Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein
“Sounds reasonable. There aren’t any charges outstanding on me here, are there?”
“No. Well, yes and no. You know the deal; we assured them that you would not be coming back, so they turned the blind eye when you left. But here you are, back. Alec, you can’t afford to be seen here. Or elsewhere in Texas. Or anywhere in the States, actually. Word gets around, and they’ll dig up those old charges.”
“I was innocent!”
He shrugged. “Alec, all my clients are innocent. I’m talking like a father, in your own interest. Get out of Dallas. If you go as far as Paraguay, so much the better.”
“How? I’m broke. Sam, I’ve got to have some dough.”
“Have I ever let you down?” He got out his wallet, counted out five one-hundred-dollar bills, laid them in front of me.
I looked at them. “What’s that? A tip?” I picked them up, pocketed them. “That much won’t get us to Brownsville. Now let’s see some money.”
“See me tomorrow.”
“Don’t play games, Sam. Open that safe and get me some real money. Or I don’t come here tomorrow; I go see the Federal man and sing like the birdies. After I get square with him—and I will; the Feds love a state’s witness, it’s the only way they ever win a case—then I go to Oregon and pick up that hundred grand.”
“Alec, are you threatening me?”
“You play games, I play games. Sam, I need a car and I don’t mean a beat-up Ford. A Cadillac. Doesn’t have to be new, but a cream puff, clean, and a good engine. A Cadillac and a few grand and we’ll be in Laredo by midnight, and in Monterrey by morning. I’ll call you from Mexico City and give you an address. If you really want me to go to Paraguay and stay there, you send the money to D.F. for me to do it.”
It did not work out quite that way, but I settled for a used Pontiac and left with six thousand dollars in cash, and instructions to go to a particular used-car lot and accept the deal offered me—Sam would call and set it up. He agreed also to call the Hyatt and get us the bridal suite, and would see that they held it. Then I was to come back at ten the next morning.
I refused to get up that early. “Make that eleven. We’re still on our honeymoon.”
Sam chuckled, slapped me on the back, and agreed.
Out in the corridor we headed toward the elevators but went ten feet farther and I opened the door to the fire-escape trunk. Margrethe followed me without comment but once inside the staircase trunk and out of earshot of others she said, “Alec, that man is not your friend.”
“No, he’s not.”
“I am afraid for you.”
“I’m afraid for me, too.”
“Terribly afraid. I fear for your life.”
“My love, I fear for my life, too. And for yours. You are in danger as long as you are with me.”
“I will not leave you!”
“I know. Whatever this is, we are in it together.”
“Yes. What are our plans now?”
“Now we go to Kansas.”
“Oh, good! Then we are not driving to Mexico?”
“Hon, I don’t even know how to drive a car.”
We came out in a basement garage and walked up a ramp to a side street. There we walked several blocks away from the Smith Building, picked up a cruising taxi, rode it to the Texas & Pacific Station, there picked up a taxi at the taxi rank, and rode it to Fort Worth, twenty-five miles west. Margrethe was very quiet on the trip. I did not ask her what she was thinking about because I knew: It can’t be happy-making to discover that a person you fell in love with was mixed up in some shenanigan that smelled of gangsters and rackets. I made myself a solemn promise never to mention the matter to her.
In Fort Worth I had the hackie drop us on its most stylish shopping street, letting him pick it. Then I said to Marga, “Darling, I’m about to buy you a heavy gold chain.”
“Goodness, darling! I don’t need a gold chain.”
“We need it. Marga, the first time I was in this world—with you, in Konge Knut—I learned that here the dollar was soft, not backed by gold, and every price I have seen today confirms that. So, if change comes again and we never know—even the hard money of this world, quarters and half dollars and dimes, won’t be worth anything because they’re not really silver. As for the paper money I got from Crumpacker—waste paper!
“Unless I change it into something else. We’ll start with that gold chain and from here on you wear it to bed, you even wear it to bathe—unless you hang it around my neck.”
“I see. Yes.”
“We’ll buy some heavy gold jewelry for each of us, then I’m going to try to find a coin dealer—buy some silver cartwheels, maybe some gold coins. But my purpose is to get rid of most of this paper money in the next hour—all but the price of two bus tickets to Wichita, Kansas, three-hundred and fifty miles north of here. Could you stand to ride a bus all night tonight? I want to get us out of Texas.”
“Certainly! Oh, dear, I do want to get out of Texas! Truly, I’m still frightened.”
“Truly, you are not alone.”
“But—”
“‘But’ what, dear? And quit looking sad.”
“Alec, I haven’t had a bath for four days.”
We found the jewelry shop, we found the coin shop; I spent about half that fiat money and saved the rest for bus fare and other purposes in this world—such as dinner, which we ate as soon as the shops started to close. A hamburger we had eaten in Gainesville seemed an awfully long way off in time and space. Then I determined that there was a bus going north—Oklahoma City, Wichita, Salina—at ten o’clock that evening. I bought tickets and paid an extra dollar on each ticket to reserve seats. Then I threw money away like a drunken sailor—took a room in a hotel across from the bus station, knowing that we would be checking out in less than two hours.
