The House of Numbers

by Jack Finney

  Now, in the garage with our packages unloaded, Ruth put the blue jeans and work shirt into the automatic washer there and poured in some bleach. There were hand tools and a makeshift workbench in the garage, and I marked off my plywood sheet into eight equal squares, and began sawing them out. The washing machine on, Ruth went into the kitchen, poured the cream from the more than two dozen containers down the sink, then began washing them out. When she finished, she emptied the six pounds of coffee into a paper bag, and dropped it into the garbage can beside the door of the garage. I had my eight squares of wood clamped together by then and a big J sketched on the surface of the outer one. I began sawing this J-shape out of the plywood.

  We worked all afternoon and into the evening without stopping. We moved from one thing to the next, seldom saying much more than was necessary to the work we were doing. At eight-thirty, still far from finished with all we had to do, we knocked off, got into the car, and drove to a drive-in a few miles north on highway 101 for supper. We ordered, then sat there in the darkened car, waiting. The restaurant juke box was on with a loudspeaker outside so you couldn't escape it, and we sat listening to a shouting rock-and-roll song.

  Ruth said, "Ben, will it work? Will it really work?"

  I thought for a moment, but could not answer either yes or no so I just shrugged. I was suddenly discouraged and tired, and — because of what we were doing and were going to do — already separate and different from all the people in the other cars around us. I felt alone and uncertain.

  "There are so many ways," Ruth murmured then, staring out through the windshield, "that it can all go wrong."

  "I know; but we don't have all summer. It's about the best we can do on short notice."

  "And what happens if it does go wrong?" she demanded. "What happens to you if they find — "

  "Don't talk about it," I said. "Right now, the only way I can get through this is not to think very much beyond what I'm doing at the moment. If I start thinking about what might happen, I won't be able to do this."

  Ruth brought her fist down on the dashboard like a hammer. "It isn't fair!" she said. "This is impossible! Arnie's got no right — " She stopped suddenly and didn't finish.

  "You're right," I said quietly. "We're beginning a crime, and an important one; one that can get me killed or both of us in prison for years. And it's through none of our doing. There's no fairness or justice about it. Arnie has no right to ask this. But he's got to. And we've got to do it. I do, anyway. They want to kill Arnie. He cashed some bad checks, and parlayed it to Death Row under the rules of the game in California. It leaves me no choice. I've got to help him if I can."

  The girl car-hop appeared at the side of the car, I rolled down my window, and she fitted a tray with our sandwiches and coffee onto the steering wheel. I thanked her, rolled up the window, and handed Ruth her sandwich.

  She took a bite, then said, "Ben, I'm not going to marry Arnie. When he's out, I'm through with him."

  I nodded. "I didn't think you would. I'm not surprised. I don't blame you; I wouldn't blame anyone."

  Then we ate our food and drove on home.

  6

  When I pulled up at the house, parking at the curb so I'd have room to work in the garage, it was about nine-thirty, and dark. We started crossing the front lawn toward the house, and a man's voice called, "Evenin'." I turned, glancing around, then saw him in the adjoining yard, a vague dark bulk in the faint light from the street lamp down the block.

  "Evening," I answered, my voice instinctively cautious, and I was aware that my heart was suddenly beating faster. As we walked toward our front door, the indistinct silhouette grew; the man was walking silently toward us across the lawns. Then he stopped before us, a tall, heavy man, a middle-aged, fat man, hatless and bald, his face very large and round.

  "Mr. Nova," he said, ducking his head abruptly in a nod of greeting, "your neighbor from next door." Then he added — his voice tones sly, as though deliberately intending not to be believed — "Just out catchin' a breath and saw you drive up. Thought I'd say howdy to the new neighbors."

  I nodded. "Glad to see you." We shook hands, and while my hands aren't small, this man's huge hand, soft of palm but very strong, swallowed mine. "This is my wife," I said, "and we're the Jarvises."

  "Evenin'," he said directly to Ruth, and she responded.

  I stood waiting then, door key in my hand, hoping he'd say something that would let us say good night and get on into the house.

  But instead he glanced up at the night sky, hands shoved into his back pockets as though he had all the time in the world, and said, "Nice out tonight. Been for a drive?"

