It Can't Happen Here (27 page)

“Well, guess y’ better git up now, better git up!
Jedge wants to
see you—jedge says he wants to see you. Heh! Guess y’ didn’t
ever think I’d be a squad leader,
did
yuh, Mist’ Jessup!”

Doremus was escorted through angling corridors to the familiar side
entrance of the courtroom—the entrance where once he had seen Thad
Dilley, Aras’s degenerate cousin, shamble in to receive sentence
for clubbing his wife to death… . He could not keep from
feeling that Thad and he were kin, now.

He was kept waiting—waiting!—for a quarter hour outside the
closed courtroom door. He had time to consider the three guards
commanded by Squad Leader Aras. He happened to know that one of
them had served a sentence at Windsor for robbery with assault; and
one, a surly young farmer, had been rather doubtfully acquitted on
a charge of barn-burning in revenge
against a neighbor.

He leaned against the slightly dirty gray plaster wall of the
corridor.

“Stand straight there, you! What the hell do you think this is?
And keeping us up late like this!” said the rejuvenated, the
redeemed Aras, waggling his bayonet and shining with desire to use
it on the bourjui.

Doremus stood straight.

He stood very straight, he stood rigid, beneath a portrait of
Horace
Greeley.

Till now, Doremus had liked to think of that most famous of radical
editors, who had been a printer in Vermont from 1825 to 1828, as
his colleague and comrade. Now he felt colleague only to the
revolutionary Karl Pascals.

His legs, not too young, were trembling; his calves ached. Was he
going to faint? What was happening in there, in the courtroom?

To save himself from the disgrace
of collapsing, he studied Aras
Dilley. Though his uniform was fairly new, Aras had managed to
deal with it as his family and he had dealt with their house on
Mount Terror—once a sturdy Vermont cottage with shining white
clapboards, now mud-smeared and rotting. His cap was crushed in,
his breeches spotted, his leggings gaping, and one tunic button
hung by a thread.

“I wouldn’t particularly want
to be dictator over an Aras, but I
most particularly do not want him and his like to be dictators over
me, whether they call them Fascists or Corpos or Communists or
Monarchists or Free Democratic Electors or anything else! If that
makes me a reactionary kulak, all right! I don’t believe I ever
really liked the shiftless brethren, for all my lying hand-shaking.
Do you think the Lord calls on
us to love the cowbirds as much as
the swallows? I don’t! Oh, I know; Aras has had a hard time:
mortgage and seven kids. But Cousin Henry Veeder and Dan Wilgus—yes, and Pete Vutong, the Canuck, that lives right across the road
from Aras and has just exactly the same kind of land—they were all
born poor, and they’ve lived decently enough. They can wash their
ears and their door sills, at least.
I’m cursed if I’m going to
give up the American-Wesleyan doctrine of Free Will and of Will to
Accomplishment entirely, even if it does get me read out of the
Liberal Communion!”

Aras had peeped into the courtroom, and he stood giggling.

Then Lorinda came out—after midnight!

Her partner, the wart Nipper, was following her, looking sheepishly
triumphant.

“Linda! Linda!” called Doremus, his
hands out, ignoring the
snickers of the curious guards, trying to move toward her. Aras
pushed him back and at Lorinda sneered, “Go on—move on, there!”
and she moved. She seemed twisted and rusty as Doremus would have
thought her bright steeliness could never have been.

Aras cackled, “Haa, haa, haa! Your friend, Sister Pike—”

“My wife’s friend!”

“All right, boss. Have it your way! Your
wife’s friend, Sister
Pike, got hers for trying to be fresh with Judge Swan! She’s been
kicked out of her partnership with Mr. Nipper—he’s going to manage
that Tavern of theirn, and Sister Pike goes back to pot-walloping
in the kitchen, like she’d ought to!—like maybe some of your
womenfolks, that think they’re so almighty stylish and independent,
will be having to, pretty soon!”

Again Doremus
had sense enough to regard the bayonets; and a mighty
voice from inside the courtroom trumpeted: “Next case! D. Jessup!”

On the judges’ bench were Shad Ledue in uniform as an M.M.
battalion leader, ex-superintendent Emil Staubmeyer presenting the
rôle of ensign, and a third man, tall, rather handsome, rather too
face-massaged, with the letters “M.J.” on the collar of his uniform
as commander,
or pseudo-colonel. He was perhaps fifteen years
younger than Doremus.

This, Doremus knew, must be Military Judge Effingham Swan, sometime
of Boston.

