All Flesh Is Grass (28 page)

19

When I came back that morning I had found that the purple flowers growing in the swale behind my house, through the wizardy of that other world, had been metamorphosed into tiny bushes. In the dark I had run my fingers along the bristling branches and felt the many swelling buds. And now the buds had broken and where each bud had been was, not a leaf, but a miniature fifty-dollar bill!

Len Streeter, the high school science teacher, handed one of the tiny bills to me.

“It's impossible,” he said.

And he was right. It
was
impossible. No bush in its right mind would grow fifty-dollar bills—or any kind of bills.

There were a lot of people there—all the crowd that had been out in the road shouting at the senator, and as many more. It looked to me as if the entire village might be there. They were tramping around among the bushes and yelling at one another, all happy and excited. They had a right to be. There probably weren't many of them who had ever seen a fifty-dollar bill, and here were thousands of them.

“You've looked close at it,” I asked the teacher. “You're sure it actually is a bill?”

He pulled a small magnifying glass out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me.

“Have a look,” he said.

I had a look and there was no question that it looked like a fifty-dollar bill—although the only fifty-dollar bills I had ever seen were the thirty of them in the envelope Sherwood had given me. And I hadn't had a chance to more than glance at those. But through the glass I could see that the little bills had the fabric-like texture one finds in folding money and everything else, including the serial number, looked authentic.

And I knew, even as I squinted through the lens, that it was authentic. For these were (how would one say it—the descendants?) of the money Tupper Tyler had stolen from me.

I knew exactly what had happened and the knowledge was a chill that bit deep into my mind.

“It's possible,” I told Streeter. “With that gang back there, it's entirely possible.”

“You mean the gang from your other world?”

“Not my other world,” I shouted. “Your other world. This world's other world. When you get it through your damn thick skulls …”

I didn't say the rest of it. I was glad I didn't.

“I'm sorry,” Streeter said. “I didn't mean it quite the way it sounded.”

Higgy, I saw, was standing halfway up the slope that led to the house and he was yelling for attention.

“Listen to me!” he was shouting. “Fellow citizens, won't you listen to me.”

The crowd was beginning to quiet down and Higgy went on yelling until everyone was quiet.

“Stop pulling off them leaves,” he told them. “Just leave them where they are.”

Charley Hutton said, “Hell, Higgy, all that we was doing was picking a few of them to have a better look.”

“Well, quit it,” said the mayor, sternly. “Every one that you pull off is fifty dollars less. Give them leaves a little time and they'll grow to proper size and then they'll drop off and all we need to do is to pick them up and every one of them will be money in our pocket.”

“How do you know that?” Grandma Jones shrilled at him.

“Well,” the mayor said, “it stands to reason, don't it? Here we have these marvelous plants growing money for us. The least we can do is let them be, so they can grow it for us.”

He looked around the crowd and suddenly saw me.

“Brad,” he asked me, “isn't that correct?”

“I'm afraid it is,” I said.

For Tupper had stolen the money and the Flowers had used the bills as patterns on which to base the leaves. I would have bet, without looking further, that there were no more than thirty different serial numbers in the entire crop of money.

“What I want to know,” said Charley Hutton, “is how you figure we should divide it up—once it's ripe, that is.”

“Why,” said the mayor, “that's something I hadn't even thought of. Maybe we could put it in a common fund that could be handed out to people as they have the need of it.”

“That don't seem fair to me,” said Charley. “That way some people would get more of it than others. Seems to me the only way is to divide it evenly. Everyone should get his fair share of it, to do with as he wants.”

“There's some merit,” said the mayor, “in your point of view. But it isn't something on which we should make a snap decision. This afternoon I'll appoint a committee to look into it. Anyone who has any ideas can present them and they'll get full consideration.”

“Mr. Mayor,” piped up Daniel Willoughby, “there is one thing I think we've overlooked. No matter what we say, this stuff isn't money.”

“But it looks like money. Once it's grown to proper size, to one could tell the difference.”

“I know,” the banker said, “that it looks like money. It probably would fool an awful lot of people. Maybe everyone. Maybe no one could ever tell that it wasn't money. But if the source of it should be learned, how much value do you think it would have then? Not only that, but all the money in this village would be suspect. If we can grow fifty-dollar bills, what is there to stop us from growing tens and twenties?”

“I don't see what this fuss is all about,” shouted Charley Hutton. “There isn't any need for anyone to know. We can keep quiet about it. We can keep the secret. We can pledge ourselves that we'll never say a word about it.”

The crowd murmured with approval. Daniel Willoughby looked as if he were on the verge of strangling. The thought of all that phony money shrivelled up his prissy soul.

“That's something,” said the mayor, blandly, “that my committee can decide.”

The way the mayor said it one knew there was no doubt at all in his mind as to how the committee would decide.

“Higgy,” said lawyer Nichols, “there's another thing we've overlooked. The money isn't ours.”

The mayor stared at him, outraged that anyone could say a thing like that.

“Whose is it, then?” he bellowed.

“Why,” said Nichols, “it belongs to Brad. It's growing on his land and it belongs to him. There is no court anywhere that wouldn't make the finding.”

All the people froze. All their eyes swiveled in on me. I felt like a crouching rabbit, with the barrels of a hundred shotguns leveled at him.

The mayor gulped. “You're sure of this?” he asked.

“Positive,” said Nichols.

The silence held and the eyes were still trained upon me.

I looked around and the eyes stared back. No one said a word.

The poor, misguided, blinded fools, I thought. All they saw here was money in their pockets, wealth such as not a single one of them had ever dared to dream. They could not see in it the threat (or promise?) of an alien race pressed close against the door, demanding entrance. And they could not know that because of this alien race, blinding death might blossom in a terrible surge of unleashed energy above the dome that enclosed the town.

