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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58974 ***
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+                               OUR TOWN
+
+                            BY JEROME BIXBY
+
+               _The jets got all the young ones in Smoky
+               Creek. Only the old folks were left--with
+                their memories. And the jets--friendly
+                 or hostile--would never get them...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+             Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1955.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+A jet bomber and four fighters had appeared low over Bald Ridge, out of
+the east. They'd curved up as one to clear Lawson's Hill, their stubby
+wings almost brushing the treetops, their hiss and thunder rolling
+back and forth between the valley walls like a giant's derision;
+they'd dipped into the valley proper, obviously informed that Smoky
+Creek, Tennessee (population 123) had no anti-aircraft installations,
+and circled the town at about five hundred feet. They circled and
+looked down--broad slavic faces with curious expressions, seen through
+plexiglass, as if thinking: _So this is an American small town._
+
+Then they took altitude and got to work. The first bomb was aimed
+at the big concrete railway bridge spanning the upper end of the
+valley; that was the main objective of the attack. The bomb exploded
+four hundred yards north of the bridge, at about six hundred feet
+altitude--the ideal point from which to flatten Smoky Creek. Low
+altitude bombing can be tricky, of course, especially in mountain
+country. A-bombs were cheap though, turned out by the carload; not like
+20 years before, when they were first developed. So it was likely the
+bombardier tripped a bomb over the town just for the hell of it.
+
+The next bomb got the bridge. The next tore up a quarter mile of
+track. The next tore up a quarter mile of road. That was the mission.
+The bomber circled, while the fighters strafed Smoky Creek for good
+measure; and then they roared away past Lawson's Hill, over Bald Ridge,
+into the east toward their invasion-coast base.
+
+Everybody died. The bombs were midget A's, designed for tactical use;
+so Smoky Creek wasn't reduced to dust--just to sticks. There wasn't
+much heat from the bomb and there was hardly any residual radiation.
+But everybody in town died. Concussion. Smoky Creek had been comprised
+of one main street and three cross streets, and that's not much
+area--the wave had thumped down from right above, like a giant fist.
+
+Everybody died, except twenty-one old men and women who had been off
+in the woods at the far end of the valley, on their annual Grandfolk's
+Picnic. They didn't die, except inside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three months later, an enemy jet came out of the sky and over the
+valley. A scoop arrangement under its belly was sniffing Tennessee
+and Alabama air for radioactive particles. It sniffed low over the
+town, and then again--a ruined town might hide an underground lab and
+converter--and then it barrel-rolled and crashed. Nine rifle bullets
+had hit the motor; straight back through the jet intake, into the
+blades.
+
+A year after that another jet came low over the town, and it
+crashed too. Only three bullets this time; but a jet motor's like a
+turbine--you get a blade or two, and it goes crazy.
+
+Two years after that, Ben Bates (no longer Mayor Ben, because a mayor
+has to have a town; but still the man in charge) knocked off playing
+horseshoes in what had been the Town Hall. Now the building served as a
+recreation hall; there were horseshoe pits at one end of the long room,
+there were tables for checkers and cards, and a short tenpin alley
+along one wall. Three years ago the alley had been twice as long as it
+was now; but then there were young men around who could peg the length
+of it without tiring every time. Overhead the roof sagged, and in one
+place you could see quite a piece of sky--but under the hole the old
+men had rigged a slanted board watershed that led to a drainage ditch;
+and scattered through the room were a lot of supporting posts and
+timber braces. Actually the building was about as safe as it had ever
+been.
+
+There were other buildings like it; buildings that the bomb hadn't
+pounded flat or made too risky. They were propped up and nailed
+together and buttressed and practically glued so they'd stay up. From
+outside you'd think they were going to crumble any minute--walls
+slanted all cockeyed, boards peeled off and hanging, and roofs
+buckling in. But they were safe. Fixed up every which way--from the
+inside. All from the inside; not an inch of repair on the outside. It
+had to be that way, because the town had to look like a dead town.
+
+After the men had finished propping, the women had come along with all
+the furniture and things they'd salvaged, and they swept and scrubbed
+and did a hundred jobs the men never would have thought of; and so the
+old people ended up with half a dozen buildings to live in, secretly
+and comfortably, in the town that had to look dead.
+
+"Arthritis is bad," Ben Bates told his teammates and opponents. "Hell,
+I'm just giving away points. Maybe next week. I'll rest up, and kick
+you all around next week."
+
+He lit a cigar, a big grey man with long legs and a good-humored mouth,
+and he watched Dan Paray throw one short; then he strolled over to
+kibitz at the checker game between Fat Sam Hogan and Windy Harris,
+at one of the tables near the door. Late morning sunlight slanted in
+through the window by the table and struck light off Windy's glasses
+as he leaned across the board, thumped a checker three times and said
+triumphantly, "King me, Sam. You're getting blind, I swear. Or dumber."
+
+Behind his back Ben Bates heard a shoe ring against the stake; then he
+heard it spin off, and he grinned at Owen Urey's bullfrog cussing.
+
+Tom Pace was saying urgently, "Look--look, Jim, damn it, you didn't
+no more shoot down that plane singlehanded than I did. We was all
+shooting. Godamighty--where you get off claiming _you_ brung it down?"
