Chapter V: Part 5

Upward and outward continuously, empty lot, fillingstation, artistic billboard, all alike to the greedy fingers. Like thumb and index they formed a crescent, a threatening semicircle, reaching forward by indirection. Northward and southeastward, the two aqueducts kept the desert from reclaiming its own; for fifty years the city had scraped up, bought, pilfered or systematically robbed all the water it could get; through the gray, wet lines, siphons, opencuts, pumps, lifts, tunnels, the metropolis sucked life. Now the desert had an ally, the grassy fingers avoided the downtown district, feeling purposefully and dangerously toward the aqueducts.

I spent much of my time, when not actively watching the grass, in the _Intelligencer_ office. I had now agreed to write articles for several weekly magazines, and though they edited my copy with a heavy and unappreciative hand, still they never outraged me as Le ffaçasé did by causing another man to usurp my name. Since I was in both senses nominally a member of the staff, I had no qualms about using the journal's typewriters and stationery for the construction of little essays on the grass as seen through the eyes of one who had cause to know it better than anyone else.

"The-uh curse of Garry-baldi be upon the head of that ee-veal man who-uh controls this organeye-zation," rolled out Gootes in pseudoChurchillian tones. "The-uh monster has woven a web; we are-uh summoned, Bertie."

I got up resignedly and followed him to the managingeditor's office. We were not greeted directly. Instead, a question was thrown furiously over our heads. "Where is he? What bristling and baseless egomania sways him to affront the _Daily Intelligencer_ with his contumacious and indecent unpunctuality?"

"Who, chief?" asked Gootes.

Le ffaçasé ignored him. "When this great newspaper condescends to shed the light of acceptance, to say nothing of an obese and taxable paycheck, upon the gross corpus of an illiterate moviecameraman, a false Daguerre, a spurious Steichen, a dubious Eisenstein, it has a right to expect a return for the goods showered upon such a deceitful sluggard."

Still ignoring Gootes, he turned to me, and apparently putting the berated one from his mind, went on with comparative mildness: "Weener, an unparalleled experience is to fall to your lot. You have not achieved this opportunity through any excellence of your own, for I must say, after lengthy contact, no vestige of merit in you is perceptible either to the nude eye or through an ultramicroscope. Nevertheless, by pure unhappy chance you are the property of the _Intelligencer_, and as such this illustrious organ intends to confer upon you the signal honor of being a Columbus, a Van Diemen, an Amundsen. You, Weener, in your unworthy person, shall be the first man to set foot upon a virgin land."

This speech being no more comprehensible to me than his excoriation of an unknown individual, I could only stay silent and try to look appreciative.

"Yes, Weener, you; some refugee from the busy newsroom of the Zwingle (Iowa) _Weekly Patriot_," a disdainful handwave referred this description to Gootes; "some miserable castoff from a fourthrate quickie studio masquerading as a newscameraman; and a party of sheep--perhaps I could simplify my whole sentence by saying merely a party of bloody sheep--will be landed by parachute on top of the grass this very afternoon."

He smacked his lips. "I can see tomorrow's bannerline now: 'Agent of Destruction Views Handiwork.' Should you chance to survive, your ghostwritten impressions--for which we pay too high a price, far too high a price--will become doubly valuable. Should you come, as I confidently expect, to a logical conclusion, the _Intelligencer_ will supply a suitable obituary. Now get the bloody hell out of here and either let me see you never again, or as a triumphant Balboa who has sat, if not upon a peak in Darien, at least upon something more important than your own backside."

_23._ The inside of the converted armybomber smelled like exactly what it was--a barn. Ten sheep and a solitary goat were tethered to stanchions along the sides. The sheep bleated continuously, the goat looked cynically forbearing, and all gave off an ammoniacal smell which was not absorbed by the bed of hay under their hoofs.

Enthusiasm for this venture was an emotion I found practically impossible to summon up. Even without Le ffaçasé's sanguinary prophecies, I objected to the trip. I had never been in a plane in my life, and this for no other reason than disinclination. I feared every possible consequence of the parachutejump, from instant annihilation through a broken neck in the jerk of its opening, down to being smothered in its folds on the ground. I distinctly did not want to go.

But caution sometimes defeats itself; I was so afraid of going that I hesitated to admit my timidity and so I found myself herded with my two companions, the pilot and crew, in with the sheep and the goat. I was not resigned, but I was quiescent. Gootes and the animals were not.

While we waited he went through his entire stock of tricks including a few new ones which were not completely successful, before the cameraman, panting, arrived ten minutes after our scheduled departure. His name was Rafe Slafe--which I thought an improbable combination of syllables--and he was so chubby in every part you imagined you saw the smile which ought to have gone with such a face and figure. Before his breath had settled down to a normal routine, Gootes had rushed upon him with an enthusiastic, "Ah, Rafello muchacho, give to me the abrazo; como usted, compañero?"

Slafe scorned reply, pushing Gootes aside with one plump hand while with the other he tidied the sparse black hairs of his mustache, which was trimmed down to an eyebrow shading his lip. After inspecting and rejecting several identical bucketseats he found one less to his distaste than the others and stowed his equipment, which was extensive, requiring several puffing trips backandforth, next to it. Then he lowered his backside onto the unyielding surface with the same anxiety with which he might have deposited a fortune in a dubious bank.

