God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Read online

  The old man wasn't a drunk or a pervert or anything. He was simply old, and a widower, and shot full of cancer, and his son in the Strategic Air Command never wrote, and his personality wasn't much. Booze upset him. The Rosewater Foundation had given him a grant for morphine, which his doctor prescribed.

  Eliot greeted him, found he could not remember his name, nor what his trouble was. Eliot filled his lungs. It was too fine a day for sad things anyway.

  At the far end of the Parthenon, which was a tenth of a mile long, was a small stand that sold shoelaces, razor-blades, soft drinks, and copies of The American Investigator. It was run by a man named Lincoln Ewald, who had been an ardent Nazi sympathizer during the Second World War. During that war, Ewald had set up a shortwave transmitter, in order to tell the Germans what was being produced by the Rosewater Saw Company every day, which was paratroop knives and armor plate. His first message, and the Germans hadn't asked him for any messages at all, was to the effect that, if they could bomb Rosewater, the entire American economy would shrivel and die. He didn't ask for money in exchange for the information. He sneered at money, said that that was why he hated America, because money was king. He wanted an Iron Cross, which he requested be sent in a plain wrapper.

  His message was received loud and clear on the walkie-talkies of two game wardens in Turkey Run State Park, forty-two miles away. The wardens spilled the beans to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who arrested Ewald at the address to which the Iron Cross was to be sent. He was put in a mental institution until the war was over.

  The Foundation had done very little for him, except to listen to his political views, which no one else would do. The only things Eliot ever bought him were a cheap phonograph and a set of German lessons on records. Ewald wanted so much to learn German, but he was too excited and angry all the time.

  Eliot couldn't remember Ewald's name, either, and nearly passed him by without seeing him. His sinister little leper's booth there in the ruin of a great civilization was easy to miss.

  "Heil Hitler," said Ewald in a grackle voice.

  Eliot stopped, looked amiably at the place from which the greeting had come. Ewald's booth was curtained by copies of The American Investigator. The curtains seemed to be polka-dotted. The polka dots were the belly-buttons of Randy Herald, the cover girl. And she asked over and over again for a man who could give her a baby that would be a genius.

  "Heil Hitler," said Ewald again. He did not part the curtains.

  "And Heil Hitler to you, sir," said Eliot smiling, "and good-bye."

  The barbaric sunshine slammed Eliot as he stepped from the Parthenon. His momentarily injured eyes saw two loafers on the courthouse steps as charred stickmen surrounded by steam. He heard Bella, down in her beauty nook, bawling out a woman for not taking good care of her fingernails.

  Eliot encountered no one for quite a while, although he did catch someone peeking at him from a window. He winked and waved to whomever it was. When he reached Noah Rosewater Memorial High School, which was closed tight for the summer, he paused before the flagpole, indulged himself in shallow melancholy. He was taken by the sounds of the hollow iron pole's being tapped and caressed despondently by the hardware on the empty halyard.

  He wanted to comment on the sounds, to have someone else listen to them, too. But there was nobody around but a dog that had been following him, so he spoke to the dog. "That's such an American sound, you know? School out and the flag down? Such a sad American sound. You should hear it sometime when the sun's gone down, and a light evening wind comes up, and it's suppertime all around the world."

  A lump grew in his throat. It felt good.

  As Eliot passed the Sunoco station, a young man crept from between two pumps. He was Roland Barry, who had suffered a nervous breakdown ten minutes after being sworn into the Army at Fort Benjamin Harrison. He had a one hundred per cent disability pension. His breakdown came when he was ordered to take a shower with one hundred other men. The pension was no joke. Roland could not speak above a whisper. He spent many hours a day between the pumps, pretending to strangers that he had something to do with something there. "Mr. Rosewater--?" he whispered.

  Eliot smiled, held out his hand. "You'll have to forgive me--I've forgotten your name."

  Roland's self-esteem was so low that he was not surprised at being forgotten by a man whom he had visited at least once a day for the past year. "Wanted to thank you for saving my life."

  "For what?"

