that would go on wounding, being shot by itself forever.
"Get," said Bayes.
Booth darted. The door slammed shut. Bayes fell against it, breathing hard.
Far across the arena at another locked door, the hammering, pounding, the crying out began again. Bayes stared at that shuddering but remote door. Phipps. But Phipps would have to wait. Now …
The theater was as vast and empty as Gettysburg in the late day with the crowd gone home and the sun set. Where the crowd had been and was no more, where the Father had lifted the Boy high on his shoulders and where the Boy had spoken and said the words, but the words now, also, gone …
On the stage, after a long moment, he reached out. His fingers brushed Lincoln's shoulder.
Fool, he thought standing there in the dusk. Don't. Now, don't. Stop it. Why are you doing this? Silly. Stop. Stop.
And what he had come to find he found. What he needed to do he did.
For tears were running down his face. He wept. Sobs choked his mouth. He could not stop them. They would not cease.
Mr. Lincoln was dead. Mr. Lincoln was dead ! And he had let his murderer go.
YES, WE'LL GATHER AT THE RIVER
At one minute to nine he should have rolled the wooden Indian back into warm tobacco darkness and turned the key in the lock. But somehow he waited because there were so many lost men walking by in no special direction for no special reason. A few of them wandered in to drift their gaze over the tribal cigars laid out in their neat brown boxes, then glanced up suddenly surprised to find where they were and said, evasively, "Evening, Charlie."
"So it is," said Charlie Moore.
Some of the men wandered off empty-handed, others moved on with a nickel cigar unlit in their mouths.
So it was nine thirty of a Thursday night before Charlie Moore finally touched the wooden Indian's elbow as if disturbing a friend and hating to bother. Gently he maneuvered the savage to where he became watchman of the night. In the shadows, the carved face stared raw and blind through the door.
"Well, Chief, what do you see?"
Charlie followed that silent gaze beyond to the highway that cut through the very center of their lives.
In locust hordes, cars roared up from Los Angeles. With irritation they slowed to thirty miles per hour here. They crept between some three dozen shops, stores, and old livery stables become gas stations, to the north rim of town. There the cars exploded back to eighty, racing like Furies on San Francisco, to teach it violence.
Charlie snorted softly.
A man passed, saw him standing with his silent wooden friend, said, "Last night, eh?" and was gone.
Last night.
There. Someone had dared use the words.
Charlie wheeled to switch off the lights, lock the door and, on the sidewalk, eyes down, freeze.
As if hypnotized, he felt his gaze rise again to the old highway which swept by with winds that smelled a billion years ago. Great bursts of headlight arrived, then cut away in departures of red taillight, like schools of small bright fish darting in the wake of sharks and blind-traveling whales. The lights sank away and were lost in the black hills.
Charlie broke his stare. He walked slowly on through his town as the clock over the Oddfellows Lodge struck the quarter hour and moved on toward ten and still he walked and was amazed and then not amazed any more to see how every shop was still open long after hours and in every door stood a man or woman transfixed even as he and his Indian brave had been transfixed by a talked-about and dreadful future suddenly become Here Now Tonight.
Fred Ferguson, the taxidermist, kin to the family of wild owls and panicked deer which stayed on forever in his window, spoke to the night air as Charlie passed:
"Hard to believe, ain't it?"
He wished no answer, for he went on, immediately:
"Keep thinking: just can't be. Tomorrow, the highway dead and us dead with it."
"Oh, it won't be that bad," said Charlie.
Ferguson gave him a shocked look. "Wait. Ain't you the
"Get," said Bayes.
Booth darted. The door slammed shut. Bayes fell against it, breathing hard.
Far across the arena at another locked door, the hammering, pounding, the crying out began again. Bayes stared at that shuddering but remote door. Phipps. But Phipps would have to wait. Now …
The theater was as vast and empty as Gettysburg in the late day with the crowd gone home and the sun set. Where the crowd had been and was no more, where the Father had lifted the Boy high on his shoulders and where the Boy had spoken and said the words, but the words now, also, gone …
On the stage, after a long moment, he reached out. His fingers brushed Lincoln's shoulder.
Fool, he thought standing there in the dusk. Don't. Now, don't. Stop it. Why are you doing this? Silly. Stop. Stop.
And what he had come to find he found. What he needed to do he did.
For tears were running down his face. He wept. Sobs choked his mouth. He could not stop them. They would not cease.
Mr. Lincoln was dead. Mr. Lincoln was dead ! And he had let his murderer go.
YES, WE'LL GATHER AT THE RIVER
At one minute to nine he should have rolled the wooden Indian back into warm tobacco darkness and turned the key in the lock. But somehow he waited because there were so many lost men walking by in no special direction for no special reason. A few of them wandered in to drift their gaze over the tribal cigars laid out in their neat brown boxes, then glanced up suddenly surprised to find where they were and said, evasively, "Evening, Charlie."
"So it is," said Charlie Moore.
Some of the men wandered off empty-handed, others moved on with a nickel cigar unlit in their mouths.
So it was nine thirty of a Thursday night before Charlie Moore finally touched the wooden Indian's elbow as if disturbing a friend and hating to bother. Gently he maneuvered the savage to where he became watchman of the night. In the shadows, the carved face stared raw and blind through the door.
"Well, Chief, what do you see?"
Charlie followed that silent gaze beyond to the highway that cut through the very center of their lives.
In locust hordes, cars roared up from Los Angeles. With irritation they slowed to thirty miles per hour here. They crept between some three dozen shops, stores, and old livery stables become gas stations, to the north rim of town. There the cars exploded back to eighty, racing like Furies on San Francisco, to teach it violence.
Charlie snorted softly.
A man passed, saw him standing with his silent wooden friend, said, "Last night, eh?" and was gone.
Last night.
There. Someone had dared use the words.
Charlie wheeled to switch off the lights, lock the door and, on the sidewalk, eyes down, freeze.
As if hypnotized, he felt his gaze rise again to the old highway which swept by with winds that smelled a billion years ago. Great bursts of headlight arrived, then cut away in departures of red taillight, like schools of small bright fish darting in the wake of sharks and blind-traveling whales. The lights sank away and were lost in the black hills.
Charlie broke his stare. He walked slowly on through his town as the clock over the Oddfellows Lodge struck the quarter hour and moved on toward ten and still he walked and was amazed and then not amazed any more to see how every shop was still open long after hours and in every door stood a man or woman transfixed even as he and his Indian brave had been transfixed by a talked-about and dreadful future suddenly become Here Now Tonight.
Fred Ferguson, the taxidermist, kin to the family of wild owls and panicked deer which stayed on forever in his window, spoke to the night air as Charlie passed:
"Hard to believe, ain't it?"
He wished no answer, for he went on, immediately:
"Keep thinking: just can't be. Tomorrow, the highway dead and us dead with it."
"Oh, it won't be that bad," said Charlie.
Ferguson gave him a shocked look. "Wait. Ain't you the
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