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Title: Odyssey of a hero

Author: Vardis Fisher

Release date: November 5, 2023 [eBook #72037]

Language: English

Original publication: Philadelphia: Ritten House

Credits: Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ODYSSEY OF A HERO ***





  Transcriber’s Note
  Italic text displayed as: _italic_




_ODYSSEY OF A HERO_




  _ODYSSEY of a HERO_

  [Illustration: Decoration]

  _VARDIS FISHER_

  [Illustration: Decoration]

  _RITTEN HOUSE_

  _PHILADELPHIA_

  _1937_




Copyright, 1937, by VARDIS FISHER

All Rights Reserved


Printed in the United States of America




When, in 1919, Private John Benton returned from France, he was not
a hero of the proportions of three or four who, alone and unaided,
had slain six or a dozen of the enemy and captured a hundred; but he
was a warrior not to be sneezed at. He had been decorated by three
nations and kissed by half the women in Paris, and the welcome given
him by natives of his home town was one that rocked Idaho from end to
end. There were seven speeches and a dozen bands and two truckloads of
flowers, and more flags and friends and goodwill than John had ever
seen before. His mother sat between two mayors, and his gawky young
sister was deferred to and flattered by all the politicians between
Boise and the Wyoming line.

And it all went to John’s head a little; but he remembered, even so,
that war had been a dark and sightless butchery, and that German
soldiers, hungry for cigarettes and peace, were human beings much like
himself. He was sick of war and he wanted quiet and forgetfulness. He
was a little terrified by the sadistic ardor of these homeland patriots
who had never seen horror in young faces or a bayonet in the belly of a
man. “We licked them all right!” cried a neighbor. “Hey, John, didn’t
we whack it to them?” And the man looked at John and burst with happy,
victorious laughter. “The Huns learned something when the Yanks got
over there,” said another. “By God, don’t tell me they didn’t!” “How
was it over there?” asked a third. “A lot of fun, wasn’t it, now? Hey,
John, you lucky devil!” And to all this, John’s answer was a pitying
shrug and a wan smile.

His smile became almost ghastly as he listened to the principal
speaker. The man shouted in furious rhetoric and aroused the great
audience to wild and prolonged applause. “We have with us today one of
the mightiest heroes in that great struggle to make all nations and
all peoples the guardians of peace: a native son, one of our own boys.
We have gathered here to honor his name and to write it high among the
selfless knights who march under the flags of war to make the world
safe for the mothers of men! In profound humility we are gathered to
pay homage to this soldier and patriot, this son of the Idaho mountains
and valleys, who captured, single-handed, the machine-gun nest of the
enemy, and marched his foes, beaten and vanquished, down the soil of
France where the name of the great Lafayette still rings like a bell in
the hearts of civilized nations!”

And when, after seven speeches and such applause as he had never
dreamed of, John Benton was called to the flag-draped stand to say a
few words to his friends and neighbors, he went with a sinking heart.
He looked at ten thousand faces, so hushed and listening that he could
hear his own breath; and for so long a moment he was speechless,
staring at the throng, that a voice from far out yelled: “Atta boy,
John! Tell us how you licked the Huns!” John cleared his voice and a
man yelled: “_Louder!_” and another shouted: “Atta boy, John!” “Friends
and neighbors,” said John at last, “I am grateful for this welcome.” A
hand clapped and then the great throng roared with applause that made
the rostrum tremble. A thousand automobile horns picked up the greeting
and rolled it in thunderous volume, and for five minutes John waited,
with the tremendous welcome like madness in his ears. “I appreciate
your kindness,” said John, when silence fell again, “and all that you
have done for me. But war, my friends, is not what you seem to think it
is.” He paused and licked his dry lips and the audience waited. When
he spoke again, those sitting close by were startled by his vehemence.
“War, my friends, is murder. We soldiers learned that the German
soldiers were not our enemy. Maybe it was a good war, fought in a good
cause, and maybe it was not. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m sick
of war and I won’t ever fight in another war and now I want peace and I
want to forget. And—well, I guess that’s about all I have to say.”

