Some kids in a pickup truck yelled at me as they went by, and I followed them for a while until I got tired of it. Then I swung around to follow the circling red flasher of an ambulance as it roared through the night. I figured it would be an accident and I was right. A couple of hot rodders piled into each other on a turn. The one kid was screaming when they lifted him out, and I watched it for a long time through my windshield.
Pretty soon I was heading back toward the expressway, hungry for another taste of the speed. A few big drops of rain glanced off the glass in front of me, and I rolled up the windows as the full fury of a brief downpour hit the road ahead. It was good, and I liked driving in the rain. I remembered the first car I’d ever owned — a supercharged French job with an eight cylinder engine. My father had bought it for my eighteenth birthday, back when the family had money, and it had rained the first day I drove it. They’d taken St away from me soon after that, because of the accident and my father’s death, but I always had the memory of that first drive in the rain.
Now my tastes ran to American cars, because the foreign ones were too distinctive. Someone might remember, reports might be compared. I was very, very careful — always.
Two girls loomed up in my headlights as the rain abated. They had a flat tire and they huddled under a single black raincoat while they debated what to do. I sped past them, then cut back to the exit lane and left the expressway at the next feeder. It took me only a few minutes to double back and get on again where I had before. This time I turned off my headlights.
The rain had stopped and they were trying to do something with the tire. I could see them clearly in the reflected glow from the distant lights, but they didn’t see me. The car hummed along like a silent bat swooping through the night. I pushed it to the speed limit and held it there — no faster, because they might be able to tell later. No faster... careful...
The girl in the raincoat glanced up at the last instant, her dim face a mixture of surprise and then terror. As I felt the car crunch against them, I slammed on the brakes and switched on my headlights. It would look good, even if they searched for skid marks on the wet pavement. It would look fine.
I got out then and looked at them. It was the first time I’d ever tried two at once.
The police came finally, with their spotlights cutting little arcs in the night. There was no need for the ambulance that came along too. “God, officer, I never saw them. Not till it was too late. That black raincoat, and they didn’t have any lights...”
“It wasn’t your fault, buddy. It was just one of those things.”
I turned away, covering my face, feeling the exhilaration flood through my veins. All right, all right for now. In a few months, in another state, with a different name and a different car, I’d be ready again.
That’s what life is all about...
Druid Doom
by Richard S. Ullery
I met Richard S. Ullery, Dean of Administration and Director of the Summer Division at American International College, in Springfield, Mass., when I spoke there this July at SM author Wenzell Brown’s course. I think you will agree with me that Dean Ullery’s story of the Druid Talgarth is the story of many men who, over the centuries, have misused such authority...
H.S.S.
The island crouches off the northwest coast of Wales. Flat sands edge into the Irish Sea, dotted with beach-houses and amusement places. Steamships, coal barges and sometimes yachts slide through bays and straits.
Twenty centuries ago the island was known as Mona. What is beach today was then swamp, where lived snakes, scorpions, birds and the fish on which they fed. Inland, wolves and wild boars ranged the forest where are small busy towns today. Ships were seldom seen. Occasionally a Phoenecian trading vessel, a Scandinavian galley or a Roman trireme passed the island headed for more important places.
Cedmon pushed through the brush hedging the forest and limped onto flat pasture-land. Beyond him lay the village, where torch-flares were wavering red streaks against the black of night. He forced himself into a stumbling run.
A sharp command cut through the darkness. “Stop there!”
Into the circle of light cast by the nearest torch strode a man. Beads glittered at the collar of his sleeveless cloak and the knife he gripped was ready.
“Hail, Artog. It is Cedmon.”
Artog took a step closer and peered into the other’s face. He thrust his knife into his belt.
“We had thought you dead.”
“I have been near death,” Cedmon answered. He hobbled forward into the full light of the torch.
“You are lame! And your face is scarred from cheek to chin!” Artog exclaimed.
“What has happened to you?”
“It is a long tale. I must go to my house to eat and rest. Is Dara well?”
“Cedmon, your wife is dead,” Artog said softly.
Cedmon cried out and clutched Artog’s arm. “Dead? When? How?”
“Food is on the fire at my house,” Artog said. “Come. Lanilar will give you something to eat, and I will tell you what happened.”
In the middle of Artog’s one-room homestead a fire of thorns and bark blazed and hissed. Cedmon lay on the hide-covered bed that extended along the wall, his ragged cloak tossed aside. The children of Artog and Lanilar slept, under a cover of skins, at the far end of the bed.
“Drink this,” Lanilar said. She handed him a wooden bowl brimming with broth and chunks of meat, her long skirt swirling as she turned, its beaded fringe gleaming many colors in the firelight.
Cedmon put the bowl to his lips and drank deep of the broth.
“Ah!” he sighed. “There is warmth and strength in that. It is long since I—” He set down the bowl. “What of Dara?”
“She was bitten by a swamp adder,” Artog said. “During spring sowing, soon after you left.”
“She was in the swamp?” Cedmon asked, surprised.
“That is the strange thing,” Lanilar said. “She was in the pasture-land, had lain down to rest and fallen asleep.”
“She did not die at once,” Artog said. “Your half-brother Talgarth was there — he who is studying to become a Druid priest. He took her to your house and cared for her. The snake had not bitten deep and it seemed that she might live. But she became worse, even with Talgarth’s medicine, and next morning she had died.”
Cedmon groaned. “If I had been here—” he began.
“Talgarth never left her side,” Artog broke in. “And as an apprentice Druid he knows more of medicine than a hunter like you.”
“But why were you not here?” Lanilar asked. “The moon has been full several times since you left — where have you been?”
“When I left on my hunting trip I went deep into the forest,” Cedmon answered. “I climbed a high ridge. From the upper end a wild boar charged down. Not at me, but at a man beyond me facing the other way. I shouted and as the boar rushed by me I threw my long spear into its side, and it turned on me. My face was gored, as you can see. I fell backward into the gulley below the ridge. My leg crumpled and I could not rise. The man whom I had saved and some others came down to help me.”
“Who were they?” Artog asked.
“They had come from the sea,” Cedmon replied. “They wore shiny hats with wings. They spoke a different tongue. I asked them to take me to our village, but they did not understand. They were kind because I may have saved the life of one of them. They made a sort of bed from branches and carried me away.”