The Disappearance

by Philip Wylie

  The city they had left had been buffeted by another hurricane in October. But there was no one there, or no one legally there, to set the trees upright again, repair the fallen wires, mend the smashed bridges, clear the streets and replace the shrubbery. The windows that had been smashed in thousands remained toothy. The roads to Miami were impassable and nobody wanted to go there, for the reason of dread although the plague had departed with its human company.

  Now, only a few Negro women and children who had evaded deportation lurked in the crumbling metropolis. And occasionally a dugout, poled by gaudy Seminoles, moved into the silent city. These women looked at the stores and the vacant streets, the creepers tenting the residences and snakes coiled in the shade of waste bins and fire hydrants. Often they smiled or even laughed a little, as if at Pyrrhic victory. . . .

  Where a tree had broached the screening on the Gaunts’ porch, a panther found its way and made its residence. It would be a good place to have cubs in the spring and the big cat may have sensed that fact. . . .

  In Minnesota, at night, the aurora played and the wind sent flying in the prismatic gloom ghostly devils of luminous snow. But the women slept, in the cold rooms, two in a bed or three. The carcass of a deer hung outdoors, high and frozen, swinging a little.

  Dreams here, memory, rest from hard work.

  But not hope.

  18

  THE RETREAT OF MEN OF GOOD WILL.

  Gaunt aimed carefully. The fool had showed himself in the bedroom window, knocking out the screen and yelling to the others below. As he aimed, and because it was his nature, Gaunt wondered what it would be like to kill a man. He saw an armload of Paula’s clothes dropped with a lewd guffaw, clothes that had remained through the years on their padded hangars.

  The range wasn’t great and Edwin’s rifle had telescopic sights. He moved the barrel on the big pine stump until the crosshairs fell exactly on the temple of the laughing man. He fired.

  The gun kicked.

  The man sagged over the upstairs window sill, slowly slid out and crashed down.

  Gaunt thought, Now they know! Now, the men raiding his house knew that it had a defender.

  An armed defender ambushed in the palmettos.

  When he had heard them drive up, Gaunt had left his typewriter. He had taken the gun standing in the corner by the fireplace, loaded and ready ever since they’d burned Jim’s place.

  Jim was still in his office, from habit. There wasn’t any business any more. But he was not here, thank God.

  Gordon was mercifully at school.

  Gaunt looked at his watch. Three-twelve.

  Hot afternoon.

  He moved, keeping out of sight, to a stump some fifty feet away from the place where he had fired.

  They were cursing now. Running from the house like ants from a hole. There were ten or twelve of them and they had come in two delivery trucks. There had been no time to phone for police. And the police, in several recent instances, had joined the raiders, when the odds were heavy or the loot was tempting.

  Gaunt looked cautiously over the second stump. The men had moved back around the car porte where the brick wall sheltered them, dragging the body as they hurried.

  Gaunt began to crawl, keeping his rifle ready. Shooting one sometimes discouraged the rest—drove them off. But these men were not going.

  His feeling of rage was his only feeling—consuming, terrible. In a way, acceptable. Even desirable. He had never felt such an emotion before.

  A fire lane had been bulldozed through the spiky scrub long since. He followed it now, keeping low. It came out on the three acres of his neighbor’s lawn. Along the east end of the grass, on the margin of the Gaunt property, was a low pile of coral rocks, chunks dynamited out to make his neighbor’s swimming pool. Now they served as a rampart. He crawled north, behind it. Presently, he could hear the men arguing. Not many words reached his ears but enough so that he gathered they were debating who should go after “the killer.”

  Gaunt smiled, a smile as mirthless and as steady as a skull’s.

  He chose a barrel-sized chunk of rock with an oak in front of it and woodbine growing thickly upon it. He raised himself, inch by inch. The men were standing in what they presumed to be the shelter of a thick, brick wall which was covered by solanum in full blue flower. They were passing from hand to hand and hand to lips bottles of liquor taken from his house. They had rifles, a tommy gun, and pistols.

