"You made this stuff grow; now you can cut it down."
Uncouth guffaws from the watching idiots.
"Mrs Dinkman, I--"
"Get behind that lawnmower, young man, if you don't want to be involved
in a lawsuit."
I wasnt afraid of such a consequence in itself, having at the moment
nothing to attach, but I thought of Miss Francis and future sales and
that impalpable thing known as "goodwill." "Yes, mam," I repeated.
I discarded pump and hose to move reluctantly toward the mower. Under my
feet I felt the springiness of the grass; was it pure fancy--or did it
truly differ in quality from the lawns I'd trod so indifferently the day
before?
I took the handle. If oiling had improved the machine, its previous
efficiency must have been slight. It went shakily over the first inch of
grass and then, as it had for Mrs Dinkman, it stopped for me.
By now the spectators had increased to a small crowd and their dull
humor had taken the form of cheerfully offering much gratuitous advice.
"Tie into it, Slim--build up the old muscle." "Back her up and take a
good run." "Go home an do some settinup exercises--come back next year."
"Got to put the old back behind it, Bud--give her the gas." "Need a
decent mower--no use trying to cut stuff like that with an antique."
"Yeah--get a good mower--one made since the Civil War." "No one around
here got an honestogod lawnmower?"
The last query evidently nettled local pride, for soon a blithe,
beamshouldered little man trundled up a shiny, rubbertired machine.
"Thisll do the business," he announced confidently as I relinquished the
spotlight to him with understandable readiness. "It's a regular
jimdandy."
It certainly was. The devilgrass came irreverently above the wheels and
flowed with graceful inquisitiveness over the blades, but the brisk
little man pushed heartily and the mechanism revolved with a barely
audible clicking. It did not balk, complain or hesitate. Cleanly severed
ends of grass whirled into the air and floated down on the neat smooth
swath left behind. Everyone smiled relievedly at the jimdandy's triumph
and my sigh was loudest and most heartfelt. I edged away as
unobtrusively as I could.
_4._ I have no sympathy with weaklings who complain of the cards being
stacked, but it did seem as though fate were dealing unkindly with me.
Here was a good proposition, coming just at the time I needed it most
and it was turning bad rapidly. Walking the short distance to Miss
Francis' I was unable to settle my mind, to strike a mental
balancesheet. There was money; there had to be money--lots and lots of
it--in the Metamorphizer, but it was possible there was trouble--lots
and lots of it--also. The thing was, well, dangerous. What was the use
of expending ability in selling something which could have kickbacks
acting as deterrents to future sales? Of course a man had to take
risks....
The door, after a properly prudent hesitation, clicked brokenly. Miss
Francis looked as though she'd added insomnia to her other abstentions,
otherwise she had not changed, even to her skirt and the smudge on her
left nostril. "If youve come about the icebox youre a week late. I fixed
it myself," she greeted me gruffly.
"Weener," I reminded her, "Albert Weener--remember? I'm selling--that
is, I'm going to sell the product you invented to make plants eat
anything."
"Oh. Weener--yes." She produced the toothpick and scratched her chin
with it. "About the Metamorphizer." She paused and rubbed her elbow. "A
mistake, I'm afraid. An error."
Aha, I thought, a new deal. Someone's offered to back her. Steal her
brainchild, negate all my efforts to make her independent and cheat me
of the reward of my spadework. You wouldnt think of her as a frail
credulous woman, easily taken in by the first smooth talker, but a woman
is a woman afterall.
"Look, Miss Francis," I argued, "youve got a big thing here, a great
thing. The possibilities are practically unlimited. Of course youll have
to have a manager to put it across--an executive, a man with business
experience--someone who can tap the great reservoir of buying power by
the conviction of a new need. Organize a sales campaign; rationalize
production. Put the whole thing on a commercial basis. For all this you
need a man who has contacted the public on every level--preferably
doortodoor and with a varied background."
She strode past the stove, which had gathered new accreta during the
night and looked in the cloudy mirror as though searching for a
misplaced thought. "No doubt, Weener, no doubt. But before all these
romantically streamlined things eventuate there must be a hiatus. In my
haste I overlooked a detail yesterday, trivial maybe--perhaps vital. I
should never have let you start out so soon."
