The old man’s voice faded.
The boys sat for a long while without moving. Then Charlie turned and looked at Douglas and said, “Well, is he or isn’t he?” Douglas breathed twice and said, “He sure is.”
The colonel opened his eyes.
“I sure am what?” he asked.
“A Time Machine,” murmured Douglas. “A Time Machine.”
The colonel looked at the boys for a full five seconds. Now it was his voice that was full of awe.
“Is that what you boys call me?” “Yes, sir, Colonel.”
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel sat slowly back in his chair and looked at the boys and looked at his hands and then looked at the blank wall beyond them steadily.
Charlie arose. “Well, I guess we better go. So long and thanks, Colonel.”
“What? Oh, so long, boys.”
Douglas and John and Charlie went on tiptoe out the door.
Colonel Freeleigh, though they crossed his line of vision, did not see them go.
In the street, the boys were startled when someone shouted from a first-floor window above, “Hey!”
They looked up.
“Yes, sir, Colonel?”
The colonel leaned out, waving one arm.
“I thought about what you said, boys!”
“Yes, sir?”
“And-you’re right! Why didn’t I think of it before! A Time Machine, by God, a Time Machine!”
“Yes, sir.”
“So long, boys. Come aboard any time!”
At the end of the street they turned again and the colonel was still waving. They waved back, feeling warm and good, then went on.
“Chug-a-chug,” said John. “I can travel twelve years into the past. Wham-chug-ding!”
“Yeah,” said Charlie, looking back at that quiet house, “but you can’t go a hundred years.”
“No,” mused John, “I can’t go a hundred years. That’s really traveling. That’s really some machine.”
They walked for a full minute in silence, looking at their feet. They came to a fence.
“Last one over this fence,” said Douglas, “is a girl.”
All the way home they called Douglas “Dora.”
Long after midnight Tom woke to find Douglas scribbling rapidly in the nickel tablet, by flashlight.
“Doug, what’s up?”
“Up? Everything’s up! I’m counting my blessings, Tom! Look here; the Happiness Machine didn’t work out, did it?. But, who cares! I got the whole year lined up, anyway. Need r to run anywhere on the main streets, I got the Green Town Trolley to look around and spy on the world from. Need to run anywhere off the main streets, I knock on Miss Fern and I Miss Roberta’s door and they charge up the batteries on their electric runabout and we go sailing down the sidewalks. Need to run down alleys and over fences, to see that part of Green Town you only see around back and behind and creep up on, and I got my brand-new sneakers. Sneakers, runabout, I trolley! I’m set! But even better, Tom, even better, listen! If I want to go where no one else can go because they’re not: smart enough to even think of it, if I want to charge back to 1890 and then transfer to 1875 and transfer again crosstown to 1860 I just hop on the old Colonel Freeleigh Express! I’m writing it down here this way: ‘Maybe old people were never children, like we claim with Mrs. Bentley, but, big or little, some of them were standing around at Appomattox the summer of 1865.’ They got Indian vision and can sight back further than you and me will ever sight ahead.”
“That sounds swell, Doug; what does it mean?”
Douglas went on writing. “It means you and me ain’t got half the chance to be far-travelers they have. If we’re lucky we’ll hit forty, forty-five, fifty, That’s just a jog around the block to them. It’s when you hit ninety, ninety-five, a hundred, that you’re far-traveling like heck.”
The flashlight went out.
They lay there in the moonlight.
“Tom,” whispered Douglas. “I got to travel all those ways. See what I can see. But most of all I got to visit Colonel Freeleigh once, twice, three times a week. He’s better than all the other machines. He talks, you listen. And the more he talks the more he gets you to peering around and noticing things. He tells you you’re riding on a very special train, by gosh, and sure enough, it’s hue. He’s been down the track, and knows. And now here we come, you and me, along the same track, but further on, and so much looking and snuffing and handling things to do, you need old Colonel Freeleigh to shove and say look alive so you remember every second! Every darn thing there is to remember! So when kids come around when you’re real old, you can do for them what the colonel once did for you. That’s the way it is, Tom, I got to spend a lot of time visiting him and listening so I can go far-traveling with him as often as he can.”