His hands darted in and out of pockets which apparently held a small pharmacopoeia. Pulling out a roll of absorbentcotton from which he plucked two wads, he stuck them thoughtfully in his ears. He withdrew a nasalsyringe and used it vigorously, swallowed gulps of a clearly labeled seasickremedy, and then sucked at pills from various boxes whose purpose was not so obvious. To conclude, he unstopped a glass vial and sniffed at it. All the while Gootes hovered over him, solicitously deluging him with friendly queries in one accent or another.

I lost interest in both fellowpassengers, for the plane, after shaking us violently, started forward, and before I was clearly aware of it had left the ground. Looking from the windows I regretted my first airplane ride hadnt been taken under less trying circumstances, for it was an extraordinarily pleasant experience to see the field dwindle into a miniature of itself and the ground beneath become nothing more than a large and highly colored reliefmap.

To our right was the stagnant river, dammed up behind the blockading arm of grass. Leftward, downtown, the thumb of the cityhall pointed rudely upward and far beyond was the listless Pacific. Ahead, the gridiron of streets was shockingly interrupted and severed by the great green mass plumped in its center.

It grew to enormous bigness and everything else disappeared; we were over and looked down upon it, a pasture hummock magnified beyond belief; retaining its essential identity, but made ominous by its unappropriate situation and size. As we hovered above the very pinnacle, the rounded peak which poked up at us, the pilot spoke over the intercommunication system. "We will circle till the load is disposed of. First the animals will be dropped, then the equipment, finally the passengers. Is that clear?"

Everything was clear to me except how we should escape from that green mountain once we had got upon it. This was apparently in the hands of Le ffaçasé, a realization, remembering his grisly conversation, making me no easier in my mind. Nor did I relish the pilot's casual description of myself as part of a "load"--to be disposed of.

Slafe suddenly came to life and after peering through a sort of lorgnette hanging round his neck, mumbling unintelligibly to himself all the while, started his camera which went on clicking magically with no apparent help from him. Efficiently and swiftly the crew fastened upon the helpless and bleating sheep their parachutes and onebyone dropped them through the open bombbay. The goat went last and she did not bleat, but dextrously butted two of her persecutors and micturated upon the third before being cast into space.

I would have forgone the dubious honor of being the first to land upon the grass, but the crew apparently had their orders; I was courteously tapped upon the shoulder--I presume the warders are polite when they enter the condemned cell at dawn--my chute was strapped upon me and the instructions I had already read in their printed form at least sixty times were repeated verbally, so much to my confusion that when I was finally in the air I do not know to this day whether I counted six, sixty, six hundred, or six thousand before jerking the ripcord. Whatever the number, it was evidently not too far wrong, for although I received a marrowexploding shock, the parachute opened and I floated down.

But no sooner were my fears of the parachute's performance relieved than I was for the first time assailed with apprehension at the thought of my destination. The grass, the weed, the destroying body which had devoured so much was immediately below me. I was irrevocably committed to come upon it--not at its edges where other men battled with it heroically--but at its very heart, where there were none to challenge it.

Still tormented and dejected, I landed easily and safely a few feet from the goat and just behind the rearquarters of one of the sheep.

And now I pause in my writing to sit quite still and remember--more than remember, live through again--the sensation of that first physical contact with the heart of the grass. Ecstasy is a pale word to apply to the joy of touching and resting upon that verdure. Soft--yes, it was soft, but the way sand is soft, unyieldingly. Unlike sand, however, it did not suggest a tightlypacked foundation, but rather the firmness of a good mattress resting on a wellmade spring. It was resilient, like carefully tended turf, yet at the same time one thought, not of the solid ground beneath, but of feathers, or even more of buoyant clouds. My parachute having landed me gently on my feet, I sank naturally to my knees, and then, impelled by some other force than gravity, my body fell fully forward in complete relaxation until my face was buried in the thickly growing culms and my arms stretched out to embrace as much of the lush surface as they could encompass.

Far more complex than the mere physical reactions were the psychical ones. When a boy I had, like every other, daydreamed of discovering new continents, of being first to climb a hitherto unscaled peak, to walk before others the shores of strange archipelagoes, to bring back tales of outlandish places and unfrequented isles. Well, I was doing these things now, long after the disillusionment adolescence brought to these childish dreams. But in addition it was in a sense _my_ island, _my_ mountain, _my_ land--for I had caused it to be. A sensation of tremendous vivacity and wellbeing seized upon me; I could not have lain upon the grass more than half a second before I leaped to my feet. With a nimbleness quite foreign to my natural habits I detached the encumbering chute and jumped and danced upon the sward. The goat regarded me speculatively through rectangular pupils, but did not offer, in true capricious fashion, to gambol with me. Her criticism did not stay me, for I felt absolutely free, extraordinarily exhilarated, inordinately stimulated. I believe I even went so far as to shout out loud and break into song.

The descent of Slafe, still solemnly recording the event, camera before him in the position of present arms, did not sober my intoxication, though circumspection caused me to act in a more conventional way. I freed him from his harness, for he was too busy taking views of the grass, the sky, the animals and me to perform this service for himself.

I do not know if he was affected the way I was, for his deceptively genial face showed no emotion as he went on aiming his camera here and there with sour thoroughness. Then, apparently satisfied for the moment, he applied himself once more to the nasalsyringe and the pillboxes.

On Gootes, however, the consequence of the landing must have been much the same as on me. He too capered and sang and his dialect renderings reached a new low, such as even a burlesqueshow comedian would have spurned. "Tis the old sod itself," he kept repeating, "Erin go bragh. Up Dev!" and he laughed inanely.

