Voices from the Street

by Philip Kindred Dick

  “Not the new LPs,” Hadley reminded him.

  “Those scratch.” Fergesson studied his two hands, which were pressed tightly together. “Of course, I wouldn’t put you in O’Neill’s place . . . that’s for me. I’m keeping you at Modern.”

  “I know that,” Hadley said.

  “If I put in a full-sized record department I’ll get down some queer from Berkeley to run it . . . like you see in the Berkeley record shops. They know all those classics, those Lily Pons and Toscanini. I’m not messing with that.”

  “Right,” Hadley agreed. “That’s a specialty.”

  “So forget about the records. But we’ll think about getting some girl in. You think a high school girl could handle it?”

  “Better get one from the business college,” Hadley said. “That place upstairs across the street from Modern. They’re older, more experienced. You know the ones I mean? Heels and sweaters—the ones you see in Woolworth at lunchtime.”

  “I thought they were secretaries.”

  “No, they’re going to that business school. They’re looking like hell for jobs.”

  “Fine,” Fergesson agreed. “I’ll go over there one of these days and see what we can scare up.”

  “I don’t know if I like this idea,” Alice said tartly. “You two are too darn interested.”

  “I don’t know either,” Ellen piped up, caught between joking and genuine concern. “I think Modern looks all right.”

  Ignoring the two women, Fergesson continued: “On second thought, maybe I’ll let you handle that. Do what you think best. We’d have to pay her two hundred a month—in a year that’s two thousand four hundred dollars . . . and that’s for a five-day week.”

  “True,” Hadley admitted. “There’s the state law.”

  “Would you rather have a couple of thousand to modernize the front? Maybe you could brighten it up more that way . . . new lighting fixtures, that glass you were talking about.” He waved his hand. “All that fancy stuff.”

  The room was abruptly silent. Everybody sat frozen, watching Hadley.

  “I’d have to check into construction costs,” Hadley said finally. Gripping the arms of the chair he said thickly. “Labor is the big item; all that stuff’s union.”

  “Well, it’s something to think about. There’s no rush on it.” Fergesson lifted his head and peered crookedly across the room at the blond young man. “But if you’re going to run that place you’ve got to learn to make decisions.”

  “Sure,” Hadley said huskily.

  Fergesson sat chewing on his cigar. The room was tense and strained; nobody dared move or breathe. Outside, some people walked along the dark sidewalk laughing and talking. The sounds died into silence and there remained only the whirr of the air-conditioning system Fergesson had installed with his own two hands.

  “Hadley,” Fergesson said, “I think you’ve calmed down now that you have a son. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me you’re beginning to grow up.”

  Hadley’s face showed that he was trying to find something to say; but no words came.

  “You’ve got a wife and child now,” Fergesson continued. “You’ve got responsibilities you didn’t have before. You’ve got a great future ahead of you, if you really bear down and stick with it.”

  “Sure,” Hadley agreed, in an almost inaudible voice.

  “Of course,” Fergesson continued inexorably, “you’ve got more expenses now. It costs a lot to raise a kid these days. Medicine, clothes, food—everything special.”

  Alice smiled a little. “The authority,” she said softly, not loudly enough for her husband to hear. There was no point in hurting his feelings.

  “I realize that,” Hadley said. He tapped his wallet. “It’s already begun to cut in.”

  “You’re making two fifty a month,” Fergesson said, “plus five percent. Running Modern means you won’t be on the floor as much; you’ll be upstairs a lot, running out to people’s homes . . . It’ll probably exit down your actual sales.”

  “I suppose so,” Hadley managed.

  Fergesson studied his hands and mulled. “I can’t go above three hundred. On the commissions, I’ll take away the five on what you sell and give you a flat one percent on the gross take of the store. That means on all commission able items . . . not tubes and phonograph needles and repairs.”

  “I get it,” Hadley said swiftly.