  "Yeah, little drive," I said. It was awkward, just standing there, not asking him in, but I couldn't; we had too much to do. He just stood there, then, in the dim light from the living-room window — we'd left a lamp on inside — nodding his head, eyes narrowed, smiling at me shrewdly; I didn't know why. He was dressed in what looked like Army suntans: tan wash trousers and shirt, open at the collar. He couldn't be in the Army though, I realized; he was fifty-five years old, maybe, with a great paunch beginning high on his chest and curving down through his belly. He was broad everywhere, from shoulders to hips; a slow-moving, powerful man overlaid with evenly distributed fat.

  "Seen you before," he said suddenly, watching me carefully, and one little eye narrowed in almost a wink as though we were sharing some lewd joke.

  "Oh?"

  "Yep." The exasperating nodding started again. Then he leaned toward me, hands still in his back pockets, and added softly, "Out to the prison."

  I could feel my face muscles go slack, a sick tension grabbing at my stomach, and I knew, staring at this man, that he'd meant to startle me, and that he knew he'd succeeded.

  "Oh" — he was wagging a great meaty hand in reassurance, standing comfortably back on his heels now — "don't worry." He grinned, somehow in complete command of the situation, whatever it was, then he winked, glancing at Ruth. "I'm a guard out at Quentin," he continued, then immediately added, "correctional officer, I mean," and his paunch shook in amusement while he glanced from one to the other of us. "I used, to be a guard" — he narrowed his eyes in a malicious smile — "years ago. In the old Quentin I was a guard, a bull, a screw." Deliberately he straightened his face into a mocking approval of the new terminology. "But now I'm an officer." Again his paunch shook. "Good thing, too," he said with deliberate hypocrisy, not bothering to remove the smile from his face. "Much better this way. Treat 'em decent. Like human beings. Movies, classes — television, even! Much better, naturally," he said perfunctorily, no longer smiling, as though the subject had suddenly lost interest for him. "Seen you goin' into the visitor's room, month or so ago maybe. Think it was you, anyway."

  "Yes" — I nodded shortly — "I'm sure it was."

  "Well" — again he wagged a hand — "don't worry. I see a lot of people from around here out to the prison; people got relatives there. Used to it; never give it a thought. Who is it, your brother?"

  I wanted to drive a fist straight out from the waist into that big fat belly. "I'm not worried, Mr. Nova," I said angrily. "Yes, it's my brother. And while it's not exactly something I've told everyone I know or meet, it's no big secret as far as I'm concerned." Oh, the bastard, I was shouting silently, the fat, stupid, bastard; why did he have to live next door?

  "Course not!" He nodded comfortably, smiling imperturbably. Then he winked confidentially. "Moved here, I expect, close to the prison, so's you could visit him regular."

  None of your business, you fat prying slob! "Well," I said aloud, "that's partly the case."

  "Be glad to look him up." Eyes narrowed, he watched me intently. "I can do that easy, you know; might help him out, maybe. Guard can be a help to a con. Inmate, I mean."

  "Oh" — I paused as though considering a friendly gesture; my mind was frantically hunting a plausible excuse — "I think not; thanks just the same. But I'm afraid he'd feel he was a source of embarrassmen
t to us if he knew a San Quentin official was a neighbor of ours. He's doing all right, anyway; he's settled down to do his time. He's accepted prison, and he's doing okay." Am I protesting too much? Does he know all about Arnie?

  Nova was nodding again. "I'll check up on him anyway; let you know how he's makin' out. Do it on the q.t." He winked again. "Won't tell him I know you." He watched me, waiting for an answer, and reluctantly I had to nod. "Well," he said then, glancing at the closed front door, "I'll be gettin' home. Just wanted to say howdy." We answered something or other and went on into the house as he walked across the front lawns toward his own.

  "Of all the unbelievable bad luck," Ruth murmured, dropping on the davenport, when the door was closed again. "Of all the places we could have moved into, we had to move next door to a San Quentin guard."

  I shrugged and sat down in the big chair. "Well, it's a big prison," I said, as though I weren't worried. "This county must be full of San Quentin people; probably most of them live here in Marin. Hardly a town you could go to, I'm certain, without guards and every other kind of San Quentin official living in it. Bad luck to move right next door to one but not so strange."

  She was watching me closely. "You think it is bad luck, then?"

