"So, a few records, diaries. What are they to you?" There was silence, then he laughed. "The money! He took all his money out of the bank, didn't he."
"Don't be ridiculous. I want records, that's all. There's a complete ham radio, complete. Dr. Westfall was an electronics engineer as well as a teacher. No one could begin to guess how much equipment he hid before he was killed."
Carla ran her hand over the box, felt behind it. More boxes.
"Yeah, yeah. I read the reports, too. All the more reason to keep the search nearby. For a year before the end a close watch was kept on the house. They had to walk to wherever they hid the stuff. And I can just say again that there's no cave around here. It fell in."
"I hope so," Madam Trudeau said.
Someone knocked on the door, and Madam Trudeau called, "Come in."
"Yes, what is it? Speak up, girl."
"It is my duty to report, Madam, that Carla did not administer the full punishment ordered by you."
Carla's fists clenched hard. Helga.
"Explain," Madam Trudeau said sharply.
"She only struck Lisa nine times, Madam. The last time she hit the chair."
"I see. Return to your room."
The man laughed when the girl closed the door once more. "Carla is the golden one, Trudeau? The one who wears a single black band?"
"The one you manhandled earlier, yes."
"Insubordination in the ranks, Trudeau? Tut, tut. And your reports all state that you never have any rebellion. Never."
Very slowly Madam Trudeau said, "I have never had a student who didn't abandon any thoughts of rebellion under my guidance. Carla will be obedient. And one day she will be an excellent Teacher. I know the signs."
Carla stood before the Teacher with her head bowed and her hands clasped together. Madam Trudeau walked around her without touching her, then sat down and said, "You will whip Lisa every day for a week, beginning tomorrow."
Carla didn't reply.
"Don't stand mute before me, Carla. Signify your obedience immediately."
"I . . .I can't, Madam."
"Carla, any day that you do not whip Lisa, I will. And I will also whip you double her allotment. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Madam."
"You will inform Lisa that she is to be whipped every day, by one or the other of us. Immediately."
"Madam, please . . ."
"You speak out of turn, Carla!"
"I, Madam, please don't do this. Don't make me do this. She is too weak . . ."
"She will beg you to do it, won't she, Carla. Beg you with tears flowing to be the one, not me. And you will feel the excitement and the hate and every day you will feel it grow strong. You will want to hurt her, want to see blood spot her bare back. And your hate will grow until you won't be able to look at her without being blinded by your own hatred. You see, I know, Carla. I know all of it."
Carla stared at her in horror. "I won't do it. I won't."
"I will."
They were old and full of hatred for the shiny young faces, the bright hair, the straight backs and strong legs and arms. They said: let us remake them in our image and they did.
Carla repeated Madam Trudeau's words to the girls gathered in the two sleeping rooms on the third floor. Lisa swayed and was supported by Ruthie. Helga smiled.
That evening Ruthie tried to run away and was caught by two of the blue-clad Males. The girls were lined up and watched as Ruthie was stoned. They buried her without a service on the hill where she had been caught.
After dark, lying on the cot open-eyed, tense, Carla heard Lisa's whisper close to her ear. "I don't care if you hit me, Carla. It won't hurt like it does when she hits me."
"Go to bed, Lisa. Go to sleep."
"I can't sleep. I keep seeing Ruthie. I should have gone with her. I wanted to, but she wouldn't let me. She was afraid there would be Males on the hill watching. She said if she didn't get caught, then I should try to follow her at night." The child's voice was flat, as if shock had dulled her sensibilities.
Carla kept seeing Ruthie too. Over and over she repeated to herself: I should have tried it. I'm cleverer than she was. I might have escaped. I should have been the one. She knew it was too late now. They would be watching too closely.
An eternity later she crept from her bed and dressed quietly. Soundlessly she gathered her own belongings, and then collected the notebooks of the other girls, and the pens, and she left the room. There were dim lights on throughout the house as she made her way silently down stairs and through corridors. She left a pen by one of the outside doors, and very cautiously made her way back to the tiny space between the floors. She slid the door open and deposited everything else she carried inside the cave. She tried to get to the kitchen for food, but stopped when she saw one of the Officers of Law. She returned soundlessly to the attic rooms and tiptoed among the beds to Lisa's cot. She placed one hand over the girl's mouth and shook her awake with the other.
Lisa bolted upright, terrified, her body stiffened convulsively. With her mouth against the girl's ear Carla whispered, "Don't make a sound. Come on." She half-led, half-carried the girl to the doorway, down the stairs and into the cave and closed the door.
"You can't talk here, either," she whispered. "They can hear." She spread out the extra garments she had collected and they lay down together, her arms tight about the girl's shoulders. "Try to sleep," she whispered. "I don't think they'll find us here. And after they leave, we'll creep out and live in the woods. We'll eat nuts and berries . . ."
The first day they were jubilant at their success and they giggled and muffled the noise with their skirts. They could hear all the orders being issued by Madam Trudeau: guards in all the halls, on the stairs, at the door to the dorm to keep other girls from trying to escape also. They could hear all the interrogations, of the girls, the guards who had not seen the escapees. They heard the mocking voice of the Doctor of Law deriding Madam Trudeau's boasts of absolute control.
