The Ninth Wave Page 31

  Mr. Appleton was followed by a woman whom he introduced as Mrs. Sweeton. She was formless in a black crepe dress. She wore a long string of coral beads around her neck and they hung to her waist. The beads were large and yellow, like the aged teeth of some large animal. Her fingers never left them alone.

  "It's your meeting, Mr. Freesmith," Mr. Appleton said. "You asked for it. So tell us what's on your mind. Mrs. Sweeton and I will talk to any politician that wants to talk to us. We represent the Senior Citizens Clubs of Long Beach, Gardena, Seal Beach, and San Pedro. So what's on your mind?"

  "I'm not a politician," Mike said. "I'm just a lawyer."

  "That's right, you're just a lawyer," Mr. Appleton said and laughed a dry thin acid laugh. "But maybe you represent a politician. So get on with it."

  Mr. Appleton sat with a simple proper arrogance, his back not touching the chair, his feet squarely on the floor. There was something mathematical, precise, clean and unattractive about him.

  "How do your people feel about Cutler?" Mike asked.

  "Don't know yet. Haven't seen his pension planks yet. Next question?"

  "What would you like to see in a platform, Mr. Appleton?" Mike asked.

  "You know that. A pension that senior citizens can live on, an act by the legislature that will make pension funds the first obligation on state funds, the administrator of the pension fund to be a friendly person. It's all on the record. We've said it before. We'll say it again. It's all on the record. Next question?"

  Mr. Appleton sat calmly in the chair, rigid with confidence.

  There was a knock on the door and it swung open. A waiter walked in with a tray on his shoulder.

  "Six Pabsts, chicken sandwiches. That right?" the waiter said. He swung the tray down onto a table. Mike pitched him a half dollar.

  "Like a bottle of beer or a sandwich, Mr. Appleton?" Mike asked.

  "Don't drink," Mr. Appleton replied crisply. "Go right ahead, though. Go right ahead."

  "Mrs. Sweeton, excuse me," Mike said. "Would you like a glass of beer or a sandwich?"

  Mrs. Sweeton's brown round eyes moved for the first time since she entered the room. She had been sitting quietly, her fat smooth hands manipulating the jagged coral beads. Since the tray came in the room, however, she had been staring out the window. Now her eyes focused on the sandwiches, examined the soft white bread, the green lettuce, the rich mound of potato salad On each plate, the brown heap of potato chips.

  As if she were remarking on something novel and unique and quite unrelated, she said, "It's been so long since breakfast," and after a quick look at Mr. Appleton she stared out the window again.

  Georgia picked up a plate and passed it to Mrs. Sweeton. Staring out the window, quite obliviously, Mrs. Sweeton took the plate and her soft sure fingers quickly grasped the sandwich and put it to her lips. She turned her head away so that they could not see her take the first bite.

  "Would you like me to send out for some tea or milk, Mrs. Sweeton?" Georgia asked.

  The gray hair moved quickly and she looked up at Georgia.

  "Oh, don't send out for anything. I'll just drink whatever you have here," Mrs. Sweeton said.

  She did not look at the glass of beer as Georgia pressed it into her hand. She took a deep drink of the beer and then put a wisp of a handkerchief to her lips to wipe away the foam.

  "Go on, Mr. Appleton," Mike said. "You were saying that your aims were all on the record. Do you think Cutler is in agreement with those aims?"

  "Can't tell, I said," and his voice was as cool and thin as shredded ice. "If we ever get him on record we'll know what he stands for."

  "Your people would not approve him though on what you know now?"

