Man Triumphant I
:
Greener Than You Think
21. The hearings of the Committee to Investigate Dangerous Vegetation
went on for five days and Mr Le ffacase was increasingly delighted as
the proceedings went down, properly edited and embellished to excite
reader interest, in the columns of the Daily Intelligencer. He even
unbent so far as to call me a fool without any adjectival modification,
which was for him the height of geniality.
I don't want to
ive the impression the committee stole the show, as the
saying goes. The show essentially and primarily was still the grass
itself. It grew while the honorable body inquired and it grew while the
honorable body, tired by its labors, slept. It increased during the
speeches of Senator Jones, through the interjections of Judge Robinson,
and as Dr Johnson added his wisdom to the deliberations.
While the committee probed, listened and digested, the grass finally
pushed its way across Hollywood Boulevard, resisting frantic efforts by
the National Guard, the fire and police departments, and a volunteer
brigade of local merchants, to stem its course. It defied alike
sharpened steel, fire, chemicals and explosives. Even the smallest
runner could now be severed only with the greatest difficulty, for in
its advance the weed had toughened--some said because of its omnivorous
diet, others, its ability to absorb nitrogen from the air--and its
rubbery quality caused it to yield to onslaught only to bound back,
apparently uninjured, after each blow.
One of the most disquieting aspects of the advance was its variability
and unpredictability. To the west, it had hardly gone five blocks from
the Dinkman house, while southward it had crossed Santa Monica Boulevard
and was nosing toward Melrose. Its growth had been measured and checked,
over and over again, but the figures were never constant. Some days it
traveled a foot an hour; on others it leapt nearly a city block between
sunrise and nightfall.
It is simple to put down "the grass crossed Hollywood Boulevard"; as
simple as saying, "our troops advanced" or "the man was hanged at dawn."
But when I write these words less than a generation later, surrounded by
rolling hills, gentle brooks, and vast lawns sedate and tame, I can
close my eyes and see again the green glacier crawling down the
sidestreets and over the low roofs of the shops to pour like a cascade
upon the busy artery.
Once more I can feel the crawling of my skin as I looked upon the
methodical obliteration of men's work. I can see the tendrils splaying
out over the sidewalks, choking the roadways, climbing walls, finding
vulnerable chinks in masonry, bunching themselves inside apertures and
bursting out, carrying with them fragments of their momentary prison as
they pursued their ruthless course.
Now the uproar and clamor of a disturbed public swelled to giant volume.
All the disruption and distress going before had been news; this was
disaster. "All same Glauman's Chinese, all same Pa'thenon," remarked
Gootes, and indeed I have heard far less outcry over the destruction of
historic landmarks than was raised when the grass obscured the
celebrated footprints.
Recall of the mayor was demanded and councilmen's official limousines
were frequently overturned. Meetings denounced the inaction of the
authorities; a gigantic parade bearing placards calling for an end to
procrastination marched past the cityhall. Democrats blamed Republicans
for inefficiency and Republicans retorted that Miss Francis had done her
research during a Democratic administration.
Every means previously tried and found wanting was tried again as though
it were impossible for human minds to acknowledge defeat by an insensate
plant. The axes, the scythes, weedburners and reapers were brought out
again, only to prove their inability to cope with the relentless flow of
the grass. Robot tanks loaded with explosives disappeared as had those
containing the soldiers, and only the stifled sound of their explosion
registered the fact that they had fulfilled their design if not their
purpose.
It was difficult for the man on the street to understand how the weapons
successful in Normandy and Tarawa could be balked by vegetation. Like
the Investigating Committee's pursuit of the question of the crudeoil's
adulteration, they wanted to know if the tanks were firstline vehicles
or some surplus palmed off by the War Department; if the weedburners
were properly accredited graminicides or just a bunch of bums taken from
the reliefrolls. The necessary reverse of this picture was the jubilant
hailing of each new instrument of attack, the brief but hysterical
enthusiasm for each in turn as the ultimate savior.
Because of my unique position I witnessed the trial of them all. I saw
tanks dragging rotary plows and others equipped with devices like
electricfans but with blades of hardened steel sharpened to razor
keenness. The only thing this latter gadget did was to scatter more
potential nuclei to the accommodating wind.
I saw the Flammenwerfer, the dreadful flamethrowers which had scorched
the bodies of men like burnt toast in an instant, direct their
concentrated fire upon the advancing runners. I smelled the sweetly sick
smell of steaming sap and saw the runners shrivel and curl back as they
had done on other occasions, until nothing was presented to the
flamethrowers except the tangled mass of interwoven stems denuded of all
foliage. Upon this involved wall the fire had no effect, the stems did
not wilt, the hard membranes did not collapse, the steely network did
not retreat. It seemed a drawn battle in one small sector, yet in that
very part where the grass paused on the ground it rose higher into the
air like a poising tidalwave. Higher and higher, until its crest,
unbalanced, toppled forward to engulf its tormentors.
Then the unruffled advance resumed, again some resource was interposed
against it, again it was checked for an instant and again it overcame
its adversary, careless of obstacles, impartially taking to itself gouty
roominghouses and pimping frenchprovincial ("17 master bedrooms")
chateaus, hotdogstand and Brown Derby, cornergrocery and pyramidal
foodmart; undeterred by anything in its path.
When you say a clump of weed attacked a city you utter an absurdity. I
think everyone was aware of the fantastic discrepancy between statement
of the event and the event itself. So innocent and ridiculous the grass
looked as it made its first tentative thrust at the urban nerves; the
green blades sloped forward like some prettily arranged but
unimaginative corsage upon the concrete bosom of the street. You could
not believe those fragile seeming strands would resist the impress of a
careless boot, much less the entire arsenal of military and agricultural
implements. It must have been this deceptive fragility which broke the
spirit of so many people.
From an item in the Intelligencer I recalled the existence of one of
Mrs Dinkman's neighbors who had rudely refused the opportunity to have
his lawn treated with the Metamorphizer. He had left an incoherent
suicidenote: "Pigeons in the grass alas. Too many pigeons, too much
grass. Pigeons are doves, but Noah expressed a raven. Contradiction
lies. Roses are red, violets are blue. The grass is green and I am thru.
Too too too. Darling kiddies." He then, in full view of the helpless
weedfighters, marched on into the grass and was lost to sight.
In the days following, so many selfdestructions succeeded this one that
the grass became known in the papers as the Green Horror. Perhaps a
peculiar sidelight on human oddity was revealed in most of these
suicides choosing to immolate themselves, not in the main body of the
grass, but in one of the many smaller nuclei springing up in close
proximity.
