Journey for Seven

Chapter II The Invulnerable

It was a tingle at the back of the neck, an answering tingle at the base of the spine. It was a feeling like the flutter of warm anticipation. It was a sudden heightening of all senses, an air of wellbeing, of supreme optimism. It faded but the sense of well-being seemed to cling.

Stan Weaver’s toothache faded and the meal no longer rested heavily on his stomach. The sunshine looked good. He whistled through his teeth and clutched the wheel a bit tighter. It felt surprisingly soft. He looked down and saw the plastic of the wheel oozing between his fingers. Cold sweat popped out on him.

Gingerly he edged over to the shoulder and applied the brake. He put his big foot on the brake pedal and pushed slowly down. He pushed the pedal right down through a torn hole in the metal floor and the bus jerked to a stop.

“Why are you stopping here?” the old lady demanded.

Stan Weaver was breathing hard. He made his voice casual and said, “Something wrong with the bus, folks. I’ll flag the next one along.”

It had happened to him before but before it had been trouble he could understand. He tried to smile at the bored faces of the six passengers. It wasn’t much of a smile. He grabbed the metal bar and slung the door open. The thick metal pipe bent and tore off in his hand. He stared stupidly at it and dropped it. It hit with the proper clang of metal, instead of the soft thud he had half expected.

Shirley Sanger sighed. She reached up, grasped the brim of her felt hat to pull it more firmly into place. The felt tore like wet blotting paper and she stared blankly at the two scraps of felt between her fingers. She took the ruined hat off, pulled at it curiously. It tore without her exerting any more than the smallest effort.

Jennilou Caswell was suddenly conscious of the heat now that the motion of the bus had stopped. She knew it would be forty minutes before the next bus. Might as well wait inside the bus. She was annoyed. She grasped the metal handles of the window and gave a quick upward tug. The handles bent like the softest lead, broke in her hands. She gasped.

Ad McGoran decided to wait outside on the shoulder of the road. He picked up the sample case. The leather handle felt soft and spongy in his hand. He grasped the back of the seat ahead of him to pull himself up. His hand bit a large piece out of the back of the seat. At the tearing sound Jennilou looked around, her eyes bulging.

She said, “Why did you—”

“Girlie, they aren’t making good buses any more.”

He stalked down the aisle, stepped down onto the shoulder. There was a spot on the sleeve of his dark suit. He scrubbed at it with a blunt thumbnail and scrubbed right through the sleeve, so that his white shirt showed through. He decided that the spot was some sort of acid and began to wonder when it had happened.

Mrs. Thompson shifted the bag of groceries to a new position. The paper ripped and the groceries cascaded to the floor. She sniffed with annoyance and bent over to pick them up. The first thing she grasped was a tin of string beans.

She dropped it, took her handkerchief out of her purse and began to wipe her fingers. To all and sundry she said, “You’d think they’d know better than to use defective cans for things people are going to eat. My fingers poked right through that tin and into the beans. I’m certainly going to go back and give that place a piece of my mind.” She looked down. The handkerchief, of good Irish linen, had disintegrated like so much tissue.

Bill Dorvan decided to cross the road and catch the next bus back to Bell City. As he went to go around the back end of the bus the driver said, “Hssst! Hey, you. What you make a this?”

Bill went over. The driver poked a blunt finger against the side of the bus. He pressed hard. There was a sound like a cork being pulled from a bottle and the man’s finger went through the metal.

“Crystallization?” Bill suggested weakly.

“Nuts, brother! This bus is melting. Try it yourself.”

Bill did with-the same result. He forgot the dull ache behind his eyes. “What do you know!” he breathed.

“I’m walkin’,” Benny Farr said to nobody in particular and headed up the road toward Stockland, turning to thumb the cars that whistled by.

When he got a safe distance away from the bus he pulled the folded ten out of his watch pocket, annoyed when he heard the pocket rip. He unfolded the bill and stretched it out. It was fun to pop new bills.

He popped it and stared stupidly at the half bill in each hand. His voice cracked as he used words off fences. Have to tape it together. He folded the two halves together and creased them with his finger and thumbnail. And he suddenly had four pieces instead of two. He made a sound suspiciously like a sob.

With the window catch broken Jennilou got very warm. She stood up. The men had all left the bus. Her dress was stuck to her back. She gave a little shake, grasped the lower edge of the tight girdle between thumbs and fingers and pulled it down.

In each hand appeared a little torn wad of fabric, the size of an apple, consisting of fabric from the black suit and rubberized fabric from the girdle. She sat down suddenly, her cheeks and throat hot, and put one palm flat against each thigh to cover the holes through which peeped the reluctant flesh. She could think of no possible way to get off the bus. She wished she could faint dead away.

Mrs. Thompson, busily inspecting her purchases, had found, to her intense dismay that every tin was distressingly fragile, that the bread had the same consistency as that spun sugar sold at carnivals, that it was impossible to pick up one of the eggs.

