“Snob,” she said. “Anyhow, you’re afraid to go on; you want to quit. So the next time you see Edie you can truthfully say, ‘I am not doing anything shameful and evil with your mama, scout’s honor.’ Right?” She mounted the horse, picked up the reins and waited. “Come on, Hal.”
An explosion lit up the sky.
The horse bolted, and Bonny leaped from it, throwing herself from its side to roll, sliding, into the shrubbery of the oak forest. Bruno, she thought; can it be him really? She lay clasping her head, sobbing with pain; a branch had laid her scalp open and blood dripped through her fingers and ran down her wrist. Now Barnes bent over her; he tugged her up, turned her over. “Bruno,” she said. “Goddamn him. Somebody will have to kill him; they should have done it long ago—they should have done it in 1970 because he was insane then.” She got her handkerchief out and mopped at her scalp. “Oh dear,” she said. “I really am hurt. That was a real fall.”
“The horse is gone, too,” Barnes said.
“It’s an evil god,” she said, “who gave him that power, whatever it is. I know it’s him, Hal. We’ve seen a lot of strange things over the years, so why not this? The ability to re-create the war, to bring it back, like he said last night. Maybe he’s got us snared in time. Could that be it? We’re stuck fast; he’s—” She broke off as a second white flash broke overhead, traveling at enormous speed; the trees around them lashed and bent and she heard, here and there, the old oaks splinter.
“I wonder where the horse went,” Barnes murmured, rising cautiously to his feet and peering around.
“Forget the horse,” she said. “We’ll have to walk back; that’s obvious. Listen, Hal. Maybe Hoppy can do something; he has funny powers, too. I think we ought to go to him and tell him. He doesn’t want to be incinerated by a lunatic. Don’t you agree? I don’t see anything else we can do at this point.”
“That’s a good idea,” Barnes said, but he was still looking for the horse; he did not seem really to be listening.
“Our punishment,” Bonny said.
“What?” he murmured.
“You know. For what Edie calls our ‘shameful, evil doings.’ I thought the other night … maybe we should have been killed with the others; maybe it’s a good thing this is happening.”
“There’s the horse,” Barnes said, walking swiftly from her. The horse was caught; his reins had become tangled in a bay limb.
The sky, now, had become sooty black. She remembered that color; it had never entirely departed anyhow. It had merely lessened.
Our little fragile world, Bonny thought, that we labored to build up, after the Emergency—this puny society with out tattered school books, our “deluxe” cigarettes, our wood-burning trucks—it can’t stand much punishment; it can’t stand this that Bruno is doing or appears to be doing. One blow again directed at us and we will be gone; the brilliant animals will perish, all the new, odd species will disappear as suddenly as they arrived. Too bad, she thought with grief. It’s unfair; Terry, the verbose dog—him, too. Maybe we were too ambitious; maybe we shouldn’t have dared to try to rebuild and go on.
I think we did pretty well, she thought, all in all. We’ve been alive; we’ve made love and drunk Gill’s Five Star, taught our kids in a peculiar-windowed school building, put out News & Views, cranked up a car radio and listened daily to W. Somerset Maugham. What more could be asked of us? Christ, she thought. It isn’t fair, this thing now. It isn’t right at all. We have our horses to protect, our crops, our lives…
Another explosion occurred, this time further off. To the south, she realized. Near the site of the old ones. San Francisco.
Wearily, she shut her eyes. And just when this McConchie has shown up, too, she thought. What lousy, stinking luck.
The dog, placing himself across the path, barring her way, groaned in his difficult voice, “Treezzz bizzzzeeeeee. Stopppppp.” He woofed in warning. She was not supposed to continue on to the wooden shack.
Yes, Edie thought, I know he’s busy. She had seen the explosions in the sky. “Hey, you know what?” she said to the dog.
“Whuuuuut?” the dog asked, becoming curious; he had a simple mind, as she well knew; he was easily taken in.
“I learned how to throw a stick so far nobody can find it,” she said. She bent, picked up a nearby stick. “Want me to prove it?”
Within her Bill said, “Who’re you talking to?” He was agitated, now that the time was drawing near. “Is it Mr. Tree?”
“No,” she said, “just the dog.” She waved the stick. “Bet you a paper ten dollar bill if I throw it you can’t find it.”
