Slowly, Slowly in the Wind

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Thanks, Gwyn,” Elsie said to the woman behind the desk, though Elsie had got her cylinders by pushbutton. “Quiet here this morning!” Elsie hadn’t met anyone she knew, or knew well enough to want to have a coffee with.

  “Yes,” said Gwyn. She was a woman of about forty, a health-faddist, good at sports.

  It was unusual for Gwyn to be so unsmiling, and Elsie said, “Anything the matter?”

  Gwyn looked for a second embarrassed, then shook her head and said, “Oh, no. Everything’s under control.”

  Elsie thought perhaps something had happened in Gwyn’s family—a death. A parent, maybe, because Gwyn was not married. Elsie went out to her copter. She was only a little distance from it when a spot on a tree trunk, at eye level, caught her attention. A funny mushroom, Elsie supposed. It was a bulging white disk and its center was slightly pink. Like a woman’s breast, she thought, and repressed a giggle. She turned to her copter, and saw another larger circle on a larger tree. Fungus. That was what the Forty-Niners must mean about the trees. It didn’t seem a huge problem. Rainbow had successfully fought fungi before, and they’d certainly had some odd ones.

  Still, Elsie felt disturbed, and when she got home switched on the television news and listened as she deposited her library cylinders in the audio-video. The news sounded positively soothing, as usual. Elsie was about to ring U-Name-It for a refill of mixed, when the news announcer broke into a colorful smile and said, “Now for a special announcement. Please do not touch your trees, for any purpose, till further notice. Those funny looking growths aren’t dangerous but they can spread, and some kids are shooting them with air rifles or poking them for fun. The Forestry Department is already taking care of them, so don’t you folks worry. Forestry will make a stop at your house in the next forty-eight hours. But don’t let the kids touch ’em. Okay, folks?” A big grin.

  Elsie didn’t like the sound of that. This was the local Rainbow news. She telephoned Jack, something she rarely did in working hours.

  “Oh, forget it, honey! What else’ve they got to talk about on the news?” Jack sounded as calm as ever.

  But when Elsie was looking over the U-Name-It mixed, which had been installed around 3 P.M., she noticed that the refrigerator power had automatically switched over from nuke to battery. That meant an emergency of some kind.

  Elsie went at once to the telephone and rang up Jane Newcombe.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Jane said. “It’s probably because Jack’s in top-secret and sworn to silence. The trees are shooting inflammable sap, Elsie! Something like phosphorus or napalm. Remember napalm?”

  Elsie did. “What do you mean, shooting?”

  “These mushroom things explode. In fact they’re not fungus. More like a cancer. Gosh, everyone’s known about it for at least—since early this morning. Kids aren’t supposed to poke them, so tell your boys.”

  “But it’s a tree disease, isn’t it?”

  “I dunno. What’s the use of giving it a name? As you always say, Elsie, does it make things any better?” Jane tried to laugh. “If you have any on your trees, don’t walk too close, dear, because they go off.”

  “Like guns?”

  “Can’t talk anymore, Tommy’s just come in and I want to make sure he’s briefed. Okay?”

  When she had hung up, Elsie went out the rear door of the house, out a second door in the covered passage to the copter and car garage onto her driveway. She loved her poplars, the young oak, the palm trees, the two pineapple trees. Elsie tended the garden, pruned the roses, kept an eye on everything. Jack wasn’t keen on gardening. She walked down the broad graveled drive to the iron gates, stood for a moment looking through the gates at the gently rolling land beyond, at the yellowish but fertile soil, at the varying green of trees and the fuzzy orange and yellow patch in the distance, a citrus orchard. Heavenly, she thought. And healthy. At least to the eye.

  She began to walk back to her house. Now she caught sight of a small whitish circle on the slender trunk of the oak. A pang went through her, as if she had seen a wound on one of her own children. The white circle confronted her directly, like some kind of accusation. It was hardly three inches in diameter, smaller than the two she had seen at Rainbow Library, but unmistakably what it was, and she could also see a pinkness at the center.

