by Howard Fast
“What are you going to do, George?” Lois asked him suddenly.
“Do? How do you mean?”
“I mean us.”
“I didn’t think of doing anything,” he said slowly, thinking that their marriage had as much now as it ever had, as any marriage he had known. He was tired and he didn’t want to talk about it but sit down somewhere and rest and forget. But she kept on talking, and his resentment turned into a deep irritation.
“Is it wrong—is it so wrong, George, to want to keep something, what little I have left, and fight for it and struggle for it …”
She was not bright, not clever, he realized; she was a dull woman who never understood sufficiently to doubt. In a sudden surge of hatred and contempt for her, he told himself that nothing would prevent him from going away now. He wanted to hurt her, but found nothing to say that was precise, sufficient to the moment, and instead he left the table abruptly and went into the library. He mixed himself a drink, a long scotch that was very short on water, and drained it down almost at a gulp, shivering, reacting with a wave of nausea; he mixed a second drink—with more scotch and more water. Wanting something to read, he selected Donn Byrne’s Destiny Bay, which he remembered only vaguely from the time, ten or fifteen years before, when he had first read it, but which offered at least the recollection of a sunny Irish fairyland, a place where courtly men and lovely women moved with slow and stately dignity. He finished his second drink too quickly, so quickly that it sickened him, and he poured himself a third. He was a little drunk by now, but not so drunk that he didn’t realize how often of late he had retreated like this, very quick drinks and a chair and a book he only half saw. He began to read “The Tale of the Gipsy Horse,” which he had once, so long ago, read aloud to Clark, and the memory it brought back of a relationship which, through the murky haze of time, became so warm and good and gentle, made him almost maudlin. He had read only three or four pages, when the phone rang. He answered it himself, and Wilson’s voice told him:
“I’m sorry to bother you now, George, but Ham Gelb wants to know could we come over with Butler later?”
“Butler?”
“You remember, Fred Butler—he’s the man we talked to at the station.”
He remembered then, but he complained, “Why here? Why the devil can’t you and Gelb—”
“I’m sorry, George. He’s nervous, won’t come to any house in town.”
“All right, bring him out,” Lowell said.
Then Lowell went back to his book, but it was dull and tasteless. At this moment, more than anything else he wanted to call Elliott Abbott, but he couldn’t do that either.
23.It was quite late when Wilson came with Butler, and Gelb arrived a few minutes later. Lois had gone up to her room, and Lowell was drunk enough not to mind their being here, drunk enough to have the rough edges smoothed down, and he took them into the library with an almost courtly and old-country grace. He gravely mixed drinks for them, revealing the liquor he had consumed only by the deliberate drag of his motions. He was drunk, but not too drunk to walk, to talk, to sit down and listen to Gelb say, “You have all our apologies, Mr. Lowell. It’s not simply that Butler here has a case of nerves—I don’t want any aspect of this developing apart from you. I think it’s a curse of our system that people like yourself—and I say this with the deepest respect—withdraw themselves from an active participation.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Lowell said, and then continued gravely, “I would be laggard indeed if this old New England soil had no call upon me.”
“I want to get out of town tonight,” Butler said suddenly.
“We won’t take up too much of your time,” Gelb said, ignoring Butler.
“The man’s afraid,” Lowell smiled. “Thoreau said of fear that it comes from the soul, not from without. Who can do me harm, if my cause is a righteous cause?”
Gelb and Wilson exchanged glances. Lowell went on, with the same grave courtliness, “Surely, Mr. Gelb is capable of seeing that no harm comes to you. And if you wish to leave, I am certain you will not find us so ungrateful as to keep you here.”
Just a trace of a smile, across Gelb’s lips so quickly that Lowell could hardly be certain it was there. Butler was staring at him. “I want you to repeat to Mr. Lowell what you said to me about the meeting,” Gelb told Butler, explaining to Lowell, “This was a meeting that took place about half-past seven tonight, all the officers of the local, the strike committee, shop stewards, kitchen captains, picket captains—about one hundred and twenty people all told. That damfool judge let Ryan out on bail, and he stood up and told them the whole story. Tell it your way, Butler.”