This was bad; I was struggling now for my job and for the future of the
Metamorphizer. "Miss Francis, I don't know what you mean by mistakes or
trivial details or how I could have started out too soon, but whatever
the trouble is I'm sure it can be smoothed out easily. Sometimes, you
know, obstacles which appear tremendous prove to be nothing at all in
experienced hands. I myself have had occasion to put things right for a
number of different concerns. Really, Miss Francis, you mustnt let
opportunity slip through your fingers. Believe me, I know what a big
thing your discovery is--Ive seen what it does."
She turned those too sharp eyes on me discomfortingly. "Ah," she said,
"so soon?"
"Well," I began, "it certainly acted quickly ..."
I stopped when I saw she wasnt hearing me. She sat down in the only
empty chair and drummed her fingers against big white teeth. "Even under
a microscope," she muttered, "no perceptible reaction for fortyeight
hours. Laboratory conditions? Or my own idiocy? But I approximated ..."
Her voice trailed off and for a full minute the absolute silence of the
kitchen was broken only by the melodramatic dripping of a tap.
She made an effort to pull herself together and addressed me in her old
abrupt way. "Corn or wheat?"
"Ay?"
"You said youve seen what it does. I asked you if you had applied it to
corn or wheat--or what?"
She was looking at me so fixedly I had a slight difficulty in putting my
words in good order. "It was neither, mam. I applied some of the stuff
to a lawn--"
"A _lawn_, Weener?"
"Y-yes, mam."
"But I said--"
"General instructions, Miss Francis. I'm sure you didnt mean to tie my
hands."
Another long silence.
"No, Weener--I didnt mean to tie your hands."
"Well, as I was saying, I applied some of the stuff to a lawn. Exactly
according to your instructions--"
"In the irrigation water?"
"Well, not precisely. But just as good, I assure you."
"Go on."
"A terrible lawn. All shot. Last night. This morning--"
"Stop. What kind of grass? Or don't you know?"
"Of course I know," I answered indignantly. Did she think I was an
idiot? "It was devilgrass."
"Ah." She rubbed the back of her hand against her singularly smooth
cheek. "Bermuda. _Cynodon dactylon._ Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could
I have been so blind? Did I think only the corn would be affected and
not the weeds in the furrows? Or that something like this might not
happen?"
I didnt feel like wasting any more time listening to her soliloquy.
"This morning," I continued, "it was as green--"
"All right, Weener, spare me your poetry. Show it to me."
"Well now, Miss Francis ..." I wanted, understandably enough, to discuss
future arrangements before she saw Dinkman's lawn.
"Immediately, Weener."
When dealing with childish persons you have to cater to their whims. I
rid myself of the pump--I'd never dreamed I'd be reluctant to part with
the monster--while she made perfunctory and unconvincing motions to fit
herself for the street. Of course she neither washed nor madeup, but she
peered in the glass argumentatively, pulled her jacket down decisively,
threw her shoulders back to raise it askew again and gave the swirl of
hair a halfhearted pat.
"I'd like to go over the matter of organizing--"
"Not now."
I was naturally reluctant to be seen on the street with so conspicuous a
figure, but I could hardly escape. I tried to match her swinging stride,
but as she was at least six inches taller I had to give a sort of skip
between steps, which was less than dignified. Searching my mind to find
a tactful approach again to the subject of proper distribution of the
Metamorphizer, I felt my opportunity slipping away every moment. She, on
her part, was silent and so abstracted that I often had to put out a
guiding hand to avert collision with other pedestrians or stationary
objects.
I doubt if I'd been gone from Mrs Dinkman's threequarters of an hour. I
had left a small group excited at the free show consequent upon the too
successful beautification of a local eyesore; I returned to a sizable
crowd viewing an impressive phenomenon. The homely levity had vanished;
no one shouted jovial advice. Opinions and comments passed in whispers
accompanied by furtive glances toward the lawn, as though it were
sentient and might be offended by rude speculation. As we pushed through
the bystanders I was suddenly aware of their cautious avoidance of
contact with the grass itself. The nearest onlookers stood a respectful
yard back and when unbalanced by the push of those behind went through
such antics to avoid treading on it, while at the same time preserving
the convention of innocence of any taboo that they frequently pivoted
and pirouetted on one foot in an awkward ballet. The very hiding of
their inhibition emphasized the new awesomeness of the grass; it was no
longer to be lightly approached or frivolously treated.