+
+Ben turned and sat down at the table next to the checker game, and
+stretched his legs in the sunlight. He raised thick brows like clumps
+of steel-wool at Tom and at old Jim Liddel, who sat in his pillowed
+armchair like a thin, scowling, bald, mansized spider.
+
+"You keep talking so high and mighty," Tom said, "we'll carry you out
+o' here and take you and dump you in the creek. You can tell the fish
+about who got the plane."
+
+"Still arguing over who planted the shot, huh," Ben grinned. "Regular
+feud, you two."
+
+"Well, hell, Ben," Tom said, and bit down on his gums so his whiskers
+almost hid the end of his nose. "I just get filled up on this old
+windbag hollering how he--"
+
+"You go call me a windbag once more, Tom Pace," Jim Liddel said, and he
+stirred his all but helpless body in the armchair, "you're gonna have a
+sore eye, you seventy year old whippersnapper. _I_ brung it down."
+
+"In a hog's behind, you brung it down, Mister Dan'l Boone!"
+
+"It 'us just after I let loose it started smoking," old Jim snarled,
+"and nobody else was shooting right then! You're gonna get a sore eye,
+I swear--tobacco in it. I can spit to where you sit, and I can spit
+faster'n you can move, I bet, unless you're faster'n a fly, and you
+ain't. You just ask anybody who was there ... it 'us just after I shot
+it started--"
+
+Tom Pace thumped the table. "_I_ was there, you old ... now, now, Jim,
+don't spit, for Godsake! Hold on. What I mean, I was there too, and
+maybe somebody's shot from a second or two before was what done the
+trick. Maybe even my shot! Takes a plane a while to know it's hurt,
+don't it? Ever think o' that?"
+
+"Maybe," Ben Bates said. "Maybe, maybe. And maybe. Let it go, you two.
+It ain't important who done it; we oughta just be grateful we got it."
+
+"Grateful _I_ got it," Jim Liddel grunted.
+
+Tom Pace said, "Now, looky here, Jim--" Ben Bates nudged Tom's leg
+under the table; and then slowly, fingering his jaw he said, "Well,
+now, Jim ... I figure maybe you did, at that. Like you say, it smoked
+and crashed right after you shot, so I always kind o' figured it _was_
+you brought it down. But that's a hard thing to prove."
+
+Jim snorted. "Can't prove it! But I got it, all right. A man knows when
+he sunk a shot."
+
+"In a varmint, maybe," Tom Pace objected, "or a man. But you claiming
+to know where to hit a plane the worst?"
+
+"We was _all_ shooting at the front, up where they put the motor," Jim
+said nastily. "Don't know about planes, but I know my aim. I got it
+square-on."
+
+"Well," Ben said, "why don't you just let it lay, eh, Tom? Jim's got a
+lot on his side." He looked sidewise at old Jim, and saw that Jim was
+still scowling at Tom. Old Jim was ninety eight, and some set in his
+notions.
+
+"Mm. Hell," Tom said reluctantly, after a second, "I ain't saying you
+_didn't_, Jim. That ain't my intent. I just get burned when you yell
+you did, like no man dared say you was wrong. Sure, maybe you're
+right. But ain't you willing to admit you might be wrong too?"
+
+"_No_," Jim Liddel yelled, and from the checker table came Windy
+Harris's encouraging, "You tell 'em who got that plane, Jim!"
+
+Ben Bates scraped an inch of ash off his cigar against the table-edge,
+sighed and got up. He looked down at the glowering pair and said,
+"Well, come the next plane, if there is one, we'll shove a rifle in
+your hand, Jim, and see how good your eye is. You too, Tom. Till that
+time, reckon this is no place for a reasoning man."
+
+"Sit down, Ben Bates," old Jim snarled. "If you're a reasoning man, sit
+down. Be glad to talk to one, after Tom here goes away."
+
+"You go to hell. _I_ ain't going no place," Tom said, and he picked up
+the cards and started shuffling them in his stiff hands.
+
+Ben sat down and stretched out his legs again.
+
+After a second, old Jim said wistfully, "You know, I wish I _could_
+still handle a rifle, Ben. Or do anything but sit. No way for a man to
+live, to have dead legs and dying arms." He shifted in his cushions.
+"You know, I reckon when I start to really die--die all over--I'm gonna
+get up out o' this chair. I'll stand up, somehow, even if it kills me
+faster. A man oughta fall when he dies, like a tree, so they know he
+stood up in his time. A man oughtn'ta die sitting down."
+
+"Sure, Jim," Ben said. "You're right about that."
+
+"Never had a sick day in my life, until they dropped that bomb. Why,
+I could outpitch and outchop and outshoot any of you whippersnappers,
+until they ..." Old Jim walloped the chair arm. "Damn, I made up for
+it, though! Didn't I? _They_ put me in a chair, I sat in it and _I_ got
+me an airyplane, and that's more'n they could do to me, by golly, they
+couldn't kill me!"
+
+"Sure, Jim," Ben said.
+
+"And when my time comes, I'll be up and out o' this chair. Man oughta
+fall and make a noise when he dies."
