A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

  “Dad fixed it so it would blow up and no one’d know where we landed or went! In case they ever came looking, see?”

  “Oh boy, a secret!”

  “Scared by my own rocket,” admitted Dad to Mom. “I am nervous. It’s silly to think there’ll ever be any more rockets. Except one, perhaps, if Edwards and his wife get through with their ship.”

  He put his tiny radio to his ear again. After two minutes he dropped his hand as you would drop a rag.

  “It’s over at last,” he said to Mom. “The radio just went off the atomic beam. Every other world station’s gone. They dwindled down to a couple in the last few years. Now the air’s completely silent. It’ll probably remain silent.”

  “For how long?” asked Robert.

  “Maybe—your great-grandchildren will hear it again,” said Dad. He just sat there, and the children were caught in the center of his awe and defeat and resignation and acceptance.

  Finally he put the boat out into the canal again, and they continued in the direction in which they had originally started.

  It was getting late. Already the sun was down the sky, and a series of dead cities lay ahead of them.

  Dad talked very quietly and gently to his sons. Many times in the past he had been brisk, distant, removed from them, but now he patted them on the head with just a word and they felt it.

  “Mike, pick a city.”

  “What, Dad?”

  “Pick a city, Son. Any one of these cities we pass.”

  “All right,” said Michael. “How do I pick?”

  “Pick the one you like the most. You, too, Robert and Tim. Pick the city you like best.”

  “I want a city with Martians in it,” said Michael.

  “You’ll have that,” said Dad. “I promise.” His lips were for the children, but his eyes were for Mom.

  They passed six cities in twenty minutes. Dad didn’t say anything more about the explosions; he seemed much more interested in having fun with his sons, keeping them happy, than anything else.

  Michael liked the first city they passed, but this was vetoed because everyone doubted quick first judgments. The second city nobody liked. It was an Earth man’s settlement, built of wood and already rotting into sawdust. Timothy liked the third city because it was large. The fourth and fifth were too small and the sixth brought acclaim from everyone, including Mother, who joined in the Gees, Goshes, and Look-at-thats!

  There were fifty or sixty huge structures still standing, streets were dusty but paved, and you could see one or two old centrifugal fountains still pulsing wetly in the plazas. That was the only life—water leaping in the late sunlight.

  “This is the city,” said everybody.

  Steering the boat to a wharf, Dad jumped out.

  “Here we are. This is ours. This is where we live from now on!”

  “From now on?” Michael was incredulous. He stood up, looking, and then turned to blink back at where the rocket used to be. “What about the rocket? What about Minnesota?”

  “Here,” said Dad.

  He touched the small radio to Michael’s blond head. “Listen.”

  Michael listened.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “That’s right. Nothing. Nothing at all any more. No more Minneapolis, no more rockets, no more Earth.”

  Michael considered the lethal revelation and began to sob little dry sobs.

  “Wait a moment,” said Dad the next instant. “I’m giving you a lot more in exchange, Mike!”

  “What?” Michael held off the tears, curious, but quite ready to continue in case Dad’s further revelation was as disconcerting as the original.

  “I’m giving you this city, Mike. It’s yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “For you and Robert and Timothy, all three of you, to own for yourselves.”

  Timothy bounded from the boat. “Look, guys, all for us! All of that!” He was playing the game with Dad, playing it large and playing it well. Later, after it was all over and things had settled, he could go off by himself and cry for ten minutes. But now it was still a game, still a family outing, and the other kids must be kept playing.

  Mike jumped out with Robert. They helped Mom.

  “Be careful of your sister,” said Dad, and nobody knew what he meant until later.

  They hurried into the great pink-stoned city, whispering among themselves, because dead cities have a way of making you want to whisper, to watch the sun go down.

  “In about five days,” said Dad quietly, “I’ll go back down to where our rocket was and collect the food hidden in the ruins there and bring it here; and I’ll hunt for Bert Edwards and his wife and daughters there.”

  “Daughters?” asked Timothy. “How many?”

  “Four.”

  “I can see that’ll cause trouble later.” Mom nodded slowly.

  “Girls.” Michael made a face like an ancient Martian stone image. “Girls.”

  “Are they coming in a rocket too?”

  “Yes. If they make it. Family rockets are made for travel to the Moon, not Mars. We were lucky we got through.”

  “Where did you get the rocket?” whispered Timothy, for the other boys were running ahead.

  “I saved it. I saved it for twenty years, Tim. I had it hidden away, hoping I’d never have to use it. I suppose I should have given it to the government for the war, but I kept thinking about Mars....”

  “And a picnic!”

  “Right. This is between you and me. When I saw everything was finishing on Earth, after I’d waited until the last moment, I packed us up. Bert Edwards had a ship hidden, too, but we decided it would be safer to take off separately, in case anyone tried to shoot us down.”

  “Why’d you blow up the rocket, Dad?”

  “So we can’t go back, ever. And so if any of those evil men ever come to Mars they won’t know we’re here.”

