“I certainly do,” said a fat man in a soiled dark suit, shouldering his way through the crowd to stand peering at Flin. “I bet I’ve preached a sermon on this subject three Sundays out of five and it’s the most important question facing this world today. If we don’t face it, if we don’t answer this question in a way that’s acceptable to the Almighty, we might just as well throw away all these centuries of doing battle with Satan and admit we’re licked.”
“Amen,” cried a woman’s voice. “Amen to that, Reverend Tibbs!”
Reverend Tibbs thrust his face close to Flin’s and said, “Do you consider yourselves human?”
Flin knew that he was on dangerous ground here. This was a religious man and religion was strictly a local affair, not to be discussed or meddled with in any way.
So he said cautiously, “On our own worlds we consider ourselves so. However, I am not prepared to argue it from your viewpoint, sir.”
He moved toward the car, but the crowd only pulled in and held him tighter.
“Well now,” said the Reverend Tibbs, “what I want to know is how you can call yourselves human when it says right in Scriptures that God created this good Earth here under my feet and then created man—human man—right out of that selfsame earth. Now if you—”
“Oh, hell, save that stuff for the pulpit,” said another man, pushing his way in front of Tibbs. This one was sunburned and leathery, with a lantern jaw and keen hard eyes. “I ain’t worried about their souls and I don’t care if they’re all pups to the Beast of the Apocalypse.” Now he spoke directly to Flin. “I been seeing faces on my teevee for years. Green faces like yours. Red ones, blue ones, purple ones, yellow ones—all the colors of the rainbow, and what I want to know is, ain’t you got any white folks out there?”
“Yeah!” said the crowd and nodded its collective heads.
The man they called Judge Shaw nodded too and said, “I reckon you put the question for all of us, Sam.”
“What I mean is,” said the lantern-jawed Sam, “this here is a white town. In most other places nowadays, I understand, you’ll find blacks and whites all run together like they were out of the same still, but we got kind of a different situation here, and we ain’t the only ones, either. There’s little pockets of us here and there, kind of holding out, you might say. And we ain’t broken any laws. We didn’t refuse to integrate, see. It was just that for one reason or another what colored folks there was around—”
Here the crowd snickered knowingly.
“—decided they could do better somewheres else and went there. So we didn’t need to integrate. We don’t have any color problem. We ain’t had any for twenty years. And what’s more, we don’t want any.”
A shout from the crowd.
Shaw said in his big booming voice, “The point we’d like to make clear to you, so you can pass it on to whoever’s interested, is that some of us like to run our lives and our towns to suit ourselves. Now, this old Earth is a pretty good place just as she stands, and we never felt any need for outsiders to come and tell us what we ought to do. So we ain’t any too friendly to begin with, you see? But we’re not unreasonable, we’re willing to listen to things so as to form our own judgments on them. Only you people had better understand right now that no matter what goes on in the big cities and other places like that, we aren’t going to be told anything by a bunch of colored folks and it doesn’t matter one damn bit what color they are. If—”
Ruvi gave a sudden cry.
Flin spun around. The young men who smelled of liquor were beside the car, all crowded together and leaning in over the door. They were laughing now and one of them said, “Aw now, what’s the matter? I was just—”
“Flin, please!”
He could see her over their bent backs and bobbing heads, as far away from them as she could get on the seat. Other faces peered in from the opposite side, grinning, hemming her in.
Somebody said in a tone of mock reproach. “You got her scared now, Jed, ain’t you ashamed?”
Flin took two steps toward the car, pushing somebody out of the way. He did not see who it was. He did not see anything but Ruvi’s frightened face and the backs of the young men.
“Get away from there,” he said.
The laughter stopped. The young men straightened slowly. One of them said, “Did I hear somebody say something?”
“You heard me,” said Flin. “Get away from the car.”
They turned around, and now the crowd was all quiet and watching. The young men were tall. They had big coarse hands, strong for any task. Their mouths hung open a little to show their teeth, and they breathed and smiled, and their eyes were cruel.
