Chapter 2: Consequences of a Discovery

11.

“But it’s got to be stopped,” exclaimed Gootes.

Miss Francis turned silently back to her flowerpot as though she’d forgotten us. Gootes coursed the kitchenfloor like a puzzled yet anxious hound. “Damn it, it’s got to be stopped.” He halfway extracted his pack of cards, then hastily withdrew his hand as though guarding the moment’s gravity.

“Otherwise ... why, otherwise itll swallow the house.” He decided on the cards afterall and balanced four of them edgewise on the back of his hand. Miss Francis immediately abandoned the flowerpot to stare childishly at the feat. “In fact, if what you say is true, it will literally swallow up the house. Digest it. Convert it into devilgrass.”

“Cynodon dactylon. What I say is true. How much elementary physics is involved in that trick?”

“But that’s terrible,” protested Gootes. He regarded a bowl of algae as if about to make it disappear. Mentally I agreed; one of the greatest potential moneymakers of the age lost and valueless.

“Yes,” she agreed, “it is terrible. Terrible as the starvation in a hive when the apiarist takes out the winter honey; terrible as the daily business in an abattoir; terrible as the appetite of grown fish at spawning time.”

“Poo. Fate. Kismet. Nature.”

“Ah; you are unconcerned with catastrophes which don’t affect man.”

“Local man,” substituted Gootes. “Los Angeles man. Pithecanthropus moviensis. Stiffs in Constantinople are strictly AP stuff.”

“It seems to me,” I broke in, “that you are both assuming too much. I don’t know of anything that calls for the word catastrophe. I’m sure I’m sorry if the Dinkmans’ house is swallowed up as Gootes suggests, but it hasnt been and I’m sure the possibility is exaggerated. The authorities will do something or the grass will stop growing. I don’t see any point in looking at the blackest side of things.”

Gootes opened his mouth in pretended astonishment. “Wal, I swan. Boy’s a philosopher.”

“You are not particularly concerned, Weener?”

“I don’t know any reason why I should be,” I retorted. “I sold your product in good faith and I am not responsible--”

“Oh, blind, blind. Do you imagine one man can suffer and you not suffer? Is your name Simeon Stylites? Do you think for an instant what happens to any man doesnt happen to everyman? Are you not your brother’s keeper?” She twisted her hands together. “Not responsible! Why, you are responsible for every brutality, execution, meanness and calamity in the world today!”

I had often heard that the borderline between profundity and insanity was thin and inexact and it was now clear on which side she stood. I looked at Gootes to see how he was taking her hysterical outburst, but he had found a batch of empty testtubes which he was building into a perilously swaying structure.

“Of course, of course,” I agreed soothingly, backing away. “Youre quite right.”

She walked the floor as if her awkward body were a burden. “Is the instant response to an obvious truth--platitude even--always a diagnosis of lunacy? I state a thought so old no one knows who first expressed it and a hearer feels bound to choose between offense to himself and contempt for the speaker. Believe me, Weener, I was offering no exclusive indictment: I too am guilty--infinitely culpable. Even if I had devoted my life to pure science--perhaps even more certainly then--patterning myself on a medieval monastic, faithful to vows of poverty and singleness of purpose; even if I had not, for an apparently laudable end, betrayed my efforts to a base greed; even if I had never picked for a moment’s use such an unworthy--do not be insulted again, Weener, unworthiness is a fact, insofar as there are any facts at all--such an unworthy tool as yourself; even if I had never compounded the Metamorphizer; even if I had been a biologist or an astronomer--even then I should be guilty of ruining the Dinkmans and making them homeless, just as you are guilty and the reporter here is guilty and the garbageman is guilty and the pastor in his pulpit is guilty.”

“Guilty,” exclaimed Gootes suddenly, “guilty! What kind of a lousy newspaperman am I? Worrying about guilt and solutions in the face of impending calamity instead of serving it redhot to a palpitating public. Guilty--hell, I ought to be fired. Or anyway shot. Where’s the phone?”

“I manage a minimum of privacy in spite of inquiring reporters and unemployed canvassers. I have no telephone.”

“Hokay. Hole everythings. I return immediate.”

