Never speak loudly to one another unless the house is on fire.
--Harold William Thompson
I'd got home pretty late, but the alarm clock went off at six, as
usual, on Monday morning. It's at this time of day that I envy my
city-dwelling brothers who can get up an hour later and reach their
offices at the same time I do. Mae and I had bought a house in High
Tor in preparation for the baby, who was scheduled to be born in late
November. ("Beautiful timing," our tax accountant once said, thinking
of the exemption which would be good for the entire year.)
I rescued the dew-soaked _New York Times_ from the lawn. Its main
headline, across four columns, said:
ALIENS KEEP PREACHER FROM PULPIT,
CITING VILLAGE'S SUNDAY WORK BAN
The radio newscasts were hitting it hard, too. I listened to them as I
brewed a pot of coffee.
Mae shuffled into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed, in her housecoat. "Why
didn't you wake me up?" she asked.
"You have to sleep for two now," I told her.
"Nonsense," she said, giving me a kiss and looking at the front page.
"What do you want for breakfast?"
"Eggs, sunny-side up, covered with Pep." You break the yolk and the Pep
absorbs it.
"We don't have any Pep. How about corn flakes?"
"They're too big," I said. "You know that."
"I'm sure I'll never learn the fine points of these little mealtime
foibles of yours. You want bread under the eggs then?"
"Obviously," I said. It's not obvious at all, of course, but Mae is
very teasable.
"Honestly, Sam," she said as she buttered the frying pan, "you could
let a little yolk run on the plate. I don't mind washing it off. You're
not a bachelor any more, you know."
"I know that very well," I said. It isn't the washing so much as the
waste that bothers me. I think occasionally of the tons of dried egg
yolks being scraped into the garbage every morning and it gives my
frugal soul the willies. "How's Junior today?"
"He's very happy. Not a peep out of her." Mae changes its sex with
every reference to keep an open mind on the subject. She even
occasionally refers to it in the plural just in case. "You don't think
our children are going to suffer from these aliens, do you? I mean
they're not going to have to live in oppression under the heel of the
invader, are they?"
"Where did you get _that_, for God's sake?"
"On the radio last night before you came home. It was that Clyde
Witchburn. You know."
"Clyde Fitchburn. Don't listen to him. Listen to Ed Murrow or Eric
Sevareid. Listen to me. But don't let that doom-shouter Fitchburn give
you nightmares. It's not good for Junior."
"All right, Sam. You like the aliens, don't you?"
"I like the few I've met personally, but that doesn't mean I approve of
everything they do or are capable of doing. I don't think they plan to
grind us under the heel, though."
"Well, they're up to something. They didn't come all this way just to
obey a lot of funny laws and get people's danders up. We must have
something they want."
"Maybe we've got something they don't want," I said.
"Why would they land here, then?"
"To keep us from exporting it, now that we're on our way to the stars."
"Like what? Germs?"
"Sort of. Uncontrolled radiation, maybe."
Mae slid the eggs from the pan onto the two pieces of bread on my
plate. She poured coffee for each of us and said, "Eat, now. It's
six-thirty."
So it was. I was out of the house in ten minutes. I bought a _Herald
Tribune_ before I got on the bus, leaving the _Times_ for Mae. The Trib
had a righteous editorial headed "Abuse of Hospitality." I skimmed
through it. It said about what you might expect. Lippmann wasn't in the
paper that day and Alsop was discussing something else.
I folded the paper and wriggled around in the seat. Buses are like
candy bars, I thought. The price goes up and the size goes down. Each
new bus seemed to have less leg room and a lower headrest than its
predecessor, so that you had to be a contortionist to take a nap.
I had found a reasonably comfortable position when two men got on, took
the seats behind me and continued a discussion they'd been having about
the aliens.
"I told Alice they'd better not fool around with the church in our
town."
"Damn right."
"I said you can go so far, but some things you just don't fool around
with."
"You said it."
"I told her, 'Alice,' I said, 'you mark my words, just let them try in
Old Corners what they did in Middle Valley and there'll be trouble'."
"What did she say?"
"She agreed a hundred per cent, of course. Now I'm not a fellow
who goes every week--you know; but Easter, maybe Palm Sunday, and
Christmas--but by God some things are sacred.
"I tell you I got so mad when I saw that on the television. If that's
the way things can happen, I told Alice, I said, 'Listen, if this is
what they expect us to put up with, believe me, they've got another
think coming.' You don't just take something like that sitting down."
"I should say not. Why, I said the same thing to----"
"I mean there's a limit. I don't pay much attention to what goes on
at the UN--I don't suppose anybody does--but when it gets as close
as this, I tell you, things have come to a pretty pass, my friend, a
pretty pass indeed."
"They sure have, I told Virginia--"
"I'll bet you did. It's a crying shame when a bunch of fancy Dans from
Lord knows where can walk in on us and try to upset the things we hold
sacred...."
This stimulating conversation must have put me to sleep because the
next thing I knew somebody was tapping me on the shoulder and saying,
"Last stop, Mac."