitively, by some strange combative instinct, they divided almost equally. With a rubber stamp and ballot they waged primitive war on one another and themselves. Although they could give reasons and words why they did what they did, they did not really know. But the liquor stores closed, the flags waved in front of fire houses and schools, the precinct lists were nailed to trees and the voting was done.

  John Cromwell won the Democratic nomination for governor in the May primary. He was little known and Daigh, the Republican, was famous. Cromwell did not wage a big and public campaign. There was some little surprise when Cromwell won the nomination by 102,000 votes. Some gamblers had taken odds that Daigh would win both nominations in the primary.

  Mike was not one of those who was surprised. He had told Georgia that Cromwell would win by at least 100,0000 votes and less than 112,000.

  The betting odds were four to one, however, that Daigh would beat Cromwell in the general election in November.

  Ten days before the primary election, Professor Moon resigned from Stanford University. The university officials did not force him out; no official reprimand was made. But he felt soiled; unpleasantly contemporary; somehow ruined.

  CHAPTER 28

  Talk in a Delicatessen

  County Hospital is built on a low hill. Originally it had been surrounded by stockyards and meat packing plants. Outside of the ring of meat packing buildings there was a welter of cheap apartment houses. In these houses lived Negroes and mixed families: Filipinos married to white girls, Negro women married to white men, brown men married to light brown women and combinations that found it difficult to find housing in other parts of the city. Also, the area was thick with butchers, itinerant farm laborers, railwaymen's hotels and miscellaneous unemployed. It was productive of cripples, syphilitics, amputations, industrial accidents, maimings, tuberculosis, stab wounds, drunkenness, flea infestations, pink eye, and all manner of contagious disease. The civic fathers had thought it wise to put the hospital close to the source of its patients.

  In recent years the stockyards had moved out. The long sleek lines of the freeways cut across and above the area, not disturbing the buildings. Below the curving perfection of the freeways, the apartment houses grew grimmer, more populated and older.

  Georgia turned the Jaguar off the Pasadena Freeway and started down into the tangle of streets that surrounded County Hospital.

  As she parked in front of the hospital, an ambulance came down a ramp, its siren clanging. A young intern, a cigarette in his mouth, smiled at her as the ambulance went by. Georgia walked into the reception room of the hospital.

  "I'd like to talk to Dr. Moore," she told
the receptionist.

  "Dr. Henry Moore," the girl said, and her fingers plugged in a phone line.

  In five minutes Hank walked into the reception room. He was wearing a tight white skullcap and a long white apron. His arms were bare to the elbow. In ihe exact middle of the apron there was a spot of fresh blood, the size of a quarter.

  "Hello, Hank," Georgia said. "I'm sorry to disturb you at the hospital. Mike wanted you to have lunch with us. He has to meet Notestein to talk over the election and he thought you'd be interested. He said he'd give you a good lunch."

  "I'm not sure I can get away," Hank said. "I'm just finishing surgery and I've got a few more ward cases."

  She noticed that he held his arms in front of his body, away from the apron, the fingers drooping. His fingers were white and scrubbed looking. They gave off a faint aseptic odor.

  "Don't come if it's too much trouble," she said. "There's always another day."

  "Oh, hell. I can ask Johnson to take the ward cases. I've put in three eighteen-hour days in a row. I could stand a break. And a good lunch. I'll be back in ten minutes."

  A half hour later they were driving out the Hollywood Freeway. Hank drove and he slid the car easily from one gear to another, watching the RPM indicator.

  The freeway clogged up with cars, and as the r.p.m.'s dropped Hank slid the shift silently into third. With a growl the car slowed down twenty miles an hour and started to feel its way through the other cars.

  "What did you think of the primary?" Georgia asked.

  "I didn't like it."

  "Did you vote for Cromwell?"

  Hank looked across at her and his face was puzzled, uncertain. "No. I voted for Daigh."

  "Did you think Cromwell could win the Democratic nomination?"

  "I thought he was going to be smothered," Hank said. "I thought Daigh would win both nominations. I still don't understand how Cromwell won."

  "Maybe Mike's right, Hank," Georgia said. "Maybe he's right and we're just sentimental."

  Hank nosed the Jaguar up to within a few inches of the car ahead, pressed down on the accelerator and turned to the outer lane. The car poured into a narrow space, roared by the other cars and was in the clear. A mile ahead was another covey of cars and Hank bore down on them doing seventy miles an hour.

  "It was just an accident, a fluke," Hank said. "Mike had nothing to do with it. You can't manipulate five million people. Anyway, Cromwell will get licked in the general election."

  "But what if he's right? What if people really do vote out of fear and hatred?" Georgia said, and her voice was urgent, she pressed Hank for an answer.

  "Georgia, don't make it more complicated than it is," Hank said slowly. "There are some things you don't do even if you know they'll work. Let me tell you about an experiment they do in rat psychology. You put the rat on a grid floor that you can charge with electricity by tripping a switch. You start out by giving the rat a hell of a shock. He's so scared his eyes bulge out of his head. Then you start to make him do a lot of things a rat doesn't do naturally: walk on his hind legs, drink too much water, eat until he ruptures his stomach, copulate between satiation. Each time he hesitates, you give him a shock. Pretty soon you can get him to do anything . . . he just sees you reaching for the switch and he'll do anything, unnatural things, things that hurt. He'll walk on his hind legs, drink until he vomits, copulate until he's unconscious, doing everything like a mad animal."

  "Well, maybe Mike's right then," Georgia said. "If a rat acts that way out of fear, maybe . . . " She licked her lips.