There was no applause now. There was only stunned silence and then a
low murmur that was like that of rage, gentle and baffled. Private John
Benton had spoken simply from his heart, little suspecting that his
words were to lay waste to his life.

John Benton, son of uneducated farmers, was a senior in high school
when English propaganda drew his country into war. He was a shy and
neurotic young man, deeply ashamed of his social background and his
illiterate relatives. He was among the first to enlist. He went not
as a patriot but as one without social or cultural anchor and without
friends, who saw in war an opportunity to prove his courage and his
worth. Nobody in his home town had ever spoken to him, except one
barber and the neighboring farmers whom he met on the streets. And
now he was to be a policeman or a night watchman or assistant to the
sheriff; he was called by his first name; he was invited into the
best homes. And in these first days he was very happy and loved his
townsfolk and began to fancy himself as a man of national importance.
But after his brief reply to the great welcome there had been a sudden
and drastic change. When he met the mayor now or any of the other plump
and prosperous men who had made his homecoming a memorable day, he was
acknowledged with a curt nod or not at all. He got no job of any kind
and he wandered up and down the streets or sat in pool halls watching
the poker chips, feeling a little vengeful and deeply unhappy, and
wondering why he had become only John Benton of the Benton farm on Mill
Creek.

It was Bill Hawkworth who gave him an idea. Bill was a lean man with
shrewd and cynical eyes and a tubercular cough. He worked in a pool
hall with a cigarette hanging from his white mouth and a fixed and
changeless contempt in his pale eyes. He sat by John one day and looked
at him with leering pity.

“What’s the matter, buddy? Ain’t they treatun you right any more?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said John, looking at Bill’s wet dead
cigarette.

“Oh, you know, all right. The mayor,” said Bill, and jerked his sallow
head toward city hall. “All them fat guys, buddy.” He smiled. His upper
lip curled and the hair of his ragged mustache fell like a hedge across
his yellow teeth. “You fanned out quick, didn’t you? Well, buddy, do
you know why?”

John turned a little angrily and looked at the lidless cynicism of
Bill’s eyes. “No,” he said.

“Want me to tell you?”

“Well, sure—if you can.”

“All right, buddy, it’s this way. You come back from war a big hero
and the city gives you a big bust and there’s speeches and flags and
popcorn for everyone and they wanted to hear how you licked hell out
of them Huns. And right there’s where you fanned. You come to bat all
right, but you just wouldn’t swing at the ball.” Bill’s lips curled
against his teeth and his eyes flickered. “You get me?” he said.

“You mean—? No,” said John, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean you coulda put this town right in your pocket. You coulda
jumped plumb into the middle of society and married the richest girl
around here and had a truckload of fortune drive right down your alley.
But what did you say when they asked what you thought of the popcorn?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’ll tell you, buddy. You said war is murder. You said you guessed
mebbe the Germans wasn’t your enemy at all. You said you wouldn’t fight
in another war to please God Almighty hisself. And all them,” said
Bill, curling his lips in cruel mockery, “was a hell of a crack. Did
you think they got all them-there brass bands and speeches and popcorn
trimmings to hear you throw them Christian sentiments in their teeth?
Was they intendun to make you assistant sheriff if you didn’t like to
fight?” Bill’s smile was evil. “Buddy,” he said, “you fanned. You swung
plumb hard and missed and fell right on your mug.”

“What did they expect?” asked John, staring, fascinated, at Bill’s
sinister eyes.

“God damn, buddy, that’s a stupid question. They wanted you to tell how
you made them Huns jump back over the Rhine like a buncha frogs—.”

“But I didn’t,” John said.

