The Long Loud Silence

by Wilson Tucker

  “Them devils don't let nobody across. I know a couple of fellas who tried it.” He paused. “You a good shot?”

  “Yes,” Gary answered frankly. “Sharpshooter. Why?”

  “I want to offer you a job — I ain't forgetting what we owe you.”

  Gary grinned across the table at him. “Mr. Hoffman, I told you, you don't owe me a thing. And as for the job — I've never worked on a farm in my life I can't milk a cow.”

  “Wouldn't expect you to — we can take care of that. It'll be hard doing without Lee next summer, but we can take care of that. You would take care of the soldiering.”

  “What?” He stopped eating.

  “Be our lookout, our guard. What do they call them in the army? Sentry. We've had one blamed thief after another around here, day in and day out. They've been robbing us blind, and I can't run the place and keep chasing them too. That would be your job — keeping thieves off the place.”

  “Well… I don't know what to say. I sort of figured on going down south for the winter…”

  “I can't pay you nothing,” Hoffman continued. “Not in money. We ain't got none left and you couldn't spend it anyway. But we can offer you a good home and the best eating in this part of the country; my wife's a fine cook!”

  Gary glanced at the woman and then the two children. “I'd certainly like to, Mr. Hoffman, but—”

  “Please?” Sandy broke in.

  He glanced down the table to find the girl shyly smiling at him, a pleading invitation in her eyes.

  “Do you really want me to stay, Sandy?”

  She nodded eagerly. “Pretty please?”

  “Well…” He scratched his ragged beard, pretending to consider it. Finally his gaze swung back to Hoffman. “Oh well, all right.” And then he added quickly, “Until spring, anyway.”

  “Fine! Believe me, we're glad to hear it — all of us. Now eat up. You've got to put on some weight.”

  “Can I borrow a razor?” Gary asked. “And if you have a pair of scissors handy I'd like to trim off this hair. I haven't been to a barbershop in a long time.”

  Staring at his newly pale image in the yellowed mirror later that morning, he winked at the lathered man in the glass. “Very neat, Corporal Gary.” The image agreed.

  * * *

  Gary studied the terrain about the farm buildings, conscious of the one blind approach to their defenses. Beyond the barn the ground fell away sharply, a rough pasture land that dipped down to a frozen creek nearly three-quarters of a mile away. Anyone approaching from that direction need only keep the barn between himself and the house, to be able to come very near without detection. Gary found baling wire in a machine shed and strung trippers across the slope beyond the barn, fastening a rusty cowbell to the outermost wire. The next snow would hide everything from sight.

  He set up a pattern of watching at night and sleeping during the day, knowing from experience that the most dangerous marauders would approach only under cover of darkness. In his nightly prowling he looked for and expected every trick of the trade that he himself had practiced, knowing there were men out there as smart as he, and as hungry as he had been. Awake at night and sleeping during the day, but still unwilling to miss the day's hot meals, he had himself awakened for each of them. And after dusk he stalked about the deserted land, prying around the buildings, alert for sight or sound of any moving thing. The farmer's family slept soundly, trusting him.

  Gary came into the house one evening just at bedtime, just as Sandy was snapping off the radio. The illumination was slowly dying behind the transparent dial and he watched it fade with startled eyes.

  “That thing works!”

  “What?” Hoffman turned around. “Oh — sure it does. Didn't you know it?” The farmer shrugged. “Ain't worth a dang, though. All the time them silly comics is blabbering, and it's always selling something we can't buy.”

  “But how?” Gary demanded impatiently, indicating the single, flickering kerosene lamp the farmer held in his hand. “Where do you get the electricity for a radio over here?”

  “The windmill — Lee fixed it up for us last winter.”

  “What about the windmill?”

  “The boy fixed it, he was a mighty smart kid — knew his way around with electricity and machinery. He hooked a generator up to the windmill somehow. I don't know how he did it — if it ever goes out of whack, that'll be the end of it. Lee was a good kid. It plays all right as long as the wind holds out. Kinda fades away, sometimes.”

