Why Call Them Back from Heaven

28

He had swung far south of Chicago. Once, from far off, he had seen the distance-misted towers and blocks of masonry that rose beside the lower end of the lake. Now he was west of it and heading north, still following the tiny, twisting, oldtime roads. At times they dwindled out or became impassable and he would be forced to turn around and retrace his way, looking for another of the primitive, grass-grown highways that trended in the right direction.

It had been like that all the way from the East Coast and he had not made good progress. Although there was no reason now that he should make good progress. There was no reason, he told himself time and time again, that he go anywhere. He had no actual destination; the destination that he did have was an emotion-charged fantasy in which there could be no real meaning and no purpose. The comfort and identity which it seemed to hold was no more than delusion; when he arrived it would be as empty and as barren as any mile along the road he took to reach it. But knowing this, he still made his way toward it, driven by an inner urge which he failed to understand.

He met few people. Through the areas he traveled there were few inhabitants. Occasionally there would be a down-at-heels family living—camping might be a better word—at one of the many abandoned sets of farm buildings. Occasionally there were tiny villages still inhabited, a few families still lived there in a stubborn refusal to join the now all but completed movement to the vast urban centers, existing in a small nucleus of humanity surrounded by the empty and decaying structures which at one time had housed a healthy community.

At times he drove past monitor-and-rescue stations, with the rescue cars and helicopters standing on the ramp, ready at an instant to dash out to retrieve a body when the monitor housed within the building detected the cessation of a transmitter signal, indicating that a heart had stopped its beating, pegging with exactitude the geographic coordinates where the stoppage had occurred.

There could not, Frost imagined, be much work to do at stations such as these, for due to the thinly scattered population months might go by without a single death within the quadrant covered by a station. And yet, even in those areas where, for long periods of time, there might be no signal except for some transient passing through, the stations still were maintained against the chance that within the area some life might flicker out.

For, despite what might be said of it, despite the rumors and the watchful critics, Forever Center still kept the ancient faith, still carried on the tradition of service which was implicit in the purpose for which it had been founded. And that, Frost told himself, with a surge of pride, was the way it had to be. For faith was the one solid foundation upon which such a social structure could be built.

The roads he traveled did not allow the piling up of any great amount of mileage in any single day. The necessity of finding food delayed the progress further. He foraged for berries and from scraggly trees still surviving in old orchards he gathered early-ripened fruit. He fished with fair success in many tiny streams, in some larger rivers. From a strong hickory sapling he fashioned a bow and trimmed arrows from ash sprouts, spent hours in trying to learn how to handle the weapon he'd devised. But the bow and arrows did not pay for the time expended in the making of them. Inexpertly fashioned, the bow admitted of little accuracy. The only game he gathered with it was an ancient wood-chuck, tough and stringy, but at least red meat, the first that he had tasted in many weeks.

In an abandoned farmhouse he found a kettle, with some rusty spots, but still intact. A few days later, on the edge of a scummy pond, he captured a snapping turtle that had strayed too far from water, butchered it, and put it in the kettle to boil. He was not entirely sure that he liked the soup, but it was food and that was the thing that counted.

He began to have a sense of leisure. No longer hiding, no longer running, he moved down a long and twisting avenue of contented time. Finding a camping place that appealed to him, he'd stay for several days, resting, fishing, swimming, foraging, and eating. He attempted to smoke some of the fish he caught, to build up a food supply against a future day. The experiment did not work out.

He no longer watched the road behind him. Marcus Appleton undoubtedly still was hunting for him, but the chances were, he told himself, that he had not learned as yet his prey had left the city. The theft of the car

would have been long since reported, the car to which he'd switched the plates might have been discovered, but there was no way, he felt sure, that the theft could be traced to him. The recognition and recovery of a stolen car was not an easy thing, for all cars were alike, all turned out by one company, which no longer bothered, since there was no competition and no customer demand, to change the models every year—or every ten or twenty years.

For the cars were standard, engineered to certain well-established specifications. All small, so they took less space. All powered by lifelong batteries—silent, fume-less, slow of speed, all with low centers of gravity. The kind of car to fit the crowded street conditions under which most of them were used and equipped with safety devices to protect their occupants.

Now Chicago was behind him and he was heading north. One day he reached the river and knew exactly where he was. The old iron bridge, red with rust, still bridged the stream, and off to the east were the gray and weathered bones of a deserted village, and to the west, just short of the bridge, was an ancient track that flanked the river, running between the water and the limestone-ribbed, tree-covered bluffs.

Twenty miles, he thought—twenty miles was all and he would be home. Although, even as he thought about it, he knew it wasn't home and it had never been. It was simply familiar, a place he once had known.

He swung the car to the right and was on the river road, a narrow set of wheel tracks with a ribbon of grass between them and brush and drooping tree branches so close they rasped against the body of the car.

A hundred yards and the brush and trees ended and ahead was a little meadow, which had been at one time, most likely, a cornfield or a pasture. Beyond the meadow the trees and brush closed in again. A short distance up the hillside a few tumbledown farm buildings sat amidst weeds and sprouting brush.

