April 2003: THE MUSICIANS
The boys would hike far out into the Martian country. They carried odorous paper bags into which from time to time upon the long walk they would insert their noses to inhale the rich smell of the ham and mayonnaised pickles, and to listen to the liquid gurgle of the orange soda in the warming bottles. Swinging their grocery bags full of clean watery green onions and odorous liverwurst and red catsup and white bread, they would dare each other on past the limits set by their stem mothers. They would run, yelling:
“First one there gets to kick!”
They biked in summer, autumn, or winter. Autumn was most fun, because then they imagined, like on Earth, they were scuttering through autumn leaves.
They would come like a scatter of jackstones on the marble flats beside the canals, the candy-cheeked boys with blue-agate eyes, panting onion-tainted commands to each other. For now that they had reached the dead, forbidden town it was no longer a matter of “Last one there’s a girl!” or “First one gets to play Musician!” Now the dead town’s doors lay wide and they thought they could hear the faintest crackle, like autumn leaves, from inside. They would hush themselves forward, by each other’s elbows, carrying sticks, remembering their parents had told them, “Not there! No, to none of the old towns! Watch where you hike. You’ll get the beating of your life when you come home. We’ll check your shoes!”
And there they stood in the dead city, a heap of boys, their hiking lunches half devoured, daring each other in shrieky whispers.
“Here goes nothing!” And suddenly one of them took off, into the nearest stone house, through the door, across the living room, and into the bedroom where, without half looking, he would kick about, thrash his feet, and the black leaves would fly through the air, brittle, thin as tissue cut from midnight sky. Behind him would race six others, and the first boy there would be the Musician, playing the white xylophone bones beneath the outer covering of black flakes. A great skull would roll to view, like a snowball; they shouted! Ribs, like spider legs, plangent as a dull harp, and then the black flakes of mortality blowing all about them in their scuffling dance; the boys pushed and heaved and fell in the leaves, in the death that had turned the dead to flakes and dryness, into a game played by boys whose stomachs gurgled with orange pop.
And then out of one house into another, into seventeen houses, mindful that each of the towns in its turn was being burned clean of its horrors by the Firemen, antiseptic warriors with shovels and bins, shoveling away at the ebony tatters and peppermint-stick bones, slowly but assuredly separating the terrible from the normal; so they must play very hard, these boys, the Firemen would soon be here!
Then, luminous with sweat, they gnashed at their last sandwiches. With a final kick, a final marimba concert, a final autumnal lunge through leaf stacks, they went home.
Their mothers examined their shoes for black flakelets which, when discovered, resulted in scalding baths and fatherly beatings.
By the year’s end the Firemen had raked the autumn leaves and white xylophones away, and it was no more fun.
June 2003: WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR
“Did you hear about it?”
“About what?”
“The niggers, the niggers!”
“What about ’em?”
“Them leaving, pulling out, going away; did you hear?”
“What you mean, pulling out? How can they do that?”
“They can, they will, they are.”
“Just a couple?”
“Every single one here in the South!”
“No.”
“Yes!”
“I got to see that. I don’t believe it. Where they going — Africa?”
A silence.
“Mars.”
“You mean the planet Mars?”
“That’s right.”
The men stood up in the hot shade of the hardware porch. Someone quit lighting a pipe. Somebody else spat out into the hot dust of noon.
“They can’t leave, they can’t do that.”
“They’re doing it, anyways.”
“Where’d you hear this?”
“It’s everywhere, on the radio a minute ago, just come through.”
Like a series of dusty statues, the men came to life.
Samuel Teece, the hardware proprietor, laughed uneasily. “I wondered what happened to Silly. I sent him on my bike an hour ago. He ain’t come back from Mrs. Bordman’s yet. You think that black fool just pedaled off to Mars?”
The men snorted.
“All I say is, he better bring back my bike. I don’t take stealing from no one, by God.”
“Listen!”