The second day Carla tried to steal food for them, and, more important, water. There were blue-clad Males everywhere. She returned empty-handed. During the night Lisa whimpered in her sleep and Carla had to stay awake to quiet the child who was slightly feverish.
"You won't let her get me, will you?" she begged over and over.
The third day Lisa became too quiet. She didn't want Carla to move from her side at all. She held Carla's hand in her hot, dry hand and now and then tried to raise it to her face, but she was too weak now. Carla stroked her forehead.
When the child slept Carla wrote in the notebooks, in the dark, not knowing if she wrote over other words, or on blank pages. She wrote her life story, and then made up other things to say. She wrote her name over and over, and wept because she had no last name. She wrote nonsense words and rhymed them with other nonsense words. She wrote of the sav ages who had laughed at the funeral and she hoped they wouldn't all die over the winter months. She thought that probably they would. She wrote of the golden light through green-black pine trees and of birds' songs and moss underfoot. She wrote of Lisa lying peacefully now at the far end of the cave amidst riches that neither of them could ever have comprehended. When she could no longer write, she drifted in and out of the golden light in the forest, listening to the birds' songs, hearing the raucous laughter that now sounded so beautiful.
Afterword
About the story. We are such a godawful preachy nation, always talking about how much we do for the kids, how much we love them, how we spoil them with excessive permissiveness because we can't bear to hurt them or deny them any of life's little joys. We do Orwell proud in our expertise at doubletalk. We live a double standard in so many areas that most of us just don't have the time to listen to our own words and compare them with our actions. I am not interested in imaginary problems in imaginary times; it seems that I am too much involved in this world to create artificial ones where my own ingenuity can put things right. So I see this story as the culmination of a lot of isola
ted items, some big and documented, some small and private. Chicago was one of them, but only one, and not the most important, just the most publicized. What was most revolting about chicago (it will become a general usage word) was the fact that afterward a majority of over 10 to 1 Americans approved the action taken by the police. Let anyone who disbelieves my story mull over that figure.
Just as in a divorce action the cause given might be the marital equivalent of chicago, but the real reasons are small daily injustices, so the generation gap, I think, has been prodded along with small daily doses of adult irresponsibility, until now there does exist a situation that is explosive.
If you, a well dressed and apparently affluent member of the adult community enter a soda fountain, a hamburger joint, or restaurant, and sit down for service, you'll get it before the group of teen agers who were there first, although you might want only a cup of coffee or a coke and they might order several dollars worth of junk. It is not an economical issue. I've seen a saleslady turn away from a teen aged girl with her purchase in her hand, needing only to be paid for, to wait on a middle aged woman who then took fifteen minutes to make up her mind. I would have been waited on next, if I had allowed it. When I insisted that the girl be helped next, the saleslady became surly and rude. No one can show respect for my advanced age by showering disrespect on another. Okay, so it's pecking order. If it turned out that there was equality in most other areas, they could put up with this sort of thing, but there isn't.
Equality under the law. I joke. I can drive a car with a noisy muffler, and if I am stopped at all, it is only for a reprimand. My son gets a ticket for the same thing—in my car. And in the courts I can have all the legal counsel I can afford, and the state will provide more if I need help, theoretically. A juvenile is at the mercy of a judge who probably is as qualified to understand adolescents as my dear old spinster aunt.
Just as long as the kids accept our standards, we leave them alone, but let them adopt their own standards, different than ours, and there is furor. Haircuts, sandals, mini-skirts (before Jackie and her crowd made them more or less respectable) and so on. Why can't they be like us, is what the school boards are really moaning. Cut their hair, wear decent clothes, drink their gin, smoke their cigarettes, and leave that other stuff alone. We accept teens and booze and beer. There may be a little tiny bit of public outcry about a group of thirteen year olds caught at a beer party, but by the following weekend, it's a dead issue. But if it's pot! My God, call the FBI!
For sale ads feature houses with three or four bedrooms, three baths, two car garages, pools, etc. Ask about the schools: oh, double shift for the present, and the teachers are on strike right now, but we have the best parking lot available for the kids' cars. Is this love?
You see a bunch of businessmen at lunch or dinner, getting louder and louder while an indulgent management smiles. A group of college boys, or high school kids would get thrown out in a minute. The VFW can take over a town, "bomb" citizens from upper floors with bags of god knows what, and the chamber of commerce fights for the privilege of having them again. Kids get the JD treatment for the same sort of provocation.
Sorry, Harlan, I'm going on too much, could go on for pages. But this is the sort of data that sociologists deal with, not writers of fiction. At least not directly. I think this is a demented society, and one of the reasons for the dementia is our everlovin' refusal to see the reality behind our honeyed words. If we were as good as we talk about being, I'd want stock in harps. It's a whole society of Let's Pretenders, and I wish, oh, how much I wish we'd all just stop.
