Odyssey of a Hero

ODYSSEY of a HERO

VARDIS FISHER

RITTEN HOUSE
PHILADELPHIA
1937

Printed in the United States of America

When, in 1919, Private John Benton returned from France, he was not a hero of the proportions of three or four who, alone and unaided, had slain six or a dozen of the enemy and captured a hundred; but he was a warrior not to be sneezed at. He had been decorated by three nations and kissed by half the women in Paris, and the welcome given him by natives of his home town was one that rocked Idaho from end to end. There were seven speeches and a dozen bands and two truckloads of flowers, and more flags and friends and goodwill than John had ever seen before. His mother sat between two mayors, and his gawky young sister was deferred to and flattered by all the politicians between Boise and the Wyoming line.

And it all went to John’s head a little; but he remembered, even so, that war had been a dark and sightless butchery, and that German soldiers, hungry for cigarettes and peace, were human beings much like himself. He was sick of war and he wanted quiet and forgetfulness. He was a little terrified by the sadistic ardor of these homeland patriots who had never seen horror in young faces or a bayonet in the belly of a man. “We licked them all right!” cried a neighbor. “Hey, John, didn’t we whack it to them?” And the man looked at John and burst with happy, victorious laughter. “The Huns learned something when the Yanks got over there,” said another. “By God, don’t tell me they didn’t!” “How was it over there?” asked a third. “A lot of fun, wasn’t it, now? Hey, John, you lucky devil!” And to all this, John’s answer was a pitying shrug and a wan smile.

His smile became almost ghastly as he listened to the principal speaker. The man shouted in furious rhetoric and aroused the great audience to wild and prolonged applause. “We have with us today one of the mightiest heroes in that great struggle to make all nations and all peoples the guardians of peace: a native son, one of our own boys. We have gathered here to honor his name and to write it high among the selfless knights who march under the flags of war to make the world safe for the mothers of men! In profound humility we are gathered to pay homage to this soldier and patriot, this son of the Idaho mountains and valleys, who captured, single-handed, the machine-gun nest of the enemy, and marched his foes, beaten and vanquished, down the soil of France where the name of the great Lafayette still rings like a bell in the hearts of civilized nations!”

And when, after seven speeches and such applause as he had never dreamed of, John Benton was called to the flag-draped stand to say a few words to his friends and neighbors, he went with a sinking heart. He looked at ten thousand faces, so hushed and listening that he could hear his own breath; and for so long a moment he was speechless, staring at the throng, that a voice from far out yelled: “Atta boy, John! Tell us how you licked the Huns!” John cleared his voice and a man yelled: “Louder!” and another shouted: “Atta boy, John!” “Friends and neighbors,” said John at last, “I am grateful for this welcome.” A hand clapped and then the great throng roared with applause that made the rostrum tremble. A thousand automobile horns picked up the greeting and rolled it in thunderous volume, and for five minutes John waited, with the tremendous welcome like madness[Pg 5] in his ears. “I appreciate your kindness,” said John, when silence fell again, “and all that you have done for me. But war, my friends, is not what you seem to think it is.” He paused and licked his dry lips and the audience waited. When he spoke again, those sitting close by were startled by his vehemence. “War, my friends, is murder. We soldiers learned that the German soldiers were not our enemy. Maybe it was a good war, fought in a good cause, and maybe it was not. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m sick of war and I won’t ever fight in another war and now I want peace and I want to forget. And—well, I guess that’s about all I have to say.”

There was no applause now. There was only stunned silence and then a low murmur that was like that of rage, gentle and baffled. Private John Benton had spoken simply from his heart, little suspecting that his words were to lay waste to his life.

John Benton, son of uneducated farmers, was a senior in high school when English propaganda drew his country into war. He was a shy and neurotic young man, deeply ashamed of his social background and his illiterate relatives. He was among the first to enlist. He went not as a patriot but as one without social or cultural anchor and without friends, who saw in war an opportunity to prove his courage and his worth. Nobody in his home town had ever spoken to him, except one barber and the neighboring farmers whom he met on the streets. And now he was to be a policeman or a night watchman or assistant to the sheriff; he was called by his first name; he was invited into the best homes. And in these first days he was very happy and loved his townsfolk and began to fancy himself as a man of national importance. But after[Pg 6] his brief reply to the great welcome there had been a sudden and drastic change. When he met the mayor now or any of the other plump and prosperous men who had made his homecoming a memorable day, he was acknowledged with a curt nod or not at all. He got no job of any kind and he wandered up and down the streets or sat in pool halls watching the poker chips, feeling a little vengeful and deeply unhappy, and wondering why he had become only John Benton of the Benton farm on Mill Creek.