  "My life, Mr. Rosewater--you saved it, whatever it is."

  "You're exaggerating, surely."

  "You're the only one who didn't think what happened to me was funny. Maybe you won't think a poem is funny, either." He thrust a piece of paper into Eliot's hand. "I cried while I wrote it. That's how funny it was to me. That's how funny everything is to me." He ran away.

  Perplexed, Eliot read the poem, which went like this:

  "Lakes, carillonst, Pools and bells, Fifes and freshets, Harps and wells; Flutes and rivers, Streams, bassoons, Geysers, trumpets, Chimes, lagoons. Hear the music, Drink the water, As we poor lambs All go to slaughter. I love you Eliot. Goodbye. I cry. Tears and violins. Hearts and flowers, Flowers and tears. Rosewater, good-bye."

  Eliot arrived at the Saw City Kandy Kitchen without further incident. Only the proprietor and one customer were inside. The customer was a fourteen-year-old nymphet, pregnant by her stepfather, which stepfather was in prison now. The Foundation was paying for her medical care. It had also reported the stepfather's crime to the police, had subsequently hired for him the best Indiana lawyer that money could buy.

  The girl's name was Tawny Wainwright. When she brought her troubles to Eliot, he asked her how her spirits were. "Well," she said, "I guess I don't feel too bad. I guess this is as good a way as any to start out being a movie star."

  She was drinking a Coca Cola and reading The American Investigator now. She glanced furtively at Eliot once. That was the last time.

  "A ticket to Indianapolis, please."

  "One way or round trip, Eliot?"

  Eliot did not hesitate. "One way, if you please."

  Tawny's glass nearly toppled. She caught it in time.

  "One way to Indianapolis!" said the proprietor loudly. "Here you are, sir!" He validated Eliot's ticket with a stamp savagely, handed over the ticket, turned quickly away. He didn't look at Eliot again, either.

  Eliot, unaware of any strain, drifted over to the magazine and book racks for something to read on the trip. He was tempted by the Investigator, opened it, scanned a story about a seven-year-old girl who had had her head eaten off by a bear in Yellowstone Park in 1934. He returned it to the rack, selected instead a paperback book by Kilgore Trout. It was called Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass.

  The bus blew its flatulent horns outside.

  As Eliot boarded the bus, Diana Moon Glampers appeared. She was sobbing. She was carrying her white Princess telephone, dragging its uprooted wire behind her. "Mr. Rosewater!"

  "Yes?"

  She smashed the telephone on the pavement by the door of the bus. "I don't need a telephone any more. Nobody for me to call up. Nobody to call me up."

  He sympathized with her, but he did not recognize her. "I'm--I'm sorry. I don't understand."

  "You don't what?"

  "It's me, Mr. Rosewater! It's Diana! It's Diana Moon Glampers!"

  "I'm pleased to meet you."

  "Pleased to meet me?"

  "I really am--but--but, what's this about a telephone?"

  "You were the only reason I needed one."

  "Oh, now--" he said, doubtingly, "you surely have many other acquaintances."

  "Oh, Mr. Rosewater--" she sobbed, and she sagged against the bus, "you're my only friend."

  "You can make more, surely," Eliot suggested hopefully.

  "Oh God!" she cried.

  "You could join some church group, perhaps."

  "You're my church group! You're my everything! You're my government. You're my husband. Yo
u're my friends."

  These claims made Eliot uncomfortable. "You're very nice to say so. Good luck to you. I really have to be going now." He waved. "Goodbye."

  Eliot now began to read Pan-Galactic Three-Day Pass. There was more fussing outside the bus, but Eliot didn't think it had anything to do with him. He was immediately enchanted by the book, so much so that he didn't even notice when the bus pulled away. It was an exciting story, all about a man who was serving on a sort of Space-Age Lewis and Clark Expedition. The hero's name was Sergeant Raymond Boyle.

  The expedition had reached what appeared to be the absolute and final rim of the Universe. There didn't seem to be anything beyond the solar system they were in, and they were setting up equipment to sense the faintest signals that might be coming from the slightest anything in all that black velvet nothing out there.

