The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

by Robert H. Rimmer

  "He doesn't suspect, thank God." Yale suddenly remembered the golf game he had left so abruptly. "I'd like to warn you, that you may be in serious trouble."

  Mat looked at him questioningly. Yale paused. Was it wise to repeat Doctor Tangle's warning to Pat? If it ever got back to Doctor Tangle that he had forewarned Mat Chilling he would be in hot water. Maybe it was better to let Mat squirm in his own juice. "Oh, I don't know," Yale said. "I'll tell you later. Do you know Professor Leonard?"

  "Sure," Mat said, wondering what Yale was concealing. "About thirty minutes ago he was standing just about where you are. He was on his way to see Harry Cohen."

  "No kidding!" Yale looked worried. "Boy, he should stay far away from Cohen."

  Mat reeled in his line. "I guess I have some other fishing to do. Okay, Yale, what's it all about?"

  "Look," Yale parried, "I'd like to talk with Leonard. Do you know where Cohen lives?" Mat admitted he did.

  Driving slowly through the hot, tired streets of Helltown, Mat explained that Sarah Cohen had often invited him to eat with them. "Harry came from New York about three years ago. A very nice guy. A little too Communistic for my thinking but then Communism has some good points . . . You turn here."

  Yale swung onto an unpaved road and came to a bumping halt in front of a weather-beaten house. It stood in ugly gingerbread detail against a background of marsh grass.

  The front porch had several broken planks that slanted tipsily away from the foundation.

  "The tide comes right into their back yard," Mat said. "A good storm here is an experience." He pounded on the front door. A voice yelled, "Come on in. We're in back." They walked through the house. Yale had a surprising glimpse of an immaculately clean front room, decorated with water color paintings. A grand piano was piled high with musical scores. Friendly piles of books littered the tables and chairs and spilled over onto the floor.

  A man in bathing trunks greeted them in the kitchen. He turned and yelled into the yard. "It's okay, Sarah. It's only Mat." He recognized Yale and looked startled. "And young Mr. Marratt," he added. "What brings us this pleasure on a hot Saturday afternoon?"

  Yale was about to answer him when the door opened and a woman about thirty-five, plump, with a friendly, rosy-cheeked face, walked into the kitchen. She was absolutely naked. Yale had a confused impression of large sturdy breasts, a quite round stomach and black pubic hairs. He blushed and turned away. He could see Mat grinning.

  "My wife comes from a part of Sweden where they dress casually," Harry Cohen said. "She is gradually making summertime nudists out of all our friends." He introduced her to Yale. Yale took her outstretched hand, trying not to see her large comfortable looking breasts.

  "I am sorry if I embarrass you, Mr. Marratt. Come out in the yard. It is quite private. Only the sea, grass and sea gulls. We have some cold beer."

  They followed her into the rocky beach that was the back yard for the house. Two boys about eight and nine years old, as naked as their mother, ran up to Mat Chilling and tugged at him joyously. "Mat, Mat, tell us a story," they screamed.

  Lying beneath a crude sun shelter built of wood and canvas Yale could see a girl about fifteen or sixteen, naked, leaning on her elbow talking to Professor Leonard, who was also naked.

  Jack Leonard waved to Yale without embarrassment. The girl, who was obviously Sarah Cohen's daughter, gave Yale a cold look.

  "Daddy," she said angrily, "you aren't being very smart today."

  "I guess you are right, honey. Mr. Marratt probably wouldn't understand. You better put on your bathing suit. You, too, Sarah."

  Yale smiled. "Don't get dressed for me. It's too hot. Besides, I'm not embarrassed, just a little startled. I didn't know there was anyone in the world besides me who liked to walk around naked."

  "Why don't you take off your clothes and relax with us, Mr. Marratt?" Sarah asked. "We are going to cook some frankfurts and you can break bread with us."

  Yale looked at Mat. Mat laughed. "When in Rome . . ." He quickly peeled off his shirt, pants and underwear. Yale was shocked to see that Mat was so thin. Like a huge animal that had gradually starved in captivity. While the skeleton structure remained strong and massive, Mat's flesh had tightened until all the bones were visible.