It was Bill Hawkworth who gave him an idea. Bill was a lean man with shrewd and cynical eyes and a tubercular cough. He worked in a pool hall with a cigarette hanging from his white mouth and a fixed and changeless contempt in his pale eyes. He sat by John one day and looked at him with leering pity.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said John, looking at Bill’s wet dead cigarette.

“Oh, you know, all right. The mayor,” said Bill, and jerked his sallow head toward city hall. “All them fat guys, buddy.” He smiled. His upper lip curled and the hair of his ragged mustache fell like a hedge across his yellow teeth. “You fanned out quick, didn’t you? Well, buddy, do you know why?”

John turned a little angrily and looked at the lidless cynicism of Bill’s eyes. “No,” he said.

“All right, buddy, it’s this way. You come back from war a big hero and the city gives you a big bust and[Pg 7] there’s speeches and flags and popcorn for everyone and they wanted to hear how you licked hell out of them Huns. And right there’s where you fanned. You come to bat all right, but you just wouldn’t swing at the ball.” Bill’s lips curled against his teeth and his eyes flickered. “You get me?” he said.

“I mean you coulda put this town right in your pocket. You coulda jumped plumb into the middle of society and married the richest girl around here and had a truckload of fortune drive right down your alley. But what did you say when they asked what you thought of the popcorn?”

“I’ll tell you, buddy. You said war is murder. You said you guessed mebbe the Germans wasn’t your enemy at all. You said you wouldn’t fight in another war to please God Almighty hisself. And all them,” said Bill, curling his lips in cruel mockery, “was a hell of a crack. Did you think they got all them-there brass bands and speeches and popcorn trimmings to hear you throw them Christian sentiments in their teeth? Was they intendun to make you assistant sheriff if you didn’t like to fight?” Bill’s smile was evil. “Buddy,” he said, “you fanned. You swung plumb hard and missed and fell right on your mug.”

“What did they expect?” asked John, staring, fascinated, at Bill’s sinister eyes.

“God damn, buddy, that’s a stupid question. They wanted you to tell how you made them Huns jump back over the Rhine like a buncha frogs—.”

“Oh, the jumped-up holy ghost!” Bill drew the weak muscles of his face down until his upper lip lay across his lower teeth. He smiled with mirthless cunning and looked at John with gentle pitying amazement. “Buddy, you wanta know how to be a hero again? I’ll tell you. You say war’s a swell thing if you’re on the right side—and you was on the right side, buddy—” Bill’s grin was chilling. “You tell how you rammed them Huns in their guts and piled them up in the Rhine until it run backwards. And if you could tell how you saved a virtuous woman—say, for the love of virgins, couldn’t you tell a story like that? Buddy, that would put you right on top of the popcorn pile with a cigar in your face a yard long. Well,” he said, and spit straight down between his knees, “you get the idea.”

But it was a difficult idea for John Benton to grasp. He walked around like a tall pale ghost of a man, with spiritual anguish in his thin, sensitive face. He wanted persons to like him. He wanted persons to remember Jesus, as he had remembered Him for two years in France, and to look far into the ways of kindliness and mercy. But Bill, meeting him now, gave him a cynical yellow smile and a jab in his ribs. “Be fierce,” he said, smirking wisely, “and blow your horn.” And again: “Buddy, stop lookun like one of the twelve apostles, huntun around for the coast of Galilee. Sail out and tell them-there big stomachs what they wanta hear.” And John, after days of wretched indecision, resolved to try.

