Chapter 1: Albert Weener Begins

1.

I always knew I should write a book. Something to help tired minds lay aside the cares of the day. But I always say you never can tell what’s around the corner till you turn it, and everyone has become so accustomed to fantastic occurrences in the last twenty one years that the inspiring and relaxing novel I used to dream about would be today as unreal as Atlantis. Instead, I find I must write of the things which have happened to me in that time.

It all began with the word itself.

“Grass. Gramina. The family Gramineae. Grasses.”

“Oh,” I responded doubtfully. The picture in my mind was only of a vague area in parks edged with benches for the idle.

Anyway, I was far too resentful to pay strict attention. I had set out in good faith, not for the first time in my career as a salesman, to answer an ad offering “$50 or more daily to top producers,” naturally expecting the searching onceover of an alert salesmanager, back to the light, behind a shinytopped desk. When youve handled as many products as I had an ad like that has the right sound. But the world is full of crackpots and some of the most pernicious are those who hoodwink unsuspecting canvassers into anticipating a sizzling deal where there is actually only a warm hope. No genuinely highclass proposition ever came from a layout without aggressiveness enough to put on some kind of front; working out of an office, for instance, not an outdated, rundown apartment in the wrong part of Hollywood.

“It’s only a temporary drawback, Weener, which restricts the Metamorphizer’s efficacy to grasses.”

The wheeling syllables, coming in a deep voice from the middleaged woman, emphasized the absurdity of the whole business. The snuffy apartment, the unhomelike livingroom--dust and books its only furniture--the unbelievable kitchen, looking like a pictured warning to housewives, were only guffaws before the final buffoonery of discovering the J S Francis who’d inserted that promising ad to be Josephine Spencer Francis. Wrong location, wrong atmosphere, wrong gender.

Now I’m not the sort of man who would restrict women to a place in the nursery. No indeed, I believe they are in some ways just as capable as I am. If Miss Francis had been one of those wellgroomed, efficient ladies who have earned their place in the business world without at the same time sacrificing femininity, I’m sure I would not have suffered such a pang for my lost time and carfare.

But wellgroomed and feminine were alike inapplicable adjectives. Towering above me--she was at least five foot ten while I am of average height--she strode up and down the kitchen which apparently was office and laboratory also, waving her arms, speaking too exuberantly, the antithesis of moderation and restraint. She was an aggregate of cylinders, big and small. Her shapeless legs were columns with large flatheeled shoes for their bases, supporting the inverted pediment of great hips. Her too short, greasespotted skirt was a mighty barrel and on it was placed the tremendous drum of her torso.

“A little more work,” she rumbled, “a few interesting problems solved, and the Metamorphizer will change the basic structure of any plant inoculated with it.”

Large as she was, her face and head were disproportionately big. Her eyes I can only speak of as enormous. I dare say there are some who would have called them beautiful. In moments of intensity they bored into mine and held them till I felt quite uncomfortable.

“Think of what this discovery means,” she urged me. “Think of it, Weener. Plants will be capable of making use of anything within reach. Understand, Weener, anything. Rocks, quartz, decomposed granite--anything.”

She took a gold victorian toothpick from the pocket of her mannish jacket and used it energetically. I shuddered. “Unfortunately,” she went on, a little indistinctly, “unfortunately, I lack resources for further experiment right now--”

This too, I thought despairingly. A slight cash investment--just enough to get production started--how many wishful times Ive heard it. I was a salesman, not a sucker, and anyway I was for the moment without liquid capital.

“It will change the face of the world, Weener. No more usedup areas, no more frantic scrabbling for the few bits of naturally rich ground, no more struggle to get artificial fertilizers to wornout soil in the face of ignorance and poverty.”

She thrust out a hand--surprisingly finely and economically molded, barely missing a piledup heap of dishes crowned by a flowerpot trailing droopy tendrils. Excitedly she paced the floor largely taken up by jars and flats of vegetation, some green and flourishing, others gray and sickly, all constricting her movements as did the stove supporting a glass tank, robbed of the goldfish which should rightfully have gaped against its sides and containing instead some slimy growth topped by a bubbling brown scum. I simply couldnt understand how any woman could so far oppose what must have been her natural instinct as to live and work in such a slatternly place. It wasnt just her kitchen which was disordered and dirty; her person too was slovenly and possibly unclean. The lank gray hair swishing about her ears was dark, perhaps from vigor, but more likely from frugality with soap and water. Her massive, heavychinned face was untouched by makeup and suggested an equal innocence of other attentions.