Now I am not what is generally called a man of religious sensibilities,
having long ago discarded belief in the supernatural; and I am not
overcome at odd moments by mystical feelings. Furthermore I had been
intimate with this particular patch of vegetation for some eighteen
hours. I had viewed its decaying state; I had injected life into it; I
had seen it in the first flush of resurrection. In spite of all this, I
too fell under the spell of the grass and knew something compounded of
wonder and apprehension.
The neatly cut swaths of the little man with the jimdandy mower came to
a dramatic end in the middle of the yard. Beyond this shorn portion the
grass rose in a threatening crest, taller than a man's knees; green,
aloof and derisive. But it was not this forbidding sight which gave me
such a queer turn. It was the mown part; for I recalled how the brisk
man's machine had cut close and left behind short, crisp stems. Now this
piece was almost as high as when I'd first seen it--grown faster in an
hour than ordinary grass in a month.
_5._ I stole a look at Miss Francis to see how she was taking the sight,
but there was no emotion visible on her face. The toothpick was once
more in play and the luminous eyes fixed straight ahead. Her legs were
spread apart and she seemed firmly in position for hours to come, as
though she would wait for the grass to exhaust its phenomenal growth.
"Why did they quit cutting?" I asked the man standing beside me.
"Mower give out--dulled the blades so they wouldnt cut no more."
"Going to give up and let it grow?"
"Hell, no. Sent for a gardener with a powermower. Big one. Cut anything.
Ought to be here now."
He was, too, honking the crowd from the driveway. Mrs Dinkman was with
him, looking at once indignant, persecuted, uncomfortable and
selfrighteous. It was evident they had failed to reach any agreement.
The gardener slammed the door of the senescent truck with vehement lack
of affection. "I cut lots a devilgrass, lady, but I won't tie into this
overgrown stuff at that price. You got no right to expect it. I know
what's fair and it's not reasonable to count on me cutting this like it
was an ordinary lawn. You know yourself it isnt fair."
"I'll give you ten dollars and that's my last word."
"Listen, lady, when I get through this job I'll have to take my mower
apart and have it resharpened. You think I can afford to do that for a
tendollar job?"
"Ten dollars," repeated Mrs Dinkman firmly.
The gardener appealed to the gallery. "Listen, folks: now I ask you--is
this fair? I'm willing to be reasonable. I understand this lady's in
trouble and I'm willing to help, but I can't do a twentyfivedollar job
for ten bucks, can I?"
It was doubtful if the observers were particularly concerned with
justice; what they desired was action, swift and drastic. A general
resentment at being balked of their amusement was manifest in murmurs of
"Go ahead, do it." "What's the matter with you?" "Don't be dumb--do it
for nothing--youll get plenty business out of it." They appealed to his
nobler and baser natures, but he remained adamant.
Not to be balked by his churlishness, they passed a hat and collected
$8.67, which I thought a remarkably generous admission price. When this
was added to Mrs Dinkman's ten dollars the gardener, still protesting,
reluctantly agreed to perform.
Mrs Dinkman prudently holding the total, he unloaded the powermower with
many flourishes, making quite an undertaking of oiling and adjusting the
roller, setting the blades; bending down to assure himself of the
gasoline in the small tank, finally wheeling the contraption into place
with great spirit. The motor started with a disgruntled put! changing
into a series of resigned explosions as he guided it over the lawn
crosswise to the lines of his predecessor. Miss Francis followed every
motion with rapt attention.
"Did you expect this?" I asked.
"Ay? The abnormally stimulated growth, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Yes and no. Work in the laboratory didnt indicate it. My own fault; I
didnt realize at once making available so much free nitrogen would have
such instant results. But last night--"
"Yes?"
"Not now. Later."
The powermower went nicely, I might almost say smoothly, over the stuff
cut before, muttering and chickling happily to itself as it dragged the
panting gardener, inescapably harnessed, in its wake. But the mown area
was narrow and the machine quickly jerked through it and made the last
easy journey along the wall of untouched devilgrass beyond.