  “A radio!” Gary was fascinated with it. “Well I'll be damned — a radio right here in the house with me and I never knew it worked.” He went over to it, caressed the cabinet with his fingers and let his nails flick the glass of the dial. “I want to play it.”

  “Help yourself,” Hoffman returned. “Kinda keep it down though, will you? The wife's a light sleeper.”

  “What? Oh, sure, sure.” The cabinet felt hot under his hand. “Sure.”

  Hoffman turned away. “Good night.”

  Gary was too entranced with the set to answer. The farmer left, carrying with him the only kerosene lamp and the room was plunged into darkness. Sandy's voice was audible for a few seconds and then the bedroom door slammed, cutting off her words and the last stray gleam of the light.

  Impatiently, Gary flung back the blackout curtains at the windows, letting in the faint light of the clouded moon and reflected snow. He never used a light. The night outside was cold and quiet. He ran back to the radio, sank to his knees before it and excitedly twisted the knob which furnished electric current. The small dial gained life, bringing the imprinted numbers into sharp relief and bringing a hum to the speaker. His burning eagerness to hear stopped his fingers, made him aware of the peculiar thrill the glow and sound had given him. A year, a year and a half ago, this was nothing, but now it was everything. This was next to life itself. This was people somewhere on the other side of the river, healthy people, safe people, talking to each other and continuing their lives. This was civilization, and sanity, and warmth, and food, this was one man on friendly terms with the next. This was what he had lost a long time ago and despaired of ever having again.

  Quickly he snapped the radio off and counted the long seconds, then eagerly turned it on again only to see the light come up, to listen to the growing power of the set. There was a strange tightness in his stomach as he touched a second control knob and moved it a fraction of an inch.

  A girl was singing.

  He found her in the middle of a word, on a syllable that at once brought the entire word into his mind as though he had heard it from the beginning, and that word and the next few cast the image of the entire sentence on his consciousness so that he could not remember where he had come in, could readily imagine that he had heard it all. She was singing a slow song, a sweet and sad song about leaves of brown that tumbled down and somewhere behind her where it shouldn't have been interfering a bell tinkled faintly.

  He frowned at that, annoyed with the bell and knowing it shouldn't be there.

  A bell. He leaped to his feet and dashed for the door, snatching up the automatic shotgun as he sped through it.

  In his haste he forgot the radio, forgot to shut the door after him as he ran across the yard and slammed through the wire gate of the old fence. Running silently, lightly, he was careful to keep the hulking barn between him and the sloping pasture land beyond it. Once in the moon-shadow of the structure he slowed, trotted cautiously alongside the building and came to a full stop just short of the corner. He listened. There was no sound.

  Gary flattened himself against the wall and inched his head past the corner. Down the slope a dark bundle of nothing lay on the ground. As he watched, a slow movement of an arm and hand seemed to detach itself from the shapeless mass, seemed to reach out probing fingers for the wires he had strung there. The dark figure was well past the outer wire which had held the bell.

  And behind him, although he could not hear it, he knew the radio was playing softl
y and a girl was singing to him. All for him. The sound of his shooting would stop her, would end the quiet contentment of the voice and the moment, as the family roused from their beds and rushed into the room. He didn't want the family there, didn't want the interference, didn't want to answer their foolish questions and waste time getting them back into bed again. The girl would be gone.

  There was no sound but the windmill pumping in the clouded night. Below him, the figure had passed another wire.

  Gary backed away from the corner, retreated alongside the barn until he came to a small door. Unlatching it, he went inside and made his way through the gloom to a corner where cast-off machinery was kept. Feeling around on the floor, his fingers touched an iron rod and he picked it up, hefted it, judging its weight and striking power. It would serve. He let himself out and quietly latched the door behind him, careful to avoid a betraying noise. Once more he took up his post at the corner of the barn, concealed in the shadows and impatient with the stranger for taking so much time to climb the slope.

