The Cat's Pajamas

“Stop is a good word. Yank off the clothes, I thought to myself. They don’t deserve to have those clothes. Take away their skin, I thought, because they don’t deserve to look like my mom and dad and brothers and sister. So I sort of edged the car forward, but they didn’t move and they couldn’t speak because they was ashamed and the wind came up and I moved the car. As I moved, they fell down in front of it and I drove straight on and when I looked back I hoped the bottom of the car had ripped their clothes off, but no, they were still full dressed, which they didn’t deserve, and they were lying there on the road, and if they was dead I wasn’t sure, but I hoped they was. I got out and went back and one by one I picked them up, put them in the back of the car, and I took off down the road with the dust rising and I laid them out here and there and somewhere else, and by that time they didn’t look like any of my folks at all. That’s a peculiar story, don’t you figure?”

“It’s peculiar,” I said.

“Well then,” he said, “that’s it. I’ve told it all. You gonna take me in?”

I looked into his face and looked down the road and I thought of the bodies still lying in the coroner’s office in Topeka. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he said. “I’ve told it all. I’m guilty. I did them in.”

I waited. The wind and the dust were rising even more. I said, “No. Strange, I don’t think you’re guilty. Don’t know why, but I don’t think you are.”

“Well, it’s getting late,” he said. “You want to see my identification?”

“If you want to show it,” I said.

He pulled a battered wallet out of his pocket and handed it over. There was no driver’s license, just an old card with a name on it I couldn’t quite read, but it looked familiar, something out of the newspapers long before I was born. The back of my neck got real cold and I said, “Where you heading after this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m feeling better than when I started the trip. What’s ahead up there on the road?”

“Same as always,” I said. “California, postcards, oranges, lemons, maybe government camps, bungalow courts.” I handed him back his card and wallet. “There’s a police station about ten miles ahead. By the time you get there, if you still feel you’ve gotta give yourself up, do it there, but I’m not your man.”

“How come?” he said, his eyes quiet and gray and steady.

“All I know is sometimes some people don’t deserve to wear the clothes that they wear or wear the faces that they got. Some people,” I said at last, “get in the way.”

“I drove real slow,” he said.

“And they didn’t move.”

“Right,” he said. “I just went right over them and that was it and I felt good. Well, I guess I better be gettin’ on.”

I stood back and let the car drift. It went down the road, the driver hunched over the whee

l, his hands on the steering wheel and the dust following him as he got smaller in the twilight.

I stood watching him for the next five minutes until he was gone. By that time the wind was rising and the dust was filling my eyes. I couldn’t tell where I was or if I was crying. I went back to my motorcycle, got on, hit the throttle, and turned around and went the other way.

A MATTER OF TASTE

1952

I WAS NEAR THE SKY when the silver ship flew down to us. I drifted through the high trees on the great morning web and all my friends came with me. Our days were always the same and always good and we were happy. But we were also happy to see the silver carrier drop from space. For it meant a new but not unreasonable change in our tapestry, and we felt we could adjust to the pattern, even as we had adjusted to all the ravelings and unravelings of a million years.

We are an old and a wise race. We considered space travel at one time and gave it up, for it meant that the refinement we were seeking in our own lives would be torn like a web in a storm, and a one-hundred-thousand-year philosophy interrupted just when it was bearing the ripest and most agreeable fruit. We decided to stay here on our rain and jungle world and live peacefully at ease.

But now—this silver craft from the heavens gave us a stir of quiet adventure. For here came travelers from some other planet who had chosen a course diametrically opposed to ours. The night, they say, has much to teach the day, and the sun, they continue, may light the moon. So I went happily, my friends went happily, in a glide, in a pleasant dream, down toward the jungle clearing where lay the silver carrier.

I must describe the afternoon: the great web cities glittered with cool rain, the trees freshly rinsed with falling waters, and now the sun bright. I had partaken of an especially succulent meal, the good wine of the humming jungle-bee, and a warm languor tempered and made my excitement all the more enjoyable.

But—a curious thing: while all of us, numbering perhaps a thousand, gathered about the craft in friendly demeanor and attitude, the ship did nothing, it remained firmly unto itself. Its portals did not open. Momentarily, I thought I glimpsed some creature at a small port above, but perhaps I was mistaken.

“For some reason,” I said to my friends, “the inhabitants of this beautiful craft are not venturing forth.”

We discussed this. We decided that perhaps—the reasoning of animals from other worlds being possibly of a divergent nature from our own—that perhaps they felt somewhat outnumbered by our welcoming committee. This seemed doubtful, but nevertheless I transmitted this sentiment to the others about us, and in less than a second the jungle trembled, the great golden webs shivered, and I was left alone by the ship.

I then advanced, in a breath, to the port and said aloud: “We welcome you to our cities and lands!”

I was soon pleased to note that some machinery was working within the ship. After a minute the portway opened.