Heed the Thunder

by Jim Thompson

  “Certainly they have,” exclaimed Jeff, addressing the circle at large. “But don’t you see what the railroad’s done, in this case? Don’t you see that you can pin a bigger assessment on them and there’s no way they can squirm out of it? Why they’ve hung it on themselves—they’ve virtually asked for it!”

  The thing was so simple to him that he was almost annoyed at their vacant frowns. Even Courtland, smart as he was supposed to be, didn’t grasp the point.

  “Look,” he said, suppressing a sigh, “the railroad’s making more money in this county than it ever made before, isn’t it? They’re making more money, and they’re doing it with a reduced service. You’ll admit that, won’t you?”

  Yes, they were quite willing to agree on that.

  “Well, then, if they’re making more money—if they’re drawing a bigger income from the same investment—then, by golly, that investment is worth more. It can be taxed for more, and by gosh they’ll have to pay it! They’ve hung themselves with their own rope!”

  They saw it at last. Smiles twitched at their shrewd mouths. They chuckled. They roared with laughter.

  “By damn,” swore old Simp, “I knew Jeff would figure some way to squirm out of it!”

  He slapped his knee, shaking with merriment, and the others beamed with approval at their ultra-sharp representative. Warmed, nurtured by their good feeling, another inspiration came to the young attorney.

  He raised a hand, and almost immediately the room fell into respectful, smiling quiet.

  “Now here’s something else,” he said airily. “It’s a way for you to prod the railroad into better service, and also to help yourself. Tom, you’ve seen these automobiles they call trucks, haven’t you?”

  “Sure, I have,” said the Chandler dealer, and he explained to the others: “A truck is about the same thing as a automobile, only it can pull more and it’s got a wagon bed on it—any kind of a bed you want. I seen lots of ’em in Grand Island and Omaha where they got the roads to run ’em on.”

  “Just suppose,” said Jeff, “you had the roads to run ’em on out here? They’d sell plenty fast, wouldn’t they, and they’d be real competition for the railroad.”

  They looked at him incredulously, albeit politely, for after all he had pulled one plump rabbit out of the hat this evening.

  “But you ain’t got the roads, Jeff.”

  “But you can have ’em,” the attorney insisted. “With the increased taxes you can squeeze out of the railroad, you’ll be able to drop the rate on the rest of the county. They’ll stand for an issue of road bonds, when you show ’em what it means to ’em, and be tickled pink for the chance. Alf”—he addressed Courtland directly for the first time—“there’d be some good honest money for the bank in a road-bond issue.”

  “Yes, there would,” the banker agreed.

  “And, Tom, it’d mean a lot to—”

  “Oh, I’m convinced,” the motor-car dealer declared roundly.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Ludlow. “It’d take a sight of bonding and the county’s already pretty deep in debt.”

  “You don’t have to pay for it all, gosh-darn it,” said Jeff. “You can make the state kick in. I’ll show you how. You ain’t worried about the state spending its money here in the county, are you?”

  Grinning, they denied that they were. The more the state could be milked for, the better.

  “Here’s the whole rub, as I see it,” said Tod Myers. “You won’t be able to build outside the county. You won’t be able to hook up with anything. And unless you can do that, you ain’t hurting the railroad any, and it’s damned little you’re helping yourself. Not enough to justify the expense.”

  It was a thought that had been foremost in all their minds, and even Courtland and Epps were forced to agree to the objection.

  Jeff buried his head in his hands and moaned.

  “Oh, gol-lee,” he cried. And his exasperation was so real that they burst out laughing again.

  “All right, Jeff, boy,” said Frank Henshaw, fondly. “You tell us how to do it.”

  “Why, don’t you see? If you build to the county line, you’re going to force the other counties to build roads. If they didn’t, you’d drain all the trade into Verdon. They’ve got to build. You can force their hand!”

  “Well, by George,” said Tod Myers.

  “He’s right, by God!” exclaimed Tom Epps.

  “I tell you,” said old Simp, “you’ve got to get up early in the morning to get ahead of Jeff.”