“Fertilizers! Poo! Expedients, Weener--miserable, makeshift expedients!” Her unavoidable eyes bit into mine. “What is a fertilizer? A tidbit, a pap, a lollypop. Indians use fish; Chinese, nightsoil; agricultural chemists concoct tasty tonics of nitrogen and potash--where’s your progress? Putting a mechanical whip on a buggy instead of inventing an internal combustion engine. Ive gone directly to the heart of the matter. Like Watt. Like Maxwell. Like Almroth Wright. No use being held back because youve only poor materials to work with--leap ahead with imagination. Change the plant itself, Weener, change the plant itself!”

It was no longer politeness which held me. If I could have freed myself from her eyes I would have escaped thankfully.

“Nourish’m on anything,” she shouted, rubbing the round end of the toothpick vigorously into her ear. “Sow a barren waste, a worthless slagheap with lifegiving corn or wheat, inoculate the plants with the Metamorphizer--and you have a crop fatter than Iowa’s or the Ukraine’s best. The whole world will teem with abundance.”

Perhaps--but what was the sales angle? Where did I come in? I didnt know a dandelion from a toadstool and was quite content to keep my distance from nature. Had she inserted the ad merely to lure a listener? Her whole procedure was irregular: not a word about territories and commissions. If I could bring her to the point of mentioning the necessary investment, maybe I could get away gracefully. “You said you were stuck,” I prompted, resolved to get the painful interview over with.

“Stuck? Stuck? Oh--money to perfect the Metamorphizer. Luckily it will do it itself.”

“I don’t catch.”

“Look about you--what do you see?”

I glanced around and started to say, a measuring glass on a dirty plate next to half a cold fried egg, but she stopped me with a sweep of her arm which came dangerously close to the flasks and retorts--all holding dirtycolored liquids--which cluttered the sink. “No, no. I mean outside.”

I couldnt see outside, because instead of a window I was facing a sickly leaf unaccountably preserved in a jar of alcohol. I said nothing.

“Metaphorically, of course. Wheatfields. Acres and acres of wheat. Bread, wheat, a grass. And cornfields. Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois--not a state in the Union without corn. Milo, oats, sorghum, rye--all grasses. And the Metamorphizer will work on all of them.”

I’m always a man with an open mind. She might--it was just possible--she might have something afterall. But could I work with her? Go out in the sticks and talk to farmers; learn to sit on fence rails and whittle, asking after crops as if they were of interest to me? No, no ... it was fantastic, out of the question.

A different, more practical setup now ... At least there would have been no lack of prospects, if you wanted to go miles from civilization to find them; no answers like We never read magazines, thank you. Of course it was hardly believable a woman without interest in keeping herself presentable could invent any such fabulous product, but there was a bare chance of making a few sales just on the idea.

The idea. It suddenly struck me she had the whole thing backwards. Grasses, she said, and went on about wheat and corn and going out to the rubes. Southern California was dotted with lawns, wasnt it? Why rush around to the hinterland when there was a big territory next door? And undoubtedly a better one?

“Revive your old tired lawn,” I improvised. “No manures, fuss, cuss, or muss. One shot of the Meta--one shot of Francis’ Amazing Discovery and your lawn springs to new life.”

“Lawns? Nonsense!” she snorted, rudely, I thought. “Do you think Ive spent years in order to satisfy suburban vanity? Lawns indeed!”

“Lawns indeed, Miss Francis,” I retorted with some spirit. “I’m a salesman and I know something about marketing a product. Yours should be sold to householders for their lawns.”

“Should it? Well, I say it shouldnt. Listen to me: there are two ways of making a discovery. One is to cut off a cat’s hindleg. The discovery is then made that a cat with one leg cut off has three legs. Hah!

“The other way is to find out your need and then search for a method of filling it. My work is with plants. I don’t take a daisy and see if I can make it produce a red and black petaled monstrosity. If I did I’d be a fashionable horticulturist, delighted to encourage imbeciles to grow grass in a desert.