  "Oh — hard to say. I don't like it, of course. But that's a natural feeling. So he lives next door; so what?"

  She shook her head. "Don't try to comfort me, Ben. What do you honestly feel?"

  I stared down at the floor for a minute, fingers playing with my hat brim. Then I looked up. "He's a son-of-a-bitch," I said quietly. "A snooping, prying, sadistic-minded, trouble-making, dangerous son-of-a-bitch."

  She was nodding before I had finished. "I think so, too; you can tell sometimes. There's something, I don't know what — nasty about him."

  I shrugged and said, "Yeah." There was nothing more to say. There are times when you somehow know you've met a natural-born enemy, someone you could never possibly like and who could never like you, someone you know in your bones you're going to have trouble with. I knew that now. "Well," I said and got to my feet, "Still a lot to do." Ruth nodded and stood up, and we went out to the garage again.

  We finished, finally, at one o'clock, everything done and ready; but by then it was too late to go to bed. Ruth made coffee, and we sat in the living-room, the drapes pulled tight shut, just talking — about anything and everything except what was about to happen.

  Ruth said, "Aren't there people in Los Angeles, Ben, who'll wonder about you?"

  "Yeah. I have friends there who'll wonder. But I'll write them in a day or so; tell them something or other. Maybe I'll go back when this is all over; I don't know."

  "What about your job?"

  "They'll sure as hell wonder. They know it isn't like me to just quit over the phone. But" — I shrugged — "they'll forget it."

  "What did you do?" she said. "Where did you work?"

  "At an advertising agency; I was production manager." I shook my head. "Of all people to just up and quit without notice, a production manager is worst. But I had an assistant, a girl, who was awfully smart; she'll keep things from getting too snarled up. Might even get my job. I hope so. She could do it."

  "Did you know many girls there?"

  "Oh — some. Nothing important, nothing serious. But I had a good time in L. A.; knew a lot of nice people."

  "Well, I'm interested," she said. "This thing we're in together" — she shook her head incredulously — "It's still hard to believe. And naturally I'm curious about you."

  I nodded; I understood. In what we were about to begin, we were completely dependent on each other; yet we knew very little about each other, and I wanted to know more about her, as she did about me. I asked her questions about herself; she'd gone to a girls' school, then to Stanford; for the past two years she'd lived alone in an apartment in San Francisco, though she saw her parents often; they lived in Palo Alto where Ruth had been born. She had a married brother living in Denver. I had the feeling that Ruth — though she had a lot of friends — had been a lonely person, and I could see how Arnie had made a big change in her life.

  We were actually sort of clinging to each other, in a way, during that last hour or so. Except in the living-room and kitchen, we'd been keeping out of each other's way in that house, getting through the odd situation we were in as well as we could. But now, at two o'clock, I shaved — so closely it hurt — and Ruth stood in the hall, leaning against the bathroom door jamb, watching me, talking, asking if I were sure I had everything I'd need. She got comfort from being close to me. She was afraid of being alone and was postponing it as long as she could. I knew how she felt; I was glad she was there; I was terribly frightened at what I was about to do.

  In my room I changed into the blue denims and work shirt Ruth had bought, while Ruth got her dark blue trench coat and blue beret out of the front closet. She drove the car into the garage. I came out by the kitchen door and lifted the now full green canvas sack formed from the tent-square I'd bought into the front seat. Then Ruth backed the car out again with only the parking lights on. I closed the garage door, got into the front seat beside Ruth, and we headed west toward highway 101.

  We didn't talk; fear was uppermost in our minds now, and we had nothing to say about that. Four or five miles north on 101, at two twenty-five Wednesday morning, we turned off onto the narrow county road which leads to the San Rafael ferry but first winds through hills past the steel storm fence which marks the outermost boundaries of the San Quentin prison reservation. That fence parallels the road for several miles, and between it and the beginning of the actual prison area lies a wide belt — a sort of no-man's land — of hills covered with trees, woods, and brush. Ruth drove very slowly now, her eyes on the rear-view mirror watching for the headlights of any car which might be on this road, too, tonight. There were none. Presently we passed the west gate of the prison area near the prison farm, where the road turned left for fifty yards then curved to the right. "We're nearly there," I said, "get set." Ruth nodded, and I said, "Now don't worry." Smiling, I added, "I know you will, but just get through the time somehow; try to think of other things. There's nothing you can do, and it'll be all right. I'm certain of it; it'll be all right."

