Cemetery World (10 page)

“I’ve been out looking at the tracks,” he said, “and there is no doubt about it. The thing last night was a war machine. I found some tread marks and there’s nothing here that leaves tread marks like that except a war machine. I followed the swath it made and I saw that it turned west. There are a lot of places back in the mountains where a war machine could hide.”

“Why would it want to hide?”

“I can’t imagine,” Elmer said. “There is no way of telling how a war machine would think. Human brain and machine brain and they’ve had ten thousand years to evolve into something else. Fletch, given that much time, what could a brain like that become?”

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “Maybe something very strange. If a war machine survived destruction, what would it become? What motive would it have to stay alive? How would it view an environment so different from the one for which it had been made? One strange thing, though. The people here seem to have no fear of it. It’s just something they don’t understand and the world seems to be filled with things they don’t understand.”

“They’re a strange lot,” Elmer said. “I don’t like looks of them. I don’t like the feel of any part of it. It strikes me as unlikely those three young coon-hunting bucks would have come strolling in on us last night without some sort of reason. They had to cut across the track made by the war machine to do it.”

“Curiosity,” I said. “Not much happens here. When something does, like us showing up, they have to find out about it.”

“Sure, I know,” said Elmer, “but that’s not all of it.”

“Anything specific?”

“No, nothing like that. Nothing that I can pin down. Just a feeling in the guts. Fletch, let’s get out of here.”

“I want to stay for the hoedown. So Bronco can get it on the tapes. Soon as it is over, we will leave.”

Chapter 9

The people had started coming, as the old man had said they would, shortly after sunset. They had come alone and in twos and threes and sometimes a dozen of them all together, and now the yard was full of them, crowding around the tables where the food was set. There were others in the house and some men were in the barn passing bottles back and forth.

The tables had been set up late in the afternoon when some of the men had gotten sawhorses out of the lumber shed, setting them up in the yard and putting planks across them. A platform for the musicians had been made in the same manner and now the musicians were seated on it, tuning up their instruments, sawing at their fiddles and plunking their guitars.

The moon hadn’t risen yet, but it was lighting the sky in the east and beyond the clearing the trees stood up dark against the lighted sky. Someone kicked a dog and the dog went yelping out into the darkness. A roar of sudden laughter came from a group of men standing to one side of a table, perhaps at the telling of a joke. Someone had started a bonfire and piled a lot of wood on it, and flames, eating up through the wood, were swirling high into the air.

Bronco was standing to one side of the clearing, close to the edge of the forest and the firelight from the bonfire seemed to make him flicker. Elmer was with one of the groups near the table where the food was laid and it seemed that he was engaged in a spirited discussion. I looked for Cynthia, but I didn’t see her.

I felt a touch upon my arm and when I looked around, the old man, Henry, had come up and was standing by my side. Just then the music struck up and couples began forming for a dance.

“You’re standing by yourself,” the old man said. The little breeze that was blowing ruffled his whiskers.

“I’ve just been standing off and looking,” I told him. “I’ve never seen the like before.” And, indeed, I never had. There was something wild and primitive and barbaric in the clearing; there was something here that should by now have been bred out of the human race. Here there still existed some of the earthbound mysticism that extended back to the gnawed thigh bone and the axe of flint.

“You will stay with us a while,” the old man said. “You know that you’ll be welcome. You can stay here with us and carry out the work you plan to do.”

I shook my head. “We’ll have to think about it. We’ll have to make our plans. And thank you very much.”

They were dancing now, a set and rather savage dance, but with a certain grace and fluidity, and upon the musicians’ platform a man with leathern lungs was calling out a chant.

The old man chuckled. “It is called a square dance. You’ve never heard of it?”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

“I’m going to dance myself,” said the old man, “as soon as I have another drink or two to get lubricated. Come to think of it …”

He took a bottle from his pocket and, pulling out the cork, handed it to me. The bottle felt cold to my hands and I put it to my lips and took a slug of it. It was better whiskey than I’d had the night before. It went down smooth and easy and it didn’t bounce when it hit the stomach.

