Thunder and Roses (49 page)

Paul had a handful of chocolate-covered cherries. “Gee,” he said. After that he walked on down the highway. The cherries disappeared and the man and the lady and the car all disappeared, but that didn’t matter. “It’ll be like that,” said young Paul Roudenbush. “It’ll be just like that.” Then, “I wonder what that lady’s name’ll be.”

A quarter of a mile down the pike was the turn-off to the school, and there was the railroad crossing with its big X on a pole that he always read RAIL CROSSING ROAD. The forenoon freight was bowling down the grade, screaming two longs, a short, and a long. When he was a kid, two years or so back, Paul used to think it saluted him:
Paul … Roud … n’Bush-h-h
 … with the final sibilant made visible in the plume of steam on the engine’s iron shoulder. Paul trotted up to the crossing and stood just where the first splintered plank met the road surface. Engine, tender, Pennsylvania, Nickel Plate, T.&N.O., Southern, Southern, Pennsylvania, Père Marquette,
Canadian Pacific. Cars from all over: hot places, cold places, far places. Automobiles, automobiles, cattle, tank. Tank tank cattle. Refrigerator, refrigerator, automobiles, caboose. Caboose with a red flag flying, and a glimpse at the window of a bull-necked trainman shaving, suds on his jowls like a mad dog. Then the train was a dwindling rectangle on the track, and on its top was the silhouette of a brakeman, leaning easily into wind and velocity, walking on top of the boxcars.

With the train in one ear and dust in the other, Paul faced the highway. A man stood at the other side of the tracks. Paul gaped at him.

He was wearing an old brown jacket with a gray sheepskin collar, and blue dungarees. These he was dusting off with long weather-beaten hands, one of which—the right—looked like a claw. There was no ring finger or little finger, and a third of the palm’s breadth was gone. From the side of the middle finger to the side of the wrist, the hand was neatly sealed with a type of flexible silvery scar-tissue.

He looked up from his dusting at Paul. “Hi, bub.” Either he had a beard or he badly needed a shave. Paul could see the cleft in his square chin, though. The man had eyes as pale as the color of water poured into a glass after the milk had been drunk.

Paul said, “Hi,” still looking at the hand. The man asked him what that town was over there in the hollow, and Paul told him. He knew now what the man was—one of those fabulous characters who ride on freight trains from place to place. Ride the rods. Catch a fast freight out of Casey, which was K.C., which was Kansas City. They had been everywhere and done everything, these men, and they had a language all their own. Handouts and line bulls, Chi and mulligan and grab a rattler to Nollins.

The man squinched up his eyes at the town, as if he were trying to drive his gaze through the hill and see more. “The old place hasn’t growed none,” he said, and spat.

Paul spat too. “Never will,” he said.

“You from there?”

“Yup.”

“Me too,” said the man surprisingly.

“Gosh,” said Paul. “You don’t look like you came from around here.”

The man crossed the single track to Paul’s side. “I guess I don’t. I been a lot of places since I left here.”

“Where you been?” asked Paul.

The man looked into Paul’s open eyes, and through them to Paul’s open credulousness. “All over the world,” he said. “All over this country on freights, and all over the oceans on ships.” He bared his right forearm. “Look there.” And sure enough he had a tattoo.

“Women,” said the man, flexing his claw so that the tattoo writhed. “That’s what
I
like.” He closed one pale eye, pushed his mouth side-wise under it, and clucked a rapid
chick-chick
from his pale cheek.

Paul wet his lips, spat again, and said, “Yeah. Oh, boy.”

The man laughed. He had bad teeth. “You’re like I was. Wasn’t room enough in that town for me.”

“Me either,” said Paul. “I ain’t going back there
no
more.”

“Oh, you’ll go back. You’ll want to look it over, and ask a few questions around, and find out what happened to your old gals, and see how dead everything is, so’s you can go away again knowin’ you done right to leave in the first place. This here’s my second trip back. Seems like every time I go through this part o’ the world I just got to drop by here and let the old burg give me a couple laughs.” He turned his attention right around and looked outward again. “You really are headin’ out, bub?”

“Headin’ out,” nodded Paul. He liked the sound of that. “Headin’ out,” he said again.

“Where you bound?”

“The city,” Paul said, “unless I hit somethin’ I like better ’fore I get there.”

The man considered him. “Hey. Got any money?”

Paul shook his head cautiously. He had two dollars and ninety-two cents. The man seemed to make some decision; he shrugged. “Well, good luck, bub. More places you see, more of a man you’ll be. Woman told me that once in Sacramento.”