  “Is that why you look up all the time?”

  “Yes, it’s silly. They won’t follow us, ever. They haven’t anything to follow with. I’m being too careful, is all.”

  Michael came running back. “Is this really our city, Dad?”

  “The whole darn planet belongs to us, kids. The whole darn planet.”

  They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.

  Night came quickly in the thin atmosphere, and Dad left them in the square by the pulsing fountain, went down to the boat, and came walking back carrying a stack of paper in his big hands.

  He laid the papers in a clutter in an old courtyard and set them afire. To keep warm, they crouched around the blaze and laughed, and Timothy saw the little letters leap like frightened animals when the flames touched and engulfed them. The papers crinkled like an old man’s skin, and the cremation surrounded innumerable words:

  “GOVERNMENT BONDS; Business Graph, 1999; Religious Prejudice: An Essay; The Science of Logistics; Problems of the Pan-American Unity; Stock Report for July 3, 1998; The War Digest …”

  Dad had insisted on bringing these papers for this purpose. He sat there and fed them into the fire, one by one, with satisfaction, and told his children what it all meant.

  “It’s time I told you a few things. I don’t suppose it was fair, keeping so much from you. I don’t know if you’ll understand, but I have to talk, even if only part of it gets over to you.”

  He dropped a leaf in the fire.

  “I’m burning a way of life, just like that way of life is being burned clean of Earth right now. Forgive me if I talk like a politician. I am, after all, a former state governor, and I was honest and they hated me for it. Life on Earth never settled down to doing anything very good. Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how
to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth. That’s what the silent radio means. That’s what we ran away from.

  “We were lucky. There aren’t any more rockets left. It’s time you knew this isn’t a fishing trip at all. I put off telling you. Earth is gone. Interplanetary travel won’t be back for centuries, maybe never. But that way of life proved itself wrong and strangled itself with its own hands. You’re young. I’ll tell you this again every day until it sinks in.”

  He paused to feed more papers to the fire.

  “Now we’re alone. We and a handful of others who’ll land in a few days. Enough to start over. Enough to turn away from all that back on Earth and strike out on a new line—”

  The fire leaped up to emphasize his talking. And then all the papers were gone except one. All the laws and beliefs of Earth were burnt into small hot ashes which soon would be carried off in a wind.

  Timothy looked at the last thing that Dad tossed in the fire. It was a map of the World, and it wrinkled and distorted itself hotly and went—flimpf—and was gone like a warm, black butterfly. Timothy turned away.

  Now I’m going to show you the Martians,” said Dad. “Come on, all of you. Here, Alice.” He took her hand.

  Michael was crying loudly, and Dad picked him up and carried him, and they walked down through the ruins toward the canal.

  The canal. Where tomorrow or the next day their future wives would come up in a boat, small laughing girls now, with their father and mother.

  The night came down around them, and there were stars. But Timothy couldn’t find Earth. It had already set. That was something to think about.

  A night bird called among the ruins as they walked. Dad said, “Your mother and I will try to teach you. Perhaps we’ll fail. I hope not. We’ve had a good lot to see and learn from. We planned this trip years ago, before you were born. Even if there hadn’t been a war we would have come to Mars, I think, to live and form our own standard of living. It would have been another century before Mars would have been really poisoned by the Earth civilization. Now, of course—”

  They reached the canal. It was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night.

  “I’ve always wanted to see a Martian,” said Michael. “Where are they, Dad? You promised.”

  “There they are,” said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.

  The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.

  The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water. Timothy and Michael and Robert and Mom and Dad.

  The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water....

  The Screaming Woman

  My name is Margaret Leary and I’m ten years old and in the fifth grade at Central School. I haven’t any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got a nice father and mother except they don’t pay much attention to me. And anyway, we never thought we’d have anything to do with a murdered woman. Or almost, anyway.

  When you’re just living on a street like we live on, you don’t think awful things are going to happen, like shooting or stabbing or burying people under the ground, practically in your back yard. And when it does happen you don’t believe it. You just go on buttering your toast or baking a cake.

  I got to tell you how it happened. It was a noon in the middle of July. It was hot and Mama said to me, “Margaret, you go to the store and buy some ice cream. It’s Saturday, Dad’s home for lunch, so we’ll have a treat.”

  I ran out across the empty lot behind our house. It was a big lot, where kids had played baseball, and broken glass and stuff. And on my way back from the store with the ice cream I was just walking along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden it happened.

  I heard the Screaming Woman.

  I stopped and listened.

  It was coming up out of the ground.

  A woman was buried under the rocks and dirt and glass, and she was screaming, all wild and horrible, for someone to dig her out.

  I just stood there, afraid. She kept screaming, muffled.

  Then I started to run. I fell down, got up, and ran some more. I got in the screen door of my house and there was Mama, calm as you please, not knowing what I knew, that there was a real live woman buried out in back of our house, just a hundred yards away, screaming bloody murder.

