The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (15 page)

 

 

"Not Mat," Jack Leonard said, handing Yale a bottle of beer. "He's the
original monk in the desert. Look at him. He is the personification of
Paphnutius. All he needs is Thais dancing around him."

 

 

Yale took the beer. He sat down on a blanket that Harry Cohen had spread
out. A warm breeze drifted over his body. Despite the heat of the day
he felt cool and alive. This was preferable to walking around a golf
course. The trouble with Pat, he thought, is that he just doesn't know how
to be lazy. Even playing golf was just another form of business to him. He
wondered what Pat would think . . . and Doctor Tangle. Boy, what a shock
for the good Doctor if he could see Yale lying naked in Harry Cohen's
back yard with Mat Chilling, Jack Leonard and two women. Yale chuckled and
noticed Cohen's daughter still looking at him. Yale returned her glance.

 

 

"I like to see women naked," he said, thinking that the only women he had
ever really seen naked were Cindar and Beatrice, and neither of them in
this easy, unhurried way.

 

 

"You think we are sexy and cheap," the girl said, her face flushed with
anger. "I told you, mommy. You can't go against conventions! You should
have kept him in the house. Now, it will be all around. People just
don't understand. If the boys I know thought I would undress and go
around naked . . ." She started to sob and put her face in her hands.

 

 

"Ruthie, stop crying," Mat said. "Yale is not the kind of person to go
around talking. If he is, then I have misjudged him. You see, Harry, I
told you and Sarah you'd eventually run into trouble. The only person who
can live his life the way he sees fit is the lone person. Once you have
married and have children, your Bohemianism, your defiance of custom,
becomes a cross that your children have to bear. Children are by nature
conformists. They want the crowd approval. Even worse, your dual life
can't exist in the work you have chosen. As a union organizer you have
to be the greatest conformist of all. The people you are trying to lead
don't want your kind of better life. They want more money and they'll
listen to you on that score, but if they knew you sat naked in your back
yard with your wife and daughter and men friends, they'd tar and feather
you. Your working friends, in the Marratt factory or any other factory you
may take on, undress in closets, make love in the dark with their clothes
on, and look upon their body and its demands as SIN with a capital S-I-N."

 

 

"Mat, stop preaching," Harry said. "I know you're right. Ruthie, go
ahead and get dressed."

 

 

Ruthie had stopped crying and was listening to Mat with great interest.
"I've changed my mind. I want to listen to you argue."

 

 

Jack Leonard exploded with laughter. "Oh, God, that's wonderful.
What's your opinion, Yale?"

 

 

Yale looked at Ruthie. "Listen, you can stop worrying. I am not going
to tell anyone I sat naked in Harry Cohen's back yard. I am in enough
trouble as it is. Furthermore, I admire your father and mother. If they
enjoy sitting in their yard naked they have good precedent. William Blake,
the poet, used to entertain his friends naked. But, I agree with Mat, Harry.
My father is out to get you and this is just the ammunition he needs.
I promise you I won't tell but believe me he has ways of finding out
things. Doctor Tangle is out for your skin, too, Professor Leonard.
He knows that you were a Communist. He knows that you and Harry are
friends. He's planning to give you the sack next week."

 

 

Yale watched Jack Leonard's face. He was surprised to see no reaction.
Sarah Cohen gasped.

 

 

"The enemy closes in," Leonard said and took a swallow of beer.

 

 

There was a moment of silence, as the implications of Leonard's cool
reaction reached the group. "Well, we are all in our skins," Harry Cohen
said finally. "Let's bare our souls. Are you a Party man, Jack?"

 

 

Yale realized his face showed his surprise. Was this a neat way Harry
had of wriggling out of the accusation? He was certain that if Professor
Leonard were mixed up with Communism that Harry Cohen was, too.

 

 

Leonard idly tossed stones into the marsh grass where they landed with
a wet slopping sound. "Okay," he said at last, "I'm not ashamed of it.
I carry a card!"

 

 

Sarah looked at Harry unhappily. "I told you, Harry, you should be more
careful. You can't afford to get mixed up with Communists. You know how
they feel about them at union headquarters."

 

 

"I'm not mixed up with Communists, Sarah. Jack is our friend. He has his
beliefs, I have mine."