“He spoke for about a half-hour,” Butler said. “Ryan’s a good speaker. You must have given him an awful going-over, from the way it sounded. Then the nigger spoke. The nigger said Curzon tried to kill him, and that didn’t sit so good. I think it was a mistake to go after the nigger like that,” Butler smiled, his first smile that evening, short and directed at Gelb, as if to say, “To hell with you. You loused it up,” and Gelb told him:
“We’re not asking what you think.”
“It’s just that we been having a lot of trouble with the shines in the local,” Butler went on. “The k’nucks don’t like the shines and neither do the micks. But this Joey Raye had them all pulling with him, and that’s why I think it was a mistake.”
“We’re not interested, Mr. Butler, in your thoughts, however lucid and grandiose they may be,” Lowell said politely, not looking at Butler, but at the bottom of his glass of scotch, the slip of ice dissolving, the misshapen hands, all fluid and restless in the motion of the drink. “Nor are we interested in opinion, even when substantiated by so variegated an experience as yours. We are interested in the fact, which Aristotle terms the sublime holy which dwelleth in all oracles.”
There was a long moment of silence, until Gelb said, “Go on, Butler.”
“Ryan called for mass picketing. He said that his idea was to turn out maybe two thousand, maybe more, tomorrow morning, as soon as dawn breaks and push the whole lot of them up against the Birch Street gate. He figured them to report in at the soup kitchens and the union hall, and then march straight up Concord Way to the plant. Someone from the hall yelled out, What about Jack Curzon if he tries to stop us?, and Ryan said that Jack Curzon and all the other pimps infecting the town could go down on a rubber duck, but if you got two thousand people marching, there wasn’t anything short of hell itself going to stop them.” Butler said it with satisfaction. His thin, toil-worn face wrapped around the words, and he delivered them to Gelb, who remarked quietly:
“He said that, did he?”
“That’s right.”
“And what did Noska say?” Gelb asked.
“Not much. He wanted to know what about the next day and the day after that, and how long did they suppose they could turn out a picket line that size? Ryan said he had seen it. done for ninety-two days, but he didn’t think this one would run that long. On that he got a big hand, and then Larry Cooney got up from the floor and asked Noska, Why didn’t he just resign and write over the leadership to the Communist Party?”
“What did Noska say?” Gelb asked, very quietly.
“He said that when the time came when he thought he couldn’t run the union any more, he’d tell them about it—and if Cooney wanted to make anything of that, Noska would see him later.”
“Didn’t Cooney get any support?” Wilson asked.
“A little—not much, just a little. You look what a smart hand this Ryan and this Joey Raye are playing. They don’t move a step without having everyone in that damn local with them. They wait until a thing sinks in, and then they give that it comes from them. That’s a smart hand.” He added after a moment, “But Noska ain’t happy. They got him by the tail, and he ain’t happy.”
“Few people are happy,” Lowell said surprisingly. “Very few people, Butler.” Watching, their faces, he noticed the reaction; they considered
him drunk. With slow, dragging thoughts, he surveyed and considered them, the shameful trio, a renegade, a brute, and a fool, and his superiority mounted on almost feather-like wings. So, he thought fancifully, must the patrician of ancient Rome have felt, with the barbarian and the plebeian louts to do his will, knowing that his will must be done, yet despising the tools. How clearly he saw them! And with what omniscience he understood them! They considered him drunk—and perhaps he was just a little tight, the warm looseness that permits thought to flow like water instead of like sluggish oil. He saw Wilson starting to rise, and he shook his head and waved a hand and said:
“No—I prefer to hear the rest, Tom. Allow Mr. Butler to continue.” And to Butler, “My apologies for interrupting you.”
Almost gritting his teeth, Gelb said, “Then they’re going out tomorrow, Butler? Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“And where does the party stand?”
