The Non-Statistical Man (11 page)

“You don’t believe it’s real any more?” asked Sarah quietly.

“As real as it’s always been—a chance hunch now and then. With just as much chance of being wrong as right!”

“What about the policies?”

“What about them? I’ll find that statistical formula I bragged about to Sprock and explain them! The ones that won’t fit—well, the old idea of a hunch is as good as any explanation. I’ll buy it. But what a fool Magruder made out of me, with his Yogi tricks and slick performance! I’ll bet he isn’t even Magruder—”

“What about Myersville?”

“Who knows—it has nothing to do with this.”

“And Sloan and his soap failure?”

“He’s probably got his trouble ironed out by now.” “And you felt it so strongly yourself—that it was real and this was the way to go.”

Bascomb’s lips compressed tightly before he answered. “I’ve seen the same thing in backwoods religious meetings, too.”

“I still feel somehow that tonight was not a loss,” said Sarah.

“It wasn’t,” Bascomb answered grimly. “It put me back on the track. What if I’d quit New England first? But
there’s still Sprock.” He grimaced painfully. “Tomorrow I have to see Sprock and do the Most Humble Grand Salaam.”

He never got the chance; he suspected he wouldn’t when he saw the paper before breakfast the following morning. The international news was light, and his own picture was on the front page, neatly framed by Magruder’s on one side and Zad Clementi’s on the other.

The caption declared:
“Mathematician Computes Clementi Innocence.”

The story described him as a disciple of Magruder, taking over the Professor’s work while the latter languished in jail, unable to provide bail on charges of medical practise without license. It told in great detail and with considerable accuracy the things Bascomb had said about intuition and the possibility of gaining skill in its use.

The story was written by Hap Johnson.

Near the end, Hap said.
“All this reminds your reporter about the old story of the tired bailiff who was asked to go out for about the nine hundredth time to get the belaboring jurors something to eat. He’s the one, you remember, who came back with eleven meals and a bale of hay.

“Well, we can all be thankful that a certain insurance statistician wasn’t on the Clementi jury. We’ve had clean-cut justice done on this case, a thing our courts and the citizens of Landbridge can be proud of. But we’ll tell you: if anyone still cares to make a gift of a bale of hay at this particular date, your reporter will see that it’s properly delivered.”

It sent a stunning wave of hurt through Bascomb as he read it. Hap Johnson had been his friend. This bitterness was something he did not understand; he gave up trying.'

On his desk, when he reached the office, there was a note for him to appear in the office of vice-president Sprock. Bascomb caught furtive glances of those beyond the glass walls of his office as he read it. Obviously they’d seen the morning papers.

Hadley hadn’t, apparently, for he came in brightly, almost on Bascomb’s heels. “Here’s the last of the policies you asked about, Mr. Bascomb,” he said. Bheuner's Hardware Store. It burned to the ground last night.”

That must have been in the second section, which
Bascomb hadn’t read. He stood staring, long after Hadley had left, at the two papers on his desk: the order from Sprock, and the claim from Bheuner. The hardware man hadn’t lost any time, he thought.

But it would do no good to call it to Sprock’s attention now; his case was lost, as far as New England was concerned. He left the claim paper on his desk and walked slowly down the hall.

The Vice-President was surprisingly direct and to the point. He outlined briefly the history of the insurance business, particularly that of New England. He dwelt at moderate length on the sacredness of the obligations incurred by the Company in behalf of the Policyholders. He went most heavily into the personal qualifications required of the ones chosen to stand vigil over that enduring trust.

But the thing of greatest significance was his parting shot: “I shall see to it personally, Bascomb, that no firm in this field ever considers your name on its roster without knowing the true facts of your fantastic attempts to besmirch the entire insurance institution in America! Intuition! Good-day, Mr. Bascomb.”

He returned along the hall to his own office. Blackballed; he had no doubts that Sprock would and could do it.