Tom was silent a moment. Then he looked over at Douglas there in the dark.
“Far-traveling. You make that up?”
“Maybe yes and maybe no.” “Far-traveling-” whispered Tom.
“Only one thing I’m sure of,” said Douglas, closing his eyes. “It sure sounds lonely.”
Bang!
A door slammed. In an attic dust jumped off bureaus and bookcases. Two old women collapsed against the attic door, each scrabbling to lock it tight, tight. A thousand pigeons seemed to have leaped off the roof right over their heads. They bent as if burdened, ducked under the drum of beating wings. Then they stopped, their mouths surprised. What they heard was only the pure sound of panic, their hearts in their chests . . . Above the uproar, they tried to make themselves heard. “What’ve we done! Poor Mister Quartermain!”
“We must’ve killed him. And someone must’ve seen and followed us. Look . . .”
Miss Fern and Miss Roberta peered from the cobwebbed attic window. Below, as if no great tragedy had occurred, the oaks and elms continued to grow in fresh sunlight. A boy strolled by on the sidewalk, turned, strolled by again, looking up.
In the attic the old women peered at each other as if trying to see their faces in a running stream.
“The police!”
But no one hammered the downstairs door and cried, “In the name of the law!” “Who’s that boy down there?”
“Douglas, Douglas Spaulding! Lord, he’s come to ask for a ride in our Green Machine. He doesn’t know. Our pride has ruined us. Pride and that electrical contraption!”
“That terrible salesman from Gumport Falls. It’s his fault, him and his talking.”
Talking, talking, like soft rain on a summer roof.
Suddenly it was another day, another noon. They sat with white fans and dishes of cool, trembling lime Jell-O on their arbored porch.
Out of the blinding glare, out of the yellow sun, glittering, splendid as a prince’s coach . . .
THE GREEN MACHINE!
It glided. It whispered, an ocean breeze. Delicate as maple leaves, fresher than creek water, it purred with the majesty of cats prowling the noontide. In the machine, his Panama hat afloat in Vaseline above his ears, the salesman from Gumport Falls! The machine, with a rubber tread, soft, shrewd, whipped up their scalded white sidewalk, whirred to the lowest porch step, twirled, stopped. The salesman leaped out, blocked off the sun with his Panama. In this small shadow, his smile flashed.
“The name is William Tara! And this—” He pinched a bulb. A seal barked. “—is the hem!” He lifted black satin cushions. “Storage batteries!” A smell of lightning blew on the hot air. “Steering lever! Foot rest! Overhead parasol! Here, in tote, is The Green Machine!”
In the dark attic the ladies shuddered, remembering, eyes shut.
“Why didn’t we stab him with our darning needles!”
“Shh! Listen.”
Someone knocked on the front door downstairs. After a time the knocking stopped. They saw a woman cross the yard and enter the house next door.
“Only Lavinia Nebbs, come with an empty cup, to borrow sugar, I guess.”
“Hold me, I’m afraid.”
&n
bsp; They shut their eyes. The memory-play began again. An old straw hat on an iron trunk was suddenly flourished, it seemed, by the man from Gumport Falls.
“Thanks, I will have some iced tea.” You could hear the cool liquid shock his stomach, in the silence. Then he turned his gaze upon the old ladies like a doctor with a small light, looking into their eyes and nostrils and mouths. “Ladies, I know you’re both vigorous. You look it. Eighty years”-he snapped his fingers—“mean nothing to you! But there are times, mind, when you’re so busy, busy, you need a friend indeed, a friend in need, and that is the two-seater Green Machine.”
He fixed his bright, stuffed-fox, green-glass-eyed gaze upon that wonderful merchandise. It stood, smelling new, in the hot sunlight, waiting for them, a parlor chair comfortably put to wheels.
