Keith Laumer - Trip To the City.pdf

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A TRIP TO THE CITY
1
“She’ll be pulling out in a minute, Brett,” Mr. Phillips said. He tucked his
railroader’s watch back in his vest pocket. “You better get aboard-if you’re
still set on going.”
“It was reading all them books done it,” Aunt Haicey said. “Thick books,
and no pictures in them. I knew it’d make trouble.” She plucked at the
faded hand-crocheted shawl over her thin shoulders, a tiny birdlike woman
with bright anxious eyes.
“Don’t worry about me,” Brett said. “I’ll be back.”
“The place’ll be yours when I’m gone,” Aunt Haicey said. “Lord knows it
won’t be long.”
“Why don’t you change your mind and stay on, boy?” Mr. Phillips said,
blinking up at the young man. “If I talk to Mr. J.D., I think he can find a job
for you at the plant.”
“So many young people leave Casperton,” Aunt Haicey said. “They never
come back.”
Mr. Phillips clicked his teeth. “They write, at first,” he said. “Then they
gradually lose touch.”
“All your people are here, Brett,” Aunt Haicey said. “Haven’t you been happy
here?”
“Why can’t you young folks be content with Cas-perton?” Mr. Phillips said.
“There’s everything you need here.”
“It’s that Pretty-Lee done it,” Aunt Haicey said. “If it wasn’t for that girl-”
A clatter ran down the line of cars. Brett kissed Aunt Haicey’s dry cheek,
shook Mr. Phillips’s hand, and swung aboard. His suitcase was on one of
the seats. He put it up above in the rack and sat down, then turned to
wave back at the two old people.
It was a summer morning. Brett leaned back and watched the country slide
by. It was nice country, Brett thought, mostly in corn, some cattle, and
away in the distance the hazy blue hills. Now he would see what was on
the other side of them: the cities, the mountains, and the ocean: strange
things. Up until now all he knew about anything outside of Cas-perton was
what he’d read or seen pictures of. As far as he was concerned, chopping
wood and milking cows back in Casperton, they might as well not have
existed. They were just words and pictures printed on paper. But he didn’t
want to just read about them. He wanted to see for himself.
Pretty-Lee hadn’t come to see him off. She was probably still mad about
yesterday. She had been sitting at the counter at the Club Rexall, drinking
a soda and reading a movie magazine with a big pic-ture of an impossibly
pretty face on the cover-the kind you never see just walking down the
street. He had taken the next stool and ordered a Coke.
 
“Why don’t you read something good, instead of that pap?” he asked her.
“Something good? You mean something dry, I guess. And don’t call it . . .
that word. It doesn’t sound polite.”
“What does it say? That somebody named Doll Starr is fed up with glamor
and longs for a simple home in the country and lots of kids? Then why
doesn’t she move to Casperton?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Pretty-Lee.
He took the magazine, leafed through it. “Look at this: all about people
who give parties that cost thousands of dollars, and fly all over the world
having affairs with each other and committing suicide and get-ting divorced.
It’s like reading about Martians.”
“I just like to read about the stars. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Reading all that junk just makes you dissatisfied. You want to do your hair
up crazy like the pictures in the magazines and wear weird-looking clothes-”
Pretty-Lee bent her straw double. She stood up and took her shopping bag.
“I’m glad to know you think my clothes are weird-”
“You’re taking everything I say personally,” Brett objected. “Look.” He
showed her a full-color advertisement on the back cover of the magazine.
“Look at this. Here’s a man supposed to be cooking steaks on some kind of
back-yard grill. He looks like a movie star; he’s dressed up like he was
going to get married; there’s not a wrinkle anywhere. There’s not a spot on
that apron. There isn’t even a grease spot on the frying pan. The lawn is as
smooth as a billiard table. There’s his son; he looks just like his pop,
except that he’s not grey at the temples. Did you ever really see a man
that handsome, or hair that was just silver over the ears and the rest
glossy black? The daughter looks like a movie starlet, and her mom is
exactly the same, except that she has that grey streak in front to match
her husband. You can see the car in the drive; the treads of the tires must
have just been scrubbed; they’re not even dusty. There’s not a pebble out
of place. All the flowers are in full bloom; no dead ones. No leaves on the
lawn; no dry twigs showing on the tree. That other house in the background
looks like a palace, and the man with the rake, looking over the fence: he
looks like this one’s twin brother, and he’s out raking leaves in brand-new
clothes-”
Pretty-Lee grabbed her magazine. “You just seem to hate everything that’s
nicer than this messy town-”
“I don’t think it’s nicer. I like you; your hair isn’t always perfectly smooth,
and you’ve got a mended place on your dress, and you feel human, you
smell human-”
“Oh!” Pretty-Lee turned and flounced out of the drug store.
Brett shifted in the dusty plush seat and looked around. There were a few
other people in the car. An old man was reading a newspaper; two old
ladies whispered together. There was a woman of about thirty with a
 