  "No. He's wrong. Christ, of course he can get people to act like the rats . . . and just out of fear. But you shouldn't do it. Because after a while the rat stops being a rat. He becomes a sub-rat, pure muscle, raw reflex, brute reactions. And humans would become the same way: hysterical with fear, trying to anticipate when the shock is coming, bundles of raw protective muscle. But they wouldn't be human anymore. They'd be something else." He paused. He shook his head in confusion. His voice was tired when he spoke. "And you can't do that to people. I don't know why, but you can't. If it's possible, you shouldn't do it. Because it makes them something less than human. It's just that simple. That's the only reason I know."

  "What you're saying is that there are some things you shouldn't do even if it's possible to do them," Georgia said, her voice questioning. "But why does Mike do them, then?"

  "Because he's got certitude," Hank said. "He's absolutely sure of himself; completely confident; utterly assured. I don't know how he got that way, but he did. And when that happens, some barrier is gone. Everybody else knows there's a line you can't cross, but not Mike."

  "If he would just be wrong once," Georgia said. "Just once. Just one mistake." She pounded the door of the car with frantic, soft blows.

  Hank looked at her and did not speak again until they reached the delicatessen.

  Mike and Notestein were sitting in one of the booths. Mike had a turkey leg and a heap of stuffed eggs on his plate. Notestein had an untouched pastrami sandwich on his plate. They were boih drinking German beer.

  "Terence, you remember Dr. Moore and Miss Blenner from Fresno," Mike said.

  Notestein stood up and shook hands. He was wearing an outlandish sport coat The shoulders were overstuffed and it dropped to a narrow waist. It was only when Notestein sat down that Hank realized that the material was an exquisite Shetland fabric; soft and handwoven.

  "Tell the waitress what you want," Mike said. "We had to start. Terence has got an appointment with his friends. Have some chopped chicken livers and turkey. That's the best here. The stuffed eggs are terrible, they've got anchovies in them. But I like anchovies . . . You won't.".

  Hank and Georgia ordered.

  "What did you think of the primary?" Hank asked Notestein.

  "Me? Me, I liked it. Big victory for my friend Mike," Notestein said. "Good things for my friends delight me. I'm happy when my friends are happy."

  "His business friends didn't like it, though," Mike said and grinned. "They thought it was a fluke. They tell Terence Cromwell won't win in the general. They tell him Cromwell will get clobbered."

  "No, no, Mike, they don't say it like that," Notestein said. His face was pained. "They're interested. They think Cromwell made a nice race in the primary. But they have some doubts." He looked quickly at Hank and then signaled to the waitress. "Cocktails for everyone, miss. Everyone deserves a good drink."

  "He's trying to get you liquored up," Mike said. "That's part of his job. Get people drunk before you give them the bad news."

  Notestein smiled grimly. Nobody ordered a drink, except Notestein. He ordered a double martini. He waited until the waitress left and turned to Mike.

  "You've got it all wrong, Mike," he said. "They like your campaign. But they're just not sure Cromwell can win."

  "I've got a theory about your friends," Mike said. "My theory is . . . "

  "You and your theories," Hank said. "You have to be careful about theories, Mike. When I was in high school I lived at a boardinghouse and the father of the landlady was blind. He said he was blinded in the war, but his daughter said he had been born blind. Anyway he had cataract growths over his eyes, white as eggshells. He used to sit on the front porch and talk to people as he heard them walk by. He had a theory that he could tell what job a person had by the way he smelled. He'd say you could tell a woman was a librarian because of the smell of book varnish, paste and dust. Or a schoolteacher because of the chalk-dust smell. He could even smell out a plasterer on Sunday because the lime and mortar hung around him."

  He paused while the waitress put the double martini on the table. Notestein was watching Hank attentively. He took his eyes away for a second and drank off the martini.

  "Go on. Tell us the rest," Notestein said.

  "This blind man used to bet he could identify the passersby. He even said he could tell an old maid because she didn't smell of a man. But one day he bet five bucks and sniffed the next guy that walked by and
said he was a bank clerk. But the guy was a carpenter who just happened to spill some d his wife's cologne on his suit before he left," Hank said.

  "And there's a moral to the story," Mike said.

  "Damned right," Hank said. "Don't believe your theory absolutely, the next smell may be a mistake."

  "But if you were blind it would be better than no theory at all, wouldn't it?" Mike asked.

  Hank smiled.

  "You win," he said. "Wait till I eat my turkey leg."

  Notestein had not eaten anything from his plate.

  "Now that was a very good story. It reminds me of something," Notestein said. He hesitated, looked quickly around the restaurant, and then went on. "I was a Hungarian Jew, see? But my family lived in Gemany. Everything got mixed up and we wound up in a ghetto. Every few weeks they'd call us into a big auditorium to listen to the latest orders from Berlin. I was young at the time; twenty-five maybe. This Nazi would come in the auditorium to give us the orders. He was short, fat. Looked friendly. But the second he walked in the auditorium you could smell him. It was a funny smell. He'd look down at us and smile, but you knew he didn't mean it because of the smell. It was like there was too much pressure inside of him. Like it popped out and congealed on his skin; a sort of beery, acid smell. Like he hated us so much, despised us so deeply, that he smelled of it. And pretty soon all of us would be sniffing, like dogs when there's danger in the air. Then when he left there would be a new smell. But that would be us. That would be the smell of all of us afraid, our skin crawling, trying to make out what the orders meant, wondering if they applied to us."