“Quiet as a swan’s feather.” They felt him breathe softly in their faces. “Listen.” They listened. “The storage batteries are fully charged and ready now! Listen! Not a tremor, not a sound. Electric, ladies. You recharge it every night in your garage.”
“It couldn’t—that is—” The younger sister gulped some iced tea. “It couldn’t electrocute us accidently?”
“Perish the thought!”
He vaulted to the machine again, his teeth like those you saw in dental windows, alone, grimacing at you, as you passed by late at night.
“Tea parties!” He waltzed the runabout in a circle. “Bridge clubs. Soirees. Galas. Luncheons. Birthday gatherings! D. A. R. breakfasts.” He purred away as if running off forever. He returned in a rubber-tired hush. “Gold Star Mother suppers.” He sat primly, corseted by his supple characterization of a woman. “Easy steering. Silent, elegant arrivals and departures. No license needed. On hot days—take the breeze. Ah . . .He glided by the porch, head back, eyes closed deliciously, hair tousling in the wind thus cleanly sliced through.
He trudged reverently up the porch stairs, hat in hand, turning to gaze at the trial model as at the altar of a familiar church. “Ladies,” he said softly, “twenty-five dollars down. Ten dollars a month, for two years.”
Fern was first down the steps onto the double seat. She sat apprehensively. Her hand itched. She raised it. She dared tweak the rubber bulb horn.
A seal barked.
Roberta, on the porch, screamed hilariously and leaned over the railing.
The salesman joined their hilarity. He escorted the older sister down the steps, roaring, at the same time taking out his pen and searching in his straw hat for some piece of paper or other.
And so we bought it!” remembered Miss Roberta, in the attic, horrified at their nerve. “We should’ve been warned! Always did think it looked like a little car off the carnival roller coaster!”
“Well,” said Fern defensively, “my hip’s bothered me for years, and you always get tired walking. It seemed so refined, so regal. Like in the old days when women wore hoop skirts. They sailed! The Green Machine sailed so quietly.”
Like an excursion boat, wonderfully easy to steer, a baton handle you twitched with your hand, so.
Oh, that glorious and enchanted first week—the magical afternoons of golden light, humming through the shady town on a dreaming, timeless river, seated stiffly, smiling at passing acquaintances, sedately purring out their wrinkled claws at every turn, squeezing a hoarse cry from the black rubber horn at intersections, sometimes letting Douglas or Tom Spaulding or any of the other boys who trotted, chatting, alongside, hitch a little ride. Fifteen slow and pleasurable miles an hour top speed. They came and went through the summer sunlight and shadow, their faces freckled and stained by passing trees, going and coming like an ancient, wheeled vision.
“And then,” whispered Fern, “this afternoon! Oh, this afternoon!”
“It was an accident.”
“But we ran away, and that’s criminal!”
This noon. The smell of the leather cushions under their bodies, the gray perfume smell of their own sachets trailing back as they moved in their silent Green Machine through the small, languorous town.
It happened quickly. Rolling soft onto the sidewalk at noon, because the streets were blistering and fiery, and the only shade was under the lawn trees, they had glided to a blind comer, bulbing their throaty horn. Suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, Mister Quartermain had tottered from nowhere!
“Look out!” screamed Miss Fern.
“Look out!” screamed Miss Roberta.
“Look out!” cried Mister Quartermain.
The two women grabbed each other instead of the steering stick.
There was a terrible thud. The Green Machine sailed on in the hot daylight, under the shady chestnut trees, past the ripening apple trees. Looking back only once, the two old ladies’ eyes filled with faded horror.
The old man lay on the sidewalk, silent.
“And here we are,” mourned Miss Fern in the darkening attic. “Oh, why didn’t we stop! Why did we run away?”
“Shh!” They both listened.
The rapping downstairs came again.
When it stopped they saw a boy cross the lawn in the dim light. “Just Douglas Spaulding come for a ride again.” They both sighed.
The hours passed; the sun was going down.
“We’ve been up here all afternoon,” said Roberta tiredly. “We can’t stay in the attic three weeks hiding till everybody forgets.”
