Three by Finney

by Jack Finney

  They walked home, Rafe off his leash, sometimes following, sometimes ahead; sniffing, wetting the bushes. Following the shoreline, passing between the two- and three-story wooden apartment buildings on each side of the road here, Lew said, “Do you realize we’re surrounded by dozens of unconscious bodies? Except for a few thin walls we could see them—lying motionless, some of them twenty feet up in the air, eyes closed, slowly breathing, not five yards away on either side of the road.”

  “That’s spooky.”

  “I know.”

  Sighing, she said, “Oh, Lord, this has been silly. And fun; such fun.”

  For a time they walked on in silence, around the bend beside the black Bay. Then Shirley said, “Lew, what else have you done? On your walks.” He told her; she listened, occasionally nodding as though in agreement; and when presently the curved line of their own apartment buildings came into view, she stopped and gripped his forearm. “Lew, let’s all of us do this! Harry’d love it. I know he would! The Night People! So would Jo. Let’s! Okay?”

  He felt a sudden pang of loss, deepening as he stood searching for something to reply that would restore it. Then he knew it was too late, the solitariness of his night-time walks already gone. “Sure,” he said slowly. “I guess so.”

  “Great.” They walked on. “Maybe a few nights from now: okay? We’ll get together, and figure it out.”

  At the driveway between their two buildings Shirley snapped her fingers for Rafe, and they turned to walk up it. “I’ll never sleep,” she murmured quietly, then smiled. “I’m going to wake Harry up, and tell him! All about this! I can’t possibly wait till morning.”

  Lew grinned. “Be sure to—wake him up right away. Shake him if you have to. And tell him I said to. G’night, Shirl.”

  “ ’Night, Lew. Such fun. So much fun. Come on, Rafe.”

  • • •

  CHAPTER FIVE

  • • •

  Jo listened at breakfast as Lew told her about his night-time walks; of meeting Shirley last night; and of what Shirley had proposed—listened, eyes and hands busy, buttering toast, rearranging dishes and plates. “Well,” she said when he’d finished, not looking at him, hands still busy, “that’s fascinating. Secret walks. In the dead of night. And I didn’t even know!” she said brightly, finally looking up at him.

  He made his voice mild. “They weren’t exactly secret, Jo; I’d have told you soon enough. And if you’d ever happened to wake up, and come over to my place, you’d have seen the note on my door.”

  “Of course. More coffee?” Without waiting for an answer she began to pour. Eyes on the hot black stream, she said, “But I could wish I’d known before Shirley.”

  “Running into Shirley was an accident.”

  “Yes, I know.” Holding his eyes, she leaned toward him over the table. “Listen: any time you get bored with me, in or out of bed, you mustn’t be bashful. Just mention it, and with a quick handshake and a twisted little smile I’ll be out of your life before you can say ‘Jo, it’s been great.’ ”

  “I will, I’ll do that. But that’s hard to imagine. Not quite possible, in fact.”

  She looked down instantly, finding a crumb that needed flicking. “You’re what my father calls a ‘bullshit artist.’ ”

  “I’ll just bet he does. What a phrasemaker.”

  “The only time you’d miss me is maybe at breakfast.” She handed him a piece of toast. “When you had to butter your own toast.”

  “You’re crazy: I worship you.”

  She nodded.

  “That cynical quirk of the mouth isn’t justified. The fact is—you know those big religious paintings? Where the saints all wear—not halos: those big golden discs around their heads.”

  “Nimbuses. Nimbi.”

  “Thank you. Well, when I imagine you naked, as I often do—sitting around at work or right now, for example—I see you wearing not one but several golden nimbuses. Not around your head—”

  “All right.”

  “Three of them. Gold, and beautifully polished.”

  “And you?”

  “Just one for me. And only silver. Sterling, though. And hallmarked.”

  “Sounds pretty cumbersome.”

  “Not at all. Be like cymbals. Clashing musically while a choir of angels sings ‘The Hallelujah Chorus.’ ”

  “Is that what they mean by making beautiful—”

  “Exactly, as I’ll be glad to demonstrate. Right now.”

  “No, you won’t, bullshit artist. And maybe never again, either. I’d hate to scratch my nimbi.”

