Read Ebook: Our Town by Bixby Jerome

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Ebook has 102 lines and 8710 words, and 3 pages

"You can have it for breakfast." She sat down across the table and picked up the knitting she'd been on when Ben came home; he had a hunch it was something for his birthday, so he tried not to look interested; too early to tell what it was, anyway. "Ben," she said, "before you go--the curtain pole in the bay window come down when I was fixing the blankets over it for tonight. The socket's loose. You better fix it before you go. You'll maybe get home after Anna and me want to light the lamps, and we can't do it till it's fixed."

Ben said, "Sure, hon." He got the hammer and some nails from the toolbox and went into the parlor, and dragged the piano bench over in front of the bay window. The iron rod was leaning by the phonograph. He took it up with him on the chair and fitted the other end of it into the far socket, then fitted the near end into the loose socket, and drove nails around the base of the socket until the thing was solid as a rock. Then he got the blanket from the couch and hung it down double over the rod, and fitted the buttonholes sewn all along its edge over the nails driven around the window casing, and patted it here and there until not a speck of light would escape when the lamps were lit.

He inspected the blankets draped over the other windows; they were all right. The parlor was pretty dark now, so he struck a match to the oil lamp on the mantle, just so Susan and Anna could see to set the table. When the others arrived, they'd light the other lamps; but not until; oil was precious. The only time anybody in town ever lit a lamp was on Social night: then the old people stayed up till around midnight for eats and entertainment; otherwise everybody got to bed at eight or so, and climbed out with the dawn.

He went back into the kitchen and put away the hammer, and said, "My second cup still hot, honey?"

She started to put down her knitting and get up, and he said, "Just asking," and pressed her shoulder till she sat again. He went around her and filled his cup at the stove.

"Ben," she said, when he sat down again, "I wish you'd take a look at the phonograph too. Last time the turntable made an awful lot of noise.... I wish it could sound better for tonight."

"I know, honey," Ben sighed. "That motor's going. There ain't much I can do about it, though. It's too old. I'm scared to take it apart; might not get it back together right. When it really quits, then I guess I'll fool around and see what I can do. Heck, it didn't sound too bad."

"It rattled during the soft parts of the music."

Ben shook his head. "If I try, I might ruin it for good." He smiled a little. "It's like us, Suse--too old to really fix up much; just got to keep cranking it, and let it go downhill at its own pace."

Susan folded her knitting and got up. She came around the table, and he put an arm around her waist and pulled her into the chair beside him.

"It'll go soon, won't it, Ben?" she said softly. "Then we won't have any music. It's a shame ... we all like to listen so much. It's peaceful."

"I know." He moved his arm up and squeezed her thin shoulders. She put her head on his shoulder, and her grey hair tickled his cheek; he closed his eyes, and her hair was black and shining again, and he put his lips against it and thought he smelled a perfume they didn't even make any more.

After a moment he said, "We got so much else, though, Suse ... we got peaceful music you can't play on a machine. Real peace. A funny kind of peace. In a funny-looking town, this one--a rag town. But it's ours, and it's quiet, and there's nothing to bother us--and just pray God we can keep it that way. Outside, the war's going on someplace, probably. People fighting each other over God knows what--if even He knows. Here, it's peaceful."

She moved her head on his shoulder. "Ben--will it ever come here, what's going on outside? Even the war, if it's still going on?"

"Well, we were talking about that this morning down at the hall, Suse. I guess it won't. If rifles can stop it, it won't. If they see us from the air, we'll shoot at 'em; and if we get 'em we'll clean up the mess so if anybody comes looking for a missing plane, they won't give Smoky Creek a second look. That's the only way anything can come, honey--if they see us from the air. Nobody's going to come hiking over these mountains. There's noplace they'd want to get to, and it's sure no country for fighting."

"Maybe so. Sooner or later."

"Oh, I hope they leave us alone."

"Don't worry, hon."

"Ben--about the phonograph--"

"Ben--"

"If I want to go fishing," Ben said, and pressed her head against his shoulder again, "I go. If I want to relax with the men, I do it. If I want to just walk and breathe deep, I do it--keeping to the trees, o' course. If I want to just be with you, I do it. It's quiet. It's real quiet in our rag town. It's a world for old people. It's just the way we want it, to live like we want to live. We got enough gardens and livestock, and all the canned stuff in the store, to last us for a ... for as long as we got. And no worries. About who's fighting who over what. About who won. About how the international mess is getting worse again, and we better make more bombs for the next one. About who's winning here and losing there and running neck-and-neck someplace else. We don't know any things like that, and we don't want to know. It don't matter none to us ... we're too old, and we seen too much of it, and it's hurt us too bad, and we know it just don't matter at all."

"Ben ... I got to crying today. About May and George and the children. I was crying, and thinking about that day...."