I followed him for I had no desire to be left alone with someone who might prove dangerous. But his long legs took him quickly out of sight before I could catch him, even by running, and so I fell into a more sedate pace. All Miss Francis’ metaphysical talk was beyond me, but what little I could make of it was pure nonsense. Guilty. Why, I had never done anything illegal in my life, unless taking a glass of beer in dry territory be so accounted. All this talk about guilt suggested some sort of inverted delusions of persecution. How sad it was the eccentricity of genius so often turned its possessors into cranks. I was thankful to be of mere normal intelligence.

12. But I wasted no more thought on her, putting the whole episode of the Metamorphizer behind me, for I now had some liquid capital. It was true it didnt amount to much, but it existed, crinkled in my pocket, and I was sure with my experience and native ability I could turn the Daily Intelligencer‘s forty dollars into a much larger sum.

But a resolve to forget the Metamorphizer didnt enable me to escape Mrs Dinkman’s lawn. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard, formulating, rejecting and reshaping plans for my future, I passed a radioshop and from a loudspeaker hung over the door with the evident purpose of inducing suggestible pedestrians to rush in and purchase sets, the latest report of the devilgrass’s advance was blared out at me.

“ ... Station KPAR, The Voice of Edendale, reaching you from a portable transmitter located in the street in front of what was formerly the residence of Mr and Mrs Dinkman. I guess youve all heard the story of how their lawn was allegedly sprinkled with some chemical which made the grass run wild. I don’t know anything about that, but I want to tell you this grass is certainly running wild. It must be fifteen or sixteen feet high--think of that, folks--nearly as high as three men standing on each other’s shoulders. It’s covered the roof halfway to the peak and it’s choking the windows and doorways of the houses on either side. It’s all over the sidewalk--looks like an enormous green woolly rug--no, that’s not quite right--anyway, it’s all over the sidewalk and it would be right out here in the street where I’m talking to you from if the firedepartment wasnt on the job constantly chopping off the creeping ends as they come over the curb. I want to tell you, folks, it’s a frightening sight to see grass--the same kind of grass growing in your backyard or mine--magnified or maybe I mean multiplied a hundred times--or maybe more--and coming at you as if it was an enemy--only the cold steel of the fireman’s ax saving you from it.

“While we’re waiting for some action, folks--well, not exactly that--the grass is giving us plenty of action all right--I’ll try to bring you some impressions of the people in the street. Literally in the street, because the sidewalk is covered with grass. Pardon me, sir--would you like to say a few words to the unseen audience of Station KPAR? Speak right into the microphone, sir. Let’s have your name first. Don’t be bashful. Haha. Gentleman doesnt care to give his name. Well, that’s all right, quite all right. Just what do you think of this phenomenon? How does it impress you? Are you disturbed by the sight of this riot of vegetation? Right into the microphone...”

“Uh ... hello ... well, I guess I havent ... uh anything much to say ... pretty color ... bad stuff, I guess. Gladsnotgrowing myyard...”

“Yes, go right on, sir. Oh ... the gentleman is through. Very interesting and thank you.

“Theyre bringing up a whole crew of weedburners now--going to try and get this thing under control. The men all have tanks of oil or kerosene on their backs. Wait a minute, folks, I want to find out for sure whether it’s oil or kerosene. Mumble. Mumble. Well, folks, I’m sorry, but this gentleman doesnt know exactly what’s in the tanks. Anyway it’s kerosene or oil and there are long hoses with wide nozzles at the end. Something like vacuumcleaners. Well, that’s not quite right. Anyway theyre lighting the nozzles now. Makes a big whoosh. Now I’ll bring the microphone closer and maybe you can catch the noise of the flame. Hear it? That’s quite a roar. I guess old Mr Grass is cooked now.

“Now these boys are advancing in a straight line from the street up over the curb, holding their fiery torches in front of them. The devilgrass is shriveling up. Yessir, it’s shriveling right up--like a gob of tobaccojuice on a hot stove. Theyve burned about two feet of it away already. Nothing left but some smoking stems. Quite a lot of smoking stems--a regular compact mass of them--but all the green stuff has been burned right off. Yes, folks, burned clean off; I wish we had television here so I could show you how that thick pad of stems lies there without a bit of life left in it.

