Invasion of the Body Snatchers (18 page)

Off across the one-story roof of Elman's restaurant, I saw, two blocks away, on Vallejo Street, the Greyhound bus from Marin City pull in. Only three people got off - a man and a woman together, and a man with a brown paper parcel he carried by the string. There was no one waiting to get on the bus, and after a minute or so it pulled out of the blue-and-white-painted depot into Vallejo Street toward highway 101, and for some reason it suddenly occurred to me - I knew the bus schedules as did most everyone in town - that there wouldn't be another bus entering or leaving town for the next fifty-one minutes, and that things had changed on the street below me.

It isn't easy to say just how they had changed. The fog was heavier, touching the higher roof tops now, thick and grey, but that was normal, that wasn't the change. There were more people on the street, but… this was the change: they weren't quite acting like a normal Saturday afternoon-shoppers crowd. Some were still moving in and out of stores, but quite a few of them were just sitting in their cars; some with a door open, feet hooked on the side, talking to the people in the next car; others reading newspapers, or fiddling with car radios, just killing time. I recognized a great many of the faces: Len Pearlman, the optometrist, Jim Clark, and his wife, Shirley, and their kids, and so on.

At this moment, though, Main Street of Santa Mira, California, could still have seemed like an ordinary, though rather shabby shopping street on an ordinary Saturday - it's what a stranger would have thought, driving through town. But looking down at it now, I knew, or at least sensed, that there was more to it than that. There was an atmosphere of… something about to happen, a quiet waiting for something expected. It was - I tried to put it into words, sitting there watching through the slit in the blind - like people slowly gathering for a parade. But that wasn't quite it, either. Possibly it was more like a group of soldiers leisurely assembling for some routine formation; some of them talking, smiling, or laughing with others; some reading quietly; others just sitting or standing off by themselves, waiting. I guess the atmosphere down on that street was simply - expectation without any special excitement about it.

Then Bill Bittner, a local contractor, a stout middle-aged man in his fifties strolling along the sidewalk, glancing at store windows, casually pulled a button out of his pocket. It was a plastic or metal button, I could see, with printing on it. He pinned it to his coat lapel, and now I saw that it was about the size of a silver dollar, and I recognized the design and knew what the printing said. It said
Santa Mira Bargain Jubilee;
the local merchants all wore them each year, and passed them out to those customers who were willing to wear them. Only - all those I'd seen before had been red with white printing. Bill Bittner's button was yellow printed on navy blue.

And now, here and there, all up and down the street as far as I could see, other people were pulling out these yellow and blue buttons, and pinning them to their coats. Not everyone did it at once. Most of them just kept on talking, or walking along, or sitting in their cars, or whatever they were doing; and within any half minute, all that a stranger walking along that street would have seen, if he'd even noticed at all, would have been two or three people pinning those buttons to the lapels of their coats. And yet, within five or six minutes perhaps, at one time or another, nearly everyone down there, even Jansek, the parking-meter cop, had brought out a blue-and-yellow
Santa Mira Bargain Jubilee
button and pinned it on in plain sight: some of them even removed red-and-white, otherwise identical, buttons, first.

It took a minute or so, too, to realize this: a gradual movement of people had been going on, from both directions on Main Street, to the semi public square formed by the intersection of Hillyer and Main. Strolling pedestrians, glancing in windows as they moved, were gradually approaching it; here and there people got casually from their cars, slammed the doors, then stretched, perhaps, or gazed around, or glanced at a window display, then wandered on down toward Hillyer and Main.

Even now, though, a stranger on Main Street would probably have seen nothing out of the way. Santa Mira was holding a bargain sale, apparently, and most of the townspeople were wearing jubilee buttons. At the moment, a considerable number of the shoppers on Main Street happened to be crowded into one short block. And yet, all in all, there was nothing out and out strange or remarkable to see.

Becky was kneeling on the floor beside me, I realized, and now I smiled and stood up, to swing the pad on the floor around so that we both could sit on it. I put an arm around her, then, and she huddled close, her cheek next to mine as we both stared down through the Venetian blind.