It was my fortune to witness the confluence of two of these descendant
bodies. They had come into being only a few blocks apart; understandably
their true character was unrecognized until they were out of control and
had enveloped the neighborhoods of their origin. They crept toward each
other with a sort of incestuous attraction until mere yards separated
them; they paused skittishly, the runners crawled forward speculatively,
the green fronds began overlapping like clasping fingers, then with
accelerating speed came together much as a pack of cards in the hands of
a deft shuffler slides edge under edge to make a compact and indivisible
whole. The line of division disappeared, the two became one, and where
before there had been left a narrow path for men to tread, now only a
serene line of vegetation outlined itself against the unblinking sky.
22. I have said Mr Le ffacase had softened his brutality toward me,
but his favor did not extend--so pervasive is literary jealousy--to
printing my own reports. He continued to subject me to the indignity of
being "ghosted," a thoroughly expressive term, which by a combination of
bad conjugation and the suggestion of insubstantiality defines the sort
of prose produced, by Jacson Gootes. This arrangement, instead of giving
me some freedom, shackled me to the reporter, who dashed from celebrity
to celebrity, grass to nuclei, office to point of momentary interest,
with unflagging energy and infuriating jocosity. I knew his repertory of
tricks and accents down to the last yawn.
Most of all I resented his irregular habits. He never arrived at the
Intelligencer office on time or quit after a proper day's work. He
thought nothing of getting me out of bed before I'd had my eight hours'
sleep to accompany him on some ridiculous errand. "Bertie, old dormouse,
the grass is knocking at the doors of NBC."
"All right," I answered, annoyed. "It started down Vine Street
yesterday. It would be more surprising if it obligingly paused before
the studios."
"Cynic," he said, pulling the bedclothes away from my face. I consider
this the lowest form of horseplay I know of. "How quickly your ideals
have been tarnished by contact with the vulgar world of newspaperdom.
Front and center, Bertie lad, we must catch the grass making its own
soundeffects before they jerk out the microphones."
Protests having no effect I reluctantly went with him, but the scene was
merely a repetition of hundreds of previous ones, the grass being no
more or less spectacular for NBC than for Watanabe's Nursery and Cut
Flower Shop a halfmile away. Its aftereffects, however, were immediate.
The governor declared martial law in Los Angeles County and ordered the
evacuation of an area five miles wide on the perimeter of the grass.
Furious cries of anguish went up from those affected by the arbitrary
order. What authority had any official to dispossess honest people from
their homes in times of peace? The right to hold their property
unmolested was a prerogative vested in the humblest American and who was
the governor to abrogate the Constitution, the Declaration of
Independence, and manifold decisions of the Supreme Court? In embittered
fury Henry Miller resigned from the Investigating Committee, now defunct
anyway, its voluminous and inconclusive report buried in the state
archives. Injunctions issued from local courts like ashes from a
stirring volcano, but the militia were impervious and hustled the
freeholders from their homes with callous disregard for the sacred dues
of property.
When the reason behind this evacuation order leaked out a still greater
lamentation was evoked, for the National Guard was planning nothing less
than a saturation incendiary bombing of the entire area. The bludgeon
which reduced the cities of Europe to mere shells must surely destroy
this new invader. Even the stoutest defenders of property conceded this
must be so--but what was the point of annihilating the enemy if their
holdings were to be sacrificed in the process? No, no, let the governor
take whatever means he pleased to dispatch the weed so long as the
method involved left them homes to enjoy when things were--as they
inevitably must be--restored to normal. So frantic were their efforts
that the Supreme Court actually forced the governor to postpone his
proposed bombing, though it did not discontinue the evacuation.
There were few indeed who understood how the weed would digest the very
wood, bricks or stucco and who packed up and moved out ahead of the
troops. American flags and shotguns recalled the heroic days of the
frontier, and defiance of the governor's edict was the rule instead of
the exception. Fierce old ladies dared the militiamen to lay a finger on
them or their possessions and apoplectic gentlemen, eyes as glazed as
those of the huntingtrophies on their walls, sputtered refusals to stir,
no, not for all the brutal force in the world. No one was seriously hurt
in this rebellion, the commonest wound being long scratches on the
cheeks of the guardsmen, inflicted by feminine nails, as with various
degrees of resistance the inhabitants were carried or shooed from their
dwellings.
While the wrangling over its destruction went on, the grass continued
its progress. Out through Cahuenga Pass it flowed, toward fertile San
Fernando Valley. Steadily it climbed to the hilltops, masticating sage,
greasewood, oak, sycamore and manzanita with the same ease it bolted
houses and pavements. Into Griffith Park it swaggered, mumbling the
planetarium, Mount Hollywood and Fern Dell in successive mouthfuls and
swarmed down to the concretelined bed of the Los Angeles River. Here
ineffectual shallow pools had preserved illusion and given tourists
something at which to laugh in the dry season; the weed licked them up
like a thirsty cow at a wallow. Up and down and over the river it ran,
each day with greater speed.
It broke into the watermains, it tore down the poles bearing electric,
telephone and telegraph wires, it forced its way between the threaded
joints of gaspipes and turned their lethal vapor loose in the air until
all services in the vicinity were hastily discontinued. Short weeks
after I'd inoculated Mrs Dinkman's lawn, that part of Los Angeles known
as Hollywood had disappeared from the map of civilization and had become
one solid mass of green devilgrass.
No one refused to move for this dispossessor as they had for the
governor; thousands of homeless fled from it. Their going clogged the
highways with automobiles and produced an artificial gasoline shortage
reminiscent of wartime. In downtown Los Angeles freightcars stood
unloaded on their sidings, their consignees out of business and the
warehouses glutted. The strain on local transportation, already
enfeebled by a publicservice system designed for a city one twentieth
its size and a complete lack of those facilities mandatory in every
other large center of population, increased by the necessary rerouting
around the affected area, threatened disruption of the entire organism
and the further disintegration of the city's already weakened
coordination. The values of realestate dropped, houses were sold for a
song, officebuildings for an aria, hotels for a chorus.
The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, secure in the knowledge its city
suffered from nothing worse than fires, earthquakes, a miserable
climate, and an invincible provincialism, invited displaced businessmen
to resettle themselves in an area where improbable happenings were less
likely; and the state of Oklahoma organized a border patrol to keep out
Californians.
I could not blame the realestate men for attempting to unload their
holdings before they suffered the fate of one tall building at Hollywood
and Highland. The grass closed about its base like a false foundation
and surged on to new conquests, leaving the monolith bare and forlorn in
its new surroundings. At first the weed satisfied itself with jocular
and teasing ventures up the smooth sides; then, as though rasped by the
skyscraper's quiescence, it forced its way into the narrow space between
the steel sash, filling the lower floor and bursting out again in a riot
of whirling tendrils. Up the sides it climbed like some false ivy;
clinging, falling back, building upon its own defeated body until it
reached another story--and another and another. At each one the tale was
repeated: windows burglariously forced, a floor suffocated, egress
effected, and another height of wall scaled. At the end the proud
structure was a lonely obelisk furred in a green covering to the very
flagpole on its peak, from which waved disappointed yet still aspiring
runners.