The gardener, without hesitation, aimed his machine at the thicket of
grass. It growled, slowed, coughed, spat, struggled and thrashed on and
finally conked out.
"Ah," said Miss Francis.
"Oh," said the spectators.
"Sonofabitch," said the gardener.
He yanked the grumbling mower back angrily, inspecting its mechanism in
the manner of a mother with a wayward son and began again. There was
desperate determination in his shoulders as he added his forward thrust
to the protesting rhythm. The machine went at the grass like a bulldog
attacking a borzoi: it bit, chewed, held on. It cut a new six inches
readily, another foot slowly--and then with jolts and misfires and loud
imprecations from the gardener, it gave up again.
"You," judged Mrs Dinkman, "don't know how to cut grass."
The gardener wiped his sweaty forehead with the inside of his wrist.
"You--you should have a law against you," he answered bitterly and
inadequately.
But the crowd evidently agreed with Mrs Dinkman's verdict, for there
were mutterings of "It's a farmer's job." "Get somebody with a scythe."
"That's right--get a scythe." "Got to have a scythe to cut hay like
that." These remarks, uttered loudly enough for him to hear, so
discouraged the gardener that after three more futile tries he reloaded
his equipment and left amidst jeers and expressions of disfavor without
attempting to collect any of the money.
For some reason the failure of the powermower lightened the atmosphere.
Everyone, including Mrs Dinkman, seemed convinced that scything was the
solution. Tension relaxed and the bystanders began talking in something
above a whisper.
_6._ "This will just about ruin our sales," I said.
Miss Francis suspended the toothpick before her chin and looked at me as
though I'd said dirty words in the presence of ladies.
"Well it will," I argued. "You can't expect people to have their lawns
inoculated if they find out it's going to make grass act this way."
Her eyes might have been microscopes and I something smeared on a slide.
"Weener, youre the sort of man who peddles _Life Begins at Forty_ to the
inmates of an old peoples' home."
I couldnt see what had upset her. The last idea had sound salesappeal,
but it was a low income market.... Oh well--her queer notions and
obscure reactions undoubtedly went with her scientific gift. You have
to lead individuals of this type for their own good, otherwise they
spend their lives wandering around in a dreamy fog, accomplishing
nothing.
"I still believe youve got something," I pointed out. "You yourself said
it wasnt perfected, but perhaps you havent realized how far from
marketable it actually is yet. Now then," I went on reasonably, "youre
just going to have to dilute it or change it or do something to it, so
while it will make grass nice and green, it won't let it grow wild like
this."
The fixed look could be annoying. It was nearly impossible to turn your
eyes away without rudeness once she caught them. "Weener, the
Metamorphizer is neither fertilizer nor plant food. It is a chemical
compound producing a controlled mutation in any treated member of the
family Gramineae. Dilution might make it not work--the mutation might
not take place--but it couldnt make it half work. I could change your
nature by forcibly injecting an ounce of lead into your cerebellum. The
change would not only be irrevocable, but it wouldnt make the slightest
difference if the lead were adulterated with ironpyrites or not."
"But, Miss Francis," I expostulated, "you'll have to do _something_."
She threw her hands into the air, a theatrical gesture even more than
ordinarily unbecoming. "Why?"
"Why? To make your discovery marketable, of course."
"Now? In the face of this?"
"Miss Francis," I said with dignity, "you are a lady and my selfrespect
makes me treat you with the courtesy due your sex. You advertised for a
salesman. Instead of sneering at my honest efforts to put your
merchandise across to the public, I think youd be better advised to
worry about such lowbrow things as keeping faith."
"Am I to keep faith in a vacuum? You came to me as a salesman and I must
give you something to sell. This is simple morality; but if such a grant
entails concomitant evils, surely I am absolved of my original
contract."
"I don't know what youre talking about," I told her frankly. "Your
stuff made the grass grow too fast, that's all. You should change the
formula or find a new one or else ..."
"Or else youll have been left with nothing to sell. I despair of making
the point about changing the formula; your trust in my powers is too
reverent. Again, I'm not an arrogant woman and I'll admit to some
responsibility. Make the world fit for Alfred Weener to make a living
in."
