In Dubious Battle (25 page)

“All right, I won’t argue any more. I don’t envy you as much as I might, Jim, because sometimes I love men as much as you do, maybe not in just the same way.”

“Do you get that, Doc? Like that—like troops and troops marching into you? And you closing around them?”

“Yes, something like that. Particularly when they’ve done something stupid, when a man’s made a mistake, and died for it. Yes, I get it, Jim—pretty often.”

They heard Mac’s voice, “Where are you guys? It’s so damn dark.”

“Over here.” They joined him and all three moved along into the orchard, under the black trees.

“The guards weren’t in the barn,” said Mac. “They were out on watch. Maybe they’re going to stick it.”

Far down the road they heard the mutter of a truck
coming toward them. “I feel sorry for Anderson,” Burton said quietly. “Everything he respects, everything he’s afraid of is turning against him. I wonder what he’ll do. They’ll drive him out of here, of course.”

Mac said harshly, “We can’t help it, Doc. He happens to be the one that’s sacrificed for the men. Somebody has to break if the whole bunch is going to get out of the slaughter-house. We can’t think about the hurts of one man. It’s necessary, Doc.”

“I wasn’t questioning your motives, nor your ends. I was just sorry for the poor old man. His self-respect is down. That’s a bitter thing to him, don’t you think so, Mac?”

“I can’t take time to think about the feelings of one man?” Mac said sharply. “I’m too busy with big bunches of men.”

“It was different with the little fellow who was shot,” Doc went on musingly. “He liked what he did. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

“Doc, you’re breakin’ my heart,” Mac said irritably. “Don’t you get lost in a lot of sentimental foolishness. There’s an end to be gained; it’s a real end, hasn’t anything to do with people losing respect. It’s people getting bread into their guts. It’s
real,
not any of your high-falutin’ ideas. How’s the old guy with the broken hip?”

“All right, then, change the subject. The old man’s getting mean as a scorpion. Right at first he got a lot of attention, he got pretty proud for a while; and now he’s mad because the men don’t come and listen to him talk.”

“I’ll go in and see him in the morning,” said Jim. “He was a kind of a nice old fellow.”

Mac cried, “Listen! Didn’t that truck stop?”

“I think it did. Sounded as though it stopped at the camp.”

“I wonder what the hell. Come on, let’s hurry. Look out for trees.” They had gone only a little distance when the truck roared, its gears clashed, and it moved away again. Its sound softened into the distance until it merged with the quiet. “I hope nothing’s wrong,” said Mac.

They trotted out of the orchard and crossed the cleared space. The light still burned in London’s tent, and a group of men moved about near it. Mac dashed up, threw up the tent-flap and went inside. On the ground lay a long, rough pine box. London sat on a box and stared morosely up at the newcomers. The girl seemed to cower down on her mattress, while London’s dark-haired, pale son sat beside her and stroked her hair. London motioned to the box with his thumb. “What the hell ’m I goin’ to do with it?” he asked. “It’s scared this here girl half to death. I can’t keep it in here.”

“Joy?” Mac asked.

“Yeah. They just brang him.”

Mac pulled his lip and studied the coffin. “We could put it outside, I guess. Or we can let your kids sleep in the hospital tent tonight and leave it here, that is, unless it scares you, London.”

“It don’t mean nothing to me,” London protested. “It’s just another stiff. I seen plenty in my time.”

“Well, let’s leave it here, then. Jim an’ me’ll stay here with it. The guy was a friend of ours.” Behind him the doctor chuckled softly. Mac reddened and swung around. “S’pose you do win, Doc? What of it? I knew the little guy.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Burton said.

London spoke softly to the girl, and to the dark boy, and in a moment they went out of the tent, she holding the shoulder blanket tight about herself and the baby.

Mac sat down on one end of the oblong box and rubbed the wood with his forefinger. The coarse pine grains wriggled like little rivers over the wood. Jim stood behind Mac and stared over his shoulder. London moved nervously about the tent, and his eyes avoided the coffin. Mac said, “Nice piece o’ goods the county puts out.”

“What you want for nothing?” London demanded.

“Well,” Mac replied, “I don’t want nothing for myself but a bonfire, just a fire to get rid of me, so I won’t lie around.” He stood up and felt in his jeans pocket and brought out a big knife. One of the blades had a screwdriver end. He fitted it to a screw in the coffin-lid and twisted.

London cried, “What do you want to open it for? That won’t do no good. Leave him be.”

“I want to see him,” said Mac.

