The Escape, page 3
“I don’t know,” he said then, slowly. “I checked the place last night as usual, before going to bed, and I’ll swear the door was closed and hooked like it always is. Five years I been here and never had any trouble.”
“So maybe somebody opened the door later on, after dark, huh?”
“Yeah. A chicken thief. Though it’s funny the dogs didn’t bark—I never heard of any human being coming here without them yapping.” Wilmer shrugged bitterly. “Well, anyway, somebody did open the door.”
“And then later on foxes got in.” Brock turned one of the dead hens over with his toe. “And maybe had to run for it when one of the dogs came sniffing around, and left these.”
“And most of the goddammed birds wandered out into the woods. It’ll take a week to catch ‘em—all that live. Oh, Judas!” Wilmer stormed out of the chickenhouse, forgetting to close the door. Brock did it for him, vaguely surprised that he had remembered to do so.
He sighed and resumed his morning chores. The animals all seemed fidgety today. And damn if his own head didn’t feel funny. He remembered his own panic of two nights before, and the odd way he’d been thinking ever since. Maybe there was some kind of fever going around.
Well—he’d ask somebody about it later. There was work to do today, plowing in the north forty that had just been cleared. All the tractors were busy cultivating, so he’d have to take a team of horses.
That was all right. Brock liked animals, he had always understood them and got along with them better than with people. Not that the people had been mean to him, anyway for a long while now. The kids used to tease him, back when he was a kid too, and then later there’d been some trouble with cars, and a couple of girls had got scared also and he’d been beaten up by the brother of one of them. But that was years back. Mr. Rossman had told him carefully what he could and could not do, kind of taken him over, and things had been all right since then. Now he could walk into the tavern when he was in town and have a beer like anybody else, and the men said hello.
He stood for a minute, wondering why he should be thinking about this when he knew it all so well, and why it should hurt him the way it did. Hell, he thought, I’m all right. I’m not so smart, maybe, but I’m strong. Mr. Rossman says he ain’t got a better farmhand nor me.
He shrugged and entered the barn to get out the horses. He was a young man, of medium height but heavy-set and muscular, with coarse strong features and a round, crew-cut, red-haired head. His blue denim clothes were shabby but clean; Mrs. Bergen, the wife of the general superintendent in whose cottage he had a room, looked after such details for him.
The barn was big and gloomy, full of the strong rich smells of hay and horses. The big Percherons stamped and snorted, restless as he harnessed them. Funny—they were always so calm before. “So, so, steady, boy. Steady, Tom. Whoa, there, Jerry. Easy, easy.” They quieted a little and he led them out and hitched them to a post while he went into the shed after the plow.
His dog Joe came frisking around him, a tall Irish setter whose coat was like gold and copper in the sun. Joe was really Mr. Rossman’s, of course, but Brock had taken care of him since he was a pup and it was always Brock whom he followed and loved. “Down, boy, down. What the hell’s got into you, anyway? Take it easy, will ya?”
The estate lay green around him, the farm buildings on one side, the cottages of the help screened off by trees on another, the many acres of woods behind. There was a lot of lawn and garden and orchard between this farming part and the big white house of the owner, a house which had been mostly empty since Mr. Rossman’s daughters had married and his wife had died. He was there now, though, spending a few weeks here in upper New York State with his flowers. Brock wondered why a millionaire like Mr. Rossman wanted to putter around growing roses, even if he was getting old.
The shed door creaked open and Brock went in and took the big plow and wheeled it out, grunting a little with the effort. Not many men could have dragged it out themselves, he thought with a flicker of pride. He chuckled as he saw how the horses stamped at the sight. Horses were lazy beasts, they’d never work if they could get out of it.
He shoved the plow around behind them, carried the tongue forward, and hitched it on. With a deft motion, he twirled the reins loose from the post, took his seat, and shook the lines across the broad rumps. “Gid-dup!”
They just stood, moving their feet.
Tom began backing. “Whoa! Whoa, you ugly devil!”
Jerry came along too. Archie took the loose end of the reins and snapped it with whistling force. Tom grunted and put one huge hoof on the tongue. It broke across.
