_47._ There was no doubt the gra.s.s, our ally to such good purpose in the war, had definitely slowed down; now it was looked upon as a fixture, a part of the American heritage, a natural phenomenon which had outlived its sensational period and come to be taken for granted. Botanists pointed out that _Cynodon dactylon_, despite its ability to sheathe itself against a chill, had never flourished in cold areas and there was no reason to suppose the inoculated gra.s.s, even with its abnormal metabolism, could withstand climates foreign to its habit. It was true it had touched, in one place, the arctic tundra, but it was confidently expected this excursion would soon cease. The high peaks of the Rockies with the heavy winter snowdrifts lying between them promised no permanent hospitality, and what seeds blew through the pa.s.ses and lighted on the Great Plains were generally isolated by saltbands, and since they were confined to comparatively small clumps they were easily wiped out by salt or fire. To all appearance the gra.s.s was satiated and content to remain crouching over what it had won.
Only a minority argued that in its new form it might be infinitely adaptable. Before, when stopped, it had produced seeds capable of bearing the parent strain. So now, they argued, it would in time acclimate itself to more rigorous temperatures. Among these pessimists, Miss Francis, emerging from welldeserved obscurity, hysterically ranged herself. She prophesied new sudden and sweeping advances and demanded money and effort equal to that expended in the late war be turned to combating the gra.s.s. As if taxes were not already outrageously high.
Those in authority, with a little judicious advice from persons of standing, quite properly disregarded her querulous importunities. The whole matter of dealing with the weed was by now in the hands of a permanent body, the Federal Disruptions Commission. This group had spent the first six months of its existence exactly defining and a.s.serting its jurisdiction, which seemed to spread just as the vegetation calling it into being did; and the second six months wrangling with the Federal Trade Commission over certain "Cease and Desist" orders issued to firms using allusions to the gra.s.s on the labels of their products, thereby implying they were as vigorous, or of as wide application, as the representation. The Disruptions Commission had no objection in principle to this castigation; they merely thought it should have come from their regulatory hands.
But with the end of the war a new spirit animated the honorable members of the commission and as a token of revived energy they issued a stern directive that no two groups engaged in antigraminous research were to pool their knowledge; for compet.i.tion, the commission argued in the sixtyseven page order, spurred enthusiasm and the rivalry between workers would the sooner produce a solution. Having settled this basically important issue they turned their attention to investigating the slower progress of the gra.s.s to determine whether it was permanent or temporary and whether its present sluggishness could be turned to good account. As a sort of side project--perhaps to show the wideness of their scope--they undertook as well to study the reasons for the failure of the wartime inoculation of the steppes as contrasted with the original too successful California one. They planned a compilation of their findings, tentatively scheduled to cover a hundred and fortyseven foliovolumes which would remain the basic work for all approaching the problem of attacking the gra.s.s; and as an important public figure who had some firsthand knowledge of the subject they requested me to visit, at my own expense, the newest outposts of the weed and favor them with my observations. I was not averse to the suggestion, for the authority of the commission would admit me to areas closed to ordinary citizens and I was toying with the idea it might be possible in some way to use the devilgra.s.s as an ingredient in our food products.
_48._ George Thario having shown in many ways he was growing stale on the job and in need of a vacation, I decided to take him with me.
Besides, if the thought of using the weed as a source of cheap rawmaterial came to anything, the engagement of his interest at an early stage would increase his usefulness. Before setting out for the field I read reports of investigators on the spot and was disquieted to note a unanimous mention of new stirrings on the edges of the green glacier. I decided to lose no time and we set out at once in my personal plane for a mountain lodge kindly offered by a business acquaintance. Here, for the next few weeks, keeping in touch with my manifold affairs only by telephone, Joe and I devoted ourselves to observing the gra.s.s.
Or rather I did. George Thario"s idea of gathering data differed radically from mine--I feel safe to say, as well as from that of almost any other intelligent man. In a way he reminded me of the cameraman Slafe in his brooding obliviousness to everything except the gra.s.s; but Slafe had been doing a job for which he was being paid, whereas Joe was only yielding to his own mood. For hours he lay flat on his belly, staring through binoculars; at other times he wandered about the edge, looking at, feeling, and smelling it and once I saw him bend down and nibble at it like a sheep.
"You know, A W," he observed enthusiastically--he always called me "A W"
with just enough of a curious intonation to make it doubtful whether the use of the initials was respectful or satirical--"you know, A W, I understand those fellows who went and chucked themselves into the gra.s.s.
It"s sublime; it has never happened in nature before. Ive read newspaper and magazine accounts and either the writers have no eyes or else they lie for the h.e.l.l of it. They talk about the "dirty brown" of the flowers, but A W, Ive seen the flowers myself and theyre a vivid glorious purple. Have you noticed the iridescent sparkle when the wind ripples the blades? All the colors of the spectrum against the background of that marvelous green."