The men collided irritably with each other, turning.
Far up the street the levee seemed to have broken. The black warm waters descended and engulfed the town. Between the blazing white banks of the town stores, among the tree silences, a black tide flowed. Like a kind of summer molasses, it poured turgidly forth upon the cinnamon-dusty road. It surged slow, slow, and it was men and women and horses and barking dogs, and it was little boys and girls. And from the mouths of the people partaking of this tide came the sound of a river. A summer-day river going somewhere, murmuring and irrevocable. And in that slow, steady channel of darkness that cut across the white glare of day were touches of alert white, the eyes, the ivory eyes staring ahead, glancing aside, as the river, the long and endless river, took itself from old channels into a new one. From various and uncountable tributaries, in creeks and brooks of color and motion, the parts of this river had joined, become one mother current, and flowed on. And brimming the swell were things carried by the river: grandfather clocks chiming, kitchen clocks ticking, caged hens screaming, babies wailing; and swimming among the thickened eddies were mules and cats, and sudden excursions of burst mattress springs floating by, insane hair stuffing sticking out, and boxes and crates and pictures of dark grandfathers in oak frames — the river flowing it on while the men sat like nervous hounds on the hardware porch, too late to mend the levee, their hands empty.
Samuel Teece wouldn’t believe it. “Why, hell, where’d they get the transportation? How they goin’ to get to Mars?”
“Rockets,” said Grandpa Quartermain.
“All the damn-fool things. Where’d they get rockets?”
“Saved their money and built them.”
“I never heard about it.”
“Seems these niggers kept it secret, worked on the rockets all themselves, don’t know where — in Africa, maybe.”
“Could they do that?” demanded Samuel Teece, pacing about the porch. “Ain’t there a law?”
“It ain’t as if they’re declarin’ war,” said Grandpa quietly.
“Where do they get off, God damn it, workin’ in secret, plottin’?” shouted Teece.
“Schedule is for all this town’s niggers to gather out by Loon Lake. Rockets be there at one o’clock, pick ’em up, take ’em to Mars.”
“Telephone the governor, call out the militia,” cried Teece. “They should’ve given notice!”
“Here comes your woman, Teece.”
The men turned again.
As they watched, down the hot road in the windless light first one white woman and then another arrived, all of them with stunned faces, all of them rustling like ancient papers. Some of them were crying, some were stern. All came to find their husbands. They pushed through barroom swing doors, vanishing. They entered cool, quiet groceries. They went in at drug shops and garages. And one of them, Mrs. Clara Teece, came to stand in the dust by the hardware porch, blinking up at her stiff and angry husband as the black river flowed full behind her.
“It’s Lucinda, Pa; you got to come home!”
“I’m not comin’ home for no damn darkie!”
“She’s leaving. What’ll I do without her?”
“Fetch for yourself, maybe. I won’t get down on my knees to stop her.”
“But she’s like a family member,” Mrs. Teece moaned.
“Don’t shout! I won’t have you blubberin’ in public this way about no goddamn — ”
His wife’s small sob stopped him. She dabbed at her eyes. “I kept telling her, «Lucinda,» I said, «you stay on and I raise your pay, and you get two nights off a week, if you want,» but she just looked set! I never seen her so set, and I said, «Don’t you love me, Lucinda?» and she said yes, but she had to go because that’s the way it was, is all. She cleaned the house and dusted it and put luncheon on the table and then she went to the parlor door and — and stood there with two bundles, one by each foot, and shook my hand and said, «Good-by, Mrs. Teece.» And she went out the door. And there was her luncheon on the table, and all of us too upset to even eat it. It’s still there now, I know; last time I looked it was getting cold.”
Teece almost struck her. “God damn it, Mrs. Teece, you get the hell home. Standin’ there makin’ a sight of yourself!”
“But, Pa…”
He strode away into the hot dimness of the store. He came back out a few seconds later with a silver pistol in his hand.