Upward and outward continuously, empty lot, fillingstation, artistic
billboard, all alike to the greedy fingers. Like thumb and index they
formed a crescent, a threatening semicircle, reaching forward by
indirection. Northward and southeastward, the two aqueducts kept the
desert from reclaiming its own; for fifty years the city had scraped up,
bought, pilfered or systematically robbed all the water it could get;
through the gray, wet lines, siphons, opencuts, pumps, lifts, tunnels,
the metropolis sucked life. Now the desert had an ally, the grassy
fingers avoided the downtown district, feeling purposefully and
dangerously toward the aqueducts.
I spent much of my time, when not actively watching the grass, in the
Intelligencer office. I had now agreed to write articles for several
weekly magazines, and though they edited my copy with a heavy and
unappreciative hand, still they never outraged me as Le ffacase did by
causing another man to usurp my name. Since I was in both senses
nominally a member of the staff, I had no qualms about using the
journal's typewriters and stationery for the construction of little
essays on the grass as seen through the eyes of one who had cause to
know it better than anyone else.
"The-uh curse of Garry-baldi be upon the head of that ee-veal man who-uh
controls this organeye-zation," rolled out Gootes in pseudoChurchillian
tones. "The-uh monster has woven a web; we are-uh summoned, Bertie."
I got up resignedly and followed him to the managingeditor's office. We
were not greeted directly. Instead, a question was thrown furiously over
our heads. "Where is he? What bristling and baseless egomania sways him
to affront the Daily Intelligencer with his contumacious and indecent
unpunctuality?"
"Who, chief?" asked Gootes.
Le ffacase ignored him. "When this great newspaper condescends to shed
the light of acceptance, to say nothing of an obese and taxable
paycheck, upon the gross corpus of an illiterate moviecameraman, a false
Daguerre, a spurious Steichen, a dubious Eisenstein, it has a right to
expect a return for the goods showered upon such a deceitful sluggard."
Still ignoring Gootes, he turned to me, and apparently putting the
berated one from his mind, went on with comparative mildness: "Weener,
an unparalleled experience is to fall to your lot. You have not achieved
this opportunity through any excellence of your own, for I must say,
after lengthy contact, no vestige of merit in you is perceptible either
to the nude eye or through an ultramicroscope. Nevertheless, by pure
unhappy chance you are the property of the Intelligencer, and as such
this illustrious organ intends to confer upon you the signal honor of
being a Columbus, a Van Diemen, an Amundsen. You, Weener, in your
unworthy person, shall be the first man to set foot upon a virgin land."
This speech being no more comprehensible to me than his excoriation of
an unknown individual, I could only stay silent and try to look
appreciative.
"Yes, Weener, you; some refugee from the busy newsroom of the Zwingle
(Iowa) Weekly Patriot," a disdainful handwave referred this
description to Gootes; "some miserable castoff from a fourthrate quickie
studio masquerading as a newscameraman; and a party of sheep--perhaps I
could simplify my whole sentence by saying merely a party of bloody
sheep--will be landed by parachute on top of the grass this very
afternoon."
He smacked his lips. "I can see tomorrow's bannerline now: 'Agent of
Destruction Views Handiwork.' Should you chance to survive, your
ghostwritten impressions--for which we pay too high a price, far too
high a price--will become doubly valuable. Should you come, as I
confidently expect, to a logical conclusion, the Intelligencer will
supply a suitable obituary. Now get the bloody hell out of here and
either let me see you never again, or as a triumphant Balboa who has
sat, if not upon a peak in Darien, at least upon something more
important than your own backside."
23. The inside of the converted armybomber smelled like exactly what
it was--a barn. Ten sheep and a solitary goat were tethered to
stanchions along the sides. The sheep bleated continuously, the goat
looked cynically forbearing, and all gave off an ammoniacal smell which
was not absorbed by the bed of hay under their hoofs.
Enthusiasm for this venture was an emotion I found practically
impossible to summon up. Even without Le ffacase's sanguinary
prophecies, I objected to the trip. I had never been in a plane in my
life, and this for no other reason than disinclination. I feared every
possible consequence of the parachutejump, from instant annihilation
through a broken neck in the jerk of its opening, down to being
smothered in its folds on the ground. I distinctly did not want to go.
But caution sometimes defeats itself; I was so afraid of going that I
hesitated to admit my timidity and so I found myself herded with my two
companions, the pilot and crew, in with the sheep and the goat. I was
not resigned, but I was quiescent. Gootes and the animals were not.
While we waited he went through his entire stock of tricks including a
few new ones which were not completely successful, before the cameraman,
panting, arrived ten minutes after our scheduled departure. His name was
Rafe Slafe--which I thought an improbable combination of syllables--and
he was so chubby in every part you imagined you saw the smile which
ought to have gone with such a face and figure. Before his breath had
settled down to a normal routine, Gootes had rushed upon him with an
enthusiastic, "Ah, Rafello muchacho, give to me the abrazo; como usted,
companero?"
Slafe scorned reply, pushing Gootes aside with one plump hand while with
the other he tidied the sparse black hairs of his mustache, which was
trimmed down to an eyebrow shading his lip. After inspecting and
rejecting several identical bucketseats he found one less to his
distaste than the others and stowed his equipment, which was extensive,
requiring several puffing trips backandforth, next to it. Then he
lowered his backside onto the unyielding surface with the same anxiety
with which he might have deposited a fortune in a dubious bank.
His hands darted in and out of pockets which apparently held a small
pharmacopoeia. Pulling out a roll of absorbentcotton from which he
plucked two wads, he stuck them thoughtfully in his ears. He withdrew a
nasalsyringe and used it vigorously, swallowed gulps of a clearly
labeled seasickremedy, and then sucked at pills from various boxes whose
purpose was not so obvious. To conclude, he unstopped a glass vial and
sniffed at it. All the while Gootes hovered over him, solicitously
deluging him with friendly queries in one accent or another.
I lost interest in both fellowpassengers, for the plane, after shaking
us violently, started forward, and before I was clearly aware of it had
left the ground. Looking from the windows I regretted my first airplane
ride hadnt been taken under less trying circumstances, for it was an
extraordinarily pleasant experience to see the field dwindle into a
miniature of itself and the ground beneath become nothing more than a
large and highly colored reliefmap.
To our right was the stagnant river, dammed up behind the blockading arm
of grass. Leftward, downtown, the thumb of the cityhall pointed rudely
upward and far beyond was the listless Pacific. Ahead, the gridiron of
streets was shockingly interrupted and severed by the great green mass
plumped in its center.
