30

The boys were enchanted with Debby, who, after studying them closely, apparently decided she would be able to manage them without much difficulty. Kathy was another matter. She had not succumbed to Debby’s charms and her bouncing ways and her assured prattle. She pulled Debby from the bewitched circle of the boys, in which Debby had been entertaining them with stories about her kindergarten, all lively and a little elaborated for effect. Debby fell immediately into a respectful silence, looking up at the taller girl meekly. But her blue eyes danced.

“After Papa, and Mrs. Burnsdale, I take care of things around here,” said Kathy severely. “You’ll be our sister if you mind. I’ll teach you to wipe dishes, and dust. And I don’t like stories, either, ’specially if they are not true. Hear me?”

“They were so true,” said Debby, looking as if about to cry with embarrassment. (“I want my Mama,” she murmured, but no one heard her.)

“We have enough story tellers around here without another one,” said Kathy, with a quelling glance at Pietro. She scrutinized Debby. “I think you will be all right,” she added. “After you are trained well. And we can plant some trees for you—if you mind.” Then she relented, bent and kissed the younger girl. “I think we’ll love you.”

“And I,” said Pietro grandly, “will marry you, Debby, when you are old enough.”

“I thought you were going to marry Kathy,” said Jean.

Pietro tossed this absurd thought away. “Gentlemen like the young girls,” he said. “Kathy is too old for me.”

Mrs. Burnsdale and Johnny listened to this with high amusement. Then Mrs. Burnsdale said, “It’s those comics he’s always reading. And the movie magazines I get.”

“If you think I’d marry a boy who doesn’t always tell the truth, and makes funny faces all the time, you are wrong,” said Kathy with disdain.

Pietro eyed Debby critically. “I like her hair best,” he said.

Debby had her own ideas. She shook the brilliant ringlets decidedly. “I will marry my new Papa,” she announced. She gave Kathy a sly glance. “My curls are real,” she said. Kathy colored. She was putting up her hair at night, now, on Mrs. Burnsdale’s curlers. “My,” said Mrs. Burnsdale with admiration. “Imagine a baby five years old knowing anything about curls being real or not.”

“I’m real smart,” said Debby smugly.

“Show me how smart you are with a dish towel,” said Kathy, pushing one into Debby’s fat little hand.

Johnny had feared that when Debby would take her place at the table he would suffer renewed sorrow. But, to his surprise, she filled the chair without giving him a single thrust of pain. It was as if Emilie were there, an Emilie grown strong, cautiously impertinent, respectful, interested, healthy, and full of laughter. It was as if Emilie had sent him this buxom child, eager for his love, this parentless child he had rescued. No more would his nights be haunted by dread, tormented by anguished and unanswered prayers. He had his five children again, and all of them bursting with vitality. Even Jean was gaining weight very fast. Johnny would think, If Emilie had lived, I’d never have known Debby, and she would be in some foster home or orphanage, and utterly abandoned. Emilie is safe; now Debby is safe.

She was accepted by the other children and she had accepted them. She abounded with curiosity, with affection, with stories that surpassed even Pietro’s. She had a fairy godmother, she announced, who kissed her every night and made her hair nicer and her eyes brighter. Johnny checked Kathy, who was about to introduce a note of dull realism into this gay fantasy. “I’m sure you have, darling,” he said. “But we call those ‘godmothers’ guardian angels.” He bought a lithograph to hang over Debby’s little bed, a picture of a benign angel with loving eyes and outstretched hands. This moved Debby, and mollified Kathy, who was such a stickler for facts. “Papa’s and Mama’s angels called them home,” said Debby, and her lip trembled, Johnny took her up in his arms, and saw her efforts to control herself, and smile. The baby is so valiant, he thought with a thrust of pain.

He entered her name for adoption. He did not know that Dr. McManus had had a hard time arranging things, for again the Children’s Aid Society had tried to cause trouble. There was a waiting vengefulness about those people, the doctor would think. But, hell, I’ve got a lot of money, and a golden sword holds buzzards away.

Debby, on seeing the school arrangements at home, decided that she preferred them to kindergarten. But on this Johnny was firm, despite her tears. He drove her to the school every day. She would return to the impatiently waiting children to give the most appalling account of her experiences. The teacher had pushed her; the children had tried to fight her, but she had kicked them right away, she had; she had poured water down another child’s neck; she had torn a dress; the teacher had cried; she had stamped on the crayons. Debby was a devil. Only Kathy listened with a frown. One day Johnny visited the young teacher himself, who affectionately assured him that Debby was a model child, a leader, full of bounce and vim and adored by the others. Still, Debby’s stories enlivened dinner, so he did not as yet interfere. She had a wonderful imagination, and half believed her stories, and there was no malice in them, only a desire to entertain.

