It Can't Happen Here (39 page)

Doremus swung his legs out of bed, also lighted an unhygienic
cigarette, and said grumpily, “Oh, I suppose so! But—tracts!
Your attitude is simply a hold-over of your religious training.
That you have a
duty
toward the dull human race—which probably
enjoys being bullied by Windrip and getting bread and circuses—except for the bread!”

“Of course it’s religious,
a revolutionary loyalty! Why not? It’s
one of the few real religious feelings. A rational, unsentimental
Stalin is still kind of a priest. No wonder most preachers hate
the Reds and preach against ‘em! They’re jealous of their
religious power. But—Oh, we can’t unfold the world, this morning,
even over breakfast coffee, Doremus! When Mr. Dimick came back
here yesterday, he ordered me to
Beecher Falls—you know, on the
Canadian border—to take charge of the N.U. cell there—ostensibly
to open up a tea room for this summer. So, hang it, I’ve got to
leave you, and leave Buck and Sis, and go. Hang it!”

“Linda!”

She would not look at him. She made much, too much, of grinding
out her cigarette.

“Linda!”

“Yes?”

“You suggested this to Dimick! He never gave any orders till you
suggested
it!”

“Well—”

“Linda! Linda! Do you want to get away from me so much? You—my
life!”

She came slowly to the bed, slowly sat down beside him. “Yes. Get
away from you and get away from myself. The world’s in chains, and
I can’t be free to love till I help tear them off.”

“It will never be out of chains!”

“Then I shall never be free to love! Oh, if we could only have run
away together for
one sweet year, when I was eighteen! Then I
would have lived two whole lives. Well, nobody seems to be very
lucky at turning the clock back—almost twenty-five years back,
too. I’m afraid Now is a fact you can’t dodge. And I’ve been
getting so—just this last two weeks, with April coming in—that I
can’t think of anything but you. Kiss me. I’m going. Today.”

As usually happens in secret service, no one detail that Sissy
ferreted out of Shad Ledue was drastically important to the N.U.,
but, like necessary bits of a picture puzzle, when added to other
details picked up by Doremus and Buck and Mary and Father Perefixe,
that trained extractor of confessions, they showed up the rather
simple schemes of this gang of Corpo racketeers who were so
touchingly
accepted by the People as patriotic shepherds.

Sissy lounged with Julian on the porch, on a deceptively mild April
day.

“Golly, like to take you off camping, couple months from now, Sis.
Just the two of us. Canoe and sleep in a pup tent. Oh, Sis, do
you
have
to have supper with Ledue and Staubmeyer tonight? I hate
it. God, how I hate it! I warn you, I’ll kill Shad! I mean it!”

“Yes, I
do have to, dear. I think I’ve got Shad crazy enough about
me so that tonight, when he chases good old Emil, and whatever foul
female Emil may bring, out of the place, I’ll get him to tell me
something about who they’re planning to pinch next. I’m not scared
of Shad, my Julian of jewelians.”

He did not smile. He said, with a gravity that had been unknown to
the lively college youth, “Do you
realize, with your kidding
yourself about being able to handle Comrade Shad so well, that he’s
husky as a gorilla and just about as primitive? One of these
nights—God! think of it! maybe tonight!—he’ll go right off the
deep end and grab you and—bing!”

She was as grave. “Julian, just what do you think could happen to
me? The worst that could happen would be that I’d get raped.”

“Good Lord—”

“Do you honestly suppose that since the New Civilization began, say
in 1914, anyone believes that kind of thing is more serious than
busting an ankle? ‘A fate worse than death’! What nasty old side-whiskered deacon ever invented that phrase? And how he must have
rolled it on his chapped old lips! I can think of plenty worse
fates—say, years of running an elevator. No—wait! I’m not
really
flippant. I haven’t any desire, beyond maybe a slight
curiosity, to be raped—at least, not by Shad; he’s a little too
strong on the Bodily Odor when he gets excited. (Oh God, darling,
what a nasty swine that man is! I hate him fifty times as much as
you do. Ugh!) But I’d be willing to have even that happen if I
could save one decent person from his bloody blackjack. I’m not
the playgirl of
Pleasant Hill any more; I’m a frightened woman from
Mount Terror!”