It grew to enormous bigness and everything else disappeared; we were
over and looked down upon it, a pasture hummock magnified beyond belief;
retaining its essential identity, but made ominous by its unappropriate
situation and size. As we hovered above the very pinnacle, the rounded
peak which poked up at us, the pilot spoke over the intercommunication
system. "We will circle till the load is disposed of. First the animals
will be dropped, then the equipment, finally the passengers. Is that
clear?"
Everything was clear to me except how we should escape from that green
mountain once we had got upon it. This was apparently in the hands of Le
ffacase, a realization, remembering his grisly conversation, making me
no easier in my mind. Nor did I relish the pilot's casual description of
myself as part of a "load"--to be disposed of.
Slafe suddenly came to life and after peering through a sort of
lorgnette hanging round his neck, mumbling unintelligibly to himself all
the while, started his camera which went on clicking magically with no
apparent help from him. Efficiently and swiftly the crew fastened upon
the helpless and bleating sheep their parachutes and onebyone dropped
them through the open bombbay. The goat went last and she did not bleat,
but dextrously butted two of her persecutors and micturated upon the
third before being cast into space.
I would have forgone the dubious honor of being the first to land upon
the grass, but the crew apparently had their orders; I was courteously
tapped upon the shoulder--I presume the warders are polite when they
enter the condemned cell at dawn--my chute was strapped upon me and the
instructions I had already read in their printed form at least sixty
times were repeated verbally, so much to my confusion that when I was
finally in the air I do not know to this day whether I counted six,
sixty, six hundred, or six thousand before jerking the ripcord. Whatever
the number, it was evidently not too far wrong, for although I received
a marrowexploding shock, the parachute opened and I floated down.
But no sooner were my fears of the parachute's performance relieved than
I was for the first time assailed with apprehension at the thought of my
destination. The grass, the weed, the destroying body which had devoured
so much was immediately below me. I was irrevocably committed to come
upon it--not at its edges where other men battled with it
heroically--but at its very heart, where there were none to challenge
it.
Still tormented and dejected, I landed easily and safely a few feet from
the goat and just behind the rearquarters of one of the sheep.
And now I pause in my writing to sit quite still and remember--more
than remember, live through again--the sensation of that first physical
contact with the heart of the grass. Ecstasy is a pale word to apply to
the joy of touching and resting upon that verdure. Soft--yes, it was
soft, but the way sand is soft, unyieldingly. Unlike sand, however, it
did not suggest a tightlypacked foundation, but rather the firmness of a
good mattress resting on a wellmade spring. It was resilient, like
carefully tended turf, yet at the same time one thought, not of the
solid ground beneath, but of feathers, or even more of buoyant clouds.
My parachute having landed me gently on my feet, I sank naturally to my
knees, and then, impelled by some other force than gravity, my body fell
fully forward in complete relaxation until my face was buried in the
thickly growing culms and my arms stretched out to embrace as much of
the lush surface as they could encompass.
Far more complex than the mere physical reactions were the psychical
ones. When a boy I had, like every other, daydreamed of discovering new
continents, of being first to climb a hitherto unscaled peak, to walk
before others the shores of strange archipelagoes, to bring back tales
of outlandish places and unfrequented isles. Well, I was doing these
things now, long after the disillusionment adolescence brought to these
childish dreams. But in addition it was in a sense my island, my
mountain, my land--for I had caused it to be. A sensation of
tremendous vivacity and wellbeing seized upon me; I could not have lain
upon the grass more than half a second before I leaped to my feet. With
a nimbleness quite foreign to my natural habits I detached the
encumbering chute and jumped and danced upon the sward. The goat
regarded me speculatively through rectangular pupils, but did not offer,
in true capricious fashion, to gambol with me. Her criticism did not
stay me, for I felt absolutely free, extraordinarily exhilarated,
inordinately stimulated. I believe I even went so far as to shout out
loud and break into song.
The descent of Slafe, still solemnly recording the event, camera before
him in the position of present arms, did not sober my intoxication,
though circumspection caused me to act in a more conventional way. I
freed him from his harness, for he was too busy taking views of the
grass, the sky, the animals and me to perform this service for himself.
I do not know if he was affected the way I was, for his deceptively
genial face showed no emotion as he went on aiming his camera here and
there with sour thoroughness. Then, apparently satisfied for the moment,
he applied himself once more to the nasalsyringe and the pillboxes.
On Gootes, however, the consequence of the landing must have been much
the same as on me. He too capered and sang and his dialect renderings
reached a new low, such as even a burlesqueshow comedian would have
spurned. "Tis the old sod itself," he kept repeating, "Erin go bragh. Up
Dev!" and he laughed inanely.
We must have wasted fully an hour in this fashion before enough coolness
returned to allow anything like calm observation. When it did, we
unpacked the equipment, despite obstacles interposed by Gootes, who,
still hilarious, found great delight in making the various instruments
disappear and reappear unexpectedly. It was quite complete and we--or
rather Slafe--recorded the thermometer and barometer readings as well as
the wind direction and altitude, these to be later compared with others
taken under normal conditions at the same hour.
Included in the gear were telescope and binoculars; these we put to our
eyes only to realize with surprise that we were located in the center of
a hollow bowl perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet across and
that an horizon of upsurging vegetation cut off our view of anything
except the sky itself. I could have sworn we had landed on a flat
plateau, if indeed the contour had not sloped upward to a cap. How,
then, did we come to find ourselves in a depression? Did the grass shift
like the sea it resembled? Or--incredible thought--had our weight caused
us to sink imperceptibly into a soft and treacherous bed?
I felt my happiness oozing away. What is man, I thought, but a pigmy
trapped in a bowl, bounded by an unknown beginning and headed for a
concealed destination? It was sweet to be, but whether good or evil lay
in the unseen, who knew? Uneasiness, which did not quite displace my
earlier buoyancy, took hold of me.
The animals, in contrast, gave no signals of disquiet. They cropped at
the grass without nervousness, perhaps more from habit than hunger. They
did not seem to be obtaining much sustenance; clearly they found it hard
to bite off mouthfuls of forage. Rather, they chewed sidewise, like a
cat, at the tough rubbery tendrils.
"I tank I want to go home--anyways I tank I want to get out of dis
haole," remarked Gootes. Slafe had unpacked another camera and attached
various gadgets to it, pursing his lips and running his hands lovingly
over the assembled product before thrusting it downward into the stolons
where queer shocks of radiance seemed to indicate he was taking
flashlight pictures of the subsurface.
But the sheep and the cameraman could not distract my attention from the
appearance of a trap which the basin of grass was assuming, while Gootes
was so volatile he couldnt even put on a simulated stoicism. In a panic
I started to climb frantically, all the elation of my first encounter
with the mound completely evaporated. The goat raised her head to note
my undignified scrambling, but the sheep kept up their determined
nibbling.