+
+"Sure, Jim," Ben said. "But that's a long ways off, ain't it?"
+
+Jim closed his eyes, and his face looked like a skull. "You squirts
+always think a man lives forever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From outside came the late morning sounds: the murmuring of Smoky Creek
+at the edge of town, under its cool tunnel of willows; the twittering
+of a flock of robins circling above; the constant soft rustle of the
+trees that crowded the green hills around. From the warehouse down by
+the tracks came the faint sounds of livestock--and the voices of the
+men whose job it was to look after them this week: to feed them, turn
+them out into the big pens for an hour's sunlight, then drive them back
+into the warehouse again.
+
+Lucky the warehouse had stood the bomb--it was perfect for the use.
+
+"Wonder how the war's going," Tom Pace said. He dropped some cards and
+bent painfully to retrieve them; his voice was muffled: "I just wonder
+how it's going, you know? Wonder who's killing more than who today.
+
+"Maybe," Tom continued, coming up, "it's all over. Ain't seen no planes
+for couple years now. Maybe somebody won."
+
+Ben shrugged. "Who knows. Don't matter none to us. We're ready as we
+can be if another plane comes around. Other than that, it ain't our
+concern."
+
+"Darn tootin'," Tom said, and pushed the cards together and started
+shuffling again.
+
+Jim Liddel said, "War!" and looked like he'd bit into spoiled meat.
+"Never settled nothing ... just makes the biggest dog top-dog for a
+while, so he can get his way. Man, I wish I could still lift a rifle,
+if an airyplane come around! I'd love to get me another one." He put
+his thin back against the cushions and pushed at the edge of the table
+with his hands. Jim's fingers didn't move so well any more; some were
+curled and some were straight out, and the joints were different sizes,
+and now they were trembling a little. "Sometimes when I think o'
+Johnny and Helen and all the kids--when I think o' that day, and those
+damn bombs, and that white tower o' smoke up over the town, I ... oh,
+godamighty, I'd love to see another airyplane! I'd shout and yell and
+pray; I'd pray almighty God for you to get it!"
+
+Ben pulled on his cigar with stiff lips, and said slowly, "Well, we
+might, Jim. We just might. Two out o' seven ain't bad." He puffed out
+smoke. "We been running in luck, so far, what with nobody ever coming
+back loaded for bear. Reckon that means the other five didn't see us,
+low as they was; probably didn't even know they was being shot at."
+
+"They musta found bulletholes, though," Tom Pace said. "Afterwards. Not
+a chance we'd all miss--" he bobbed his beard at old Jim--"'specially
+with Dan'l Boone here plugging away. They'd know they was shot at, all
+right. Might even find rifle bullets."
+
+"Maybe they did," Ben said. "Nobody ever come snooping back, though."
+
+"Wouldn't know where to, would they?" Windy Harris said. He and Fat
+Sam Hogan had stopped playing checkers, and had been listening. "Smoky
+Creek looks dead as Sodom. Buildings all down, and stuff knee-deep in
+the streets. Bridge down, and the road out. And the valley is way the
+hell out o' the way ... no call for them to suspect it more'n anyplace
+else. Less, even. They'd likely figure somebody took a potshot from a
+hill ... and there's a pack o' hills between here'n outside.
+
+"Looks like," Ben said. "We just got to keep it that way. We got a
+good plan: if the plane's up high, we just freeze under cover; if it
+comes down low a time or two, we figure we're likely spotted and start
+shooting. We shoot, and maybe it shoots too, and we pray."
+
+"It's a good plan," Jim Liddel said, looking out the window. "We got
+two."
+
+Windy Harris got up and stretched out his arms.
+
+"Two ain't _enough_," old Jim said bitterly.
+
+"Well," Windy said, "I hope we keep on getting 'em--them as sees us,
+anyway. Hope nobody _ever_ knows we're here. It's peaceful here. Way
+off by ourselves, nothing to do but get up and go to bed, and do
+what we want in between." He sent tobacco juice into the cuspidor
+by the door. "Right now, me, I guess I'll go fishing down by the
+creek--promised Maude I'd bring home a cat or two for supper. Anybody
+come along?"
+
+Tom Pace shook his head, and old Jim looked like he'd like to go, if
+he only could--and Ben said, "Maybe I'll be down a little while later,
+Windy. Keep to the trees."
+
+Windy left, and Tom Pace shuffled the cards and looked over at Jim
+Liddel. "You going to play with Ben and me, you old windbag, or you
+going to keep bragging so loud a man can't stand your company?"
+
+"Why, you whippersnapper," Jim growled, "you just go ahead and run 'em.
+Reckon a reasoning man and a nitwit's about the best I can do right
+now."
+
+Tom dealt out two cards, and said, "War!" without dealing out the rest.
+He looked at Ben, his eyes cloudy. "Got a cigar, Ben?"
+
+Ben handed one over and held a match, and Tom got it going, puffing
+longer than he had to, like he didn't want to talk yet.
+
+Then he said, "It didn't have to happen." He worked the cigar over to
+the corner of his mouth and settled it in the nest of stained whiskers
+there. "None of it had to happen--what happened here, and whatever
+happened outside the valley. It just didn't have to happen."
