"On account of your female Burbank, your scientess (scientistess is a
twister. Peder Piber et a peg of piggled pebbers) won't play ball with W
R. The chief offered her a fabulous sum--'much beer in little kegs, many
dozen hardboiled eggs, and goodies to a fabulous amount'--fabulous for W
R, that is--to act as special writer on the grass business. J S Francis,
World Renowned Chemist, exclusively in the _Intelligencer_. You know.
Suppress her unfortunate sex. ORIGINATOR OF WILD GRASS TELLS ALL.
"Anyway she didnt grasp her chance. Practically told W R to go to hell.
Practically told him to go to hell," he repeated, evidently torn
between reprehension at the sacrilege and admiration of the daring.
Miss Francis plainly had what might be described as talent that way. I
debated whether to inform Gootes of my discovery of her craziness and
decided against it on the bare possibility it would be unwise to lower
the value of my connection with the Metamorphizer's discoverer. I was
soon rewarded for my caution.
"O Weeneru san," continued Gootes, evidently in an oriental vein
traveling westward, "not too hard for you to be picking up few yen. You
do not hate fifty potatoes from Editor san yesterday?"
"Forty," I corrected.
"Forty, fifty--what's the difference so long as youre healthy?" He
produced a card, showed it, tore it in half, waved his hand and
exhibited it whole and unharmed. "No kidding, chum; the old man has the
bug to make _you_ a special correspondent--on my advice
yunderstand--always looking out for my pals."
Well, why not? The wheel of Fortune had been a long time turning before
stopping at the proper spot. I had never had any doubt I'd someday be in
a position to prove my writing ability. Now all those who had sneered at
me years before--my English teachers and editors who had been too
jealous to recognize my existence by anything more courteous than a
printed rejection--would have to acknowledge their injustice. And in the
meantime all my accumulated experience had been added to enhance my
original talent. I'd sold everything that could be sold doortodoor and a
man acquires not only an ease with words but a wide knowledge of human
nature this way. Certainly I was better equipped all around than many of
these highly advertised magazine or newspaper authors.
"Well ... I don't know if I could spare the time...."
"O K, bigshot. Let me know if the market goes down and I'll come around
and put up more margin."
"How much will Mr Le ffaçasé--"
"How the hell do I know? More than youre worth--more than I'm getting,
because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the crap on the grass
and sent it nuts. Less than he'd have given Minerva-Medusa. Come and get
it straight from the horse's mouth."
My only previous visits to newspaper offices had been to place
advertisements, but I was prepared to find the _Daily Intelligencer_ a
veritable hive of activity. Perhaps some part of the big building which
housed the paper did hum, but not the floor devoted to the editorial
staff. That simply dozed. Gootes led me from the elevator through an
enormous room where men and an occasional woman sat indolently before
typewriters, stared druggedly into space or flew paper airplanes out of
open windows. The only sign of animation I saw as we walked what might
well have been a quartermile was one reporter (I judged him such by the
undersized hat on the back of his head) who enthusiastically munched a
sandwich while perusing a magazine containing photographs of women with
uncovered breasts. Even the nipples showed.
Beyond the cityroom was a battery of private offices. I will certainly
not conceal the existence of my extreme nervousness as we neared the
proximity of the famous editor. I hung back from the groundglass door
inscribed in shabby, peeling letters--in distinction to its neighbors,
newly and brightly painted--W.R. Le ffaçasé. Gootes, noting my
trepidation, put on the brogue of a burlesque Irishman.
"Is it afraid of Himself you are, me boy? Sure, think no more of it.
Faith, and wasnt he born Billy Casey; no better than the rest of us for
all his mother was a Clancy and related to the Finnegans? He's written
so often about coming from noble Huguenot stock he almost believes it
himself, but the Huguenots were dirty Protestants and when his time
comes W R'll send for the priest and take the last sacraments like the
true son of the Church he is in his heart. So buck up, me boy, and come
in and view the biggest faker in journalism."
But Gootes' flippancy reassured me no more than did the bare sunlit
office behind the door. I had somehow, perhaps from the movies, expected
to see an editor's desk piled with copypaper while he himself used
halfadozen telephones at once, simultaneously making incomprehensible
gestures at countless underlings. But Mr Le ffaçasé's desk was nude
except for an enameled snuffbox and a signed photograph of a president
whose administration had been subjected daily to the editor's bitterest
jabs. On the walls hung framed originals of the more famous political
cartoons of the last quartercentury, but neither telephone nor scrap of
manuscript was in evidence.
But who could examine that office with detached scrutiny while William
Rufus Le ffaçasé occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he opened
tiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered.
Under a shiny alpaca coat he wore an oldfashioned collarless shirt whose
neckband was fastened with a diamond stud. Neither collar nor tie
competed with the brilliance of this flashing gem resting in a shaven
stubblefold of his draped neck. His face was remarkably long, his
upperlip stretching interminably from a mouth looking to have been
freshly smeared with vaseline to a nose not unlike a golfclub in shape.
From the snuffbox on his desk, which I'd imagined a pretty ornament or
receptacle for small objects, he scooped with a flat thumb a conical
mound of graybrown dust and this, with a sweeping upward motion, he
pushed into a gaping nostril.
"Chief, this is Albert Weener."
"How do, Mr Weener. Gootes, who the bloody hell is Weener?"
"Why, Chief, he's the guy who put the stuff on the grass."
"Oh." He surveyed me with the attention due a worthy but not
particularly valuable specimen. "You bit the dog, ay, Weener?"
Gootes burst into a high, appreciative cackle. Le ffaçasé turned the
deathray of his left eye on him. "Youre a syncophant, Gootes," he stated
flatly, "a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthed
chickenhearted toadeating arselicking, slobbering syncophant."
I couldnt see how we were ever to reach the point this way, so I
ventured, "I understand in view of the fact that I inoculated Mrs
Dinkman's lawn you want me to contribute--"
"Desires grow smaller as intelligence expands," growled Le ffaçasé. "I
want nothing except to find a few undisturbed moments in which to read
the work of the immortal Hobbes."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I understood you wished me to report the progress
of the wildly growing grass."
"Cityeditor's province," he declared uninterestedly.
"No such thing on the _Intelligencer_," Gootes informed me in a loud
whisper. Le ffaçasé, who evidently heard him, glared, reached down and
retrieved the telephone from its concealment under the desk and snarled
into the mouthpiece, "I hate to interrupt your crapgame with the trivial
concerns of this organ men called a newspaper till you got on the
payroll. I'm sending you a man who knows something about the crazy
grass. Divorce yourself from whatever pornography youre gloating over at
the moment to see if we can use him."
His immediate obliviousness to our presence was so insulting that if
Gootes had not made the first move to leave I should have done so
myself. I don't know what vast speculations swept upon him as he hung up
the telephone, but I thought he might at least have had the courtesy to
nod a dismissal.
"Youre hired, bejesus," proclaimed Gootes, and of course I was, for
there was no doubt a brilliantly successful figure like Le
ffaçasé--whatever my opinion of his intemperate language or failure in
the niceties of deportment, he was a forceful man--had sized me up in a
flash and sensed my ability before I'd written a single line for his
paper.
_14._ The wage offered by the _Daily Intelligencer_--even assuming, as
they undoubtedly did, that the affair of the grass would be over shortly
and my service ended--was high enough to warrant my buying a secondhand
car. A previous unpleasantness with a financecompany made the
transaction difficult, with as little cash as I had on hand, but a
phonecall to the paper established my bonafides and I was soon driving
out Sunset Boulevard in a tomatocolored roadster, meditating on the
longdelayed upsurge of my fortunes.