  Wilhelm Deutsch added his guttural approval to the general one. Along with the others, as they filed out, he gave the attorney a hearty handshake and a forthright nod which promised his valuable political support. To his way of thinking, it did not make much difference who was elected to office. The pattern of government was such that, regardless of the original stature of the office holder, he inevitably became warped and dwarfed in the attempt to exist within it.

  As for Jeff: after his first exhilaration had died away, he became increasingly apprehensive as to what the railroad’s attitude toward him would be. For he was positive that they would learn he had double-crossed them.

  He returned to Lincoln and took up his quarters again in the hotel, and every time there was a knock on his door, every time he saw the fat lobbyist, Cassidy, at the capitol, he shivered with dread.

  Then there came a day, the following spring, when an important piece of legislation affecting the railroad was before the legislature. It had to do with restraining the ’roads in their evil practice of rebating; and Jeff, seeing a way to square himself, got up to make an earnest speech in the railroad’s behalf. That was what he got up to do, but he did not. Just as inspiration had come to him that precarious night in the hotel room in Verdon, so one came to him now:

  He talked for thirty minutes—and he ripped the railroad up one side and down the other. He accused them of every crime in the statutes, with a few of his own invention for good measure; and he was so fiery, so convincing, and so obviously sincere, that the restraining measure passed by a landslide. Practically every paper in the state carried his speech, and a great many his picture. But, most important of all, Cassidy came to see him that night.

  Jeff had been taking a bath and, country-fashion, he had neglected to lock his door. And when he entered the bedroom there was Jiggs Cassidy, seated comfortably in a big chair, just as he had been that first morning.

  Jeff’s eyes widened innocently.

  “Did you want to use the bathroom?” he inquired.

  “Well, not right now. Maybe later.” Cassidy motioned with his cigar. “Ever think about moving, Senator?”

  “Why, no,” said Jeff, “I kind of like it here. I’ve got a little arrangement with the hotel-keeper’s association so that it doesn’t cost me much.”

  “Ummm.” The fat man blinked fishily. “A lot of the boys do that. But I wasn’t talking about your room, Senator.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not your room. We think you’re kind of cramped, the place you’re in. You bounce around too much. Not that we blame you, y’understand”—he tapped the ash from his cigar—“it’s just that you’re in a little place all by yourself with everyone looking at you, so you kind of feel like you got to bounce. We think you ought to move, Senator.”

  “Up?”

  “Attorney general.”

  Jeff nodded seriously.

  “I’m always willing to follow the dictates of my constituents, Jiggs. Particularly the large ones.”

  “Umm. Most of the boys are.”

  The fat man blinked again, arose heavily, and shook hands. He took a step toward the door.

  “One more thing, Senator. Do you think it will rain?”

  “It always has, Jiggs.”

  “I believe you’re right,” said Cassidy. “Thank you, very much.”

  He waddled out while Jeff watched, grinning.

  There was no thick envelope on the dresser this time, and he would not have ac
cepted it if there had been. He had passed the envelope stage in his career. Pacing back and forth in his delight, he thought suddenly of Alfred Courtland, even as he always seemed to think of him just at those moments when he was feeling his best. And the expression on his boy’s face was not nice to see.…

  23

  Goddamit,” said Sherman Fargo, “there’s just one thing wrong with you. You don’t know nothing about farming.”

  Alfred Courtland smiled with weary politeness. It was past him now to longer feel angry at these people. He had become used to them, and he hated himself too greatly.

  “Well, you don’t, Alf,” said Sherman.

  “Perhaps you’re right, Sherm.”

  “Hell, I know I’m right.”

  Courtland’s face twitched. He massaged the bridge of his nose between his thumb and second finger; then, realizing that his hand was shaking, he ceased that. It had been four—almost five—years now since the Omaha doctors had passed sentence on him. He felt, or believed he felt, many indications that that sentence was about to be executed. His life had become a sort of dull, waiting horror, the only escape from which was drink. And that was no escape—only a horror of another kind.

