density and acquiring weight, until they were pressing against his skin and constricting his chest.
He heard the sirens. He was aware, somewhere, of great activity. It had to be outside, and soon the familiar pulsing red illumination of fire and police department emergency lights came flashing through the windows. If a crowd gathered?as why would it not??he heard that too, that low human buzz of a species drawn hypnotically to drama, hungry to see and feel another's tragedy.
Yet no one appeared.
He waited and waited. The seconds seemed to liquefy and elongate, like drops falling off a window sill, fighting gravity till the last, until a final gossamer broke and off they plunged, slowly, slowly to obliteration.
Goddammit, when will they get here?
When will somebody get here?
The sweat now ran lazily down his face, irritating under normal circumstances, insanely bothersome under these. He scrunched his brow to stop it, and failed; it cascaded down, and his knees knocked, and his heart thudded.
He imagined that at any second the pin could slip that final millionth of an inch from where it now prevented the striker from plunging, and one hundredth of a second later there would be no Sam, only a crater in the block where Sam used to live.
At last a door opened.
'Mr. Sam?' came a timid voice from outside.
Sam recognized it as Sheriff Harry Debaugh.
'Harry! Thank God you're here.'
'What you got in there, Mr. Sam?'
'I think it's a sixty-millimeter mortar shell with a detonating thing screwed into the fuse. Pull it all the way out, it goes off. I started, and, well, anyway, I stopped just as I felt the pressure of a spring. So now I am hung up but good. I can't move. If I relax, I think it'll go.'
'What should we do, Mr. Sam?'
He didn't know! He had no idea!
'Well, call Camp Chaffee and surely they have an explosive ord [nance disposal team with equipment. That would be one thing.' Why do I have to think of these things myself? They should be on the way now! 'Or try, let's see, Little Rock would have a bomb squad. Maybe they could get here faster. I don't think the state police boys up at Fayetteville could get here in time. Harry, I could drop this at any second, goddammit. My hands are cramping up something fierce.'
'Sam, you hold tight. I'll make them calls.'
Another geologic epoch crawled by. One-celled animals evolved into fishes and plants and dinosaurs and then snakes and bugs and dogs and birds and monkeys and finally men came into the picture. Cave-dwellers arrived and departed, and then the Greeks, the Romans, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the terrible nineteenth century with its Civil War, and then, fifty-one full years and two major wars into this one, Harry again piped up.
'Sam, it's going to take at least an hour. The Army people have to git together. I've rung up state police and they'll escort ' in, sirens an' all, but, dammit, I don't think it'll be no sooner.'
Sam knew he couldn't last that long. He had another twenty minutes at most before his fingers reached muscle failure, and then the ribbon would slip and it would be over.
'Sam, you sure? I mean, it could just be a bottle of bourbon.'
'No/ Goddammit, I smelled Cosmoline. In arms depots, small arms and ammo are stored in a penetrating grease called Cosmoline. Its smell sinks into everything. This shell must have been wrapped up in excelsior from the place where it was stored. I smelled it as I was pulling the ribbon.
That's why I stopped.'
'Sam, you hold on now. No need gittin' upset.'
I am one tenth of a second from being blown to smithereens, but I AM NOT UPSET.
'Listen, Harry. I can't hold this position much longer. What I need is a cool young volunteer. Someone who can cut the cardboard away so that we can see what we have. Then maybe I can improvise a way to defuse the thing.'
'Sam, I can't order no man to?' 'I said volunteer, dammit!'
'All right, Sam, hold your water. I'll ask.'
Harry disappeared, and again Sam stood alone in the living room.
He glanced around as the seconds pulled their long tails by. He could see a wedding picture of himself and his wife on a shelf, he could see a radio, he could see a picture taken at Hot Springs and one in Miami, the whole family, all those kids who would now grow up without a father. He could see plaques from Kiwanis and Rotary and the Masons and the Chamber of Commerce. He could see books from the Book of-the-Month Club and Life magazines and Time magazines piled up in the magazine rack, but no damn television, as he wouldn't have one in the house. He could see… he could see his whole damned life and how little it came to, how much nothing it was.
God, if I get out of this one, I swear I'll do SOMETHING. Don't know what, but something.
He knew who it was from, of course. It could have come from but one source.
Goddamn them, they got me. I thought I got away clean, but they got me.
They reached into Arkansas, into my house, into the bosom of my family, where my children gathered, and they got me and they would have killed them all.
The bitterness was so intense he almost yanked the ribbon that last quarter inch just to release it. But he didn't.
Oh, Lord, he thought, just let me survive this and get my licks in.
And then Harry was back. Sam sensed him sliding nervously up to the house and lingering there in the lee of the door, breathing hard.
'Sam?' he finally said, and his tone carried the whole story.
'Yeah?'
'Sam, nobody would do it. It's too tricky. I can see the point, too, can't you? I mean, either your thing is going to go off or it's just a bottle of Pepsi-Cola and we can all laugh about it, that's all. And if it's the first, getting another man killed, I mean, what the hell good does it do? One's enough, by my reckoning. I wish Earl were here. He could doit.'
'Well, Earl isn't here, dammit, and we will just have to deal with that.'
'How do you feel, Sam?'
'This palaver is no help at all. But my hands hurt like hell, my arms are weakening, my lower back is cramping and my knees are shaking. Oh, and my vision is blurring.'
'Sam, I…'
'Yes, Harry?'
'Sam, I can't stay here. A mortar shell goes off this close to me and I'm cooked too, along with you. I'm sorry, Sam. You see what it is, don't you? Either them Army boys are going to get here or not, and either there's a mortar shell in there or there ain't. My being here, it don't matter.'
'All right, Harry.'
'Do you want me to say anything to your wife and kids?'
'Only what they know. That I loved them, that I wish I was a better man for them. Now get the hell out of here, Harry, and get busy on your praying.'
But Harry wasn't listening.
Some sort of ruckus came up outside, a welter of noise and emotion, hard to make out, though indistinct sentence fragments came around the corner and into the room where Sam so delicately stood, the ribbon taut, the pains scaling his arms and legs, the sweat running down his face into his bushy eyebrows.
'You can't?'
'I told?'
'Sheriff, we tried?'
'She wouldn't listen?'
'Now, Mrs. Longacre,' cooed the sheriff, 'this is a very dangerous ?'