The street was closed off by a road barrier quite some distance away and
tightly parked cars testified to the attraction of the expanding grass.
Scorning these idle sightseers, I pushed and shoved my way forward to
what had now become the focus of all my interests.
The Dinkmans had lived in a city block, an urban entity. It was no
pretentious group of houses, nor was it a repetitive design out of some
subdividing contractor's greedy mind. Moderatesized, mediumpriced,
middleclass bungalows; these were the homes of the Dinkmans and their
neighbors; a sample from a pattern which varied but was basically the
same here and in Oakland, Seattle and St. Louis; in Chicago,
Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland.
But now I looked upon no city scene, no picture built upon the
substantial foundation of daddy at the office all day, fixing a leaky
faucet of an evening, painting the woodwork during his summer vacation;
or mom, after a pleasant afternoon with the girls, unstintedly opening
cans for supper and harassedly watching the cleaning woman who came in
once a week. An alien presence, a rude fist through the canvas negated
the convention that this was a picture of reality. A coneshaped hill
rose to a blurred point, marking the burialplace of the Dinkman house.
It was a child's drawing of a coneshaped hill, done in green crayon; too
symmetrical, too evenly and heavily green to be a spontaneous product of
nature; man's unimaginative hand was apparent in its composition.
The sides of the cone flowed past the doors and windows of the adjacent
houses, blocking them as it had previously blocked the Dinkmans', but
their inhabitants, forewarned, had gone. More than mere desertion was
implied in their going; there was an implicit surrender, abandonment to
the invader. The base of the cone, accepting capitulation and still
aggressive, had reached to the lawns beyond, warning these householders
too to be ready for flight; over backfences to dwellings fronting
another street, and establishing itself firmly over the concrete
pavement before the Dinkmans' door.
I would be suppressing part of the truth if I did not admit that for the
smallest moment some perverted pride made me cherish this hill as my
work, my creation. But for me it would not have existed. I had done
something notable, I had caused a stir; it was the same kind of
sensation, I imagine, which makes criminals boast of their crimes.
I quickly dismissed this morbid thought, but it was succeeded by one
almost equally unhealthy, for I was ridden by a sudden wild impulse to
touch, feel, walk on, roll in the encroaching grass. I tried to control
myself, but no willing of mine could prevent me from going up and
letting the long runners slip through my half open hands. It was like
receiving some sort of electric shock. Though the blades were soft and
tender, the stems communicated to my palms a feeling of surging
vitality, implacable life and ineluctable strength. I drew back from the
green mass as though I had been doing something venturesome.
For, no matter what botanists or naturalists may tell us to the
contrary, we habitually think of plantlife as fixed and stolid,
insensate and quiescent. But this abnormal growth was no passive lawn,
no sleepy patch of vegetation. As I stood there with fascinated
attention, the thing moved and kept on moving; not in one place, but in
thousands; not in one direction, but toward all points of the compass.
It writhed and twisted in nightmarish unease, expanding, extending,
increasing; spreading, spreading, spreading. Its movement, by human
standards, was slow, but it was so monstrous to see this great mass of
verdure move at all that it appeared to be going with express speed,
inexorably enveloping everything in its path. A crack in the roadway
disappeared under it, a shrub was swallowed up, a patch of wall
vanished.
The eye shifted from whole to detail and back again. The overrun crack
was duplicated by an untouched one a few inches away--it too went; the
fine tentacles on top of the mound reached upward, shimmering like the
air on a hot summer's day, and near my feet hundreds of runners crept
ever closer, the pale stolons shiny and brittle, supporting the
ominously bristling green leaves.
I hope Ive not given the impression there was no human activity all this
while, that nothing was being done to combat the living glacier. On the
contrary, there was tremendous bustle and industry. The weedburning crew
was still fighting a rearguard action, gaining momentary successes here
and there, driving back the invading tendrils as they wriggled over
concrete sidewalk and roadway, only to be defeated as the main mass,
piling higher and ever higher, toppled forward on the temporarily
redeemed areas. For on this vastly thicker bulk the smoky fingers of
flame had no more effect than did the exertions of the scythemen,
hacking futilely away at the tough intricacies, or the rattling reapers
entangling themselves to become like waterlogged ships.
But greatest hopes were now being pinned on a new weapon. A dozen black
and sootylooking tanktrucks had come up and from them, like the arms of
a squid, thick hoses lazily uncoiled. Hundreds of gallons of dark
crudeoil were being poured upon the grass. At least ten bystanders
eagerly explained to any who would listen the purpose and value of this
maneuver. Petroleum, deadly enemy of all rooted things, would
unquestionably kill the weed. They might as well call off all the other
silly efforts, for in a day or two, as soon as the oil soaked into the
ground, the roots would die, the monster collapse and wither away. I
wanted with all my heart to believe in this hope, but when I compared
the feeble brown trickle to the vast green body I was gravely doubtful.
Shaken and thoughtful, I went back to my car and drove homeward,
reflecting on the fortuitousness of human actions. Had I not answered
Miss Francis' ad someone else would have been the agent of calamity; had
Mrs Dinkman been away from home that day another place than hers, or
perhaps no place at all, might have been engulfed.
On the other hand, I might still be searching for a chance to prove my
merit to the world. It seemed to me suddenly man was but a helpless
creature afterall.
_15._ It wasnt until I was almost at my own frontdoor I remembered the
purpose of my visit, which was not to draw philosophic conclusions, but
to order my impressions so the columns of the _Daily Intelligencer_
might benefit by the reactions of one so closely connected with the
spread of the devilgrass. I began tentatively putting sentences together
and by the time I got to my room and sat down with pencil and paper, I
was in a ferment of creative activity.
Now I cannot account for this, but the instant I took the pencil in my
fingers all thought of the grass left my mind. No effort to summon back
those fine rolling sentences was of the least avail. I slapped my
forehead and muttered, "Grass, grass, Bermuda, _Cynodon dactylon_"
aloud, varying it with such key words as "Dinkman, swallowing up, green
hill" and the like, but all I could think of was buying a tire (700 x
16) for the left rear wheel, paying my overdue rent, Gootes' infuriating
buffoonery, the possibilities for a man of my caliber in Florida or New
York, and with a couple of thousand dollars a nice mailorder business
could be established to bring in a comfortable income....
I left the chair and walked up and down the cramped room until the
lodger below rapped spitefully on his ceiling. I went to the bathroom
and washed my hands. I came back and inspected my teeth in the mirror.
Then I resumed my seat and wrote, "The Grass--" After a moment I crossed
this out and substituted, "Today, the grass--"
I decided the whole approach was unimaginative and unworthy of me. I
turned the paper over and began, "Like a dragon springing--" Good,
good--this was the way to start; it would show the readers at once they
were dealing with a man of imagination. "Like a dragon springing."
Springing from what? What did dragons spring from anyway? Eggs, like
snakes? Dragons were reptiles werent they? Or werent they? Give up the
metaphor? I set my teeth with determination and began again. "Not unlike
a fierce and belligerently furious dragon or some other ferocious,
blustery and furious chimerical creature, a menacing and comminatory
debacle is burning fierily in the heart of our fair and increasingly
populous city. As one with an innocent yet cardinal part in the
unleashing of this dire menace, I want to describe how the exposure of
this threatening menace affected me as I looked upon its menacing and
malevolent advance today...."