“Now theyre uncovering the sidewalk. I’m following right behind with the microphone--maybe you can hear the roar of the weedburners again. Now I’d like to have you keep in mind the height of this grass. You never saw grass as tall as this unless youve been in the jungle or South America or someplace where grass grows this high. I mean high. Even here at the sidewalk it’s well over a man’s head, seven or eight feet. And this crew is carving right into it, cutting it like steel with an acetylenetorch. Theyre making big holes in it. You hear that hissing? That noise like a steamhose? Well, that’s the grass shriveling. Think of it--grass with so much sap inside it hisses. It’s drying right up in a one-two-three! Now the top part is falling down--toppling forward--coming like a breaking wave. Oops! Hay ... It put out one of the torches by smothering it. Drowned it in grass. Nothing serious--the boy’s got it lit again. Progress is slow here, folks--youve got to realize this stuff’s about ten feet high. Further in it’s anyway sixteen feet. Fighting it’s like battling an octopus with a million arms. The stuff writhes around and grows all the time. It’s terrific. Imagine tangles of barbedwire, hundreds and hundreds of bales or rolls or however barbedwire comes, covering your frontyard and house--only it isnt barbedwire at all, but green, living grass ... Just a minute, folks, I’m having a little trouble with my microphone cable. Nothing serious, you understand--tangled a bit in the grass behind me. Those burnt stems. Stand by for just a minute...”

“This is KPAR, The Voice of Edendale. Due to mechanical difficulties there will be a brief musical interlude until contact is resumed with our portable transmitter bringing you an onthespot account of the unusual grass...”

“Kirk, Quork, krrmp--AR’s portable transmitter. Here I am again, folks, in the street in front of the Dinkman residence--a little out of breath, but none the worse off, ready to resume the blowbyblow story of the fight against the devilgrass. That was a little trouble back there, but it’s all right now. Seems the weedburners hadnt quite finished off the grass in the parkwaystrip between the curb and the sidewalk and after I dragged my microphone cable across it, it sort of--well, it sort of came to life again and tangled up the cable. It’s all right now though. Everything under control. The boys with the weedburners have come back and are going over the parkwaystrip again, just to make sure.

“I want to tell you--this stuff really can grow. It’s amazing, simply amazing. Youve heard of plants growing while you look at them; well, this grows while you don’t look at it. It grows while your back is turned. Just to give you an example: while the boys have been busy a second time with the parkwaystrip, the grass has come back and grown again over all they burned up beyond the sidewalk. And now it’s starting to come back over the concrete. You can actually see it move. The creepers run out in front and crawl ahead like thousands of little green snakes. Imagine seeing grass traveling forward like an army of worms. An army you can’t stop. Because it’s alive. Alive and coming at you. It’s alive. It’s alive. It’s al--”

“This is Station KPAR. We will resume our regular programs immediately following the timesignal. Now we bring you a message from the manufacturers of Chewachoc, the Candy Laxative with the Hole...”

I continued thoughtfully down the street. The Daily Intelligencer was spread on a newsstand, a smudgy black bannerhead fouling its pure bosom. CITY COUNCIL MEETS TO END GRASS MENACE.

I trusted so. Quickly. I was tired of Mrs Dinkman’s lawn.

13. “Weener sahib, fate has tied us together.”

I hoped not. I was weary of Gootes and his phony accents.

“On account of your female Burbank, your scientess (scientistess is a twister. Peder Piber et a peg of piggled pebbers) won’t play ball with W R. The chief offered her a fabulous sum--’much beer in little kegs, many dozen hardboiled eggs, and goodies to a fabulous amount’--fabulous for W R, that is--to act as special writer on the grass business. J S Francis, World Renowned Chemist, exclusively in the Intelligencer. You know. Suppress her unfortunate sex. ORIGINATOR OF WILD GRASS TELLS ALL.

“Anyway she didnt grasp her chance. Practically told W R to go to hell. Practically told him to go to hell,” he repeated, evidently torn between reprehension at the sacrilege and admiration of the daring.

Miss Francis plainly had what might be described as talent that way. I debated whether to inform Gootes of my discovery of her craziness and decided against it on the bare possibility it would be unwise to lower the value of my connection with the Metamorphizer’s discoverer. I was soon rewarded for my caution.

“O Weeneru san,” continued Gootes, evidently in an oriental vein traveling westward, “not too hard for you to be picking up few yen. You do not hate fifty potatoes from Editor san yesterday?”

