“Who’s the man who died?”
“Sam Zehedi, Z-E-H-E-D-I, I think it goes. A grocer, about thirty. We were holed up in a filling station on State Highway 7, just two carloads of people who couldn’t get through the flood. The sick man is, I’m sorry to say, my very dear friend Henry Starkman, the Burgess of Hebertown. In the morning when we realized he had pneumonia we carried him about twelve miles into town. He’s in that improvised hospital they have there. When I saw him last his condition was poor. He is about sixty-five. He was in my car when we got stopped; we were looking at conditions and making plans. On a small scale, what Mr. Akslund is here for.” Cue to Sharon!
Sharon said to the congressman, “The networks are probably trying to get mobile broadcasting units in right now. They should be set up and sending by midnight. By morning they’ll have all they need to lead the disaster strong in the breakfast newscasts.”
It was a reminder that they had better get down to brass tacks on a concrete proposal for relief and reconstruction. Dramatically issued from the site of the flood, it would be unbeatable.
They were rolling slowly into Hebertown proper.
Artie said to the driver, “Drive around for a while.”
“Yes,” said Akslund. “Show me everything.”
Sharon added: “Drop me off at the school. I’ll get the police chief to find a room for us somehow. We’ll have work to do.”
“Lots of it,” Akslund said thoughtfully, looking through the window at the wreckage.
No cars!
Mrs. Goudeket rubbed her forehead thoughtfully. She had tried two garages, and no cars for rent. Chief Brayer, they said. He had commandeered them, if you please, had them driven to a “motor pool.” The couple of cars going through the streets that she had flagged down were “on missions.” See Chief Brayer.
Well, she would see this new dictator, this Hitler of Hebertown. She reached the schoolhouse, and there, sure enough, was the motor pool in the teachers’ parking lot across the street—a strange collection of vehicles ranging from a two-ton farm truck to somebody’s little Rambler. There was a man with a clipboard at a table, on guard.
She sniffed and walked into the marble lobby of the school, which was crowded and noisy with the talk of fifty busy people. There were two uniformed men at card tables; one was in a fireman’s queer, boxy uniform cap and the other must be this Brayer.
He was talking to a boy scout—at a time like this!—but she waited until he was finished. Then she burst out, “I’ve got to have a car. I’m Mrs. S. Goudeket of Goudeket’s Green Acres. I’ve got to get back to my place. Now.”
The mustached old man looked up. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We need all the cars for public service. Maybe later after some help comes in. Why don’t you—”
“Did you hear who I am?” she yelled.
“I don’t give a damn who you are,” he yelled back, standing up. “The town is drowning. People are sick. People are looting and burning. We’re trying to hold it together for a few hours until help comes. Don’t come here grabbing for a car. Go and find something useful to do. They need help in the hospital, people to make beds and carry slops. You can do that, or if you don’t want to do that you can at least get out of everybody’s way!”
He sat down and turned to a man wearing a handkerchief around his arm and immediately was in thoughtful, intense conversation with him.
Mrs. Goudeket recoiled a step, then walked slowly from the lobby.
Maybe—maybe he was right. There was Polly, waiting for her.
She said to the girl, “No cars. We should go work in the hospital they set up for a while, Polly. They need help.”
Polly Chesbro nodded. Together they walked to the improvised excuse for a hospital.
Mrs. Goudeket was thinking: Mr. Goudeket wouldn’t have stormed up to that busy old man. He would have seen that making beds in the hospital right now is more important than whether Green Acres is in the black this year. Mr. Goudeket may have been right about more things than I ever knew before…
She wondered idly how the orange groves in Palestine for which they had donated year after year were growing.
