“Well, any man can hide behind a definition. Anyway....”
John Benton wondered afterwards why he did not speak up in defense of his colleague. “I’m a coward,” he told his wife. He paced the room, agitated. “I’m a coward!” he cried. “I can see it now!” And a week later, when the local paper again called him a communist and demanded in a long editorial that he resign from the board, he shook all over. He felt the nameless dread of his youth. And when his fellow trustees called him into conference behind a locked door, he trembled with anxiety and turned to them a face as white as death. They asked for his resignation. They asked if he had anything to say. He looked at them and every one of them, it seemed to him, was a man at ease, plump, secure, certain. He rose to his feet. “Yes,” he said, his voice shaking, “I have something to say. It’s perhaps the last thing I’ll ever say. Yes, I want to say that I fought in the last war. I know a lot of men who fought in the last war. Where are they? Dead—like Harlan and Roscoe and Ainsworth.” He licked his dry lips. He placed hands on a table to steady his shaking frame. “But you didn’t fight in that war. Did you?—did you?—or you? No, you’re Goddamned right you didn’t! But I did. And I was not a coward, either!” His voice was a little wild now. “I was decorated for bravery, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I?” he demanded, with humorless tragic pride. “And I came back and hated war and I spoke against war, and what did you do to me? What did this town do to me? I’ll tell you: it made a street bum out of me. You did! You’re liars if you say you didn’t. A street bum—a drunkard—a fool, because I hated war and spoke against war. And then,” he said, his face awful in its white anguish, “then I favored war, I did, and—and you turned against me again. I couldn’t please you,” he said, with dry choked bitterness. “Just like Jameson couldn’t—nobody can, nobody! Nobody,” he said. “And then—then I preached peace and you liked me and I had friends and I liked to preach peace and I was happy. I had friends. Everyone was my friend: you—and you. Everyone,” he said, proudly. “Everyone. But now—now nobody speaks to me and they call me a communist, and I’m not a communist, but nobody can please you. I can’t, Jameson couldn’t, nobody could.” His voice fell almost to a whisper, anguished and tragic and hopeless. “I fought in that war and I was decorated for bravery and I’ve tried to make everyone like me. But nobody can please men like you! You don’t want war and you don’t want peace and—nobody!” he cried, wildly. His mind darkened and there was something terrible in his eyes now. He advanced a little, his body shaking. “I—you—” he said. The muscles in one cheek twitched. “I fought in that war and I was decorated!” He leaned forward, searching their faces with dark and unreasoning eyes, searching for friendliness and goodwill. “Three nations decorated me for bravery,” he said. He hesitated, groping, lost. Then he smiled and his smile was more chilling than his words. “I—” He stopped, trying to understand. “I’d fight again,” he said, softly, terribly. He laughed, and the trustees rose and backed away from him. “I’d fight again,” he said, softly, terribly, advancing toward them. “Honest!” he declared, clenching his lean hands. The knuckles on his hands were as white as his mouth. “I’d fight again,” he said.