"There"s nothing marvelous about it," I told him a little irritably.
"It used to be really green, a bright, even color, but up here where it"s high and cold it doesnt look much different from ordinary devilgra.s.s--dirty and ugly." I thought his enthusiasm distinctly out of place in the circ.u.mstances.
He did not seem to hear me, but went on dreamily, "And the sounds it makes! My G.o.d, A W, a composer"d give half the years of his life to reproduce those sounds. High and piercing; soft and muted; creating tonepoems and etudes there in its lonely grandeur."
I have spoken before of the noise produced by the weed, a thunderous crackling and snapping attributable to its extraordinary rate of growth.
During its dormancy the sound had ceased and, in the mountains at least, was replaced by different notes and combinations of notes as the wind blew through its culms and sc.r.a.ped the tough stems against each other.
Occasionally these ululations produced reflections extremely pleasing, more often it hurt the ears with a shrieking discordance; but even at its best it fell far short, to my mind--and I suppose I may say I"m as sensitive to beauty as anybody--of meriting Joe"s extravagant rhapsodies.
But he was entranced beyond the soberness of commonsense. He filled notebooks, those thick pulppapered volumes which children are supposed to use in school but never do, with his reactions. In idle moments when he was away, I glanced through them, but for the most part they were incoherent. Meterless poems, lists of adjectives, strained interpretations of the actions of the gra.s.s, and many musical notations which seemed to get no farther than a repet.i.tive and faltering start.
I reproduce a few pages of the less chaotic material for what it is worth: "The iceage drove the Cromagnon from the caves which prophesied Cnossus and Pithom and the Temple of Athena in the Acropolis. This gra.s.s, twentiethcentury ice, drives magnates from their twentyroom villas to their twentyroom duplexes. The loss was yesterday"s. Walt Whitman.
"For it is the animals. Cows and pigs, horses, goats, sheep and rabbits abandoned by the husbandman, startled, puzzled; the clock with the broken mainspring running backward. The small game: deer, antlered, striped, and spotted; wildsheep, _ovis poli_, TeddyRooseveltshot and Audubonprinted, mountaingoats leaping in terror to hazardous safety on babel"s top, upward to the pinpoint where no angels dance. But not alone.
"Meat and meateater, food and feeder, predator and prey; foxes, lynx, coyotes, wolves, wildcats, mountainlion (the pa.s.sengerpigeon"s gone, the dung they pecked from herds thick as man born and man yet to be born lies no more on the plains, _night and day we traveled, but the birds overhead gave cover from the sun and the buffalo before us stretched from the river to the hills_), driven by the ice not ice, but living green, up and up. Pause here upon this little shelf to nibble bark, to mate and bear; to snarl and claw and rend and suck hot blood from moving jugularvein; and then move again upward with docile hoof or else retreat with lashing tail and snarling fang. Biter and bitten transfused with fear, the timberline behind, the snow alone welcoming, ironically the glacier meets another glacier and only glacier gives refuge to glacier"s hunted.
"Here little islands on the peaks. Vegetation"s sea is death creeping upward to end at the beginning. The carnivores, whippedtailed, seek the top, ambition"s pinnacle, surveying nothing. Tomorrow is for man, the lower mind is reasonable and ponders food and dung and l.u.s.t, so obstinate the padclaw prowls higher till nothing"s left but pedestal and would then wing, but being not yet man can only turn again.
"The ruminants, resigned, nibble at the edges of their death, converting death to life, chewing, swallowing, digesting, regurgitating and digesting again inescapable fate. Reluctant sustenance. Emptybellied, the pointed teeth descend again to take their food at secondhand, to go back sated, brown blood upon the snow and bits of hide and hair, gnawedat bones, while fellows, forgetting fear, remaining stoic, eat, stamp and stamp without impatience and eat again of that which has condemned them.
"Learned doctor, your addingmachine gives you the answer: so many carnivores, so many herbivores, the parallel dashes introduce extinction. Confusedly the savor of Abel"s sacrifice was sweet to His nostrils, not Cain"s fruits. So is the mind confounded. Turning and devouring each other over prostrate antlers the snarlers die, their furry hides bloat and then collapse on rigid bones to make a place for curious sniffings and quick retreat in trampled snow. There is no victory without harshness, no hope in triumph. The placid ruminants live--the conquerors have conquered nothing.
"The gra.s.s comes to the edge of the snow; they eat and fill their meager bellies, they chew the cud and mate and calve and live in wretched unawareness of the heat of glory and death. So is justice done and mercy and yet not justice and yet not mercy. Who was victor yesterday is not victor today, but neither is he victim. Who was victim yesterday is not victor, but neither is he victim...."
