The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  “Still,” she said, “I would like to meet him, alone. I mean, maybe later I would like to see him hypnotized.” At this stage in her adventure, Diana only wanted to look at the person, she was only curious to see what he looked like. “May I have his address?”

  “All right,” Mr. Sedgely agreed. “Are you on foot? No? Well, I’ll tell you how to drive there.”

  Five

  Day Whittacker Is Met

  Day Whittacker was not at home. His mother said that he had gone to a Boy Scout meeting, but would soon return, and invited Diana to come in and wait, but Diana said she would come back later. Then she drove into Passaic in search of dinner. She would have preferred a good restaurant but was not dressed for it and did not want to get her luggage out and change in her car or in a service station rest room, so she stopped at a roadside diner and ate with truckers, who ogled her and made remarks among themselves. Her meal was veal cutlet, not poorly cooked, and she had a beer with it, and rather enjoyed the informal atmosphere of the place, and the experience of eating alone, both in sharp contrast to the dining hall of Sarah Lawrence. She began to feel actually adventurous, instead of bored, for the first time in a good long while. What will he look like? she wondered, and tried to visualize a typical New Jersey high school senior. What will I say to him? or ask of him? She was not exactly on pins and needles, but the idea of meeting somebody who was the reincarnation of somebody else disquieted her who was so quiet. She was not unmindful of what a silly situation it was, of how ludicrous, how fantastically chimerical it was, but she did not at all regret giving up the trip to Ardmore with Susan, which would have been merely a duplication of many ways she had wasted her time. While she ate her dessert, a lemon meringue pie not poorly cooked, she thought about some of the questions she might ask the boy. I will really have to grill him, she determined.

  But as it turned out, she herself was submitted to a grilling. When she returned to the Whittacker home, which was another ranch-style bungalow of the same anonymous kind as Mr. Sedgely’s, she discovered that the son had still not returned from his Boy Scout meeting, and was once again invited to come in and wait for him. Mrs. Whittacker was a flighty woman in her late thirties, who offered Diana coffee and then, when that was refused (because Diana decided against asking to have it iced), offered a “highball.” For Diana, it was an old-fashioned term and she could not remember exactly what a highball was, nor what it contained. She said a glass of water would do her fine, and Mrs. Whittacker brought it to her, along with a glass of what appeared to be iced coffee for herself, and they sat in the living room. “What kind of car is that you’re driving?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and when Diana told her, she said, “I’ve never heard of that kind before. Are you from New York?” Diana said she was not from New York City. “But you have New York plates on your car?” Mrs. Whittacker said. Diana explained that that was because she had purchased her car in New York. “Are you in school?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and Diana said no, she recently graduated. “Where from?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and Diana told her Sarah Lawrence. “Isn’t that one of those ritzy high-tone places?” the woman wanted to know, and Diana agreed that it had a reputation for being rather high-toned. “You must be pretty well off, and with a car like that?” the woman had a habit of making questions out of declarative statements, so Diana felt some response was required, and modestly nodded her head. “What does your father do?” the woman asked, and Diana said he was in insurance. “My husband,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “is in chemistry?” again making a question of a declaration and thus requiring some response from Diana, who asked if he were a chemist and was told no, he was a “sales engineer” for a chemical firm in Passaic. “How old are you?” Mrs. Whittacker asked and Diana told her twenty-one and fought down the impulse to ask her how old she was. “You’re a very, very pretty girl?” Mrs. Whittacker said, and Diana didn’t know how to answer that question except to say thank you. “Is your hair natural?” the woman asked, and Diana confessed that although she was a natural blonde she did resort to a rinse occasionally to lighten it a bit. “How long have you known Day?” Mrs. Whittacker asked, and Diana said “What?” and then said oh, she didn’t know him at all and was just going to meet him for the first time. “What was it you wished to see him about?” Mrs. Whittacker asked in a suspicious tone. Diana wondered if she would jeopardize her chances if she admitted that it concerned the boy’s relations with Mr. Sedgely. Perhaps the woman did not like Mr. Sedgely, or did not approve of her son being used as a subject in age regression experiments. But Diana, thinking quickly, could not conceive a ready pretext. What did she know about the boy other than that he was a high school senior? Perhaps that was sufficient. So she told Mrs. Whittacker that she was a researcher from Life magazine and they were doing an article on a cross section of this year’s crop of high school graduates, and that Day Whittacker’s name had been chosen at random. Mrs. Whittacker, swallowing it, brightened. “Do you want to run some pictures of him when he was a baby? We have lots.” Diana said that wasn’t exactly the idea. Mrs. Whittacker protested, “But Life always runs everybody’s baby pictures? You don’t want to see his baby pictures?” Diana decided that she didn’t mind; in fact, she was curious to see what he looked like even as a baby, so the woman hauled out the family album and put it in Diana’s lap. She explained, “He’s an only child, that’s why we have so many of him?” and Diana nodded and glanced through the pages of his baby pictures. He looked like a baby. That was all. As much like Winston Churchill as like Daniel Lyam Montross, and she had never seen any baby pictures of the latter. But the pictures progressed from babyhood through childhood; the baby crawled, then teetered, then walked, and stood squinting in the bright sun with the photographer’s shadow thrown across his tummy. A thin lad, towheaded, still too unformed to resemble anybody in particular. Diana flipped quickly through the album, and the boy grew up, and up and up. He’s tall, Diana remarked and Mrs. Whittacker said, “Oh, yes, he’s past six feet now?” Diana tapped one of the pictures with her fingernail and asked if it were a fairly typical recent picture, that is, did he look like that? and Mrs. Whittacker said, “Well, he looks a lot better than that, but yes, it’s a recent picture, just last Christmas?” Diana studied it.

