Philip Dick - The Man in the High Castle

Later, she sat in a booth at Tasty Charley’s Broiled Hamburgers, listlessly reading the menu. The jukebox played some hillbilly tune; steel guitar and emotion-choked moaning… the air was heavy with grease smoke. And yet, the place was warm and bright, and it cheered her. The presence of the truck drivers at the counter, the waitress, the big Irish fry cook in his white jacket at the register making change.

Seeing her, Charley approached to wait on her himself. Grinning, he drawled, “Missy want tea now?”

“Coffee,” Juliana said, enduring the fry cook’s relentless humor.

“Ah so,” Charley said, nodding.

“And the hot steak sandwich with gravy.”

“Not have bowl rat’s-nest soup? Or maybe goat brains fried in olive oil?” A couple of the truck drivers, turning on their stools, grinned along with the gag, too. And in addition they took pleasure in noticing how attractive she was. Even lacking the fry cook’s kidding, she would have found the truck drivers scrutinizing her. The months of active judo had given her unusual muscle tone; she knew how well she held herself and what it did for her figure.

It all has to do with the shoulder muscles, she thought as she met their gaze. Dancers do it, too. It has nothing to do with size. Send your wives around to the gym and we’ll teach them. And you’ll be so much more content in life.

“Stay away from her,” the fry cook warned the truck drivers with a wink. “She’ll throw you on your can.”

She said to the younger of the truck drivers, “Where are you in from?”

“Missouri,” both men said.

“Are you from the United States?” she asked.

“I am,” the older man said. “Philadelphia. Got three kids there. The oldest is eleven.”

“Listen,” Juliana said. “Is it—easy to get a good job back there?”

The younger truck driver said, “Sure. If you have the right color skin.” He himself had a dark brooding face with curly black hair. His expression had become set and bitter.

“He’s a wop,” the older man said.

“Well,” Juliana said, “didn’t Italy win the war?” She smiled at the young truck driver but he did not smile back. Instead, his somber eyes glowed even more intensely, and suddenly he turned away.

I’m sorry, she thought. But she said nothing. I can’t save you or anybody else from being dark. She thought of Frank. I wonder if he’s dead yet. Said the wrong thing; spoke out of line. No, she thought. Somehow he likes Japs. Maybe he identifies with them because they’re ugly. She had always told Frank that he was ugly. Large pores. Big nose. Her own skin was finely knit, unusually so. Did he fall dead without me? A fink is a finch, a form of bird. And they say birds die.

“Are you going back on the road tonight?” she asked the young Italian truck driver.

“Tomorrow.”

“If you’re not happy in the U.S. why don’t you cross over permanently?” she said. “I’ve been living in the Rockies for a long time and it isn’t so bad. I lived on the Coast, in San Francisco. They have the skin thing there, too.”

Glancing briefly at her as he sat hunched at the counter, the young Italian said, “Lady, it’s bad enough to have to spend one day or one night in a town like this. Live here? Christ—if I could get any other kind of job, and not have to be on the road eating my meals in places like this—” Noticing that the fry cook was red, he ceased speaking and began to drink his coffee.

The older truck driver said to him, “Joe, you’re a snob.”

“You could live in Denver,” Juliana said. “It’s nicer up there.” I know you East Americans, she thought. You like the big time. Dreaming your big schemes. This is just the sticks to you, the Rockies. Nothing has happened here since before the war. Retired old people, farmers, the stupid, slow, poor… and all the smart boys have flocked east to New York, crossed the border legally or illegally. Because, she thought, that’s where the money is, the big industrial money. The expansion. German investment has done a lot… it didn’t take long for them to build the U.S. back up.

The fry cook said in a hoarse angry voice, “Buddy, I’m not a Jew-lover, but I seen some of those Jew refugees fleeing your U.S. in ‘49, and you can have your U.S. If there’s a lot of building back there and a lot of loose easy money it’s because they stole it from those Jews when they kicked them out of New York, that goddam Nazi Nuremberg Law. I lived in Boston when I was a kid, and I got no special use for Jews, but I never thought I’d see that Nazi racial law get passed in the U.S., even if we did lose the war. I’m surprised you aren’t in the U.S. Armed Forces, getting ready to invade some little South American republic as a front for the Germans, so they can push the Japanese back a little bit more—”

Both truck drivers were on their feet, their faces stark. The older man picked up a ketchup bottle from the counter and held it upright by the neck. The fry cook without turning his back to the two men reached behind him until his fingers touched one of his meat forks. He brought the fork out and held it.

Juliana said, “Denver is getting one of those heat-resistant runways so that Lufthansa rockets can land there.”

None of the three men moved or spoke. The other customers sat silently.

Finally the fry cook said, “One flew over around sundown.”

“It wasn’t going to Denver,” Juliana said. “It was going west, to the Coast.”

By degrees, the two truck drivers reseated themselves. The older man mumbled, “I always forget; they’re a little yellow out here.”

The fry cook said. “No Japs killed Jews, in the war or after. No Japs built ovens.”

“Too bad they didn’t,” the older truck driver said. But, picking up his coffee cup, he resumed eating.

Yellow, Juliana thought. Yes, I suppose it’s true. We love the Japs out here.

“Where are you staying?” she asked, speaking to the young truck driver, Joe. “Overnight.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I just got out of the truck to come in here. I don’t like this whole state. Maybe I’ll sleep in the truck.”

“The Honey Bee Motel isn’t too bad,” the fry cook said.

“Okay,” the young truck driver said. “Maybe I’ll stay there. If they don’t mind me being Italian.” He had a definite accent, although he tried to hide it.

Watching him, Juliana thought, it’s idealism that makes him that bitter. Asking too much out of life. Always moving on, restless and griped. I’m the same way; I couldn’t stay on the West Coast and eventually I won’t be able to stand it here. Weren’t the old-timers like that? But, she thought, now the frontier isn’t here; it’s the other planets.

She thought: He and I could sign up for one of those colonizing rocket ships. But the Germans would disbar him because of his skin and me because of my dark hair. Those pale skinny Nordic SS fairies in those training castles in Bavaria. This guy—Joe whatever—hasn’t even got the right expression on his face; he should have that cold but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith. Yes, that’s how they are. They’re not idealists like Joe and me; they’re cynics with utter faith. It’s a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy—that maiming those German psychiatrists do as a poor substitute for psychotherapy.

Their trouble, she decided, is with sex; they did something foul with it back in the ‘thirties, and it has gotten worse. Hitler started it with his—what was she? His sister? Aunt? Niece? And his family was inbred already; his mother and father were cousins. They’re all committing incest, going back to the original sin of lusting for their own mothers. That’s why they, those elite SS fairies, have that angelic simper, that blond babylike innocence; they’re saving themselves for Mama. Or for each other.