For a long moment, Brock sat there, finding no words. Then he shook his red head, giving up the problem, and fastened the horses to the post again and unhitched the plow. “It’s a ac-ci-dent,” he said aloud. The morning seemed very quiet all of a sudden. “It’s a ac-ci-dent.”
There was a spare tongue in the shed. He fetched it and some tools, and began doggedly removing the broken one.
“Hi, there! Stop! Stop, I say!”
Brock looked up. The squealing and grunting were like a blow. He saw a black streak go by, and then another and another—The pigs were loose!
“Joe!” he yelled, even then wondering a little at how quickly he reacted. “Go get ‘em, Joe! Round ‘em up, boy!”
The dog was off like burnished lightning. He got ahead of the lead sow and snapped at her. She grunted, turning aside, and he darted after the next. Stan Wilmer came running from the direction of the pen. His face was white.
Brock ran to intercept another pig, turning it, but a fourth one slipped aside and was lost in the woods. It took several confused minutes to chase the majority back into the pen; a number were gone.
Wilmer stood gasping. His voice was raw. “I saw it,” he groaned. “Oh, my God, I saw it. It ain’t possible.”
Brock blew out his cheeks and wiped his face.
“You hear me?” Wilmer grasped his arm. “I saw it, I tell you, saw it with my own eyes. Those pigs opened the gate themselves.”
“Naw!” Brock felt his mouth falling open.
“I tell you, I saw it! One of ‘em stood up on her hind legs and nosed the latch up. She did it all by herself. And the others were crowding right behind her. Oh, no, no, no!”
Joe came out of the woods, driving a pig before him with sardonic barks. She seemed to give up after a minute and trotted quietly toward the pen. Wilmer turned like a machine and opened the gate again and let her go in.
“Good boy!” Brock patted the silken head that nuzzled against him. “Smart dog!”
“Too damned smart.” Wilmer narrowed his eyes. “Did a dog ever make like that before?”
“Sure,” said Brock uncertainly.
Joe got off his haunches and went back into the woods.
“I’ll bet he’s going after another pig.” There was a kind of horror in Wilmer’s voice.
“Sure. He’s a smart dog, he is.”
“I’m going to see Bill Bergen about this.” Wilmer turned on his heel. Brock looked after him, shrugged heavy shoulders, and went back to his own task. By the time he finished it, Joe had rounded up two more pigs and brought them back.
“Good fellow,” said Brock. “I’ll see yuh get a bone for this.” He hitched Tom and Jerry, who had been standing at their ease. “All right, yuh bums, let’s go. Gid-dup!”
Slowly, the horses backed. “Hey!” screamed Brock.
This time they didn’t stop with the tongue. Very carefully, they walked on to the plow itself and bent its iron frame with their weight and broke off the coulter. Brock felt his throat dry.
“No,” he mumbled.
The horses stood placidly in their tangled harness, watching him. His hands shook, and he had to bite his lip as he approached them. “Take it easy,” he said. “Just take it easy. I ain’t gonna hurt yuh.”
Joe barked and dashed off. Brock’s eyes followed him, to see him turn a pig back. So they’d opened the gate again.
“Keep an eye on ‘em. Stay there, Joe.” Very slowly and carefully, Brock unhitched the horses. They followed him meekly back into the barn, where he put them in their stalls and took off their harness.
They’s no harm in ‘em, he thought insanely. They’re just lazy. They won’t hurt me, because I feed ‘em.
He went out and sat down on the ground and held his head between his hands.
Wilmer nearly had a fit when he learned about the horses. Bergen only stood there, shaking his head and whistling tunelessly. “I’ll bet it wasn’t any man opened that henhouse last night,” said Wilmer in a voice that trembled. “I’ll bet it was the foxes.”
“The hook on the door’s too high up for that,” said Bergen.
“Not if two or three foxes stood on top of each other. God in heaven, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Bergen scratched his sandy head. “Tell you what. We’ll call off all work having to do with animals, except feeding and milking, of course. Padlock every gate and have somebody check all our fence lines. I’ll see the old man about this.”
