The Ninth Wave (45 page)

The political parties went into dull, self-conscious action. Like
a common, harmless, little-noticed weed the party apparatus worked
throughout the state. At the ends of the apparatus, like tiny hairlike
projections, were the precinct clubs. The weed stirred and held teas,
rallies, debates, fund-raising bazaars, and issued statements. Some of
the branches of the weed were tobacco stained and bourbon nourished, and
flourished. Some were bright with summer chiffon dresses and warm bosoms
and were nourished on tea and Scotch shortbread and operated in Beverly
Hills and the Marina. Some of the hairlike projections were stiff with
doctrine and lived in an atmosphere of books, lectures, crew cuts and
undergraduate enthusiasm at UCLA, Stanford and Berkeley. The swaying,
barely moving tips of the weed were linked by thicker branches to the
clubs, county committees and the higher branches.
The political weed stirred in the state, unnoticed and quiet. It talked
to itseft and ate itself and influenced no one.
And in the interstices of the weed, in the black private earth between
the growth, never public, were the things that nourished the weed and
kept it barely alive.
There was, for example, Ben Adams, a coffee-colored Negro, with a knobby
head, neat small ears and a voice smooth and unctuous from singing in the
Baptist choir. In his eighteenth year he walked down Central Avenue in
Los Angeles and listened to a speaker standing on the back of a big red
Chevvy truck. The speaker reminded the audience of what the Democrats and
F.D.R. had done for the Negro and the Democratic platform for an FEPC,
and his voice soared with enthusiasm for the natural identity between
the Negro and the Democratic Party. And as Ben Adams looked at the black,
brown, creamy, brown and tan faces and as he watched them nod agreement,
somewhere inside his head a tiny worm of hatred stirred, a feeling that he
was not like them, a wish to be unlike them and different. And quietly,
very privately, Ben Adams became a Republican and when he was twenty-one
he voted Republican. Of course, without telling anyone and belonging all
the time to the Central Avenue Young Democratic Club and even selling
tickets to the barbecues and dances.
And there was Joe Wilson of Burlingame, San Francisco Peninsula, who
was once Jere Wilzweski of Pittsburgh. He had come from Pittsburgh to
demonstrate a new puddling process at the Bethlehem plant in South San
Francisco. He had stayed and been promoted and one day even gotten a
white-collar job and then, during the expansion of the war, he became
an executive. The Wilzweskis moved down the Peninsula to Burlingame,
and one of the things they discovered was that everyone in the block,
all of the barbecue-pit owners, the mechanical-lawnmower owners, the
Chrysler and Mercury owners, the commuters, the Peninsulates, the
Fortune-reading people, were Republican. And so the Wilzweskis quietly
changed their registration and put a Dewey sticker on their car and
eagerly said harsh things about Truman and, finally, even began to
reconstruct their memory of Roosevelt and remembered him as socialist,
father of much-marrying children, fomenter of discontent, upsetter of
the peace, and heard and believed that Eleanor had never loved him.
And there was Enos Deer, father of three, milk-truck driver, Mason,
champion bowler in the Dairy-Bakery-Poultry League, owner of a Ford,
a vacationer at Yosemite Park for two weeks of each year, a twenty-year
resident of San Bernardino. He had never known a politician and he hated
them all. He voted Democratic because his father had once winked at him
and said, "Can't tell, Enos, what would happen if you stepped inside the
booth, pulled the curtain behind you, and voted for a Republican. You,
son, you vote Democratic." And Enos did.
And there was Alden Ethridge, chief clerk at Pacific Mutual Life
Insurance in Los Angeles. He was a Christian Scientist, had never
taken a drink in his life, wore cheap clothes that looked somehow like
those tailor-made for insurance executives, subscribed to the 'Saturday
Review,' married Esther who was thin and faintly aristocratic looking
because of her leanness, had no children, started fourteen International
Correspondence School courses and never finished one, read books on
"Salesmanship," drove a Plymouth, was a seaman in the Navy in World
War II for three months and then obtained a medical discharge because
of asthma, belonged to Book-of-the-Month. When he was first employed by
Pacific Mutual he heard a vice-president say, "If we ever get him out,
him and Harry Hopkins and Ickes and the rest of those socialist bastards,
if we do that we'll have prosperity in this country again. We'll have
businessmen in power. We'll have common sense in Washington. But we
won't because too many of the common people vote Democratic."
