Chapter Five

Something White

The old woman standing by the greeting card rack satis­fied, better than anyone he had seen yet, his ideal concep­tion of what a resident of this village ought to look like. The wispy white hair caught up in a bun, the silverpoint wrinkles, the knobby, venerable hands, the stooped shoul­ders and fallen bosom, the crepe falling in black folds to her ankles, allowing just a glimpse of what might even be button shoes: she was in herself a more perfect greeting card than any of those that, with many a low chuckle and many a nod and a smile, she read aloud to herself in a dry, slow, delighted drone.

The clerk, a middle-aged gentleman suitably dressed for a dinner party in Surbiton, appeared from beneath the counter. He held a feather duster rigidly in one hand, an allegory of his trade. “Can I—” His courtesy exploded into coughing; he covered his mouth discreetly with the feather duster, sneezed, sniffed.

“I’d like a newspaper,” he said. “Any newspaper for today.”

The clerk blinked back tears. “I’m so sorry.” He touched the knot in his tie, the handkerchief in his breast pocket, trying, by as much as it lay inhis power, to make this a better world. “You see, we don’t . . .” He laughed self-dep­recatingly. “You understand, surely, that it isn’t me . . .”

“You’re trying to tell me that you don’t handle newspa­pers.”

The clerk sighed. “Just so–we don’t handle them.”

“I wanted something to read on the train.”

“On the . . .? Yes, well! That’s . . . There’s . . .” He stabbed the air with the duster. “. . . lots of books. Do you like to read . . . books?”

“I’d prefer a magazine.”

“Oh yes, magazines, those, yes. We keep the magazines over in that corner:Country Life . AndHair-Do , but no, you wouldn’t . . .Car and Driver ?Analog ? Or that one there, on the top, with the greenish cover and that lovely what is it, some kind of, oh, that’s for children, isn’t it?MuscularDevelopment , mm? If you could give me . . . some idea?”

“I’d like aNew Statesman .”

“No, I don’t think . . . We don’t receive muchdemand , you see, for—”

“The Spectator?Newsweek ?

“Not that sort of thing, really. That’s all, how would you say, politics, isn’t it? They say there’s two things you should never discuss—politics and religion.”

“Then perhaps you could tell me, at least, when the train departs?”

“Which train?”

“Any at all. Preferably one this afternoon. I’ve been to the station twice today. The ticket window is always closed, and no schedules are posted.”

“Yes. Well. I think they’re on thesummer schedule now. But I’m not at all sure. If you asked at the station . . .”

“I’ve just come from the station. There was no one there.”

“Did you look around? They might have been somewhere else, you know, doing something.”

“Where do you suggest I look?”

“Oh . . . Oh, that’s difficult. I’m not really qualified, am I? I mean, this is just abook store. People don’t buy their train tickets at book stores, now do they? So unless there’s something that . . .? You can see for yourself that thereare other customers.”

They both looked at the other customer, who glanced sideways at them, smiling, and jiggled an embossed and glittering birthday card, enticing them to share its message with her.

“Thank you for your help.”

“Not at all. Think nothing of it. I try to do what I . . .” And, his eyes seemed to express, if that wasn’t very much, it wasn’this fault.


The sweeper, a thick suet pudding of a fellow, tackled his job with great zeal, conscientiously oblivious to the fact that his broom, this third time around, raised no dust, none, from the floorboards. It was his job to sweep, and so he swept on. Perhaps he was motivated less by a concep­tion of duty than by an admiration for the tools of his craft. It was a wide and quite handsome broom, in perfect condition, the bristles still fresh, soft, and supple. No one could ask for a better broom than this. His uniform was no less handsome, of heavy black twill on which had been lavished all manner of pleats, pockets, buckles, zippers, snaps, and, on the back, in chartreuse script, the insigniaDepartment of Sanitation . He was equipped, in addition, with a fine leather harness (black) that suggested immense utility, though, unless he were to be harnessed to a plow, it was hard to imagine any real use for it.

The broom bumped his shoe. The sweeper, encountering this unprecedented obstruction, stopped. The sweeper, tem­porarily deactivated, considered this obstruction and how best to deal with it.

The sweeper spoke. He said: “Hey! You. What are you doing here?”

“I’m waiting for a train.”

“Huh? What train?”

“This is a railway waiting room. Outside there are tracks for trains. I arrived here this morning by train, and I’m waiting now for another in order to leave.”

“Uh. But. It’s closed.”

“In that case how is it that the door is standing open?”

The sweeper looked at the open door. He looked at his broom. He looked at the face of the clock. The big hand was on XI; the little hand was on IV. He tapped the clock with a thick, segmented sausage of finger. He said: “Look at the time.”

“I’ve been looking at it for hours. Perhaps you can tell me when the next train leaves?” A very far-out possibility, but he would mention it.

“Uh. You ask the ticket window man about that. I just sweep.”

“There is no ticket window man to ask.”

“That’s because we’re closed.” It followed logically, it did!

“Since the waiting room is closed, I’ll wait outside on the platform.”

Which he did.

In a few moments the sweeper had followed him out the door, trailing his fine broom in dejection. “Hey. You. It’s closed.”

“How can it be closed when there are still people wait­ing for a train?”

The sweeper stood on his two feet and confronted this question, as though it had been a wall erected just in front of him in the middle of the platform.

“Well. Anyhow.” (Climbing over the wall.) “You can’t sit there. I got to sweep.”

He stood up. The sweeper swept. From the other end of the platform a third figure approached them. The sweeper stopped sweeping. He smiled. “You talk to him. Okay?”

