JIMMIE WALKED to the paint works. His mother, emerging from her woebegone condition for a single, considerate moment, had offered a car for him to drive.
He had preferred to walk. It wasn’t much more than a mile to the plant; and Jimmie was used to walking. He hadn’t bothered to tell his mother that he was used to walking now.
He had felt too inert and too wounded—wantonly wounded—to take the trouble to remind her that he had just come from England, where there was a hideous war and people walked places whenever they could. No more use turning the screw, driving the barb.
Something had happened to his family in the six years of his absence. They’d lost something—heart, guts, reason, even great chunks of knowledge—and all they had left were glass brick walls, automobiles, cocktails, bad tempers.
He tramped through the pretty part of town, the hill part, squirting the slush vindictively; he entered the shabbier section with less spattering steps, as if the poorer people had more delicate sensibilities, or as if they were fellow sufferers rather than the authors of his fury. The ugliness of the rows of frame houses, painted in the most repugnant shades of yellow and green and brown, stung like a rebuke; nobody taught the poor people anything; they couldn’t learn for themselves; even if they learned, they couldn’t do much about their learning, because they were poor. His father would call these people—the women hanging out clothes in the back yards, the old men stealing kindling from the railroad right-of-way—by the single name of Labor. His father would call what was going on inside Jimmie’s mind Communistic. But Jimmie wasn’t thinking about economics—he wasn’t thinking at all; he was only feeling—and his feelings were raw as his right cheek, and as unpleasant to behold.
At the Corinth Works he was given a pass by the boss’s secretary, Miss Melrose, and shown to the lab that had been made ready for his coming. A big lab, a good lab, a fairly dramatic lab. Too intricate for the layman’s eyes it was like the insides of a great engine, made of glass. He kicked off his overshoes, hung his hat on the spout of a retort, put on a brand new rubber apron, and walked around, reading the labels on hundreds of bottles, cocking his eye, now and again, to note that the old man had so much imagination, and so much money for chemicals. The apparatus was magnificent. The layout could not be improved. Light poured from windows high overhead, all around the room—twenty or more, big and opaque, so no one could watch the alchemy in progress.
The place was air-conditioned.
Jimmie sighed and sat down on a stool. Here was one spot-one niche in the hostile Midwestern city, in the unfamiliar world of America—where he was going to be perfectly at home.
Old Cholmondeley, he thought, would give his right eye for this joint. Percy would give his other arm. Well, this was America. In America—they had everything. He wondered which of the pressing problems he would start on. His wonderment took his thoughts a long way—to the heart of the battle in Europe; he tried to weigh the relative strategic values of succeeding here, or succeeding there—if he should succeed at all.
Finally, grunting, he walked to a rack of test tubes, took one down, poured into it some powdered iron, looked at it for a full five minutes, set it back in the rack, picked up a pencil that had never been used, and commenced to write a prodigality of equations on long sheets of yellow paper.
He was studying these when his door pushed open. Because Miss Melrose had said no one would disturb him unless he rang, Jimmie knew who had opened his door.
“’Lo, Willie,” he said.
“How do you like it?”
“Don’t need to answer, do I? If my brain was as sound as your lab we’d have the war won in a week!”
Mr. Corinth chuckled soundlessly. He sat down on another stool and squinted for some time at his employee. “Who hit you?”
“My brother.” The response was complacent. “Uh-huh. Biff’s got a bad temper.
War, eh?”
“Domestic relations,” Jimmie answered, smiling ruefully, “seem to hinge on international relations.”
“Out here in the West they do, anyhow. They ought to draft that puppy pretty soon.”
“They did.”
Mr. Corinth pulled on his white mustache, apparently to hide a smile. “SO he hit you. Did you see it coming?”
Jimmie had been studying his equations again. He looked up, not with irritation, but in a way that showed his preoccupation. “No.”
“Thought not.” The old man yawned and stretched. “Jimmie, put the foolscap away. I want to talk.”
“Okay!” He smiled indulgently and tossed down the pencil.