“I don’t think,” said the one they called Jed, “I liked the tone of your voice when you said that.”
“I don’t give a damn whether you liked it or not.”
“You gonna take that, Jed?” somebody yelled. “From a nigger, even if he is a green one?”
There was a burst of laughter. Jed smiled and tilted his weight forward over his bent knees.
“I was just trying to talk friendly with your woman,” he said. “You shouldn’t object to that.”
He reached out and pushed with his stiffened fingers hard against Flin’s chest.
Flin turned his body and let the force of the thrust slide off his shoulder. Everything seemed to be moving very slowly, in a curiously icy vacuum which for the moment contained only himself and Jed. He was conscious of a new and terrible feeling within him, something he had never felt before. He stepped forward, lightly, strongly, not hurrying. His feet and hands performed four motions. He had done them countless times before in the gymnasium against a friendly opponent. He had never done them like this before, full force, with hate, with a dark evil brute lust to do injury. He watched the blood spurt from Jed’s nose, watched him fall slowly, slowly to the pavement with his hands clutching his belly and his eyes wide open and his mouth gasping in astonishment and pain.
Outside this center of subjective time and hate in which he stood Flin sensed other movement and noise. Gradually, then with urgent swiftness, they came clear. Judge Shaw had thrust himself in front of Flin. Others were holding Jed, who was getting up. A swag-bellied man with a badge on his shirt was waving his arms, clearing people away from around the car, Jed’s friends among them. There was a confused and frightening clamor of voices and over it all Shaw’s big authoritative voice was shouting.
“Calm down now, everybody, we don’t want any trouble here.”
He turned his head and said to Flin, “I advise you to be on your way just as fast as you can go.”
Flin walked around the car where the policeman had cleared the way. He got in and started the motor. The crowd surged forward as though it was going to try and stop him in spite of Shaw and the policeman.
Suddenly he cried out at them.
“Yes, we have white folks out there, about one in every ten thousand, and they don’t think anything of it and neither do we. You can’t hide from the universe. You’re going to be tramped under with color—all the colors of the rainbow!”
And he understood then that that was exactly what they feared.
He let in the drive and sent the big car lurching forward. The people in the street scattered out of his way. There were noises as thrown objects struck the top and sides of the car and then the street was long and straight and clear ahead of him and he pushed the throttle lever all the way down.
Lights flashed by. Then there was darkness and the town was gone.
Flin eased back on the throttle. Ruvi was bent over in the seat beside him, her hands covering her face. She was not crying. He reached out and touched her shoulder. She was trembling. And so was he. He felt physically sick, but he made his voice quiet and reassuring.
“It’s all right now. They’re gone.”
She made a sound—a whimper, an answer, he was not sure. Presently she sat erect, her hands clenched in her lap. They did not speak again. The air was cooler he
re but still oppressive with moisture, almost as clammy as fog against the skin. No stars showed. Off to the right there were intermittent flashes of lightning and a low growling of thunder.
A clot of red light appeared on the night ahead, resolving itself into a neon sign. Patch’s. The roadhouse with the pump.
Ruvi whispered, “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
“I have to,” he said gently, and pulled off the road onto a wide graveled space beside a ramshackle frame building with dimly lighted windows. Strongly rhythmic music played inside. There was a smaller building, a dwelling house, beside the tavern, and midway between them was a single fuel pump.
Flin stopped beside it. Hardly realizing what he was doing, he turned and fumbled in the back seat for his hat and jacket and put them on, pulling the hat brim down to hide his face as much as possible. Ruvi had a yellow shawl that matched her tunic. She drew it over her head and shoulders and made herself small in the corner of the seat. Flin switched off the dashboard lights.
A raw-boned lanky woman came out of the dwelling. Probably the man ran the tavern, leaving her to tend to smaller matters. Trying to keep his voice steady, Flin asked her to fill the tank. She hardly glanced at him and went surlily to the pump. He got out his wallet and felt with shaking hands among the bills.