“Oh, the jumped-up holy ghost!” Bill drew the weak muscles of his face
down until his upper lip lay across his lower teeth. He smiled with
mirthless cunning and looked at John with gentle pitying amazement.
“Buddy, you wanta know how to be a hero again? I’ll tell you. You say
war’s a swell thing if you’re on the right side—and you was on the
right side, buddy—” Bill’s grin was chilling. “You tell how you rammed
them Huns in their guts and piled them up in the Rhine until it run
backwards. And if you could tell how you saved a virtuous woman—say,
for the love of virgins, couldn’t you tell a story like that? Buddy,
that would put you right on top of the popcorn pile with a cigar in
your face a yard long. Well,” he said, and spit straight down between
his knees, “you get the idea.”

But it was a difficult idea for John Benton to grasp. He walked around
like a tall pale ghost of a man, with spiritual anguish in his thin,
sensitive face. He wanted persons to like him. He wanted persons to
remember Jesus, as he had remembered Him for two years in France, and
to look far into the ways of kindliness and mercy. But Bill, meeting
him now, gave him a cynical yellow smile and a jab in his ribs. “Be
fierce,” he said, smirking wisely, “and blow your horn.” And again:
“Buddy, stop lookun like one of the twelve apostles, huntun around for
the coast of Galilee. Sail out and tell them-there big stomachs what
they wanta hear.” And John, after days of wretched indecision, resolved
to try.

He approached the matter gently, experimentally, at first, telling
only the less horrifying details of war; and in the men here who had
remained at home he found an eager response. They gathered round him
in the pool hall, and when his tale faltered, or when he broke off,
feeling sick and traitorous, they urged him to resume. “Hey, John,
tell us how you captured that there machine-gun nest.” And simply,
without exaggeration, John told of the lone exploit for which he had
been decorated by three nations. He said he crept out at daybreak and
came to the nest and surprised the gunners and marched them back to the
American line. Such a bald narrative, he learned after a while, would
not do at all. His listeners wanted heroics and a breath-taking clash
and a picture of a lone American fighting hand to hand with a dozen of
the enemy and licking the whole lot of them. It took John a long time
and many tellings to learn what was wanted. The questions helped. “And
didn’t them cowards put up no fight at all?” “Hey, John, you don’t
mean they just laid down like a bunch of sheep!” No, John perceived,
he could not afford to mean anything like that. “You’re too modest,”
they said, never doubting that he had more amazing things to tell; and
with increasing recklessness John became less modest. He elaborated
the tale, adding to it in every recital some breathless episode, some
additional moment in which he missed death by a hair, some new cunning
ferocity in the foe. And he was a strange person, this tall, grave man,
telling his legends and feeling sickened by the telling.

After a while his tale was a gorgeous thing and not like the real
experience at all. But that, he began to understand, did not matter.
Now he crawled forth under a red sheet of artillery fire with shells
bursting like automobile motors all around him and with the sky above
him like a rolling mountain of flame. He crawled inch by inch through
great shell-holes, and the lead falling around him threw earth into his
eyes and stung his flesh like hornets and dug graves across his path.
He crept past dead bodies—American bodies, the slain and mangled of
his own company, all of them gutted in the gray wet dawn; went slowly,
patiently, toward that one infernal nest that was raining death on
the American line; dragged himself foot by foot, seeing that one gun
belching its flame and hearing above and around him the mad thundering
nightmare and smelling dead flesh. Inch by inch he crawled toward that
nest, his hair matted with earth, his paralyzed hands grasping his
pistols, his ears running blood—inch by inch, until at last he was
under the red fire of it; and for a moment he rested, with his senses
reeling and his heart in his throat....

“And—and then?” gasped one.

