that meant there was no bather. I had reached the end of it!
I ran up the road, exultant and relieved, for I’d been fighting down
the feeling, and having a hard time to fight it down entirely, that the
barrier might run all around the village. And in the midst of all my
exultation and relief, I hit the wall again.
I hit it fairly hard, for I was running hard, sure that it wasn’t
there, but in a terrible hurry to make sure it wasn’t there. I went into it
for three running strides before it tossed me back. I hit the roadbed flat
on my back and my head banged upon the pavement. There were a million stars.
I rolled over and got on my hands and knees and stayed there for a
moment, like a gutted hound, with my head hanging limp between my shoulders,
and I shook it now and then to shake the stars away.
I heard the crackle and the roar of flames and that jerked me to my
feet. I still was fairly wobbly, but wobbly or not, I got away from there.
The car was burning briskly and at any moment the flames would reach the gas
tank and the car would go sky high.
But the explosion, when it came, was not too spectacular -just an
angry, muffled whuff and a great gout of flame flaring up into the sky. But
it was loud enough to bring some people out to see what was going on. Doe
Fabian and lawyer Nichols were running up the road, and behind them came a
bunch of yelling kids and a pack of barking dogs.
I didn’t wait for them although I had half a mind to, for I had a lot
to tell and here was an audience. But there was something else that stopped
me from turning back – I had to go on tracking down the barrier and try to
find its end, if it had an end.
My head had begun to clear and all the stars were gone and I could
think a little better.
There was one thing that stood out plain and clear: a car could go
through the barrier when there was no one in it, but when it was occupied,
the barrier stopped it dead. A man could not go through the barrier, but he
could pick up a phone and talk to anyone he wanted. And I remembered that I
had heard the voices of the men shouting in the road, had heard them very
clearly even when they were on the other side. I picked up some sticks and
stones and tossed them at the barrier. They went sailing through as if
nothing had been there.
There was only one thing that the barrier would stop and that single
thing was life. And why in the world should there be a barrier to shut out,
or shut in, life?
The village was beginning to stir to life.
I watched Floyd Caldwell come out on his back porch, dressed in his
undershirt and a pair of pants with the suspenders hanging. Except for old
Doc Fabian, Floyd was the only man in Millville who ever wore suspenders.
But while old Doc wore sedate and narrow black ones, Floyd wore a pair that
was broad and red. Floyd was the barber and he took a lot of kidding about
his red suspenders, but Floyd didn’t mind. He was the village smart guy and
he worked at it all the time and it probably was all right, for it brought
him a lot of trade from out in the farming country. People who might just as
well have gone to Coon Valley for their haircuts came, instead, to Millville
to listen to Floyd’s jokes and to see him clown.
Floyd stood out on the back porch and stretched his arms and yawned.
Then he took a close look at the weather and he scratched his ribs. Down the
street a woman called the family dog and in a little while I heard the flat
snap of a screen door shutting and I knew the dog was in.
It was strange, I thought, that there’d been no alarm. Perhaps it was
because few people as yet knew about the barrier.
Perhaps the few who had found out about it were still a little numb.
Perhaps most of them couldn’t quite believe it. Maybe they were afraid, as I
was, to make too much fuss about it until they knew something more about it.
But it couldn’t last for long, this morning calm. Before too long,
Millville would be seething.
Now, as I followed it, the barrier cut through the back yard of one of
the older houses in the village. In its day it had been a place of elegance,
but years of poverty and neglect had left it tumbledown.
An old lady was coming down the steps from the shaky back porch,
balancing her frail body with a steadying cane.
Her hair was thin and white and even with no breeze to stir the air,
ragged ends of it floated like a fuzzy halo all around her head.
She started down the path to the little garden, but when she saw me she
stopped and peered at me, with her head tilted just a little in a bird-like
fashion. Her pale blue eyes glittered at me through the thickness of her
glasses.
‘Brad Carter, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, Mrs Tyler,’ I said. ‘How are you this morning?’
‘Oh, just tolerable,’ she told me. ‘I’m never more than that. I thought
that it was you, but my eyes have failed me and I never can be sure.’
‘It’s a nice morning, Mrs Tyler. This is good weather we are having.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is. I was looking for Tupper. He seems to have
wandered off again. You haven’t seen him, have you?’
I shook my head. It had been ten years since anyone had seen Tupper
Tyler.
‘He is such a restless boy,’ she said. ‘Always wandering off I declare,
I don’t know what to do with him.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ I told her. ‘He’ll show up again.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose he will. He always does, you know.’ She
prodded with her cane at the bed of purple flowers that grew along the walk.
‘They’re very good this year,’ she said. ‘The best I’ve ever seen them. I
got them from your father twenty years ago. Mr Tyler and your father were
such good friends. You remember that, of course.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I remember very well.’
‘And your mother? Tell me how she is. We used to see a good deal of one
another.’
‘You forget, Mrs Tyler,’ I told her, gently. ‘Mother died almost two
years ago.’
‘Oh, so she did,’ she said. ‘It’s true, I am forgetful. Old age does it
to one. No one should grow old.’
‘I must be getting on,’ I said. ‘It was good to see you.’
‘It was kind of you to call,’ she said. ‘If you have the time, you
might step in and we could have some tea. It is so seldom now that anyone
ever comes for tea. I suppose it’s because the times have changed. No one,
any more, has the time for tea.’
‘I’m sorry that I can’t,’ I said. ‘I just stopped by for a moment.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it was very nice of you. If you happen to see Tupper
would you mind, I wonder, to tell him to come home.’
‘Of course I will,’ I promised.
I was glad to get away from her. She was nice enough, of course, but
just a little mad. In all the years since Tupper’s disappearance, she had
gone on looking for him, and always as if he’d just stepped out the door,
always very calm and confident in the thought that he’d be coming home in
just a little while. Quite reasonable about it and very, very sweet, no more
than mildly worried about the idiot son who had vanished without trace.
Tupper, I recalled, had been something of a pest. He’d been a pest with
everyone, of course, but especially with me. He loved flowers and he’d hung
around the greenhouse that my father had, and my father, who was
constitutionally unable to be unkind to anyone, had put up with him and his
continual jabber. Tupper had attached himself to me and no matter what I did
or said, he’d tag along behind me. The fact that he was a good ten years
older than I was made no difference at all; in his own mind Tupper never had
outgrown childhood. In the back of my mind I still could hear his jaunty
voice, mindlessly happy over anything at all, cooing over flowers or asking
endless, senseless questions. I had hated him, of course, but there was
really nothing one could pin a good hate on.