Time is the Simplest Thing

SEVEN

The crowd had gathered across the street from the restaurant. It was clustered thickly about Harriet’s car and it was watching closely and it was deadly silent. Ugly, but not noisy. Angry, and perhaps just slightly apprehensive, perhaps just on the edge of fear. Angry, more than likely, because it was afraid.

Blaine pressed his back against the wall of the restaurant where, a few minutes before, they had finished breakfast. And there had been nothing wrong at breakfast. It had been all right. No one had said a thing. No one stared at them. Everything had been normal and very commonplace.

“How could they tell?” asked Blaine.

“I don’t know,” said Harriet.

“They took down the sign.”

“Or maybe it fell over. Maybe they never had one. There are some that don’t. It takes a lot of belligerence to put up a sign.”

“These babies look belligerent enough.”

“They may not be after us.”

“Maybe not,” he said. But there was no one else, there was nothing else against which they would be banded.

Listen closely, Shep. If something happens. If we are separated. Go to South Dakota. Pierre in South Dakota (map of the United States with Pierre marked with a star and the name in big red letters and a purple road that led from this tiny border town to the city on the wide Missouri).

I know the place, said Blaine.

Ask for me at this restaurant (the facade of a building, stone-fronted, big plate windows with an ornate, silver-mounted saddle hanging in one window, a magnificent set of elk antlers fixed above the door). It’s up on the hill, above the river. Almost anyone will know me. They can tell you where I am.

We won’t get separated.

But if we do, you mind what I say.

Of course I will, said Blaine. You have lugged me this far. I’ll trust you all the way.

The crowd was beginning to seethe a little — not actually moving, but stirring around, beginning to get restless, as if it might be gently frothing. And a murmur rose from it, a sullen, growling murmur without any words.

An old crone pushed through it and shambled out into the street. She was an ancient thing. What could be seen of her — her head, her hands, her bare and muddy feet — were a mass of wrinkles. Her hair was dirty, ragged white and it drooped in wisps all about her head.

She lifted a feeble arm, from which flabby muscles hung like an obscene pouch, and she pointed a crooked, bony, quavering forefinger straight in Blaine’s direction.

“That is him,” she screamed. “He is the one I spotted. There’s something queer with him. You can’t get into his brain. It’s like a shining mirror. It—”

The rest of what she said was drowned out in the rising clamor of the crowd, which began moving forward — not rapidly, but foot by foot — edging along toward the two against the wall, as if it might be fearful and reluctant but pushed along by a civic duty that was greater than its fear.

Blaine put his hand into his jacket pocket and his fingers closed around the gun he’d scooped up in Charline’s kitchen. But that was not the way, he knew. That would only make it worse. He pulled his hand out of the pocket and let it dangle at his side.

But there was something wrong — he was standing all alone, just his human self. There was no Pinkness in him, no stir inside his brain. He was a naked human and wondered wildly, for a moment, if he should be glad or not. And then he caught it peeping out of one corner of his brain and he waited for it, but nothing happened and the questioning segment of it pulled out of consciousness again.

There was fury and loathing in the faces that floated atop the mass of human bodies moving in the street. Not the night-shrouded baying of the mob, but the slantwise, daylight slinking of a pack of wolves, and in the forefront of the press, borne along on the edge of this wave of human hatred, was the withered crone who had pointed with her finger to set the pack in motion.

“Stand still,” Blaine said to Harriet. “That is our only chance.”

Any moment now, he knew, the situation could hit a crisis point. The mob would either lose its nerve and waver, or some slight incident, some smallest motion, some spoken word, would send it forward with a rush.

And if that happened, he knew, he would use the gun. Not that he wanted to, not that he intended to — but it would be the one thing left to do.

But for the moment, in the little interval before violence could erupt, the town stood petrified — a sleepy little town with shabby, two-story business buildings, all in need of paint, fronting on a sun-baked street. Scraggy trees stood at infrequent intervals, and there were faces at the upstairs windows, staring out in astonishment at the potential animal padding in the street.

The mob moved closer, circling, still cautious, and mute; all its murmur quieted, all its hate locked tight behind the savage masks.

A foot clicked sharply on the sidewalk, then another foot, and still another one — the rugged, steady sound of someone’s stolid walking.

The footsteps came closer, and Blaine turned his eyes a second to catch out of the corner of them the sight of a tall, angular, almost cadaverous man who strode along deliberately, for all the world as if he were out for a morning stroll. The man reached Blaine and stood to one side of him and then he turned and faced the mob. He never said a word; he just stayed standing there. But the crowd came to a halt and stood there in the street in a dreadful quietness.

Then a man said: “Good morning to you, Sheriff.” The sheriff didn’t stir; he didn’t say a word.

“Them is parries,” said the man.

“Who says so?” asked the sheriff.

“Old Sara, she says so.”

The sheriff looked at the crone: “How about it, Sara?”

“Tom is right,” Old Sara screeched. “That one there, he has a funny mind. It bounces back at you.”

“And the woman?” asked the sheriff.

“She is with him, ain’t she?”

“I am ashamed of you,” the sheriff said, as if they all were naughty children. “I have a mind to run you in, every one of you.”

“But them is parries!” yelled a stricken voice. “You know we don’t allow no parries here.”

“Now, I tell you what,” the sheriff said. “You all get back to business. I’ll take care of this.”