Then he crept slowly around the bushes of the nest and forward in the
darkness of underbrush until he could almost touch the five men there,
every one of them like a blackened sweating devil, pouring lead at the
American flag. And here in his narrative John paused, having learned
much of the proper telling of a story; looked at the choked, almost
anguished, suspense in the faces around him. “Then what?” asked one in
a whisper. Then, John said, carefully building his legend, he examined
his pistols and cocked them; and when all five men were busy, working
like fiends out of hell, he sprang to his feet and covered the distance
in one bound; brought his guns crashing upon the skulls of two of them;
kicked a third in his belly and sent him over the machine-gun; and
jammed the pistol barrels into the bellies of the fourth and fifth. The
third, knocked into the line of fire, was slain by his own gun, and
the first and second rose, with blood gushing from their skulls, and
reached for the sky. He marched the four of them, gory with wounds, out
across the surging hell of no-man’s-land, and that was the end of a
nest that had taken thousands of American lives. It was the end, John
learned to understand, of the most villainous bandits on the whole
western front....

The news of John spread, and three months after his return the local
paper announced:

 JOHN BENTON TO SPEAK

 John Benton, one of the greatest heroes in the World War, and Idaho’s
 native son and our own fellow-townsman, will address a mammoth meeting
 tonight in the Paramount Theater and relate some of his most dramatic
 experiences. He will tell of his capture, alone and unaided and in
 a veritable deluge of bursting shellfire, of the most murderous and
 treacherous machine-gun nest on the whole German front.

And John did. The audience went wild with applause and he was again a
hero. On the following Sunday he had dinner at the mayor’s home and
repeated his story to nine distinguished guests; and when one of them,
Harry Cuthwright, a banker, declared that Germany was a degenerate
nation and that America had entered the war with the noblest of
motives, John hastily agreed. Within a month he was the most respected
person in his home city. The girls looked at him with coy admiration
and the men deferred to him when he spoke. Though happy and proud, he
was troubled, too: he no longer knew what the truth was or was not, and
with obstinate ardor he strove not to care. And he blundered again.

If he had been modest, reciting his legends only after repeated urging;
if he had understood why the persons here wanted his legends and how
fickle their worship was, he might not have become the pest that he
was to be a few years later. But the more he realized that interest
in him was waning, the more he was whetted to invest fresh details
and to tell his bloody fables to those who no longer cared to listen.
After a while he insisted on telling them to persons who were bored and
impatient; and as his nation was restored, year by year, to prosperity
and interest in disarmament and world courts, John’s power diminished,
his exploits were forgotten, and he himself became a pale and humorless
nuisance. He did not understand that a revulsion against war had
overtaken his country. When persons tried to shrug him into silence,
or told him, with a contemptuous grimace, that he was a bad citizen,
he became comically aggressive in his bearing and blasphemous in his
speech. He said there should be another war—with Japan, perhaps—and
declared that he would be the first to enlist. He swaggered and got
into drunken brawls, and twice for disturbing the peace was thrown into
jail.

“You’re a bad citizen,” said Cuthwright, the banker. “The United States
has always been a peace-loving nation. We were dragged into that last
damned war by a cowardly President who promised to keep us out of it.
And now look at our war debts!”

“Sure,” said John. “Why don’t we go over with an army and collect them?”

“Collect hell! Keep out of Europe, that’s what I say. That’s what
Washington said. It’s men like you, Benton, who get nations into war.
You enlisted in that last one and you came back boasting of the men
you’d killed and you’ve been boasting ever since. Why don’t you preach
peace?”

“Peace!” said John, appalled.

“Yes, peace. Didn’t Jesus command us to seek peace? But you go around
with your damned doctrines of hatred—”

“Preach peace!” cried John, aghast.

“Listen, Benton, you sound just like Mussolini to me. Why the hell
don’t you go over to Italy? Anyway, we’re a peace-loving nation, and
I’m telling you, Benton, you’d better change your tune. This city is
getting awfully sick of you.”