  They finished breakfast, Lew reading the news section of the Chronicle while Jo read Herb Caen. As Lew walked toward the balcony doors to return to his apartment for his suit coat, Jo called to him, and he turned. She said, “They were secret, weren’t they? The walks.”

  He puffed out his cheeks with a breath, held it a moment, then released a little sighing pop of air. “I guess so. Yeah, I guess so, Jo, I don’t know. But I’d have told you eventually.”

  “I know. But meanwhile I’m curious: why so secret?”

  “Well.” He began walking back toward the table. “I’ve always liked the notion of some secret way to walk off into another world: I was a natural for Lost Horizon. I’ve got a paperback copy, and every once in a while I reread the Shangri La parts.” He stood looking down at her. “And when I was a kid I ate up the Oz books, though I can’t say I enjoyed them: I didn’t like it that there really wasn’t any such place. But I couldn’t stop reading them. I think the closest I ever actually came to whatever the hell I thought I wanted, was in Illinois when it would snow at night. You’d wake up and you’d know the moment you opened your eyes, because the ceiling was different: the light reflected up onto it from the new snow outside. And it moved; shimmered like water reflections. The sounds from the street would be changed, too, and you’d get up and look out, and for once it was true: the world had changed. Into something different and better, or it seemed like it.”

  “Were you unhappy?”

  “No! Hell, no; I had a good time as a kid. I miss snow. I like California all right, but I still feel a little alien out here. Probably always would. There aren’t any falls or springs, and even winter isn’t much different from summer except that it rains. A few years ago I got so hungry for snow—real snow, not Sierra snow—it was during the Christmas holidays, for godsake, yet it was warm and sunny—that I flew back to Chicago. Just bought a ticket, and went. It was great. It was snowing when I got off the plane. Few hours later it turned colder, and I wasn’t really dressed for it, and the slush froze, but it was still good to see things covered with white. I got a cab, and went out to my parents’ house; I thought I’d ask whoever lived in it if I could come in, and look around, but I didn’t; just sat in the cab across the street, and looked.”

  “Why didn’t you go in?”

  “It was the wrong color.” He smiled. “It was a frame house, and we always painted it brown, but now it was peach. And the yard was different. They’d put in some ornamental fencing, iron pipes with low chains slung between them; and there was a new concrete walk around the side, and a new front door. It wasn’t our house any more. Anyway, I was satisfied. I’d seen snow, and I flew back next morning. I met you not long after.” He looked at his watch. “Jo, some people are just never satisfied with the way things are, that’s all. They’re a boring bunch; they talk about snow a lot.” He shrugged. “You just keep hoping for the big difference some day. And that’s about as close as I can come to what I liked about the walks at night.”

  “When I was a girl I always liked the idea of a summerhouse. I’d seen pictures: the little lath and scrollwork places you’d go off to by yourself on a long 1890 kind of summer afternoon. I’d still like one. Maybe I’ll make one when I get time. For The Town.” She stood up, kissed him quickly, a little peck, and said, “You’ll be late for work.”

  Harry Levy sat waiting at the wheel of his Alfa as Lew settled himself
into the bucket seat beside him. Lew slammed the door, Harry turned onto the driveway, onto the road, then he glanced at Lew, face expressionless. “I hear you’ve been fooling around with my wife. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the freeway.”

  “That’s right.” Lew kept his face equally expressionless, not wanting to anticipate a joke Harry might not be making. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” He looked at Harry, intentionally meeting his eyes, then looked past him at Richardson Bay: they were moving along its edge.

  “Oh, I don’t. It was hearing about it in the middle of the night that I objected to. I’m told you were all for breaking the news to me at 3 A.M.” He smiled, and Lew did, too, relieved.

  “Right. Usually the husband is the last to know, but I wanted you to be first.”

  “Damn white of you. Lew, what is this? Shirl says you run around Strawberry night after night in some kind of clown suit, and that we’re all supposed to join in the fun. That right?”

  “More or less.”

  Harry nodded. “Well, okay. Try anything once.”