On the dark road beyond the circle of light from the tavern, a car went slowly past.
The pump mechanism clicked and rang its solemn bells and finally was still. The woman hung up the hose with a clash and came forward. Flin took a deep breath. He thrust a bill at her. “That’ll be eight-eighty-seven,” she said and took the bill and saw the color of the hand she took it from. She started to speak or yell, stepping back and bending suddenly in the same movement. He saw her eyes shining in the light, peering into the car. Flin had already started the motor. He roared away in a spurt of gravel, leaving the woman standing with her arm out, pointing after them.
“We won’t have to stop again until we reach the city. It’ll be all right there.”
He threw his hat into the back seat. Ruvi let the shawl fall away from her head.
“I’ve never wanted to hide my face before,” she said. “It’s a strange feeling.”
Flin muttered savagely, “I’ve got a lot to say but I can’t say it now, not if I’m going to drive.”
The road was narrow and black beneath the thunderous sky, between the empty fields and dark woods.
There was another car in the road ahead, moving slowly.
Flin overtook it.
It was well out in the middle. He waited a moment for the driver to see that he wanted to pass and make room for him. The car continued to block the road. He sounded his horn, politely at first and then loudly. The car stayed where it was, moving slower and slower so “that he had to brake to keep from hitting it.
“What are they doing?” whispered Ruvi. “Why won’t they let us by?”
Flin shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He began to be afraid.
He pulled as far as he could to the left, riding on the rough berm. He sounded the horn and tramped on the throttle.
The other car swerved too. Its rear fender struck his front one. Ruvi screamed. Flin steadied the wildly lurching car. Sweat prickled like hot needles all over his skin. He stamped his foot hard on the brake.
The other car skidded on ahead. Flin swung the wheel sharp right and pushed the throttle down, whipping the big car across the road and onto the berm on the other side.
For one brief moment he thought he was going to make it. But the other car swayed over the ruthless speed and punched again with its clattering fenders like a man pushing another with his shoulder. Holes and stones threw Flin’s car back and forth. He fought to control it, hearing the voices of men shouting close by….
Hit the sonofabitch, knock his goddam ass ‘off the road. That’s the way—
There was a tree ahead. His headlights picked it up, brought it starkly into view, the rough-textured bark, the knots and gnarls, the uneven branches and dark leaves. Flin spun the wheel frantically. The lights made a wide slicing turn across meadow grass and weeds. The car bounded, leaped, sprang over uneven ground and fell with a jarring crash into the ditch of a little stream and died.
Silence, dazed and desperate.
Flin looked back. The other car had stopped at the side of the road. Men were getting out of it. He counted five. He thought he knew what men they were.
He reached across Ruvi and opened the door and pushed her ahead of him. “We’re going to run now,” he said, surprised at the flat banality of his voice, as though he were speaking to a child about some unimportant game. The car tilted that way and Ruvi slid out easily. Flin came behind her into mud and cold water that lapped around his ankles. He half helped, half threw her up the low steep bank and followed, grabbing her hand then and pulling her along.
He did not look back again. He did not have to. The men called as they ran, laughing, hooting, baying like great hounds.
Crooked Are lighted a curtain of black cloud. Flin saw trees, a clump of woods. The fire died and was followed by a hollow booming. The woods vanished. He continued to run toward them. The grass and weeds tangled around his legs. Ruvi lagged, pulling harder and harder against his grip, sobbing as she ran.
They were among the trees.
He let go of her. “Go on. Hide yourself somewhere. Don’t make a sound no matter what happens.”
“No. I won’t leave—”
He pushed her fiercely, trying not to scream at her aloud. “Go on!”
The young men came loping through the long grass, into the trees. They had a light. Its long white beam probed and poked.
See anything?
Not yet.
Who’s got the bottle? I’m dry from runnin’.
See anything?
They’re in here somewhere.
Breath rasping in big hard throats, legs ripping the undergrowth, feet trampling the ground.