  And the affairs of the bank were in none too good shape. He had missed out on the road bonds, doubtless, he believed, through Jeff Parker’s influence. Yet he did not blame Jeff for what he had done or for what he might do. Whatever Jeff or anyone else thought of him, it could not be as bad as what he thought of himself. He wished only that they would leave him alone, or dispatch him quickly. In his rotting brain the world had become a vast prison for his torture.

  “Well,” said Sherman, “what do you say, Alf?”

  “I’m sorry, Sherm.”

  “But, Alf, it’s crazy! I can’t plant wheat another year.”

  “Well, you’ve got all that equipment, Sherm. The thresher, and the combine, and those automatic seeders—”

  “Hell, I had to have them, didn’t I? I couldn’t farm the ground I’ve been farming without the equipment. I ain’t bought a damned thing I didn’t need!”

  “I know. I know you didn’t,” agreed the banker. “But now you have all that stuff and you’re proposing not to use it. You have that big investment in machinery, and—”

  “I’ve got a hell of a sight bigger one in land!”

  Courtland laid his hands on the edge of the desk. He pulled them back and shoved them into his pockets. By an immense effort, he managed to hold his voice down to a decent, patient level.

  “I see your point, Sherm. Now try to see mine. Banking’s changed a lot in the last few years. There’s half again as much credit as there used to be. I can’t handle all my own paper. I handle it, all right, but I have to have the help of the big insurance companies and mortgage firms in the East. I have to make loans that I can borrow on myself.…”

  “Well, I don’t know nothing about that,” said Sherman. “All I know is—”

  “I’m trying to explain. I write to one of these Eastern companies and say this. I say: ‘Here’s a man with seven hundred and fifty acres of land. He’s been raising wheat for the last five years and he knows the business. He’s got everything necessary for raising wheat. Last year his crop produced so much, and the year before it was so much, and so on.’ Do you see what I’m driving at, Sherm? It’s all clear-cut for them. They can take out their pencils and see in a minute that I’ve made a smart loan. They—”

  “But, goddamit, it ain’t smart!”

  “Please, Sherm. I’m just trying to explain their attitude. I’m just trying to show you how they look on these things. Whatever you or I might feel, they’d think it was a good loan. But if I go to them and say: ‘Here’s a man that’s been primarily a wheat farmer. He has thousands of dollars tied up in machinery for the raising of wheat. Now he proposes to stop growing wheat. He wants to put a hundred and sixty into corn, and forty into potatoes, and eighty into cane, and sixty into beets, and so on’—if I tell them that they won’t touch the loan with a ten-foot pole and—and by God I can’t help it!”

  Sherman shoved back his chair. “You don’t need to get so huffy about it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m—I’m not quite myself today.”

  “Well, wheat it is,” said Sherman surlily, and he rolled out the door, banging it behind him.

  Damn Alf to hell, anyway. He was worse than old Bark. Bark didn’t tie you up to ruining your land just to get a crop loan.

  He looked down the street, scowling. He swaggered off toward his wagon, stockily shouldering his way through the Saturday crowd. He had brought the wagon today because Josephine couldn’t get in the buggy and she had wanted to come, although, since she hadn’t been to town in two years, he couldn’t see why the hell she’d had to come today.

  She was seated on a stout plank laid across the wagon box. Behind her, on a second plank, were the two oldest girls, now quite the young ladies. Little Ruthie, no longer so little, sat on the curb drawing pictures in the dust.

  Her father jerked her to her feet, roughly. Sneering, he looked at the sunburned trio in the wagon box.

  “What the hell you sittin’ there for?” he demanded of his wife. “You think maybe somebody’s going to take your picture?”

  The girls tittered with embarrassment. Their mother, a sunbonnet the size of a coal hod on her bloated head, tried to frown.

  “You know why,” she hissed.

  “Huh-no h-I huh-don’t h-know w’y,” mocked Sherman. “I thought you was all going to the hotel. What do you want me to do—bring you a bale of hay?”