The Minute Men marched him in front of the bench and retired, with
only two of them, a milky-faced farm boy and a former gas-station
attendant, remaining on guard inside the double doors of the side
entrance … the entrance for criminals.

Commander
Swan loafed to his feet and, as though he were greeting
his oldest friend, cooed at Doremus, “My dear fellow, so sorry to
have to trouble you. Just a routine query, you know. Do sit down.
Gentlemen, in the case of Mr. Doremus, surely we need not go
through the farce of formal inquiry. Let’s all sit about that damn
big silly table down there—place where they always stick the
innocent defendants
and the guilty attorneys, y’ know—get down
from this high altar—little too mystical for the taste of a vulgar
bucket-shop gambler like myself. After you, Professor; after you,
my dear Captain.” And, to the guards, “Just wait outside in the
hall, will you? Close the doors.”

Staubmeyer and Shad looking, despite Effingham Swan’s frivolity, as
portentous as their uniforms could make them, clumped
down to the
table. Swan followed them airily, and to Doremus, still standing,
he gave his tortoise-shell cigarette case, caroling, “Do have a
smoke, Mr. Doremus. Must we all be so painfully formal?”

Doremus reluctantly took a cigarette, reluctantly sat down as Swan
waved him to a chair—with something not quite so airy and affable
in the sharpness of the gesture.

“My name is Jessup, Commander.
Doremus is my first name.”

“Ah, I see. It could be. Quite so. Very New England. Doremus.”
Swan was leaning back in his wooden armchair, powerful trim hands
behind his neck. “I’ll tell you, my dear fellow. One’s memory is
so wretched, you know. I’ll just call you ‘Doremus,’ sans Mister.
Then, d’ you see, it might apply to either the first (or Christian,
as I believe one’s wretched people
in Back Bay insist on calling
it)—either the Christian or the surname. Then we shall feel all
friendly and secure. Now, Doremus, my dear fellow, I begged my
friends in the M.M.—I do trust they were not too importunate, as
these parochial units sometimes do seem to be—but I ordered them
to invite you here, really, just to get your advice as a
journalist. Does it seem to you that most of the peasants
here are
coming to their senses and ready to accept the Corpo fait
accompli?”

Doremus grumbled, “But I understood I was dragged here—and if you
want to know, your squad was all of what you call ‘importunate’!—because of an editorial I wrote about President Windrip.”

“Oh, was that you, Doremus? You see?—I was right—one does have
such a wretched memory! I do seem now to remember some minor
incident
of the sort—you know—mentioned in the agenda. Do have
another cigarette, my dear fellow.”

“Swan! I don’t care much for this cat-and-mouse game—at least,
not while I’m the mouse. What are your charges against me?”

“Charges? Oh, my only aunt! Just trifling things—criminal libel
and conveying secret information to alien forces and high treason
and homicidal incitement to violence—you know,
the usual boresome
line. And all so easily got rid of, my Doremus, if you’d just be
persuaded—you see how quite pitifully eager I am to be friendly
with you, and to have the inestimable aid of your experience here—if you’d just decide that it might be the part of discretion—so
suitable, y’ know, to your venerable years—”

“Damn it, I’m not venerable, nor anything like it. Only sixty.
Sixty-one,
I should say.”

“Matter of ratio, my dear fellow. I’m forty-seven m’self, and I
have no doubt the young pups already call
me
venerable! But as I
was saying, Doremus—”

(Why was it he winced with fury every time Swan called him that?)

“—with your position as one of the Council of Elders, and with
your responsibilities to your family—it would be
too
sick-making
if anything happened to
them
, y’
know!—you just can’t afford to be
too brash! And all we desire is for you to play along with us in
your paper—I would adore the chance of explaining some of the
Corpos’ and the Chief’s still unrevealed plans to you. You’d see
such a new light!”

Shad grunted, “Him? Jessup couldn’t see a new light if it was on
the end of his nose!”

“A moment, my dear Captain… . And also, Doremus, of course
we
shall urge you to help us by giving us a complete list of every
person in this vicinity that you know of who is secretly opposed to
the Administration.”

“Spying? Me?”

“Quite!”

“If I’m accused of—I insist on having my lawyer, Mungo Kitterick,
and on being tried, not all this bear-baiting—”

“Quaint name. Mungo Kitterick! Oh, my only aunt! Why does it
give me so absurd a picture of an
explorer with a Greek grammar in
his hand? You don’t quite understand, my Doremus. Habeas corpus—due processes of law—too, too bad!—all those ancient sanctities,
dating, no doubt, from Magna Charta, been suspended—oh, but just
temporarily, y’ know—state of crisis—unfortunate necessity
martial law—”

“Damn it, Swan—”

“Commander, my dear fellow—ridiculous matter of military
discipline, y’ know—
such
rot!”