"It's Albert, not Alfred," I corrected her. I'm not touchy, goodness
knows, but afterall a name's a piece of property.
"Your pardon, Albert." She looked down at me with such a placatory and
genuinely feminine smile I decided I'd been foolish to be offended.
She's a nut of course, I thought indulgently, someone whose life is
bounded by theories and testtubes, a woman with no conception of
practical reality. Instead of being affronted it would be better to show
her patiently how essential my help was to her.
"Of all people," she went on, searching my face with those discomfiting
eyes, "of all people Ive the least cause for moral snobbery. Anxious to
get a few dollars to carry on my work--and what was such anxiety but
selfindulgence?--I threw the Metamorphizer to you and the world before I
realized that it was not only imperfect, but faulty. Hell is paved with
good intentions and the first result of my desire to benefit mankind has
been to injure the Dinkmans. Meditation in place of infatuation would
have shown me both the immediate and ultimate wrongs. I doubt if youd
been gone an hour yesterday when I knew I'd made a blunder in permitting
you to go out with danger in both hands."
"I don't know what youre getting at," I said stiffly, for it sounded as
though she were regarding me as a child.
"Why, as I was sitting, composing my thoughts toward extending the
effectiveness of the Metamorphizer beyond gramina, it suddenly became
clear to me I'd erred about not knowing how long the effect of the
inoculations would last."
"You mean you found out?" If she brought the thing under control and the
effect lasted a specified time there might be repeat business afterall.
"I found out a great deal by using speculation and logic for a change
instead of my hands and memory. I sat and thought, and though this is an
unorthodox way for a scientist to proceed, I profited by it. I reasoned:
if you change the genetic structure of a plant you change it
permanently; not for a day or an hour, but for its existence. I'm not
speaking of chance mutations, you understand, Weener, coming about over
a course of generations, generations which include sports, degenerates,
atavars andsoforth; but of controlled changes, brought about through
human intervention. Inoculation by the Metamorphizer might be compared
to cutting off a man's leg or transplanting part of his brain.
Albert--what happens when you cut off a man's leg?"
I was tired of being talked to like a grammarschool class. Still, I
humored her. "Why, then he has only one leg," I answered agreeably if
idiotically.
"True. More than that, he has a onelegged disposition. His whole ego,
his entire spirit is changed. No longer a twolegged creature, reduced,
he is another--warped, if you like--being. To come to the immediate
point of the grass: if you engender an omnivorous capacity you implant
an insatiable appetite."
"I don't catch."
"If you give a man a big belly you make him a hog."
A chevvy coupe, gently breathing steam from its radiator cap,
interrupted. From its turtle hung the blade of a scythe and on the
nervously hinged door had been hopefully lettered _Arcangelo Barelli,
Plowing & Grading_.
While the coupe was trembling for some seconds before quieting down, I
sighed a double relief, at Miss Francis' forgetfulness of the money due
her and the soothing of my fears for the lawn's eating its way downward
to China or India. The remark about gluttonous abdomens was disturbing.
"And of course there will be no further sale of the Metamorphizer," she
concluded, her eyes now totally concerned with the farmer who was
opening the turtle with the air of a man expecting to be unpleasantly
astonished.
Mr Barelli came as to a deathbed, a consoling but hopeless smile
widening his narrow face only inconsiderably. At the scythe cradled in
his arms someone shouted, "Here's old Father Time himself." Mr Barelli
wasnt amused. Brushing his forehead thoughtfully with tender fingers he
surveyed with saddened eye the three graduated steps of grass. The last
step, unessayed by his predecessors, rose nearly four feet, as alien to
the concept of lawn as a field of wheat.
"Think you can cut it?" one of the audience asked.
Mr Barelli smiled cheerlessly and didnt answer. Instead, he uprooted
from his hip pocket a slender stone and began phlegmatically to caress
the blade of the scythe with it.
"Hay, that stuff's not goin to stop growin while you fool around."
"Got to do things right," explained Mr Barelli gently.
