I shrugs and starts walking back to town. "Everybody took off," I
says. "Your _Paradise_ booths were real popular."
He still looks blank so I give it to him straight. I had first thought
about it when Wally Claus disappeared. It occurs to me then that
everybody has times when they wish they could crawl out from under and
quietly disappear. You see, Joe had assumed that some people were
adjusted to society and some weren't. Well, actually _nobody_ is, it's
just a difference of degree.
Once Wally took off, it sorta burst the dam. More and more people
sneaked into the booths, dropped in a quarter, and _whisht_--they were
a billion miles away.
It was lonely and dark in town. No street lamps, of course. There was
nobody down at the power plant to work the switches. And there weren't
any lights in the houses 'cause there wasn't anybody around.
"I can't imagine _everybody_ going," Joe says, biting his lip. "What
about all the kids?"
"I kinda think they were among the first," I says. I waves at the
starry sky. "There's probably a planet up there some place where
there's nothing but hot rods and football stadiums. And I suppose
there's one section of the universe fenced off for all the Junior
Spacemen that'll be roaming around it."
Anybody you could think of mighta had a reason for leaving, I told
him. The boys at Schultz's probably took off for a world where Marilyn
Monroe has a thousand twin sisters; and Johnny Douglas, the ace at
Kelly's Bowling Alley, is probably located on a world where it's
impossible to bowl anything but a three hundred game.
By then, we were in front of Joe's house. It was as dark and curtained
as the others.
* * * * *
The house was empty. The blinds had been drawn, the dishes neatly
stacked and put away, and a note left on the doorstoop telling the
milkman not to bring any more milk.
The note to Joe was on the kitchen table. It was hard for Joe to read
on accounta it was blurred in spots where Marge had been crying and
the tears had fallen on the paper. It told Joe--among a whole mess of
other things--that she thought she had married a man, not a radio set,
and since everybody was using them she was going to visit a _Paradise_
booth that night.
"What am I going to do?" Joe asks remorsefully.
"That's your problem," I says heartlessly, thinking of all the chili
dinners that went with Marge. "You made the booths in the first
place."
"Yeah, I know." He pulls out a wad of papers from his pocket and
thumbs through them. "I got contracts here for a _Paradise_ booth in
every town over five thousand population. I could be a millionaire in
a month."
"Joe," I says, suddenly frightened, "don't do it. Look what happened
here in Fremont. Why man, if you put those things all over the country
there wouldn't be a soul left in the United States after a month had
gone by."
"You're right, Harry," he says. "Absolutely right." And he takes a
cigarette lighter out of his pocket and sets fire to the papers and
lets them burn 'til they're nothing but ashes.
"What are you gonna do with the booths in town?" I ask.
He goes down to the basement and comes up with a hatchet. "Come on,"
he says grimly. "I'll show you what I'm going to do with them!"
The first two we chop in small pieces until the walk is covered with
cogs and wheels and smashed tubes and dials. We stop at the third one.
That was the fanciest one of all, with the leather upholstery inside
and the big red neon sign on top that you could read halfway across
town.
Joe stares at it for a long minute, then makes up his mind. He fishes
around in his pocket for a coin.
"What do you think you're going to do?" I asks, alarmed.
"I'm going to look for Marge," he says. "I need a vacation anyways."
"How you gonna find her, Joe?" I asks. "You don't even know what kind
of a world to look for!"
"Yes, I do," Joe says wistfully. "It'll be the kind of world where
Marge always wanted to spend a vacation. Some place like up in
Massachusetts during the summer. White beaches, little wooden houses,
fishing boats and lobster pots.... She's described it to me so often I
could picture it down to the last pebble on the beach."
He gets into the booth.
"Think you'll ever be back, Joe?" I asks.
He drops a quarter in the coin slot and a picture builds up on the
screen of a beach with a little town in the distance.
"Sure," Joe says confidentially. "We'll be back." And then there's a
flash of blue light and Joe's gone, too.
I hung around for a couple of days afterward but Joe and Marge never
came back. I think he found her all right but Marge didn't want
anything to do with the old world so they just stayed there.
And that's about all there is, son. Except I've often wondered what
happened when strangers drove through and found Fremont a ghost
town....
* * * * *
Now, lookahere, son, it's no cause for you to go calling me a liar
just because you never heard of Stellar Electric and Fremont ain't
listed on any map you've got. You didn't expect me to stay behind when
everybody else had left, did you? I always had a hankerin' for a
different type of world, too.
A world where a body didn't have to work so blamed hard and total
strangers would be willin' to listen to my stories and buy me a
beer....
...THE END