 

 

Mat asked Harry what his beliefs were.

 

 

"I came here to organize the Marratt Corporation. I'm not interested in
having the state take over the means of production. We simply need the
force exerted by a government which insists that management will sit
down with labor and bargain with them fairly for a decent wage. Your
old man is a dying breed, Yale. At a certain period he was necessary
and hundreds like him; to carve out the means of production, to prove
by their individual initiative that we Americans could make a better
world. Unfortunately, they have grown too fat with their own power.
The race is to the lean. We hope to thin them down a little for their own
good . . . to increase their longevity. Fortunately, we have a President
who realizes that the next step in our growth as a nation is to share
that wealth with the laboring man who helps create it."

 

 

"You sound like a Party prospect to me," Leonard said amiably.

 

 

"Not at all. I want to simply narrow the profit margin by giving labor
its share. I still believe in profits to keep the gears meshing.
The difference, Jack, is that you believe in an all powerful state
that may or may not wither away. A state which controls the means of
production. Me, I want Pat Marratt to run his own factory. He has the
drive to make more money for all his employees. All I want is that the
stockholders get a little less."

 

 

"How do you know my father will be satisfied with a little less?"
Yale asked. "The drive for profits is what makes him tick."

 

 

"You now enter the area of philosophy, Yale," Harry went on. "I'll
leave that to Mat. Men like your father don't really have a money
incentive beyond a certain point. I think maybe a Platonic idea of the
perfectibility of men and things would be a stronger motivation for
men like Pat than money. Pat Marratt earning a thousand dollars a week
instead of two thousand dollars a week would be exactly the same man
with the same drives."

 

 

"I'd like to see you tell that to Pat," Yale said and was surprised when
Harry told him that he had discussed it with Pat. They continued to talk,
arguing whether capitalism was in its death throes. As Yale listened to
Leonard, he realized that Leonard was a dedicated man. Whatever happened
to his current teaching job wouldn't really concern him. Probably, he had
come to Midhaven with a particular mission of "contacting" Harry Cohen.
Or was that the word they used among the fellow travelers? Yale examined
Leonard's face trying to find some clue to his personality, something
that would identify him as the unwashed Bolshevik.

 

 

"Why do you hang onto capitalism with such a frenzy?" Jack was asking.
Yale could only see a clean cut, blond young man whose blue eyes flashed
with enthusiasm as he talked. "It's not inviolable. After all the world
came along for quite a few thousand years without it. I'm thirty. In
the past four years I've seen bread lines, starvation and near revolution.
I've seen a moral decay in the western world. An occupation with the
'bitch-goddess' Success that bodes no good for this culture. The wealth
of the country being depleted by industrialists who don't give a damn for
anything or anybody but their own personal power. Capitalism is on its way
out, Harry. Even our good President realizes it. There are more sincere
Communists in our government than you realize." Jack stood up and looked
at the sky. "Lord . . . it's good to stand naked before you and accept
all men as my brothers." He paused. "Can you say that, Mat Chilling?"

 

 

Mat shook his head. "I'm not certain all men want to be my brothers;
particularly if I am planning, 'deus ex machina,' their lives.
My occupation is to care for their souls, not plan their economies."

 

 

"You can't expect them to find heaven with an empty belly. I've got to
leave you good people. I guess my clothes are in the house. Don't get up,
Sarah, I'll find them. Thanks for the tip, Yale. I'll shake up the good
Doctor a bit by confessing my derelictions to him. Nothing like being
able to anticpate your enemy. It throws him off guard."

 

 

They watched Jack Leonard walk toward the house. "He's kind of nice,"
Ruthie said, smiling. "Even if he is nuts."

 

 

"Didn't you know he had a card?" Mat asked Harry.

 

 

"Never gave it a thought. We liked his company. Outside of Sarah he
knows more about music than anyone I ever met. His father is president
of a bank in Iowa. In my opinion he's just in rebellion -- a wide-eyed,
wet-behind-the-cars revolutionist. He deosn't know what it's all
about. These damned intellectuals just muddy up the waters. He doesn't
know what it is to starve or stand in a soup line or work in the Marratt
factory for a lousy eighteen dollars and fifty cents a week and support
a family." Harry looked at Yale sourly. "You are another one just like
him . . . the intellectual drinking champagne and dining on caviar while
he worries about the plight of the working man."

