The five children slept soundly on their hard pallets at night. They were exhausted.
Miss Palmer slept well for she was pleased with the progress that her charges were making.
They obeyed her now, they were learning what she was teaching them, all was right with her world.
But she did not listen, she did not hear.
She did not know that within these children was the silent sound of screams.
The lessons continued until time was forgotten... lessons in everything. At bath time, they took turns — the two girls in the bathroom, then the three boys, with Miss Palmer sitting rigidly at her desk, one hand on her whip, the other on her pistol. After a thorough inspection of ears and necks, they were chained back in their places.
They were watched as they ate, and reminded that little ladies and gentlemen did not eat with their hands and that they used napkins (linen, not paper), the small forks were for salad and the small knives for butter spreading.
They said please and thank you and may I be excused now, although there was no place for them to go. They learned how to extend an invitation, and to accept one, and to refuse one, all graciously, until finally a strange thing came to pass — they all began to look alike.
Not their features, but the fixed pleasant smiles on their faces, their eyes faintly glazed, the mouths slightly curved upward, the skin shining with cleanliness. Their words were mainly, “Yes, Miss Palmer,” and, “No, Miss Palmer,” and no longer did they interrupt to express their own opinions. They echoed her, and she was mightily pleased.
Thank God, she said to herself, my life has not been lived in vain.
So the school term, for Miss Palmer and her pupils, drew to an end.
“Now at last,” she told them one morning, beaming, “you are little ladies and gentlemen, and this is your graduating day. You have overcome, with my help the obstacles of your disadvantaged home lives and the unfortunate ministrations of the present school system and have become what you should have been in the first place — educated, cultured and well mannered young citizens.
“So,” still beaming, “be prepared to leave. And as I relieve you of the chains of ignorance which are no longer necessary, I will ask the little gentlemen to bow from the waist, as they have been taught, and the little ladies to curtsy, in farewell and gratitude to their Miss Palmer.”
She went to them, a happy woman at last, and unfastened their chains and stood back waiting for their obeisance.
When they fell upon her, there was no one to hear the sounds of her screams.
The Only Road to Glory
by C. G. Cobb
Glory was dead — a near-ghost town with only six remaining inhabitants. But the old mining town held a rich and deadly secret — and the man who came over the hill knew it had to be there.
Rudell Foster was knocking the ashes out of his pipe when the first car of the day appeared over the top of the low hill to the east of Glory. He shaded his eyes against the early sun, squinted, and managed to make out a four-door sedan, gray, looking new, probably a Chevy. It parked in the visitors’ lot and let out a stocky man who moved, with a curious rolling gait, like a sailor, over to one of the dispensers.
The dispensers were marked FREE — TAKE ONE, and were kept filled daily by Ranger Warren. They held maps of Glory and historical facts about the old mining town. The man took one, opened it, studied it, looked around, then used his odd walk to come rolling down the path and into the town. In a moment, the man was lost from sight amid the ancient empty buildings, so Rudell studied the gray sedan.
It was new, all right. One of those short Impalas. It probably smelled new on the inside, too. Sometime Rudell would have a car like that. Maybe better. As he watched, two other cars drove in. A middle-aged couple emerged from one, a youngish couple with two yelling kids got out of the other.
Rudell almost felt like locking the house and going up to work the claim, even though it was his self-appointed day off. Kids carried a racket around with them that was enough to drive a man out of his mind. But he stayed put, looking at the people who came to look at his town.
Over the years, Rudell had come to know the signs of the tourist strain. It marked those people who were on their way to someplace to look at something and then go away again. Aimlessly purposeful. Grimly enjoying the dictates of their free maps. Exactly the same, all of them.
Well, not quite. That fella with the funny walk, he was different. Oh, he used his map, all right, but in a different way. He’d started at one corner of the township and moved from house to house, from yard to yard. Never missed a window or a door. Looked over every fence he came to. Moved on to the end of a row, passed over to the next, started back down it.
Now he wasn’t going to someplace to look at something, he was going everywhere and looking at everything. Why, hell, he was looking for something. Trying to be casual about it. Taking his time and trying to act like a tourist and not fooling Rudell Foster one bit.
Here he came, passing Rudell’s house and yard and door-step. In his forties. Stocky, all right — downright wide, in fact. Five foot nine or ten, maybe a hundred eighty-ninety pounds. Wide, wide shoulders, thick neck, small head with black hair. Plain blue windbreaker over a T-shirt. Big hands. Hard face. Wide-spaced eyes so dark they looked black.
Rudell had been with the Third Division in Europe and had seen eyes like that before, staring out of men’s faces who’d been killing Germans entirely too long. Cold eyes, dead eyes, eyes looking constantly for targets. Rudell got a good look into those eyes because the man stopped and stared at him, a neutral expression on his face.
Rudell stared back, nodded, cleared his throat, got ready to be civil. Rudell Foster had been around better than fifty years, and he knew it was important to be civil with this kind of man.
“Morning,” said the man. He had a high-pitched voice which was faintly startling at first. Rudell remembered from listening to the radio that Rocky Marciano had had a voice like that.
Rudell gave the man good morning and asked if he were enjoying his visit.
“Yeah,” said the man. “You get many people through here this time of year?”
Rudell found something needing his attention in the bowl of his pipe and inspected it before answering slowly, “Fair amount.”
The man started to speak again, then changed his mind and went on his way without another word. Rudell watched his sailor’s walk, watched him check the next building, and the next, and the next. Watching, Rudell saw the man give only cursory attention to the stable and the old mortuary and the smithy. He paid his main notice to those buildings which had been living quarters.
Through most of the remainder of the morning, Rudell sat and smoked and watched that hardfaced stranger as he quartered the town and never missed a thing. Around noon, Rudell knocked out his pipe and walked over to Tod Spencer’s.
Back in the Thirties, after the gold market had gone to hell, the town of Glory gave its last convulsive kick and died for good and all. The big mill closed down, a fire destroyed half the dwellings and the entire red light district, a record snowfall buried the town that winter, and almost everyone packed up and left.