+
+"'Course it didn't," Ben said. "Never has to. It just always does. Some
+people got reasons to let it happen, and some ain't got the sense not
+to."
+
+Fat Sam Hogan said, "I don't figure there's anything in the world a man
+can't sit down and talk out, instead o' reaching for a gun. Don't know
+why that oughtn'ta hold for countries."
+
+Ben Bates looked at one of the two cards Tom Pace had dealt--his hole
+card. It was a four, and he lost interest. "Yup," he said, "it holds
+all right ... they'll just both reach half the time anyway. One war
+on top of another. Even one right after this one, ten years or so, if
+this one's over. I just bet. Every country wants a piece out o' the
+next one's hide--or his poke--and they won't give an inch except in
+talk; they won't really buckle down to stop a war. Never. Not if they
+can't get what they want by talk." He looked at the card again, just
+in case--a four, sure enough. "Only time there's never a war is when
+everybody has what they want, or figure they can get it without killing
+somebody. But the second they see that's the only way, then it's war.
+War, war, war. It's a rotten way to run a world, killing to decide
+who's right or wrong ... 'specially killing people who got damn little
+say about it. But I seen three-four wars now, and they don't look to
+stop soon, judging." He shook his head wonderingly. "Put half the money
+they spend on killing toward curing, instead, and helping them that
+wants, and finding out all about diseases and such ... why, shucks,
+it'd be a brand-new world."
+
+"I seen five," Jim Liddel said. "I seen wars come and go. I fought in
+one. Afterwards, every time, they say everything's fine. The war to
+save this or that's over, and things are fine. Then somebody wants
+something somebody else has, and they're at it again, like two bulls
+trying to hump the same heifer. Bulls don't have enough sense to know
+there's enough cows to go around; but people ought. It's a big enough
+world." He worked those hands of his together until they were clasped,
+and he pushed them that way against the table-edge until the overgrown
+knuckles looked like chalk. "When I think o' that noise, and that
+cloud, ... how we come running and screaming back here into all the
+dust and mess, and all them bodies ... I ... Ben, I...."
+
+"You lost heavy, Jim," Ben said. He let smoke out of his lungs, and
+it curled off into the broad beam of sunlight that came through the
+window, and it looked like the smoke that had shadowed a murdered town.
+"Heavy. You lost heavier'n any of us."
+
+"You can't count it," old Jim said, and the chalk was whiter. "We all
+lost the same; I just had more of it. Our kids and their kids--and
+_their_ kids ... lost heavy? What can a man lose more'n his life?...
+And if you're as old as us, what's your life except the family you made
+out o' your own flesh? What else's a man got when he's eighty or a
+hundred?"
+
+Tom Pace said, "Ruth and Dave and their kids. I remember little Davey.
+He called me Tom Peach. I bought him a toy plane for his birthday. That
+was a couple days before the real planes come. I buried it with him ...
+I think. I think it was him I put it with. It mighta been Joey ... they
+looked alike."
+
+"A man ain't nothing, when he's as old as us," Jim Liddel said, his
+skull sockets closed, "except what he done. _He_ ain't much any more,
+himself; he's mostly what he done with his life, whatever he done and
+left around that he can point to and say, 'I did that', that's all.
+And what's he got left if they take that away? We can't make it again.
+We made Smoky Creek; built it; wasn't a thing here that didn't come
+out o' us or ours. We made the valley, after God give it to us; wasn't
+a thing here we didn't let live or help live or make live. We made
+our families, and watched 'em fit into the town and the valley, like
+the valley fits into the world, and we watched 'em go on doing what
+we done before them: building and working and planting and raising
+families--going on, like people got to go on. That's the way it was.
+That's what we had. Until they dropped the bomb and killed it--killed
+all we done that made us men." Tears were squeezing out of the skull
+sockets, and Ben Bates caught Tom Pace's eye and looked away, out the
+window, at the green walls of the valley that was a coffin.
+
+"I just wish an airyplane would come around again," old Jim said.
+"_I--just--wish._ You know, Ben?"
+
+Ben tried to talk and had to clear his throat; he put out his cigar in
+the ashtray, as if that was what was wrong with his throat, and said,
+"I know, Jim. Sure. And maybe you'll get your wish." He pushed back his
+chair and tried to grin, but it came out sour. "Maybe you will, you
+old fire-eater--and what if one comes and we get spotted and it shoots
+us up or goes back and tells everybody we're here? That's one wish we
+don't want the good Lord to grant, ain't it? Ain't it, now?"
+
+Jim didn't say anything.
+
+Ben got up and said, "'Bout noon. Guess I'll go home for a bite and
+then go down and fish with Windy."
+
+Jim said, thinly, "I meant, I wish one would come and we'd _get_ it."
+
+"Well, maybe one will," Ben said, turning toward the door. "They built
+a slew o' them. And maybe _we_ will, if it does."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He stopped by the door of the Town Hall to listen carefully, his sharp
+old eyes half-shut. Behind him, at the far end of the room, somebody
+made a ringer, and Dave Mason said, "Nice, Owen," in his reedy voice.
