“What’s the matter with it?”
“Hell, it’s a very nice bit. But we don’t publish fiction. You should have checked it out better, Marty, like you usually do. The examiner says those kids have been in the bottom of that canal for maybe eight months. I had Sam check her out through the clinic. She was damn near terminal eight months ago. What probably happened, the boy went to see her and found her so bad off he got scared and decided to rush her to Miami. She was still in her pajamas, with a sweater over them. That way it’s a human-interest bit. I had Helen do it. It’s page one this afternoon, boxed.”
I took my worthless story, tore it in half and dropped it into the wastebasket. Sergeant Lazeer’s bad guess about the identity of his moonlight road runner had made me look like an incompetent jackass. I vowed to check all facts, get all names right, and never again indulge in glowing, strawberry-flake prose.
Three weeks later I got a phone call from Sergeant Lazeer.
He said, “I guess you figured out we got some boy coming in from out of county to fun us these moonlight nights.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I’m right sorry about you wasting that time and effort when we were thinking we were after Joe Lee Cuddard. We’re having some bright moonlight about now, and it’ll run full tomorrow night. You want to come over, we can show you some fun, because I got a plan that’s dead sure. We tried it last night, but there was just one flaw, and he got away through a road we didn’t know about. Tomorrow he won’t get that chance to melt away.”
I remembered the snarl of that engine, the glimpse of a dark shape, the great wind of passage. Suddenly the backs of my hands prickled. I remembered the emptiness of that stretch of road when we searched it. Could there have been that much pride and passion, labor and love and hope, that Clarissa May and Joe Lee could forever ride the night roads of their home county, balling through the silver moonlight? And what curious message had assembled all those kids from six counties so quickly?
“You there? You still there?”
“Sorry, I was trying to remember my schedule. I don’t think I can make it.”
“Well, we’ll get him for sure this time.”
“Best of luck, Sergeant.”
“Six cars this time. Barricades. And a spotter plane. He hasn’t got a chance if he comes into the net.”
I guess I should have gone. Maybe hearing it again, glimpsing the dark shape, feeling the stir of the night wind, would have convinced me of its reality. They didn’t get him, of course. But they came so close, so very close. But they left just enough room between a heavy barricade and a live-oak tree, an almost impossibly narrow place to slam through. But thread it he did, and rocketback onto the hard-top and plunge off, leaving the fading, dying contralto drone.
Sergeant Lazeer is grimly readying next month’s trap. He says it is the final one. Thus far, all he has captured are the two little marks, a streak of paint on the rough edge of a timber sawhorse, another nudge of paint on the trunk of the oak. Strawberry red. Flecked with gold.
“Are you a moralist?”
In the same Show magazine interview quoted earlier (and well worth reading in its entirety if you can get hold of a back issue), Ray Bradbury answered this question with:
“I think I am, above everything, for the question of morality arises again and again with each machine that we create. . . . While machines are amoral, sometimes the very manner of their construction, and the power locked into their frame, inspires man to lunacy, idiocy, or evil. Some of the greatest liberals of our time are illiberal and demonic in a car. Some of the greatest conservatives become radical destructionists when they step on the starter and rampage off after murder. I once asked a class in design at the Art Center in Los Angeles to design a car that would cause men not to prove their masculinity every time they slung themselves into the bucket seat. ...”
I thought—indeed, I knew—no one could write another freeway satire I would want to read, let alone reread, or reprint. One of the differences may be that the author had not read any of the others: or so at least, his brief biographical note suggests. A professional musician, James Houston has been writing for eight years, publishing stories and poems in literary magazines and men’s magazines in this country and in England. An essay on California appeared in a recent issue of Holiday; his first book, The Sport of Hawaiian Kings, a history of surf-riding in the Pacific, was published this year by Tuttle.
GAS MASK
James D. Houston
Charlie Bates didn’t mind the freeways much. As he often told his wife when he arrived home from work, he could take them or leave them alone. He listed freeways among those curious obstacle-conveniences with which the world seemed so unavoidably cluttered. Charlie was neither surprised nor dismayed, then, when one summer afternoon about five-thirty the eight lanes of traffic around him slowed to a creep and finally to a standstill.
He grew uneasy only when movement resumed half an hour later. His engine was off; the car was in gear; yet it moved forward slowly, as if another car were pushing. Charlie turned around, but the driver behind was turned, too, and the driver beyond him. All the drivers in all the lanes were turned to see who was pushing. Charlie heard his license plate crinkle. He opened his door and stood on the sill.
He was on a high, curving overpass that looked down on a lower overpass and farther down onto a 12-lane straightaway leading to the city’s center. As far as Charlie could see in any direction cars were jammed end to end, lane to lane, and nothing moved. The pushing had stopped. Evidently there was nowhere else to push.
He looked into the cars near him. The drivers leaned a little with the curve’s sloping bank. Nobody seemed disturbed. They waited quietly. All the engines were off now. Below him the lower levels waited, too—thousands of cars and not a sound, no horns, no one yelling. At first the silence bothered Charlie, frightened him. He decided, however, that it really was the only civilized way to behave. “No use getting worked up,” he thought. He climbed back in and closed the door as softly as he could.
As Charlie got used to the silence, he found it actually restful. Another hour passed. Then a helicopter flew over, and a loudspeaker announced, “May I have your attention, please. You are part of a citywide traffic deadlock. It will take at least 24 hours to clear. You have the choice of remaining overnight or leaving your car on the freeway. The city will provide police protection through the crisis.”
The ‘copter boomed its message about every 50 yards. A heavy murmur followed it down the freeway. The driver next to Charlie leaned out his window.
“Are they nuts?”
Charlie looked at him.
“They must be nuts. Twenty-four hours to clear a goddamn traffic jam.”
Charlie shook his head, sharing the man’s bafflement.
“Probably a pile-up further down,” the man said. “I’ve seen ‘em before. Never takes over an hour or two. I don’t know about you, but I’m stickin’ it out. If they think I’m gonna leave my goddamn Valiant out here on the freeway, they’re all wet.”
His name was Arvin Bainbridge. While two more hours passed, he and Charlie chatted about traffic and the world. It was getting dark when Charlie decided he at least ought to phone his wife. Arvin thought the jam would break any minute, so Charlie waited a while longer. Nothing happened.
Finally Charlie climbed out, intending to find a phone booth. He realized, however, that in order to reach the ground he’d have to hike a couple of miles to an exit. Luckily Arvin had a tow rope in a trunk. Charlie tied it to the railing, waved his thanks, swung over the side and hand-over-handed to the second level. From there he slid out onto a high tree limb and shinnied to the ground.