“My method is the second one. I want no more backward countries; no more famines in India or China; no more dustbowls; no more wars, depressions, hungry children. For this I produced the Metamorphizer--to make not two blades of grass grow where one sprouted before, but whole fields flourish where only rocks and sandpiles lay.

“No, Weener, it won’t do--I can’t trade in my vision as a downpayment on a means to encourage a waste of ground, seed and water. You may think I lost such rights when I thought up the name Metamorphizer to appeal on the popular level, but there’s a difference.”

That was a clincher. Anyone who believed Metamorphizer had salesappeal just wasnt all there. But why should I disillusion her and wound her pride? Down underneath her rough exterior I supposed she could be as sensitive as I; and I hope I am not without chivalry.

I said nothing, but of course her interdiction of the only possibility killed any weakening inclination. And yet ... yet ... Afterall, I had to have something...

“All right, Weener. This pump--” she produced miraculously from the jumble an unwieldy engine dragging a long and tangling tail of hose behind it, the end lost among mementos of unfinished meals “--this pump is full of the Metamorphizer, enough to inoculate a hundred and fifty acres when added in proper proportion to the irrigating water. I have a table worked out to show you about that. The tank holds five gallons; get $50 a gallon--a dollar and a half an acre and keep ten percent for yourself. Be sure to return the pump every night.”

I had to say for her that when she got down to business she didnt waste any words. Perhaps this contrasting directness so startled me I was roped in before I could refuse. On the other hand, of course, I would be helping out someone who needed my assistance badly, since she couldnt, with all the obvious factors against her, be having a very easy time. Sometimes it is advisable to temper business judgment with kindness.

Her first offer was ridiculous in its assumption that a salesman’s talent, skill and effort were worth only a miserable ten percent, as though I were a literary agent with something a cinch to sell. I began to feel more at home as we ironed out the details and I brought the knowledge acquired with much hard work and painful experience into the bargaining. Fifty percent I wanted and fifty percent I finally got by demanding seventyfive. She became as interested in the contest as she had been before in benefits to humanity and I perceived a keen mind under all her eccentricity.

I can’t truthfully say I got to like her, but I reconciled myself and eventually was on my way with the pump--a trifling weight to Miss Francis, judging by the way she handled it, but uncomfortably heavy to me--strapped to my back and ten feet of recalcitrant hose coiled round my shoulder. She turned her imperious eyes on me again and repeated for the fourth or fifth time the instructions for applying, as though I were less intelligent than she. I went out through the barren livingroom and took a backward glance at the scaling stucco walls of the apartmenthouse, shaking my head. It was a queer place for Albert Weener, the crackerjack salesman who had once led his team in a national contest to put over a threepiece aluminum deal, to be working out of. And for a woman. And for such a woman...

2. Everything is for the best, is my philosophy and Make your cross your crutch is a good thought to hold; so I reminded myself that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown and no one sees the bright side of things if he wears dark glasses. Since it takes all kinds to make a world and Josephine Spencer Francis was one of those kinds, wasnt it only reasonable to suppose there were other kinds who would buy the stuff she’d invented? The only way to sell something is first to sell yourself and I piously went over the virtues of the Metamorphizer in my mind. What if by its very nature there could be no repeat business? I wasnt tying myself to it for life.

All that remained was to find myself a customer. I tried to recall the location of the nearest rural territory. San Fernando valley, probably--a long, tiresome trip. And expensive, unless I wished to demean myself by thumbing rides--a difficult thing to do, burdened as I was by the pump. If she hadnt balked unreasonably about putting the stuff on lawns, I’d have prospects right at hand.

I was suddenly lawnconscious. There was probably not a Los Angeles street I hadnt covered at some time--magazines, vacuums, old gold, nearnylons--and I must have been aware of green spaces before most of the houses, but now for the first time I saw lawns. Neat, sharply confined, smoothshaven lawns. Sagging, slipping, eager-to-keep-up-appearances but fighting-a-losing-game lawns. Ragged, weedy, dissolute lawns. Halfbare, repulsively crippled, hummocky lawns. Bright lawns, insistent on former respectability and trimness; yellow and gray lawns, touched with the craziness of age, quite beyond all interest in looks, content to doze easily in the sun. If Miss Francis’ mixture was on the upandup and she hadnt introduced a perfectly unreasonable condition--why, I couldnt miss.

