 CHAPTER IV PART C. In the socialistic orgy of nationalizing business, I was fortunate. Consolidated pemmican and allied concentrates was left in the hands of private initiative. Better than that, it had not been tied down and made helpless by the multiplicity of regulations hampering the few types of endeavor remaining nominally free of regimenting bureaucracy. Opportunity, long prepared for and not, I trust, undeserved, was before me. In the past to which our country had come, it seemed to me I could be of most service supplying our armed forces with field rations. Such an unselfish and patriotic desire one would think easy of realization, as I so innocently did, and I immediately began interviewing numberless officers of the quartermaster's department to further this worthy aim. I certainly believe every corporation must have its rules, otherwise executives would be besieged all day by time-wasters. The United States government is surely a corporation, as I always used to say, in advocating election of a business administration, and standard procedures and regulations are essential. Still, there ought to be a limit to the number and length of questionnaires to fill out, and the number of underlings to interview before a serious businessman can get to see a responsible official. After making three fruitless trips to Washington and getting exhaustively familiar with countless tantalizing waiting rooms, I became impatient. The man I needed to see was a brigadier general Thario, but after wasting valuable days and hours I was no nearer reaching him than in the beginning. I had filled out the necessary forms and stated the nature of my business so often I began to be alarmed lest my hand refused to write anything else, and I be condemned for the rest of my life to repeat the idiotic phrases called for in the blank spaces. I am afraid I must have raised my voice in expressing my exasperation to the young lady who acted as receptionist and barrier. At any rate she looked startled and I think pressed a button on her desk. A pink-faced, white must-asked gentleman came hastily through the door behind her. The jacket of his uniform fitted snugly at the waist and his bald head was sunburned and shiny. What's this? What's this going on here? I saw the single star on his shoulder straps and ventured. General Thario? He hid his white must-asked with a forefinger pink as his cheeks. Yes, yes, but she must have an appointment to speak to me. That's all you know. Must have an appointment. He appeared extremely nervous and harassed, his eyes darting back to the refuge of his office, but he was evidently held to the spot by whatever distress animated his receptionist. General Thario, I persisted firmly. I quite appreciate your viewpoint, but I've been trying for days to get such an appointment with you on a matter of vital concern and I have been put off every time by what I can only describe as red tape. I'm sorry to say so, General Thario, but I must repeat, red tape. He looked more worried than before and his eyes ranged over the room for some escape. No, just how you feel, he muttered. No, just how you feel. Horrible stuff. Swaddled in it here. Simply swaddled in it. Strangled. He cleared his throat as though to disembarrass it of a grot. But hang it, mister. Wiener, Albert Wiener, president of Consolidated Pemican and Allied Concentrates, Incorporated. Well, you know, mister Wiener, man your position. Appreciate absolute necessity, certain amount of routine. Keep the cranks out, otherwise swarming with him. Simply swarming. War-time precautions. Must excuse me now, terribly rushed. Glad to admit. Swallowing the rest of the sentence and putting his hand over his mouth, lest he should inadvertently regurgitate it, he started for his office. General Thario, I pleaded, a moment. Consider our positions reversed. I have long since established my identity, my responsibility. I want nothing for myself. I am here doing a patriotic duty. Surely enough of the routine you mention has been complied with to permit me to speak to you for five or ten minutes. Do for one moment, as I say, general, and put yourself in my place. Think of the discouragement you as a citizen would feel to be hampered, perhaps more than is necessary. He took his hand down from his mouth and looked at me out of blue eyes so pale as to be almost colorless. But hang it, you know, mister Wiener. Highly irregular. Sympathize completely, but consider. Don't like being put in such a position. Why don't you come back in the morning? General, I urged, flushed with victory. Give me ten minutes now. He collapsed. No just how you feel. Wanted to be out in the field myself. No desk soldier. Lot of nonsense if you ask me. Come in. Come in. In his office I explained the sort of contract I was anxious to secure and assured him of my ability to fulfill its terms. But I could see his mind was not intent upon the specifications for field rations. Looking up occasionally from a dejected study of his knees he kept inquiring in elliptical practically verbless questions how many men my plant employed, whether I had a satisfactory manager, and if a knowledge of chemistry was essential to the manufacture of concentrates, evading or discussing in the vagus terms the actual business in hand. However he seemed very friendly and affable toward me personally once the chill air of the waiting room had been left behind, and as button fleas had advised me insistently to entertain without regard to expense any officials with whom I came in contact, I thought it politic to invite him to dinner. He demurred at first, but at length accepted, instructing his secretary to phone his wife not to expect him home early. I suggested Mrs. Thario join us, but he shook his head muttering, no place for women, Mr. Wainer, no place for women. Whether this referred to Washington or the restaurant where we were going or to his life largely was not clear. Wartime Washington was in its usual chaotic turmoil, and it was impossible to get a taxi so we had to walk. But the general did not seem at all averse to the exercise. It seemed to me he rather enjoyed returning the salutes with the greatest punctilio and flourish. On our way we came to one of the capitol's most famous taverns, and I thought I detected a hesitancy in his stride. Now I am not a drinking man myself. I limit my imbibing to an occasional glass of beer on account of the yeast it contains which I consider beneficial. I hope, however, I am no prig or puritan, and so I asked casually if he would care to stop in for an appetizer. Well, now you mention it, Mr. Wainer, huh? Fact is, don't mind if I do. While I confined myself to my medicinal beverage, the general conducted a most remarkable raid on the bar. As I have hinted he was in demeanor a mild appearing if not indeed a timid man. In the course of an hour's conversation no word of profanity such as is affected by many military men had crossed his lips. The framed photograph of his wife and daughters on his desk and his respectful references to women indicated he was not the type of soldier who lusts for rapine. But seated before that dull mahogany bar, whatever inhibitions, whatever conventional shackles, whatever self-denials and repressions had been inculcated, fell from him swiftly and completely. He barked his orders at the bartender who seemed to know him very well as though he were addressing a parade formation of badly disciplined troops. Not only did General Thario drink enormously, but he broke all the rules I had ever heard laid down about drinking. He began with a small squat glass which I believe is called an old-fashioned glass containing half cognac and half rye whiskey. He followed this with a tall tumbler, twelve full ounces none of your right ounce thimbles, not truffled with, of champagne into which the bartender, upon his instructions and under his critical eye, poured two jiggers of tropical rum. Then he wiped his lips with a handkerchief pulled from his sleeve and began with a serious air on a combination of benedictin and tequila. The more he imbibed, the longer, more complete and more coherent his sentences became. He dropped his harassed air. His abdomen receded, his chest expanded, bringing to my notice for the first time the rows of ribbons which confirmed his earlier assertion that he was not a desk soldier. He was sipping curaso, liberally laced with applejack, when he suggested we have our dinner sent in rather than leave this comfortable spot. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Wiener, I'm going to call you Albert if you don't mind. I said I didn't mind with all the hardiness at my command. The fact of the matter is, Albert, I have devoted my unfortunate life to two arcs, the military and the potatory. As you may have noticed, most of the miserable creatures on the wrong side of a bar adopt one of two reprehensible courses. Either they treat drinking as though the aim of blending liquids were to imitate some French chef's fiddle-faddle, a dash of bitters, a squirt of orange, an olive, cherry or onion wrenched from its proper place in the salad bowl, a twist of lemon peel, sprig of mint or lump of sugar and an eyedropper full of whiskey, or else they embrace the opposite extreme of vulgarity and gulp whatever rock gutter's thrust at them to addle their undisturbing brains and atrophy their undiscriminating pallets. Ah, their practice is foreign to my nature and philosophy. I believe the happiest combinations of liquors are simple ones, containing no more than two ingredients, each of which should be noble, that is to say, drinkable in its own right. He raised his fresh glass, containing Brandy and Eric. No doubt you have observed a catholicity in my taste. I range through the whole gamut from us quibah to sake, though during the present conflict for obvious patriotic reasons I cross vodka from my list, while as a man born south of the Mason Dixon line, sir, I leave gin to nakers. I must say, though somewhat startled by his manner of imbibing, I was inclined to like General Thario, but I was impatient to discuss the matter of a contract for consolidated Pamekin. Every time I attempted to bring the subject round to it, he waved me grandly aside. Dinner, he confirmed when the waiters brought in their trays. Yes, no drink is complete without a little bit of the rat food to garnish it. Eating in moderation I approve of, but mark my words, Albert, the man who takes a meal on an empty stomach is digging his grave with his teeth. If he would not talk business, I could only hope his amiability would carry over till I saw him again in his office tomorrow. I settled down as far as I could simply to enjoy his company. You may have been surprised at my referring to my life as unfortunate, Albert, but it is a judicious adjective, vilely unfortunate. I come of a military family, you know. You will find footnotes mentioned in the Tharios in the history of every war this country has had. He finished what was in his class. My misfortunes, like Tristan Shandy's, began before my birth and in the same way, exactly the same way. My father was a scholar and a gentleman who dreamed his life away over the campaigns of the great captains instead of attempting to become a great captain himself. I do not condemn him for this. The organization of the army is such as to encourage impracticality and inadvertence, but the consequences were unfortunate for me. He named me after his favorite heroes, Stuart Hannibal, Ayrton Thario. And so aloof was he from the vulgarities of everyday life, that it was not until my monogram was ordered painted upon my first piece of luggage that the unfortunate combination of my initials was noted. Hannibal and Ayrton promptly suppressed in the interests of decency. Nevertheless, at West Point, my surname was twisted by fellow classmates into low Thario, giving it a connotation quite foreign to my nature. I lived down both vacations only to encounter a third. Though Ayrton remained successfully concealed, the Hannibal leaked out, and when during the World War I had the misfortune to lead a company which was decimated, his hand strayed to the ribbons on his chest. Behind my back, the enlisted man called me Cannibal Thario. He began discussing another drink. Of one thing, I'm resolved. My son shall not suffer as I have suffered. I did not send him to West Point, so he might win decorations on the field of valor, and then be shunted off to sit