“Surrrrre I cannnnnn,” the dog said, and whined in eagerness; this was his favorite sort of sport. “Buuuut I cannnn’t bettttt,” he added. “I haaaaave no monnnnnneyyyy.”
From the wooden shack walked Mr. Tree, all at once; taken by surprise, both she and the dog stopped what they were doing. Mr. Tree paid no attention to them; he continued on up a small hill and then disappeared down the far side, out of sight.
“Mr. Tree!” Edie called. “Maybe he isn’t busy now,” she said to the dog. “Go ask him, okay? Tell him I want to talk to him a minute.”
Within her Bill said restlessly, “He’s not far off now, is he? I know he’s there. I’m ready; I’m going to try real hard this time. He can do almost anything, can’t he? See and walk and hear and smell—isn’t that right? It’s not like that worm.”
“He doesn’t have any teeth,” Edie said, “but he has everything else that most people have.” As the dog obediently loped off in pursuit of Mr. Tree she began walking along the path once more. “It won’t be long,” she said. “I’ll tell him—” She had it all worked out. “I’ll say, ‘Mr. Tree, you know what? Well, I swallowed one of those duck callers hunters use, and if you lean close you can hear it.’ How’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said desperately. “What’s a ‘duck caller’? What’s a duck, Edie? Is it alive?” He sounded more and more confused, as if the situation were to much for him.
“You sissy,” she hissed. “Be quiet.” The dog had reached Tree and now the man had turned; he was starting back toward her, frowning.
“I am very busy, Edie,” Mr. Tree called. “Later—I’ll talk to you later; I can’t be interrupted now.” He raised his arms and made a bizarre motion toward her, as if he were keeping time to some music; he scowled and swayed, and she felt like laughing, he looked so foolish.
“I just want to show you something,” she called back.
“Later!” He started away, then spoke to the dog.
“Yessirr,” the dog growled, and loped back toward the girl. “Nooo,” the dog told her. “Stoppppp.”
Darn it, Edie thought. We can’t do it today; we’ll have to come back maybe tomorrow.
“Gooo awayyyy,” the dog was saying to her, and it bared its fangs; it had been given the strongest possible instructions.
Edie said, “Listen, Mr. Tree—” And then she stopped, because there was no longer any Mr. Tree there. The dog turned, whined, and within her Bill moaned.
“Edie,” Bill cried, “he’s gone; I can feel it. Now where’ll I go to get out? What’ll I do?”
High up in the air, a tiny black speck blew and tumbled; the girl watched it drift as if it were caught in some violent spout of wind. It was Mr. Tree and his arms stuck out as he rolled over and over, dropping and rising like a kite. What’s happened to him? she wondered dismally, knowing that Bill was right; their chance, their plan, was gone forever now.
Something had hold of Mr. Tree and it was killing him. It lifted him higher and higher, and then Edie shrieked. Mr. Tree suddenly dropped. He fell like a stone straight at the ground; she shut her eyes and the dog, Terry, let out a howl of stark dismay.
“What is it?” Bill was clamoring in despair. “Who did it to him? They took him away, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” she said, and opened her eyes.
Mr. Tree lay on the ground, broken and crooked, wit
h his legs and arms sticking up at all angles. He was dead; she knew that and so did the dog. The dog trotted over to him, halted, turned to her with a stricken, numbed look. She said nothing; she stopped, too, a distance away. It was awful, what they—whoever it was—had done to Mr. Tree. It was like the glasses man from Bolinas, she thought; it was a killing.
“Hoppy did it,” Bill moaned. “Hoppy killed Mr. Tree from a distance because he was afraid of him; Mr. Tree’s down with the dead, now, I can hear him talking. He’s saying that; he says Hoppy reached out all the way from his house where he is and grabbed Mr. Tree and picked him up and flung him everywhere!”
“Gee,” Edie said. I wonder how come Hoppy did that, she wondered. Because of the explosions Mr. Tree was making in the sky, was that it? Did they bother Hoppy? Make him sore?
She felt fright. That Hoppy, she thought; he can kill from so far off; nobody else can do that. We better be careful. Very careful. Because he could kill all of us; he could fling us all around or squeeze us.
“I guess News & Views will put this on the first page,” she said, half to herself, half to Bill.
