I Love Galesburg in the Springtime

by Jack Finney

  I said, "Sure. After a hot day, the beams of my house cool off and contract; make a lot of noise. Every time it happens I remember the first time I tasted strawberries as a kid. With some of the other old associations in my house, the memories are gone, only the emotions left, and I can't remember why they began."

  "Yes!" Ellie leaned forward, excited. "This house is full of them! Turn a corner in the front hallway, and the way the stairs rise toward the second floor gives me a feeling of peace. And when the back screen door slams, just the sound of it makes me happy for no reason I know." She hesitated, then said, "And there are other more specific things. One morning I walked into the library. Sam was sitting there reading. The windowpanes are divided into quarters, and the sun came through at an angle, and four diamond-shaped patches of sunlight lay across the bindings of the books on the shelves. Harry, I saw them, smiled, and said to Sam, 'Well, the Pelliers arrive tomorrow for a week. Won't we have fun!' And Sam looked up and nodded. He knew it, too! Then we just stared at each other. Because we don't know anyone named Pellier; we never have. And no one was coming next day."

  Sam said, "I thought she was nuts, too, Harry, till that happened. But from then on, things happened to me, too. There's an upstairs window, and when you open it, it squeals and the sash weight rattles. All I can tell you is that whenever that happens I'm just glad to be alive. And a couple of months ago I opened the front door to see if the morning paper had arrived. My hand touched the doorknob and the instant I felt it—it's porcelain and oval; feels like a china egg—I thought, Today's the parade! At the same time, I knew there wasn't any parade, hadn't been a parade in Dar-ley for years." He turned to Ellie. "Tell him about the skating."

  She said, "Night before last we were reading in the living room. I looked up from my book at the fireplace, then thought, In a couple of months, we'll be lighting that. And when we do, there'll be skating on Sikermann's Slough. Yet I don't even know what that means."

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck prickle as I said, "I do. It's been filled in and forgotten for years but it was still there when my father was a boy—a slough that used to freeze over every winter. It was on a corner of what was once the Sikermann farm, sometime in the eighteen eighties."

  In Darley, as elsewhere, building slacks off during the winter; and whenever I had time, I tried to learn where or when the old house existed before but I never did. The title block of the original plans tells for whom they were drawn but I found nothing about him or the plans in town records which isn't particularly surprising. I poked through back files of the old Darley Intelligencer, too, but found out very little; they're incomplete with gaps of days, weeks, months, and even years. All I learned was how many more fires there were back in the days of largely wood construction and of gas and kerosene lighting and wood stoves.

  But I have no doubt that that house existed—sometime in the eighties, I should think. And that it was a happy house —one of the occasional rare and wonderful houses that acquire souls and lives of their own; the kind of house that seems to know you're in it and puts its best foot forward; a house born of the feelings and love of the lost and forgotten people who planned, built, lived in, and gave it life. I think that like many another house of the times this one burned and that maybe my granddad produced the plans for a fire-insurance claim agent, then stuck them on his shelves. I don't know.

  But in one way or another its life was cut suddenly short. And then, miraculously, it found itself in being again. Room for room, in every least detail—exactly as it had been in the far-off moment when fire flared along the edge of a curtain, perhaps—the old house existed once more. And it simply resumed its life; the kind of life and times, of course, that it knew.

  I've never gone back to it. I suppose I'd be welcome but I don't feel that I belong there any more, not in the life the Cluetts lead now. They leave the grounds only when necessary, Sam driving his buggy. No one goes in; the big gates are kept closed. Sam sold his boatyard this spring—for enough money, I've heard, so that he need never work again. They no longer take a newspaper and whether they read their mail no one knows; they never send any.

  But every night the lights are on, the wonderfully warm yellow-orange gas lights, and all last winter they used the fireplaces. This summer people have had glimpses of them. They've been seen playing croquet on the lawn, Ellie in a long white dress. And just this week twin hammocks, the kind with long fringe at the sides, appeared on the shaded veranda. And the two of them lie there reading the lazy afternoons away. I know what they read. The books they'd bought had arrived when I last visited the Cluetts, and along with other fine leather-bound old volumes there were the complete works of Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, just the thing for long summer afternoons far back in the past.

