Greener Than You Think Part 9

"Yes, go right on, sir. Oh ... the gentleman is through. Very interesting and thank you.

"Theyre bringing up a whole crew of weedburners now--going to try and get this thing under control. The men all have tanks of oil or kerosene on their backs. Wait a minute, folks, I want to find out for sure whether it's oil or kerosene. Mumble. Mumble. Well, folks, I'm sorry, but this gentleman doesnt know exactly what's in the tanks. Anyway it's kerosene or oil and there are long hoses with wide nozzles at the end.

Something like vacuumcleaners. Well, that's not quite right. Anyway theyre lighting the nozzles now. Makes a big whoosh. Now I'll bring the microphone closer and maybe you can catch the noise of the flame. Hear it? That's quite a roar. I guess old Mr Gra.s.s is cooked now.

"Now these boys are advancing in a straight line from the street up over the curb, holding their fiery torches in front of them. The devilgra.s.s is shriveling up. Yessir, it's shriveling right up--like a gob of tobaccojuice on a hot stove. Theyve burned about two feet of it away already. Nothing left but some smoking stems. Quite a lot of smoking stems--a regular compact ma.s.s of them--but all the green stuff has been burned right off. Yes, folks, burned clean off; I wish we had television here so I could show you how that thick pad of stems lies there without a bit of life left in it.

"Now theyre uncovering the sidewalk. I'm following right behind with the microphone--maybe you can hear the roar of the weedburners again. Now I'd like to have you keep in mind the height of this gra.s.s. You never saw gra.s.s as tall as this unless youve been in the jungle or South America or someplace where gra.s.s grows this high. I mean high. Even here at the sidewalk it's well over a man's head, seven or eight feet. And this crew is carving right into it, cutting it like steel with an acetylenetorch. Theyre making big holes in it. You hear that hissing?

That noise like a steamhose? Well, that's the gra.s.s shriveling. Think of it--gra.s.s with so much sap inside it hisses. It's drying right up in a one-two-three! Now the top part is falling down--toppling forward--coming like a breaking wave. Oops! Hay.... It put out one of the torches by smothering it. Drowned it in gra.s.s. Nothing serious--the boy's got it lit again. Progress is slow here, folks--youve got to realize this stuff's about ten feet high. Further in it's anyway sixteen feet. Fighting it's like battling an octopus with a million arms. The stuff writhes around and grows all the time. It's terrific. Imagine tangles of barbedwire, hundreds and hundreds of bales or rolls or however barbedwire comes, covering your frontyard and house--only it isnt barbedwire at all, but green, living gra.s.s.... Just a minute, folks, I'm having a little trouble with my microphone cable. Nothing serious, you understand--tangled a bit in the gra.s.s behind me. Those burnt stems. Stand by for just a minute...."

"This is KPAR, The Voice of Edendale. Due to mechanical difficulties there will be a brief musical interlude until contact is resumed with our portable transmitter bringing you an onthespot account of the unusual gra.s.s...."

"Kirk, Quork, krrmp--AR's portable transmitter. Here I am again, folks, in the street in front of the d.i.n.kman residence--a little out of breath, but none the worse off, ready to resume the blowbyblow story of the fight against the devilgra.s.s. That was a little trouble back there, but it's all right now. Seems the weedburners hadnt quite finished off the gra.s.s in the parkwaystrip between the curb and the sidewalk and after I dragged my microphone cable across it, it sort of--well, it sort of came to life again and tangled up the cable. It's all right now though.

Everything under control. The boys with the weedburners have come back and are going over the parkwaystrip again, just to make sure.

"I want to tell you--this stuff really can grow. It's amazing, simply amazing. Youve heard of plants growing while you look at them; well, this grows while you don't look at it. It grows while your back is turned. Just to give you an example: while the boys have been busy a second time with the parkwaystrip, the gra.s.s has come back and grown again over all they burned up beyond the sidewalk. And now it's starting to come back over the concrete. You can actually see it move. The creepers run out in front and crawl ahead like thousands of little green snakes. Imagine seeing gra.s.s traveling forward like an army of worms. An army you can't stop. Because it's alive. Alive and coming at you. It's alive. It's alive. It's al--"

"This is Station KPAR. We will resume our regular programs immediately following the timesignal. Now we bring you a message from the manufacturers of Chewachoc, the Candy Laxative with the Hole...."

I continued thoughtfully down the street. The _Daily Intelligencer_ was spread on a newsstand, a smudgy black bannerhead fouling its pure bosom.

CITY COUNCIL MEETS TO END GRa.s.s MENACE.

I trusted so. Quickly. I was tired of Mrs d.i.n.kman's lawn.

_13._ "Weener sahib, fate has tied us together."

I hoped not. I was weary of Gootes and his phony accents.

"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 gra.s.s business. J S Francis, World Renowned Chemist, exclusively in the _Intelligencer_. You know.

Suppress her unfortunate s.e.x. ORIGINATOR OF WILD GRa.s.s TELLS ALL.

"Anyway she didnt grasp her chance. Practically told W R to go to h.e.l.l.

Practically told him to go to h.e.l.l," 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 acc.u.mulated 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 ffacase--"

"How the h.e.l.l do I know? More than youre worth--more than I'm getting, because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the c.r.a.p on the gra.s.s 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 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 groundgla.s.s door inscribed in shabby, peeling letters--in distinction to its neighbors, newly and brightly painted--W.R. Le ffacase. 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 n.o.ble 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 rea.s.sured 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 ffacase'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 sc.r.a.p of ma.n.u.script was in evidence.

But who could examine that office with detached scrutiny while William Rufus Le ffacase occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he opened tiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered.

Under a s.h.i.+ny alpaca coat he wore an oldfas.h.i.+oned collarless s.h.i.+rt whose neckband was fastened with a diamond stud. Neither collar nor tie competed with the brilliance of this flas.h.i.+ng 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 b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is Weener?"

"Why, Chief, he's the guy who put the stuff on the gra.s.s."

"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 ffacase 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 a.r.s.elicking, s...o...b..ring 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 d.i.n.kman's lawn you want me to contribute--"

"Desires grow smaller as intelligence expands," growled Le ffacase. "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 gra.s.s."

"Cityeditor's province," he declared uninterestedly.

"No such thing on the _Intelligencer_," Gootes informed me in a loud whisper. Le ffacase, 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 c.r.a.pgame 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 gra.s.s. Divorce yourself from whatever p.o.r.nography 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 ffacase--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 a.s.suming, as they undoubtedly did, that the affair of the gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s.

Scorning these idle sightseers, I pushed and shoved my way forward to what had now become the focus of all my interests.

The d.i.n.kmans had lived in a city block, an urban ent.i.ty. It was no pretentious group of houses, nor was it a repet.i.tive design out of some subdividing contractor's greedy mind. Moderatesized, mediumpriced, middlecla.s.s bungalows; these were the homes of the d.i.n.kmans 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 hara.s.sedly 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 d.i.n.kman 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.