  He had a Colt in addition to Edwin’s good gun. And he was sober.

  He slid the barrel of the rifle cautiously in amongst the vine leaves, on top of the great coral stone. He moved his knees until they were firm and comfortable. One of the men peered around the house, south toward the palmettos that Gaunt had left.

  They would take everything they wanted from his house as they, and a hundred other gangs, had robbed a thousand other homes. They would kill anybody they encountered, a child as quickly as a man, in, or near, a house.

  He decided he could shoot two: he aimed at one and re-aimed swiftly, for practice. Two. Not three. And not one. There was no great hurry. They were still drinking.

  Along the edge of lawn behind him was a cord, weather-beaten and gray, that ran from stake to stake. Gaunt examined it. He relinquished his rifle and pulled up one of the stakes. He crawled and pulled another. Then a third. He broke off a long length of the partly rotted twine. He went a little farther south and tied its end to a young poisonwood tree, carefully not touching its leaves or barks.

  The tree, he thought, had come up and grown as tall as a man since the women had vanished.

  He crawled back to his rifle, paying out line.

  He had about twenty-five feet left. It would do.

  Some ways behind his back was the north line of his property; beyond that, a thick pine woods. He set himself again, knees on the same spots on the crushed turf. Men at that distance, two hundred feet, were big targets.

  Who were they? Who were the nearest two, the two his rifle muzzle alternately pointed out? Not hoodlums. Not necessarily. Not delinquent youths. They were anybody.

  All ages, all sorts. Most had once undoubtedly considered themselves respectable. Some might have once had good jobs, responsible positions, property of their own. Not any more. Probably most of them had been married, had children. Not any more.

  Life was cheap. Excitement was hard to find unless you made your own excitement. Rations were thin unless you went out and added to your share by force.

  Life was cheap.

  Gaunt’s aim steadied. The rifle cracked sharply. The hit man made two-thirds of a scream. The second shot went unheard in that horrid, flap-jawed, ear-splitting utterance.

  But the dirty pith helmet worn by the second man jumped into the air and hit the Gaunt lawn and rolled. The front part of his head turned red and slid sideways and gushed clots and blood. He seemed to stand up for a long time.

  The tommy gun chattered.

  But Gaunt had moved north, paying out line. Bullets pinged in the air, threw a green confetti from slit leaves, tore into the grass beyond the rude wall, spat coral fragments.

  The men were all firing now, firing and cursing and kicking each other’s heels as they pushed through the back door. Then they were out of sight, except the two dead men.

  Windows immediately broke as rifle barrels cleared away the glass. Firing from indoors chipped at the big stones.

  Gaunt reached the end of the cord. He jerked it lightly.

  Thirty yards to the south, the poison wood tree quivered as if a crawling man had touched it.

  “There he is!”

  The submachine gun whittled into the coral. The poisonwood lost its leaves.

  Gaunt lay behind the rocks, watching. He allowed the tree to stand still for some time, shook it again, waited through another fusillade, and then pulled up the string slowly so the tree bent a little. He made his taut line fast.

  “Fallen against that bush!” a voice bellowed. “Callen! Doyle! Get around the
end of that wall! Guy’s probably dead!”

  Gaunt waited a long while. Then, far down the wall, he saw Callen, or perhaps Doyle, furtively wriggling forward. He aimed at the man’s head, fired, and missed.

  The man ran.

  Gaunt had shot from an angle north of the house where he could not be seen through the windows. Now, swiftly, he backed into the trees, turned, hurried, turned again and looked, saw no one and walked upright, east, through the pine trees.

  He came out on a road. From the road his house was invisible. He followed it east a block, then south, walked two more blocks, crossed another lawn, and slunk west again, behind a higher, cemented coral wall completing a circuit of his property.

  He knew that he should leave now.

  The men didn’t have, much organization. But they had less sense.

  That was how he had killed three of them.