And Alden Ethridge squared his thin shoulders, put a determined tough grin
on his sallow city pale face and voted Republican and never again thought
of politics. Except when it occurred to him that he was most uncommon.
The billboards went up throughout the state. Big red and white signs
with men ten feet tall on them and, occasionally, the faces of their
families. Each billboard cost $80 a month. The throwaways, costing
only three for a penny, began to circulate. The mailing pieces went
out. Newspaper space was bought. Television time was purchased for $450
per half hour. From parts of the political weed rumors and information
flowed and died before they got far.
And nobody listened. Dimly, vaguely, offhandedly they made up their
minds. In a casual or antic or sullen or irritated or happy or euphoric
mood they arose and went to vote. Five million of them. Their moods
and intentions collided, coincided, reciprocated, canceled out and
strengthened. Mysteriously, intuitively, by some strange combative
instinct, they divided almost equally. With a rubber stamp and ballot
they waged primitive war on one another and themselves. Although they
could give reasons and words why they did what they did, they did not
really know. But the liquor stores closed, the flags waved in front of
fire houses and schools, the precinct lists were nailed to trees and
the voting was done.
John Cromwell won the Democratic nomination for governor in the May primary.
He was little known and Daigh, the Republican, was famous. Cromwell did
not wage a big and public campaign. There was some little surprise when
Cromwell won the nomination by 102,000 votes. Some gamblers had taken
odds that Daigh would win both nominations in the primary.
Mike was not one of those who was surprised. He had told Georgia that
Cromwell would win by at least 100,0000 votes and less than 112,000.
The betting odds were four to one, however, that Daigh would beat Cromwell
in the general election in November.
Ten days before the primary election, Professor Moon resigned from
Stanford University. The university officials did not force him out;
no official reprimand was made. But he felt soiled; unpleasantly
contemporary; somehow ruined.
CHAPTER 28
Talk in a Delicatessen
County Hospital is built on a low hill. Originally it had been surrounded
by stockyards and meat packing plants. Outside of the ring of meat packing
buildings there was a welter of cheap apartment houses. In these houses
lived Negroes and mixed families: Filipinos married to white girls, Negro
women married to white men, brown men married to light brown women and
combinations that found it difficult to find housing in other parts of the
city. Also, the area was thick with butchers, itinerant farm laborers,
railwaymen's hotels and miscellaneous unemployed. It was productive of
cripples, syphilitics, amputations, industrial accidents, maimings,
tuberculosis, stab wounds, drunkenness, flea infestations, pink eye,
and all manner of contagious disease. The civic fathers had thought it
wise to put the hospital close to the source of its patients.
In recent years the stockyards had moved out. The long sleek lines
of the freeways cut across and above the area, not disturbing the
buildings. Below the curving perfection of the freeways, the apartment
houses grew grimmer, more populated and older.
Georgia turned the Jaguar off the Pasadena Freeway and started down into
the tangle of streets that surrounded County Hospital.
As she parked in front of the hospital, an ambulance came down a ramp,
its siren clanging. A young intern, a cigarette in his mouth, smiled at
her as the ambulance went by. Georgia walked into the reception room of
the hospital.
"I'd like to talk to Dr. Moore," she told the receptionist.
"Dr. Henry Moore," the girl said, and her fingers plugged in a phone line.
In five minutes Hank walked into the reception room. He was wearing a
tight white skullcap and a long white apron. His arms were bare to the
elbow. In ihe exact middle of the apron there was a spot of fresh blood,
the size of a quarter.
"Hello, Hank," Georgia said. "I'm sorry to disturb you at the hospital.
Mike wanted you to have lunch with us. He has to meet Notestein to talk
over the election and he thought you'd be interested. He said he'd give
you a good lunch."
"I'm not sure I can get away," Hank said. "I'm just finishing surgery
and I've got a few more ward cases."
She noticed that he held his arms in front of his body, away from
the apron, the fingers drooping. His fingers were white and scrubbed
looking. They gave off a faint aseptic odor.
"Don't come if it's too much trouble," she said. "There's always
another day."