We must have wasted fully an hour in this fashion before enough coolness returned to allow anything like calm observation. When it did, we unpacked the equipment, despite obstacles interposed by Gootes, who, still hilarious, found great delight in making the various instruments disappear and reappear unexpectedly. It was quite complete and we--or rather Slafe--recorded the thermometer and barometer readings as well as the wind direction and altitude, these to be later compared with others taken under normal conditions at the same hour.

Included in the gear were telescope and binoculars; these we put to our eyes only to realize with surprise that we were located in the center of a hollow bowl perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred feet across and that an horizon of upsurging vegetation cut off our view of anything except the sky itself. I could have sworn we had landed on a flat plateau, if indeed the contour had not sloped upward to a cap. How, then, did we come to find ourselves in a depression? Did the grass shift like the sea it resembled? Or--incredible thought--had our weight caused us to sink imperceptibly into a soft and treacherous bed?

I felt my happiness oozing away. What is man, I thought, but a pigmy trapped in a bowl, bounded by an unknown beginning and headed for a concealed destination? It was sweet to be, but whether good or evil lay in the unseen, who knew? Uneasiness, which did not quite displace my earlier buoyancy, took hold of me.

The animals, in contrast, gave no signals of disquiet. They cropped at the grass without nervousness, perhaps more from habit than hunger. They did not seem to be obtaining much sustenance; clearly they found it hard to bite off mouthfuls of forage. Rather, they chewed sidewise, like a cat, at the tough rubbery tendrils.

"I tank I want to go home--anyways I tank I want to get out of dis haole," remarked Gootes. Slafe had unpacked another camera and attached various gadgets to it, pursing his lips and running his hands lovingly over the assembled product before thrusting it downward into the stolons where queer shocks of radiance seemed to indicate he was taking flashlight pictures of the subsurface.

But the sheep and the cameraman could not distract my attention from the appearance of a trap which the basin of grass was assuming, while Gootes was so volatile he couldnt even put on a simulated stoicism. In a panic I started to climb frantically, all the elation of my first encounter with the mound completely evaporated. The goat raised her head to note my undignified scrambling, but the sheep kept up their determined nibbling.

The trough, as I said, could not have been more than a couple of hundred feet across and though the loose runners impeded my progress I must have covered twice the distance to the edge of the rim before I realized it was as far from me as when I had started. Gootes, going in a direction oblique to mine, had no better success. His waving arms and struggling body indicated his awareness of his predicament. Only Slafe was undisturbed, perhaps unconscious of our efforts, for he had taken out still another camera and was lying on his back, pointing it over our heads at the boundary of grass and sky.

Hysteria burned my lungs as I continued the dreamlike battle upward. Fear may have confused me, but it seemed as though the enveloping weed was now positively rather than merely negatively hampering me. The runners whipped around my legs in clinging spirals; the surface, always soft, now developed treacherous spots like quicksands and while one foot remained comparatively secure, the other sank deeply, tripping me. Prone, the entangling fronds caught at my arms and neck; the green blades, no longer tender, scratched my face and smothered my useless cries for help. I sobbed childishly, knowing myself doomed to die in this awful morass, drowned in an unnatural sea.

So despairing were my thoughts that I gave up all struggle and lay there weakly crying when I noticed the grass relaxing its hold, I was sinking in no farther; indeed it seemed the lightest effort would set me free. I rose to my knees and finally to my feet, but I was so shaken by my battle I made no attempt to continue forward, but stood gazing around me marveling that I was still, even if only for a few more moments, alive.

"Belly belong you walk about too much, ay? Him fella look-look no got belly." Gootes had given up his endeavor to reach the rim and apparently struggled all the way over to impart, if I understood his _bêchedemer_, this absurd and selfevident piece of information.

"This is hardly a time for levity," I rebuked him coldly.

"Couldnt think of a better. Reality is escaped through one flippancy or another. Rafe has his--" he waved his hand toward the still industrious cameraman "--and I have mine. I bet W R has a telescope or a periscope or a spectroscope somehow trained on us right now and will see to it the rescue party arrives ten minutes after all life is extinct."

To tell the truth I'd forgotten our expedition was but a stunt initiated by the _Daily Intelligencer_ to rebound to its greater publicity. Here in this isolate cup it was difficult to conceive of an anterior existence; I thought of myself, as in some strange manner indigenous to and part of the weed. To recall now that we were here purposefully, that others were concerned with our venture, and that we might reasonably hope for succor extricated me from my subjective entanglement with the grass much as the relaxation of my body a short while before freed me from its physical bonds. I looked hopefully at the empty sky: of course we would get help at any moment.

Once more my spirits were raised; there was no point in trying to get out of the depression now, seeing we could as easily be rescued from one portion of the grass as from another. Again the grass was soft and pleasant to touch and Slafe's preoccupation with his pictures no longer seemed either eccentric or heroic, but rather proper and sensible. Like Alice and the Red Queen, since we had given up trying to reach a particular spot we found ourselves able to travel with comparative ease. We inspected Slafe's activities with interest and responded readily to his autocratic gestures indicating positions and poses we should take in order to be incorporated in his record.

But our gaiety was again succeeded by another period of despondency; we repeated all our antics, struggles and despair. Again I fought madly against the enmeshing weed and again I gave myself up to death only to be revived in the moment of my resignation.