Ten minutes later Sharon was at the desk, telling Chief Brayer: “You’ve got to. He’s the head of three committees. He can turn the faucet and a million, five million dollars runs into Hebertown. Or he can leave the faucet shut. Think of your town, Chief I”
Brayer sighed and wished Henry were there. At last he beckoned to one of the deputies and said, “Take two men. Go to the new Fielding place, that little ranch-house thing on Sullivan. Turn everybody out. We need it for Congressman Akslund and his, uh, staff. Leave a man there to see that nobody sneaks back in. Better leave a man there as long the Congressman’s there, for a guard and in case there are any messages.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Sharon said warmly. “You’re doing the right thing. I’ll just wait here; they’ll pick me up. And can you let us have a guide to show us the way to the house?”
“Sure,” said Brayer. “God, it must be smooth to be a congressman!”
They had dropped off the AP man, and Artie could talk freely. “Another thing I didn’t want to say in front of him, Halmer, is the Southern angle. Those Democrats from Dixie are going to be swarming around the valley offering sites and tax write-offs and hell knows what to persuade damaged industries to relocate. This means you build up the Democratic South and drain strength out of our state. Unemployment and discontent. We’re G.O.P. here, but not by such a margin that a sharp local depression couldn’t put the state over the line. The cities, frankly, we lost last time but we have the counties as of now. If the valley isn’t saved, Halmer, it might cost us a senator—and you know what that would mean. Knocking off Bolling and his sixteen years of seniority and the committee appointments that go with it would be a very serious thing for us nationally. I’m not exaggerating when I say that a large, prompt injection of cash is vital to everything you and I stand for.” Akslund hooded his wise old eyes and nodded.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Polly Chesbro went through the ranks of litters to the one on which the burgess lay. A nurse in the pinstriped cotton fatigue uniform had shoved a thermometer under his tongue and was looking at her watch.
“How is he, Lieutenant?” Polly asked.
The nurse whipped out the thermometer, read it, jotted down a figure on her clipboard and said, “Holding his own. Excuse me.” She shook down the thermometer, popped it into a glass that held many thermometers, picked out another one and slipped it under the tongue of the person in the next litter, a girl of ten with a dry, burning face and dry, burning eyes.
In the marble lobby of the schoolhouse Mickey Groff was studying an extraordinary organization that had sprung up within a very few hours. Card tables had been set up and conference tables dragged from offices and classrooms. For an ad-hoc government with the wires out you wanted everything under one roof, in one room, instead of scattered through a town hall. When a man came to you with trouble you could fix, this way there was no phone to pick up; this way you called across the room and things happened fast.
There were two main centers around the fire chief and the police chief. They retained roughly their old jurisdictions, respectively over the destructiveness of nature and the cussedness of man. While Groff watched, a woman came coolly to the fire chief in her turn to say that her undermined house was beginning to sag and she had twenty refugees. They had gone out into the street, could he find places for them? And, as an afterthought, could they do anything about the house? The fire chief called to three boy scouts, part of his combined field force and housing records. One knew a big thirteen-room place on the outskirts which, when he last checked, had only twelve people in it. Thirteen rooms. Space for twenty more. And the house?
“George.” the fire chief called to a brassarded man, “get some people, a dozen if you can, and see if you can do anything about Mrs. Comden’s place. She says it’s beginning to lean badly. Be a pity to see it g
o now.”
George, an electric-company rigger, said, “What kind of a house, Mrs. Comden? How big? Which way’s it going?”
“Frame. Two-story, eight rooms. It’s going into the street, maybe gone by now, I don’t know.”
“What’s in the back yard? Do you have a back yard?”
She passed her hand vaguely across her forehead, brushing back her hair. “Back yard? Just a back yard. A vegetable garden…”
“Good,” said George with satisfaction. “I know where there’s some wire rope and oil drums. We’ll dig in the drums for deadmen and anchor the house to them with the rope. I’ll need a truck, Chief.”
“You get a car,” the chief said. “Sorry.” He scribbled a note which would go to the guardian of the improvised motor pool outside. George walked off with it slowly, collecting waiting men. He picked them big and burly. The woman trailed apathetically after. The chief was already engaged with a man who wanted a gang to clear away snapped and fallen electrical cables which would set his house afire—and, as an afterthought, the neighborhood it was in—the instant current came through again. He got two men with axes and a felling saw to cut away the fallen tree that had brought down the cables.
