Odyssey of a heroPart 2
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Part 2
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 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....
“And—and then?” gasped one.
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, 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 and you came back boasting of the men you’d killed and you’ve been boasting ever since. Why don’t you preach peace?”
“Peace!” said John, appalled.
“Yes, peace. Didn’t Jesus command us to seek peace? But you go around with your damned doctrines of hatred—”
“Preach peace!” cried John, aghast.
“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 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.”
“Who is Professor Jameson?”
“He teaches in the college here. He would like to meet you.”
“Why?” asked John, feeling a little sick.
“Oh, I don’t know. He—he hates war. And he says you did—once.”
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 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—I don’t know,” John said.
“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.”
“It took me a long time,” John said.
“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 asked to speak anywhere. Some of his townsfolk began to look at him with suspicious or hostile eyes.
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