Jim was sitting up in bed before he remembered that he did not have to worry about Terry crying in the night. He had not had to worry about that for a long time now. What was it, four years? Five? But still, whenever the sirens wailed he thought of going into Terry's room to stay with him until silence returned.
He fell back in the bed and felt Beth stir beside him. "Bastards," she moaned, covering her head with the pillow. He snorted a half laugh in the dark and rolled onto his side, hoping the keening sound would soon stop and the dogs stop quickly after.
But the sirens screamed on and the dogs kept barking. Melba, their Persian cat, began to growl from somewhere under the bed, and Beth took the pillow away from her ears.
"Melba," she called softly. " 'S'okay, girl. Just sirens." The cat meowed shrilly and spat. "What's wrong with her?" Beth said. "Sirens don't bother her. . . . C'mon, girl." She reached down and put her hand under the dust ruffle. There was another hiss, and Beth gasped and pulled her hand up. "She scratched me!" she said in surprise. "Why, that little bitch."
"I'll turn the light on. Close your eyes." Jim flicked a switch and the bedside light exploded into life. He had to blink several times before opening his eyes wide enough to see the thin red parallel lines slashed across the heel of Beth's right hand. "Christ," he said. "She really let you have it. I'll get something for it."
"It's all right, I'll go." She got up and left the room. Jim lay in the bed, wondering why the sirens didn't stop. One blast signified a fire in Merridale proper, and two a fire in Randallsville, a village three miles away. But he couldn't remember ever hearing those shrill ululations repeat over and over again as they did now.
Beth came back into the room, holding a wet washcloth against her hand, a bottle of Bactine between her fingers. "What is going on out there," she said.
Jim shrugged. "What I was wondering. You think it could be the plant?" The plant was what everyone called Thorn Hill Nuclear Station, a million-kilowatt power facility ten miles away that had been completed in 1977.
Beth shook her head. "It's not the plant. They played us a tape of the sirens a couple of weeks ago at Hatch. Along with the fire sirens, the nuclear attack sirens, ambulance, and police."
Jim grinned lopsidedly. "What was all that for?”
“American Legion's idea—the kids oughta know what they're in for—Preparedness Day, they called it."
"More like Paranoia Day. How's the hand?"
She took the washcloth away. "Still oozing. God, she hasn't done that since she was a kitten. Listen to her."
Melba was still snarling under the bed. Jim got down and lifted the ruffle quickly, holding his hand high. The cat spat, but did not strike. "Come on, old girl," he called calmly. "What's the matter, huh?"
Only a low throaty growl answered him. The cat would not budge.
"Just sirens, y'know?" As if on cue, the sirens finally fell away into silence, but the dogs kept barking. "All gone, see?" Jim said. "Just the doggies. C'mere."
She went for his hand as she would have gone after a feline rival, front claws wrapping around his wrist, back claws kicking and tearing the skin. He yelled once, then grasped the back of her neck with his free hand, pulling her away from his ripped flesh. With the torn hand he grabbed her legs in a huge fist, like a cowboy hogtying a steer, and threw her into the hall, slamming the door shut as she rolled screaming on the carpet.
"Shit!" he howled. "That cunt!"
"Oh, my God," said Beth, pressing the cold washcloth to Jim's wounds, "she got you worse than she got me!" They both heard the cat's shrieking progress through the house, past dining room, kitchen, and finally its pattering down the basement steps. Beth leaped up and ran out of the room. In a moment Jim heard the slam of the basement door. "And stay there, you rotten little shit! What is wrong with her?" Beth asked again as she reentered the bedroom.
"Same thing that's wrong with the dogs." For the first time since the dogs and sirens started, he stepped to the window, pulled back the curtains, and looked out. "Holy shit." It was not said quickly, in surprise or fear, but slowly and thoughtfully, as though something puzzled him.
"What?" Beth moved to his side and looked.
The Sundale Road development was situated on a slight rise, so that part of the town could be seen below. "What are they?" Beth asked. "Can you make it out?"
"I don't know. They look like"—he paused for a long time, knowing how silly it must sound—"like people. Sort of."
