On and on and on through the afternoon. Out of fifty interviews, he’d use the five best. And submit them. And have the editor tell him they lacked punch. And he’d go out the next day and do worse. And who cared?
The thirty-fifth interview was with a plump lady who insisted that once she had put a man out of her life she would keep him out. She was rather vociferous about it, and a tittering crowd had gathered. Well, that saved work. There were always a half a dozen idiots ready to push forward with their two cents’ worth. “Thank you very much, Miss Robertson. You’ll see it in tomorrow’s Sunburst,” he said automatically. “Is there anyone else who might like to—”
The crowd surged lightly and another girl stood before him. Without looking up from his notebook he said, “Your name?”
“Betty Riordan,” said that soft, familiar voice.
The last straw! But he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing how terribly he was hurt by having to ask her that question. The shaking of his voice was almost unnoticeable as he asked, for the thirty-sixth time that day, “How would you tell an ex-sweetheart that you wanted him back?”
She said, “I’d tell him that I was a fool for ever having quarreled … I’d say that I couldn’t live without him … I’d tell him that he was right and I was, oh, so wrong. I’d—oh, Gene! Gene darling! I’ve followed you ever since you left the Sunburst office, hoping you’d see me. You were too proud to call, and I was too proud to write, and—oh, Gene, take me back! Take me back.”
The crowed roared as two young people held each other close and kissed lingeringly …
“How do you like that!” bellowed the Features Editor, as he hurled Gene’s manuscript at the copy boy. “Here we are, ready to fire Gene Willis because he’s lying down on the job, and he submits a minor masterpiece. Tell the cashier to take the pink slip out of Willis’ pay envelope. By the way, who was it sent in today’s question?”
“Someone named—” the boy studied the front page of manuscript “—Betty Riordan. Why?”
“Just wondered. She was sure Gene Willis’ good angel!”
Some People Forget
BUTCH WAS A card. He was a wild Indian, a jitterbug, and in the words of a harassed high school principal, a troublemaker. There was never a dull moment with Butch around. There was no real harm in him, his aunt used to say. He was just a lively young man who got his fun by annoying people. He lived with his aunt—had, ever since his father died in 1922. That left him an orphan; his mother had died when he was born, and his aunt never could do much with him. She stopped trying when he was in his teens.
He was two years out of high school and had an office boy job somewhere or other. He still lived with his aunt, and shot his salary on clothes and the nerve-wracking things he called fun.
One warm afternoon, Butch and three of his sidekicks were loafing out in front of Murphy’s place. No one seemed to have any good ideas for killing the evening, and all four of them were tired of holding down that corner. But there was no other place to go, so they stayed there. After a while even small talk petered out. Butch began scuffing the side of his shoe on the curbstone. Those who knew him always welcomed that little sign, because it meant that Butch was bored, and when Butch was bored things happened.
And just at that moment Harry Jack peered up the street and saw Pushover Britt coming along. The situation was made to order. Britt had been in the neighborhood about two weeks, which was about as long as it took Butch to find out that the guy was quiet and harmless and would just as soon avoid trouble.
“Hey, Butch!” said Harry. “Get a load of this!”
Butch looked. “Well, strike me pink!” he said. “Pushover Britt himself, and—by golly, he’s got an armload of posies!”
“I’d like to know who the gal is that would give him a tumble,” said Al Schultz.
“Anyone could get a tumble with that many flowers,” said Mario Petri. “Musta cost his whole pay day.”
Harry started toward Britt, but Butch caught his arm. “Wait a second. Let’s follow him. I’d like to have a look at the girl who rates all that shrubbery, myself. Maybe we can get to know her.”
So they let Britt pass them without a word and gave him half a block lead. “Now who in blazes can he be going to see?” Mario asked no one in particular. “I thought I knew every skirt in the neighborhood. Let’s see …”
The same thought was running through all four minds as they followed Britt. For a while they were sure it was Sue Reale, but Britt passed her street without a glance. Aggie’s house was just around the corner from it, but he ignored that, too.