It was getting dim in the marble lobby, in spite of the tall windows. On a couple of the card tables candles stuck in their own wax were being lit; across the room somebody was pumping up a Coleman lamp. It lit, in a dazzling green-white flare, and the gloom was gone for a while.
On the police chiefs side the reports were more bitter. “Goons from across the river, Red. So far they’re just hanging around and talking it up, but they’ve got bottles. It’s just a matter of time before they get bra-a-ave enough to smash my window and grab the furs. There’s a dozen of them and I’ve got to have at least six men. So help me, if I don’t get six men I’m going to kill the first drunken s.o.b. that makes a move at our place. I’ve got my brother there with the shotgun now—”
“Skip the rest, Pete. You and your brother are two able-bodied men and you’ve got a shotgun. You don’t need any help.”
“I don’t want to blast ‘em!” the furrier wailed. “Why do we hire you guys, anyway?”
“We’re spread too thin, Pete. We’ll send the patrol car past and put a scare into your friends, but don’t expect us to tie up six men for every shop on Broad Street. We’re spread too thin and we have to keep moving. Matter of fact, I ought to let your brother handle the store himself and deputize you right here and now.”
“No you don’t, Red!” The man backed away and was gone.
A wide-eyed scout darted up and gave old Red the three-fingered salute. “Big fight, Chief, down on the river, foot of Sullivan. I don’t know what it’s about, maybe one of the boats—”
The chief yelled at two waiting men in Legion caps: “Take a car. They’re trying to take over one of the ferries at Sullivan Street. Break it up and keep patroling the river. We’ve got to keep the boats in our hands.” The men stolidly moved off to the car pool.
Mickey Groff knew by then where he’d be useful. He went up to the chief’s table and said, “I’d like to be deputized.”
The old man stared at him. “And go looting with a badge? Who’re you, mister? I haven’t seen you in town before.”
“Mickey Groff. From New York. I came in to see your burgess about taking over the old Swanscomb Mill for a factory of mine.”
“Groff. Henry talked about your offer. All right—Groff.” The old man suddenly grinned. “Think I’ll even trust you with a gun. Know how to use one?”
“Yes. The army.”
The chief snorted. “Army! I hoped you might be a hunter. Well, maybe you’ll do. Put up your hand.”
Groff did.
In a rapid mumble the old man asked him whether he swore to uphold and defend the laws and constitution of the State of Pennsylvania, so help him God. Groff said he would, and the old man said he hereby appointed him a special deputy policeman of the Borough of Heber-town. “And,” he added, “I sure hope this is legal because I’ve been doing it all day. Sign your name on this list. Clarence, give this man a thirty-eight. Have you got a handkerchief, mister? No? Clarence, give the man a clean handkerchief to tie around his arm.”
He clanked down an enormous revolver and five cartridges on the table.
“Five?” Groff asked.
“Army!” the chief snorted. “The chamber under the hammer is kept empty in civilian life, Groff. Let me see you load it.”
Fishing in his memory, Groff broke the revolver, set the safety, loaded it and closed it, being very careful where he pointed the thing.
The chief said, “I guess I won’t have to take it back after all. Now you stick around and wait. Talk to Murphy over there. He’s been a deputy before this.”
Murphy was small and quiet. He volunteered that he was a plumber and that there’d be a lot of work for him after all this was over. He showed Groff how to carry his pistol in the waistband of his pants and said cautioningly, “Of course we ain’t going to use them, you understand.”
Groff, who had his doubts about it, said he understood and watched while a battery-operated receiver-transmitter on another of the card tables came to life under the ministrations of a sixteen-year-old boy. The fire chief and the police chief both charged over; so after a while did a doctor from the outside when the word reached him. The three tried simultaneously to dictate messages to the bulldozed teenager.
The fire chief wanted chemical trucks sent in, as many as could be rounded up. The police chief wanted National Guardsmen, at least a battalion. The doctor wanted to know where the hell the goddam army field hospital was. It was an interesting fight and Mickey Groff was sorry when a trouble call came in and he and Murphy missed the end of it.
