The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  This was his field, his specialty, and, though I watched him from time to time, as we all did, I didn't even try to understand what he was doing. But his job was to convert at least one torpedo to a dummy; to take off the war head, remove the TNT and replace it with a small flash charge. We'd often used dummies in the Navy for practice firings; they go off with a flash and a lot of smoke, for easy sighting, but with no force to speak of.

  Actually a practice head is different from a war head, but Moreno said he could make these do, and I knew he could. Just the same, I'll admit it made me a little nervous, standing on the dock with Vic, Lauffnauer and Linc, watching him get ready to remove that blunt and deadly red-painted war head from the first of the torpedoes. He grinned up at me nastily, so I made a point of standing there watching, even after the others left. I stood watching him remove the detonator in the war nose first, then unscrew the war head, and open up the compartment which held the TNT. These were small, short-range torpedoes — only a thousand yards — but each of them held more than four hundred pounds of TNT, a terrible and devastating force when exploded. Presently Linc brought our rowboat into the dock, and Moreno laid the big sticks in the bottom; then Linc rowed far out to dump them overboard.

  Moreno had bought whatever he needed for the harmless flash charge; the difference in weight between it and the big charge he'd removed would be made up, he'd said, with sea water. Once the TNT was out of the war head, I didn't hang around; Moreno and I weren't speaking any more than necessary, and the rest of us were to begin testing the sub.

  We weren't finished working on her; not quite. There were still odds and ends to finish up yet. But the engines and motors were working — beautifully, and in perfect adjustment. The compressor worked as well as it ever would, and the tanks held air. All valves and vents were in reasonably good working order; and all fuel, air, water and electrical lines were in excellent condition. The periscope worked smoothly; all we'd had to do was clean and oil it. And my switchboard worked perfectly the first time I'd tried it. All outside parts were free and moving again, though they were terribly eroded and pitted and worked loosely.

  But though it wasn't a lot, we'd done just about all we could. Lauffnauer had stripped off the sodden deck gratings and was going to knock together a new set. We had two inflatable rafts to buy, Linc had a radio to buy, and I had to get chargers. But essentially we were finished; now we had to test what we'd done.

  Inside the submarine we blew the tanks, and the sub rose to float high in the dock, gently nudging the old tires nailed to the sides. This much we'd known would happen; we knew we could blow the tanks. Then we opened the dock doors, and Lauffnauer, in the tower, searched the water with a pair of Navy binoculars that belonged to Moreno — stolen, I imagined. There was nothing in sight, and the rest of us shoved the sub out with poles; there was a fresh breeze, and the water was choppy today, but we didn't want to test her under only ideal conditions anyway. I climbed down inside to the engines, Linc coming along to take the rudder wheel; Vic stayed on deck with his poles to fend her off if necessary. Lauffnauer hadn't replaced the old deck gratings yet, and Vic had a job staying on deck. Then I started the diesels, Linc swung the rudder wheel, and we curved out to sea. Vic came down then, Lauffnauer still in the tower. We went a mile out, cruising back and forth along the coast for half a mile in either direction, testing the engines at various speeds, Line and Vic getting used to the way the rudder responded. We had all our batteries, and we'd bought them charged, and after a time I ran the motors with them. We'd used up some of the battery charge, and not all of them had been charged to capacity in the first place. So I used the batteries for only a minute; they worked fine.

  From time to time we flooded to just above negative buoyancy, then blew the tanks, testing them over and over. Then, finally, we made our first dive test — in twenty-five feet of water. Moreno had told us where to find clean bottom at that depth, and we sounded with a line and found it right away. We expected no trouble; the tanks had blown when we raised the sub; and in any case we could flood and escape at this depth without even using diving lungs. I threw out the engine clutch, Frank came down, closing the hatches behind him, and we flooded the tanks, very slowly. We sank then, the tanks not completely filled, at just below positive buoyancy, and the depth gauge worked. The needle moved to five, then ten, then fifteen feet; a moment or so afterward we felt the sub's keel nudge the bottom, and the needle stopped at twenty-six feet. We didn't move; we held our breaths, listening. But there was no sound of water, either inside the hull or from the ballast tanks. Then we moved through the sub, inspecting for leaks, and found none. We hadn't expected to; the sub, after all, had withstood the pressure of a hundred-foot depth for forty years. It was our work on the ballast-tank valves we'd come down to test; if the tanks wouldn't blow, we'd have to flood and escape, leaving the sunken submarine forever.