“You know mighty well and good it isn’t temporary! It’s permanent—that is, as long as the Corpos last.”

“It could be!”

“Swan—Commander—you get that ‘it could be’ and ‘my aunt’ from the
Reggie Fortune stories, don’t you?”

“Now there
is
a fellow detective-story fanatic! But how too
bogus!”

“And that’s Evelyn Waugh! You’re quite a literary man for so
famous a yachtsman and horseman,
Commander.”

“Horsemun, yachtsmun,
lit
-er-ary man! Am I, Doremus, even in my
sanctum sanctorum
, having, as the lesser breeds would say, the
pants kidded off me? Oh, my Doremus, that couldn’t be! And just
when one is so feeble, after having been so, shall I say
excoriated, by your so amiable friend, Mrs. Lorinda Pike? No, no!
How too unbefitting the majesty of the law!”

Shad interrupted again,
“Yeh, we had a swell time with your girl-friend, Jessup. But I already had the dope about you and her
before.”

Doremus sprang up, his chair crashing backward on the floor. He
was reaching for Shad’s throat across the table. Effingham Swan
was on him, pushing him back into another chair. Doremus hiccuped
with fury. Shad had not even troubled to rise, and he was going on
contemptuously:

“Yuh, you two’ll have quite some trouble if you try to pull any spy
stuff on the Corpos. My, my, Doremus, ain’t we had fun, Lindy and
you, playing footie-footie these last couple years! Didn’t nobody
know about it, did they! But what
you
didn’t know was Lindy—and
don’t it beat hell a long-nosed, skinny old maid like her can have
so much pep!—and she’s been cheating on you right along, sleeping
with every doggone man boarder she’s had at the Tavern, and of
course with her little squirt of a partner, Nipper!”

Swan’s great hand—hand of an ape with a manicure—held Doremus in
his chair. Shad snickered. Emil Staubmeyer, who had been sitting
with fingertips together, laughed amiably. Swan patted Doremus’s
back.

He was less sunken by the insult to Lorinda than by the feeling of
helpless
loneliness. It was so late; the night so quiet. He would
have been glad if even the M.M. guards had come in from the hall.
Their rustic innocence, however barnyardishly brutal, would have
been comforting after the easy viciousness of the three judges.

Swan was placidly resuming: “But I suppose we really must get down
to business—however agreeable, my dear clever literary detective,
it would
be to discuss Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and
Norman Klein. Perhaps we can some day, when the Chief puts us both
in the same prison! There’s really, my dear Doremus, no need of
your troubling your legal gentleman, Mr. Monkey Kitteridge. I am
quite authorized to conduct this trial—for quaintly enough,
Doremus, it
is
a trial, despite the delightful St. Botolph’s
atmosphere! And as to testimony,
I already have all I need, both
in the good Miss Lorinda’s inadvertent admissions, in the actual
text of your editorial criticizing the Chief, and in the quite
thorough reports of Captain Ledue and Dr. Staubmeyer. One really
ought to take you out and shoot you—and one is quite empowered to
do so, oh quite!—but one has one’s faults—one is really too
merciful. And perhaps we can find a
better use for you than as
fertilizer—you are, you know, rather too much on the skinny side
to make adequate fertilizer.

“You are to be released on parole, to assist and coach Dr.
Staubmeyer who, by orders from Commissioner Reek, at Hanover, has
just been made editor of the
Informer
, but who doubtless lacks
certain points of technical training. You will help him—oh,
gladly, I am sure!—until
he learns. Then we’ll see what we’ll do
with you! … You will write editorials, with all your
accustomed brilliance—oh, I assure you, people constantly stop on
Boston Common to discuss your masterpieces; have done for years!
But you’ll write only as Dr. Staubmeyer tells you.
Understand?
Oh. Today—since ‘tis already past the witching hour—you will
write an abject apology for your diatribe—oh
yes, very much on the
abject side! You know—you veteran journalists do these things so
neatly—just admit you were a cockeyed liar and that sort of thing—bright and bantering—
you
know! And next Monday you will, like
most of the other ditchwater-dull hick papers, begin the serial
publication of the Chief’s
Zero Hour
. You’ll enjoy that!”