The cameraman was still untouched by the successive waves of fear and joyfulness. Invincibly armored by some strange spirit he kept on and on, although by now I could not understand--in those moments when I could think about anything other than the grass--what new material he could find for his film. Skyward and downward, to all points of the compass, holding his cameras at crazy angles, burlesquing all photographers, his zeal was unabated, unaffected even by the force of the grass.

Our alternating moods underwent a subtle change: the spans of defeat grew longer, the moments of hope more fleeting. The sheep too at last were infected by uneasiness, bleating piteously skyward and making no attempt to nibble any longer. The goat, like Slafe, was unmoved; she disdained the emotional sheep.

And now with horror I suddenly realized that a physical change had marched alongside the fluctuations of our temper. The circumference of the bowl was the same as at first, but imperceptibly yet swiftly the hollow had deepened, sunk farther from the sky, the walls had become almost perpendicular and to my terror I found myself looking upward from the bottom of a pit at the retreating sky.

I suppose everyone at some time has imagined himself irrevocably imprisoned, cast into some lightless dungeon and left to die. Such visions implied human instrumentality, human whim; the most implacable jailer might relent. But this, this was an incarceration no supplication could end, a doom not to be stayed. Silently, evenly, unmeasuredly the well deepened and the walls became more sheer.

Like kittens about to be ignominiously drowned we slid into a huddled bunch at the bottom of the sack, men and animals equally helpless and distraught. Fortunately it was during one of the now rare periods of resurgence that we saw the helicopter, for I do not think we should have had the spiritual strength needful to help ourselves had it come during our times of dejection. Gootes and I yelled and waved our arms frenziedly, while Slafe, exhibiting faint excitement for the first time, contorted himself to aim the camera at the machine's belly. Evidently the pilot spotted us without difficulty for the ship came to a hovering rest over the mouth of the well and a jacobsladder unrolled its length to dangle rope sides and wooden rungs down to us.

"Snatched from the buzzsaw as the express thundered across the switch and the water came up to our noses," chanted Gootes. "W R has a vilely melodramatic sense of timing."

The ladder was nearest Slafe, but working more furiously than ever, he waved it impatiently aside and so I grasped it and started upward. The terror of the ascent paradoxically was a welcome one, for it was the common fear which comes to men on the battlefield or in the creaking hours of the night, the natural dread of ordinary perils and not the unmanning panic inspired by the awful unknown within the grass.

The helicopter shuddered and dipped, causing the unanchored ladder to sway and twist until with each convulsive jerk I expected to be thrown off. I bruised and burned my palms with the tightness of my grip, my knees twitched and my face and back and chest were wet. But in spite of all this, waves of thankfulness surged over me.

The roaring and rattling above grew louder and I made my way finally into the open glassfronted cockpit, pulling myself in with the last bit of my strength. For a long moment I lay huddled there, exhausted. My eye took in every trifle, every bolthead, rivet, scratch, dent, indicator, seam and panel, playing with them in my mind, making and rejecting patterns. They were artificial, made on a blessed assemblyline--no terrifying product of nature.

I wondered how so small a space could accommodate us all and was devoutly grateful that I, at least, had achieved safety. Reminded of my companions, I looked out and down. The grass walls towered upward almost within reach; beyond the hole they so unexpectedly made in its surface the weed stretched out levelly, peaceful and inviting. I shuddered and peered down the reversed telescope where the ladder once more hung temptingly before Slafe.

Again he waved it aside. Gootes appeared to argue with him for he shook his head obstinately and went on using his camera. At length the reporter seized him forcibly with a strength I had not known he possessed and boosted him up the first rungs of the ladder. Slafe seemed at last resigned to leave, but he pointed anxiously to his other cameras and cans of film. Gootes nodded energetically and waved the photographer upward.

I saw every detail of what happened then, emphasized and heightened as though revealed through a slowmotion picture. I heard Slafe climb on board and knew that in a few seconds now we would be free and away. I saw the bright sun reflect itself dazzlingly upon the blades of the grass, sloping imperceptibly away to merge with the city it squatted upon in the distance.

The sun where we were was dazzling, I say, but in the hole where Gootes was now tying Slafe's paraphernalia to the ladder, the shadow of the walls darkened it into twilight. I squinted, telepathically urging him to hurry; he seemed slow and fumbling. And then ...

And then the walls collapsed. Not slowly, not with warning, not dramatically or with trumpets. They came together as silently and naturally as two waves close a trough in the ocean, but without disturbance or upheaval. They fell into an embrace, into a coalescence as inevitable as the well they obliterated was fortuitous. They closed like the jaws of a trap somehow above malevolence, leaving only the top of the ladder projecting upward from the smooth and placid surface of the weed.

Whether in some involuntary recoil the pilot pressed a wrong control or whether the action of the grass itself snatched the ladder from the ship I don't know; but that last bit attached to the machine was torn free and fell upon the green. It was the only thing to mark the spot where the bowl which had held us had been, and it lay, a brown and futile tangle of rope and wood, a helpless speck of artifice on an imperturbable mass of vegetation.

