Jerome Bixby

“ Ben said.
"And when my time comes, I'll be up and out o' this chair. Man oughta fall and make a noise when he dies."
"Sure, Jim," Ben said. "But that's a long ways off, ain't it?"
Jim closed his eyes, and his face looked like a skull. "You squirts always think a man lives forever."
From outside came the late morning sounds: the murmuring of Smoky Creek at the edge of town, under its cool tunnel of willows; the twittering of a flock of robins circling above; the constant soft rustle of the trees that crowded the green hills around. ”

“ We made our families, and watched 'em fit into the town and the valley, like the valley fits into the world, and we watched 'em go on doing what we done before them: building and working and planting and raising families—going on, like people got to go on. That's the way it was. That's what we had. Until they dropped the bomb and killed it—killed all we done that made us men." Tears were squeezing out of the skull sockets, and Ben Bates caught Tom Pace's eye and looked away, out the window, at the green walls of the valley that was a coffin. ”

“ Fat Sam Hogan said, "I don't figure there's anything in the world a man can't sit down and talk out, instead o' reaching for a gun. Don't know why that oughtn'ta hold for countries."
Ben Bates looked at one of the two cards Tom Pace had dealt—his hole card. It was a four, and he lost interest. "Yup," he said, "it holds all right ... they'll just both reach half the time anyway. One war on top of another. Even one right after this one, ten years or so, if this one's over. I just bet. Every country wants a piece out o' the next one's hide—or his poke—and they won't give an inch except in talk ”

“ Tom said, and he picked up the cards and started shuffling them in his stiff hands.
Ben sat down and stretched out his legs again.
After a second, old Jim said wistfully, "You know, I wish I could still handle a rifle, Ben. Or do anything but sit. No way for a man to live, to have dead legs and dying arms." He shifted in his cushions. "You know, I reckon when I start to really die—die all over—I'm gonna get up out o' this chair. I'll stand up, somehow, even if it kills me faster. A man oughta fall when he dies, like a tree, so they know he stood up in his time. ”

“ People fighting each other over God knows what—if even He knows. Here, it's peaceful."
She moved her head on his shoulder. "Ben—will it ever come here, what's going on outside? Even the war, if it's still going on?"
"Well, we were talking about that this morning down at the hall, Suse. I guess it won't. If rifles can stop it, it won't. If they see us from the air, we'll shoot at 'em; and if we get 'em we'll clean up the mess so if anybody comes looking for a missing plane, they won't give Smoky Creek a second look. That's the only way anything can come, honey—if they see us from the air. ”

“ The summer sun stood at noon, and the porch was in shadow; beyond, the street was a jumble of boards and broken glass, its canyon walls of leaning building-fronts and sagging porches, its caverns of empty windows and doorways shimmering in the heat. ”

“ He called me Tom Peach. I bought him a toy plane for his birthday. That was a couple days before the real planes come. I buried it with him ... I think. I think it was him I put it with. It mighta been Joey ... they looked alike."
"A man ain't nothing, when he's as old as us," Jim Liddel said, his skull sockets closed, "except what he done. He ain't much any more, himself; he's mostly what he done with his life, whatever he done and left around that he can point to and say, 'I did that', that's all. And what's he got left if they take that away? We can't make it again. We made Smoky Creek ”

“ Then somebody wants something somebody else has, and they're at it again, like two bulls trying to hump the same heifer. Bulls don't have enough sense to know there's enough cows to go around; but people ought. It's a big enough world." He worked those hands of his together until they were clasped, and he pushed them that way against the table-edge until the overgrown knuckles looked like chalk. "When I think o' that noise, and that cloud, ... how we come running and screaming back here into all the dust and mess, and all them bodies ... I ... Ben, I...."
"You lost heavy, Jim," Ben said. ”

“ There wasn't much heat from the bomb and there was hardly any residual radiation. But everybody in town died. Concussion. Smoky Creek had been comprised of one main street and three cross streets, and that's not much area—the wave had thumped down from right above, like a giant fist.
Everybody died, except twenty-one old men and women who had been off in the woods at the far end of the valley, on their annual Grandfolk's Picnic. They didn't die, except inside.
Three months later, an enemy jet came out of the sky and over the valley. ”

“ What we want is going to last us—and what we don't want will come too late to hurt us. Nothing's going to hurt our peace. I know that somehow. We got it, and it'll be like this for as long as we're here to enjoy it ... ”

“ After the men had finished propping, the women had come along with all the furniture and things they'd salvaged, and they swept and scrubbed and did a hundred jobs the men never would have thought of; and so the old people ended up with half a dozen buildings to live in, secretly and comfortably, in the town that had to look dead. ”

“ Will they let him come home soon, Ben?"
"They will, Anna. I think they will, real soon. Maybe tomorrow."
"Will they?"
"Sure."
Keith Kincaid was under one of those fist-sized rocks, out in the cemetery that wasn't a cemetery—next to his wife, June Hogan, and their four kids. But Anna Kincaid didn't know that. Since the bomb, Anna hadn't known much of anything except what the old people told her, and they told her only things that would make her as happy as she could be: that Keith was in the Army, and June was off with the kids having a nice time in Knoxville ”

“ Every rifle was taken care of that way. Right now Tom Pace and Dan Paray were hurrying around gathering rifles to clean them, load them. No rifle must miss fire, or throw a bullet an inch off aim—because that might be the rifle whose aim was right. ”

“ Not if they can't get what they want by talk." He looked at the card again, just in case—a four, sure enough. "Only time there's never a war is when everybody has what they want, or figure they can get it without killing somebody. ”

“ Windy Harris said. He and Fat Sam Hogan had stopped playing checkers, and had been listening. "Smoky Creek looks dead as Sodom. Buildings all down, and stuff knee-deep in the streets. Bridge down, and the road out. And the valley is way the hell out o' the way ... no call for them to suspect it more'n anyplace else. Less, even. They'd likely figure somebody took a potshot from a hill ... and there's a pack o' hills between here'n outside.
"Looks like," Ben said. "We just got to keep it that way. We got a good plan: if the plane's up high, we just freeze under cover ”