Cue for Quiet Page 3

from the Harper busto the Clairmount line, and it's a forty minute ride. For two days Ifed my ego by holding my breath. I likely looked queer with a burstingred face, but no one said anything, at least directly to me. Iwouldn't have cared much, anyway, because I didn't care much whathappened; after all, wasn't I a benefactor to practically all thehuman race, the thinking part, that is? Wasn't it going to be nice tolive in a world without punctured eardrums and hamstrung nerves?Wasn't it going to be good to be able to eat a meal in peace, to sipyour ten or sixty-cent drink without having some moron with a nickelprodding your ulcer? I thought so.

  Thursday, or maybe Friday, my careful searching of the daily papersfound my tiny item buried back of the stock reports, with the labornews. I read it three times.

  JUKEBOX WAR SUSPECTED.

  _An anonymous tip today told our labor reporter that serious troublelooms in the canned music industry. R. C. Jones, czar of Local 77,AFL, has issued orders to individually guard each machine serviced byhis union. Jones had the classic "no comment" for publication, but itis an open secret that intra-union friction is high in theHarper-Gratiot area. Jones inferred that deliberate sabotage isresponsible for the wholesale short-circuiting of jukeboxes andtelevision sets. He named no names, but in an off-the-record statementthreatened to fight fire with fire. "We're not," he snapped, "going tostand by and watch while goons ruin our livelihood. We will...._"

  Now I was in a fix. They had to make a living. I'd forgotten that. Aunion man myself, who was I to break another's rice bowl? I could seeno point in writing to this R. C. Jones. He'd think I was as crazy asthey come. And the newspapers--I could imagine the reactions of atough city editor. So, wrapped up in my own thoughts, I stepped offthe curb a little ahead of the green, and I jumped just in time. Iswore at the truck that almost got me, and it happened so quickly Iwasn't prepared to hear or to see the motor of the truck throw apiston right through the rusted hood. White as a sheet the driver gotout of his cab, and I crossed the street against the red light andlost myself in the crowd. This curve I was putting on the ball, itcame to me then, wasn't limited to jukeboxes and noisy radios andburnt-out bearings. I had to watch my temper, or I was going to getsomeone in trouble. I was in trouble myself, and I had to get out ofit.

  By the time I got home I'd thought it over quite well. This--thispower whatever it might be, was the McCoy. Why should I waste it whenan honest dollar might be turned? A factory job in Detroit is just afactory job, and I might keep mine for the next forty years if I livedlong enough through the noise and the dirt and the uncertainty and themodel changeover layoffs every Christmas. The Olsens' radio disturbedmy thinking and it took only a second. Either they were going to gettired of putting new tubes into that gadget, or play it softer, ormove. I didn't care which.

  So I used my wife's portable to type out a letter to Naval Ordnance inAberdeen where my brother-in-law used to be stationed, telling themwhat I'd done, what I thought I might be able to do, and asking themfor an opportunity to give them a demonstration. In return, I askedfor a steady government job in a warm climate. Until I could arrange acertain demonstration, I went on, I could understand they might thinkme a crank, so I wouldn't at present sign my name. I suggested theypay close attention through the week of the fifth through the twelfthto the various press association dispatches, and I would arrangelater, in my next letter, for a more personal show if they wanted totake it any further.

  * * * * *

  The fifth fell on a Saturday. Bright and early I was up to ride thebus downtown, changing to the Woodward line, ending up at Ferndale,all the time concentrating furiously and holding my breath as much asI dared. On the way back home I tried to work it a little differently.Probably no one else on the streetcar beside myself noticed therewasn't a single passenger car, truck or bus that passed us. Every car,as we sailed by, stalled and every traffic light we passed eitherturned three colors or blinked out completely. Most of the moving carsmade it to the curb on their momentum. The others stayed where theywere. When I got off in front of the City Hall, filthy old hulk thatit is, the streetcar stayed immobile at the safety zone, it was a newPCC car, and the insulation poured smoke from under the wheels.Naturally there wasn't any moving traffic in back of it, or in front.I saw to that. Then I just strolled around Cadillac Square, bollixingup everything that occurred to me, from trucks to busses to trafficlights. You never saw such a verminous tangled mess in all your life.When the patrol wagons began to scream into the Square loaded withreinforcements for the helpless purple single cop at the Michiganintersection I let them get as far as the center of the street beforeI pinned them down. Even when I saw it later in the newsreels Icouldn't believe it. Even Mack Sennett could have done no better.

