A Matter of Matter (Stories from the Golden Age) Page 6

  The feeling that he had given offense wore upon Danny. The screaming urge within him to communicate drove him further. At last he crossed the cell and sat down on the blanket alongside his cellmate.

  “Have a cigarette,” he said by way of apology.

  The cellmate took one, looked at it for some time as though doubtful what one must do with such an article. At last he permitted it to be lighted, and drew on it carefully.

  “I guess I’d better tell you,” said Danny West, the flashboards tearing away from the top of his conversational dam. “I’ve got to tell somebody! Or I’ll begin to think I’m crazy myself.”

  His cellmate put a lazy guard on his interest. “By all means,” he said. “Fire away.”

  Well—said Danny West—about twenty-four hours ago I was fighting for my life harder than anybody at any training camp ever dreamed of. And the kind of fighting I was doing wasn’t included in any training manuals either.

  I haven’t fought the Germans yet, but when it comes to that, after what I’ve been through I’ll take my chances.

  You know how it was yesterday afternoon, just about like it is now, the air hot and thick and a storm coming on. Our outfit had been coming forward for two days without any rest and all yesterday we walked in dust behind tanks for what seemed like fifteen million years.

  I was tired. Everybody was tired. But when we got into the city it seemed everybody from the commanding general down had some lousy fatigue duty for us to do. There wasn’t any outfit in the army except Company B of the Nineteenth.

  Me, after I put about eighteen billets in shape for other guys to sleep in, I finally got routed out by that stinking captain of ours and told that I had been detailed to reinforce the local MP company. He said there were going to be a lot of riots and that two squads were to go and stand duty for any emergency that came up. We were flying squads.

  It had been getting hotter and hotter. Some big clouds slid in over Rome, and finally opened up with enough artillery to end the war.

  Our captain marched us down to the Colosseum and then left us standing there in the rain, while he went off to some soft bunk someplace.

  The sergeant watched him go and the rest of us tried to find a dry spot under the stones. Then the sergeant said, “I got to make a routine patrol,” and he disappeared.

  Then one of the corporals said, “I got to make a routine patrol, too,” and he disappeared. And the first thing I knew there wasn’t anybody left there but me.

  Pretty soon this stinking captain of ours came back and in the course of that time I was sound asleep—rain, mud and all. He gave me a swift kick in the side and says, “On your feet! Attention! What do you mean by sleeping on duty? Where are the others?”

  So I says, “They’re out making routine patrols, Captain.”

  “I’ll routine patrol them,” he says and stamps off, probably to find some place a lot drier than it was outside the Colosseum.

  I walked up and down for a few minutes but there wasn’t anything doing. The population of Rome just wasn’t thinking about rioting. It was either kissing the boots of the conquering army, or shacking up, or drowning its sorrows in vino.

  They had given us riot guns, a couple of bandoliers of ammunition apiece, and three tear gas grenades per man. Then they took away our own weapons, the only ones we knew how to use, as being too heavy for street fighting.

  The gun I was carrying must have been made for the Franco-Prussian War. I sat down and looked at it a little while and tried to figure out how the thing worked. I had nothing better to do and you never know in the middle of a war when you’re going to need your weapons.

  I had to make up my own manual about the thing as I went along, but later on I was sure glad that I’d taken the trouble. The old baby was an automatic shotgun weighing about fifteen pounds, with an eight-gauge barrel that would have fitted better on a howitzer. It was fully automatic and its ammunition would have broken the springs on a lorry.

  I got tired when I was sure the captain wasn’t coming back and began to look for a dry hole under the stones. The lightning kept cracking down like the end of the world. The rain had stopped falling in drops and had joined hands to make close formation. You had to have gills to breathe in that weather.

  So I found this hole, and I crawled in. About two seconds later a lightning bolt hit the top of the Colosseum and showered enough mortar down to rebuild a village. That’s all I know.