“I’ve got it!” said Al suddenly. “Little Marion Kennedy who lives opposite the cemetery!”
“You got something there,” said Butch. “This is going to be good!”
It seemed as if Al Schultz was right. Britt turned toward the churchyard. Butch began planning his campaign. It was going to be one spoiled evening for Pushover Britt. They were so sure of themselves, those four, that when Britt turned into the burying ground they stopped short, open-mouthed.
“Come on!” said Mario. “He’s wise to us—or he’s going to meet her inside. That’s a laugh!”
“Nuts,” said Butch. “Leave him be. I don’t like that place. I’m going back.”
Harry hooted. “Scared of ghosts, Butch?” He ducked as Butch swung at him. Then the four of them went after Britt.
They saw him just as they poured through the gate. He was walking slowly down one of the paths, reading the headstones as he went. “How do you like that?” breathed Mario. “Come on!”
As they reached Britt he was leaning over a low railing, placing his flowers on one of the graves. The rest of them made way for Butch; he always started the fun. But this time it didn’t look like fun. Butch’s face was paper white and working crazily. He came up behind Britt and whirled him around.
“What’s the idea, mug?” he snarled.
Britt looked very much surprised, but not at all frightened. “Why,” he said coolly. “I always do this on Memorial Day. Look.” He pointed to the headstone.
JOHN ROLFE HARRISON
1890–1922
He died at home but gave his life to his country.
“I guess he was a war vet who died of his wounds. There’s no flowers on the grave, and there should be today. Some people forget. It’s up to you and me to remember.”
“Yes,” said Butch. His voice was choked. “Some … people … forget …”
Britt said to the others, “Let’s go, boys. I think your friend wants to be by himself for a while.” He turned to Butch, put a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t know—”
Butch brushed the hand off. “Okay, Okay.”
So they left him there, Britt and the three flashily-dressed youths; left him standing with bowed head, gazing through what might have been tears at the flowers on his father’s grave.
A God in a Garden
KENNETH COURTNEY, ANYONE could see, was plenty sore. No man works so hard and viciously digging his own lily pond on his own time unless he has a man-size gripe against someone. In Kenneth’s case it was a wife who allowed herself to be annoyed by trifles. The fact that in her arguments she presented a good case made Kenneth all the angrier because it made him sore at himself too. Suppose he had come in at 4 A.M.? And suppose he had told Marjorie that he was working late? A lie like that was nothing—much. The only trouble with lies was that people—especially wives and bosses—can make such a damn fool out of a man when they catch him in one. All right; so it was a poker game, and he had lost a few bucks.
Marjorie, as usual, got all the details out of him; but she didn’t stop there. She cited instance after instance when he had done the same thing. Her kick, it developed, was not so much the poker, but the fact that he had lied to her about it. Well, and why should a man brag to his wife about losing twenty-four bucks? If only she’d take his simple little explanations without all those fireworks, life would be more worth living. At least he wouldn�
��t have to retreat into the garden and take out his fury on a pick and shovel.
He had reached about this stage in his mental monologue when his shovel rang dully against old Rakna.
Of course, he didn’t know then that it was Rakna. He might well have stopped digging altogether if he had known. And then again, he might not. It didn’t work out so badly in the end.
At any rate, all he knew was that there was an unyielding mass, and a large one, in his way, and he couldn’t finish digging the little lily pool until he moved it. That would have to happen now, he thought bitterly. Everything’s going wrong today.
He threw down his shovel and stamped up the garden path toward the house. Sore as he was, he still found room in his sulking mind to admire that garden. It began at the house, almost as if it were part of it, and led downward into a little gully. Kenneth had, by ranking trees and shrubs carefully, built a small lot up to look like something twenty times as big.
The sunken rockery, well out of sight, was the hidden theme of the whole; you stumbled on it, that rock garden; and yet because of the subtle placing of the trees and plants around it, you knew that it had been there all the time. There was a miniature bridge, and a huge pottery teapot—all the fixings. And once you were in the rock garden, you and your eye were led to the shrinelike niche by the lily pool.