“The—oh!” said Paul. Approaching the grade crossing was a maroon coupé. “It’s Mr. Sherman!”

“Who’s he?”

“The sheriff. He’ll be out lookin’ for me!”

“Sheriff! Me for the brush. Don’t tag, you little squirt! Go the other way!” and he dived down the embankment and disappeared into the bushes.

Frightened by the man’s sudden harshness, confused by the necessity for instant action, Paul shuffled for a moment, almost dancing, and then ran to the other side. Flat on his stomach in a growth of fireweed, he stopped breathing and peered at the road. The coupé slowed, all but stopped. Paul closed his eyes in terror. Then he heard the grate of gears and the rising whine as the car pulled over the tracks in second gear and moaned on up the highway.

Paul waited five minutes, his fear leaving him exactly as fast as his sweat dried. Then he emerged and hurried along the highway, keeping a sharp watch ahead for the sheriff’s returning car. He saw no sign of the man with the claw. But then, he hadn’t really expected to.

It could be like that, he thought. Travel this old world over. Gramps used to say that men like that had an itching foot. Paul’s feet itched a little, if he thought about it. Hurt a little, too. He could come back years from now with a tattoo and a mutilated hand. Folks’d really take notice. The stories he could tell!
“I run down the bank, see, to haul this tomato out o’ th’ drink. She was yellin’ her blond head off. No sooner got my hooks on her when
clomp,
a alligator takes off part o’ me hand. I didn’t mind none. Not when I carried this babe up the bank.”
He shut one eye, pushed his mouth sideways, and clucked. The sound, somehow, reminded him of chocolate-covered cherries.…

Another half mile, and the country became more open. He flicked his eyes from side to side as he trudged. First sign of that maroon coupé and he’d have to fade.
Sheriff! Me for the brush!
He felt good. He could keep ahead of the law. Bet your life. Go where you want to go, do what you want to do, come back for a laugh every once in a while. That was better, even, than a big car and a tuxedo suit. Women. A smooth-faced one in the car beside you or,
chick-chick
, women all over, Sacramento and every place, to tell you what a man you are, because of all the places you’ve been. Yup, that was it.

There was a deep drone from overhead. Paul looked up and saw the plane—one of the private planes that based at the airport forty miles away. Planes were no novelty, but Paul never saw one without an expressed wish that something would happen—not necessarily a crash, though that wouldn’t be bad, but much rather something that would bring the plane down for a forced landing, so he could run over and see the pilot get out, and maybe talk to him or even help him fix the trouble. “Let me know next time you’re at the field,” the pilot would say.

Paul slowed, stopped, then went to the shoulder and sat down with his feet in the dry ditch. He watched the plane. It dipped a wing and circled, went off and came lower, made a run over the meadow. Paul thought he was going to—well, of course, he was going to land!

The wheels touched, kicked up a puff of yellow dust that whisked out of existence in the prop-wash. They touched again and held the earth; the tail came down, bounced a little, and then the plane was carrying its wings instead of being carried. The wings were orange and the fuselage was blue, and it was glossy in the sun. The wings wobbled slightly as the plane taxied over the lumpy meadow, and Paul knew that if he held out his arms and wobbled them like that he would feel it in his shoulders.

The motor barked, and the propeller blades became invisible as the pilot braked one wheel and turned the ship in its own length. The propeller, in profile, was a ghostly band and then a glass disc as the plane swung toward Paul. It snorted and wobbled across the meadow until it was within twenty feet of the fence and the ditch. Then, with a roar, it swung broadside to him and the sound of the motor dwindled to an easy
pwap-tick-tickety-pwap
, while the pilot did knowledgeable things at the controls. Paul could see him in there, plain as day, through the cabin doors. The plane was beautiful; standing still it looked as if it were going two hundred miles an hour. The windshield swept right back over the pilot’s head. It was fine.

The pilot opened the door and vaulted to the ground. “Glory be! You’d think they’d have a field built in town after all these years.”

“They never will,” said Paul. “Nice job you got there.”

The pilot, pulling off a pair of high-cuffed gloves, looked briefly
at the plane and grinned. He was very clean and had wide shoulders and practically no hips. He wore a good soft leather jacket and tight breeches. “Know anybody in town, son?”

“Everybody, I guess.”

“Well, now. I can get all the news from you before I go on in.”

“Say—ain’t you Paul Roudenbush?”