  A rifle or pistol shot made Elsie jump, her sandals rattled on the gravel, and she realized how tense she was. Their nearest neighbors, the Osbournes, sometimes shot clay pigeons. Hunting was forbidden in Rainbow. She heard two more shots, more distant, and from another direction.

  The telephone was ringing. Elsie ran in and answered it eagerly.

  “This is Helen Ludlow at Rainbow Academy,” said a pleasant young voice. “Mrs Gifford? . . . This is just to say Richard’s had a slight accident. No, not serious, I can assure you, but we’re bringing him home and he may be a little late because we’re—treating him. Someone will bring his copter, so he’ll have it at home. His brother Charles is quite all right.”

  Elsie asked if it had anything to do with the trees, but the line went dead. Miss Ludlow taught history, if Elsie remembered correctly.

  Now there were more gunshots, some very distant, barely audible. She went out on her driveway again to look at the spot on the oak. She imagined that it had grown larger in the last five minutes. Its outer edge was crinkled like water-soaked flesh, like something prepared to expand. It seemed to quiver as she approached. Or was she imagining?

  She decided to telephone the Forestry Department.

  The Forestry Department’s line gave out a constant busy signal. Rainbow Hospital? She anticipated evasiveness there. The police? They would probably say it was the business of the Forestry Department. Elsie put on the television. She got a Mozart opera, on another channel a Spanish lesson, then a gymnastics class, a cooking lesson, finally came to her senses and pushed Channel 30 which gave out news twenty-four hours a day. The announcer was talking about the President’s warm reception at a Far Eastern capi-tal, as if anyone cared.

  Elsie was aware of a growing panic.

  She grabbed a jacket and went to her copter. At least from the copter she would be able to see what was happening.

  The sporadic gunshots kept up.

  Elsie headed in the same direction she had gone that morning, towards the center of Rainbow called the Forum, which held the Library, Rainbow Hospital, Town Hall and Symphony Hall. Now she noticed a more than usual number of cars on the roads, all moving towards the eastern borders of Rainbow. They looked like ladybirds—some of them did have polka-dot roofs—but small as they were, they held more than most copters could, if one was moving home. Each battery car took only two passengers, but behind there was ample room for suitcases, crates and whatnot. Elsie flew lower as she approached a grove of trees. She saw men with rifles. Some were laughing, bending backward, though she couldn’t hear what they said.

  “Hey! Not so close!” a man on the ground yelled at her, waving his arms.

  “Vibes! Keep clear!” called another voice.

  “And shut up yourself!” said the first man.

  Elsie saw two trees then a third wilt rapidly, and collapse—in a matter of ten seconds! Figures scattered away on the run.

  More guns went off.

  Two white ambulances rushed at top speed (they went faster than ordinary cars, but were also on battery) towards the tree area. Elsie cut her forward power and hovered. She was now over another part of the park, over trees which bordered Symphony Hall.

  “Go away please!” That was from a middle-aged man below who brandished a stick. “Vibrations!” He wore the dark green uniform of the Forestry Department.

  Then Elsie saw a white jet come from nowhere and hit the man in the face. The man screamed and fell, head in his hands.

  At once, without even thinking, Elsie lowered her copter. The man h
ad fallen in a wide lane, and she had space to land. She got out and ran the short distance to where he lay. She could hear his groans now.

  “Are you—” Elsie stopped in horror. The man’s face was burning. Steam actually rose, and she could smell it—scorched flesh plus something aromatic, like resin. She pulled the man’s hands down instinctively from his face, then saw that his palms were burning too. “Can you walk to the copter?” Elsie looked around wildly for help, because he showed no sign of getting up, and she was not sure she could get him to the copter to fly him to the hospital a half mile away. Was this what had happened to Richard?

  She caught the man under his arms, began to drag him towards the copter, and realized that he had fainted. No, he was dead. His eyes, open, had turned upward and were pink-white except for a crescent of gray. Was he dead? She bent quickly to look for a pulse in his wrist.