On the other hand, I thought suddenly, I’m the salesman, not she. It was up to me as a practical man to determine where and how I could sell to the best advantage. With sudden resolution I walked over a twinkling greensward and rang the bell.

“Good afternoon, madam. I can see from your garden youre a lady who’s interested in keeping it lovely.”

“Not my garden and Mrs Smith’s not home.” The door shut. Not gently.

The next house had no lawn at all, but was fronted with a rank growth of ivy. I felt no one had a right to plant ivy when I was selling something effective only on the family Gramineae. I tramped over the ivy hard and rang the doorbell on the other side.

“Good afternoon, madam. I can see from the appearance of your lawn youre a lady who really cares for her garden. I’m introducing to a restricted group--just one or two in each neighborhood--a new preparation, an astounding discovery by a renowned scientist which will make your grass twice as green and many times as vigorous upon one application, without the aid of anything else, natural or artificial.”

“My gardener takes care of all that.”

“But, madam--”

“There is a city ordinance against unlicensed solicitors. Have you a license, young man?”

After the fifth refusal I began to think less unkindly of Miss Francis’ idea of selling the stuff to farmers and to wonder what was wrong with my technique. After some understandable hesitation--for I don’t make a practice of being odd or conspicuous--I sat down on the curb to think. Besides, the pump was getting wearisomely heavy. I couldnt decide exactly what was unsatisfactory in my routine. The stuff had neither been used nor advertised, so there could be no prejudice against it; no one had yet allowed me to get so far as quoting price, so it wasnt too expensive.

The process of elimination brought me to the absurd conclusion that the fault must lie in me. Not in my appearance, I reasoned, for I was a personable young man, a little over thirty at the time, with no obvious defects a few visits to the dentist wouldnt have removed. Of course I do have an unfortunate skin condition, but such a thing’s an act of God, as the lawyers say, and people must take me as I am.

No, it wasnt my appearance ... or was it? That monstrously outsized pump! Who wanted to listen to a salestalk from a man apparently prepared for an immediate gasattack? There is little use in pressing your trousers between two boards under the mattress if you discount such neatness with the accouterment of an invading Martian. I uncoiled the hose from my shoulder and eased the incubus from my back. Leaving them visible from the corner of my eye, I crossed the most miserable lawn yet encountered.

It was composed of what I since learned is Bermuda, a plant most Southern Californians call--with many profane prefixes--devilgrass. It was yellow, the dirty, grayish yellow of moldy straw; and bald, scuffed spots immodestly exposed the cracked, parched earth beneath. Over the walk, interwoven stolons had been felted down into a ragged mat, repellent alike to foot and eye. Perversely, onto what had once been flowerbeds, the runners crept erect, bristling spines showing faintly green on top--the only live color in the miserable expanse. Where the grass had gone to seed there were patches of muddy purple, patches which enhanced rather than relieved the diseased color of the whole and emphasized the dying air of the yard. It was a neglected, unvalued thing; an odious appendage, a mistake never rectified.

“Madam,” I began, “your lawn is deplorable.” There was no use giving her the line about I-can-see-you-are-a-lady-who-cares-for-lovely-things. Anyway, now the pump was off my back I felt reckless. I threw the whole book of salesmanship away. “It’s the most neglected lawn in the neighborhood. It is, madam, I’m sorry to say, no less than a disgrace.”

She was a woman beyond the age of childbearing, her dress revealing the outlines of her corset, and she looked at me coldly through rimless glassing biting the bridge of her inadequate nose. “So what?” she asked.

“Madam,” I said, “for ten dollars I can make this the finest lawn in the block, the pride of your family and the envy of your neighbors.”

“I can do better things with ten dollars than spend it on a bunch of dead grass.”

Gratefully I knew I had her then and was glad I hadnt weakly given in to an impulse to carry out the crackpot’s original instructions. When they start to argue, my motto is, theyre sold. I took a good breath and wound up for the clincher.