I handed the bottle back to him, but he pushed my hand away. “Have another one,” he said. “You are way behind.” So I had another one. It lay warm inside of me and I began feeling good.

I handed back the bottle and the old man had a drink. “It’s Cemetery whiskey,” he said. “It’s better than what we can make ourselves. Some of the boys went up to Cemetery this morning and traded for a case.”

The first dance had ended and another was getting under way. Cynthia was out with this new set of dancers. She was beautiful with the firelight on her and she danced with a lithesome grace that took me by surprise, although I did not know why I possibly could have thought she would not be graceful.

The moon had risen now and was riding in the sky, and I had never felt so good before.

“Have another one,” the old man said, handing me the bottle.

The night was warm, the people warm, the woods were dark, the fire was bright, and Cynthia was out there dancing and I wanted to go out and dance with her.

The set ended and I started to move forward, intending to ask Cynthia if she would dance with me. But before I had gone more than a step or two, Elmer came striding to the space that had been cleared for dancing. He came to the center of it and performed an impromptu jig, and as soon as he did that one of the fiddlers on the platform stood up and began to play, if not a jig, at least a sprightly piece of music and the others all joined in.

Elmer danced. He had always seemed to me a stolid, plodding robot, but now his feet patted rapidly upon the ground and his body swayed. The people formed a ring about him and yelled and hollered at him, clapping their hands in encouragement and appreciation. Bronco moved out from his position at the edge of the woods and ankled toward the circle. Someone, seeing him, cried out and the ring of people parted to let him through. He came into the circle and stood in front of Elmer and began to shuffle and pat the ground with all eight feet.

The musicians were playing wildly now and increased the tempo of the music, and in the circle Elmer and Bronco responded to it. Bronco’s eight legs went up and down like pistons gone berserk and between the pumping, dancing legs his body bobbed and swayed. The ground beneath their feet thundered like a drum and it seemed to me that I could feel the vibrations through my soles. The people yelled and whooped. Some of them standing outside the circle had began to dance and the others now joined in, dancing along with Bronco and with Elmer.

I looked to one side of me and the old man was dancing, too, jigging wildly up and down, with his white hair flying and his white beard flapping and jerking with the violence of his motion. “Dance!” he yelled at me, his breath short and rasping in his throat. “What’s the matter, you ain’t dancing?”

And as he said it he reached into his pocket and, hauling out the bottle, handed it to me. I reached out and grabbed it and began to dance. I pulled the cork out of the bottle and put it to my mouth while dancing and the glass of the bottle’s neck rattled on my teeth and some of the liquor sprayed onto my face and a good, solid slug of it went down my throat. It hit my gut and lay there warm and sloshing, and I danced, waving the bottle high, and I think I did some yelling, not that there was anything to yell about, but for the pure joy of the night.

We were, all of us, pure and simple crazy—crazy with the night and fire and music. We danced without a thought or purpose. Each of us danced because all the others danced, or because two sleek machines were out there dancing, their basic awkwardness transformed to matchless grace, or perhaps we simply danced because we were alive and deep within us knew we would not always be alive.

The moon floated in the sky and the wood smoke from the fire trailed in a slender column of whiteness up into the sky. The screeching fiddles and the twanging guitars shrieked and sobbed and sang.

Suddenly, as if by command (although there was no command), the music stuttered to a halt and the dancing stopped. I saw the others stop and stopped myself, with the bottle still held high.

I felt someone pawing at my lifted arm and a voice said, “The bottle, man. For pity’s sake, the bottle.”

It was the old man. I gave him the bottle. He used it as a pointer to indicate one side of the circle and then he tucked its neck into his whiskers and tilted back his head. The bottle gurgled and his Adam’s apple jerked in concert with the gurgling.

