“Webster!” he shouted.
Webster shook his head. “You came here with one of your big ideas,” shouted King. “You were going to lay it before the council. Step up, man, and speak your piece.”
Webster rose slowly, grim-lipped.
“Perhaps you’re too thick-skulled,” he told King, “to know why I resent the way you have behaved.”
King gasped, then exploded. “Thick-skulled! You would say that to me. We’ve worked together and I’ve helped you. You’ve never called me that before … you’ve –”
“I’ve never called you that before,” said Webster, levelly. “Naturally not. I wanted to keep my job.”
“Well, you haven’t got a job,” roared King. “From this minute on, you haven’t got a job.”
“Shut up,” said Webster.
King stared at him, bewildered, as if someone had slapped him across the face.
“And sit down,” said Webster, and his voice bit through the room like a sharp-edged knife.
King’s knees caved beneath him and he sat down abruptly. The silence was brittle.
“I have something to say,” said Webster. “Something that should have been said long ago. Something all of you should hear. That I should be the one who would tell it to you is the one thing that astounds me. And yet, perhaps, as one who has worked in the interests of this city for almost fifteen years, I am the logical one to speak the truth.
“Alderman Griffin said the city is dying on its feet and his statement is correct. There is but one fault I would find with it and that is its understatement. The city … this city, any city … already is dead.
“The city is an anachronism. It has outlived its usefulness. Hydroponics and the helicopter spelled its downfall. In the first instance the city was a tribal place, an area where the tribe banded together for mutual protection. In later years a wall was thrown around it for additional protection. Then the wall finally disappeared but the city lived on because of the conveniences which it offered trade and commerce. It continued into modern times because people were compelled to live close to their jobs and the jobs were in the city.
“But today that is no longer true. With the family plane, one hundred miles today is a shorter distance than five miles back in 1930. Men can fly several hundred miles to work and fly home when the day is done. There is no longer any need for them to live cooped up in a city.
“The automobile started the trend and the family plane finished it. Even in the first part of the century the trend was noticeable—a movement away from the city with its taxes and its stuffiness, a move toward the suburb and close-in acreages. Lack of adequate transportation, lack of finances held many to the city. But now, with tank farming destroying the value of land, a man can buy a huge acreage in the country for less than he could a city lot forty years ago. With planes powered by atomics there is no longer any transportation problem.”
He paused and the silence held. The mayor wore a shocked look. King’s lips moved, but no words came. Griffin was smiling.
“So what have we?” asked Webster. “I’ll tell you what we have. Street after street, block after block, of deserted houses, houses that the people just up and walked away from. Why should they have stayed? What could the city offer them? None of the things that it offered the generations before them, for progress has wiped out the need of the city’s benefits. They lost something, some monetary consideration, of course, when they left the houses. But the fact that they could buy a house twice as good for half as much, the fact that they could live as they wished to live, that they could develop what amounts to family estates after the best tradition set them by the wealthy of a generation ago—all these things outweighed the leaving of their homes.
“And what have we left? A few blocks of business houses. A few acres of industrial plants. A city government geared to take care of a million people without the million people. A budget that has run the taxes so high that eventually even business houses will move to escape those taxes. Tax forfeitures that have left us loaded with worthless property. That’s what we have left.
“If you think any Chamber of Commerce, any ballyhoo, any hare-brained scheme will give you the answers, you’re crazy. There is only one answer and that is simple. The city as a human institution is dead. It may struggle on a few more years, but that is all.”
“Mr. Webster –” said the mayor.
But Webster paid him no attention.
“But for what happened today,” he said, “I would have stayed on and played doll house with you. I would have gone on pretending that the city was a going concern. Would have gone on kidding myself and you. But there is, gentlemen, such a thing as human dignity.”
The icy silence broke down in the rustling of papers, the muffled cough of some embarrassed listener.
John J. Webster turned on his heel and left the room.
Outside on the broad stone steps, he stopped and stared up at the cloudless sky, saw the pigeons wheeling above the turrets and spires of the city hall.
He shook himself mentally, like a dog coming out of a pool.
He had been a fool, of course. Now he’d have to hunt for a job and it might take time to find one. He was getting a bit old to be hunting for a job.
But despite his thoughts, a little tune rose unbidden to his lips. He walked away briskly, lips pursed, whistling soundlessly.
No more hypocrisy. No more lying awake nights wondering what to do—knowing that the city was dead, knowing that what he did was a useless task, feeling like a heel for taking a salary that he knew he wasn’t earning. Sensing the strange, nagging frustration of a worker who knows his work is nonproductive.
He strode toward the parking lot, heading for his helicopter.
Now, maybe, he told himself, they could move out into the country the way Betty wanted to. Maybe he could spend his evenings tramping land that belonged to him. A place with a stream. Definitely it had to have a stream he could stock with trout.
He made a mental note to go up into the attic and check his fly equipment.
Martha Johnson was waiting at the barnyard gate when the old car chugged down the lane.