+Ben listened and didn't hear what he was listening for. He stepped past
+the rifle that leaned beside the door and made his way to the end of
+the porch, walking close to the wall. The summer sun stood at noon, and
+the porch was in shadow; beyond, the street was a jumble of boards and
+broken glass, its canyon walls of leaning building-fronts and sagging
+porches, its caverns of empty windows and doorways shimmering in the
+heat. You couldn't see much dirt along the way; where the debris didn't
+come to your knees, it reached over your head.
+
+At the end of the porch Ben stopped and listened again; heard nothing.
+He stepped down and walked as fast as he could--damn arthritis
+again--to the porch of the next building.
+
+This had been Fat Sam Hogan's Hardware Store, and about all that was
+left of it was the porch; the rest was a twisted mess of wood that
+slumped away to the ground at the rear. The porch had been down too,
+right after the bombing--but the old men, working at night, had raised
+it and braced it up. Something to walk under.
+
+A Springfield stood, oiled and waiting, against the wall. Ben paused
+and touched the barrel--it was his own. Or rather it had once been
+his own; now it was the town's, strictly speaking, to be used by
+whoever was nearest it when the time came. It was a good gun, a
+straight-shooter, one of the best--which was why it was here instead of
+at his house. A man could get a better shot from here.
+
+He went on, hugging the wall.
+
+He passed a rifle wedged up between the fender and hood of Norm
+Henley's old Model A, and he remembered how the bomb had flipped the
+car right over on its top, and how the car must have protected Norm
+from the blast--just a little. Enough so they found him two blocks up
+the street, in front of his mashed house, trailing blood from every
+hole in him, to get to his family before he died.
+
+Ben passed rifles leaned against walls and chairs on porches, rifles
+standing behind trees, leaned in the cracks between what buildings
+still stood to provide cracks, even old Jim's carbine lying under the
+ledge of the pump-trough in front of Mason's General Store. All of them
+in places where they were protected from rain or snow, but where they
+were easy to get at.
+
+He passed sixteen rifles--walking, as everybody walked when they were
+out of doors, as close to the walls of the buildings as possible. When
+you had to cross open spaces you ran as fast as your seventy or eighty
+year old legs would take you--and if you couldn't run, you walked
+real fast. And always you listened while you walked; particularly you
+listened before you went out. For planes. So you wouldn't be spotted
+from the air.
+
+At the end of the porch of the last building on the street, Ben paused
+in the shade and looked out across the creek to where the first plane
+they'd shot down had crashed--the one Jim claimed to have got by his
+lonesome. They'd buried what they found of the pilot, and cleared away
+every last bolt and nut and scrap of aluminum, but the long scar in the
+ground remained. Ben looked at it, all broken up by rocks and flowers
+and bushes the old people had transplanted so it wouldn't show from
+the air; and he looked at the cemetery a hundred feet beyond at which
+the scar pointed like an arrow--the cemetery that wasn't a cemetery,
+because it didn't have headstones; just bodies. A town that was dead
+shouldn't have a lot of new graves--the dead don't bury themselves. A
+pilot might see a hundred graves he hadn't seen before and wonder--and
+strafe.
+
+So Ben looked at the flat ground where those hundred bodies lay, with
+only small rocks the size of a man's fist with names scratched on them
+to mark who lay beneath; and he thought of his daughter May, and Owen
+Urey's son George who'd married May, and their three kids, and he
+remembered burying them there; he remembered their faces. The blood
+from eyes, nose, ears, mouth--_his_ blood it was, part of it.
+
+Then Ben looked up. "We ain't looking for trouble," he said to the
+empty blue bowl of sky. "But if you do come, we're ready. Every day
+we're ready. If you stay up high, we'll hide. But if you come down low,
+we'll try to get you, you crazy murderers."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His house was only a few yards farther on; he got there by sticking
+under the trees, walking quickly from one to the next, his ears cocked
+for the jetsound that would flatten him against a trunk. Way off to
+his left, across a long flat of sunflowers and goldenrod, he saw
+Windy Harris down on the creekbank, by the bridge. He yelled, "They
+biting?"--and Windy's faint "Got two!" reminded him of all old Jim had
+said, and he shook his head. He left the trees and walked fast up his
+front path.
+
+His house was in pretty good shape. All four houses on the outskirts
+had come off standing--his and Windy's and Jim's and Owen Urey's.
+They'd needed just a little bracing here and there, and they were
+fine--except Owen's. Owen had stomped around in his, and listened to
+the sounds of it, and said he didn't trust it--and sure enough, the
+first big storm it had gone down.
+
+Now Ben and his wife Susan lived downstairs in his house; Joe Kincaid
+and his wife Anna lived on the second floor; and Tom Pace lived in the
+attic, claiming that climbing the stairs was good for his innards.
+
+Anna Kincaid was sitting on the porch-swing, peeling potatoes. Ben
+said, "Afternoon, Anna," and saw her pale bright eyes flicker up at
+him, and that scared smile touched her mouth for just a second; then
+she hunched her shoulders and kept on with the potatoes, like he wasn't
+even there.
+
+Ben thought, _It must be lonely to be that way_--and he attracted her
+attention again, his voice a little louder: "Hope you're feeling fine,
+Anna."
