Other Times, Other Worlds

The Big Contest

Originally published in Worlds Beyond, December 1950.

Now, forty years after the contest, we can figure out a few things about the little guy who won it. He had a terrible task here on this Earth; he must have been very lonely...

There was a blueness in the sharp-edged shadow cast by the Fire House, a blueness that hinted of dusk. There had been a piece in the Cardon Gazette about the man over in Chamber County who claimed to have seen a flying saucer. Through the heat of the long Saturday afternoon the front of the Fire House had been the focal point for the saucer discussion. Men came and went all afternoon and the talk at times grew as hot as the sun against the pavement and store fronts across the way.

Hobe Traik had been in the same faded blue kitchen chair all afternoon, tipped back against the weathered wood, his belly resting comfortably against his beer-keg thighs, his store teeth clamped into the deep grooves of the pipestem, a mist of sweat gleaming on his bald head. He had taken no part in the discussion, a fact which was so unusual as to be remarked upon many times that Saturday. But each time Kobe merely smiled with enigmatic amusement.

Now the group was down to five, if you don’t count the small boy. There are always small boys around fire houses. This one had a brown face, pale blue eyes, taffy hair and a pair of jeans so big for him the cuffs were rolled up. The five were Hobe Traik, Stu Ganser — the only other oldtimer in the group, a grizzled, indestructible man much given to belching — young Harry Darian from the bank, prissy Arthur LeBlanc trying hard, as usual, to be one of the boys, and Brad Sedwell, the cattle buyer.

Brad and Harry were hunkered down against the wall, Hobe Traik, Stu Ganser and Arthur LeBlanc were tipped back in the three kitchen chairs from the card room and bunk room over the Fire House.

Harry’s argument with Brad Sedwell about the saucers being mass hypnosis had petered out, as arguments will, when dusk began to spread layers of stillness over the town.

Hobe took his pipe out of his mouth and spat toward the road. It was a very respectable effort, carrying across the sidewalk and curb out onto the pavement. He cleared his throat. “Now I’ve heard a lot of fool talk today about these here saucers. Might be I’m a little tired of it. Me, I’ve been a-waitin’ on them for just about forty years. Ever since Woolmutt left town. You remember Woolmutt, Stu?”

“Can’t say as I do,” Stu Ganser said, applying the usual terminal belch.

“That spitter.”

“Oh! That Woolmutt.”

“You’re a damned old fool, Stu Ganser. There was only the one Woolmutt in this town, ever. You’re gettin’ so damn old, that head of yours...”

“What’s a spitter got to do with saucers?” Arthur LeBlanc demanded in that voice of his, just a little bit lispy.

“Now you just settle back there,” Hobe said, “and listen to it the way I want to tell it. It was nineteen eleven, the year we built this here Fire House so we wouldn’t have to keep the pumper over in Holly’s barn. Good thing we got it built when we did. The next week that barn burned to the ground. I was a sprout then. Full of sass. Seems like every minute I wasn’t courtin’ them Loomis sisters, I was right here at the Fire House. Both of ’em finally said no to me. Mary Alice married Clarence French from over Deliville Way. Had nine kids afore Clarence fell the hell off the silo, but that’s neither here nor there.

“That was the year we had the spittin’. Crown Street wasn’t paved then, of course, and in a dry spell it was just plain dust. Yalla dust. Choke you to death when somebody stirred it up. Now I don’t rightly remember just who it was started it. You could say we all started it one hot day when there wasn’t a breath of wind. Somebody just up and spit and in that dust you could see where they hit and just how much roll they got. So somebody else, he spits a little further. First thing you know we got us a line drawed and rules made and we’re takin’ turns.

“You take a town like this in the summer forty years ago, there wasn’t so much for people to do. Surprisin’ how spittin’ contests caught on that year. I’ve always been a right fair spitter myself, but there was a couple boys I just couldn’t beat. Fred Tunnison was one. Fred got killed in the first war. Luke Amery was the other one. Luke later went over to Youngstown and got in the banking business. Built a big house and sired four kids off that junior leaguer he married and then jumped the hell out of his office window in nineteen thirty.

“Well, Fred would win one contest and the next one Luke would win. The way we had it set up, each contestant got three spits. Took turns to give each man time to work up something to spit in between. Why, we had boys coming over from Lake Valley and far away as Dunstan to try against Fred and Luke. Sort of swept the county you might say.

“It must have been after the spittin’ had been going on for a month that this Woolmutt fella started comin’ around to watch. One of those fellas, he was, you don’t even think once about. You don’t see him come and you don’t notice him leave. Little chunky fella with washed-out eyes, sort of a stupid look, and a big mouth. He was workin’ as hired man over to old Cable Fisher’s place on the east side of Perry Woods.

“Now you know how these contests go. Some of the boys Luke and Fred out-spit went back and practiced up and the first thing you know we got ourselves a big Fourth of July contest all lined up. I kind of took charge of it, me havin’ no urge to do any spittin’ against Luke and Fred. Those boys could stand right at the near edge of that walk right there and let one go that would carry out as far as that white line down the middle of the road. Everybody that wanted to get in the contest had to put twenty-five cents in the hat for every time they tried a string of three spits. We roped off the street to keep traffic off it, and I made up some blocks of wood painted briglit colors so we could get ’em out to mark the best spits.