Cuthwright was the greatest man in the city and his rebuke threw John
into a terrific struggle. He felt angry and baffled and lost. He went
to his father’s farm and sulked there, and then went to church and
listened with doubtful ears to a plea for internationalism and the
World Court. He wanted to rise and blaspheme the preacher; but he
learned, after his sulking was done, that he had kept all the while,
overgrown with boasting and anecdote, a belief in peace: it was there,
under the fierce thicket of his words and gestures, and it came little
by little like a thing out of hiding. And he wept one day in bitter
astonishment and then felt a new and frenzied eagerness, as if he had
come out of darkness, a vault, to look at a clear sky. He returned to
the city and the first to greet him said:

“Well, how’s the braggart today? Hey, how’s your one-man war against
Germany?” And another said:

“Hello, John. You still capturing that machine-gun nest?” And John
looked at them with strange, unhappy eyes. He went away from them
without speaking and entered a pool hall and saw the winks and leers.
He sat and read a newspaper or looked at the men, thoughtfully,
gravely, wondering about them and about himself. A slender, fair-haired
youth came up and sat by him.

“John,” he said, “just between me and you, isn’t war plain damned
murder?” John hesitated. He looked at the clear blue eyes, candid and
friendly. “You said so, years ago,” the young man went on. “I was just
a kid then. I heard you. I’ve never forgotten it. And Professor Jameson
heard you, too.”

“Who is Professor Jameson?”

“He teaches in the college here. He would like to meet you.”

“Why?” asked John, feeling a little sick.

“Oh, I don’t know. He—he hates war. And he says you did—once.”

John was thoughtful for a long moment. “Yes,” he said, looking at the
young man with eyes full of memory, “I—I did.” He turned away, full of
bitter loneliness and grief.

It was Arnold Jameson who set John on his feet again. Jameson was a
small unobtrusive man with large tragic eyes. He was gentle and kind,
and he had John over to dinner; after dinner he said:

“I suppose you know Jim Harlan died last week. And Walt Ainsworth last
summer. Both from old wounds. And Dick Roscoe hasn’t more than two
or three years to go. But the world is shaping up toward peace now,
Benton, and I’ve often wondered why you don’t take a hand in it.” John
was silent and ashamed, remembering how he had boasted of medals and
brawls and told of legendary Germans whom he had run through with a
bayonet. “In 1917 I opposed the war,” Jameson went on, “and nearly lost
my job. But now we can teach peace and get away with it.” He looked at
John’s sensitive, unhappy face and wondered about him. “Seven years
ago,” he said, “you believed in peace. What changed you?”

“I—I don’t know,” John said.

“I’ve some books here,” Jameson said, “that I thought you might like to
read.”

Deeply ashamed, and no longer the town’s worst drunkard and braggart,
John settled down and married a blue-eyed girl and lived in a tiny
house on a quiet street. He talked often with Jameson and visited his
classes in the college and became an ardent apostle of internationalism
and goodwill. He rejoined the church from which war and bitterness
had divorced him; taught a group of boys in Sunday school; and became
a speaker in demand throughout the countryside. He was again a hero
and his heart was in his work. “There is no need,” said those who
introduced him, “to tell you who John Benton is. His devotion to peace
shows that the last war was not fought in vain. It is with pride.”...
And it was with pride that John faced these audiences on Washington’s
or Lincoln’s birthday or on Armistice Day and spoke out of his heart.
It was with pride that he became Jameson’s closest friend and heard
Jameson say: “It’s on the few of us, John, that civilization depends.
We must keep our heads when the world goes mad.” John was keeping his
head. In the tenth year after his return and in the thirty-second of
his life he was elected a trustee of the college. He was a person of
power in his community.

“John,” said Cuthwright one day, “we’re proud of you. I knew you’d come
to your senses.”

“It took me a long time,” John said.

“Yes, but oaks don’t grow in a season.” Cuthwright laid a friendly hand
on John’s shoulder. “I lost a son in France,” he said, his eyes misty.
“But now—well, that was the price we paid, John, for a better world.”

