Mr. Debevois tore a May-something 2077 date-sheet off his desk calendar, made a paper dart of it, and shot it at his lagging stenographer, who was stooping to return a folder of microfilm to a bottom file drawer. Storekeepers took off their aprons and walked out, leaving doors unlocked. Plump Mr. Wilson pressed a button and a sign appeared on the movie-house marquee: NO SHOW TONIGHT. Beardy Mr. Goldfarb shrugged, smiled, put away a sheaf of teleflashed stock reports, unbuttoned a great big drawer and took out a great big parchment scroll. School children tore off across the soft sandy schoolyard and green lawns slippery with sunlight. Down at the little aluminum station the atomic train inched to a stop like a golden caterpillar and the engineer jumped out in his best clothes.
The whistles blew. Mr. Moriarty, the town mortician, with black-clad limbs thin as a spider’s and hat tall as Abraham Lincoln’s, looked around at the bare gleaming tables and rubbed his hands. He opened a big thick icebox door and looked into two coffins. “They’ll keep,” he said. He opened another and looked at the empty shelves and nodded. “In case anybody has the bad luck to die the next three days,” he said. Then the spiderweb of wrinkles all over his face contracted in a smile. He said softly, “Or maybe that would be the nicest time of year to go.”
The whistles stopped. From back of the firehouse, around the lovely new red-vaned fire-copter, twenty pairs of strong hands pushed an oldfashioned automobile, a convertible, black and fat as sin, armored with chromium and sprouting three antennae—for radio, phone, and television. They shoved it across the street with a shout and it jounced to rest in front of the courthouse, its antennae quivering.
While toward the courthouse square, down the leaf-bowered streets silent of traffic, 4,000 big and little feet came pounding.
In the empty schoolhouse, before the mirror in the girls’ room, Miss Kidd decided that her inch-long eyelashes were securely attached. She painted herself sultry lips, then almost ruined them making anguished faces as she tugged at the girdle borrowed from the museum. Pausing to catch her breath, she leafed with morbid curiosity through the pile of themes her class had turned in. They were all tided “The
Big Holiday.” The first one began:
By some it is thot that the Big Holiday started with the merrimaking of the Pre-lentin festeval at Reo D. Janero...
She hastily turned to the next.
In the olden times of the 20th Century, people didnt injoy holidays very much. They worried too much about making money and buying and selling. They even tried to sell each other, like in the very f aroff times of slavery.
(Beside this, Miss Kidd had red-penciled, “Sell a person on something. Old idiom. Means to persuade to buy, or convince of worth; has nothing to do with slavery.”)
Resisting further temptation, Miss Kidd turned the themes face down and got back to work. She pinned together the plunging neckline of her antique cocktail dress, hesitated, then recklessly unpinned it. She put on a weird picture hat about three feet across, tossed a mink fur around her shoulders. “The fourth grade will have things to say about you,” she told her reflection and hobbled out on unfamiliar French heels.
In the barber shop Mr. Felton, the town drunkard, lifted incredulous fingers to his fresh-shaven, lotioned cheeks. He watched the mirror with a beery wonder as they clad him hi silk shirt, stiff collar, and a pin striped suit. He gaped with delight as they draped a huge gold watch-chain across his paunch and speared his tie with a blinding diamond pin. Mr. Kantarian, the barber, stood back, walked around, and curtly nodded his approval.
Mr. Wilson stepped into a money bag with arms and legs, tightened the drawstring around his neck, and put on a golden crown. A thought struck him and he got out his pocketbook. “It isn’t breaking a holiday rule,” he reassured himself, “if I use the junk as a stage property.” And he artistically stuffed twenty or thirty dollar bills into his neckband. Then he walked out of his movie house.
The square was already a-chatter and a-swirl with the town’s two thousand. Mr. Wilson, conscious of the dignity of his role, ignored the attention he attracted. At the firehouse corner he was joined by Miss Kidd and Mr. Felton. The drunkard eyed the crowd, then stiffened his back. With ritualistic solemnity the three walked to the fat black convertible. There they were met by Mr. Moriarty, whose spider- webbed face was set in the gloomiest lines. He tipped his stovepipe hat and opened the rear door for Miss Kidd and Mr. Felton, then got in front beside Mr. Wilson, who had taken the wheel.
There was a shot and a puff of smoke. A figure hi track pants and shirt emblazoned with golden bolts of lightning took off from across the square. He sped like the wind, the propeller of his beanie making a golden glory over his bent head. A goddess with a plastic bow gave an excited little yip. Mr. Tomlinson lifted a comprehending brow and remarked to her, “Jim Kelly, pet? So that’s why you need to be fleet footed.”
“He’s awfully shy too,” she told him frankly.
Meanwhile the speedy topic of their conversation had sprung up on the back of the seat behind Mr. Wilson and begun pounding him on his money-green ruff and pointing frantically to the big old alarm clock strapped to his own wrist.
A dark man beat on a drum. Things got quiet. Mr. Goldfarb unrolled his parchment, cleared his throat, directed a severe stare at the occupants of the black car, and recited loudly, “Hear ye! Hear ye! Know all men here present that for the good of our hearts and minds and souls the following creatures are banished from town.
“First,” he said, eyeing Mr. Wilson, “Money! Because he’s a tyrant, a very Midas who turns the moon to two bits and the green grass to dingy green paper.
“Second,” (Mr. Felton beamed as the stern gaze turned his way). “Success! Because he goes around with the wrong sort of people— I mean the gentleman I referred to first and the lady I’m referring to next.” He looked at Miss Kidd. “Glamour! Because she’s a huzzy who doesn’t play fair. We like girls too much to let them be used to help sell soft drinks.
“And finally,” he went on, turning to Jim Kelly and Mr. Moriarty, “Hurry and Worry! The one because while he’s a good boy on a trip to Mars or the doctor, he’s too hard on our hearts. The other-Worry— because he aids and abets all four aforementioned.”
Mr. Jingles stepped up and began to tootle the funeral march, while dark Mr. Ambrose rumbled his drums ever so softly.
Mr. Goldfarb concluded, “These five are directed to leave town at once without pause or prayer. If they —or any of their equally guilty accomplices, such as Work, War, and Glory—should venture within the town limits during the next three days, we will violate the Constitution and visit upon them various cruel and unusual punishments.”
He rolled up the parchment, folded his arms, stuck out his beard, and said, “Now, get!”
Mr. Wilson stamped on the starter. The exhaust puffed nose-wrinkling blue smoke. The fat black car moved forward ponderously. Ahead the bright-clad people lined up on either side, like rows of flowers.
“Goodby,” they called.
They waved at Mr. Wilson. “Goodby, Money.” He stared solemnly ahead, intent on steering.
“Goodby, Success,” they called to Mr. Felton. Forgetting character, he waved happily back.
“Goodby, Glamour,” they called to Miss Kidd. She smiled at them scornfully, threw back her shoulders, looked down her plunging neckline, gathered her courage and held her position.
“Goodby, Hurry. Goodby, Worry,” they called to Jim Kelly and Mr. Moriarty. The latter creased his brow and shook his head doom-fully. The sprinter wildly pleaded with Wilson for more speed.
The car passed between Mason’s Hardware and the town’s sole skyscraper, a ten-story glastic skylon. Buckets of black confetti filled the air, snowed on the car, peppered Miss Kidd with beauty spots. Black paper streamers unrolled lazily downward, snagged chromium grills, dragged behind like a black fringe.