It seemed, the whole thing, rather unreal to Sissy; a burlesqued
version of the old melodramas in which the City Villain tries to
ruin Our Nell, apropos of a bottle of Champagne Wine. Shad, even
in a belted tweed jacket, a kaleidoscopic Scotch sweater (from
Minnesota), and white linen plus-fours, hadn’t the absent-minded
seductiveness
that becomes a City Slicker.

Ensign Emil Staubmeyer had showed up at Shad’s new private suite at
the Star Hotel with a grass widow who betrayed her gold teeth and
who had tried to repair the erosions in the fair field of her neck
with overmuch topsoil of brick-tinted powder. She was pretty
dreadful. She was harder to tolerate than the rumbling Shad—a man
for whom the chaplain might even have
been a little sorry, after he
was safely hanged. The synthetic widow was always nudging herself
at Emil and when, rather wearily, he obliged by poking her
shoulder, she giggled, “Now you
sssstop
!”

Shad’s suite was clean, and had some air. Beyond that there was
nothing much to say. The “parlor” was firmly furnished in oak
chairs and settee with leather upholstery, and four pictures of
marquises
not doing anything interesting. The freshness of the
linen spread on the brass bedstead in the other room fascinated
Sissy uncomfortably.

Shad served them rye highballs with ginger ale from a quart bottle
that had first been opened at least a day ago, sandwiches with
chicken and ham that tasted of niter, and ice cream with six colors
but only two flavors—both strawberry. Then he waited, not
too
patiently, looking as much like General Göring as possible, for
Emil and his woman to get the devil out of here, and for Sissy to
acknowledge his virile charms. He only grunted at Emil’s pedagogic
little jokes, and the man of culture abruptly got up and removed
his lady, whinnying in farewell, “Now, Captain, don’t you and your
girl-friend do anything Papa wouldn’t do!”

“Come on now, baby—come
over here and give us a kiss,” Shad
roared, as he flopped into the corner of the leather settee.

“Now I don’t know whether I
will
or not!” It nauseated her a good
deal, but she made herself as pertly provocative as she could. She
minced to the settee, and sat just far enough from his hulking side
for him to reach over and draw her toward him. She observed him
cynically, recalling her experience
with most of the Boys …
though not with Julian … well, not so much with Julian. They
always, all of them, went through the same procedure, heavily
pretending that there was no system in their manual proposals; and
to a girl of spirit, the chief diversion in the whole business was
watching their smirking pride in their technique. The only
variation, ever, was whether they started in at the top
or the
bottom.

Yes. She thought so. Shad, not being so delicately fanciful as,
say, Malcolm Tasbrough, started with an apparently careless hand on
her knee.

She shivered. His sinewy paw was to her like the slime and
writhing of an eel. She moved away with a maidenly alarm which
mocked the rôle of Mata Hari she had felt herself to be gracing.

“Like me?” he demanded.

“Oh—well—sort of.”

“Oh, shucks! You think I’m still just a hired man! Even though I
am a County Commissioner now! and a Battalion-Leader! and prob’ly
pretty soon I’ll be a Commander!” He spoke the sacred names with
awe. It was the twentieth time he had made the same plaint to her
in the same words. “And you still think I ain’t good for anything
except lugging in kindling!”

“Oh, Shad dear! Why, I always think
of you as being just about my
oldest playmate! The way I used to tag after you and ask you could
I run the lawnmower! My! I always remember that!”

“Do you, honest?” He yearned at her like a lumpish farm dog.

“Of course! And honest, it makes me tired, your acting as if you
were ashamed of having worked for us! Why, don’t you know that,
when he was a boy, Daddy used to work as a farm hand,
and split
wood and tend lawn for the neighbors and all that, and he was awful
glad to get the money?” She reflected that this thumping and
entirely impromptu lie was beautiful… . That it happened not
to be a lie, she did not know.

“That a fact? Well! Honest? Well! So the old man used to hustle
the rake too! Never knew that! You know, he ain’t such a bad old
coot—just awful stubborn.”

“You
do
like him,
don’t
you, Shad! Nobody knows how sweet he is—I
mean, in these sort of complicated days, we’ve got to protect him
against people that might not understand him, against outsiders,
don’t you think so, Shad? You
will
protect him!”

“Well, I’ll do what I can,” said the Battalion-Leader with such fat
complacency that Sissy almost slapped him. “That is, as long as he
behaves himself,
baby, and don’t get mixed up with any of these Red
rebels … and as long as you feel like being nice to a fella!”
He pulled her toward him as though he were hauling a bag of grain
out of a wagon.