I sat back, not dissatisfied with my beginning, and thought about the
neat little bachelor apartment I could rent on what the _Intelligencer_
was paying me. Of course in a few days this hullabaloo would be all
over--for though I had little faith in the efficacy of the crudeoil I
knew really drastic measures would be taken soon and the whole business
stopped--but even in so short a time there could be no doubt Mr Le
ffaçasé would realize he needed me permanently on his staff and I would
be assured of a living in my own proper sphere. Thus fired with the
thoughts of accomplishment, I returned to my task, but I cannot say it
went easily. I remembered many great writers indulged in stimulants in
the throes of composition, but I decided such a course might blunt the
keen edge of my mind and afterall there was no better stimulant than
plain oldfashioned perseverance. I picked up the pencil again and
doggedly went on to the next sentence.
_16._ "What the hell's this?" demanded the cityeditor, looking at my
neatly rolled pile of manuscript.
I disdained to bandy words with an underling too lazy to make an effort
to get at what was probably the finest piece of writing ever brought to
him, so I unrolled my story, flattening it out so he might read it the
more easily.
"By the balls of Benjamin Franklin and the little white fringe on Horace
Greeley's chin, this goddamned thing's been wrote by hand! Arent there
any typewriters anymore? Did Mister Remington commit suicide unbeknownst
to me?"
"I'm sorry," I said stiffly. "I didnt think youd have any difficulty in
reading my handwriting." And in fact the whole business was absurd, for
if there's anything I pride myself on it's the gracefulness and
legibility of my penmanship. Typewriters might well be mandatory for the
ephemeral news item, but I had been hired as a special correspondent and
someday my manuscript would be a valuable property.
The cityeditor eyed me in a most disagreeable fashion. "I'm an educated
man," he stated. "Groton, Harvard and the WPA. No doubt with time and
care I could decipher this bid for next year's Pulitzer prize. But I
must consider the more handicapped members of the staff: compositors,
layoutmen and proofreaders; without my advantages and broadmindedness
they might be so startled by this innovation as to have their usefulness
permanently crippled. No; I'm afraid, Mr Weener, I must ask you to put
this in more orthodox form and type it up."
Just another example of pettish bureaucracy, the officiousness of the
jack-in-office. Except for the nuisance, it didnt particularly matter.
When Mr Le ffaçasé read my contribution I knew there would be no concern
in future whether it was handwritten, typewritten, or engraved in
Babylonic cuneiform on a freshly baked brick.
Nevertheless I went over to one of the unoccupied desks and began to
copy what I had written on the machine. I must say I was favorably
impressed by the appearance of my words in this form, for they somehow
looked more important and enduring. While still engaged in this task I
was slapped so heartily on the back I was knocked forward against the
typewriter and Gootes perched himself on a corner of the desk.
"Working the jolly old mill, what? I say, the old bugger wants to know
where your stuff is. Fact of the matter, he wants to know with quite a
bit of deuced bad language. Not a softspoken chap, you know, W R."
"I'll be through in a minute or two."
He gathered his pipe apparently out of my left ear and his tobacco pouch
from the air and very rudely, without asking my permission, picked up
the top sheet and started to read it. A thick eyebrow shot up
immediately and he allowed his pipe to hang slackly from his mouth.
"Purple," he exclaimed, "magenta, violet, lavender, mauve. Schmaltz,
real copperriveted, brassbound, steeljacketed, castiron schmaltz. I
havent seen such a genuine sample since my kid sister wrote up Jack the
Ripper back in 1889."
The manifest discrepancy in these remarks so confused me my fingers
stumbled over the typewriter keys. Evidently he intended some kind of
humor or sarcasm, but I could make nothing of it. How could his younger
sister...?
"Bertie boy," he said, after I had struggled to get another paragraph
down, "it breaks my heart to see you toil so. Let's take in as much as
youve done to the chief and either he'll be so impressed he'll put a
stenographer to transcribing the rest or else--"
"Or else?" I prompted.
"Or else he won't. Come on."
Mr Le ffaçasé had apparently not stirred since last we were in his
office. He opened his eyes, thumbed a pinch of snuff and asked Gootes,
"Where the bloody hell is that stuff on the grass?"
"Here it is, Chief. No date, no who what when and where, but very litry.
Very, very litry."
The editor picked up my copy and I could not help but watch him
anxiously for some sign of his reaction. It came forth promptly and
explosively.
"What the ingenious and delightfully painful hell is this, Gootes?"
"'As Reported by Our Special Writer, Albert Weener, The Man Who
Inoculated the Loony Grass.'"
"Gootes, you are the endproduct of a long line of incestuous idiots, the
winner of the boobyprize in any intelligencetest, but you have outdone
yourself in bringing me this verminous and maggoty ordure," said Le
ffaçasé, throwing my efforts to the floor and kicking at them. The
outrage made me boil and if he had not been an older man I might have
done him an injury. "As for you, Weener, I doubt if you will ever be
elevated to the ranks of idiocy. Get the sanguinary hell out of here
and do humanity the favor to step in front of the first tentontruck
driving by."
"One minute, Chief," urged Gootes. "Don't be hasty. Seen the latest on
the grass? Well, the mayor's asked the governor to call out the National
Guard; the _Times_'ll have an interview with Einstein tomorrow and the
_Examiner_'s going to run a symposium of what Herbert Hoover, Bernard
Shaw and General MacArthur think of the situation. Don't suppose perhaps
we could afford to ghost Bertie here?"
Was I never to escape from the malice inspired by the envy my literary
talent aroused? I had certainly expected that a man of the famous
editor's reputation would be above such pettiness. I was too dismayed
and downcast by the meanness of human nature to speak.
Le ffaçasé snuffed again and looked malevolently at the wall. A framed
caricature of himself returned the stare. "Very well," he grudgingly
conceded at length, "youre on the grass anyway, so you might as well
take this on too. Leave you only twentytwo hours a day to sleep in. You,
Weener, are still on the payroll--at half the agreedupon figure."
I opened my mouth to protest, but he turned on me with a snarl; baring
yellow and twisted teeth, unpleasant to see. "Weener, you look like a
criminal type to me; Lombroso couldve used you for a model to advantage.
Have you a policerecord or have you so far evaded the law? Let me tell
you, the _Intelligencer_ is the evildoers' nemesis. Is your conscience
clear, your past unsullied as a virgin's bed, your every deed open to
search? Do you know what a penitentiary's like? Did you ever hear the
clang of a celldoor as the turnkey slammed it behind him and left you to
think and stew and weep in a silence accented and made more wretched by
a yellow electricbulb and the stink of corrosivesublimate? Back to the
cityroom, you dabbling booby, you precious simpleton, addlepated dunce,
and be thankful my boundless generosity permits you to draw a weekly
paycheck at all and doesnt condemn you to labor forever unrewarded in
the subterranean vaults where the old files are kept."
First Miss Francis and now Le ffaçasé. Were all these great
intelligences touched? Was the world piloted by unbalanced minds? It
seemed incredible, impossible it should be so, but two such similar
experiences in so short a time apparently supported this gloomy view.
Horrible, I thought as I preceded Gootes out of the maniac's office,
unbelievably horrible.
"Son," advised Gootes, "never argue with the chief. He has the makings
of a firstclass apoplexy--I hope. You just keep squawking to the
bookkeeping department and youll get further than coming up against the
Old Man. Now let's go out and look at nature in the raw."
"But my copy," I protested.
"Oh, that," he said airily, "I'll run that off when we come back.
Deadlines mean nothing to Jacson Gootes, the compositors' companion, the
proofreaders' pardner, the layoutman's love. Come, Señor Veener, we take
look at el grasso grosso by the moonlight."
_17._ However, it was not moonlight illuminating the weird tumulus, but
the glare of a battery of searchlights, suggesting, as Gootes
irreverently remarked, the opening of a new supermarket. During my
absence the National Guard had arrived and focused the great
incandescent beams on the mound which now covered five houses and whose
threat had driven the inhabitants from as many more. The powdery blue
lights gave the grass an uncanny yellowish look, as though it had been
stricken by a disease.