mean-looking kid; and some others. They didn’t look like magazine
pictures, any of them. He tried to picture them doing the things you read in
newspapers: the old ladies putting poison in somebody’s tea; the old man
giving orders to start a war. He thought about babies in houses in cities,
and airplanes flying over, and bombs falling down: huge explosive bombs.
Blam! Buildings fall in, pieces of glass and stone fly through the air. The
babies are blown up along with everything else-
But the kind of people he knew couldn’t do any-thing like that. They liked
to loaf and eat and talk and drink beer and buy a new tractor or refrigerator
and go fishing. And if they ever got mad and hit -somebody-afterwards they
were embarrassed and wanted to shake hands. . . .
The train slowed, came to a shuddery stop. Through the window he saw a
cardboardy-looking building with the words baxter’s junction painted across
it. There were a few faded posters on a bulle-tin board. An old man was
sitting on a bench, wait-ing. The two old ladies got off and a boy in blue
jeans got on. The train started up. Brett folded his jacket and tucked it
under his head and tried to doze off. . . .
Brett awoke, yawned, sat up. The train was slow-ing. He remembered you
couldn’t use the toilets while the train was stopped. He got up and went to
the end of the car. The door was jammed. He got it open and went inside
and closed the door behind him. The train was going slower, clack clack . . .
clack-clack . . . clack; clack . . . cuh-lack . . .
He washed his hands, then pulled on the door. It was stuck. He pulled
harder. The handle was too small; it was hard to get hold of. The train
came to a halt. Brett braced himself and strained against the door. It didn’t
budge.
He looked out the grimy window. The sun was getting lower. It was about
three-thirty, he guessed. He couldn’t see anything but some dry-looking
fields.
Outside in the corridor there were footsteps. He started to call, but then
didn’t. It would be too embar-rassing, pounding on the door and yelling,
“Let me out! I’m stuck in the toilet. . . .”
He tried to rattle the door. It didn’t rattle. Some-body was dragging
something heavy past the door. Mail bags, maybe. He’d better yell. But
dammit, the door couldn’t be all that hard to open. He studied the latch. All
he had to do was turn it. He got a good grip and twisted. Nothing.
He heard the mail bag bump-bump, and then another one. To heck with it;
he’d yell. He’d wait until he heard the footsteps outside the door again and
then he’d make some noise.
Brett waited. It was quiet now. He rapped on the door anyway. No answer.
Maybe there was nobody left in the car. In a minute the train would start
up and he’d be stuck here until the next stop. He banged on the door. “Hey!
The door is stuck!”
It sounded foolish. He listened. It was very quiet. He pounded again. Still
just silence. The car creaked once. He put his ear to the door. He couldn’t
 