No one knew less certainly than John himself how it came or what
it meant. There was at first, of course, a crashing of industrial
pyramids, and then the depression, but everyone spoke of it lightly and
said it would soon pass. It did not soon pass, and there was growing
anxiety and unrest. There were farmers who had been earnest citizens;
but now, with their taxes unpaid, their homes mortgaged, many of them
became bootleggers and drunkards. There were small business men who had
gone into bankruptcy; doctors and dentists with unpaid bills piling
up on their desks; common laborers who, unable to find work, loafed
in the pool halls and became brutal and cynical. Then there was a new
President and, for a little while, new hope; but when the chief bank
here failed to open its doors there were angry threats and almost a
riot. It was learned that Cuthwright and all the chief stockholders had
withdrawn their money long ago.

Then matters in Germany came to a crisis; the words of the Italian war
lord stood in black type across the newspapers; and Japan was invading
China. After a while, some persons here began to talk of the next war
and they spoke with such hopeless resignation or with such fierce
impatience that John was alarmed. He redoubled his efforts for peace.
The audiences were small now and applause often ran into hisses; and
then he was no longer asked to speak anywhere. Some of his townsfolk
began to look at him with suspicious or hostile eyes.

And the hostility grew. One by one his colleagues fell away and he and
Jameson stood alone. The bishop under whom he had labored said a war
between the United States and Japan was inevitable and declared that
all the Japs ought to be driven out of the Idaho beet fields. He said
Japan would conquer China and then come over and conquer the United
States, and his talk excited people and made them argue for a large
army and navy. He said all aliens should be driven from the nation’s
shores. He said the depression had been caused by the millions of
foreigners here, most of whom were communists and spies and the scum
of earth. He said that any man who talked of peace when his country
was surrounded by enemies was a communist and a traitor. “And you,” he
said, looking at John with angry eyes, “you’d better watch your step.”

“I believe in peace,” John said. “And so did Jesus.”

“Our Lord, yes. But what did He know of the menace of Japs and
communists and Fascists?”

And the legend grew. It was rumored that John Benton and Arnold Jameson
were communist agitators. Hadn’t they defended the Jews? And what were
Jews but the worst damned breed of communist on earth! Didn’t they
think that the confounded Japs should be allowed to thin Idaho beets,
even though Idahoans starved? If they weren’t communists, then what in
hell were they?

And John Benton, bewildered, terrified, felt the growth of a mighty
unfriendliness. Idlers in pool halls, on the streets, looked at him
with skulking eyes. Men who had introduced him as our distinguished
citizen did not speak to him now. He wrote a letter to his local
paper, summarizing the argument of an eminent American who said
Roosevelt might lead the nation into war to save his face. And then the
crisis came.

The paper declared one morning that Jameson had made remarks to his
classes which were false and subversive and communistic, and that John
Benton was in the pay of Russia. It demanded the dismissal of the one
and the resignation of the other; and two days later Jameson was called
before the trustees. There were five members on the board, including
John; Cuthwright, the banker; a druggist; and a lawyer and the editor
of the local newspaper. They sat at the head of a long table in the
banker’s office and Jameson came in, looking anxiously from face to
face. Cuthwright waved him to a chair.

“Jameson, have you anything to say in your defense?”

“What is the charge against me?”

“Why, that your teaching is subversive. It is dangerous to the welfare
of our government.”

“Because I preach peace?”

“Because,” said Cuthwright impatiently, “you talk like a communist.”

He leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. He was a big man
with stern jaws and a paralyzing gaze. “A week ago you said in your
class in history that the World War was a mistake and we entered it
because our statesmen were outwitted by the English. You implied, as I
understand it, that we’re a nation of fools—”

“I was quoting,” said Jameson, “from a book.”

“What book?”

“A book by Walter Millis called _The Road to War_.”