“Plenty of time for chemistry. Time goes on forever, and chemistry’s part of it.
Not enough time for people on the other hand, no matter what. I like to feel the fellows working for me are in the proper mood. It’s my hunch that the mood you’re in is everything. You can come over to this glass maze week after week and figure out how to pick an atom off here and stick it on yonder; but if you’re in the wrong mood you never get any valuable answers. On the other hand, you can go out and lie pie-eyed drunk in the gutter for a month and come in here for one day, and if you feel hot you can discover more than ten men in ten lifetimes. Funny!”
“Still,” Jimmie said, “I don’t propose to try the inspirational method of the gutter.”
“Plenty sore, aren’t you?”
Jimmie was going to deny that. But he said, “Yes. Plenty.”
“Well, when people are sore it’s because they’re afraid. Every damn’ solitary time.
Maybe not afraid of exactly what they seem to be sore at—but afraid of something behind it. What do you think you’re afraid of, at this point?”
“Afraid?” He laughed unsympathetically. “Nothing.”
“Sure you are. Scared dizzy. You love your family, Jimmie. You’re that kind of an egg. As loyal as a darned dog. And you’ve blown ’em high as kites, I bet. Started scenes—Biff hit you at breakfast? I thought so. You’re scared—but I’ll let you figure out of what.
You know, Jimmie, you have a lot to catch up on.”
“Evidently.”
“Think about that—for one thing.”
Jimmie suddenly had a mental picture of his father, reading the morning paper. “If your psychology is sound—if rage is a sign of fear—then my old man must be about dead of fright these days!” He described the passionate perusal.
Mr. Corinth snorted. “Yes, there’s men doing that all over the country. Sore at the president because they’re scared of what he’ll do. But that’s not the main thing these days.
That’ll wash—one way or another—according to what the majority of the American people think they want. It’s what they think they want that matters. What their attitude is. Hitler’s propaganda fellows understand that. Jimmie, how many times do you believe you can change your mind and still keep believing in yourself?” The younger man cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”
“Well, suppose—” Mr. Corinth took out a large linen handkerchief. “Suppose I said this was black. You think it’s white. But suppose I finally convince you it’s black. All right. I’ve reversed your attitude once. Now. Suppose somebody else comes along and makes you realize it’s white again. That’s twice your opinion has changed.
“Now. You’re going along thinking it’s a white handkerchief. But suppose—just for the hell of it—that the underside of this darned thing really is black. And suppose you can see a reflection of that side in a mirror. And suppose, also, it happens to be a matter of life and death importance to you that the whole handkerchief should be black. And suppose I—who have already convinced you once that it was black—start to work on you again. You have a motive for thinking this whole thing is black. I tell you it is—and prove it, let’s say, by phoney physics. Let’s say, you’ve always pretended to know a lot about physics—though you don’t. Suppose, also, a lot of men who are leaders in your field—not all, but a lot—start saying this handkerchief of mine is all black. What do you do now?
“Naturally, you get convinced again that the darned thing is as black as the Ace of Spades on both sides. Why? Because you’ve made that mistake once. Because you have a dire personal need to think it’s all black. And because the big shots above you say it’s black. Jimmie—that’s the most important thing in the world today. That’s what’s the matter with your family. They can’t start all over again with the basic facts, line ’em up impartially, change their opinions for about the fifth time, and come up once more, finally and for all, with the true bill of goods!”
“That just states the problem. How do you solve it?”
The old man tipped his stool back against a high table and peered at Jimmie. “You know your family. You know your country—or, at least, what your country has stood for in the past. ‘We hold all men to be created free and equal.’ That sort of stuff. You solve their problem. I’ll help you out, though. For years I’ve been pasting up scrapbooks of things I thought were important. All sorts of things. Newspaper clippings and items from magazines. Pages from books—most whole books only do have a couple of worth-while pages in ’em. My scrapbooks aren’t perfect—they missed a lot—but I’ll lend ’em to you.
They’ll help you catch up on your American history.”
“I need to,” Jimmie said.