The man in the Legion cap said, “You best give me that gun, fella. I can handle it.”
“So can I,” said Mickey Groff. He wasn’t nasty about it; but the man in the Legion cap shrugged and let it go. “This the place?” Groff asked as the car stopped.
“This is the place.” The Legionnaire scowled worriedly. “They took all the boats across the river. You see anything over there?”
Groff got out of the car and looked. It was full dark now, and the river was wide. There were lights of some kind on the opposite bank, but he couldn’t have told you what they were. Flashlights and electric lanterns, most likely.
But they looked a little bit close.
Groff ordered, “Turn the car to the right. Put the brights on.” The Legionnaire cramped the wheels around and inched forward. He kicked the button of the highway-beam headlights.
“They’re coming, all right,” said Groff. Shapes were lying on the water, punctuated with hand lights.
“Sons of bitches,” said the Legionnaire bitterly. Now there’ll be hell to pay. Four of us against every goddam goon on the river—and Harry and me ain’t even got guns.”
“Take it easy, Walt,” Murphy said. But in the reflection from the headlights Groff could see his face was worried.
Murphy, who had appointed himself in charge of the detail, sent the Legionnaire named Walt after the Legionnaire named Harry; and he disposed them as best he could. Groff got the place of honor—he had a gun. He was put on the end of a little loading jetty; Murphy took a position on a floating landing platform; Walt and Harry were left to stand by the car, to keep the lights on the boats.
And the boats came on, four of them, put-putting through the water in convoy formation. Funny, thought Groff abstractedly; if I were them I’d come ashore upstream a little way. This is the natural place for deputies to be waiting for them. If they used their heads they’d know that, and they’d come ashore somewhere else—
He thanked his lucky stars that the goons evidently were not using their heads.
Harry, behind the wheel of the car, was making a fantastic amount of racket grinding gears, racing the motor, shifting back and forth to pick out one boat after another with the headlights. Damn fool, thought Groff aggrieved
ly. He could hardly hear the deputy named Murphy shouting at the approaching boats. There was some kind of answer from them, but he couldn’t make that out at all.
But they were getting dose.
Groff carefully dropped to one knee, rested his hand with the revolver in it on the railing of the jetty, and took aim at the lead boat. How long had it been since he’d fired the pistol-dismounted qualifying range? Nearly fifteen years, he guessed; it was in the first few months of basic training, and always after that it had been a carbine or an M-1.
Somebody was coming up behind him.
Good God, he thought, they’ve made another landing! He started to turn.
It was the man Walt, grabbing for the gun. “Leggo, you!” he panted, clutching at the revolver. “If you’re too yellow to shoot let me have it!”
Walt was no kid; he was in his late fifties at the least. But he was big and solid, and Groff was off balance. For a moment he staggered at the end of the jetty, Walt leaning on him…
They both went in.
The water was cold and the current was fast. What became of the revolver Groff didn’t know. He broke surface, spluttering and choking.
Walt was splashing right beside him. “Help me!” he bawled. “For God’s sake, help me! I can’t swim!”
Groff had one bitter moment of temptation—let him drown! cried his subconscious. But then the decision was out of his hands. Walt flailed toward him and caught him. Groff went under, choking; he struggled upward, carrying the panicky man with him, got a breath, went under again—
The next time he came to the surface someone was there to grab him.
The goons! Instinctively he tried to fight free, but somebody in the boat had a good grip on his arm. They hauled him in, and another boat had Walt.
“You all right?” one of the men in the boat demanded anxiously. Groff said dizzily, “Sure. But—”
“Take it easy,” said the man in the boat. “We’ll take you up to the emergency center. We figured you people’d need some help, so after we got things under control on our side we came on over.” He said proudly, “They thought I was nuts, keeping after everybody to join the Civil Defense squads. I guess they’ll change their minds now!”
A Town Is Drowning Page 11
