DAY AT THE BEACH

  by Carol Emshwiller

  from Fantasy and Science Fiction

  The first Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference was
held in 1956. Among those invited were a number of artists,
agents, editors, and publishers in the field. So artist Ed "Emsh"
came up for the week—with his family.

   Carol Emshwiller had then published two or three stories;
but she didn't know she was a writer, and the bated-breath
humility with which she asked if she possibly might be allowed
to sit in on workshop meetings has come back to haunt us Older
Hands each summer since. Each summer, I mean, when Carol
pops out of the playpen-and-baby-bottle laden car, an infant (at
least figuratively) under one arm, and her newest manuscript
under the other. (Ed carries two kids and his brushes in his
teeth—nothing to it when you get the knack.)

  The first time I read Day at the Beach was in one of these
workshop sessions. After that, I just waited for someone to
print it first, so I could next…

   "It's Saturday," the absolutely hairless woman said, and she pulled at
her frayed, green kerchief to make sure it cov-ered her head. "I sometimes
forget to keep track of the days, but I marked three more off on the
calender because I think that's how many I forgot, so this must be
Saturday."

   Her name was Myra and she had neither eyebrows nor lashes nor even
a faint, transparent down along her cheeks. Once she had had long, black
hair, but now, looking at her pink, bare face, one would guess she had
been a red-head.

   Her equally hairless husband, Ben, sprawled at the kitchen table
waiting for breakfast. He wore red plaid Bermuda shorts, rather faded,
and a tee shirt with a large hole under the arm. His skull curved above his
staring eyes more naked-seeming than hers because he wore no kerchief
or hat.
   "We used to always go out on Saturdays," she said, and she put a bowl
of oatmeal at the side of the table in front of a youth chair.

   Then she put the biggest bowl between her husband's elbows.

   "I have to mow the lawn this morning," he said. "All the more so if it's
Saturday."

  She went on as if she hadn't heard. "A day like today we'd go to the
beach. I forget a lot of things, but I remem-ber that."

   "If I were you, I just wouldn't think about it." Ben's empty eyes finally
focused on the youth chair and he turned then to the open window behind
him and yelled, "Littleboy, Littleboy," making the sound run together all
L's and Y. "Hey, it's breakfast, Boy," and under his breath he said, "He
won't come."

   "But I do think about it. I remember hot dogs and clam chowder and
how cool it was days like this. I don't sup-pose I even have a bathing suit
around any more."

   "It wouldn't be like it used to be."

  "Oh, the sea's the same. That's one thing sure. I won-der if the
boardwalk's still there."

    "Hah," he said. "I don't have to see it to know it's all gone for firewood.
It's been four winters now."

  She sat down, put her elbows on the table and stared at her bowl.
"Oatmeal," she said, putting in that one word everything she felt about the
beach and wanting to go there.

   "It's not that I don't want to do better for you," Ben said. He touched
her arm with the tips of his fingers for just a moment. "I wish I could. And
I wish I could have hung on to that corned beef hash last time, but it was
heavy and I had to run and there was a fight on the train and I lost the
sugar too. I wonder which bastard has it now."

   "I know how hard you try, Ben. I do. It's just sometimes everything
comes on you at once, especially when it's a Saturday like this. Having to
get water way down the block and that only when there's electricity to run
the pump, and this oatmeal; sometimes it's just once too often, and then,
most of all, you commuting in all that danger to get food."

   "I make out. I'm not the smallest one on that train."

  "God, I think that everyday. Thank God, I say to myself, or where would
we be now. Dead of starvation that's where."

  She watched him leaning low over his bowl, pushing his lips out and
making a sucking sound. Even now she was still surprised to see how long
and naked his skull arched, and she had an impulse, seeing it there so bare
and ugly and thinking of the commuting, to cover it gently with her two
hands, to cup it and make her hands do for his hair; but she only
smoothed at her kerchief again to make sure it covered her own baldness.

