The Last Western (25 page)

“The people only get what they take by fighting,” Clio said, and they opened more beer.

And so through the night it went until the sun spread a soft gold haze over the dusty main road of Delphi.

“You can sleep over with the Gotteds,” said Willie, picking up Clio’s bag. “Come on. They both work and I’m building a kite with the kids. You look tired.”

Going across the street, Clio wanted to ask about the munitions firm but just then Willie said, “We talk of these things, of war and killing, and just today, or yesterday now, I learned that our people here all work at a gun plant out at the edge of town. I was trying to find some way to help them want to do something different.”

“They probably need the jobs,” said Clio, looking at Delphi in the dawn light.

“Nobody needs jobs that bad.”

Clio laughed.

“The beautiful dreamer,” he said fondly.

At 3:00 that afternoon
the directors of Doveblade Communications, unable to find a pacification on short notice, gathered in the executive offices of the Delphi plant and voted unanimously to suspend the employment of 800 local workers.

The vote took fourteen seconds, since Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade, being the majority stockholder, had reached a decision about the firing three days earlier.

But it made the directors of the company feel good to know that they thought as Mr. Goldenblade did. After the vote, cocktails were served to the directors and to the sole guest, General Maxwell Harrison, USA.

A list of the discharged employees had been carefully prepared the day before and the list had been distributed to the foremen.

Of the 800 workers, 524 were Mexican, 274 were black, 2 were white, one of them a sixty-nine-year-old veteran of fourteen wars who had the job of sealing the Doveblade symbol on hand grenades.

Copies of the notice of discharge, prepared by G. D. Goldenblade himself, were to be distributed to the workers along with final paychecks at the regular closing time of five o’clock.

The notice of discharge blamed the firings on the United Nations, pornographic films, monism, and the lack of family prayer.

In a world racked by sin, corruption, cruddery and the like, the notice concluded, we of the Doveblade management will never stop praying for the salvation of each and every one of you who are being released for the good of the country. In the words of the Divine Foreman himself, “Well Done, Good and Faithful ServantsI”

“It’s one of the best firing notices I ever wrote,” Goldenblade said to General Harrison. “I just hope it does the job.”

The two men were sitting in the Bimini Lounge of the executive suite, discussing the possibility of a riot.

“I take it the troops are ready to move?”

“Ready and willing,” said the general. “Ninety-six hundred of them in full battle gear just in case these people don’t choose to see reason.”

“Half the workers can’t read,” said Goldenblade, “and the other half don’t care whether they work or not. All we have to worry about is the small minority who can both read and want to work. It’s people like that who always make the trouble about discriminating against spies and nigras.”

“You let two white men go.”

“True, but there is a minority of men in there who talk that monist equality rot. In any crowd of 800 you are going to find bright-boy types like that. If they got the crowd worked up, it could be bad.”

“We like to handle the bright-boy types,” said the general.

“With what we got in that plant, if they ever started burning, this town and this plant and you and I and everybody would get blown right off the top of the world.”

“I’m going to fix myself another martini,” said the general.

“Go right ahead, Maxie,” said Goldenblade, “we might as well have a drink while this thing transpires. Morgan, though, our regular bartender who once wrote a book about the African slave trade, will fix you up. Morgan, make the general a drink.”

Morgan, an old black man, said, “Yessuh,” as in the days no one remembers.

At 5:00 the whistle blew and the men were handed their paychecks—in 800 cases, paychecks enfolded in a personal letter from Mr. George Doveland Goldenblade.

At 5:05, having stumbled into the hot sunshine, the men were milling around the front gate, under the cross that had been erected there.

The readers were telling the nonreaders what the notices said.

“The moment of truth,” said Goldenblade, craning with his binoculars. “We have our own men in there, of course, planted employees, who have been instructed to urge the unemployed toward town. So if they do start plundering, it will be the town and not the plant that bears the brunt.”