The rays, directed low, were constantly being interrupted by the bodies
of the militiamen hurrying back and forth to accomplish some definite
task. "What goes on?" inquired Gootes.
The officer addressed had two gleaming silver bars on his shoulder. He
seemed very young and nervous. "Sorry--no one allowed this far without
special authorization."
"Working press." Gootes produced a reporter's badge from the captain's
bars.
"Oh. Excuse me. Say, that was a sharp little stunt, Mr--"
"Name of Jacson Gootes. _Intelligencer_."
"Captain Eltwiss. How did you learn stuff like that?"
I looked at him, for the name was somehow vaguely familiar. But to the
best of my knowledge I had never seen that smooth, boyish face before.
"Talent. Natural talent. What did you say all the shootin was about?"
"Getting ready to tunnel under," answered the officer affably. "Blow the
thing skyhigh from the middle and get rid of it right now. Not going to
let any grass grow under our feet."
"But I read an article saying neither dynamite, TNT nor nitroglycerin
would be effective against the grass; might even do more harm than
good."
"Writers." Captain Eltwiss dismissed literature without even resorting
to an exclamationpoint. "Writers." To underline his confidence the
boneshaking chatter of pneumatic chisels began a syncopated rattle.
Military directness would accomplish in one swift, decisive stroke at
the heart of things what civilian fumbling around the edges had failed
to do.
I looked with almost sentimental regret at the great conical heap. I had
brought it into being; in a few hours it would be gone and whatever fame
its brief existence had given me would be gone with it.
With swift method the guardsmen started burrowing. In ordered relays,
fresh workers replaced tired, and the pile of excavated dirt grew. Since
their activity, except for its urgency and the strangeness of the
situation, didnt differ from labors observable any time a street was
repaired or a foundation laid, I saw no point in watching, hour after
hour. I thought Gootes' persistence less a devotion to duty than the
idle curiosity which makes grown men gape at a steamshovel.
My hints being lost on him, I ascertained the hour they expected to be
finished and went home. Excitement or no excitement, I saw no reason to
abandon all routine. My forethought was proven when I returned refreshed
in midmorning as the last shovelfuls of dirt came from the tunnel and
the explosive charges were hurried to their place.
There was reason for haste. While the tunneling had been going on, all
the grassfighting activity had ceased, for the militia had ordered
weedburners, reapers, bulldozers and the rest off the scene. The weed,
unhampered for the first time since Mrs Dinkman attacked it with her
lawnmower, responded by growing and growing until more and more
guardsmen had to be detached to the duty of keeping it back from the
excavation--by the very means they had scorned so recently. Even their
most frantic efforts could not prevent the grass from sending its most
advanced tendrils down into the gaping hole where the wires were being
laid to detonate the charge.
There was so much dashing to and fro, so many orders relayed, so many
dispatches delivered that I thought I might have been witnessing an
outofdate Civilwar play instead of a peacetime action of the California
National Guard. Captain Eltwiss--I kept wondering where I'd heard the
name--was constantly being interrupted in what was apparently a very
friendly conversation with Gootes by the arrival of officiallooking
envelopes which he immediately stuffed into his pocket with every
indication of vexation. "Silly old fools," he muttered, each time the
incident happened.
Quick inspections made, plans checked, an order was rasped to clear the
vicinity. Gootes' agonized protest that he had to report the occasion
for the _Intelligencer_'s readers was ignored. "Can't start making
exceptions," explained Captain Eltwiss. Everyone--workingpress, militia,
sightseers and all, had to move back a couple of blocks where
intervening trees and houses cut us off from any view of the green hill.
"This is terrible," exclaimed Gootes frantically. "Tragic. Howll I live
it down? Howm I going to face W R? Godlike wrath. 'What poolhall were
you dozing in, Gootes? Asleep on your bloody feet, ay, somnambulistic
offspring of a threetoed sloth?' Wait all night for a story and then not
get it, like the star legman on the Jackson Junior Highschool
_Jive-Jitterbug_. I'll never be able to hold my head up again. Say
something, say something, Weener--Ive _got_ to get this."
"We'll be able to hear the explosion from here," I remarked to console
him, for his distress was genuine.
"Oh," he groaned. "Hear the explosion. Albert, Albert ... you have a
fertile mind. Why didnt I hide myself before they told us to clear out?
Why didnt I get W R to hire a plane? Why didnt I foresee this and do any
of a hundred things? A microphone and automatic moviecamera ... Goony
Gootes, they called him, the man who missed all bets.... A captive
balloon, now.... Hay! What about a roof?"
"Trees," I objected, with a mental picture of him bursting into the
nearest house and demanding entrance to the roof.
"Bushwa. Zair's no tree in z' way of z' old box over zair--allons!"
It wasnt till he had urged me inside and up a flight of stairs that I
realized the "box" was Miss Francis' apartmenthouse. It had been a
logical choice, since its height and ugliness distinguished it even from
its unhandsome neighbors. Less than a week had gone by since I had come
here for the first time. As I followed Gootes' grasshopper leaps upward
at a more dignified pace, I reflected how strangely my circumstances had
changed.
The shoddily carpeted halls were musty and still as we climbed, except
for the unheeded squeaking of a radio someone had forgotten to turn off.
You could always tell when a radio was being listened to, for when
disregarded it sulkily gave off painfully listless noises in frustration
and loneliness.
I wasnt at all surprised to find Miss Francis among the spectators
crowded on the roof in evidence of having no more important occupation.
"I somehow expected you. Have you any new tricks?" she asked Gootes
coaxingly.
"Ecod, your worship, wot time ave I for legerdemain? Wif your elp, now,
I'd be a fine gentleman-journalist, stead of a noverworked ack."
"Ha," she said genially, busy with the toothpick, "youll find enough
respectable laboratory mechanics eager to cooperate. How long will it be
before they shoot, do you know?"
Gootes shook his head and I strained my eyes toward the grass.
Symmetrical and shimmeringly green, removed as it now was from all
connotations of danger by distance and the promise of immediate
destruction, it showed serenely beautiful and unaffected by the
machinations of its attackers. I could almost have wept as I traced its
sloping sides upward to the rounded peak on top. Reversing all previous
impressions, it now appeared to be the natural inhabitant and all the
houses, roadways, pavements, fences, automobiles, lightpoles and the
rest of the evidences of civilization the intruders.
But even as I looked at it so eagerly it moved and wavered and I heard
the muffled boom of explosion. The roof trembled and windows rattled
with diminishing echoes. The noise was neither a great nor terrifying
one and I distinctly remember thinking it quite inadequate to the
occasion.
I believe all of us there, when we heard the report, expected to see a
vast hole where the grass had been. I'm sure I did. When it was clear
this hadnt happened, I continued to stare hard, thinking, since my
highschool physics was so hazy, I had somehow reversed the relative
speed of sight and sound and we had heard the noise before seeing the
destruction.
But the green bulk was still there.
Oh, not unchanged, by any means. The smooth, picturebook slope had
become jagged and bruised while the regular, evenlyrounded apex had
turned into a sort of phrygian cap with its pinnacle woundedly askew.
The outlines which had been sharp were now blurred, its evenness had
become scraggly. The placid surface was vexed; the attempt on its being
had hurt. But not mortally, for even with outline altered, it remained;
defiant, certain, inexorable.
The air was filled with small green particles whirling and floating
downward. Feathery, yet clumsy, they refused to obey gravity and seek
the earth urgently, but instead shifted and changed direction, coyly
spiraling upward and sideways before yielding to the inevitable
attraction.