  Damn him, damn him, why didn't he hurry?

  * * *

  Immediately afterward, Gary thought to dispose of the body. To leave the man here for discovery on the morrow would only raise a furore, cause questions, perhaps more of that confounded weeping. The corpse had nothing in his pockets.

  He circled the barn very slowly, peering with feverish eyes across the fields and pasturage, but if the fellow had a companion there was no sight of him. Nothing else moved under the clouded moon. Finally satisfied, he at last returned to where the body lay and stooped to hoist it across his shoulder. Swinging the shotgun in his free hand, he set off in a fast walk down the slope toward the distant creek. The man was heavy and his shoulder tired; twice he had to dump the body into the snow and stop for a short rest. It seemed to Gary that an hour had passed before he reached the frozen creek and threw the body down onto the ice.

  The woman and the two kids would not come this far from the house, not any more, and it would be spring before Hoffman had occasion to come this way.

  Gary turned and ran for the farmhouse.

  Just inside the yard gate he hurled himself to the frozen ground and aimed at the yawning door, seeking movement within. The man's voice was low, soothing. It went on and on without variation. Gary frowned, jumped forward and halted again, listening to the voice. The voice stopped and some instrument struck three tiny notes.

  The notes stirred his memory and he climbed to his feet, swearing softly at himself. The radio was still on. Gary let himself through the door and closed it behind him, eyes darting about the room. There was nothing, no one other than himself. A second male voice came from the speaker.

  The girl was gone.

  9

  GARY ran to the radio and crouched down before it.

  “…while in the west the icy grip of winter caused another tragic accident, this one near Laramie, Wyoming. A heavily loaded troop train running behind schedule was struck from the rear by a speeding freight, and the last four cars demolished. The engineer of the freight, himself hurt, blamed lack of visibility; it was snowing heavily, he said, and he had extreme difficulty seeing the track signals, much less the lights on the rear of the troop train. Police on the scene have not released the casualty figures, and military authorities said the train was en route to the Mississippi frontier, carrying replacements.

  “And that brings us to the next piece of news, happy news for some men in the line and their women waiting at home. Rotation goes on, winter or not, and many weary soldiers can look forward to Christmas at home. An army spokesman said fresh troops are arriving weekly at the Mississippi and Canadian frontiers, releasing those with the longest months of service. Authorities have consistently refused to divulge the number of troops now guarding those frontiers — but, the spokesman reminded me again today, there are more than enough to protect the nation from the few enemy agents known to be roaming around that desolate land. Those agents are welcome to the contaminated states, the hard-eyed soldiers tell me, welcome to the dead and vacant nothing that is east of the river. And when we get ready to take it again, what few remain will run like frightened rabbits.”

  Gary sat down hard, staring at the lighted dial.

  “Only a few months ago, you will remember, the army security office released the details of one such agent who attempted to cross the river under it, at an undisclosed point along the Minnesota shore. He was cut down amid a hail of bullets before he could climb from the water, and the river swallowed his body. A pity, I think, for once we capture one of those fellows we can definitely prove his origin and his nationality to the world.

  “Meanwhile, weak signals continue to trickle in from the Pentagon, proving that some brave Americans are still alive in that underground fortress — quite possibly the only Americans still living east of the Mississippi. A few days ago I was privileged to see some rare photographs obtained by reconnaissance planes flying over parts of Illinois and Kentucky — photographs which showed no living thing in those unfortunate states. No smoke curled upward from chimneys, no children or adults moved about the houses and yards, there was not even a dog to track the smooth expanse of snow. Without a doubt, the only American survivors are those who have secreted themselves in an underground bastion, while the despicable enemy agents patrol the rest.”

  “You're a lying sonofabitch and you know it!” Gary hurled back at the smooth voice.

