The Last Place on Earth | Page 2

can't make me get out," Sam said.
* * * * *
Ed Michaels scooped up a pound, one ounce of nails and spilled them onto his scale. He pinched off the excess, then dropped it back in and fed the nails into a brown paper bag. He crumpled the top and set it on the counter. "That's twenty-nine plus one, Sam. Thirty cents."
Collins laid out a quarter and a nickel and picked up the bag. "Appreciate you doing this after store hours, Ed."
Michaels chuckled. "I wasn't exactly getting ready for the opera, Sam."
Collins turned around and saw Sarah Comstock still waiting, the petition in her hand.
"Now what's a pretty girl like you doing, wasting her time in politics?" Collins heard himself ask.
Mrs. Comstock twittered. "I'm old enough to be your mother, Sam Collins."
"I like mature women."
Collins watched his hand in fascination as it reached out to touch one of Sarah Comstock's plump cheeks, then dropped to her shoulder and ripped away the strap-sleeve of her summer print dress.
A plump, rosy shoulder was revealed, splattered with freckles.
Sarah Comstock put her hands over her ears as if to keep from hearing her own shrill scream. It reached out into pure soprano range.
Sarah Comstock backed away, into the shadows, and Sam Collins followed her, trying to explain, to apologize.
"Sam! Sam!"
The voice cut through to him and he looked up.
Ed Michaels had a double-barreled shotgun aimed at him. Mrs. Michaels' face was looking over his shoulder in the door to the back, her face a sick white.
"You get out of here, Sam," Michaels said. "You get out and don't you come back. Ever."
Collins' hands moved emptily in air. He was always better with his hands than words, but this time even they seemed inexpressive.
He crumpled the sack of nails in both fists, and turned and left the hardware store.

II
His house was still there, sitting at the end of Elm Street, at the end of town, on the edge of the prairie. It was a very old house. It was decorated with gingerboard, a rusted-out tin rooster-comb running the peak of the roof and stained glass window transoms; and the top of the house was joined to the ground floor by lapped fishscales, as though it was a mermaid instead of a house. The house was a golden house. It had been painted brown against the dust, but the keening wind, the relentless sun, the savage rape of the thunderstorms, they had all bleached the brown paint into a shining pure gold.
Sam stepped inside and leaned back against the front door, the door of full-length glass with a border of glass emeralds and rubies. He leaned back and breathed deep.
The house didn't smell old. It smelled new. It smelled like sawdust and fresh-hewn lumber as bright and blond as a high school senior's crewcut.
He walked across the flowered carpet. The carpet didn't mind footsteps or bright sun. It never became worn or faded. It grew brighter with the years, the roses turning redder, the sunflowers becoming yellower.
The parlor looked the same as it always did, clean and waiting to be used. The cane-backed sofa and chairs eagerly waiting to be sat upon, the bead-shaded kerosene lamps ready to burst into light.
Sam went into his workshop. This had once been the ground level master bedroom, but he had had to make the change. The work table held its share of radios, toasters, TV sets, an electric train, a spring-wind Victrola. Sam threw the nails onto the table and crossed the room, running his fingers along the silent keyboard of the player piano. He looked out the window. The bulldozers had made the ground rectangular, level and brown, turning it into a gigantic half-cent stamp. He remembered the mail and raised the window and reached down into the mailbox. It was on this side of the house, because only this side was technically within city limits.
As he came up with the letters, Sam Collins saw a man sighting along a plumbline towards his house. He shut the window.
Some of the letters didn't have any postage stamps, just a line of small print about a $300 fine. Government letters. He went over and forced them into the tightly packed coal stove. All the trash would be burned out in the cold weather.
Collins sat down and looked through the rest of his mail. A new catalogue of electronic parts. A bulky envelope with two paperback novels by Richard S. Prather and Robert Bloch he had ordered. A couple of letters from hams. He tossed the mail on the table and leaned back.
* * * * *
He thought about what had happened in the hardware store.
It wasn't surprising it had happened to him. Things like that were bound to happen to him. He had just been lucky that Ed Michaels hadn't