The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  Marin County, California, is low, softly rounded hills and the little valleys winding between them; and it is flatland, seashore, and bay shore. It is towns with apartment buildings and not enough parking space, and it is still-untouched areas where foxes and deer live. It is rows of squeezed-together tract houses, a commuting area; and there are ranches yet, where real cowboys round up cattle. It has a mountain twenty-five hundred feet high, a forest of giant redwood trees; and there are miles of coastline, on which ocean waves break. Soundlessly, effortlessly, they moved over this patchwork, and Charley kept his bearings by the tiny moving lights on the highway that wound through the hills below. Sometimes he spilled sand from the paper ballast sacks strung in the netting beside him; sometimes he released hot air from a vent in the top of the balloon, or raised or lowered the flame in his burner. He had the feel of ballooning now; moving steadily along through the sky and the night, he had never, not even as a child, felt so free.

  Off to the right lay the floodlighted, buff-color walls of San Quentin prison, looking from here like a miniature castle. Behind it, the lights of San Rafael lay scattered and sparkling on its hills. Below them, just now, lay moon-washed darkness, an area unbuilt upon. It was glorious, moving along above it; a thrill glowed in Charley's breast. At the same time, it was an utter contentment, and glancing at Mrs. Lanidas beside him — who turned to smile — he knew she felt the same way. The air was soft and warm and pressed gently against their faces. He glanced over his shoulder; the great bay, though still far ahead, was appreciably closer, and Charley lowered the balloon, feeling the decrease in pressure of the bar under his legs as they began sliding closer to the ground in a long, slow arc. The breeze held, and Charley lowered again till they were perhaps a hundred feet aboveground, so that he could descend quickly if he had to, before they were blown out over the bay.

  Swinging on their bar, they crossed the boundary of a tract, such as the one they lived in. From here, it was a crisscross of sparsely illuminated streets; of squares of darkness that were front or back yards; of lighted windows; of rods of moving light, which were automobiles; and of occasional rectangles of moonlight, which were swimming pools. Sound moved up to them distinctly. The night was balmy, windows were open, and they heard — glancing at each other to smile — the familiar nightly pounding of hoofs and blasts of gunfire from television sets. They crossed a back yard and saw the red glow of cigarette ends and the quiet voices of two men.

  Four kids named Stephen in his grade alone. Aren't there any kids named George or Frank any more?

  I know. Same with girls, these days. Ten million Debbies and no more Ednas.

  Or Edwins.

  Or Gladyses.

  Or —

  They heard a child call, Mom! and the mother answer, What is it? Now, get to sleep! As a dog glanced up at the moon, they saw the moonlight eerily reflected in its eyes; then the dog saw the balloon's black silhouette moving across the face of the moon, and raced the length of the back yard, its chain rattling, barking at them furiously. Then, for miles around and minutes afterward, the barking was picked up and repeated like a tom-tom message. Not ten feet off in the darkness, they heard a duck honk and the beat of its wings.

  Charley felt godlike, drifting soundlessly and invisibly over the rooftops, wondering what the people under them were doing and thinking. He loved them suddenly, all of them, and wanted to bestow a blessing on them, and did so. He trickled a little sand into his palm, then scattered it benevolently over the community below, saying, Blessings on you. Blessings on you all, from your friends Charley Burke and Mrs. Lanidas.

  Then they laughed, and in simultaneous impulse lifted their feet, ankles together, legs straight out. and leaned far back at arm's length, their free arms around each other's waists, supporting each other, and began to pump together, like children on a school playground. Alternately tucking their legs far back under their perch, then shooting them forward and up in unison, they swung back and forth in a great arc under the balloon, and Charley began singing. Come, Josephine, in my flying machine! he shouted. And it's up we'll go, up we'll go! A man in pajamas hurried out into a yard directly below them, head turning rapidly as he looked all around. But he never looked up at Charley and Mrs. Lanidas, grinning a hundred feet over his head and moving silently past.