    "Is it living, though? Is it living, staying home all the time, hiding like,
in this house? Maybe it's the rest of them, the dead ones, that are lucky.
It's pretty sad when a person can't even go to the beach on a Saturday."

    She was thinking the one thing she didn't want to do most of all was to
hurt him. No, she told herself inside, sternly. Stop it right now. Be silent
for once and eat, and, like Ben says, don't think; but she was caught up in
it somehow and she said, "You know, Littleboy never did go to the beach
yet, not even once, and it's only nine miles down," and she knew it would
hurt him.

   "Where is Littleboy?" he said and yelled again out the window. "He just
roams."

   "It isn't as if there were cars to worry about any more, and have you
seen how fast he is and how he climbs so good for three and a half?
Besides, what can you do when he gets up so early."

   He was finished eating now and he got up and dipped a cup of water
from the large pan on the stove and drank it. "I'll take a look," he said. "He
won't come when you call."

    She began to eat finally, watching him out the kitchen window and
listening to him calling. Seeing him hunched forward and squinting
because he had worn glasses before and his last pair had been broken a
year ago. Not in a fight, because he was careful not to wear them
commuting even then, when it wasn't quite so bad. It was Littleboy who
had done it, climbed up and got them himself from the very top drawer,
and he was a whole year younger. Next thing she knew they were on the
floor, broken.

   Ben disappeared out of range of the window and Little-boy came
darting in as though he had been huddling by the door behind the arbor
vitae all the time.

   He was the opposite of his big, pink and hairless parents, with thick
and fine black hair growing low over his fore-head and extending down
the back of his neck so far that she always wondered if it ended where hair
used to end be-fore, or whether it grew too far down. He was thin and
small for his age, but strong-looking and wiry with long arms and legs. He
had a pale, olive skin, wide, blunt fea-tures and a wary stare, and he
looked at her now, waiting to see what she would do.

   She only sighed, lifted him and put him in his youth chair and kissed
his firm, warm cheek, thinking, what beautiful hair, and wishing she knew
how to cut it better so he would look neat.

   "We don't have any more sugar," she said, "but I saved you some
raisins," and she took down a box and sprinkled some on his cereal.

   Then she went to the door and called, "He's here, Ben. He's here." And
in a softer voice she said, "The pixy." She heard Ben answer with a whistle
and she turned back to the kitchen to find Littleboy's oatmeal on the floor
in a lopsided oval lump, and him, still looking at her with wise and wary
brown eyes.

   She knelt down first, and spooned most of it back into the bowl. Then
she picked him up rather roughly, but there was gentleness to the
roughness, too. She pulled at the elastic topped jeans and gave him two
hard, satisfying slaps on bare buttocks. "It isn't as if we had food to
waste," she said, noticing the down that grew along his backbone and
wondering if that was the way the three year olds had been before.

  He made an Aaa, Aaa, sound, but didn't cry, and after that she picked
him up and held him so that he nuzzled into her neck in the way she liked.
"Aaa," he said again, more softly, and bit her just above the collar bone.

   She dropped him down, letting him kind of slide with her arms still
around him. It hurt and she could see there was a shallow, half-inch piece
bitten right out.

   "He bit me again," she shouted, hearing Ben at the door. "He bit me. A
real piece out even, and look, he has it in his mouth still."

   "God, what a…"

    "Don't hurt him. I already slapped him good for the floor and three is a
hard age." She pulled at Ben's arm. "It says so in the books. Three is hard,
it says." But she re-membered it really said that three was a beginning to
be co-operative age.

  He let go and Littleboy ran out of the kitchen back to-ward the
bedrooms.

   She took a deep breath. "I've just got to get out of this house. I mean
really away."

    She sat down and let him wash the place and cross two bandaids over
it. "Do you think we could go? Do you think we could go just one more
time with a blanket and a pic-nic lunch? I've just got to do something."