From the dime store, a salesman walked out to his car; it was lettered on the door with the name of his company. Opening the door, he began hunting for something, apparently, on the floor of the car. Jansek, the cop, glancing at his watch, strolled over, then stopped to stand on the walk beside the front bumper of the car. The salesman straightened, slammed the door of his car, and, a sheaf of leaflets in his hand, turned toward the store he'd come out of. Jansek spoke to him, the salesman stepped onto the walk, and they stood there talking. It occurred to me, staring down at them, the salesman facing in our direction now, that he was one of the few people on the street, if there were any others, who was not wearing a blue-and-yellow jubilee button. He was frowning now, looking bewildered, and Jansek was slowly and firmly shaking his head at whatever the salesman was saying. Then the salesman shrugged irritably, walked around to the driver's side of his car, pulling his keys from his pocket, and Jansek opened the other door and slid into the right-hand front seat. The car backed out, drove ahead a dozen yards, then swung slowly left into Hillyer Avenue, and I knew they were headed for the police station. What Jansek could be arresting him for, I couldn't guess.

A blue Ford sedan, the only car now moving in the street, drove slowly along in low gear, looking for a space to park. The driver spotted one, then, and began to nose in; the car had Oregon licence plates. A cop's whistle sounded, and Beauchamp, the local police sergeant, was trotting down the sidewalk, his paunch jiggling, waving a hand at the car, and shaking his head no. The Oregon car stopped where it was, and the driver sat waiting till Beauchamp came up, the woman beside him leaning forward to peer through the windshield. Beauchamp stooped at the driver's window, they talked for a few moments, then Beauchamp got into the back seat, and the car backed, then pulled ahead, turned left into Hillyer Avenue, and disappeared from sight.

There were three more cops in sight, in the nearly two blocks I could see: old Hayes, and two others, younger men I didn't know. Hayes wore uniform, but the younger men wore uniform caps only, leather jackets, and dark, nondescript pants; they looked like special cops, hired and deputized for a single occasion. Alice, the waitress at Elman's, came out and stood on the sidewalk before the door, the blue-and-yellow jubilee button pinned to her white uniform. One of the younger cops spotted her immediately, and Alice looked at him, nodded her head once, then turned and walked back into the restaurant. The cop came along, then turned into the restaurant.

Maybe a minute later he came out again, and three people, a man, a woman, and an eight- or nine-year-old girl, obviously a family, were with him. For a moment or so the group stood on the walk, the man talking, protesting about something, the young cop answering politely and patiently. Then the group walked away - toward Hillyer Avenue - and I watched till they turned the corner and disappeared. None of the family had been wearing a jubilee button, but the young cop was.

One other man, a delivery-truck driver, got the same treatment; and when he and the cop with him had turned into Hillyer, in the truck, there wasn't a soul I could see who wasn't wearing a yellow-and-blue jubilee button.

And now the street was quiet, almost completely silent, not a car moving or a person walking. No one read a paper, or sat in his car any more. Everyone stood on the sidewalks, three or four deep, facing the street, except Hayes, the old cop, who stood alone in the middle of the wide street. In front of each store or business establishment stood the proprietor, his clerks and employees, and whatever customers had been in the place. Old Hayes, out in the street, slowly turned his head, glancing in turn at each of the proprietors; and each time the proprietor shook his head no. The two other cops, then, came up to Hayes, and reported, apparently, and Hayes listened and nodded. Then, the roll call over, Hayes and the other two cops walked to the sidewalk, turned to face the street, and stood waiting in the crowd.

In two places, looking over roof tops, I could see streets as far as half a mile away. Not a car or anything else moved on any of them, and on one street, Oak Lane, I could see a barricade across the road: the grey-painted, wooden horses of the street department. I realized suddenly - I knew - that all over town, every street was blocked off like this by crews of men in overalls ostensibly repairing the street. I knew that right now you couldn't get into Santa Mira any way at all, or move along its streets toward the business district. And I knew that the handful of strangers who had happened to be here had been gathered up, and were being held at the police station, under just what pretext it did not matter. Santa Mira was cut off from the world right now, and there was absolutely no one in sight of the centre of town who wasn't a resident.