“Me, I’m gonna carry a gun,” said Wilmer.
“Well, it might not be a bad idea,” said Bergen.
Archie Brock was assigned to look at one section, a two-mile line enclosing the woods. He took Joe, who gambolled merrily in his wake, and went off glad to be alone for a change.
How still the forest was! Sunlight slanted down through green unstirring leaves, throwing a dapple on the warm brown shadows. The sky was utterly blue overhead, no clouds, no wind. His feet scrunched dully on an occasional clod or stone, he brushed against a twig and it scratched very faintly along his clothes, otherwise the land was altogether silent. The birds seemed to have quieted down all at once, no squirrels were in sight, even the sheep had withdrawn into the inner woods. He thought uneasily that the whole green world had a somehow waiting feel to it.
He could see how people would be scared if the animals started getting smarter. If they were really smart, would they keep on letting humans lock them up and work them and emasculate them and kill and skin and eat them? Suppose Tom and Jerry, now—But they were so gentle!
And—wait—weren’t the people getting smarter too? It seemed like in the last couple of days they’d been talking more, and it wasn’t all about the weather and the neighbors either, it was about things like who was going to win the next election and why a rear-engine drive was better in a car. They’d always talked like that now and then, sure, but not so much, and they hadn’t had so much to say either. Even Mrs. Bergen, he’d seen her reading a magazine, and all she ever did before in her spare time was watch TV.
I’m getting smarter too!
The knowledge was like a thunderclap. He stood there for a long while, not moving, and Joe came up and sniffed his hand in a puzzled way.
I’m getting smarter.
Sure—it had to be. The way he’d been wondering lately, and remembering things, and speaking out when he’d never said anything much before—what else could it be? All the world was getting smart.
He leaned his head against the cool trunk of a tree, listening to the blood roar in his ears. Please, God, let it be real. Please make me like other people.
After awhile he went on, checking the fence as he had been told. There was a boiling in him, though, and he had to fight it down.
I can read, he told himself. Not very good, but they did teach me the al-pha-bet, and I can read a comic book. Maybe I can read a real book now.
Books had the answers to what he wondered about, things like the sun and moon and stars, why there was winter and summer, why they had wars and Presidents and who lived on the other side of the world and—
He shook his head, unable to grasp the wilderness that rose up inside him and spread till it covered creation further than he could see. He’d never wondered before. Things just happened and were forgotten again. But—He looked at his hands, marveling. Who am I? What am I doing here?
In the evening, after chores, he put on a clean suit and went up to the big house. Mr. Rossman was sitting on the porch, smoking a pipe and turning the pages of a book over in his thin fingers, not really seeing it. Brock paused timidly, cap in hand, till the owner looked up and spied him.
“Oh, hello, Archie,” he said in his soft voice. “How are you tonight?”
“I’m all right, thank you.” Brock twisted the cap between his stumpy fingers and shifted from one foot to another. “Please, can I see you for a minute?”
“Why, of course. Come on in.” Mr. Rossman laid his book aside and sat smoking while Brock opened the screen door and walked over to him. “Here, take a chair.”
“That’s all right, thanks. I—” Brock ran his tongue across dry lips. “I’d just like to ask you ‘bout something.”
“Ask away, Archie.” Mr. Rossman leaned back. He was a tall spare man, his face thinly carved, proud under its kindness of the moment, his hair white. Brock’s parents had been tenants of his, and when it became plain that their son would never amount to anything, Rossman had taken charge of the boy. “Everything okay?”
“Well, it’s about, uh, about this change here.”
“Eh?” Rossman’s gaze sharpened. “What change?”
“You know. The animals getting smart and uppity.”
“Oh, yes. That.” Rossman blew a cloud of smoke. “Tell me, Archie, have you noticed any change in yourself?”
“Yes, I, uh, well, I think maybe I have.”
Rossman nodded slowly. “You wouldn’t have come here if you hadn’t changed.”
“What’s happening, Mr. Rossman? What’s gone wrong?”
“I don’t know, Archie. Nobody knows.” The old man looked out into a gathering blue twilight. “Are you so sure it’s wrong, though? Maybe something is finally going right.”