  “And now, closer to home… Right here in federal court today a former Missouri farmer named Edward Evans won his long-contested case against the government. Evans, who with thousands of others was hastily evacuated from the frontier when the bombs fell, protested that the government did not allow him anything near a fair price for his land. The Evans farm lay entirely within the ten-mile strip now called 'No Man's Land,' and of course he lost it all, not even being allowed to harvest his crops. A federal jury agreed with the distressed farmer, awarding him twenty dollars an acre more than the government offered. Other such suits are expected to follow.

  “Street cars are running again, after a long absence from our streets, and I must say they make a strange, if welcome, sight. Following the ban on pleasure travel due to the critical shortage of oil and gasoline, public busses were next to feel the pinch and their schedules were drastically curtailed. This in turn played havoc with the habits of bus riders and local defense plants reported a serious increase in absenteeism and tardiness. Street cars were the answer, and happily the rails had never been ripped up. Let's welcome back the noisy old trolley and save gasoline.

  “And as for rubber tires! Mister, mention that word around town and you are knee-deep in argument. Akron, Ohio — -if that unfortunate city still stands — will have number one priority when we march across the river once more.

  “An optimistic note in today's news comes from the postal department. By next summer, declares the postmaster general, the cost of mailing a first class letter should be down to about ten cents — perhaps even less if other ways can be found to bolster post-office revenue. There is also reason to believe that smaller cities and towns — as well as rural routes — may again be receiving mail every day instead of every second or third day as they do now. You may expect this before next summer. The loss of books, magazines, advertising and other types of third and fourth class mail plunged the department into the red, of course, and it had been a slow uphill fight coming back. I'm sure that my listeners will be pleased with the prospect of loosening that wartime belt by at least one notch.”

  “Oh, go to hell!” Gary reached out angrily and shut off the radio.

  The suave voice was lying with every other sweet sentence it uttered, lying or spreading propaganda of the most transparent sort. He had seen the army working that line of endeavor too well in Italy to be taken in by it, had seen the effects of smooth talk on newly conquered, vastly bewildered Germans. It seemed all right at the time, seemed the thing to do to a defeated enemy. They had to be re-educated, given refresher c
ourses in democracy, and what better way to do it than feed them propaganda pills sugar-coated with news? And now the United States was receiving the same treatment from the same hands — the twenty-two United States west of the all-important river. Those twenty-two states were under martial law, no question of it. The radio announcer had unconsciously confirmed it by his honeyed words, his phrasing of the news; in a situation such as the present one the army passed on what was broadcast, what was printed.

  He was still alive, still walking around in the contaminated zone, therefore declared the army he was an enemy agent. What could be the reason for spreading that? To cover up their inability to accept him back, to hide their fear of him and others like him? Or was it the foundation for something else to come, the preparatory steps of reconstruction such as the schoolteacher had hinted? Was he branded an enemy agent for the sake of convenience — when the mopping-up process came?

  In the year and a half since awakening in that dirty hotel room he had not met one person who might be such an agent, who might actually have entered the country for war-making purposes. He had seen only countless hundreds of ordinary people fighting to stay alive — to prolong their lives until the day the government came to their rescue. Of course the chimneys didn't smoke, not any more, not during the daylight hours unless you wanted strangers. He had cautioned Hoffman's wife of that folly and she now did her cooking under cover of darkness. And of course there were no more dog tracks on the snow — dogs had vanished long before cannibalism came into the picture. But there were people in and about many of the houses; it might be that they no longer rushed out to stare at an airplane overhead, but they were there even though the photographer chose to ignore them. There were thousands of them still alive in the contaminated zone — waiting for what? Waiting to be “reconstructed"? Was that the real reason in telling the western states they no longer existed?

  Rotation of troops — that was a sweet one! Troops were rotated by the trainload only when several thousand of them were in the line, and why should several thousand be needed when only a handful of “enemy agents” ran free across the river? Did good tax-paying citizens with tight belts swallow that? Had they all lost the ability to think for themselves?