For as long as three or four minutes, then - as strange a sight as I have ever seen - that crowd lined both sidewalks, the street empty, like people watching an invisible parade. They stood almost motionless, and silent; even the children were quiet. Here and there a few men were smoking, but most of the crowd just stood, some of the men with arms folded on their chests, comfortable and relaxed, people occasionally shifting weight from one foot to the other. Children stood holding to their parents' coats.

I heard the motor of a car, then the hood came into sight around the bend of the street, near the
Sequoia,
a dark-green, battered old Chevrolet pickup. Behind it came four other trucks, three of them big GM farm trucks with slatted portable sides, the other another pickup. They drove into the little public square, and parked at a curb, all lined up together. Each of them carried a load covered by canvas tarpaulins, and the drivers, setting their hand brakes, swung out of the cabs of their trucks, one by one and began untying the tarps. The scene, now, looked like an open-air market, the produce just arrived from the country. All of the drivers were farmers; they wore overalls or denim pants and shirts, and I knew four of the five. They were all from farms west of town: Joe Grimaldi, Joe Pixley, Art Gessner, Bert Parnell, and one other.

Two men in business suits had stepped into the street, near the line of trucks: Wally Eberhard, a local real-estate man, and another man whose name I couldn't recall, though I remembered he was a mechanic at the Buick garage. Wally had some sheets of paper in his hand, small sheets that looked as though they'd come from a notebook, and the two men stood glancing through them, Wally shuffling them in his hands. Then the mechanic looked up, drew a deep breath, and in a loud voice, almost a shout - we could hear him plainly through our window - called out, "Sausalito! If you have Sausalito families, step out, please!" Sausalito is a Marin County town of around five thousand, the first town you come to in the county, after crossing the Bay. Two people, a man and a woman, not together, had stepped from the curb into the street and were walking toward Wally. Several others were pushing their way through the crowd, then they stepped into the street and walked toward the trucks.

Joe Pixley had the tarp on his pickup untied now, and he walked to the back of the truck, took the bottom edge of the tarp, then heaved it up, folding it back onto the truck, off the load. I'd long since known what was in those trucks; I felt not even the beginning of surprise when the tarp came off. Lining the metal sides of the pickup body were thin boards prolonging the height of the sides, and keeping the tarp off the load that was piled cab-high in the truck. It was filled with the huge seed pods I'd seen, now, so often before.

"All right!" the mechanic yelled. "Sausalito! Sausalito only, please!" and he motioned the five or six people standing in the street toward Joe Pixley's truck. Standing on the running board, Joe lifted off the top pods of his load, one by one, handing them down into the waiting arms of the people clustered below him. Each man and woman took a single pod, carrying it away carefully in his out-stretched arms; one man took two. Beside them, Wally Eberhard made a check mark on what was apparently a list in his hand, as each pod was handed down. Then he spoke to the mechanic, who called out, "Marin City, please! All with Marin City families or contacts, next!" Marin City is the next Marin County town, a few miles in from Sausalito.

Seven people came forward, edging through the crowd, then stepping into the street, and as they came forward and stopped at his truck, Joe handed down a pod to each. One person, Grace Birk, a middle-aged woman who worked at the bank, took three, and a man stepped down from the curb to help her carry them without crushing them. I remembered that Grace Birk had a sister and brother-in-law living in Marin City; whether there were more in the family, I didn't know.

The trunk doors of parked cars were being unlocked now, and heaved open; the great pods just fitted into the empty trunks of some of the newer model cars. Other pods were being carefully eased through the open doors of several cars, then set gently down on the back seats. In each case, then, the man or woman, kneeling on the front seat, would place a sheet or some kind of light cloth over the great pod, concealing it from view.

Mill Valley was called out next, and eight people came forward for pods, and then Joe Pixley's truck was empty; he sat down on the running board, lighting a cigarette, to wait. The other trucks were uncovered, the drivers standing ready to unload them. The garage mechanic in the neat grey suit called, "Belvedere," and two people stepped out into the street. Tiburon, Strawberry Mannor, Belveron Gardens, Valley Springs, and San Rafael were next - fourteen people accepted pods for San Rafael, a town of around fifteen thousand. Then every other town in the county was called out, until presently, in no more than fifteen minutes, perhaps, all five trucks were empty, except Joe Grimaldi's, which had two left over.