‘Oh, sure, Mr. Coglan. But how, I mean?’
‘Advertising,’ said old man Coglan, with a devil’s smile and a demon’s voice.
Silence. There was a moment of silence.
Marlene said faintly: ‘I don’t think they’re going to like it.’
‘Who?’
‘The bigwigs. They’re aren’t going to like that. Not advertising, you know. I mean I’m for you. I’m in favour of advertising. I like it. But -’
‘There’s no question of liking it!’ Coglan said in a terrible voice. ‘It’s what has made our country great! It tooled us up to fight in a great war, and when that war was over, it put us back together again!’
‘I understand that, Mr. Coglan,’ she said. ‘But -’
‘I don’t want to hear that word from you, Miss Groshawk,’ he snapped. ‘There is no question. Consider America after the war, ah? You don’t remember, perhaps. They kept it from you. But the cities all were demolished. The buildings were ruins. It was only advertising that built them up again - advertising, and the power of research! For I remind you of what a great man once said: “Our chief job in research is to keep the customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has.” ‘
Coglan paused, visibly affected. ‘That was Charles F. Kettering of General Motors,’ he said, ‘and the beauty of it, Miss Groshawk, is that he said this in the Twenties! Imagine! So clear a perception of what Science means to all of us. So comprehensive a grasp of the meaning of American Inventiveness!’
Marlene said brokenly: ‘That’s beautiful.’
Coglan nodded. ‘Of course. So you see, there is nothing at all that your bigwigs can do, like it or not. We Americans - we real Americans - know that without advertising there is no industry; and accordingly we have shaped advertising into a tool that serves us well. Why, here, look at that television set!’
Marlene did, and in a moment began again to giggle. Archly she whispered: ‘Mr. Coglan!’
‘You see? and if that doesn’t suffice, well, there’s always the law. Let’s see what the bigwigs of Pung’s Corners can do against the massed might of the United States Army!’
‘I do hope there won’t be any fighting, Mr. Coglan.’
‘I doubt there will,’ he said sincerely. ‘And now to work, eh? Or -’ he glanced at his watch and nodded - ‘after all, there’s no real hurry this afternoon. Suppose we order some dinner, just for the two of us. And some wine? And!’
‘Of course, Mr. Coglan.’
Marlene started to go to the telephone, but Mr. Coglan stopped her.
‘On second thought, Miss Groshawk,’ he said, beginning to breathe a little hard, ‘I’ll do the ordering. You just sit there and rest for a minute. Watch the television set, eh?’
4
Now I have to tell you about Jack Tighe.
Yes, indeed. Jack Tighe. The Father of the Second Republic. Sit tight and listen and don’t interrupt, because what I have to tell you isn’t exactly what you learned in school.
The apple tree? No, that’s only a story. It couldn’t have happened, you see, because apple trees don’t grow on upper Madison Avenue, and that’s where Jack Tighe spent his youth. Because Jack Tighe wasn’t the President of the Second Republic. For a long time, he was something else, something called V.P. in charge of S.L. division, of the advertising firm of Yust and Ruminant.
That’s right. Advertising.
Don’t cry. It’s all right. He’d given it up, you see, long before - oh, long before, even before the big war; given it up and come to Fung’s Corners, to retire.
Jack Tighe had his place out on the marshland down at the bend of the Delaware River. It wasn’t particularly healthy there. All the highlands around Pung’s Corners drained into the creeks of that part of the area, and a lot of radio-activity had come down. But it didn’t bother Jack Tighe, because he was too old.
He was as old as old man Coglan, in fact. And what’s more, they had known each other, back at the agency.
Jack Tighe was also big, not as big as Coglan but well over six feet. And in a way he looked like Coglan. You’ve seen his pictures. Same eyes, same devil-may-care bounce to his walk and snap to his voice. He could have been a big man in Pung’s Corners. They would have made him mayor any time. But he said he’d come there to retire, and retire he would; it would take a major upheaval to make him come out of retirement, he said.
And he got one.
The first thing was Andy Grammis, white as a sheet.
‘Jack!’ he whispered, out of breath at the porch steps, for he’d run almost all the way from his store.
Jack Tighe took his feet down off the porch rail. ‘Sit down, Andy,’ he said kindly. ‘I suppose I know why you’re here.’
‘You do, Jack?”
‘I think so.’ Jack Tighe nodded. Oh, he was a handsome man. He said: ‘Aircraft dumping neoscopalamine in the reservoir, a stranger turning up in a car with a sheet-lead body. And we all know what’s outside, don’t we? Yes, it has to be that.’
‘It’s him, all right,’ babbled Andy Grammis, plopping himself down on the steps, his face chalk. ‘It’s him and there’s nothing we can do! He came into the store this morning. Brought Marlene with him. We should have done something about that girl, Jack. I knew she’d come to no good -’
‘What did he want?’
‘Want? Jack, he had a pad and a pencil like he wanted to take down orders, and he kept asking for - asking for - “Breakfast foods,” he says, “what’ve you got in the way of breakfast foods?” So I told him. Oatmeal and corn flakes. Jack, he flew at me! “You don’t stock Coco-Wheet?” he says. “Or Treets, Eets, Neets or Elixo-Wheets? How about Hunny-Yummies, or Prune-Bran Whippets, The Cereal with the Zip-Gun in Every Box?” “No, sir,” I tell him.
‘But he’s mad by then. “Potatoes?” he hollers. “What about potatoes?” Well, we’ve got plenty of potatoes, a whole cellar full. But I tell him and that doesn’t satisfy him. “Raw, you mean?” he yells. “Not Tater-Fluff, Pre-Skortch Mickies or Uncle Everett’s Converted Spuds?” And then he shows me his card.’
‘I know,’ said Jack Tighe kindly, for Grammis seemed to find it hard to go on. ‘You don’t have to say it, if you don’t want to.’
‘Oh, I can say it all right, Jack,’ said Andy Grammis bravely. ‘This Mr. Coglan, he’s an adver -’
‘No,’ said Jack Tighe, standing up, ‘don’t make yourself do it. It’s bad enough as it is. But it had to come. Yes, count it that it had to come, Andy. We’ve had a few good years, but we couldn’t expect them to last forever.’
‘But what are we going to do ?’
‘Get up, Andy,’ said Jack Tighe strongly. ‘Come inside! Sit down and rest yourself. And I’ll send for the others.’
‘You’re going to fight him? But he has the whole United States Army behind him.’
Old Jack Tighe nodded. ‘So he has, Andy,’ he said, but he seemed wonderfully cheerful.
Jack Tighe’s place was a sort of ranch house, with fixings. He was a great individual man, Jack Tighe was. All of you know that, because you were taught it in school; and maybe some of you have been to the house. But it’s different now; I don’t care what they say. The furniture isn’t just the same. And the grounds -
Well, during the big war, of course, that was where the radio-dust drained down from the hills, so nothing grew. They’ve prettied it up with grass and trees and flowers. Flowers! I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. In his young days, Jack Tighe was an account executive on the National Floral account. Why, he wouldn’t have a flower in the house, much less plant and tend them.