  For that's where the Cluetts are, of course. I don't quite believe stories I've heard—that one night last winter it snowed on their property and nowhere else; and that occasionally sun has shone or rain has fallen on their roof but not on the rest of the town, as though the house existed in some other year. Just the same, Ellie and Sam are living far back in the past; that's where they are. For their new house is haunted by its old self. And its ghost has captured the Cluetts—rather easily, for I think they were glad to surrender.

  HEY, LOOK AT ME!

  HEY, LOOK AT ME!

  About six months after Maxwell Kingery died I saw his ghost walking along Miller Avenue in Mill Valley, California. It was two twenty in the afternoon, a clear sunny day, and I saw him from a distance which I later paced off; it was less than fifteen feet. There is no possibility that I was mistaken about who—or what—I saw, and I'll tell you why I'm sure.

  My name is Peter Marks, and I'm the book editor of a San Francisco newspaper. I live in Mill Valley a dozen miles from San Francisco, and I work at home most days, from about nine till around two or three in the afternoon. My wife is likely to need something from the store by then, so I generally walk downtown, nearly always stopping in at Meier's bakery which has a lunch counter. Until he died, I often had coffee there with Max Kingery, and we'd sit at the counter for half an hour and talk.

  He was a writer, so it was absolutely inevitable that I'd be introduced to him soon after he came to Mill Valley. A lot of writers live here, and whenever a new one arrives people love to introduce us and then stand back to see what will happen. Nothing much ever does, though once a man denounced me right out on the sidewalk in front of the Redhill liquor store. "Peter Marks? The book critic?" he said, and when I nodded he said, "You, sir, are a puling idiot who ought to be writing 'News of Our Pets' for the Carmel Pine Cone instead of criticizing the work of your betters." Then he turned, and—this is the word—stalked off, while I stood staring after him, smiling. I'd panned two of his books, he'd been waiting for Peter Marks ever since, and was admirably ready when his moment came.

  But all Max Kingery said, stiffly, the day we were introduced, was, "How do you do," then he stood there nodding rapidly a number of times, finally remembering to smile; and that's all I said to him. It was in the spring, downtown in front of the bank, I think, and Max was bareheaded, wearing a light-brown, shabby-looking topcoat with the collar turned up. He was a black-haired, black-eyed man with heavy black-rimmed glasses, intense and quick-moving; it was hard for him to stand still there. He was young but already stooped, his hair thinning. I could see this was a man who took himself seriously but his name rang no bell in my mind and we spoke politely and parted quickly, probably forever if we hadn't kept meeting in the bakery after that. But we both came in for coffee nearly every afternoon, and after we'd met and nodded half a dozen times we were almost forced to sit together at the counter and try to make some conversation.

  So we slowly became friends; he didn't have many. After I knew him I looked up what he'd written, naturally, and found it was a first novel which I'd reviewed a year before. I'd said it showed promise, and that I thought it was possible he'd write a fine novel some day, but all in all it was the kind o
f review usually called "mixed," and I felt awkward about it.

  But I needn't have worried. I soon learned that what I or anyone else thought of his book was of no importance to Max; he knew that in time I and everyone else would have to say that Maxwell Kingery was a very great writer. Right now not many people, even here in town, knew he was a writer at all but that was okay with Max; he wasn't ready for them to know. Some day not only every soul in Mill Valley but the inhabitants of remote villages in distant places would know he was one of the important writers of his time, and possibly of all time. Max never said any of this but you learned that he thought so and that it wasn't egotism. It was just something he knew, and maybe he was right. Who knows how many Shakespeares have died prematurely, how many young geniuses we've lost in stupid accidents, illnesses, and wars?