+
+Again the flicker of eyes. "Just fine, Ben, thanks," she said, almost
+in a whisper. "Peeling spuds."
+
+"I see."
+
+Her knife sped over a potato, removing a spiral of skin. She popped out
+an eye with a twist of the point. "Think Keith'll be back from the war
+today, Ben? It's been so long ... I hate to think o' my boy fighting
+out there so long. Will they let him come home soon, Ben?"
+
+"They will, Anna. I think they will, real soon. Maybe tomorrow."
+
+"_Will they?_"
+
+"Sure."
+
+Keith Kincaid was under one of those fist-sized rocks, out in the
+cemetery that wasn't a cemetery--next to his wife, June Hogan, and
+their four kids. But Anna Kincaid didn't know that. Since the bomb,
+Anna hadn't known much of anything except what the old people told her,
+and they told her only things that would make her as happy as she could
+be: that Keith was in the Army, and June was off with the kids having a
+nice time in Knoxville; and that they'd all be back home in a day or so.
+
+Anna never wondered about that "day or so"--she didn't remember much
+from day to day. Joe Kincaid sometimes said that helped a little, as
+much as anything could. He could tell her the same nice things every
+day, and her eyes would light up all over again. He spent a lot of
+time with her, doing that. He was pretty good at it, too ... Joe
+Kincaid had been Doctor Joe before the bomb. He still doctored some,
+when he could, but he was almost out of supplies; and what with his
+patients being so old, he mostly just prayed for them.
+
+In the kitchen, Susan had lunch ready and waiting--some chicken from
+last night, green beans, boiled potatoes and a salad from the tiny
+gardens the women tended off in the weedy ground and around the bases
+of trees where they wouldn't be seen.
+
+On the way in Ben had noticed that the woodbox was about empty--he'd
+have to bring home another bag of charcoal from the "general
+store"--which was Windy's barn, all braced up. Into it the old people
+had taken every bit of clothing, canned food, hardware, anything at
+all they could use in the way of housekeeping and everyday living, and
+there it all stood; when somebody needed something, they went and took
+it. Only the canned foods and tobacco and liquor were rationed. Every
+week or so, around midnight, Fat Sam Hogan and Dan Paray went into
+the big cave in Lawson's Hill, right near where the second plane had
+crashed, and set up a lot of small fires, back where the light wouldn't
+be seen; they made charcoal, and when it cooled they brought it down
+to the "store," for cooking and such--a charcoal fire doesn't give off
+much smoke.
+
+Over coffee, Ben said, "Reckon I'll fish some this afternoon, honey.
+How's a cat or two for supper sound?"
+
+"Why, goodness, Ben, not for tonight," Susan smiled. "You know
+tonight's the Social; me and Anna are fixing a big dinner--steaks and
+all the trimmings."
+
+"Mm," Ben said, draining his cup. "Forgot today was Sunday."
+
+"We're going to have some music, and Owen Urey's going to read
+Shakespeare."
+
+Ben pursed his lips, tasting the coffee. It was rationed to two cups a
+day; he always took his with his lunch, and sometimes he'd have sold
+a leg to dive into a full pot. "Well ... I might as well fish anyway;
+take in some fun. Fish'll keep till tomorrow, won't it?"
+
+"You can have it for breakfast." She sat down across the table and
+picked up the knitting she'd been on when Ben came home; he had a hunch
+it was something for his birthday, so he tried not to look interested;
+too early to tell what it was, anyway. "Ben," she said, "before you
+go--the curtain pole in the bay window come down when I was fixing the
+blankets over it for tonight. The socket's loose. You better fix it
+before you go. You'll maybe get home after Anna and me want to light
+the lamps, and we can't do it till it's fixed."
+
+Ben said, "Sure, hon." He got the hammer and some nails from the
+toolbox and went into the parlor, and dragged the piano bench over in
+front of the bay window. The iron rod was leaning by the phonograph. He
+took it up with him on the chair and fitted the other end of it into
+the far socket, then fitted the near end into the loose socket, and
+drove nails around the base of the socket until the thing was solid as
+a rock. Then he got the blanket from the couch and hung it down double
+over the rod, and fitted the buttonholes sewn all along its edge over
+the nails driven around the window casing, and patted it here and there
+until not a speck of light would escape when the lamps were lit.
+
+He inspected the blankets draped over the other windows; they were all
+right. The parlor was pretty dark now, so he struck a match to the oil
+lamp on the mantle, just so Susan and Anna could see to set the table.
+When the others arrived, they'd light the other lamps; but not until;
+oil was precious. The only time anybody in town ever lit a lamp was on
+Social night: then the old people stayed up till around midnight for
+eats and entertainment; otherwise everybody got to bed at eight or so,
+and climbed out with the dawn.
+
+He went back into the kitchen and put away the hammer, and said, "My
+second cup still hot, honey?"
+
+She started to put down her knitting and get up, and he said, "Just
+asking," and pressed her shoulder till she sat again. He went around
+her and filled his cup at the stove.
+
+"Ben," she said, when he sat down again, "I wish you'd take a look
+at the phonograph too. Last time the turntable made an awful lot of
+noise.... I wish it could sound better for tonight."