_49._ In all this confused rambling I thought there might be a curious and interesting little observation about animal migration--if one could trust the accuracy of an imagination more romantic than factual--and I reduced it to some kind of coherence and added it not only to my report for the Federal Disruptions Commission, but for the dispatches I found time to send in to the _Intelligencer_. I hardly suppose it is necessary to mention that by now my literary talents could no longer be denied or ignored and that these items were not edited nor garbled but appeared exactly as I had written them, boxed and doubleleaded on page one.
Though the matter was really trivial and in confessing it I don"t mind admitting all of us are subject to petty vanities I was gratified to notice too that Le ffacase had the discernment to realize how much the public appreciated my handling the news about the gra.s.s, for he advertised my contributions lavishly.
In my news stories I could tell no less than the full truth, which was that the gra.s.s, after remaining patriotically dormant throughout the war except for the spurt northward to destroy the remnants of the invading host, had once more set out upon the march. The loss of color I had pointed out to Joe was less apparent each day of our stay as the old vividness revived with its renewed energy and the sweet music which entranced him gave place to the familiar crackling, growing louder with each foot it advanced down the slope, culminating every so often in thunderous explosions.
For down the thousand mile incline of the Mississippibasin it was pouring with accelerating tempo, engulfing or driving everything before it. It was the old story of the creeping stolons, the steppedup tangled ma.s.s and the great, towering bulk behind; the falling forward and then the continued headway. Once more the eastbound trains and highways clogged with refugees.
My affairs not permitting a longer stay, I returned to New York, but I could not pry Joe from his preoccupation. "A W," he argued, "I"d be no more use to Consolidated Pemmican right now than groundgla.s.s in a ham sandwich. My backside might be in a swivelchair, but my soul would be right up here. It"s Whitman translated visibly and tangibly, A W, "Come lovely and soothing death, undulate round and round." Besides, youve got the Old Man now, he"s worth more to you than I ever will be; he loves business. It"s just like the army--without a doddering old generalstaff to pull him back every time he gets enthusiastic."
If anyone else in my organization had talked like this I would have fired him immediately, but I was sure down underneath his aesthetic poses and artistic pretensions there was a foundation of good commonsense inherited from the general. Give the boy his head, I thought; let him stay here and rhapsodize till he gets sick of it; he"ll come back the better executive for having got it out of his system.
Also, as he himself pointed out, I had his father to rely on and he was a man to whip up production if ever there was one.
_50._ The chief purpose of my visit to the gra.s.s was, at least momentarily, a failure. There was little point sampling and a.n.a.lyzing the weed for its possible use as an ingredient in a food concentrate if it were impossible to set up a permanent place to gather and process it.
I won"t say I considered my time wasted, but its employment had not been profitable.
But even immersed in the everexpanding affairs of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Industries, as we now called the parent company, I could not get away from the gra.s.s. Each hour"s eastward thrust was reported in detail by an hysterical radio and every day the newspapers printed maps showing the newly overrun territory. Once more the gra.s.s was the most prominent thought in men"s minds, not only over the land of its being, but throughout the world. Scientists of every nationality studied it at firsthand and only strict laws and rigid searches by customs inspectors prevented the importation of specimens for dissection in their own laboratories.
The formula of Miss Francis, now at length revealed in its entirety, was discussed by everyone. There was hardly a man, woman or child who did not dream of finding some means to destroy or halt the gra.s.s and thereby make of himself an unparalleled benefactor. A new crop of suggestions was harvested by the _Intelligencer_; in addition to the old they included such expedients as reinoculating the gra.s.s with the Metamorphizer in the hope either of its cannibalistically feeding upon itself or becoming so infected with giantism as to blow up and burst--the failure of the experiment on the Russian steppes was ignored or forgotten by these contributors; building barriers of dryice; and the use of infrared lamps.
One of the proposals which tickled the popular imagination was a plan for vast areas to be roofed and gla.s.senclosed, giant greenhouses to offer refuge for mankind in the very teeth of the gra.s.s. Artesian wells could be sunk, it was argued, power harnessed to the tides of the sea and piped underground, the populace fed by means of concentrates or hydroponic farming. Everyone--except those in authority, the ones who would have to approve the expenditure of the vast sums necessary--thought there was something in the idea, but nothing was done about it.
Many, believing physical means could be of little avail, suggested metaphysical ones, and these were always punctiliously printed by the _Intelligencer_. They ranged from disregarding the existence of the weed and carrying on ordinary life as though it presented no threat, through Holding the Correct Thought, praying daily for its miraculous disappearance, preferably at a simultaneous moment, to reorganizing the spiritual concepts of the human totality.