“You don’t know—”
“No. Nobody knows.” Rossman’s thin blue-veined hand slapped the newspaper on the table beside him. “There are hints here. The knowledge is creeping out. I’m sure much more is known, but the government has suppressed the information for fear of a panic.” He grinned with a certain viciousness. “As if a world-wide phenomenon could be kept secret! They’ll hang on to their stupidity to the very end, though, in Washington.”
“But, Mr. Rossman—” Brock lifted his hands and let them fall again.
“What can we do?”
“Wait. I’m going to the city soon, to find out for myself—those pet brains of mine at the Institute should—”
“Not leaving?”
Rossman shook his head, smiling. “Poor Archie. There’s a horror in being helpless, isn’t there? I sometimes think that’s why men fear death—not because of oblivion, but because it’s foredoomed, there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Even fatalism is a refuge from that, in a way… . But I digress, don’t I?”
He sat smoking for a long while. The summer dusk chirred and murmured around them. “Yes,” he said at last, “I feel it in myself too. And it’s not altogether pleasant. I’ve always imagined myself as a quick, capable, logical thinker. Now something is coming to life within me that I don’t understand at all. Sometimes my whole life seems to have been a petty and meaningless scramble. And yet I thought I’d served my dependents and my country well.” He smiled once more. “I do hope I’ll see the end of this, though. It should be interesting!”
Tears stung Brock’s eyes. “What can I do?”
“Do? Live. Live from day to day. What else can a man do?” Rossman got up and put his hand on Brock’s shoulder. “But keep on thinking. Keep your thinking close to the ground, where it belongs. Don’t take off—just think about real things, daily life, until you get more used to it. Or until—well, no matter.” He grimaced. “Our younger security-hungry generation talks about ‘new freedom.’ It’s just trading one set of masters for another. There was a New Deal in Egypt when the Old Kingdom fell, a New Deal in Rome under the Gracchi, and what did it get them? Don’t ever trade your liberty for another man’s offer to do your thinking for you. I had to play the feudal lord with you, Archie, but it may be that that’s no longer necessary.”
Brock didn’t understand most of it. But it seemed Mr. Rossman was telling him to be cheerful, that this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. “I thought maybe I could borrow some books,” he said humbly. “I’d like to see if I can read them now.”
“Why, of course, Archie. Come on into the library. I’ll see if I can find something suitable for you to begin on—”
IV
..................
Conference.
Everybody was working late, and it was ten o’clock before the meeting which Corinth had invited to his place was ready. Sheila had insisted on putting out her usual buffet of sandwiches and coffee; afterward she sat in a corner, talking quietly with Sarah Mandelbaum. Their eyes strayed occasionally to their husbands, who were playing chess, and there was a creeping fear in the gaze.
Corinth was playing better than he had ever done before. Usually he and Mandelbaum were pretty evenly matched, the physicist’s slow careful strategy offsetting the unionist’s nerve-wracking bravura. But tonight the younger man was too distracted. He made schemes that would have delighted Capablanca, but Mandelbaum saw through them and slashed barbarically past his defenses. Corinth sighed at last and leaned back.
“I concede,” he said. “It’d be mate in, uh, seven moves.”
“Not so.” Mandelbaum pointed a gnarled finger at king’s bishop. “If you moved him over here, and then—”
“Oh, yes, you’re right. No matter. I’m just not in the mood. What’s keeping Nat?”
“He’ll be along. Take it easy.” Mandelbaum removed himself to an armchair and began stuffing a big-bowled pipe.
“I don’t see how you can sit there like that when—”
“When a world’s falling to pieces around my ears? Look, Pete, it’s been falling apart as long as I can remember. So far, in this particular episode, no guns have come out.”
“They may do so yet.” Corinth got up and stood looking out the window, hands crossed behind his back and shoulders slumped. The restless glimmer of city light etched him against darkness. “Don’t you see, Felix, this new factor—if we survive it at all—changes the whole basis of human life? Our society was built by and for one sort of man. Now man himself is becoming something else.”
