“And do you mean to say,” George commented, speaking the words slowly and with emphasis—“do you mean to say that Merrit seized that moment to throw you out on your ear? Why, the dirty----”
“Yes,” said Randy. “I got the sack just a week after the bank closed. I don’t know whether Merrit figured that was the best time to get rid of me or whether it just happened so. But what’s the difference? It’s been coming for a long time. I’ve seen it coming for a year or more. It was just a question of when. And believe me,” he said with quiet emphasis, “I’ve been through hell. I lived from day to day in fear and dread of it, knowing it was coming and knowing there wasn’t anything I could do to head it off. But the funny thing is, now it’s happened I feel relieved.” He smiled his old clear smile. “It’s the truth,” he said. “I never would have had the guts to quit—I was making pretty good money, you know—but now that I’m out, I’m glad. I’d forgotten how it felt to be a free man. Now I can hold my head up and look anybody in the eye and tell the Great Man, Paul S. Appleton himself, to go to the devil. It’s a good feeling. I like it.”
“But what are you going to do, Randy?” asked George with evident concern.
“I don’t know,” said Randy cheerfully. “I haven’t any plans. All the years I was with the Company I lived pretty well, but I also managed to save a little something. And, luckily, I didn’t put it in the Citizens Trust, or in real estate either, so I’ve still got it. And I own the old family house. Margaret and I can get along all right for a while. Of course, jobs that pay as well as the one I had don’t turn up round every corner, but this is a big country and there’s always a place for a good man. Did you ever hear of a good man who couldn’t find work?” he said.
“Well, you can’t be too sure of that,” said George, shaking his head dubiously. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he went on, pausing and frowning thoughtfully, “but I don’t think the Stock Market crash and the bank failure in Libya Hill were isolated events. I’m coming to feel,” he said, “that we may be up against something new—something that’s going to cut deeper than anything America has experienced before. The papers are beginning to take it seriously. They’re calling it a depression. Everybody seems to be scared.”
“Oh, pshaw!” said Randy with a laugh. “You are feeling low. That’s because you live in New York. Here the Stock Market is everything. When it’s high, times are good; when it’s low, they’re bad. But New York is not America.”
“I know,” said George. “But I’m not thinking about the Stock Market. I’m thinking about America…Sometimes it seems to me,” he continued slowly, like a man who gropes his way in darkness over an unfamiliar road, “that America went off the track somewhere—back round the time of the Civil War, or pretty soon afterwards. Instead of going ahead and developing along the line in which the country started out, it got shunted off in another direction—and now we look round and see we’ve gone places we didn’t mean to go. Suddenly we realise that America has turned into something ugly—and vicious—and corroded at the heart of its power with easy wealth and graft and special privilege…And the worst of it is the intellectual dishonesty which all this corruption has bred. People are afraid to think straight—_afraid_ to face themselves—_afraid_ to look at things and see them as they are. We’ve become like a nation of advertising men, all hiding behind catch phrases like ‘prosperity’ and ‘rugged individualism’ and ‘the American way’. And the real things like freedom, and equal opportunity, and the integrity and worth of the individual—things that have belonged to the American dream since the beginning—they have become just words, too. The substance has gone out of them—they’re not real any more…Take your own case. You say you feel free at last because you’ve lost your job. I don’t doubt it—but it’s a funny kind of freedom. And just how free are you?”
“Well, free enough to suit me,” said Randy heartily. “And, funny or not, I’m freer than I’ve ever been before. Free enough to take my time and look round a bit before I make a new connection. I don’t want to get in with another outfit like the old one. I’ll land on my feet,” he said serenely.
“But how are you going to do it?” asked George. “There can’t be anything for you in Libya Hill, with the bottom dropped out of everything down there.”
“Hell, I’m not wedded to the place!” said Randy. “I’ll go anywhere. Remember, I’ve been a salesman all my life—I’m used to travelling round. And I have friends in the game—in other lines—who’ll help me. That’s one good thing about being a salesman: if you can sell one thing, you can sell anything, and it’s easy to switch products. I know my way round,” he concluded with strong confidence. “Don’t you worry about me.”