Read Ebook: The Scapegoat by Maples Richard

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Ebook has 215 lines and 9328 words, and 5 pages

THE SCAPEGOAT

Illustrated by WEISS

The old guy didn't have a chance. All he could do was shield his head with limp arms and moan, while this other fellow--a young, husky six-footer--gave him a vicious, cold-blooded beating.

"Hey, there!" I yelled indignantly. "Cut it out!"

But the kid kept belting away, as if he were methodically working out on a fifty-pound training bag. Finally, the old man sagged to the pavement. Then this hoodlum began to kick him.

I'm not a hero. I'm a newspaper man whose job it is to look at things objectively. But I know right from wrong.

My one punch caught the young bruiser back of the ear and spilled him on the ground. He lay there for a moment, then rolled over. Even by the street light, it was easy to see his eyes were glassy.

It gave me lots of satisfaction. I'm not a big man--just compact--but I take care of myself. I don't drink or smoke and I exercise regularly. The result is I can handle myself in the clinches.

The kid sat up and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. I could see now that he was a college boy. The red sweater with the terrycloth border and the white pants with a shortened left leg were a dead giveaway.

"Listen here," I said roughly, "you nuts? Beating up an old man!"

He appeared to be desperately searching for an explanation--something to say. Then, abruptly, without having uttered a sound, he reeled away and shambled hurriedly down the street.

My first inclination was to give chase. But the old man groaned and I turned to help him. That was when I had it--a virtual brain storm.

This whole episode, I could see, was a perfect answer to the damnable criticisms leveled at my series on juvenile delinquency. More than that, it was an absolute vindication!

Barely an hour ago, I'd had to sit at a meeting and take it on the chin from twenty of the town's leading lights who designated themselves The Committee for the Protection of Youth. The outfit was, of course, politically inspired. It had obviously been started by the Mayor and his gang as a means of torpedoing Jones, the publisher of my paper. Jones, you see, had become politically ambitious himself.

Since I was the star on Jones' team, they piled on me. Some of the nicer things said about my articles were that they constituted filthy muckraking, were a pattern of irresponsible lies, and were designed principally to smear the incumbent politicos. The children of the town, they cried, were being sacrificed to ruthless ambition.

It wouldn't have been so bad if Jones had stuck by me. But he cut and ran. Discretion, he had whispered to me from behind a pudgy hand, was the better part of valor. Then he told them he would discontinue the articles.

Now I had first-hand proof of a particularly brutal bit of delinquency. A cruel assault on a poor, helpless old man! Furthermore, I was the hero of the incident!

Bending down to see how seriously the old man had been hurt, I asked, "What happened, Pop? Was he trying to rob you or something?" He didn't answer.

I looked around for help, but the street was deserted. The best thing, I decided, was to take him home. There Nan, my wife, could patch him up while I found out what had happened. I bent down again and pulled him to his feet. He staggered. I put one steadying hand on his shoulder and gripped his wrist with the other. My spine went cold.

It was his flesh. Not so much that it felt like rubber--but the chill. Here we were in the middle of a heat wave, the thermometer nudging ninety, and the old guy's wrist is like an icicle!

For a second, it threw me. Then I thought of shock. That might explain it. And Nan, having been a nurse, would be the one to know.

I started the old man walking. "See if you can make it to my house," I urged. "It's just around the corner."

Nan switched on the porch light when she heard us on the steps. Opening the door, she drew back with a little shriek. The old man was pretty gruesome-looking at that. But it wasn't just his blood-covered face and matted white beard.

There was something spiderish about him. He was angular, and dark, and skeletal. His eyes, deep-set and brooding, seemed to crouch under his shaggy, jutting brows.

"Take it easy, honey," I said. "The old guy just needs some patching up."

She recovered quickly and helped him into the house. After we'd eased him into the easy chair by the fireplace in the living room, she turned to me, worried. "Were you in an accident?"

I gave her the story and she looked at me sharply, but didn't speak. She went into the bedroom and came back with blankets and medicine bottles. Tucking the blankets around the old man's legs, she said, "But I don't understand why you were walking. You went to the meeting in Jones' car. Why didn't he bring you back?"

I didn't answer. The old man had closed his eyes and his breathing was becoming very shallow. "Look at him," I said. "Is he all right?"

"He's sleeping. Why don't you answer my question?"

"Jones didn't bring me home because I had words with him and walked away in a huff."

"Over the meeting?"

"Partly." I explained about the meeting and how Jones had back-tracked when the going got rough. "After all, it was his idea to build circulation with sensational articles and to use them to attack the present administration. But when there's a showdown, he acts like a scared rabbit. And that's what I told him."

"I'm glad," Nan said, her face brightening. "What did he say to that?"

"He gave me a lot of bull about it being a mistake to pick on people's children and how we should stick to old standbys like red-light districts and dope trafficking."

Nan slapped the iodine on the table. "Some nerve! What did you tell him?"

"I told him he was jerking the rug from under me and that I'd be damned if I'd write a bunch of warmed-over tripe. Then I walked away."

"You finally quit!"

Until then, I don't think I'd ever realized just how much Nan hated my work. Of course, off and on, we'd really had some knock-down drag-outs, but I'd never considered them serious. Oh, we often talked about my going into teaching physical ed. It had been my intention ever since college. Some day I'd actually do it.

I shook my head. "No, honey, I didn't quit."

"But you're going to?"

I shrugged in a gesture of helplessness. "How can I? An unprovoked attack against a poor old man is dynamite. It puts me in the driver's seat. I can write an article that will make every mealy-mouthed hypocrite who spoke against me tonight eat his words."

The fire in her eyes died. "It's always something," she said wearily. "Year after year, you've come up with one reason or another to stay in the rotten business. And what does it amount to? Mud-slinging! I'm beginning to think you like it!"

She'd never come out so bluntly and, deep down, I felt my resentment pressing like the sharp edge of a coiled spring. Originally, getting into the newspaper game had been a sort of fluke. Majoring in physical ed at college, I often covered the various sports events for the campus paper. One day, a big-time scandal broke, involving gamblers and one of the teams, and I found myself in a perfect spot to do an exclusive for a city paper. My stuff was run verbatim under a by-line and afterward picked up by the wire services.

Later, with a trick knee keeping me out of the war, I managed to talk myself into a job with the newspaper that had run my expose. I was goaded by a feeling that I ought to be doing something bigger than teaching children how to play games.

From the very start, I discovered I had a peculiar talent. If I found myself anywhere near a skeleton in a closet, I could plainly hear its rattle. Before long, my reputation was firmly established.

Nan, whom I'd met at college, knew of my ambition to teach and began planning toward that end as soon as we married. She started what she called a quitting fund. This was to stake a move to a small town where her uncle was principal of the high school. He was supposed to help me get a foothold in the new career.

Finally, when Tommy was about ten, she suddenly let me have it.

It seems the kid was running around with a tough crowd. She wanted to get him away from the city. He needed the fresh air and the decent, normal home-life of a small town, she said. And she meant every word of it.

Luckily, Jones had come along right about then and offered me a job on his newspaper, back in the old home town. He had an idea he could drive the opposition paper out of business by featuring yellow journalism at the local level. That's where I came in. With my ability to make the news bleed, he figured he could cinch it. For that reason, he was willing to double my present salary. So I accepted.

Nan, of course, was furious, even though I pointed out the extra dough meant we could start planning again. She didn't calm down until I promised to quit the job after six months.

Yes, it was always something. She was right enough about that. But she had no right to make such an issue of things. I started to tell her that, then stopped. Maybe she was picking a quarrel to make me forget about the old man and the story. I threw a fast block into my resentment.

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