by Jack Finney
Then, moving along over the almost deserted highway, I began to feel a return of some sort of ordered thinking, or at least the illusion of it. Successful rapid flight, the piling up of distance, becomes in itself a calming thing, an antidote for fear, and I turned to Becky in the back seat beside me, smiling, my mouth opening to speak. Then I saw she was asleep, her face pale and drained in the light from a passing car, and the fright roared up in me again, worse than ever, bursting in my brain in a silent explosion of pure panic.
I was shaking Jack's shoulder, shouting at him to stop, then we were bouncing off the dark road onto the narrow dirt-and-gravel shoulder. Jack's hand brake rasped, then, leaning far across Theodora, he brought his fist down on the glove-compartment button, it flew open, he fumbled inside it, then scrambled out of the car, his face wild and questioning. I was leaning past him, yanking his keys from the dashboard, then we were running toward the back of the car. But Jack ran on, down the narrow dirt shoulder, and I had my mouth open to yell at him, when he dropped to one knee, and I knew what he was doing.
Jack once had the back of his car smashed in while he was changing a tyre, and now it's second nature with him, when he stops off the road, to set out a flare. It sputtered in his hand, now, then flared into smoky pink-red flame, and as Jack raised it high to jam the spike into the ground, I shoved a key into the lock of his trunk, twisting it frantically.
Then Jack had the keys, yanking them from the lock. He found the right one, inserted it, turned, then heaved up the lid of the trunk. And there they lay, in the advancing, retreating waves of flickering red light: two enormous pods already burst open in one or two places, and I reached in with both hands, and tumbled them out onto the dirt. They were as weightless as children's balloons, harsh and dry on my palms and fingers. At the feel of them on my skin, I lost my mind completely, and then I was trampling them, smashing and crushing them under my plunging feet and legs, not even knowing that I was uttering a sort of hoarse, meaningless cry – "Unhh! Unhh! Unhh!" – of fright, animal disgust, and rage. The wind had the flare, twisting the flame till it sputtered and choked, and on the high cutaway embankment beside me, I saw a giant shadow – mine – squirming and dancing in a wild, flickering, insane caper, the whole nightmare scene bathed in a mad light the colour of froth from a wound, and I think I came close to losing my mind.
Jack was yanking hard on my arm, dragging me away, and we turned to the trunk again. Jack pulled out the red-painted, spare can of gasoline he carried. He got the top off, and there at the side of the road, in the pink washes of smoky light, he drenched those two great weightless masses, and they dissolved into a mushy pulp of nothingness. Then I had the flare, wrenching it from the ground, and, running back, I hurled it into the soupy mass lying there in the dirt and gravel.
Pulling away fast, the car bumping onto the road again, I looked back, and the flames suddenly shot high, five or six feet; orange flames in a pink wash of light, the thick, greasy smoke twisting and rolling away in the heat waves. Watching, as Jack shifted into second, and then into high, I saw the flames drop quickly and subside into a score of inch-high, blue-and-red flickering tongues, the smoke blood-pink once again. Suddenly they went out, or were lost to view over a small rise of ground, I never knew which.
And now I didn't even try to talk or think; none of us did; we were drained of thought, feeling, and emotion. I just sat, holding Becky's hand, steering the car with my eyes, around the curves, up and down the hills, piling up distance, Becky silent and bolt upright beside me.
An hour or so later, the green neon Vacancy sign looking cold and unfriendly, we stopped at a motel, the Rancho Something-or-other. Jack got out, and as I opened my door, Becky leaned toward me and whispered, "Don't get me a room alone, Miles; I'm too scared. I just couldn't stay by myself tonight; I couldn't. Miles, please; I'm so scared." I nodded – there was simply nothing else to do – and got out. We awakened the proprietor, a perpetually tired and irritated middle-aged woman in slippers and robe, who had long since given up wondering about the people who woke her at any and all hours of the night. With no more than half a dozen words, we got two double rooms, paid for them, were given keys, and we signed the registration cards. Without consciously thinking about it, I signed a false name, and then felt ashamed; then I noticed Jack doing the same thing, and realized why we had. It was idiotic, of course, but it seemed terribly important just then to make ourselves anonymous, and crawl into a hole and out of sight, no one in the world knowing where we were.