behind an unsoldierly desk. I broke with tradition when I kept him from a military career quite on purpose, just as I was thinking of his welfare and not some silly foyable of my own when I called him by the simplest name I could find. What is your son's name? I was constrained to ask. George, he answered proudly. George Thario. There is no nickname for George, as far as I know. And he's not in the army now, I queried, more in politeness than interest. No, and I don't intend he shall be. The General's pink face grew pinker with his vehemence. Albert, there are plenty of dunderheads and duffers like me in the country who are good for nothing better than cannon fodder. Let them go and be killed. I'm willing enough. Only an idiotic general staff has booted me into the quartermaster corps, for which I am no more fitted than to run an academy for lady marines. But I'm not willing for a fine sensitive boy, a talented musician like George, to suffer the harsh brutalities of a training camp and battlefield. The draft, I began tentatively. If George had a civilian position in an essential industry, say one holding a contract with the army for badly needed field rations. I should like to meet your son, I said. I have been looking around for some time for a reliable manager. George might consider it. General Thario squinted his glass against the light. I'll have him stopped by your hotel tomorrow. The little radio behind the bar which had been mumbling to itself for hours spoke loudly. We interrupt this program to bring you a news flash. IR has declared war on the Soviet Union. I repeat, war has been declared on the Union of Soviet Republics by IR. Keep tuned to this station for further details. We return you now to our regular program. There was an absent pattering of applause and General Thario stood up gravely, glass in hand. Gallant little IR, or if I may be permitted once, the indulgence of using the good old name we know and love so well, Brave Old Ireland. When the world was at war, despite every provocation, she stayed peaceful. Now that the world is disgracefully pacific, and you have all heard foreign ministers unanimously declaring their countries neutral, so fast to they rushed to the microphones that they were still penning when they went on the air. When the whole world was cautious, Ireland, true to her traditions, joined the just cause. Gentlemen, I give you our fighting ally, IR. Departing from his usual custom, he drank the toast in one gulp, but no one else in the room paid any attention. I considered this lack of enthusiasm for a courageous gesture, quite unworthy, and meditated for a moment on the insensitivity into which our people seemed to have sunk. As the evening went on, the General grew more and more affable, and if possible less and less reticent. He had, he assured me, been the constant victim, either of men or of circumstances. At the military academy he had trained for the cavalry, only to find himself assigned to the tank corps. He had reconciled himself, pursued his duties with zeal, and was shunted off to the infantry, where, swallowing chagrin, he had led his men bravely into a crossfire from machine-guns. For this he got innumerable decorations, and a transfer to the quartermaster's department. His marriage to the daughter of an influential politician should have assured peacetime promotion, but the nuptials coincided with an election depriving the family's party of power. Now another war had come, and he was a mere brigadier pigeonholed in an unimportant office, with juniors broadly hinting at his retirement, while classmates were leading divisions, and even army corps, to glorious victory on the field of battle. At least they would have been leading them to glorious victory if there had been any action at all. Invade, insisted General Thario, becoming sufficiently stirred by his fervour to lapse into sober incoherence. Invade them before they invade us. Aircraft out, gentlemen's agreement, quiet understand. Well, landing barges, barren sea, strike south, shuttle transports, drive left wing, trans-siberian, hold an operation by Rotten Center, A-B-C. No doubt it was a pity he was deprived of the opportunity to try these tactics. I was one of the few who had not become a military theoretician upon the outbreak of the war, but to my lame mind his plan sounded feasible. Nevertheless I was more interested in the possible contract for food concentrates than in any strategy, no matter how brilliant. I'm afraid I showed my boredom, for the general abruptly declared it was time to go home. I was a little dubious that after all the drinking and confidences he would remember to send his son around and to tell the truth in the calm morning I felt I would not be too sorry if he didn't, for he had not given me a very high opinion of that young man. What on earth consolidated Pemmican could do with a musician and a draft evader as general manager, even if the title as it must be were purely honorary, I couldn't imagine. I had been long up, shaved and breakfasted, and had attended to my correspondence before the telephone rang and George Thario announced himself at my disposal. He was what people call a handsome young man. That is, he was big and burly and slow, and his eyelashes were perceptible. His hair was short and he wore no hat, but lounged about the room with his hands, thumbs out in his jacket pockets, looking at me vaguely through the curling smoke from a bent pipe. I had never seen anyone look less like a musician, and I began to wonder if his father had been serious in so describing him. I don't like it, he announced abruptly. Don't like what, Mr. Thario, I inquired. Joe to you, he corrected. Mr. from you to me belies our prospective relationship. Just call me Joe. I thought your name was George. Baptismal, whim of the old man, but it's a stuffy label, no shortening it, you know, so the fellows all call me Joe. Chum here. Don't like the idea of evading the draft. Shows a lack of moral courage. By rights I ought to be a conchie, but that would just about kill the old lady. She's in a first class uproar as it is. Like to see me in the front lines right now, bursting with doke et decorum. I don't believe it would bother the old man, Annie, if I sat out the duration in a CO camp, but it had hurt his job like hell, and the poor old boy as straining as guts to get into the trenches and twirl a theoretical sabre. So I guess I'm slated to be your humble and obedient, Mr. Wiener. I'll be delighted to have you join our firm, I said Riley, for I felt he would be a completely useless appendage. In this I am glad to say I did him an injustice. For though he never denied his essential lack of interest in concentrates and the whole process of money-making, he proved, nevertheless, at such times as he chose to attend to his duties, a faithful and conscientious employee, his only faults being a lack of initiative and a tendency to pamper the workers in the plant. But I have anticipated. At the moment I looked upon him only as a liability to be balanced in good time by the asset of his father's position. It was therefore with irritation I listened to his insistence on my coming to the Thario home that afternoon to meet his mother and sisters. I had no desire for purely social intercourse, last evening's outing being in the nature of a business investment, and it seemed superfluous to be forced to extend courtesies to an entire family because of involvement with one member. However great my reluctance I felt I couldn't afford to risk giving a fence, and so at four o'clock promptly I was in Georgetown, using the knocker of a door looking like all the other doors on both sides of the street. I'm Winifred Thario, and you're the chewing-gum man. No wait a minute, I'll get it. The food-concentrate man who's going to make Joe essential to the war effort do come in, and excuse my rudeness. I'm the youngest, you know, except for Joe, so everybody excuses me. Her straight blonde hair looked dead. The vivacity which lit her wind-burned face seemed a false vivacity, and when she showed her large white teeth I thought it was with a calculated effort. She led me into a living room, people like an early Victorian conversation-piece. Behind a low table in a rocking chair sat a large, full-busomed woman with the same dead hair and weather-beaten cheeks, the only difference being that the blondness of her hair was mitigated by gray, and in her face were the tiny broken red lines which no doubt in time would come to Winifred. This is mama, said Winifred, accenting the second syllable strongly, and contriving at once to be vivacious and reverent. Mama inclined her head toward me without the faintest smile, welcoming or otherwise, placing her hand as she did so regally upon the tea-cozy as upon a royal orb. Mrs. Thario, I said, I am delighted to meet you. Mama found this beneath her condescension. And this is Constance, the general's firstborn, introduced Winifred, still retaining her liveliness despite Mama's low temperature. Constance was the perfect connecting link between Winifred and her mother, not yet gray but soon to be so, without Winifred's animation, but with the same voluntary smile showing the same white teeth. She rose and shook my hand as she might have shaken a naughty puppy with a vigorous, sidewise jerk disengaging the clasp quickly. And this, announced Winifred brightly, is Pauline. To say that Pauline Thario was beautiful would be like saying Mount Everest is high. In her, the blonde hair sparkled like newly-thressed straw. The teeth were just as white and even, but they did not seem too large for her mouth, and her complexion was faultless as a cosmetic ad. She was an unbelievably exquisite painting placed in an appropriate frame. And yet, and yet the painting had a quality of unreality about it, as though it were the delineation of a Madonna without child or of a nun. There was no vigor to her beauty, no touch of the earthiness or of blemish necessary to make the loveliness real and bring it home. She did not offer me her hand but bowed, in a manner only slightly less distant than her mother's. I sat down on the edge of a petty-point chair, thoroughly ill at ease. You must tell us about your pills, Mr. Wiener, urged Winifred. Pills? I asked at a loss. Yes, the thingamajigs you're going to have Joe make for you, explained Constance. Mama made a loud trumpeting noise, which so startled me I half rose from my seat. Damn slacker! she exclaimed, looking fiercely right over my head. Now Mama, blood pressure, enjoined Pauline in a colorless voice. Mama relapsed into immobility, and Winifred went on quite as if there had been no explosion. Are you married, Mr. Wiener? I said I was not. Then here's our chance for Pauline, decided Winifred. Mr. Wiener, how would you like to marry Pauline? I could do nothing but smile uncomfortably. Was this a sort of conversation habitually carried on in their circle, or were they quite mad? Constance mentioned with apparent irrelevance, Winifred is so giddy, and Pauline smiled at me understandingly. But Winifred went on. We've been trying to marry Pauline off for years, you know. She's wonderful to look at, but she hasn't any sex appeal. Mama snorted, damned vulgar thing to have. Would you like some tea, Mr. Wiener? asked Constance. Tea? He looks like a secret Coca-Cola guzzler to me. Are you an American, mister? Mama demanded fiercely, daining for the first time to address me. I was born in California, Mrs. Thario, I assured her. Pity. Pity. Damned shame, she muttered. I was partially relieved from my uneasiness by the appearance of George Thario, who bounded in, waved lightly at his sisters, and kissed his mother just below her hairline. My respectful duty, Mama, he greeted. Damned hypocrisy! You did your duty, you being the army! Blood pressure warned Constance. Have they made you thoroughly miserable, Mr. Wiener? Don't mind them. There's something wrong with all the Tharios, except the old man. Blood gaunt them from too much inner marriage. Just like incest, exclaimed Winifred. Don't you think incest's fascinating, Mr. Wiener? Eugene O'Neill and all that sort of thing. Morbid, objected Constance. Damned nonsense, grunted Mama. Cream or lemon, Mr. Wiener, inquired Constance. Mama, moved by a hospitable reflex, filled the grudging cup. Cream, please, I requested. Turn it, sour, muttered Mama. But she poured the cream and handed the cup to Constance, who passed it