  They moved with the breeze, dipping with it into the valleys, then riding it over the hills again. They did this now; riding up the slope of a hill higher than any others they'd passed so far. They had left the tract, and the area below them, now, was black and lightless. The balloon had revolved several times as they traveled, so Charley was confused, not sure where they were, and when they reached the crest of the hill and rose over it, the whole sweep of the bay suddenly lay directly before them. Down the other slope, they moved with the breeze and an instant later sailed out across the shoreline over the bay — and the enormous length and tremendous height of the great Golden Gate Bridge suddenly dwarfed them, towering over their heads and incredibly close, not fifty yards to the right.

  And they were dropping. Here, over the water, the current of air that carried them flowed on down to the water's surface, moving just over it, and in the blackness beneath them, Charley suddenly saw the whitecaps of waves. Then he heard them, too, heard their cold and watery ripple, and understood how very close they were. High, high overhead hung the roadway of the bridge, its yellow lighting shining far up into the shadowed red superstructure of towers and cables even farther beyond them. An instant later, arms tight around each other's waists, gripping the support ropes, they were staring directly up at the underside of the bridge, silhouetted blackly against the moonlit sky, and Charley understood that they were being swept under the bridge and out to sea, dangling just above the white-speckled black water.

  He spilled ballast. He tore open the sand sacks as fast as his free arm could move. Their trapeze seat jerked under them, and they shot toward the sky. Kicking his feet sideways, gripping both ropes and jerking his body at the waist, Charley managed to turn the balloon so that they faced the bridge. But even before the half turn was complete, they'd shot to the level of the roadway, and for an instant — not a dozen feet out in the blackness west of the bridge — they stared over their shoulders directly into the windows of cars driving past them. Then, Mrs. Lanidas clinging with one arm to Charley's waist, they were staring down at moving car roofs, yellowed by the bridge lights, and the car roofs were shrinking, and they were still rising.

  But now they were free of the surface breeze and climbing vertically. Even in his rigidly suppressed panic, Charley was observing, judging. They rose, but more and more slowly, until — just higher than the flat tops of the enormous bridge towers — they stopped and through several moments hung absolutely motionless not six feet from the northern tower of the bridge and nearly level with its top. Far below, the cars had shrunk to miniatures, the six-lane roadway to the width of a man's hand. Around them, the air lay still and unmoving through a dozen heartbeats, while they held their breaths. Then they felt the air stir infinitesimally, and ever so slowly, it began to move them, not seaward but back toward the bridge, and for an instant Charley closed his eyes in relief. Then he opened them quickly to grin at Mrs. Lanidas, and after a moment, she smiled back.

  Almost precisely even with the level top of the bridge tower, they drifted slowly toward it and would have bumped gently into it if Charley hadn't fended them off with his free arm. For a moment then, the flat top of the great bridge tower lay directly before them like a moonlit table top, their knees almost touching it. Inspired by the excitement of relief, Charley reached overhead and rubbed a finger across the base of the kerosene brazier. It came away blackened with soot, and he leaned forward slightly and in the moonlight wrote “C.B.” on the very top of the northern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. He looked at it for a moment — proudly, smiling — then glanced at Mrs. Lanidas, and she reached up to the brazier, then wrote “E.L.” just under his initials. Once more, Mrs. Lanidas rub
bed her finger through the soot of the brazier, reached out to the tower, and began to draw something — a circle, an oval, or something else — around the set of initials. But what it was to be Charley never knew, because the breeze had them again now, their moment of motionlessness over, and they moved on across the bridge, leaving their initials on its very top, to the eternal mystification of the steeplejacks who painted it.