In the tumbled mound of clothes in the back seat, Jack found pyjamas, but I didn't, and borrowed a pair of his; each of the girls found nightgowns. I unlocked the door of our room, ushered Becky in first, then stepped in after her. I'd asked for twin beds, but there stood a double bed, and when I made a sound of annoyance, and turned back to the door, Becky stopped me, a hand on my arm. "Leave it this way, Miles, please. I'm just too scared; I haven't been this frightened since I was a little girl. Oh, Miles, I need you, don't leave me!"
We were asleep in less than five minutes, I suppose. I lay, not touching Becky, except for an arm around her waist, and she had both hands clasped over mine, holding it tight, like a child. And we slept, simply slept, for the rest of the night. We were tired; I'd had no sleep at all since three o'clock of the night before. Anyway, there's a time and place for everything, and while this may have been the place, it wasn't the time for a million reasons. We slept.
If I dreamed, no traces remained in my memory; I simply left the world and life for complete exhausted oblivion, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I might have slept on till noon, I think, but around eight-thirty, quarter to nine, I turned over, bumped into someone, and heard her sigh. My eyes flashed open as Becky, still asleep, turned to snuggle close to me.
It was too much. Wonderfully warm, flushed with sleep, the soft column of her breath pressing my cheek, she lay full length beside me, and I could no more have stopped gathering her into my arms than stop breathing. For a long moment it was wonderful, the gorgeous warm length of her pressed against me; and my mind not thinking at all, there was room only for feeling and emotion. Then I knew what was going to happen; and knew that I had only two or three seconds of independent thought and action left to me. Something like this had happened to me before, and I'd suddenly found myself married one day. And not too long afterward I'd found myself standing in a divorce court. It seemed to me that I was turning into some sort of puppet who had no control over what was happening to him. It wasn't easy, to coin a vast understatement, but I turned away, slipped out of the edge of the covers, and stood on the floor.
Then I looked down at Becky. Her eyes closed, those long lashes on her cheeks, one thin shoulder-strap slipped down over her arm, she lay there looking like a schoolboy's daydream; and knowing that all I had to do to get back into bed with her was simply to do it, I had to swing my head away while I still could. Then I grabbed up my clothes, and walked to the bathroom to shower and dress.
Fifteen minutes later I walked on tiptoe past the end of the bed, toward the door. But when I glanced at Becky, her eyes were open. She smiled at me mockingly. "What's the matter?" she said. "Noble?"
I shook my head – "Senile" – and walked out.
Jack was outside, wandering the paved motel court, smoking, and I walked over, we spoke, then stood looking around at the morning. After a few moments, when our eyes met, I said, "Well? What now? Where to?"
Jack looked at me, his face tired and drawn; then one shoulder lifted in a little shrug. "Home," he said.
I just stared at him.
"Yeah, that's right," he said irritably. "Where did you think we were going?" I was frowning, angry, my mouth opening to argue with him; but I didn't. After a moment, I closed my mouth, and Jack smiled a little, nodding as though I'd said something he agreed with. "Sure," he said, "you know it as well as I do." He grinned tiredly. "Did you think you were going to change your name, grow a beard, and go off somewhere to s
tart life anew?"
Then I smiled a little too. When Jack put it into words, anything but going back home to Santa Mira was unreal, without force or conviction. It was morning now, the air bright with sun, I'd had half a night's sleep, and my brain was washed clear of horror again. The fear was there still, active and real, but I was able to think without panic. We'd had our running away, and it had done us good; me, anyway. But we belonged in Santa Mira, not some vague, unknown, and mythical new place. And now it was time to go home, to the place we belonged, and which belonged to us. There really wasn't anything else to do but go back and fight against whatever was happening, as best we could, and however we could. Jack knew that, and now so did I.
A moment later, Theodora came out, and walked toward us. As she got nearer, her eyes on Jack's face, she began to frown; then, stopping before him, she simply looked at him questioningly. Jack nodded. "Yeah," he said uneasily. "Honey, Miles and I feel – " He stopped as Theodora slowly nodded her head.