  “That means you won’t have to compete with White and Tampini; you can let them close the stuff, while you keep the ceiling from falling. It’s going to be a big job . . . In the long run you’ll make more, but you’ll really have to work. And if you get in a girl, or maybe a high school kid . . . You’ll have to get in somebody to sweep and clean; you can’t fool around with that.”

  “Sure,” Hadley agreed. “I know.”

  “How does it sound?” Fergesson demanded belligerently. “I know three hundred doesn’t sound like much, but around Christmas a one percent on the gross ought to really roll it in for you.”

  “It sounds fine,” Hadley said.

  “Thank God,” Alice breathed, getting to her feet with a sigh of relief. “I’m certainly glad that’s over.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fergesson roared, outraged. “You goddamn women, sitting around like a bunch of witches—you had this all arranged!”

  Stuart Hadley and his wife walked slowly home along the dark, warm streets. Overhead, scattered clouds of stars winked. A faint night wind stirred the Oriental plums along High Street. The rows of houses were dark and still; front doors stood wide open to admit fresh air. In her arms Ellen clutched the bundle that was Pete wrapped in his robes and feeding apparatus.

  “Well?” Ellen said. “What do you have to say?”

  “I guess I got the job.”

  “How—do you feel about it?” Anxiously, she pushed against him and squeezed his arm. “Tell me how you feel, Stuart; are you glad? It is what you want, isn’t it?”

  Searching his mind, Stuart Hadley groped for an answer. He pictured himself as manager of Modern TV Sales and Service; it was no fantasy: it was genuine. Tomorrow morning he would open up the store as its manager. Jack White, Joe Tampini, Olsen, and if they got a girl, her, too—he was in charge of them all. Responsibility, position, power over others . . . The store was an object which he could mold and shape as he saw fit, a plastic object to be formed and re-formed.

  He thought of the world outside the store. An infinite chaos of shifting shapes . . . Outside, there was nothing to stand on, only chill shadows and the dim light of stars too remote to be touched. The store was a neat little cosmos, an orderly square of firmness around which a meaningless nether-universe drifted and swirled.

  Suddenly he was terrified; he couldn’t stand it outside the store. Even now, walking the dark quiet streets with his son and wife—it was too dangerous, too much of a risk. The world was out of control. Nothing could be depended on . . . the ground under him tilted away wherever he walked, spilling him into the shadows.

  In his mind came the vivid image of opening the store on a bright summer morning. The crisp, moist air, smelling of night dew, sparkling off the cars and sidewalks. The hurrying secretaries; the businessmen unrolling their awnings; the Negro sweeping trash into the gutter; the sound of people and motion, a city coming to life and starting its busy routine. Coffee from the Health Food Store . . . the telephone ringing . . . Olsen climbing crossly into the truck with the day’s repairs.

  “Sure,” Hadley said desperately. He increased his pace; the darkness terrified him. It reminded him of that night with Marsha, the deserted road, the parked car, the crickets. The utter bleak loneliness and desolation. “Let’s get home and hit the sack—I have to get up early tomorrow.”

  “It’s cold,” Ellen said. She shivered against him and hurried to keep up. “Here, you take Pete awhile.”

  Hadley grabbed his son from her; the baby stirred fitfully but did not waken. Overhead the cold stars seemed more remote each moment; it w
as a huge universe, too large for one man to cope with. He wondered how he could ever have wanted to venture out into it; arid and hostile, it stretched out to infinity, utterly indifferent to human affairs. Even now he yearned for the familiar store; it was human-constructed, under control. And it was the only world open to him. He was eager and grateful to enter fully into it, to pull it around him.

  “I’m glad,” Ellen was saying breathlessly. “Everything worked out all right . . . It’s so wonderful.”

  Hadley wasn’t listening. His fear grew; and it was fear of himself, fear of what he might do. He might destroy himself; he might suddenly, blindly, burst out and destroy the safety of his microcosmos. In his archaic fury he might smash, demolish, pull down the only world in which he could exist.

  In his mind were forces that could destroy it; in him was the possibility, the energy to annihilate himself and his tiny universe. As before; as in all his life. It was not new; it had always been there. In one moment he could collapse every fragment of himself. That was the terror; that was what made the universe awful and foreboding.