“We had a meeting afterward in Joe Santana’s house.”
“Both branches?”
“Both. That’s why I want to get out of here. They know there’s a stool inside. How long do you think it’s going to be before someone puts the finger on me?”
“Turning yellow?” Gelb asked softly.
“I take care of my skin—nobody else does.”
“What did the party decide?”
“They’re turning out with the big line—almost all of them, except a few, like the old man, the professor. They’re going to try to get as many outside people in the town to go along with them, but my guess is they won’t get many. That’s all. They talked a little about some food the party over in Hudson, New York, and up in Rutledge, Vermont, promised them, but mostly it was about the big line tomorrow.” He sat there stiffly, ill at ease in Lowell’s comfortable library, turning his cap round and round, a small, ordinary-looking man, who in appearance was neither vicious nor dangerous, the kind of man you see passing and then forget a moment later, a tired man. Lowell granted him a muddled pity; there, it seemed to Lowell, was man, man miserable and small and contemptible.
“I ought to get a bonus for this;” Butler complained. “You offered Ryan money—you offered Noska two grand, and I work for peanuts.”
“Did Noska say that?” Gelb snapped.
“Sure he said it.”
“The son of a bitch,” Gelb whispered.
“I work for peanuts,” Butler went on. “I got to get out of here tonight. I got a family. How do you expect me to travel?”
“What do you want?” Wilson demanded.
“Five hundred.”
“Give it to him,” Lowell said wearily. “Give it to him and let him go. Give it to him and take him out of here. Take the stench of him out of here.”
24.It seemed to Fern that this evening, in some way, marked her growing-up. She was not in love with Frank Norman, but in her mind there was the simple expression, “What a nice boy!” He hadn’t pawed her except once, going up the toboggan drag, and then she was curled up against him, and he had done it in such a mawkishly obvious way that it became nice and straightforward. She kissed him then, and she kissed him once more, when they were in the car going home. They had dinner, danced, and then went out to try the slope. It wasn’t very good, the snowfall being light, but they had five runs before the surface wore off, and it was wonderful, clean fun. After that, they tramped across the links in the moonlight, went back to the club for a nightcap, mulled wine, which neither of them liked but which was the proper thing to drink when you came in out of the snow, and finally drove home. The evening left Fern with a warm, mature feeling that at the same time contained something childlike and innocent. It was that way at the hotel, where she dropped him, and where he kissed her lightly and gently on the lips. She drove home singing, and entered the house that way. It was quite late, but there were lights on in the hallway and in the library.
In the library, sprawled in a big leather chair, snoring heavily, his head lolling back, a glass on the floor beside him and the puddle the drink had made when it dropped from his hand, was her father. Control had left his long handsome face; the mouth was open, and a drool of dry spittle crawled over his chin—which, with his uncombed hair and the shadow of new beard on his cheeks, gave him the appearance of a stranger, a particularly unappetizing stranger. When the first shock had passed, the first horrified reaction to him as a man dead, a thought quickly dissipated by the snores, Fern looked at him with complete distaste. Literally, she had to force herself to touch him, to shake him, and then to slap his cheeks, but it produced no other reaction than a few mumbled words an incoherent sentence that came from the deeply unconscious, and then he stiffened into sleep with decided resistance. The tongue came out and licked over the lips, and a second line of spittle appeared alongside the first. Louder than she imagined, Fern cried, “Get up, do you hear me? Get up, damn you, you filthy pig, get up!” Then she ran upstairs and into her mother’s room.
“Fern, were you shouting downstairs?” her mother asked, in that controlled, patient tone that the girl hated so.
“I’m glad you’re up. Your husband’s downstairs, stinking drunk, and I can’t wake him. Perhaps you can.”
“I don’t particularly want to,” Lois said, and now Fern could make out her figure in bed, a bed-jacket on, a book on the cover beside her, as if she had just turned off the light.
“Do you want him to be there in the morning, so that Jane and the others can walk in and see him?”