  Mr. Appleton brought the tips of his fingers together in what was clearly a gesture of pleasure. "No," he said. "No. We wouldn't approve him or any other pie-in-the-sky, big-bellied lying politician. Not until we saw their platform in black and white. If his pension plank is right we'd support him. But we wouldn't really believe him until we saw the right laws roll out of Sacramento." Mr. Appleton paused a moment. He glanced coolly at Mrs. Sweeton, at the big attractive tray of beer and sandwiches, at the big suite of rooms. "We're not as stupid as we were ten years ago, Mr. Freesmith. And we're a hell of a lot better organized. We don't buy very easily now. We've got a program and we're going to get it. Franklin Roosevelt framed us, Upton Sinclair framed us. But we ain't fools,anymore. We're organized."

  He stopped abruptly. Like a man who has already said too much. He stopped tapping his fingertips together and twisted his hands together into a mass of thin fingers and white knuckles.

  Mrs. Sweeton was frightened and she put the glass of beer down on the table. She continued to nibble at the sandwich. Her teeth worked deftly and minutely at it, wearing it down with nervous small bites so that she chewed incessantly.

  "Mr. Appleton, what did you do before you retired?" Mike asked.

  "I was a carpenter. Journeyman carpenter. Iowa first and then California. Good one too. Laid three thousand feet of oak flooring in . . . " he stopped slowly and glanced at Mike. "I was a carpenter."

  Mike poured a glass full of beer. He did it slowly. He poured the beer down the side of the glass and watched the thin collar of foam climb slowly up the side. He turned the glass upright just as it was perfectly full. He took a bite of a sandwich and then pushed a handful of potato chips in his mouth. The sound of the chips being crushed was the loudest noise in the room. Mike wiped his hand across his mouth and smiled at Mr. Appleton.

  "Mr. Appleton, have you got a minute to spare so I can tell you a little story?" Mike asked. "It's a very short story. Very short."

  Mr. Appleton's bright birdlike eyes swept over Mike with a look of hard pity. His hands uncurled and he tapped his fingertips together; the five fingers of one hand gently bouncing off the five fingers of the other hand.

  "A minute, Mr. Freesmith? I've got lots of minutes," he said and cackled shrilly; a harsh arrogant sound; chickenlike and hard; utterly confident. "Sure. I've got a minute."

  "You see, Mr. Appleton, we know a little bit about how our eider citizens, our senior citizens, were treated in other societies," Mike said in a soft voice. He looked relaxed and powerless. Sweat marked his armpits and blotched the front of his shirt. His eyes were half closed against the heat and the glare of the sun that came in the venetian blinds. "We know; Mr. Appleton, from anthropology and sociology that every society tends to protect its most productive members . . . the men and women who can work the hardest, reproduce, fight wars, invent things, expend energy. In tough times the entire society will instinctively protect its strongest members. An old Eskimo will make up his mind one day and wander off into a storm and die if the food supply gets low enough. He does that because he knows that if he doesn't the younger people might force him out into the storm. And so he goes by himself."

  "Mr. Freesmith, my people are waiting for me back in the Convention Hall," Mr. Appleton said and his upper lip was drawn thin. "They want to know what Cromwell stands for. They don't want to hear horror stories."

  "Sure, sure. Just a minute," Mike said. He took another drink of beer. He put more potato chips in his mouth, crunched them loudly. "Just hear me out. Let me tell you about one society and the way it took care of its older people. This was a society that was hard pressed by its enemies . . . pretty much the way the United States is today. They began to worry, wonder if they could stand the pressure, argue about how they'd do in a war. They worried about whether they were strong enough and what they ought to do to keep strong. What they finally did was have all the citizens take off their clothes once a year . . . all at the same time. Then they would all gather naked in the public square and march in front of a committee of wise men. It was pretty clever really. All the young bucks would see girls they were interested in and it would become obvious that they were interested and, even more important; that they were capable of doing something about it."

  Mike paused and looked
at Mr. Appleton. Mr. Appleton was looking straight ahead, but his eyes were a deeper color and they had lost their hard suspicious look. His tongue licked at the corners of his dry old lips and he almost smiled.