"At least there's less of it," observed Gootes. "This much anyway," he
added, holding a broken stolon in his fingers.
"_Cynodon dactylon_," said Miss Francis, "like most of the family
Gramineae, is propagated not only by seed, but by cuttings as well. That
is to say, any part of the plant (except the leaves or flowers)
separated from the parent whole, upon receiving water and nourishment
will root itself and become a new parent or entity. The dispersion of
the mass, far from making the whole less, as our literary friend so
ingenuously assumes, increases it to what mathematicians call the _n_th
power because each particle, finding a new restingplace unhampered by
the competition for food it encountered when integrated with the parent
mass, now becomes capable of spreading infinitely itself unless checked
by factors which deprive it of sustenance. These facts have been
repeated a hundred times in letters, telegrams and newspaper articles
since the project of attempting to blow up the inoculated batch was
known. In spite of warnings the authorities chose to go ahead. No, make
no mistake, this fiasco has not set _Cynodon dactylon_ back a
millimeter; rather it has advanced it tremendously."
There was silence while we absorbed this unpleasant bit of information.
Gootes was the first to regain his usual cockiness and he asked, "You
say fiasco, professor. O K--can you tell us just why it was a fiasco? I
know they stuck enough soup under it to blow the whole works and when it
went off it gave out with a good bang."
"Certainly. _Cynodon dactylon_ spreads in what may be called jumps. That
is, the stems are short and jointed. Those aboveground, the true stems,
are called stolons, and those below, from which the roots spread, are
rhizomes. Conceive if you will twoinch lengths of stiff wire--and this
plant is vulgarly called wiregrass in some regions just as it is called
devilgrass here--bent on either end at rightangles. Now take these bits
and weave them horizontally into a thick mass. Then add, vertically,
more of the wires, breaking the pattern occasionally and putting in more
in odd places, just to be sure there are no logical fracturepoints.
Cover this involved web--not forgetting it has three dimensions despite
my instructions treating it as a plane--with earth, eight, ten, or
twelve inches deep. Then try to blow it up with dynamite or
trinitrotoluene and see if you havent--in a much lesser
degree--duplicated and accounted for the situation in hand."
Everything now seemed unusually and, perhaps because of the contrast,
unreasonably quiet. Downstairs the radio, which had been monotonously
soothing a presumptive audience of unsatisfied housewives with languid
ballads, raised its pitch several tones as though for the first time it
had become interested in what it purveyed.
"... Yes, unseen friends, God is preparing His vengeance for wickedness
and sin, even as you are listening. You have been warned many times of
the wrath to come, but I say to you, the wrath is at hand. Even now God
is giving you a sign of His displeasure; a cloud no bigger than a man's
hand. But, O my unseen friends, that cloud has within it all the storms,
cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes and tornadoes necessary to destroy you
and yours. Unless you repent of your pride and sloth, Judgment will
surely come upon you. The Lord has taken a simple and despisèd weed and
caused it to multiply in defiance of all your puny powers and efforts. O
my friends, do not fight this grass, but cherish it; do not allow it to
be cut down for it is full of significance for you. Call off all your
minions and repent, lest if the holy messenger be injured a more
terrible one is sent. But now, my friends, I see my time is up; please
send your contributions so urgently needed to carry on the Divine Work
to Brother Paul care of the station to which you are listening."
"That's one way of looking at it," said Gootes. "Adios amigos."
He went down the stairs at an even more breakneck pace than he had come
up. Almost in front of the apartmenthouse door we nearly collided with
two officers in angry dispute.
"You mean to tell me, Captain, that not one of the urgent orders to
suspend operations came through to you?"
"Colonel, I havent seen a thing against the project except some fool
articles in a newspaper."
Suddenly I remembered where I'd seen the name Eltwiss. It was on the
financial page, not far away from the elusive quotation on Consolidated
Pemmican and Allied Concentrates for which I'd been idly searching.
"Eltwiss Explosives Cut Melon." Funny how things come back to you as
soon as you put them out of your mind.
Miss Francis, who had followed us down was busy collecting some of the
stolons which were still floating lazily downward.
_18._ An illiterate patchwork of lifeless and uninteresting scribbling
appeared under my byline day after day in the _Intelligencer_. Not a
word, not a thought of my own was left. I was not restrained from
protest by the absurd threats of Le ffaçasé, but prudence dictated not
throwing away dirty water before I got clean, and the money from the
paper, while negligible of course, yet provided my most pressing needs.
As I was being paid for my name while my talents went to waste, I was
free to go anywhere I pleased, but I had little desire to leave the
vicinity of the grass. It exerted upon me, more understandably, the same
fascination as on the merely curious.
But I was not permitted unmolested access to the phenomenon with which I
was so closely concerned. An officious young guardsman warned me away
brusquely and I was not allowed to come near until I swallowed my pride
and claimed connection with the _Intelligencer_. Even then it was
necessary for me to explain myself to several nervous soldiers on pain
of being ordered from the spot.
I was struck as I had not been before by the dynamic quality of the
grass; never the same for successive instants. Constant movement and
struggle as the expanding parts fought for room among themselves,
pushing upward and outward, seemed to indicate perceptible sentience
permeating the whole body. Preparing, brooding, it was disturbed,
searching, alert.
Its external aspect reflected the change. The proportions of height to
breadth had altered since the explosion. The peak had disappeared,
flattening out into an irregular plateau. Its progress across the
ground, however, had been vastly accelerated; it had crossed the streets
on all sides of the block and was spreading with great rapidity over the
whole district. For the moment no new effort was apparently being made
to halt its progress, the activities of the militia being confined to
patrolling the area and shooing decent citizens away. I wondered if a
new strategy contemplated allowing the thing to exhaust itself. Since it
looked more vigorous with each passing hour, I saw myself on the payroll
of the _Intelligencer_ for a long time to come.
Captain Eltwiss walked by and I asked him if this were so. "Don't
worry," he reassured me. "We're hep now, with the actual, unbeatable
mccoy. Park the body and watch what happens to old Mr Grass."
I had every intention of staying and I thought it advisable to remain
close to the captain in order, if his boast were wellfounded, to be in
on the kill. He was in excellent spirits and although I did not think it
tactful to refer to it, it was evident his little difference with the
colonel about the unreceived orders had not affected him. We chatted
amiably. I mentioned what Miss Francis had said about the weed springing
up in new places from each of the shreds dispersed by the explosion, but
he merely shrugged and laughed.
"I know these longbearded scientific nuts. They can find calamity around
the corner quicker than a drunk can find a bar."
"The discoverer of the Metamorphizer is a woman, so her long beard is
doubtful," I told him, just a little irritated by his cocksureness.
He laughed with as much ease at himself as at anything else. "A woman
scientist, ay? Funny things womenll do when they can't get a man. But
longbearded or flatchested it's all the same. Gruesome, that's what
they are, gruesome. Forget it. After we get this cleaned up we'll take
care of any others that start, but personally I don't think therell be
any. Sounds like a lot of theory to me."
I looked contemptuously at him, for he had that unimaginative approach
which disdains Science and so holds Civilization back on its upward
path. If the world's future rested with people like this, I thought, we
should never have had dynamite or germtheories or airplanes capable of
destroying whole cities at a blow.
But Captain Eltwiss was a servant to the Science he looked down on. The
answer he had bragged about now appeared and it was a scientific
contribution if ever there was one. A division of tanks, twenty or
thirty of them with what appeared to be sledrunners invertedly attached
to their fronts, rolled into sight. "Wirecutters," he explained with
pride. "Same equipment used for barbedwire on the Normandy beachhead. Go
through anything like cheese."