“Forty,” I corrected.

“Forty, fifty--what’s the difference so long as youre healthy?” He produced a card, showed it, tore it in half, waved his hand and exhibited it whole and unharmed. “No kidding, chum; the old man has the bug to make you a special correspondent--on my advice yunderstand--always looking out for my pals.”

Well, why not? The wheel of Fortune had been a long time turning before stopping at the proper spot. I had never had any doubt I’d someday be in a position to prove my writing ability. Now all those who had sneered at me years before--my English teachers and editors who had been too jealous to recognize my existence by anything more courteous than a printed rejection--would have to acknowledge their injustice. And in the meantime all my accumulated experience had been added to enhance my original talent. I’d sold everything that could be sold doortodoor and a man acquires not only an ease with words but a wide knowledge of human nature this way. Certainly I was better equipped all around than many of these highly advertised magazine or newspaper authors.

“Well ... I don’t know if I could spare the time...”

“O K, bigshot. Let me know if the market goes down and I’ll come around and put up more margin.”

“How much will Mr Le ffaçasé--”

“How the hell do I know? More than youre worth--more than I’m getting, because youre a ninetyday wonder, the guy who put the crap on the grass and sent it nuts. Less than he’d have given Minerva-Medusa. Come and get it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

My only previous visits to newspaper offices had been to place advertisements, but I was prepared to find the Daily Intelligencer a veritable hive of activity. Perhaps some part of the big building which housed the paper did hum, but not the floor devoted to the editorial staff. That simply dozed. Gootes led me from the elevator through an enormous room where men and an occasional woman sat indolently before typewriters, stared druggedly into space or flew paper airplanes out of open windows. The only sign of animation I saw as we walked what might well have been a quartermile was one reporter (I judged him such by the undersized hat on the back of his head) who enthusiastically munched a sandwich while perusing a magazine containing photographs of women with uncovered breasts. Even the nipples showed.

Beyond the cityroom was a battery of private offices. I will certainly not conceal the existence of my extreme nervousness as we neared the proximity of the famous editor. I hung back from the groundglass door inscribed in shabby, peeling letters--in distinction to its neighbors, newly and brightly painted--W.R. Le ffaçasé. Gootes, noting my trepidation, put on the brogue of a burlesque Irishman.

“Is it afraid of Himself you are, me boy? Sure, think no more of it. Faith, and wasnt he born Billy Casey; no better than the rest of us for all his mother was a Clancy and related to the Finnegans? He’s written so often about coming from noble Huguenot stock he almost believes it himself, but the Huguenots were dirty Protestants and when his time comes W R’ll send for the priest and take the last sacraments like the true son of the Church he is in his heart. So buck up, me boy, and come in and view the biggest faker in journalism.”

But Gootes’ flippancy reassured me no more than did the bare sunlit office behind the door. I had somehow, perhaps from the movies, expected to see an editor’s desk piled with copypaper while he himself used halfadozen telephones at once, simultaneously making incomprehensible gestures at countless underlings. But Mr Le ffaçasé’s desk was nude except for an enameled snuffbox and a signed photograph of a president whose administration had been subjected daily to the editor’s bitterest jabs. On the walls hung framed originals of the more famous political cartoons of the last quartercentury, but neither telephone nor scrap of manuscript was in evidence.

But who could examine that office with detached scrutiny while William Rufus Le ffaçasé occupied it? Somnolent in a leather armchair, he opened tiny, sunken eyes to regard us with less than interest as we entered. Under a shiny alpaca coat he wore an oldfashioned collarless shirt whose neckband was fastened with a diamond stud. Neither collar nor tie competed with the brilliance of this flashing gem resting in a shaven stubblefold of his draped neck. His face was remarkably long, his upperlip stretching interminably from a mouth looking to have been freshly smeared with vaseline to a nose not unlike a golfclub in shape. From the snuffbox on his desk, which I’d imagined a pretty ornament or receptacle for small objects, he scooped with a flat thumb a conical mound of graybrown dust and this, with a sweeping upward motion, he pushed into a gaping nostril.

“Chief, this is Albert Weener.”

“How do, Mr Weener. Gootes, who the bloody hell is Weener?”

“Why, Chief, he’s the guy who put the stuff on the grass.”