For months Kenneth had been searching for an old idol ugly enough for that niche; he wanted it there so that it would frighten people. Something nice and hideous, to be a perfect and jarring foil for the quiet and beautiful effect of all that surrounded it. Kenneth determined to leave that niche empty until he found a stone face ugly enough to turn an average stomach—not wrench it, exactly; Kenneth was not altogether fiendish in his humorous moments!—but plumb ugly.
He went into the back kitchen—it served as a tool shed as well—and took down a crowbar. His wife came to the door when she heard him.
“How’s it going?” she asked in the dutifully interested tone of a wife whose most recent words to her husband were violent ones.
“Swell,” he said, his casualness equally forced.
“See?” she cried in feminine triumph. “You even lie to me about a little thing like that. If everything was swell down there, you wouldn’t need a crowbar to dig with. This ground isn’t rocky. Why can’t you tell the truth just once?” Then she fled into her own territory, to be alone with her indignation.
Kenneth shrugged. Fight all morning with your wife, and you’re up against things like that. He hesitated. She was probably crying, after that blowup. That’s a woman for you. Fire and water all at once. Oh, well. He shrugged again and started back with his crowbar. The tears would wait, he reflected callously. There were more where they came from.
His conscience bothered him a little, though. Maybe she had something there. It did seem as if he couldn’t tell her—or anyone—the absolute truth. It was just a conversational habit, that lying; but it did make trouble. But what could a man do? Maybe he’d be a little more careful in future—but, damn it, why did she have to be so picky?
As usual, he took it out in work, picking and prying and heaving. Well, this lump of brownstone or whatever it was, was something worthwhile working on. Not like digging in the soft earth around it. He began to forget about Marge and her annoyances in the task on hand.
Slipping the bar well under the brown mass, he heaved strongly and lifted it a few inches at the corner. Kicking a rock under it, he stepped back for a look at the thing, and was confronted by quite the most hideous imaginable face. He stared, shook his head, stared again.
“Well, I’ll be … here’s my idol, right where I need it. Now where the devil did that thing come from?” he asked no one in particular.
Yes, it was an idol, that brown mass in the half-finished lily pool. And what a face! Hideous—and yet, was it? There was a certain tongue-in-cheek quality about it, a grim and likable humor. The planes of that face were craggy and aristocratic, and there was that about the curve of the nostril and the heavily lidded eyes that told Kenneth that he was looking at a realistic conception of a superiority complex. And yet—again; was it? Those heavy eyelids—each, it seemed, had been closed in the middle of a sly wink at some huge and subtle joke. And the deep lines around the mouth were the lines of authority, but also the lines of laughter. It was the face of a very old little boy caught stealing jam, and it was also the face of a being who might have the power to stop the sun.
“Or a clock,” thought Kenneth. He shook himself from his apathy—the thing nearly hypnotized by its ugliness—and walked around it, knocking off clods of dirt with his hands.
The face was lying on its side. Yes, he discovered, it was more than a face. A body, about half the size of the head, was curled up behind it. Kenneth shuddered. The body looked like an unborn fetus he had seen at the Fair, floating in alcohol. The limbs were shriveled, and the trunk was big-bellied with an atrophied chest, jammed up against the back of that enormous head. The whole thing was, maybe, five feet high and three wide, and weighed a good ton.
Kenneth went back to the house shrugging off an emotional hangover, and called up Joe Mancinelli. Joe had a two-ton hoist at his “Auto Fixery” that would do the trick.
“Joe,” he said when he got his connection, “I want you to come right over with your truck and the two-ton lift. And listen. What I’ve got to lift will knock your eye out. Don’t let it scare you.”
“Hokay, Kan,” said Mancinelli. “I feex. I no scare. You know me, boy!”
Kenneth had his doubts.
“Who are you calling, dear?” Marjorie called.