  "All right. All right. You wear the wrench in your belt and I'll wear the
hammer, and we'll risk taking the car."

   She spent twenty minutes looking for bathing suits and not finding
them, and then she stopped because she knew it didn't really matter, there
probably wouldn't be anyone there.

   The picnic was simple enough. She gathered it together in five minutes,
a precious can of tuna fish and hard, home-made biscuits baked the
evening before when the electricity had come on for a while, and shriveled,
worm-eaten apples, picked from neighboring trees and hoarded all winter
in an-other house that had a cellar.

   She heard Ben banging about in the garage, measuring out gas from
his cache of cans, ten miles' worth to put in the car and ten miles' worth in
a can to carry along and hide someplace for the trip back.

   Now that he had decided they would go, her mind be-gan to be full of
what-ifs. Still, she thought, she would not change her mind. Surely once in
four years was not too often to risk going to the beach. She had thought
about it all last year too, and now she was going and she would enjoy it.

   She gave Littleboy an apple to keep him busy and she packed the lunch
in the basket, all the time pressing her lips tight together, and she said to
herself that she was not going to think of any more what-ifs, and she was
going to have a good time.

   Ben had switched after the war from the big-finned Dodge to a small
and rattly European car. They fitted into it cozily, the lunch in back with
the army blanket and a pail and shovel for playing in the sand, and
Littleboy in front on her lap, his hair brushing her cheek as he turned,
looking out.

   They started out on the empty road. "Remember how it was before on a
weekend?" she said, and laughed. "Bumper to bumper, they called it. We
didn't like it then."

   A little way down they passed an old person on a bicycle, in jeans and a
bright shirt with the tail out. They couldn't tell if it was a man or a
woman, but the person smiled and they waved and called, "Aaa."

   The sun was hot, but as they neared the beach there be-gan to be a
breeze and she could smell the sea. She began to feel as she had the very
first time she had seen it. She had been born in Ohio and she was twelve
before she had taken a trip and come out on the wide, flat, sunny sands
and smelled this smell.

   She held Littleboy tight though it made him squirm, and she leaned
against Ben's shoulder. "Oh, it's going to be fun!" she said. "Littleboy,
you're going to see the sea. Look, darling, keep watching, and smell. It's
delicious." And Littleboy squirmed until she let go again.

    Then, at last, there was the sea, and it was exactly as it had always
been, huge and sparkling and making a sound like… no, drowning out the
noises of wars. Like the black sky with stars, or the cold and stolid moon,
it dwarfed even what had happened.

    Theypassed the long, brick bathhouses, looking about as they always
had, but the boardwalks between were gone, as Ben had said, not a stick
left of them.

  "Let's stop at the main bathhouse."
  "No," Ben said. "We better keep away from those places. You can't tell
who's in there. I'm going way down beyond."

   She was glad, really, especially because at the last bath-house she
thought she saw a dark figure duck behind the wall.

   They went down another mile or so, then drove the car off behind some
stunted trees and bushes.

   "Nothing's going to spoil this Saturday," she said, pull-ing out the
picnic things, "just nothing. Come, Littleboy." She kicked off her shoes and
started running for the beach, the basket bouncing against her knee.

    Littleboy slipped out of his roomy sneakers easily and scampered after
her. "You can take your clothes off," she told him. "There's nobody here at
all."

   When Ben came, later, after hiding the gas, she was settled, flat on the
blanket in old red shorts and a halter, and still the same green kerchief,
and Littleboy, brown and naked, splashed with his pail in the shallow
water, the wet-ness bringing out the hairs along his back.

    "Look," she said, "nobody as far as you can see and you can see so far. It
gives you a different feeling from home. You know there are people here
and there in the houses, but here, it's like we were the only ones, and here
it doesn't even matter. Like Adam and Eve, we are, just you and me and
our baby."

   He lay on his stomach next to her. "Nice breeze," he said.

