pavement and his clothes were torn and dirty. But he wasn’t angry any more;
he was just plain scared. He was looking down the road as if he’d seen a
ghost and he still was shaking.
‘But there’s nothing there,’ he said.
‘There’ll be other cars,’ I said, ‘and you are across the road. Hadn’t
we ought to put out some flares or flags or something?’
That seemed to snap him out of it.
‘Flags,’ he said.
He climbed into the cab and got out some flags.
I walked down the road with him while he set them out.
He put the last one down and squatted down beside it. He took out a
handkerchief and began dabbing at his face.
‘Where can I get a phone?’ he asked. ‘We’ll have to get some help.’
‘Someone has to figure out a way to clear the barrier off the road,’ I
said. ‘In a little while there’ll be a lot of traffic. It’ll be piled up for
miles.’
He dabbed at his face some more. There was a lot of dust and grease.
And a little blood.
‘A phone?’ he asked.
‘Oh, any place,’ I told him. ‘Just go up to any house. They’ll let you
use a phone.’
And here we were, I thought, talking about this thing as if it were an
ordinary road block, as if it were a fallen tree or a washed-out culvert.
‘Say, what’s the name of this place, anyhow? I got to tell them where I
am calling from.’
‘Millville,’ I told him.
‘You live here?’
I nodded.
He got up and tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll go and find that phone.’
He wanted me to offer to go with him, but I had something else to do. I
had to walk around the road block and get up to Johnny’s Motor Court and
explain to Alf what had happened to delay me.
I stood in the road and watched him plod along. Then I turned around
and went up the road in the opposite direction, walking toward that
something which would stop a car. I reached it and it stopped me, not
abruptly, nor roughly, but gently, as if it didn’t intend to let me through
under any circumstances, but was being polite and reasonable about it.
I put out my hand and I couldn’t feel a thing. I tried rubbing my hand
back and forth, as you would to feel a surface, but there was no surface,
there was not a thing to rub; there was absolutely nothing, just that gentle
pressure pushing you away from whatever might be there.
I looked up and down the road and there was still no traffic, but in a
little while, I knew, there would be. Perhaps, I told myself, I should set
out some flags in the east-bound traffic lane to convey at least some
warning that there was something wrong. It would take no more than a minute
or two to set up the flags when I went around the end of the barrier to get
to Johnny’s Motor Court.
I went back to the cab and found two flags and climbed down the
shoulder of the road and clambered up the hillside, making a big sweep to
get around the barrier – and even as I made the sweep I ran into the barrier
again. I backed away from it and started to walk alongside it, climbing up
the hill. It was hard to do. If the barrier had been a solid thing, I would
have had no trouble, but since it was invisible, I kept bumping into it.
That was the way I traced it, bumping into it, then sheering off, then
bumping into it again.
I thought that the barrier would end almost any time, or that it might
get thinner. A couple of times I tried pushing through it, but it still was
as stiff and strong as ever. There was an awful thought growing in my mind.
And the higher up the hill I climbed, the more persistent grew the thought.
It was about this time that I dropped the flags.
Below me I heard the sound of skidding tires and swung around to look.
A car on the east-bound lane had slammed into the barrier, and in sliding
back, had skidded broadside across both lanes. Another car had been
travelling behind the first and was trying to slow down. But either its
brakes were bad or its speed had been too high, for it couldn’t stop. As I
watched, its driver swung it out, with the wheels upon the shoulder,
skinning past the broadside car. Then he slapped into the barrier, but his
speed had been reduced, and he didn’t go far in. Slowly the barrier pushed
back the car and it slid into the other car and finally came to rest.
The driver had gotten out of the first car and was walking around his
car to reach the second car. I saw his head tilt up and it was clear he saw
me. He waved his arms at me and shouted, but I was too far away to make out
what he said.
The truck and my car, lying crushed beneath it, still were alone on the
west-bound lanes. It was curious, I told myself, that no one else had come
along.
There was a house atop the hill and for some reason I didn’t recognize
it. It had to be a house of someone that I knew, for I’d lived all my life
in Millville except for a year at college and I knew everyone. I don’t know
how to explain it, but for a moment I was all mixed up. Nothing looked
familiar and I stood confused, trying to get my bearings and figure where I
was.
The east was brightening and in another thirty minutes the sun would be
poking up. In the west a great angry cloud bank loomed, and at its base I
could see the rapier flickering of the lightning that was riding with the
storm.
I stood and stared down at the village and it all came clear to me
exactly where I was. The house up on the hill was Bill Donovan’s. Bill was
the village garbage man.
I followed along the barrier, heading for the house and for a moment I
wondered just where the house might be in relation to the barrier. More than
likely, I told myself, it stood just inside of it.
I came to a fence and climbed it and crossed the littered yard to the
rickety back stairs. I climbed them gingerly to gain the stoop and looked
for a bell. There wasn’t any bell. I lifted a fist and pounded on the door,
then waited. I heard someone stirring around inside, then the door came open
and Bill stared out at me. He was an unkempt bear of a man and his bushy
hair stood all on end and he looked at me from beneath a pair of belligerent
eyebrows. He had pulled his trousers over his pajama, but he hadn’t taken
the time to zip up the fly and a swatch of purple pajama cloth stuck out.
His feet were bare and his toes curled up a bit against the cold of the
kitchen floor.
‘What’s the matter, Brad?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I told him. ‘There is something happening down on the
road.’
‘An accident?’ he asked.
‘No, not an accident. I tell you I don’t know. There’s something across
the road. You can’t see it, but it’s there. You run into it and it stops you
cold. It’s like a wall, but you can’t touch or feel it.’
‘Come on in,’ said Bill. ‘You could do with a cup of coffee. I’ll put
on the pot. It’s time for breakfast anyhow. The wife is getting up.’
He reached behind him and snapped on the kitchen light, then stood to
one side so that I could enter.
Bill walked over to the sink. He picked a glass off the counter top and
turned on the water, then stood waiting.
‘Have to let it run a while until it gets cold,’ he told me. He filled
the glass and held it out to me. ‘Want a drink?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks,’ I told him.
He put the glass to his mouth and drank in great slobbering gulps.
Somewhere in the house a woman screamed. If I live to be a hundred,
I’ll not forget what that scream was like. Donovan dropped the glass on the
floor and it broke, spraying jagged glass and water.
‘Liz!’ he cried. ‘Liz, what’s wrong?’
He charged out of the room and I stood there, frozen, looking at the
blood on the floor, where Donovan’s bare feet had been gashed by the broken
glass.
The woman screamed again, but this time the scream was muffled, as if
she might be screaming with her mouth pressed against a pillow or a wall.