by Howard Fast
“Childish? I don’t know. I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I don’t think it’s childish,” Myra put in. “I think it’s a filthy plan and that it’s far from childish to be concerned about it. I’ve known Ed Lundfest a long time, and if someone else told me this, I couldn’t have believed it.”
“I keep wondering why he came to me?”
“I suppose he had to start somewhere,” Silas shrugged.
“I don’t quite understand you, Professor.”
“No?”
“Of course, I’m an old man, and a pastor takes liberties. He has been taking them so long that it becomes his second nature to walk where angels fear to tread. He turns his collar around, and this apparently gives him the right to intrude upon the most precious sorrows and intimacies of people. That is how I’m here. But the why I’m here is, I suppose, that I am afraid. I am afraid, Professor Timberman. This is new and awful—and it is quiet. A college dean—Lundfest is a dean, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“A college dean comes to me and calmly proposes that I become the head of a committee to burn books, just as he might propose that I become the head of a committee to raise funds for orphan children—the same tone, the same manner. You see, I live in the state of Indiana, in the United States of America, and I have lived here all my life, and I’ve liked it, I must confess. Such things don’t happen here. Believe me, I did not come here to you impulsively. I considered the matter. Tell me, have such things been happening?”
“Yes—they have.”
“Why don’t I know?”
Silas shrugged, and Myra said, “Sometimes it’s hard to know. Sometimes you know and you don’t know. People are afraid.”
“Are you afraid?” he asked gently.
“Am I?” Myra smiled. “I suppose I am. We are both out of a job. Today I received a threatening phone call. My children are hounded and tortured at school. Today at school, my older daughter, Geraldine, was lectured on the fruits of godlessness. A group of little boys beat Brian. Silas has apparently committed two criminal acts, contempt of Congress and the telling of the truth. People we have known for years are afraid to come to this house. Isn’t that reason enough to be afraid?”
“Reason enough, of course. Will it help any to know that you have a brother?” he asked simply. “I mean myself. For whatever help or comfort I can give.”
“You’re not obligated—”
“But I am. But I am. And there are others like me. Don’t you know that?”
They didn’t answer him.
“Really, don’t you know that? You must know that. A great many. I’m more outspoken perhaps, and perhaps I have less to lose than most. But you aren’t alone.”
Then he said, “Tell me, are you communists?”
“This is the third time I have been asked that,” Silas said, smiling himself now. “First, Anthony Cabot—then Brannigan—and now you.”
“I’m not in very good company, am I?”
“We’re not communists,” Silas said, “and the strange part of it is that we’re hardly sure we know anyone else who is.”
“I had sort of hoped you were,” the pastor nodded, a note of regret in his voice. “I had wanted to ask you about it. I’m very curious about it. I think Mr. Lundfest believes that I am one, and I don’t know whether it’s flattering or not. Do you begin to have the sensation, Mr. Timberman, that there is a great deal you don’t know?”
Silas nodded.
“Then perhaps we will all of us learn a little. It will be the holiday season soon. May I ask you to be of good cheer? I know it will be hard.”
Then he said his goodbys and left.
* * *
Then they thought that they would get to bed early because they were both tired, but it wasn’t to be that way, not bed and not anything to rest them. Only a few minutes after the pastor had gone, Brady called and said he was coming over, not whether he could, but that he was coming; and when he came, Spencer was with him and Jerome Lennox and another student, a well set-up, broad-shouldered young man who was introduced to the Timbermans as Willie Talbot, and whose name Silas recalled as having something to do with the football squad. Brady wasted no time in formalities, and he brushed aside the obvious weariness of Silas and Myra, coming directly to the point.
“Something is up and cooking, Silas, and it has leaked out—not anything that can’t be handled, but something that must be handled and put to rest. There is every likelihood that something nasty will happen here tonight.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Myra demanded.
“The dirty minds and mean souls of miserable people. There is something planned for tonight, directed against you and Silas. Some sort of demonstration, rowdyism, attack, or what you will.”
“This is fantastic,” Silas said.
“Of course, it’s fantastic. But there it is.”
“What is? Why in hell can’t you talk sense, Alec? I’ve had a bellyful of this kind of thing today.”
“I can’t talk sense because it doesn’t make sense. Suppose you explain it to Professor Timberman, Lennox.”
“The little I can explain. It seems that a gang of loafers, hoodlums and just plain damned stupid kids are being got together in some sort of phony vigilante action against you. I don’t know just what or how many or when, except that it’s planned for tonight, and the purpose is to frighten you out of Clemington. I don’t know that they’re going to do anything worse than make a lot of noise and maybe some damnfool nonsense like burning a cross on your front lawn. One of them approached Willie here, and that’s how we know.”
“There’s no danger if it doesn’t get out of hand, Silas,” Brady said. “But with a thing like this, it pays to know about it and do something about it in advance. If only not to have the kids frightened too much.”
“It still doesn’t make sense,” Myra protested. “Our lives aren’t a nightmare. Who’s coming here? Why? Why do they want us out of Clemington?”
“Why do sick, hate-crazed people do the things they do? You know as well as I do, Myra.”
