The Martian Chronicles

The money appeared. The old man fingered it into his hat and gave the hat to Belter. “Son,” he said, “you ain’t missin’ no rocket.”

Belter smiled into the hat. “No, sir, I guess I ain’t!”

Teece shouted: “You give that money back to them!”

Belter bowed respectfully, handing the money over, and when Teece would not touch it he set it down in the dust at Teece’s feet. “There’s your money, sir,” he said. “Thank you kindly.” Smiling, he gained the saddle of his horse and whipped his horse along, thanking the old man, who rode with him now until they were out of sight and hearing.

“Son of a bitch,” whispered Teece, staring blind at the sun. “Son of a bitch.”

“Pick up the money, Samuel,” said someone from the porch.

It was happening all along the way. Little white boys, barefoot, dashed up with the news. “Them that has helps them that hasn’t! And that way they all get free! Seen a rich man give a poor man two hundred bucks to pay off some’un! Seen some’un else give some’un else ten bucks, five bucks, sixteen, lots of that, all over, everybody!”

The white men sat with sour water in their mouths. Their eyes were almost puffed shut, as if they had been struck in their faces by wind and sand and heat.

The rage was in Samuel Teece. He climbed up on the porch and glared at the passing swarms. He waved his gun. And after a while when he had to do something, he began to shout at anyone, any Negro who looked up at him. “Bang! There’s another rocket out in space!” he shouted so all could hear. “Bang! By God!” The dark heads didn’t flicker or pretend to hear, but their white eyes slid swiftly over and back. “Crash! All them rockets fallin’! Screamin’, dyin’! Bang! God Almighty, I’m glad I’m right here on old terra firma. As they says in that old joke, the more firma, the less terra! Ha, ha!”

Horses clopped along, shuffling up dust. Wagons bumbled on ruined springs.

“Bang!” His voice was lonely in the heat, trying to terrify the dust and the blazing sun sky. “Wham! Niggers all over space! Jerked outa rockets like so many minnows hit by a meteor, by God! Space fulla meteors. You know that? Sure! Thick as buckshot; powie! Shoot down them tin-can rockets like so many ducks, so many clay pipes! Ole sardine cans full of black cod! Bangin’ like a stringa ladyfingers, bang, bang, bang! Ten thousand dead here, ten thousand there. Floatin’ in space, around and around earth, ever and ever, cold and way out, Lord! You hear that, you there!”

Silence. The river was broad and continuous. Having entered all cotton shacks during the hour, having flooded all the valuables out, it was now carrying the clocks and the washboards, the silk bolts and curtain rods on down to some distant black sea.

High tide passed. It was two o’clock. Low tide came. Soon the river was dried up, the town silent, the dust settling in a film on the stores, the seated men, the tall hot trees.

Silence.

The men on the porch listened.

Hearing nothing, they extended their thoughts and their imaginations out and into the surrounding meadows. In the early morning the land had been filled with its usual concoctions of sound. Here and there, with stubborn persistence to custom, there had been voices singing, the honey laughter under the mimosa branches, the pickaninnies rushing in clear water laughter at the creek, movements and bendings in the fields, jokes and shouts of amusement from the shingle shacks covered with fresh green vine.

Now it was as if a great wind had washed the land clean of sounds. There was nothing. Skeleton doors hung open on leather hinges. Rubber-tire swings hung in the silent air, uninhibited. The washing rocks at the river were empty, and the watermelon patches, if any, were left alone to heat their hidden liquors in the sun. Spiders started building new webs in abandoned huts; dust started to sift in from unpatched roofs in golden spicules. Here and there a fire, forgotten in the last rush, lingered and in a sudden access of strength fed upon the dry bones of some littered shack. The sound of a gentle feeding burn went up through the silenced air.

The men sat on the hardware porch, not blinking or swallowing.

“I can’t figure why they left now. With things lookin’ up. I mean, every day they got more rights. What they want, anyway? Here’s the poll tax gone, and more and more states passin’ anti-lynchin’ bills, and all kinds of equal rights. What more they want? They make almost as good money as a white man, but there they go.”

Far down the empty street a bicycle came.

“I’ll be goddamned. Teece, here comes your Silly now.”

The bicycle pulled up before the porch, a seventeen-year-old colored boy on it, all arms and feet and long legs and round watermelon head. He looked up at Samuel Teece and smiled.

“So you got a guilty conscience and came back,” said Teece.

“No, sir, I just brought the bicycle.”

“What’s wrong, couldn’t get it on the rocket?”

“That wasn’t it, sir.”

“Don’t tell me what it was! Get off, you’re not goin’ to steal my property!” He gave the boy a push. The bicycle fell. “Get inside and start cleaning the brass.”

“Beg pardon?” The boy’s eyes widened.

“You heard what I said. There’s guns need unpacking there, and a crate of nails just come from Natchez — ”

“Mr. Teece.”

“And a box of hammers need fixin’ — ”

“Mr. Teece, sir?”

“You still standin’ there!” Teece glared.

“Mr. Teece, you don’t mind I take the day off,” he said apologetically.

“And tomorrow and day after tomorrow and the day after the day after that,” said Teece.

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“You should be afraid, boy. Come here.” He marched the boy across the porch and drew a paper out of a desk. “Remember this?”

“Sir?”

“It’s your workin’ paper. You signed it, there’s your X right there, ain’t it? Answer me.”

“I didn’t sign that, Mr. Teece.” The boy trembled. “Anyone can make an X.”

“Listen to this, Silly. Contract: «I will work for Mr. Samuel Teece two years, starting July 15, 2001, and if intending to leave will give four weeks’ notice and continue working until my position is filled.» There.” Teece slapped the paper, his eyes glittering. “You cause trouble, we’ll take it to court.”

“I can’t do that,” wailed the boy, tears starting to roll down his face, “If I don’t go today, I don’t go.”

“I know just how you feel, Silly; yes, sir, I sympathize with you, boy. But we’ll treat you good and give you good food, boy. Now you just get inside and start working and forget all about that nonsense, eh, Silly? Sure.” Teece grinned and patted the boy’s shoulder.

The boy turned and looked at the old men sitting on the porch. He could hardly see now for his tears. “Maybe — maybe one of these gentlemen here…” The men looked up in the hot, uneasy shadows, looking first at the boy and then at Teece.

“You meanin’ to say you think a white man should take your place, boy?” asked Teece coldly.

Grandpa Quartermain took his red hands off his knees. He looked out at the horizon thoughtfully and said, “Teece, what about me?”

“What?”

“I’ll take Silly’s job.”

The porch was silent.

Teece balanced himself in the air. “Grandpa,” he said warningly.

“Let the boy go. I’ll clean the brass.”

“Would you, would you, really?” Silly ran over to Grandpa, laughing, tears on his cheeks, unbelieving.

“Sure.”

“Grandpa,” said Teece, “keep your damn trap outa this.”