Doomsday Morning M Read online

  He stumbled his way out from behind the bench, still scowling. He was as tall as I was, not much younger, thick through the chest. But he’d never been a Cropper. He didn’t know what I knew. He didn’t expect anything new. I could have laughed, ut I didn’t.

  It was perfectly clear from the look in his eyes and the way he shifted his feet exactly what he meant to do. I was there before him. I caught his first blow in the palm of my hand, contemptuously, not letting the impact even rock me. And while he was still off balance I gave him one hard, straight-armed shove that carried him over backward into the fire. It was too easy. I hoped savagely that he’d catch fire and burn—anything to break up the troupe and prospect of the work I had to do.

  But he caught himself with one palm on the hot iron slab, snatched it off again, staggered against the smoky stones. I jumped to grab him by the shoulder and jerk him forward, off balance, before he could get set again. I held him up with one hand and cocked the other fist shoulder-high, waiting with fierce anticipation.

  I saw the pain of his burned hand hit him hard. I saw the fight drain out of his face. The features went flabby and under my grip all the muscles in his body slackened.

  In the same instant a woman’s hoarse voice shrieked something wordless from beyond the stove. Instinct moved faster than reason and I ducked just in time. Straight over my head the heavy coffeepot went hurtling, trailing cord and plug and spilling boiling coffee as it flew. I heard it thud against a tree beyond me, but I hadn’t time to look. For the red-haired woman herself came hurtling close behind the pot, her face convulsed and both hands raking at me.

  I let the burned man go and swung to catch her. She smacked hard into me and I shut my arms around her to hold her safe. She gasped muffled, furious protest against my chest, struggling to get her hands free. I should have expected it, I knew. That look of tigress protection in her sidelong glance should have told me.

  I looked up and saw Guthrie standing over the fallen coffeepot. I said, “Here, catch!” and swung the raging woman at him. She went staggering and stumbling across the dust and Guthrie caught her neatly by the arms. The bright red hair loosened from its knot in her raging and swung Medusa-like over her convulsed face as she surged against Guthrie’s grip and tried in vain to break free.

  “Damn you, damn you, let me go!” she shrieked, writhing. “I’ll tear his face off! No drunken bum of a Cropper can come in here and——”

  I bellowed, “Shut up!” making my voice big enough to fill the whole clearing. It felt good to let all that volume out, stretching my chest to its depths and filling my throat with sound. “Shut up and listen! All of you—listen!”

  She looked stunned for a moment. Then she shrieked again. I roared her down without effort. I have a big voice. When I let it out no other voice I ever heard has a chance against it.

  “Shut up and listen! Shut it off, damn you! Let me talk!”

  She blinked. Guthrie gave her a gentle shake, and she caught her breath and hesitated. I glanced around the group. For a moment it had been touch and go whether the whole ast jumped me. For that moment I hoped they would. But now I had the stage, and I let the savage contempt in my voice sound clear, talking fast before the woman began screaming again.

  “Now’s your chance,” I told them, looking coldly from face to face. “Make up your minds. I don’t like you. I don’t want to work with you. I like to pick my casts, and I wouldn’t have picked you. But I promised to do this job and I’m going to if I can. You’ll never have a chance like this again. I can’t make you work with me. But if you do, you’ll jump when I crack the whip. I’ll drive you like slaves. And you’ll learn more in a week from me than you’ll ever learn the rest of your stupid lives. Now make up your minds. Now! Don’t keep me waiting. Yes or no? You!” And I shot my arms out again and leveled my finger at the man with the burned hand.

  He was nursing his wrist painfully and the heavy, good-looking face was pale with shock. He licked his lips, glanced at the red-haired woman, and said uncertainly, “I—I don’t know, Rohan. It’s not that simple. Let’s take a vote.” And he glanced around the group.

  I saw the red-haired woman catch her breath, and I said quickly, “All right, you—this man’s hand needs bandaging. Can you do it? You through screaming yet?”

  She shook impatiently against Guthrie’s grip. “All right, Guthrie. Let go, let go!”

