I was feeling pretty low. Small thing as it had been, the phone had spelled the end. It was the thing that finally signified for me what a failure I had been. You can go along for months and kid yourself that everything's all right and will work out in the end, but always something comes up that you can't kid away. Ed Adler coming to disconnect and take away the phone had been that final thing I couldn't kid away.
I stood there on the sidewalk, looking down the street, and I felt hatred for the town — not for the people in it, but for the town itself, for the impersonal geographic concept of one particular place.
The town lay dusty and arrogant and smug beyond all telling and it sneered at me and I knew that I had been mistaken in not leaving it when I'd had the chance. I had tried to live with it for very love of it, but I'd been blind to try. I had known what all my friends had known, the ones who'd gone away, but I had closed my mind to that sure and certain knowledge: there was nothing left in Millville to make one stay around. It was an old town and it was dying, as old things always die. It was being strangled by the swift and easy roads that took customers to better shopping areas; it was dying with the decline of marginal agriculture, dying along with the little vacant hillside farms that no longer would support a family. It was a place of genteel poverty and it had its share of musty quaintness, but it was dying just the same, albeit in the polite scent of lavender and impeccable good manners.
I turned down the street, away from the dusty business section and made my way down to the little river that flowed dose against the east edge of the town. There I found the ancient footpath underneath the trees and walked along, listening in the summer silence to the gurgle of the water as it flowed between the grassy banks and along the gravel bars.
And as I walked the lost and half forgotten years came crowding in upon me. There, just ahead, was the village swimming hole, and below it the stretch of shallows where I'd netted suckers in the spring.
Around the river's bend was the place we had held our picnics. We had built a fire to roast the wieners and to toast the marshmallows and we had sat and watched the evening steal in among the trees and across the meadows.
After a time the moon would rise, making the place a magic place, painted by the lattice of shadow and of moonlight. Then we talked in whispers and we willed that time should move at a slower pace so we might hold the magic longer. But for all our willing, it had never come to pass, for time, even then, was something that could not be slowed or stopped.
There had been Nancy and myself and Ed Adler and Priscilla Gordon, and at times Alf Peterson had come with us as well, but as I remembered it he had seldom brought the same girl twice.
I stood for a moment in the path and tried to bring it back, the glow of moonlight and the glimmer of the dying fire, the soft girl voices and the soft girl-flesh, the engulfing tenderness of that youthful miracle, the tingle and excitement and the thankfulness. I sought the enchanted darkness and the golden happiness, or at least the ghosts of them; all that I could find was the intellectual knowledge of them, that they once had been and were not any more.
So I stood, with the edge worn off a tarnished memory, and a business failure. I think I faced it squarely then, the first time that I'd faced it.
What would I do next?
Perhaps, I thought, I should have stayed in the greenhouse business, but it was a foolish thought and a piece of wishfulness, for after Dad had died it had been, in every way, a losing proposition. When he had been alive, we had done all right, but then there'd been the three of us to work, and Dad had been the kind of man who had an understanding with all growing things. They grew and flourished under his care and he seemed to know exactly what to do to keep them green and healthy. Somehow or other, I didn't have the knack. With me the plants were poor and puny at the best, and there were always pests and parasites and all sorts of plant diseases.
Suddenly, as I stood there, the river and the path and trees became ancient, alien things. As if I were a stranger in this place, as if I had wandered into an area of time and space where I had no business being. And more terrifying than if it had been a place I'd never seen before because I knew in a chill, far corner of my mind that here was a place that held a part of me.
I turned around and started up the path and back of me was a fear and panic that made me want to run. But I didn't run. I went even slower than I ordinarily would have, for this was a victory that I needed and was determined I would have any sort of little futile victory, like walking very slowly when there was the urge to run.
Back on the street again, away from the deep shadow of the trees, the warmth and brilliance of the sunlight set things right again. Not entirely right, perhaps, but as they had been before. The street was the same as ever. There were a few more cars and the dog had disappeared and Stiffy Grant had changed his loafing place. Instead of propping up the Happy Hollow tavern, he was propping up my office.
Or at least what had been my office. For now I knew that there was no point in waiting. I might as well go in right now and clean out my desk and lock the door behind me and take the key down to the bank. Daniel Willoughby would be fairly frosty, but I was beyond all caring about Daniel Willoughby.
Sure, I owed him rent that I couldn't pay and he probably would resent it, but there were a lot of other people in the village who owed Daniel Willoughby without much prospect of paying. That was the way he'd worked it and that was the way he had it and that was why he resented everyone. I'd rather be like myself, I thought, than like Dan Willoughby, who walked the streets each day, chewed by contempt and hatred of everyone he met.
Under other circumstances I would have been glad to have stopped and talked a while with Stiffy Grant. He might be the village bum, but he was a friend of mine. He was always ready to go fishing and he knew all the likely places and his talk was far more interesting than you might imagine. But right now I didn't care to talk with anyone.
"Hi, there, Brad," said Stiffy, as I came up to him. "You wouldn't happen, would you, to have a dollar on you?