Paul froze.
He
hadn’t said that. There were sudden icy cramps in the backs of his knees. The plane vanished. The pilot vanished. Paul sat with his feet in the dry ditch and slowly turned his head.

A maroon coupé stood by the ditch. Its door was open, and there, one foot on the running-board, was Mr. Sherman.
Sheriff! Me for the brush!

Instead, he licked his lips and said, “Hi, Mr. Sherman.”

“My,” said Mr. Sherman, “you give me a turn, you did. Saw you sitting there so still, figured you’d been hit by a car or some such.”

“I’m all right,” said Paul faintly. He rose. Might as well get it over with. “I was just … thinkin’, I guess.”

Thinking—and now he was caught, and the thoughts raced through him like the cars of the forenoon freight; thoughts from hot places, cold places, far places. Stock market, car, claw claw plane. Women, women, cigarette lighter, landing field. Thoughts that were real, thoughts that he made up; they barreled on through him, with a roar and a swirl, and left him standing, facing the highway and Mr. Sherman, who had caught him.

“Thinking, eh? Well, I’m right relieved,” said Mr. Sherman. He got back in the car, slammed the door, stepped on the starter.

“Mr. Sherman, ain’t you—”

“Ain’t I what, son?”

“Nothin’, Mr. Sherman. Nothin’ at all.”

“You’re a weird one,” said Mr. Sherman, shaking his head. “Hey, I’m heading back into town. Want a lift? It’s near eating time.”

“No, thanks,” said Paul immediately and with great sincerity.

Paul watched the maroon coupé move off, his mind racing. The car was going into town. Without him. Mr. Sherman did not know he was running away. Why not? Well, they hadn’t missed him yet. Unless … unless they didn’t care whether he came back or not. No.
No, that couldn’t be! The car would go right past his house, soon’s it got in town. Wasn’t much of a house. In it, though, was his own room. Small, but absolutely his own.

The trouble with the other ways to go back, it took time to make a killing in the stock market and get married. It took time to acquire a plane. It probably took quite a while to get part of your hand cut off. But this way—

Suddenly he was in the road screaming, “Mr. Sherman! Mr. Sherman!”

Mr. Sherman didn’t hear him but he saw him in the rear-view mirror. He stopped and backed up a bit. Paul climbed in, gasped his thanks, and sat still, working on his wind. He got it all back just about the time they turned into the Township Road.

Mr. Sherman glanced abruptly at the boy. “Paul.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I just had a thought. You, ’way out there on the pike; were you running away?”

Paul said, “No.” His eyes were more puzzled than anything else. “I was coming back,” he said.

“Maturity”:
first published in
Astounding Science-Fiction
, February 1947. Written before March 25, 1946 (when he told his mother, in a letter, that he had already sold it and been paid, $367.50). Substantially rewritten in early 1948, for inclusion in Sturgeon’s first book, the story collection
Without Sorcery
(Prime Press, 1948). The version included in this volume is the later version, which the author strongly preferred. The text of the second half of the original magazine version is included here as an appendix, for scholars and the curious.

Sturgeon’s introduction to the story in
Without Sorcery
follows:
Robin English, one of the most captivating characters ever to take a fictional bit in his teeth, appeared in an earlier version of “Maturity.” Let the reader be enjoined, if he has read this earlier effort, to forget it; if he has not, to leave it alone
.

Halfway through the original version, I found that I had by the tail a very large beast indeed. Finding myself suddenly with neither information nor convictions, I completed the story by merely tying up plot-threads, and not by saying anything at all
.

I have attempted here to erase this reprehensible act. The story now says much and concludes nothing. It may now, I earnestly hope, serve to generate a certain amount of directive thought on this curious subject
.

Sturgeon’s other major public statement about the story appeared in a book entitled
Maturity
(subtitled:
Three Stories by Theodore Sturgeon
) published in a limited edition of 750 copies to commemorate TS’s appearance as Guest of Honor at a science fiction
convention in Minnesota in April 1979. In the Editors’ Notes to that book (Rune Press, 1979), editors Scott Imes and Stuart W. Wells III explain that, “Scott called Sturgeon and he agreed [to the idea of a limited edition book]. He had just the story for the book. He would rewrite and expand ‘Maturity.’ There was plenty of time, but he would start right away.… A few months come and go and February arrives. Deadlines draw nearer and nearer. How is the story coming? Sturgeon is reached and reveals that he started to rewrite the story but likes the original better.… The book is now too short. Sturgeon suggests that two stories be added on the same theme: ‘Bulkhead’ and ‘The Graveyard Reader.’ ”