A seventeen year old boy bounded across the street, smelling faintly of the smudged lipstick on his cheek, almost knocked the old man down, cried, "Sorry!" and leaped up the steps. Fitting a key to the lock he went in.

The old man stood there with the town lying asleep on all sides of him; the unlit windows, the breathing rooms, the stars all through the trees, liberally caught and held on winter branches, so much snow suspended glittering on the cold air.

"That's my house; who are all those people going in it?" cried the old man to the wrestling children.

The wind blew, shaking the empty trees.

In the year which was 1923 the house was dark. A car drove up before it, the mother stepped from the car with her son William, who was three. William looked at the dusky morning world and saw his house and as he felt his mother lead him toward the house he heard her say. "Is that you, Mr. Terle?" and in the shadows by the great wind-filled oak tree an old man stood and replied, "Yes." The door closed.

In the year which was 1934 William came running in the summer night, feeling the football cradled in his hands, feeling the murky night street pa.s.s under his running feet, along the sidewalk. He smelled, rather than saw, an old man, as he ran past. Neither of them spoke. And so, on into the house.

In the year 1937 William ran with antelope boundings across the street, a smell of lipstick on his face, a smell of someone young and fresh upon his cheeks; all thoughts of love and deep night. He almost knocked the stranger down, cried, "Sorry!" and ran to fit a key to the front door.

In the year 1947 a car drew up before the house, William relaxed, his wife beside him. He wore a fine tweed suit, it was late, he was tired, they both smelled faintly of so many drinks offered and accepted. For a moment they both heard the wind in the trees. They got out of the car and let themselves into the house with a key. An old man came from the living room and cried, "What are you doing in my house?"

"Your house?" said William. "Here now, old man, get on out." And William, feeling faintly sick in his stomach, for there was something about the old man that made him feel all water and nothing, searched the old man and pushed him out the door and closed and locked it. From outside the old man cried, "This is my house. You can't lock me out!"

They went up to bed and turned out the lights.

In the year 1928 William and the other small boys wrestled on the lawn, waiting for the time when they would leave to watch the circus come chuffing into the pale-dawn railroad station on the blue metal tracks. In the leaves they lay and laughed and kicked and fought. An old man with a flashlight came across the lawn. "Why are you playing here on my lawn at this time of morning?" asked the old man.

"Who are you?" replied William, looking up a moment from the tangle.

The old man stood over the tumbling children a long moment. Then he dropped his flash. "Oh, my dear boy, I know now, now I know!" He bent to touch the boy. "I am you and you are me. I love you, my dear boy, with all of my heart! Let me tell you what will happen to you in the years to come! If you knew! I am you and you were once me! My name is William-so is yours! And all these people going into the house, they are William, they are you, they are me!" The old man shivered. "Oh, all the long years and the pa.s.sing of time!"

"Go away," said the boy. "You're crazy."

"But-" said the old man.

"You're crazy. I'll call my father."

The old man turned and walked away.

There was a flickering of the house lights, on and off. The boys wrestled quietly and secretly in the rustling leaves. The old man stood on the dark lawn.

Upstairs, in his bed, William Latting did not sleep, in the year 1947. He sat up, lit a cigarette, and looked out the window. His wife was awake. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"That old man," said William Latting. "I think he's still down there, under the oak tree."

"Oh, he couldn't be," she said.

"I can't see very well, but I think he's there. I can barely make him out, it's so dark."

"He'll go away," she said.

William Latting drew quietly on his cigarette. He nodded. "Who are those kids?"

From her bed his wife said, "What kids?"

"Playing on the lawn out there, what a h.e.l.l of a time of night to be playing in the leaves."

"Probably the Moran boys."

"Doesn't look like them."

He stood by the window. "You hear something?"

"What?"

"A baby crying. Way off?"

"I don't hear anything," she said.

She lay listening. They both thought they heard running footsteps on the street, a key to the door. William Latting went to the hall and looked down the stairs but saw nothing.

In the year 1937, coming to the door, William saw a man in a dressing gown at the top of the stairs, looking down, with a cigarette in his hand. "That you, Dad?" No answer. The man sighed and went back into some room. William went to the kitchen to raid the ice-box.

The children wrestled in the soft, dark leaves of morning.

William Latting said, "Listen."

He and his wife listened.

"It's the old man," said William, "crying."

"Why should he be crying?"