  The truth was, of course, when he stopped to think about it, that Josephine couldn’t get down from the wagon without something that came nearly parallel with the wagon bed for her to step upon. At home, she had to enter and alight from the porch. In town, the hotel hitching-block was the only thing high enough and strong enough to fill her needs.

  Sherman guessed that he shouldn’t have stayed in the bank so long and left her sitting there. But why couldn’t she have stayed at home, dammit, where she belonged? Embarrassed by her, and yet abashed by his own actions, he drove to the hotel.

  He had to displace the plank seats and remove one side of the box, since she could not step over it. She stood up and the two older girls took her by the elbows, and Sherman stood in front of her his hands slightly outstretched. She edged toward the side of the bed, and the wheels on the opposite side rose from the road. Sherman cursed. He told her to watch what she was doing. And poor Josephine, flustered and unable to see anything that was not five feet in front of her, missed the step.

  Her great foot with its stove-pipe leg went down between the hitching block and the wagon bed. Groaning and panting, she slipped down upon the other knee to save breaking the imprisoned member. And her dress went up, exposing her voluminous flour-sack drawers. Tittering, the red-faced girls tried to rearrange her clothes. Sherman howled profane instructions. Josephine groaned and panted and whined. Edie Dillon came running out of the hotel.

  “Now you just stop that kind of talk, Sherm Fargo!” she exclaimed. “A fine doggone husband you are!”

  “Dammit, Edie, why didn’t she stay to home?”

  “Well, now, you just get busy and help her. Can you lean forward, Josephine? Across the hitching block?”

  “H-I guess so.…”

  “That’s the way, that’s fine,” said Edie, soothingly. “Sherm, you get around there and raise the wagon bed a little so she can get her leg free.”

  Sherman said a word or two more, but did as he was bid. They got Josephine sprawled across the top of the block on her stomach. Then, taking her legs, they pivoted her around until her back was to the walk. She let her knees down and was raised from them to her feet. At last the frightful adventure was over, and she stood safely on the walk.

  Edie led the tottering mountain of flesh toward the door, casting one last disapproving glance at her brother.

  “You ought to be ashamed,” she said.

 
“I am,” said Sherman bitterly. “Goddamned ashamed.”

  Looking around quickly, he tried to catch the eye of some of the loiterers who had been watching the scene. But they, wisely, had all moved on. He mopped his face with his handkerchief, thrust his short pipe into the corner of his mouth, and went off toward the dry goods and grocery store.

  The loafers in the place were strangely silent when he entered, and he thought he caught a fleeting grin on old Simp’s weathered face. Well, let them laugh, by God. Just let ’em give out with one little peep! He treated the merchant to a long, hard stare; then pulled the needs list from his pocket and slapped it down upon the counter.

  “Think you can get that filled between now and next summer?” he demanded.

  “When’d you get in such a big hurry?” demanded the merchant spryly. “Someone set your watch up on you?”

  “Now never you mind about that,” said Sherman. “Just get busy. And don’t short-weight me on everything like you usually do.”

  Old Simp’s mouth became a thin dry line. The Fargo family had been trading with him for nigh on to thirty-five years; he’d known Sherman when he wasn’t nothing more than a snot-nosed kid. And now here he was hollering frog and expecting him to jump.

  “You just go soak your head,” he advised.

  “What’s that?” snarled Sherman. “What’d you say to me, Simp?”

  “I said,” repeated the storekeeper, “to go soak your head. What you in such a big hurry about? You’re going to be in town all day, ain’t you?”

  Sherman glowered at him, thrusting his jaw out; and the old man cackled.

  “Durned if you don’t look more like a bullfrog every day, Sherm! Don’t he, fellers?”

  The fellers squirmed uneasily and said nothing. One or two of them decided that they had to be going.

  “Is this here a store or not?” inquired Sherman, in the manner of a stranger in the village. “Maybe I got in the wrong place.”

  “You ought to know whether it’s a store or not,” snapped Simp.