He approached the matter gently, experimentally, at first, telling only the less horrifying details of war; and in the men here who had remained at home he found an[Pg 9] eager response. They gathered round him in the pool hall, and when his tale faltered, or when he broke off, feeling sick and traitorous, they urged him to resume. “Hey, John, tell us how you captured that there machine-gun nest.” And simply, without exaggeration, John told of the lone exploit for which he had been decorated by three nations. He said he crept out at daybreak and came to the nest and surprised the gunners and marched them back to the American line. Such a bald narrative, he learned after a while, would not do at all. His listeners wanted heroics and a breath-taking clash and a picture of a lone American fighting hand to hand with a dozen of the enemy and licking the whole lot of them. It took John a long time and many tellings to learn what was wanted. The questions helped. “And didn’t them cowards put up no fight at all?” “Hey, John, you don’t mean they just laid down like a bunch of sheep!” No, John perceived, he could not afford to mean anything like that. “You’re too modest,” they said, never doubting that he had more amazing things to tell; and with increasing recklessness John became less modest. He elaborated the tale, adding to it in every recital some breathless episode, some additional moment in which he missed death by a hair, some new cunning ferocity in the foe. And he was a strange person, this tall, grave man, telling his legends and feeling sickened by the telling.

After a while his tale was a gorgeous thing and not like the real experience at all. But that, he began to understand, did not matter. Now he crawled forth under a red sheet of artillery fire with shells bursting like automobile motors all around him and with the sky above him like a rolling mountain of flame. He crawled inch by inch[Pg 10] through great shell-holes, and the lead falling around him threw earth into his eyes and stung his flesh like hornets and dug graves across his path. He crept past dead bodies—American bodies, the slain and mangled of his own company, all of them gutted in the gray wet dawn; went slowly, patiently, toward that one infernal nest that was raining death on the American line; dragged himself foot by foot, seeing that one gun belching its flame and hearing above and around him the mad thundering nightmare and smelling dead flesh. Inch by inch he crawled toward that nest, his hair matted with earth, his paralyzed hands grasping his pistols, his ears running blood—inch by inch, until at last he was under the red fire of it; and for a moment he rested, with his senses reeling and his heart in his throat....

Then he crept slowly around the bushes of the nest and forward in the darkness of underbrush until he could almost touch the five men there, every one of them like a blackened sweating devil, pouring lead at the American flag. And here in his narrative John paused, having learned much of the proper telling of a story; looked at the choked, almost anguished, suspense in the faces around him. “Then what?” asked one in a whisper. Then, John said, carefully building his legend, he examined his pistols and cocked them; and when all five men were busy, working like fiends out of hell, he sprang to his feet and covered the distance in one bound; brought his guns crashing upon the skulls of two of them; kicked a third in his belly and sent him over the machine-gun; and jammed the pistol barrels into the bellies of the fourth and fifth. The third, knocked into the line of fire, was slain by his own gun,[Pg 11] and the first and second rose, with blood gushing from their skulls, and reached for the sky. He marched the four of them, gory with wounds, out across the surging hell of no-man’s-land, and that was the end of a nest that had taken thousands of American lives. It was the end, John learned to understand, of the most villainous bandits on the whole western front....

The news of John spread, and three months after his return the local paper announced:

JOHN BENTON TO SPEAK

John Benton, one of the greatest heroes in the World War, and Idaho’s native son and our own fellow-townsman, will address a mammoth meeting tonight in the Paramount Theater and relate some of his most dramatic experiences. He will tell of his capture, alone and unaided and in a veritable deluge of bursting shellfire, of the most murderous and treacherous machine-gun nest on the whole German front.

And John did. The audience went wild with applause and he was again a hero. On the following Sunday he had dinner at the mayor’s home and repeated his story to nine distinguished guests; and when one of them, Harry Cuthwright, a banker, declared that Germany was a degenerate nation and that America had entered the war with the noblest of motives, John hastily agreed. Within a month he was the most respected person in his home city. The girls looked at him with coy admiration and the men deferred to him when he spoke. Though happy and proud, he was troubled, too: he no longer knew what the truth was or was not, and with obstinate ardor he strove not to care. And he blundered again.