I won’t say she was an easy sale, but afterall I’m a psychologist; I found all her weak points and touched them expertly. Even so, she made me cut my price in half, leaving me only twofifty according to my agreement with Miss Francis, but it was an icebreaker.

I got the pump and hose, collecting at the same time an audience of brats who assisted me by shouting, “What ya goin a do, mister?” “What’s at thing for, mister?” “You goin a water Mrs Dinkman’s frontyard, mister?” “Do your teeth awwis look so funny, mister? My grampa takes his teeth out at night and puts’m in a glass of water. Do you take out your teeth at night, mister?” “You goin a put that stuff on our garden too, mister?” “Hay, Shirley--come on over and see the funnylooking man who’s fixing up Dinkman’s yard.”

They were untiring, shrilling their questions, exclamations and comments, completely driving from my mind the details of the actual application of the Metamorphizer. Anyway, Miss Francis had been concerned with putting it in the irrigation water--which didnt apply in this case. I thought a moment. A gallon was enough for thirty acres; half a pint should suffice for this--more than suffice. Irrigation water, nonsense--I’d squirt it on and tell the woman to hose it down afterward--that’d be the same as putting it in the water, wouldnt it?

To come to this practical conclusion under the brunt of the children’s assault was a remarkable feat. As I dribbled the stuff over the sorry devilgrass they kicked the pump--and my shins--mimicking my actions, tripping me as they skipped under my legs, getting wet with the Metamorphizer--I hoped with mutually deleterious effect--and generally making me more than ever thankful for my bachelor condition.

Twofifty, I thought, angrily squirting a fine mist at a particularly dreary spot--and it isnt even selling. Manual labor. Working with my hands. I might as well be a gardener. College training. Wide experience. Alert and aggressive. In order to dribble stuff smelling sickeningly of carnations on a wasted yard. I coiled up my hose disgustedly and collected a reluctant five dollars.

“It don’t look any different,” commented Mrs Dinkman dubiously.

“Madam, Professor Francis’ remarkable discovery works miracles, but not in the twinkling of an eye. In a week youll see for yourself, provided of course you wet it down properly.”

“In a week youll be far gone with my five dollars,” diagnosed Mrs Dinkman.

While this might be superficially true, it was an unfair and unkind thing to say, and it wounded me. I reached into my pocket and drew out an old card--one printed before I’d had an irreconcilable difference with the firm employing me at the time.

“I can always be reached at this address, Mrs Dinkman,” I said, “should you have any cause for dissatisfaction--which I’m sure is quite impossible. Besides, I shall be daily in this district demonstrating the value of Dr Francis’ Lawn Tonic.”

That was certainly true; unless I made a better connection. Degrading manual labor or not, I intended to sell as many local people as possible on the strength of having found a weak spot in the wall of salesresistance before the effects of the Metamorphizer became apparent. For, in strict confidence, and despite its being an undesirable negative attitude, I was a little dubious that those effects--or lack of them--would stimulate further sales.

3. My alarmclock, as it did every morning, Sundays included, rang at sixthirty, for I am a man of habit. I turned it off, remembering instantly I had given Miss Francis neither her pump nor her share of the sale. Of course it was more convenient and timesaving to bring them both together and I was sure she didnt expect me to follow instructions to the letter, like an officeboy, any more in these matters than she had in her restriction to agricultural use.

Still, it was remiss of me. The fact is, I had spent her money as well as my own--not on dissipation, I hasten to say, but on dinner and an installment of my roomrent. This was embarrassing, but I looked upon it merely as an advance--quite as if I’d had the customary drawingaccount--to be charged against my next commissions. My acceptance of the advance merely indicated my faith in the future of the Metamorphizer.

I dissolved a yeastcake in a glass of water; it’s very healthy and I’d heard it alleviated dermal irritations. Lathering my face, I glanced over the list culled from the dictionary and stuck in the mirror the night before, for I have never been too tired to improve my mind. By this easy method of increasing my vocabulary I had progressed, at the time, down to the letter K.

While drinking my coffee--never more than two cups--it was my custom to read and digest stock and bond quotations, for though I had no investments--the only time I had been able to take a flurry there was an unforeseen recession in the market--I thought a man who didnt keep up with trends and conditions unfitted for a place in the businessworld. Besides, I didnt expect to be straitened indefinitely and I believed in being ready to take proper advantage of opportunity when it came.

