Isaac Asimov - Catastrophes!

But he never read the papers, and he'd never thought much about the world outside Glenn Center. He was almost too old to start, but he'd think some more about it, after he got out of jail. Maybe he should do something about those Russians so many people were worried about.

The clock on the Methodist Church was striking two when Lem finally went to bed.

The sheriff brought him his breakfast at four o'clock, a big t plate of ham and eggs, and toast, and lots of steaming coffee, Lem could already hear the men arriving out behind the jail, where the scaffold was.

Reverend Meyers came in before Lem finished eating, and his thin face was pale and grim. "Ted is still trying," he said,

Lem nodded. He wanted to tell the Reverend that everything would be all right, so he wouldn't worry, but if he did that he might have to tell him about the pictures. The Reverend was a good man, and Lem was sure he could trust him if he trusted anybody.

He was still thinking about it when he finished his breakfast. He got down on his knees to pray when the Reverend asked him to, and then the sheriff came in and there wasn't time. The sheriff and two deputies took Lem out to the scaffold, with the Reverend following along behind them.

Lem hadn't known that he had so many friends. The crowd filled the whole field and overflowed out into First Avenue. There weren't any women and children, of course, but it looked like every man from miles around had turned out. Lem thought it was nice of them to get up so early in the morning just for him. They waited quietly, not talking much and looking the other way when Lem looked down at them.

The Reverend was talking with the sheriff at the edge of the scaffold, talking fast, and with his hands gesturing urgently. The sheriff kept shrugging and turning his hands palms up and glancing at his watch. A deputy moved Lem over the trap and put the rope around his neck, Lem looked up and smiled a little when he saw it was an old rope.

The sheriff's hands were trembling when he stepped forward. He patted Lem on the back, and the Reverend said a little prayer and whispered, "God bless you, Lem," and out in the crowd Lem saw District Attorney Whaley turn slowly and stand with his eyes on the steeple of the Methodist Church. Then there was nothing under Lem's feet, and he was falling.

The savage jerk blurred his eyes with pain, but he kept falling until he sank to his knees on the ground under the scaffold. The air rocked with noise as everyone started talking and shouting. Sheriff Harbson came down and helped Lem out and stood there white-faced, staring, not able to talk.

"Get a new rope!" someone shouted, and the crowd began to chant, "New rope! New rope!"

"You can't hang a man twice in one day," the Reverend was shouting, and the sheriff found his voice and shouted back, "He has to hang by his neck until dead. That's the law."

Then everyone turned toward the jail, where a deputy was screaming and trying to fight his way through the crowd.

The sheriff, and the deputies, and Reverend Meyers took Lem and started back to the jail with him. It took a long time, because none of the crowd seemed in any hurry to get out of their way. Lem had supposed that the men would be glad to hear about the governor's reprieve, but they weren't. The noise got louder and louder, and they were shouting things like he'd heard in his cell the night before. Lem's pained him, and his ankle hurt from the fall, and he was glad it was over with.

They'd rounded the corner of the jail and started for the entrance, on Main Street, when the roaring fury of the crowd caught up with them and overwhelmed them. The sheriff went down trying to draw his revolver and was trampled. A deputy rushed into the jail and barred the door, and he could be seen through the window excitedly bending over the telephone. The crowd boosted a man up the side of the building to jerk the wires loose. Stones shattered the window and rained into the jail.

Lem was dragged back toward the scaffold, and when a deputy ducked behind it and fired into the air, the crowd turned the other way and dragged him toward Main Street,

"Get a rope!" someone shouted.

"Anyone got a horse? They used to use horses!"

"Don't need no horse. We can use Jake Arnson's truck, Jake, back your truck under that elm tree!"

Jake Arnson ran down the street to his truck. The motor coughed and sputtered and finally caught with a roar, and the truck lurched backward. Jake parked under the elm, cut the motor, and jumped out. A rope snaked up over a tree limb. Lem had been too stunned and horrified to feel the kicks and blows that rained upon him. They hoisted him onto the truck, and he stood there, hands and feet bound, trembling with frustration, while the rope was knotted about his neck.

He told himself he should have waited to see all of the picture. He should have looked at more pictures. But how could he have known that these men he knew so well would use him like this? Now he'd have to look at pictures again. He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate.,

The pictures flashed in front of him, one after the other, and in each of them the truck rocked forward and left Lem Dyer dangling by his neck.

Jake was back in his truck, trying to start the motor. The starter whined fretfully. Someone yelled, "Need a push, Jake?"

Lem kept watching the pictures, but finally he knew, with a sickening certainty, that pictures couldn't help him. In all of them the truck moved forward and left him hanging. It had never happened that way before-pictures without any choices.

He shook the perspiration from his eyes and looked about him. The sheriff lay on the sidewalk in front of the jail in a pool of blood. Reverend Meyers lay nearby, his arms moving feebly, one leg bent at a strange angle. Men were hurling stones at the scaffold, where the deputy had taken refuge.

Sadly he looked down at the hate-twisted faces of men he'd thought were his friends. He remembered what the Reverend had told him. Jesus had seen hate like that when they'd nailed him to the cross, and he'd said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Lem said the words to himself, softly. Maybe his old life wasn't worth much to anyone but himself, but it was sad.

The starter whined again, and someone called, "Speech! Can the murderer talk? Let's have a confession!"

A hundred coarse echoes sounded. "Confession! Confession!"

Lem threw his cracked voice out over the mob. "You're evil men-evil! Get down on your knees and pray that God won't punish you!"

They flung back at him wave after stinging wave of hoots of laughter. "You dirty murderer! God won't punish us!"

The Reverend had slumped forward to lie motionless. Doc Beasley had finally managed to push through the crowd and was kneeling beside the sheriff. The faces below Lem blurred and twisted and mortal anger overwhelmed him. "If God won't punish you," he screamed, "I will!"

He closed his eyes and willed the pictures into being. Larger than life, they were, but they moved so slowly, and he had so little time.

A tornado, dragging its swirling funnel along Main Street, relentlessly flattening buildings, crushing their occupants, toppling the Methodist Church steeple onto the jail.,,

"Not enough!" Lem gasped.

A prairie fire, tossed high on gale winds, roaring hungrily down on Glenn Center, driving the populace before it…

"Not enough?"

Fleets of enemy planes darkening the sky, pouring searing death onto even such an insignificant dot on the map as Glenn Center…

"Not enough!"

The summer sun, high and bright at noonday, suddenly bulging crazily, tearing the sky asunder, drenching the countryside in blinding incandescence, charring human vermin, steaming away the rivers, crumbling concrete, boiling the very dust underfoot…