by Jerry Sohl
“It must have been hard for you—all these years—feeling the way you do.”
“Hard?” She smiled wanly. “It wasn’t hard. Not really. It was easy letting him do these things. It would have been harder trying to stop him. I wish now I had had the courage to do it. But then I’m a woman and I was married to him and I cherished the dream that sometime he would see the error of his ways, that some act would restore his rightful place in the community.
“He wasn’t really a bad man. I think he was afraid more than anything else. When we were first married and moved here, we had a mortgage and a few cows and chickens. But we had our pride. We worked from sunup to sundown. And people visited us and we visited them. I had many friends and so did he. He was what you’d call jolly, then. He belonged to farmer organizations, a lodge in town, and even a luncheon club over at Taylorville.
“Then the bombs came. And the conquest. I don’t have to tell you how many friends we had left after he showed which way he was going to go. Now nobody ever stops in here any more. No self-respecting person would ever stop at the Tisdails’. This is off limits. Communist territory.”
“Was it that bad?”
“Worse. You know what kind of people came here? Party members, Communist officials. Even an Enemy officer stopped here once. The model farm, he said it was. The perfect example of occupation loyalty.”
“He was that open about it?”
“From the first. He spied, pried, pressed and informed on everyone, including his best friends. It wasn’t long after the bombs fell that he became a vital cog in the occupation machinery hereabouts. Of course we took our boosters just like everyone else, but we didn’t have to go to the station for them. Oh, no, not the Tisdails. We were on a route of collaborators. The third of every month they’d stop by to give us our vaccine. And taxes? There weren’t any. We could get a travel permit anytime we wanted. We didn’t have to pay for a baby permit—and believe me I thought perhaps that might help Cad see things right—but we were never fortunate enough to have a child. Cad insisted I go to a hospital station to find out why, but I refused to go. Perhaps I should have swallowed my pride. Maybe things would have been different. . .”
She was silent, lost in her own thoughts, which left Emmett standing awkwardly by, not knowing what to do. A dead man on the floor, the man he had killed, and he should be moving on, getting away, yet he didn’t want to leave her just yet, couldn’t just walk out, leaving her alone this way.
How different the Tisdails were from the people he knew! His own parents had never compromised with the Communists. They had lived with it, it’s true, but they had never done anything for them. They complied with the rules because they had to, not because they wanted to.
“I’m only an old woman,” she said finally, turning away from the windows, “an old woman filled with the thoughts of an old woman. I shouldn’t be standing here telling you these things. They mean nothing to you.”
“They do mean something,” he said gently. “They mean that as long as there are women like you there is always a chance some day this country will be free again.”
“Free again?” She smiled at him. “It’s a wonderful thought. But it’s hopeless. I know. I’ve seen them. They’re thorough. They have weapons. And we are all shackled by the booster. We always will be.”
“I’ve heard the gypsies don’t have to have boosters.”
“Maybe they don’t. There are always exceptions to rules.”
“But why wouldn’t they be susceptible?”
She shrugged. “I never thought much about it. I’ve never heard it discussed.”
“They should have succumbed, it seems to me. It can’t be right they’re immune.”
“Perhaps not. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where any gypsy bands are, do you?”
“No. Are you one of them?”
“No. I—I was thinking of joining such a band.”
Mrs. Tisdail gave him an appraising look. “Who are you? And why is it you’re traveling about this way? Don’t you have a travel permit?”
“No, I don’t,” he confided, certain he could trust her now. “Like you, I don’t like life under the Communists. I was on my way to see what I could do about it.”
“Do you think you will get very far? You almost didn’t get past this farm. How will you manage your boosters?”
“I’ll manage somehow.”
“Yes,” she said, taking in his broad shoulders, the strong brown hands, clear blue eyes. “I think you might.” Then her eyes were drawn once again to the form on the floor.
Emmett followed her gaze. “I shouldn’t leave him there.”
“Leave him right where he is. It’s got to appear as if I killed him.”
“You can’t do that!”
She met his look squarely. “It’s the only way ... for you.” “But what about you?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“But you just can’t stay here and tell them that! They’ll take away your booster—they’ll--”
“I told you not to worry about me,” she said sharply. “Now I’ve got to get you something to eat and send you on your way.” “But I can’t let you do it! Don’t stay—come along with me, but don’t stay!”
She reached into the sink and picked up his water flask, started to fill it under the tap. “Don’t you stop me in the one thing I can do to help you and, in turn, help the country I used to know. It’s you who are important. Not me. My life’s over, done with. We’ve got to save yours while we can.”
“But. . . !”
“Will you shut up!” She faced him, angry. “Already we’ve spent too much time talking. Here.” She handed him the flask.
“Now you take this wet rag and go over the room and clean everything you’ve touched.” She jerked open a drawer, pointed to a tray of knives. “Pick out the knife that is nearest the size of your hunting knife. You’ll have to replace yours with it. We don’t want your knife for evidence, you know.”