I’m gonna find out, by God. After I take care of that son-of-a-bitch I’m gonna find out.
Whatcha gonna find out, Jed?
If it’s true they lay eggs or not.
Laughter.
Who’s got the goddam bottle?
Wait a minute, hey, right there, swing that light back, I hear the bastards moving—
Hey!
Flin turned, straightening his shoulders, standing between them and Ruvi.
One of them held the light in his face. He could not see them clearly. But he heard the voice of the one called Jed speaking to him.
“All right, greenie, you’re so anxious to teach us things— it ain’t fair for us to take and not give, so we got a lesson for you.”
“Let my wife go,” said Flin steadily. “You have no quarrel with her.”
“Your wife, huh?” said Jed. “Well now, how do we know she’s your wife? Was you married here under the laws of this land?”
“We were married under our own laws—”
“You hear that, boys? Well, your laws don’t cut any ice with us, greenie, so it don’t seem that you are man and wife as we would say. Anyway, she stays. That’s part of the lesson.”
Jed laughed. They all laughed.
In their own language Flin said to Ruvi, “Run now.”
He sprang forward at the man holding the light.
Another man moved quickly from the side and struck him across the shoulders and neck with something more than the naked hand. A tree branch, perhaps, or a metal bar. Flin went down, stunned with pain. He heard Ruvi cry out. He tried to tell her again to run but his voice had left him. There were scuffling sounds and more cries. He tried to get up and hard-shod feet kicked him and stamped him down. Iron knuckles battered his face. Jed bent over him and shook him.
“Hold him up there, Mike, I want to be sure he hears this. You hear me, greenie? Lesson One. Niggers always keep to their own side of the road.”
Crash. Blood in the mouth, and pain.
Ruvi?<
br />
“Hold him, Mike, goddam it. Lesson Two. When a white man takes a mind to a female nigger, she ain’t supposed to get uppity about it. It’s an honor, see? She’s supposed to be real nice and happy and flattered. See?”
More blood, more pain.
Ruvi, Ruvi!
“Lesson Three. And this one you better remember and write out and hang up where all the other red, blue, green, and purple niggers can see it. You never lay a hand on a white man. Never. No matter what.”
Ruvi was quiet. He could not hear her voice.
“You understand that? No matter what!”
Hya-hoo!
Give it to him, Jed. Tell him so he don’t forget.
Dark, night, thunder, red fire, red blood, silence, distance, one long fading echoing voice.
—Just like a real human woman by God what do you know—
Laughter.
Ruvi—
Gone.
There was a great deal of public indignation about it. Newspapers all over the world had editorials. The President made a statement. The Governor made a formal apology for his state and a sincere promise to find and punish the handful of men responsible for the outrage.
Grand Falls protected its own.
No witnesses could be found to identify the men involved in the incident that had occurred in town. Judge Shaw was sure he had never seen them before. So was the policeman. The attack itself had taken place out in the country, of course, and in the dark. Flin did not remember the license number of the car nor had he seen the faces of the men clearly. Neither had Ruvi. They could have been anyone from anywhere.
The name “Jed” by itself meant nothing. There were a number of Jeds in the neighborhood but they were the wrong ones. The right Jed never turned up, and if he had Flin could only have identified him definitely as the man he himself had struck in front of the Grand Falls Hotel. (“Mighty hot tempered, he seemed,” Judge Shaw said. “Took offense where I’m sure none was meant. Like he just didn’t understand our ways.”)
So there was no finding and no punishment.
As soon as the doctors told him he was fit to travel, Flin informed his group that he was returning home. He had already been in contact with Galactic Center. Someone else would be sent to take his place. They were very angry about the whole thing at home and various steps were being considered. But since Earth was not a member planet she was not subject to galactic law, and since the future of a world was considerably more important than the actions of a few individuals or the feelings of their victims, probably nothing very drastic would be done. And Flin recognized that this was right.
The Halfling and Other Stories Page 15