_24._ Mr Le ffaçasé removed the tube of the dictaphone from his lips as I entered. "Weener, although a rigid adherence to fact compels me to claim some acquaintance with general knowledge and a slight cognizance of abnormal psychology, I must admit bafflement at the spectacle of your mottled complexion once more in these rooms sacred to the perpetuation of truth and the dissemination of enlightenment. Everyday you embezzle good money from this paper under pretense of giving value received, and each day your uselessness becomes more conspicuous. Almost anyone would disapprove the divine choice in the matter of taking Gootes and leaving you alive, and while I know the world suffered not the least hurt by his translation to whatever baroque, noisy and entirely public hell is reserved for reporters, at least he attempted to forge some ostensible return for his paycheck."

"Mr Le ffaçasé," I began indignantly, but he cut me off.

"You unalloyed imbecile," he roared, "at least have the prudence if not the intelligence or courtesy to be silent while your betters are speaking. Gootes was a bloody knave, a lazy, slipshod, slack, tasteless, absurd, fawning, thieving, conniving sloven, but even if he had the energy to make the attempt and a mind to put to it, he could not, in ten lifetimes, become the perfect, immaculate and prototypical idiot you were born."

I don't know how long he would have continued in this insulting vein, but he was interrupted by the concealed telephone. "What in the name of the ten thousand dubious virgins do you mean by annoying me?" he bellowed into the mouthpiece. "Yes. Yes. I know all about deadlines; I was a newspaperman when you were vainly suckling canine dugs. Are you ambitious to replace me? Go get with child a mandrakeroot, you, you journalist! I will meet the _Intelligencer_'s deadline as I did before your father got the first tepidly lustful idea in his nulliparous head and as I shall after you have followed your useless testes to a worthy desuetude."

He replaced the receiver and picked up the mouthpiece of the dictaphone again, paying no further attention to me. He enunciated clearly and precisely, speaking in an even monotone, pausing not at all, as if reading from some prepared script, though his eyes were fixed upon a vacant spot where wall and ceiling joined.

"In the death today of Jacson Gootes the _Daily Intelligencer_ lost a son. It is an old and good custom on these solemn occasions to pause and remember the dead.

"Jacson Gootes was a reporter of exceptional probity, of clear understanding, of indefatigable effort, and of great native ability. His serious and straightforward approach to an occupation which to him was a labor of love was balanced by a sunny yet thoughtful humor, a combination making his company something to be sought. Beloved of his fellow workers, no one mourns his loss more sincerely than the editor through whose hands passed all those brilliant contributions, now finally marked, as all newspaper copy is, -30-.

"But though the _Intelligencer_ has suffered a personal and deeply felt bereavement, American journalism has given another warrior on the battlefield. Not by compulsion nor arbitrary selection, but of his own free will, he who serves the public through the press is a soldier. And as a soldier he is ready at the proper time to go forward and give up his life if need be.

"No member of a sturdy army was more worthy of a gallant end than Jacson Gootes. He died, not in some burst of audacity such as may occasionally actuate men to astonishing feats, but doggedly and calmly in the line of duty. More than a mere hero, he was a good newspaperman. W.R.L."

There were tears under my eyelids as the editor concluded his eulogy. Under that gruff and even overbearing exterior must beat a warm and tender heart. You can't go by appearances, I always say, and I felt I would never again be hurt by whatever hasty words he chose to hurl at me.

"Wake up, you moonstruck simpleton, and stop beaming at some private vision. The time has passed for you to live on the bounty of the _Intelligencer_ like the bloody mendicant you are. You have outlived your usefulness as the man who started all this fuss; it is no longer good publicity; the matter has become too serious.

"No, Weener, from now on, beneath your unearned byline the public will know you only as the first to set foot upon this terra incognita, this verdant isle which flourishes senselessly where only yesterday Hollywood nourished senselessly. So rest no more upon your accidental laurels, but transform yourself into what nature never intended, a useful member of the community. I will make a newspaperman of you, Weener, if I have to beat into your head an entire typefont, from fourpoint up to and including those rare boldfaced letters we keep in the cellar to announce on our final page one the end of the world.

"You will cover the grass as before and you will bring or send or cause in some other manner to be transmitted to me copy without a single adjective or adverb, containing nothing more lethal than verbs, nouns, prepositions and conjunctions, stating facts and only facts, clearly and distinctly in the least possible number of words compatible with the usages of English grammar. You will do this daily and conscientiously, Weener, on pain of instant dismemberment, to say nothing of crucifixion and the death of a thousand cuts."

"The _Weekly Ruminant_ and the _Honeycomb_ have found little pieces of mine, written without special instructions, suitable for their columns," I mentioned defensively.

He threw himself back in his chair and stared at me with such concentrated fury I thought he would burst the diamond stud loose from his shirtband. "The _Weekly Ruminant_," he informed me, "was founded by a parsimonious whoremaster whose sanctimonious rantings in public were equaled only by his private impieties. It was brought to greatness--if inflated circulation be a synonym--by a veritable journalistic pimp who pandered to the public taste for literary virgins by bribing them to commit their perverse acts in full view. It is now carried on by a spectral corporation, losing circulation at the same rate a haemophilic loses blood.

"As for the _Honeycomb_, it is enough to say that careful research proves its most absorbing reading to be the 'throw away your truss' ads. Is it not natural, Weener, that two such journals of taste and enlightenment should appreciate your efforts? Unfortunately the _Daily Intelligencer_ demands accounts written in intelligible English above the level of fourthgrade grammarschool."

I would have been shocked beyond measure at his libelous smirching of honored names and hurt as well by his slighting reference to myself had I not known from the revealing editorial he had dictated what a sympathetic and kindly nature was really his and how he might, beneath this cynical pose, have an admiration great as mine for the characters he had just slandered.