It was worth it. Hot baths for each of us, taking turns, each of us remaining fully dressed and carrying the other’s clothing, jewelry, and all the money while the other was naked and wet. And carrying my razor, which had become a talisman of how to outwit Loki’s playful tricks.
And new, clean underwear for each of us, purchased in passing while we were converting paper money into valuta.
I had hoped for time enough for love—but no; by the time I was clean and dry we had to dress and check out to catch that bus. Never mind, there would be other times. We climbed into the bus, put the backrests back, put Marga’s head on my shoulder. As the bus headed north we fell asleep.
I woke up sometime later because the road was so rough. We were seated right behind the driver, so I leaned forward and asked, “Is this a detour?” I could not recall a rough stretch when we had ridden south on this same road about twelve hours earlier.
“No,” he said. “We’ve crossed into Oklahoma, that’s all. Not much pavement in Oklahoma. Some near Oke City and a little between there and Guthrie.”
The talk had wakened Margrethe; she straightened up. “What is it, dear?”
“Nothing. Just Loki having fun with us. Go back to sleep.”
XXI
What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and
whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest.
And he said unto me, These are they which came out
of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
Therefore are they before the throne of God,
and serve Him day and night in His temple.
Revelation 8:13-15
I was driving a horse and buggy and not enjoying it. The day was hot, the dust kicked up by horse’s hooves stuck to sweaty skin, flies were bad, there was no breeze. We were somewhere near the corner of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but I was not sure where. I had not seen a map for days and the roads were no longer marked with highway signs for the guidance of automobilists—there were no automobiles.
The last two weeks (more or less—I had lost track of the days) had been endless
I took it. The paper money he gave us for five ounces of silver would not buy dinner for Marga and me at a backwoods gourmet spot called “Mom’s Diner.”
That was in a charming community called (by a sign at its outskirts):
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
A Clean Community
Blackamoors, Kikes, Papists
Keep Moving!
We kept moving. That whole two weeks had been spent trying to travel the two hundred miles from Oklahoma City to Joplin, Missouri. I had been forced to give up the notion of avoiding Kansas City. I still had no intention of staying in or near Kansas City, not when a sudden change of worlds could land us in Abigail’s lap. But I had learned in Oklahoma City that the fastest and indeed the only practical route to Wichita was a long detour through Kansas City. We had retrogressed to the horse-and-buggy era.
When you consider the total age of the earth, from Creation in 4004 B.C. to the year of Our Lord 1994, or 5998 years—call it 6000—in a period of 6000 years, 80 or 90 years is nothing much. And that is how short a time it has been since the horse-and-buggy day in my world. My father was born in that day (1909) and my paternal grandfather not only never owned an automobile but refused to ride in one. He claimed that they were spawn of the Devil, and used to quote passages from Ezekiel to prove it. Perhaps he was right.
But the horse-and-buggy era does have shortcomings. There are obvious ones such as no inside plumbing, no air conditioning, no modern medicine. But for us there was an unobvious but major one; where there are no trucks and no cars there is effectively no hitchhiking. Oh, it is sometimes possible to hitch rides on farm wagons—but the difference in speed between a human’s walk and a horse’s walk is not great. We rode when we could but, either way, fifteen miles was a good day’s progress—too good; it left no time to work for meals and a place to sleep.
There is an old paradox, Achilles and the Tortoise, in which the remaining distance to your goal is halved at each step. The question is: How long does it take to reach your goal? The answer is: You can’t get there from here.
That is the way we “progressed” from Oklahoma City to Joplin.
Something else compounded my frustration: I became increasingly persuaded that we were indeed in the latter days, and we could expect the return of Jesus and the Final Judgment at any moment—and my darling, my necessary one, was not yet back in the arms of Jesus. I refrained from nagging her about it, although it took all my will power to respect her wish to handle it alone. I began to sleep badly through worrying about her.
I became a bit crazy, too (in addition to my paranoid belief that these world changes were aimed at me personally)—crazy in that I acquired an unfounded but compelling belief that finishing this journey was essential to the safety of my darling’s immortal soul. Just let us get as far as Kansas, dear Lord, and I will pray without ceasing until I have converted her and brought her to grace. O Lord God of Israel, grant me this boon!
I continued to look for dishwashing jobs (or anything) even while we still had silver and gold to trade for local money. But motels disappeared entirely; hotels became scarce and restaurants decreased in numbers and size to fit an economy in which travel was rare and almost all meals were eaten at home.
It became easier to find jobs cleaning stalls in livery stables. I preferred dishwashing to shoveling horse manure—especially as I had only one pair of shoes. But I stuck to the rule of take any honest work but keep moving!