“If that’s his pleasure,” Lois answered, a child’s pout in her voice.
Fern ran downstairs, furious, half hysterical at this point, picked up the ice bucket, and emptied the melted contents over her father’s face. He stirred into consciousness then, but slowly and sluggishly, blinking his eyes until he was able to make out the girl, grinning as he said, “Hello, Ferney,” and then pain coming, replacing the grin with a whimper. “I got a terrible head, Ferney. What time is it?”
“After one.”
“I’m tired, Ferney,” he said. “I’m tired and I got a terrible head. Will you pour me a drink?”
“I’ll make some coffee.”
“A drink would be better for me, Ferney.”
“I’ll make you some coffee,” she said.
But when he tried to sleep, he felt that it was the coffee keeping him awake. After he finished it, Fern helped him upstairs and into his study. She took his shoes off and left him sitting there, on the couch, with just one lamp to light the room. He got his tie off, his jacket, and then his pants, and managed to stumble to the closet and find a heavy woolen robe, which he wrapped around himself. Then he lay down on the couch, inert, conscious of himself without shape and without any real substance, a jelly-like amoeba-like mass. In his cloudy thoughts, his arms and legs, and his head too, were without relation to the reality; they grew and they dwindled; he became headless and his arms extended a thousand yards; his feet disappeared, and his body swelled to enormous proportions; his eyes popped out and occupied all estimable space, and then they became nothing and he was blind.
In spite of the robe, he was cold, and was afraid too. He tried to cling to his thoughts, know them, control them, make them the thoughts of a person who inhabited a knowable, reasonable world. He groped back into his youth, where there was sunlight and assurance and confidence, but his youth was an enormous place where he wandered haplessly, a cavern, a drunken hall fit for his drunken dreams, a place where the years were a calendar dealt like a card deck. He remembered the first time he had seen Lois, the sister of a friend at school, tall and cool and assured as a goddess, and his memory of youth turned into the dreadful realization that youth was gone and irreplaceable. His life was gone and put away; he lay there facing death, and the fear of death gripped his heart like a coiled wire drawn tight. The past was an instant, and in the same way, the future became only an instant, a momentary prelude to extinction, the end of all, the finality, the horror beyond horror. It went into his stomach, the fear;
it gripped his bowels; it permeated him, and he lay there on the couch, his face in his hands, weeping drunkenly.
25.But until the last moment, his son Clark had not feared death. At that time, so long ago, so sadly, immensely, incomparably long ago, belonging to history, belonging to the shadowed past where the dead live, his son Clark was taken, cold, shivering, wet, and all full of the dejection and stupidity of being taken prisoner, a tall, handsome lad with three days’ beard on his face, who said to the man next to him, simply, “Well, this is it, and what a hell of a note!” But at least it was over for the time being, and soon the war would be over too—because then the signs of the end were unmistakable. And for Clark Lowell, who had never seen a fascist before he came to Europe, or thought about a fascist, or considered a fascist, or hated a fascist, or liked one either, for that matter, it was a moment that might just as well come. It happened, and you were taken prisoner; it was a puzzle the way war was a puzzle, this war, this whole goddamned huge disordered and disorganized war to the huge homesick army and to Lieutenant Clark Lowell also, who stood in the snow, feet spread, until it happened, until he saw it begin to happen, and then all of the moment until the end but enough of a moment for fascism to become more than a preachment, an idea or an ideology. He himself was shot coolly in the head by an SS officer who stood next to him.
The newspaper reporter who wrote the story in which Clark Lowell’s name was first mentioned was a little more alive, a little more curious and human than most of his colleagues. While they wrote in their notebooks, he knelt in the snow next to what had been Clark Lowell, and turned the body over. Strangely, his first quick impression of the face, all blue and purple with frost, was that this man had been beautiful. Except for the awful hole the Luger made, the boy slept, a shadow of doubt on the waxen face, a shadow of uncertainty, a hint of incredulity, but also the peaceful conviction that brings repose.