  I nodded at him. She brushed herself down with quick, angry gestures, pushed the crimson hair back, and gave me one glance of hatred before she turned and ran for one of the trucks. She was back in seconds with a first-aid box, and from then on she was too busy with the burned hand to make herself much of a menace to me, though I kept a careful eye on her.

  “I want names first,” I said. “You!” and I pointed to the white-haired man who had stumbled to his feet on the other side of the table when all the trouble began. He still stood there, watching alertly. Now he said in a mildly surprised voice, “Why, you know me, Mr. Rohan. Henken. Pod Henken. And there’s Eileen. Eileen, you remember Howard Rohan?”

  The aged Ophelia patted her little opera box which had been singing quietly away to itself through all the tumult. “Oh yes,” she murmured to nobody in particular. “Oh, I remember Rohan. …”

  Guthrie said briskly, “My name’s Guthrie, Mr. Rohan.”

  I nodded at him and he added, waving at the red-haired woman working over my victim, “Polly and Roy Copley.” The woman shot me a glance of venom, and the man returned my nod wanly.

  That left the girl. I didn’t want to know her name. All I could think about just now was the taste of whiskey and how much I wanted it. The excitement was dying down inside me.

  I heard a clear, low voice from across the fire say, “My name is Cressy Kellogg, Mr. Rohan,” and I gave her one disinterestedom across k and nodded. She couldn’t help the way she looked. Not much, anyhow. The poor man’s Miranda, I thought with anguish and contempt.

  We stood there in silence for about as long as it takes to draw two breaths and let them out again, all of us gazing warily at each other. The end of a round had come. Not the end of a battle. They’d sarted the fight. I’d picked it up. They had good reason, I suppose, not to like me. Maybe to resent being saddled with me. My reputation wasn’t very good among theatrical circles any more. But I was still, in my worst slump, so much better than they would ever be at their very best …

  I can’t make them like me, I thought angrily. But I can make them hate me. And I will.

  “All right, cast,” I said, making my voice firm. “About this play——”

  Polly Copley lifted her disordered red head from the bandage she was sealing around Roy Copley’s wrist. Were they husband and wife? She looked the older by a good ten years. “Forget the play, Rohan,” she said. Her voice was hoarse and strong, a good carrying voice. The angry blue eyes bulged at me. “We aren’t giving a play. The Swann Players are disbanding.”

  I had my mouth open to bully her before the sense of what she’d said fully reached me. It took the wind out of my sails a little. I’d expected almost any complication but this. Looking from face to face, seeing the same expression of agreement on them all, I thought I knew what the trouble was. They were scared. There was no Comus west of Blythe, the state was running wild around us for all I knew. I could hardly blame them. But I made my voice confident.

  “What’s the matter with you people? Just because there’s been a little trouble in California——”

  “Little trouble, hell,” Polly said. “I don’t know what you mean by a little trouble, mister. Maybe you haven’t heard what happened to Paul Swann. He went down into San Andreas to make arrangements for our first play and he came back in an ambulance. I never saw a man beat up so bad. I never want to again.” She struck the bright red hair out of her eyes angrily. “I don’t care if they beat you, Rohan. I hope they do. But they aren’t going to beat up Roy. Or me. Or anybody with the sense God gave him.”

  Pod Henken’s voice chim
ed in with a slight quaver in it. “That’s the truth, Mr. Rohan. Paul sure took a beating.”

  I looked at Guthrie, who shrugged and averted his eyes somewhat guiltily. He might have told me, I thought. But I said with confidence, “You let me worry about that.”

  “You better start worrying then,” Polly said.

  I squared my shoulders. They were all watching me. I said in a flat, firm voice,” We open in San Andreas on Saturday. I’ll set it up tomorrow and I won’t come back on a stretcher. You can leave that to me.”

  The smell of coffee woke me and I lay there awhile perfectly blank, wondering where I was. I knew Miranda had been beside me up to the moment I opened my eyes. She always was. But I myself might be in an agri-camp in Illinois, or a hotel room in New York, with Nye’s boys waiting outside the door. The world eddied around me, unstable as jelly. Then it made up its mind and solidified down into a long dormitory truck with neatly made-up bunks on both sides and a shaft of morning sun coming through the door. The smell of redwoods and woodsmoke and coffee came with it.

