“Fred and Luke don’t do so well the next turn around. A lot of the others have dropped out. Woolmutt steps up and hits the road. Where he hits there is a long line in the dust and a big cloud of dust comes up. It ricochets up and smacks the front of Winkelhauer’s again, this time just under the busted window.
“On the third try, Fred and Luke are weaker than ever. The heart is gone out — of them. Woolmutt takes a long time aiming. He hits that red block that marks Fred’s best shot and knocks it clean over onto the walk on the other side of the road. I kept that block around for years. Soft pine. Had a half-inch dent in the side of it. Never did know where it disappeared to finally.
“Well, I’m here to tell you that the rest of that Fourth of July was one of the gol-damnedest days I ever did see. How about it, Stu?”
Stu belched softly, reminiscently. “Sure was,” he sighed.
“You see,” said Hobe, “the crowd sort of took Woolmutt to its heart. He was a kind of likable little guy. And we knew that in him we had the best spitter in the state, if not the world at large. I announced him the winner and he shoved the money in his pants and they carried him on their shoulders around to Loofer’s. I guess the little guy wasn’t used to drinking. They loaded him up, and I do mean that they loaded him up. The better element went home. Along about midafternoon, Woolmutt, sort of loosened up at every joint, led what you might call a triumphant procession through town.
“You could hear him coming a block away. First all you’d hear would be the bang, bang, bang, as he hit the wooden buildings. After each bang all those fellas following him would let out a yell, Fred and Luke yelling louder than anybody. When he got closer you could hear the whole works. ‘Whih-THOO BANG YELL. Whih-THOO BANG YELL.’ It was something terrible. I was with him when Mrs. Thomas’ cat, big yella devil named Wheedlekins, made the mistake of runnin’ across the road in front of Woolmutt. Little Woolmutt really threw up the dust around that cat. Wheedlekins run up a tree, panting and yelling, and made the mistake of leaving a little bit exposed around the edge of the top limb. Woolmutt nailed Wheedlekins again and that cat dropped out of the tree and raced across town like its tail was afire.
“Judge Proctor’s bay team caught it next. You might say Woolmutt sort of encouraged those horses. It’s said that the Judge got them stopped just short of the county fine. The good citizens who wanted no part of all this locked their doors and they didn’t get in line with the windows either. Woolmutt proved himself a gentleman, though, even when he was the most carried away with it all. You gentlemen know Mrs. Iverson. Well, she was about eighteen then, and the way she dressed there were some ready and willing to say she’d come to no good end. A handsome filly always looking as though she’d bust right out of her clothes.
“When they came around the comer of Market and Crown, there was Hazel fifty feet away, bent over tying her shoe. They all pleaded, but Woolmutt refused. He said it wasn’t right and proper. And...”
“I don’t see what this has got to do with flying saucers,” Brad Sedwell complained.
“You young folks are always too damn impatient,” Hobe said. “You’re hurrying me. Well, on that day Harry Chase’s son, John, was in town, taking a vacation from the hospital down east where he was doing his interning. Smart boy, John Chase. Of course, he’s no boy now. It surprised me to find him following around after Woolmutt and then I noticed that he wasn’t yelling the way the others were. He just kept his eyes glued to Woolmutt as though he couldn’t look away.
“When the whole mob stopped back here in front of the Fire House, John got right up next to Woolmutt, staring at him hard. The first thing we knew, he grabbed one of Woolmutt’s hands and looked’ at it close, front and back. Woolmutt tried to pull away. Then John got his fingers on Woolmutt’s pulse. He looked deep into Woolmutt’s eyes and I could see him turn white. Woolmutt yanked free, plunged through the crowd and ran out of town. Nobody ever saw him again. And John Chase wouldn’t say a word about what he saw — but he didn’t seem too surprised when he found out that Woolmutt had left the county for good. That’s how it ties in with them saucers, Brad.”
Brad snorted. “Oh, sure. Woolmutt came in a flying saucer.”
“Use the brains God gave squirrels, Brad,” Hobe said angrily. “It stands to reason that whoever flies around in them saucers has been watching us for a long time, maybe hundreds of years. I say they’re making a study of us mortals. You ever read Charles Fort’s stuff? He says right out that we’re nothing but property. The more I pondered on Woolmutt and his accent and the funny way he looked, the more I began to think that Woolmutt was a spy from someplace. Someplace off this earth. They made him look like a man and they stuck him here on us to make out his reports.
“But the little bugger got lonesome. You know how it is. Here he was among strangers, maybe for most of his life, getting lonesomer every day. They didn’t do a good job of making him look like a man maybe because they didn’t know enough about us, forty years ago. But when he saw the spittin’ he knew that it was something he could do, something he could get in on. Just like the time that drummer told Nancy Carrwell she had a good singing voice. She like to drove the whole town crazy for three years until she got over it.
“Now John Chase was a trained doctor and he could see things about Woolmutt that we wouldn’t notice. Woolmutt, with his spittin’, attracted too much attention and he knew it when John started examining him. So Woolmutt had to go back where he came from. Now they’ve had spies here long enough so that they know about the fix this world’s gettin’ into and they’re coming around in their saucers and keep us from killing each other off — the same way you divide up a chicken run when they start peckin’ each other to death.”
The street lights came on with startling suddenness, turning the blue dusk to night. Stu sighed and shuffled off into the darkness. Arthur LeBlanc stood up and laughed nervously and said, “Well, this has all been very interesting.” His lisp seemed more pronounced. Hobe’s closing comments had seemed to put some restraint on the group. Brad and Harry mumbled something about getting home and went off together.
Only the boy was left. “You better be gettin’ on home to your Ma,” Kobe suggested gently.
The boy sighed as though awakening from a dream. “Sure, mister. Sure. G’night, mister.”
He went off up the street. He walked down Crown to the tracks and turned east. When he got beyond the street lights the countryside seemed brighter, as though there were a last legitimate bit of the day left.
He cut across lots toward Perry’s woods. When he neared the tangle of impenetrable brush he took a small irridescent cube out of the pocket of the jeans and held it to his ear. He spoke, listened a few moments, and then spoke again, his tone firm and brisk.
He put the cube back in his pocket. A small tawny rabbit, barely visible in the dusk, stood atop a knoll sixty yards away.
The rabbit suddenly tumbled over and over, jumped up and scurried away. The small boy flattened the long tongue out again, smiled almost sadly, and rose straight up, with increasing speed, toward the navy blue sky of night.