shapes the sky had taken: the vast and monumental creatures that were watching them. He, in his passion, still worked at her, thrust to his root and out the length again as he knew she delighted in, ‘til a hand the colour of beets and the size of a man pinched his neck, and plucked him out of his wife's lap. She watched him lifted into the sky like a squirming jack-rabbit, spitting from two mouths, North and South, as he finished his thrusts on the air. Then his eyes opened for a moment, and he saw his wife twenty feet below him, still bare, still spread butterfly wide, with monsters on every side. Casually, without malice, they threw him away, out of their ring of admiration, and out of her sight.
She remembered so well the hour that followed, the embraces of the monsters. Not foul in any way, not gross or harmful, never less than loving. Even the machineries of reproduction that they pierced her with, one after the other, were not painful, though some were as large as Eugene's fisted arm, and hard as bone. How many of those strangers took her that afternoon — three, four, five, mingling their semen in her body, fondly teasing joy from her with their patient thrusts. When they went away, and her skin was touched with sunlight again, she felt, though on reflection it seemed shameful, a loss; as though the zenith of her life was passed, and the rest of her days would be a cold ride down to death.
She had got up at last, and walked over to where Eugene was lying unconscious on the sand, one of his legs broken by the fall. She had kissed him, and then squatted to pass water. She hoped, and hope it was, that there would be fruit from the seed of that day's love, and it would be a keepsake of her joy.
In the house Eugene struck the boy. Aaron's nose bled, but he made no sound.
'Speak, boy.'
'What shall I say?'
'Am I your father or not?'
'Yes, father.'
'Liar!'
He struck again, without warning; this time the blow carried Aaron to the floor. As his small, uncalloused palms flattened against the kitchen tiles to raise himself he felt something through the floor. There was a music in the ground.
'Liar!' his father was saying still.
There would be more blows to come, the boy thought, more pain, more blood. But it was bearable; and the music was a promise, after a long wait, of an end to blows once and for all.
Davidson staggered into the main street of Welcome. It was the middle of the afternoon, he guessed (his watch had stopped, perhaps out of sympathy), but the town appeared to be empty, until his eye alighted on the dark, smoking mound in the middle of the street, a hundred yards from where he stood.
If such a thing had been possible, his blood would have run cold at the sight.
He recognized what that bundle of burned flesh had been, despite the distance, and his head spun with horror. It had all been real after all. He stumbled on a couple more steps, fighting the dizziness and losing, until he felt himself supported by strong arms, and heard, through a fuzz of head-noises, reassuring words being spoken to him. They made no sense, but at least they were soft and human: he could give up any pretence to consciousness. He fainted, but it seemed there was only a moment of respite before the world came back into view again, as odious as ever.
He had been carried inside and was lying on an uncomfortable sofa, a woman's face, that of Eleanor Kooker, staring down at him. She beamed as he came round.
'The man'll survive,' she said, her voice like cabbage going through a grater.
She leaned further forward.
'You seen the thing, did you?'
Davidson nodded.
'Better give us the low-down.'
A glass was thrust into his hand and Eleanor filled it generously with whisky.
'Drink,' she demanded, 'then tell us what you got to tell —'
He downed the whisky in two, and the glass was immediately refilled. He drank the second glass more slowly, and began to feel better.
The room was filled with people: it was as though all of Welcome was pressing into the Kooker front parlour. Quite an audience: but then it was quite a tale. Loosened by the whisky, he began to tell it as best he could, without embellishment, just letting the words come. In return Eleanor described the circumstances of Sheriff Packard's 'accident' with the body of the car-wrecker. Packard was in the room, looking the worse for consoling whiskies and pain killers, his mutilated hand bound up so well it looked more like a club than a limb.
'It's not the only devil out there,' said Packard when the stories were out.
'So's you say,' said Eleanor, her quick eyes less than convinced.
'My Papa said so,' Packard returned, staring down at his bandaged hand. 'And I believe it, sure as Hell I believe it.'
'Then we'd best do something about it.'
'Like what?' posed a sour looking individual leaning against the mantelpiece. 'What's to be done about the likes of a thing that eats automobiles?'
Eleanor straightened up and delivered a well-aimed sneer at the questioner.
'Well let's have the benefit of your wisdom, Lou,' she said. 'What do you think we should do?'
'I think we should lie low and let ‘em pass.'
'I'm no ostrich,' said Eleanor, 'but if you want to go bury your head, I'll lend you a spade, Lou. I'll even dig you the hole.'
General laughter. The cynic, discomforted, fell silent and picked at his nails.
'We can't sit here and let them come running through,' said Packard's deputy, between blowing bubbles with his gum.
'They were going towards the mountains,' Davidson said. 'Away from Welcome.'
'So what's to stop them changing their goddam minds?' Eleanor countered. 'Well?'
No answer. A few nods, a few head shakings. 'Jebediah,' she said, 'you're deputy — what do you think about this?'
The young man with the badge and the gum flushed a little, and plucked at his thin moustache. He obviously hadn't a clue.
'I see the picture,' the woman snapped back before he could answer. 'Clear as a bell. You're all too shit scared to go poking them divils out of their holes, that it?'
Murmurs of self-justification around the room, more head-shaking.
'You're just planning to sit yourselves down and let the women folk be devoured.'
A good word: devoured. So much more emotive than eaten. Eleanor paused for effect. Then she said darkly: 'Or worse.'
Worse than devoured? Pity sakes, what was worse than devoured?
'You're not going to be touched by no divils,' said Packard, getting up from his seat with some difficulty. He swayed on his feet as he addressed the room.
'We're going to have them shit-eaters and lynch ‘em.' This rousing battle-cry left the males in the room unroused; the sheriff was low on credibility since his encounter in Main Street.
'Discretion's the better part of valour,' Davidson murmured under his breath.
'That's so much horse-shit,' said Eleanor.
Davidson shrugged, and finished off the whisky in his glass. It was not refilled. He reflected ruefully that he should be thankful he was still alive. But his work-schedule was in ruins. He had to get to a telephone and hire a car; if necessary have someone drive out to pick him up. The 'divils', whatever they were, were not his problem. Perhaps he'd be interested to read a few column-inches on the subject in Newsweek, when he was back East and relaxing with Barbara; but now all he wanted to do was finish his business in Arizona and get home as soon as possible.
Packard, however, had other ideas.
'You're a witness,' he said, pointing at Davidson, 'and as Sheriff of this community I order you to stay in