If he had been modest, reciting his legends only after repeated urging; if he had understood why the persons here wanted his legends and how fickle their worship was, he might not have become the pest that he was to be a few years later. But the more he realized that interest in him was waning, the more he was whetted to invest fresh details and to tell his bloody fables to those who no longer cared to listen. After a while he insisted on telling them to persons who were bored and impatient; and as his nation was restored, year by year, to prosperity and interest in disarmament and world courts, John’s power diminished, his exploits were forgotten, and he himself became a pale and humorless nuisance. He did not understand that a revulsion against war had overtaken his country. When persons tried to shrug him into silence, or told him, with a contemptuous grimace, that he was a bad citizen, he became comically aggressive in his bearing and blasphemous in his speech. He said there should be another war—with Japan, perhaps—and declared that he would be the first to enlist. He swaggered and got into drunken brawls, and twice for disturbing the peace was thrown into jail.

“You’re a bad citizen,” said Cuthwright, the banker. “The United States has always been a peace-loving nation. We were dragged into that last damned war by a cowardly President who promised to keep us out of it. And now look at our war debts!”

“Sure,” said John. “Why don’t we go over with an army and collect them?”

“Collect hell! Keep out of Europe, that’s what I say. That’s what Washington said. It’s men like you, Benton, who get nations into war. You enlisted in that last one[Pg 13] and you came back boasting of the men you’d killed and you’ve been boasting ever since. Why don’t you preach peace?”

“Yes, peace. Didn’t Jesus command us to seek peace? But you go around with your damned doctrines of hatred—”

“Listen, Benton, you sound just like Mussolini to me. Why the hell don’t you go over to Italy? Anyway, we’re a peace-loving nation, and I’m telling you, Benton, you’d better change your tune. This city is getting awfully sick of you.”

Cuthwright was the greatest man in the city and his rebuke threw John into a terrific struggle. He felt angry and baffled and lost. He went to his father’s farm and sulked there, and then went to church and listened with doubtful ears to a plea for internationalism and the World Court. He wanted to rise and blaspheme the preacher; but he learned, after his sulking was done, that he had kept all the while, overgrown with boasting and anecdote, a belief in peace: it was there, under the fierce thicket of his words and gestures, and it came little by little like a thing out of hiding. And he wept one day in bitter astonishment and then felt a new and frenzied eagerness, as if he had come out of darkness, a vault, to look at a clear sky. He returned to the city and the first to greet him said:

“Well, how’s the braggart today? Hey, how’s your one-man war against Germany?” And another said:

“Hello, John. You still capturing that machine-gun nest?” And John looked at them with strange, unhappy[Pg 14] eyes. He went away from them without speaking and entered a pool hall and saw the winks and leers. He sat and read a newspaper or looked at the men, thoughtfully, gravely, wondering about them and about himself. A slender, fair-haired youth came up and sat by him.

“John,” he said, “just between me and you, isn’t war plain damned murder?” John hesitated. He looked at the clear blue eyes, candid and friendly. “You said so, years ago,” the young man went on. “I was just a kid then. I heard you. I’ve never forgotten it. And Professor Jameson heard you, too.”

John was thoughtful for a long moment. “Yes,” he said, looking at the young man with eyes full of memory, “I—I did.” He turned away, full of bitter loneliness and grief.

It was Arnold Jameson who set John on his feet again. Jameson was a small unobtrusive man with large tragic eyes. He was gentle and kind, and he had John over to dinner; after dinner he said:

“I suppose you know Jim Harlan died last week. And Walt Ainsworth last summer. Both from old wounds. And Dick Roscoe hasn’t more than two or three years to go. But the world is shaping up toward peace now, Benton, and I’ve often wondered why you don’t take a hand in it.” John was silent and ashamed, remembering how he had boasted of medals and brawls and told of[Pg 15] legendary Germans whom he had run through with a bayonet. “In 1917 I opposed the war,” Jameson went on, “and nearly lost my job. But now we can teach peace and get away with it.” He looked at John’s sensitive, unhappy face and wondered about him. “Seven years ago,” he said, “you believed in peace. What changed you?”

“I’ve some books here,” Jameson said, “that I thought you might like to read.”