  A subdued murmur came from under my pillow. I reached in to shut off the sleep-teach box which had been reading Crossroads to me all night long. Last night Pod and Roy Copley and Guthrie had slept in here with me. I’d waked up alive, so evidently nobody held a serious grudge in spite of yesterday. Nobody except, perhaps, myself.

  I fumbled into my clothes and went outside. There was no reason on God’s earth why I should go into San Andreas and get myself beaten to a pulp this morning. I’d talked confidently last night because I’d taken on a role I couldn’t put off without looking silly. But some changes were going to be made in the part from here on in.

  Sunlight fell in unashamed grandeur in vast, slanting rays across the breakfast table, where my six colleagues sat over nearly empty plates. “Good morning,” I said. Six pairs of eyes regarded me coldly. I went past them without a pause and carried my towel and shaving materials into the small square building set among redwood columns at the far side of the clearing. It was dingy concrete and it housed showers, toilets, laundry tubs. I went into the half marked MEN in the funny, old-fashioned block letters of the 1950s, trying as I shaved to imagine myself back in those untroubled times before the Five Day’s War.

  When I went back the six plates had been cleared from the table, but somebody had laid out and opened a single breakfast-plate can and the steam was beginning to rise as its self-heating unit went into operation. Cressy Kellogg poured coffee into a cup and set it by my plate. I didn’t look at her. I felt good and terrible in layers. My outside couldn’t help reacting to the cool morning air, unbelievely fresh. But under my skin the familiar crawling sensation was at work. I needed more alcohol than I’d allowed myself yet. Inside that layer of misery was an irrational good feeling about the future. Dangerous, challenging, uncertain. I didn’t even know what I was going to do. But it felt mysteriously good just the same.

  Last of all, right down the middle of my awareness, ran a familiar core of pain and the fear of pain, the thought of the beautiful dreamer who would never wake again and never leave me.

  I spread out a script of Crossroads on the table and looked through it as I ate. The chances were I’d never direct the thing, or act in it, but the sleep-taught lines were in my brain and I was curious about how it looked on paper. In spite of myself I’d begun to group my own speeches in my mind, block out the scenes tentatively, think over how I’d handle the part. If I handled it at all.

  The play looked innocent enough. No obvious propaganda, though it had to be there, because Comus never does things without a purpose. It seems there were a boy and a girl (Cressy and Roy, that would be) who meet at a street crossing in a small town. There’s an amorous female Comus officer who makes passes at the boy. It was a good touch. Comus is always handled with kid gloves in all official entertainment. This had the spontaneous look of non-partisanship.

  Then there’s an old couple who quarrel a lot but turn on anyone who comes between them. And a dashing older man (Rohan himself) who tries to break up the boy-girl affair. It was a part with many possibilities, that one. The whole play was good. A simple story about one evening in the lives of the six and how they solve each other’s problems and their own in about an hour’s playing time. Very skillfully done, and sure fire for comedy and drama.

  I sat there visualizing the groupings of the actors on a circle stage, setting up pictures in my mind, wondering in spite of myself how this cast had conceived their own parts. That’s always interesting. I was curious. No two people ever see the same part in the same way. It was very satisfying to feel my mind take hold again as if it had never let go.

  Satisfying—and frightening.

  Polly’s forthright voice, quite near, made me jump.

  “Rohan, I’ve got something to say to you.” I looked up. Her stiffly coated hair was smooth this morning, each strand glistening separately in the slanting light that fell through the trees. She looked as haggard as if she hadn’t slept at all. Maybe she hadn’t. “We’ve been talking things over,” she told me. “We don’t want to disband unless we have to. We need the work. We’re even willing to work with you as long as you treat us right. But I warn you, one more blowup like yesterday and——” Her face suffused and the veins stood out in her neck.

  “All right,” I said. “You treat me right and I’ll treat you right. I’m not an easy man to work with. I warn you. I won’t pull any punches in rehearsals.”