  "You see the way Yale looks at me, Sarah? As I have told you before, the male animal is probably better disguised with clothes."

  "Mr. Marratt looks at you with the eyes of a man. God made women's eyes differently. I see the body of a man and peering through it the child who needs a woman. I see Mat Chilling, naked, jumping from his stone tub, shouting 'Eureka' to the astounded Greeks, and because his deep, thinking mind frightens me and leaves me a little awe stricken I am pleased to know as a woman, it depends for its very existence on the frailty of the body beneath it. You need a woman, Mat, and a year of good Kishke and flanken dinners to fill you out."

  "Not Mat," Jack Leonard said, handing Yale a bottle of beer. "He's the original monk in the desert. Look at him. He is the personification of Paphnutius. All he needs is Thais dancing around him."

  Yale took the beer. He sat down on a blanket that Harry Cohen had spread out. A warm breeze drifted over his body. Despite the heat of the day he felt cool and alive. This was preferable to walking around a golf course. The trouble with Pat, he thought, is that he just doesn't know how to be lazy. Even playing golf was just another form of business to him. He wondered what Pat would think . . . and Doctor Tangle. Boy, what a shock for the good Doctor if he could see Yale lying naked in Harry Cohen's back yard with Mat Chilling, Jack Leonard and two women. Yale chuckled and noticed Cohen's daughter still looking at him. Yale returned her glance.

  "I like to see women naked," he said, thinking that the only women he had ever really seen naked were Cindar and Beatrice, and neither of them in this easy, unhurried way.

  "You think we are sexy and cheap," the girl said, her face flushed with anger. "I told you, mommy. You can't go against conventions! You should have kept him in the house. Now, it will be all around. People just don't understand. If the boys I know thought I would undress and go around naked . . ." She started to sob and put her face in her hands.

  "Ruthie, stop crying," Mat said. "Yale is not the kind of person to go around talking. If he is, then I have misjudged him. You see, Harry, I told you and Sarah you'd eventually run into trouble. The only person who can live his life the way he sees fit is the lone person. Once you have married and have children, your Bohemianism, your defiance of custom, becomes a cross that your children have to bear. Children are by nature conformists. They want the crowd approval. Even worse, your dual life can't exist in the work you have chosen. As a union organizer you have to be the greatest conformist of all. The people you are trying to lead don't want your kind of better life. They want more money and they'll listen to you on that score, but if they knew you sat naked in your back yard with your wife and daughter and men friends, they'd tar and feather you. Your working friends, in the Marratt factory or any other factory you may take on, undress in closets, make love in the dark with their clothes on, and look upon their body and its demands as SIN with a capital S-I-N."

  "Mat, stop preaching," Harry said. "I know you're right. Ruthie, go ahead and get dressed."

  Ruthie had stopped crying and was listening to Mat with great interest. "I've changed my mind. I want to listen to you argue."

  Jack Leonard exploded with laughter. "Oh, God, that's wonderful. What's your opinion, Yale?"

  Yale looked at Ruthie. "Listen, you can stop worrying. I am not going to tell anyone I sat naked in Harry Cohen's back yard. I am in enough trouble as it is. Furthermore, I admire your father and mother. If they enjoy sitting in their yard naked they have good precedent. William Blake, the poet, used to entertain his friends naked. But, I agree with Mat, Harry. My father is out to get you and this is just the ammunition he needs. I promise you I won't tell but believe me he has ways of finding out things. Doctor Tangle is out for your skin, too, Professor Leona
rd. He knows that you were a Communist. He knows that you and Harry are friends. He's planning to give you the sack next week."

  Yale watched Jack Leonard's face. He was surprised to see no reaction. Sarah Cohen gasped.

  "The enemy closes in," Leonard said and took a swallow of beer.

  There was a moment of silence, as the implications of Leonard's cool reaction reached the group. "Well, we are all in our skins," Harry Cohen said finally. "Let's bare our souls. Are you a Party man, Jack?"

  Yale realized his face showed his surprise. Was this a neat way Harry had of wriggling out of the accusation? He was certain that if Professor Leonard were mixed up with Communism that Harry Cohen was, too.

  Leonard idly tossed stones into the marsh grass where they landed with a wet slopping sound. "Okay," he said at last, "I'm not ashamed of it. I carry a card!"

