Not This August Read online

  “Near by?” Rawson asked thoughtfully.

  “Skip that. Just let me know who’s your boss and how to get in touch. I want to dump this business. I don’t know what to do with it, where to begin. I’ve got to turn it over to somebody.”

  “You’re nuts,” Rawson said. “I don’t know about any A-bombs and you don’t know about any bombardment satellites lying around. What A-bomb was this—that liquor you helped me out with?”

  “Liquor be damned! Who’s your boss?”

  “Convince me, Billy. You haven’t yet. And if it’ll help you talk, you might as well know I used to be, in my time, the youngest general officer in the Corps of Engineers.”

  “You’re in command?”

  “Of what? I’m not giving information, Billy. I’m only taking today.”

  So, Justin thought bitterly, I don’t get to lay it down. Instead I get involved deeper. Now I have the burden of Rawson’s identity on me—unless he’s lying or crazy. He began to talk.

  Gribble, the psychosis, the satellite.

  When there was no more to tell, the legless man said: “Very circumstantial. Maybe even true.”

  “You’ll take it from here?” Justin demanded.

  “Go home and wait, Billy. Just go home and wait.” Rawson shoved his gocart five feet farther down the line and stabbed his auger into the sod for the next post hole.

  Justin started down the dirt path, the burden still on his back. He thought of blood-spattered cellar walls against which men exactly like him, but with less than a millionth of the guilty knowledge he possessed, were beaten and killed. When would they let Billy Justin be Billy Justin again? It went far back into childhood, his involvement. Were the old wars like this rolling, continuous thing of which he had been a part for as long as he could remember, this thing that would not end even now that it was ended? Item: childhood games. Item: high school R.O.T.C. Item: propaganda poster contests. Item: Korea (and an infected leg wound from a dirty, nameless little patrol). Item: War Three (and cows). Item: defeat and occupation. And still he was entangled in spite of his fatigue, his hundred-times-earned honorable discharge.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Justin waited through two weeks of summer drought and flies, having a minimum of talk with Gribble, collapsing every night in exhaustion. They came very close to meeting their milk norm.

  The signal was a long blast of the mailwoman’s horn—it meant registered mail, an insured package or something of the sort. Justin climbed the steep, short hill to the mailbox suspecting nothing more. But Betsy Cardew told him: “Think up a good reason. You’re going into Chiunga Center with me.”

  “Rawson?” he asked. She nodded. “Can you wait while I throw a bucket of water over myself and change my shirt?”

  “I can’t. Please get in.”

  They chugged the long mail route almost without conversing. She had nothing to say except that he would meet some people. He tried to tell her that she shouldn’t be mixed up in anything like this and she said she had to be. They had to have the mail carriers. And, after reflecting, he realized that they did. Mail carriers were daily travelers who met everybody and carried packages as part of the job. Mail carriers were essential, and if one of them happened to be a slim, clear-eyed girl entirely unsuited for torture and death in a cellar, so much the worse for her.

  She showed no fear at the check points. The Red Army men who stopped her and signed her through on their registers were friendly. She said to them, “Prohsteetye, chtoh behspohkohyoo vas,” while Justin stared and the soldiers grinned.

  “Very difficult language,” she told Justin as they drove on. “I’m making slow progress.”

  “Those soldiers looked pretty sloppy to me.”

  “Colonel Platov got a girl. Mrs. Grauer.”

  Justin whistled. The Grauers were Chiunga Center aristocracy. Young Mr. Grauer was president by primogeniture of the feed mill, Mrs. Grauer was an imported Wellesley girl and very slim and lovely. The husband, of course, was whereabouts-unknown after surrendering his National Guard regiment in the debacle at El Paso. “Goes right to the house?” he asked.

  “Right to the big red brick Georgian show place,” she said, concentrating on her driving. “I don’t know if they’re in love or not. There’s an awful lot of it going on.”

