The Last Supper: And Other Stories (6 page)

A Walk Home

M
ARTIN ANDERSON LIVED EIGHT BLOCKS FROM THE
plant, and almost every evening, he walked home. If the weather was very bad, hard rain or snow or sleet, he would sometimes take a lift from some of the boys who shared a car-pool, for he was well liked, and they were always ready to squeeze a little tighter or even carry him on someone's lap for the few blocks; but by and large, he enjoyed the walk, even in the rain, and living so close to the plant made it possible for him and Alice and the two kids to have a few things that those who owned cars couldn't afford.

It also did him good to stretch his legs and breathe deeply of fresh, clean air after spending a whole day at a lathe, where the air stank of the smell of oil and hot metal and men's sweat, and where his leg muscles cramped up and got tighter and tighter as the day went on. Eight blocks were just right, not too long a distance, not too short a distance; it gave him time with his own thoughts, a chance to think through matters that could never be to reflect, to see himself and examine himself, an opunraveled in the clank and turmoil of the plant, a chance portunity to arrange the incidents of the day, so that those incidents would be amusing to Alice and the kids.

By and large, when he was home, he stayed home. He had given up drinking two years ago, and the high cost of baby sitters confined evenings out to one or at the most two nights on the weekend, and more important, he liked his family. He looked forward all day to the few hours before the kids' bedtime, and at least three nights a week, there were television programs he really enjoyed. He had just passed his thirty-sixth year, and sometimes he felt that he was becoming stodgy and sedentary as he moved into middle-age; but this feeling was not accompanied by any resentment.

He had other resentments, but not on the score of his wife and kids, and each evening as he left the plant, he felt a specific sense of pleasure at the fact that he would soon be with them, and that the simple, daily incidents of the evening would then unfold, playing with the kids, eating dinner, helping Alice with the dishes, being called in on this or that problem of the day, and so forth and so on, and he was thinking of this and nothing more tonight, as he left the plant and noticed, in the cold, gathering twilight, the pink-orange band of the setting sun across the housetops, its clean, cold beauty. It mixed in his thoughts, cleansed them with cold color as he passed through the gates and waved goodnight to some of his friends. He almost did not notice as the two men fell in step with him, one on either side of him.

And then he did notice and was a little afraid, because they walked regularly and purposefully on either side of him, but not for any other reason. Anderson had few physical fears; he was a large man with broad, sloping shoulders, and his appearance commanded respect. The two men who had fallen in step with him were both smaller than he was; they were just youngsters; they were no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. They were well dressed in neat gray worsted topcoats, gray sharkskin suits and black shoes. They had round, slightly-overfed faces, snub noses and blue eyes. They looked like they might be brothers. They looked sure of themselves, but not too sure of themselves.

Anderson continued to walk. The only thought in his mind at that moment was that he had eight blocks to walk home. One of the two men said,

“Hello, Marty.”

“Nice evening, isn't it, Marty?” the other said.

“What do you want?” Anderson demanded.

“You're Martin Anderson, aren't you?”

“Suppose I am?”

“Why don't you take it easy, Marty? This is just a routine thing. We're from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Here are our credentials, all straight and above board.”

Each in turn took out his wallet and showed Anderson his credentials. Anderson barely looked at the badges and papers; the truth of the matter was that he had known when they fell in step with him; he didn't have to look. In the whole world, no one falls in step with you like that but a couple of cops. You don't have to look. He stepped down into the gutter, and thought fleetingly that there were seven more blocks home, seven blocks that he knew like the, back of his hand, past the auto graveyard, past the block of taxpayers, past the muddy field where there were always some kids playing association football, past the Staysweet doll factory, past three blocks of rickety wooden tenements—and then he would see Alice and in the moment alone with her as he kissed her, before the kids were on top of him, say, “What do you know, a couple of F.B.I. guys took a walk with me,” and then, if she became disturbed, he would say, “The hell with them—the hell with the bastards!” just like that, as he was saying it now to himself, “The hell with them—”

One said, “This is just a little, talk. We know you like to walk home, Marty. We thought we'd walk home with you.”