His wife was gone.
The river flowed black between the buildings, with a rustle and a creak and a constant whispering shuffle. It was a very quiet thing, with a great certainty to it; no laughter, no wildness, just a steady, decided, and ceaseless flow.
Teece sat on the edge of his hardwood chair. “If one of ’em so much as laughs, by Christ, I’ll kill ’em.”
The men waited.
The river passed quietly in the dreamful noon.
“Looks like you goin’ to have to hoe your own turnips, Sam,” Grandpa chuckled.
“I’m not bad at shootin’ white folks neither.” Teece didn’t look at Grandpa. Grandpa turned his head away and shut up his mouth.
“Hold on there!” Samuel Teece leaped off the porch. He reached up and seized the reins of a horse ridden by a tall Negro man. “You, Belter, come down off there!”
“Yes, sir.” Belter slid down.
Teece looked him over. “Now, just what you think you’re doin’?”
“Well, Mr. Teece…”
“I reckon you think you’re goin’, just like that song — what’s the words? «Way up in the middle of the air»; ain’t that it?”
“Yes, sir.” The Negro waited.
“You recollect you owe me fifty dollars, Belter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You tryin’ to sneak out? By God, I’ll horsewhip you!”
“All the excitement, and it slipped my mind, sir.”
“It slipped his mind.” Teece gave a vicious wink at his men on the hardware porch. “God damn, mister, you know what you’re goin’ to do?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re stayin’ here to work out that fifty bucks, or my name ain’t Samuel W. Teece.” He turned again to smile confidently at the men in the shade.
Belter looked at the river going along the street, that dark river flowing and flowing between the shops, the dark river on wheels and horses and in dusty shoes, the dark river from which he had been snatched on his journey. He began to shiver. “Let me go, Mr. Teece. I’ll send your money from up there, I promise!”
“Listen, Belter.” Teece grasped the man’s suspenders like two harp strings, playing them now and again, contemptuously, snorting at the sky, pointing one bony finger straight at God. “Belter, you know anything about what’s up there?”
“What they tells me.”
“What they tells him! Christ! Hear that? What they tells him!” He swung the man’s weight by his suspenders, idly, ever so casual, flicking a finger in the black face. “Belter, you fly up and up like a July Fourth rocket, and bang! There you are, cinders, spread all over space. Them crackpot scientists, they don’t know nothin’, they kill you all off!”
“I don’t care.”
“Glad to hear that. Because you know what’s up on that planet Mars? There’s monsters with big raw eyes like mushrooms! You seen them pictures on those future magazines you buy at the drugstore for a dime, ain’t you? Well! Them monsters jump up and suck marrow from your bones!”
“I don’t care, don’t care at all, don’t care.” Belter watched the parade slide by, leaving him. Sweat lay on his dark brow. He seemed about to collapse.
“And it’s cold up there; no air, you fall down, jerk like a fish, gaspin’, dyin’, stranglin’, stranglin’ and dyin’. You like that?”
“Lots of things I don’t like, sir. Please, sir, let me go. I’m late.”
“I’ll let you go when I’m ready to let you go. We’ll just talk here polite until I say you can leave, and you know it damn well. You want to travel, do you? Well, Mister Way up in the Middle of the Air, you get the hell home and work out that fifty bucks you owe me! Take you two months to do that!”
“But if I work it out, I’ll miss the rocket, sir!”
“Ain’t that a shame now?” Teece tried to look sad.
“I give you my horse, sir.”
“Horse ain’t legal tender. You don’t move until I get my money.” Teece laughed inside. He felt very warm and good.
A small crowd of dark people had gathered to hear all this. Now as Belter stood, head down, trembling, an old man stepped forward.
“Mister?”
Teece flashed him a quick look. “Well?”
“How much this man owe you, mister?”
“None of your damn business!”
The old man looked at Belter. “How much, son?”