to Pauline, who gave it to me with a gracious smile. You just mustn't forget to keep Pauline in mind, Mr. Wiener. She would be a terrific help when you become horribly rich and have to do a lot of stuffy entertaining. Really, Winifred, protested Constance. Help him to the poor house and a damned good riddance. I spent another uneasy fifteen minutes before I could decently make my departure, wondering whether I hadn't made a mistake in becoming involved with the Tharios at all. But there being no question of the solidity of the general's position, I decided, since it was not, after all, incumbent upon me to continue a social connection with them, to bear with it and confine my acquaintance as far as possible to Joe and his father. As soon as the contracts were awarded, the struggle began to obtain necessary labor and raw materials. We were straining everything to do a patriotic service to the country in time of war, but we came up against the competition for these essentials by ruthless capitalists, who had no thought but to milk the government by selling them supplies at an enormous profit. Even with the wholehearted assistance of General Thario, it was an endless and painful task to comply with, break through, or evade, the restrictions and regulations thrown up by an uncertain and slow-moving administration, restrictions designed to aid our competitors and hamper us. Yet we got organized at last, and by the time three Russian marshals had been purged and the American High Command had been shaken up several times, we had doubled the capacity of our plant and were negotiating the purchase of a new factory in Florida. I set aside a block of stock for the general, but its transfer was a delicate matter on account of the indefatigable nosiness of the government, and I approached his son for advice. Elburitch exclaimed Joe incomprehensibly. Just wrap it up and mail it to him. Mama, God bless her, takes care of all financial transactions anyway, and doubtless with great force, I thought. Such directness, I pointed out, might have embarrassing repercussions because of inevitably small-minded interpretation if the facts ever became public. We finally solved the problem by putting the gift in George Thario's name, he making a will leaving it to the general. I informed his father in a guarded letter of what we had done, and he replied at great length and somewhat indiscreetly as the following quotation may show. In spite of pulling every handy and unhandy wire, I am still billeted on this ridiculous desk. The general staff is the most incompetent set of blunders ever to wear military uniform since bull run. They've never heard of Falk, much less of Falkenheim and Mockensen to say nothing of Rommel, Guderian, or Montgomery. They rest idly behind their Washington breastworks when the order of the day should be attack, attack and again attack, keeping the combat entirely verbal, weakening the spirit of our forces and waiting supinely for the enemy to bring the war to us. Although I was too much occupied with the press of business to follow the day-to-day progress of hostilities, there was little doubt the general was justified in his strictures. The war was entirely static. With fear of raids by marauding aircraft delayed, the only remaining uneasiness of the public had been whether the words heavier than aircraft covered robot or V-bombs. But when weeks had passed without these dreadful missiles whistling downward, this anxiety also went and the country settled down to enjoy a wartime prosperity as pleasant, notwithstanding the 50-hour week, rationing and the exorbitant income tax as the peacetime panic had been miserable. In my own case, Consolidated Pemmican was quoted at 38, and I was on my way, in spite of all hampering circumstances, to reap the benefits of foresight and industry. Unique among great combats, not a shot had so far been exchanged, and everyone except cranks began to look upon the academic conflict as an unalloyed benefit. Gradually the war began leaving the front pages, military analysts found themselves next to either the chess problems, today's selected recipe, or the weekly horoscope. People once more began to concern themselves with the grass. It now extended in a vast sweep from a point on the Mexican coast below the town of Mazatlán, northward along the slope of the Rocky Mountains, up into Canada's Yukon province. It was wildest at its point of origin, covering Southern California and Nevada, Arizona and part of New Mexico, and it was narrowest in the north where it dabbled with delicate fingers at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. It had spared practically all of Alaska, nearly all of British Columbia, most of Washington, western Oregon, and the sea coast of northern California. Why it surged up to the Rockies and not over them when it had conquered individually higher mountains was not understood, but people were quick once more to take hope and remember the plant's normal distaste for cold or think there was perhaps something in the rarefied atmosphere to paralyze the seeds or inhibit the stolons, so preventing further progress. Even through the comparatively low passes it came at such a slow pace. Methods tried fruitlessly in Los Angeles were successful in keeping it back. Everyone was quite ready to wipe off the far west if the grass were going to spare the rest of the country. General Thario's indiscreet letters kept coming. If anything, they increased in frequency and discretion and length as his continued frustration in securing a field command was added to his helpless wrath at the general staff's ineptitude. They have got hold of that odd female scientist, Francis, he wrote, and have made her turn over her formula for making grass go crazy. It's to be used as a war weapon, but how or where I don't know. Just the sort of silly rod a lot of armchair theorists would dream up. Later, he wrote indignantly, they are sending a group of picked men to Russia to inoculate the grasses on the steps with this Francis stuff. Sheer waste of trained men, bungling incompetent. Why not send a specially selected group of hypnotists to persuade the Russians to sue for peace? It would be better to have given them mills, bombs, and let them blow up the Kremlin. Time and effort and good men thrown away. Still later, he wrote with unconcealed satisfaction. Well, that silly business of inoculating the steps came to exactly nothing. Our fellows got through a course and did their job, but nothing happened to the grass. Either Francis gave them the wrong formula, possibly mislaid the right one in her handbag, or else what worked in California wouldn't do elsewhere. She is busy trying to explain herself to a military commission right now. For my part, they can either shoot her or put her in charge of the whack. It's of no moment. You can't fight a determined enemy with spray guns and formulas. Attack with infantry by way of Siberia. End of chapter four, part D. Chapter four, part E of Greener Than You Think. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore. Chapter four, part E. While everyone, except possibly General Thario and others in similar position, was enjoying the new comrade in arms atmosphere the abortive war had brought on, a sudden series of submarine attacks on the Pacific Fleet provided a disagreeable jolt and ended the bloodless stage of the conflict. Tried improved methods of detection and defense became useless. The warships were nothing more than targets for the enemy's torpedoes. In quick succession, the battleships Montana, Louisiana, Ohio, and New Hampshire were sunk, as were the carriers Gettysburg and Teetum, Guadacanel, and Chipotlepec, as well as the cruisers Manitowoc, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Yonkers, Long Beach, Evanston, and Portsmouth, to say nothing of the countless destroyers and other craft. Never had the Navy been so crippled, and the people, presaging correctly a forthcoming invasion, suffered a new series of terrors, which was only relieved by the news of the Russian landings on the California coast at Cambria, San Simeon, and Big Sur. What did I tell you? What did I tell them, the duffers and thunderheads? We could have been halfway across Asia by now. Instead, we waited and hammed and hauled till the enemy from the sheer weight of our inertia was forced to attack. The whole crew should be court-martialed and made to study the campaigns of Generals Shafter and Wheeler as punishment. General Thario's always precise handwriting wavered and trembled with the violence of his disgust. An impalpable war, pregnant with annihilating scientific devices and other unseen bogies was one thing. Actual invasion of the sacred soil over which old glory flew, and by presumptuous foreigners who couldn't even speak English, was quite another. At once the will of the nation stiffened, and for the first time something approaching enthusiasm was manifest. Cartoonists, moved by a common impulse, unanimously drew pictures of Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves and preparing to give the pesky interlopers a good trouncing before hurling them back into the Pacific. Unfortunately, the presence of the grass prevented quick eviction of the unwelcome visitors. Only a small portion of the armed forces was based on the Pacific coast because of the logistical problems presented by inadequacies of supply and transportation. Of these only a fraction could be sent to the threatened places for fear dispersions of the main body would prove disastrous if the landings were faint. Thus the enemy came ashore practically unopposed at his original landing points and secured small additional beachheads at Gorda, Lucia, Maro Bay, and Carmel. East of the grass there were whole armies who had completed basic training, fit and supple. The obvious answer to the invasion was to load them on transports and ship them to the theater of operations. Unfortunately the agreement not to use heavier than aircraft was an insuperable bar to this action. That the pact had never been designed to prevent nations from defending their soil against an invader was certain. Thousands of voices urged that we keep the spirit of the treaty and disregard the letter. No one could expect us to sit idly by and let our homeland be invaded because of overphynically interpretation of a diplomatic document. But in spite of this clear logic the American people were swept by a wave of timidity. If we use airplanes they argued so will the Russians. Airplanes mean bombs. Bombs mean atom bombs. Better to let the Russians hold what advantage their invasion has given them than to have our cities destroyed, our population wiped out, our descendants, if any, born with six heads or a dozen arms as a result of radioactivity. According to General Thario for a while it was touch and go whether the president would yield to the men of vision or the others. But in the end apprehension and calculation ordained that every effort must be made to reinforce the defense of the west coast except the effective one. Of course every dirigible was commandeered and work speeded up on those under construction. Troopships, heedless of their vulnerability rushed for the Panama Canal while negotiations were opened with Mexico looking toward transporting divisions over its territory to a point south of the weed. While confusion and defeatism took as heavy a toll of the country's spirit as an actual defeat on the battlefield the Russians slowly pushed their way inland and consolidated their positions. The American units offered valiant resistance but little by little they were driven northward until a fairly fixed front was established south of San Francisco from the ocean to the bay and a more fluid one from the bay to the edge of the grass. Army men like the public were suspicious of the enemy's apparent contentment with this line for they reasoned it presaged further landings to the north. General Thario's jubilation contrasted with the common gloom. At last the blunderers have given me active duty. I have a brigade in the third army, finest of all. Can't write exactly where I'm stationed but it is not far from a well known city noted for its altitude located in a mining state. Brigade is remarkably fit considering and the men are raring to go. Keep your ear open for some news. It won't be long. The news was of the heroic counter landings. The entire fleet, disdainful of possible submarine action