“Excellent thinking,” said the general. “What’s that noise I hear?”

“We have mikes planted from the end of the gate all the way to town—down there all the way to the church, do you see? We can listen to what they say.”

“Excellent,” said the general.

Goldenblade said, “Morgan, get the engineer.”

A young white engineer appeared presently.

“All we’re getting is this buzzing,” Goldenblade complained. The engineer studied the control panel of the sound pick-up.

“They’re just murmuring, Mr. Goldenblade,” said the engineer.

“Turn it up,” said Goldenblade.

So the engineer put on his earphones and turned a dial, immediately filling the Bimini Lounge with an ear-splitting roar.

“We don’t need to hear it that much!” Goldenblade snarled.

“If they start toward town,” the engineer said, “they’ll string out. Our mikes can then be cut in and out and we’ll be able to pick up the individual voices of the men as they file along.”

The general ordered another drink and looked down at the workers through the wrong end of his binoculars.

“How far up are we?” he asked.

“This is the fourth floor,” Goldenblade said absently. “They have absolutely
got
to move to town.”

“How like an insect is man,” said the general. “How infinitesimal his toil.”

“They’re starting for town!” Goldenblade said suddenly.

And he was right.

As if cued by a stage director, the workers began straggling toward the center of Delphi.

Now through the speaker in the Bimini Lounge came clear and distinct voices, many of them in Spanish.

A translator was summoned.

“What are they talking about?” Goldenblade demanded.

The translator, cocking his ear, passed on the comments.

“He says he’s going to get drunk for three days. That one says he knew the job wouldn’t last forever. That man says we should be grateful we had the jobs in the first place.”

“Wonderful,” said Goldenblade. “They’re taking it fine.”

“Sir, all those were company men planted in the mob,” said the translator. “I know their voices.”

Goldenblade cursed the translator’s father, mother, brothers, sisters and wife.

“Do you have any children?” he asked the translator.

“No sir.”

“Nor will you ever have any,” said Goldenblade, “if you don’t tell me what the
fired
ones are saying!”

“Yes sir,” said the translator. “Well, that one, he said we ought to burn the plant down.”

“That man should be arrested!” Goldenblade cried, jerking his hand violently downward and knocking over General Harrison’s drink. “Sorry, general.”

“S’all right,” the general said, “I think I’ll just get another.”

“This one,” said the translator, responding to a single highly pitched voice, “this one says the men should find the managers of the company and—and—”

“And what?” Goldenblade snapped.

“Mr. Goldenblade,” said the translator, “it is very bad what he said.”

Goldenblade cursed all the relatives of the translator’s family who had ever lived and all future generations of the family.

The translator breathed a deep breath and said, “He said, that man, that we, that is the fired men, should get the officers of the company and tie them to stakes. Then they—that is the officers of the plant, not the men who were fired but rather the superior, how you say, executives—they, not the fired men, but rather—”

Goldenblade, burying his head in his hands, muttered something.

“Sir?” said the translator.

Goldenblade, head in hands, said nothing. But suddenly a low hum was heard in the room—the first few bars of the
Only-Therefore
hymn.

All the words came quickly to the terrified translator: “He said that the workers should get the plant officers, tie them up to stakes, pour Regent sweet wine upon their bodies and leave them to the flies.”

“That man should be executed immediately, General!” cried Goldenblade.

The general, having gulped down his new drink, turned on his shortwave.

“Send the execution squad over here,” he said in a slurred voice.

“For God’s sake!” Goldenblade shrieked. “Not now! You want to start a riot? We use those men of yours only as a last resort.”

“But who’s going to do the executing?” the general said.

At that moment a new voice came over the speaker.

“Goldenblade’s a fruit!”

Goldenblade, hearing this, pounded his fist on the table, knocking over the general’s glass a second time.

The general turned the radio on.

“Delay the last order.”

“Yessir,” said the voice on the radio.