You may wonder why we did not shift to hitching rides on freight trains. In the first place I did not know how, never having done it. Still more important, I could not guarantee Marga’s safety. There were the hazards of mounting a moving freight car. But worse were dangers from people: railroad bulls and road kids—hobos, tramps, bindlestiffs, bums. No need to discuss those grisly dangers, as I kept her away from rail lines and hobo jungles.
And I worried. While abiding strictly by her request not to be pressured, I did take to praying aloud every night and in her presence, on my knees. And at last, to my great joy, my darling joined me, on her knees. She did not pray aloud and I stopped vocalizing myself, save for a final: “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” We still did not talk about it.
I wound up driving this horse and buggy (goodness, what a hot day!—“Cyclone weather,” my grandmother Hergensheimer would have called it) as a result of a job cleaning stalls in a livery stable. As usual I had quit after one day, telling my temporary employer that my wife and I had to move on to Joplin; her mother was ill.
He told me that he had a rig that needed to be returned to the next town up the road. What he meant was that he had too many rigs and nags on hand, his own and others, or he would have waited until he could send it back by renting it to a passing drummer.
I offered to return it for one day’s wages at the same extremely low rate that he had paid me to shovel manure and curry nags.
He pointed out that he was doing me a favor, since my wife and I had to get to Joplin.
He had both logic and strength of position on his side; I agreed. But his wife did put up a lunch for us, as well as giving us breakfast after we slept in their shed.
So I was not too unhappy driving that rig, despite the weather, despite the frustrations. We were getting a few miles closer to Joplin every day—and now my darling was praying. It was beginning to look like “Home Free!” after all.
We had just reached the outskirts of this town (Lowell? Racine? I wish I could remember) when we encountered something right straight out of my childhood: a camp meeting, an old-time revival. On the left side of the road was a cemetery, well kept but the grass was drying; facing it on the right was the revival tent, pitched in a pasture. I wondered whether the juxtaposition of graveyard and Bible meeting was accidental, or planned?—if the Reverend Danny had been involved, I would know it was planned; most people cannot see gravestones without thinking about the long hereafter.
Crowded ranks of buggies and farm wagons stood near the tent, and a temporary corral lay beyond them. Picnic tables of the plank-and-sawhorse type were by the tent on the other side; I could see remains of lunch. This was a serious Bible meeting, one that started in the morning, broke for lunch, carried on in the afternoon—would no doubt break for supper, then adjourn only when the revivalist judged that there were no more souls to be saved that day.
(I despise these modern city preachers with their five-minute “inspirational messages.” They say Billy Sunday could preach for seven hours on only a glass of water—then do it again in the evening and the next day. No wonder heathen cults have spread like a green bay tree!)
There was a two-horse caravan near the tent. Painted on its side was: Brother “Bible” Barnaby. Out front was a canvas sign on guys and stays:
That Old-Time Religion!
Brother “Bible” Barnaby
Healing Every Session
10 a.m.—2 p.m.—7 p.m.
Every Day from Sunday June 5th till
!!!JUDGMENT DAY!!!
I spoke to the nag and pulled on the reins to let her know that I wanted to stop. “Darling, look at that!”
Margrethe read the sign, made no comment.
“I admire his courage,” I said. “Brother Barnaby is betting his reputation that Judgment Day will arrive before it’s time to harvest wheat…which could be early this year, hot as it is.”
“But you think Judgment Day is soon,”
“Yes, but I’m not betting a professional reputation on i
“We will stay however long you wish. But—Alec, you wish me to go in? Must I?”
“Uh—” (Yes, darling, I certainly do want you to go inside.) “You would rather wait in the buggy?”
Her silence was answer enough. “I see. Marga, I’m not trying to twist your arm. Just one thing—We have not been separated except when utterly necessary for several weeks. And you know why. With the changes coming almost every day, I would hate to have one hit while you were sitting out here and I was inside, quite a way off. Uh, we could stand outside the tent. I see they have the sides rolled up.”
She squared her shoulders. “I was being silly. No, we will go inside. Alec, I do need to hold your hand; you are right: Change comes fast. But I will not ask you to stay away from a meeting of your coreligionists.”
“Thank you, Marga.”
“And, Alec—I will try.”
“Thank you. Thank you loads! Amen!”
“No need to tank me. If you go to your Heaven, I want to go, too!”
“Let’s go inside, dear.”
I put the buggy at the far end of a rank, then led the mare to the corral, Marga with me. As we came back to the tent I could hear:
“—the corner where you are!
“Brighten the corner where you are!
“Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar!
“So—”
I chimed in: “—brighten the corner where you are!”
It felt good.
Their instrumental music consisted of a foot-pumped organ and a slide trombone. The latter surprised me but pleased me; there is no other instrument that can get right down and rassle with The Holy City the way a trombone can, and it is almost indispensable for The Son of God Goes Forth to War.