  They were in his house, afraid to emerge.

  Getting drunk.

  Since killing had not driven them off, there was no way to tell what they would do. But they could not fire the house so long as they depended on it for cover. And they did not know where he was, so they did not know which exit would be safe.

  The knowledge that he had done what he could, what he had planned to do, what he had somewhat prepared to do—the fact that he was unscathed and could get away, seemed unsatisfying. He wanted to stay. He wanted to kill all of them.

  Why?

  It was his house.

  His house.

  Driven from it, bereft of it, watching from a hiding place, like Gordon and Jim while their home burned, was, very simply, a thing some hitherto unknown, inner part of him refused to tolerate. He was not a deputy. He could have been. Duty did not hold him.

  It was, rather, outrage.

  From behind the wall, he peered at houses and bungalows below his place; they were identifiable as white walls seen through trees and as splashes of tile roof seen over bushes.

  Nobody emerged from them. These smaller houses were less liable to attack. But everyone in the neighborhood might be away. More likely, men and boys were cringing in their rooms, listening to the shots and the cries, quaking, impotent.

  Gaunt was not very nervous. His hands were cold but steady. His heart was beating hard from hurrying down the street; soon it quieted. He found a place where the palmettos were higher than the wall, and went back into his own property. He threaded his way amongst the clumps, crawling on old pine needles, bare sand, ashes from brush fires, and sooty ledges of the hard, sharp spongelike rock.

  In the thickest part of this area, a spot marked by a new, young pine, he had cached another rifle and shells. He made his way slowly, careful not to agitate the palmetto fronds. He found a green hole where he could look through, not over, the tangle.

  He heard, dimly, the loud talk in his house. Presently he saw a man slide from his upstairs windows onto the flat roof.

  He used a crotch in the little pine for a gun rest. There was no sense in taking chances on his own, unbraced aim. He was not a good shot.

  The man began moving forward, crouched, peering, his rifle ready.

  Gaunt fixed the cross hairs on a point midway between the shoulders. He squeezed the trigger until the gun cracked and kicked. The man rolled off the roof.

  Gaunt moved a hundred yards. Bullets sought him at random. Uselessly.

  But now, they again knew approximately where he was.

  A truck started, rolled along his driveway. Gaunt fired at it without effect and moved again. The other truck remained. A half hour passed. Flies and mosquitoes found Gaunt.

  He brushed the flies away, slapped at the mosquitoes as quietly as he could. A little of the rage in him was distracted by the tormenting insects.

  The truck returned, accompanied by two more. Gaunt heard a third vehicle stop on the road south and east of the palmettos. Reinforcements. They had enough esprit de corps for that. Enough to be more furious than afraid, enough to want to pay him back for their losses.

  The men in Gaunt’s house called, jeered, whistled.

  His fingers were sticky with his own blood from the hundreds of fat mosquitoes he had crushed. His trousers were stained where he had kept wiping his hands. He picked up the two rifles reluctantly: he could no longer bear the insects.

  He crawled again to the wall and found a covering cabbage palm. He went over.

  His house was about three hundred yards away.

  He heard another car approach along the overgrown street between his place and the ruins of Jim’s. The car turned into his drive. Shots came from the house and from the parking yard where the trucks stood. The car backed furiously, raced its rear wheels and went away. He heard it again, moving down a distant road; then it was silent.

  More time passed.

  Suddenly the rocks spattered in front of him, near his head, and the sound of a rifle followed the sting of fragments. Gaunt dropped. There were now men behind him, over toward Teddy Barker’s. Men, probably, all around the huge square of palmetto and hurricane-broken pine. They would close in.

  A second shot did not immediately follow because, by dropping, Gaunt had put himself out of sight behind a clump of weeds. He moved a few yards and lay still: moving made the weeds bob.

  But now they had a good idea of his position.

  Two men began firing from the ragged shrubbery to the south. Bullets came from the west. Men in the house took up the fire from the corners of windows.