  Diana looked at her wristwatch and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay much longer….”

  Mrs. Whittacker patted her shoulder and said, “Now you just sit right there and I’ll have him here in a minute?” and she quickly left the room. Diana heard her telephoning, in the hallway. “You said you’d be home by nine! What in heck are you doing? Huh, well tell him to finish his own bandage, and get yourself right home! There’s a lady here from Life magazine wants to see you! You hear me! I’m not kidding you! Life magazine! You get yourself right home!” She hung up and returned to the living room, saying to Diana, “Don’t you worry, he’ll come through that doorway in two shakes of a dead lamb’s tail?” Diana thanked her. While they waited, the woman recited a number of boastings about her son, his grades in school, his character, the fact that he was an Eagle Scout with forty thousand merit badges and all kinds of decorations, was also in the choir at church, and was going to be one of the head counselors at Scout camp this summer.

  Mrs. Whittacker cocked her ear, hearing footsteps on the front walk, and stood up, saying, “And here he is! In person!” She made a dramatic sweeping gesture with her arm at the doorway, as the door opened and Day Whittacker came into the room.

  Diana stood up also, to meet him.

  He was not dressed in a Scout uniform, but simply in a white teeshirt, faded blue jeans, and loafers without socks. Although tall, he was very thin, and his clothes hung from him as if draped on a wire frame. His hair was not long, except a lock in front which seemed to be trying to hide what was actually a handsome face. He looked at his mother uncertainly, then briefly at Diana and then down at his shoes; he twisted his ankles sideways, standing on the sides of his feet so that his loafers came partly off.

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nbsp; “Day,” the woman said, “this is Miss—.” She turned to Diana and said, “I didn’t even get your name?”

  “Diana Stoving,” she said and extended her hand to Day.

  He gave her hand one quick and limp pump, withdrawing his hand and sticking it into his pocket. “I’m pleased to meet you,” he said to the rug.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Mrs. Whittacker said to both of them, and pushed them toward separate chairs, where they sat. Then she herself sat down between them and said to Diana, “Now you just ask him anything you want to?”