The rhythmic friction of stone against steel prolonged suspense
unbearably. All kinds of speculation crowded my mind while the leisurely
performance went on. The grass was growing rapidly; faster than
vegetation had ever grown before. Could it grow so quickly the farmer's
scythe couldnt keep up with it? Suppose it had been wheat or corn?
Planted today, it would be ready to harvest next week, fully ripe. The
original dream of Miss Francis would pale compared with the reality.
There was still--somewhere, somehow--a fortune in the Metamorphizer....
Ready at last, Mr Barelli walked delicately across the stubble as if it
were a substance too precious to be trampled brutally. Again he measured
the rippling, ascending mass with his eye. It was the look of a
bridegroom.
"What you waitin for?"
Unheeding, he scraped bootwelt semicircularly on the sward as though to
mark a stance. Once more he appraised the grass, crooked his knee,
rested his hands lightly on the two short, upraised handholds. Satisfied
at length with his preparations, he finally drew the scythe back with a
sweeping motion of both arms and curved it forward close to the ground.
It embraced a sudden island lovingly and a sheaf of grass swooned into a
heap. I was reminded of old woodcuts in a history of the French
Revolution.
The bystanders sighed in harmony. "Nothing to it ... should a had him in
the first place ... can't beat the old elbowgrease. No, sir,
musclepower'll do it every time ... guess it's licked now all right, all
right...." Mr Barelli duplicated his sweep and another sheaf fell.
Another. And another....
"One of the oldest human rituals," remarked Miss Francis, swaying her
body in time with the farmer's. "An act of devotion to Ceres. But all
this husbandman reaps is _Cynodon dactylon_. A commentary."
"Progress," I pointed out. "Now they have machines to harvest grain. All
uptodate farmers use them; only the backward ones stick to primitive
tools and have to make a living by taking on odd jobs."
"Progress," she repeated, looking from the scythewielder to me and back
again. "Progress, Weener. A remarkable conception of the nineteenth
century...."
The less intense spectators began to move off; not, to be sure, without
backward glances, but the metronomic swing of Mr Barelli's blade
indicated it was all over with the rank grass now. I too should have
been on my way, writing off the Metamorphizer as a total loss and
considering methods for making a new and more profitable connection. Not
that I was one to leave a sinking ship, nor had I lost faith in the
potentialities of Miss Francis' discovery; but she either wasnt smart
enough to modify her formula, or else ... but there really wasnt any "or
else". She just wasnt smart enough to make the Metamorphizer marketable
and she was cheating me of the handsome return which should be
rightfully mine.
She'd made the stuff and deceived me by an unscrupulously worded
advertisement, now, no longer interested, she asked airily if further
effort were essential. Who wouldnt be indignant? And to cap it all she
suddenly ejaculated, "Can't dawdle around here all day" and after
snatching up a handful of the scythings, she left, rolling her large
body from side to side, galloping her untidy hair up and down over her
neck as she took rapid strides. Evidently the attractions of her messy
kitchen were more to her taste than the wholesome air of outdoors.
Pottering around, producing another mare's nest and eventually, I
suppose, getting another victim....
_7._ But I couldnt leave so cavalierly. Every leaf, stem, and blade of
the cancerous grass held me in somewhat the same way Miss Francis'
intense eyes did. It wasnt an aesthetic or morbid attraction--its basis
was strictly practical. If it could have been controlled--if only the
growth could be induced on a modified and proper scale--what a product!
A fury of frustration rocked my customary calm....
The stretch and retraction of the mower's arms, the swift, bright
curving as the scythe cut deeper, fascinated me. An unscrupulous
man--just as a whimsical thought--might go about in the night
inoculating lawns surreptitiously and appear with a crew next day to
offer his services in cutting them. Just goes to show how easy it is to
make dishonest speculations ... but of course such things don't pay in
the long run....
The lush area was being reduced, but perhaps not with the same rapidity
as at first when Mr Barelli was at the top of enthusiastic--if the
adjective was applicable--vigor. Oftener and oftener and oftener he
paused to sharpen his implement and I thought the cropped shocks were
becoming smaller and smaller. As the movement of the scythe swept the
guillotined grass backward, the trailing stolons entangled themselves
with the uncut stand, pulling the sheaves out of place and making the
stacks ragged and inadequate looking.