  Sarah looked at Harry unhappily. "I told you, Harry, you should be more careful. You can't afford to get mixed up with Communists. You know how they feel about them at union headquarters."

  "I'm not mixed up with Communists, Sarah. Jack is our friend. He has his beliefs, I have mine."

  Mat asked Harry what his beliefs were.

  "I came here to organize the Marratt Corporation. I'm not interested in having the state take over the means of production. We simply need the force exerted by a government which insists that management will sit down with labor and bargain with them fairly for a decent wage. Your old man is a dying breed, Yale. At a certain period he was necessary and hundreds like him; to carve out the means of production, to prove by their individual initiative that we Americans could make a better world. Unfortunately, they have grown too fat with their own power. The race is to the lean. We hope to thin them down a little for their own good . . . to increase their longevity. Fortunately, we have a President who realizes that the next step in our growth as a nation is to share that wealth with the laboring man who helps create it."

  "You sound like a Party prospect to me," Leonard said amiably.

  "Not at all. I want to simply narrow the profit margin by giving labor its share. I still believe in profits to keep the gears meshing. The difference, Jack, is that you believe in an all powerful state that may or may not wither away. A state which controls the means of production. Me, I want Pat Marratt to run his own factory. He has the drive to make more money for all his employees. All I want is that the stockholders get a little less."

  "How do you know my father will be satisfied with a little less?" Yale asked. "The drive for profits is what makes him tick."

  "You now enter the area of philosophy, Yale," Harry went on. "I'll leave that to Mat. Men like your father don't really have a money incentive beyond a certain point. I think maybe a Platonic idea of the perfectibility of men and things would be a stronger motivation for men like Pat than money. Pat Marratt earning a thousand dollars a week instead of two thousand dollars a week would be exactly the same man with the same drives."

  "I'd like to see you tell that to Pat," Yale said and was surprised when Harry told him that he had discussed it with Pat. They continued to talk, arguing whether capitalism was in its death throes. As Yale listened to Leonard, he realized that Leonard was a dedicated man. Whatever happened to his current teaching job wouldn't really concern him. Probably, he had come to Midhaven with a particular mission of "contacting" Harry Cohen. Or was that the word they used among the fellow travelers? Yale examined Leonard's face trying to find some clue to his personality, something that would identify him as the unwashed Bolshevik.

  "Why do you hang onto capitalism with such a frenzy?" Jack was asking. Yale could only see a clean cut, blond young man whose blue eyes flashed with enthusiasm as he talked. "It's not inviolable. After all the world came along for quite a few thousand years without it. I'm thirty. In the past four years I've seen bread lines, starvation and near revolution. I've seen a moral decay in the western world. An occupation with the 'bitch-goddess' Success that bodes no good for this culture. The wealth of the country being depleted by industrialists who don't give a damn for anything or anybody but their own personal power. Capitalism is on its way out, Harry. Even our good President realizes it. There are more sincere Communists in our government than you realize." Jack stood up and looked at the sky. "Lord . . . it's good to stand naked before you and accept all men as my brothers." He paused. "Can you say that, Mat Chilling?"

  Mat shook his head. "I'm not certain all men want to be my brothers; particularly if I am planning, 'deus ex machina,' their lives. My occupation is to care for their souls, not plan their economies."

  "You can't expect them to find heaven with an empty belly. I've got to leave you good people. I guess my clothes are in the house. Don't get up, Sarah, I'll find them. Thanks for the tip, Yale. I'll shake up the good Doctor a bit by confessing my derelictions to him. Nothing like being able to anticpate your enemy. It throws him off guard."

  They watched Jack Leonard walk toward the house. "He's kind of nice," Ruthie said, smiling. "Even if he is nuts."

  "Didn't you know he had a card?" Mat asked Harry.

  "Never gave it a thought. We liked his company. Outside of Sarah he knows more about music than anyone I ever met. His father is president of a bank in Iowa. In my opinion he's just in rebellion -- a wide-eyed, wet-behind-the-cars revolutionist. He deosn't know what it's all about. These damned intellectuals just muddy up the waters. He doesn't know what it is to starve or stand in a soup line or work in the Marratt factory for a lousy eighteen dollars and fifty cents a week and support a family." Harry looked at Yale sourly. "You are another one just like him . . . the intellectual drinking champagne and dining on caviar while he worries about the plight of the working man."