_51._ But even without the newspapers George Thario would have kept me informed. "Piteous if not too comprehensive for small emotions," he wrote in a letter only a little more intelligible than the stuff in his notebooks. "Yesterday I stopped by a small farm or ranch as local grandiloquence everseeking purple justification has it here. Submarginal land the tabulating minds of governmentofficials (spectacles precise on nosebridge, daily ration of exlax safe in briefcase) would have labeled it, sitting in expectant unease on hilltops and the uncomfortable slopes between. Dryfarming; the place illegally acquired from cattlerange (more proper and more profitable) by nester grandsire; surviving drought and duststorm, locust, weevil, and straying herds; feeding rachitic kids, dull women and helpless men for halfacentury.
"The Farm Resettlement Administration would have moved them to fatter ground a hundred times, but blindly obstinate they held to what was theirs and yet not theirs. In the frontseat the man and wife and what remained of quick moments of dropjawed ecstasy, in back unwieldly chickencoop, slats patched with bits of applebox and wire, weathered gray; astonished c.o.c.ks crowing out of time and hens heads down. Hitched behind, the family cow, stiffribbed and emptyuddered. The gra.s.s, deaf lover, had seized the shack, its fingers curled the solid door, body pressed forward for joyful rape. The nesters don"t look back but pant ahead; the b.u.mping of the car accommodates the cow.
"Ive had to leave the lodge of course and spend my nights in a thin house with a roof shaped like two playingcards, with the misleading sign, in punishment crippled, half fallen from its support, "Tourists Accommodated" (if accommodation be empty s.p.a.ces with mottoes and porcelain p.i.s.spots then punishment was unrighteous). I shall move on soon, perhaps for the worse since there is green now, beneath the blue.
"If I can ever come away I shall, but I"d not miss this gladiator show, this retiarii swing.
"Give my best to the Old Boy--tell him I"d write direct, but family feeling makes it hard. Joe."
I showed the letter to the general, expecting him perhaps to be annoyed by Joe"s instability, but he merely said, "Boy shouldnt be wasting his talents ... put it in sound ... orchestrate it."
Just as Joe"s enthusiasm covered only one aspect of the gra.s.s so his retreat from lodge to wayside hostel, to city hotel, embraced only a minute sector of the great advance. Neither moral nor brute force slowed the weed. It clutched the upper reaches of the Rio Grande and ran down its course to the Gulf of Mexico like quicksilver in a broken thermometer. It went through Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas; it nibbled at the forks of the Platte; it left behind the Great Salt Lake like a chip diamond lost in an enormous setting.
There is no benefit to be derived from looking at the darker side of things and indeed it is a universal observation that there is no misfortune without its compensation. The loss of the great cattlegrazing areas of the West increased the demand for our concentrated foods by the hundredfold. We paid no duty on the products shipped in from our South American factories for they competed only with ourselves and we did the country the humanitarian service of preventing a famine by rushing carload after carload westward, rising above all thoughts of petty gain by making no increase whatever in our prices despite the expanding demand.
_52._ About this time it became indisputable that b.u.t.ton Gwynnet Fles was no longer of value to Consolidated Pemmican. His Yankee shrewdness and caution which enabled him to run the corporation when it was merely a name and a quotation on the stockmarket had the limits of its virtues.
He was extraordinarily provincial in outlook and quite unable to see the concern on a world scale. In view of our vast expansion such narrowness had become an unbearable hindrance.
I had permitted him to hold a limited number of shares and to act nominally as secretary in order to comply with the regulations of the Security and Exchange Commission, but now it was expedient to add to our officers directors of other companies whose fields were complementary to ours. Besides, in General Thario I had a much abler a.s.sistant and so, perhaps reluctantly because of my oversensitivity, I displaced Fles and making the general president of the corporation I accepted the post of chairman of the board.
I must say he took a perfectly natural business move with unbecoming illgrace. "It was mine, Mr Weener, you know it was mine and I did not protest when you stole it; I worked loyally and unselfishly for you. It isnt the money, Mr Weener, really it isnt--it"s the idea of being thrown out of my own business. At least let me stay on the Board of Directors; youll never have any trouble from me, I promise you that."
It distressed me to reject his abject plea, but my hands were tied by my devotion to the welfare of the company. Besides, he annoyed me by his palpably untrue reference to what had been a legitimate transaction, never giving a thought to my generosity in not exposing his chicanery, nor the fact that the dummy he manipulated bore no resemblance whatever to the firm I had brought by my own effort to its present size.
Leaving matters in the able hands of General Thario, after warning Joe he had better soon return to his father"s a.s.sistance, I went abroad to arrange for wider European representation. There I found a curious eagerness to be of help to me and almost fawning servility antipathetic to my democratic American notions. Oddly enough, the Europeans looked upon the United States as a doomed country, thinking I, like some members of our wealthier cla.s.ses, had come to escape disruption and dislocation at home. Only in England did I find the belief prevalent that the Americans would somehow muddle through because afterall theyre the same sort of chaps we are, you know.
After a highly successful trip I returned home the same day the Gra.s.s reached the headwaters of the Mississippi.