Looking where he’d pointed, I saw a man standing quietly there. He wore a black robe of some sort that came down to his feet and that had a cowl on it, covering his head, so that all that showed of him was the white smear of his face.

The old man sputtered, half strangled, and took the bottle from his face. He used it to point again.

“The census-taker,” he said.

The people were drawing back and away from the census-taker, and on the platform the musicians sat limp, mopping their faces with their shirt sleeves.

The census-taker stood there for a moment, with all the people gaping at him, then he floated—he didn’t walk, he floated—to the center of the dancing circle. The man with the reed instrument lifted it to his lips and began a piping that at first was the sound of the wind moving through the grasses of a meadow, then grew louder, trilling a string of notes that one could almost see hanging in the air. The violins came in softly as a background to the piping and as if from some distant place the guitars twanged a hollow sound and then the violins sobbed and the piping went insane and the guitars were humming like vibratory drums.

Out in the circle, the census-taker was dancing, not with his feet—you couldn’t see his feet because of the robe he wore—but with his body swaying like a dish cloth hanging on a line and whipping in the wind, a strange, distorted, dangling dance such as a puppet would perform.

He was not alone. There were others with him, many shadowy shapes that had come from nowhere and were dancing with him, the firelight shining through the unsubstantial shimmer of their ghostly bodies. They were simply shapes at first, but as I stared at them, astonished, they began to take on more definite form and feature, although they did not gain in substantiality. They still were nebulous and hazy, but now they were people rather than just shapes, and I saw with horror that they wore the costumes of many different races from far among the stars. There a bewhiskered brigand in the kilt and cape of that distant planet that was called, curiously enough, End of Nothing; there the jolly merchant with his stately toga from the planet Cash, and between them, dancing with abandon in a tattered gown, a rope of gems about her neck, a girl who could have been from nowhere else but the pleasure planet Vegas.

She didn’t touch me and I didn’t hear her come, but with some sense I did not know I had, I became aware that Cynthia was beside me. I looked down at her and she was staring up at me, with mingled fear and wonder on her face. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her because of the loudness of the music.

“What did you say?” I asked, but she had no time to answer, for in the instant that I spoke, a concussion slapped me over and I went down on the ground so hard that the breath was knocked out of me. I landed on my side and rolled over on my back and I saw, with some surprise, Bronco flying through the air, with all eight legs spraddled out grotesquely, while all around burning togs and brands were flying and a puff of smoke floated up to dim the brilliance of the moon.

I tried to breathe and couldn’t and a sudden panic hit me—that I’d never breathe again, that I was done with breathing. Then I did breathe, taking in great gulps of air, and each gulp was so agonizing that I tried to stop, but couldn’t.

All over the clearing, I saw, people had been thrown to the ground. Some of them were getting up and others were trying to get up and there were many others who were just lying there.

I struggled to my knees and saw that Cynthia, beside me, was also trying to get up and I put out a hand to help her. Bronco was sprawled out on the ground and as I watched, he finally gained his feet, but two of his legs, both on the same side, dangled, and he stood there unsteadily on the other six.

A thunder of feet went past me and Elmer was at Bronco’s side, holding him erect, propping him, helping him to move. I got to my feet and pulled Cynthia up beside me. Elmer and Bronco were coming toward us and Elmer yelled at us, “Get out of here! Up across the hill!”

We turned and ran, coming to the fence on which the old man, Henry, and myself had squatted half the afternoon. And coming to it, I knew that the crippled Bronco could never make his way across it. I grabbed a post with both my hands and tried to pull it loose and force it down. It wiggled back and forth, but I could not topple it.

“Let me,” said Elmer, close beside me. He lifted a foot and kicked and the boards splintered and came loose. Cynthia had crawled through the fence and was running up the hill. I ran after her.

I took one quick look behind me as I ran and saw that one of the haystacks close beside the barn was burning, set afire, most likely, by one of the flaming brands sent flying through the air by the explosion that had crippled Bronco. People were running aimlessly in the light of the burning stack.