The wound was healing rapidly.

The petitions were piling up on the mayor’s desk, much to his wrath. He cursed Johnny, the instigator. His friends upbraided him; he showed them the petitions, and the threats implicit in them.

Mr. Summerfield’s assistant editor was unable to ignore the petitions. He had his “comedian” write light and ridiculing editorials about them. Circulation suddenly dropped off alarmingly. The “comedian” was replaced by a more sober editorial writer. He introduced the “pro” and “con” method, inviting the people to write in about the petitions. He wrote several of them on the “con” side of the petitions and put them in the “The People Write.” Unfortunately for him, his were the only contrary letters. The “people” responded with violent invective and angry replies to the fictitious initials in the column and to the editorials.

“All the people in Barryfield are with the minister,” Lon Harding reported contentedly. “Except the ones whose old men own the factories and the mills. But they keep their mouths shut.”

In the meantime, Johnny’s parish-hall school was booming with young boys and girls eager to learn what they could not learn in school. The old teachers, including Miss Coogan, were exhilarated with joy. It was now the end of February, and unusually warm, and people reported that when they passed the parish hall four nights a week they could hear the excited voices of the young people who were discovering the world of poetry, glory, patriotism, and literature which had been denied them, “In the interest of society, and in the cause of realistic life-adjustment.”

The murderer of little Emilie had still not been found. Johnny did not give up hope.

One afternoon the chief of police called Dr. McManus. “I don’t think we have something here, Al, but I thought I’d tell you about it. A woman’s here, name of Sheila Gandy, from Wilkes-Barre. She says her husband set that fire in your minister’s parsonage. He’s dying, she says. And she wants the reward, because he wants her to have the reward so she’ll have something when he’s dead. Kind of a stupid woman. Probably just another false alarm. But there was something. She told how he’d told her he’d stuffed the hot-air pipes of the furnace with gasoline rags, put strings to ’em, and then set ’em on fire and got out of the house. Got in through the cellar and hid behind the furnace when the minister was searching. That checks. And you know we did find some evidence like that. Did any of that stuff get in the newspapers?”

“No!” squealed the doctor. “What a hell of a memory you have! Nobody let it out, except that maybe one of your boys did, but I don’t see why. Your department kept it quiet. Did she say that Communists told him to do it?”

The chief paused. “No, she didn’t. Why don’t you come down and bring the minister, right now?”

The doctor had just come from the operating room. Tired though he was, he told a nurse to call Johnny and tell him to appear at the office of the chief of police.

Johnny came, as white as death, trembling and speechless. “Don’t get your hopes up, son,” said Dr. McManus. “The chief thinks this is just a false alarm. He’s told me about a lot of others and we decided not to bother you, for they were fakes. This has something that sounds a little like it, but not much. Try to control youself.”

“I think this is it,” said Johnny in a stifled voice.

“Well, don’t fly off half cocked, as usual. I know women. They get hysterical, and I hate hysterical women.”

They went into the chief’s dusty and gritty office, which was crowded with files and ancient furniture. Beside his desk sat a big, fat woman with a face like dough, thin black hair floating about her face, clumsy limbs, worn clothing, and a cautious, belligerent expression on her shapeless features. Her large hands, in black cotton gloves, were tightly clasped together. She stared at Johnny and the doctor with no pleasure. “Why the minister?” she demanded sullenly. “You just said two friends, chief.” Then her expression changed, became charged with alarm. “Is this the minister, huh?”

“Yes, Mrs. Gandy,” said the chief of police. He nodded to the young policeman who sat at the end of the battered desk, and who held his pencil poised over a notebook. “Mr. Fletcher, this is Sergeant Batson. He’s been taking notes. Sergeant, read them off, will you?”

Mrs. Gandy said in a faltering voice to Johnny, “Gee, parson, I’m terrible sorry—about that little girl. But my man—”

Johnny looked at her without speaking, and she flinched and turned away from him. Dr. McManus sat down. “All right,” he said, “go right along, sergeant.”

