He looked around restlessly, seeming to wish that there was more to say. Then he led his four followers through one of the checkout lanes. In addition to the elderly woman, there was a chubby boy of about twelve, a young girl, and a man in blue jeans wearing a golf cap tipped back on his head.
Norton’s eyes caught mine, widened a little, and then started to swing away.
«Brent, wait a minute,» I said.
«I don’t want to discuss it any further. Certainly not with you.
«I know you don’t. I just want to ask a favor.» I looked around and saw Billy coming back toward the checkouts at a run.
«What’s that?» Norton asked suspiciously as Billy came up and handed me a package done up in cellophane.
«Clothesline,» I said. I was vaguely aware that everyone in the market was watching us now, loosely strung out on the other side of the cash registers and checkout lanes. «It’s the big package. Three hundred feet.»
«so?»
«I wondered if you’d tie one end around your waist before you go out. I’ll let it out. When you feel it come up tight, just tie it around something. It doesn’t matter what. A car door handle would do.»
«What in God’s name for?»
«It will tell me you got at least three hundred feet,» I said.
Something in his eyes flickered … but only momentarily. «No,» he said.
I shrugged. «Okay. Good luck, anyhow.»
Abruptly the man in the golf cap said, «I’ll do it, mister. No reason not to.»
Norton swung on him, as if to say something sharp, and the man in the golf cap studied him calmly. There was nothing flickering in his eyes. He had made his decision and there was simply no doubt in him. Norton saw it too and said nothing.
«Thanks,» I said.
I slit the wrapping with my pocketknife and the clothesline accordioned out in stiff loops. I found one loose end and tied it around Golf Cap’s waist in a loose granny. He immediately untied it and cinched it tighter with a good quick sheet-bend knot. There was not a sound in the market. Norton shifted uneasily from foot to foot.
«You want to take my knife?» I asked the man in the golf cap.
«I got one.» He looked at me with that same calm contempt. «You just see to paying out your line. If it binds up, I’ll chuck her.»
«Are we all ready?» Norton asked, too loud. The chubby boy jumped as if he had been goosed. Getting no response, Norton turned to go.
«Brent,» I said, and held out my hand. «Good luck, man.
He studied my hand as if it were some dubious foreign object. «We’ll send back help,» he said finally, and pushed through the OUT door. That thin, acrid smell came in again. The others followed him out.
Mike Hatlen came down and stood beside me. Norton’s party of five stood in the milky, slow-moving fog. Norton said something and I should have heard it, but the mist seemed to have an odd damping effect. I heard nothing but the sound of his voice and two or three isolated syllables, like the voice on the radio heard from some distance. They moved off.
Hatlen held the door a little way open. I paid out the clothesline, keeping as much slack in it as I could, mindful of the man’s promise to chuck the rope if it bound him up. There was still not a sound. Billy stood beside me, motionless but seeming to thrum with his own inner current.
Again there was that weird feeling that the five of them did not so much disappear into the fog as become invisible. For a moment their clothes seemed to stand alone, and then they were gone. You were not really impressed with the unnatural density of the mist until you saw people swallowed up in a space of seconds.
I paid the line out. A quarter of it went, then a half. It stopped going out for a moment. It went from a live thing to a dead one in my hands. I held my breath. Then it started to go out again. I paid it through my fingers, and suddenly remembered my father taking me to see the Gregory Peck film of Moby Dick at the Brookside. I think I smiled a little.