"You will be the new Peter Schlemihl, Weener; from now on you will go forth without a ghost and any revision essential to your puny assault upon the Republic of Letters will be done by me and God help you if I find much to do, for my life is passing and I must have time to read the immortal Hobbes before I die."

In spite of all he'd said I couldnt help but believe Mr Le ffaçasé realized my true worth--or why did he confer on me what was practically a promotion? I was therefore emboldened to suggest the cancellation of the unjust paycut, but this innocent remark called forth such a vituperative stream of epithet I really thought the apoplexy Gootes had predicted was about to strike and I hurried from his presence lest I be blamed for bringing it on.

_25._ A little reading brought me uptodate on the state of the grass as a necessary background for my new responsibility. It was now shaped like a great, irregular crescent with one tip at Newhall, broadening out to bury the San Fernando Road; stretching over the Santa Monica Mountains from Beverly Glen to the Los Angeles River. Its fattest part was what had once been Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the socalled Wilshire district. The right arm of the semicircle, more slender than the left, curled crookedly eastward along Venice Boulevard, in places only a few blocks wide. It severed the downtown district from the manufacturing area, crossing the river near the Ninth Street bridge and swallowing the great Searsroebuck store like a capsule. The office of the _Daily Intelligencer_, like the Civic Center, was unthreatened and able to function, but we were without water and gas, though the electric service, subject to annoying interruptions, was still available.

Already arrangements were being completed to move the paper to Pomona, where the mayor and councilmanic offices also intended to continue. For there was no hiding the fact that the city was being surrendered to the weed. Eastward and southward the homeless and the alarmed journeyed carrying the tale of a city besieged and gutted in little more than the time it would have taken a human army to fight the necessary preliminaries and bring up its big guns.

On trains and buses, by bicycles and on foot, the exodus moved. Those who could afford it left their ravished homes swiftly behind by air and to these fortunate ones the way north was not closed, as it was to the earthbound, by the weed's overrunning of the highways. Usedcardealers sold out their stocks at inflated figures and a ceilingprice had to be put on the gasoline supplied to those retreating from the grass.

Though only a fragment of the city had been lost, all industry had come to a practical standstill. Workers did not care to leave homes which might be grassbound by nightfall; employers could not manufacture without backlog of materials, for a dwindling market, and without transportation for their products. Services were so crippled as to be barely existent and with the failure of the watersupply, epidemics, mild at first, broke out and the diseases were carried and spread by the refugees.

Cattlemen, uncertain there would be either stockyards or working butchers, held back their shipments. Truckfarmers found it simpler and more profitable to supply local depots catering at fantastic prices to the needs of the fugitives, than to depend on railroads which were already overstrained and might consign their highly perishable goods to rot on a siding. Los Angeles began to starve. Housewives rushed frantically to clean out the grocer's shelves, but this was living off their own fat and even the most farsighted of hoarders could provide for no more than a few weeks of future.

So even those not directly evicted or frightened by its proximity began moving away from the grass. But they still had possessions and they wanted to take them along, all of them, down to the obsolescent console radio in grandma's room, the busted mantelclock--a weddingpresent from Aunt Minnie--in the garage and the bridgelamp without a shade which had so long rested in the mopcloset. All of this taxed an already overstrained transportation system. Since it was entirely a oneway traffic, charges were naturally doubled and even then shippers were reluctant to risk the return of their equipment to the threatened zone. The greed to take along every last bit of impedimenta dwindled under the impact of necessity; possessions were scrutinized for what would be least missed, then for what could be got along without; for the absolutely essential, and finally for things so dear it was not worth going if they were left behind. This last category proved surprisingly small, compact enough to be squeezed into the family car--"Junior can sit on the box of fishingtackle--it's flat--and hold the birdcage on his lap"--as it made ready to join the procession crawling along the clogged highways.

_Time_, reporting the progress of the weed, said in part: "Death, as it must to all, came last week to cult-harboring, movie-producing Los Angeles. The metropolis of the southwest (pop. 3,012,910) died gracelessly, undignifiedly, as its blood oozed slowly away. A shell remained: downtown district, suburbs, beaches, sprawling South and East sides, but the spirit, heart, brain, lungs and liver were gone; swallowed up, Jonah-wise by the advance of the terrifying Bermuda grass (TIME Aug. 10). Still at his post was sunk-eyed W. (for William) R. (for Rufus) Le ffaçasé (pronounced L'Fass-uh-say), prolix, wide-read editor of the Los Angeles _Intelligencer_. Till the last press stopped the _Intelligencer_ would continue to disseminate the news. Among those remaining was Le ffaçasé's acereporter, Jacson C. (for Crayman) Gootes, 28. Gootes' permanent beat: the heart of the menacing grass where he met his death."

Under Religion, _Time_ had another note about the weed. "Harassed Angelinos, distracted & terrified by encroaching _Cynodon dactylon_ (TIME Aug. 10) now smothering their city (see National Affairs) were further distracted when turning on their radios (those still working) last week. The nasal, portentous boom of the evangelist calling himself Brother Paul (real name: Algernon Knight Mood) announced the 2nd Advent. It was taking place in the heart of the choking grass. What brought death and disaster to the country's 3rd city offered hope and bliss to followers of Brother Paul. 'Sell all you have,' advised the radiopreacher, 'fly to your Savior who is gathering His true disciples at this moment in the very center of the grass. Do not fear, for He will sustain and comfort you in the thicket through which the unsaved cannot pass.' At last report countless followers had been forcibly restrained from self-immolation in the _Cynodon dactylon_, unnumbered others gone joyfully to their beatification. Not yet reported as joining his Savior: Brother Paul."

