No, what you wanted instead of revolutionaries were people like Croley.
Croley!
He couldn't stop laughing. When he thought of thousands of underground American Communists lying tonight in their own blood on thousands of cellar floors, when he thought of Floyd C. Croley, Hero of Soviet Labor, Servant of the North American People's Democratic Republic, he couldn't stop laughing.
CHAPTER FOUR
April 30 . . .
The first of the spring rains had come and gone. They were broadcasting weather forecasts again, which was good. You noticed that forecasts east of the Mississippi were credited to the Red Air Force Meteorological Service. From the Mississippi to the Pacific it was through the courtesy of the Weather Organization of the Chinese People's Republic. Apparently this meant that the two Communist powers had split the continent down the middle. China got more land, which it badly needed, and Russia got more machinery, which it badly needed. A very logical solution of an inevitable problem.
The Sunday Times had stopped coming, but Justin hardly missed it. He was a farmer, whether he liked it or not, and spring was his busy season. He had grudged time to attend the auction of the Bradens' estate, but once there he had picked up some badly needed tools and six piglets. Croley, under whose general authority the auction was held, himself bought the house and twelve acres for an absurd eight hundred dollars. Nobody bid against him, but after the place was knocked down to him, half a dozen farmers tried to rent it. They were thinking of their sons and daughters in the service who should be back very soon. Croley grudgingly allowed the Wehrweins to have the place at fifty dollars a month, cash or kind.
Justin was almost happy on the spring morning that was the fourteenth day of defeat. His future looked clear for the moment. The red clover was sprouting bravely in his west pasture; he'd be able to turn his cows out any day now and still have hay in reserve. Electric service was steady; he'd be able to run a single-strand electric fence instead of having to break his back repairing and tightening the wartime four-strand nonelectric fences. The piglets looked promising; he anticipated an orgy of spareribs in the fall and all the ham, bacon, and sausage he could eat through the winter. His two dozen bantams were gorging themselves on the bugs of spring and laying like mad; it meant all the eggs he wanted and plenty left over for the Eastern Milkshed Administration pickup. His vegetable garden was spaded and ready for seeding; his long years of weed chopping seemed to have suddenly paid off. There wasn't a sign of plantain, burdock, or ironweed anywhere on his place.
At ten-thirty the EMA truck ground to a stop at his roadside platform and even McGinty, the driver, was cheery with spring. He loaded the cans and handed Justin his monthly envelope—and stood by, grinning, waiting for Justin to open it. Justin understood the gag when a few of the new phony bills fluttered from the statement. He counted up ninety-three dollars in Bill Haywood ones, John Reed fives, and Lincoln Steffens tens. He didn't give McGinty the satisfaction of seeing him blow his top. As a matter of fact, he wasn't particularly upset. If everybody agreed that this stuff was money, then it was money. He murmured: "Paying in cash now? I guess that means I sign a receipt."
McGinty, bitterly disappointed, produced a receipt book and a stub of pencil. "You should of heard old lady Wehrwein," he said reminiscently. Justin checked the statement (Apr 1-Apr 15 a/c Justin WH, Norton Twp Chiunga Cy, 31 cwt at $3.00, $93.00) and signed. McGinty's truck rumbled on.
It was a miserably small two-week net for eight good Holsteins, but they were near the end of their lactation period; soon he'd have to arrange for freshening them again.
He was planting onion sets and radish seed in his vegetable garden when Rawson came down the road—the legless veteran whom he had met on the day of defeat. Rawson turned up at the estate sale and he found out that he had indeed got work at the Shiptons' farm, but for how long was anybody's guess, with the Shiptons' three boys and two girls due for demobilization.
Rawson seemed to be in a hell of a hurry to get to him. Justin straightened up and met him at the road. "What's up?"
"Plenty, Billy. Couple of Red Army boys over at the Shiptons'. One's a farm expert, the other's an interpreter. They're going over the place with a fine-tooth comb. Boils down to this: the Shiptons have to turn out 25 per cent more milk, 10 per cent more grain, and God knows what else. The old lady told me to pass the word around. Fake your books, hide one of your cows—whatever you can think of. Push me off, will you? I've got some more ground to cover."
"Thanks," Justin said thoughtfully, and pushed. The little cart went spinning down the road, Rawson pumping away. He called it "my muscle-mobile."
Justin mechanically went back to his onion sets and radish seed, but the savor had gone out of the spring morning. He couldn't think of one right, definite thing to do. He didn't come from twenty generations of farmers consummately skilled at looking poor when they were rich. He didn't know the thousand dodges farmers everywhere always used, almost instinctively, to cheat the tax man of his due for the tsar, the commissar, the emperor, the shereef, the zamindar, La République, the American Way of Life. Billy Justin, like a fool, kept books—and only one set of them. He was a sitting duck.
The jeep with the red star arrived in midafternoon while he was mending fence in the pasture with a sledge, block and tackle, nippers and pliers. In spite of his heavy gloves he had got a few rips from the rusted, snarled old wire. He was feeling savage. He heard them honk for him, deliberately finished driving a cedar post, and then slowly strolled toward the road.
Two privates were in the front seat, chauffeur and armed guard, two officers in the back, a captain and a lieutenant. Both young, both sweating in too-heavy wool dress uniforms with choker collars, both festooned with incomprehensible ribbons and decorations.
The lieutenant said, looking up from a typewritten list, "You're Mr. William H. Justin, aren't you?"
Justin gulped. To hear the flat, midwest American speech coming from this fellow in this uniform was a jolt. It made the whole thing seem like a fancy-dress party. "Yes," he said. And then, inevitably, "You speak English very well."
"Thanks, Mr. Justin. I worked hard at it. I'm Lieutenant Zoloty of the 449th Military Government Unit. Translator. And this is Captain Kirilov of the same command. He's the head of our agronomy group."
Kirilov, bored, jerked a nod at Justin.
"We'd like to look over your layout as part of a survey we're running. I see you're listed as primarily a dairy farmer, so let's start with your cow barn and milkhouse."
"Right this way," Justin said flatly.
Captain Kirilov knew his stuff. He scowled at the unwashed milker, felt the bags of the eight Holsteins, kicked disapprovingly at a rotten board. Through it all he directed a stream of Russian at Zoloty, who nodded and took notes. Once the captain got angry. He was burrowing through the corncrib and found rat droppings. He shook them under Justin's nose and yelled at him. After he disgustedly cast them aside and wiped his hands on a corn shuck, the lieutenant said in a undertone: "He was explaining that rodents are intolerable on a well-run farm, that grain should be raised for the people and not for parasites."
"Uh-huh," Justin said.
When the captain came across the six piglets, he was delighted. Zoloty said: "The captain is pleased that there are six. He says, 'At last I see the famous American principle of mass production. Our peasants at home wastefully indulge in roast-pig feasts instead of letting all the young grow to maturity.'"
Finally the captain snapped something definite and final, left the barn, and headed for the jeep.
Zoloty said: "Captain Kirilov establishes your norm at twenty hundredweight of milk per week. Do you understand what that means?"
"I