“What for? He’s dead—he’s a lump of dirt.”

The doctor said softly, “Sometimes I think you realists are the most sentimental people in the world.”

Mac snorted and laid the screw carefully on the ground. “If you think this is sentiment, you’re nuts, Doc. I want to see if it’d be a good idea for the guys to look at him tomorrow. We got to shoot some juice into ’em some way. They’re dyin’ on their feet.”

Burton said, “Fun with dead bodies, huh?”

Jim insisted earnestly, “We’ve got to use every means, Doc. We’ve got to use every weapon.”

Mac looked up at him appreciatively. “That’s the idea. That’s the way it is. If Joy can do some work after he’s
dead, then he’s got to do it. There’s no such things as personal feelings in this crowd. Can’t be. And there’s no such things as good taste, don’t you forget it.”

London stood still, listening and nodding his big head slowly up and down. “You guys got it right,” he agreed. “Look at Dakin. He let his damn truck make him mad. I heard he comes up for trial tomorrow—for assault.”

Mac quickly turned out the screws and laid them in a line on the ground. The lid was stuck. He kicked it loose with his heel.

Joy looked flat and small and painfully clean. He had on a clean blue shirt, and his oil soiled blue jeans. The arms were folded stiffly across the stomach. “All he got was a shot of formaldehyde,” Mac said. A stubble was growing on Joy’s cheeks, looking very dark against the grey, waxy skin. His face was composed and rested. The gnawing bitterness was gone from it.

“He looks quiet,” Jim remarked.

“Yes,” said Mac. “That’s the trouble. It won’t do no good to show him. He looks so comfortable all the guys’ll want to get right in with him.” The doctor moved close and looked down at the coffin for a moment, and then he walked to a box and sat down. His big, plaintive eyes fastened on Mac’s face. Mac still stared at Joy. “He was such a good little guy,” he said. “He didn’t want nothing for himself. Y’see, he wasn’t very bright. But some way he got it into his head something was wrong. He didn’t see why food had to be dumped and left to rot when people were starving. Poor little fool, he could never understand that. And he got the notion he might help to stop it. I wonder how much he helped? It’s awful hard to say. Maybe not at all—maybe a lot. You can’t tell.”
Mac’s voice had become unsteady. The doctor’s eyes stayed on his face, and the doctor’s mouth was smiling a curious half-sardonic, half-kindly smile.

Jim interposed, “Joy wasn’t afraid of anything.”

Mac picked up the coffin-lid and set it in place again. “I don’t know why we say ’poor little guy’. He wasn’t poor. He was greater than himself. He didn’t know it—didn’t care. But there was a kind of ecstasy in him all the time, even when they beat him. And Jim says it—he wasn’t afraid.” Mack picked up a screw, and stuck it through the hole and turned it down with his knife.

London said, “That sounds like a speech. Maybe you better give the speech. I don’t know nothin’ about talkin’. That was a pretty speech. It sounded nice.”

Mac looked up guiltily and searched London for sarcasm, and found none. “That wasn’t a speech,” he said quietly. “I guess it could be, but it wasn’t. It’s like tellin’ the guy he hasn’t been wasted.”

“Why don’t you make the speech tomorrow? You can talk.”

“Hell, no. You’re the boss. The guys’d be sore if I sounded off. They expect you to do it.”

“Well, what do I got to say?”

Mac drove the screws in, one after another. “Tell ’em the usual stuff. Tell ’em Joy died for ’em. Tell ’em he was tryin’ to help ’em, and the best they can do for him is to help ’emselves by stickin’ together, see?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

Mac stood up and regarded the grained wood of the lid. “I hope somebody tries to stop us,” he said. “I hope some of them damn vigilantes gets in our way. God, I hope they try to stop us paradin’ through town.”

“Yeah, I see,” said London.

Jim’s eyes glowed. He repeated, “I hope so.”

“The guys’ll want to fight,” Mac continued. “They’ll be all sore inside. They’ll want to bust something. Them vigilantes ain’t got much sense; I hope they’re crazy enough to start something tomorrow.”

Burton stood up wearily from his box and walked up to Mac. He touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Mac,” he said, “you’re the craziest mess of cruelty and haus-frau sentimentality, of clear vision and rose-colored glasses I ever saw. I don’t know how you manage to be all of them at once.”

“Nuts,” said Mac.

The doctor yawned. “All right. We’ll leave it at nuts. I’m going to bed. You know where to find me if you want me, only I hope you won’t want me.”