The other said, “No more than that, Marty. We just thought we'd like to walk home with you and talk to you a little.”

One said, “Because, when you come down to it, we felt you're a good American, Marty. A damn good patriotic American. As a matter of fact, we know all about you. We know about your war record. We know about the Silver Star and all about that incident at Anzio. You'd be surprised how much we know, because it's our business to know things, Marty. That's how we know you're a good American, with a fine wife and two clean-cut kids.”

The other said, “But we got to make sure that when we know something, it fits, Marty. Otherwise, you just have ill-assorted facts. We know about Johnson, Levy and Curtis, who you've been making buddies out of at the plant. We know all about them, too. We know they're redder than the rose, Marty, redder than the rose. They're dyed in the wool. That's why we were puzzled to figure out your angle with them. We don't think you're redder than the rose, Marty. As we said before, we think you're a damn good patriotic American.”

“That's what we think,” one said. “That's why we feel you want to cooperate with us. We feel you're a patriotic American who'd want to cooperate with us. We know a lot, but we don't know everything. There's a lot more than Johnson, Levy and Curtis in that plant who are redder than the rose. There's a lot more in the Union. By now, Marty, you could probably tag every one of them. And we felt you love this fine country of ours enough to want to cooperate with your legally elected government against elements like that, elements who are plotting to overthrow everything we hold dear by force and violence.”

The other said, “You'd be surprised, Marty, how many people choose to cooperate with us. A fine class of people, too. The best people, as a matter of fact. You'd be surprised how many people come to us and say frankly, I want to cooperate with you. And we welcome them. They have nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all. We welcome them and guarantee their safety and security. They come as patriotic Americans and we welcome them as such.”

“The main thing is that they have nothing to be afraid of. Most people hesitate about the F.B.I. They hear all kinds of stories, and they believe all kinds of nonsense. But the truth is that the F.B.I, is
your
institution, set up to serve
you.
That's what we want to get across.”

Daylight was fading gently and sweetly, with colors that turned the softest violet as they walked past the tax-payers, Holts's Five, Ten and Twenty-five Cent Store, Mantini's Shoe Repair Parlor, the First, Original Trueline Barbers, Henterman's Habadashery and the Clover Celtic Bar and Grill, and just as Anderson had expected, in the open lot on the next block, the kids were playing association football, yelling to each other to throw the ball high, so they could see it against the subdued light left in the sky.

“So there it is,” the other said, “and that's the way we're putting it to you, Marty. Are you going to cooperate? We want you to cooperate with us. And we think your're a good enough American to do so.”

“Go to hell,” Anderson said.

“That doesn't make sense, Marty. We have been talking to you man to man. The least you can do is talk to us the same way.”

“Go to hell.”

“After all,” the other said, “you're just making a snap decision, Marty. It's fine for them to build you up to this, and you just tell us to go to hell. Why we could write you down as a commie just for a crack like that, Marty. But we don't want to, and we don't think you're, a commie. That is, we don't think so right now. We could change our thinking on the subject, because as I said we don't know everything, but I'm not sure we want to. I'm also not sure you meant what you just said. The, point is, think it over before you say yes or no. This isn't such a light thing that you can just make a snap judgement.”

“Or look at it from this point of view, Marty. We came to you and asked you to cooperate as a loyal American. It doesn't raise your stock as a loyal American to tell us to go to hell. Sure, your commie pals gave you a song and dance about informers. There's nothing they like better than to weep and whine about informers and stool pigeons, as they call anyone with enough guts to cooperate with his government as a loyal American. But maybe we were wrong in thinking of you as a loyal American. I don't say we were wrong, but maybe we were wrong.”

“We could be wrong,” the other said. “We have been wrong before.”

“Damned wrong.”

“We could be so wrong that we don't even have a leg in the truth of it.”