The general felt uncertain about things, so he turned the radio on again and said, “Colonel?”

“Yessir.”

“Find the man who called me a fruit!” Goldenblade shouted.

“No one called you a fruit,” said the voice on the shortwave.

“This is General Maxwell Harrison speaking,” said the general, “United States Army regular, get that?”

“Yessir.”

“Have the men stand at attention until further notice. I’m not tolerating insubordination from you or anyone else.”

“Yessir. Sir?”

“Just obey the simple order as given,” said the general, “or I’ll get your eagle.”

The general snapped the radio off, reached over the bar, seized the gin bottle and began to drink freely.

“What are they saying?” Goldenblade asked the translator, for now the voices were most distinct and most angry.

“Different things. That one says for instance you are not just a fruit, but a fruit such as has grown rotten at the core.”

At this, Goldenblade hit the table again. The general grabbed his bottle just in time.

“And this one says the men should get guns. This one speaks of fire. One man, the last voice, says all should gather together and have a meeting.”

Goldenblade groaned.

“That’s bad, that’s bad, bad, bad. They have meetings and the fires start. Turn the cameras on.”

“That man says they will meet in front of the church,” said the translator.

“Should I ball for the cazookas?” said the general, rising uncertainly to his feet.

“Cazookas?” Goldenblade exclaimed.

“Bazookas,” said the general. “Case they get smart and blow church. We could blow church before they had chance to meet in it.”

“Max, sit down over there. Have a drink. Watch the television,” said Goldenblade. “Bazookas is what we don’t need. Not yet anyway.”

“It’s matter of infinity to me,” said the general. “Absolutely infinitesimal. Practically on the insect scale.”

Above the bar of the Bimini Lounge, four television sets snapped on at once, showing four different pictures of the town square.

As the men streamed into view, waving clenched fists, shouting and cursing, it seemed for a moment they might actually begin fighting among themselves.

A brick went flying through the air and the crowd roared.

“Get the gas!” came a voice from nowhere.

A fist loomed before one of the cameras, then fell away.

All four screens went black for a second or two, then presented close-up the picture of two men standing on the steps of the church.

One of the men held out his arms in a curious way, his face turned up to the sky.

He appeared to be speaking to the men, but a mike could not pick up his words because the crowd now had created a storm of sound.

“
What
is that?” Goldenblade asked no one in particular.

“The priest,” said the translator. “Willie Brother.”

“Who’s the nigra?” asked Goldenblade.

No one knew.

All four cameras caught a tight shot of Willie now, his lips moving, plainly exhorting the crowd.

“If a microphone is not put close to that man’s mouth within the next thirty seconds,” Goldenblade told the engineer, “you and your whole monist crew are through.”

“Yessir,” said the engineer and began to speak rapidly into the walkie-talkie.

“Going into church,” mumbled the general from the end of the bar. “Maybe burn church themselves. No need for nazookas then. Burn church—infinity—man’s toil.”

The doors of the church had opened and the men began to move inside.

Little by little the angry moan of the men began to subside.

“What sort of man is this Father Brother or whatever the hell his name is?” Goldenblade said, not without admiration. “He’s got the whole shabby lot of them eating out of his hand!”

One of the planted company men came into view and waved a cameraman forward.

The camera followed him into the church.

The picture wavered and tore, went to black, focused fleetingly on a statue of Saint Theresa the Great, then found a bronze icon—until the mouth opened.

“You are angry,” Willie began, his voice carrying clearly now over the mike the planted employee had brought into the church.

“They took our jobs!” a man shouted from the congregation.

“They took your jobs,” Willie repeated, holding out his arms, “and so you are angry. Yes, you are very angry. And it is natural to be angry—anger is correct.

“Because what is it that you think? You think, How will I feed my family? How will I make the payments on my house? What about the car and the television and the automatic dishwashing machine?

“And it seems—it must seem—to many of you that you have lost everything this day, everything that you have struggled to buy and own and have.