  I had to walk all the way out Gratiot to St. Antoine before I couldfind transportation home that wasn't walled off by screaming horns andhaggard foot-patrolmen, and when I got off at my corner all Gratiotand Harper behind me was as clogged as Woodward. I even knocked outevery red neon sign within two blocks of a traffic light. That onemight keep a few pedestrians alive a little longer.

  Helen was over at her mother's helping her hang drapes when I gothome. The icebox gave me a cold Jumbo bottle and I turned on ourlittle portable set. On every station the spot broadcast crews werehoarse. I spun the dials and finally concentrated on oneannouncer--you know who I mean--with the raspiest, most grating voicethis side of a vixen file. Unfortunately, the housewives seem to likehim, including Helen, and it's the housewives who have the radio onall day. I knew he was broadcasting from the roof studios of one ofour highest buildings, and I took an enormous and perverted pleasurein holding my breath and thinking about the elevator system there. Onsecond thought, I held my breath again and the station left the air inthe middle of a word. I hope he liked the walk downstairs.

  The newspapers next day couldn't make things add, as was natural. Theypublished silly interviews with all the top engineers in the city anda good many all over the world, including the Chairman of the Board ofthe company where I worked, and his answer was just as asinine as therest. All in all, it had been a good show, and I put in another letterto Naval Ordnance. I knew I had gone much further than I had intended,and I suggested they get in touch with me, if they wanted, through thepersonal columns of one of the Detroit newspapers. I didn't want toget into trouble with the city police. I didn't sign my name to thesecond letter either. And that was a mistake.

  * * * * *

  Early in the morning of the tenth I felt good. I'd been sleeping welllately, now that I was rid of the Olsens' radio, not to mention theWerners', and the Smiths'. I rolled over and squinted at the luminoushands of the' clock. Beer cheese in the icebox. Half a Dutch apple pieleft over from dinner. Milk. Helen didn't wake as I eased out of bedand groped for my slippers, and the rustling and shuffling I heard asI tiptoed down the back stairs I attributed to an overbrave mouse. Oneof these days, I thought, I was going to have to get some traps andcatch me a mouse. When I turned on the kitchen light the mouse washolding a howitzer nine inches away from my head.

  "All right, you," the mouse snarled. "Reach!"

  I reached. Quick.

  The gunman backed to the outside door and flicked it open with onehand, never taking his eyes from me. Footsteps pounded on the backporch and hard faces filled the kitchen. One even had one of thesegaspipe Sten guns, and I liked that even less than the howitzer. Mypajama tops might have concealed an arsenal from the care I got when Iwas searched. No one said a word, and I didn't dare. Just about thattime Helen got the sandman out of her eyes. Likely the noise hadawakened her appetite, and she had come down to help me eat a snack.One of the gunmen heard her slippers clattering down the stairs, and ahard hand slapped over my mouth and a gun rammed viciously against myspine. Spun around and held as a human shield I had to helplesslywatch her come yawning in the kitchen door. One look she got in at me,and the drawn guns, and her mouth opened for a scream that got nofurther than a muffled yip and a dead
faint. They let her fall. Thegunman took his hand from my mouth and swung me around.

  "Shut up!" he snapped, although I hadn't tried to say anything.

  At the point of his gun he held me there while the rest of the hardfaced crew roamed the house, upstairs and down. None of the faces didI know, and I began to wonder if behind one of those granite maskswas the revengeful personality of R. C. Jones, President of Local 77,AFL. I heard footsteps pad on the back porch, and my head tried toturn in spite of myself. The gun in my back gouged a little harder.Out of the corner of my eye I could see who pushed open the screendoor I hadn't got around to taking down yet. The gun in my back helpedme stand up.

  * * * * *

  J. Edgar Hoover motioned to the gun and the