The Glass Village

It was a few seconds past two o’clock by the Judge’s watch, and they huddled under a big beech peering at the sky and trying to determine its long range intentions. The woods about the pond crackled and trembled under lightning bolts; one struck not a hundred feet away.

“Rather be drowned on the road than electrocuted under a tree,” shouted the Judge. “Let’s get out of here!”

They turned the boat over, hastily gathered their gear, and ran for the road.

They pushed against a curtain of water, squishing along heads down at a steady pace. At two-thirty by the Judge’s watch they were half a mile from the crest of Holy Hill.

“We’re not doing bad!” roared the old man. “We’ve come about halfway. How d’ye feel, Johnny?”

“Reminiscent!” said Johnny. He never wanted to see another fish. “Isn’t there any traffic on this road?”

“Let us pray!”

“Keep your weather eye peeled for anything on wheels. A scooter would look good just now!”

Five minutes later a figure swam into view on the opposite side of the road, heading in the direction from which they had come and leaning into the rain.

“Hi, there!” yelled Johnny. “Enjoying the swim?”

The man leaped like a deer. For a moment he glared in their direction, the width of the road between them. They saw a medium-sized man of spare build with a face dark gray as the skies, a stubble of light beard, and two timid, burning eyes. The rain had fluted the brim of his odd green hat and was coursing down his face in rivers; patched black pants plastered his shanks and the light tweed jacket with its leather elbow patches hung on his body like a wet paper sack. He carried a small black suitcase, the size of an overnight bag, made of some cheap material which was dissolving at the seams — a rope held it together... For a moment only; then, in a lightning flash, water squirting out of his shapeless shoes, the man ran.

Soaked as they were, Johnny and the Judge stared up the road after the running man.

“Wonder who he is,” said the Judge. “Stranger around here.”

“Never look a stranger in the mouth,” said Johnny.

But the Judge kept staring.

“Foreigner, I’d say,” shrugged Johnny. “Or of recent foreign origin. He never got that green velour hat in the U.S.A.”

“Probably some itinerant heading for Cudbury and a mill job. Why do you suppose he ran like that, Johnny?”

“Sudden memories of the old country and the People’s Police, no doubt. Two armed men.”

“Good Lord!” The Judge shifted his rifle self-consciously. “I hope the poor devil gets a lift.”

“Hope for yourself, Judge. And while you’re at it, put in a good word for me!”

A minute or so later a gray shabby sedan bore down on them from behind, shedding water like a motorboat. They turned and shouted, but it was going over forty miles an hour and before they could half open their mouths it was past them and out of sight over the hill. They stood in the slap of its wake, dejected.

“That was Burney Hackett’s car,” growled the Judge. “Darn his chinless hide! He never even saw us.”

“Courage, your honor. Only a mile or so more to go.”

“We could stop in at Hosey Lemmon’s shack,” said the Judge doubtfully. “It’s at the top of the hill there, in the woods off the road.”

“No, thanks, I filled my quota of filthy shacks long ago. I’ll settle for your house and a clean towel.”

As they reached the top of Holy Hill, the Judge exclaimed, “There’s old Lemmon now, footing it for home.”

“Another pioneer,” grumbled Johnny. “Doesn’t he have a car, or a buggy, or a tricycle, either?”

“Hosey? Heavens, no.” Judge Shinn frowned. “What’s he doing back up here? He’s hired out to the Scotts.”

“Prefers high ground, of course!”

The Judge bellowed at the white-bearded hermit, but if Lemmon heard the hail he paid no attention to it. He disappeared in his hut, a ramshackle cabin with a torn tar-paper roof and a rusty stovepipe for a chimney.

Nothing human or mechanical passed them again. They fell into the Judge’s house at three o’clock like shipwrecked sailors on a providential beach, stripped and showered and got into clean dry clothes as if the devil were after them; and at three-fifteen, just as they were sitting down in the Judge’s living room with a glass of brown comfort and rags to clean the guns, the phone rang twice and the Judge sighed and said, “Now I don’t consider that neighborly,” and he answered the phone and Burney Hackett’s nasal voice, more nasal and less lucid than the Judge had ever heard it, announced with total unbelief that he had just walked over to the Adams house and found Aunt Fanny Adams stretched out on the floor of her paintin’ room deader than a shucked corn.

“Aunt Fanny?” said Judge Shinn. “Did you say, Burney, Fanny Adams is dead?”

Johnny put his glass down.

The Judge hung up and blindly turned in his direction.

“Heart?” said Johnny, wishing he could look elsewhere.

“Brains.” The Judge groped. “Where’s my gun? Brains, Burney Hackett says. They’re spilled all down her smock. Where’s my gun!”