  So Colonel Platoff had a girl and the soldiers at the check points had murky brass and had skipped shaving. The soldierly virtue was running fast out of SMGU 449. Justin was suddenly more conscious than ever that he smelled like what he was: a farmer in a midsummer drought.

  Justin got out when they reached the post office by late afternoon. Betsy Cardew said she had two hours of sorting ahead of her, and would he meet her at her house on Chiunga Hill.

  He wandered through the town unmolested. Mr. Farish, the bald, asthmatic young pharmacist, called to him from behind his prescription counter as he strolled down High Street. Mr. Farish and he had been fellow members of Rotary in the old days before the Farm-or-Fight Law; the membership of a freelance commercial artist made Chiunga Center Rotary more broad-minded and cultured than the other chapters down the valley. They valued him for it, especially Mr. Farish who daydreamed of escaping from pharmacy via an interminable historical novel he was writing.

  Justin stepped into the store and nervously blurted out his cover story, an unconvincing bit about buying seed cake from the local feed store, Croley’s price being too high for comfort.

  Mr. Farish, completely uninterested, waved the yarn aside and set him up a root beer. “Red Army boys are crazy about root beer,” he said. “Nothing like it where they come from.”

  “How’re they behaving?”

  “Pretty fair. Say, did you hear about Colonel Platov and Mrs.—?”

  “I heard. Customer, Fred.”

  It was a Red soldier with a roll of film. “Sredah?” he asked, grinning.

  “Pyatneetsah,” Mr. Farish told him. “O.K.?”

  “Hokay,” said the soldier. He contorted his face and brought out from the depths: “Soap?” And grinned with relief.

  Mr. Farish sold him the soap and put away the film. “He wanted it on Wednesday and I told him Friday,” he said casually. “You saw how he took it, Billy. There’s no harm in them. Of course, you farmers are eating a lot better than we are here but after they get food distribution squared away—”

  Justin gulped his root beer and thanked Farish. He had to find out about that seed cake, he said, and hurried out. The bald young man looked hurt by his abruptness.

  The bald young idiot!

  He headed for one of the elm-shaded residential streets and paced its length, his hands rammed into the pockets of his jeans. Farish didn’t know; Farish knew only that farmers were always griping. He didn’t realize that the problem facing the Reds in the valley was to squeeze the maximum amount of milk from it and any time spent batting the mercantile population around would be wasted. After the pattern was set, after the dairy farmers were automatic serfs, then they would move on the shopkeepers. Currently they were being used, and skillfully, to supply the garrison and the farms.

  And still there was a nagging thought that these Red G.I.s were just human, and that their bosses were just human, that things seemed to be easing into a friendlier pattern of live and let live.

  And beneath that one there was the darker thought that it was too good to last, that somehow the gigantic self-regulating system would respond to the fact that Red G.I.s were treating the conquered population like friends and that Colonel Platov had a girl.

  An off-duty soldier and his girl were strolling the elm-shaded street with him, he noticed. The girl he vaguely recognized: one of those town drifters who serves your coffee at the diner one morning and the next day, to your surprise, is selling you crockery at the five-and-ten. Margaret something-or-other—

  A sergeant bore down on the couple, and the soldier popped to attention, saluting. Without understanding a word Justin knew that he was witnessing a memorable chewing-out. The spitti
ng, snarling Russian language was well suited to the purpose. When it ended at last, the chastened soldier saluted, about-faced, and marched down the street at attention, with Margaret something-or-other left standing flat-footed. The sergeant relaxed and smiled at her: “Kahkoy, preeyatnyi syoorpreez!”

  Margaret had her bearings again. She smiled back, “Da, big boy. Let’s go,” and off they went arm in arm.

  Justin walked back to High Street, deeply disturbed. He liked what he had seen. It was too good, too warmly human, to be true.