The trough, as I said, could not have been more than a couple of hundred
feet across and though the loose runners impeded my progress I must have
covered twice the distance to the edge of the rim before I realized it
was as far from me as when I had started. Gootes, going in a direction
oblique to mine, had no better success. His waving arms and struggling
body indicated his awareness of his predicament. Only Slafe was
undisturbed, perhaps unconscious of our efforts, for he had taken out
still another camera and was lying on his back, pointing it over our
heads at the boundary of grass and sky.
Hysteria burned my lungs as I continued the dreamlike battle upward.
Fear may have confused me, but it seemed as though the enveloping weed
was now positively rather than merely negatively hampering me. The
runners whipped around my legs in clinging spirals; the surface, always
soft, now developed treacherous spots like quicksands and while one foot
remained comparatively secure, the other sank deeply, tripping me.
Prone, the entangling fronds caught at my arms and neck; the green
blades, no longer tender, scratched my face and smothered my useless
cries for help. I sobbed childishly, knowing myself doomed to die in
this awful morass, drowned in an unnatural sea.
So despairing were my thoughts that I gave up all struggle and lay there
weakly crying when I noticed the grass relaxing its hold, I was sinking
in no farther; indeed it seemed the lightest effort would set me free. I
rose to my knees and finally to my feet, but I was so shaken by my
battle I made no attempt to continue forward, but stood gazing around me
marveling that I was still, even if only for a few more moments, alive.
"Belly belong you walk about too much, ay? Him fella look-look no got
belly." Gootes had given up his endeavor to reach the rim and apparently
struggled all the way over to impart, if I understood his bechedemer,
this absurd and selfevident piece of information.
"This is hardly a time for levity," I rebuked him coldly.
"Couldnt think of a better. Reality is escaped through one flippancy or
another. Rafe has his--" he waved his hand toward the still industrious
cameraman "--and I have mine. I bet W R has a telescope or a periscope
or a spectroscope somehow trained on us right now and will see to it the
rescue party arrives ten minutes after all life is extinct."
To tell the truth I'd forgotten our expedition was but a stunt initiated
by the Daily Intelligencer to rebound to its greater publicity. Here
in this isolate cup it was difficult to conceive of an anterior
existence; I thought of myself, as in some strange manner indigenous to
and part of the weed. To recall now that we were here purposefully, that
others were concerned with our venture, and that we might reasonably
hope for succor extricated me from my subjective entanglement with the
grass much as the relaxation of my body a short while before freed me
from its physical bonds. I looked hopefully at the empty sky: of course
we would get help at any moment.
Once more my spirits were raised; there was no point in trying to get
out of the depression now, seeing we could as easily be rescued from one
portion of the grass as from another. Again the grass was soft and
pleasant to touch and Slafe's preoccupation with his pictures no longer
seemed either eccentric or heroic, but rather proper and sensible. Like
Alice and the Red Queen, since we had given up trying to reach a
particular spot we found ourselves able to travel with comparative ease.
We inspected Slafe's activities with interest and responded readily to
his autocratic gestures indicating positions and poses we should take in
order to be incorporated in his record.
But our gaiety was again succeeded by another period of despondency; we
repeated all our antics, struggles and despair. Again I fought madly
against the enmeshing weed and again I gave myself up to death only to
be revived in the moment of my resignation.
The cameraman was still untouched by the successive waves of fear and
joyfulness. Invincibly armored by some strange spirit he kept on and on,
although by now I could not understand--in those moments when I could
think about anything other than the grass--what new material he could
find for his film. Skyward and downward, to all points of the compass,
holding his cameras at crazy angles, burlesquing all photographers, his
zeal was unabated, unaffected even by the force of the grass.
Our alternating moods underwent a subtle change: the spans of defeat
grew longer, the moments of hope more fleeting. The sheep too at last
were infected by uneasiness, bleating piteously skyward and making no
attempt to nibble any longer. The goat, like Slafe, was unmoved; she
disdained the emotional sheep.
And now with horror I suddenly realized that a physical change had
marched alongside the fluctuations of our temper. The circumference of
the bowl was the same as at first, but imperceptibly yet swiftly the
hollow had deepened, sunk farther from the sky, the walls had become
almost perpendicular and to my terror I found myself looking upward from
the bottom of a pit at the retreating sky.
I suppose everyone at some time has imagined himself irrevocably
imprisoned, cast into some lightless dungeon and left to die. Such
visions implied human instrumentality, human whim; the most implacable
jailer might relent. But this, this was an incarceration no supplication
could end, a doom not to be stayed. Silently, evenly, unmeasuredly the
well deepened and the walls became more sheer.
Like kittens about to be ignominiously drowned we slid into a huddled
bunch at the bottom of the sack, men and animals equally helpless and
distraught. Fortunately it was during one of the now rare periods of
resurgence that we saw the helicopter, for I do not think we should have
had the spiritual strength needful to help ourselves had it come during
our times of dejection. Gootes and I yelled and waved our arms
frenziedly, while Slafe, exhibiting faint excitement for the first time,
contorted himself to aim the camera at the machine's belly. Evidently
the pilot spotted us without difficulty for the ship came to a hovering
rest over the mouth of the well and a jacobsladder unrolled its length
to dangle rope sides and wooden rungs down to us.
"Snatched from the buzzsaw as the express thundered across the switch
and the water came up to our noses," chanted Gootes. "W R has a vilely
melodramatic sense of timing."
The ladder was nearest Slafe, but working more furiously than ever, he
waved it impatiently aside and so I grasped it and started upward. The
terror of the ascent paradoxically was a welcome one, for it was the
common fear which comes to men on the battlefield or in the creaking
hours of the night, the natural dread of ordinary perils and not the
unmanning panic inspired by the awful unknown within the grass.
The helicopter shuddered and dipped, causing the unanchored ladder to
sway and twist until with each convulsive jerk I expected to be thrown
off. I bruised and burned my palms with the tightness of my grip, my
knees twitched and my face and back and chest were wet. But in spite of
all this, waves of thankfulness surged over me.
The roaring and rattling above grew louder and I made my way finally
into the open glassfronted cockpit, pulling myself in with the last bit
of my strength. For a long moment I lay huddled there, exhausted. My eye
took in every trifle, every bolthead, rivet, scratch, dent, indicator,
seam and panel, playing with them in my mind, making and rejecting
patterns. They were artificial, made on a blessed assemblyline--no
terrifying product of nature.
I wondered how so small a space could accommodate us all and was
devoutly grateful that I, at least, had achieved safety. Reminded of my
companions, I looked out and down. The grass walls towered upward almost
within reach; beyond the hole they so unexpectedly made in its surface
the weed stretched out levelly, peaceful and inviting. I shuddered and
peered down the reversed telescope where the ladder once more hung
temptingly before Slafe.