The tanks drew up in a semicircle and the drivers came out of their
vehicles for lastminute preparations. A final check was made of gas,
oil, and the positions of the wirecutters. Maps, showing the location of
each house now covered by the grass, were studied and compasspoints
checked against them. I admired the thoroughness and efficiency of the
arrangements. So did the captain.
"The idea is simple. These tanks are shocktroops. Theyll cut their way
into the middle of the stuff. This will give us entranceways and a
central operating point, besides hitting the grass where its strength is
greatest. From there--" he paused impressively--"from there we'll throw
everything in the book at it and a few that arent. All the stuff they
used before we came. Only we'll use it efficiently. And everything else.
Even hush-hush stuff. Just got the release from Washington. The minute
one of these stems shows we'll stamp it out. We'll fight it and fight it
until we beat it and we won't leave a bit of it, no, sir, not one bit of
it, alive."
He looked at me triumphantly. Behind his triumph was a hint of the vast
resources and the slowmoving but unassailable force his uniform
represented. It sounded as though he had been correct in his boast and
something drastic indeed would "happen to Mr. Grass."
The tanks were ready to go at last and the drivers climbed back into
them and disappeared, leaving the steel monsters looking as though theyd
swallowed the men. Like bubbles of air in a narrow glass tube they began
to jerk backward and forward, until at some signal--I presume given by
radio--they jumped ahead, their exhausts bellowing defiance of the grass
mauled and torn by their treads.
They went onward with careless scorn, leaving behind a bruised and
trampled pathway. The captain followed in the track and I after him,
though I must admit it was not without some trepidation I put my feet
upon the battered and now lifeless mass packed into a hard roadbed, for
I recalled clearly how the grass had wrenched the ladder from the
firemen and how it had impishly attacked the broadcaster's equipment.
The tanks moved ahead steadily until the slope of the mound began to
rise sharply and the runners of grass, instead of flattening obediently
behind, curled and twisted grotesquely as the tracks passed over them,
lightly slapping at the impervious steel sides. Small bunches, mutilated
and crushed, sprang back into erectness, larger ones flopped limply as
their props were pushed aside.
Then, suddenly, the tank we were trailing disappeared. There was no
warning; one second it was pursuing its way, an implacable executioner,
the next it had plunged into the weed and was lost to sight. The ends of
the grass came together spitefully behind it, weaving themselves
together, knitting, as we watched, an opaque blanket. It closed over and
around so that the smooth track ended abruptly, bitten by a wiry green
portcullis.
I was dismayed, but the captain seemed happy. "Now we're getting
somewhere," he exclaimed. "The little devils are eating right into the
heart of the old sonofabitch."
We stood there gaping stupidly after our lost champion, but the grass
mound was enigmatic and offered us no information as to its progress. A
survey of the other tracks showed their tanks, too, had burrowed into
the heart of the weed like so many hounds after a rabbit.
"Well," said the captain, who by now had apparently accepted me as his
confidant, "let's go and see what's coming in over the radio."
I was glad to be reminded the tanks werent lost, even temporarily, and
that we would soon learn of their advance. Field headquarters had been
set up in a house about two blocks away and there, after exchanging
salutes, passwords, and assorted badinage, the captain led. The men in
contact with the tanks, shoulders hunched, fingers rapid with pad and
pencil, were sitting in a row by a wall on which had been tacked a large
and detailed map of the district.
In addition to their earphones, a loudspeaker had also been thoughtfully
set up, apparently to take care of any such curious visitors as
ourselves. The disadvantage, soon manifest, was that no plan had been
devised to unscramble the reports from the various tanks. As a
consequence, whenever two or three came in together, the reports
overlapped, resulting in a jumble of unintelligible sounds from the
loudspeaker.
"Brf brf brm," it was saying as we entered the room. "Rrr rrr about
three hundred meters khorof khorof khorof north by northeast. Can you
hear me, FHQ? Come in, FHQ."
There was a further muddle of words, then, "I think my motor's going to
conk out. Shall I backtrack, FHQ? Come in, FHQ."
"Rugged place to stall," commented captain Eltwiss sympathetically, "but
we can pull him out in halfashake soons we get things under control."
The loudspeaker, after a great deal of gibberish, condescended to
clarity again. "... about five hundred meters. Supposed to join SMT5 at
this point. Can't raise him by radio. What do you have on SMT5, FHQ?
Come in, FHQ."
I was still speculating as to what had happened to SMT5 when the
loudspeaker once more became intelligible. "... and the going's getting
tougher all the time. I don't believe these goddamned wirecutters are
worth a pissinasnowhole. Just fouled up, that's what they are, just
fouled up. Got further if theyd been left off."
His grumbling was blotted out. For a moment there was complete babel,
then "... if I can guess, it's somehow got in the motor and shorted the
ignition. Ive got to take a chance and get out to look at it. This is
SMT3 reporting to FHQ. Now leaving the transmitter."
"... stalled so I turned on my lights. Can you hear me, FHQ? Come in
FHQ, O K, O K, don't get sore. So I turned on my lights. I'm not going
to do a Bob Trout, but I want to tell you it's pretty creepy. I guess
this stuff looks pretty and green enough on top, especially in daylight,
but from where I am now it's like an illustration out of Grimm's _Fairy
Tales_--something about the place where the wicked ogre lived. Not a bit
of green. Not a bit of light except from my own which penetrate about
two feet ahead and stop. Dead. Yellow and reddishbrown stems. Thick.
Interlaced. How the hell I ever got this far I'd like to know. But not
as much as how I'm going to get out.
"I'm sticking my head out of the turret now. As far as these stemsll let
me. Which isnt far. Theyre a solid mass on top of the machine. And
beside it. I'm going to take a few tools and make for the engine. Only
thing to do. Can't sit here and describe grassroots to you dogrobbers
all day long. See if I can't get her running and back out. Then I resign
from the state of California. Right then. This is SMT7 leaving the
transmitter for essential repairs and signing off."
For hours the reports kept coming in, all in identically the same vein:
rapid progress followed by a slowdown, then either engine trouble or a
failure to keep rendezvous by another tank, all messages concluding
alike: "Now leaving transmitter." It was no use for field headquarters
frantically to order them to stay in their tanks no matter what
happened. They were young, ablebodied, impatient men and when something
went wrong they crawled out to fight their way through a few feet of
grass to fix it. Afterall they were in the heart of a great city. Their
machines had burrowed straightforwardly into the grass and no threats of
courtmartial could make them sit and look silly till help arrived and
they were tamely rescued. So one by one they wormed their way out to fix
the ignition, adjust the carburetor, or hack free the cogs which moved
the tracks. And one by one their radios became silent and were not heard
again.
The captain went from cockiness to doubt, from doubt to anxiety, and
then to anguished fury. He had been so completely confident of the
maneuver's outcome that its failure drove him, not to despair, but to
anger. He knew most of the tankdrivers personally and the picture of
these friends trapped in their tiny, evernarrowing pockets of green sent
him into a frenzy. "SMT1--that's Lew Brown. Don't get out, Lew--stay
where you are, you jackass. Stay where you are, Lew," he bellowed into
the unresponsive loudspeaker.
"Jake White. Jake White's in four. Said I'd buy him a drink afterwards.
Joke. He's a cocacola boy. Why can't you stay inside, Jake? Why can't
you stay put?"
Unable to bear it longer, he rushed from field headquarters shouting,
"Let's get'm out, boys, let's get'm out," and would personally have led
a volunteer party charging on foot into the grass if he had not been
forcibly restrained and sympathetically led away, sobbing hysterically,
toward hospitalization and calming treatment.
