It Can't Happen Here (25 page)

A smallish, neat, gray-bearded man, furiously rattling an aged
typewriter, typing with his two forefingers.

Dan Wilgus, head of the composing room, looked and barked like an
old sergeant and, like an old sergeant, was only theoretically meek
to his superior officer. He was
shaking when he brought in this
copy and, almost rubbing Doremus’s nose in it, protested, “Say,
boss, you don’t honest t’ God think we’re going to set this up, do
you?”

“I certainly do!”

“Well, I don’t! Rattlesnake poison! It’s all right
your
getting
thrown in the hoosegow and probably shot at dawn, if you like that
kind of sport, but we’ve held a meeting of the chapel, and we all
say, damned
if we’ll risk our necks too!”

“All right, you yellow pup! All right, Dan, I’ll set it myself!”

“Aw, don’t! Gosh, I don’t want to have to go to your funeral after
the M.M.’s get through with you, and say, ‘Don’t he look
unnatural!’”

“After working for me for twenty years, Dan! Traitor!”

“Look here! I’m no Enoch Arden or—oh, what the hell was his
name?—Ethan Frome or Benedict Arnold or whatever
it was!—and more
‘n once I’ve licked some galoot that was standing around a saloon
telling the world you were the lousiest highbrow editor in Vermont,
and at that, I guess maybe he was telling the truth, but same time—”
Dan’s effort to be humorous and coaxing broke, and he wailed,
“God, boss, please don’t!”

“I know, Dan. Prob’ly our friend Shad Ledue will be annoyed. But
I can’t go on standing
things like slaughtering old De Verez any
more and—Here! Gimme that copy!”

While compositors, pressmen, and the young devil stood alternately
fretting and snickering at his clumsiness, Doremus ranged up before
a type case, in his left hand the first composing-stick he had held
in ten years, and looked doubtfully at the case. It was like a
labyrinth to him. “Forgot how it’s arranged. Can’t
find anything
except the e-box!” he complained.

“Hell! I’ll do it! All you pussyfooters get the hell out of this!
You don’t know one doggone thing about who set this up!” Dan Wilgus
roared, and the other printers vanished!—as far as the toilet
door.

In the editorial office, Doremus showed proofs of his indiscretion
to Doc Itchitt, that enterprising though awkward reporter, and to
Julian Falck,
who was off now to Amherst but who had been working
for the
Informer
all summer, combining unprintable articles on Adam
Smith with extremely printable accounts of golf and dances at the
country club.

“Gee, I hope you will have the nerve to go on and print it—and
same time, I hope you don’t! They’ll get you!” worried Julian.

“Naw! Gwan and print it! They won’t dare to do a thing! They may
get funny in New York and Washington, but you’re too strong in the
Beulah Valley for Ledue and Staubmeyer to dare lift a hand!” brayed
Doc Itchitt, while Doremus considered, “I wonder if this smart
young journalistic Judas wouldn’t like to see me in trouble and get
hold of the
Informer
and turn it Corpo?”

He did not stay at the office till the paper with his editorial had
gone to press. He went
home early, and showed the proof to Emma
and Sissy. While they were reading it, with yelps of disapproval,
Julian Falck slipped in.

Emma protested, “Oh, you can’t—you mustn’t do it! What will
become of us all? Honestly, Dormouse, I’m not scared for myself,
but what would I do if they beat you or put you in prison or
something? It would just break my heart to think of you in a cell!
And without
any clean underclothes! It isn’t too late to stop it,
is it?”

“No. As a matter of fact the paper doesn’t go to bed till
eleven… . Sissy, what do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think! Oh damn!”

“Why Sis-sy,” from Emma, quite mechanically.

“It used to be, you did what was right and got a nice stick of
candy for it,” said Sissy. “Now, it seems as if whatever’s right
is wrong. Julian—funny-face—what
do you think of Pop’s kicking
Shad in his sweet hairy ears?”

“Why, Sis—”

Julian blurted, “I think it’d be fierce if somebody didn’t try to
stop these fellows. I wish I could do it. But how could I?”

“You’ve probably answered the whole business,” said Doremus. “If a
man is going to assume the right to tell several thousand readers
what’s what—most agreeable, hitherto—he’s got a kind of you
might
say priestly obligation to tell the truth. ‘O cursed spite.’
Well! I think I’ll drop into the office again. Home about
midnight. Don’t sit up, anybody—and Sissy, and you, Julian, that
particularly goes for you two night prowlers! As for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord—and in Vermont, that means going to
bed.”