“Oh.” He surveyed me with the attention due a worthy but not particularly valuable specimen. “You bit the dog, ay, Weener?”

Gootes burst into a high, appreciative cackle. Le ffaçasé turned the deathray of his left eye on him. “Youre a syncophant, Gootes,” he stated flatly, “a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthed chickenhearted toadeating arselicking, slobbering syncophant.”

I couldnt see how we were ever to reach the point this way, so I ventured, “I understand in view of the fact that I inoculated Mrs Dinkman’s lawn you want me to contribute--”

“Desires grow smaller as intelligence expands,” growled Le ffaçasé. “I want nothing except to find a few undisturbed moments in which to read the work of the immortal Hobbes.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I understood you wished me to report the progress of the wildly growing grass.”

“Cityeditor’s province,” he declared uninterestedly.

“No such thing on the Intelligencer,” Gootes informed me in a loud whisper. Le ffaçasé, who evidently heard him, glared, reached down and retrieved the telephone from its concealment under the desk and snarled into the mouthpiece, “I hate to interrupt your crapgame with the trivial concerns of this organ men called a newspaper till you got on the payroll. I’m sending you a man who knows something about the crazy grass. Divorce yourself from whatever pornography youre gloating over at the moment to see if we can use him.”

His immediate obliviousness to our presence was so insulting that if Gootes had not made the first move to leave I should have done so myself. I don’t know what vast speculations swept upon him as he hung up the telephone, but I thought he might at least have had the courtesy to nod a dismissal.

“Youre hired, bejesus,” proclaimed Gootes, and of course I was, for there was no doubt a brilliantly successful figure like Le ffaçasé--whatever my opinion of his intemperate language or failure in the niceties of deportment, he was a forceful man--had sized me up in a flash and sensed my ability before I’d written a single line for his paper.

14. The wage offered by the Daily Intelligencer--even assuming, as they undoubtedly did, that the affair of the grass would be over shortly and my service ended--was high enough to warrant my buying a secondhand car. A previous unpleasantness with a financecompany made the transaction difficult, with as little cash as I had on hand, but a phonecall to the paper established my bonafides and I was soon driving out Sunset Boulevard in a tomatocolored roadster, meditating on the longdelayed upsurge of my fortunes.

The street was closed off by a road barrier quite some distance away and tightly parked cars testified to the attraction of the expanding grass. Scorning these idle sightseers, I pushed and shoved my way forward to what had now become the focus of all my interests.

The Dinkmans had lived in a city block, an urban entity. It was no pretentious group of houses, nor was it a repetitive design out of some subdividing contractor’s greedy mind. Moderatesized, mediumpriced, middleclass bungalows; these were the homes of the Dinkmans and their neighbors; a sample from a pattern which varied but was basically the same here and in Oakland, Seattle and St. Louis; in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Cleveland.

But now I looked upon no city scene, no picture built upon the substantial foundation of daddy at the office all day, fixing a leaky faucet of an evening, painting the woodwork during his summer vacation; or mom, after a pleasant afternoon with the girls, unstintedly opening cans for supper and harassedly watching the cleaning woman who came in once a week. An alien presence, a rude fist through the canvas negated the convention that this was a picture of reality. A coneshaped hill rose to a blurred point, marking the burialplace of the Dinkman house. It was a child’s drawing of a coneshaped hill, done in green crayon; too symmetrical, too evenly and heavily green to be a spontaneous product of nature; man’s unimaginative hand was apparent in its composition.

The sides of the cone flowed past the doors and windows of the adjacent houses, blocking them as it had previously blocked the Dinkmans’, but their inhabitants, forewarned, had gone. More than mere desertion was implied in their going; there was an implicit surrender, abandonment to the invader. The base of the cone, accepting capitulation and still aggressive, had reached to the lawns beyond, warning these householders too to be ready for flight; over backfences to dwellings fronting another street, and establishing itself firmly over the concrete pavement before the Dinkmans’ door.

I would be suppressing part of the truth if I did not admit that for the smallest moment some perverted pride made me cherish this hill as my work, my creation. But for me it would not have existed. I had done something notable, I had caused a stir; it was the same kind of sensation, I imagine, which makes criminals boast of their crimes.