  Finally Lauffnauer gave the word, Vic yanked the air-flask levers, and we heard the gush of sound — always wonderful to hear, always a relief — of sea water forced out by the rush of air into the tanks, and we felt the sub stir and saw the depth-gauge needle quiver and begin to move back, and knew we were rising. Vic shut off the air then, closed the valves, and I started the motors, as Lauffnauer and Vic took the fore and aft dive-plane wheels. Then, at just above negative buoyancy, we maneuvered the little submarine at a depth of about fifteen feet, Lauffnauer commanding. We rose toward the surface, then nosed down toward the bottom, the sub responding well, as Frank and Vic heaved at their wheels, Linc steering. We kept it up for only two minutes, then I shut down my motors; I wasn't risking running out of juice for the trip back. The sub rose of its own buoyancy then; we surfaced, and, as Lauffnauer broke open the hatches, we were grinning at each other. We still had other — and far more severe and dangerous — tests to make, but our submarine was operating so far, and we felt certain, in that moment, that it would continue to do so. Then I connected the diesels, started them and we headed for home. I wanted the batteries fully charged for the rest of our tests, and I hadn't yet had a chance to get chargers, so we were through for the day.

  Moreno had two torpedoes ready when we got back and was working on a third; he'd already rowed out and dumped the TNT, he said, grinning up at me, as though I were the one who needed reassuring about that. He'd decided to convert all six, he said then; we were standing in the dock watching him. While we needed only one dummy, there was no point in depending on only one when we had five spares on hand. He'd convert them all, he said, and the rest of us agreed.

  "Hugh," he said, glancing up at me, and I was surprised; his voice was pleasant and he even smiled agreeably. "This might be the best time to pick up your chargers and the rafts. Linc can go along to pick up his radio. … What's on your schedule, Frank?"

  "I will make the new gratings. I can ride along to the village, order the two-by-fours and ride back with the lumber truck. I will buy paint, too, and bring it back on the truck, and I want to see if there is mail for me at the post office. I am expecting a letter sent general delivery"— and he grinned at us —"from Argentina."

  "O.K." Sitting on the dock beside his partly assembled torpedo, Moreno nodded. "Hugh? … Linc? That O.K. with you?" he said, and we nodded. "Vic, maybe you could give Frank a hand on the deck gratings."

  "Sure," Vic said, and Moreno yanked open the first couple of snap fasteners at the neck of his tan coveralls, then pulled out a little leather sack hanging from a chain around his neck. He took a thick roll of bills from the sack, carefully counted out seven hundred and fifty dollars, then handed it up to me.

  "Bring back the change," he said, grinning, and I took it, not answering. Then Linc and I left to go up to the shack and get dressed for the city. I dressed in clean denims and work shirt; Rosa had washed and ironed them. Then I went out to wait while Linc washed and dressed.

  Rosa had a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk ready for me, and I sat at the kitchen table eating, watching her prepare a sandwich for L
inc. It was the first moment I'd been alone with her since I'd been at her house, and now I thought about last night and about my encounter with Moreno on my way home. Rosa was slicing Linc's sandwich in half, standing at the drainboard of the sink, wearing a high-necked yellow sweater, the sleeves pushed up over her elbows, a dark-green skirt and low-heeled shoes, her hair coiled in braids on top of her head; she looked very, very pretty. "Want to ride along, Rosa?" I said casually. "Spend a couple hours in New York?"

  She swung around, her eyes lighting up; then she frowned and glanced out the window toward the dock.

  "Listen," I said angrily, "are you marrying that guy? If you are, I wish you'd say so."

  "He says I am." A slow, mischievous smile crept over her face. "He asked me again this morning — even before breakfast, as soon as I arrived. He told me, that is; this time he didn't ask."

  "And what did you tell him?"