As a man may devote the graver part of his mind to a subject and then turn for relaxation to a lighter aspect, so I had for years been interested in a stock called Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates. It wasnt a highpriced issue, nor were its fluctuations startling. For six months of the year, year in and year out, it would be quoted at 1/16 of a cent a share; for the other six months it stood at 1/8. I didnt know what pemmican was and I didnt particularly care, but if a man could invest at 1/16 he could double his money overnight when it rose to 1/8. Then he could reverse the process by selling before it went down and so snowball into fortune. It was a daydream, but a harmless one.

Satisfying myself Consolidated Pemmican was bumbling along at its low level, I reluctantly prepared to resume Miss Francis’ pump. It seemed less heavy as I wound the hose over my shoulder and I felt this wasnt due to the negligible quantity I’d expended on Mrs Dinkman’s grass. I just knew I was going to have a successful day. I had to.

In moments of fancy I often think a salesman is more truly a creative artist than many of those who arrogate the title to themselves. He uses words, on one hand, and the receptivity of prospects on the other, to mold a cohesive and satisfying whole, a work of Art, signed and dated on the dotted line. Like any such work, the creation implies thoughtful and careful preparation. So it was that I got off the bus, polishing a new salestalk to fit the changed situation. “One of your neighbors...” “I have just applied...” I sneered my way past those houses refusing my services the day before; they couldnt have the Metamorphizer at any price now. Then it hit my eyes.

Mrs Dinkman’s lawn, I mean.

The one so neglected, ailing and yellow only yesterday.

It wasnt sad and sickly now. The most enthusiastic homeowner wouldnt have disdained it. There wasnt a single bare spot visible in the whole lush, healthy expanse. And it was green. Green. Not just here and there, but over every inch of soft, undulating surface; a pale applegreen where the blades waved to expose its underparts and a rich, dazzling emerald on top. Even the runners, sinuously encroaching upon the sidewalk, were deeply virescent.

The Metamorphizer worked.

The Metamorphizer not only worked, but it worked with unbelievable rapidity. Overnight. I knew nothing about the speed at which ordinary fertilizers, plant stimulants or hormones took hold, but commonsense told me nothing like this had ever happened so quickly. I had been indulging in a little legitimate puffery in saying the inoculant worked miracles, but if anything that had been an understatement. It just went to show how impossible it is for a real salesman to be too enthusiastic.

Nerves in knees and fingers quivering, I walked over to join the group curiously inspecting the translated lawn. I, I had done this; out of the most miserable I’d made the loveliest--and for a paltry five dollars. I tried to recapture the memory of what it had looked like in order to relish the contrast more, but it was impossible; the vivid present blotted out the decayed past completely.

“Overnight,” someone said. “Yessir, just overnight. Wouldnt of believed it if I hadnt noticed just yesterday how much worse an the city dump it looked.”

“Bet at stuff’s ten inches high.”

“Brother, you can say that again. Foot’d be closer.”

“Anyhow it’s uh fattestlookin grass I seen sence I lef Texas.”

“An the greenest. Guess I never did see such a green before.”

While they exclaimed about the beauty and vigor of the growth, my mind was racing in high along practical lines. Achievement isnt worth much unless you can harness it, and in today’s triumph I saw tomorrow’s benefit. No more canvassing with a pump undignifiedly on my back, no more manual labor; no, bold as the thought was, not even any more direct selling for me. This was big, too big to be approached in any cockroach, build-up-slowly-from-the-bottom way. It was a real top deal, in a class with nylon or jukeboxes or bubblegum. You could smell the money in it.

First of all I’d have to tie Josephine Francis down with an ironclad contract. Agents; dealerships; distributors and a general salesmanager, Albert Weener, at the top. Incorporate. Get it all down in black and white and signed by Miss Francis right away. For her own good. An idealistic scientist, a frail woman, protect her from the vultures who’d try to rob her as soon as they saw what the Metamorphizer would do. Such a woman wouldnt have any business sense. I’d see she got a comfortable living out of it and free her from responsibility. Then she could potter around all she liked.