Again he waved it aside. Gootes appeared to argue with him for he shook
his head obstinately and went on using his camera. At length the
reporter seized him forcibly with a strength I had not known he
possessed and boosted him up the first rungs of the ladder. Slafe seemed
at last resigned to leave, but he pointed anxiously to his other cameras
and cans of film. Gootes nodded energetically and waved the photographer
upward.
I saw every detail of what happened then, emphasized and heightened as
though revealed through a slowmotion picture. I heard Slafe climb on
board and knew that in a few seconds now we would be free and away. I
saw the bright sun reflect itself dazzlingly upon the blades of the
grass, sloping imperceptibly away to merge with the city it squatted
upon in the distance.
The sun where we were was dazzling, I say, but in the hole where Gootes
was now tying Slafe's paraphernalia to the ladder, the shadow of the
walls darkened it into twilight. I squinted, telepathically urging him
to hurry; he seemed slow and fumbling. And then ...
And then the walls collapsed. Not slowly, not with warning, not
dramatically or with trumpets. They came together as silently and
naturally as two waves close a trough in the ocean, but without
disturbance or upheaval. They fell into an embrace, into a coalescence
as inevitable as the well they obliterated was fortuitous. They closed
like the jaws of a trap somehow above malevolence, leaving only the top
of the ladder projecting upward from the smooth and placid surface of
the weed.
Whether in some involuntary recoil the pilot pressed a wrong control or
whether the action of the grass itself snatched the ladder from the ship
I don't know; but that last bit attached to the machine was torn free
and fell upon the green. It was the only thing to mark the spot where
the bowl which had held us had been, and it lay, a brown and futile
tangle of rope and wood, a helpless speck of artifice on an
imperturbable mass of vegetation.
24. Mr Le ffacase removed the tube of the dictaphone from his lips as
I entered. "Weener, although a rigid adherence to fact compels me to
claim some acquaintance with general knowledge and a slight cognizance
of abnormal psychology, I must admit bafflement at the spectacle of your
mottled complexion once more in these rooms sacred to the perpetuation
of truth and the dissemination of enlightenment. Everyday you embezzle
good money from this paper under pretense of giving value received, and
each day your uselessness becomes more conspicuous. Almost anyone would
disapprove the divine choice in the matter of taking Gootes and leaving
you alive, and while I know the world suffered not the least hurt by his
translation to whatever baroque, noisy and entirely public hell is
reserved for reporters, at least he attempted to forge some ostensible
return for his paycheck."
"Mr Le ffacase," I began indignantly, but he cut me off.
"You unalloyed imbecile," he roared, "at least have the prudence if not
the intelligence or courtesy to be silent while your betters are
speaking. Gootes was a bloody knave, a lazy, slipshod, slack, tasteless,
absurd, fawning, thieving, conniving sloven, but even if he had the
energy to make the attempt and a mind to put to it, he could not, in ten
lifetimes, become the perfect, immaculate and prototypical idiot you
were born."
I don't know how long he would have continued in this insulting vein,
but he was interrupted by the concealed telephone. "What in the name of
the ten thousand dubious virgins do you mean by annoying me?" he
bellowed into the mouthpiece. "Yes. Yes. I know all about deadlines; I
was a newspaperman when you were vainly suckling canine dugs. Are you
ambitious to replace me? Go get with child a mandrakeroot, you, you
journalist! I will meet the Intelligencer's deadline as I did before
your father got the first tepidly lustful idea in his nulliparous head
and as I shall after you have followed your useless testes to a worthy
desuetude."
He replaced the receiver and picked up the mouthpiece of the dictaphone
again, paying no further attention to me. He enunciated clearly and
precisely, speaking in an even monotone, pausing not at all, as if
reading from some prepared script, though his eyes were fixed upon a
vacant spot where wall and ceiling joined.
"In the death today of Jacson Gootes the Daily Intelligencer lost a
son. It is an old and good custom on these solemn occasions to pause and
remember the dead.
"Jacson Gootes was a reporter of exceptional probity, of clear
understanding, of indefatigable effort, and of great native ability. His
serious and straightforward approach to an occupation which to him was a
labor of love was balanced by a sunny yet thoughtful humor, a
combination making his company something to be sought. Beloved of his
fellow workers, no one mourns his loss more sincerely than the editor
through whose hands passed all those brilliant contributions, now
finally marked, as all newspaper copy is, -30-.
"But though the Intelligencer has suffered a personal and deeply felt
bereavement, American journalism has given another warrior on the
battlefield. Not by compulsion nor arbitrary selection, but of his own
free will, he who serves the public through the press is a soldier. And
as a soldier he is ready at the proper time to go forward and give up
his life if need be.
"No member of a sturdy army was more worthy of a gallant end than Jacson
Gootes. He died, not in some burst of audacity such as may occasionally
actuate men to astonishing feats, but doggedly and calmly in the line of
duty. More than a mere hero, he was a good newspaperman. W.R.L."
There were tears under my eyelids as the editor concluded his eulogy.
Under that gruff and even overbearing exterior must beat a warm and
tender heart. You can't go by appearances, I always say, and I felt I
would never again be hurt by whatever hasty words he chose to hurl at
me.
"Wake up, you moonstruck simpleton, and stop beaming at some private
vision. The time has passed for you to live on the bounty of the
Intelligencer like the bloody mendicant you are. You have outlived
your usefulness as the man who started all this fuss; it is no longer
good publicity; the matter has become too serious.
"No, Weener, from now on, beneath your unearned byline the public will
know you only as the first to set foot upon this terra incognita, this
verdant isle which flourishes senselessly where only yesterday Hollywood
nourished senselessly. So rest no more upon your accidental laurels, but
transform yourself into what nature never intended, a useful member of
the community. I will make a newspaperman of you, Weener, if I have to
beat into your head an entire typefont, from fourpoint up to and
including those rare boldfaced letters we keep in the cellar to announce
on our final page one the end of the world.
"You will cover the grass as before and you will bring or send or cause
in some other manner to be transmitted to me copy without a single
adjective or adverb, containing nothing more lethal than verbs, nouns,
prepositions and conjunctions, stating facts and only facts, clearly
and distinctly in the least possible number of words compatible with the
usages of English grammar. You will do this daily and conscientiously,
Weener, on pain of instant dismemberment, to say nothing of crucifixion
and the death of a thousand cuts."
"The Weekly Ruminant and the Honeycomb have found little pieces of
mine, written without special instructions, suitable for their columns,"
I mentioned defensively.
He threw himself back in his chair and stared at me with such
concentrated fury I thought he would burst the diamond stud loose from
his shirtband. "The Weekly Ruminant," he informed me, "was founded by
a parsimonious whoremaster whose sanctimonious rantings in public were
equaled only by his private impieties. It was brought to greatness--if
inflated circulation be a synonym--by a veritable journalistic pimp who
pandered to the public taste for literary virgins by bribing them to
commit their perverse acts in full view. It is now carried on by a
spectral corporation, losing circulation at the same rate a haemophilic
loses blood.