The approaching figure was of the secular (as opposed to the official, and uniformed) order, a prodigy of good grooming, good taste, and good cheer. As a model he would have commanded the very highest rates: well-built but notso well-built that you could not imagine those same clothes looking almost as nice on you; bright, even teeth (his grin broadened as he grew nearer) that would have done credit to any toothpaste; a prominent bone structure that one might photograph from any angle. He could have worn the most implausible clothing and yet it would have seemed, on him, fashionable rather than pecu­liar. He approached, grinning, within three feet, within two, and then, with as much grace as efficiency, he swung his fist into the stomach of the man who had begun to ask, once more, about the trains.

Who was answered, as well, by the handle of the broom in the small of his back. Vertebrae crunched.

He doubled up.

Caught hold of the manicured hand chopping at his neck. Twisted, left, twisted, farther left. The buckled, square-toed shoes slipped.

The bristly end of the broom swept on a long arc toward that point in space his head had occupied only a second before; which now was occupied by the more pho­togenic head of the model.

The handle of the broom broke off at its base.

He had stopped. Now, taking leverage on the suddenly limp wrist, he lifted the well-built body up: up higher. And dumped it into the suet pudding. A buckle-shoe caught in the harness. The harness gave.

The sweeper looked unhappily at the body littering the platform. “You shouldn’t,” he said, in a tone more of disap­pointment than of disapproval.

“Neither, for that matter, should you.”

He hit the sweeper in the stomach.

He hit the sweeper in the stomach a second time.

He hit the sweeper in the stomach a third time.

The sweeper lifted his arms in self-defense.

Sometimes his fists sank into the pudding, sometimes they were deflected. The sweeper stepped over the pile of litter. Grabbed for a blue lapel with white piping.

His fists battered at the blinking face. Seams strained, split. The sweeper got a better grip, beneath the swinging arms. He lifted, tightening his hold, oblivious, as a bear to bee stings, to the pelting hands, the kicking feet; hugging, more tightly still, the small of that back.

Thinking:Break, godammit, break!

Then:

(The sweeper did not understand this, but he didn’t let it distract him.)

They were on the platform, the other body tangled beneath their legs. They rolled, in each other’s grasp, across the well-swept boards. The sweeper’s head bumped the frame of the door. They rolled back. His head bumped the frame of the door, again. They rolled into the waiting room. His hands and arms and head concentrated on squeezing the small of that back.

He began to choke.

Eventually, his attention was distracted by this choking. The man he grasped was not hitting him any longer. Instead he was pulling at the broken straps of the harness. The straps were across his neck.

He understood everything now: the man was choking him with the harness straps.

He relaxed his hold to grab for . . .

To get . . .

But the straps were embedded too deeply in his flesh. Too tightly. He could not get . . .

He choked.

His head stopped thinking. His arms flopped.


He stood above the sweeper, listened to the wheeze from his welted throat. His own breath came irregularly. He looked at himself in the mirror of the gum machine. The left lapel had been torn from his coat. He removed his bill-fold from the breast pocket, dropped the coat in a wire bas­ket, Property of the Village.

The movement of the sweeper’s arms indicated his return to consciousness. He put his shoulder against the back of the gum machine and shoved. The machine crashed down on the sweeper, whose arms once more relaxed.

The body outside was still quiet.

He jumped from the platform down to the track and began walking east along the ties. He stopped at intervals to remove a cinder from his shoe, but on the whole he made good time.

He passed no houses. The station had been built at the easternmost limit of the Village. The track stretched on across a perfectly even and featureless plain, and so it was some time before he was out of sight of the station. A mile away Nature grew bolder and asserted herself with, here and there, a shrub of dogwood or a spindle tree. Saxifrage, iridescent as puddles of oil, squinted out from the cinder bed. Dandelions bred promiscuously amid the select gath­erings of their betters–knapweed, butterbur and sneezewort yarrow.

There were no birds. There was nothing in all this land­scape, except himself, that moved or made noises.

Two miles from the Village the tracks stopped, abruptly. The meadow continued, without the aid of perpective lines, to the horizon.

A white sphere stood at the horizon, or just before it. Its size could not be estimated with any exactness. Twelve feet? Fifteen feet? More?

The sphere approached, rolling smoothly and easily across the weeds, westward, away from its shadow.

He broke into a run.

The sphere swerved right, its silhouette warping momentarily with the torsion: it was soft.

It was very big.

He crouched, shielding his head in his arms. The sphere slammed into him, knocking him off his knees. He slid on his side several feet through the weeds. The sphere bounced high into the air, settled gelatinously, bounced, settled, quivered.

He stood up, nursing his right shoulder, which had taken the brunt of the collision. The sphere edged toward him, nudged; pushed. He pushed back at the yielding white skin, but the great bulk of it moved on, resistless as a bull-dozer. He slithered, braced against the advancing sphere, across a mulch of crushed weeds and meadowgrass, until, his heel catching in soft earth, he could not slide. The straining muscles accordioned, he collapsed. The sphere moved back.

He stood, wincing at the pain. An ankle sprained. The sphere rolled forward, nudged. He stepped back. The sphere stopped. He walked slowly backward, facing the sphere.

He began angling to his left, still moving backward. The sphere, like an anxious collie, corrected his false trajectory.

He angled to the right, which the sphere permitted until he had returned to the tracks. Thereafter no deviation from the true path was allowed. The sphere insisted that he return to the station. It insisted that he walk along, between the rails, at a moderate pace, back to the Village. It did allow him to stop at intervals to remove a cinder from his shoe, but it would not tolerate indolence on any larger scale.