  Mr. Sparhawk was established on a crate at the corner of High and Onondaga outside the bank preaching to a thin crowd, none of whom stayed for more than a minute. The pinched British voice and the bony British face had not changed in the months since Justin last saw him. Neither had his line:

  “My dear friends, we have peace at last. Some of you doubtless believe that it would be a better peace if it had been won by the victory of the North American Governments than by their adversaries, but this is vain thinking. Peace is indivisible, however attained. It is not what it has come out of but what we make of it. Reforming ourselves from within is the way in which we shall reform society. In the lonely individual heart begins what you are pleased to call progress. I rejoice that there is a diminished supply of meat and pray that this condition will reveal to you all the untruthfulness of the propaganda that meat is essential to health, and that from this realization many of you will progress to vegetarianism, the first great ascetic step along the road to universal life-reverence…”

  Justin could not stand more than a minute of it himself. He headed north along Onondaga Street toward Chiunga Hill and the big white house where Betsy lived. He knew why it hadn’t yet been requisitioned, even after the guilty flight of her father, the National Committeeman. The Russians were supposed to live like Spartans in their barracks, officers faring not much better than the troops. But he thought he scented a trend in town that would end only with the expropriation of every decent dwelling in the Center.

  The second and third floors of the house were closed off. There was still plenty of room for Betsy and a Mrs. Norse, the last of the servants. She was tottery and deaf; actually the two women waited on each other. Betsy matter-of-factly offered Justin a bath, which he eagerly accepted. When he emerged from the tub, she called to him: “I’ve found some of my father’s gardening things for you to put on. I don’t suppose you want me to save your clothes?”

  “No,” he called back, embarrassed. “You caught me by surprise today, you know. I was wearing them just to clean the barn—”

  “Of course,” she said politely. “I’ll have Mrs. Norse burn them, shall I?”

  Clean socks, underwear, and clean, faded denims—he had to take up six inches of slack with his belt—left Justin feeling better than he had in months. Mrs. Norse was noisy about the improvement. She remembered the day when a man wouldn’t dream of setting foot outside his bedroom unless he was decently clothed in stiff collar, white shirt, tie, and jacket. She told Justin about it and Betsy cooked dinner.

  A panel truck pulled into the driveway while they were eating spanish rice, the main dish. It proceeded on to the back of the house, but Justin had time to read the lettering on it as it passed the window.

  “ ‘Department of Agriculture,’ ” he said to Betsy. “And in smaller letters, ‘Fish and Wild Life Survey.’ ”

  She was blank-faced. “Go into the library when you’ve finished,” she said. “Mrs. Norse and I will clear things up.” He found he was gobbling his spanish rice and deliberately slowed down. Then the stuff balled in his mouth so he couldn’t swallow.

  “Excuse me,” he said, gulping coffee and standing. He went into the library.

  There were three men, all strangers, all middle-aged. One was the lean little gnome type, one was heavy and spectacularly bald, one was a placid ox.

  Mr. Ox said, “Put up your hands,” and searched him. Mr. Egg said, “I hope you don’t mind. We have to ask you some questions,” and Justin knew at once who he was—The Honorable James Buchanan Wagner, junior senator from Michigan, nicknamed “Curly.” He had shaved his head, and for safety’s sake really ought to do something about his superb voice. Though perhaps, Justin thought, he as a commercial artist was a lot quicker than most to fill in the outlines of that bushy head.

  Mr. Gnome said, “Sit down, please,” and opened a brief case. He laid a light tray and variously colored tiles before Justin and said: “Put them in the tray any way you like.” Justin built up a nice design for the man in about a minute and sat back.

  Mr. Gnome said: “Look at this picture and tell me what it’s about.” The picture was very confusing, but after a moment Justin realized that it was a drawing of one man telling another man something, apparently a secret from their furtive expressions. He said so.

  “Now what about this one?”

  “Two men fighting. The big one’s losing the fight.”

  “This one?”

  “A horse—just a horse.”

  There were about fifty pictures. When they were run through, Mr. Gnome switched to ink-blot cards, which Justin identified as spiders, women, mirrors, and whatever else they looked like to him.

  Every now and then Justin heard Senator Wagner distinctly mutter, “Fiddle-faddle,” which did not surprise him. The senator, known as a man who saw his duty to the United States and did it, was nevertheless not distinguished for broad-gaged, liberal leadership.

