"A barbed-wire inclosure is to be constructed around the entire residential and business district, and armed guards will be posted against all refugees who may attempt to enter. Crews will be assigned to the erection of the fence, and guard duty will be rotated among the male citizens."
Ken passed the sheet back to his neighbor. His mind felt numb as he thought of some of those he had seen shuffling through the deep snow in town. He knew now how he had known they were strangers. Their pinched, haunted faces showed the evidence of more privation and hardship than any in Mayfield had yet known. These were the ones who would be turned away from now on.
Ken heard the angry buzz of comments all around him. "Should have done it long ago," a plump woman somewhere behind him was saying. "What right have they got to come in and eat our food?"
A man at the head of the line was saying, "They ought to round them all up and make them move on. Three thousand—that would keep the people who've got a right here going a long time."
Someone else, not quite so angry, said, "They're people just like us. You know what the Bible says about that. We ought to share as long as we can."
"Yeah, and pretty soon there won't be anything for anybody to share!"
"That may be true, but it's what we're supposed to do. It's what we've got to do if we're going to stay human. I'll take anybody into my house who knocks on my door."
"When you see your kids crying for food you can't give them you'll change your tune!"
Just ahead of him in line Ken saw a small, silent woman who looked about with darting glances of fear. She was trembling with fright as much as with the cold that penetrated her thin, ragged, cloth coat.
She was one of them, Ken thought. She was one who had come from the outside. He wondered which of the loud-mouthed ones beside him would be willing to be the first to take her beyond the bounds of Mayfield and force her to move on.