Mrs. Gandy listened, and now her round black eyes became defiant, and she set her head at an arrogant angle and listened as intently as did the others.

Merrill Gandy, her husband, was now thirty-nine years old; she was forty-two. They resided in the city of Wilkes-Barre. Her husband had been drafted in 1944. They had no children, and Merrill had been a machinist. They had been married in 1939, and at the time of the draft they had had but two hundred dollars saved. “What could you expect, with the depression?” Mrs. Gandy had asked. They lived on a mean street, and had no friends. They had never had time to make them. Mrs. Gandy worked in a bakery and, during the war, in a war plant. They still had a little money by the end of the war. “Well, we got a new radio set, some furniture, and a used car, and went out bowling a lot, and made some friends, and the money went,” Mrs. Gandy had said resentfully. “Beer and clothes and things cost a lot.”

Merrill was discharged from the Army in the spring of 1946. He went back to work in his factory. In August, 1946, several months later, he complained of his back. He thought at first that it was due to “heavy liftin’.” But the plant physician said it was an old injury, four ruptured discs in his spine. Then Merrill, frustrated at not collecting workmen’s compensation, suddenly remembered that he had sustained the injury in the Army. He had never gone overseas. He had remained in the same camp where his talents as a machinist were appreciated—Air Force. “Lots of men comin’ and goin’,” Mrs. Gandy had said. One day he was standing behind an open engine he was working on, and “some smart aleck” got in the seat, and started it up, and the two right wheels ran right over Mr. Merrill’s body, “hurtin’ his spine.”

The chief of police had asked why he had not reported it immediately. The reply was that he had done this, and had been treated in the infirmary. But Merrill could remember nothing of the doctor’s name, or the names of any of the nurses, or the “smart aleck.” “Whole place too crowded, and everybody comin’ and goin’.” Merrill had remained in the camp, after apparently recovering. “Trouble didn’t show up until he got to workin’ on heavy stuff in the factories,” said Mrs. Gandy. Then he could not work. He applied to the Veterans Administration for compensation, but they could find no records. The bureau acknowledged that during the confusion of the war years such things very often happened. He had been hospitalized in a veterans’ hospital. While the administration again searched records, and investigated, they took X rays. They told Merrill that they could do nothing about compensation until his case was approved to be service-connected.

Merrill, after several weeks, told his wife that he “wasn’t goin’ to stay in this damn hospital no longer,” and he went home and to bed. Oh, sometimes he’d get up and go and play cards with the boys, and have a beer, but he couldn’t work. Back too bad. So he went to a doctor and had X rays, and here they was, right there on the chief’s desk, and the doctor’s report.

Dr. McManus held out his hand for the X rays. He studied them intently. He looked at Mrs. Gandy, then muttered, “Well, they’re the discs all right, but not too bad. Seen worse in men working every day. Couldn’t give him too much trouble, except every once in a while, and then he could sleep on the floor a few nights, and take some aspirin, and get right up again. But that’s not the trouble. Look here at these big shadows.” He held out the X rays to Johnny. He whispered, “Cancer. Of long standing. The man’s dying, and it’s not near the spine at all, and had nothing to do with it.”

Mrs. Gandy demanded loudly, “What you whisperin’ about? Can’t you read X rays? Tryin’ to cook up something against Merrill?”

Dr. McManus said gravely, “Madam, I agree with you that your husband is desperately sick, and I agree with you that he hasn’t long to live.”

Her face changed, then she began to cry. “I don’t care for nothin’ but Merrill. And they did that to him and they won’t give him a cent compensation, and they won’t give me nothin’ either, when Merrill’s dead.”

“Does your husband cough much and complain of pains in his chest?” asked the doctor, with real concern. The woman nodded her head so vigorously that the cheap velvet hat wobbled. “He sure does. All the time. Coughs up blood, sometimes. It’s those discs.”

The doctor said, “I’d advise you to send your husband back to the veterans’ hospital immediately. He hasn’t very long to live, I’m afraid.”