I quickly dismissed this morbid thought, but it was succeeded by one almost equally unhealthy, for I was ridden by a sudden wild impulse to touch, feel, walk on, roll in the encroaching grass. I tried to control myself, but no willing of mine could prevent me from going up and letting the long runners slip through my half open hands. It was like receiving some sort of electric shock. Though the blades were soft and tender, the stems communicated to my palms a feeling of surging vitality, implacable life and ineluctable strength. I drew back from the green mass as though I had been doing something venturesome.

For, no matter what botanists or naturalists may tell us to the contrary, we habitually think of plantlife as fixed and stolid, insensate and quiescent. But this abnormal growth was no passive lawn, no sleepy patch of vegetation. As I stood there with fascinated attention, the thing moved and kept on moving; not in one place, but in thousands; not in one direction, but toward all points of the compass. It writhed and twisted in nightmarish unease, expanding, extending, increasing; spreading, spreading, spreading. Its movement, by human standards, was slow, but it was so monstrous to see this great mass of verdure move at all that it appeared to be going with express speed, inexorably enveloping everything in its path. A crack in the roadway disappeared under it, a shrub was swallowed up, a patch of wall vanished.

The eye shifted from whole to detail and back again. The overrun crack was duplicated by an untouched one a few inches away--it too went; the fine tentacles on top of the mound reached upward, shimmering like the air on a hot summer’s day, and near my feet hundreds of runners crept ever closer, the pale stolons shiny and brittle, supporting the ominously bristling green leaves.

I hope Ive not given the impression there was no human activity all this while, that nothing was being done to combat the living glacier. On the contrary, there was tremendous bustle and industry. The weedburning crew was still fighting a rearguard action, gaining momentary successes here and there, driving back the invading tendrils as they wriggled over concrete sidewalk and roadway, only to be defeated as the main mass, piling higher and ever higher, toppled forward on the temporarily redeemed areas. For on this vastly thicker bulk the smoky fingers of flame had no more effect than did the exertions of the scythemen, hacking futilely away at the tough intricacies, or the rattling reapers entangling themselves to become like waterlogged ships.

But greatest hopes were now being pinned on a new weapon. A dozen black and sootylooking tanktrucks had come up and from them, like the arms of a squid, thick hoses lazily uncoiled. Hundreds of gallons of dark crudeoil were being poured upon the grass. At least ten bystanders eagerly explained to any who would listen the purpose and value of this maneuver. Petroleum, deadly enemy of all rooted things, would unquestionably kill the weed. They might as well call off all the other silly efforts, for in a day or two, as soon as the oil soaked into the ground, the roots would die, the monster collapse and wither away. I wanted with all my heart to believe in this hope, but when I compared the feeble brown trickle to the vast green body I was gravely doubtful.

Shaken and thoughtful, I went back to my car and drove homeward, reflecting on the fortuitousness of human actions. Had I not answered Miss Francis’ ad someone else would have been the agent of calamity; had Mrs Dinkman been away from home that day another place than hers, or perhaps no place at all, might have been engulfed.

On the other hand, I might still be searching for a chance to prove my merit to the world. It seemed to me suddenly man was but a helpless creature afterall.

15. It wasnt until I was almost at my own frontdoor I remembered the purpose of my visit, which was not to draw philosophic conclusions, but to order my impressions so the columns of the Daily Intelligencer might benefit by the reactions of one so closely connected with the spread of the devilgrass. I began tentatively putting sentences together and by the time I got to my room and sat down with pencil and paper, I was in a ferment of creative activity.

Now I cannot account for this, but the instant I took the pencil in my fingers all thought of the grass left my mind. No effort to summon back those fine rolling sentences was of the least avail. I slapped my forehead and muttered, “Grass, grass, Bermuda, Cynodon dactylon“ aloud, varying it with such key words as “Dinkman, swallowing up, green hill” and the like, but all I could think of was buying a tire (700 x 16) for the left rear wheel, paying my overdue rent, Gootes’ infuriating buffoonery, the possibilities for a man of my caliber in Florida or New York, and with a couple of thousand dollars a nice mailorder business could be established to bring in a comfortable income...

I left the chair and walked up and down the cramped room until the lodger below rapped spitefully on his ceiling. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. I came back and inspected my teeth in the mirror. Then I resumed my seat and wrote, “The Grass--” After a moment I crossed this out and substituted, “Today, the grass--”