  Cora, my wife, met Max presently, and because he looked thin, hungry, and forlorn—as he was—she had me ask him over for a meal, and pretty soon we were having him often. His wife had died about a year before we met him. (The more I learned about Max, the more it seemed to me that he was one of those occasional people who, beyond all dispute, are plagued by simple bad luck all their lives.) After his wife died and his book had failed, he moved from the city to Mill Valley, and now he lived alone working on the novel which, with the others to follow, was going to make him famous. He lived in a mean cheap little house he'd rented, walking downtown for meals. I never knew where he got whatever money he had; it wasn't much. So we had him over often so Cora could feed him, and once he was sure he was welcome he'd stop in of his own accord, if his work were going well. And nearly every day I saw him downtown, and we'd sit over coffee and talk.

  It was seldom about writing. All he'd ever say about his own work when we met was that it was going well or that it was not, because he knew I was interested. Some writers don't like to talk about what they're doing, and he was one; I never even knew what his book was about. We talked about politics, the possible futures of the world, and whatever else people on the way to becoming pretty good friends talk about. Occasionally he read a book I'd reviewed, and we'd discuss it, and my review. He was always polite enough about what I did, but his real attitude showed through. Some writers are belligerent about critics, some are sullen and hostile, but Max was just contemptuous. I'm sure he believed that all writers outranked all critics—-well or badly, they actually do the deed which we only sit and carp about. And sometimes Max would listen to an opinion of mine about someone's book, then he'd shrug and say, "Well, you're not a writer," as though that severely limited my understanding. I'd say, "No, I'm a critic," which seemed a good answer to me, but Max would nod as though I'd agreed with him. He liked me, but to Max my work made me only a hanger-on, a camp follower, almost a parasite. That's why it was all right to accept free meals from me; I was one of the people who live off the work writers do, and I'm sure he thought it was only my duty, which I wouldn't deny, to help him get his book written. Reading it would be my reward.

  But of course I never read Max's next book or the others that were to follow it; he died that summer, absolutely point-lessly. He caught flu or something—one of those nameless things everyone gets occasionally. But Max didn't always eat well or live sensibly, and it hung on and turned into pneumonia, though he didn't know that. He lay in that little house of his waiting to get well, and didn't. By the time he got himself to a doctor, and the doctor got him to a hospital and got some penicillin in him, it was too late and Max died in Marin General Hospital that night.

  What made it even more shocking to Cora and me was the way we learned about it. We were out of town on vacation six hundred miles away in Utah when it happened, and didn't know about it. (We've thought over and again, of course, that if only we'd been home when Max took sick we'd have taken him to our house and he'd never have gotten pneumonia, and I'm sure it's true; Max was just an unlucky man.) When we got home, not only did we learn that Max was dead but even his funeral, over ten days before, was already receding into the past.

  So there was no way for Cora and me to make ourselves realize that Max was actually gone forever. You return from a vacation and slip back into an old routine so easily sometimes it hardly seems you'd left. It was like that now, and walking into the bakery again for coffee in the afternoons it seemed only a day or so since I'd last seen Max here, and whenever the door opened I'd find myself glancing up.

  Except for a few people who remembered seeing me around town with Max, and who spoke to me about him now, shaking their heads, it didn't seem to me that Max's death was even discussed. I'm sure people had talked about it to some extent at least, although not many had known him well or at all. But other events had replaced that one by some days. So to Cora and me Max's absence from the town didn't seem to have left any discernible gap in it.

  Even visiting the cemetery didn't help. It's in San Rafael, not Mill Valley, and the grave was in a remote corner; we had to climb a steep hill to reach it. But it hardly seemed real; there was no marker, and we had to count in from the road to even locate it. Standing there in the sun with Cora, I felt a flash of resentment against his relatives, but then I knew I shouldn't. Max had a few scattered cousins or something in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The last time he'd known any of them at all well they'd been children, and he hadn't corresponded with them since. Now they'd sent a minimum of money to California to pay expenses, more from family pride than for Max, I expect, and none of them had come themselves. You couldn't blame them, it was a long way and expensive, but it was sad; there'd been only five people at the funeral. Max had never been in or even seen this cemetery, and standing at the unmarked grave, the new grass already beginning, I couldn't get it through my head that it had anything much to do with him.