"I don't know. Why does anybody cry? Maybe he's unhappy."

"If he's still there in the morning," said his wife in the dim room, "call the police."

William Latting went away from the window, put out his cigarette, and lay in the bed, his eyes closed. "No," he said quietly. "I won't call the police. Not for him, I won't."

"Why not?"

His voice was certain. "I wouldn't want to do that. I just wouldn't."

They both lay there and faintly there was a sound of crying and the wind blew and William Latting knew that all he had to do if he wanted to watch the boys wrestling in the icy leaves of morning would be to reach out with his hand and lift the shade and look, and there they would be, far below, wrestling and wrestling, as dawn came pale in the Eastern sky.

ALMOST THE END OF THE WORLD.

SIGHTING ROCK JUNCTION, ARIZONA, AT NOON on August 22, 1967, w.i.l.l.y Bersinger let his miner's boot rest easy on the jalopy's accelerator and talked quietly to his partner, Samuel Fitts.

"Yes, sir, Samuel, it's great hitting town. After a couple of months out at the Penny Dreadful Mine, a jukebox looks like a stained-gla.s.s window to me. We need the town; without it, we might wake some morning and find ourselves all jerked beef and petrified rock. And then, of course, the town needs us, too."

"How's that?" asked Samuel Fitts.

"Well, we bring things into town that it hasn't got-mountains, creeks, desert night, stars, things like that . . ."

And it was true, thought w.i.l.l.y, driving along. Set a man 'way out in the strange lands and he fills with wellsprings of silence. Silence of sagebrush, or a mountain lion purring like a warm beehive at noon. Silence of the river shallows deep in the canyons. All this a man takes in. Opening his mouth, in town, he breathes it out.

"Oh, how I love to climb into that old barbershop chair," w.i.l.l.y admitted, "and see all those city men lined up under the naked-lady calendars, staring back at me, waiting while I chew over my philosophy of rocks and mirages and the kind of Time that just sits out there in the hills waiting for man to go away. I exhale-and that wilderness settles in a fine dust on the customers. Oh, it's nice, me talking, soft and easy, up and down, on and on . . ."

In his mind he saw the customers' eyes strike fire. Someday they would yell and rabbit for the hills, leaving families and time-clock civilization behind.

"It's good to feel wanted," said w.i.l.l.y. "You and me, Samuel, are basic necessities for those city-dwelling folks. Gangway, Rock Junction!"

And with a tremulous tin whistling they steamed across city limits into awe and wonder.

They had driven perhaps a hundred feet through town when w.i.l.l.y kicked the brakes. A great shower of rust flakes sifted from the jalopy fenders. The car stood cowering in the road.

"Something's wrong," said w.i.l.l.y. He squinted his lynx eyes this way and that. He snuffed his huge nose. "You feel it? You smell it?"

"Sure," said Samuel, uneasily, "but what?"

w.i.l.l.y scowled. "You ever see a sky-blue cigar-store Indian?"

"Never did."

"There's one over there. Ever see a pink dog kennel, an orange outhouse, a lilac-colored birdbath? There, there, and over there!"

Both men had risen slowly now to stand on the creaking floorboards.

"Samuel," whispered w.i.l.l.y, "the whole d.a.m.n shooting match, every kindling pile, porch rail, gewgaw gingerbread, fence, fireplug, garbage truck, the whole blasted town, look at it! It was painted just an hour ago!"

"No!" said Samuel Fitts.

But there stood the band pavilion, the Baptist church, the firehouse, the Oddfellows' orphanage, the railroad depot, the county jail, the cat hospital and all the bungalows, cottages, greenhouses, gazebos, shop signs, mailboxes, telephone poles and trashbins, around and in between, and they all blazed with corn yellow, crab-apple greens, circus reds. From water tank to tabernacle, each building looked as if G.o.d had jigsawed it, colored it and set it out to dry a moment ago.

Not only that, but where weeds had always been, now cabbages, green onions, and lettuce crammed every yard, crowds of curious sunflowers clocked the noon sky, and pansies lay under unnumbered trees cool as summer puppies, their great damp eyes peering over rolled lawns mint-green as Irish travel posters. To top it all, ten boys, faces scrubbed, hair brilliantined, shirts, pants and tennis shoes clean as chunks of snow, raced by.