He did as he was told.
Later, when he had eaten and when she had prepared a lunch to take along, she led him to another room where she opened a large cabinet on the wall. Inside were weapons he had never seen before.
“That one at the top is the biggest heat gun Cad had,” she said. “He used to tell people it could burn a hole in inch-thick armor at a mile. It’s too big for you, though.”
She pointed to smaller heat guns, some with telescopic sights and others not so equipped, in graduated sizes. There were several old-fashioned rifles and automatics, and at the bottom were three sleep guns, one of them a small, compact, pistol type that she picked up.
“This sleeper will fit into your pocket,” she said. “You’d better take it. As far as I know it has never been fired.”
Emmett found the sleeper lighter than he thought it would be and cool to the touch. It must have been made of magnesium steel, he thought. It was black and efficient-looking.
“Thanks, Mrs. Tisdail.”
“I only wish there was more I could do for you.”
On the way out of the room Emmett noticed a small panel at one side of the room. It glowed with many lights.
“That’s the annunciator,” she said. “Cad insisted it be installed. He was always afraid somebody was going to come up to the house and kill him. This would give the warning. It rang a bell when you turned into the driveway.”
“Do many places have systems like this?” Emmett asked, reflecting on how lucky he had been to set off no warnings in his night-and-day trek, though he had known of the danger.
“Most collaborators have them. But I don’t think they’re much good. If you know where they are you can get by them easily enough by crawling under them as if you were going under a fence. They’re not set that low. If they were, all the cats and dogs and rodents would be setting them off all the time.”
The sky held little of what remained of the day when they stepped out of the kitchen. The dog came up, nuzzled
Emmett’s hand as he stood, not knowing what to say to this woman who had helped him.
“You could take the turbo,” Mrs. Tisdail said, “but they would know something was wrong then.”
“What are you going to tell them? How are you going to explain your killing him?”
She smiled and, in the area outside the house, illuminated only by the porch light, her face looked young. He fancied she had been an attractive girl in her youth.
“I’m not going to tell them anything,” she said.
“They have ways,” he said.
“Have they?”
“You ought to know.”
“I do know. Now will you please go?”
He hadn’t noticed her hand on his arm until he turned to go. He turned back, hating to leave her there to face them.
“Good-bye, then,” he said, not moving away. He wished there was something he could do for her, some last thing.
And then he knew there was something.
He reached up to her shoulder, pulled her forward and kissed her.
For a moment her arms were around him, her cheek against his, and she sobbed.
Then she pushed him away.
“Please go now.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Tisdail,” he said, turning. He knew he could not look back now.
He started down the driveway, the dog trotting at his side.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Good luck . . . and thanks.”
Emmett went out into the night to the road.
He could still feel the coolness of her lips.
CHAPTER - 4
It was a night to beware of because it was clear and the light from the full moon was everywhere. It would have been wiser to have taken refuge in a wooded area and not to have exposed himself as a moving object on such a night, but Emmett was driven to be far from the Tisdail place by morning.
Armed with the sleeper and with a pocket bulging with currency, he felt a confidence he had not known before. But he’d have to be careful how he used them. People who were loose with their money were regarded with suspicion in Spring Creek. It was probably no different anywhere else.
And people with sleepers were Communists.
He took to the roads because he felt he had been brash in trusting the fields before. The annunciator panel in the Tisdail home had changed that for him. There would be no warning systems on the roads. And they would be faster.
But the unending roads made him drowsy. And no wonder, he told himself, remembering all he had been through. But he did not sanction it. He forced himself to keep alert. There could be no sleep for, say, fifteen miles yet. If he could walk three hours, then he’d chance getting out the blanket and sleeping for a while.
But how will I wake up? And instantly he thought of his alarm clock at home, an old-fashioned, round-faced, luminous-dialed clock his grandfather had given him. He wondered if it had run down yet, wished he had brought it along. But he laughed when he remembered its loud ticking. It would have roused the countryside. Too bad I don’t have a wrist watch, he mused, thinking of those he had seen on display in Spring Creek. But who bought them? Certainly not anyone in the Keyes family.
A sudden yapping at his side jarred him. A dog rushed from the underbrush, snarling and darting at his leg. Emmett backed away. The dog nipped his trousers and he heard the fabric tear. Then he remembered the sleeper, brought it to bear on the barking dog, pressed the trigger, heard a click. The dog slumped in the middle of the road.
Though fearful the animal would revive at any moment and renew its attack, Emmett picked it up and carried it to the roadside ditch. A sleeped dog in the middle of the road might give rise to questions.
When he started down the road once more, he tried concentrating on his surroundings, not wanting to be surprised again. With each step down the lonely road he made himself watchful of all things, hearing the animals that skittered away in the underbrush as he approached, seeing the endless procession of dark shapes that were trees and bushes going by, being particularly careful when passing farmhouses, and wondering at the same time who lived in them, whether they were meeting their quotas, were managing to pay their taxes, wondering if they were happy.