Ole got out stiffly, face rimmed with weariness.
“Sell anything?” asked Martha.
Ole shook his head. “It ain’t no use. They won’t buy farm-raised stuff. Just laughed at me. Showed me ears of corn twice as big as the ones I had, just as sweet and with more even rows. Showed me melons that had almost no rind at all. Better tasting, too, they said.”
He kicked at a clod and it exploded into dust.
“There ain’t no getting around it,” he declared. “Tank farming sure has ruined us.”
“Maybe we better fix to sell the farm,” suggested Martha.
Ole said nothing.
“You could get a job on a tank farm,” she said. “Harry did. Likes it real well.”
Ole shook his head.
“Or maybe a gardener,” said Martha. “You would make a right smart gardener. Ritzy folks that’s moved out to big estates like to have gardeners to take care of flowers and things. More classy than doing it with machines.”
Ole shook his head again. “Couldn’t stand to mess around with flowers,” he declared. “Not after raising corn for more than twenty years.”
“Maybe,” said Martha, “we could have one of them little planes. And running water in the house. And a bathtub instead of taking a bath in the old washtub by the kitchen fire.”
“Couldn’t run a plane,” objected Ole.
“Sure you could,” said Martha. “Simple to run, they are. Why, them Anderson kids ain’t no more than knee-high to a cricket and they fly one all over. One of them got fooling around and fell out once, but –”
“I got to think about it,” said Ole, desperately. “I got to think.”
He swung away, vaulted a fence, hea
ded for the fields. Martha stood beside the car and watched him go. One lone tear rolled down her dusty cheek.
“Mr. Taylor is waiting for you,” said the girl.
John J. Webster stammered. “But I haven’t been here before. He didn’t know I was coming.”
“Mr. Taylor,” insisted the girl, “is waiting for you.”
She nodded her head toward the door. It read:
Bureau of Human Adjustment
“But I came here to get a job,” protested Webster. “I didn’t come to be adjusted or anything. This is the World Committee’s placement service, isn’t it?”
“That is right,” the girl declared. “Won’t you see Mr. Taylor?”
“Since you insist,” said Webster.
The girl clicked over a switch, spoke into the intercommunicator. “Mr. Webster is here, sir.”
“Send him in,” said a voice.
Hat in hand, Webster walked through the door.
The man behind the desk had white hair but a young man’s face. He motioned toward a chair.
“You’ve been trying to find a job,” he said.
“Yes,” said Webster, “but –”
“Please sit down,” said Taylor. “If you’re thinking about that sign on the door, forget it. We’ll not try to adjust you.”
“I couldn’t find a job,” said Webster. “I’ve hunted for weeks and no one would have me. So finally, I came here.”
“You didn’t want to come here?”
“No, frankly, I didn’t. A placement service. It has, well … it has an implication I do not like.”
Taylor smiled. “The terminology may be unfortunate. You’re thinking of the employment services of the old days. The places where men went when they were desperate for work. The government operated places that tried to find work for men so they wouldn’t become public charges.”
“I’m desperate enough,” confessed Webster. “But I still have a pride that made it hard to come. But, finally, there was nothing else to do. You see, I turned traitor –”
“You mean,” said Taylor, “that you told the truth. Even when it cost you your job. The business world, not only here, but all over the world, is not ready for that truth. The businessman still clings to the city myth, to the myth of salesmanship. In time to come he will realize he doesn’t need the city, that service and honest values will bring him more substantial business than salesmanship ever did.
“I’ve wondered, Webster, just what made you do what you did?”
“I was sick of it,” said Webster. “Sick of watching men blundering along with their eyes tight shut. Sick of seeing an old tradition being kept alive when it should have been laid away. Sick of King’s simpering civic enthusiasm when all cause for enthusiasm had vanished.”
Taylor nodded. “Webster, do you think you could adjust human beings?”
Webster merely stared.
“I mean it,” said Taylor. “The World Committee has been doing it for years, quietly, unobtrusively. Even many of the people who have been adjusted don’t know they have been adjusted.
“Changes such as have come since the creation of the World Committee following the war has meant much human maladjustment. The advent of workable atomic power took jobs away from hundreds of thousands. They had to be trained and guided into new jobs, some with the new atomics, some into other lines of work. The advent of tank farming swept the farmers off their land. They, perhaps, have supplied us with our greatest problem, for other than the special knowledge needed to grow crops and handle animals, they had no skills. Most of them had no wish for acquiring skills. Most of them were bitterly resentful of having been forced from the livelihood which they inherited from their forebears. And being natural individualists, they offered the toughest psychological problems of any other class.”
“Many of them,” declared Webster, “still are at loose ends. There’s a hundred or more of them squatting out in the houses, living from hand to mouth. Shooting a few rabbits and a few squirrels, doing some fishing, raising vegetables and picking wild fruit. Engaging in a little petty thievery now and then and doing occasional begging on the uptown streets.”