  Sergeant Boyle was an Earthling. He was the only Earthling on the expedition. In fact, he was the only creature from the Milky Way. The other members were from all over the place. The expedition was a joint effort supported by about two hundred galaxies. Boyle wasn't a technician. He was an English teacher. The thing was that Earth was the only place in the whole known Universe where language was used. It was a unique Earthling invention. Everybody else used mental telepathy, so Earthlings could get pretty good jobs as language teachers just about anywhere they went.

  The reason creatures wanted to use language instead of mental telepathy was that they found out they could get so much more done with language. Language made them so much more active. Mental telepathy, with everybody constantly telling everybody everything, produced a sort of generalized indifference to all information. But language, with its slow, narrow meanings, made it possible to think about one thing at a time--to start thinking in terms of projects.

  Boyle was called out of his English class, was told to report at once to the commanding officer of the expedition. He couldn't imagine what it was all about. He went into the C.O.'s office, saluted the old man. Actually, the C.O. didn't look anything like an old man. He was from the planet Tralfamadore, and was about as tall as an Earthling beer can. Actually, he didn't look like a beer can, either. He looked like a little plumber's friend.

  He wasn't alone. The chaplain of the expedition was there, too. The padre was from the planet Glinko-X-3. He was an enormous sort of Portuguese man-o'-war, in a tank of sulfuric acid on wheels. The chaplain looked grave. Something awful had happened.

  The chaplain told Boyle to be brave, and then the C.O. told him there was very bad news from home. The C.O. said there had been a death back home, that Boyle was being given an emergency three-day pass, that he should get ready to leave right away.

  "Is it--is it--Mom?" said Boyle, fighting back the tears. "Is it Pop? Is it Nancy?" Nancy was the girl next door. "Is it Gramps?"

  "Son--" said the C.O., "brace yourself. I hate to tell you this: It isn't who has died. It's what has died. "

  "What's died?"

  "What's died, my boy, is the Milky Way."

  Eliot looked up from his reading. Rosewater County was gone. He did not miss it.

  When the bus stopped in Nashville, Indiana, the seat of Brown County, Eliot glanced up again, studied the fire apparatus on view there. He thought of buying Nashville some really nice equipment, but decided against it. He didn't think the people would take good care of it.

  Nashville was an arts and crafts center, so it wasn't surprising that Eliot also saw a glassblower making Christmas-tree ornaments in June.

  Eliot didn't look up again until the bus reached the outskirts of Indianapolis. He was astonished to see that the entire city was being consumed by a firestorm. He had never seen a firestorm, but he had certainly read and dreamed about many of them.

  He had a book hidden in his office, and it was a mystery even to Eliot as to why he should hide it, why he should feel guilty every time he got it out, why he should be afraid of being caught reading it. His feelings about the book were those of a weak-willed puritan with respect to pornography, yet no book could be more innocent of eroticism than the book he hid. It was called The Bombing of Germany. It was written by Hans Rumpf.

  And the passage Eliot would read over and over again, his features blank, his palms sweating, was this description of the firestorms in Dresden:

  As the many fires broke through the roofs of the burning buildings, a column of heated air rose more than two and a half miles high and one and a half miles in diameter.... This column was turbulent, and it was fed from its base by in-rushing cooler ground-surface air. One and one and a half miles from the fires this draught increased the wind velocity from eleven to thirty-three miles per hour. At the edge of the area the velocities must have been appreciably greater, as trees three feet in diameter were uprooted. In a short time the temperature reached ignition point for all combustibles, and the entire area was ablaze. In such fires complete burn-out occurred; that is, no trace of combustible material remained, and only after two days were the areas cool enough to approach.

  Eliot, rising from his seat in the bus, beheld the firestorm of Indianapolis. He was awed by the majesty of the column of fire, which was at least eight miles in diameter and fifty miles high. The boundaries of the column seemed absolutely sharp and unwavering, as though made of glass. Within the boundaries, helixes of dull red embers turned in stately harmony about an inner core of white. The white seemed holy.