“What’s News & Views?” Bill protested in anguish. “I don’t understand what’s going on; can’t you explain it to me? Please.”
Edie said, “We better go back to town now.” She started slowly away, leaving the dog sitting there beside the squashed remains of Mr. Tree. I guess, she thought, it’s a good thing you didn’t switch, because if you had been inside Mr. Tree you would have been killed.
And, she thought, he would be alive inside me. At least until I got the oleander leaves chewed and swallowed. And maybe he would have found a way to stop that. He had funny powers; he could make those explosions, and he might somehow have done that inside me.
“We can try somebody else,” Bill said, hopefully. “Can’t we? Do you want to try that—what do you call it again? That dog? I think I’d like to be that dog; it can run fast and catch things and see a long way, can’t it?”
“Not now,” she said, still frightened, wanting to get away. “Some other time. You’d better wait.” And she began to run back along the path, in the direction of town.
XIV
Orion Stroud, seated in the center of the Foresters’ Hall where he could clearly be heard by everyone, rapped for order and said:
“Mrs. Keller and Doctor Stockstill asked that the West Marin Official Jury and also the West Marin Governing Citizens’ Council convene to hear a piece of vital news regarding a killing that just took place today.”
Around him, Mrs. Tallman and Cas Stone and Fred Quinn and Mrs. Lully and Andrew Gill and Earl Colvig and Miss Costigan—he glanced from one to the next, satisfied that everyone was present. They all watched with fixed attention, knowing that this was really important. Nothing like this had ever happened in their community before. This was not a killing like that of the glasses man or of Mr. Austurias.
“I understand,” Stroud said, “that it was discovered that Mr. Jack Tree who’s been living among us—”
From the audience a voice said, “He was Bluthgeld.”
“Right,” Stroud said, nodding. “But he’s dead now so there’s nothing to worry about; you have to get that through your heads. And it was Hoppy that done it. Did it, I mean.” He glanced at Paul Dietz apologetically. “Have to use proper grammar,” he said, “because this is all going to be in News & Views—right Paul?”
“A special edition,” Paul said, nodding in agreement.
“Now you understand, we’re not here to decide if Hoppy ought to be punished for what he did. There’s no problem there because Bluthgeld was a noted war criminal and what’s more he was beginning to use his magical powers to restart some of the old war. I guess everybody in this room knows that, because you all saw the explosions. Now—” He glanced toward Gill. “There’s a newcomer, here, a Negro named Stuart McConchie, and ordinarily I have to admit we don’t welcome darkies to West Marin, but I understand that McConchie was tracking down Bluthgeld, so he’s going to be allowed to settle in West Marin if he so desires.”
The audience rustled with approval.
“Mainly what we’re here for,” Stroud continued, “is to vote some sort of reward to Hoppy to show our appreciation. We probably would all have been killed, due to Bluthgeld’s magical powers. So we owe him a real debt of gratitude. I see he isn’t here, because he’s busy at work in his house, fixing things; after all, he’s our handy and that’s a pretty big responsibility, right there. Anyhow, has anybody got an idea of how the people here can express their appreciation for Hoppy’s timely killing of Doctor Bluthgeld?” Stroud looked around questioningly.
Rising to his feet, Andrew Gill cleared his throat and said, “I think it’s appropriate for me to say a few words. First, I want to thank Mr. Stroud and this community for welcoming my new business associate, Mr. McConchie. And then I want to offer one reward that might be appropriate regarding Hoppy’s great service to this community and to the world at large. I’d like to contribute a hundred special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes.” He paused, starting to reseat himself, and then added, “And a case of Gill’s Five Star.”
The audience applauded, whistled, stamped in approval.
“Well,” Stroud said, smiling, “that’s really something. I guess Mr. Gill is aware of what Hoppy’s action spared us all. There’s a whole lot of oak trees knocked over along Bear Valley Ranch Road, from the concussion of the blasts Bluthgeld was setting off. Also, as you may know, I understand that he was beginning to turn his attention south toward San Francisco—”
“That’s correct,” Bonny Keller spoke up.