+
+"I know, honey," Ben sighed. "That motor's going. There ain't much I
+can do about it, though. It's too old. I'm scared to take it apart;
+might not get it back together right. When it really quits, then I
+guess I'll fool around and see what I can do. Heck, it didn't sound too
+bad."
+
+"It rattled during the soft parts of the music."
+
+Ben shook his head. "If I try, I might ruin it for good." He smiled a
+little. "It's like us, Suse--too old to really fix up much; just got to
+keep cranking it, and let it go downhill at its own pace."
+
+Susan folded her knitting and got up. She came around the table, and he
+put an arm around her waist and pulled her into the chair beside him.
+
+"It'll go soon, won't it, Ben?" she said softly. "Then we won't have
+any music. It's a shame ... we all like to listen so much. It's
+peaceful."
+
+"I know." He moved his arm up and squeezed her thin shoulders. She
+put her head on his shoulder, and her grey hair tickled his cheek; he
+closed his eyes, and her hair was black and shining again, and he put
+his lips against it and thought he smelled a perfume they didn't even
+make any more.
+
+After a moment he said, "We got so much else, though, Suse ... we got
+peaceful music you can't play on a machine. Real peace. A funny kind of
+peace. In a funny-looking town, this one--a rag town. But it's ours,
+and it's quiet, and there's nothing to bother us--and just pray God we
+can keep it that way. Outside, the war's going on someplace, probably.
+People fighting each other over God knows what--if even He knows. Here,
+it's peaceful."
+
+She moved her head on his shoulder. "Ben--will it ever come here,
+what's going on outside? Even the war, if it's still going on?"
+
+"Well, we were talking about that this morning down at the hall, Suse.
+I guess it won't. If rifles can stop it, it won't. If they see us from
+the air, we'll shoot at 'em; and if we get 'em we'll clean up the mess
+so if anybody comes looking for a missing plane, they won't give Smoky
+Creek a second look. That's the only way anything can come, honey--if
+they see us from the air. Nobody's going to come hiking over these
+mountains. There's noplace they'd want to get to, and it's sure no
+country for fighting."
+
+"If the war _is_ over, they'll likely be around to fix up the bridge
+and the road. Won't they?"
+
+"Maybe so. Sooner or later."
+
+"Oh, I hope they leave us alone."
+
+"Don't worry, hon."
+
+"Ben--about the phonograph--"
+
+"Suse ..." He turned his head to look at her eyes. "It's good for
+longer'n we are. That motor. So's the bridge, the way it is, and the
+road ... we'll be gone first. Before they get around to fix 'em. Before
+the phonograph gives out. What we want is going to last us--and what we
+don't want will come too late to hurt us. _Nothing's_ going to hurt our
+peace. I know that somehow. We got it, and it'll be like this for as
+long as we're here to enjoy it ... I _know_."
+
+"Ben--"
+
+"If I want to go fishing," Ben said, and pressed her head against his
+shoulder again, "I go. If I want to relax with the men, I do it. If I
+want to just walk and breathe deep, I do it--keeping to the trees, o'
+course. If I want to just be with you, I do it. It's quiet. It's real
+quiet in our rag town. It's a world for old people. It's just the way
+we want it, to live like we want to live. We got enough gardens and
+livestock, and all the canned stuff in the store, to last us for a ...
+for as long as we got. And no worries. About who's fighting who over
+what. About who won. About how the international mess is getting worse
+again, and we better make more bombs for the next one. About who's
+winning here and losing there and running neck-and-neck someplace else.
+We don't know any things like that, and we don't want to know. It don't
+matter none to us ... we're too old, and we seen too much of it, and
+it's hurt us too bad, and we know it just don't matter at all."
+
+"Ben ... I got to crying today. About May and George and the children.
+I was crying, and thinking about that day...."
+
+"So did I think. None of us ever forgets for a minute. For a second."
+His lips thinned. "That's part of why we do what we do. Rest is, we
+just want to be left alone."
+
+They sat in silence for a moment, his arm around her shoulders, his
+other hand holding hers. Then he released her hand and thumped his own
+on the table, grinned at her and said, "Life goes on, now! Reckon I'll
+go down and get that cat--or go walking--or just go soak in some sun.
+What time are the folks showing up for--"
+
+Jetsound slammed across the peaceful valley.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ben got up and walked as fast as he could to the door, picked up the
+rifle leaning there, cocked it. Looking toward town he saw that Tom
+Pace had been on his way home, and the sound had caught him between
+trees. Tom hesitated, then turned and dived toward the tree he'd just
+left--because a rifle was there.
+
+Ben saw men pour out of the doorways of the two habitable buildings on
+Main Street; they stuck close to the walls, under the porches, and they
+picked up rifles.
+
+Motionless, hidden, in shadows, under trees, in doorways, behind
+knotholes, they waited. To see if the plane would buzz the town again.
+
+It did.
+
+It came down low over Main Street while the thunders of its first pass
+still echoed and rolled. Frightening birds out of trees, driving a hare
+frantically along the creekbank, blotting out the murmur of the creek
+and the tree-sounds, driving away peace.