  "Nothing." She shrugged. "I'm not ready to be married again; my husband is dead only four months. But in time I will marry again."

  "Moreno?" I persisted.

  "Maybe."

  "Don't marry Moreno," I said, and Rosa smiled, her brows rising.

  "Oh?" she said. "Are you proposing to me, then?"

  "No, I'm not. But you can do a lot better than Moreno."

  "And a lot worse!" she said suddenly, angrily, leaning toward me, her hands on her hips, her black eyes glittering. "You don't like him, but I could do much worse — a very great deal!"

  I shrugged. "Suit yourself," I said, and just to irritate her, because I felt angry myself, I added, "You'll have plenty of money to console you, anyway."

  She just laughed at me; a single, contemptuous snort of laughter. "Money," she said. "You are like children, all of you; Moreno too. I think I will not marry any of you; you are stupid. But, yes, I will go to New York with you."

  Linc came out a moment later, wearing clean wash clothes. I yelled for Lauffnauer then, and a moment or so later, when he came plodding up the path, we all walked out, turning toward the back of the shack and the jeep. We climbed in and; as Lauffnauer approached the jeep, he glanced at Rosa beside me, then at me — warningly, his eyes narrowed — but he said nothing and got into the back with Linc.

  We didn't do anything special in New York. At the first gas station outside the tunnel I stopped, and Linc and I copied half a dozen addresses each from the classified section of the phone book — radio- and auto-supply houses and a couple of surplus stores. I put Rosa in a cab then; she was going to Fifth Avenue, at Linc's suggestion, walk up it, and we'd pick her up at a spot in Central Park.

  It took Linc and me a little over two hours to buy what we needed. I got my chargers right away, and then two small inflatable life rafts at a store in the same block. But Linc and I visited half a dozen radio-supply places before Linc — looking over radios, asking questions and pricing them — found what he wanted.

  We picked up Rosa then — it was a little past five-and started back for the tunnel. She'd had a good time, she said.

  It was dusk, almost dark, when we reached the shack, and Linc hopped right out, picked up the carton containing his radio, surprisingly small and compact, and carried it around the corner of the shack toward the dock. Then — I was startled, and had just time to wonder if she'd been thinking as I had — Rosa turned to me, lifting her arms easily and naturally, as though there were nothing else that could occur, and my arms slid around her, and I was kissing her. I held her tight to me and kissed her long and hard. When we stopped, it was only for an instant. Then I was straining her to me, kissing her again, and it was wildly exciting, and I never wanted to stop.

  But as suddenly as she'd begun, Rosa was pulling loose, and she leaned back against the door away from me, a hand rising to her hair, the other hand holding me off, and I got mad. "What the devil was that for?" I said.

  "I don't know." She shrugged. "No reason. I just felt like it. Is everything you do for a reason? Perhaps I was just trying to find out how I feel; I cannot remain a widow forever, and I will remain one only as long as I feel like one." She frowned angrily. "Anyway, Ed Moreno doesn't own me. Not yet."

  I grinned at her. "I guess that answers my question; you weren't kissing me, you were just defying Moreno."

  "You think too much."

  "Maybe; so let's quit thinking." I leaned toward her, putting an arm around her waist, drawing her toward me, and said, "No thinking now; this time it's just for the fun of it." She hesitated, frowning a little, then raised her arms, and I grabbed her to me and kissed her once more, this time long and lingeringly.

  Then she broke loose, twisting suddenly and angrily from my arms. "This is stupid!" she said. "Like children! You don't love me! And I don't love you! You are nothing but a big, good-looking man, and I am ashamed of myself!"

  I reached forward and put a hand on her arm. "Now who's thinking too much?" I said gently, smiling at her, and after a moment she smiled back, but grudgingly.

  "There is lipstick on your face," she said shortly. "Wipe it off."

  I reached for the handkerchief in my back pocket, then stopped. I don't know how I suddenly knew that Moreno was waiting somewhere in the almost complete darkness around us; I don't think there'd been a sound of any sort, though maybe there had been. But I knew, and I said, "You go on ahead. I've got to haul the rafts and chargers down to the dock."