“In those days Marty Loofer’s Saloon was right around the comer on Chestnut and it being so handy to bring the buckets of beer around, we figured that nobody’d get too dry to spit, anyway. Well, the start-off time was two o’clock and I collected six dollars and a quarter in the hat. You got to remember, you young fellows, that six dollars was a good week’s pay in this town in nineteen eleven. Those boys had something to spit for.

“Just as we were gettin’ started, this Woolmutt fella comes up to me, shy like, and drops a quarter in the hat. I knew he’d been watching a lot, but I knew, too, how tight old Cable Fisher was with money, so I tried to talk Woolmutt out of entering. No sir, he wouldn’t have a chance, I told him. He had a funny accent and he didn’t talk much, but he sure was stubborn. So I kept his quarter and told him that because he was the last one to enter, he could spit last.

“With so much at stake, everybody was taking their time, believe me. Old Fred, he strutted up to the line and got himself balanced nice on the balls of his feet, his mouth working. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Sure was a hot day. When he was all ready and everybody quieted down, Fred sort of hunched back and then shot his head up and out like a blacksnake hitting a horse fly. He got a good explosion and a nice arc on that first spit. It was one of the best he ever did. A big cheer went up, because Fred was a pretty popular fella around this town in those days. He swaggered back from the line trying to look meek, but you could see he was pretty proud of that effort. The next few boys did pretty well, as far as spittin’s concerned, but the best of them was a good four foot eight inches back of die red block we set out to mark where Fred hit. Then Luke came up. His style was a little different, but just as good as Fred’s I’d say. Luke made himself just as high on his toes as he could get, and he stuck his head up just as far as he could get it, balanced there and let fly. You should have heard the yell when he got a good inch beyond Fred’s mark. Fred turned red and then white. You could see him setting his jaw for the next effort.

“One fella from out of town got within six inches of Fred, but the rest of them were almost pitiful. Woolmutt was the last one up to toe the mark. All those people standing around seemed to scare him. I was off to the side because it was part of my job to see that nobody fouled by stepping across the line. So from there I could see how Woolmutt worked himself up to it.

“First thing I see, he sticks his tongue out. Now I tell you, boys, that was the biggest tongue I ever did see on anybody. He sticks it straight out, flat like, and then he curls it up from the sides to make a sort of tube. That tube is a good four inches out beyond the end of his stubby little nose. I see him take a breath. Big chest on the little fella.

“He goes whih-THOO! And something goes bang across the street. Now afterward there were some claimed they could see that line of flight, right from the tip of his tongue over to the hole in the plate glass in the front of Winkelhauer’s Merchandise Mart. Wilbur Winkelhauer is a spectator, and when he sees what happens to his front window, he lets out a scream of mortal agony. Then the yell of the crowd drowns out Wilbur. Fred and Luke, they look badly shaken. Little Woolmutt is sort of dazed by all the commotion.

“Fred and Luke, they try to get me to rule Woolmutt out of the competition. First they say he isn’t spittin’ at all and that he’s got a friend hid somewhere with a gun. Then Woolmutt has to prove that he is spitting. He does so. Next Fred and Luke say that the little fella has some sort of a thing in his mouth like a blow gun. They make him stick out his tongue. It sure is big. Fred even reaches out slow like and pinches the end of it. He yanks his hand back quick and wipes it on his shirt and says, ‘Yep, it sure is a tongue.’ Then they say he didn’t hit the road.

“Fred and Luke don’t do so well the next turn around. A lot of the others have dropped out. Woolmutt steps up and hits the road. Where he hits there is a long line in the dust and a big cloud of dust comes up. It ricochets up and smacks the front of Winkelhauer’s again, this time just under the busted window.

“On the third try, Fred and Luke are weaker than ever. The heart is gone out — of them. Woolmutt takes a long time aiming. He hits that red block that marks Fred’s best shot and knocks it clean over onto the walk on the other side of the road. I kept that block around for years. Soft pine. Had a half-inch dent in the side of it. Never did know where it disappeared to finally.

“Well, I’m here to tell you that the rest of that Fourth of July was one of the gol-damnedest days I ever did see. How about it, Stu?”

Stu belched softly, reminiscently. “Sure was,” he sighed.

“You see,” said Hobe, “the crowd sort of took Woolmutt to its heart. He was a kind of likable little guy. And we knew that in him we had the best spitter in the state, if not the world at large. I announced him the winner and he shoved the money in his pants and they carried him on their shoulders around to Loofer’s. I guess the little guy wasn’t used to drinking. They loaded him up, and I do mean that they loaded him up. The better element went home. Along about midafternoon, Woolmutt, sort of loosened up at every joint, led what you might call a triumphant procession through town.