"So did I think. None of us ever forgets for a minute. For a second." His lips thinned. "That's part of why we do what we do. Rest is, we just want to be left alone."

They sat in silence for a moment, his arm around her shoulders, his other hand holding hers. Then he released her hand and thumped his own on the table, grinned at her and said, "Life goes on, now! Reckon I'll go down and get that cat--or go walking--or just go soak in some sun. What time are the folks showing up for--"

Jetsound slammed across the peaceful valley.

Ben got up and walked as fast as he could to the door, picked up the rifle leaning there, cocked it. Looking toward town he saw that Tom Pace had been on his way home, and the sound had caught him between trees. Tom hesitated, then turned and dived toward the tree he'd just left--because a rifle was there.

Ben saw men pour out of the doorways of the two habitable buildings on Main Street; they stuck close to the walls, under the porches, and they picked up rifles.

Motionless, hidden, in shadows, under trees, in doorways, behind knotholes, they waited. To see if the plane would buzz the town again.

It did.

It came down low over Main Street while the thunders of its first pass still echoed and rolled. Frightening birds out of trees, driving a hare frantically along the creekbank, blotting out the murmur of the creek and the tree-sounds, driving away peace.

They saw the pilot peering through the plexiglass, down at the buildings ... he was past the town in four winks; but in two they knew that he was curious, and would probably come back for a third look.

He circled wide off over the end of the valley, a vertical bank that brought a blinding flash of sunlight from one wing, and he came back.

Ben leveled his rifle and centered the nose of the plane in his sights. For some reason--probably because the valley walls crowded the town on both sides--the planes always lined up with Main Street when they flew low over the town.

The plane grew at startling speed in Ben's sights--it loomed, and the oval jet intake was a growling mouth--and he waited till it was about two seconds and a thousand feet from him; then he sent his bullet up into that mouth: a bullet aimed by a man who'd handled a rifle for sixty years, who could pop the head off a squirrel at a hundred feet. A running squirrel.

That was the signal, Ben's shot.

From under the tree Tom Pace's rifle spoke.

The jet was past town then, and he wheeled to follow it with his eyes; its whining thunder lashed down and pressed his ears, lowering suddenly in pitch as it receded; and though he couldn't hear them for the thunder, he knew that nineteen rifles had roared before it completed its turn, each aimed head-on at the plane. Aimed by men and women who could shoot with Ben, and even outshoot him.

The plane coughed. Lurched. It had time to emit a fuzzy thread of black smoke before it nosed down and melted into the ground and became a long ugly smear of mounds and shreds and tatters of flame.

The sounds of the crash died. Ben heard men shouting; loudest of all was old Jim Liddel's, "Got him ... by God, I prayed, and we got him!"

Behind him Susan was crying.

Ben saw men and women head for the crash-site; immediately they'd start to carry away what debris wasn't too hot to handle. Then they'd wait, and as soon as anything was cool enough it would be carried off and hidden.

And there'd be a burial tonight.

Ben saw that some of the men had carried old Jim's chair out onto the porch of the Town Hall; and he saw that Jim was half-standing out of his cushions, propped up on his fists and still shouting; and Ben wondered if the Maker wasn't on the porch there with Jim, waiting for Jim to fall and make his noise.

He turned away--at seventy you don't want to see a man die--and went inside and put his rifle on the kitchen table. He crossed to the cabinet under the sink to get his reamer and oiling rag. Every rifle was taken care of that way. Right now Tom Pace and Dan Paray were hurrying around gathering rifles to clean them, load them. No rifle must miss fire, or throw a bullet an inch off aim--because that might be the rifle whose aim was right.

"Lucky we got that one," he said. "I think he saw us, Suse ... he come in low and sudden, and I think he saw us."

"Was--was it one of theirs, Ben ... or one of ours?"

"Don't know. I didn't even look. I can't tell 'em apart. Owen'll be around to tell me when they find out ... but I reckon it was one of ours. If he saw us and didn't shoot, then I reckon it was one of ours. Like the last one."

Ben stood looking out the window over the sink; watching a cloud of yellow dust settle over the wreckage of the plane, and a cloud of black smoke rising from the wreckage to darken the yellow. He knew some of the men would be passing buckets from the well, and spading dirt on the flames where they weren't too hot to get to.

"That's the way it is," he said. "That's how we decided. God didn't stop the bomb dropping, Suse ... for whatever reasons He had. It don't seem He'd deny us the right to shoot rifles, for the reasons we got. If we get turned away at the Gates, we'll know we was wrong. But I don't think so."

Quiet was returning to the valley; the birds had already started singing again. You could hear the trees. From the direction of the creek came Windy Harris, running, and he broke the quiet with a shout as he saw Ben by the window: "Got it, huh, Ben?"

"Sure did," Ben said, and Windy ran on.

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