+
+They saw the pilot peering through the plexiglass, down at the
+buildings ... he was past the town in four winks; but in two they knew
+that he was curious, and would probably come back for a third look.
+
+He circled wide off over the end of the valley, a vertical bank that
+brought a blinding flash of sunlight from one wing, and he came back.
+
+Ben leveled his rifle and centered the nose of the plane in his sights.
+For some reason--probably because the valley walls crowded the town on
+both sides--the planes always lined up with Main Street when they flew
+low over the town.
+
+The plane grew at startling speed in Ben's sights--it loomed, and the
+oval jet intake was a growling mouth--and he waited till it was about
+two seconds and a thousand feet from him; then he sent his bullet up
+into that mouth: a bullet aimed by a man who'd handled a rifle for
+sixty years, who could pop the head off a squirrel at a hundred feet. A
+running squirrel.
+
+That was the signal, Ben's shot.
+
+From under the tree Tom Pace's rifle spoke.
+
+The jet was past town then, and he wheeled to follow it with his eyes;
+its whining thunder lashed down and pressed his ears, lowering suddenly
+in pitch as it receded; and though he couldn't hear them for the
+thunder, he knew that nineteen rifles had roared before it completed
+its turn, each aimed head-on at the plane. Aimed by men and women who
+could shoot with Ben, and even outshoot him.
+
+The plane coughed. Lurched. It had time to emit a fuzzy thread of black
+smoke before it nosed down and melted into the ground and became a long
+ugly smear of mounds and shreds and tatters of flame.
+
+The sounds of the crash died. Ben heard men shouting; loudest of all
+was old Jim Liddel's, "Got him ... by God, I prayed, and we got him!"
+
+Behind him Susan was crying.
+
+Ben saw men and women head for the crash-site; immediately they'd start
+to carry away what debris wasn't too hot to handle. Then they'd wait,
+and as soon as anything was cool enough it would be carried off and
+hidden.
+
+And there'd be a burial tonight.
+
+Ben saw that some of the men had carried old Jim's chair out onto the
+porch of the Town Hall; and he saw that Jim was half-standing out of
+his cushions, propped up on his fists and still shouting; and Ben
+wondered if the Maker wasn't on the porch there with Jim, waiting for
+Jim to fall and make his noise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He turned away--at seventy you don't want to see a man die--and went
+inside and put his rifle on the kitchen table. He crossed to the
+cabinet under the sink to get his reamer and oiling rag. Every rifle
+was taken care of that way. Right now Tom Pace and Dan Paray were
+hurrying around gathering rifles to clean them, load them. No rifle
+must miss fire, or throw a bullet an inch off aim--because that might
+be the rifle whose aim was right.
+
+"Lucky we got that one," he said. "I think he saw us, Suse ... he come
+in low and sudden, and I think he saw us."
+
+"Was--was it one of theirs, Ben ... or one of ours?"
+
+"Don't know. I didn't even look. I can't tell 'em apart. Owen'll be
+around to tell me when they find out ... but I reckon it was one of
+ours. If he saw us and didn't shoot, then I reckon it was one of ours.
+Like the last one."
+
+"Oh, _Ben_," Susan said. "Ben, ain't it against God?"
+
+Ben stood looking out the window over the sink; watching a cloud of
+yellow dust settle over the wreckage of the plane, and a cloud of black
+smoke rising from the wreckage to darken the yellow. He knew some of
+the men would be passing buckets from the well, and spading dirt on the
+flames where they weren't too hot to get to.
+
+"That's the way it is," he said. "That's how we decided. God didn't
+stop the bomb dropping, Suse ... for whatever reasons He had. It don't
+seem He'd deny us the right to shoot rifles, for the reasons we got. If
+we get turned away at the Gates, we'll know we was wrong. But I don't
+think so."
+
+Quiet was returning to the valley; the birds had already started
+singing again. You could hear the trees. From the direction of the
+creek came Windy Harris, running, and he broke the quiet with a shout
+as he saw Ben by the window: "Got it, huh, Ben?"
+
+"Sure did," Ben said, and Windy ran on.
+
+Ben looked toward the porch of the Town Hall. Old Jim had sunk back
+into his pillowed chair, and he was shaking his fist, and Ben could
+hear him yelling, "Got it ... _got_ it, we did!"
+
+_He'll be around for a while yet, old Jim_, Ben thought, and turned
+back to the table. He sat down and listened to the sounds of the
+valley, and his eyes were the eyes of the valley--they'd seen a lot,
+and understood enough of it.
+
+"It don't matter whose it was," he said. "All of a cloth." He slid the
+reamer into the barrel of the rifle, and worked it. "The hell with
+the war. Even if it's over, the hell with it. With any war. Nothing's
+ever going to give us back what we lost. Let 'em stay away, all them
+that's to blame. Them and their planes and wars and bombs ... they're
+_crazy_!" His lips curled as he worked the reamer. "Let 'em stay out
+o' what they left us for lives. Don't want to hear what they're doing,
+or _how_, or _why_, or _who_ ... don't want to hear about it. It'd be
+_crazy_. The hell with 'em. _All_ o' them. _The hell with the whole
+Twentieth Century._"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Town, by Jerome Bixby
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58974 ***