The Sad came to Esmerelda, California, that Tuesday at 11:47 a.m. “Came” was a dubious verb, implying contagion, a notion nationalized and sensationalized by a panicky ninny at CNN who a week earlier had used the word “airborne” to describe the phenomenon. People fled. And they did their fleeing everywhichway. And they ran themselves into monstrous pileups and foundered in freeway jams.

There was little fleeing to or from Esmerelda, population 4,300, a reserved township that had a historic piece of the upper state wine industry. Nonetheless, a bit before noon on Tuesday Judson Wolins, who was 33 and employed at the local well-kept hardware store, staggered back from the microwave on his kitchen counter where a once-a-week-indulgence pizza roll was heating. This was one of Judson’s days off. He’d slept very late, and had dreamed about the strange alarming things he had seen on the TV recently. His stockinged feet slid on the graying linoleum as he dropped like a sack of wet sand into a chair at his little kitchen table.

A vast, crushing, merciless weight of despair, loneliness and regret fell upon him as his arms hung limply, knuckles scraping the floor. Into his mind and heart came memories of a girl he had known in his late teens, soft-haired, dimple-cheeked, who to his breathless perceptions had been the ideal of desirable femininity. He had awkwardly dated her more than once. He had even snuck in a making-out with her. But in the end she’d slipped easily past him, on to more likely prospects. A no-harm, no-foul, adolescent touch and go.

But this morning he saw and felt her with the intensity of a morphine-driven hallucination. He perceived the full fantastically tragic sweep of the affair. He recognized that she – her name was Anita Ingram – had been his alpha and omega, and that his life without her was absolute failure and misery.

The microwave finished its programmed cycle with an electronic bleat. Beyond the little greasy window his pizza roll bubbled. The green digits on the display became 11:48.

 
Judson Wolins longed to die. 

* * * 

Only he didn’t spontaneously die, and he didn’t kill himself. And the next day he went back to work, dragging his feet as though he wore leaded shoes. His world was an unremitting shade of charcoal; and gloom made his every action a terrible chore. He could barely move his tongue to respond monosyllabically to people. “What’s wrong?” a regular customer at the hardware store asked. Then, with a note of rising horror, “What is wrong, Jud?”

By Friday the Sad had affected everyone in Esmerelda.

Judson went off his diet. He watched TV a lot, and it didn’t matter to him what was on, so long as the screen’s flickering colors gave him someplace to rest his eyes. Stations went off the air; then, later came back on. Downcast anchors mumbled the news. Much of it was strange, but the weirdness didn’t arouse Judson. Things had come to a standstill around the world. That lasted for a while. Then people just ... went on. The Sad had covered the planet. There were suicides, but not the mass suicides one might have expected. Scientists who weeks ago had urgently studied the phenomenon announced they didn’t understand it and left it at that.

“What difference does it make what causes it?” so muttered the most expert of the experts.

Stocks of antidepressants were plundered; but they didn’t really work anymore it seemed. People drank more, but that was as pointless.

The days were slogs, nothing more. Hours of grim time to be gotten through. Stones to be pushed up bleak hills. However, the governments of the world gradually realized that all the current wars were no longer being fought. Aggression required energy, stamina, will. Nobody cared about ideologies any longer. Religious fanatics of every stripe had tried to cash in on the spectacle, but no one was buying their drivel anymore. And after a time they bashfully abandoned their beliefs.

Judson Wolins, whose gut now sagged gruesomely – which depressed him even more – realized in a drab mental flash that Anita Ingram, wherever she now was, must be feeling just as lousy as he. There was no comfort in that. But it made him realize, subsequently, that he no longer felt anything for her. The dramatic longing had dulled, becoming more of the flat sameness of his relentless misery. Even the glamour of heartache was gone.

* * * 

He plodded through days of dejection. One of those days was a Wednesday, and he was at the hardware store. Society still functioned, after a fashion. People came in, bought things, went away. He waited on them drearily, exchanging no pleasantries, no small talk. His body ached, a general heavy hurt. He hated to see himself in the mirror, and could rarely get it together enough to even shower. He was no different from the people he encountered – unshaven, reeking, disheveled.

But that Wednesday it suddenly occurred to Judson that he should commit some sort of action. Do something. The notion simply came to him. He halted there in the aisle and took stock of himself and realized that he was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. Muscles tugged hard on his face, and a grin cut across his formerly morose features. He reached up for the handle of the 12-pound double-headed sledge hammer hanging before him. The wood felt good. The head swung nicely.

He carried it toward the front of the store. A woman backed away from him, seeing the fearsome grin splitting his face. On the street outside a burglar alarm abruptly tore into life. The sound thrilled Judson, and a great hot eagerness surged within him. He pushed his way through the doors, lifting the sledge hammer.

The Joy had come to Esmerelda.