  Again, he might struggle out into the infinite hostile regions, striving to find something, catch hold of something vague and dim, something he could never really find. Something beyond the reach of his groping hands.

  “You’re walking too fast,” Ellen protested breathlessly, hurrying behind him, trying to keep up. She listened; she fervently examined his voice, trying to hear how he felt. “I’m so glad,” she told him. Desperately, she ran to keep up. “I want you to be happy; I want you to have what you need. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? All this . . . It finally came through.”

  Hadley didn’t answer.

  “You know,” his wife gasped, her voice thin and pleading, “I think I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life. What do you think about that? Isn’t it wonderful?”

  There was no response. Hadley strode on, gripping his sleeping son. Tugging his wife after him, along the dark, deserted streets.

  Every Thursday, by a fantastic union ruling in direct opposition to the laws of God and commerce, all nurseries were required to close. As the flower shop in which he worked was subsumed by the Cedar Groves Nursery, Horace Wakefield had a day off. He therefore got up at eight o’clock instead of seven, on this particular morning, a hot day late in August. And he had stewed prunes and cream instead of cornflakes for his breakfast.

  His little room was clean and neat. All his anti-vivisectionist magazines were stacked carefully in the corners and along the walls. He opened the windows wide and allowed fresh air to circulate. He enjoyed August; he liked the days long and dry and hot. Along the street sunlight danced and glittered from the pavement. The mailman moved slowly along, weighed down by his pack, his face glistening with perspiration. Down at the corner a laundry truck was parked and the driver was lugging a heavy white bundle up a flight of concrete stairs into an apartment house.

  Wakefield filled a bucket with water from the bathtub tap and carried it out to the sundeck. In pots and in flats, huge roses and chrysanthemums grew everywhere. He watered them carefully, then stood for a moment enjoying the steamy smell that drifted up from the black soil and manure. The world spread out below him on all sides made him feel immense: practically a giant. Miles high, he gazed up at the sun and sheer blue sky and sucked in vast lungfuls of air.

  He had the whole day to himself. In his mind he ran over the things that needed to be done. First, there were three letters to newspapers that needed to be written and sent off. The laundry truck reminded him that his shirts were waiting down at the Pioneer Laundry. He had to take his watch over to the jeweler for cleaning. He had to change the sheets on his bed; the landlady was willing, but Wakefield preferred to do it himself.

  And then there was the real work.

  Wakefield returned to his room. He put on his hat and coat and marched down the long dim stairs, with its elaborate oak banister and railing, to the little foyer where the ancient mirror and hat rack greeted him every morning of his life. He patted his thinning black hair in place, adjusted his glasses, blew his nose, and then pushed the massive front door open and stepped out in the dazzling sun.

  Because it was such a nice day, Wakefield walked all the way across town to the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus hall. He hated the stuffy buses; especially he hated the clouds of poisonous vapors that poured out of them, and the grinding and bucking of their motors. As he walked he continued to breathe in deep drafts of air and rejoice that he was alive on such a beautiful day in such a beautiful world.

  The nearer he got to the hall the more he could feel the stirring. The air vibrated with activity. The hall radiated a vast sense of urgency; things were happening, events were in the making. Wakefield found himself almost running. When he arrived he was out of breath and panting excitedly. The desire not to miss out made him race up the two flights of steep stairs to the rooms above the main hall, which the Society was using for its business offices. The main hall had been turned into an organizational and recruiting center; dues were collected and processed; activities were assigned.

  Again he realized that a religious movement was much more than a band of people united by belief; it was a functioning machine. Simply to believe was not enough, in this world . . . Those who believed made arrangements to have others believe. The apparatus of the Society lay spread out in this hall and in similar halls scattered throughout the world. Earnest middle-aged women baked pies and collected old clothing and held raffles . . . but that was not all; indeed that was not at all all. Leaflets were printed, phonograph records were pressed, radio scripts were constructed, money was collected. Beneath the level of well-meaning ladies was the hard core of astute directors for which religion was a full-time job, a way of life. A world, not merely an activity.

