Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

He had backed the car out of the parking space when the clerk came running to the sidewalk. “Hey! Telephone for you!”

Johnny Loughlin nodded. He was not going to say thank you. The clerk had not called him by name. He preceded the clerk to the back of the store. “Hello?”

“Johnny? Are you coming home?”

“I was. Is anything wrong, Cyn?”

“Senator Clinton is dead. They don’t know why yet. He seemed to be resting and then he just closed his eyes. I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. I scared the children.”

“All right, all right.”

“There was shooting in Grand Central, too. It’s terrible, Johnny, I mean it.”

“Well, make sure that the kids know you’re all right.”

“You can’t tie up that telephone for your own use,” the clerk said.

“Who was that?” Cynthia asked.

He didn’t answer her. He turned to the clerk. “Am I going to have trouble with you?”

“That depends on you,” the clerk said frightenedly. Johnny Loughlin turned away from him again.

“I’ll be right home, Cyn. Turn off the television set. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

“No longer, Johnny, please.”

He hung up, glanced back once at the clerk, and walked out of the store. In the car, he hesitated, then drove down to the other end of the village. He parked outside the post office, still not knowing why. There was no one in sight. All he could hear was the soft churning of the car motor. The knot tightened in his stomach. He was afraid, very afraid, without knowing why. Almost in a panic, he turned on the radio.

“. . crowd is smashing windows and overturning cars as it moves down Forty-Third Street. It seems to be growing in size, picking up people as it moves along. The police and fire departments have determined to set up barricades at Sixth Avenue. To repeat the earlier reports, gunfire in Grand Central Station created a panic that sent thousands of already angry people stampeding into the streets. A series of seemingly unrelated incidents in and about the station forged the crowd into a mob. Hundreds have been injured. .”

Johnny Loughlin pushed the button to change the station. He had to get home, but he couldn’t get going.

“Rebels in South Africa have gained control of the Durban airfield and have put at least five prop-driven fighter planes into the air. Indiscriminate strafing runs have been made over all quarters of the city. A gas tank has exploded and fires have. .”

He punched another button. His hand was shaking furiously.

“. . It’s as if tempers around the world have all snapped at once. People woke up this morning deciding they had had enough of the Cold War, oppression, arrogance and abuse. For nearly twenty years people have lived under an unbearable pressure. It’s amazing that this hasn’t happened before. Astronomers tell us that a star will generate tremendous pressure inside itself without visible effect, but then suddenly, without warning, it will burst. “

With that, Johnny Loughlin turned the radio off. His teeth were clenched so tightly together that his jaws ached. He put the car into reverse and backed it out to face toward home. From the other end of the square another car came at him. Instinctively Johnny Loughlin wheeled far to the right. Almost at once the other car flew past, throttle open wide, making better than seventy miles an hour. Johnny Loughlin did not watch. He had had only a glimpse of the driver’s face, twisted with desperation.

Now there was a squeal of tires as the car went into the turn outside of town. Johnny Loughlin lit a cigarette. He felt ill. The other car would have ploughed into him— possibly. As he drove slowly out of the square he felt his stomach continuing to ache. Again on impulse, he turned the radio on. All news, all bulletins. There were bulletins from Berlin now. It was only a matter of time. He felt a crushing presentiment of grief at the prospect of the war. Only a small corner of his mind was still reasoning, still saying that it all could pass, that what he felt would overcome everyone else. Yet the rest of him was still caught up in it, giddy at the chance to settle old scores. He did not even know where he would begin. It was as if a part of him was in every mob, running wild everywhere in the world. While he drove, he could see it, feel it, hear it, bursting in a shower of splintered glass.

Three blocks from his home he saw a car on fire, where it had smashed into a fence. People were throwing sand at it.

It was different on his own street. He could hear the shouting from around the corner. As he turned in he saw them running toward the center of the block, the people he knew. He stopped the car and got out and ran with them.

“Johnny! Is that you, Johnny?”

It was Marty Phillips, who had punched his wife less than an hour before. Now he was calm. He shoved through the crowd and grabbed Johnny Loughlin by the arms. “Johnny, listen to me! Stay away from your house! Listen to me!”

“What are you talking about?” Somebody grabbed him from behind; he tried to wrench free. Now he heard: a woman’s screams.

“Easy, fella! Take it easy!”

“She’s coming out!” someone cried from inside his own house.

The crowd backed up. The arms bound him tighter. A woman near him began to scream hysterically.

Cynthia ran out onto the front steps and stopped. Her housecoat, her hands, even her face, were covered with blood. In her hand was a pair of sewing shears. She shouted again, at no one, not even a word, as if she were lost in a forest and had really quit shouting.

A man appeared behind her, afraid to grab her. There was no color in him. Johnny Loughlin stopped struggling. In the momentary quiet the man’s voice carried on the soft morning air.

“They’re dead. She’s killed them both.”

There was a surge of strength from somewhere in Johnny Laughlin’s body, then it passed. He went slack, falling, while the voices close by rose in a groan, almost a howl, of anguish, acceptance and defeat.

“Do you like my foot,” putting it on the table. There, between the chipped saucer and candle; you have noticed how carefully I avoid the marmalade, the box of salty butter. “Will you accept it as a token of my affection? For you? It is, as they say, a good foot.” Earlier, I have deftly undone the laces with my toes, grasped the sock between piano-key toes and foot and slowly drawn it off, like peeling a willow wand. “The arch is long and graceful, with the springy delicacy of a light man. The toes curl in as though to embrace the foot; the nails are flecked with color. And pink is the color of this foot.” Pink, with the bright red crescent at the top of the curve: pimple on one side, in the curve, and dimpled on the other. “I am offering this, should you want it, my dear. It is all I have.”

Her attention is arrested by my foot. This is true of most. At parties my friends will group together talking, and glancing occasionally with great expectation toward the corner chair where I sit calm, unmoved, unmoving. As the evening advances, their glances are more frequent and begin to form a rhythm; then finally, beginning as a low moan among the women, gradually swelling up through the groups until it becomes a steady, hard, syncopated shout, and bursting at last out of the crowds, the call comes: Foot! Foot! Then slowly I lift it to the level of their eyes and one of them, a woman, the chosen, comes forward out of the group wearing shyness like a belt and starts softly to undo the pale pink shoe, dropping it to the floor, where it lies on its side in the carpet pile. You have seen the way a snake is skinned — first the skin is slit away from the mouth, then rolled gently down along the body: this is how my sock is removed — then thrown to them. A few are unable to stand the pressure and must be sent away. Others on the edge near me remove their own shoes and socks and sit staring sadly at the pale uncovered feet. I tell her all this.