  Rosa nodded and got out, and before she reached the door of the shack, I opened my door and moved quickly out away from the jeep, onto the rut road and in the clear — crouched, turning, watching every direction. But Moreno didn't rush me. There were no stars, no moon, but there was still light, the very last of the day, high in the sky. And now the indistinct silhouette of Moreno's squat, powerful figure walked out from behind the shack. Then, in the faint light, I saw the dull shine of the knife in his hand.

  I don't know anything about knife fighting beyond the little I've read here and there, which is that it can be highly skilled, a whole system of offensive and defensive lunges and parries. In any case, I didn't have a knife of my own. But I was certain Moreno was skilled with a knife; the very way he held it, walking slowly toward me, seemed professional and deadly. Standing half crouched, my hands out and open, watching him move closer, I knew that this time there'd be no talking, that he was going to use that knife to kill me if he could.

  I was — quietly and with utter calm — very frightened. I don't think my pulse beat even increased; I couldn't let my fear affect me. If I were going to survive the next minute, I had to be as deadly and purposely thoughtful as the man with the knife — not four yards away now — walking toward me, the haft in his fist held at stomach level, the blade pointing at me. Now, silently, not saying a word, he was ten feet away, and I whirled and ran — purposely awkward and stumbling, simulating blind panic. I ran three or four steps up the road away from the shack, then darted a look over my shoulder. Moreno was running hard after me, but not gaining, and I stumbled again, my outthrust hand brushing the tall grass beside the rut as though I were about to fall, letting him come closer.

  Then, my feet pounding in the dry, powdery dust of the deep rut, I stooped, still running, grabbed up a thick handful of dust and whirled to face Moreno. Very fast, but with absolutely careful aim, I shot my arm out, opening my fist, and flung the handful of dust squarely into Moreno's face. He came after me still, but stumbling, blinded, his free hand swiping across his eyes, and as I backed carefully away, maintaining a yard's distance between us, he began to curse, not loudly. He was shaking his head violently, eyes blinking rapidly, the knife still outthrust, and now I kicked. With all my strength, aiming with the very point of my toe, my foot flashed upward and the blunt tip of my work shoe caught his hand squarely. The force of it flung his arm straight overhead, the knife flashing up out of his hand. Then I hit him, with every ounce of force I had, aiming for the belly, but missing and catching him squarely in the chest, knocking him over and rolling.

  He continued to roll, very quick
ly, out of my way and onto his knees and feet, arms and fists out, low and in front of his belly as he crouched. He was blinking still — I could see the whites of his eyes — but I knew from the way he moved that he could see, and I stood waiting for him.

  We fought then for a long time — through many minutes, though I don't know how many. We swung at each other's jaws, and struck a shoulder bone instead, or grazed a head, or missed completely, stumbling against each other and struggling frantically for balance, feet sliding. We clinched awkwardly, holding each other up. We grunted with effort, heaving for breath. We both went down again and again, half knocked down by a blow, half stumbling and falling.

  The fight didn't end at all; it just dwindled to a stop. We were standing in the darkness pressed against each other, arms hanging onto each other, and I think that if either of us had been able to step aside, the other would have fallen on his face in the road.

  We couldn't talk; we stood slumped together, holding each other erect, the breath actually whistling in our throats, chests swelling and collapsing in struggle for air. Our shirts were soaked with sweat. Moments passed, then we staggered apart and stood swaying, staring at each other. Then — not a word had been spoken — we stumbled down the road toward the shack, arms actually around each other's waist holding ourselves up.

  Rosa was alone in the cabin, standing at the sink rinsing dishes. As we stumbled in through the door, she turned to look at us, and her eyes widened, but she didn't ask needless questions. She swung around, yanked two chairs out from the kitchen table and pulled them to the sink, gesturing at them with her head. We sat down, fell into them actually, and Rosa took two clean dish towels from the little shelf over the sink made of an old crate nailed to the wall. Soaking them under the tap, she said, "Take off your shirts," and we each began fumbling at them. The tails were out long since, the shirts ripped and grass-stained, most of the buttons missing. But they were wet and clinging with sweat; neither of us could get ours off, and Rosa helped us.