  There followed word-association lists. Not only did the gnome hold a stop watch, but Mr. Ox calmly donned a stethoscope and put the button on Justin’s wrist.

  Then they seemed to be finished. The gnome told the senator: “I guess he’s all right. Yes—he’s either smarter than I am or he’s all right. Sincere, not too neurotic, a reasonably effective person. For what it’s worth, Senator, I vouch for—”

  The senator said angrily: “No names!”

  Mr. Gnome shrugged. “His reaction time on ‘Congress,’ ‘hair,’ ‘wagon’—he recognized you all right.”

  “Very well, Doctor,” rumbled the celebrated voice. “Mr. Justin, I wish to show you something.” The senator turned down his collar on the right. He was still bitterly hostile—fundamentally scared, Justin realized, with two kinds of fear. There was the built-in animal fear of pain, mutilation, death. There was the abstract fear that one wrong decision at any stage of this dangerous game would blow sky-high any hope that America would rise again.

  The senator was showing Justin a razor blade taped inside his collar. “You can seem merely to be easing your collar, Mr. Justin. With one swift move, however—so—you can slash your carotid artery beyond repair. Within seconds you will be dead. Your orders are not to be taken alive,” the senator said. And he added grimly: “My psychologist friend indicates that you have sufficient moral fiber to carry them out.” He tossed a blade and an inch of tape at Justin. “Put them on. Then tell your story. General Hollerith assures us through Miss Cardew that it is of the utmost importance.”

  “Is Hollerith Rawson?” Justin demanded.

  “I don’t recall his cover name. No legs,” said the psychologist.

  His friend Rawson a general after all. Then what might not be true? The psychologist slipped out while Justin told Senator Wagner and Mr. Ox—of the FBI?—about his bombardment satellite.

  The senator was apoplectic. He fizzed for minutes about abuse of the executive power; apparently Congress had been told as little about the bombardment satellite as an earlier Congress had been told about the atomic bomb. Well—sigh—what’s done is done. Now the problem is to integrate the windfall into existing plans.

  Mr. Gnome returned and said: “Miss Cardew will brief you, Mr. Justin. We have to be on our way now.”

  They left and Justin heard the Fish and Wild Life Survey panel truck move out of the driveway and down the road.

  Back in the dining room Miss Norse was dozing in a corner.

  “Well?” asked Betsy Cardew.

  He
turned down his collar and showed her the blade.

  “The man said you were in and I was to brief you. What do you want to know about us?”

  “What’s there to know? How many. What you plan. Whether you think you can get away with it. Who’s the boss.”

  “I don’t know how many there are. I don’t really know whether there’s anybody in it except a couple of local people and those three. They came around a month ago—I used to know the senator. I don’t know who’s in charge, if anybody.

  “They told me it’s a war plan, one of those things that lies in the files until it’s needed. Well, it was needed when the collapse came at El Paso. The orders were for as many atomic-service officers as possible to grab all the fissionable material they could lay their hands on and go underground. The same for psychological-warfare personnel. Then start recruiting civilians into the organization.”

  “And what do we do?”

  “They’ve mentioned a winter uprising. They hope by then to have a large part of the civilian population alerted. There should be food caches, caches of winter clothing, weapons, and ammunition stolen from Red supply dumps. Then you wait for real socked-in, no-see flying weather and fire your suitcase A-bombs. Washington, of course, to behead the Administration. Ports to prevent reinforcement. Tank parks. Roads and railways. Simultaneously a scorched-earth guerrilla war against the garrisons while they’re cut off.

  “Oh, and you asked me whether I think we can get away with it, didn’t you? The answer is no. I don’t think so. I don’t see anything coming out of it except defeat and retaliation. But is there anything else to do?”

  “No,” he said gravely. Nor was there.

  “What did you tell General Hollerith, anyway?” she asked. “Something to do with Gribble, wasn’t it?”