“I don’t—I don’t! Someone called us today—” Then she told them. “But why? Who are they?”
“What’s the use of speculating on who they are? It’s more important for us to do something about it.”
Silas was calm now. He sat in a chair, smoking a cigarette and watching Brady. A long time ago, he was going to be beaten; today Brian was beaten; but a long time ago, when he was not much older than Brian was now, he had known that they were waiting for him and it was many to one. The courage that is pride comes early, and if the pain was forgotten, the shame stayed with him. This was shame too, and he understood that shame could be worse than death. There was sickness all over the place and the sickness was deep and terrible, and his voice was angry when he told Myra that it did no good to make a fuss over it.
“Will that stop it?” he asked coldly, and then said to Brady, “Instead of thanking you for coming here, we behave like this. All right, we’re not used to it yet. We think we are, but we’re not, and we’ll get used to it, Alec. What do you suggest we do? The kids are asleep. Shall we wake them?”
“No—no, let them sleep. Maybe it won’t come off at all, and if it does, the chances are that they’ll sleep through it. A thing like this isn’t well organized. They’re feeling around. The very fact that they came to Talbot proves that. They don’t know who’s with them and who is against them. They were shocked when Talbot told them to go to hell. You have to see what is behind this, Silas. A thing like this never happens spontaneously. It requires thought and organization and decision, and the purpose behind it is to spread panic and destroy any will to resist, whereby those who organize it advance themselves in both power and position. It’s hard for us to see it that way, because our minds don’t work that way.”
“But who is behind it?” Myra wanted to know.
“I can’t say. Your guess is as good as mine, Myra
. Could it be some of the Legion people from the city? Or some hooligans from the town? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it’s not any of the college people, not any of the faculty, but I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we call the police?”
“You can. That’s up to you and Silas. But I know what they’ll do. They’ll either laugh it away and tell you to let them know if anything happens, or else they’ll send a radio car over and it’ll cruise around for a while and then go away if they don’t see anything suspicious. Whoever’s organizing this isn’t unaware of the police, and at a moment like this, when nothing has crystallized yet, it’s difficult to say where the police stand or what they will do. It’s much to the point that they selected you and Silas, instead of Ike or Hartman or Lawrence or myself. It means that they feel you are particularly vulnerable—yes, we can call the police, but I don’t want to stop with that. You get a mob of crazy, wrought-up people with some liquor in them, and there’s no telling what can happen. My own idea is to make certain that nothing serious happens tonight, and then to grab this thing by the horns tomorrow and throw it right back in their faces. But tonight is the problem. You live in a house that’s backed by a wooded slope and which stands to some extent by itself—well, why take chances?”
“I agree with that,” Silas said quietly. “What do you want to do?”
“Keep some sort of guard all night. Lennox says there are some students who can be approached to help, and who will be more than willing. I thought I would telephone Mike Leslie in Indianapolis and have him come up with a few of his trade union people. After what happened when he was here, he can hardly say no, and I don’t think he’ll want to say no. That way, we can be pretty certain that we’ll be covered all night. Also, some of the faculty will help. It doesn’t require much of a show of determination to stop a thing like this.”
“All right,” Silas agreed. “If that’s what you think, all right. I would either laugh it off or be very frightened, and it’s good to have some alternative to sitting back and doing nothing.”
But Myra felt no comfort and the fear did not go away. The worst kind of a thing that can happen is something that by all the laws of reason and logic cannot happen. The world became unreal and Brady and the others were just as unreal. The whole world had gone insane, but until now it had been a polite insanity which observed rules and due process. It had been like a funeral where the kind of a person her mother always referred to as a “nice” person had died and where “nice” people came to pay their respects, and where everything proceeded with great decorum. But now a note of shrill terror had been injected, like one of the “nice” mourners screaming wildly and uncontrollably.
* * *
Terror, Silas considered, was a word, and it belonged in the category and interplay of similar words, horror and madness and murder and other words relegated to the description of things that did not really exist. At least, they did not exist for people like himself, except in books which he had read with safety and security, and the delicious apartness of a person who could be thrilled without ever being involved. The simple horror of here and now was that these words had entered his life and had become a part of his being.
He sat in the kitchen with Mike Leslie, drinking coffee and watching Myra set a fresh pot on the stove. It was a half-hour past midnight, and the kitchen was warm and comfortable, and outside the moon lit up the thin carpet of snow. Silas had been outside with the others for almost an hour, walking around and feeling rather foolish but also putting some of his anxiety to rest. He had an advantage over Myra there.
“You ought to go to sleep, Mrs. Timberman,” Leslie said. “We can get more coffee if it’s needed. I know how it is when you got kids and you got to be up with them in the morning.”
“I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
It was surprising how slowly warmth came back to Silas, how long it took to get the chill out of his bones. Not that it was very cold outside, and he could remember many a colder night during the war; but that was better than five years ago, and he was forty years old now. And he was a skinny man; he had always chilled easily.