The phone rang and both of them jumped. Jim, the first to recover, picked up the receiver, thinking of unexpected deaths, midnight disasters. "Hello?"
The voice on the other end was weak and shaking. "Jim?”
“Yes?"
"Mary Spruce, Jim. Oh, Jim, have you seen?"
"Seen what, Mary?"
"Outside. Did you look outside?"
"You mean those lights?"
"Lights? You don't know what they are?"
"Well, no, they're too far—"
"They're people. Bodies anyway. It's . . . just horrible.”
“Bodies?" Jim said. Beth's frown deepened. She seemed ready to yank the phone away.
"Yes, I . . . Look, Jim, Reg is standing here. We're going to go. . . . May I talk to Beth?"
"Uh . . . sure." He handed the phone to his wife, shaking his head quickly to show the confusion he felt. Mary Spruce was the last person he'd expect to go off the deep end. As principal of Hatch Road Elementary, she'd always been the perfect martinet, ramrod straight, unflappable, and undeviating.
"Hello, Mary," Beth said, a note of official crispness in her voice. "What's wrong? . . . Are you serious? . . . Reg wants to what? . . . But I'm sure it's not the plant, Mary. It wasn't their siren. . . . All right. . . . No, I don't know what else it could be either. . . . I’ll call Dr. Reed in the morning. . . . All right, then. But do you really think . . . I know, Mary. . . .”
Jim began to pace. He looked out past the curtains and saw that the blue lights were still there.
"Yes, I know. . . . No, no one up here seems to be." Jim saw the Tompkins' porch light go on. "All right, I'll take care of it. Now, please don't worry, you—" Beth looked at the phone as though it had bit her ear. "She hung up on me."
"What did she say?"
"Okay, let me . . . let me try to remember. She paid that there are blue people, blue glowing people in the street, and that they don't move or talk. Evidently downtown is full of them."
"Oh, come on." He sat back down on the bed, turning his attention once more to his cut hand.
"That's what she said. And Reg thinks it's got something to do with the plant, so he and Mary are leaving, going to Mary's sister's place in Pittsburgh. She wants me to call Joe Reed and tell him she won't be in school tomorrow."
"Oh, nice. That's a good piece of shit work."
"Yeah, but she wants me to call him now."
Jim looked at the clock radio. "Jesus Christ, it's only four. You sure she's not just trying to knock you out of her job in two years?"
"What?"
"I mean, if I were the school superintendent and somebody called me at four A.M., I'm damned if I'd make them a principal."
She smiled coldly. "I didn't think you cared about that." He could not smile back. "I care about you. I still do." The silence was uncomfortable, and she broke it quickly.
"Yeah. Well, that's not going to call Reed for me." She dialed the number while Jim got a pair of binoculars from the closet and looked out the window toward town.
"Mary was right," he said finally. "They are people. And they're naked."
"You're joking."
"Come here and look. Mary wasn't crazy."
"I can't. The phone's still . . . Hello? Dr. Reed? . . . This is Elizabeth Callendar. I'm sorry to call you at this hour, but—"
Reed's voice was so loud over the line that Jim could hear it, faint and tinny. ". . . can't talk now," the voice said. "Everything's insane. There will be no school at all in the district tomorrow, if that's why you
called. Everything's canceled. Everything. Call me back tomorrow." There was a click and the line went dead.
"What the—"
"I told you," said Jim, "come here and look."
She went to his side and took the binoculars. "They are naked!"
"Uh-huh. And dead, if we can believe Mary."
"Jim, they're not moving."
"That would tend to add credence to the dead part."
"Stop it!" she flared, lowering the binoculars. "This isn't funny! What's happening out there?"
Jim thought for a moment. "I'll call Bill Gingrich." He dialed, but the line was busy. "That's funny," he said. "This whole thing is funny. I'm scared."
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know."
"We could go see what it's all about."
"No," she said. "I'm not going out there."
"We just going to shiver here till morning?"
"I know I'm not going out."
He nodded. "Okay, then. Let's go back to bed."
She looked at the rumpled bedclothes and shook her head.
"I won't sleep. I think I'll make some coffee. How's your hand?"