   Shoulder to shoulder they watched the waves and the gulls and
Littleboy, and later they splashed in the surf and then ate the lunch and
lay watching again, lazy, on their stomachs. And after a while she turned
on her back to see his face. "With the sea it doesn't matter at all," she said
and she put her arm across his shoulder. "And we're just part of
everything, the wind and the earth and the sea too, my Adam."

   "Eve," he said and smiled and kissed her and it was a longer kiss than
they had meant. "Myra. Myra."

   "There's nobody but us."
   She sat up. "I don't even know a doctor since Press Smith was killed by
those robbing kids and I'd be scared."

   "We'll find one. Besides, you didn't have any trouble. It's been so damn
long." She pulled away from his arm. "And I love you. And Littleboy, he'll
be way over four by the time we'd have another one."

  She stood up and stretched and then looked down the beach and Ben
put a hand around her ankle. She looked down the other way. "Somebody's
coming," she said, and then he got up too.

   Far down, walking in a business-like way on the hard, damp part of the
sand, three men were coming toward them.

    "You got your wrench?" Ben asked. "Put it just under the blanket and
sit down by it, but keep your knees under you."

   He put his tee shirt back on, leaving it hanging out, and he hooked the
hammer under his belt in back, the top covered by the shirt. Then he
stood and waited for them to come.

   They were all three bald and shirtless. Two wore jeans cut off at the
knees and thick belts, and the other had checked shorts and a red leather
cap and a pistol stuck in his belt in the middle of the front at the buckle.
He was older. The others looked like kids and they held back as they
neared and let the older one come up alone. He was a small man, but
looked tough. "You got gas," he said, a flat-voiced statement of fact.

  "Just enough to get home."

  "I don't mean right here. You got gas at home is what I mean."

   Myra sat stiffly, her hand on the blanket on top of where the wrench
was. Ben was a little in front of her and she could see his curving,
forward-sloping shoulders and the lump of the hammer-head at the small
of his back. If he stood up straight, she thought, and held his shoulders
like they ought to be, he would look broad and even taller and he would
show that little man, but the other had the pistol. Her eyes kept coming
back to its shining black.

   Ben took a step forward. "Don't move," the little man said. He shifted
his weight to one leg, looking relaxed, and put his hand on his hip near the
pistol. "Where you got the gas to get you home? Maybe we'll come with
you and you might lend us a little of that gas you got there at your house.
Where'd you hide the stuff to get you back, or I'll let my boys play a bit
with your little one and you might not like it."

   Littleboy, she saw, had edged down, away from them, and he crouched
now, watching with his wide-eyed stare. She could see the tense, stringy
muscles along his arms and legs and he reminded her of gibbons she had
seen at the zoo long ago. His poor little face looks old, she thought, too old
for three years. Her fingers closed over the blanket-covered wrench. They'd
better not hurt Littleboy.

  She heard her husband say, "I don't know."

  "Oh, Ben," she said, "oh, Ben."

   The man made a motion and the two youths started out, but Littleboy
had started first, she saw. She pulled at her wrench and then had to stop
and fumble with the blanket, and it took a long time because she kept her
eyes on Little-boy and the two others chasing.

   She heard a shout and a grunt beside her. "Oh, Ben," she said again,
and turned, but it was Ben on top attacking the other, and the small man
was trying to use his pistol as a club but he had hold of the wrong end for
that, and Ben had the hammer and he was much bigger.

  He was finished in a minute. She watched, empty-eyed, the whole of it,
holding the wrench in a white-knuckled hand in case he needed her.

  Afterward, he moved from the body into a crouching run, hammer in
one hand and pistbl, by the barrel, in the other. "You stay here," he
shouted back.

   She looked at the sea a few minutes, and listened to it, but her own
feelings seemed more important than the stoic sea now. She turned and
followed, walking along the marks where the feet had swept at the soft
sand.