The captain's impulse, though impractical, was shared by all his
comrades. For the moment the destruction of the grass became secondary
to the rescue of the trapped tankmen. If field headquarters had bustled
before, it now turned into a veritable beehive, with officers shouting,
exhorting, complaining, and men running backwards and forwards as though
there were no specific for the situation except unlimited quantities of
their own sweat.
_19._ It would be futile to relate, even if I could recall them, all the
various methods and devices which were suggested and rejected or tried
and proved failures in the attempt to rescue the tankdrivers. Press and
radio followed every daring essay and carefully planned endeavor until
the last vicarious quiver had been wrung from a fascinated public. For
twentyfour hours there was no room on the front pages of the newspapers
for anything but the latest on the "prisoners of the grass," as they
were at first called. Later, when hope for their rescue had diminished
and they were forced from the limelight to make way for later
developments, they were known simply as "heroes in the fight against the
weird enemy."
For the grass had not paused chivalrously during the interval. On the
contrary, it seemed to take renewed vigor from the victims it had
entombed. House after house, block after block were engulfed. The names
of those forced from their homes were no longer treated individually and
written up as separate stories, but listed in alphabetical order, like
battle casualties. Miss Francis, frantically trying to get all her
specimens and equipment moved from her kitchen in time, had been ousted
from the peeling stucco and joined those who were finding shelter (with
some difficulty) in other parts of the city.
The southernmost runners crept down toward Hollywood Boulevard where
every effort was being marshaled to combat them, and the northernmost
wandered around and seemingly lost themselves in the desert of sagebrush
and greasewood about Hollywood Bowl. Traffic through Cahuenga Pass, the
great artery between Los Angeles and its tributary valley, was
threatened with disruption.
But while the parent body was spreading out, its offspring, as Miss
Francis foresaw, had come into existence. Dozens of nuclei were
reported, some close at hand, others far away as the Sunset Strip and
Hollywoodland. These smaller bodies were vigorously attacked as soon as
discovered but of course they had in every case made progress too great
to be countered, for they were at first naturally indistinguishable
from ordinary devilgrass and by the time their true character was
determined so rapid was their growth they were already beyond all
possibility of control.
The grass was now everyone's primary thought, replacing the moon (among
lovers), the incometax (among individuals of importance), the weather
(among strangers), and illness (among ladies no longer interested in the
moon), as topics of conversation. Old friends meeting casually after
many years' lapse greeted each other with "What's the latest on the
grass?" Radiocomedians fired gagmen with weeks of service behind them
for failure to provide botanical quips, or, conversely, hired raw
writers who had inhabited the fringes of Hollywood since Mack Sennett
days on the strength of a single agrostological illusion. Newspapers ran
long articles on _Cynodon dactylon_ and the editors of their garden
sections were roused from the somnolence into which they had sunk upon
receiving their appointment and shoved into doubleleaded boldfaced
position.
Textbooks on botany began outselling popular novels and a mere work of
fiction having the accidental title _Greener Than You Think_ was
catapulted onto the bestseller list before anyone realized it wasnt an
academic discussion of the family Gramineae. Contributors to
scientifiction magazines burst bloodvessels happily turning out ten
thousand words a day describing their heroes' adventures amid the red
grass of Mars or the blue grass of Venus after they had
singlehanded--with the help of a deathray and the heroine's pure
love--conquered the green grass of Tellus.
Professors, shy and otherwise, were lured from their classrooms to
lecture before ladies' clubs hitherto sacred to the accents of
transoceanic celebrities and Eleanor Roosevelt. There they competed on
alternate forums with literate gardeners and stuttering horticultural
amateurs. Stolon, rhizome and culm became words replacing crankshaft and
piston in the popular vocabulary; the puerile reports Gootes fabricated
under my name as the man responsible for the phenomenon were syndicated
in newspapers from coast to coast, and a query as to rates was received
from the _Daily Mail_.
Brother Paul's exhortations on the radio increased in both length and
intensity as the grass spread. Pastors of other churches and conductors
of similar programs denounced him as misled; realestate operators,
fearful of all this talk about the grass bringing doom and so
depreciating the value of their properties, complained to the Federal
Communications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Year
and hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked by
their own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser and detractor alike
was to buy up more radiotime.
No one doubted the government would at length awaken from its apathy and
counter the menace swiftly and efficiently, as always before in crises
when the country was threatened. The nation with the highest rate of
production per manhour, the greatest efficiency per machine, the
greatest wealth per capita, and the greatest vision per mindseye was not
going to be defeated by a mere weed, however overgrown. While waiting
the inevitable action and equally inevitable solution the public had all
the excitement of war without suffering the accompanying privations and
bereavements. The grass was a nuisance, but a nuisance with titillating
compensations; most people felt like children whose schoolhouse had
burned down; they were sorry, they knew there'd be a new one, they were
quite ready to help build it--but in the meantime it was fun.
The _Daily Intelligencer_ was gorged with letters from its readers on
the subject of the grass. Many of them wanted to know what a newspaper
of its standing meant by devoting so much space to an ephemeral
happening, while many more asked indignantly why more space wasnt given
to something affecting their very lives and fortunes. Communist
partymembers, using improbable pennames, asked passionately if this was
not a direct result of the country's failure to come to a thorough
understanding with the Soviet Union? Terrified propertyholders irately
demanded that something, SOMETHING be done before realestate became as
valueless in Southern California as it already was in Red Russia.
Technocrats demanded the government be immediately turned over to a
committee of engineers and competent agronomists who would deal with the
situation as it deserved after harnessing the wasted energy of the
populace. Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result
of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen--in
conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions--was at the bottom of the grass.
Brother Paul wrote--and his letter was printed, for he now advertised
his radioprograms in the columns of the _Intelligencer_--that
Caesar--presumably the state of California--had been chastened for
arrogating to itself things not to be rendered unto Caesar and the
tankmen had deservedly perished for their sacrilege. The letter aroused
fury--the followers of Brother Paul either didnt read the _Intelligencer_
or were satisfied their leader needed no championing, if they did--and
other letters poured in calling for various expressions of popular
disapproval, from simple boycott up through tarring and feathering to
plain and elaborated--with gasoline and castration--lynching. The grass
was a hot topic.
With its acute perception of the popular taste Le ffaçasé's paper
printed not only most of the communications--the unprintable ones were
circulated among the staff till they wore out or disappeared
mysteriously in the Gents Room--but maps showing the daily progress of
the weed, guesses as to the duration of the plague by local prophets,
learned articles by scientists, opinions of statesmen, views of
prominent entertainers, in fact anything having any remote connection
with the topic of the day. The paper even went further and offered a
reward of ten thousand dollars to anyone advancing a suggestion leading
to the destruction of the intruder. Its circulation jumped at the
expense of less perspicacious rivals and the incoming mail, already many
times normal, swelled to staggering proportions.
The contest was taken with deadly seriousness, for the livelihood of
many of the paper's readers was suddenly threatened by its subject and
from a new quarter. In the same issue as the offered reward there
appeared an interview with the accredited head of the organized
motionpicture producers. This retiring gentleman was rumored to be
completely illiterate, an unquestionable slander, for he had written
checks to support every cause dedicated to keeping wages where they
belonged and seeing the wage earners didnt waste the money so
benevolently supplied by their employers.
I got the details of the interview from the interviewer himself. The
magnate--he had no objection to the description--had been irritable and
minced no words. The grass was bad alike for production and boxoffice,
taking everyone's mind off the prime business of making and viewing
motionpictures. It was injuring The Industry and he couldnt conceal the
fact that The Industry, speaking through his mouth and with his
vocabulary, was annoyed.
