“Incredible,” said Johnny.
“What?” The Judge started.
“I said all this strikes me as unbelievable,” Johnny said. “For the first time I begin to grasp Lexington and Concord and the Boston Tea Party. How can people get so worked up over anything?”
“They believe in something,” said the Judge.
“To this extent?” Johnny laughed.
“It shows they’re alive, at any rate.”
“I’m alive,” argued Johnny. “But I’ve got more sense than to stick my neck out. For what? The old lady, God rest her soul, is dead; nothing’s going to bring her back. Why get into a hassle?”
Judge Shinn’s rocker creaked. “Are you referring to me, or to them, Johnny?”
“To both of you.”
“Let me tell you something about people like us,” said the Judge. “You have to go back a lot further than 1776. You have to go back more than three centuries to when the Puritan nature was molding itself to the rough shape of the new England. To Miles Standish, for instance, under orders by the Pilgrim Fathers to destroy the Mount Wollaston settlement and kick out Thomas Morton because of his uninhibited life and his success at Indian trading — moral issues and economics, you see, the Holy Book and the Pocketbook, in defense of either or both of which the good Puritan more or less cheerfully risked his life. Or to the John Endecott expedition against the Pequot Indians in reprisal for the murder of John Oldham, a simple exercise in revenge against the benighted heathen furriners — well, their skin color was different and they spoke English with an accent when they spoke it at all, which amounted to the same thing. As I recall it, they followed that up by wiping out the main Pequot settlement and massacring every big and little Pequot they could find. The Puritan is a mighty stubborn citizen when aroused.”
“In other words,” Johnny grinned in the darkness, “they were swine.”
“They were people. People with beliefs, some right and some wrong. More important — they did something, rightly or wrongly, about their beliefs.” The rocker stopped creaking. “Johnny, what do you believe in?”
In the darkness Johnny felt the old man’s eyes groping for him.
“Nothing, I guess.”
“A man has to believe in something, Johnny.”
“I’m not a man, I’m a vegetable,” laughed Johnny.
“So you’re vegetating.”
“It follows, doesn’t it?” Johnny suddenly felt too tired to talk. “I used to believe in a great deal.”
“Of course you did—”
“It was painful.”
“Yes,” said the Judge dryly.
“I even did something about my beliefs. I lapped up all the noble sludge, shipped out to be a hero. I knew what I was fighting for. You betcha. Democracy. Freedom. Down with the tyrants. One world. Man, those were the days. Remember?”
“I remember,” said the Judge.
“So do I,” said Johnny. “I wish I didn’t. Remembering is the worst pain of all. The trouble is, I’m not a successful vegetable. I’m not a successful anything. That bothers me a little. It would be nice just rooting in the sun, performing my little photosynthesis for the day, watching the animal life go by. But I’m like the rose in a story I read by Roald Dahl. When it was cut, it shrieked.”
“Go on,” said the Judge.
“You like to listen to this stuff?” Johnny lit a cigaret; the flame trembled, and he snuffed it out quickly. “All right, I will. I think the first hint I got that I was going to be the missing link between the fauna and the flora came to me when I saw Hiroshima. Know anything about real fear, Judge? It’s the only hell there is. Hiroshima was hell on earth. Hell is a man’s shadow printed on the side of a building. It’s a radioactive bloodstream. It’s a kid with his bones lit up like a Christmas tree. There’s nothing in Dante that comes within a million miles of it.”
Johnny smiled his queer smile in the warmth of the night. “So I came home. I felt out of sorts... out of touch with business-as-usual, but I put that down to the labor pains of readjustment. I really tried. I tried sitting in a law class again. I tried watching movies and TV commercials. I tried to understand prices going up and industry blaming it on labor and labor blaming it on industry. I tried to understand the UN. The one thing I didn’t try was Communism. I never fell for that crap. Some of the men did — I knew a fighter pilot who’d flown fifty-nine missions and came back and after a while joined the party, said there had to be hope somewhere. I was denied even that. I began to realize that there was no hope anywhere, at all. Then Korea. Am I boring you?
“No,” said Judge Shinn. “No.”
“Korea, God help us,” said Johnny. “I was no hero that time. I just wanted to get back into something I knew. And all the time I was keeping my eye on what was going on outside that pustulated pimple on the hide of Asia. I saw nothing that stirred me in the direction of the fauna. Quite the contrary. And when it was all ‘over’ — as if it’s over! — the hopelessness simply shifted from one phase into another. But it was the same damned thing. More TV commercials. More gripes about taxes. More politicians promising better protection for less dough. And more speeches at the UN. And — always — bigger and better bombs.
“I’m not being emotional about this,” said Johnny. “I dream some, but I manage to sleep... You take this Commie business. Suppose there were no Commies. There’d still be Africa, India, China — there’d still be Spain and Germany, and the Arabs, and the Peronistas — there’d still be a world full of poverty, hate, ambition, greed. There’d still be atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, nerve gas. And there’d still be the book burners and the witch hunters and the doubletalkers. About the only note of reassurance the brass keep sounding is that we’ve got all of three years left before the bombs start falling... So what do you want me to do, Judge — find a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, water a lawn, save up for Junior’s college and my old age? What for?”
The Judge was silent.
Johnny said apologetically, “Well, you asked me. Mind if I hit the sack?”
He went into the house and climbed the polished stairway to his musty bedroom to try out Coroner Barnwell’s parting advice.
After a long time, Judge Shinn followed.
Johnny was awakened from his dream by the church bell. His first drowsy thought was, What a nice way to be reminded that I promised myself to attend Mr. Sheare’s service Sunday morning. But as his senses sharpened it seemed to him the reminder was too insistent. The old bell, with its flat and cracked clang, was pealing away like a 1900 fire alarm.
He rolled out of bed and went to a window.
The people were running toward their church from all directions. He saw Burney Hackett burst out of his house on the south corner, struggling to get into his Sunday jacket and hold on to his gun at the same time. Peter Berry came lumbering up Four Corners Road from his house behind the store as if a bull were after him. Children were darting everywhere, surrounded by wildly barking dogs. The Pangmans and Prue Plummer were trotting down the middle of Shinn Road, urging one another on. Two cars shot up to the north corner, one from the south and the other from the west, almost colliding at the intersection. One deposited Dave Hemus, Merton Isbel, and Calvin Waters, the other Drakeley Scott and his mother. A group was already waiting before the church; Johnny saw Samuel Sheare and his stout wife hurrying across the lawn from the parsonage, their faces unnaturally white.