Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall

“I had my hair to my shoulders then, nothing significant in it at all. It was the length at the time. I saw on my first excursion out into wolf country that it was a giveaway. Either very long, to the waist if possible, or else very short, bobbed even, but not in between. I decided to let it grow long, and meanwhile I got a wig. I stole it from a shop where the salesman never took his eyes off our group. Seven of us scattered in all directions covering the shop, making him stony very busy. He knew we planned to steal something, but I suppose he had his mind on his jewelry more than on the wigs. I got a black one made of something that burned like a Ping-Pong ball. I learned that later, much later. Betsy McCormack had about five hundred dollars with her, in cash. All of us had credit cards that he demanded to see before he even let us in; he knew we didn’t plan to use them. But the sight of all that cash floored, him. I guess he never had seen so much in one little hand before. So while Betsy haggled with him over an imitation plastic raincoat, I got the wig on, tied my own ribbon around it, and smeared a little vaseline on it to make it look like dirty hair. The shopkeeper never gave it a second look although we stayed in the shop long enough for two other girls to do the same thing. I still wonder if he ever found out what we had taken.

“The clothes in wolf-country were wild. Plastic pants and shirts, covered with plastic coats. Nothing under it. You had to be shaved clean, and the nipples had to be bright red, with white, green, blue lines radiating out from them, like war paint. The navel was colored too, usually red, but this was not arbitrary. The plastic clothes were tinted, yellow, blue, whatever, and they were almost as clear as glass. It wasn’t as if you could really see the body, just almost see it. Also, the plastic had a refraction quality so that the lines wavered when we moved.

“Well, that was in January. We would go out once a week usually, hiding in the buses that brought kids back from visits here or there; sneaking rides in the delivery trucks; sneaking out through the personnel gates. Most of the time we stayed within five or ten blocks of the university, seeing the sex movies, or smoking pot in one of the caves, or watching one of the brawls that always turned into a riot. When they started we always got out of the thick of it, ducked into a store, or the movie, or someplace like that when the thing started to get too rough and the National Guards were called in. It was after one of those fights that I found out the wig I’d stolen would burn.

“We were watching a bunch of the short-paired girls force a grocery truck to the curb and proceeded to rifle its contents, taking great sacks of groceries while the driver was sat on by some of the gang members. We were long hairs, so we stayed as far away as we could and not miss it altogether. The boys came then, and we couldn’t tell which side they were on. They started to roughhouse it with the girls, and suddenly the street was filled with people all screaming, fighting, smashing everything. We turned to go back to school. We knew that the guards would be there in a few minutes and if any of us ever got caught out in one of the riots, we’d be suspended and sent home. The damn fools set fire to the truck though, started it and sent it down the street in our direction. It cracked up half a block up from us and the building that stopped it burst into flames as if it had been waiting a lifetime for such a chance. And before we could get out of there the whole section seemed to be burning. We ran through alleys, climbed fences, ran some more, but the fire was spreading faster than we could outdistance it. And we were turned back again and again by firemen and guards and short hairs with clubs and pipes.

“I was getting so exhausted that I felt like just giving up and letting the fire have me, but every time I stumbled and staggered against a building, or against someone, the thought of being sent home in disgrace put life back in me and I kept going. Then suddenly. there were four boys, about fourteen to seventeen, and they wanted me. They were fanning out the way they do. They had plastic clubs, the kind that don’t usually kill or break bones, but hurt like the devil. The fire was at my back, I’d been running in circles for an hour. Sparks fell on me through the plastic as if it wasn’t even there, and at that moment my wig caught and blazed. I snatched it off before I was actually burned, but the boys were scared and ran. They thought I was on fire. I threw the wig down. I ran into a secondhand clothing store and grabbed a coat and threw it around me. With my own hair and a cloth coat on I got through the cordon of guards who were picking up every slum kid that came streaming out of the fired area. I couldn’t get back to the university however, and I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. I had no money with me, no ID, no credit cards, nothing. I kept walking. I didn’t know what had happened to the other girls I had been with. We had been separated early in the fracas and I hadn’t seen them since. I was hoping they had got back inside the school grounds and that they would cover for me. I didn’t believe I would be able to get back that night.

“They were keeping the riot and the fire pretty much confined to the area near the university, so I walked the other way. I walked and walked; the excitement going on behind me gave me protection. No one had time to pick up one solitary girl right then, and the place was alive with police, National Guards, detectives. Then I saw a window poster advertising the mammoth revival meeting being held at the downtown Municipal Auditorium. I remembered that a number of students had been permitted to attend, they were mostly from psychology classes studying mass hysteria, mob psychology, mass conversion, and such. I thought I could get back with them.

“The meeting had started already, a guest speaker was talking briefly of the advances being made in Brazil, his native country. I was directed to a Seat, down front, not with the school group, by an usher with a lighted taper of some sort, electric I guess, but it looked different, as if a dancing flame were enclosed in the tiny pointed bulb that was tinted pink. I kept craning my neck to try to pick out any of the kids I knew, but there was such a crowd there. The ushers were spaced throughout the auditorium, up and down the steps, at the doors, forming lighted lines along the aisles between rows of seats. It was very effective, beautiful, awesome even. The small lights radiated out from the speakers’ platform like arms of a starfish glowing in the otherwise darkened auditorium.

“I was so tired, and I had been so frightened, and here it was warm and safe. Gradually my heart calmed again and my breath wasn’t coming in gasps, and I could observe and listen to the speaker. I didn’t think much of him. Short, dark, with a heavy accent, he was talking about things I didn’t understand, and I found him very boring, much like the professors at school. Then he was finished. The choir sang a hymn. I didn’t know it. It was one of the new ones published by the Church a few years ago. There was something about it, though…. I analyzed what it was and decided that the composer had deliberately copied the style of Ravel’s Bolero, the same insistence, the same hypnotic building up to a smashing climax. Later I knew I was wrong about that, but then I was feeling smug and superior, and almost sorry for the poor innocent ones there who didn’t have the background to see what was being done. The hymn ended, and when the lights went down that had illuminated the choir, Brother Cox was standing on the dais. As if by magic. I had been watching critically and I hadn’t seen him enter. I still don’t know how he does that.

“There was a yellow light on him. I was close enough to see how bronzed he was, how healthy-looking, how alive. His hair and beard gleamed, his eyes shone as if he were giving off light. I was wishing that I had a notebook to make notes on it all. I was fascinated and repelled. But when he began to speak…. And here is the mystery: I had heard the same things from other people who had been converted, and I had read of him, and of course, in my home, we had discussed the Church and all it implied, but when I heard Brother Cox talk about it, explain the real reasons for his faith, explain the significance of the Church and what it was doing and what it stood for, I knew he was right. It was that simple. I was still able to observe the cleverness of the organization in the lighting, and the buildup to this moment, but even with this objective consideration of the mechanics of the proceedings, I knew that what he had to say warranted any means of gaining attention long enough for the people to understand it all.