  Diana wondered how to get rid of the mother politely. She searched in her purse for a pencil or pen and a scrap of paper, to pretend that she was taking notes during the interview. She found an old ballpoint which she knew was dry of ink, but no paper except for an envelope, which however she took out and held in one palm beneath the useless ballpoint. “Now,” she said, and decided she would ask a few simple questions and then get out of there, “what we’re interested in, at Life, is the opinion of American high school graduates on a few topics, such as Vietnam. What is your own position, Mr. Whittacker, on the war?”

  “He hasn’t had his physical yet,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “but I can tell you he will be proud to serve, like anybody else.”

  Diana gave the woman an annoyed look, with a polite question, “Would you mind?”

  “Mind what?” Mrs. Whittacker asked.

  “I would very much like to get his answers.”

  “Oh. Okay. Don’t mind me. You tell her, Day. Open your mouth so she can hear you say something.”

  “I haven’t had my physical yet, as she says,” the young man said to Diana. The volume of his voice was so low that Diana had to lean closer. “If I pass it, and get inducted, I’ll probably immolate myself.”

  Mrs. Whittacker nudged Diana and said, “Told you he was smart, didn’t I? Uses all those big words!”

  Diana caught the trace of a smile on the son’s face and gave him a trace from her own. “Your immolation, Mr. Whittacker,” she asked, “will it take the form of the usual pyrotechnics, that is, incineration?”

  “Pyrotechnic in the figurative sense of a spectacular display,” he said, “but not of combustion.”

  “My, my,” said Mrs. Whittacker. “He’ll be an officer, I’ll bet?”

  “What is your opinion of student unrest on the college campuses?” she asked, in further parody of an interview.

  “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said, “because I’m not going to college.”

  “He is too!” Mrs. Whittacker said. “Don’t you print that. He is too going, but he just hasn’t made up his mind which college. His father and I intend to see to it that he goes. Day, you watch what you tell her! Hear me? This is going to be in Life magazine, and you think I want my friends to know you’re a drop-out or something?”

  Diana was thoroughly annoyed by the woman’s presence, and wanted to get away from here as soon as she could. But she was attracted to the son and still wanted to talk with him in some other place, without the mother present. She had an inspiration: “I wonder,” she said to him, “if I might have a look at your environment—the high school and the places where the students congregate, and that sort of thing. I have a car.”

  “It’s too dark to see anything,” Mrs. Whittacker said, “but we can show you all the local spots in pictures in Day’s yearbook from the high school. Day, where did you put that yearbook?”

  Diana sighed. She despaired of further ruses; she did not see how it might be possible to get him away from his mother. She even considered blurting out her true reason for being here, but decided against it.

  She squandered another fifteen minutes of her time looking at pictures in the high school yearbook, asking a few polite questions and making a few polite remarks, and stifling several yawns. Then she told them that she had been happy to meet them, and told Day Whittacker that she would write to him if she needed to know anything else.

  She stood up to go.

  “You’re not going to take any pictures?” Mrs. Whittacker asked.

  “Our photographer does that,” she said. “He might come later.” She shook hands with both of them, and said, “Thank you very much, and good night.”

  She left their house and walked to her car. She turned and gave their house a long look, then got into her car and started the engine. She pushed the stick into gear.

  Day Whittacker leapt from the steps of his house and ran to her car and around it to her open window and leaned his arms on the roof of the car and looked in at her. “My mother’s a pill,” he said. “I’m sorry. If you want me to, I’ll be glad to show you the high school and some other places, even if they’re in the dark.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, and then she said, “I don’t care about the high school. I’m not really from Life magazine. I just wanted to talk with you.”

  “Oh?” he said, and removed his arms from the top of her car. “What about?”

  “Do you know me?” she asked.

  “Should I?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Do I look at all familiar to you?”

  He scrutinized her carefully. “You remind me of this movie starlet, I can’t remember her name.” He looked at her car, the redness of it, the sweep of its lines. “You aren’t her?” he said. “I mean, you aren’t a movie star?”

  “No,” she said. And then she told him. “I’m the granddaughter of Daniel Lyam Montross.”