  Immediately afterwards I was awakened by the roaring of wild beasts. It was as though a circus tent had caught on fire and the menagerie was fighting its way out. It was a symphony of racket that made the ground shake under me. From the bass roars of the lions to the yelps of the dogs, the voice of every animal could be picked out of that din. Cutting through it, weaving circles around it, slicing it up and tramping it down were the trumpetings of at least a hundred wild elephants.

  I was lying in straw and the sun was bright through bars. The straw stank, the animals stank, and I was scared. Plainly, somebody had done me dirt.

  The walls about me were of wood, except on one side where a grating barred my way. There was no exit that I could find, and my speculations ran the limit from military prison to a new war machine of the Tedeschi.

  It was morning, but I had not slept. I was still soaked with the rain, which a moment before I knew had been falling.

  I didn’t really begin to shake, though, until a hideous crescendo of human screams began to shake the building. There was enough agony in those screams to load a freight train.

  My explorations grew swift and I discovered presently that I was not in a cell but in a sort of hallway, one end of which was blocked by the iron grate, the other end by a large wooden door. On the other side of the latter I could hear a swelling, murmuring sound, like a crowd at a football game.

  I still had my riot gun, three gas grenades, and, I hoped, my wits. I was about to shoot the lock off the wooden door when a small black dwarf came wriggling up to the iron bars and peered through. He looked, gaped, and quickly ran away.

  I yelled for him to come back, and so he did, with a man whose dress had unmistakably not been seen on earth for the last two thousand years.

  He was a big man. With one hand he carried a bucket full of live coals and in the other hand he had a long glowing poker. His face was brutal, like a gorilla’s.

  “Listen, fellows,” I said, “how about letting me out of here?”

  They stared at each other and began a long argument which was punctuated by jabs toward the little man by the big man’s hot poker.

  For two or three minutes I could make nothing of the conversation until it came to me that they were talking Latin.

  I had taught eight straight semesters of Latin at Texas A&M, so it did not take me long to enter into the spirit of the thing.

  “Get me out of here,” I demanded.

  “He’s no Christian,” said the big man.

  “Well, then he’s a northman,” said the dwarf.

  “Northman or no northman, he’s no gladiator. What are we supposed to do?”

  “Get a gladiator and put him in,” said the dwarf.

  “All right, you run and get Glaucus, and ask him to come here.” The big man turned toward me. “Who put you in here?”

  “I’m Danny West from Teague County, Texas, and if I don’t get out of here pretty quick and report to duty, my captain will make mincemeat out of me. Lemme out of here.”

  “What kind of a gladiator are you?” he demanded.

  “I’m no gladiator, I’m a soldier. And if you don’t listen to reason, the United States Army is going to be mighty peeved at me.”

  “You’re a gladiator all right, you’re just scared. A taste of this iron will cure that. But what are you supposed to fight?”

  “Fight? I’m not mad at anybody.”

  “What d’ya fight? What d’ya fight with? Net and spear? Lions? What?” The big man waved his poker suggestively, and seeing that it had cooled during the argume
nt, thrust it back into the glowing coals.

  “I fight Germans,” I said.

  “Yes, yes, what Roman won’t fight barbarians, but I mean in the arena. What d’ya fight in the arena?”

  “The . . . the arena . . . ?”

  A swelling roar hammered at the wooden door. And a flock of history lit in my lap like a stack of iron plates.

  “Well, what d’ya fight?” he persisted.

  “Mice,” I said. We were getting nowhere.

  “What kind of a weapon is that? You can’t do anything against lions with a club. No, nor . . .” he scratched a leprous scalp at the problem.

  A small, nervous individual, dripping sweat, came streaming up to the bars.

  “Who is this? What is this? Oh, I’m ruined. I can never set up a good program unless some fool gums it up. Oh, why was I ever born? What made me ever get into this business? Arrangements, arrangements, arrangements . . . One minute it’s ‘Send the Christians in first.’ The next minute it’s ‘Make it Nubians and lions.’ By the guts of Jupiter, I’ll retire. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll retire.”