“The both of them?” a voice asked.

“Why, I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “The lady ain’t no parry. I just kind of figured we’d run her out of town and that would be enough.”

He said to Harriet: “Are you with this man?”

“And I’m staying with him!”

No! said Blaine. (A sign for silence, finger to the lips.)

Fast, hoping that no one would catch it, for in a town like this even a telepath might be in for trouble.

But the warning must be sounded.

“That your car across the street?” the sheriff asked.

Harriet shot a questioning glance at Blaine.

“Yes, it is,” she said.

“Well, I tell you, miss. You just trot over to it and get out of here. The folks will let you through.”

“But I don’t intend—”

Blaine said: “You better do it, Harriet.”

She hesitated.

“Go ahead,” he said.

She stepped slowly off the sidewalk, then turned back.

“I’ll be seeing you,” she said to Blaine.

She glanced with contempt at the sheriff. “Cossack,” she declared.

The sheriff didn’t mind. He’d never heard the term.

“Beat it, lady,” he said, and his voice was almost kindly.

The crowd parted to let her through, but buzzed angrily. She reached the car and turned to wave at Blaine. Then she got into the seat and started the motor, gunned the jets and swung the car sharply out into the street. The crowd fled, shrieking, tumbling over one another to get out of the way, blinded by the screaming dust that was spun up by the jets.

The sheriff watched with monumental calm as the car roared down the street.

“You see that, sheriff!” roared an outraged victim. “Why don’t you run her in?”

“Served you right,” the sheriff said. “You started all of this. Here I was getting ready for a restful day and you got me all stirred up.”

He didn’t look stirred up.

The protesting crowd pushed toward the sidewalk, arguing violently.

The sheriff waved his hands, as if he were shooing chickens.

“Get along with you,” he told them. “You have had your fun. Now I got to get to work. I got this guy to jail.”

He turned to Blaine. “Come along with me,” he said. They walked down the street together toward the courthouse.

“You ought to have known better,” said the sheriff. “This town is hell on parries.”

“No way to tell,” said Blaine. “There wasn’t any sign.”

“Blew down a year or two ago,” the sheriff told him. “No one had the gumption to set it up again. Really should have a new sign. Old one got pretty rickety. You could hardly read the lettering on it. Sand storms scoured off the paint.”

“What do you intend to do with me?”

The sheriff said: “Not too much, I reckon. Hold you for a while until the folks cool down. For your own protection. As soon as it is safe, I’ll get you out of here.”

He was silent for a moment, considering the situation.

“Can’t do it right away,” he said. “The boys will be watching mighty close.”

They reached the courthouse and climbed the steps. The sheriff opened the door. “Straight ahead,” he said.

They walked into the sheriff’s office, and the sheriff closed the door.

“You know,” said Blaine, “I don’t believe you’ve got the grounds to hold me. What would happen if I just walked out of here?”

“Nothing much, I guess. Not right away, at least. I certainly wouldn’t stop you, although I’d argue some. But you wouldn’t get out of town. They’d have you in five minutes.”

“I could have left in the car.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Son, I know these people. I was raised with them. I am one of them. I know how far I can go with them and when I’ve got to stop. I could get the lady off, but not the both of you. You ever see a mob in action?”

Blaine shook his head.

“It ain’t a pretty sight.”

“How about this Sara? She’s a parry, too.”

“Well, I tell you, friend. Sara has good blood behind her. Fell on evil times, but her family’s been here for more than a hundred years. The town just tolerates her.”

“And she’s handy as a spotter.”

The sheriff shook his head and chuckled. “There ain’t much,” he said, with local pride, “that filters past our Sara. She has a busy time of it, watching all the strangers that come into town.”

“You catch a lot of parries that way?”

“Tolerable,” said the sheriff. “Every now and then. A tolerable number, I would say.”

He motioned at the desk. “Just dump your pockets there. The law says I got to do it. I’ll fix up a receipt for you.”

Blaine began digging in his pockets. Billfold, card case, handkerchief, key ring, matches and, finally, the gun.

He lifted it out rather gingerly and laid it with the other stuff.

The sheriff eyed it. “You had that all the time?”

Blaine nodded.

“And you never reached for it?”

“I was too scared to reach for it.”

“You got a permit for it?”

“I don’t even own it.”

The sheriff whistled softly through his teeth.

He picked up the gun and broke it. There was the coppery shine of cartridge cases.

The sheriff opened a desk drawer and tossed it in.

“Now,” he said, as if relieved, “I’ve got something legal I can hold you on.”

He picked up the book of matches and handed them to Blaine.

“You’ll want these for smoking.”

Blaine put them in his pocket.

“I could get you cigarettes,” the sheriff said.

“No need,” Blaine told him. “I carry them sometimes, but I don’t do much smoking. Usually I wear them out carrying them before I get around to smoking.”

The sheriff lifted a ring of keys off a nail.

“Come along,” he said.

Blaine followed him into a corridor that fronted on a row of cells.

The sheriff unlocked the nearest one, across the corridor from the door.

“You’ve got it all alone,” he said. “Ran the last one out last night. Boy who came across the border and got himself tanked up. Figured he was as good as white folks.”

Blaine walked into the cell. The sheriff banged and locked the door.

“Anything you want,” he said, with a fine show of hospitality, “just yell out and say so. I’ll get it for you.”