stood off from the rear of the Russian positions bombarding them for 48 hours preliminary to landing marines who fought their way inland to recapture nearly half the invaded territory. Simultaneously the army, the low San Francisco, pushed the Russians back and made contact at some points with the marines. The enemy was reduced to a mere foothold. But the whole operation proved no more than a rearguard action as General Thario wrote, We are fighting on the wrong continent. Joe was even broader and more emphatic. It's a put up job, he complained, to keep cost plus plans like this operating. If they called off their silly war, Beethoven down in the cellar during the siege of Vienna expresses the right attitude and went home. The country would fall back into depression. We'd have some kind of revolution and everybody be better off. I had suspected him of being some kind of parlor radical and although he would doubtless outgrow his youthful notions it made me uneasy to have a crank in my employ. But beyond urging him to keep his idea strictly to himself and not leave any more memo-pads scribbled over with cleft signs on his desk, I could do nothing, for upon his retention depended his father's good will. The General's assignment to a field command hadn't altered the status of our contracts and we had too many unscrupulous competitors to rely solely upon merit for the continuance of our sales. George Thario's attitude was symptomatic of the demoralization of the country, apparent even during our momentary success. There was no will to victory and the General's staff, if one could believe General Thario, was too unimaginative and inflexible to meet the peculiar conditions of a war circumscribed and shaped by the alien glacier dividing the country and diverting normal operations into novel channels. So the new landings at Astoria and Longview, though anticipated and indeed precisely indicated by the flimsiness of the Russian resistance to the counteroffensive, caught the high command by surprise. Never was a military operation more certain, wrote General Thario, and never was less done to meet the certainty. Albert, if a businessman conducted himself like the military college, he would be bankrupt in six months. Wherever the fault lay, the American gains were wiped out and the invaders swept ahead to occupy all of the country west of the grass. Boastfully they sent us newsreels of their entries into Portland and Seattle. They established headquarters in San Francisco and paraded 40 abreast down Market Street, renamed Krasny Prospect. The Russians also renamed Montgomery Street and Van Ness after Mooney and Billings respectively, but for some reason abandoned these designations almost immediately. But for all their celebrations and 101 gun salutes, this was as far as they could go. The monstrous growth which had clogged our defense now sealed the invaders off and held them in an ever shrinking sector. Now came another period of quiescence in the war, but a period radically different in temper from the first. There were many, perhaps constituting a majority, who like George Thario wanted a peace, almost any kind of peace to be made. Others attempted to ignore the presence of a war entirely and to conduct their lives as though it did not exist. Still others seemed to regard it as some kind of game, a contest carried on in a bloodless vacuum, and from these to the newspapers in the War Department came the hundreds of plans, nearly all of them entirely fantastic, for conquering an enemy now unassailably entrenched. But while pessimism and lassitude governed the United States, the intruders were taking energetic measures to increase their successes. I have been present at the questioning of two spies, reported General Thario, and I want to tell you the enemy is not going to miss a single opportunity to unlock ourselves. What they have in mind, I cannot guess. They can't fly over the grass any more than we can, as long as they want to conciliate world opinion, and I doubt if they can tunnel under it, but that they intend to do something is beyond question. Often the obvious course is the surprising one. Since the Russians couldn't go over or under the grass, they decided to march on top of it. They had heard of our pre-war snowshoe excursions on its surface, and so they equipped a vast army with this clumsy-foot gear and set it in motion with supply trains on wide skis pulled by the men themselves. Russian ingenuity, boasted the Kremlin, would succeed in conquering the grass, where the decadent imperialists had failed. It is unbelievable, you might even call it absurd, but at least they are doing something not sitting twiddling their thumbs. My men would give six months' pay to be as active as the enemy. To be sure they are grotesque and inefficient, so was the army of Italy. Imagine sending an army or armies, if our reports are correct, on a 600 mile march without an air force, without artillery, without any mechanized equipment whatsoever. Unless, like the army of Italy, they have a bonapart concealed behind their lunacy, they have no chance at all of success. But by the military genius of Joseph Eggleston Johnson, if I were a younger man and not an American, I would like to be with them just for the fun they are having. By its very nature the expedition was composed exclusively of infantry divisions, carrying the latest type of automatic rifle. The field commissaries, the ambulances, the baggage trains, had to be cut to the barest minimum, and General Thario wrote that evidently because of the impossibility of taking a long artillery, the enemy had also abandoned their light and heavy machine guns. Against this determined threat, behind the wall of the Rockies, the American army waited with field artillery, railway guns, bazookas, and flamethrowers. For the first time there was belief in a Russian defeat, if not an eventual American victory. But the waiting Americans were not to be given the opportunity for hand-to-hand combat. Since planes could not report the progress of the snowshoers over the grass, dirigibles, and free balloons drifting with the wind gave minute-to-minute reports. Though many of the airships were shot down and many more of the balloons blown helplessly out of the area, enough returned to give a picture of the rapid disintegration of the invading force. Nothing like it had happened to an army since 1812. The snowshoes, adequate enough for short excursions over the edge of the grass, became suicidal instruments on a march of weeks. Starting eastward from their bases in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, in military formation, singing triumphantly in minor keys, the Slavic steamroller had presented an imposing sight. Americans in the occupied area seeing column after column of closely packed soldiers tramping endlessly up and over the grass, said it reminded them of old prints of pickets charge at Gettysburg. The first day's march went well enough, though it covered no more than a few miles. At night they camped upon great squares of tarpaulin, and in the morning resumed their webfooted way. But the night had not proved restful, for over the edges of every tarpaulin the eager grass had thrust impatient runners, and when the time came to de-camp, more than half the canvases had been left in possession of the weed. The second day's progress was slower than the first, and it was clear to the observers the men were tiring unduly. More than one threw away his rifle to make the marching easier. Some freed themselves of their snowshoes, and so after a few yards, sank and extricably tangled into the grass. Others lay down exhausted to rise no more. The men in the balloons could see by the way the feet were raised, that the inquisitive stolons were more and more entangling themselves in the webbing. Still the Soviet command poured fresh troops onto the grass. Profiting perhaps by the American example, they transported new supplies to the army by dirigibles, replacing the lost tarpaulins and rifles, daringly sending whole divisions of snowshoes by parachute almost to the eastern edge. This last experiment proved too reckless, for enough of these adventurers were located to permit their annihilation by long-range artillery. Their endurance is incredible, magnificent, eulogized General Thario enthusiastically. They are contending not only with the prospect of meetin' fresh unworn troops on our side, but against a tireless enemy who cannot be awed or hurt, and even more against their own feelings of fear and despair, which must come upon them constantly as they get farther into this green desert, farther from natural surroundings, deeper into the silence and mystery of the abnormal barrier they have undertaken to cross. They are Superman, and only supernatural means will defeat them. But there was plenty of evidence that the General credited the foe with a stronger spirit than they possessed. Their spirit was undoubtedly high, but it could not stand up against the relentless harassment of the grass. The weary, sodden advance went on slower and slower. The toll higher and higher. There were signs of dissatisfaction, mutiny, and madness. Some units turned about to be shot down by those behind. Some wandered off helplessly until lost forever. The dwindling of the Great Army accelerated. Airborne replacements dependent on such erratic transport failed to fill the gaps. The marchers no longer fired at the airships overhead. They moved their feet slowly, hopelessly, stood stock still for hours, or faltered aimlessly. Occasional improvised white flags could be seen, held apathetically up toward the balloonists. Long after their brave start, the crazed and starving survivors began trickling into the American lines where they surrendered. They were dull and listless, except for one strange manifestation. They shied away fearfully from every living plant or growth, but did they see a bare patch of soil, a boulder, or stretch of sand? They clutched, kissed, mumbled, and wept over it in a very frenzy. Chapter 4 Part F But the catastrophic loss of their great armies was not all the enemy had to endure. As the grass had stood our ally and swallowed the attackers, helping us in a negative fashion, as it were, it now turned and became a positive force in our relief. Unnoticed for months it had crept north-westward, filching precious mile after mile of the hostile foothold. Now it spirited ahead as it had sometimes done before at a furious pace to take over the coast as far north as the Russian River, which now doubled the irony of its name, and added thousands of square miles to its area at the enemy's expense. It surged directly westward, too, making what was left of the invaders' foothold precarious in the extreme. The stock market boomed, and the country went wild with joy at the news of the Soviet defeats. At the darkest moment we had been delivered by forces outside ourselves, but still indubitably American. Hymns of praise were sung to the grass as the savior of the nation, and in a burst of gratitude it was declared a national park forever in violet. Rationing restrictions were eased, and many industries were sensibly returned to private ownership. Good old Uncle Sam was unbeatable after all. But if the Americans were jubilant, the Russians were cast into deepest gloom. Accustomed to tremendous wartime losses of manpower, they had at first taken the news stoically, interpreting it as just another defeat to be later redeemed by pouring fresh troops and then more fresh troops after those which had gone down. But when they realized they had lost not divisions but whole armies, that they had suffered a greater blow than any in their history, that their reserve power was a little greater than the armies remaining to the Americans, and finally that the grass, the foe which had dealt all these grievous blows, was rapidly wiping out what remained of their bridgehead, they began to murmur against the war itself. Under our dear little Uncle Stalin, they said, this would never have taken place. Our sons and brothers would not have been sent to die so far away from Holy Mother Russia, down with the enemies of Stalin, down with a warmongering bureaucracy. The Kremlin hastened to assure the population it was carrying out the wishes of the sainted Stalin. It convinced them of the purity of its motives, by machine-gunning all demonstrators, and executing after public trials all Trotskyite fascist American