  They were out over the bay, moving high above it in a wide arc that was carrying them, Charley saw, north toward the Marin County shoreline again. Off to the right lay the shining city, and they stared down at it in awe. Its lights were scattered thinly now, most of the city asleep. But they picked out the floodlighted front of the Fairmont Hotel and, directly across from it at their own eye level, the huge windows of the Top of the Mark. Far to the south they saw Market Street angling across the city, the great dark rectangle of Golden Gate Park, and the whole maplike crisscrossing of San Francisco's streets rising over and then slipping down its hills. And they heard — very clearly — the toylike cling-clang of a cable-car bell.

  Then they were across the shoreline, moving almost due north in a straight line, which, Charley saw, would intersect their mile-and-a-half-long, east-and-west street. Almost sleepily now, they simply sat waiting until they should reach it. Presently, when he recognized the curving pattern of lighted dots ahead, which were the lamps of their street, Charley began cautiously lowering them toward the street in a slow curve. There, caught once more by the nightly current that flowed down the quiet, late-at-night street, they moved along it, following the curving white center line toward home.

  In the morning, Charley's wife and daughter were back again, the house alive and happy once more. In the days, then weeks, then months that followed, he thought of his balloon, packed away in the garage, and of using it again. But he never did, and presently he realized that, alone no longer, he wasn't going to; that he'd had what he wanted from it and needed no more. And that, in fact, his flight in the balloon could not ever really be repeated. He thought of showing the balloon to his wife and of telling her what had happened. But he realized, also, that he wasn't sure he knew what had happened; that what had happened was very little a matter of fact and almost entirely a matter of emotion, for which he had no words.

  He didn't see Mrs. Lanidas again for six months. Then he was at a P.T.A. meeting, and the meeting over, the parents standing in the corridor chatting, Charley stood beside his wife, who was talking to someone. He'd spoken politely to a number of people, whom he saw nowhere else but here. His wife had introduced him to still others. Now he stood absently waiting, wanting to go home and have a drink. When his wife touched his arm, saying, Charley, I want you to meet — he turned with an automatic smile as she finished — Mrs. Lanidas, from our street.

  For a moment, Charley stood looking at her, knowing that, factually speaking, this was Mrs. Lanidas. Yet it wasn't she at all. This was no laughing girl in a black leotard, sailing through the sky and the night as the wind rippled her hair. This was a mother of small children, with the first lines in her face, all dressed up in a hat, good dress, dark coat, and wearing a girdle. Charley nodded pleasantly. Oh, yes, he said politely, I've met Mrs. Lanidas.

  At the absurdity of this, she smiled, and for a moment — eyes warm, almost mischievous — she was a girl once more, and speaking to both of them, but her hand rising to touch Charley's sleeve, she said, Not Mrs. Lanidas. Call me Josephine.

  Out in the dark schoolyard, as they got into their car, Charley's wife said puzzledly, Now, why did she say that? I'm almost certain her name isn't Josephine. I think it's Edna.

  But Charley didn't answer. Sliding under the steering wheel, he simply shrugged, smiling a little, and half under his breath, he continued his whistling — of an old, old tune.

  McCall's, October 1961, LXXXIX(1):112-113, 230, 232-233

  Where the Cluetts Are

  We had open books and magazines lying on every flat surface in the room. They stood propped in a row along the fireplace mantel and lay face up on the seat cushions of the upholstered chairs. They hung like little tents on the chair arms and backs, were piled in layers on the big round coffee table, and lay scattered all over the carpeted floor. Every one of them was opened to a photograph, sketch, floor plan, or architect's elevation of a house. Ellie Cluett sat on the top of the ladder I used to reach the highest of the bookshelves. She was wearing a gray sweater and slacks and was slowly leafing through an Architectural Forum. Sam, her husband, sat on the floor, his back against the bookshelves, and now he held up his book for us to look at. This was the big room I worked in and I was at my drafting table watching them.

  How about something like this? Sam said. It was a color photograph of the Taj Mahal.

  Ellie said, Great. The big dome in the center is just right for a television aerial. Okay with you, Harry?

  Sure. All I have to do is design the place. You'll have to live in it. I smiled at Ellie. She was about twenty-three, intelligent and likable.

