Sometimes I used to wonder how New England really felt about the
Pilgrims. If you think that sounds silly--perhaps one of these days you
won't.
The beginning was some ten years back, on a hunting trip the autumn
after I got out of college. That was just before I started working, as
far off the bottom as I could talk myself, which was the personnel
office in my Uncle John's dry cleaning chain in the city.
That wasn't too bad. But I was number four man in the office, so it
could have been better, too. Uncle John was a bachelor, which meant he
had no daughter I could marry. Anyway, she would have been my cousin.
But next best, I figured, was to be on good personal terms with the old
bull.
This wasn't too hard. Apart from expecting rising young executives to
rise and start work no later than 8:30 a.m., Uncle John was more or
less all right. Humor him? Well, every fall he liked to go hunting. So
when he asked me to go hunting with him up in the Great Sentries, I
knew I was getting along pretty well. I went hunting.
The trip was nothing very much. We camped up in the hills. We drank a
reasonably good bourbon. We hunted--if that's the word for it. Me, I'd
done my hitch in the Army. I know what a gun is--and respect it. Uncle
John provided our hunting excitement by turning out to be one of the
trigger-happy types. His score was two cows, a goat, a couple of other
hunters, one possible deer--and unnumbered shrubs and bushes shot _at_.
Luckily he was such a lousy shot that the safest things in the
mountains were his targets.
Well, no matter. I tried to stay in the second safest place, which was
directly behind him. So it was a nice enough trip with no casualties,
right up to the last night.
We were all set to pack out in the morning when it happened. Maybe you
read about the thing at the time. It got a light-hearted play in the
papers, the way those things do. "A one in a billion accident," they
called it.
We were lounging by the campfire after supper and a few good snorts.
Uncle John was entertaining himself with a review of some of his
nearer, more thrilling misses. I, to tell the truth, was sort of dozing
off.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a bright flash of blue-green light and
a loud sort of a "zoop-zing" sound. And a sharp, stinging sensation in
my thighs.
I hollered. I jumped to my feet. I looked down, and my pants were
peppered with about a dozen little holes like buckshot. I didn't have
to drop my pants to know my legs were too. I could feel it. And blood
started to ooze.
I figured, of course, that Uncle John had finally shot me and I at once
looked on the bright side. I would be a cinch for a fast promotion to
vice president. But Uncle John swore he hadn't been near a gun. So we
guessed some other hunter must have done it, seen what he had done and
then prudently ducked. At least no one stepped forward.
It was a moonlight night. With Uncle John helping me we made it the two
and a half miles back down the trail to Poxville, where we'd left our
car and stuff. We routed out the only doctor in the area, old Doc
Grandy.
He grumbled, "Hell, boy, a few little hunks o' buckshot like that and
you make such a holler. I see a dozen twice's bad as this ever' season.
Ought to make you wait till office hours. Well--hike yourself up on the
table there. I'll flip 'em out for you."
Which he proceeded to do. If it was a joke to him, it sure wasn't to
me, even if they weren't in very deep. Finally he was done. He stood
there clucking like an old hen with no family but a brass doorknob.
Something didn't seem quite right to him.
Uncle John gave me a good belt of the bourbon he'd been thoughtful
enough to pack along.
"What was it you say hit you, boy?" Doc Grandy wanted to know, reaching
absently for the bottle.
"Buckshot, I suppose. What was it you just hacked out of me?"
"Hah!" He passed the bottle back to Uncle John. "Not like any buckshot
I ever saw. Little balls, or shells of metallic stuff all right. But
not lead. Peculiar. M-mph. You know what, boy?"
"You're mighty liberal with the iodine, I know that. What else?"
"You say you saw a big flash of light. Come to think on it, I saw a
streak of light up the mountainside about that same time. I was out
on the porch. You know, boy, I believe you got something to feel
right set up about. I believe you been hit by a meteor. If it
weren't--ha-ha--pieces of one of them flying saucers you read
about."
Well, I didn't feel so set up about it, then or ever. But it did turn
out he was right.
Doc Grandy got a science professor from Eastern State Teachers College
there in Poxville to come look. He agreed that they were meteor
fragments. The two of them phoned it in to the city papers during a
slow week and, all in all, it was a big thing. To them. To me it was
nothing much but a pain in the rear.
The meteor, interviewed scientists were quoted as saying, must have
almost burned up coming through the atmosphere, and disintegrated just
before it hit me. Otherwise I'd have been killed. The Poxville
professor got very long-winded about the peculiar shape and composition
of the pieces, and finally carried off all but one for the college
museum. Most likely they're still there. One I kept as a souvenir,
which was silly. It wasn't a thing I wanted to remember--or, as I found
later, would ever be able to forget. Anyway, I lost it.
All right. That was that and, except for a lingering need to sit on
very soft cushions, the end of it. I thought. We went back to town.
Uncle John felt almost as guilty about the whole thing as if he had
shot me himself and, in November, when he found about old Bert
Winginheimer interviewing girl applicants for checker jobs at home in
his apartment, I got a nice promotion.
Working my way up, I was a happy, successful businessman.
And then, not all at once but gradually, a lot of little things
developed into problems. They weren't really problems either, exactly.
They were puzzles. Nothing big but--well, it was like I was sort of
being made to do, or not do, certain things. Like being pushed in one
direction or another. And not necessarily the direction I personally
would have picked. Like----
Well, one thing was shaving.
I always had used an ordinary safety razor--nicked myself not more than
average. It seemed OK to me. Never cared too much for electric razors;
it didn't seem to me they shaved as close. But--I took to using an
electric razor now, because I had to.
One workday morning I dragged myself to the bathroom of my bachelor
apartment to wash and shave. Getting started in the morning was never a
pleasure to me. But this time seemed somehow tougher than usual. I
lathered my face and put a fresh blade in my old razor.
For some reason, I could barely force myself to start. "Come on, Johnny
boy!" I told myself. "Let's go!" I made myself take a first stroke with
the razor. Man! It burned like fire. I started another stroke and the
burning came before the razor even touched my face. I had to give up. I
went down to the office without a shave.
That was no good, of course, so at the coffee break I forced myself
around the corner to the barber shop. Same thing! I got all lathered up
all right, holding myself by force in the chair. But, before the barber
could touch the razor to my face, the burning started again.