saboteurs and traitors. For some reason these arguments failed to win over the people, and on November 7 a new slogan was heard. Long live Stalin and Trotsky, which proved so popular that in a short time the entire bureaucracy was liquidated. The Soviet Union declared an unequivocal worker state, the army replaced by red guards, the selling of Soviet bonds decreed a contravention of socialist economy, wages of all were equalized, and the words de conovism erased from all Russian dictionaries. No formal peace was ever made. Neither side had any further appetite for war, and though newspapers like the Daily Intelligencer continued for months to clamor for the resumption of hostilities, even to using aircraft now that there was less danger of reprisal, both countries seemed content to return quietly to the status quo. The only results of the war, aside from the tremendous losses, was that in America the grass had been unmolested for a year and the Soviet Union had a new constitution. One of the peculiar provisions of this constitution was that political offenders, and the definition was now severely limited, leaving out ninety-nine percent of those formally jeoparded, should henceforth expiate their crimes by spending the term of their sentence gazing at the colossal and elaborate tomb of Stalin which occupied the center of Red Square. General Stuart Thario, rudely treated by an ungrateful republic, had the choice of a permanent colonelcy or retirement. I have always thought it was his human vanity making him cling to the title of general which caused him to retire. At any rate there was no difficulty in finding a place for him in our organization, and if his son's salary and position were reduced in consequence it was all in the family as the saying goes. One of the happy results of our unique system of free enterprise was the rewarding of men an exact proportion to their merits and abilities. The war, bringing disruption and bankruptcy to so many shiftless and short-sighted people, made of consolidated Pemekin one of the country's great concerns. The organization welcoming General Thario was far different from the one which had hired his son. I now had fourteen factories stretching like a string of illustrious pearls from Quebec down to Montevideo, and I was negotiating to open new branches in Europe and the Far East. I had been elected to the directorship of several important corporations, and my material possessions were enough to constitute a nuisance, for I have always remained a simple literary sort of fellow at heart, requiring secretaries and stewards to look after them. It is a depressing sidelight on human nature that the achievement of eminence brings with it the malice in spite of petty minds, and no one of prominence can avoid becoming the target of stupid and unscrupulous attack. It would be pointless now to go into those carping and unjust accusations directed at me by irresponsible newspaper columnists. Another man might have ignored these mean assaults, but I am naturally sensitive, and while it was beneath my dignity to reply personally, I thought it perhaps one of the best investments I could make to add a newspaper to my other properties. Now I am certainly not the sort of capitalist portrayed by cartoonists in the early part of the century who would subvert the freedom of the press by hand picking an editor and telling him what to say. I think the proof of this, as well as of my broad-mindedness, is to be found in the fact that the paper I chose to buy was the Daily Intelligencer, and the editor I retained was William Rufus Lafacici. The Intelligencer had lost both circulation and money since it had, so to speak, no home base, but moved perhaps by sentiment I was not deterred from buying it for this reason, and anyway it was purchasable at a more reasonable figure on this account. Small circulation or no, it, or rather Lafacici himself, still possessed that intangible thing called prestige, and I was satisfied with my bargain. Lafacici showed no reluctance, as why indeed should he, to continue as managing editor, and acted toward me as though there had never been any previous association, but I did not object to this harmless eccentricity as a smaller-minded person might have. As publisher I named General Thario. I never knew exactly what purpose a publisher serves, but it seemed necessary for every newspaper to have one. Whatever the duties of the office, it left the general plenty of time to attend to the concerns of consolidated Pemicon. I fed the paper judiciously with money, and it was not long before it regained most of the circulation it had lost. There was no doubt the grass, our ally to such good purpose in the war, had definitely slowed down. Now it was looked upon as a fixture, a part of the American heritage, a natural phenomenon which had outlived its sensational period and come to be taken for granted. Botanists pointed out that Synodon Dactilon, despite its ability to sheathe itself against a chill, had never flourished in cold areas, and there was no reason to suppose the inoculated grass, even with its abnormal metabolism, could withstand climate's foreign to its habit. It was true it had touched in one place the Arctic tundra, but it was confidently expected this excursion would soon cease. The high peaks of the Rockies, with the heavy winter snowdrifts lying between them, promised no permanent hospitality, and what seeds blew through the passes and lighted on the Great Plains were generally isolated by salt bands, and since they were confined to comparatively small clumps they were easily wiped out by salt or fire. To all appearance the grass was satiated and content to remain crouching over what it had won. Only a minority argued that in its new form it might be infinitely adaptable. Before, when stopped, it had produced seeds capable of bearing the parent's strain, so now they argued it wouldn't time acclimate itself to more rigorous temperatures. Among these pessimists, Miss Francis, emerging from well-deserved obscurity, hysterically ranged herself. She prophesied new sudden and sweeping advances and demanded money and effort equal to that expended in the late war be turned to combating the grass, as if taxes were not already outrageously high. Those in authority, with a little judicious advice from persons of standing, quite properly disregarded her quarelless importunities. The whole matter of dealing with the weed was by now in the hands of a permanent body, the Federal Disruptions Commission. This group had spent the first six months of its existence exactly defining and asserting its jurisdiction, which seemed to spread just as the vegetation calling it into being did. In the second six months, wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission over certain cease and desist orders issued to firms using allusions to the grass on the labels of their products, thereby implying they were as vigorous or of as wide application as the representation. The Disruptions Commission had no objection and principle to this castigation. They merely thought it should have come from their regulatory hands. But with the end of the war, a new spirit animated the honorable members of the commission, and as a token of revived energy, they issued a stern directive that no two groups engaged in anti-grammarous research were to pool their knowledge. For competition, the commission argued in the sixty-seven page order, spurred enthusiasm and the rivalry between workers would the sooner produce a solution. Having settled this basically important issue, they turned their attention to investigating the slower progress of the grass to determine whether it was permanent or temporary and whether its present sluggishness could be turned to good account. As a sort of side project, perhaps to show the wideness of their scope, they undertook as well to study the reasons for the failure of the wartime inoculation of the steps as contrasted with the original two successful California one. They planned a compilation of their findings, tentatively scheduled to cover a hundred and forty-seven folio volumes which would remain the basic work for all approaching the problem of attacking the grass, and as an important public figure who had some first-hand knowledge of the subject, they requested me to visit, at my own expense, the newest outposts of the weed and favor them with my observations. I was not averse to the suggestion, for the authority of the commission would admit me to areas close to ordinary citizens, and I was toying with the idea it might be possible in some way to use the devil grass as an ingredient in our food products. George Thario, having shown in many ways he was growing stale on the job and in need of a vacation, I decided to take him with me. Besides, if the thought of using the weed as a source of cheap raw material came to anything, the engagement of his interest at an early stage would increase his usefulness. Before setting out for the field I read reports of investigators on the spot and was disquieted to note a unanimous mention of new stirrings on the edges of the green glacier. I decided to lose no time and we set out at once in my personal plain for a mountain lodge kindly offered by a business acquaintance. Here, for the next few weeks, keeping in touch with my manifold affairs, only by telephone, Joe and I devoted ourselves to observing the grass. Or rather, I did. George Thario's idea of gathering data differed radically from mine. I feel safe to say as well as from that of almost any other intelligent man. In a way he reminded me of the cameraman's slave in his brooding obliviousness to everything except the grass. But slave had been doing a job for which he was being paid, whereas Joe was only yielding to his own mood. For hours he lay flat on his belly, staring through binoculars. At other times he wandered about the edge, looking at, feeling, and smelling it. And once I saw him bend down a nibble at it like a sheep. You know, A.W., he observed enthusiastically, he always called me A.W., with just enough of a curious intonation to make it doubtful whether the use of the initials was respectful or satirical. You know, A.W., I understand those fellows who went and chucked themselves into the grass. It's sublime. It has never happened in nature before. I've read newspaper and magazine accounts and either the writers have no eyes or else they've never seen it before. Or else they lie for the hell of it. They talk about the dirty brown of the flowers, but A.W., I've seen the flowers myself and they're a vivid, glorious purple. Have you noticed the iridescent sparkle when the wind ripples the blades? All the colors of the spectrum against the background of that marvelous green. There's nothing marvelous about it, I told him a little irritably. It used to be really green, a bright even color, but up here where it's high and cold it doesn't look much different from ordinary devil grass, dirty and ugly. I thought his enthusiasm distinctly out of place in the circumstances. He did not seem to hear me but went on dreamily. And the sounds it makes. My God, A.W., a composer give half the years of his life to reproduce those sounds. High and piercing, soft and muted, creating tome poems and etudes there in its lonely grandeur. I have spoken before of the noise produced by the weed, a thunderous crackling and snapping attributable to its extraordinary rate of growth. During its dormancy the sound and sea stand in the mountains at least was replaced by different notes and combination of notes as the wind blew through its combs and scraped the tough stems against each other. Occasionally these oolations produced reflections extremely pleasing. More often it hurt the ears with a shrieking discordance, but even at its best it fell far short to my mind and I suppose I may say I'm as sensitive to beauty as anybody of meriting Joe's extravagant rhapsodies. But he was in trance beyond the soberness of common sense. He filled notebooks, those thick pulp-paper volumes which children are supposed to use in school but never do, with his reactions. In idle moments when he was away I glanced through them and for the most part they were incoherent. Meterless poems, lists of adjectives, strained interpretations of the actions of the grass and many musical notations which seemed to get no farther than a repetitive and faltering start. I reproduce a few pages of the less chaotic