“Mmmm. I’ll send the books over to your house. Maybe your family’ll peek into ’em. They’ll remind them of a lot they’ve overlooked.”
Jimmie grinned. “I bet.”
Mr. Corinth took a cigar from his disreputable waistcoat pocket and struck a match. He puffed ruminatively. “Your people—most people—don’t realize what has happened to them. It’s so big, so abrupt, so demanding of enormous mental change, that they can’t realize. Takes more time than they’re willing to take to think. More intellectual honesty than your father or your mother are in the habit of using. I don’t believe either Roosevelt or Churchill ever understood exactly what’s happened to all of us on this planet. I mean about this isolation business. When folks do understand what has happened, this word ‘isolation’ just about won’t exist any more.”
Mr. Corinth stared at Jimmie. “In the case of crime or danger there is only one question important to a human. That isn’t—How big is the danger, or, How terrible? It’s—How faraway is it? Only, Jimmie, there’re two kinds of ‘faraway.’ One is—How far in distance? The other is—How far in time? The murder and rape of a few thousand Chinese is pretty faraway in distance. So is the German Army—in spite of the cruising range of bombers. That reassures people. But they aren’t any distance away in time! Even with the telegraph, distance in time was still distance. It took time to get the messages translated and printed in the newspapers. But with the radio that’s all gone. We’re isolated in distance, only a few hours, all over the world. And in time, not at all—any more, ever! ”
“I never thought of that,” Jimmie said. “Not that way.”
“Nope. People don’t. I pick up my radio. I hear the AA going in London. Shrapnel hitting the roof where the announcer stands. Fire crackling. Bombs screeching. I think— Well, that’s London and it’s faraway. But I can’t think—That’s something that happened. I know darn’ well it’s something happening right here and now! There’s the trouble. It isn’t history. It’s present tense. Therefore, my conscience won’t let me overlook it. My instinct is to do something about it because it’s going on now! If I still try to tell myself it’s faraway I feel I’m a hypocrite. I feel that I’m an accessory to the whole bloody affair. I am—in the sense that I haven’t the excuse of isolation in time any more. Particeps criminis, the law calls it. That is, if you’re going down the street and you see a robbery take place and you don’t try to do anything about it the law can punish you. You’re an accessory. That’s what radio makes the whole world: accessories before, during, and after the rotten crimes now going on. Not eyewitnesses, earwitnesses, which is just as damning.”
“Not to my family,” Jimmie answered grimly. “Not to them! They think we’re safe. They call the destruction of a continent a ‘European quarrel.’ They say I’m a ‘warmonger.’ I’m not, because I don’t plan in any way to profit by war—which IS what the word really means. They say I’m an interventionist. I’m not, because my reason for wanting to help is not to high-pressure somebody else’s war, but to do a long-range job of saving our own skin. They say I’m pro-British which I am—though the reason is, the English have changed. Before the war I was almost anti-English. Munich made me sick.
But England changed! My family says England betrayed France in the end. Actually—in the end—England offered France an even-Stephen union with the British Empire—a thing which would have caused every tory in the country to shoot himself, three years before! They made that offer, to keep France from betraying herself. Oh—the hell with my family!”
Mr. Corinth smoked. His eyes were as near to twinkling as their opacity permitted. “I know your family. Listening to their radios they feel like accessories to all the crimes. But to stop the crimes—means war, maybe. To go to war means—well, a terrible risk. Perhaps it means they’ll lose their money, their clothes, their cars, their house with the new glass brick panels, maybe Biff’s life, maybe yours. Maybe, even, their own. They will all tell you that Hitler can never touch America. They even say he cannot cross the English Channel—though he crossed it often enough in the air. They will say that Muskogewan can never be harmed. Then, when a little time has passed, and the discussion warms, they will recommend staying out of war tin order to save the lives of Muskogewan’s innocent women and children.’ Oh, they contradict themselves—people like your mother and father! But they talk very much and very loudly, because they are talking nonsense—and their consciences know it. They realize, at the very least, that they are refusing to answer a moral demand. Refusing, because they fear the cost will be high.