“The point is, Marty, that if we're so wrong, it places certain responsibilities on us. That plant you left isn't just any plant. It doesn't only turn out tractors—it turns out parts for tanks—tanks, Marty, t-a-n-k-s-period. Tanks that are going to have to stop the red tide one day and Marty, then a lot of other folks ought to know how wrong we are. They ought to know that there are possibly some loopholes in their thinking, if they've been thinking about you as a loyal American.”

“Take the plant manager, Jack Fredericks,” said the other. “He's pretty damn well concerned about this country of ours. He might just want to know that there's a man holding down a job in the plant who won't cooperate with any branch of his government. He might feel damned uneasy about such a man holding down a job.”

“In fact, he might not want such a man in the plant at all. He might just fire him the hell out.”

“On the other hand, Marty, you might figure that such a man could find a job somewhere else. But could he—that's the question. There isn't a big plant in the city here that hasn't got a piece of a government contract. It's a fine thing to be a hero, but what do you do when your kids get hungry?”

“I don't think Marty looks at it that way.”

“Neither do I,” said the other. “I like Marty. I think Marty's a hundred percent American. That's the straight goods, Marty, and that's why we're asking you to cooperate with us, to do it the American way.”

“Go to hell and get away from me!” Anderson said.

A sudden change came over the two young men. Their warmth fell away from them, and they became as cold as the gathering night wind. Their small blue eyes became cold and their pudgy faces set.

“O.K., Marty.”

“You want it that way, Marty.”

And then they walked away from him, looking like brothers, walking like brothers, no difference in the way they were dressed, in height or manner of gait. They walked away from him, and there in front of Anderson was his home, his house, his castle, nine thousand dollars, nine hundred dollars down on the G.I. Bill of Rights, so much a month, until someday it was his, and his kids grown and educated, and he and his wife comfortable in their older years, in the warm, good years that were the gift of a land of freedom and opportunity. There was his house. He walked home almost every evening. He liked to walk home.

Coca Cola

T
HIS AND THAT HAS BEEN SAID ABOUT COCA COLA, AND
many hold that it is more and less than a soft drink; and there are parts of the world where they refer without love to a “Coca Cola civilization.” Be that as it may, I have my own feelings about the matter, which I sometimes recall as my “Arabian adventure.”

Nor am I in any fashion sold on the romance of Arabia, which I hold as one of the less favored spots on earth. In any case, during the month of June, it's hotter than hell, which I know for a fact; for hell is the product of gullible imagination and an Arabian summer actually exists. This I know, for I happened to be in Arabia one June during the Second World War, traveling from Africa to the Far East and satisfying my curiosity meanwhile about what was happening on the Arabian peninsula. Perhaps in the winter season, I would have developed the kind of interest in Arabia that others have shown; as it was, a few days of the heat, sand and indescribable poverty satisfied my curiosity, and I turned my attention to getting out of Arabia.

This was not as easy as it might seem, for apparently nothing in the way of Army Air Transport went directly out of Arabia, but instead to another airstrip. And the handful of miserable GIs at each of these airstrips, living in a perpetual state of intense dehydration, talked not of sex or the war, but of the superior quality, taste and quantity of water at some other airstrip. And in between their rather profound discussions of water, they spent their pay on Coca Cola. It's amazing how much Coca Cola an American in the Arabian desert can consume.

Time passed and it became hotter, and when I landed one day on an airstrip in the central part of the peninsula, staggered into the shade, and read on the thermometer there that the temperature was one hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit, I knew that I had enough of Arabia. I inquired for the next plane out.

I was told that in the next forty-eight hour period, only one plane would be taking off, and that one a C46, due in this very afternoon and scheduled to take off as soon as it had refueled and loaded cargo. What sort of cargo it would load at this godforsaken place in the center of a glaring, burning white-salt desert, I neither knew nor cared, just as I neither knew nor cared what the future destination of the C46 might be—secure in the knowledge that wherever that destination was, it was superior to the place I was in now.