“You could hear him coming a block away. First all you’d hear would be the bang, bang, bang, as he hit the wooden buildings. After each bang all those fellas following him would let out a yell, Fred and Luke yelling louder than anybody. When he got closer you could hear the whole works. ‘Whih-THOO BANG YELL. Whih-THOO BANG YELL.’ It was something terrible. I was with him when Mrs. Thomas’ cat, big yella devil named Wheedlekins, made the mistake of runnin’ across the road in front of Woolmutt. Little Woolmutt really threw up the dust around that cat. Wheedlekins run up a tree, panting and yelling, and made the mistake of leaving a little bit exposed around the edge of the top limb. Woolmutt nailed Wheedlekins again and that cat dropped out of the tree and raced across town like its tail was afire.

“Judge Proctor’s bay team caught it next. You might say Woolmutt sort of encouraged those horses. It’s said that the Judge got them stopped just short of the county fine. The good citizens who wanted no part of all this locked their doors and they didn’t get in line with the windows either. Woolmutt proved himself a gentleman, though, even when he was the most carried away with it all. You gentlemen know Mrs. Iverson. Well, she was about eighteen then, and the way she dressed there were some ready and willing to say she’d come to no good end. A handsome filly always looking as though she’d bust right out of her clothes.

“When they came around the comer of Market and Crown, there was Hazel fifty feet away, bent over tying her shoe. They all pleaded, but Woolmutt refused. He said it wasn’t right and proper. And...”

“I don’t see what this has got to do with flying saucers,” Brad Sedwell complained.

“You young folks are always too damn impatient,” Hobe said. “You’re hurrying me. Well, on that day Harry Chase’s son, John, was in town, taking a vacation from the hospital down east where he was doing his interning. Smart boy, John Chase. Of course, he’s no boy now. It surprised me to find him following around after Woolmutt and then I noticed that he wasn’t yelling the way the others were. He just kept his eyes glued to Woolmutt as though he couldn’t look away.

“When the whole mob stopped back here in front of the Fire House, John got right up next to Woolmutt, staring at him hard. The first thing we knew, he grabbed one of Woolmutt’s hands and looked’ at it close, front and back. Woolmutt tried to pull away. Then John got his fingers on Woolmutt’s pulse. He looked deep into Woolmutt’s eyes and I could see him turn white. Woolmutt yanked free, plunged through the crowd and ran out of town. Nobody ever saw him again. And John Chase wouldn’t say a word about what he saw — but he didn’t seem too surprised when he found out that Woolmutt had left the county for good. That’s how it ties in with them saucers, Brad.”

Brad snorted. “Oh, sure. Woolmutt came in a flying saucer.”

“Use the brains God gave squirrels, Brad,” Hobe said angrily. “It stands to reason that whoever flies around in them saucers has been watching us for a long time, maybe hundreds of years. I say they’re making a study of us mortals. You ever read Charles Fort’s stuff? He says right out that we’re nothing but property. The more I pondered on Woolmutt and his accent and the funny way he looked, the more I began to think that Woolmutt was a spy from someplace. Someplace off this earth. They made him look like a man and they stuck him here on us to make out his reports.

“But the little bugger got lonesome. You know how it is. Here he was among strangers, maybe for most of his life, getting lonesomer every day. They didn’t do a good job of making him look like a man maybe because they didn’t know enough about us, forty years ago. But when he saw the spittin’ he knew that it was something he could do, something he could get in on. Just like the time that drummer told Nancy Carrwell she had a good singing voice. She like to drove the whole town crazy for three years until she got over it.

“Now John Chase was a trained doctor and he could see things about Woolmutt that we wouldn’t notice. Woolmutt, with his spittin’, attracted too much attention and he knew it when John started examining him. So Woolmutt had to go back where he came from. Now they’ve had spies here long enough so that they know about the fix this world’s gettin’ into and they’re coming around in their saucers and keep us from killing each other off — the same way you divide up a chicken run when they start peckin’ each other to death.”

The street lights came on with startling suddenness, turning the blue dusk to night. Stu sighed and shuffled off into the darkness. Arthur LeBlanc stood up and laughed nervously and said, “Well, this has all been very interesting.” His lisp seemed more pronounced. Hobe’s closing comments had seemed to put some restraint on the group. Brad and Harry mumbled something about getting home and went off together.

Only the boy was left. “You better be gettin’ on home to your Ma,” Kobe suggested gently.

The boy sighed as though awakening from a dream. “Sure, mister. Sure. G’night, mister.”

He went off up the street. He walked down Crown to the tracks and turned east. When he got beyond the street lights the countryside seemed brighter, as though there were a last legitimate bit of the day left.

He cut across lots toward Perry’s woods. When he neared the tangle of impenetrable brush he took a small irridescent cube out of the pocket of the jeans and held it to his ear. He spoke, listened a few moments, and then spoke again, his tone firm and brisk.

He put the cube back in his pocket. A small tawny rabbit, barely visible in the dusk, stood atop a knoll sixty yards away.

The rabbit suddenly tumbled over and over, jumped up and scurried away. The small boy flattened the long tongue out again, smiled almost sadly, and rose straight up, with increasing speed, toward the navy blue sky of night.