"As for the Honeycomb, it is enough to say that careful research
proves its most absorbing reading to be the 'throw away your truss' ads.
Is it not natural, Weener, that two such journals of taste and
enlightenment should appreciate your efforts? Unfortunately the Daily
Intelligencer demands accounts written in intelligible English above
the level of fourthgrade grammarschool."
I would have been shocked beyond measure at his libelous smirching of
honored names and hurt as well by his slighting reference to myself had
I not known from the revealing editorial he had dictated what a
sympathetic and kindly nature was really his and how he might, beneath
this cynical pose, have an admiration great as mine for the characters
he had just slandered.
"You will be the new Peter Schlemihl, Weener; from now on you will go
forth without a ghost and any revision essential to your puny assault
upon the Republic of Letters will be done by me and God help you if I
find much to do, for my life is passing and I must have time to read
the immortal Hobbes before I die."
In spite of all he'd said I couldnt help but believe Mr Le ffacase
realized my true worth--or why did he confer on me what was practically
a promotion? I was therefore emboldened to suggest the cancellation of
the unjust paycut, but this innocent remark called forth such a
vituperative stream of epithet I really thought the apoplexy Gootes had
predicted was about to strike and I hurried from his presence lest I be
blamed for bringing it on.
25. A little reading brought me uptodate on the state of the grass as
a necessary background for my new responsibility. It was now shaped like
a great, irregular crescent with one tip at Newhall, broadening out to
bury the San Fernando Road; stretching over the Santa Monica Mountains
from Beverly Glen to the Los Angeles River. Its fattest part was what
had once been Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the socalled Wilshire
district. The right arm of the semicircle, more slender than the left,
curled crookedly eastward along Venice Boulevard, in places only a few
blocks wide. It severed the downtown district from the manufacturing
area, crossing the river near the Ninth Street bridge and swallowing the
great Searsroebuck store like a capsule. The office of the Daily
Intelligencer, like the Civic Center, was unthreatened and able to
function, but we were without water and gas, though the electric
service, subject to annoying interruptions, was still available.
Already arrangements were being completed to move the paper to Pomona,
where the mayor and councilmanic offices also intended to continue. For
there was no hiding the fact that the city was being surrendered to the
weed. Eastward and southward the homeless and the alarmed journeyed
carrying the tale of a city besieged and gutted in little more than the
time it would have taken a human army to fight the necessary
preliminaries and bring up its big guns.
On trains and buses, by bicycles and on foot, the exodus moved. Those
who could afford it left their ravished homes swiftly behind by air and
to these fortunate ones the way north was not closed, as it was to the
earthbound, by the weed's overrunning of the highways. Usedcardealers
sold out their stocks at inflated figures and a ceilingprice had to be
put on the gasoline supplied to those retreating from the grass.
Though only a fragment of the city had been lost, all industry had come
to a practical standstill. Workers did not care to leave homes which
might be grassbound by nightfall; employers could not manufacture
without backlog of materials, for a dwindling market, and without
transportation for their products. Services were so crippled as to be
barely existent and with the failure of the watersupply, epidemics, mild
at first, broke out and the diseases were carried and spread by the
refugees.
Cattlemen, uncertain there would be either stockyards or working
butchers, held back their shipments. Truckfarmers found it simpler and
more profitable to supply local depots catering at fantastic prices to
the needs of the fugitives, than to depend on railroads which were
already overstrained and might consign their highly perishable goods to
rot on a siding. Los Angeles began to starve. Housewives rushed
frantically to clean out the grocer's shelves, but this was living off
their own fat and even the most farsighted of hoarders could provide for
no more than a few weeks of future.
So even those not directly evicted or frightened by its proximity began
moving away from the grass. But they still had possessions and they
wanted to take them along, all of them, down to the obsolescent console
radio in grandma's room, the busted mantelclock--a weddingpresent from
Aunt Minnie--in the garage and the bridgelamp without a shade which had
so long rested in the mopcloset. All of this taxed an already
overstrained transportation system. Since it was entirely a oneway
traffic, charges were naturally doubled and even then shippers were
reluctant to risk the return of their equipment to the threatened zone.
The greed to take along every last bit of impedimenta dwindled under the
impact of necessity; possessions were scrutinized for what would be
least missed, then for what could be got along without; for the
absolutely essential, and finally for things so dear it was not worth
going if they were left behind. This last category proved surprisingly
small, compact enough to be squeezed into the family car--"Junior can
sit on the box of fishingtackle--it's flat--and hold the birdcage on his
lap"--as it made ready to join the procession crawling along the clogged
highways.
Time, reporting the progress of the weed, said in part: "Death, as it
must to all, came last week to cult-harboring, movie-producing Los
Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest (pop. 3,012,910) died
gracelessly, undignifiedly, as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell
remained: downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling South and East
sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs and liver were gone;
swallowed up, Jonah-wise by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass
(TIME Aug. 10). Still at his post was sunk-eyed W. (for William) R. (for
Rufus) Le ffacase (pronounced L'Fass-uh-say), prolix, wide-read editor
of the Los Angeles Intelligencer. Till the last press stopped the
Intelligencer would continue to disseminate the news. Among those
remaining was Le ffacase's acereporter, Jacson C. (for Crayman) Gootes,
28. Gootes' permanent beat: the heart of the menacing grass where he met
his death."
Under Religion, Time had another note about the weed. "Harassed
Angelinos, distracted & terrified by encroaching Cynodon dactylon
(TIME Aug. 10) now smothering their city (see National Affairs) were
further distracted when turning on their radios (those still working)
last week. The nasal, portentous boom of the evangelist calling himself
Brother Paul (real name: Algernon Knight Mood) announced the 2nd Advent.
It was taking place in the heart of the choking grass. What brought
death and disaster to the country's 3rd city offered hope and bliss to
followers of Brother Paul. 'Sell all you have,' advised the
radiopreacher, 'fly to your Savior who is gathering His true disciples
at this moment in the very center of the grass. Do not fear, for He will
sustain and comfort you in the thicket through which the unsaved cannot
pass.' At last report countless followers had been forcibly restrained
from self-immolation in the Cynodon dactylon, unnumbered others gone
joyfully to their beatification. Not yet reported as joining his Savior:
Brother Paul."
Under People: "Admitted to the Relief rolls of San Diego County this
week were Adam Dinkman & wife, whose front lawn (TIME Aug. 3) was the
starting point of the plaguing grass. Said Mrs. Dinkman, 'The government
ought to pay....' Said Adam Dinkman, '... it's a terrible thing....'"