  “Mama,” I said.

  “Don’t stand there with the ice cream,” said Mama.

  “But, Mama,” I said.

  “Put it in the icebox,” she said.

  “Listen, Mama, there’s a Screaming Woman in the empty lot.”

  “And wash your hands,” said Mama.

  “She was screamin’ and screamin’ …”

  “Let’s see now, salt and pepper,” said Mama, far away.

  “Listen to me,” I said, loud. “We got to dig her out. She’s buried under tons and tons of dirt and if we don’t dig her out, she’ll choke up and die.”

  “I’m certain she can wait until after lunch,” said Mama.

  “Mama, don’t you believe me?”

  “Of course, dear. Now wash your hands and take this plate of meat in to your father.”

  “I don’t even know who she is or how she got there,” I said. “But we got to help her before it’s too late.”

  “Good gosh,” said Mama. “Look at this ice cream. What did you do, just stand in the sun and let it melt?”

  “Well, the empty lot …”

  “Go on, now, scoot.”

  I went into the dining room.

  “Hi, Dad, there’s a Screaming Woman in the empty lot.”

  “I never knew a woman who didn’t,” said Dad.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “You look very grave,” said Father.

  “We’ve got to get picks and shovels and excavate, like for an Egyptian mummy,” I said.

  “I don’t feel like an archaeologist, Margaret,” said Father. “Now, some nice cool October day, I’ll take you up on that.”

  “But we can’t wait that long,” I almost screamed. My heart was bursting in me. I was excited and scared and afraid and here was Dad, putting meat on his plate, cutting and chewing and paying me no attention.

  “Dad?” I said.

  “Mmmm?” he said, chewing.

  “Dad, you just gotta come out after lunch and help me,” I said. “Dad, Dad, I’ll give you all the money in my piggy bank!”

  “Well,” said Dad, “So it’s a business proposition, is it? It must be important for you to offer your perfectly good money. How much money will you pay, by the hour?”

  “I got five whole dollars it took me a year to save, and it’s all yours.”

  Dad touched my arm. “I’m touched. I’m really touched. You want me to play with you and you’re willing to pay for my time. Honest, Margaret, you make your old Dad feel like a piker. I don’t give you enough time. Tell you what, after lunch, I’ll come out and listen to your screaming woman, free of charge.”

  “Will you, oh, will you, really?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s what I’ll do,” said Dad. “But you must promise me one thing?”

  “What?”

  “If I come out, you must eat all of your lunch first.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  Mother came in and sat down and we started to eat.

  “Not so fast,” said Mama.

  I slowed down. Then I started eating fast again.

  “You heard your mother,” said Dad.

  “The Screaming Woman,” I said. “We got to hurry.”

  “I,” said Father, “intend sitting here quietly and judiciously giving my attention first to my steak, then to my potatoes, and my salad, of course, and then to my ice cream, and after that to a long drink of iced coffee, if you don’t mind. I may be a good hour at it. And another thing, young lady, if you mention her name, this Screaming What-sis, once more at this table during lunch, I won’t go out with
you to hear her recital.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Lunch was a million years long. Everybody moved in slow motion, like those films you see at the movies. Mama got up slow and got down slow and forks and knives and spoons moved slow. Even the flies in the room were slow. And Dad’s cheek muscles moved slow. It was so slow. I wanted to scream, “Hurry! Oh, please, rush, get up, run around, come on out, run!”

  But no, I had to sit, and all the while we sat there slowly, slowly eating our lunch, out there in the empty lot (I could hear her screaming in my mind. Scream!) was the Screaming Woman, all alone, while the world ate its lunch and the sun was hot and the lot was empty as the sky.

  “There we are,” said Dad, finished at last.

  “Now will you come out to see the Screaming Woman?” I said.

  “First a little more iced coffee,” said Dad.

  “Speaking of Screaming Women,” said Mother. “Charlie Nesbitt and his wife, Helen, had another fight last night.”

  “That’s nothing new,” said Father. “They’re always fighting.”

  “If you ask me, Charlie’s no good,” said Mother. “Or her, either.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Dad. “I think she’s pretty nice.”

  “You’re prejudiced. After all, you almost married her.”

  “You going to bring that up again?” he said. “After all, I was only engaged to her six weeks.”

  “You showed some sense when you broke it off.”

  “Oh, you know Helen. Always stagestruck. Wanted to travel in a trunk. I just couldn’t see it. That broke it up. She was sweet, though. Sweet and kind.”

  “What did it get her? A terrible brute of a husband like Charlie.”

  “Dad,” I said.

  “I’ll give you that. Charlie has got a terrible temper,” said Dad. “Remember when Helen had the lead in our high school graduation play? Pretty as a picture. She wrote some songs for it herself. That was the summer she wrote that song for me.”

  “Ha,” said Mother.

  “Don’t laugh. It was a good song.”

  “You never told me about that song.”

  “It was between Helen and me. Let’s see, how did it go?”