"Oh, hell. I can ask Johnson to take the ward cases. I've put in three
eighteen-hour days in a row. I could stand a break. And a good lunch. I'll
be back in ten minutes."
A half hour later they were driving out the Hollywood Freeway. Hank drove
and he slid the car easily from one gear to another, watching the RPM
indicator.
The freeway clogged up with cars, and as the r.p.m.'s dropped Hank slid
the shift silently into third. With a growl the car slowed down twenty
miles an hour and started to feel its way through the other cars.
"What did you think of the primary?" Georgia asked.
"I didn't like it."
"Did you vote for Cromwell?"
Hank looked across at her and his face was puzzled, uncertain. "No. I
voted for Daigh."
"Did you think Cromwell could win the Democratic nomination?"
"I thought he was going to be smothered," Hank said. "I thought Daigh
would win both nominations. I still don't understand how Cromwell won."
"Maybe Mike's right, Hank," Georgia said. "Maybe he's right and we're
just sentimental."
Hank nosed the Jaguar up to within a few inches of the car ahead, pressed
down on the accelerator and turned to the outer lane. The car poured into
a narrow space, roared by the other cars and was in the clear. A mile
ahead was another covey of cars and Hank bore down on them doing seventy
miles an hour.
"It was just an accident, a fluke," Hank said. "Mike had nothing to do
with it. You can't manipulate five million people. Anyway, Cromwell will
get licked in the general election."
"But what if he's right? What if people really do vote out of fear and
hatred?" Georgia said, and her voice was urgent, she pressed Hank for
an answer.
"Georgia, don't make it more complicated than it is," Hank said
slowly. "There are some things you don't do even if you know they'll
work. Let me tell you about an experiment they do in rat psychology. You
put the rat on a grid floor that you can charge with electricity
by tripping a switch. You start out by giving the rat a hell of a
shock. He's so scared his eyes bulge out of his head. Then you start
to make him do a lot of things a rat doesn't do naturally: walk on his
hind legs, drink too much water, eat until he ruptures his stomach,
copulate between satiation. Each time he hesitates, you give him a
shock. Pretty soon you can get him to do anything . . . he just sees
you reaching for the switch and he'll do anything, unnatural things,
things that hurt. He'll walk on his hind legs, drink until he vomits,
copulate until he's unconscious, doing everything like a mad animal."
"Well, maybe Mike's right then," Georgia said. "If a rat acts that way
out of fear, maybe . . . " She licked her lips.
"No. He's wrong. Christ, of course he can get people to act like the
rats . . . and just out of fear. But you shouldn't do it. Because after
a while the rat stops being a rat. He becomes a sub-rat, pure muscle, raw
reflex, brute reactions. And humans would become the same way: hysterical
with fear, trying to anticipate when the shock is coming, bundles of raw
protective muscle. But they wouldn't be human anymore. They'd be something
else." He paused. He shook his head in confusion. His voice was tired
when he spoke. "And you can't do that to people. I don't know why, but
you can't. If it's possible, you shouldn't do it. Because it makes them
something less than human. It's just that simple. That's the only reason
I know."
"What you're saying is that there are some things you shouldn't do even
if it's possible to do them," Georgia said, her voice questioning. "But
why does Mike do them, then?"
"Because he's got certitude," Hank said. "He's absolutely sure of himself;
completely confident; utterly assured. I don't know how he got that way,
but he did. And when that happens, some barrier is gone. Everybody else
knows there's a line you can't cross, but not Mike."
"If he would just be wrong once," Georgia said. "Just once. Just one
mistake." She pounded the door of the car with frantic, soft blows.
Hank looked at her and did not speak again until they reached the
delicatessen.
Mike and Notestein were sitting in one of the booths. Mike had a turkey
leg and a heap of stuffed eggs on his plate. Notestein had an untouched
pastrami sandwich on his plate. They were boih drinking German beer.
"Terence, you remember Dr. Moore and Miss Blenner from Fresno," Mike said.
Notestein stood up and shook hands. He was wearing an outlandish sport
coat The shoulders were overstuffed and it dropped to a narrow waist. It
was only when Notestein sat down that Hank realized that the material
was an exquisite Shetland fabric; soft and handwoven.