“We’d starve.”
“What’ll we do, then? Do you think anyone saw and followed us?” They looked at each other. “No. Nobody saw.”
The town was silent, all the tiny houses putting on lights. There was a smell of watered grass and cooking suppers from below.
“Time to put on the meat,” said Miss Fern. “Frank’ll be coming home in ten minutes.”
“Do we dare go down?”
“Frank’d call the police if he found the house empty. That’d make things worse.”
The sun went swiftly. Now they were only two moving things in the musty blackness. “Do you,” wondered Miss Fern, “think he’s dead?”
“Mister Quartermain?”
A pause. “Yes.”
Roberta hesitated. “We’ll check the evening paper.”
They opened the attic door and looked carefully at the steps leading down. “Oh, if Frank hears about this, he’ll take our Green Machine away from us, and it’s so lovely and nice riding and getting the cool wind and seeing the town.”
“We won’t tell him.”
“Won’t we?”
They helped each other down the creaking stairs to the second floor, stopping to listen . . . In the kitchen they peered at the pantry, peeked out windows with frightened eyes, and finally set to work frying hamburger on the stove. After five minutes of working silence Fern looked sadly over at Roberta and said, “I’ve been thinking. We’re old and feeble and don’t like to admit it. We’re dangerous. We owe a debt to society for running off—”
“And—?” A kind of silence fell on the frying in the kitchen as the two sisters faced each other, nothing in their hands.
“I think that”—Fern stared at the wall for a long time-“we shouldn’t drive the Green Machine ever again.” Roberta picked up a plate and held it in her thin hand. “Not-ever?” she said.
“No.”
“But,” said Roberta, “we don’t have to—to get rid of it, do we? We can keep it, can’t we?”
Fern considered this.
“Yes, I guess we can keep it.”
“At least that’ll be something. I’ll go out now and disconnect the batteries.”
Roberta was leaving just as Frank, their younger brother, only fifty-six years, entered.
“Hi, sisters!” he cried.
Roberta brushed past him without a word and walked out into the summer dusk. Frank was carrying a newspaper which Fern immediately snatched from him. Trembling, she looked it through and through, and sighing, gave it back to him.
“Saw Doug Spaulding outside just now. Said he had a message for you. Said for you not to worry—he saw
everything and everything’s all right. What did he mean by that?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.” Fem turned her back and searched for her handkerchief.
“Oh well, these kids.” Frank looked at his sister’s back for a long moment, then shrugged.
“Supper almost ready?” he asked pleasantly.
“Yes.” Fern set the kitchen table.
There was a bulbing cry from outside. Once, twice, three times—far away.
“What’s that?” Frank peered through the kitchen window into the dusk. “What’s Roberta up to? Look at her out there, sitting in the Green Machine, poking the rubber horn!”
Once, twice more, in the dusk, softly, like some kind of mournful animal, the bulbing sound was pinched out.
“What’s got into her?” demanded Frank.
“You just leave her alone!” screamed Fern. Frank looked surprised.
A moment later Roberta entered quietly, without looking at anyone, and they all sat down to supper.
The first light on the roof outside; very early morning. The leaves on all the trees tremble with a soft awakening to any breeze the dawn may offer. And then, far off, around a curve of silver track, comes the trolley, balanced on four small steel-blue wheels, and it is painted the color of tangerines. Epaulets of shimmery brass cover it and pipings of gold; and its chrome bell bings if the ancient motorman taps it with a wrinkled shoe. The numerals on the trolley’s front 1, and sides are bright as lemons. Within, its seats prickle with; cool green moss. Something like a buggy whip flings up from its roof to brush the spider thread high in the passing trees from which it takes its juice. From every window blows an incense, the all-pervasive blue and secret smell of summer storms and lightning.
Down the long elm-shadowed streets the trolley moves along, the motorman’s gray-gloved hand touched gently, timelessly, to the levered controls.
At noon the motorman stopped Is car in the middle of the block and leaned out. “Hey!”
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