That means I hey are putting a money value on their own characters. To admit that out loud, would destroy them. So they deny it; inevitably, they contradict themselves.”
Jimmie stood and stretched. He paced his new laboratory for several moments.
“They make me so mad! Last night the whole crowd at the club said that an American declaration of war on Germany amounted to ‘pointing an empty gun’! Where do they get that kind of garbage? Is a world war the same thing as a stick-up? Is the biggest navy in the world—an empty gun? And what about declaring in the greatest economic plant on earth? Then my old man said that if England lost the whole of Europe would be Communist overnight. Does he believe that? Can’t he read? Hitler has never kept a promise. But hasn’t he carried out every threat he ever made—so far?
“Dad says Fascism is the same thing as Communism. Even if it was—exactly the same thing—what would we do with the whole world like that? I asked him, and he smiled like a sap and said, ‘What we’ve always done, son. Mind our own business.’ I asked him what business we’d have left to mind, and he said I didn’t understand world trade. Imagine! I understand world trade on Hitler’s terms, all right! But Dad doesn’t—and yet he runs a bank! He says, ‘Leave it up to the common people, and you’ll get the right answer every time.’ I say—a lot of things are too damned complicated for the common people! Even at that, I say, the polls of American sentiment show the majority feels a hell of a lot different from Father! So he says the polls are rigged. Are they?”
The old chemist shook his head. “No. They’re honest—and reliable. Only—time enters in, again. That’s why these polls drive people crazy. People overlook the fact that polls are always history. They represent what the nation thought yesterday, or last week, or even last month. Which, with the radio knocking time down to zero, means that the polls are not news, but reminiscence. They have no positive value in deciding what to do now. They only show what should have been done last month, when the poll was taken.
We’re able to live in the present everywhere, now. People ought to think what that means.
One reason the isolationists always talk about this war in historical terms is to try—subconsciously—to push it back into a less uncompromising focus. The kind of focus they grew up with. The focus in which the dying, and t he killing, are always over when you learn about them. That’s comfortable—because it does not make you an accessory. The radio does.”
Jimmie raised his foot onto the top of a stool. He relaxed his weight against his knee. His gray eyes were blazingly alive; his reddish brown hair was uncombed, so that it jostled when he spoke. “The bunch that Father and Mother work with is sure baffling! They take the word of a pilot as gospelon all things military and aerodynamic. They sit on platforms with a prominent Socialist—and you ought to hear what Dad thinks about Socialism! They listen to anybody on their side, no matter how obvious. No matter if he’s a manifest crackpot, or publicity-crazed, or an ax-grinder, or a professional Irishman, or a long-established baiter of Britain, or a discredited politician trying to make headlines—just anybody! No rhyme, no reason, no order—just rant! And big applause.”
“Sure. I’ll introduce you to a few ‘interventionists,’ though, Jimmie—to keep you sane. You’ll find that they’ve pretty much thought their way through all the changes of black and white—to the real answer. It’s funny. The interventionist attitude toward the isolationist is one of worry. Worry about how to convert him. Worry about the factors that made him the way he is. An earnest attempt to reason with him. But the isolationist’s attitude toward his interventionist friend is just—rage. Instead of reason the isolationist has been using slogans. ‘Don’t plow under our boys.’ Frantic, hysterical swill like that. Malicious stuff.” The old man sighed. “The difference in their attitudes toward each other is just about a definition of who’s doing the calm thinking and who’s doing the terrified yelling. Well, Jimmie, there’s a lot wrong with America—”
“You tell me,” Jimmie said. “I’m liking this. At home, they shut me up. At home, their slogans are truth. My facts are propaganda. Even Audrey Wilson called me Duff Cooper at one point last night.”
Mr. Corinth’s eyebrows lifted. “So you’ve met our Audrey?”
“Yeah. Mother’s idea—at the beginning.”
“Mmmm.” The old man slid from his stool. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with America—and the world—some other time, Jimmie. Did you like her?”
“Who? Audrey? She’s attractive.”