It had been a long time since Stiffy had put the bite on me and I was surprised that he should do it now. For whatever else Stiffy Grant might be, he was a gentleman and most considerate. He never tapped anyone for money unless they could afford it. Stiffy had a ready genius for knowing exactly when and how he could safely make a touch.
I dipped into my pocket and there was a small wad of bills and a little silver. I hauled out the little wad and peeled off a bill for him.
"Thank you, Brad," he said. "I ain't had a drink all day." He tucked the dollar into the pocket of a patched and flapping vest and hobbled swiftly up the street, heading for the tavern.
I opened the office door and stepped inside and as I shut the door behind me, the phone began to ring.
I stood there, like a fool, rooted to the floor, staring at the phone.
It kept on ringing, so I went and answered it.
"Mr Bradshaw Carter?" asked the sweetest voice I have ever heard.
"This is he," I said. "What can I do for you?
I knew that it was no one in the village, for they would have called me Brad. And, besides, there was no one I knew who had that kind of voice. It had the persuasive purr of a TV glamour girl selling soap or beauty aids, and it had, as well, that dear, bright timbre one would expect when a fairy princess spoke.
"You, perhaps, are the Mr Bradshaw Carter whose father ran a greenhouse?"
"Yes, that's right," I said.
"You, yourself, no longer run the greenhouse?
"No," I said, "I don't." And then the voice changed. Up till now it had been sweet and very feminine, but now it was male and businesslike. As if one person had been talking, then had gotten up and gone and an entirely different person had picked up the phone. And yet, for some crazy reason, I had the distinct impression that there had been no change of person, but just a change of voice.
"We understand," this new voice said, "that you might be free to do some work for us
."
"Why, yes, I would," I said. "But what is going on? Why did your voice change? Who am I talking with?" And it was a silly thing to ask, for no matter what my impression might have been, no human voice could have changed so completely and abruptly. It had to be two persons.
But the question wasn't answered.
"We have hopes," the voice said, "that you can represent us. You have been highly recommended."
"In what capacity?" I asked.
"Diplomatically," said the voice. "I think that is the proper…"
"But I'm no diplomat. I have no…"
"You mistake us, Mr Carter. You do not understand. Perhaps I should explain a little. We have contact with many of your people. They serve us in many ways. For example, we have a group of readers…"
"Readers?"
"That is what I said. Ones who read to us. They read many different things, you see. Things of many interests. The Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Oxford dictionary and many different textbooks. Literature and history. Philosophy and economics. And it's all so interesting."
"But you could read these things yourself. There is no need of readers. All you need to do is to get some books…"
The voice sighed resignedly. "You do not understand. You are springing at conclusions."
"All right, then," I said, "I do not understand. We'll let it go at that. What do you want of me? Remembering that I'm a lousy reader."
"We want you to represent us. We would like first to talk with you, so that you may give us your appraisal of the situation, and from there we can…" There was more of it, but I didn't hear it. For now, suddenly, I knew what had seemed so wrong. I had been looking at it all the while, of course, but it was not until this moment that a full realization of it touched my consciousness. There had been too many other things — the phone when there should have been no phone, the sudden change of voices, the crazy trend of the conversation. My mind had been too busy to grasp the many things in their entirety.
But now the wrongness of the phone punched through to me and what the voice might be saying became a fuzzy sound.
For this was not the phone that had been on the desk an hour before.
This phone had no dial and it had no cord connected to the wall outlet.
"What's going on?" I shouted. "Who am I talking to? Where are you calling from?" And there was yet another voice, neither feminine nor male, neither businesslike nor sweet, but an empty voice that was somehow jocular, but without a trace of character in the fibre of it.
"Mr Carter," said the empty voice, "you need not be alarmed. We take care of our own. We have much gratitude. Believe us, Mr Carter, we are very grateful to you."
"Grateful for what?" I shouted.
"Go see Gerald Sherwood," said the emptiness. "We will speak to him of you."
"Look here," I yelled, "I don't know what's going on, but…"
"Just talk to Gerald Sherwood," said the voice.
Then the phone went dead. Dead, completely dead. There was no humming on the wire. There was just an emptiness.
"Hello, there," I shouted. "Hello, whoever you may be." But there was no answer.
I took the receiver from my ear and stood with it in my hand, trying to reach back into my memory for something that I knew was there. That final voice — I should know that voice. I had heard it somewhere. But my memory felled me.
I put the receiver back on the cradle and picked up the phone. It was, to all appearance, an ordinary phone, except that it had no dial and was entirely unconnected. I looked for a trademark or a manufacturer's designation and there was no such thing.
Ed Adler had come to take out the phone. He had disconnected it and had been standing, with it dangling from his hand, when I'd gone out for my walk.
When I had returned and heard the ringing of the phone and seen it on the desk, the thing that had run through my mind (illogical, but the only ready explanation), had been that for some reason Ed had reconnected the phone and had not taken it. Perhaps because of his friendship for me; willing, perhaps, to disregard an order so that I could keep the phone. Or, perhaps, that Tom Preston might have reconsidered and decided to give me a little extra time. Or even that some unknown benefactor had come forward to pay the bill and save the phone for me.