Mac looked quickly at the tent ceiling. Fat, lazy drops were falling on the canvas. One—two—three, and then a dozen, patting the tent with a soft drumming. Mac sighed. “I hoped it wouldn’t. Now by morning the guys’ll be drowned rats. They won’t have no more spirit than a guinea pig.”

“I’m still going to bed,” the doctor said. He went out and dropped the flaps behind him.

Mac sat down heavily on the coffin. The drumming grew quicker. Outside, the men began calling to one another, and their voices were blurred by the rain. “I don’t suppose there’s a tent in the camp that don’t leak,” said Mac. “Jesus, why can’t we get a break without getting it cancelled out? Why do we always have to take it in the neck—always?”

Jim sat gingerly down on the long box beside him.

“Don’t worry about it, Mac. Sometimes, when a guy gets miserable enough, he’ll fight all the harder. That’s the way it was with me, Mac, when my mother was dying, and she wouldn’t even speak to me. I just got so miserable I’d’ve taken any chance. Don’t you worry about it.”

Mac turned on him. “Catching me up again, are you? I’ll get mad if you show me up too often. Go lie down on the girl’s mattress there. You’ve got a bad arm. It must hurt by now.”

“It burns some, all right.”

“Well, lie down there. See if you can’t get some sleep.” Jim started to protest, and then he went to the mattress on the ground and stretched out on it. The wound throbbed down his arm and across his chest. He heard the rain increase until it swept on the canvas, like a broom. He heard the big drops falling inside the tent, and then, when a place leaked in the center of the tent, he heard the heavy drops splash on the coffin box.

Mac still sat beside it, holding his head in his arms. And London’s eyes, like the sleepless eyes of a lynx, stared and stared at the lamp. The camp was quiet again, and the rain fell steadily, out of a windless sky. It was not very long before Jim fell into a burning sleep. The rain poured down hour after hour. On the tent-pole the lamplight yellowed and dropped to the wick. A blue flame sputtered for a while, and then went out.

TO Jim it seemed that he awakened out of a box. One whole side of him was encased in painful stiffness. He opened his eyes and looked about the tent. A grey and listless dawn had come. The coffin still lay where it had, but Mac and London were gone. He heard the pounding that must have awakened him, hammers on wood. For a time he lay quietly looking about the tent, but at last he tried to sit up. The box of pain held him. He rolled over and climbed up to his knees, and then stood up, drooping his hurt shoulder to protect it from tension.

The flap swung up and Mac entered. His blue denim jacket glistened with moisture. “Hi, Jim. You got some sleep, didn’t you. How’s the arm?”

“Stiff,” said. “Is it still raining?”

“Dirty drizzle. Doc’s coming to look at your shoulder in a minute. Lord, it’s wet outside! Soon’s the guys walk around a little bit, it’ll be all slop.”

“What’s the pounding?”

“Well, we’ve been building the stand for Joy. Even dug up an old flag to go over him.” He held up a small dingy package of cloth, and unrolled it, a threadbare and stained American flag. He spread it carefully on the coffin top. “No,” he said. “I think that’s wrong. I think the field should be over the left breast, like this.”

“It’s a lousy dirty flag,” Jim said.

“I know, but it’ll get over big. Doc ought to be along any minute now.”

“I’m hungry as hell,” said Jim.

“Who isn’t? We’re going to have rolled oats, straight, for breakfast, no sugar or no milk—just oats.”

“Even that sounds good to me. You don’t sound so low this morning, Mac.”

“Me? Well, the guys aren’t knocked out as much as I thought they would be. The women ’re raising hell, but the guys are in pretty good shape, considering.”

Burton hustled in. “How’s it feel, Jim?”

“Pretty sore.”

“Well, sit down over here. I’ll put on a clean bandage.” Jim sat on a box and braced himself against expected pain, but the doctor worked deftly, removed the old wrapping and applied a new one without hurting him. “Old Dan’s upset,” he said. “He’s afraid he isn’t going to get to go to the funeral. He says he started this strike, now everybody’s forgetting him.”

Mac asked, “Do you think we could put him on a truck and take him along, Doc? It’d be swell publicity if we could.”

“You could, Mac, but it’d hurt him like the devil; and it might cause shock complications. He’s an old man. Hold still, Jim. I’m nearly through. No, I’ll tell you what we’d better do. We’ll tell him we’re going to take him, and then when we start to lift him, I think he’ll beg off. His pride’s just hurt. He thinks Joy stole the show from him.” He patted the finished bandage. “There you are, Jim. How do you feel now?”