 

 

"I resent that. First, I'm not worried about the working man. Up until
this afternoon I never gave him a thought except that mostly he looked
unwashed."

 

 

"Probably couldn't afford soap," Harry said.

 

 

"I'm stabbed," Yale laughed. "Anyhow, I thank you, Harry Cohen, for
opening up new doors for me. You've shown me people discussing values
instead of golf scores. You've got me thinking so many thoughts that I've
been here for two hours, with a stolen car, without even worrying. For
the last hour I've forgotten that I'm naked as are you and your wife and
your daughter and Mat Chilling. I will think about this. How something
which is bad can be good."

 

 

"You must come again," Sarah said, taking his hand, as Yale stood up
to leave.

 

 

Yale blushed. "You are a pretty woman, Mrs. Cohen. But I think Mat is right.
You'll probably have to wear a bathing suit."

 

 

 

 

"Mat, I've been dreaming," Yale said as they drove back to Midhaven. "This
afternoon didn't happen. The Cohens aren't nice people. They're bastards
and they go around naked for all the world to see. Jack Leonard is a hairy
Rasputin spouting evil ideas. You are a disgrace to Midhaven College and
the religious fraternity for getting mixed up with such people. That's
the truth, isn't it?"

 

 

In front of Doctor Tangle's house Mat opened the door and got out. "That's
the truth, Yale Marratt. That's the truth as Doctor Amos Tangle would
see it. That's the truth as Pat Marratt would see it. What makes you
think it isn't the truth? Who are you, Yale Marratt? . . . God or
something? It's worth thinking about." He waved, started to walk away
from the car and then he grinned at Yale and said, "I live in Doctor
Tangle's attic. Did you know that at night I'm closer to the Doctor's
heaven than he is. . . ."

 

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

Yale drove the Packard around the back of the house and left it in place
in the four-car garage. Before going in the house he tried to size up the
situation. There was going to be hell to pay, that was certain. Pat would
be doubly angry -- furious at Yale for disgracing him in front of Doctor
Tangle and Bert Walsh, and even more wrathful at being stranded at the
club without his car. Saturday afternoon after playing golf he usually
came home, showered, had a few drinks and then drove back with Liz.

 

 

The Saturday night dinner and dance at the club was an institution
religiously attended by the members, who were prominent in Midhaven
society. Pat had once speculated that it took an income in excess of
twenty thousand a year to be "accepted" at the Midhaven Country Club. The
members were friends in inverse relationship to their income. Those at
the high end of the monetary scale were Pat, Alfred Latham, Tom Morrison,
and Henry Willis. Of the four men with their wives, the Marratts were
the nouveau riche. Latham and Willis could trace their wealth and
manufacturing lineage back to Civil War days. Morrison was a lawyer
with inherited wealth, who had been a Republican Senator before the
Rooseveltian deluge. Yale had heard Pat remark that he would be Governor
someday. None of the four families were close friends. They seemed to
draw their friends from the members of the lower end of the accepted
income scale. Each, like a respected feudal lord, Yale thought, had
accumulated a satrapy of admiring stooges whose respect was largely based
on superior purchasing power. The Marratt coterie of friends represented
a good cross section of the Midhaven's wealthier professional class and
the more affluent automobile dealers and store owners.

 

 

Yale noticed that Liz's car was gone. The garden truck was pulled in
behind Yale's Ford. In the room over the garage Yale could see a light
which meant that Whit Jones, the gardener and general handy man around
the Marratt estate, was home for the day. Barbara Marratt's car was
still in the garage. Here it was July, Yale thought, and he had seen
Barbara only twice since school closed. A large bathroom separated
their rooms. Several times he had heard her puttering around getting
ready for a date. She never seemed to eat with the family. From Yale's
point of view she lived in another world dominated by sleek young men
who arrived in expensive convertibles, talked breezily with Pat or Liz,
and then whisked her away to plays in New York, expensive night clubs
or weekends at family estates. Liz approved heartily. All this was
related to getting Barbara properly married, approximately one year
from this July, when she would have her Bryn Mawr credentials. Pat had
been already primed for what Yale expected would be the most expensive
wedding ceremony in the history of Midhaven.