Greener Than You Think Part 31

"I think you will find what I have to offer a material aid to your church."

"I have no church," he said. "We are Christians and recognize no manmade inst.i.tution."

"Well, then, to your movement or whatever you call it." In spite of his reluctance, which was now as great as mine had been originally, I persuaded him to accompany me. He sat uneasily forward while I told him who I was and sketched the plan for collecting some of the Gra.s.s.

"What is this to me? I have long ago put aside all material thoughts and now care only for the life of the spirit."

This must be true, I thought, noting his shabby clothes, sweatgreasy m.u.f.fler at once hiding and revealing lack of necktie, and cracked shoes, one sock brown, the other black. "It is this to you: if you don't want the salary and bonus attached to organizing and superintending the expedition--and I am prepared to be generous--you can turn it over to Brother Paul. I imagine it will be acceptable."

He shook his head, muttering, "Satan, Satan." The lower part of his face was wide and divided horizontally, like an inverted jellymold. It tapered up into bracketing ears, supporting gingery eaves. I pressed home my arguments.

"I will put your proposition to Brother Paul," he conceded at length.

"I thought distinctions between one man and another were worldly and trivial," I prodded him. "Arent you Brother Paul?"

"Satan, Satan," he repeated.

I'm sure it could have been nothing but one of those flashes of intuition for which successful executives are noted which caused me to pick this man in spite of his absurd ranting and illfavored appearance.

Not intuition really, but an ability to evaluate and cla.s.sify personalities instantly. I always had this faculty; it helped me in my early experiences as a salesman and blossomed out when I entered my proper field.

Anthony Preblesham--for that was his worldly name--did not disappoint my judgment for he proved one of the most aggressive men I ever hired. The Brother Paul hocuspocus, which he quickly dropped, had merely caught and ca.n.a.lized an abounding energy that would otherwise have flowed aimlessly in a stagnant world. In Consolidated Pemmican he found his true faith; his zeal for our products proved as great if not greater than his former hysteria for the salvation of mankind. It was no fault of his that the expedition he led proved fruitless.

The men Tony Preblesham took with him were all Brother Pauls who--since they disdained them--had not been told of material rewards but given the impression they were furthering their fanatical creed. They built a camp upon the Gra.s.s, or rather upon the snow which overlay the Gra.s.s, near what had once been Springfield, Illinois. Digging down through the snow to the weed, they discovered it to have lost most of its rubbery qualities of resistance in dormancy, and cut with comparative ease more than four tons which were transported with the greatest difficulty to the Florida plant. Here, to antic.i.p.ate, their work came to nothing, for no practicable method was found for reducing the gra.s.s to a form in which its nutritive elements could be economically extracted.

_61._ The secrecy surrounding the government expedition could not be maintained and it was soon learned that what was planned was nothing less than an attempt to burn great areas of the weed while in its dormant state. All previous attempts to fire the Gra.s.s had been made when the sap was running and it was thought that in its dryer condition some measure of success might be obtained. The public instantly translated possibility into probability and probability into virtual certainty, their enthusiastic optimism making the winter more bearable.

The party proceeded not more than a couple of miles beyond the eastern edge, dragging with them a flexible pipeline through which was pumped fueloil, now priceless in the freezing cities. Methodically they sprayed a square mile and set it afire, feeding the flames with the oil. The burning area sank neatly through the snow, exposing the gra.s.s beneath: dry, yellow and brittle. The stiff, interwoven stolons caught; oil was applied unstintedly; the crackling and roaring and snapping could be heard by those well beyond the perimeter of the Gra.s.s and the terrific heat forced the temporary abandonment of the work.

The s...o...b..oadcasters in emotional voices gave the news to those whose radios still functioned. Reporters flashed their editors, BURNING SUCCESSFUL. WILL STOP GRa.s.s IF MULTIPLIED. All over the country volunteer crews were instantly formed to repeat the experiment.

When the flames died down the men crept closer to inspect the results.

The heat had melted the snow for many yards outside the orbit of fire, revealing a border of dull and sodden gra.s.s. Beyond this border a blackened crater had eaten its way straight down to the reclaimed earth below. Shouting and rejoicing greeted this evidence of triumph. What if the Gra.s.s could advance at will in summer? It could be subdued in winter and thus kept in check till the ingenuity which devised this one victory could win another.

Working furiously, the oil was again sprayed, this time over a still larger piece and again the flames lit the sky. The President issued a Proclamation of Thanksgiving; the American dollar rose to $175 to the pound, and several prominent expatriates began to think seriously of returning home.

The second fire burned through the night and aided by a slight change in the weather thawed the snow over a great area. Eagerly the expedition, now swollen into a small army, returned to continue their triumphant labors. The bright sun shone upon the dirtied snow, upon naked muddy earth in the center of the crater, upon the network of burnt and blackened stems and upon the wide band of grayishgreen gra.s.s the retreating snow had laid open to its rays. Grayishgreen, but changing in color at every moment as the work of spraying began again.