“Funny about coffee,” Leslie said. “It seems that every struggle I ever been in, there’s always some time when you sit with a cup of coffee in your hand. It’s always the taste of black coffee that brings it back. I was in the Bulge, and even there, they got some hot coffee up to us once. Black. I drink it there, and it reminds me of a picket line. Then I drink it on a picket line, and it reminds me of the Bulge.”
“It reminds me of trying to stay awake when I was a student,” Myra said.
“Funny, when I have it for breakfast, I use milk and sugar. The kind of habits we get into!”
Silas was recalling his reactions as he had paced around the house with Alec Brady. He had wondered then what he would do if they met anyone, and he recalled his amusement at the stick he carried in his hand. Brady was a strange man, a typical scholar, indeed in some ways a great scholar, yet with an incredible diversity of experience and knowledge. His prediction about the police had been absolutely correct. They came and they went. Had it occurred to Silas, Brady wanted to know, how modern the entire concept of police was? That until society reached a certain point of organization, there were no police anywhere? That until then, men as individuals and little groups organized for the protection of their property? Property—it was not his, Silas thought, for when he stopped paying the quarterly installments, it would go to the bank. And where would the Timbermans go, he wondered? Strange how little thought he had given to his own future—or perhaps it was not so strange when one considered how indeterminate his future was. He had no idea of what he was going to do. The only thing he knew how to do was to teach. Was it possible that there was a college somewhere that would not be swayed by this insanity? They would have to leave Clemington sooner or later—so why all these heroics tonight about remaining in a house which soon would not be theirs at all?
“I guess I will have a sandwich,” Mike Leslie said, “if you twist my arm, Mrs. Timberman.”
“Ham and cheese?”
“Ham and cheese is fine. You know, I like those college kids out there. They’re good kids,” he said with an air of discovery.
“Ever go to college, Mike?”
“Nope. I would have liked it, I guess, but I would have been something else. You got one life, and you don’t live it, it lives you—”
“We discovered that,” Myra nodded.
Silas thought about Myra. Look at Myra. Why did she always adapt to something so much better than he did? How could she be so much more at ease among people? If something troubled her for a while, she worked it into herself, and then it stopped troubling her; but with him it was different. Things went on troubling him, and he chewed a thing over endlessly. Myra’s people had money; his own people were dead; they had lived and died in poverty—and their only dream and their only pride had been to educate a son. He recalled Anthony Cabot’s amazing chatter about names. Timberman. Now the house of Timberman Was beleaguered. The thought made him smile. Myra’s people had money and Myra wasn’t afraid of poverty, and he was afraid and the whole future mixed itself up with fear.
He finished his coffee, and Myra asked him, “Where are you going, Si?”
“I thought I’d look at the kids,” he said.
“But you just looked at them.”
“I know—well—you know the way I am.”
He went upstairs, wondering whether Myra felt what he felt when he looked at them asleep, and wondering whether the complexity of people was not also a terrible simplicity? The two girls slept in one room, Brian in a little cubbyhole of his own. Their rooms were lit with enough reflected moonlight for him to see them. As usual, Brian had kicked off his blankets, and Silas covered him.
Susan opened her eyes, smiled at him, and went back to sleep.
It was good to be a child at a time like this, Silas thought.
* * *
At a half-hour past one,
Spencer and Talbot and half a dozen of the students discovered four or five people climbing the slope in back of the house. Whoever these were, they broke and ran at the sight of the students; and a handful of others also ran for cover when found across the road from the front of the house. For the next hour, it was quiet and no one else appeared. The men from Indianapolis spread out and beat through the heavy brush on the slope and through the empty lots on each side of the Timberman place, but there was nothing to be found.
At a quarter to three in the morning, Brady came into the house and said, “I sent the Clemington kids home to get some sleep. That leaves Hart and myself and Leslie and the men he brought with him—and you, of course. I think it’s over, and that our brave knights of righteousness changed their plans when they discovered that we were up and waiting. But you can’t tell. We’ll spend the night here and leave some lights on. You and Myra get some sleep.”
“We’re all right. I just wish we had beds.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll use the couch and put the pillows on the floor—and see what kind of blankets you can spare?”
Myra found two camp cots and a rubber bolster, and dragged out every pillow and blanket they had in the house. It wasn’t comfortable but it would be better than sitting up, and when she and Silas finally crawled into bed, it was well past three o’clock.
“This has been a day—a day and a night,” Myra sighed. “I’m not for this kind of a life. I always used to tell myself how much I’d enjoy danger—like those women you read about, shooting lions and climbing mountains. I don’t enjoy it, Silas. Not at all.”
“No—I guess not,” he mumbled. He had begun to fall asleep the moment he got into bed, his head burrowed into her arm, his long body jack-knifed.
“Damned, bony man—Silas. You hear me? Funny, I. never knew you until now—sleeping? I’m not sleepy, Si—” She went on talking as he drifted into sleep, and then it seemed that he had only closed his eyes when he sat up, wide awake. “Myra?” She was asleep next to him. The moon must have set, for the room was very dark, and he sat in bed trying to recall what had awakened him. Then he heard shouts. He fell over himself dragging pants on over his pajamas, and then he thrust his bare feet into his shoes and ran to the window. Myra was awake and crying.
