Three by Finney

by Jack Finney

  “Flares,” Lew murmured. “Half a dozen road flares.” He sat staring out at the distant drydocks, seeing the film again—the sudden smoky red light flaring up. “Light one, then hold it under the others and light them all at once. Stand up. Crouched low so you don’t tip the boat. All the flares bunched in one hand. Heave them up hard—”

  “Sidearm; sidearm would be best.”

  Jo murmured, “Honestly . . .”

  “Yeah. Sidearm and arched high. So they’d clear the top with room to spare. On the way down they’d separate a little before they hit bottom. But road flares wouldn’t go out.”

  “Take a while to catch, though. For a while you wouldn’t see anything.”

  “Give you time to row away,” Lew said. “Fast as hell.”

  “Yeah. Then a little way from shore—rowing, you’d be facing the things—you’d see just a tip of flame, maybe. Sort of flickering up over the side for a second.”

  “Yeah. You’d reach shore, tie up, get back out of sight somewhere, and—”

  “Whoosh! All of a sudden up she goes. Then all four of them catch. Jesus: you’d see the god-damn things all over the Bay.”

  “Sure would.” Lew nodded. “Four pair of those walls; high and completely surrounded by air; and there’d probably be a breeze, they’d get all the oxygen they could use. They been soaking out there in the sun for years; the wood’s bone dry. Loaded with tar. And then soaked with gas—my god, the flames’d shoot up two hundred feet. And against the darkness, on a night like this, the fire reflected in the water . . .” He sat staring.

  “Well?” Harry leaned forward to grin at him. “When do we do it? Tonight?”

  “Not tonight or any other,” said Shirley.

  Harry shrugged. “Wouldn’t do any harm. They’re well out in the Bay, nothing else anywhere near them. And they’re no fucking good; the county’s been after the owner for years to get rid of them. They’re abandoned, actually. We’d be doing the world a favor. Right, Lew?”

  “Absolutely. Let’s ditch this pair of deadheads, and go find us a siphon.”

  They finished their coffee. Jo took their cups and put them into her pack, then they walked silently back to the road, and turned toward the freeway just beyond its other end.

  The freeway pulled at Lew: he wanted the others to see the eerie sight of the great lighted road lying empty and motionless in the middle of the night. But they reached the service road, lying dark and empty, turned onto it, and almost immediately a car passed on the freeway beside them. As they walked, they watched its tail lights shrink, but just before they winked out over the Corte Madera rise, the blazing eyes of another pair of headlights popped up over the crest. They grew fast, lengthening into beams, then the car shot past on the southbound side of the freeway. Shirley’s head turned, following it, and as she looked back over her shoulder, her eyes met Lew’s, they read each other’s mind, and both smiled at the memory of the night last week when they’d lain together out there on the empty concrete.

  Exasperatingly, the road would not clear. Reaching the concrete overpass, they turned by common impulse onto the corkscrew ramp, then walked along the overpass, and always, at least one car and occasionally a clump of two, three, or four moved along the two-mile stretch below them.

  By tacit agreement, they stopped over the southbound lanes to lean, chins on wrists, on the concrete rail and stare out over the long reach of concrete, dim and livid in the even starlight. Headlights approached from the north, and they watched them rapidly grow into brilliance, the car behind them indistinct. Fifty yards off, the windshield was a blank black sheet of reflected sky, then suddenly it cleared as the car shot toward and under them, and they saw the driver’s startled face staring up at them, open-mouthed.

  Smiling, they walked on, and after a dozen steps Lew realized that now once again the world lay silent all around them. He checked both ways: as far off as he could see nothing moved, no headlights appeared. As they turned onto the downward ramp Harry realized it, too. “Hey, look”—he gestured at it—“look at that road! My god, it’s empty! It’s empty; look at it!” He began running around and around the corkscrew ramp, the others breaking into a trot to follow, and at the bottom he ran directly onto the freeway-entrance curve, the one he and Lew took every weekday morning, and out onto the freeway itself.

  The others followed, then they all stood in the center lane, heads turning, looking one way, then the other. The lull held; nothing appeared, and Harry looked at Lew, grinning. “This freaks me out, old buddy, it really does,” he said, and Jo nodded happily. “I can’t believe this,” she murmured. “It’s wonderful.” And Lew felt himself nodding modestly, as though he’d made a big promise he’d managed to keep.