Changing color, becoming more verdant, thrusting blades into the air, moving its long runners upward and sideways and downward toward the destroyed part. Revived by the heat, relieved of the snow, the Gra.s.s, fighting for its life with the same intensity which animated its attackers, burst into a fury of growth. It covered the evidences of destruction in less time than the burning had taken. It tore the pipeline from its tormentors' hands and drove them away with threats of swift immolation. Defiantly it rose to a pinnacle, hiding its mutilation, and flaunted its vivid tendrils to bear witness to its invulnerability till a killing frost followed by another snowfall covered it again.

Since the delusive hope had been so high, the disappointment threw the public into a despair greater than ever before. The nervous tension of anxiety was replaced by a listlessness of resignation and the suicide rate, high before, now doubled. For the first time a general admission was to be heard that no solution would be found and in another season the end would come for the United States. Facing the prospect squarely, an exodus of the little people, as distinguished from the earlier flight of men of wealth and foresight, from the country began.

This was the first countermeasure attempted since the Gra.s.s crossed the Mississippi, and in reaction to its collapse, the return of Brother Paul's expedition pa.s.sed almost unnoticed. Only _Time_, now published in Paris, bothered to report it for general circulation: "Last week from some undisclosed spot in mid U.S. returned Mother, 'The Forerunner' Joan (real name: unknown), and party. Dispatched Gra.s.sward by Brother Paul, doom-predicting, advent-prophesying graminophile evangelist, the purpose of Mother Joan's expedition had been her 'Sanctification,' above the exact spot where the Savior was waiting in the midst of the Gra.s.s to receive His faithful disciples. Said Brother Paul to reporters after embracing The Forerunner enthusiastically, 'The expedition has been successful.' Said Mother Joan, off the record, 'My feet hurt.'"

_62._ The coming of spring was awaited with grim foreboding, but the Gra.s.s was not bound by any manmade almanac and unable to contain itself till the melting of the snow, again leaped the barrier of the Mississippi, this time near Natchez, and ran through the South like water from a sloshed dishpan. The prized reforms of the black legislatures were wiped out more quickly even than their greatgrandfathers' had been in 1877. The wornout cotton and tobacco lands offered hospitable soil while cypress swamps and winter-swollen creeks pumped vitality into the questing runners. Southward and eastward it spread, waiting only the opening of the first p.u.s.s.ywillow and the showing of the first crocus to jump northward and meet the western advance there.

The dwindling remnants of cohesion and selfcontrol existing before now disappeared completely. The capital was moved to Portland, Maine. Local law and order vanished. The great gangs took over the cities and extracted what tribute they could from the impoverished inhabitants.

Utilities ceased functioning entirely, what little goods remained were obtainable only by barter, and epidemic after epidemic decreased the population to fit the shrinking boundaries.

Brother Paul, deprived of the radio, now multiplied himself infinitely in the person of his disciples, preaching unremittingly against resistance, even by thought, to the oncoming Gra.s.s. Mother Joan's infrequent public appearances attracted enormous crowds as she proclaimed, "O be joyful; give your souls to Jesus and your bodies to the Gra.s.s. I am The Forerunner and after me will come the Ox. Rejoice, brothers and sisters, for this is the end of all your suffering and misery."

On foot or rarely with the aid of a horse or mule, the panicstricken population marched northward and eastward. Canadian officials, anxious to apply immigration controls with the greatest possible lat.i.tude, were thrust aside as though their existence were an irrelevance. Along the lower reaches of the St Lawrence the refugees came like locusts to devour the substance of the _habitants_. Into empty Ungava and almost equally empty Labrador the hardier ones pushed, armed like their forebears with only ax and shotgun. Northward and eastward, beyond the Arctic Circle and onto the polar ice they trickled, seeking some place which promised security from the Gra.s.s. Pa.s.senger rates to Europe or South America, formerly at a premium, now shot to unparalleled heights.

I wound up my own affairs, disappointed at the failure to find a use for the Gra.s.s, but still keeping it in view as a future objective, and arranged for the removal of the Florida factory to Brazzaville. Heeding the cabled importunities of Stuart Thario I risked my life to travel once more into the interior to see Joe and persuade him to come back with me. I found them in a small Pennsylvania town in the Alleghenies, once a company owned miningvillage. The Gra.s.s, advancing rapidly, was just beyond the nearest mountainridge, replacing the jagged Appalachian horizon with a softer and more ominous one.

They appeared serene and content, Joe's haggard look of the winter erased. "I'm in the middle of the third movement, A W," he told me, like a man who had no time to waste on preliminaries or indirections. "Here."