  She nodded, knowing I wasn't and couldn't be sure of any such thing. "I won't worry a bit," she said. "Why should I? This sort of thing is done all the time," and I laughed.

  We drove on, the road curving regularly, left, right, left, right; then we entered a comparatively straight stretch of road, where the right road bank rose steeply. "Anywhere along here," I said quietly. Ruth pulled off the road, stopped, and turned off the lights.

  It suddenly occurred to me that I might never see her again; that it was possible, or even very likely, that I was going to spend the coming years in a prison, never seeing Ruth or any other girl close enough to touch. I might even be killed in the next few minutes. And if either of those things was going to happen to me then I had to have this much at least: I had to hold this girl to me and kiss her for a moment, for a minute, Arnie or no Arnie. That much was owed to me by someone or something. That much I had to have, because of what I was about to go into.

  I turned to Ruth, and began trying to explain that to her. But she just touched a hand to my mouth to shut me off, and then she was moving toward me across the seat and the canvas sack, her arms raising, and I grabbed her to me, hard. I kissed her then, and she responded, and everything I was about to do was gone and forgotten and didn't exist. Then I drew back and said quickly, "I've got to go," and she released me, staring after me as I opened the door beside me, and stepped out onto the dirt shoulder of the deserted road, pulling the sack along with me.

  On the road beside the car, I quietly pushed my door tight closed. Then Ruth came to life and slid under the wheel. "Get going, Ruthie!" I said.

  She nodded, put the car into gear, and as it began to move she said, "Be careful. Oh, Ben, be careful!"

  7

  Then the car was picking up
speed and sliding past me. I climbed a few feet up the bank and when I turned, the car's red taillights flicked out of sight at the bend of the road just ahead. I stood perfectly still, listening, ready to drop flat in the high weeds. The sound of the car motor faded and there was no other sound. I stood in semidarkness — there was a faint half moon and a great many stars — at just before three in the morning — low ebb time for the human body and spirit — yearning after Ruth, and knowing that what I had to do now was impossible. I was about to walk into the greatest danger of my life and I had no stomach for it. I stood there terribly frightened. It wasn't even an exhilarating fear, it occurred to me, but a sickening depression of spirit that left me with hardly the will to move.

  But I did. I stepped to the six-foot storm fence of linked wire, topped with barbed-wire strands set at an angle to the fence, and heaved my canvas bundle over it, letting it drop into the weeds on the other side. Once more I paused, listening for an approaching car. Then, setting a toe at an awkward angle into the mesh of the fence, I grabbed the fence top with both hands and slowly climbed over it, carefully avoiding the steel barbs. On the ground at the other side, I listened again through several moments, then picked up my canvas bundle, and began to climb the hill ahead, pushing slowly through the summer weeds and underbrush, guiding myself to the hilltop by the scattered silhouettes of trees on its crest. This area, I knew, was nothing more than a belt of wasteland isolating the actual prison area from the rest of the county. It was not guarded in any way; there was nothing to stop anyone from doing what I was doing now and for the moment I was safe enough.

  In the darkness it took me fifteen minutes to reach the hill's peak where I stood looking down from its height at the long gradual slope of its other side. Ahead and below me, spread out like a great map, lay the prison in black shadow and yellow electric light. I'd been through the prison twice after Arnie began his term here; anyone can go through it — they have scheduled tours for the public every Thursday afternoon. So I knew what I was looking at now. Far ahead lay the enclosed area of the prison itself, eight or ten acres of ground maybe, completely enclosed by either concrete walls or cell blocks and other prison buildings joined together end to end. Inside the enclosed area lay the dark athletic fields, and far beyond them to the west, outside the walls, the prison farm was lost in darkness. Some of the prison below me was dark, some of it well lighted; I could see the great prison Yard, empty now, its shape defined by the strong wall lights around its edges; the tall narrow windows of the enormous cell blocks were dimly lit. Directly below me at the base of the hill lay the prison industrial area, a concrete-walled rectangle directly adjoining the prison area, its south wall being the north wall of the prison. I began walking toward it down the dark hill.