I resolved to send the Dinkmans some money as soon as I could possibly
afford it. I made a note to this effect in a pocket memorandumbook,
feeling the glow of worthy sacrifice, and then went out and got in my
car. It was all right to digest facts and figures about the weed from
the printed page, but it was necessary to see again its physical
presence before writing anything for so critical an editor as W R Le
ffacase.
I drove through the Second Street tunnel and out Beverly Boulevard.
There, several miles from the most advanced runners of the grass, the
certainty of its coming lay like a smothering blanket upon the
unnaturally silent district. There was no traffic on my side of the
street and only a few lastminute straggling jalopies, loaded down with
shameless bedding and bundles, coughed their way frantically eastward.
Those few shops still unaccountably open were bare of goods and the idle
proprietors walked periodically to the front to scan the western sky to
assure themselves the grass was not yet in sight. But most of the stores
were closed, their windows broken, their signs already tarnished and
decrepit with the age which seems to come so swiftly upon a defunct
business. The sidewalks were littered with rubbish, diagonally flattened
papers, broken boxes, odd shoes. Garbagecans, instead of standing
decorously in alleys or shamefacedly along the curb, sprawled in
lascivious abandon over the pavements, their contents strewn widely.
Dogs and cats, deserted by fond owners, snarled and fought over choicer
tidbits. I had not realized how many people in the city kept pets until
the time came to leave them behind.
At Vermont Avenue I came upon what I was sure was a new nucleus, a lawn
green and tall set between others withered and yellow, but I did not
even bother reporting this to the police for I knew that before long the
main body would take it to its bosom. And now, looking westward, I could
see the grass itself, a half mile away at Normandie. It rose high in the
air, dwarfing the buildings in its path, blotting out the mountains
behind, and giving the illusion of rushing straight at me.
I turned the car north, not with the idea of further observation, but
because standing still in the face of that towering palisade seemed
somehow to invite immediate destruction. I drove slowly and thoughtfully
and then at Melrose the grass came in sight again, creeping down from
Los Feliz. I turned back toward the Civic Center. It would not be more
than a couple of days at most, now, before even downtown was gone.
26. During my drive several walkers loaded with awkward bundles raised
imploring thumbs for a ride, but knowing to what lengths desperation
will drive people and not wishing to be robbed of my car, I had pressed
my foot down and driven on. But now as I went along Temple near Rampart
a beautiful woman, incongruously--for it was in the middle of a hot
October--dressed in a fur coat, and with each gloved hand grasping the
handle of a suitcase, stepped in front of me and I had to jam on the
brakes to avoid running over her.
The car stopped, radiator almost touching her, but she made no attempt
to move. A small hat with a tiny fringe of veil concealed her eyes, but
her sullen mouth looked furiously at me as rigidly clutching her luggage
she barred my path. Fearing some trap, I turned off the ignition and
unobtrusively slid the keys into a sidepocket before getting out and
going to her.
"Excuse me, miss. Can I help you?"
She threw her head back and her eyes, brown and glistening, appraised me
through heavily painted lashes. I stood there stiffly, uncomfortable
under her gaze till I suddenly remembered my hat and lifted it with an
awkward bow. This seemed to satisfy her, for still without speaking she
nodded and thrust the two suitcases at me. Not knowing what else to do,
I took them from her and she promptly, after smoothing her gloves,
walked toward the passenger's side of the car.
"You want me to take you somewhere, miss?" I inquired quite
superfluously.
She bent her head the merest fraction and then rested her fingers on the
doorhandle, waiting for me to open it for her. I ran as fast as I could
with the bags--they were beautifully matched expensive luggage--to put
them in the turtle and then had to make myself still more ridiculous by
running back for the forgotten key resting in the sidepocket. When I had
finally stowed away the baggage and opened the door for her she got in
with the barest of condescending nods for my efforts and sat staring
ahead.
I drove very slowly, nipping off little glances of her profile as we
moved along. Her cheeks were smooth as a chinadoll's, her nose the
chiseled replica of some lovely antique marble, her mouth a living study
of rounded lines; never had I been so close to such an alluring woman.
We reached the Civic Center and I automatically headed for the
Intelligencer building. But I could not bear to part company so
quickly and so I turned left instead, out Macy Street.
Now we found ourselves caught in the traffic snailing eastward. In low
gear I drove a block, then stopped and waited till a clear ten feet
ahead permitted another painfully slow forward motion. Still my
passenger had no word to say but kept staring ahead though she could see
nothing before her except the trunkladen rearend of a tottery ford long
past its majority.
"You," I stumbled, "I--that is, I mean wasnt there somewhere in
particular you wanted to go?"
She nodded, still without looking at me, and for the first time spoke.
Her voice was deep and had the timbre of some old bronze bell. "Yuma,"
she said.
"Yuma, Arizona?" I asked stupidly.
Again she nodded faintly. In a panic I reckoned the contents of my
wallet. About forty dollars, I thought--no, thirty. Would that take us
to Yuma? Barely, perhaps, and I should have to wire the Intelligencer
for money to return. Besides, in the present condition of the roads the
journey would be a matter of days and I knew she would accept nothing
but the very best. How could I do it? Should I return to the
Intelligencer office and try to get an advance on next week's salary?
I had heard from more than one disgruntled reporter that it was an
impossibility. Good heavens, I thought, I shall lose her.
Whatever happened I must take her as far as I could; I must not let her
go before I was absolutely forced to. This resolution made, my first
thought was to cut the time, for poking along in this packed mass I was
burning gasoline without getting anywhere. Taking advantage of my
knowledge of the sideroads, I turned off at the first chance and was
able to resume a normal speed as I avoided towns and main highways.
Still she continued silent, until at length, passing orangegroves heavy
with coppery fruit, I ventured to speak myself. "My name is Albert
Weener. Bert."
The right rear tire kicked up some dust as I nervously edged off the
road. Somewhere overhead a plane ripped through the hot silk of the sky.
"Uh ... what ... uh ... won't you tell me yours?"
Still facing ahead, she replied, "It isnt necessary."
After a few more miles I ventured again. "You live--were living in Los
Angeles?"
She shook her head impatiently.
Well, I thought, really...! Then: poor thing, she's probably terribly
upset. Home and family lost perhaps. Money gone. Destitute. Going East,
swallowing pride, make a new start with the help of unsympathetic
relatives. She has only me to depend on--I must not fail her. Break the
ice, whatever attitude her natural pride dictates, offer your services.
"I'm on the Daily Intelligencer," I said. "I'm the man who first
walked on top of the grass."
Ten miles later I inquired, "Wouldnt you be more comfortable with that
heavy fur coat off? I can put it in the back with your luggage and it
won't be crushed."
She shook her head more impatiently.
Suddenly I remembered the car radio installed a few days before. A
little cheerful music ca