"Yes. Our spectroscopes show a 'red shift' in the apparent motion of
all stars. This proves that the universe is expanding--"
"Why, no!" said Hank. "Gosh, no!"
"_No?_"
"Why, you got it all backward," explained Horse-sense Hank. "What
you're sayin' ain't reasonable. Truth of the matter is, the universe
ain't expandin' at all. It's just a-standin' still. Reason things look
thataway to us is because--we're contractin'!"
And that really _did_ stop them! Even when Hank explained that the same
effect would be visible to a man standing in the middle of the floor of
a gigantic room while the walls receded, as would be visible to a man
_shrinking_ in the middle of a normal-sized room. They didn't get it,
but they tried. They took it home to sleep on.
* * * * *
So grew the fame of Horse-sense Hank. And while all this was going on,
another thing was happening, too. Hank was seeing Helen MacDowell,
practically every night. And--well, if you've ever seen a supercharged
carton of honey and dynamite like Helen, you know the inevitable
results. Love, with a capital _boom_!
Old MacDowell had a fit--ee-eye-ee-eye-oh! But it did him no good.
His mood was one of kill and boo, but Helen's was one of bill and
coo. It got so every time I saw Hank and Helen together they looked a
reproduction of the Laocoön[2] group.
[Footnote 2: Laocoön (lay-ock-o-on) was a priest of Apollo who warned
the Trojans against the wooden horse of the Greeks. As a result he
and his two sons were destroyed by serpents sent by Athene, who'd
placed her bet on Greece. This mythological tragedy is portrayed in a
magnificent statue now in the Vatican at Rome.--Ed.]
And then the ripples in the path of true love began to straighten out.
The Isaminder Research Fund heard about Hank and granted him a five
thousand dollar fellowship, and Dr. MacDowell snorted,
"Preposterous! They must be crazy!"
Then the Lowell Observatory made him an honorary member for his great
help in unveiling the mystery of white dwarf stars, and MacDowell said,
"What do you think of that?"
Then the Advisory Council of Midwestern U. went over our prexy's
head and offered Hank the chair of General & Practical Sciences, and
MacDowell, bug-eyed, told me hopefully,
"You know, Jim, the first time I saw that young man I said he'd go
places!"
And when the Nobel Committee voted to Hank Cleaver the annual
awards for outstanding work in the fields of physics, astronomy and
psychology, MacDowell capitulated completely. He rubbed his hands
together, beamed like an April morning, and said,
"God bless you, my children! Would you like block letters or script on
the announcements? Anything at all to please your little hearts!"
So it was arranged. A big church wedding for Helen and Hank, and of
course I was to be best man. And Hank should have been the happiest guy
alive. But was he? No. As the days narrowed toward the fateful one, he
began to grow moody and thoughtful. Several times I caught him sitting
by himself, pondering and shaking his head. Once I heard him mutter in
a low under-tone,
"Mebbe it wouldn't exactly work like that--"
He was puzzling out some deep problem. Just what, I didn't know. I was
too busy to quiz him about it. And then came the day when wedding bells
were to peal.
* * * * *
I went to the church to see that everything was in apple-pie order. I
left Hank wandering in a sort of daze, impressed on him the necessity
of being there at eleven sharp, told him to take a drink and stop
looking like Sydney Carton, and wondered if he'd stop the ceremony to
tell the preacher his words were unreasonable.
Time zipped by. The guests began to arrive. The organist came in and
started practicing. The preacher came. Helen arrived, surrounded by a
bevy of chattering bridesmaids. But no Hank. I called the apartment;
the phone continued to laugh at me. Dr. MacDowell came back to the
vestry room and pouted,
"Where is he, Jim? It's getting near eleven."
"He must be on his way," I said hopefully.
But eleven came--and still no Hank. And then it was eleven-fifteen, and
eleven-thirty, and people were beginning to cough and get restless. One
of the bridesmaids got hysterical. Helen shot Emily Post to the four
winds and came to me in the vestry room almost in tears.
"Jim," she pleaded, "he's not here! He must have been hurt or
something. Can't you find out?"
"I'll try," I told her. She left, and her old man came in. He was
upset, and I don't mean he had a hangover. His eyes bulged like bumps
on a cucumber.
"Blakeson," he bellowed, "where's Cleaver?"
"Do I look like a crystal ball?" I snarled. "Sit tight and amuse the
crowd with card tricks. I'm going out to find him." And I went ... but
somehow I had a feeling that it was a futile gesture.
* * * * *
I hope the card tricks were good. They had to be to hold that crowd,
because it took me three days to find my friend Hank. And I finally
located him in--you've guessed it!--the south forty of his farm near
Westville. Hank had reverted to the soil. Once again he was clad in
coveralls and bulldog shoes. He had turned his back on civilization as
a snake discards last year's skin, and the mouth that had once taught
pedagogues was again clogged to the incisors with cut plug.
He saw me coming across the field, rose and dusted his knees, and shook
his head dolefully.
"Nope, Jim," he said, "it ain't no use askin'. I ain't a-goin' back!"
"Man," I told him, "you're crazy! Don't you know the whole University's
in a fever because you skipped out? Why did you go? Helen's all busted
up. Don't you love her?"
He made a vain, twisting gesture with his hands. His eyes were bleak.
"Yup, Jim," he said.
"Then for goodness' sakes, why did you do it?"
He gulped wretchedly. "I--I can't marry her, Jim. I just can't. That's
all there is to it."
"Why?" I was sore now. "For Satan's sake, why? Something like this
deserves an explanation."
"On account," he said, "on account of it wouldn't work."
"It wouldn't--" I stared at him. "Come clean!"
He said, "I figgered it all out, an' it won't work. Say I married her,
Awright. Purty soon, stands to reason, we'd have a youngster. A boy, I
figger. Some more years'd pass, he'd grow up. Fust thing you know, he'd
be a man hisself, an' he'd up an' fall in love with a girl.
"An' it just natcherally stands to reason that him bein' the kind of
boy he'd be, an' me bein' the kind of man I am, we'd be sure to have a
big ruckus, because--"
* * * * *