“A mild phrase. Too mild. It protests too much—in converse. Audrey is to attractiveness what a flying fortress is to a box kite. I know Audrey pretty well. She tried to get a job here, once. Tried hard.”
“Audrey did? Doing what?”
“Learning chemistry. She’d polished off finishing school and she had an idea she’d become another Eve Curie.”
“Why didn’t you let her learn?”
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe I was wrong. I looked at Audrey and I decided women already knew too darn’ much, anyhow. Teaching women the things men know hasn’t done one doggoned visible thing to improve human life yet. I half suspect it’s made the women skimp their natural business, besides. So I thought Audrey ought to have a chance to grow mellow by just being female.”
“Mellow. She’s hardly that.”
“No. I suppose not. She might be closer to it, though, than you think. You’re no wood-aged paragon of mellowness yourself, yet.” He reached out, rather impulsively, and put his hand on Jimmie’s shoulder. “You’re thinking, this morning—if I may be so clairvoyant as to say so—of taking a room, hunh?”
The younger man grinned again. “I was.”
“Don’t. Stick around your family. You aren’t anywhere near in the mood to work.
The mood I talked about when I butted in here. You won’t find out anything, anyway.
You might as well get over your mad—or push through it—or whatever you do when you see red. I can run the paint works—government orders and all. You just stay at home and mess around here when you want.”
“I’m used to working in any mood,” Jimmie answered seriously. “I’ve had some damned good practice!”
The venerable face was seamed with amusement and at the same time with a transcendent sympathy. “Yes, Jimmie. I can imagine. I can imagine a little. Twenty-three years ago—for a month—when I was in Chemical Warfare I had charge of a big ammunition dump—high explosive and gas. They shelled and bombed the thing constantly. I can make a stab at knowing what you mean. It’s not that mood I’m talking about. I have a sneaking idea you aren’t yellow—or a quitter. It’s the other mood.” He hesitated. “You’ll be seeing Audrey again soon, I suppose?”
“I don’t know. Her family canceled a party they’d set for me—when they found out I was a British agent, practically.”
“Well, when you see her do me a favor. Keep trying to think what she’d be like if she didn’t have those looks.”
Jimmie laughed. “Why?”
“I always wondered myself—that’s all. And another chore. Try it. Make believe you’ve been sold on every single item your mother and your father subscribe to. Empty gun—not our war—America can’t be invaded—Roosevelt is a Communist and a hysteric.
Believe all that, on purpose. Then see how you feel about life!” Mr. Corinth walked to the table where Jimmie had been working. He picked up the pages of equations and read through them rapidly. His white eyebrows waggled and he blinked at Jimmie once or twice.
“Solve your personal equations first,” he said, as he walked from the room.
Jimmie went back to work. In a vehement, though unappraised, determination to refute the opinion of the philosophical old man, he worked through the lunch hour and the afternoon. No satisfying thought came out of his labors. At five, a whistle blew. The shifts changed. Jimmie shook himself; he was stiff from concentration. He put on his overshoes and his hat and locked the door of his laboratory.
Outside, the air was warmer. The snow had gone and the damp ground smelled pungently of sun-cured vegetation spread on it by autumn. Men and women were walking toward exits in the high fence. Some turned at the corner and started home on foot; others crossed a muddy street to the big parking lot and started their cars. The low-slanting sunlight throbbed with revving engines. Jimmie had a hunch that a second, belated, Indian summer would follow the freak cold spell which had bound Muskogewan in snow.
Such a warm spell was typical of the climate of the region. It would be followed by the crisp weather that led into Thanksgiving. His hunch exhilarated Jimmie. English weather was tedious and small-scale. The changes in this part of northern United States were dramatic, stimulating.
A horn blew as Jimmie checked out at the gatehouse. He looked up. Audrey was sitting in a coupe parked in the space alongside a fireplug. Jimmie put his pass in his wallet and took off his hat and walked over to her car. “Up to now,” he said, “I’ve refused all offers of chaufferage. I’ll take yours, though.”