  Sam said, Well, I wish you would design it and quit pestering us about it. He grinned to show he didn't mean it, though he did. Sam was wearing slacks and a sports shirt and was about my age — somewhere just over thirty.

  Ellie said, Yes, Harry, please. Have it built, and phone us in New York when it's finished. Surprise us! Honestly — she gestured at the roomful of opened books and magazines — I know we promised to look through all this, but it's driving me crazy.

  I'll have the rooms padded, then. In tasteful decorator colors.

  Damn it, Harry, I think you're being pointlessly stubborn, Sam said. There are only two things that matter to me about this house, and you know what they are.

  I nodded. Sam owned a big boatyard on the Sound. He wanted a house here in Darley, Connecticut, because it was only thirty minutes from the yard. He sold his boats by demonstration and entertainment, so he wanted an impressive house to take his prospects to.

  Sam said, That's all I care about, and you won't change it if you lock me up in here.

  It isn't as though we'd really be living here, Ellie said gently. We'll keep our apartment in New York, you can be sure. Except for the boat season, we'll hardly be in Darley.

  I didn't want to lose this job. Just before the boat craze began, Sam Cluett started his boat works on nothing; now he was rich and offering me a free hand in designing a show place with nothing skimped. I wanted to do it and needed the money but I said, I can't do it alone. If this house doesn't mean enough to you to give it some time and work and to develop some opinions and enthusiasms about it, then I don't want to design it. Because it would never be much of a house. It wouldn't be yours, mine, or anyone's. It would be a house without life or soul — or, even worse, the wrong kind of soul.

  Absolutely identical looks came to their faces: brows raised in polite question, eyes alertly interested in and amused by the notion of a house with a soul.

  I suspected that I was about to become an anecdote back in New York but I was going to save this job if I could and I smiled and said, It's true, or close to it. A house can have a life and soul of its own. There's a house here in Darley, twelve years old and it's had nineteen owners. No one ever lives in it long. There are houses like it in every town in the world. I stood up and began walking around the room, hands shoved into my back pockets, picking my way through the scattered books.

  Sam sat watching me from the floor, arms folded. Ellie sat on top of the ladder staring down at me, her chin on her fist. There was a faint smile of interest on each face and they looked like a couple of sophisticated kids waiting for the rest of a story.

  I said, It's an ordinary enough house but I prowled through it between tenants, once, and began to understand why it never kept an owner. Everywhere you look the proportions are just faintly unpleasant. There's a feeling of harshness to the place. There's even something wrong in the very way the light slants in through the windows. It wasn't the designer's fault; the house simply developed an ugly life and
soul of its own. It's filled with unpleasant associations and after you're in it awhile it becomes downright repelling. I don't really understand why, and I'm an architect. I glanced at Sam, then at Ellie, smiling so as not to seem too deadly serious. Ellie's eyes were bright with interest. I said, There's another house in Darley that no one has ever willingly left. Those who've left it, the husbands were transferred or something of that sort, and I've heard that each wife cried when she had to give up that house. And that a child in one family said and has continued to say that when he grows up, he's going to buy that house back and live in it. I don't doubt these stories because I've been in that house, too, and I swear it welcomes you as you step through the front door.

  I looked at the Cluetts again, and began to hope. I said, You've been in that kind of house; everyone has. For no reason you can explain you feel a joy at just being in it. I almost think that kind of house knows you're in it and puts its best foot forward. There's a kind of felicity about it, everything in it just right. It's something more and better than any designer could consciously plan. It's the occasional rare and wonderful house that somehow acquires a life and soul of its own, and a fine one. Personally, I believe that kind of house comes out of the feelings and attitude and actual love for it of the people who plan it and bring it to life. And that has to be the people who are going to live in it, not just the architect. When I design a house I want it to have a chance of turning out to be that kind. But you're not giving yours any chance at all.