Perhaps in some of the houses he passed lived people like his mother and father—good, loyal, hard-working people who prayed for the day when they’d once again be free, people who were dismayed by nothing, had seen suffering, who had themselves suffered, but who could not move from their subservient position because of the boosters. That and the ever-present commies and occasional Enemy.
And some of the houses were homes for people who had things a little better, men and women who had more than adapted themselves to the occupation. These were the people who went along, not caring what the new government decreed, but supporting it and thinking it wise to do so. They did not exactly curry favor, but they did not object to special treatment for themselves.
And in a few of these houses were people like the Tisdails, where husband or wife or both left nothing undone to show the victors they meant to help with the occupation all the way, even though it might mean suffering for others. These were the farmhouses he should have passed most carefully, but he had no way of knowing which they were.
A sudden scurrying in the bushes at the side of the road halted him, his hand ready to draw the gun. It had been a noise much louder than that made by small animals.
A figure emerged from the parted foliage. It was a young man.
“Hi," the youth said. He was smiling. He couldn’t have been more than twenty at the very most.
Emmett backed away, ready for any sudden movement, trying to guess why such a youngster should be abroad at this hour. It was at least an hour after curfew.
“Watcha got in the bag?”
The voice came from the other side of the road and Emmett whirled in time to see another shape loose itself from the bushes there. He backed still farther, drew the sleeper. He didn’t like the looks of this, glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was behind him.
But there was.
In a matter of moments the road was filled with youngsters. He could see them better now. They were all teen-agers. They stood in a rough circle and they were grinning.
“We’re your friends,” one of them said.
“Yeah.”
There was a little laughter.
“Hey, what’s he got in his hand?”
“Looks like a gun.” .
“It is a gun,” Emmett said. “A sleep gun.”
“A sleep gun!” one of them jeered. “Hey, he thinks he’s got a sleeper!”
“Only big shots got sleepers.”
“Maybe I am a big shot,” Emmett said. “Did you think of that?” They stood a little uncertain. Then one of them said something filthy. It wasn’t the largest boy.
“Sure looks like a sleeper.”
“Aw! He probably carved it out of wood.”
“Let’s get him!” A figure darted toward Emmett. But others failed to join him.
“Wait a minute, you guys,” a younger voice quavered. “He ain’t done nothing, has he?”
“He’s walkin’ through our territory, ain’t he?”
“Yeah. How about that? You got a travel permit?”
“With this sleeper,” Emmett said, “I don’t need a travel permit. Now are you fellows going to get out of the way or do I have to blast a path through you?”
A fellow bigger than the others detached himself from the circle. “You better hand everything over--”
“You better stay where you are,” Emmett warned.
The youth stopped. “You hand your stuff over and we’ll hold it while you fight one of us.”
“Two of us, Bob! He’s a big guy.”
“O.K. Two of us, then. I guarantee the fight’ll be fair and square. Then we’ll let you go.”
A few of the boys were unable to hold their chuckles at this. It was just a kids’ gang. Emmett had realized that when he first saw them. But even a group like t
his could be mighty rough if it had a mind to be, for he had once been a member of such a gang. He remembered how much fun it was after being held down all day to steal out at night and see how much hell could be raised. His group had challenged many a stranger, had been in many a fight. But he didn’t remember ever stopping a man with a sleeper.
“Look,” Emmett said, “I don’t want to have to use this sleeper. But I’ll have to if you don’t move on and let me alone.”
“Quit your kiddin’.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Emmett asked. “Commie or American?”
“You try in’ to be funny, Mister?”
“We ain’t on anybody’s side,” the leader said. “We’re on our own side.”
“We’re for ourselves.”
“Hey, he’s stallin’.”
“Yeah. Let’s have the fight.”
“Make him fight, Bob.”
“O.K.,” Bob said, stepping toward him, “but first we got to see what’s in that bag.” The others started to move in too.
There was no alternative. Emmett squeezed the trigger of the sleeper. There was a satisfying answering click.
The leader slumped to the ground without a murmur. Two youths behind him in the fringe area of the gun’s effectiveness, tottered, tried to walk a few feet, and collapsed.
“Geez!” It was the only sound and it came from a single throat.
The group, halted by their sudden loss, stood uncertain again. But only for a moment this time. Then there were yells, and they scattered, some running down the road, others disappearing into the fields.
“Hey, you!” Emmett cried at two slow starters.
They stopped their flight and turned. He could see the fear in their faces.
“You forgot your friends,” he said. “You’d better get them off the road.”
The moon had moved halfway across the sky before Emmett, numb with weariness, the bag a leaden weight on his shoulder, struck off from the road into a wilderness of weeds, brambles, bushes and trees. He went more than a hundred yards into the area before he took the bag off his shoulder and opened it.