“Oh! Shad! You frighten me! Oh, you must be gentle! A big,
strong man like you can afford to be gentle. It’s only the sissies
that have to get rough. And you’re so strong!”

“Well, I guess I can
still feed myself! Say, talking about
sissies, what do you see in a light-waisted mollycoddle like
Julian? You don’t really like him, do you?”

“Oh, you know how it is,” she said, trying without too much
obviousness to ease her head away from his shoulder. “We’ve always
been playmates, since we were kids.”

“Well, you just said I was, too!”

“Yes, that’s so.”

Now in her effort to give all
the famous pleasures of seduction
without taking any of the risk, the amateur secret-service
operative, Sissy, had a slightly confused aim. She was going to
get from Shad information valuable to the N.U. Rapidly rehearsing
it in her imagination, the while she was supposed to be weakened by
the charm of leaning against Shad’s meaty shoulder, she heard
herself teasing him into giving her the name
of some citizen whom
the M.M.’s were about to arrest, slickly freeing herself from him,
dashing out to find Julian—oh, hang it, why hadn’t she made an
engagement with Julian for that night?—well, he’d either be at
home or out driving Dr. Olmsted—Julian’s melodramatically dashing
to the home of the destined victim and starting him for the
Canadian border before dawn… . And it might be a good idea
for the refugee to tack on his door a note dated two days ago,
saying that he was off on a trip, so that Shad would never suspect
her… . All this in a second of hectic story-telling, neatly
illustrated in color by her fancy, while she pretended that she had
to blow her nose and thus had an excuse to sit straight. Edging
another inch or two away, she purred, “But of course it isn’t just
physical
strength, Shad. You have so much power politically. My!
I imagine you could send almost anybody in Fort Beulah off to
concentration camp, if you wanted to.”

“Well, I could put a few of ‘em away, if they got funny!”

“I’ll bet you could—and will, too! Who you going to arrest next,
Shad?”

“Huh?”

“Oh come on! Don’t be so tightwad with all your secrets!”

“What are you trying to do, baby?
Pump me?”

“Why no, of course not, I just—”

“Sure! You’d like to get the poor old fathead going, and find out
everything he knows—and that’s plenty, you can bet your sweet life
on that! Nothing doing, baby.”

“Shad, I’d just—I’d just love to see an M.M. squad arresting
somebody once. It must be dreadfully exciting!”

“Oh, it’s exciting enough, all right, all right! When the poor
chumps try
to resist, and you throw their radio out of the window!
Or when the fellow’s wife gets fresh and shoots off her mouth too
much, and so you just teach her a little lesson by letting her look
on while you trip him up on the floor and beat him up—maybe that
sounds a little rough, but you see, in the long run it’s the best
thing you can do for these beggars, because it teaches ‘em to not
get ugly.”

“But—you won’t think I’m horrid and unwomanly, will you?—but I
would like to see you hauling out one of those people, just once.
Come on, tell a fellow! Who are you going to arrest next?”

“Naughty, naughty! Mustn’t try to kid papa! No, the womanly thing
for you to do is a little love-making! Aw come on, let’s have some
fun, baby! You know you’re crazy about me!” Now he really seized
her,
his hand across her breasts. She struggled, thoroughly
frightened, no longer cynical and sophisticated. She shrieked, “Oh
don’t—don’t!” She wept, real tears, more from anger than from
modesty. He loosened his grip a little, and she had the
inspiration to sob, “Oh, Shad, if you really want me to love you,
you must give me time! You wouldn’t want me to be a hussy that you
could do anything you
wanted to with—you, in your position? Oh,
no, Shad, you couldn’t do that!”

“Well, maybe,” said he, with the smugness of a carp.

She had sprung up, dabbling at her eyes—and through the doorway,
in the bedroom, on a flat-topped desk, she saw a bunch of two or
three Yale keys. Keys to his office, to secret cupboards and
drawers with Corpo plans! Undoubtedly! Her imagination in one
second pictured
her making a rubbing of the keys, getting John
Pollikop, that omnifarious mechanic, to file substitute keys,
herself and Julian somehow or other sneaking into Corpo
headquarters at night, perilously creeping past the guards, rifling
Shad’s every dread file—She stammered, “Do you mind if I go in and wash my face? All
teary—so silly! You don’t happen to have any face powder in your
bathroom?”