He had thirty days coming if he wanted it, but he declined. He told Sprock he’d finish up at once, if that was all right; it was. He turned over his current studies to Wardlaw, Assistant Statistician. He cleaned out his desk and said a stiff goodbye to the office associates who didn’t suddenly have to go down the hall for a break as they saw he was about ready.

That was it. He and New England were through. As he turned his back on the building he was aware that this fact had not sunk thoroughly into all his cells. A certain part of him had no doubt that he would be coming this way again in the morning. It would be a bitter struggle when that certain part attained full awareness.

Sarah was not surprised. They had discussed it at breakfast, and she had told him it was going to happen. He had believed her, but hoped for some miracle to prove her wrong—to prove all her intuitive hunches wrong for the rest of their lives.

It wouldn’t be bad, however, he told her; he’d start looking in the morning. He might have to go farther
away, but there wouldn’t be much trouble for a man of his experience. He didn’t tell her of Sprock’s threat.

He did little the next day except write some letters asking for interviews. He went to a public stenographer in town to do this, and came home early—at the height of thirteen-year-old Mark’s wails of rage and discomfort.

These were coming from the direction of the bathroom, where Bascomb found Sarah busy with soap and water and bandages. His oldest boy’s eye was tightly closed. Cuts and bruises decorated the rest of his face and his upper torso.

Bascomb wanted to make it light, but he saw Sarah’s face and changed his intended tone. “What was it all about?” he asked evenly.

Mark glanced up, hesitant; he turned to his mother. “It’s all right,” she said grimly.

“Down at school—said Mark. “All the kids—I told them they couldn’t say things like that and tried to make ’em shut up. But I couldn’t lick the whole school.”

“What were they saying?” Bascomb asked.

“That you are a Communist. They went around singing it kind of: Bascomb’s dad’s a Red man; that sort of thing. Then Art Slescher wrote on the boards in all the classes before I got there:
Name a dirty Commie.
I got him after school.”

Bascomb looked at Sarah, his face blanched. They didn’t speak.

Later, when the children were in bed, they tried to talk about it. “We can’t go on bucking something like that forever,” Sarah said.

“It won’t be forever,” Bascomb snapped, more irritably than he intended; “I mean, it will die down after while. You knovy how these newspaper stories go. They pin a guy to the cross with scandal, and in a week even his next door neighbors have forgotten about it.”

“Not this.” Sarah shook her head. “It hasn’t even got a good start it’s going to build bigger and bigger. Mark’s experience isn’t the only one.”

“What else?”

“I overheard talk at the store while I was shopping today. Two women on the other side of grocery island. They thought I’d gone away. One mentioned your name. Said her daughter had a friend who’d heard you were caught molesting some high school girls one night that it was no wonder you were defending a man like dementi.”

Bascomb buried his face in his hands and groaned with helpless despair and rage “Such a little thing to begin with—! How in Heaven’s name did it lead up to this? I hope they hang Magruder!” He looked up. “It’s going to be hell to live with while it lasts, but time will make a difference.”

“Not in this.” Sarah shook her head again; “it will only grow worse.”

“Then what are we to do! We’ve got our home here. It’s our community as much as those gossiping old biddies’ —those mentally twisted kids—”

“It’s going to force us out, Charles; we can’t live here any longer. The sooner we prepare to leave, the better we’ll be. Put the house up for sale tomorrow!”

Only then, for the first time in many days, did Bascomb remember Magruder’s strange words, and it hit him like a blow in the stomach.
“It’s going to cost you everything—your present job, your whole career—your good name—your position in the community; your home
—"

Magruder had said that; and every word of it was coming true.

But there was time and a way to save things yet. “We’re not moving out before a thing of that kind,” he said; “there’re ways of licking it.”

“At the price of our own destruction!”

“It’s always been expensive to fight against insane prejudice, but the world would be a hell of a place to live in if a few of us didn’t try.

“Tell Mark to not get involved in any more fistfights; tell him that when the others accuse me of being a Communist, he’s to agree. He’s to tell them I’ve got a pipeline straight to Moscow. Khrushchev himself appointed me, and I’m planning to wipe out the President and his Cabinet next month.