Deeply ashamed, and no longer the town’s worst drunkard and braggart, John settled down and married a blue-eyed girl and lived in a tiny house on a quiet street. He talked often with Jameson and visited his classes in the college and became an ardent apostle of internationalism and goodwill. He rejoined the church from which war and bitterness had divorced him; taught a group of boys in Sunday school; and became a speaker in demand throughout the countryside. He was again a hero and his heart was in his work. “There is no need,” said those who introduced him, “to tell you who John Benton is. His devotion to peace shows that the last war was not fought in vain. It is with pride.”... And it was with pride that John faced these audiences on Washington’s or Lincoln’s birthday or on Armistice Day and spoke out of his heart. It was with pride that he became Jameson’s closest friend and heard Jameson say: “It’s on the few of us, John, that civilization depends. We must keep our heads when the world goes mad.” John was keeping his head. In the tenth year after his return and in the thirty-second of his life he was elected a trustee of the college. He was a person of power in his community.

“John,” said Cuthwright one day, “we’re proud of you. I knew you’d come to your senses.”

“Yes, but oaks don’t grow in a season.” Cuthwright laid a friendly hand on John’s shoulder. “I lost a son in France,” he said, his eyes misty. “But now—well, that was the price we paid, John, for a better world.”

No one knew less certainly than John himself how it came or what it meant. There was at first, of course, a crashing of industrial pyramids, and then the depression, but everyone spoke of it lightly and said it would soon pass. It did not soon pass, and there was growing anxiety and unrest. There were farmers who had been earnest citizens; but now, with their taxes unpaid, their homes mortgaged, many of them became bootleggers and drunkards. There were small business men who had gone into bankruptcy; doctors and dentists with unpaid bills piling up on their desks; common laborers who, unable to find work, loafed in the pool halls and became brutal and cynical. Then there was a new President and, for a little while, new hope; but when the chief bank here failed to open its doors there were angry threats and almost a riot. It was learned that Cuthwright and all the chief stockholders had withdrawn their money long ago.

Then matters in Germany came to a crisis; the words of the Italian war lord stood in black type across the newspapers; and Japan was invading China. After a while, some persons here began to talk of the next war and they spoke with such hopeless resignation or with such fierce impatience that John was alarmed. He redoubled his efforts for peace. The audiences were small now and applause often ran into hisses; and then he was no longer[Pg 17] asked to speak anywhere. Some of his townsfolk began to look at him with suspicious or hostile eyes.

And the hostility grew. One by one his colleagues fell away and he and Jameson stood alone. The bishop under whom he had labored said a war between the United States and Japan was inevitable and declared that all the Japs ought to be driven out of the Idaho beet fields. He said Japan would conquer China and then come over and conquer the United States, and his talk excited people and made them argue for a large army and navy. He said all aliens should be driven from the nation’s shores. He said the depression had been caused by the millions of foreigners here, most of whom were communists and spies and the scum of earth. He said that any man who talked of peace when his country was surrounded by enemies was a communist and a traitor. “And you,” he said, looking at John with angry eyes, “you’d better watch your step.”

“Our Lord, yes. But what did He know of the menace of Japs and communists and Fascists?”

And the legend grew. It was rumored that John Benton and Arnold Jameson were communist agitators. Hadn’t they defended the Jews? And what were Jews but the worst damned breed of communist on earth! Didn’t they think that the confounded Japs should be allowed to thin Idaho beets, even though Idahoans starved? If they weren’t communists, then what in hell were they?

And John Benton, bewildered, terrified, felt the growth of a mighty unfriendliness. Idlers in pool halls, on the streets, looked at him with skulking eyes. Men who had introduced him as our distinguished citizen did not speak[Pg 18] to him now. He wrote a letter to his local paper, summarizing the argument of an eminent American who said Roosevelt might lead the nation into war to save his face. And then the crisis came.

The paper declared one morning that Jameson had made remarks to his classes which were false and subversive and communistic, and that John Benton was in the pay of Russia. It demanded the dismissal of the one and the resignation of the other; and two days later Jameson was called before the trustees. There were five members on the board, including John; Cuthwright, the banker; a druggist; and a lawyer and the editor of the local newspaper. They sat at the head of a long table in the banker’s office and Jameson came in, looking anxiously from face to face. Cuthwright waved him to a chair.

“Why, that your teaching is subversive. It is dangerous to the welfare of our government.”