  “Get away this place is dangerous!” This came from a tall, booted figure in green, another Forestry Department man, young, furious, with a rifle in his hands.

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re shooting the trees and there’s no telling which way they’ll go off! Take off, ma’am!”

  Elsie cast a glance around her, saw several trees wilting, heard more gunshots, then ran towards her copter. She imagined that the ground shook under her feet, but she dismissed the idea. She had just seen a man die. Why shouldn’t she imagine that the ground was shaking? As she started the copter, she saw a man fire his rifle at a tree and duck at the same time, as if dodging a live enemy, and Elsie saw the jet of white sap—or something—spew like a lanced boil, except that no boil was like this. The jet had looked strong as a garden hose turned on full, like a deliberate act of retaliation by the tree.

  The copter rose, and Elsie looked fixedly at the sight below. In the grove, five or six slender columns of smoke swayed in the gentle wind. The fires could get out of control, she thought. She saw a Forestry man with a rifle creeping stealthily among wilting, smoking trees, looking for another mark. A jet got him first at chest level, knocked him sideways, and Elsie saw him tearing his jacket off, saw smoke coming from the cloth of his uniform, then she had to give her attention to the copter controls. She flew homeward at top speed.

  The surface of their swimming pool rippled, heaved almost, as if there was a high wind, but there was hardly any wind. Phone Jack again, Elsie told herself. But when she picked up the telephone, she found herself dialing Jane Newcombe’s number.

  There was no answer, though Elsie let it ring ten times. Maybe Jane was shopping. But a stronger feeling possessed her: the Newcombes had fled. Their family of four might have been in four of the cars she had seen this morning on the roads going out of Rainbow.

  She was about to try Channel 30 again, when the chimes sounded, indicating a copter wanting to land. This was a friendly signal, activated by a visitor pushing a button in his copter. It would be Richard coming home, and Charles.

  A nervous young man in white got out of the big hospital copter in the driveway. The boys’ two copters were landing in the hangar. Richard was with the young man, had a light bandage round his head, but he was on his feet, walking just as usual.

  “Nothing at all, Mrs. Gifford. Just a little scorch mark. We just bandaged him to make sure—antiseptics, y’know. You can take the bandage off tomorrow. Better if the air gets to it—probably.”

  “What happened?—Can’t you tell me?” she added, because the young man was trotting back to his copter, and his colleague ran to join him from the hangar.

  “We got work to do, ma’am! Your boy’s okay!”

  In fact both Richard and Charles had their usual smiles. Elsie found her voice and said, “Come in the house, for goodness’ sake! What happened, Richard?”

  “He poked a tree blister,” Charles said, “with a baseball bat. It was game period, see? But we weren’t supposed to touch the trees.” Charles’s calm smile showed a hint of enjoyment.

  “I ducked but the kid behind me—” Richard finished the sentence with a brush of his palms. “He really got it right in the face. Dead. Honest it was like something on TV.” He spoke with a certain earnestness, as Elsie had heard him speak on rare occasions about a TV show he had enjoyed.

  “What boy?” Elsie asked.

  “They’re closing all the schools!” Charles said. “Closed since noon! This tree stuff’s like liquid fire! You ought to see it, mom!”

  Richard’s mouth was still turned up at the corners.

  “Does it hurt, Richard?” Elsie asked.

  “It would, but they put stuff on it so it won’t.”

  “The trees are jiggling the earth,” Charles told her. “The sap is jiggling the roots, and one of the fellows said there’s going to be the biggest earthquake anybody’s ever seen.” Despite his unwonted intensity, Charles’s bland smile returned, and his lids fell halfway down, sleepily, over glazed eyes.

  Elsie wondered if the kids had made up most of it. “Who told you that?”

  “Look at that picture on the wall!” Richard said, laughing.

  The heaviest picture in the living room had gone very askew. Now there was a crash of glass in the kitchen, and she went to see what had happened. A glass platter of oranges and apples had jiggled from a sideboard and fallen on the tile floor. All the glasses teetered on the edges of shelves, some tinkling together like a discordant carillon. She pushed the glasses back, knowing that the gesture was futile, absurd.