hear anything. He turned back to the window. There was no one in sight.
He put his cheek flat against it, looked along the car. All he saw was the
dry fields.
He turned around and gave the door a good kick. If he damaged it, that
was too bad; the railroad shouldn’t have defective locks on the doors. If
they tried to make him pay for it, he’d tell them they were lucky he didn’t
sue the railroad. . . .
He braced himself against the opposite wall, drew his foot back, and kicked
hard at the lock. Something broke. He pulled the door open.
He was looking out the open door and through the window beyond. There
was no platform, just the same dry fields he could see on the other side.
He came out and went along to his seat. The car was empty now.
He looked out the window. Why had the train stopped here? Maybe there
was some kind of trouble with the engine. It had been sitting here for ten
minutes or so now. Brett got up and went along to the door, stepped down
onto the iron step. Leaning out, he could see the train stretching along
ahead, one car, two cars-
There was no engine.
Maybe he was turned around. He looked the other way. There were three
cars. No engine there either. He must be on some kind of siding. . . .
Brett stepped back inside, and pushed through into the next car. It was
empty. He walked along the length of it, into the next car. It was empty
too. He went back through the two cars and his own car and on, all the way
to the end of the train. All the cars were empty. He stood on the platform
at the end of the last car, and looked back along the rails. They ran straight
through the dry fields, right to the horizon. He stepped down to the ground,
went along the cindery bed to the front of the train, step-ping on the ends
of the wooden ties. The coupling stood open. The tall, dusty coach stood
silently on its iron wheels, waiting. Ahead the tracks went on-
And stopped.
2
Maybe all train trips were like this, Brett thought. After all, this was his
first. If he’d been asleep, say, he’d never have noticed the train stopping
and all the rest of it. Probably his best bet was to get back aboard and
wait. Yet he didn’t. He started walking.
He walked along the ties, following the iron rails, shiny on top, and brown
with rust on the sides. A hundred feet from the train they ended. The
cinders went on another ten feet and petered out. Beyond, the fields closed
in. Brett looked up at the sun. It was lower now in the west, its light
getting yellow and late-afternoonish. He turned and looked back at the
train. The cars stood high and prim, empty, silent. Then he thought of his
suitcase, still in the rack, and his new jacket on the seat. He walked back,
climbed in, got his bag down from the rack, pulled on his jacket. He jumped
down to the cin-ders, followed them to where they ended. He hesi-tated a
 
moment, then pushed between the knee-high stalks. Eastward across the
field he could see what looked like a smudge on the far horizon.
He walked until dark, then made himself a scratchy nest in the dead stalks
and went to sleep.
He slept for what seemed like a long time; then he woke, lay on his back,
looking up at pink dawn clouds. Around him, dry stalks rustled in a faint stir
of air. He felt crumbly earth under his fingers. He sat up, reached out and
broke off a stalk. It crumbled into fragile chips. He wondered what it was.
It wasn’t any crop he’d ever seen before.
He stood, looked around. The field went on and on, dead flat. A locust
came whirring toward him, plumped to earth at his feet. He picked it up.
Long, elbowed legs groped at his fingers aimlessly. He tossed the insect in
the air. It fluttered away. To the east the smudge was clearer now; it
seemed to be a grey wall, far away. The city? He picked up his bag and
started on.
He was getting hungry. He hadn’t eaten since the previous morning. He was
thirsty too. The city couldn’t be more than three hours’ walk. He tramped
along, the dry plants crackling under his feet, little puffs of dust rising from
the dry ground. He thought about the rails, running across the empty fields,
end-ing . . .
He tried to remember just when the strangeness had begun: he had heard
the locomotive groaning up ahead as the train slowed. And there had been
feet in the corridor. Where had they gone?
He thought of the train, Casperton, Aunt Haicey, Mr. Phillips. They seemed
very far away, something remembered from long ago. Up above the sun was
hot. That was real. The other things, from the past, seemed unimportant.
Ahead there was a city. He would walk until he came to it. He tried to think
of other things: television, crowds of people, money; the tattered paper
and worn silver-
Only the sun and the dusty plain and the dead plants were real now. He
could see them, feel them. And the suitcase. It was heavy; he shifted
hands, kept going.
There was something white on the ground ahead, a small shiny surface
protruding from the earth. Brett put the suitcase down, went down on one
knee, dug into the dry soil, and pulled out a china teacup, the handle
missing. Caked dirt crumbled away under his thumb, leaving the surface
clean. He looked at the bottom of the cup. It was unmarked. Why just one
teacup, he wondered, here in the mid-dle of nowhere? He dropped it, took
up his suitcase, and went on.
After that he watched the ground more closely. He found a shoe; it was
badly weathered, but the sole was good. It was a high-topped work shoe,
size 10½C. Who had dropped it here? He thought of other lone shoes he
had seen, lying at the roadside or in alleys. How did they get there . . . ?
Half an hour later he detoured around a rusted front fender from an
old-fashioned car. He looked around for the rest of the car but saw nothing.
 
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