Almost the End of the World

Willy lay back down in the chair and closed his eyes.

Antonelli leaned forward, breathing hard.

'Listen,'he said.

'Imagine four weeks ago, a late Saturday morning, women and children staring at clowns and magicians on TV. In beauty shops, women staring at TV fashions. In the barbershop and hardware stores, men staring at baseball or trout fishing. Everybody everywhere in the civilized world starling. No sound, no motion, except on the little black and white screens.

‘And then, in the middle of all that staring…’

Antonelli paused to lift up one corner of the broiling cloth.

‘Sunspots on the sun,’ he said.

Willy stiffened.

‘Biggest damn sunspots in the history of mortal man, said Antonelli. ‘Whole damn world flooded with electricity Wiped every TV screen clear as a whistle, leaving nothing and, after that, more nothing.’

His voice was remote as the voice of a man describing an Arctic landscape. He lathered Willy’s face not looking at what he was doing. Willy peered across the barber–shop, at the soft snow falling down and down that humming screen in an eternal winter. He could almost hear the rabbit–thumping of all the hearts in the shop.

Antonelli continued his funeral oration.

‘It took us all that first day to realize what had happened. Two hours after that first sunspot storm hit, every TV repairman in the United States was on the road. Everyone figured it was just their own set. With the radios conked out too it was only that night when newsboys, like in the old days, ran headlines through the streets that we got the shock about the sunspots maybe going on — for the rest of our lives!’

The customers murmured.

Antonelli’s hand, holding the razor, shook. He had to wait.

‘All that blankness, that empty stuff falling down, falling down inside our television sets, oh, I tell you, it gave everyone the willies It was like a good friend who talks to you in your front room and suddenly shuts up and lies there, pale, and you know he’s dead and you begin to turn cold yourself.

‘That first night, there was a run on the town’s movie houses. Drug–store fizzed up two hundred vanilla, three hundred chocolate sodas that first night of the Calamity. But you can’t buy movies and sodas every night. What then? Phone your in–laws for canasta or parchesi?’

‘Might as well,’ observed Willy, ‘blow your brains out.’

‘Sure, but people had to get out of their haunted houses.

Walking through their parlours was like whistling past a graveyard. All that silence —

‘Willy sat up a little. ‘Speaking of silence —'

'On the third night,’ said Antonelli, quickly, ‘we were all still in shock. We were saved from outright lunacy by one woman. Somewhere in this town this woman strolled out of the house, and came back a minute later. In one hand she held a paintbrush. And in the other…’

‘A bucket of paint,’ said Willy.

Everyone smiled, seeing how well he understood.

‘If those psychologists ever strike off 10 gold medals, they should pin one on that woman and every woman like her in every little town who saved our world from coming to an end. Those women who instinctively wandered in at twilight, and brought us the miracle cure…'

Willy imagined it. There were the glaring fathers and the scowling sons slumped by their dead TV sets waiting for the damn things to shout Ball One, or Strike Two! And then they looked up from their wake and there in the twilight saw the fair women of great purpose and dignity standing and waiting with brushes and paint. And a glorious light kindled their cheeks and eyes…’

‘Lord, it spread like wildfire!’ said Antonelli. ‘House to house, city to city. Jigsaw–puzzle craze, 1932; yo– yocraze, 1928, were nothing compared with the Everybody Do Everything Craze that blew this town to smithereens and glued it back again. Men everywhere slapped paint on anything that stood still ten seconds; men everywhere climbed steeples straddled fences, fell off roofs and ladders by the hundreds. Women painted cupboards, closets; kids painted toys, wagons, kites. All towns, everywhere, the same, where people had forgotten how to waggle their jaws, make their own talk. I tell you, men were moving in mindless circles, dazed, until their wives shoved a brush in their hand and pointed them towards the nearest unpainted wall!’

'Looks like you finished the job,’ said Willy.

‘Paint stores ran out of paint three times the first week.’ Antonelli surveyed the town with pride. ‘The painting could only last so long, of course, unless you start painting hedges spraying grass blades one by one. Now that the attics and cellars are cleaned out, too, our fire is seeping off into, well—women canning fruit again, making tomato pickles, raspberry, strawberry preserves. Basement shelves are loaded. Big church doings, too. Organized bowling, box socials, beer busts. Music shop sold five hundred ukuleles, two hundred twelve steel guitars, four hundred sixty ocarinas and kazoos in four weeks. I’m studying trombone. Mac, there, the flute. Band concerts Thursday and Sunday nights. Hand–crank ice–cream machines? Bert Tyson’s sold two hundred last week alone. Twenty–eight days, ‘Willy, twenty–eight days.’

‘Willy Bersinger and Samuel Fitts sat there, trying to imagine and feel the shock, the crushing blow.

‘Twenty–eight days, the barber–shop jammed with men, getting shaved twice a day so they can sit and stare at customers like they might say something,’ said Antonelli, shaving Willy now. ‘Once, remember, before TV, barbers were supposed to be great talkers. Well, this month it took us one whole week to warm up, get the rust out. No quality, but our quantity is ferocious. When you came in you heard the commotion. Oh, it’ll simmer down when we get used to the great Oblivion…’

‘Is that what everyone calls it?’

‘It sure looked that way to most of us, there for a while.’

Willy Bersinger laughed quietly and shook his head.

‘Now I know why you didn’t want me to start lecturing when I walked in that door.’

Of course, thought Willy, why didn’t I see it right off? Four short weeks ago the wilderness fell on this town and shook it good and scared it plenty. Because of the sunspots, all the towns in all the western world have had enough silence to last them ten years. And here I come by with another doze of silence, my easy talk about deserts and nights with no moon and only stars and just the little sound of the sand blowing along the empty river bottoms. No telling what might have happened if Antonelli hadn’t shut me up. I see me, tarred and feathered, leaving town.

‘Antonelli,’ he said aloud. ‘Thanks.’

‘For nothing,’ said Antonelli. He picked up his comb and shears. ‘Now, short on the sides, long in back?’

‘Long on the sides,’ said Willy Bersinger, closing his eyes again, ‘short in back.’

An hour later Willy and Samuel climbed back into their jalopy, which someone, they never knew who, had washed and polished while they were in the barber–shop.

‘Doom,’ Samuel handed over a small sack of gold–dust. With a capital D.’

‘Keep it.’ Willy sat, thoughtful, behind the wheel.

‘Let's take this money and hit out for Phoenix, Tucson, Kansas City, why not? Right now, we’re a surplus commodity around here. We won’t be welcome again until those little begin to dance and sing. Sure as hell, if we stay, we’ll open our traps and the desert monsters and chicken hawks the wilderness will slip out and make us trouble.’

'Willy squinted at the highway straight ahead.

‘Pearl of the Orient, that’s what he said. Can you imagine that dirty old town, Chicago, all painted up fresh and as a babe in the morning light? We just got to see Chicago, by God!’

'He started the car, let it idle, and looked at the town.

‘Man survives,’ he murmured. ‘Man endures. Too bad we missed the big change. It must have been a fierce thing, a time of trials and testings. Samuel, I don’t recall, do you? What have we ever seen on TV?’

‘Saw a woman wrestle a bear two falls out of three, one night.'

–Who won?’

‘Damned if I know. She —‘