  "I resent that. First, I'm not worried about the working man. Up until this afternoon I never gave him a thought except that mostly he looked unwashed."

  "Probably couldn't afford soap," Harry said.

  "I'm stabbed," Yale laughed. "Anyhow, I thank you, Harry Cohen, for opening up new doors for me. You've shown me people discussing values instead of golf scores. You've got me thinking so many thoughts that I've been here for two hours, with a stolen car, without even worrying. For the last hour I've forgotten that I'm naked as are you and your wife and your daughter and Mat Chilling. I will think about this. How something which is bad can be good."

  "You must come again," Sarah said, taking his hand, as Yale stood up to leave.

  Yale blushed. "You are a pretty woman, Mrs. Cohen. But I think Mat is right. You'll probably have to wear a bathing suit."

  "Mat, I've been dreaming," Yale said as they drove back to Midhaven. "This afternoon didn't happen. The Cohens aren't nice people. They're bastards and they go around naked for all the world to see. Jack Leonard is a hairy Rasputin spouting evil ideas. You are a disgrace to Midhaven College and the religious fraternity for getting mixed up with such people. That's the truth, isn't it?"

  In front of Doctor Tangle's house Mat opened the door and got out. "That's the truth, Yale Marratt. That's the truth as Doctor Amos Tangle would see it. That's the truth as Pat Marratt would see it. What makes you think it isn't the truth? Who are you, Yale Marratt? . . . God or something? It's worth thinking about." He waved, started to walk away from the car and then he grinned at Yale and said, "I live in Doctor Tangle's attic. Did you know that at night I'm closer to the Doctor's heaven than he is. . . ."

  8

  Yale drove the Packard around the back of the house and left it in place in the four-car garage. Before going in the house he tried to size up the situation. There was going to be hell to pay, that was certain. Pat would be doubly angry -- furious at Yale for disgracing him in front of Doctor Tangle and Bert Walsh, and even more wrathful at being stranded at the club without his car. Saturday afternoon after playing golf he usually came home, showered, had a few drinks and then drove back with Liz.

  The Saturday night dinner and dance at the club was an institution religiously attended by the members, who were prominent in
Midhaven society. Pat had once speculated that it took an income in excess of twenty thousand a year to be "accepted" at the Midhaven Country Club. The members were friends in inverse relationship to their income. Those at the high end of the monetary scale were Pat, Alfred Latham, Tom Morrison, and Henry Willis. Of the four men with their wives, the Marratts were the nouveau riche. Latham and Willis could trace their wealth and manufacturing lineage back to Civil War days. Morrison was a lawyer with inherited wealth, who had been a Republican Senator before the Rooseveltian deluge. Yale had heard Pat remark that he would be Governor someday. None of the four families were close friends. They seemed to draw their friends from the members of the lower end of the accepted income scale. Each, like a respected feudal lord, Yale thought, had accumulated a satrapy of admiring stooges whose respect was largely based on superior purchasing power. The Marratt coterie of friends represented a good cross section of the Midhaven's wealthier professional class and the more affluent automobile dealers and store owners.

  Yale noticed that Liz's car was gone. The garden truck was pulled in behind Yale's Ford. In the room over the garage Yale could see a light which meant that Whit Jones, the gardener and general handy man around the Marratt estate, was home for the day. Barbara Marratt's car was still in the garage. Here it was July, Yale thought, and he had seen Barbara only twice since school closed. A large bathroom separated their rooms. Several times he had heard her puttering around getting ready for a date. She never seemed to eat with the family. From Yale's point of view she lived in another world dominated by sleek young men who arrived in expensive convertibles, talked breezily with Pat or Liz, and then whisked her away to plays in New York, expensive night clubs or weekends at family estates. Liz approved heartily. All this was related to getting Barbara properly married, approximately one year from this July, when she would have her Bryn Mawr credentials. Pat had been already primed for what Yale expected would be the most expensive wedding ceremony in the history of Midhaven.