“Oh, and what in hell does he know about it? Who is he—a communist?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, you don’t think so. Jameson, I should say that before you try to
instruct the minds of our sons and daughters you’d find out who an
author is. He may be only a paid agent of Stalin. Besides that, you
said all wars have been stupid.” Cuthwright looked at his notes. “You
said England and the United States don’t intend to let Japan dominate
the East. Why in hell,” demanded Cuthwright angrily, “shouldn’t _we_
dominate the East? You mean to tell me you’d let a bunch of Japs do
it?” Cuthwright thumped the table. “And you said the United States
should boycott Italy if it invades Ethiopia. What in hell is it our
business if they go down and fight those niggers? And where are we to
sell our goods if you communists close up all the foreign markets?
I suppose you’d let England sell guns and stack ours up in the
Metropolitan Museum! Well, do you deny any of those statements?”

“No.”

“All right, Jameson, we’ll have to ask for your resignation.”

Jameson was very pale now but his gaze was unwavering. “For more than
twenty years I’ve lived here and taught here.”

“I know, I know, Jameson. We’re sorry about it. But our duty—what you
don’t understand, Jameson, is that the welfare of the State is greater
than that of any individual. You didn’t use to be a communist.”

“And I’m not one now.”

“Well, any man can hide behind a definition. Anyway....”

John Benton wondered afterwards why he did not speak up in defense of
his colleague. “I’m a coward,” he told his wife. He paced the room,
agitated. “I’m a coward!” he cried. “I can see it now!” And a week
later, when the local paper again called him a communist and demanded
in a long editorial that he resign from the board, he shook all over.
He felt the nameless dread of his youth. And when his fellow trustees
called him into conference behind a locked door, he trembled with
anxiety and turned to them a face as white as death. They asked for
his resignation. They asked if he had anything to say. He looked at
them and every one of them, it seemed to him, was a man at ease,
plump, secure, certain. He rose to his feet. “Yes,” he said, his voice
shaking, “I have something to say. It’s perhaps the last thing I’ll
ever say. Yes, I want to say that I fought in the last war. I know a
lot of men who fought in the last war. Where are they? Dead—like Harlan
and Roscoe and Ainsworth.” He licked his dry lips. He placed hands on a
table to steady his shaking frame. “But you didn’t fight in that war.
Did you?—did you?—or you? No, you’re Goddamned right you didn’t! But
I did. And I was not a coward, either!” His voice was a little wild
now. “I was decorated for bravery, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?” he demanded,
with humorless tragic pride. “And I came back and hated war and I spoke
against war, and what did you do to me? What did this town do to me?
I’ll tell you: it made a street bum out of me. You did! You’re liars
if you say you didn’t. A street bum—a drunkard—a fool, because I hated
war and spoke against war. And then,” he said, his face awful in its
white anguish, “then I favored war, I did, and—and you turned against
me again. I couldn’t please you,” he said, with dry choked bitterness.
“Just like Jameson couldn’t—nobody can, nobody! Nobody,” he said. “And
then—then I preached peace and you liked me and I had friends and I
liked to preach peace and I was happy. I had friends. Everyone was
my friend: you—and you. Everyone,” he said, proudly. “Everyone. But
now—now nobody speaks to me and they call me a communist, and I’m not
a communist, but nobody can please you. I can’t, Jameson couldn’t,
nobody could.” His voice fell almost to a whisper, anguished and tragic
and hopeless. “I fought in that war and I was decorated for bravery
and I’ve tried to make everyone like me. But nobody can please men
like you! You don’t want war and you don’t want peace and—nobody!”
he cried, wildly. His mind darkened and there was something terrible
in his eyes now. He advanced a little, his body shaking. “I—you—” he
said. The muscles in one cheek twitched. “I fought in that war and I
was decorated!” He leaned forward, searching their faces with dark
and unreasoning eyes, searching for friendliness and goodwill. “Three
nations decorated me for bravery,” he said. He hesitated, groping,
lost. Then he smiled and his smile was more chilling than his words.
“I—” He stopped, trying to understand. “I’d fight again,” he said,
softly, terribly. He laughed, and the trustees rose and backed away
from him. “I’d fight again,” he said, softly, terribly, advancing
toward them. “Honest!” he declared, clenching his lean hands. The
knuckles on his hands were as white as his mouth. “I’d fight again,” he
said.





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