“Mayor,” I said, “I don't want the stuff.”

“Well, now,” the mayor said, “that's a handsome gesture, Brad. I'm sure the folks appreciate it.”

“They damn well should,” said Nichols.

A woman's scream rang out—and then another scream. It seemed to come from behind me and I spun around.

A woman was running down the slope that led to Doc Fabian's house—although running wasn't quite the word for it. She was trying to run when she was able to do little more than hobble. Her body was twisted with the terrible effort of her running and she had her arms stretched out so they would catch her if she fell—and when she took another step, she fell and rolled and finally ended up a huddled shape lying on the hillside.

“Myra!” Nichols yelled. “My God, Myra, what's wrong?”

It was Mrs. Fabian, and she lay there on the hillside with the whiteness of her hair shining in the sunlight, a startling patch of brilliance against the green sweep of the lawn. She was a little thing and frail and for years had been half-crippled by arthritis, and now she seemed so small and fragile, crumpled on the grass, that it hurt to look at her.

I ran toward her and all the others were running toward her, too.

Bill Donovan was the first to reach her and he went down on his knees to lift her up and hold her.

“Everything's all right,” he told her. “See—everything's all right. All your friends are here.”

Her eyes were open and she seemed to be all right, but she lay there in the cradle of Bill's arms and she didn't try to move. Her hair had fallen down across her face and Bill brushed it back, gently, with a big, grimed, awkward hand.

“It's the doctor,” she told us. “He's gone into a coma …”

“But,” protested Higgy, “he was all right an hour ago. I saw him just an hour ago.”

She waited until he'd finished, then she said, as if he hadn't spoken, “He's in a coma and I can't wake him up. He lay down for a nap and now he won't wake up.”

Donovan stood up, lifting her, holding her like a child. She was so little and he was so big that she had the appearance of a doll, a doll with a sweet and wrinkled face.

“He needs help,” she said. “He's helped you all his life. Now he needs some help.”

Norma Shepard touched Bill on the arm. “Take her up to the house,” she said. “I'll take care of her.”

“But my husband,” Mrs. Fabian insisted. “You'll get some help for him? You'll find some way to help him?”

“Yes, Myra,” Higgy said. “Yes, of course we will. We can't let him down. He's done too much for us. We'll find a way to help him.”

Donovan started up the hill, carrying Mrs. Fabian. Norma ran ahead of him.

Butch Ormsby said, “Some of us ought to go, too, and see what we can do for Doc.”

“Well,” asked Charley Hutton, “how about it, Higgy? You were the one who shot off his big fat face. How are you going to help him?”

“Somebody's got to help him,” declared Pappy Andrews, thumping his cane upon the ground by way of emphasis. “There never was a time we needed Doc more than we need him now. There are sick people in this village and we've got to get him on his feet somehow.”

“We can do what we can,” said Streeter, “to make him comfortable. We'll take care of him, of course, the best that we know how. But there isn't anyone who has any medical knowledge …”

“I'll tell you what we'll do,” said Higgy. “Someone can get in touch with some medical people and tell them what's happened. We can describe the symptoms and maybe they can diagnose the illness and then tell us what to do. Norma is a nurse—well, sort of, she's been helping out in Doc's office for the last four years or so—and she'd be some help to us.”

“I suppose it's the best we can do,” said Streeter, “but it's not very good.”

“I tell you, men,” said Pappy, loudly, “we can't stay standing here. The situation calls for action and it behooves us to get started.”

What Streeter had said, I told myself, was right. Maybe it was the best that we could do, but it wasn't good enough. There was more to medicine than word-of-mouth advice or telephoned instructions. And there were others in the village in need of medical aid, more specialized aid than a stricken doctor—even if he could be gotten on his feet—was equipped to give them.

Maybe, I thought, there was someone else who could help—and if they could, they'd better, or I'd go back somehow into that other world and start ripping up their roots.

It was time, I told myself, that this other world was getting on the ball. The Flowers had put us in this situation and it was time they dug us out. If they were intent on proving what great tasks they could perform, there were more important ways of proving it than growing fifty-dollar bills on bushes and all their other hocus-pocus.

There were phones down at the village hall, the ones that had been taken from Stiffy's shack, and I could use one of those, of course, but I'd probably have to break Hiram's skull before I could get at one of them. And another round with Hiram, I decided, was something I could get along without.

I looked around for Sherwood, but he wasn't there, and neither was Nancy. One of them might be home and they'd let me use the phone in Sherwood's study.

A lot of the others were heading up toward Doc's house, but I turned and went the other way.

20

No one answered the bell. I rang several times and waited, then finally tried the door and it was unlocked.

I went inside and closed the door behind me. The sound of its closing was muffled by the hushed solemnity of the hall that ran back to the kitchen.

“Anyone home?” I called.

Somewhere a lone fly buzzed desperately, as if trying to escape, trapped against a window perhaps, behind a fold of drape. The sun spilled through the fanlights above the door to make a ragged pattern on the floor.

There was no answer to my hail, so I went down the hall and walked into the study. The phone stood on the heavy desk. The walls of books still seemed rich and wondrous. A half-empty whiskey bottle and an unwashed glass stood on the liquor cabinet.

I went across the carpeting to the desk and reached out, pulling the phone toward me.

I lifted the receiver and immediately Tupper said, in his businessman's voice, “Mr. Carter, it's good to hear from you at last. Events are going well, we hope. You have made, we would presume, preliminary contact.”

As if they didn't know!

“That's not what I called about,” I snapped.

“But that was the understanding. You were to act for us.”

The unctuous smugness of the voice burned me up.

“And it was understood, as well,” I asked, “that you were to make a fool of me?”

The voice was startled. “We fail to understand. Will you please explain?”