"Never mind," she said tiredly. "If you're going back, you're going back; it doesn't matter why. And where you go, I go." She shrugged. Turning to me, she managed a wan smile. " 'Morning, Miles."
When Becky came out, her nightgown and my pyjamas rolled into a bundle under her arm, her face was anxious and intent, full of what she had to say. "Miles" – she stopped in front of us – "I've got to go back. It's all real, it really is happening, and my father – " She stopped talking as I nodded.
"We're all going back," I said gently, taking her elbow, leading her toward the car, Jack and Theodora walking along with us. "Only first, for lord's sakes, let's go get us some breakfast."
At two minutes after eleven that morning, Jack shifted into second and began to curse, as we turned off the highway onto the Santa Mira road, and the last few miles to home. We were charged with a terrible urgency to get there, now – to move, to act – but this road was a hopeless dusty mess of great twisted ruts, sharp-edged little chuckholes, and frequent wider, deeper holes that could break an axle if you did more than slowly ease your car into and out of them again. "The one road into Santa Mira," Jack said angrily, "and they let it fall apart." He pulled hard on the wheel to bring us out of a rut and avoid a miniature gully just ahead. "Typical town-council stupidity," he burst out. "They let this one go to pieces because the new state road was coming through town, then change their minds, and veto the new road. Miles, you read about that?" I said no, and Jack said, "Yeah, in the Tribune. The council's against the highway now; it would spoil the quiet residential quality of the town, they say," Jack said bitterly. "And now surveying's stopped, and looks like they'll re-route the new highway. Leaving us with one practically impassable road, and with the winter rains coming on, there's no point fixing it now." The rear bumper guards scraped dirt, as the back wheels lurched out of a hole, and Jack cursed and complained steadily until eleven-thirty, when we passed the black-and-white Santa Mira City Limits sign, population 3,890.
Chapter twelve
I don't know how many people still live in the towns they were born in, these days. But I did, and it's inexpressibly sad to see that place die; far worse than the death of a friend, because you have other friends to turn to. We did a great deal, and a lot of things happened, in the hour and fifty-five minutes that followed; and in every minute of it my sense of loss deepened and my sense of shock grew at what we saw, and I knew that something very dear to me was irretrievably lost. Moving along an outlying street, now, I had my first actual feeling of the terrible change in Santa Mira, and I remembered something a friend had told me about the war, the fighting in Italy. They would come, sometimes, into a town supposedly free of Germans, the population supposedly friendly. But they'd enter with rifles at the ready, just the same, glancing around, up, and back, with every cautious step. And they saw every window, door, alleyway, and face, he'd told me, as something to fear. Now, home again in the town I was born in – I'd delivered papers on this very street – I knew how he'd felt entering those Italian villages; I was afraid of what I might see and find here.
Jack said, "I'd like to run up to our place for a few minutes, Miles; Teddy and I need some clothes."
I didn't want to go with them; I was sick with the thoughts and feelings moving through me, and I knew I had to see this town, to look at it up close, hoping to be able to tell myself that it was still the way it always had been. I had no Saturday office hours to worry about, so I said, "Let us out, then, Jack, and we'll walk. I feel like it, if Becky doesn't mind, and we'll meet you at my place."
So Jack let us out on Etta Street, south of Main; maybe a ten-minute walk from my house. Etta is a quiet residential street, like most of the others in Santa Mira, and as the sound of Jack's car died, Becky and I walked along toward Main, and there wasn't a soul in sight, and hardly a sound but our shoes on the walk; it should have seemed peaceful.
"Miles, what's wrong with you?" Becky said irritably, and I stared at her. She smiled a little, then, but there was still a little edge of irritation in her voice. "Don't you know I'm awfully close to being in love with you; can't you tell?" She didn't wait for an answer; she just looked at me as though I were simple-minded, and added, "And you'd be with me, if you'd just relax and let go." She put a hand on my arm. "Miles, what's the matter?"