He thrust an enormous manila envelope at me. "Here are the first two movements. There are no copies and I cannot trust the mails or any other messenger to get them out. If possible I'll send the Old Man the third movement as soon as it's finished--and the fourth, if I have time. But take the first two anyway; at least I'll know theyre preserved."

"Joe, Florence!" I exclaimed. "This is ridiculous. Insane. Come back with me."

Silence.

"You can compose just as well in Europe, if it is so important to you.

In France, say, or England, away from this danger and discomfort. There is no doubt the country is finished; come to safety while you can."

Florence was busy with a stack of musicpaper and offered no comment. Joe put his hand for a second on my shoulder and then turned away, talking with his eyes fixed out the window in the direction of the Gra.s.s.

"General Herkimer had both legs shot off at the battle of Oriskany. He made his men put his back to a treestump and with a flintlock rifle fired at the enemy until he bled to death. Commodore Lawrence, mortally wounded, had only one order. Schoolbooks hold the words of John Paul, selfnamed Jones, and of Hiram Ulysses Grant. Even yesterday, the old tradition was alive: 'Enemy landing; issue in doubt.' If I finish my symphony--"

"When you finish your symphony--" I encouraged.

"If you finish your symphony--" said Florence quietly.

"If I finish my symphony, it must be in Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont."

His speech took on a hushed, abstracted tone. "Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island or Connecticut. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania--" his voice rose higher-- "Maryland, Virginia or West Virginia--" his shoulders shook and he seemed to be crying-- "North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida ..."

I left them, convinced the madness of the country had found still another victim. That night I thankfully boarded the European Clipper for the last time. The next day I sank back into civilization as into a comfortable bed.

_63._ "The United States, July 4 (N.A.N.A.)--'A decent respect for the opinion of mankind' dictates the content of this summary. Less than two centuries past, a small group of smugglers, merchants and planters united in an insurrection which in its course gathered to itself such an accreta of riffraff--debtors, convicts, adventurers, careerists, foreigners, theoreticians, idealists, revolutionaries, soldiers of fortune and restless men, that at the height of their numbers they composed, with their sympathizers, perhaps a third of the people in the country. After seven years of inept war in which they had all the breaks, including that of a halfhearted enemy, they established 'upon this continent a new nation.' Some of the phrases thrown off in the heat of propaganda were taken seriously and despite shocked opposition written into basic law.

"The cryptogram is readable backward or forward, straightaway or upside down. Unparalleled resources, the fortuitous historical moment, the tide of immigration drawing on the best of the world, the implicit good in conception necessarily resultant in the explicit best of being; high purpose, inventive genius, exploratory urge, compet.i.tive spirit, fraternal enthusiasm, what does the ascription matter if the end product was clear for all to see?

"Is it not fitting that a nation calling itself lightly 'G.o.d's Country,'

meaning a land abundantly favored by nature, should find its dispatch through an act of the benefactor become understandably irritable? This is not to pose the editorial question of justice, but to remember in pa.s.sing the girdled forests, abused prairies, gullied lands, the stupidly harnessed plains, wasted coal, gas, petroleum; the millions of tons of rich mud denied hungry soil by Mississippi levees and forced profitlessly into the salt sea.

"A small part, a heartbreakingly small part of the United States remains at this moment. In a matter of weeks even this little must be overrun, stilled and covered green as all graves are. Scattered through the world there will be Americans, partic.i.p.ants in a bitter diaspora. For them--and for their children to be instructed zealously in the formalities of an antique civilization--there can be no Fourth of July, no Thanksgiving; only one holiday will remain, and that continue through all the year. Its name, of course, is Memorial Day. W.R.L."

_64._ This was the last dispatch from the once great editor. It was a.s.sumed generally that he had perished with so many others. It was only some time later I heard a curious story, for whose authenticity I cannot vouch.

True to the flippant prediction of Jacson Gootes, Le ffacase returned to the Church into which he had been born. He went further and became a lay brother, taking upon himself the obligation of silence. Though an old man, he stayed close to the advancing Gra.s.s, giving what a.s.sistance and comfort he could to the refugees. The anecdotes of his sudden appearance in typhusridden camps, mute and gaunt, hastening with water for the feverish, quieting the terrified with a light touch, praying silently beside the dying, sound improbable to me, but I mention them for what they are worth.

_65._ When winter came again, the Canadian government pet.i.tioned the Parliament at Westminster for crowncolony status and the a.s.sent of the Queen's Privy Council was given to the ending of the premier Dominion.

All that was left of the largest landma.s.s within the British Commonwealth was eastern and northern Quebec, the Maritime Provinces and part of the Northwest Territories.

The United States and more than half of Mexico had been wiped from the map. From the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Nome to Veracruz stretched a new Sarga.s.so Sea of _Cynodon dactylon_. A hundred and eighty million men, women, and children had been thrust from their homes by a despised weed.