Introduction to
HARRY THE HARE
Easily the most joyous aspect of putting together the Dangerous Visions anthologies is the discovering of new talents. Getting a flamethrower from Kate Wilhelm or Ursula Le Guin is to be expected—they're professionals with extra-special talents. But encountering someone new and unpublished, finding a story that might otherwise never have gotten into print (you'd be surprised how many fine stories by unknowns languish for years and eventually go into the trunk as the writer goes into plumbing or CPAing), is a special thrill. For one thing, it justifies the existence of the editor. Collecting either already-published stories or assembling new stories on a commissioned basis by "big names," is hardly worthy of applause or citation. But if an editor can bring forward one or two "first" writers, he can be said to have earned his share of the action and performed a noble act.
In the field of speculative fiction, helping out the tyros is a dues-paying activity held in only slightly less esteem than that of making money. I know of no other genre in which the established names—from the Asimovian/Bradburyian/Clarkesque upper echelons all the way down to last year's newcomers—break their asses with such regularity and effusiveness, to assist the fledglings. Show me, if you can, another field of free-lance endeavor in which the fastest guns teach the plowboys how to outdraw them. In sf, the prevailing attitude seems to be: "A man can stay on top only as long as he can beat his own best record." There are hungry trolls clambering up our mountain every day, and inexplicably, but nobly, the Kings of the Glass Hill don't stomp them, they extend a helping hand.
In this anthology you will read quite a few new writers. Some have published in other mediums—from critical essays to poetry—and some are seeing their contributions published here as the initial appearance in print. A few—Ed Bryant, Joan Bernott, Ken McCullough, Richard Hill—have gone on to sell widely elsewhere. But the stories here were their first sales. (No, wait a minute, that's not true for Hill. Damon Knight had already bought Richard's first story for ORBIT when I met him and bought "Moth Race." This was his second sale. I want to be scrupulously honest about it.)
Jim Hemesath is a twenty-seven year old writer I met while doing a two-week Visiting Lecturer stint at the 1969 University of Colorado Writers' Workshop in the Rockies. He was one of two writers I bought for this book, out of an enrollment close to two hundred.
James Bartholomew William Hemesath was born 25 April 1944 in New Hampton, Chickasaw County, Iowa. He is ex-Roman Catholic, ex-married and ex-Marine Corps. He attended college at the Universities of Hawaii and Iowa, obtaining a B.A. in history from the latter in 1969. He is Phi Beta Kappa and won the Harcourt, Brace & World Fellowship to the 1969 U. of Colorado Workshop, as well as a Research Assistantship to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, 1969–70.
Apart from "Harry the Hare" and "The Box" (published in Dare, December 1967) he has made money at the usual mundane jobs writers seek out while waiting for the world to discover them: newspaper boy, soda jerk, food service worker in a boys' dormitory, rental housing inspector for the city of Iowa City, assistant foreman on a thinning crew in the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana; and following in the footsteps of such fine writers as John Steinbeck, Clifford Odets and Jack Williamson, Mr. Hemesath has forayed into the nitty and/or gritty working with his hands as an asphalt paver, concrete paver, on a sewer gang, and with a section gang raising track for the Chicago and Northwestern along the Cedar River.
His first contact with the Muse was during his junior year at the University of Iowa, working under Mary Carter, author of A Fortune in Dimes and The Minutes of the Night. In her fiction writing course he was required to hand in a three hundred word scene every day, and later, a short story every day, thereby proving there are other teachers of writing besides your editor who feel most theory is bullshit and the only way you can become a writer is to write. Mr. Hemesath insists I mention that his three favorite stories are Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and "A Boy and His Dog" by your editor. He gave me no option in relating this, stating that if I really wanted to note germinal influences on him, those three needed to be entered for posterity. I found no difficulty in meeting his request. Being linked with Poe and Jackson fixes me for the rest of the week. And maybe into next week, as well.
He concludes his biographical notes with the remark that he hopes one day to write a novel th
at takes place in Iowa.
Of "Harry the Hare" I will only say, it is at once bizarre, funny, alarming and tragic. I suspect it is a story Ray Bradbury might have liked to've written, and one I know he will enjoy. I suspect you will, too.
HARRY THE HARE
James B. Hemesath
Inside the dimly lit movie theater, there was a muffled sound, then one of the swinging doors from the outer lobby opened, and a short, fat man began walking down the aisle toward the stage. It was early in the day, before the show had started. The short, fat man strode the descending length of the aisle, climbed the steps to the stage, and walked up close to the great white rectangle of the movie screen.
"Hello, Bijou . . .I've returned," he said softly, almost reverently. He tentatively poked a finger at the screen, and chuckled. "Nothing but a sheet of perforated plastic? Ridiculous."
"Good afternoon." The voice came from the rear of the theater. "Do you have business here? We're not open yet." The short, fat man had turned at the first words. Now he stared up and back at the rear of the theater. It was too dim back there, but now he could barely see, barely make out, something. A gloved hand rested on the hinged window of the projection booth.
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