Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories Read online

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  A PLACE OF MEETING

  by Charles Beaumont

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  It swept down from the mountains, a loose, crystal-smelling wind, an autumn chill of moving wetness. Down from the mountains and into the town, where it set the dead trees hissing and the signboards creaking. And it even went into the church, because the bell was ringing and there was no one to ring the bell. The people in the yard stopped their talk and listened to the rusty music. Big Jim Kroner listened too. Then he cleared his throat and clapped his hands- thick hands, calloused and work-dirtied. "All right," he said loudly. "All right, let's settle down now." He walked out from the group and turned. "Who's got the list?" "Got it right here, Jim," a woman said, coming forward with a loose-leaf folder. "All present?" "Everybody except that there German, Mr. Grunin-Grunger-" Kroner smiled; he made a megaphone of his hands. "Gruninger-Bartold Gruninger?" A small man with a mustache called out excitedly, "Ja, ja! ... s'war schwer den Friedhof zu finden," "All right. That's all we wanted to know, whether you was here or not," Kroner studied the pages carefully. Then he reached into the pocket of his overalls and withdrew a stub of pencil and put the tip in his mouth. "Now, before we start off," he said to the group, "I want you to know is there anybody here that's got a question or anything to ask?" He looked over the crowd of silent faces. "Anybody don't know who I am? No?" Then came another wind, mountain-scattered and fast: it billowed dresses, set damp hair moving; it pushed over pewter vases, and smashed dead roses and hydrangeas to swirling dust against the gritty tombstones. Its clean rain smell was gone now, though, for it had passed over the fields with the odors of rotting life. Kroner made a check mark in the notebook, "Anderson," he shouted. "Edward L." A man in overalls like Kroner's stepped forward. "Andy, you covered Skagit valley, Snohomish and King counties, as well as Seattle and the rest?" "Yes, sir." "What you got to report?" "They're all dead," Anderson said. "You looked everywhere? You was real careful?" "Yes, sir. Ain't nobody alive in the whole state." Kroner nodded and made another check mark. "That's all, Andy. Next: Avakian, Katina." A woman in a wool skirt and gray blouse walked up from the back, waving her arms. She started to speak. Kroner tapped his stick. "Listen here for a second, folks," he said. "For those that don't know how to talk English, you know what this is all about-so when I ask my question, you nod up-and-down for yes (like this) and sideways (like this) for no. Makes it a lot easier for those of us as don't remember too good. All right?" There were murmurings and whispered consultations and for a little while the yard was full of noise. The woman called Avakian kept nodding. "Fine," Kroner said. "Now, Miss Avakian. You covered what? Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria. Did you-find-an-ybody a-live?" The woman stopped nodding. "No," she said. "No, no." Kroner checked the name. "Let's see here, Boleslavsky, Peter. You can go on back now, Miss Avakian." A man in bright city clothes walked briskly to the tree clearing. "Yes, sir," he said. "What have you got for us?" The man shrugged. "Well, I tell you; I went over New York with a fine-tooth comb. Then I hit Brooklyn and Jersey. Nothin', man. Nothin' nowhere." "He is right," a dark-faced woman said in a tremulous voice. "I was there too. Only the dead in the streets, all over, all over the city; in the cars I looked even, in the offices. Everywhere is people dead." "Chavez, Pietro. Baja California." "All dead, senor chief," "Ciodo, Ruggiero. Capri." The man from Capri shook his head violently. "Denman, Charlotte. Southern United States." "Dead as doornails…" "Elgar, Davis S…" "Ferrazio, Ignatz…" "Goldfarb, Bernard…" "Halpern…" "Ives… Kranek… O'Brian…" The names exploded in the pale evening air like deep gunshots; there was much head-shaking, many people saying, "No. No." At last Kroner stopped marking. He closed the notebook and spread his big workman's hands. He saw the round eyes, the trembling mouths, the young faces; he saw all the frightened people. A girl began to cry. She sank to the damp ground, and covered her face and made these crying sounds. An elderly man put his hand on her head, The elderly man looked sad. But not afraid. Only the young ones seemed afraid, "Settle down now," Kroner said firmly. "Settle on down. Now, listen to me, I'm going to ask you all the same question one more time, because we got to be sure." He waited for them to grow quiet. "All right. This here is all of us, everyone. Ve've covered all the spots. Did anybody here find one single solitary sign of life?" The people were silent. The wind had died again, so there was no sound at all. Across the corroded wire fence the gray meadows lay strewn with the carcasses of cows and horses and, in one of the fields, sheep. No flies buzzed near the dead animals; there were no maggots burrowing. No vultures; the sky was clean of birds. And in all the untended rolling hills of grass and weeds which had once sung and pulsed with a million voices, in all the land there was only this immense stillness now, still as years, still as the unheard motion of the stars. Kroner watched the people. The young woman in the gay print dress; the tall African with his bright paint and cultivated scars; the fierce-looking Swede looking not so fierce now in this graying twilight. He watched all the tall and short and old and young people from all over the world, pressed together now, a vast silent polyglot in this country meeting place, this always lonely and long-deserted spot-deserted even before the gas bombs and the disease and the flying pestilences that had covered the earth in three days and three nights. Deserted. Forgotten. "Talk to us, Jim," the woman who had handed him the notebook said. She was new, Kroner put the list inside his big overalls pocket. "Tell us," someone else said. "How shall we be nourished? What will we do?" "The world's all dead," a child moaned. "Dead as dead, the whole world…" . "Todo el mund-" "Monsieur Kroner, Monsieur Kroner, what will we do?" Kroner smiled, "Do?" He looked up through the still-hanging poison cloud, the dun blanket, up to where the moon was now risen in full coldness. His voice was steady, but it lacked life. "What some of us have done before," he said. "We'll go back and wait. It ain't the first time. It ain't the last." A little fat bald man with old eyes sighed and began to waver in the October dusk. The outline of his form wavered and disappeared in the shadows under the trees where the moonlight did not reach. Others followed him as Kroner talked. "Same thing we'll do again and likely keep on doing. We'll go back and-sleep. And we'll wait. Then it'll start all over again and folks'll build their cities-new folks with new blood-and then we'll wake up. Maybe a long time yet. But it ain't so bad; it's quiet, and time passes." He lifted a small girl of fifteen or sixteen with pale cheeks and red lips. "Come on, now! Why, just think of the appetite you'll have all built up!" The girl smiled. Kroner faced the crowd and waved his hands, large hands, rough from the stone of midnight pyramids and the feel of muskets, boil-speckled from night hours in packing plants and trucking lines; broken by the impact of a tomahawk and machine-gun bullet; but white where the dirt was not caked, and bloodless. Old hands, old beyond years. As he waved, the wind came limping back from the mountains. It blew the heavy iron bell high in the steepled white barn, and set the signboards creaking, and lifted ancient dusts and hissed again through the dead trees. Kroner watched the air turn black. He listened to it fill with the flappings and the flutterings and the squeakings. He waited; then he stopped waving and sighed and began to walk. He walked to a place of vines and heavy brush. Here he paused for a moment and looked out at the silent place of high dark grass, of hidden huddled tombs, of scrolls and stone-frozen children stained silver in the night's wet darkness; at the crosses he did not look. The people were gone, the place was empty. Kroner kicked away the foliage. Then he got into the coffin and closed the lid. Soon he was asleep.