  "Round and round the public square they'd march," Mike went on. "Everyone buck-assed naked. And slowly they'd pair off. The strong young men would pick the strong young women they liked and the committee of selection would let them leave the square and wander off into a grove of trees nearby. Then what would be left would be old people who obviously couldn't do what was necessary. Thin old geezers with skin hanging around their waist and knock-kneed; fat old men with pot bellies and double chins. Old hags; no corsets or girdles to hide them. Just their white old ruined childless flesh for everyone to see. No muscles left; no energy, no nothing. Understand?"

  Mr. Appleton was still sitting very straight, but his eyes were unfocused and vague. His face seemed slightly dissolved. He crossed his arms across his chest and rocked back and forth.

  "Understand, Mr. Appleton?" Mike asked."No energy, no nothing?"

  Mr. Appleton's eyes roamed around the room and then fastened fiercely on Mike. He nodded savagely.

  "Finally the only ones left in the square would be the old people," Mike said. "They'd walk around and around, the old naked men and the old naked women . . . with the committee giving them a cold eye. Waiting to see if the old men still had it in 'em. Or if anyone wanted the old women. The committee didn't say a thing. They didn't do anything. But after a while the old men and women would disappear. They would wander off. Not into the grove but out into the countryside and far away from the town. Out of the society altogether. Gone. Gone forever. Some of the stronger ones became slaves or shepherds, but none of them hung around." Mike paused a minute and took another sip of beer. His teeth, when he bit into the sandwich, looked very white and strong and he looked up with a grin.

  Mr. Appleton twisted in his chair. Mrs. Sweeton sobbed distantly and fumbled for the beer glass with her hand. Hank handed it to her and she drank deeply and then wiped off her lips with the back of her hand. There was a smear of mayonnaise on her chin. Mr. Appleton was trying to smile, but his teeth made a thin, chalky sound as they ground together in a desperate effort to keep his chin from gaping and wagging.

  "You're . . . you're . . . you're . . . a savage," Mr. Appleton said finally and snapped his mouth shut. Saliva ran from the corner of his mouth and in a bright silvery streak down his chin. He leaned far back in the chair. Suddenly he looked very frail and small; almost childlike. Some thin strong certitude had snapped and his jaw hung open and showed the false pinkness of his dentures and the real pinkness of his tongue.

  "No. I'm not savage," Mike said softly. "I'm just trying to tell you the facts of life. The story is true. It happened in Sparta and the man who wrote it down Was Lycurgus. Go to the public library and check it out. Read it. It really happened."

  "Well, it's uncivilized~" Appleton said, but his voice lacked conviction. His tongue clacked softly against his false teeth.

  "You have to realize that America's in a crisis today," Mike went on. "Just like Sparta was. Russia is looking down our throat. Pretty soon there's going to be a war. And people will get scared. They'll wonder if we're strong enough to win. And they'll take a cold look at who can help in the fight and who can't. Every society does it, Mr. Appleton. Every single society that's under pressure does exactly that. When we take that cold look we might decide that our senior citizens are a liability; a handicap."

  "It's not so," Mrs. Sweeton said. There were tears in her eyes, but her face was not anguished, it was frightened. "No one thinks that in America."

  "Look, Mrs. Sweeton," Mike said. "Did you ever hear of euthanasia until recently? Of course not. It's a polite term for murdering people who don't have any good reason for living anymore. Right now euthanasia would only be applied to congenital idiots, incurable cancer and things like that. But let things get really tough; let the battle really begin, and that will change. Someday soon someone is going to suggest that maybe euthanasia be applied to people over a certain age . . . everyone over a certain age would get the works. It's in people's minds already; you can see it stirring around; just waiting to be said. You don't see many young people anymore, but they're talking about it; gnawing away at the idea. Worries 'em. And the word euthanasia keeps popping up."