In the center of the clearing, just off the road, lay;camp. Dirty patched tents stood in a circle. Thin spirals of blue smoke swirled up from cooking fires. Three or four battered, rusted cars stood to one side of the tents and there were animals which must have been horses, athough Frost had never seen a horse. And there were dogs, and people, all turned to look at him some of them starting to move toward him and crying back and forth to one another-shrill, triumphant cries.

In the instant that it took for the scene to register noon Frost's mind, he knew what he had stumbled on-o band of Loafers, one of those strange and vicious tabes which roamed the countryside, that small percentage of unemployed and unemployable who through the years had resisted all attempts to find a place for them in the economic structure. There were not many of them, perhaps; but here was one of the bands and bed run headlong into it!

He slowed the car, then changed his mind and accelerated, heading down the road, building up his speed in hope that he'd be able to run clear of the pack of humans who were streaming from the camp.

For a moment it seemed that he might have made it, for he pulled even with and was forging past the largest body of the running men. Looking out the window, to the side, he could see their screaming faces, bearded, dirty, mouths open in their shouting, lips peeled back to show their teeth.

Then suddenly the wave of charging bodies hit the car, ran into it as a man might run headlong into a fence, and it bounced alarmingly, hopping in the ruts, and then was going over, slowly tipping to one side, while the two wheels still in contact with the ground continued to give it some forward motion. And even as it tipped, the mass of screaming men swarmed onto it and forced it over.

It struck the ground and skidded, shuddering. Someone jerked open the door and hands reached in to haul Frost out. Once out, they dumped him on the ground. Slowly, he regained his feet. The Loafers ringed him like a pack of wolves, but now the viciousness was gone and there was amusement on their faces. One man, standing in the forefront of the paclc, nodded at him knowingly. "Now it was thoughtful," he said, "to deliver us a car. We sure God needed one. Our old ones are getting so they hardly run no more." Frost did not answer. He glanced around the semi-circle and all of them were laughing, or very close to laughing. Among the men were children, gangling little boys who stood and gawked at him.

"Horses are all right," said a slack-jawed man, "but they ain't as good as cars. They can't go as fast and they are a lot of trouble, taking care of them."

Frost still said nothing, mostly because he could not decide what might be safe to say. It was quite clear that these people meant to keep the car and there was nothing, he realized, that he could do about it. They were laughing now, at their own good fortune and his discomfiture, but at any moment, if he should say the wrong word, he sensed they could turn ugly.

"Pa," a shrill boyish voice cried, "what is that there on his forehead? He has got a red mark there. What kind of thing is that?"

Silence fell. The laughter died. The faces took on grimness.

"An osty!" cried the slack-jawed man. "By God, he is an osty!"

Frost spun and made a sudden lunge. His hands grasped the upward side of the car and, with a single motion, he vaulted over it. He lit unsteadily on his feet and stumbled, saw the mob of Loafers pounding around each end of the car, closing in on him. He started a stumbling run and saw that he was trapped. The river lay in front of him and there was no chance of dodging to one side, for either way he turned the Loafers had him flanked. There was shouting and laughing once again, but it was vicious laughter, the shrill hooting of hysterical hyenas.

Stones whizzed past him and plunged into the ground or skipped through the grass and he hunched his shoulders to protect his head, but one caught him in the cheek and the blow of it jolted his whole body and it seemed for an instant that his head was coming off as swift pain lanced through his jaw and skull. A fog rose from the ground and obscured his vision and he was plunging into it and all at once, with no sense of having fallen, he was down and hands were reaching roughly for him and lifting and carrying him.

Through the haze of the fog and the deep rumble of the shouting voices, one bullhorn voice rang out loud and clear above all the rest of them. "Wait a minute, boys," it roared. "Don't throw him in just yet. He'll drown sure as hell if he has got his shoes on."

"Hell, yes," yelled another voice, "he has to have a chance. Get them shoes off him."

Someone was tugging at his shoes and he felt them leave his feet and he tried to yell out, but the best he could utter was a croak.

"Them pants of his will get waterlogged," yelled the man with the bullhorn voice.

And another said, "Them rescue boys might not even be able to fish him out should it happen he did drown."

Frost fought, but there were too many of them and his fight was feeble as they stripped him of his trousers and his jacket and his shirt and all the other clothes.

Then there were four men, one to each arm, one to each leg and somewhere off to one side, someone was shouting out the count: "One! Two! Three!"

And each time at the count they swung him and at the count of three let go and he sailed out above the river, naked as a jaybird, and saw the river rushing up to meet him.

He struck sprawled and spraddled out and the water hit him like a doubled fist. He sank into it, fighting and desperate and confused, down into the blue-greenness and the cold. Then he rose and broke the surface and worked his hands and feet, more by instinct than by purpose, to keep himself afloat. Something bumped hard against him and he flung out an arm to ward it off and felt the roughness of wood touch against his hide. He wound an arm around it and it floated and sup, ported him and he saw that it was a drifting tree trunk: floating down the current. He swung himself around and got both arms over it and rested on it, looking back.

On the river's bank the Loafers pranced and hopped in a hilarious war dance, shouting out at him words he did not recognize and one', of them, with an arm raised high, waved his trousers at him as if they might have been a scalp.