  • • •

  Sitting on Jo’s balcony Saturday afternoon drinking lemonade after tennis, they agreed to go out on Monday night: too many people were out late on weekends, Lew said—the women nodding, Harry listening skeptically—and the essence of this was the deserted quality of the night. “Play hell with sleep on a work night,” Harry said, but shrugged and agreed.

  • • •

  Their alarms having rung in the darkness of their bedrooms some minutes before, the two couples met on the driveway between their buildings at two thirty. Glancing doubtfully around in the dim light from the stars and a partial moon, they exchanged semiwhispered greetings. Then Harry, Jo, and even Shirley stood waiting apathetically, shoulders hunched against the lingering pull of interrupted sleep. Jo wore her white Irish knit sweater and tasseled cap, Lew’s red daypack containing a thermos of coffee strapped to her back; Shirley again in bleached raincoat, and pants, though without a scarf tonight; Lew in the clothes he’d worn on other nights; Harry wore a black baseball cap and green nylon jacket, fists tucked up into the slanted breast pockets of his jacket. Their interest, Lew saw, was minimal now, and he felt resentful: these walks at night had been his alone, he hadn’t asked them to join him. “Well, let’s go,” he muttered, and walked down the driveway. Turning right, toward the shoreline road, he led them straggling down the silent street past the dark apartments.

  It wasn’t the same: Lew knew it the moment his foot touched the street. The blank-windowed buildings beside them offered no suggestion now of the mystery he had felt out here alone, but looked only as they ought to, the people inside them sensibly and enviably asleep. Plodding along, heads down, the others didn’t even glance up at them, and Lew felt tired, wishing he were home, and thought irritably of stopping right here to call it all off.

  But Jo tucked her arm under his, and he smiled at her. And after a mile, climbing and descending the hilly shoreline road winding along beside Richardson Bay, they warmed up, awakened, and when Lew abruptly turned off the road onto a level stretch of empty ground at the left, Shirley said, “What? Hey, where we going?” and he felt the interest in her voice.

  “You’ll see.”

  As they crossed the leveled stretch, there loomed up ahead the tree-covered dark bulk of Silva Island, facing a cove of this far north end of Richardson Bay. Harry said, “Hey, nice work, fuehrer; I’ve never been over there.” They stopped. At their feet between them and the island shore lay an eight-foot ditch shaded by the overhanging branches of a large tree on the island shore. Through this ditch a shallow tide-water pond, a bird sanctuary just to the north at their right, drained and refilled; four storklike white birds stood in its shallows, stick-legged, heads tucked under their wings. “What now?” said Shirley. “Wait for the ferry?” But Harry stood leaning forward over the ditch, reaching. Then his hand found the rope suspended over the water from a tree limb; used, as he and Lew had often seen driving home from work, by boys of the neighborhood.

  Rope in hand, Harry walked back a dozen feet, then turned and tugged on it hard, leaning far back, testing his weight against it. He stood erect, regripped the rope as far up as he could, then leaped high, drawing his legs up, and swung forward toward them, past them, and out over the ditch. He landed running, paying the rope out, braking with his feet. He shoved the rope back, and Lew caught it.

  The women swung across, Jo as agile and skilled as Shirley, Lew was pleased to see. He followed, lifting his legs almost straight overhead to cross hanging upside down, landing with the short run and graceful bowing stop of a circus acrobat, and Shirley said, “Toss him a fish.”

  “All set?” Lew murmured. They stood under the tree, deep in its shadows, trespassers now, the island privately owned by the four or five families who lived on it, the uninvited not welcome. A few feet ahead, dim in the starlight, lay the narrow road which ran the length of the whalebacked little island. They walked to its edge, and stood listening. As Lew was about to step out, Harry stepped out first, and they followed, feet carefully noiseless, looking curiously at the few widely scattered old houses. The island thick with old trees, the ground under them lay sparsely grown, heavily leaf-covered. The old houses, individually oriented, stood at various ground levels, and with outbuildings. It was a country landscape in miniature, remote and rural seeming although the freeway lay only a few hundred yards ahead. “Love to live here,” Jo whispered over Shirley’s shoulder, and Shirley turned eagerly: “Oh, yes!”