  "You shut up. You're a god damn liar," Mr. Appleton said. He was crouched in the chair, like a tiny defensive monkey. His old splayed carpenter's hands were held out in front of him. "You're lying. That's what you're doing." -

  "Mike, my God, don't talk like that," Georgia said. She looked at Hank, but he was staring at Mike. Her voice was thin; at the shatter point. "Even if it's true don't say it."

  "But it's true," 'Mike said. "I have to say it. If these people are going into politics they better find out the facts." Mike reached out and shuffled through the papers on the coffee table. He picked up a sheet. "Now, look at this report. It's from UNESCO. It's a survey of what age groups suffered most in Russia and Germany during World War Two. Do you know that the old people, people over fifty-five, just about disappeared from those two countries? No one knows just how, but they did. They just vanished away; Starved, maybe, or sent off to Siberia or killed from overwork or something. But they're gone. Just as if the Germans and the Russians decided that the old people had to go first."

  Mr. Appleton moved his bent, tough carpenter's hands, but no words accompanied them: only a sound like a muted sustained yelp.

  "The point is, Mr. Appleton, you don't want to press a society too hard," Mike said. "Those slick young men down in Long Beach that run your organizations tell you you can get anything you want if you just push hard enough. But maybe you'll get more than you bargained for. Maybe America is saving up a surprise to hand you. Maybe you'd better protect yourself."

  Mrs. Sweeton stood up as if she were going to leave the room. She stood hesitantly and then Mike looked up at her. He did not smile and for a few moments they looked at one another. Then she saw the sandwiches and the broken look left her face; she went soft with desire. She picked up a sandwich, pushed it savagely into her mouth, roughly jabbed the bits of chicken past her lips. Little bits of lettuce fell unnoticed on her neat black bosom.

  "What should we do?" Appleton asked. His voice was thick and mechanical; as if the words were made only by the false teeth.

  "The first thing is to forget all that stuff about calling yourselves senior citizens or the deserving elderly or any other term like that," Mike said. "Just face the facts. You're old, marginal, used-up, surplus. All right. How do you protect yourselves?"

  Mike picked up a folder. He opened it and spread the paper on the table. The top item was an architect's sketch of what looked like a great sprawling army camp with Quonset huts and barracks neatly arranged in blocks.

  "Now the worst problem that old people face is adequate housing," Mike said. "Cromwell is prepared to undertake a state program of old-age camps where everyone past a certain age could have an individual room, adequate food and an issue of clothing. The camps would be out in the country. They would be nicely built. It wouldn't be luxurious, but it would be safe. Now the thing the old people have to do is . . . "

  When Mr. Appleton and Mrs. Sweeton looked up, their eyes were bright and clear like the eyes of very trusting and loyal children. They watched Mike's lips move, but they scarcely heard his words. They nodded endlessly.

  When the old people left, Mike stood up. He walked to the bathroom door. He turned.

  Hank spoke very slow, with careful deliberation, reaching measuredly for the words.

  "Mike, you dirty, dirty, dirty bastard, you deliberately . . . "

  And then he stopped. For a grin was spreading over Mike's face. It was not a hard grin or without pity. But it was certain; absolutely sure.

  Mike waited, but Hank did not speak. Mike turned and went into the bathroom.

  CHAPTER 23

  An Honest Man

&nb
sp; There was a knock on the door and Notestein came in. He wore a large hat that came almost to his ears and hung just over his eyebrows. It was an expensive and subdued hat and he wore an expensive and subdued suit. He took a few steps into the room and stopped, peering out at them. He smiled, almost pluckishly; like a person expected to be clownish. Without speaking, he took the hat off. The hat was too large, the suit tailored too abundantly, as if to show that he could afford plenty of excellent material. His hands manipulated the expensive hat as something to be valued, to be viewed, to be appreciated. He wanted it big. He moved his feet, calling attention to his shoes. They were two-toned, brown and white. The white inserts were made of linen lattice that was worked into the initials T.N. Mike came out of the bathroom and Notestein smiled at him, took a few steps toward Georgia.