Not This August by C.M. Kornbluth Read Free Book Online Page B

weather? Kirilov’s—mistaken. It can’t be done. I’m hauling water for the cows now. And we haven’t got DDT. Flies cut down the production. I haven’t got a seed-cake quota; my herd’s too small. There must be some mistake. Can you take back word to the captain?”
    The sergeant, bored, said: “ Ya nye ponimayoo vas .” He held out a clipboard, a ruled form, and a pen. “ Podtverdeet poloocheneyeh .”
    Justin said uncertainly: “Speak English? Tell Captain Kirilov?”
    Headshake, then, very slowly and patiently, “ Nye—ponimayoo. Nye .” Brandishing the form and pen: “ Poloocheneyeh. Eemyah. Zdyehs .” He pointed to a line; Justin could do nothing but write his name numbly.
    The sergeant roared off in a cloud of dust. Justin stood there and spat grit from his mouth. This time no genial interpreter; this time no firm-but-fair agronomist. This time—orders. Quite, unarguable orders.
    He noticed the date on the quota form. July 4.
    Rawson came visiting in his gocart and Justin sourly told him his discovery. The legless man shrugged his giant shoulders. “Shiptons got one too,” he said. “That’s why they sent me over. Didn’t want to use the phone. They’re thinking about holding kind of a meeting and getting up kind of a petition.”
    Justin said violently: “The old fools!” And then, slower, “But they are old. I guess they just don’t get it. Didn’t you try to talk them out of it?”
    “Me? The hired man? To Sam Shipton that’s farmed his farm for sixty years and his father and his gram’pappy before him? I saved my breath. Rather take a little spin in the muscle-mobile than pitch manure any day. I guess I tell them ‘No’ from you?”
    “Of course. But isn’t there some way you can try and keep them out of trouble? Explain, for instance, that it isn’t like petitioning the highway commissioner to grade a road or put in a new culvert? Entirely different?”
    “Sam Shipton’s an independent farmer, Billy. He’s going to stay one if it kills him.”
    “It may do that, Sarge. Sooner than he thinks.”
    “Been wondering why you call me ‘Sarge.’ Matter of fact, I was a bucktail private in the rear rank. Another thing—confidentially. On my own, not the Shiptons. I happen to have a little bit of contraband…”
    The word covered a lot of ground. Narcotics. Untaxed liquor. Home-grown tobacco. Guns, ammunition—even reloading tools. Any item of Red Army equipment, from a pint of their purple-dyed gasoline to a case of their combat rations. Unlicensed scientific equipment and material. It was all posted on the board down at Croley’s store in Norton. Not once had Justin heard of anybody being arrested or even chided for violating the rules, though old Mr. Konreid continued to distill and peddle his popskull, and those who smoked up here grew their own tobacco, minimally concealed, with varying success. Guns and ammunition—practically all of it—had been turned in and stood racked and tagged in Croley’s storeroom, under Red Army seal. There was a widespread impression that about guns and ammunition the orders were not kidding, that the rest was just the product of some brass hat covering himself for the record. They were farmers up here, but farmers who had been under fire at San Juan Hill, Belleau Wood, Anzio, Huertgen, Iwo, Pyongyang, Recife, Tehuantepec—not one of them but was “army wise.”
    Why speak of contraband?
    “What about it?” Justin asked warily.
    Rawson shrugged. “I want to pass it on to a fella I know, but I don’t especially want him to come to the Shiptons’. It isn’t bulky. I’d just like to drop it off here sometime and he’ll come by in a day or less and pick it up.”
    “Why me?” Justin asked flatly. “Do I look especially like a smuggler?”
    “Not especially,” Rawson grinned. “Mostly because you live alone. Also because you wouldn’t chisel on me. You’re a guy who can’t be bothered with doing things the crooked way. Old man