BED SHEETS ARE WHITE
Evelyn Lief
KEEP OUR HIGHWAYS CLEAN
DON'T LITTER
KEEP CLEAN, KEEP WHITE
The traffic moved slowly.
Gart's palms were sticky. His shirt clung to his stomach.
Noon. Two hundred fifty more miles. I'll never make it in time.
Gart drove his car forward two feet. He knew he was wedged in by the sound of bumpers clashing in front and behind him.
White cars reflected the sun's light.
When Gart looked straight ahead the light blinded him. So he looked down into the car.
My eyes hurt. Maybe I've got a pair of sunglasses.
Gait opened the glove compartment, bent down and looked in.
Nothing. Oh yes. Last week. I remember. They passed a law against them. Just about the last thing to go.
Wish I had a pair of sunglasses.
The line of cars started moving slowly forward. Then, one after another, the cars jerked to a halt.
Not even halfway there.
So tired.
Should never have tried to make the trip in one day. Should have listened to Rita.
Sunglasses. Yeah.
I remember when we still had the gray-blue and gray-black roads. With only a white line down the middle. No line now. Just all white.
He shut his eyes, and held his hands over them.
Ah, nothing.
Gart pressed down and took his hands away quickly.
Red.
The side of his head was red. Blood trickled down past his ear and under his chin.
I was pushed against him. People were on all sides of me.
Above the mass of heads surrounding me I could see a mounted cop. I turned to go the other way. The fuzz was there too.
They were circling. Making the circle smaller and smaller.
NOWHERE TO GO.
The guy with the bloody head fell down. Couldn't see him. But I could feel him next to my feet.
The crowd was pushing against me. They were shoving me toward the empty space over that guy's body.
I'd have to step on him or fall.
NO.
I pushed back, but only managed to stay in the same place.
A chant started, unclear at first. Then:
DOWN WITH LADYBIRD. WE WANT OUR DIRT.
DOWN WITH LADYBIRD. WE WANT OUR DIRT.
Again, again. I felt a sense of power within me. The chant grew louder, louder.
DOWN WITH LADYBIRD. WE WANT OUR DIRT.
Then they sprayed us with the hoses.
I got a stream right in the face. I turned away and fell down over that guy with the bloody head.
I got kicked in the side. Heard some girls screaming. Covered my head with my arms. More kicks, and people stumbling over me.
Then it stopped. No more hoses. Everybody was running away.
Somehow 1 managed to get to my feet and run. Halfway down the block 1 looked over my shoulder.
The fuzz was laughing.
Fuck you bastards.
Then I ran.
Run. I'd like to get out and run between the aisles of these paralyzed lumps of scraps with those automatons inside. Run and wave my arms and shout, "My bed sheets aren't white,"
How those guys would envy me. They all like what they do in bed. But they'd never admit it.
To be pure, keep clean, keep white. That's THE LAW to them.
God, do I want my sunglasses.
Some cars were turning off the road. Lunch hour was over. The traffic was a little less now, and Gart was able to move at a steady thirty miles per hour.
On my way. At last. Still won't make it home before nightfall. I'll have to stop at a motel.
Tired.
That argument last week with Rita. Too much. What does she want me to do? Change the world by myself?
Those demonstrations years ago didn't do any good. THEY just have more organization, more weapons. Can't do a thing.
Just sit around and rap about it. She thinks something gets done that way.
"White is just a compensation for their guilt. If you can just convince one person of the idiocy of the White Laws, well, then we're making progress."
Those are her favorite lines. And what good does one or two or three more people do?
Nothing. That's what.
And then at night she puts that pink sheet on our bed. Just to spite them, she says.
But what does she do first thing in the morning? Why, she changes it to white. Just like everyone else.
There's one thing they can't make a law against. Can't stop the sky from being blue. And all those hues of red at sunset.
It's almost night. Didn't notice the time at all. You can get hypnotized by all these white buildings.
Better find a motel.
Gart traveled another fifteen minutes looking for a motel advertisement. It was getting darker.
I got a great idea. Rita wants me to do something? I'll just continue driving at night. I'll only be out another hour. And besides, I would like to see everything in shades of black.
Already things aren't so white anymore. I can almost imagine purple or green shades on the sides of the buildings.
Yeah. I think I'll drive home at night.
A half hour later Gart heard a siren.
I knew it. Can't get away with a thing.
He pulled over to the side of the road. The cops came up alongside him.
One of them got out of his car and walked over to Gart.
"Hey mister, you want to get killed or something, driving around at night? You know it's dangerous. The blackness could give you unacceptable thoughts.
"See, you're looking at the sky. Don't you know there was a law passed today against that. Sky's never white. That'll be a double charge.
"Come on out. You're under arrest."
Afterword
"This story is trite and schoolgirlish. It's the perfect example of every single thing that can be done wrong, all in one piece of writing."
On his second day at the Clarion Workshop in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1968), Harlan ridiculed one of my stories. "Show me how a woman can undulate across the room," he said. I couldn't At the end of that class I told him I would write a story.
But first I took a plain piece of white paper and wrote myself a sign. It said: DAMN YOU, HARLAN ELLISON. Every time I was ready to give up I would look at that sign, and determinedly return to the typewriter. Halfway through the night I added, in small letters, I'm gonna do it. And the next morning I had finished "Bed Sheets are White." For me it would have been sufficient to have written a good story in the face of Harlan's criticism. I waited anxiously for his response. It had never entered my mind to dream he would buy the story.
For this and much more, Harlan, thank you.