The dreary story continued. Merrill began to hate the Veterans Administration “for bein’ so mean to him, and not giving him no compensation after the Army hurt him, and me havin’ to work all the time in the bakery, and gettin’ only fifty-five dollars a week. If Merrill’d been a rich guy with a lot of pull, he’d have got compensation fast enough! Why, there was fellers holdin’ down big jobs and gettin’ big compensation, right there in Merrill’s plant!” Johnny looked at the blubbery and shaking face, and the tears, and his heart softened in pity. But he hardened it almost at once. “It was all sassiety’s fault,” said Mrs. Gandy. “The rich guys with their big, shiny new cars—they don’t want the little feller to have anythin’. No, nothin’.” And so Merrill, who had not been injured in the Army at all, and who was dying of cancer, began to hate some amorphous and nonexistent thing as “society.” He wouldn’t stay in bed at home, but went out for beer and cards while his wife worked—and hated. The boys talked, and the hate grew. Somebody gave Merrill a copy of a Communist newspaper. Merrill devoured it, believed it. It was a conspiracy against him, on the part of sassiety, a conspiracy directed against all the drab and hopeless people in the world, especially Merrill.

“He got so he couldn’t talk about nothin’ else,” said Mrs. Gandy, wiping her eyes with a trembling hand. “And it sure is true. And Merrill got to goin’ to meetings and listening to people tellin’ him how people like us ain’t got a right to live, the rich guys say. And how someday there’ll be a change, and the rich guys’ll get what they got comin’ and we’ll have somethin’ and Merrill will have a chanceta—”

The sergeant read on. He read the sordid story of ignorant and guided hatred. Merrill met “a man.” Never did find out his name. Met him in a beer joint. But he was a good man. He gave Merrill twenty-five dollars, “just because Merrill’s a little guy and a victim of sassiety,” said Mrs. Gandy. Merrill kept going back to the veterans’ hospital to see if they’d found anything, and the doctors begged him to stay. But he wouldn’t. He’d read in the Communist paper that sometimes poor little guys like him was kept in them hospitals just for the doctors to try things on ’em. Like rats, was it? Or maybe the mice. Merrill wasn’t going to do any such thing, no sir.

And then one day the kind man who was sorry for Merrill told Merrill about a minister, who was a tool of the big interests, a fascist, a rich man, in Barryfield.

Johnny, who had been listening mournfully, sat up, and his eyes flashed with an intense blue. Dr. McManus said, “Easy now; just sit and listen.”

Well, the kind man told Merrill a lot about Johnny, “the fascist.” He’d busted a union here in this town; he was down on the workers; he’d broken a strike. He was all for “sassiety.” Big interests, big rich guys. Why, he’d given a sermon, and he’d cursed the poor little feller, and did all kinds of terrible things, keeping the workers down. It was all in the Barryfield newspapers. He ought to have a lesson. He was a real dangerous man.

As this part was read, Mrs. Gandy sat up in her chair and flashed Johnny a look of the purest hatred. “Sure I’m sorry about the little kid, but I sure wish you’d burned up!” she exclaimed. “That was the idea, anyway.”

Sergeant Batson read on calmly. So the kind man had offered Merrill five hundred dollars “to do the job.” To teach the minister a lesson. The rich minister, the tool of the interests. Two hundred fifty down, two hundred fifty after the job. And then the kind man would “force” the Veterans Administration to give Merrill compensation. There was ways.

No. Merrill never did rightly get the man’s name. Never asked, maybe. Merrill sure hated the big guys now. And people like the minister, who help them, rich fascist ministers, who get paid off with big money. Shouldn’t be allowed to live. No, Mrs. Gandy had known nothing of the plan. Merrill just told her, day before Christmas, that he had to go out of town, but would be back at night. He had bus tickets. Maybe a job, he said, coughin’ his poor lungs out. So he went away.

And a couple of days later there was all that news in the paper. Mrs. Gandy did not connect this news with her husband, who was now “terrible sick,” and couldn’t get out of bed. He’d got a cold somewhere. No, he wouldn’t have a doctor. All caught up on doctors, who ain’t got no use for the little feller.

And then, yesterday, Merrill had told his wife that he was dying. He loved her. He did not want her to work in the bakery any more. He had no money. But there was that big reward in the newspapers. He had told her the story. She was to go to Barryfield, to the police, tell his story, and get the reward. That would “set her up.” No use worrying about him any longer. He was dying. They couldn’t do much to him.