"Well," I said, "I hadn't wanted to tell you this, but there's a curse on my family; we Bennells are doomed to walk alone. I was the first in generations to try marriage, and you know what happened. If I tried again, I'd turn into an owl, and so would anyone who tried with me. I don't mind for myself, but I wouldn't want you to be an owl."
She didn't answer for a few steps, then she said, "Who are you afraid for, you or me?"
"Both." I shrugged. "I wouldn't want either of us to get on a first-name basis at our neighbourhood divorce court."
She smiled. "And you think that would happen to us?"
"My record's perfect so far. I might be the type who makes it a habit. How can I tell?"
"I don't know. I don't know how you can tell; your logic is flawless. Miles, I'd better move home."
"I'd tie you down first," I said. "You're not moving anywhere. But from now on, we won't even shake hands" – I grinned at her maliciously – "wonderful as it was sleeping with you."
"Go to hell," she said, and grinned.
We walked on, then, not talking about anything important, for half a dozen blocks, and I looked around me at Etta Street. I'd driven the streets of Santa Mira every day; I'd been in this very block not a week before. And everything I was seeing now had been here to see then, except that you don't really see the familiar until it's thrust on you. You don't actually look, you don't notice, until there's a reason to do so. But now there was a reason, and I looked around me, really seeing the street and the houses along it, trying to soak up every impression they could give me.
I couldn't possibly describe any specific way in which anything I saw seemed different; yet it did, in a way words can't explain. But if I were an artist, painting the way Etta Street seemed to me, walking along now with Becky, I think I'd distort the windows of the houses we passed. I'd show them with half-drawn shades, the bottom edge of each shade curving downward, so that the windows looked like heavy-lidded, watchful eyes, quietly and terribly aware of us as we passed through that silent street. I'd show the porch rails and stair rails hugging the houses like protective arms, sullenly guarding them against our curiosity. I'd paint the houses themselves as huddled and crouching, alien and withdrawn, resentful, evil, and full of icy malice against the two figures walking along the street between them. And somehow I'd depict the very trees and lawns, the street and sky above us, as dark – though it was actually clear and sunny – and give the picture a brooding, silent, fearful quality. And I think I'd make every colour just a shade off-key.
I don't know if that would convey what I felt, but – something was wrong, and I knew it. And then I knew that Becky did, too.
"Miles," she said in a cautious, lowered tone, "am I i
magining it, or does this street look – dead?"
I shook my head. "No. In seven blocks we haven't passed a single house with as much as the trim being repainted; not a roof, porch, or even a cracked window being repaired; not a tree, shrub, or a blade of grass being planted, or even trimmed. Nothing's happening, Becky, nobody's doing anything. And they haven't for days, maybe weeks."
It was true; we walked three more blocks, to Main, and saw not a sign of change. We might have been on a finished stage set, completed to the last nail and final stroke of a brush. Yet you can't walk ten blocks on an ordinary street inhabited by human beings without seeing evidences of say, a garage being built, a new cement sidewalk being laid, a yard being spaded, a picture window being installed – at least some little signs of the endless urge to change and improve that marks the human race.
We turned onto Main, and while there were people on the sidewalks, and cars angled in at the parking meters, somehow the street seemed surprisingly empty and inactive. Except for the occasional slam of a car door, or the sound of a voice, the street was very nearly silent for as much as half a block at a time; the way it is late at night, with the town asleep.
A great deal of what we saw then, I'd seen before, driving along Main on my way to house calls; but I hadn't really noticed, hadn't really looked at this street I'd been seeing all my life. But I did now, and I suddenly remembered the empty store I'd seen near my office. Because now, in the first few blocks – our footsteps plainly audible on the walk – we passed three more empty stores. The windows had been whitened, and through them, dimly, we could see the interiors littered and uncleaned, and they looked as though they'd been empty for some time now. We passed under the neon Pastime Bar and Grill sign, and the letters st, in Pastime, had gone out. The windows were fly-specked, the crepe-paper decoration and cardboard liquor signs badly sun-faded; these windows hadn't been touched for days. There was only one customer, sitting motionless at the bar – the doors were open, and we glanced in as we passed – and neither the radio nor television was on; the place was silent.