"It stopped bleeding."
"You going to get up?"
He didn't want to. He knew that if he did, she'd talk about nothing but the hysteria that seemed to be affecting the town. Besides, it was the hour of the wolf, that dark time just before dawn that he treasured, the time when he was used to lying with his guilt next to him like a lover, reliving that moment over and over again, wearing his crown of thorns while Beth was lost in her own sleeping dreams. "No," he said. "I'm still tired."
She left the bedroom, and soon he heard the bubble of the coffeepot, smelled the spicy scent of the brew drifting through the house, remembering how Terry used to love to work the grinder, remembering Terry.
He turned off the bedside lamp and lay on his side, so that he would not see the dim frame of light surrounding the door.
Remembering Terry. . .
CHAPTER 7
“Your great-grandfather, Terry. . . . Can you say hello? Hello, hello?"
He held the baby out toward the old man so that they could see each other. There was no understanding in either face. The baby's was smooth and blank; eyes, nose, mouth, were all there, arranged in a cherubic perfection of scale, but it might as well have been featureless like an egg or lifeless like marble for all the reaction it showed to its ancestor.
Jim's grandfather displayed the same outward lack of enthusiasm. His eyes, so small amidst the yellowish pouches of flesh that surrounded them, glittered brightly as they always did, but whether with recognition or with merely the wet slickness of cataracts was something that only Grandpa Foster knew, for he had not spoken a word in three years. His mouth, merely a ridge in a pasty plain, had lost all ability to verbalize. All that remained was a slightly cockeyed smile that fortunately hid the absence of teeth. The mouth and tongue knew only softness, delivered by spoon with the help of patient nurses or by straw from those more hurried. Sucking, like Terry sucked at Beth's breast. Cycles. Jim thought: four generations apart and both babies sucking for nourishment.
Though never a tall man, Jim's grandfather had once exuded strength just the same, a tight spareness of frame making him look like a little Hercules standing behind the counter of his small grocery store, or tossing the heavy cartons of canned goods out of the cellar hole. He'd been a fixture in Merridale for decades, and the sign over the store. "Foster's Red Rose (Since 1923)," was proudly repainted every few years, at least until the Acmes and the Weis Markets moved in, making the little two-aisle store as obsolete as the pickle barrel, or the soft drink cooler on the porch where bottles of Sun-Ripe and Moxie and Ma's Root Beer sat neck-deep in water just a touch from freezing, or the ten-pound glass-lidded cans of pretzels that would be measured and sold at the customer's pleasure, bagged without benefit of rubber gloves or cellophane. It was remarkable, Jim remembered, how smiles and friendly words had made up for the lack of sterility. But in 1974, it was all sterility and few smiles. Even in Merridale there was not a "general store" to be found. Oh, other shops were still small and personable, but comestibles were in the hands of the giants, and the happy friendly grocer was a soulless shell who dribbled bloody urine into a plastic bag, while the little store was emptied, stripped, and newly stuffed with a batch of old cookware and battered furniture that was labeled "Antique" by the new sign on the window.
"I think he's tired," said Jim's mother, hovering at the bedside. "Are you tired, Dad? Would you like to sleep now? Did you like the baby. Dad? Isn't he pretty, hmm?" Jim's father made a sour face and looked up on the wall at the picture of Christ sitting in profile, the sleeping Jerusalem beneath him. Then he looked at Jim and shook his head, as if to say what he would say later in the car on the way home: “Can’t hear a thing. Didn’t even know we were there.” Jim smiled sadly at his father, agreeing tacitly. “Do you want to go to sleep now, Dad?” his mother went on. “I think we'd better go. Dad wants to . . .”
Just then the baby gurgled and cooed, and its doll-like hands began to flail the air as if the most beautiful and exciting and colorful toy in all the world hung before its great-grandfather's face. It was the most animated it had been since coming home from the hospital three weeks before, and Jim, Beth, Jim's mother and father, all froze in surprise as baby Terry babbled his magic syllables and weaved his arcane spell.
The enchantment produced a small miracle—a tear, large and crystalline as a diamond, slid from a corner of the old man's eye and drifted over his cheek, pausing momentarily as it slipped from crevice to crevice.