“Joe Mancinelli. I’ve got to have help. I ran across a … a big rock in the lily pool.” There it was again. Now, why did he have to say that?
Marjorie came across the room and put her hands on his shoulders. “That’s so much better, sweetheart. It isn’t terribly hard to tell the truth, now, is it?”
Her eyes were a little red, and she looked very sweet. He kissed her. “I … I’ll try, kiddo. You’re right, I guess.” He turned and went out to the shed, muttering to himself.
“Can you beat that? Tell her a lie and she raises hell. Tell her another and everything’s all right. You can’t win.”
He rigged a set of shear poles so that the chain hoist would have some kind of a purchase, and dragged them down to the rock garden. The sight of the half-buried idol gave him another fascinated shock. He looked at it more closely. It seemed old as time itself and carved—was it carved? Its execution made him think that if nature had carved rock into idols, then this was a natural work. And yet, it was so flawless! What human artist could do such macabre sculpture? Kenneth had seen the striges on the carved galleries on Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, and had thought that they were tops in outré art. But this— He shrugged and went back to the shed for a wire strap to slip under the thing, meeting Joe halfway to the house. Joe was staggering under the coils of chain over his shoulders.
“Hi, keed! Ware you got heem, thees beeg theeng?”
“Down at the bottom of the garden, Joe. What made you come over here so fast?”
“I like to see thees theeng make scare Joe Mancinelli,” wheezed Joe.
“Well, look it over for yourself. It’s half buried. I’ve got shear poles rigged. Be with you in a jiffy.”
As he reached the shed, Kenneth smiled at the roar of polylingual profanity which issued from the rock garden. Joe was evidently impressed. Coming to the door with the wire strap in his hand, Kenneth called: “Scared, Joe?”
The answer came back hollowly: “I no scare. I sorry I come. But I no scare!”
Kenneth laughed and started down. He had taken about five steps when he heard a sound like a giant champagne cork, and Joe Mancinelli came hurtling up the path as if he were being chased by one of the devil’s altar boys.
“Hey! Whoa there!” Kenneth called, laughing. “What happened? Hey!”
He surged forward and tackled the Italian low. They slid to a stop in a cloud
of dust. “Easy, now, boy. Easy.”
“The ’oist is down dere. You do you work, calla me, I come back, get heem. I don’ never touch that theeng.”
“All right, all right. But what happened?”
“You don’ tell nobody?”
“No, Joe. Course not.”
“So I see thees face. Thees not so gooda face. Maybe I scare, maybe no. I tell this face, ‘I no lika you. So. I speet on you. So. Ptui.’ ” Joe turned white at the recollection, and swallowed hard. “Thees thing shake all over like wan piece jelly, is make the mouth like dees”—Joe pursed his lips—“an’… ptow! Is speet on me. So. Now, I go.”
“You dreamed it,” Kenneth said unconvincingly.
“So, I dream. But I tella you, boy, I go now to church. I take wan bat’ in holy water. I light wan dozen candles. An I bring you tomorra plenty dynamite for feex that thing.”
Kenneth laughed. “Forget it, Joe,” he said. “I’ll take care of old funnyface down there. Without dynamite.”
Joe snorted and went back to his truck, starting it with a violence that set its gears’ teeth on edge. Kenneth grinned and picked up the wire strap. “I no scare,” he said, and laughed again.
He was not, evidently, the only one who was amused by the episode. Old funnyface, as Ken had called the idol, really seemed to have deepened the humorous lines around his tight-lipped, aristocratic mouth. A trick of the light, of course. “You know,” said Kenneth conversationally, “if you were alive you’d be a rather likable dog.”
He burrowed under the idol and pushed the end of the strap as far under as he could reach. He was flat on his stomach, reaching out and down, with his shoulder against the mass of the thing, when he felt it settle slightly. He pulled his arm out and rolled clear, to see old funnyface settling steadily back into the hole.
“You old devil!” he said. “You almost had me that time. Bet you did that on purpose.”
The Ultimate Egoist Page 13