But I knew now that it had been none of these things. For this phone was not the phone that Ed had disconnected.
I reached out and took the receiver from the cradle and put it to my ear.
The businesslike voice spoke to me. It didn't say hello, it did not ask who called. It said: "It is clear, Mr Carter, that you are suspicious of us. We can understand quite well your confusion and your lack of confidence in us. We do not blame you for it, but feeling as you do, there is no use of further conversation. Talk first to Mr Sherwood and then come back and talk with us." The line went dead again. This time I didn't shout to try to bring the voice back. I knew it was no use. I put the receiver back on the cradle and shoved the phone away.
See Gerald Sherwood, the voice had said, and then come back and talk.
And what in the world could Gerald Sherwood have to do with it?
I considered Gerald Sherwood and he seemed a most unlikely person to be mixed up in any business such as this.
He was Nancy Sherwood's father and an industrialist of sorts who was a native of the village and lived in the old ancestral home on top of the bill at the village edge. Unlike the rest of us, he was not entirely of the village. He owned and ran a factory at Elmore, a city of some thirty or forty thousand about fifty miles away. It was not his factory, really; it had been his father's factory, and at one time it had been engaged in making farm machinery. But some years ago the bottom had fallen out of the farm machinery business and Sherwood had changed over to the manufacturing of a wide variety of gadgets. Just what kind of gadgets, I had no idea, for I had paid but small attention to the Sherwood family, except for a time, in the closing days of high school, when I had held a somewhat more than casual interest in Gerald Sherwood's daughter.
He was a solid and substantial citizen and he was well accepted. But because he, and his father before him, had not made their living in the village, because the Sherwood family had always been well-off, if not exactly rich, while the rest of us were poor, they had always been considered just a step this side of strangers. Their interests were not entirely the interests of the village; they were not tied as tightly to the community as the rest of us. So they stood apart, perhaps not so much that they wanted to as that we forced them to.
So what was I to do? Drive out to Sherwood's place and play the village fool? Go barging in and ask him what he knew of a screwy telephone?
I looked at my watch and it was only four o'clock. Even if I decided to go out and talk with Sherwood, I couldn't do it until early evening. More than likely, I told myself he didn't return from Elmore until six o'clock or so.
I pulled out the desk drawer and began taking out my stuff. Then I put it back again and closed the drawer. I'd have to keep the office until sometime tonight because I'd have to come to it to talk with the person (or the persons?) on that nightmare phone. After it was dark, if I wanted to, I could walk out with the phone and take it home with me. But I couldn't walk the streets in broad daylight with a phone tucked beneath my arm.
I went out and closed the door behind me and started down the street. I didn't know what to do and stood at the first street corner for a moment to make up my mind. I could go home, of course, but I shrank from doing it. It seemed a bit too much like hunting out a hole to hide in. I could go down to the village hall and there might be someone there to talk with.
Although there was a chance, as well, that Hiram Martin, the village constable, would be the only one around. Hiram would want me to play a game of checkers with him and I wasn't in the mood for playing any checkers.
Hiram was a rotten loser, too, and you had to let him win to prevent him from getting nasty.
Hiram and I had never got along too well together. He
had been a bully on the schoolground and he and I had fought a dozen times a year. He always licked me, but he never made me say that I was licked, and he never liked me. You had to let Hiram lick you once or twice a year and then admit that you were licked and he'd let you be his friend. And there was a chance, as well, that Higman Morris would be there, and on a day like this, I couldn't stomach Higgy. Higgy was the mayor, a pillar of the church, a member of the school board, a director of the bank, and a big stuffed shirt. Even on my better days, Higgy was a chore; I ducked him when I could.
Or I could go up to the Tribune office and spend an hour or so with the editor, Joe Evans, who wouldn't be too busy, because the paper had been put out this morning. But Joe would be full of county politics and the proposal to build a swimming pool and a lot of other things of lively public interest and somehow or other I couldn't stir up too much interest in any one of them.
I would go down to the Happy Hollow tavern, I decided, and take one of the booths in back and nurse a beer or two while I killed some time and tried to do some thinking. My finances didn't run to drinking, but a beer or two wouldn't make me much worse off than I was already, and there is, at times, an awful lot of comfort in a glass of beer. It was too early for many people to be in the place and I could be alone.
Stiffy Grant, more than likely, would be there, spending the dollar that I had given him. But Stiffy was a gentleman and a most perceptive person. If he saw I wanted to be by myself, he wouldn't bother me.
The tavern was dark and cool and I had to feel my way along, after coming in from the brilliance of the street. I reached the back booth and saw that it was empty, so I sat down in it. There were some people in one of the booths up front, but that was all there were.
Mae Hutton came from behind the bar.
"Hello, Brad," she said. "We don't see much of you."
All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories Page 3