Journey Work — Edition Insights

All were overage. None dared protest.

At seventy a poor man without relatives willing to care for him was supposed to let himself be permanently retired to a Home for Seniles. If he wasn't senile and didn't want a home with barred windows and a barbed wire fence, he had to lie low and keep his mouth shut.

Anyone could charge an overage person with incompetence. The charge was not a crime and so had no defence.

All of which was old stuff to Ollie Hollveg. He'd been dodging the geriatricians for sixteen years. He considered himself used to the setup.

Yet something about the rancher, Rost--maybe his excessive weight, in contrast with the pickers' under-fed gauntness, or maybe his cardboard cowboy boots and imitation sombrero--made Ollie boil in spite of himself.

He tried not to show his feelings. But when he was called to the tally table the rancher scowled up at him defensively and said, "Don't glare at me, Hollveg! If you moved as fast picking tomatoes as you do collecting your pay, you'd have earned more than this."

He pushed out a little pile of coins that came to four dollars eighty-seven cents.

"Odd pennies?" Ollie's voice broke as he fought to keep it under control. "Odd pennies, when picking's at the rate of two bits a lug? That can't be right. Just because we're old, you're stealing from us!"

Rost's fat face turned livid. "Call me a thief?" he sputtered. "Get off my land!"

Rost jumped clumsily to his feet, upsetting the tally table. Ollie bent to retrieve the coins scattered in the dust.

"Don't try to steal from me!" Rost shouted. He pulled out a small gas gun and discharged it under Ollie's nose. Ollie pitched forward onto his face, twitched, moaned, and lay still.

The deputy sheriff held an ampoule under his nose and brought him to after setting the squad car on the beamway, proceeding under remote control toward the county seat.

The first thing Ollie thought of was his day's pay. He'd never received it. Worse--his bedroll was left behind. And there was no stopping nor turning on the beam way.

He complained bitterly.

"You won't need that stuff," the sharp young deputy said. "Not where you're going."

"I suppose Rost needs it!" Ollie protested.

"He might at that. All he's got is those measily four rented acres of tomatoes. The cannery pays him the same as if he had four hundred acres and could pick by machine.

"About all the profit he can make is what he chisels out of his pickers. You'll be better off in a Home, Pop, than trying to work cheaper than a machine."

"Those Homes are prisons!"

The deputy sighed. "I know how you feel. My old grandfather cried when we put him in. But we couldn't support him and he had no way of making a living.

"The world changes faster than the people in it, Pop. Science all the time lets us live longer, but faster and faster it keeps changing the way we do things. An old guy falls so far behind the times, the only place for him is a Home."

"But if a man wants to stay out," said Ollie, "I don't see why he can't."

"Old guys are dangerous to the rest of us. I saw three people killed, not long ago, trying to dodge an oldtimer who walked too slow to get across a wide street before the lights changed against him."

"They could have slowed the signal," Ollie said. "But no! Always it's the man who has to adapt to the machine, not the machine to the man. The only way to get by in this world is to find some machine you just naturally fit."

"You sound kind of bitter."

"Why not? I used to be a stock control clerk, keeping track of spare parts supply for a nationally distributed line of machine tools. I had twenty girls working for me. Then one day they put in a big computer."

He sighed. "No wonder these suicide salesmen do so well. If I had the money I'd hire somebody to knock me off right now."

"Don't be stupid!" the deputy snarled. "You wouldn't be losing your freedom if you'd had sense enough to stay out of a fight. And when you talk about suicide salesmen, you sure prove you can't take care of yourself!"

But the deputy was kinder than he sounded. Rather than allege incompetence, he charged Ollie with an assault against Rost. So instead of being remanded to the geriatricians, Ollie was kept overnight in jail and ordered held, next morning, for want of fifty dollars bail.

An hour after bail had been set, a dapper thin faced bailbond broker came to see him.