“And alone!” murmured Sissy.

“
Why—Cecilia—Jes-sup!
”

As Doremus
trotted out, Foolish, who had sat adoring him, jumped
up, hoping for a run.

Somehow, more than all of Emma’s imploring, the dog’s familiar
devotion made Doremus feel what it might be to go to prison.

He had lied. He did not return to the office. He drove up the
valley to the Tavern and to Lorinda Pike.

But on the way he stopped in at the home of his son-in-law,
bustling young Dr. Fowler
Greenhill; not to show him the proof but
to have—perhaps in prison?—another memory of the domestic life in
which he had been rich. He stepped quietly into the front hall of
the Greenhill house—a jaunty imitation of Mount Vernon; very
prosperous and secure, gay with the brass-knobbed walnut furniture
and painted Russian boxes which Mary Greenhill affected. Doremus
could hear David (but surely
it was past his bedtime?—what time
did
nine-year-old kids go to bed these degenerate days?) excitedly
chattering with his father, and his father’s partner, old Dr.
Marcus Olmsted, who was almost retired but who kept up the
obstetrics and eye-and-ear work for the firm.

Doremus peeped into the living room, with its bright curtains of
yellow linen. David’s mother was writing letters, a crisp,
fashionable
figure at a maple desk complete with yellow quill pen,
engraved notepaper, and silver-backed blotter. Fowler and David
were lounging on the two wide arms of Dr. Olmsted’s chair.

“So you don’t think you’ll be a doctor, like your dad and me?” Dr.
Olmsted was quizzing.

David’s soft hair fluttered as he bobbed his head in the agitation
of being taken seriously by grown-ups.

“Oh—oh—oh yes, I would
like to. Oh, I think it’d be slick to be
a doctor. But I want to be a newspaper, like Granddad. That’d be
a wow! You said it!”

(“Da-vid! Where you ever pick up such language!”)

“You see, Uncle-Doctor, a doctor, oh gee, he has to stay up all
night, but an editor, he just sits in his office and takes it easy
and never has to worry about nothing!”

That moment, Fowler Greenhill saw his father-in-law
making monkey
faces at him from the door and admonished David, “Now, not always!
Editors have to work pretty hard sometimes—just think of when
there’s train wrecks and floods and everything! I’ll tell you.
Did you know I have magic power?”

“What’s ‘magic power,’ Daddy?”

“I’ll show you. I’ll summon your granddad here from misty deeps—”

(“But will he come?” grunted Dr. Olmsted.)

“—and have
him tell you all the troubles an editor has. Just make
him come flying through the air!”

“Aw, gee, you couldn’t do
that
, Dad!”

“Oh, can’t I!” Fowler stood solemnly, the overhead lights making
soft his harsh red hair, and he windmilled his arms, hooting,
“Presto—vesto—adsit—Granddad Jes-sup—voilà!”

And there, coming through the doorway, sure enough
was
Granddad
Jessup!

Doremus remained only
ten minutes, saying to himself, “Anyway,
nothing bad can happen here, in this solid household.” When Fowler
saw him to the door, Doremus sighed to him, “Wish Davy were right—just had to sit in the office and not worry. But I suppose some
day I’ll have a run-in with the Corpos.”

“I hope not. Nasty bunch. What do you think, Dad? That swine
Shad Ledue told me yesterday they wanted me to join
the M.M.’s as
medical officer. Fat chance! I told him so.”

“Watch out for Shad, Fowler. He’s vindictive. Made us rewire our
whole building.”

“I’m not scared of Captain General Ledue or fifty like him! Hope
he calls me in for a bellyache some day! I’ll give him a good
sedative—potassium of cyanide. Maybe I’ll some day have the
pleasure of seeing that gent in his coffin. That’s the advantage
the doctor has, you know! G’-night, Dad! Sleep tight!”

A good many tourists were still coming up from New York to view the
colored autumn of Vermont, and when Doremus arrived at the Beulah
Valley Tavern he had irritably to wait while Lorinda dug out extra
towels and looked up tram schedules and was polite to old ladies
who complained that there was too much—or not enough—sound from
the Beulah
River Falls at night. He could not talk to her apart
until after ten. There was, meanwhile, a curious exalted luxury in
watching each lost minute threaten him with the approach of the
final press time, as he sat in the tea room, imperturbably
scratching through the leaves of the latest Fortune.

