wooden horses of the street department. I realized suddenly – I knew – that all over town, every street was blocked off like this by crews of men in overalls ostensibly repairing the street. I knew that right now you couldn't get into Santa Mira any way at all, or move along its streets toward the business district. And I knew that the handful of strangers who had happened to be here had been gathered up, and were being held at the police station, under just what pretext it did not matter. Santa Mira was cut off from the world right now, and there was absolutely no one in sight of the centre of town who wasn't a resident.
For as long as three or four minutes, then – as strange a sight as I have ever seen – that crowd lined both sidewalks, the street empty, like people watching an invisible parade. They stood almost motionless, and silent; even the children were quiet. Here and there a few men were smoking, but most of the crowd just stood, some of the men with arms folded on their chests, comfortable and relaxed, people occasionally shifting weight from one foot to the other. Children stood holding to their parents' coats.
I heard the motor of a car, then the hood came into sight around the bend of the street, near the
Two men in business suits had stepped into the street, near the line of trucks: Wally Eberhard, a local real- estate man, and another man whose name I couldn't recall, though I remembered he was a mechanic at the Buick garage. Wally had some sheets of paper in his hand, small sheets that looked as though they'd come from a notebook, and the two men stood glancing through them, Wally shuffling them in his hands. Then the mechanic looked up, drew a deep breath, and in a loud voice, almost a shout – we could hear him plainly through our window – called out, 'Sausalito! If you have Sausalito families, step out, please!' Sausalito is a Marin County town of around five thousand, the first town you come to in the county, after crossing the Bay. Two people, a man and a woman, not together, had stepped from the curb into the street and were walking toward Wally. Several others were pushing their way through the crowd, then they stepped into the street and walked toward the trucks.
Joe Pixley had the tarp on his pickup untied now, and he walked to the back of the truck, took the bottom edge of the tarp, then heaved it up, folding it back onto the truck, off the load. I'd long since known what was in those trucks; I felt not even the beginning of surprise when the tarp came off. Lining the metal sides of the pickup body were thin boards prolonging the height of the sides, and keeping the tarp off the load that was piled cab-high in the truck. It was filled with the huge seed pods I'd seen, now, so often before.
'All right!' the mechanic yelled. 'Sausalito! Sausalito only, please!' and he motioned the five or six people standing in the street toward Joe Pixley's truck. Standing on the running board, Joe lifted off the top pods of his load, one by one, handing them down into the waiting arms of the people clustered below him. Each man and woman took a single pod, carrying it away carefully in his out-stretched arms; one man took two. Beside them, Wally Eberhard made a check mark on what was apparently a list in his hand, as each pod was handed down. Then he spoke to the mechanic, who called out, 'Marin City, please! All with Marin City families or contacts, next!' Marin City is the next Marin County town, a few miles in from Sausalito.
Seven people came forward, edging through the crowd, then stepping into the street, and as they came forward and stopped at his truck, Joe handed down a pod to each. One person, Grace Birk, a middle-aged woman who worked at the bank, took three, and a man stepped down from the curb to help her carry them without crushing them. I remembered that Grace Birk had a sister and brother-in-law living in Marin City; whether there were more in the family, I didn't know.
The trunk doors of parked cars were being unlocked now, and heaved open; the great pods just fitted into the empty trunks of some of the newer model cars. Other pods were being carefully eased through the open doors of several cars, then set gently down on the back seats. In each case, then, the man or woman, kneeling on the front seat, would place a sheet or some kind of light cloth over the great pod, concealing it from view.
Mill Valley was called out next, and eight people came forward for pods, and then Joe Pixley's truck was empty; he sat down on the running board, lighting a cigarette, to wait. The other trucks were uncovered, the drivers standing ready to unload them. The garage mechanic in the neat grey suit called, 'Belvedere,' and two people stepped out into the street. Tiburon, Strawberry Mannor, Belveron Gardens, Valley Springs, and San Rafael were next – fourteen people accepted pods for San Rafael, a town of around fifteen thousand. Then every other town in the county was called out, until presently, in no more than fifteen minutes, perhaps, all five trucks were empty, except Joe Grimaldi's, which had two left over.
In less than a minute, then, Wally and the mechanic had stepped into the crowd again, Wally shoving his papers into his inside breast pocket; the crowd itself was shifting and breaking up; the little cavalcade of trucks, starters whirring, motors catching, had backed out into the street, then disappeared down Main; and all up and down the nearly two blocks we could see, cars with giant pods in their trunks or concealed in the rear, were backing out of the angled parking spaces, then driving away. For a brief time, the crowd, moving along the walks, crossing the street, getting into cars, children darting into and out of it, was heavier than normal, like the sudden glut of people pouring out of a movie after the last show. But it quickly thinned, and I saw women again trundling wire shopping carts inside the supermarket, people sitting down at the counter of Elman's restaurant, others sauntering into or out of the various stores. Cars moved slowly along the streets once more. The scene was normal again, a more or less typical main street, perhaps rather more run-down than is usual but not enough so to arouse wonder in a passing stranger. Not a person in the street wore a yellow-and-blue jubilee button any more, though one or two wore the red-and-white kind the merchants passed out.
Perhaps five minutes later, I saw the salesman Jansek had arrested driving down Main, alone in his car, and a few moments after that, the car with Oregon license plates.
My arm still around her, I turned to look at Becky, and she stared at me for a moment, then pursed her lips and shrugged, and I smiled a little in response. There was nothing more to do or say, and I wasn't aware of any particular emotion; certainly there was no new one, and I felt none of the old ones any more strongly. We'd simply reached a limit beyond which there was nothing more to be said or felt.
But I was finally aware – now I knew it for sure – that the entire town of Santa Mira was taken, that not a soul in it but ourselves, and possibly the Belicecs, was what he had been, or what he seemed still, to the naked eye. The men, women, and children in the street and stores below me were something else now, every last one of them. They were each our enemies, including those with the eyes, faces, gestures, and walks of old friends. There was no help for us here, except from each other, and even now the communities around us were being invaded.
Chapter sixteen
We often say, 'I wasn't surprised,' or 'I knew it would happen' – meaning that in the moment of an event's occurrence, although we'd previously given it no conscious thought, we have a feeling of inevitableness, as though we'd known for a long time that precisely this was going to happen. In the minutes we'd been sitting there by the window, all I could think of to do was wait until dark, and then try to work our way through the hills, and out of town; it was useless to try in daylight, with every hand and eye against us. I explained this to Becky, in as hopeful terms as I could, trying to look as though I believed we could succeed; and there were moments when I did feel hopeful.
And yet when I heard the slight grate of a key sliding into the lock of my reception-room door, I had the feeling I've tried to describe. I wasn't surprised; it seemed to me, then, that I'd known all along what would happen, and I even had time to realize that whoever it was had simply gotten the building's master-key from the janitor.
But when the door opened, and I saw the first of the four people who walked into the room, I scrambled to my feet, my heart suddenly elated and pounding. Grinning with wild new hope and excitement, my hand moving out to shake his, I stepped quickly forward, and my voice came out in a harsh, loud whisper. 'Mannie!' I said, in a kind of