"The town," said w.i.l.l.y, watching them run, "has gone mad. Mystery. Mystery everywhere. Samuel, what kind of tyrant's come to power? What law was pa.s.sed that keeps boys clean, drives people to paint every toothpick, every geranium pot? Smell that smell? There's fresh wallpaper in all those houses! Doom in some horrible shape has tried and tested these people. Human nature doesn't just get this picky perfect overnight. I'll bet all the gold I panned last month those attics, those cellars are cleaned out, all shipshape. I'll bet you a real Thing fell on this town."

"Why, I can almost hear the cherubim singing in the Garden," Samuel protested. "How you figure Doom? Shake my hand, put 'er there. I'll bet and take your money!"

The jalopy swerved around a corner through a wind that smelled of turpentine and whitewash. Samuel threw out a gum wrapper, snorting. He was somewhat surprised at what happened next. An old man in new overalls, with mirror-bright shoes, ran out into the street, grabbed the crumpled gum wrapper and shook his fist after the departing jalopy.

"Doom . . ." Samuel Fitts looked back, his voice fading. "Well, . . .the bet still stands."

They opened the door upon a barbershop teeming with customers whose hair had already been cut and oiled, whose faces were shaved close and pink, yet who sat waiting to vault back into the chairs where three barbers flourished their shears and combs. A stock-market uproar filled the room as customers and barbers all talked at once.

When w.i.l.l.y and Samuel entered, the uproar ceased instantly. It was if they had fired a shotgun blast through the door.

"Sam . . .w.i.l.l.y . . ."

In the silence some of the sitting men stood up and some of the standing men sat down, slowly, staring.

"Samuel," said w.i.l.l.y out of the corner of his mouth, "I feel like the Red Death standing here." Aloud he said, "Howdy! Here I am to finish my lecture on the Interesting Flora and Fauna of the Great American Desert, and-"

"No!"

Antonelli, the head barber, rushed frantically at w.i.l.l.y, seized his arm, clapped his hand over w.i.l.l.y's mouth like a snuffer on a candle. "w.i.l.l.y," he whispered, looking apprehensively over his shoulder at his customers. "Promise me one thing: buy a needle and thread, sew up your lips. Silence, man, if you value your life!"

w.i.l.l.y and Samuel felt themselves hurried forward. Two already neat customers leaped out of the barber chairs without being asked. As they stepped into the chairs, the two miners glimpsed their own images in the flyspecked mirror.

"Samuel, there we are! Look! Compare!"

"Why," said Samuel, blinking, "we're the only men in all Rock Junction who really need a shave and a haircut."

"Strangers!" Antonelli laid them out in the chairs as if to anesthetize them quickly. "You don't know what strangers you are!"

"Why, we've only been gone a couple of months-" A steaming towel inundated w.i.l.l.y's face; he subsided with m.u.f.fled cries. In steaming darkness he heard Antonelli's low and urgent voice.

"We'll fix you to look like everyone else. Not that the way you look is dangerous, no, but the kind of talk you miners talk might upset folks at a time like this."

"Time like this, h.e.l.l!" w.i.l.l.y lifted the seething towel. One bleary eye fixed Antonelli. "What's wrong with Rock Junction?"

"Not just Rock Junction." Antonelli gazed off at some incredible dream beyond the horizon. "Phoenix, Tucson, Denver. All the cities in America! My wife and I are going as tourists to Chicago next week. Imagine Chicago all painted and clean and new. The Pearl of the Orient, they call it! Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Buffalo, the same! All because-well, get up now, walk over and switch on that television set against the wall."

w.i.l.l.y handed Antonelli the steaming towel, walked over. switched on the television set, listened to it hum, fiddled with the dials and waited. White snow drifted down the screen.

"Try the radio now," said Antonelli.

w.i.l.l.y felt everyone watch as he twisted the radio dial from station to station.

"h.e.l.l," he said at last, "both your television and radio are broken."

"No," said Antonelli simply.

w.i.l.l.y lay back down in the chair and closed his eyes.

Antonelli leaned forward, breathing hard.

"Listen," he said.

"Imagine four weeks ago, a late Sat.u.r.day morning, women and children staring at clowns and magicians on TV. In beauty shops, women staring at TV fashions. In the barbershop and hardware stores, men staring at baseball or trout fishing. Everybody everywhere in the civilized world staring. No sound, no motion, except on the little black-and-white screens.

"And then, in the middle of all that staring . . ."

Antonelli paused to lift up one corner of the broiling cloth.