material for what it is worth. The Ice Age drove the crow-magnum from the caves which prophesized noses and pythons and the temple of Athena in the Acropolis. This grass, 20th century ice, drives magnets from their 20 room villas to their 20 room duplexes. The loss was yesterday's, Walt Whitman. For it is the animals, cows and pigs, horses, goats, sheep, and rabbits abandoned by the husbandmen, startled, puzzled. The clock with the broken mainspring running backward. The small game, deer, antlered, striped and spotted, wild sheep, ovis, pulley, teddy Roosevelt shot and autobomb printed, mountain goats leaping in terror to hazardous safety on babble's top, upward to the pinpoint where no angels dance, but not alone. Meat and meat-eater, food and feeder, predator and prey, foxes, lynx, coyotes, wolves, wildcats, mountain lions, the passenger pigeons gone, the dung they pecked from herds thick as man born, and man yet to be born lies no more on the plains. Night and day we travel, but the birds overhead gave cover from the sun and the buffalo before us stretch from the river to the hills, driven by the ice, not ice, but living green up and up. Pause here upon this little shelf to nibble bark, to mate and bear, to snarl and claw and rend and suck hot blood from the moving jugular vein, and then move again upward with docile, who afar else retreat with lashing tail and snarling fang. Biter and bitten transfused with fear, the timber-line behind, the snow alone welcoming, ironically the glacier meets another glacier and only glacier gives refuge to glaciers haunted. Here little islands on the peaks. Vegetation sea is death creeping upward to end at the beginning. The carnivores, whipped tailed, seek the top ambitions pinnacle surveying nothing. Tomorrow is for man, the lower mind is reasonable and ponders food and dung and lust, so obstinate the pad claw prowls higher till nothing's left but pedestal and would then wing, but being not yet man can only turn again. The ruminants, resigned, nibble at the edges of their death, converting death to life, chewing, swallowing, digesting, regurgitating and digesting again in escapable fate. Reluctant sustenance, empty-bellied the pointed teeth descend again to take their food at second hand to go back sated, brown blood upon the snow and bits of hide and hair, gnawed at bones, while fellows for getting fear remaining stoic eat, stamp and stamp without impatience and eat again of that which has condemned them. Learn a doctor your adding machine gives you the answer, so many carnivores, so many herbivores. The parallel dashes introduce extinction. Confusedly the savor of Abel's sacrifice was sweet to his nostrils, not Cain's fruits. So was the mind confounded, turning and devouring each other over prostrate antlers, the snarlers die, their furry hides bloat and then collapse on rigid bones to make a place for curious sniffings and quick retreat in trampled snow. There is no victory without harshness, no hope in triumph. The placid ruminants live, the conquerors have conquered nothing. The grass comes to the edge of the snow, they eat and fill their meager bellies, they chew the cud and mate and cav and live in wretched unawareness of the heat of glory and death. So is justice done and mercy and yet not justice and yet not mercy. Who was victor yesterday is not victor today, but neither is he victim. Who was victim yesterday is not victor, but neither is he victim. End of chapter four part f chapter four part g of greener than you think. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org greener than you think by Ward Moore. Chapter four part g. In all this confused rambling I thought there might be a curious and interesting little observation about animal migration, if one could trust the accuracy of an imagination more romantic than factual, and I reduced it to some kind of coherence and added it not only to my report for the Federal Disruptions Commission but for the dispatches I found time to send into the Intelligencer. I hardly suppose it is necessary to mention that by now my literary talents could no longer be denied or ignored and that these items were not edited nor garbled but appeared exactly as I had written them boxed and double-leaded on page one. Though the matter was really trivial and in confessing it I don't mind admitting all of this are subject to petty vanities, I was gratified to notice too that Lafacice had the discernment to realize how much the public appreciated my handling the news about the grass for he advertised my contributions lavishly. In my news stories I could tell no less than the full truth which was that the grass, after remaining patriotically dormant throughout the war except for the spurt northward to destroy the remnants of the invading host, had once more set out upon the march. The loss of color I had pointed out to Joe was less apparent each day of our stay as the old vividness revived with its renewed energy and the sweet music which entranced him gave place to the familiar crackling, growing louder with each foot at advance down the slope, culminating every so often in thunderous explosions. For down the thousand mile incline of the Mississippi basin it was pouring with accelerating tempo engulfing or driving everything before it. It was the old story of the creeping stolons, the stepped up tangled mass and the great towering bulk behind, the falling forward and then the continued headway, once more the eastbound trains and highways clogged with refugees. My affair is not permitting a longer stay, I return to New York, but I could not pry Joe from his preoccupation. A.W., he argued, I be no more used to consolidated Pemekin right now than ground glass in a ham sandwich. My backside might be in a swivel chair, but my soul would be right up here. It's Whitman translated visibly and tangibly, A.W. Come lovely and soothing death, undulate round and round. Besides, you've got the old man now, he's worth more to you than I ever will be. He loves business. It's just like the army, without a doddering old general staff to pull him back every time he gets enthusiastic. If anyone else in my organization had talked like this, I would have fired him immediately. But I was sure down underneath his aesthetic poses and artistic pretensions there was a foundation of good common sense inherited from the general. Give the boy his head, I thought. Let him stay here and rhapsodize till he gets sick of it. He'll come back the better executive for having got it out of his system. Also, as he himself pointed out, I had his father to rely on, and he was a man to whip up production if ever there was one. The chief purpose of my visit to the grass was, at least momentarily, a failure. There was little point sampling and analyzing the weed for its possible use as an ingredient in a food concentrate if it were impossible to set up a permanent place to gather and process it. I won't say I considered my time wasted, but its employment had not been profitable. But even immersed in the ever-expanding affairs of consolidated pemmican and allied industries, as we now called the parent company, I could not get away from the grass. Each hour's eastward thrust was reported in detail by an hysterical radio, and every day the newspapers printed maps showing the newly overrun territory. Once more the grass was the most prominent thought in men's minds, not only over the land of its being, but throughout the world. Scientists of every nationality studied it at first hand, and only strict laws and rigid searches by customs inspectors prevented the importation of specimens for dissection in their own laboratories. The formula of Miss Francis, now at length revealed in its entirety, was discussed by everyone. There was hardly a man, woman, or child who did not dream of finding some means to destroy or halt the grass, and thereby make of himself an unparalleled benefactor. A new crop of suggestions was harvested by the intelligentser. In addition to the old, they included such expedience, as re-inoculating the grass with a metamorphiser in the hope either of its cannibalistically feeding upon itself, or becoming so infected with giantism as to blow up and burst. The failure of the experiment on the Russian steps was ignored or forgotten by these contributors, building barriers of dry ice, and the use of infrared lamps. One of the proposals which tickled the popular imagination was a plan for vast areas to be roofed in glass-enclosed, giant greenhouses to offer refuge for mankind in the very teeth of the grass. Artesian wells could be sunk, it was argued, power harnessed to the tides of the sea and piped underground, the populace fed by means of concentrates or hydroponic farming. Everyone, except those in authority, the ones who would have to approve the expenditure of the vast sums necessary, thought there was something in the idea, but nothing was done about it. Many, believing physical means could be of little avail, suggested metaphysical ones, and these were always punctiliously printed by the intelligentser. They ranged from disregarding the existence of the weed and carrying on ordinary life as though it presented no threat through holding the correct thought, praying daily for its miraculous disappearance, preferably at a simultaneous moment, to reorganizing the spiritual concepts of the human totality. But even without the newspapers George Thario would have kept me informed. Piteous, if not too comprehensive for small emotions, he wrote in a letter, only a little more intelligible than the stuff in his notebooks. Yesterday I stopped by a small farm, or ranch, as local grand delinquents ever seeking purple justification has it here. Submarginal land, the tabulating minds of government officials, spectacles precise on Nosebridge, daily ration of ex-lax safe in briefcase, would have labeled it, sitting in expectant unease on hilltops and the uncomfortable slopes between dry farming, the place illegally acquired from cattle range, more proper and more profitable, by nester grand sire, surviving drought and dust storm, locust, weevil and straying herds, feeding rachitic kids, dull women, and helpless men for half a century. The farm resettlement administration would have moved them to fatter ground a hundred times, but blindly obstinate they held to what was theirs and yet not theirs. In the front seat the man and wife and what remained of quick moments of drop-jawed ecstasy, in back unwieldy chicken coop slats patched with bits of apple box and wire, weather gray, astonished cocks crowing out of time and hens heads down. Hitched behind the family cow, stiff-ribbed and empty-uttered, the grass, deaf lover had seized the shack, its fingers curled the solid door, body pressed forward for joyful rape. The nesters don't look back but pant ahead, the bumping of the car accommodates the cow. I've had to leave the lodge, of course, and spend my nights in a thin house with a roof shaped like two playing-cards, with the misleading sign and punishment crippled half-fallen from its support, tourists accommodated. If accommodation be empty spaces with mottos and porcelain piss-pots, then punishment was unrighteous. I shall move on soon, perhaps for the worse since there is green now beneath the blue. If I can ever come away, I shall. But I'd not miss this gladiator show, this richieri swing. Give my best to the old boy. Tell him I'd write direct, but family feeling makes it hard. Joe. I showed the letter to the general, expecting him perhaps to be annoyed by Joe's instability, but he merely said, Boy, shouldn't be wasting his talents. Put it in sound, orchestrate it. Just as Joe's enthusiasm covered only one aspect of the grass, so his retreat from lodge to wayside hostel to city hotel embraced only a minute sector of the great advance. Neither moral nor brute force slowed the weed. It clutched the upper reaches of the Rio Grande and ran down its course to the Gulf of Mexico like Quicksilver and a broken thermometer. It went through Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas. It nibbled at the forks of the plot. It left behind the great Salt Lake like a chip diamond lost in an enormous setting. There is no benefit to be derived from looking at the darker side of things, and indeed it is a universal observation that there is no misfortune without its compensation. The loss of the great cattle grazing areas of the West increased the demand for our