"Unless this disgraceful episode ends within ten days," he had said
sternly, "the Motion Picture Industry will move to Florida."
It was an ultimatum; Southern Californians heard and trembled. The last
time this dread interdiction had been invoked--in the midst of a bitter
election fight--it had sent them scurrying to the polls to do their
benefactor's bidding. Now indeed the grass menace would be taken
seriously.
The next day's paper had news of more immediate concern to me. The
governor had appointed a special committee to investigate the situation
and the first two witnesses to be called were Josephine Spencer Francis
and Albert Weener.
_20._ William Rufus Le ffaçasé was as enthusiastic as his phlegmatic
nature permitted. He called me into his office and half raised the
snuffbox off the desk as though to offer me an unwelcome pinch. "Youre a
made man now, Weener," he said, thinking better of his generosity and
putting the snuffbox back. "Your name will be in headlines from Alabama
to Alberta--and all due to the _Intelligencer_."
I would have resented this as a gross misappropriation of credit--for
surely all obligation was on the other side--had I not been deeply
disturbed by the prospect of being haled before this committee like a
criminal before the bar of justice.
"I'd much rather avoid this unpleasant notoriety, Mr. Le ffaçasé," I
protested. "Since the _Intelligencer_, for reasons best known to itself,
chooses not to avail itself of my contributions, but prints my name over
words I have not written, there could be no possible objection to my
slipping away to Nevada until this investigation ends."
His face became a pretty shade of plum. "Weener, youre a thief, a petty,
cadging, sly, larcenous, pilfering, bloody thief. You take the _Daily
Intelligencer_'s honest dollars without a qualm, aye, with a smirk on
your imbecile face, proposing with the cool impudence of the born
embezzler to return no value for them. Weener, you forget yourself. The
_Intelligencer_ picked you out of a gutter, a nauseous, dungspattered
and thoroughly fitting gutter, and pays you well, mark that, you
feebleminded counterfeit of a confidenceman, pays you well, not for your
futile, lecherous pawings at the chastity of the English language, but
out of the boundless generosity which only a newspaper with a great soul
can have. And what do you propose to do in gratitude? To run, to flee,
to hide from the expression of authority, to bring disgrace upon the
very newspaper whose munificence pumps life into your boneless,
soulless, gutless carcass. Not another word, not a sound, not a ghoulish
syllable from your ineffective vocabulary. Out of my presence before I
lose my temper. Get down to whatever smokefilled and tastelessly
decorated room that committee is meeting in and do not leave while it is
in session, neither to eat, sleep, nor move those bowels whose
possession I gravely doubt. You hear me, Weener?"
For some reason the committee was not attempting to get the story of the
grass in chronological order. When I arrived, the six distinguished
gentlemen were trying to find out all about the crudeoil poured,
apparently without effect, in what now seemed so long ago, but which
actually had been less than two weeks before.
Flanked on either side by his colleagues, the little black plug of his
hearingaid sticking out like a misplaced unicorn's horn, was the
chairman, Senator Jones, his looseskinned old fingers resting lightly on
the bright table, the nails square and ridged, the flesh brownspotted.
He adjusted a pair of goldrimmed spectacles, quickly found the
improvement in his vision unpleasant, and rumbled, "What did it cost the
taxpayers?"
On the stand, the chief of police was settled in great discomfort, so
far forward on the rounded edge of his chair that his balance was a
source of fascinated speculation to the gallery. He squirmed a perilous
half inch forward, but before he had time to reply, old Judge Robinson
of the State Supreme Court, who scorned any palliation of his deafness
such as Senator Jones condescended to, cupped his left ear with his hand
and shrieked, "Ay? Ay? What's that? Speak up, can't you? Don't sit there
mumbling."
Assemblyman Brown, head of the legislature's antiracketeering committee,
intense concentration expressed in the forward push of his vigorous
shoulders and the creased lines on his youthful forehead, asked if it
were not true that the oil had been held up by a union jurisdictional
dispute? There was a spattering of applause from the listeners at this
adroit question and one man in the back of the room cried "Sha--" and
then sat down quickly.
Attorney General Smith wanted to know just who had ordered the oil in
the first place and whether the propertyowners had given their consent
to its application. The attorney general's square face, softened and
rounded by fat, shone on the wriggling chief like a klieglight; his
lips, irresistibly suggesting twin slices of underdone steak, parting
into a pleasant smile when his question had concluded. The other two
members of the committee seemed about to inquire further when the chief
managed to stammer, he was awfully sorry, gentlemen, but he had been
out of town and hadnt even heard of the oil till this moment.
He was instantly dismissed from the stand and a new witness, from the
mayor's office, was called, with no happier results. He, too, was about
to be excused when Dr Johnson, who represented Science on the committee,
descended from Himalayan abstraction to demand what effect the oil had
had on the grass.
There were excited whisperings and craning of feminine heads as Dr
Johnson propounded his question. The interest he excited was, however,
largely vicarious. For he was famous, not so much in his own right, as
in being the husband of the _Intelligencer_'s widely read society
columnist whose malapropisms caused more wry enjoyment and fearsome
anticipation than an elopement to Nevada.
"And what effect did the oil have on the grass?" he repeated.
The query caused confusion, for it seemed the committee could not
proceed until this fact had been ascertained. Various technicians were
sent for, and the doctor, tall, solemn and benign, looked over his
stiff, turned-down collar and the black string tie drooping around it,
as though searching for some profound truth which would be readily
apparent to him alone.
The experts discoursed at some length in esoteric terms--one even
bringing a portable blackboard on which he demonstrated, with diagrams,
the chemical, geologic and mathematical aspects of the problem--but no
pertinent information was forthcoming till some minor clerk in the
Department of Water and Power, who had only got to the stand through a
confusion of names, said boldly, "No effect whatever."
"Why not?" asked Judge Robinson. "Was the oil adulterated? Speak up,
speak up; don't mumble."
Henry Miller, the Southland's bestknown realtor ("Los Angeles First in
Population by Nineteen Ninety Nine"), who had connections in the oil
industry, as well as in citrus and walnut packing, frowned
disapprovingly. The clerk said he didnt know, but he might venture a
guess--
Senator Jones informed him majestically that the committee was concerned
with facts, not speculations. This created an impasse until Attorney
General Smith tactfully suggested the clerk might be permitted to guess,
entirely off the record. After the official stenographer had been
commanded sternly not to take down a single word of conjecture, the
witness was allowed to advance the opinion that the oil hadnt killed the
plant because it had never reached the roots.
"Ay?" questioned the learned judge, looking as though neither his lunch
nor breakfast nor, for that matter, any nourishment absorbed since the
Taft administration, had agreed with him.
"I'm a bit of a gardener myself, gentlemen," the witness assured them
confidentially, settling back comfortably. "I putter around my own place
Saturdays and Sundays and I know what devilgrass is like. I can well
imagine a bunch of it twenty or twentyfive feet high could be coated
with many, many gallons of oil without a drop seeping down into the
ground."
Mr Miller said magisterially, "Not really good American oil," but no one
paid attention, knowing that he was commenting, not as a member of the
committee, but in his other capacity as the head of an organization to
promote Brotherhood and Democracy by deporting all foreignborn and the
descendants of foreignborn to their original countries. Everyone was
only too happy to have the oil matter concluded at any cost; and after
the stenographer was ordered to resume his labors, the next witness was
called.
"Albert Weener!"
I hope I may never again have to submit to the scrutiny of twelve such
merciless eyes. I cast my own down at the brown linoleum until every
stain and inkspot was impressed ineradicably on my mind. Senator Jones
finally broke the tension by asking, "What is your name?"