The story continued. The whole idea, Merrill explained, was to get the rich fascist minister out of town, by burning his house, and showing him little guys wouldn’t stand for him. Merrill was a little surprised to see how small and mean the parsonage was, but then, people like “him” are misers, anyway. He got in through the cellar window, and waited for the family to go to bed. The minister came down in the cellar, and began to look around. He didn’t look behind the furnace, though, in the dark. Merrill sure was scared. He’d put on coal to make the furnace real hot, and then when the minister went upstairs again he stuffed the wool waste in the pipes, right near the furnace, and they were soaked with gasoline. Merrill was scared; afraid he’d burn up too. Then he thought that it would take a little while, and he’d just go upstairs himself, and look for some of the money the minister had. He didn’t find anything downstairs, and he couldn’t go up to the bedrooms. So he left the house, and he went through back yards and got away.

That was all. The kind man met him a couple of days later and gave him the rest of his pay.

The chief said, “I called Wilkes-Barre, and they talked to Gandy, but he’s incoherent. They took him to a hospital, and now he’s in a coma. Frankly, I think he read about the whole thing in the newspapers. There must have been a leak. The poor devil had a lot of time to think. He cooked it all up, knowing he couldn’t be tried, and that he was dying, and he wanted to leave his wife a lot of money—the reward.”

“That’s a lie!” shouted Mrs. Gandy. “Merrill ain’t no liar!”

The doctor shook his head. “It could be true, of course.”

He looked at Johnny. The minister said unsteadily, “I think it’s true.”

The chief sighed. “Sorry. I don’t.”

“Oh, you don’t!” exclaimed Mrs. Gandy. “Well, sir, here’s your proof.” She opened her imitation leather purse, lifted something out, and banged it triumphantly on the desk.

It was Lorry’s golden box, and it glimmered, and a sweet scent rose from it. They all looked at it, in a desperate silence. “That’s all he could find in your house, parson,” said Mrs. Gandy. “No money. Just this in your desk, and he took it.”

Johnny reached for the box and held it tightly in his fingers. Now, for an instant he forgot what he had heard. He saw Lorry’s face, and he smiled inwardly with an overpowering joy. Then he put the box down and looked at Mrs. Gandy, who glared at him murderously. He studied her for a long moment or two.

He said finally, “Yes, this is my box, and it was taken from my house, and the story is true. But there is something you should know. Your husband had no service-connected injury. He is dying of cancer, and no one knows why or how it comes.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Gandy weakly.

“Yes, it is true,” said Johnny. “And it isn’t the fault of ‘society.’ No one has injured you, or your husband. The veterans’ hospital wanted Merrill to stay. They had mercy on you and on him; they didn’t tell you what they’d really found. But they were trying to help you some way.”

He was torn with compassion for this weeping woman, and all the ignorant millions who had been deceived by the Communist murderers, and all their agony exploited.

He went on. “I’m a poor man. I have a very small salary. I’m not the ‘tool of the interests.’ I’m nobody’s tool. I just try to serve God the best way I can. You see, I am trying to rid my town of hatred, to bring people together so they’ll love each other, and God. For that I was to be destroyed. Your husband couldn’t have known anything about me but what he was told, and what was given him to read in that Communist newspaper. He believed it, because he was suffering, and didn’t know why.”

She looked at the compassionate blue eyes, the pain-filled face, and was silent.

“Your husband was used, and others like him are being used, by the Communists. To enslave or kill all of us—you, me, the doctor here, and the chief of police. Everybody who stands in their wicked way. You see, we are ‘society.’ Yes, you are part of ‘society.’ Society means the people, and we are the people.”

She stared at him, and blinked her wet eyes. He spoke with gentle authority and truth, and she believed him, though she tried to resist.

“We are the workers, all of us, whether rich or poor,” said Johnny. “Anyone who works with his hands or his brain is a worker, whether or not he makes one thousand dollars a year or one hundred thousand dollars. The few who don’t work don’t count; they’re so very few. Do you understand?”

She nodded, dazedly.

“Tell me,” said Johnny, “was your husband—sorry—when he read that my little girl died because of the fire?”

She gulped, and wiped her eyes. “Well, I remember he was terrible excited, and he said it was awful, and he got worse right away, and went down and down. He couldn’t stop talking about that little girl. We never had none of our own. He—well, he said—the man who’d done that should die, killing a baby. He couldn’t seem to rest.” She sobbed bitterly. “I think that’s really killing him now.”

Johnny stood up. He put his hand on her shoulder. He said gently, “Forgive me for hating him. For he was ignorant and deceived by evil men. Go to him right away. And if he can hear you, tell him it’s all right, and that I’ve forgiven him too.”

But they never found the shadowy Communist. Like his brothers, he moved in silent darkness, and watched and waited, and never slept.