He leaned forward and folded his arms on the table. He was a big man with stern jaws and a paralyzing gaze. “A week ago you said in your class in history that the World War was a mistake and we entered it because our statesmen were outwitted by the English. You implied, as I understand it, that we’re a nation of fools—”

“Oh, you don’t think so. Jameson, I should say that before you try to instruct the minds of our sons and daughters you’d find out who an author is. He may be only a paid agent of Stalin. Besides that, you said all wars have been stupid.” Cuthwright looked at his notes. “You said England and the United States don’t intend to let Japan dominate the East. Why in hell,” demanded Cuthwright angrily, “shouldn’t we dominate the East? You mean to tell me you’d let a bunch of Japs do it?” Cuthwright thumped the table. “And you said the United States should boycott Italy if it invades Ethiopia. What in hell is it our business if they go down and fight those niggers? And where are we to sell our goods if you communists close up all the foreign markets? I suppose you’d let England sell guns and stack ours up in the Metropolitan Museum! Well, do you deny any of those statements?”

Jameson was very pale now but his gaze was unwavering. “For more than twenty years I’ve lived here and taught here.”

“I know, I know, Jameson. We’re sorry about it. But our duty—what you don’t understand, Jameson, is that the welfare of the State is greater than that of any individual. You didn’t use to be a communist.”

John Benton wondered afterwards why he did not speak up in defense of his colleague. “I’m a coward,” he told his wife. He paced the room, agitated. “I’m a coward!” he cried. “I can see it now!” And a week later, when the local paper again called him a communist and demanded in a long editorial that he resign from the board, he shook all over. He felt the nameless dread of his youth. And when his fellow trustees called him into conference behind a locked door, he trembled with anxiety and turned to them a face as white as death. They asked for his resignation. They asked if he had anything to say. He looked at them and every one of them, it seemed to him, was a man at ease, plump, secure, certain. He rose to his feet. “Yes,” he said, his voice shaking, “I have something to say. It’s perhaps the last thing I’ll ever say. Yes, I want to say that I fought in the last war. I know a lot of men who fought in the last war. Where are they? Dead—like Harlan and Roscoe and Ainsworth.” He licked his dry lips. He placed hands on a table to steady his shaking frame. “But you didn’t fight in that war. Did you?—did you?—or you? No, you’re Goddamned right you didn’t! But I did. And I was not a coward, either!” His voice was a little wild now. “I was decorated for bravery, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?” he demanded, with humorless tragic pride. “And I came back and hated war and I spoke against war, and what did you do to me? What did this town do to me? I’ll tell you: it made a street bum out of me. You did! You’re liars if you say you didn’t. A street bum—a drunkard—a fool, because I hated war and spoke against war. And then,” he said,[Pg 21] his face awful in its white anguish, “then I favored war, I did, and—and you turned against me again. I couldn’t please you,” he said, with dry choked bitterness. “Just like Jameson couldn’t—nobody can, nobody! Nobody,” he said. “And then—then I preached peace and you liked me and I had friends and I liked to preach peace and I was happy. I had friends. Everyone was my friend: you—and you. Everyone,” he said, proudly. “Everyone. But now—now nobody speaks to me and they call me a communist, and I’m not a communist, but nobody can please you. I can’t, Jameson couldn’t, nobody could.” His voice fell almost to a whisper, anguished and tragic and hopeless. “I fought in that war and I was decorated for bravery and I’ve tried to make everyone like me. But nobody can please men like you! You don’t want war and you don’t want peace and—nobody!” he cried, wildly. His mind darkened and there was something terrible in his eyes now. He advanced a little, his body shaking. “I—you—” he said. The muscles in one cheek twitched. “I fought in that war and I was decorated!” He leaned forward, searching their faces with dark and unreasoning eyes, searching for friendliness and goodwill. “Three nations decorated me for bravery,” he said. He hesitated, groping, lost. Then he smiled and his smile was more chilling than his words. “I—” He stopped, trying to understand. “I’d fight again,” he said, softly, terribly. He laughed, and the trustees rose and backed away from him. “I’d fight again,” he said, softly, terribly, advancing toward them. “Honest!” he declared, clenching his lean hands. The knuckles on his hands were as white as his mouth. “I’d fight again,” he said.