concentrated foods by the hundred fold. We paid no duty on the product shipped in from our South American factories, for they competed only with ourselves, and we did the country the humanitarian service of preventing a famine by rushing carload after carload westward, rising above all thoughts of petty gain by making no increase whatever in our prices despite the expanding demand. About this time it became indisputable that Button Gwinnett Fleece was no longer of value to consolidated Pemmican. His janky shrewdness and caution which enabled him to run the corporation when it was merely a name and a quotation on the stock market had the limits of its virtues. He was extraordinarily provincial in outlook and quite unable to see the concern on a world scale. In view of our vast expansion such narrowness had become an unbearable hindrance. I had permitted him to hold a limited number of shares and to act nominally as secretary in order to comply with the regulations of the Security and Exchange Commission, but now it was expedient to add to our officers directors of other companies whose fields were complementary to ours. Besides in general Thoreo I had a much abler assistant and so perhaps reluctantly because of my oversensitivity I displaced Fleece and making the general president of the corporation I accepted the post of chairman of the board. I must say he took a perfectly natural business move with unbecoming ill grace. It was my Mr. Wainer you know it was mine and I did not protest when you stole it. I worked loyally and unselfishly for you. It isn't the money Mr. Wainer really it isn't. It's the idea of being thrown out of my own business. At least let me stay on the border directors. You'll never have any trouble from me I promise you that. It distressed me to reject his abject plea but my hands were tied by my devotion to the welfare of the company. Besides he annoyed me by his palpably untrue reference to what had been a legitimate transaction never giving a thought to my generosity and not exposing his chicanery nor the fact that the dummy he manipulated bore no resemblance whatever to the firm I had brought by my own effort to its present size. Leaving matters in the able hands of general Thoreo after warning Joe he had better soon return to his father's assistance I went abroad to arrange for wider European representation. There I found a curious eagerness to be of help to me and almost fawning servility antipathetic to my democratic American notions. Oddly enough the Europeans looked upon the United States as a doomed country thinking I like some members of our wealthier classes had come to escape disruption and dislocation at home. Only in England did I find the belief prevalent that the Americans would somehow muddle through because after all they're the same sort of chaps we are, you know. After a highly successful trip I returned home the same day the grass reached the headwaters of the Mississippi. William Rufus Lafacici astonished me as well as every newspaper man in the country by resigning as editor of the Daily Intelligencer, a post he had held before many of its reporters were born. When I phoned him to come to my office and explain himself he refused. In tones and manner I had not heard from any man since the days when I had wasted my talents as a subordinate. Having none of the pettiness of pride which makes some men fearful of their position since he would not come to my office I went to his. There he shocked me for the third time. A high glossy collar, a flowing and figured cravat concealed the famous diamond stud while instead of the snuff box his hands hovered over a package of cheap cigarettes. Weiner, he asked, jettisoning all those criticism to which I had become accustomed. I never thought I'd be glad to see your vapid face again unless on a marble slab in some city morgue but now you're here. Money bag slapping the insides of your thighs in place of the scrotum for which you could have no possible use. I am delighted to tell you in person to take my paper. My paper, sir, note that well for all your dirty poings could not make it anything but mine and sup-posit it. I hope it frets you Weiner for the sake of your snivelling but immortal soul. I sincerely hope it rests you like a misplaced hair shirt. You will get some miserable dicksbiddle to take my place, some mangy bookkeeping pimp with a permanent waved wife and three snotty-nosed brats with the spirit and guts of the intelligentser depart with W. R. Lafacicy. I disregarded both his ill manners and his bombast. What's the matter, Bill? I ask kindly. Is it more money? You can write your own ticket, you know, within reason, of course. His fingers looked for the snuff box but found only the cigarettes which he inspected puzzedly. Weiner, no man could do you justice. You are the bloody prototype of all the R. Slickers, panders, arsonists, kidnappers, cutthroats, pickpockets, abortionists, pilfers, cheats, forgers, sneak thieves, sharpers, and blackmailers since Jacob swindled his brother. Do not fawn upon me, little man. I am too old to want women or money. The sands are running out and I shall never now read the immortal Hobbes. But I'm not dying your bloody harness. In me you do not see the man who picked up the torch of Franklin and Greeley and Dana where Henry Waterson dropped it. Loose of your gangrenous chains, you behold the freelance correspondent of the North American newspaper alliance. The man who will devote his decline and years to reporting in the terse and vivid prose for which he is justly famous. The progress of the grass which strangles the country as you have tried to strangle me. Again I put personal feelings aside. If your mind is really made up, will want your stuff for the intelligence, sir Bill? Sir, you may want. I hope the condition persists. There being no profit in arguing with a madman, I made arrangements to replace him immediately. I reproduce here not for self-justification, which would be superfluous, but merely for what amusement it may afford one of his accounts which appeared in the columns of so many third and fourth-rate newspapers. I won't say it shows the decay of a once-possibly great mind, but it certainly reveals that the intelligentser suffered no irreparable loss. Today at Dubuque, Iowa, the Mississippi was crossed. Not by red men in canoes nor white on logs or clumsy rafts, nor yet by multi-wheeled locomotives gliding over steel bridges, nor airplanes so high the wide stream was a thread below. Nature and devastation, hand in hand for the moment one and the same, crossed it today as Quantrell or Kirby Smith or Nathan Bedford Forrest crossed it, sabers glittering so many forgotten years ago. But if the men in gray and butternut raided a store or burned a tavern, they thought it a mighty victory and went home rejoicing. The green invader is an occupier and colonizer come to remain for all time, leaving no town, no road, no farm where it has passed. A few weeks ago Dubuque was still here quiet, old and pleasant, the butt of affectionate jokes, the grass still miles away, the population still hopeful of salvation, and then because of the panic the frantic scurrying to save things once valuable and now only valued. No one noticed when a betraying wind blew seeds beyond the town over the river to find receptive soil on the Wisconsin side. The seeds germinated, the clump flourished, it cut the highway and reached down the banks into the Mississippi, waiting, and while it waited it built up a greater bulk for itself behind and beside. Each day it pushed a little farther toward midstream, drowning its own foremost runners so those behind might have solidity to advance upon. Meanwhile from the west the continent imposed upon a continent came closer. The other day Dubuque went. Its weathered bricks and immature stucco alike obliterated. The grass ran out like a bather on a cold morning hastening to the water before timidity halts him. Although I was watching I could not tell you at what exact instant the gap was closed, at what moment the runners from one clump intertwined with those of the other, but such a moment did occur, and shedding water like a surfacing whale the united bodies rose from the riverbed to form a verdant bridge. You could not walk across it, at least no man I know would want to try, but it gives the illusion of permanency no work of man, stone or steel or concrete has ever given, and it is a dismaying thing to see man's trade taken over by nature in this fashion. The bridge is a dam also. All the debris from the upper reaches collects against it, and soon there will be floods to add to the other distress the grass has brought. More than half the country is gone now. The territories pillaged from Mexico argued from Britain bought from France have all been lost. Only the original states and Florida remain. Shall we be more successful in defending our basic land than all the acquisitions of a century and a half? But why add any more dry senile without feeling? My only wonder was that his stuff was printed even in the obscure media where it appeared. Chapter four part g chapter four part h of greener than you think this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org greener than you think by Ward Moore chapter four part h with two-thirds of the country absorbed in 150 million people squeezed into what was left economic conditions became worse than ever no European ghetto was as crowded as our cities and no overpopulated countryside farms so intensively to so little purpose and almost complete cessation of employment except in the remnant of the export trade valueless money English shillings and pound notes illegally circulated being the prized medium of exchange starvation only irritated rather than relieved by the doles of food seized from the farmers and grudgingly handed out to the urban dwellers each election saw another party in power the sole demand of the voters being for an administration capable of stopping the grass since none was successful the dissatisfaction and anger grew together with the panic and dislocation messiahs and furors sprang up thickly riots in all cities were daily occurrences rating no more than obscure paragraphs while in many areas gangs of hoodlums actually maintained themselves in power for weeks at a time ruling their possessions like feudal baronies and exacting tribute from all travelers through their domain immigration had long ago been stopped but now the government in order to preserve what space was left for genuine americans canceled the naturalization of all foreign born and ordered them immediately deported all jews who had been in the country less than three generations were shipped to Palestine and the others deprived of political rights in order to encourage them to leave also the negroes who except for a period less than a decade in length had never had any political or civil rights planned a mass migration to africa a project enthusiastically spurred by such elder statesmen as the learned maybank and the judicious rancor this movement proved abortive when statisticians showed there were not enough liquid assets among the colored population to pay a profit on their transportation an attempt to oust all catholics failed also for the rather odd reason that many of the minor protestant sex joined in a body to oppose it the latter day saints now busy building new desert in central australia and the church of christ scientist as well as the episcopalians dowyites shakers christa delphians and the congregation of the chapel of the former and latter reins presented a united front for tolerance and equity an astonishing byproduct of the national despair and turmoil was the feverish activity in all fields of creative endeavor novels streamed from the presses volumes of poetry became substantial items on publishers lists and those which failed to find a publisher were mimeographed and peddled to a receptive public while painters working with renaissance enthusiasm turned out great canvases as fast as their brushes could spread the oils we had suddenly become a nation madly devoted to the arts when orpheus chris odds devil grass symphony was first played in carnegie hall an audience three times as great as that admitted had to be accommodated outside with loudspeakers and when the awesome crescendo of horns drums and broken crockery rubbed over slate surfaces announced the climax of the sixth movement the crowds wept even