  Gaunt did not fire back. To do so would merely hurry the instant when they would hit him.

  He rolled on his back, pressed against the wall.

  There were white clouds in the sky, white clouds with dark undersides, evenly spaced and very nearly of a size. Caribbean clouds; against them, a curled frond of cabbage palm and the limb of a pine. Here, soon, he would die.

  His eyes were speculative. He no longer seemed to mind the haze of mosquitoes around his face, no longer even noticed it. His mouth was smiling. For a few minutes, minutes punctuated by the slap of bullets against the wall, by the downdrift of pine needles and the fall of twigs, he wondered what they would take from the house. Paula’s clothes. The “new” money; Gaunt had a few hundred in his desk. The food and the liquor, of course. Maybe a chair or two because his chairs were comfortable and expensive. Some of his clothes because they were good clothes. Fire would destroy everything else.

  And he would be dead.

  This was the end of the successful philosopher.

  Whose philosophy had in no way coped with the events of his life, or encompassed them, or interpreted them. Whose life had been spent in reflection and in learning and in writing what he had understood of what he had learned. A man of intelligence, whose last adventure, and most satisfactory in some bizarre fashion, had been the killing of other men.

  Why had it satisfied him?

  He looked steadily at the clouds and the blue areas between and the answer to his question was as plain as it was primitive. His life had been devoted to thought. He had rarely expressed feelings until he had first considered them. He had not yielded to the push of instinct until he had first defined and clarified impulse and intent, in his mind.

  But, at the last, because of what he had felt, and without reason—indeed, with an utter lack of sanity—he had remained in a place where death would overtake him, in order to shoot strangers.

  He had acted, that one time, from primordial feelings in so doing he had experienced a primordial satisfaction. It was as if, all his life, he had somewhere doubted that he was truly a man and as if, now that he was going to die, he could do so with the knowledge that in the ultimate crisis he was a man like other men.

  He could hear, presently, a clumsy, drunken approach through the palmettos. He did not dare rise to fire again: the men on his side of the wall would see him and shoot. A snapping of dead sticks and a rustle of foliage became grunts and mutters.

  Gaunt took the Colt from his pocket. If one of them peered over the wall, he might get
one more of them. Soon there was silence again. A long silence. He wondered about it.

  Wondered, and caught sight of what he thought for an instant was a bird. But the

  “bird” fell within a foot or two of where he lay, spitting fire. He grabbed the wrapped sticks of dynamite and threw them with their burning fuse, back over the wall.

  There was a blast. Men yelled and cursed. The wall itself cracked. Mortar sifted on Gaunt. From the south came a series of shots and more yells. He heard men running.

  Then a voice: “Dad! Over this way!”

  He lay there. His skin cooled, pimpled. He tried to shout and could not.

  “Dad! We’re covering you! If you’re okay, streak toward Barker’s. Cut through the mangoes!” The voice was loud, clear, unmistakable.

  Gathering his weapons, Gaunt ran.

  As he rounded the bungalow he came upon Teddy Barker and his son, Edwin.

  Both held tommy guns. The instant they saw him, they began to run and he ran with them. They leaped into a battered car. Edwin started the engine. He cut west on the coral road, shot past the Wests’ place and the row of houses beyond it, turned onto Ponce De Leon Boulevard and turned again, on Sunset.

  There was no immediate pursuit.

  Below South Miami, on the Dixie Highway, a tire blew out.

  Edwin stopped the car with a grim-lipped skill. “Come on!” he yelled.

  The three men, carrying their encumbering weapons, hurried from the deserted road in amongst an untrimmed wilderness of hibiscus. Behind it was a house. In what had been a lawn and was now waist-high weeds stood a faded sign: “R. Baxter. Hibiscery.”

  Gaunt remembered the nurseryman.

  Huge, hybrid blossoms glowed everywhere in a thicket of shrubs head high, house high. Red, orange, buff, white, yellow, pink, every combination of those colors, every shade between.