“So,” Stroud said, “maybe those people down there will want to pitch in and contribute something to Hoppy as a token of appreciation. I guess the best we can do, and it’s good but I wish there was more, is turn over Mr. Gill’s gift of the hundred special deluxe Gold Label cigarettes and the case of brandy … Hoppy will appreciate that, but I was actually thinking of something more in the line of a memorial, like a statue or a park or at least a plaque of some sort. And—I’d be willing to donate the land, and I know Cas Stone would, too.”
“Right,” Cas Stone declared emphatically.
“Anybody else got an idea?” Stroud asked. “You, Mrs. Tallman; I’d like to hear from you.”
Mrs. Tallman said, “It would be fitting to elect Mr. Harrington to an honorary public office, such as President of the West Marin Governing Citizens’ Council for instance, or as clerk of the School Trustees Board, That, of course, in addition to the park or memorial and the brandy and cigarettes.”
“Good idea,” Stroud said. “Well? Anybody else? Because let’s be realistic, folks; Hoppy saved our lives. That Bluthgeld had gone out of his mind, as everybody who was at the reading last night knows … he would have put us right back where we were seven years ago, and all our hard work in rebuilding would have gone for nothing. Nothing at all.”
The audience murmured its agreement.
“When you have magic like he had,” Stroud said, “a physicist like Bluthgeld with all that knowledge … the world never was in such danger before; am I right? It’s just lucky Hoppy can move objects at a distance; it’s lucky for us that Hoppy’s been practicing that all these years now because nothing else would have reached out like that, over all that distance, and mashed that Bluthgeld like it did.”
Fred Quinn spoke up, “I talked to Edie Keller who witnessed it and she tells me that Bluthgeld got flung right up into the air before Hoppy mashed him; tossed all around.”
“I know,” Stroud said. “I interviewed Edie about it.” He looked around the room, at all the people. “If anybody wants details, I’m sure Edie would give them. Right, Mrs. Keller?”
Bonny, seated stiffly, her face pale, nodded.
“You still scared, Bonny?” Stroud asked.
“It was terrible,” Bonny said quietly.
“Sure it was,” Stroud said, “but Hoppy got him.” And then he thought to himself, That makes H
oppy pretty formidable, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s what Bonny’s thinking. Maybe that’s why she’s so quiet.
“I think the best thing to do,” Cas Stone said, “is to go right to Hoppy and say, ‘Hoppy, what do you want that we can do for you in token of our appreciation?’ We’ll put it right to him. Maybe there’s something he wants very badly that we don’t know about.”
Yes, Stroud thought to himself. You have quite a point there, Cas. Maybe he wants many things we don’t know about, and maybe one day—not too far off—he’ll want to get them. Whether we form a delegation and go inquire after that or not.
“Bonny,” he said to Mrs. Keller, “I wish you’d speak up; you’re sitting there so quiet.”
Bonny Keller murmured, “I’m just tired.”
“Did you know Jack Tree was Bluthgeld?”
Silently, she nodded.
“Was it you, then,” Stroud asked, “who told Hoppy?”
“No,” she said. “I intended to; I was on my way. But it had already happened. He knew.”
I wonder how he knew, Stroud asked himself.
“That Hoppy,” Mrs. Lully said in a quavering voice, “he seems to be able to do almost anything … why, he’s even more powerful than that Mr. Bluthgeld, evidently.”
“Right,” Stroud agreed.
The audience murmured nervously.
“But he’s put all his abilities to use for the welfare of our community,” Andrew Gill said. “Remember that. Remember he’s our handy and he helps bring in Dangerfield when the signal’s weak, and he does tricks for us, and imitations when we can’t get Dangerfield at all—he does a whole lot of things, including saving our lives from another nuclear holocaust. So I say, God bless Hoppy and his abilities. I think we should thank God that we have a funny here like him.”
“Right,” Cas Stone said.
“I agree,” Stroud said, with caution. “But I think we ought to sort of put it to Hoppy that maybe from now on—” He hesitated. “Our killings should be like with Austurias, done legally, by our Jury. I mean, Hoppy did right and he had to act quickly and all … but the Jury is the legal body that’s supposed to decide. And Earl, here should do the actual act. In the future, I mean. That doesn’t include Bluthgeld because having all that magic he was different.” You can’t kill a man with powers like that through the ordinary methods, he realized. Like Hoppy, for instance … suppose someone tried to kill him; it would be next to impossible.