  14

  EVERYTHING WENT BLACK for Eliot, as black as what lay beyond the ultimate rim of the universe. And then he awoke to find himself sitting on the flat rim of a dry fountain. He was dappled by sunlight filtering down through a sycamore tree. A bird was singing in the sycamore tree. "Poo-tee-weet?" it sang. "Poo-tee-weet. Weet, weet, weet." Eliot was within a high garden wall, and the garden was familiar. He had spoken to Sylvia many times in just this place. It was the garden of Dr. Brown's private mental hospital in Indianapolis, to which he had brought her so many years before. These words were cut into the fountain rim:

  "Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled."

  Eliot found that someone had dressed him for tennis, all in snowy white, and that, as though he were a department store display, someone had even put a tennis racket in his lap. He closed his hand around the racket handle experimentally, to discover whether it was real and whether he was real. He watched the play of the intricate basketwork of his forearm's musculature, sensed that he was not only a tennis player, but a good one. And he did not wonder where it was that he played tennis, for one side of the garden was bounded by a tennis court, with morning-glories and sweet peas twining in the chicken wire.

  "Poo-tee-weet?"

  Eliot looked up at the bird and all the green leaves, understood that this garden in downtown Indianapolis could not have survived the fire he saw. So there had been no fire. He accepted this peacefully.

  He continued to look up at the bird. He wished that he were a dicky bird, so that he could go up into the treetop and never come down. He wanted to fly up so high because there was something going on at ground-zero that did not make him feel good. Four men in dark business suits were seated chockablock on a concrete bench only six feet away. There were staring at him hard, expecting something significant from him. And it was Eliot's feeling that he had nothing of significance to say or give.

  The muscles in the back of his neck were aching now. They couldn't hold his head tipped back forever.

  "Eliot--?"

  "Sir--?" And Eliot knew that he had just spoken to his father. He now brought his gaze down from the tree gradually, let it drop like a sick dicky bird from twig to twig. His eyes were at last on level with those of his father.

  "You were going to tell us something important," his father reminded him.

  Eliot saw that there were three old men and one young one on the bench, all sympathetic, and listening intently for whatever he might care to say. The young man he recognized as Dr. Brown. The second old man was Thurmond McAllister, the family lawyer. The third old m
an was a stranger. Eliot could not name him, and yet, in some way that did not disturb Eliot, the man's features, those of a kindly country undertaker, claimed him as a close friend, indeed.

  "You can't find the words?" Dr. Brown suggested. There was a tinge of anxiety in the healer's voice, and he shifted about, putting body English on whatever Eliot was about to do.

  "I can't find the words," Eliot agreed.

  "Well," said the Senator, "if you can't put it into words, you certainly can't use it at a sanity hearing."

  Eliot nodded in appreciation of the truth of this. "Did--did I even begin to put it into words?"

  "You simply announced," said the Senator, "that you had just been struck by an idea that would clear up this whole mess instantly, beautifully and fairly. And then you looked up in the tree."

  "Um," said Eliot. He pretended to think, then shrugged. "Whatever it was, it's slipped my mind."

  Senator Rosewater clapped his speckled old hands. "It isn't as though we're short of ideas as to how to beat this thing." He gave his hideous victory grin, patted McAllister on the knee. "Right?" He reached behind McAllister, patted the stranger on the back. "Right?" He was crazy about the stranger. "We've got the greatest idea man in the world on our side!" He laughed, he was so happy about all the ideas.

  The Senator now extended his arms to Eliot. "But my boy here, just the way he looks and carries himself--there's our winning argument number one. So trim! So clean!" The old eyes glittered. "How much weight has he lost, Doctor?"

  "Forty-three pounds."

  "Back to fighting weight," the Senator rhapsodized. "Not a spare ounce on him. And what a tennis game! Merciless!" He bounced to his feet, did a ramshackle pantomime of a tennis serve. "Greatest game I ever saw in my life took place an hour ago, within these walls. You killed him, Eliot!"