Handling the brown paper, which tore like tissue, with great care she managed, after three false attempts, to wrap a sample of each purchase and tie it with the string from the eggs. It was hard to tie a knot in string that had all the strength of wet spaghetti.

She walked firmly down the aisle, stepped down and called back to Stan Weaver, “Young man! I am returning to the city to return unsatisfactory merchandise.”

“Goodbye, lady,” Stan said wearily.

Mrs. Thompson walked around the front of the bus and directly into the path of a panel delivery truck with a drycleaner’s sign painted on the side of it. The truck tires screamed and the Queen Mary hat sailed in the air and there was a heavy, metallic sickening thud. Mrs. Thompson described an arc and landed on the shoulder a good thirty feet in front of the bus.

Dorvan gagged and the bus driver closed his eyes and leaned against the bus. Benny Farr was a tiny dot in the distance. McGoran looked on with clinical interest. Jennilou forgot to cover the holes with her palms. Shirley Sanger closed her eyes and bit her lip.

After hitting Mrs. Thompson the truck had darted crazily across the road. It rested half in the ditch on the far side. The driver, wearing a crisp white uniform, climbed slowly out.

Mrs. Thompson stood up and brushed feebly at her ragged clothes. She turned toward the truck and in a clear voice said, “Young man, you should watch where you’re going.”

“Ain’t you dead, lady?” he asked.

Other cars stopped. Water ran out of the smashed radiator of the truck. The back end protruded out onto the highway. The front bumper was a neat, deep U, the headlights staring crosseyed at each other.

Mrs. Thompson retrieved her hat and clamped it over her iron-grey hair. Mr. McGoran retrieved her purse and handed it to her.

“There is at least one gentleman here,” she said.

“You better go to a hospital and get checked over,” Stan Weaver suggested.

“Nonsense. It shook me up a little. But I’m all right now.”

“How about my truck?” the driver asked plaintively.

“And how about my groceries?” asked Mrs. Thompson, seeing an immediate opportunity for profit. She measured the distance from where the truck had hit her to where she had struck the shoulder. She placed both hands over her heart and sank gently to the ground.

“I’m dying,” she said. She closed her eyes and thought of brandy — a quart instead of a pint.

Shirley Sanger leaned against the side of the bus. She said to Bill Dorvan, “This is beginning to get me down. Have a cigarette. Handle them gently. There’s something wrong with them. They squash. Everything in the world has gone — mealy. And that old lady — foooof.”

She took her lighter out of her purse, gave an energetic twist of the wheel. Spring, wheel and lid jumped off the lighter and fell in the dust. She gave him a grey-lipped look. “See what I mean?”

Sirens sounded in the distance. A small man with a notebook came by, saying, “Are you two people witnesses to that tragic accident? Criminal carelessness on the part of the truck driver. I’m an attorney for Mrs. Thompson. Now if you’d—”

“Go away,” Bill Dorvan said distinctly. “Come on,” he said to Shirley.

As Shirley Sanger started to walk off beside Bill the attorney grabbed her arm and tried to spin her around. Shirley angrily took his wrist to pull his hand off her arm. The little man turned dead white and screamed. He slumped and she released him. He sat on the ground and stared at his wrist. His hand was swelling and darkening and his wrist had a white pinched look. The marks of her fingers were deep and an angry red.

“What did you do to him?” Bill asked. “What is it? Judo?”

She took his wrist. “Just this.”

He shrugged. “I don’t feel anything special. You are a big strong girl, though.”

“Shut up, please.”

The ambulance with Mrs. Thompson therein wailed off toward Bell City. Three tow trucks competed for the truck job. The new bus arrived. Shirley, Bill and Mr. McGoran stared frankly at the odd stance and posture of Jennilou. Jennilou’s face was flame. She scuttled up into the waiting bus. The driver came back and said, “The crate quit on you, Stan?”

“No. I just got tired of driving it.”

“Now I’ll laugh. What’s wrong?”

“It’s melting. Look.” Stan did the finger trick.

The other driver licked his lips and tried. He pushed and pushed. Nothing happened except that his knuckle cracked.

“Do that again.”

Stan shrugged and did it again. Once again the other driver tried. Bill, watching them, began to have an impossible and incredible hunch. He found a fifty cent piece in his pocket. He pressed his thumb firmly into the middle of it and turned it into a soup bowl for a set of toy silver dishes. He shuddered and put it back in his pocket. He caught Shirley just as she was about to board the bus.

“Get off,” he said firmly.

“Look, are you...”

“Please, whatever your name is. It’s important.”

She got off. “The name is Shirley Sanger.”

“Bill Dorvan. Look. Can you bend this back?” He handed her the coin. She bent it back.

He took it over to the new driver. “Bud, can you bend this coin?”

“I got no time for jokes, Mister.”

Stan Weaver took the coin, held it on edge between thumb and finger and bent it double. He gave Bill Dorvan an odd look. He handed it to the new driver. The man couldn’t pry it apart.

Dorvan turned quickly to Shirley and said, “Come on. We walk for awhile.” She fell in stride beside him without protest.