  “We didn’t know he was in here,” said the big man. “I left Jocko here.”

  “Bunglers! Fools! Idiots!” howled the dripping master of ceremonies. “The crowd is getting ugly. That last batch of Christians sat down in the middle of the arena and let the wild dogs run all over them, without lifting a hand. Oh, what poor fodder they send me these days! How can I put on a show—? Take him out of there. Take him out of there quick. The next act is about to go on. Get Glaucus. Oh, oh, oh, do something! Do something!”

  But before they could do anything, there was a creak, and a groan, and then silence. The big wooden door had slid up and the white sand of the arena blinded me.

  Behind me the master of ceremonies groaned piteously, “It’s too late now—it’s too late. Throw some lions at him and let’s get it over with.”

  “Get out there, you,” said the man with the poker, which he used to good effect. I jumped!

  “Now see here,” I said. But I had jumped so far that I stood outside the door and it dropped with a bang behind me.

  I swear there must have been ten thousand people in the seats around the arena. The sun was beating down and the air was full of dust and yells. Boos and catcalls split through the lower, steadier roar of the crowd.

  One section was stamping its feet and shouting in time. “Bring on the Nubians! We want the Nubians! Bring on the Nubians!” I felt a little bit insulted that they would prefer Nubians to me. But they didn’t know me, after all.

  There were pools of blood indifferently spread with white sand all around me. The once-white palisades which lifted fourteen feet from the ground to the first boxes were splattered with dried gore. The stench of the place was horrible. Death—rotten meat—and unwashed humanity. I had stage fright.

  You couldn’t have heard an artillery barrage in the din that rocked the old place. I was trying feebly to collect my wits and find a way out of all this. I had got well into the realization that something terrible indeed had happened to me, when the wooden gates at the far end from me opened—out bounded the biggest lion I ever laid my eyes on this side of the Galveston Zoo.

  This lion had something on his mind. His eyes were so red they practically dripped blood. He was so thin that you could see light straight through the middle of him. His tail was ten feet long, or longer, and it was lashing from side to side until you could almost hear it swish. Apparently he was looking for something.

  Shortly he found it. Me! I felt like saying, “Now wait a minute, fellows, let’s sit down right where we are and think this whole thing over. I’m sure we can talk the matter into a reasonable solution.”

  But the crowd was in a hurry! And the lion was in a hurry! And the riot gun was strapped across my back. I had to do something and do it quick—so I did it!

  I dropped on one knee, pried loose the gun, threw a shell under the hammer and took aim.

  Now, shooting lions is not my favorite pastime. I had had a little experience with quail, and one small experience with a deer that got away, but not lions. And the front sight of that gun was weaving around like it was trying to write my obituary.

  The lion got within ten feet, crouched down till his belly touched the sand, and then jumped!

  The lion got within ten feet, crouched down till his belly touched the sand, and then jumped!

  There was a blast against my shoulder that knocked me about two feet! When I picked myself up the lion was lying there, all four feet reaching for clouds and clawing.

  Though I had been told that hunters were usually pretty proud of their first kill, I never had time to examine this one. They let twelve more lions in through the second door.

  The newcomers wasted no time. They saw the dying lion—saw me—and began to whet their appetites at ninety miles an hour. They crossed that arena, the whole twelve of them, like they’d just heard chow call.

  I looked to the blunderbuss. They had not even given us instructions as to how to fire the thing, for it was an English gun and they probably didn’t know themselves. Like a shotgun it fired paper shells and I was afraid these had swollen in the rain. It fired a mass of pellets something bigger than buckshot and with a very wide spread. Though a few of them would discourage rioters, what did these lions know about the Riot Act?

  I watched them sweep down on me. Did you ever see a lion run? Well, mister, they don’t run at all, they bound sideways off the ground like rubber balls. A jeep on a Roman road would make a better target.