  Six

  Diana Stoving Receives an Opportunity to Query the Subject

  “I can’t remember what she said her name was?” Mrs. Whittacker told me in the spring of the following year, “but that sounds like it, Diana Stoving? Anyway, she said she was from Life magazine, so maybe she’s not the party you had in mind? But, yes, she was here just a day or two before poor Day disappeared, so maybe there’s some connection? He ran out of the house after she left, and he didn’t get back in until sometime after midnight, but when I asked him where he’d been he said he had to go back to the Scout meeting? I believed him at the time? I didn’t think to make any connection with her being here? I didn’t see her again? When Day disappeared, I thought it was just another case of a crazy kid running off from home? I told his father, I said to him, ‘You just wait, and Day will come back when the Scout camp is over’? But maybe if you ever find her, she can tell you what became of him? I don’t think, I certainly don’t think he would have harmed her? He was a gentle boy, such a kind and decent boy…?”

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when Diana knocked at Mr. Sedgely’s door, not using the doorbell because it might startle him more if he were asleep, as seemed likely because the lights were all off except for one which might be in the bathroom. While she waited to see if there was any response to the knock, she turned to Day and said, “I would rather you didn’t tell him. Let’s just pretend that I’m a historian or something, with some knowledge about Montross, and if he can arrange it so that I can ask you questions while you’re under. Just to check a few things, you see.” She waited, and knocked again. “I feel foolish,” she admitted. “Maybe we ought to come back tomorrow.”

  Lights went on within the living room, and the front door opened to reveal Mr. Sedgely in his bathrobe. “Hullo,” he said, rubbing his eyes beneath his spectacles; Diana realized how much Day resembled him, as if they were father and son. “Hullo, Day,” he said. “And Miss Stoving. Don’t tell me, let me guess why you’ve come.” He ushered them in, and closed the door.

  Putting Day “under,” as Diana discovered, was quick, nearly effortless, little more than switching an imaginary switch. Mr. Sedgely corrected her: “Not under,” he said in a whisper. “Over. Above. Beyond.” Then he said, “Don’t be deceived by the quickness of it. In the beginning, it takes ten or fifteen minutes to put the subject into a deep trance. But Day is an old hand at this.”

  Day was sprawled limply and comfortably in the overstuffed armchair, his eyes closed, with Diana and Mr
. Sedgely both sitting near him to one side.

  Mr. Sedgely addressed Day, in a slow, even, somnolent voice: “You are going to go back, ’way back, back beyond your birth. On the count of three, you will be back fifty years. One…going back…two…’way back…three.”

  Diana perceived no visible change in the boy’s expression.

  “Now,” Mr. Sedgely said to him, “there will be another voice here, you will hear a voice other than my own, this other voice will ask you questions, and you will answer these questions.” He turned to Diana and whispered, “All right. Go ahead.”

  Diana had her first question ready, but her voice broke as she began to ask it. She cleared her throat gently and tried again:

  Where were you born?

  There was no immediate answer. The gaps which Diana was to perceive between her questions and his answers led her to suspect that he was taking time to fabricate a reply. A few seconds passed, then his voice, which seemed not unlike his own voice, said

  Dudleytown, Connecticut.

  In what year?

  ———I don’t remember. Seventy-nine, eighty. Eighteen hundred and eighty.

  How long did you live in Dudleytown?

  ———Until I was fifteen.

  Why did you leave?

  ———Wanted to. I. I reckon. No opportunity there. And fought. Jared Story and Ferrenzo Allyn. Renz like to kilt me.

  In what year did you go to Arkansas?

  ———

  Although she waited a minute or longer, and repeated her question, there was no answer. Mr. Sedgely leaned over and whispered to her, “Perhaps he’s not there yet. I sent him back to around 1920. If it were later than that, he wouldn’t know. I’ll move him.” He said to Day, “You are going up through time, thirty years, it will be thirty years later.” To Diana he said, “Now ask him again.”