Brad and Harry were hunkered down against the wall, Hobe Traik, Stu Ganser and Arthur LeBlanc were tipped back in the three kitchen chairs from the card room and bunk room over the Fire House.
Harry’s argument with Brad Sedwell about the saucers being mass hypnosis had petered out, as arguments will, when dusk began to spread layers of stillness over the town.
Hobe took his pipe out of his mouth and spat toward the road. It was a very respectable effort, carrying across the sidewalk and curb out onto the pavement. He cleared his throat. “Now I’ve heard a lot of fool talk today about these here saucers. Might be I’m a little tired of it. Me, I’ve been a-waitin’ on them for just about forty years. Ever since Woolmutt left town. You remember Woolmutt, Stu?”
“Can’t say as I do,” Stu Ganser said, applying the usual terminal belch.
“That spitter.”
“Oh! That Woolmutt.”
“You’re a damned old fool, Stu Ganser. There was only the one Woolmutt in this town, ever. You’re gettin’ so damn old, that head of yours...”
“What’s a spitter got to do with saucers?” Arthur LeBlanc demanded in that voice of his, just a little bit lispy.
“Now you just settle back there,” Hobe said, “and listen to it the way I want to tell it. It was nineteen eleven, the year we built this here Fire House so we wouldn’t have to keep the pumper over in Holly’s barn. Good thing we got it built when we did. The next week that barn burned to the ground. I was a sprout then. Full of sass. Seems like every minute I wasn’t courtin’ them Loomis sisters, I was right here at the Fire House. Both of ’em finally said no to me. Mary Alice married Clarence French from over Deliville Way. Had nine kids afore Clarence fell the hell off the silo, but that’s neither here nor there.
“That was the year we had the spittin’. Crown Street wasn’t paved then, of course, and in a dry spell it was just plain dust. Yalla dust. Choke you to death when somebody stirred it up. Now I don’t rightly remember just who it was started it. You could say we all started it one hot day when there wasn’t a breath of wind. Somebody just up and spit and in that dust you could see where they hit and just how much roll they got. So somebody else, he spits a little further. First thing you know we got us a line drawed and rules made and we’re takin’ turns.
“You take a town like this in the summer forty years ago, there wasn’t so much for people to do. Surprisin’ how spittin’ contests caught on that year. I’ve always been a right fair spitter myself, but there was a couple boys I just couldn’t beat. Fred Tunnison was one. Fred got killed in the first war. Luke Amery was the other one. Luke later went over to Youngstown and got in the banking business. Built a big house and sired four kids off that junior leaguer he married and then jumped the hell out of his office window in nineteen thirty.
“Well, Fred would win one contest and the next one Luke would win. The way we had it set up, each contestant got three spits. Took turns to give each man time to work up something to spit in between. Why, we had boys coming over from Lake Valley and far away as Dunstan to try against Fred and Luke. Sort of swept the county you might say.
“It must have been after the spittin’ had been going on for a month that this Woolmutt fella started comin’ around to watch. One of those fellas, he was, you don’t even think once about. You don’t see him come and you don’t notice him leave. Little chunky fella with washed-out eyes, sort of a stupid look, and a big mouth. He was workin’ as hired man over to old Cable Fisher’s place on the east side of Perry Woods.
“Now you know how these contests go. Some of the boys Luke and Fred out-spit went back and practiced up and the first thing you know we got ourselves a big Fourth of July contest all lined up. I kind of took charge of it, me havin’ no urge to do any spittin’ against Luke and Fred. Those boys could stand right at the near edge of that walk right there and let one go that would carry out as far as that white line down the middle of the road. Everybody that wanted to get in the contest had to put twenty-five cents in the hat for every time they tried a string of three spits. We roped off the street to keep traffic off it, and I made up some blocks of wood painted briglit colors so we could get ’em out to mark the best spits.
“In those days Marty Loofer’s Saloon was right around the comer on Chestnut and it being so handy to bring the buckets of beer around, we figured that nobody’d get too dry to spit, anyway. Well, the start-off time was two o’clock and I collected six dollars and a quarter in the hat. You got to remember, you young fellows, that six dollars was a good week’s pay in this town in nineteen eleven. Those boys had something to spit for.
“Just as we were gettin’ started, this Woolmutt fella comes up to me, shy like, and drops a quarter in the hat. I knew he’d been watching a lot, but I knew, too, how tight old Cable Fisher was with money, so I tried to talk Woolmutt out of entering. No sir, he wouldn’t have a chance, I told him. He had a funny accent and he didn’t talk much, but he sure was stubborn. So I kept his quarter and told him that because he was the last one to enter, he could spit last.
“With so much at stake, everybody was taking their time, believe me. Old Fred, he strutted up to the line and got himself balanced nice on the balls of his feet, his mouth working. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Sure was a hot day. When he was all ready and everybody quieted down, Fred sort of hunched back and then shot his head up and out like a blacksnake hitting a horse fly. He got a good explosion and a nice arc on that first spit. It was one of the best he ever did. A big cheer went up, because Fred was a pretty popular fella around this town in those days. He swaggered back from the line trying to look meek, but you could see he was pretty proud of that effort. The next few boys did pretty well, as far as spittin’s concerned, but the best of them was a good four foot eight inches back of die red block we set out to mark where Fred hit. Then Luke came up. His style was a little different, but just as good as Fred’s I’d say. Luke made himself just as high on his toes as he could get, and he stuck his head up just as far as he could get it, balanced there and let fly. You should have heard the yell when he got a good inch beyond Fred’s mark. Fred turned red and then white. You could see him setting his jaw for the next effort.
“One fella from out of town got within six inches of Fred, but the rest of them were almost pitiful. Woolmutt was the last one up to toe the mark. All those people standing around seemed to scare him. I was off to the side because it was part of my job to see that nobody fouled by stepping across the line. So from there I could see how Woolmutt worked himself up to it.
“First thing I see, he sticks his tongue out. Now I tell you, boys, that was the biggest tongue I ever did see on anybody. He sticks it straight out, flat like, and then he curls it up from the sides to make a sort of tube. That tube is a good four inches out beyond the end of his stubby little nose. I see him take a breath. Big chest on the little fella.
“He goes whih-THOO! And something goes bang across the street. Now afterward there were some claimed they could see that line of flight, right from the tip of his tongue over to the hole in the plate glass in the front of Winkelhauer’s Merchandise Mart. Wilbur Winkelhauer is a spectator, and when he sees what happens to his front window, he lets out a scream of mortal agony. Then the yell of the crowd drowns out Wilbur. Fred and Luke, they look badly shaken. Little Woolmutt is sort of dazed by all the commotion.
“Fred and Luke, they try to get me to rule Woolmutt out of the competition. First they say he isn’t spittin’ at all and that he’s got a friend hid somewhere with a gun. Then Woolmutt has to prove that he is spitting. He does so. Next Fred and Luke say that the little fella has some sort of a thing in his mouth like a blow gun. They make him stick out his tongue. It sure is big. Fred even reaches out slow like and pinches the end of it. He yanks his hand back quick and wipes it on his shirt and says, ‘Yep, it sure is a tongue.’ Then they say he didn’t hit the road.