"My God," whispered Jim's mother. Old Dan Foster started to shake then, and more tears dripped from his eyes, while a thick boll of mucus appeared at each nostril.
"He's crying," Jim said. "He understands. He really knows," and the craggy head nodded ever so slightly.
They talked nonstop to the old man then, telling him things they hadn't thought about before because they had been so sure that Grandpa Foster wouldn't understand them. Jim's mother told him about the antique store, lying when she said it looked nice. Jim told him about the company newsletter he was editing, lying when he told him how much he enjoyed doing it, and thinking it ironic that old people should be told so many lies, especially an old man who had just miraculously demonstrated a capacity for understanding the truth. So, while Terry bubbled and babbled, Jim told the lies. The truth was not shocking, not even atypical.
He disliked his job. It was that simple. His official title, as related in his job description, was Administrative Associate, Employee Services. It meant that he was in charge of editing (organizing, laying out, and writing ninety percent of the copy for) The Open Eye, an eight-page biweekly newsletter for the white-collar staff of Linden Industries, a building-equipment company that owned a hefty piece of Lansford and employed a large number of its residents. When he'd taken the job in 1967, right out of college. he'd felt as though he'd been gently blessed. It was, as Harry Oakes told him, a great job for a college grad with a major in journalism. "Perfect place to learn the ropes," Oakes had said. "You'd be surprised—kids don't want to work for business these days. They'd rather starve on some dipshit small town newspaper staff. Think they're gonna express themselves. What they wind up expressing is bake sale announcements. But here you'll be your own boss, Jim. It's your paper. Of course, Mr. Matthews and I will want to take a look at each issue beforehand just to make sure you don't spill any beans that shouldn't be spilled, if you get me. After all, you'll have access to a lot of important information, more than any other young fellow in this company, I'll tell you that. But I think you'll be surprised at the free rein you'll have."
Jim was surprised. Not at the free rein, but at the bit that was inserted between his journalistic teeth after he put together his first issue. Too political, was Mr. Matthews's verdict. Too topical, Mr. Oakes's. Matthews's strikeouts and changes were numerous, and drafted in a rude, thick red. The line in a
n article about proposed housing starts for 1968; —With the expected escalation of the Vietnam Conflict, economists have predicted a small downturn in . . ." was slashed savagely, a huge "NO!" emblazoned over it for good measure. When Jim asked Oakes the reason, Oakes smiled uncomfortably.
"That's my comment," he said, "about being too topical. You see, Mr. Matthews really doesn't like any mentions of. . . uh . . . hard news. After all, it is a company newsletter, and should be fairly well restricted to what goes on in the company."
Jim was honestly confused. "Mr. Oakes, doesn't what directly affects the company have some bearing on what goes into it?"
"I don't think it's necessary to mention Vietnam."
But if Vietnam escalates, there aren't going to be as many housing starts because a lot of prospective home buyers will be going over there."
"Would you just make the change please, Jim?”
“But don't you think—"
Oakes's face hardened. "Jim, let me clarify this. Mr. Matthews and I would prefer to see no mention of Vietnam, race problems, peace movements, hippies, the draft, Eugene McCarthy. Bobby Kennedy, communism, dope, rock and roll music"—he thought for only a moment before adding—"and sex. We make building equipment. We don't make guns or placards or marijuana. Understand?"
Jim didn't answer.
"Okay?"
Finally he nodded. "Okay."
Mr. Oakes leaned forward. "You like your job, Jim?"
He made himself nod. "I like it."
"Good. Because a lot of other people would like it too. Good health coverage, insurance, nice retirement package, decent salary . . ." Oakes smiled again. "Listen, Jim, I'm sorry we had to have this little talk. I like you. You're a bright young guy and you've already added a lot to Linden. But we just have our own ways of doing things."
Jim smiled. It tasted sour. "I understand. I'm sorry about the hassle."
"That's all right then." Oakes stood up and walked Jim to the door of his office. "You know, business is a lot like being married, Jim. You're married, aren't you?"
"Yes."
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