Lorinda led him, at ten-fifteen, into her little office—just a
roll-top desk, a desk chair, one straight
chair, and a table piled
with heaps of defunct hotel-magazines. It was spinsterishly neat
yet smelled still of the cigar smoke and old letter files of
proprietors long since gone.

“Let’s hurry, Dor. I’m having a little dust-up with that snipe
Nipper.” She plumped down at the desk.

“Linda, read this proof. For tomorrow’s paper… . No. Wait.
Stand up.”

“Eh?”

He himself took the desk chair
and pulled her down on his knees.
“Oh,
you
!” she snorted, but she nuzzled her cheek against his
shoulder and murmured contentedly.

“Read this, Linda. For tomorrow’s paper. I think I’m going to
publish it, all right—got to decide finally before eleven—but
ought I to? I was sure when I left the office, but Emma was
scared—”

“Oh,
Emma
! Sit still. Let me see it.” She read quickly. She
always
did. At the end she said emotionlessly, “Yes. You must run
it. Doremus! They’ve actually come to us here—the Corpos—it’s
like reading about typhus in China and suddenly finding it in your
own house!”

She rubbed his shoulder with her cheek again, and raged, “Think of
it! That Shad Ledue—and I taught him for a year in district
school, though I was only two years older than he was—and what
a
nasty bully he was, too! He came to me a few days ago, and he had
the nerve to propose that if I would give lower rates to the
M.M.’s—he sort of hinted it would be nice of me to serve M.M.
officers free—they would close their eyes to my selling liquor
here, without a license or anything! Why, he had the inconceivable
nerve to tell me, and
condescendingly
! my dear—that he and his
fine friends
would be willing to hang out here a lot! Even
Staubmeyer—oh, our ‘professor’ is blossoming out as quite a
sporting character! And when I chased Ledue out, with a flea in
his ear—Well, just this morning I got a notice that I have to
appear in the county court tomorrow—some complaint from my
endearing partner, Mr. Nipper—seems he isn’t satisfied with the
division of our work here—and honestly,
my darling, he never does
one blame thing but sit around and bore my best customers to death
by telling what a swell hotel he used to have in Florida. And
Nipper has taken his things out of here and moved into town. I’m
afraid I’ll have an unpleasant time, trying to keep from telling
him what I think of him, in court.”

“Good Lord! Look, sweet, have you got a lawyer for it?”

“Lawyer? Heavens
no! Just a misunderstanding—on little Nipper’s
part.”

“You’d better. The Corpos are using the courts for all sorts of
graft and for accusations of sedition. Get Mungo Kitterick, my
lawyer.”

“He’s dumb. Ice water in his veins.”

“I know, but he’s a tidier-up, like so many lawyers. Likes to see
everything all neat in pigeonholes. He may not care a damn for
justice, but he’ll be awfully pained
by any irregularities. Please
get him, Lindy, because they’ve got Effingham Swan presiding at
court tomorrow.”

“Who?”

“Swan—the Military Judge for District Three—that’s a new Corpo
office. Kind of circuit judge with court-martial powers. This
Effingham Swan—I had Doc Itchitt interview him today, when he
arrived—he’s the perfect gentleman-Fascist—Oswald Mosley style.
Good family—whatever that
means. Harvard graduate. Columbia Law
School, year at Oxford. But went into finance in Boston.
Investment banker. Major or something during the war. Plays polo
and sailed in a yacht race to Bermuda. Itchitt says he’s a big
brute, with manners smoother than a butterscotch sundae and more
language than a bishop.”

“But I’ll be glad to have a
gentleman
to explain things to, instead
of Shad.”

“A gentleman’s blackjack hurts just as much as a mucker’s!”

“Oh,
you
!” with irritated tenderness, running her forefinger along
the line of his jaw.

Outside, a footstep.

She sprang up, sat down primly in the straight chair. The
footsteps went by. She mused:

“All this trouble and the Corpos—They’re going to do something to
you and me. We’ll become so roused up that—either we’ll be
desperate
and really cling to each other and everybody else in the
world can go to the devil or, what I’m afraid is more likely, we’ll
get so deep into rebellion against Windrip, we’ll feel so terribly
that we’re standing for something, that we’ll want to give up
everything else for it, even give up you and me. So that no one
can ever find out and criticize. We’ll have to be beyond
criticism.”