  Ascending the whaleback, they watched apprehensively but no dog came racing toward them, no light flashed on, no shout sounded. Silva was no longer truly an island: when the old highway had been expanded into the present multiple-lane freeway, the strip of bay water between island and shore had been filled in to expand the roadway. Now, a hundred yards ahead, at the end of the island road, lay the service road beside the freeway, and having seen Silva undetected, they were free to walk off it. Instead, hardly knowing in advance that he was going to, Lew turned abruptly to his left, down toward the houses. “Hey!” one of the women called in a whisper, but he walked on, downhill toward the shore. Behind him, feet scuffling the fallen leaves, he heard the others follow.

  Passing between two of the houses in straggling single file, they reached the shore, stepping out onto a tiny beach. Far ahead across the long reach of black water lay night-time Sausalito, a few scattered lights on the dark slope of its hills. “What’re we doing here?” Jo whispered urgently, and Lew turned, smiling in the faint light, and reaching to the pack on her back. “Exploring a newly discovered island. Sit down.”

  Embedded on the rocky little beach, a bleached log lay half exposed, and as Lew passed out Styrofoam cups and unscrewed the thermos lid, they sat alternately looking out at the view, and glancing behind them. But no sound or movement came from the dark houses up the slope to the rear, the nearest of them fifty yards off; and presently, sipping coffee, they sat in a row looking far ahead across the shining dark water. A new view for them, they identified the black shape of Alcatraz beyond Sausalito, and beyond it the shoreline lights of San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Shooting out ruler-straight from the Embarcadero, the glowing yellow beads of the Bay Bridge lay across the blackness, red pinpricks blinking above them. “This is fun,” Jo said, and Shirley nodded above the white of her cup: they sat side by side between the men. “I know. But a little scary.” She glanced behind her.

  Harry pointed ahead and, voice low, said, “Those are the drydocks, right?”

  Lew followed Harry’s point; far out on the Bay he saw the tiny, slightly blacker rectangle near the Sausalito shore. “Yeah.” They all knew the drydocks, standing in four identical open-ended sections stranded in the shallow water before the town: they’d been a part of the scene for years, a landmark of southern Marin. Small though they looked from here, the docks were enormous; four pairs of towering wooden walls rising up out of the Bay from their rotted-out bottoms sunk in t
he mud.

  “Quiet night like this you could row out there easy,” Harry murmured. “Wouldn’t be far from Sausalito.” Lew nodded. In his mind he saw the scene movie-style, externally and from above the rowboat looking down at its pointed silhouette on the night-time water, two dim figures pulling at the oars. “Climb up the damn things,” Harry said, and in Lew’s mind the scene cut, and he watched himself climbing the wooden slats he knew were nailed to the sides of the docks. “Get a hell of a view from the top,” Harry went on, and again the picture in Lew’s mind abruptly cut, and now he saw himself high on the top of the great wooden wall, sharply defined against the lights of San Francisco. His arms moved alternately, rapidly: he seemed to be hauling up a weight from the boat by a rope, then it came into view, and he set it by his feet. It was a cluster of explosives, vaguely defined; he didn’t know what they ought to look like.

  Lew blinked, startled at himself. “Damnedest thing,” he said, leaning forward to look past the women at Harry on the other end of the log. “I wasn’t even thinking about it, and all of a sudden I start imagining rowing out to the drydocks. At night.” Voice wondering, he said, “To blow them up . . .

  “Be something, wouldn’t it.” Harry nodded. “Whammo.”

  “Blow things up,” Shirley murmured. “You guys are in tune with the times, all right.”

  “You couldn’t do it, though,” Harry said, staring out at the tiny distant blackness on the Bay. “Take tons of stuff to send those things up. And you’d have to plant it under the bottoms somehow; they’re built. I was out on them once.”

  “When?” Shirley said.

  “That time with Floyd Weatherill. In his FJ. We tied up to one of them. The bottoms are rotted out, but the inner floors were still above water, just barely. We walked around in one, and they’re immense.” He turned to Lew, grinning, his face dim in the wan starlight. “What you want to do, Lew, is burn them. Forget explosives: use gasoline; that you can get. Take plenty of gas, and really soak them down. All four sections. Then row off a few feet, and heave up a torch or something.”