  He just vanished from the town, that's all. His things— a half-finished manuscript, portable typewriter, a few clothes, and half a ream of unused yellow paper—had been shipped to his relatives. And Max, with a dozen great books hidden in his brain, who had been going to become famous, was now just gone, hardly missed and barely remembered.

  Time is the great healer; it makes you forget; sometimes it makes you forget literally and with great cruelty. I knew a man whose wife ran away, and he never saw her again. He missed her so much he thought he could never for a moment forget it. A year later, reading in his living room at night, he became so absorbed in his book that when he heard a faint familiar noise in the kitchen he called out without looking up from his book and asked his wife to bring him a cup of tea when she came back into the room. Only when there was no answer did he look up from his complete forgetful-ness; then his loss swept over him worse than ever.

  About six months after Max died, I finished my day's work and walked downtown. This was in January, and we'd just had nearly a month of rain, fog, and wet chill. Then California did what it does several times every winter and for which I always forgive it anything. The rain stopped, the sun came out, the sky turned an unclouded blue, and the temperature went up into the high seventies. Everything was lush from the winter rains and there was no way to distinguish those three or four days from summer, and I walked into town in shirtsleeves. And when I started across Miller Avenue by the bus station heading for Meier's bakery across the street and saw Max Kingery over there walking toward the corner of Throckmorton just ahead, I wasn't surprised but just glad to see him. I think it was because this was like a continuation of the summer I'd known him, the interval following it omitted, and because I'd never really had proof that he died. So I walked on, crossing the street and watching Max, thin, dark and intense; he didn't see me. I was waiting till I got close enough to call to him and I reached the middle o£ the street and even took a step or two past it before I remembered that Max Kingery was dead. Then I just stood there, my mouth hanging open, as Max or what seemed to be Max walked on to the corner, turned, and moved on out of sight.

  I went on to the bakery then and had my coffee; I had to have something. I don't know if I could have spoken but I didn't have t
o; they always set a cup of coffee in front of me when I come in. My hand shook when I lifted the cup, and I spilled some, and if it had occurred to me I'd have gone to a bar instead and had several drinks.

  If you ever have some such experience you'll learn that people resist believing you as they resist nothing else; you'll resist it yourself. I got home and told Cora what had happened; we sat in the living room and this time I did have a drink in my hand. She listened; there really wasn't much to say, I found, except that I'd seen Max Kingery walking along Miller Avenue. I couldn't blame Cora; my words sounded flat and foolish as I heard them. She nodded and said that several times she'd seen dark, preoccupied, thin young men downtown who reminded her a little of Max. It was only natural; it was where we'd so often run into him.

  Patiently I said, "No, listen to me, Cora. It's one thing to see someone who reminds you of someone else—from a distance, or from the back, or just as he disappears in a crowd. But you cannot possibly mistake a stranger when you see him close up and see his face in full daylight for someone you know well and saw often. With the possible exception of identical twins, there are no such resemblances between people. That was Max, Cora, Max Kingery and no one else in the world."

  Cora just sat there on the davenport continuing to look at me; she didn't know what to say. I understood, and felt half sorry for her, half irritated. Finally—she had to say something—she said, "Well … what was he wearing?"

  I had to stop and think. Then I shrugged. "Well, just some kind of pants; I didn't notice the shoes; a dark shirt of some kind, maybe plaid, I don't know. And one of those round straw hats."

  "Round straw hats?"

  "Yeah, you know. You see people wearing them in the summer. I think they buy them at carnivals or somewhere. With a peak. Shaped like a baseball cap, only they're made of some kind of shiny yellow straw. Usually the peak is stitched around the rim with a narrow strip of red cloth or braid. This one was, and it had a red button on top, and"— I remembered this suddenly, triumphantly—"it had his initials on front! Big red initials, M.K., about three inches high, stitched into the straw just over the peak in red thread or braid or something."