  She nodded jerkily. “We don’t expect you to. We just wanted you to know that if you can set things up in San Andreas and guarantee we don’t get mobbed we’ll start rehearsing right away. We won’t disband.”

  I said, “Good enough,” and turned a page of the script to show the interview was over. She flushed a little again and turned sharply, almost bumping into Guthrie, who was coming up to the table, buttoning his checkered shirt.

  “When you’re ready, Mr. Rohan,” he said, “I’ll drive you into San Andreas.”

  I didn’t answer. I was watching something across the clearing. Cressy and Roy Copley were standing together in one of the solemn shafts of light, layers of woodsmoke floating mistily around them like incense in a cathedral. She was holding his bandaged hand with exaggerated sympathy, and the way they were looking at each other made me glance quickly to see if Polly had noticed. Guthrie said, “How about it, Mr. Rohan?”

  I shrugged. Polly’s troubles were her own business.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  CHAPTER VII

  STOP HERE A minute,” I said. Guthrie switched off the motor and the humming silence of the mountains settled all around us. Warm sunshine, bright, sparkling air, a breeze breathing with the smell of pine. Before us the highway stalked on long concrete legs across the valley where San Andreas lay. Two turnoffs led down into town, one to fetch and one to carry. At the foot of the Entrance Only turnoff the red Comus check station glowed like an enormous oval blood-drop, looking strange without the Raleigh banner lifting in the wind from its flagstaff.

  San Andreas lay winking up at us among its trees. You could locate the center of town by the shaft of the Raleigh monument, white and tall against blue sky. Southward the valley widened into checkerboard fields, with trucks and men already creeping slowing along the rows. For an instant I was down there with them with an aching back, harvesting and hating it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Guthrie told me. “Go on. Say it.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know enough yet to say anything. Yesterday you strong-armed me back into camp, but you didn’t say a word about what happened to Paul Swann. What else are you covering up? Just how bad are things in California?”

  Guthrie slated me one of his melancholy looks.

  “That depends. Some of the state’s quiet. Some of it—isn’t. This town isn’t. Maybe that’s why we have to open here. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know much. What’s this tour about, anyhow?”

  “We put on play
s where we’re told to. If I knew any more than that I couldn’t tell you. You ought to realize that.”

  “Now look, Guthrie.” I turned in the seat to meet his eye directly. “You can strong-arm me just so far. Next time I may say shoot and be damned. I’m no good to anybody if I’m dead. Right now I’m pretty near the point where I just get out of this truck and walk off.”

  “So you walk off,” Guthrie said quietly. “Then what? You can’t stay out of sight forever. Either Comus picks you up or the rebels do. And they’re tough boys. Even if they took you in, we’re going to pacify the state within a few weeks. The rebels are headed for jail or the gas chamber. That puts Comus back in control, and Mr. Nye tells me he holds a Cropper contract for you.” He nodded toward the toiling figures in the field below. “Your choice is between that down there or jail with the rebels—or else going on with this job for Comus.”

  I thought it over. “Okay. You’ve said your piece. Maybe you gave Paul Swann the same pitch. That didn’t stop his getting beat up. From here on in whatever I do, I do on my own. Your holding a gun on me doesn’t mean a damned thing. If I’m going to do this job I’ve got to do it my way, and that means I’m boss of the company. You’re under my orders on company business. Now suppose you tell me all you know about the rebellion in California. Everything. Whatever you hold back handicaps me and the job.”

  Guthrie scratched his cheek with his pipestem. After a moment he said slowly, “Well, I guess that’s fair enough. I’ll tell you as much as I know.” He meditated. “Back in ‘93,” he said after another pause, “a guy named Charlie Starr touched off the San Diego Massacre. That was what got things started. I don’t know much about Starr. Comus got things under control again and I believe Starr was killed. But his followers took to the hills and Comus never did root them all out. They seem to have set up what they call Freedom Committees that cover the whole area. About a year ago as near as we can figure one of the rebel groups doped out a gimmick that might cause trouble——” Here he paused and looked at me cautiously.