  “Hey, Dad’s here!” Charles yelled.

  Jack had come into the living room, white-faced, but with his usual smile—almost his usual smile.

  “Jack—” Elsie began.

  “They call it a sap disturbance in the tree roots, hon,” Jack said in a calm, deep voice. “We’re trying to counteract it, so don’t worry.”

  “Did you know we’ve been on battery power since—maybe this morning?” Elsie asked. She heard a faint, hollow boom just then, distant, and the house quivered just after the sound. That had been an underground explosion. A scree-eech behind her: the heavy-framed picture was falling, taking the hook from the wall.

  “I know,” Jack said. “I didn’t bother telling you. Safety measure, battery power. We had only a week to analyze this tree sap syndrome—not long enough. It’s weird. Anyway—we didn’t want to alarm the public by talking about it.”

  “Well—am I the public?”

  “Honey, we’re doing all the necessary. Trust me, trust us. San Andreas isn’t kicking up at all yet. Just the trees. Irregular pattern. So it’s hard to counterbomb. We’re busy!” Jack now looked at his sons as if suddenly aware of, or annoyed by, their presence. “Hey, Ritchie—”

  “Yes,” Elsie said. “He punctured a tree. He—” Suddenly Elsie realized that Jack was in a state of shock, a kind of trance. He hadn’t noticed Richard’s bandage until now—and now he looked at Richard with eyes as glazed as the boys’ eyes. “Shouldn’t we leave, Jack? Everyone’s leaving, aren’t they? The Newcombes have left!”

  The question did not bring Jack out of his semi-trance, but he talked. They were bombing peripherally to drain the strain, he said, and why didn’t they all have some instant coffee or chocolate milk instead of standing around in the living room? Another crash came from the kitchen, and Elsie paid no attention. She was hanging on her husband’s words, trying to derive some comfort, even information, from them.

  “Suppose the bombing just activates the sap—and San Andreas?”

  The boys were now hopping about the living room, screaming with laughter, feeling furniture that was trembling and drifting.

  “We just shoot ’em and they wilt, finished,” Jack said. “We’re in asbestos suits. This is an asbestos suit, see?” He pulled up a headgear from the back of his neck, and peered at Elsie through a transparent panel. “I should be out fighting with ’em. Got to go. But I came hom
e to see how you were. First of all, let’s take down anything that’s going to fall upstairs. I don’t want to leave our nice home, do you?”

  They all climbed the stairs. All the pictures were cockeyed, and worse, a pipe had cracked in the bathroom, and water gushed, steaming, into the tub. Elsie staggered as the house shook violently under her.

  Crack!

  She and Jack and the kids looked up and got their faces full of sharp plastic fragments. A split at least two inches wide ran the length of the hall ceiling and disappeared over a bedroom door.

  “They can’t kill all the trees in half an hour!” Elsie said. “If you mean it’s just the trees doing it—”

  “It’s nothing,” Jack said, waving a hand which in the last seconds had been encased in an asbestos glove.

  A clunk came from the bathroom. Elsie saw that the basin had tumbled from its pedestal. “Jack—you’ve been told to say it’s nothing, I suppose!” Elsie was hoping only that he would tell the truth. Had they given him a pill?

  The telephone rang.

  Elsie ran down the stairs, rather surprised that the telephone was still working.

  “Hello, Elsie!” said Jane. “You’re still there? Aren’t you leaving?”

  Then came awful crackles on the line. “Where’re you phoning from?”

  “Eastern border of Golden Gate! Everyone’s leaving! I’m so glad to get you because nearly all the lines are out! There’s going to be an earthquake! Jack should know! Where is he?”

  “He’s here. He says they’re trying to counterbomb it!”

  “Elsie, dear, Golden Gate is . . .” R-ZZZZ!

  The line went dead, really dead. What had she been about to say? Gone? Finished? At any instant Elsie thought the house would give a great heave and collapse—a death trap. “Jack,” Elsie yelled up the stairway.