for mozart the hall was full or practically full in the lively arts the impact of the grass was more overt on the comic page superman daily pushed it back and there was great regret his activities were limited to a four-color process while terry lee and flash gordon ever inspired by the sharp outlines of mammary glands also saved the country even lilabner and snuffy smith battled the vegetation while no one but jigs remained absolutely impervious the green grass blues was heard on every radio and came from every adolescent's phonograph until it was succeeded by itty bitty scene made awful nasty weed perhaps the most notable feature of this period was a preoccupation with permanency jerry building architectural mode since the first false front was erected over the first small town store practically disappeared the skyscrapers were no longer steel skeletons with thin facings of stone hung upon them like a slattern's apron while the practice of dobbing mud on chicken wire hastily laid over paper was discontinued everyone wanted to build for all time even though the grass might seize upon their effort next week in new york the cathedral of st john the divine was finally completed and a new one dedicated to st george begun the demand for enduring woods replaced the market for green pine and men planned homes to accommodate their great-grandchildren and not to attract prospective buyers before the plaster cracked naturally forward-looking men like steward thario and myself though we had every respect for culture were not swamped by this sudden urge to encourage the effervescent side of life our feet were still upon the ground and though we knew symphonies and novels and cathedrals had their place it was important not to lose sight of fundamentals while we approved in principle the desire for permanency we took reality into account we had every faith in the future of the country being certain a way would be found before long to stop the encroachments of the weed nevertheless as a proper precaution a safeguarding counterbalance to our own enthusiastic patriotism we invested our surplus funds and consoles and european bonds while hastening our plans for new factories on other continents i'm sure george thario must have been a great cross to his father although the general never spoke of him saving the most affectionate terms living like a tramp he sent a snapshot once showing him with a long starveling beard dressed in careless overalls his arm over the shoulder of a slovenly looking girl he stayed always on the edge of the advancing weed moving eastward only when forced he wrote from galena eagle forgotten the rejected accepted for yesterday's eagle is today's the hero is man and man his own hero i was with him when he died and when he died again and a hundred miles to the south is another eagle forgotten and all the prairies green once more will be as they were before men insulted them oh eagle forgotten oh stained prairie oh gallows thirsty mob knife torch revolver contumaly parochialism the short vision forever gone and the long vision too the eagle forgotten is the national bird the great merging with the greater so gained too late a vision and saw the hope that was despair i named the catalog of states and the great syllables rolled from my tongue to echo silence my sister my bride gone and gone the conestoga wagons have no more faint ruts to follow the little big horn is a combination of letters the marking some flowers exist no more we destroyed we preempted we are destroyed and we have been thrust out illinois admitted to the union on such and such a date the little giant rubs stubby fingers through pompous hair heavy with bare grease the honorable ave in springfield's most expensive broad cloth necktie in the latest mode but pulled aside to free an eager adam's apple the drunken tanner punctual with the small man's virtues betrayed and dying painfully with so much blood upon his hands and the eagle himself forgotten and now again forgotten i move once more step by step i give it up the land we took in the land we made each foot i resign leaves the rest more precious oh precious land oh dear and fruitful soil its clods are me i eat them give them back the bond is indissoluble even the land gone is still mine my bones rest in it i have eaten of its fruits and laid my mark on it all of which was a long winded way of saying the grass was overrunning illinois in contrast i cannot forebear to quote lefassusy though his faults at the opposite end of the scale were just as glaring it is in kentucky now birth state of abraham lincoln 16th president of the united states a country which once stretched south of the 49th parallel from the atlantic to the pacific i have been traveling extensively in what is left of lincoln's nation dukes remarked chesterston don't emigrate this country was settled by the poor and thriftless and now few more than the poor and thriftless remain in it let me try to present an overall picture what is left of the country has become a 19th century ireland with all economic power in the hands of absentees it is not that everyone below the level of a millionaire is too stupid to foresee possibility of complete destruction or the middle and lower classes virtuously imbued with such fanatical patriotism they are prepared for mass suicide rather than leave because dukes are emigrating and sending the price of shipping space into brackets which make the export of any commodity but diamonds or their own hides a dubious investment even the pawning of all the family assets would not buy steerage passage for a year old baby besides there are not enough bottoms in the world to transport a hundred and fifty million people if the grass is not stopped except for a negligible few it will cover americans when it covers america no wonder a strange and conflicting spirit animates our people apathy yes there is apathy you can see it on the faces in a line of relief clients wondering how long an industrially stagnant country can continue their dough even though now it consists of nothing but unpalatable chemicals so-called concentrates despair certainly the riots and eludings especially the intensified ones recently in cleveland and pittsburgh are symptoms of it the overcrowded churches the terrific increase in drugging and drinking the sex orgies which have been taking place practically in the open in baltimore and philadelphia and boston our stigmata of desperation hope i suppose there is hope congress sits in uninterrupted session and senators lend their voices night and day to the destruction of the grass the federal disruptions commission has published the eleventh volume of its report and is currently holding hearings to determine how closely the extinct buffalo grass is related to synodon dactylon every research laboratory in the country except those whose staffs and equipment have been moved with their proprietary industries is expending its energies in seeking a salvation perhaps only in the deep south as yet protected by the width of the lower mississippi is there something approaching a genuine hope although ironically that may be the product of ignorance here the overlords have gone and the poor whites unsupported by an explicit kinship have withdrawn into complete listlessness some black men have fled but to most the grass is a mere bogie incapable of frightening those who have survived so much now for the first time since 1877 the polls are open to all and there are again negro governors and black legislatures and they are legislating as if forever farm tenancy has been abolished the great plantations have been expropriated and made cooperative the homestead act of 1862 has been applied in the south and every citizen is entitled to claim a quarter section there is a great deal of laughter at this childish lawmaking but it goes on changing the face of the region the lawmakers themselves not at all averse to the joke everything the fascist he wrote was not only dull but biased and unjust as well it was true capital was leaving the country rapidly but what other course had it to stay and attempt to carry on industry in the midst of the demoralization was obviously impractical the plants remained and went away was found to conquer the grass we would be glad to reopen them for this would be a practical course just as the flight of capital was a practical course standards of living were now so reduced in the united states it would be more profitable to employ cheap american labor than overpaid latin or european i had now no fixed abode dividing my time between rio and Buenos aries melbourne and manchester general thario and his family lived in copenhagen overseeing our continental properties now of equal importance with the south american holdings before leaving and indeed on every trip back home he visited his son no easy thing to do what with the young man's constant movement and the extreme difficulty of going from east to west against the torrent pouring in the opposite direction joe had married the female of the snapshot or contracted some sort of permanent alliance with her i never got it quite straight and the tharios were deplorably careless about such details and she proved as eccentric as he was no appeal to self-interest no pleading he forego his morbid preoccupation with the grass for the sake of his family could move them a w you have seen it heard it smelled it can't you explain miraculously touched with the gift of lucidity for fact as you are for the fictions of production overhead and dividends oh not to mama either she understands better than i are not at all but to the old man or connie as a child you learn for the first time of death the heart is shuttered in a little cell too cruel for breathing the sun is gray in an instant you forget the sky is bright the blood pounds years later the adolescent falls in love with death prints his spirit for it recalls an unpresumptuous brotherhood shelly and keats and shatterton afterward the flush fades we are reconciled to life but the promise is still implicit now however it must be earned awaited haste would destroy the savor the award assured pace becomes dignified but death is not death life is never mocked the grass is not death any more than it is evil the grass is the grass it is me and i am it in my father's house there are many mansions if it were not so i would not have told you no i suppose not yet it hurts my liver to offer the old boy incomprehensible reasons or verbiage like compulsion neurosis when all he wants is to protect me from my own impulses as he protected me from the army florence and i delight in him he comes again next week if possible but we cannot convey to him the unthinkableness of leaving i heard about this visit later from the general joe had scoured chicago for the alcoholic commodities now practically unprecurable and returned in triumph to the couple's furnished room there they entertained him with two bottles of quantro and a stone demi-john of corn whiskey touched filial affection even drank the quantro fiddle on stuff no wonder it was still available in the drought better son a man never had girls all right moved in circles perhaps not accustomed bit rough in speech but a heart of gold give you the shirt right off her back um manner of speaking know what i mean but she would not add her persuasions to those of the general joe's got to stay it's not something he sat down and thought up the way you planned dinner or whether blue goes good with your new permanent he's got to stay because he's got to stay and of course so do i we couldn't be satisfied anywhere we couldn't see the grass lights to dull away from it but of course that's only part it's too big to explain but george joe as you call him highly talented sensitive shouldn't be allowed to decay the general argued fascination understand the effort i will break the spell europe birthplace of culture reflection give him a proper perspective chance to do things even when the evening lengthened and he became more lucid under the stimulus of corn whiskey and quantro he could not shake them judicious retreat especially in the face of overwhelming superiority has always been a military weapon and no captain no matter how valiant has ever feared to use it pop george thario had retorted good humordly you dragged in the metaphor not i you've heard of the alamo and vicksburg and corregidor well this is them all rolled into one end of chapter four part h