  Awed by the sight of these tireless functionaries, Horace Wakefield stood planted at the entrance. He admired them, and he was afraid of them. The sight carried him back to the days of his childhood, to the revival meetings his father had driven the family to, in their little upright Ford, down the long dirt roads between endless peach and apricot orchards. In the meetings, under the vast canopy of dirty brown canvas, men and women packed in tight listened attentively, dispassionately, to a screaming man who leaped and waved his arms and foamed at the mouth. It was not the revivalist who had terrified Wakefield; it was the sudden inexplicable sight of an ordinary drab-haired woman, or a thin country youth, or perhaps a pimple-faced girl—ordinary people, the kind that shopped in the country towns on Saturday, the kind that sat around farmhouses in the evening pulling long strips of greasy taffy—anybody, in fact, suddenly leaping up and rushing wild-eyed to the platform to testify.

  Testimonials terrified him like nothing on earth because it seemed a kind of madness, like the bite of the tarantula which makes people dance themselves to death (or so he had heard). As a child he had sat huddled against his father, biting his lips and clenching his fists, petrified for fear the craziness might strike him: that he might leap up, hobble, leap, and roll his way down the aisle to the platform and, in sight of his friends and neighbors, begin to scream shrilly, to tear off his clothes and whatnot, to yell and slobber and finally dunk himself in the tub of water through which the old souls were made new.

  An acute awareness turned his thoughts back to the present. Mary Krafft was standing by a huge wall chart, gesturing and talking to a group of heavy-set women. With dismay, Wakefield realized that she had seen him; she nodded and jerkily waved him over. With slow steps he reluctantly made his way into the room . . . Of all people, Mary Krafft irritated him the most. By the time he reached the group of women his good spirits were gone; he was listless and out of sorts.

  “Morning,” he muttered.

  Breathing hoarsely, Mrs. Krafft caught hold of his arm and spun him around to face the wall chart. “Well,” she cried, “what do you think?”

  Wakefield could make nothing of the wall chart; it showed a map of the United States with litt
le colored pins stuck here and there. Disengaging his arm he answered with dignity: “It looks very nice, of course. Very neat and orderly.”

  “Everywhere!” Mrs. Krafft spluttered in his ear. “Do you see? Contributions from every state in the Union. We’re getting our message all over the country—we’re catching fire!”

  Wakefield winced and tried to edge away. “Very nice,” he mumbled. “Very impressive.” The ring of ladies gave way, and he made his escape back into the center of the booming hall. There he stood, wondering what to do, wanting to pitch in and help but not wanting to involve himself with the grim-jawed women feverishly working on every side.

  “Here,” an authoritative voice said; a large colored matron was approaching him. “There’s too much to do for standing around; come over here and I’ll put you to work.”

  “Oh, yes,” Wakefield said guiltily, starting into life. He hurried toward the colored woman. “I mean, I just came, of course. What do you want done?”

  The colored woman strode among tables to a corner of the hall. Wakefield trotted after her, hoping it was something important, hoping that he had been singled out for some unique assignment. The woman halted in front of a long table on which were stacked folded papers and boxes of stamped envelopes. “You can stuff these. Or you can operate the mimeograph. Take your choice.”

  Abashed and disappointed, Wakefield stammered: “Well, I guess I’d rather stuff the envelopes.” He lingered plaintively. “Isn’t there anything else?”

  “What do you want to do?” the woman demanded haughtily. “Let Mister Beckheim stuff the envelopes while you preach?” She strode off, leaving Wakefield standing mutely by the table.

  He sat miserably down and began pushing the mimeographed inserts into the envelopes. One of them fell open; he gazed at it dully. Beckheim had left San Francisco and was retracing his long journey down the coast to Los Angeles. In huge amateurish letters the sheet proclaimed another lecture in Cedar Groves as Beckheim passed through. Wakefield refolded the paper and pushed it sullenly into an envelope.