  I put that old museum piece of a shotgun on single and set myself down to knock off the leaders before the main crowd arrived.

  Their stink got there before they did. A lion smells like a combination of a slaughterhouse, a choice privy and a dead horse in August. The odor of it, added to my stage fright, was enough to make me lose my boots.

  The old gun belted me in the shoulder. The leader plowed sand for fifteen feet. The top of his head was gone! Clean as if he’d patronized an army barbershop.

  The face of the next one just plain disappeared.

  The third did five forward somersaults and ended up with his tail pointing at me accusatively. Then came the main herd.

  I slipped the gun to full automatic and let them have it! There were only eleven shells to go, but they sure were plenty. There was lion meat stacked around there, until it looked as though I had decided to build a castle of the stuff. I remembered how they’d used to feed poor old horses to the lions at the Galveston Zoo. I felt pretty satisfied, let me tell you.

  I had a breather then. I wiped the smoke out of my eyes and looked around me. I sure thought I’d shown the locals a thing or two. A whiff of the crowd hit me and it stunk almost as bad as the lions. The masses of streamers and faces went up from me on all sides like ranges of mountains. The crowd was quiet and I fully expected them to be something more than curious. However, it evidently took a great deal to shake a Roman mob.

  I looked at one side where the President of the Games, the Emperor, for all I knew, and two royal ladies gazed on with indifferent contempt.

  They were wearing gold laurel leaves inset with jewels. The box looked like Christmas. On their right sat what I took to be the vestal virgins, white-hooded and grim. Most of them, startlingly enough, were quite old. Above me, out of the quiet, drifted the voice of a young buck talking to his girl.

  “Like Nero, isn’t it, to produce magic in the arena. No taste, I’ve always said, no taste whatever. This fellow is simply one of those wizards from Assyria that we’ve heard about lately. Mass hypnotism, you know. There were no lions at all. We merely suppose that they are dead. The thing is really quite simple.”

  “Gee, Marius,” said the girl, “you know everything, don’t you?”

  The one section of the stands which had been chanting before had now recovered from its surprise and began to demand blood. “We want Numidians. We want Numidians. We want Numidians,” they chanted, stamping their
feet in time.

  “Now take earlier this morning,” said young Marius, in a bored tone, “those elephants squashing the Christians, now there’s what I call a spectacle. And that one elephant that picked up the woman and knocked her head off against the wall. Now that was interesting. But this sort of thing, mere wizardry, chicanery . . .”

  The crowd went back to buying nuts and fruit off the vendors. Some other parts of the crowd began to take up the Numidian chant.

  I was trying hard to recall how these games were conducted. I finally remembered that after one had killed his meat or his man, he was supposed to go before the President’s box and ask for the thumbs up or thumbs down sign. So, I began walking toward the President’s box.

  I was getting my breath back by now, for it seemed to me that the worst was over. The crowd was becoming quite impatient with the delay and, as the master of ceremonies had said, was obviously in an ugly mood. Boos, hisses, catcalls and an occasional hunk of rotten fruit began to descend into the arena.

  “We want action,” bawled a tubby man above the palisades. “We came here to see a spectacle. We want action. We want blood!”

  Others in the crowd began to take up his chant. Soon the ground under my feet was shivering with it. I never did get close to the President’s box. For, about halfway en route, the tone of the crowd changed so quickly and to such a pitch of enthusiasm that I knew I was in for more.

  The master of ceremonies was evidently on his toes. I turned around quickly. A gate was opening and two net-and-trident men sped out into the arena, holding up their weapons for acclaim. They were evidently quite popular, for they were greeted with cheering.

  They wasted little time, for a fast victory was what was wanted. They closed in. One circled wide until he had gained a distance on my left. The other held his ground on my right. Then they rushed me!

  I didn’t like to do what I did. But I dropped to one knee and leveled on the first one.

  BOWIE!

  He flew apart in mid-rush.