Under People: "Admitted to the Relief rolls of San Diego County this week were Adam Dinkman & wife, whose front lawn (TIME Aug. 3) was the starting point of the plaguing grass. Said Mrs. Dinkman, 'The government ought to pay....' Said Adam Dinkman, '... it's a terrible thing....'"

I resolved to send the Dinkmans some money as soon as I could possibly afford it. I made a note to this effect in a pocket memorandumbook, feeling the glow of worthy sacrifice, and then went out and got in my car. It was all right to digest facts and figures about the weed from the printed page, but it was necessary to see again its physical presence before writing anything for so critical an editor as W R Le ffaçasé.

I drove through the Second Street tunnel and out Beverly Boulevard. There, several miles from the most advanced runners of the grass, the certainty of its coming lay like a smothering blanket upon the unnaturally silent district. There was no traffic on my side of the street and only a few lastminute straggling jalopies, loaded down with shameless bedding and bundles, coughed their way frantically eastward.

Those few shops still unaccountably open were bare of goods and the idle proprietors walked periodically to the front to scan the western sky to assure themselves the grass was not yet in sight. But most of the stores were closed, their windows broken, their signs already tarnished and decrepit with the age which seems to come so swiftly upon a defunct business. The sidewalks were littered with rubbish, diagonally flattened papers, broken boxes, odd shoes. Garbagecans, instead of standing decorously in alleys or shamefacedly along the curb, sprawled in lascivious abandon over the pavements, their contents strewn widely. Dogs and cats, deserted by fond owners, snarled and fought over choicer tidbits. I had not realized how many people in the city kept pets until the time came to leave them behind.

At Vermont Avenue I came upon what I was sure was a new nucleus, a lawn green and tall set between others withered and yellow, but I did not even bother reporting this to the police for I knew that before long the main body would take it to its bosom. And now, looking westward, I could see the grass itself, a half mile away at Normandie. It rose high in the air, dwarfing the buildings in its path, blotting out the mountains behind, and giving the illusion of rushing straight at me.

I turned the car north, not with the idea of further observation, but because standing still in the face of that towering palisade seemed somehow to invite immediate destruction. I drove slowly and thoughtfully and then at Melrose the grass came in sight again, creeping down from Los Feliz. I turned back toward the Civic Center. It would not be more than a couple of days at most, now, before even downtown was gone.

_26._ During my drive several walkers loaded with awkward bundles raised imploring thumbs for a ride, but knowing to what lengths desperation will drive people and not wishing to be robbed of my car, I had pressed my foot down and driven on. But now as I went along Temple near Rampart a beautiful woman, incongruously--for it was in the middle of a hot October--dressed in a fur coat, and with each gloved hand grasping the handle of a suitcase, stepped in front of me and I had to jam on the brakes to avoid running over her.

The car stopped, radiator almost touching her, but she made no attempt to move. A small hat with a tiny fringe of veil concealed her eyes, but her sullen mouth looked furiously at me as rigidly clutching her luggage she barred my path. Fearing some trap, I turned off the ignition and unobtrusively slid the keys into a sidepocket before getting out and going to her.

"Excuse me, miss. Can I help you?"

She threw her head back and her eyes, brown and glistening, appraised me through heavily painted lashes. I stood there stiffly, uncomfortable under her gaze till I suddenly remembered my hat and lifted it with an awkward bow. This seemed to satisfy her, for still without speaking she nodded and thrust the two suitcases at me. Not knowing what else to do, I took them from her and she promptly, after smoothing her gloves, walked toward the passenger's side of the car.

"You want me to take you somewhere, miss?" I inquired quite superfluously.

She bent her head the merest fraction and then rested her fingers on the doorhandle, waiting for me to open it for her. I ran as fast as I could with the bags--they were beautifully matched expensive luggage--to put them in the turtle and then had to make myself still more ridiculous by running back for the forgotten key resting in the sidepocket. When I had finally stowed away the baggage and opened the door for her she got in with the barest of condescending nods for my efforts and sat staring ahead.

I drove very slowly, nipping off little glances of her profile as we moved along. Her cheeks were smooth as a chinadoll's, her nose the chiseled replica of some lovely antique marble, her mouth a living study of rounded lines; never had I been so close to such an alluring woman. We reached the Civic Center and I automatically headed for the _Intelligencer_ building. But I could not bear to part company so quickly and so I turned left instead, out Macy Street.

Now we found ourselves caught in the traffic snailing eastward. In low gear I drove a block, then stopped and waited till a clear ten feet ahead permitted another painfully slow forward motion. Still my passenger had no word to say but kept staring ahead though she could see nothing before her except the trunkladen rearend of a tottery ford long past its majority.

"You," I stumbled, "I--that is, I mean wasnt there somewhere in particular you wanted to go?"

She nodded, still without looking at me, and for the first time spoke.

Her voice was deep and had the timbre of some old bronze bell. "Yuma," she said.

"Yuma, Arizona?" I asked stupidly.