“Tell the neighborhood biddies the same thing. Walk up and ask their advice on what to do with a husband you catch every week or two with sixteen-year old girls right in your own house. That’ll shut them up after a while.

“And then—we’re staying; we’re staying right here and we’ll find out who did the murder Clementi is accused
of. We’ll ram it down their throats until it chokes every one of the lying, sadistic gossipers!”

“We have nothing but an intuitive sense about dementi—sod you’ve rejected that. So possibly the jury- was right, after all.”

Bascomb remained staring straight ahead of him to the figured pattern on the opposite wall; it seemed as if he hadn’t heard her. Then, slowly his lips parted. “No,” he said. “I’ve rejected everything Magruder induced me to believe about intuition, but dementi’s innocence doesn’t depend on that. Our feelings about
him
were merely random chance, let us say, but logic convinces me we were right in that one thing. I’ve gone back and read the accounts of the trail. The evidence is ridiculous; they haven’t given him a chance. And I think it’s because there’s someone who’s being protected.”

It was a noble and virtuous gesture. Bascomb felt Sarah would commend him and agree to stick valiantly by him. Instead, she got up and paused in the center of the room. She gave him a single backward, almost-contemptuous look. “You are being an idiotic fool!” she said. “A pebble can’t stop a fifty ton boulder rolling down a hill.” She strode off in the direction of the bedroom.

A week later, Charles Bascomb was convinced she was right. Mark was in the hospital to get an arm set after it had been broken when the mob piled on
him
at school. Sarah had been read out of the two ladies clubs she belonged to; and the minister of their Church had informed her he had made different arrangements in the baby-sitting round robin which had been worked out during services. Sarah wouldn’t need to bother with it any more.

Bascomb had found his car painted a screaming red-including all the glass—when he got off the train at the end of the week to drive home. The same night their front windows were broken with slingshots; and when they got up, they found a crude hammer and sickle painted on the front door.

In the city he’d not been able to get a single Job Interview during the entire time.

Bascomb visited the local suburban real estate office in the early morning. By afternoon he had a sale
at
a thousand dollar loss, which the agent assured him was the best he could do in the light of the jinxed condition of the property.

Once agreeing to defeat, it was impossible for Bascomb to get out too soon. He didn’t know where they were going, but as soon as all arrangements for storage and forwarding of their personal goods had been made he turned the car west. Slivers of red paint still showed next to the rubber gasket of the windshield; but the new paint job on the car symbolized the only thing he was taking with them, hope.

He didn’t know where they were going. He was still stunned by the events of past days. The uncontrolled viciousness and brutality of the attacks against his family were unexplainable. Even the police had expressed apathy toward his complaints. A city had turned against him.

And for what? he asked himself continually, over and over again. There was no rational explanation. His single statement of defense for Clementi had set it off. But that must be only the trigger. Where was the main explosive force of the catastrophe! He didn’t know. All he was sure of was that his townsmen seemed to have suddenly gone insane.

They crossed New York in easy stages, and stopped late that night at a Pennsylvania tourist lodge. Mark’s arm was giving him pain. Neither Chuck, nor Darcie, the youngest, lying across his lap asleep, was enjoying the ride. They were running from a terror that wouldn’t show its proper face.

It was there that they heard the newscast as they turned on the small radio in the lodge.

“Police are looking for a once-respected insurance executive now fleeing with his family from the consequences of an incredible wave of criminal attacks. Charles Bascomb—dark green Buick—six girls all under age
—
license number
—"

“Come on!” said Bascomb. “It must have been on earlier; I noticed the clerk watching closely while I wrote down our license number—”

They turned out of the drive, even as the clerk came out of the office to witness their unexplained departure. Sarah saw him turn and run inside. “He’s phoning the police,” she said.

There was no hysteria, or even despair, Bascomb re
called later as he turned the car onto the highway and kept it moving. A kind of calm seemed to have settled over them all. The children were quiet, and Sarah sat as if she had confidence that Bascomb knew exactly what he was doing.