“Fifty dollars.”
The old man put out his black hands at the people around him, “There’s twenty-five of you. Each give two dollars; quick now, this no time for argument.”
“Here, now!” cried Teece, stiffening up, tall, tall.
The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat and gave the hat to Belter. “Son,” he said, “you ain’t missin’ no rocket.”
Belter smiled into the hat. “No, sir, I guess I ain’t!”
Teece shouted: “You give that money back to them!”
Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Teece would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Teece’s feet. “There’s your money, sir,” he said. “Thank you kindly.” Smiling, he gained the saddle of his horse and whipped his horse along, thanking the old man, who rode with him now until they were out of sight and hearing.
“Son of a bitch,” whispered Teece, staring blind at the sun. “Son of a bitch.”
“Pick up the money, Samuel,” said someone from the porch.
It was happening all along the way. Little white boys, barefoot, dashed up with the news. “Them that has helps them that hasn’t! And that way they all get free! Seen a rich man give a poor man two hundred bucks to pay off some’un! Seen some’un else give some’un else ten bucks, five bucks, sixteen, lots of that, all over, everybody!”
The white men sat with sour water in their mouths. Their eyes were almost puffed shut, as if they had been struck in their faces by wind and sand and heat.
The rage was in Samuel Teece. He climbed up on the porch and glared at the passing swarms. He waved his gun. And after a while when he had to do something, he began to shout at anyone, any Negro who looked up at him. “Bang! There’s another rocket out in space!” he shouted so all could hear. “Bang! By God!” The dark heads didn’t flicker or pretend to hear, but their white eyes slid swiftly over and back. “Crash! All them rockets fallin’! Screamin’, dyin’! Bang! God Almighty, I’m glad I’m right here on old terra firma. As they says in that old joke, the more firma, the less terra! Ha, ha!”
Horses clopped along, shuffling up dust. Wagons bumbled on ruined springs.
“Bang!” His voice was lonely in the heat, trying to terrify the dust and the blazing sun sky. “Wham! Niggers all over space! Jerked outa rockets like so many minnows hit by a meteor, by God! Space fulla meteors. You know that? Sure! Thick as buckshot; powie! Shoot down them tin-can rockets like so many ducks, so many clay pipes! Ole sardine cans full of b
lack cod! Bangin’ like a stringa ladyfingers, bang, bang, bang! Ten thousand dead here, ten thousand there. Floatin’ in space, around and around earth, ever and ever, cold and way out, Lord! You hear that, you there!”
Silence. The river was broad and continuous. Having entered all cotton shacks during the hour, having flooded all the valuables out, it was now carrying the clocks and the washboards, the silk bolts and curtain rods on down to some distant black sea.
High tide passed. It was two o’clock. Low tide came. Soon the river was dried up, the town silent, the dust settling in a film on the stores, the seated men, the tall hot trees.
Silence.
The men on the porch listened.
Hearing nothing, they extended their thoughts and their imaginations out and into the surrounding meadows. In the early morning the land had been filled with its usual concoctions of sound. Here and there, with stubborn persistence to custom, there had been voices singing, the honey laughter under the mimosa branches, the pickaninnies rushing in clear water laughter at the creek, movements and bendings in the fields, jokes and shouts of amusement from the shingle shacks covered with fresh green vine.
Now it was as if a great wind had washed the land clean of sounds. There was nothing. Skeleton doors hung open on leather hinges. Rubber-tire swings hung in the silent air, uninhibited. The washing rocks at the river were empty, and the watermelon patches, if any, were left alone to heat their hidden liquors in the sun. Spiders started building new webs in abandoned huts; dust started to sift in from unpatched roofs in golden spicules. Here and there a fire, forgotten in the last rush, lingered and in a sudden access of strength fed upon the dry bones of some littered shack. The sound of a gentle feeding burn went up through the silenced air.
The Martian Chronicles Page 11