Again she nodded faintly. In a panic I reckoned the contents of my wallet. About forty dollars, I thought--no, thirty. Would that take us to Yuma? Barely, perhaps, and I should have to wire the _Intelligencer_ for money to return. Besides, in the present condition of the roads the journey would be a matter of days and I knew she would accept nothing but the very best. How could I do it? Should I return to the _Intelligencer_ office and try to get an advance on next week's salary? I had heard from more than one disgruntled reporter that it was an impossibility. Good heavens, I thought, I shall lose her.

Whatever happened I must take her as far as I could; I must not let her go before I was absolutely forced to. This resolution made, my first thought was to cut the time, for poking along in this packed mass I was burning gasoline without getting anywhere. Taking advantage of my knowledge of the sideroads, I turned off at the first chance and was able to resume a normal speed as I avoided towns and main highways.

Still she continued silent, until at length, passing orangegroves heavy with coppery fruit, I ventured to speak myself. "My name is Albert Weener. Bert."

The right rear tire kicked up some dust as I nervously edged off the road. Somewhere overhead a plane ripped through the hot silk of the sky.

"Uh ... what ... uh ... won't you tell me yours?"

Still facing ahead, she replied, "It isnt necessary."

After a few more miles I ventured again. "You live--were living in Los Angeles?"

She shook her head impatiently.

Well, I thought, really...! Then: poor thing, she's probably terribly upset. Home and family lost perhaps. Money gone. Destitute. Going East, swallowing pride, make a new start with the help of unsympathetic relatives. She has only me to depend on--I must not fail her. Break the ice, whatever attitude her natural pride dictates, offer your services.

"I'm on the _Daily Intelligencer_," I said. "I'm the man who first walked on top of the grass."

Ten miles later I inquired, "Wouldnt you be more comfortable with that heavy fur coat off? I can put it in the back with your luggage and it won't be crushed."

She shook her head more impatiently.

Suddenly I remembered the car radio installed a few days before. A little cheerful music calms the soul. I turned it on and got a band playing a brandnew hit, "Green as Grass."

"Oh, no. No noise."

Of course. How thoughtless of me. The very word "grass" reminded her of her tragic situation. I kicked myself for my tactlessness.

We skirted Riverside and joined the highway again at Beaumont where we were unavoidably packed into the slowmoving mass. "I'm sorry," I apologized, "but I can take a chance again at Banning and drive up into the mountains to get away from this."

An hour later I suggested stopping for something to eat. She shook her head. "But it's getting late," I said. "Pretty soon we shall have to think about stopping for the night."

She raised her left hand imperatively. "Drive all night."

This would certainly solve part of my financial problem, but I was hungry and unreasonably more irritated by her refusal of food than her unsociability. "I have to eat, even if you don't," I told her rudely. "I'm going to stop at the next place I see." With the same left hand she made a gesture of resignation.

I pulled up before the roadside cafe. "Won't you change your mind and come in? At least for a cup of coffee?"

"No."

I went in angrily and ate. Who was she, to treat me like a hired chauffeur? A mere pickup, I raged, a stray woman found on a street. By God, she would have the courtesy at least to address me, her benefactor, civilly or else I'd abandon her here on the highway and return to Los Angeles. I finished my meal full of determination and strode back purposefully toward the car. She was still sitting rigid, staring through the windshield. I got in.

"You know--" I began.

She did not hear me. I turned on the ignition, pressed the starterbutton, and drove ahead.

Soddeneyed with lack of sleep and outraged at her taciturnity, I breakfasted alone on the soggiest wheatcakes and the muddiest coffee I have ever demeaned my stomach with. The absence of my customary morning paper added the final touch to my wretchedness. But one would have thought to look at my companion that she had been refreshed by a lengthy repose, had bathed at leisure, and eaten the most delicate of continental breakfasts. There was not a smudge on her suede gloves nor a speck upon her small hat and the mascara on her eyelashes might have been renewed but a moment before.

The road curved through vast hummocks of sand, which for no good reason reminded me of the grass in its early stages. Reminded, I wanted to know what the latest news was, how far the weed had progressed in the night. Thoughtlessly, without remembering her interdiction, I turned the knob. "Kfkfkk," squeaked the radio.

"Please," she said, in anything but a pleading tone, and turned it off.

Well, I thought, this is certainly going too far. I opened my mouth to voice the angry words but a look at her stopped me. I couldnt help but feel her imperviousness was fragile, that harsh speech might shatter a calm too taut to be anything but hysterical. I drove on without speaking until the hummocks gave way again to smooth desert. "We'll soon be in Yuma," I announced. "Arent you going to tell me your name?"

"It isnt important," she repeated.

"But it's important to me," I told her boldly. "I want to know who the beautiful lady was whom I drove from Los Angeles to Yuma."

She shook her head irritably and we crossed the bridge into Arizona.

"All right, this is Yuma. Now where?"

"Here."

"Right here in the middle of the road?"

She nodded. I looked helplessly at her, but her gaze was still fixed ahead. Resignedly I got out, took her bags from the turtle and set them beside the road, opened the door. She descended, smoothed her gloves, straightened the edge of her veil, brushed an immaterial speck from her coat and, after the briefest of acknowledging nods, picked up her grips.

"But ... can't I carry them for you?"

She did not even answer this with her usual headshake, but began walking resolutely back over the way we had come. Bewildered, I watched her a moment and then got into the car and turned it around, trying to keep her in sight in the rearview mirror as I did so. It was an awkward procedure on a highway heavy with traffic. By the time I had reversed my direction she was gone.