“You know these people?” asked Taylor.
“I know some of them,” said Webster. “One of them brings me squirrels and rabbits on occasions. To make up for it, he bums ammunition money.”
“They’d resent being adjusted, wouldn’t they?”
“Violently,” said Webster.
“You know a farmer by the name of Ole Johnson? Still sticking to his farm, still unreconstructed?”
Webster nodded.
“What if you tried to adjust him?”
“He’d run me off the farm,” said Webster.
“Men like Ole and the Squatters,” said Taylor, “are our special problems now. Most of the rest of the world is fairly well adjusted, fairly well settled into the groove of the present. Some of them are doing a lot of moaning about the past, but that’s just for effect. You couldn’t drive them back to their old ways of life.
“Years ago, with the advent of atomics, in fact, the World Committee faced a hard decision. Should changes that spelled progress in the world be brought about gradually to allow the people to adjust themselves naturally, or should they be developed as quickly as possible, with the Committee aiding in the necessary human adjustment? It was decided, rightly or wrongly, that progress should come first, regardless of its effect upon the people. The decision in the main has proven a wise one.
“We knew, of course, that in many instances, this readjustment could not be made too openly. In some cases, as in large groups of workers who had been displaced, it was possible, but in most individual cases, such as our friend Ole, it was not. These people must be helped to find themselves in this new world, but they must not know that they’re being helped. To let them know would destroy confidence and dignity, and human dignity is the keystone of any civilization.”
“I knew, of course, about the readjustments made within industry itself,” said Webster, “but I had not heard of the individual cases.”
“We could not advertise it,” Taylor said. “It’s practically undercover.”
“But why are you telling me all this now?”
“Because we’d like you to come in with us. Have a hand at adjusting Ole to start with. Maybe see what could be done about the Squatters next.”
“I don’t know—“said Webster.
“We’d been waiting for you to come in,” said Taylor. “We knew you’d finally have to come here. Any chance you might have had at any kind of job would have been queered by King. He passed the word along. You’re blackballed by every Chamber of Commerce and every civic group in the world today.”
“Probably I have no choice,” said Webster.
“We didn’t want you to feel that way about it,” Taylor said. “Take a while to think it over, then come back. Even if you don’t want the job we’ll find you another one—in spite of King.”
Outside the office, Webster found a scarecrow figure waiting for him. It was Levi Lewis, snaggle-toothed grin wiped off, rifle under his arm.
“Some of the boys said they seen you go in here,” he explained. “So I waited for you.”
“What’s the trouble?” Webster asked. For Levi’s face spoke eloquently of trouble.
“It’s them police,” said Levi. He spat disgustedly.
“The police,” said Webster, and his heart sank as he said the words. For he knew what the trouble was.
“Yeah,” said Levi. “They’re fixing to burn us out.”
“So the council finally gave in,” said Webster, face grim.
“I just came from police headquarters,” declared Levi. “I told them they better go easy. I told them there’d be guts strewed all over the place if they tried it. I got the boys posted all around the place with orders not to
shoot till they’re sure of hitting.”
“You can’t do that, Levi,” said Webster, sharply.
“I can’t!” retorted Levi. “I done it already. They drove us off the farms, forced us to sell because we couldn’t make a living. And they aren’t driving us no farther. We either stay here or we die here. And the only way they’ll burn us out is when there’s no one left to stop them.”
He shucked up his pants and spat again.
“And we ain’t the only ones that feel that way,” he declared. “Gramp is out there with us.”
“Gramp!”
“Sure, Gramp. The old guy that lives with you. He’s sort of taken over as our commanding general. Says he remembers tricks from the war them police have never heard of. He sent some of the boys over to one of them Legion halls to swipe a cannon. Says he knows where we can get some shells for it from the museum. Says we’ll get it all set up and then send word that if the police make a move we’ll shell the loop.”
“Look, Levi, will you do something for me?”
“Sure will, Mr. Webster.”
“Will you go in and ask for a Mr. Taylor? Insist on seeing him. Tell him I’m already on the job.”
“Sure will, but where are you going?”
“I’m going up to the city hall.”
“Sure you don’t want me along?”
“No,” declared Webster. “I’ll do better alone. And, Levi –”
“Yes.”
“Tell Gramp to hold up his artillery. Don’t shoot unless he has to—but if he has to, to lay it on the line.”
“The mayor is busy,” said Raymond Brown, his secretary.
“That’s what you think,” said Webster, starting for the door.
“You can’t go in there, Webster,” yelled Brown.
He leaped from his chair, came charging around the desk, reaching for Webster. Webster swung broadside with his arm, caught Brown across the chest, swept him back against the desk. The desk skidded and Brown waved his arms, lost his balance, thudded to the floor.
Webster jerked open the mayor’s door.
The mayor’s feet thumped off his desk. “I told Brown –” he said.
The Ghost of a Model T: And Other Stories Page 18