  Where the bushes began she saw him loping back. "What happened?"

  "They ran off when they saw me after them with the other guy's gun. No
bullets though. You'll have to help look now."
  "He's lost!"

   "He won't come when you call. We'll just have to look. He could be way
out. I'll try that and you stay close and look here. The gas is buried under
that bush there, if you need it."

  "We've got to find him, Ben. He doesn't know his way home from here."

   He came to her and kissed her and held her firmly across the shoulders
with one arm. She could feel his muscles bunch into her neck as hard
almost as the head of his ham-mer that pressed against her arm. She
remembered a time four years ago when his embrace had been soft and
com-fortable. He had had hair then, but he had been quite fat, and now he
was hard and bald, having gained something and lost something.

   He turned and started off, but looked back and she smiled and nodded
to show him she felt better from his arm around her and the kiss.

   I would die if anything happened and we would lose Littleboy, she
thought, but mostly I would hate to lose Ben. Then the world would really
be lost altogether, and everything would be ended.

  She looked, calling in a whisper, knowing she had to peer under each
bush and watch behind and ahead for scamper-ing things. He's so small
when he huddles into a ball and he can sit so still. Sometimes I wish there
was another three-year-old around to judge him by. I forget so much
about how it used to be, before. Sometimes I just wonder about him.

   "Littleboy, Littleboy. Mommy wants you," she called softly. "Come.
There's still time to play in the sand and there are apples left." She leaned
forward, and her hand reached to touch the bushes.

   Later the breeze began to cool and a few clouds gathered. She shivered
in just her shorts and halter, but it was mostly an inner coldness. She felt
she had circled, hunting, for well over an hour, but she had no watch, and
at a time like this she wasn't sure of her judgment. Still, the sun seemed
low. They should go home soon. She kept watching now, too, for
silhouettes of people who might not be Ben or Lit-tleboy, and she probed
the bushes with her wrench with less care. Every now and then she went
back to look at the blanket and the basket and the pail and shovel, lying
alone and far from the water, and the body there, with the red leather cap
beside it.
    And then, when she came back another time to see if all the things were
still there, undisturbed, she saw a tall, two-headed seeming monster
walking briskly down the beach, and one head, bouncing directly over the
other one, had hair and was Littleboy's.

   The sunset was just beginning. The rosy glow deepened as they neared
her and changed the colors of everything. The red plaid of Ben's shorts
seemed more emphatic. The sand turned orangeish. She ran to meet
them, laughing and splashing her feet in the shallow water, and she came
up and held Ben tight around the waist and Littleboy said, "Aaa."

   "We'll be home before dark," she said. "There's even time for one last
splash."

   They packed up finally while Littleboy circled the body by the blanket,
touching it sometimes until Ben slapped him for it and he went off and sat
down and made little cat sounds to himself.

   He fell asleep in her lap on the way home, lying forward against her
with his head at her neck the way she liked. The sunset was deep, with
reds and purples.

   She leaned against Ben. "The beach always makes you tired," she said.
"I remember that from before too. I'll be able to sleep tonight."

   They drove silently along the wide empty parkway. The car had no
lights, but that didn't matter.

  "We did have a good day after all," she said. "I feel re-newed."

  "Good," he said.

   It was just dark as they drove up to the house. Ben stopped the car and
they sat a moment and held hands be-fore moving to get the things out.

  "We had a good day," she said again. "And Littleboy saw the sea." She
put her hand on the sleeping boy's hair, gently so as not to disturb him
and then she yawned. "I wonder if it really was Saturday."

  HOT ARGUMENT

  by Randall Garrett
  from Fantasy and Science Fiction

  Willy and his girl-friend, Bea,

  While working for the A.E.C.,

  Got in a fight and failed to hear

  The warning of a bomb test near.

  Their friends were sad to hear, no doubt,

  That they had had a falling-out.

  Proofed by FishNChips. "Fried food and fast food is good for
you."