  Harry snatched off his cap, wadding it up, tucking the bill in, compacting it. “Yours, Lew!” he yelled, running backward, arm upraised, the quarterback hunting a receiver. He threw it hard in a pass, Jo leaping to intercept, Lew running for it, but the light cloth fell too quickly to catch. Yelling, “Fumble!” he scooped it up anyway, and ran toward the women, folded cap under one arm, the other out in an old-fashioned straight-arm. They shrieked, partly real, partly faking, and separated, Lew running between them, and Harry grabbed him around the waist in a mock tackle. “Car!” Lew yelled, pointing; they all whirled, saw the headlights far to the north, and trotted off the road, Lew tossing Harry his cap in a short pass.

  Off the road and behind the mesh fence they lay in a row on their stomachs facing the freeway; waiting, grinning. As the car approached they lay motionless, heads low, watching, and saw first the red-white-and-blue lighting strip across the roof; then, as it moved past at moderate speed in the far lane, the lettering across the white door: MILL VALLEY POLICE. The hatless driver never glanced their way, and they watched the two broad tail-light strips move slowly up and then dip over the crest of the Richardson Bay bridge to the south.

  They walked back across the overpass, and at the Standard station along the service road on the other side turned in and walked past the pump islands of the dark locked-up blue-and-white little building to the drinking fountain beside the washroom doors at the side: Shirley was thirsty. Each in turn drank, then as Lew bent over the fountain, reaching for the handle, he froze, they all did, at a small sound from the front of the station, the slight but unmistakable scrape of a bumper-guard on concrete. A faint brake squeal, a muttering engine abruptly switched off, then silence.

  Lew and Harry crept toward the front corner, and stopped short of it. Through two windows, across a corner of the dark office, they saw the length of the car stopped beside the nearest pump island, MILL VALLEY POLICE, across the front-door panel. Its lights were off, and behind his windshield the cop sat facing their direction but looking away, off across the freeway, watching.

  He had seen them; running about the freeway, probably, and seen them run off. Keeping his eyes straight ahead then, giving no sign—knowing they could run off into the darkness before he could stop, get out, and reach them—he’d driven slowly past, aware of them watching him undoubtedly, on the other side of the fence.

  On over the bridge, and then—out of their sight just beyond the bridge’s other end—he’d have driven across the freeway through the bus-lane gap in the divider fence, and full speed back on the other side. Lights out, probably, as he came over the bridge, he’d swung immediately onto the off-ramp at the bridge’s foot, and down into the station. Now, screened by the pumps, he sat waiting for them to reveal themselves somewhere.

  Well, here we are, old buddy. Right beside you, Lew said in his mind, aware of a thrill of—what? Excitement: sudden, intense and deeply pleasurable. He turned to grin at Jo and Shirley behind him; but their eyes on his were apprehensive and questioning. Possibly a minute passed, then another, the cop waiting, watching across the freeway, occasionally looking slowly all around him; behind the windshield, his face was indistinct. Then he leaned forward, started his engine, and an amplified metallic click sounded from the car
roof as the speaker there came to life.

  Lew thought he’d drive off; instead his door opened, and they edged back out of sight. Footsteps sounded, leather on concrete. Almost immediately they stopped. A pause, then the locked front door of the station rattled in its casement. Startlingly loud, a woman’s bored and distant voice squawked three unintelligible words from the speaker on the car roof. Silence, then distantly from the other side of the building, the rattling chain of a rising garage door.

  They ran swiftly back to the rear of the station, then Lew and Harry walked to the opposite corner. Slowly Lew moved an eye around it, Harry beside him. White fluorescent light filled the roof-high square of the garage entrance, spilling out onto the concrete. From inside they heard the distinctive dead clunk and then the small clatter of a coin rattling down a slot. A metallic click, a soft pop, a gurgle. Slow approaching footsteps, and they drew back their heads. A light switch clicked, the garage door rolled down. The tiny metallic clickings of a key finding its lock. Slow footsteps again, receding now, and they looked around the corner. His blue-shirted back toward them, feet shuffling, the cop moved slowly back toward his car holding a steaming Styrofoam cup out to the side, apparently full almost to sloshing over.

  Again they watched at the front corner: the car door stood open and the cop sat sideways on the seat facing the station, heels hooked to the narrow sill, the cooling cup in his hands. Through his door window they could see his face in three-quarter view: narrow, wedge-shaped; hair dead black, straight, and cropped short; wide, close-trimmed pistol-grip sideburns to below his ear lobes. Back in his car with no further need to activate the roof speaker, he’d turned off the engine—they could hear the small pings and cracklings of cooling metal—and he sat staring absently at nothing, waiting for his coffee to cool.

  For minutes then, behind the station, they waited; sitting on the asphalt leaning back against the wall. Just beyond the little asphalted area lay the wide expanse of the bird sanctuary, no exit that way. Presently Lew said, “Well, Go’father, what do we do? Shoot our way out?”

  Harry smiled but he said, “You know what annoys me? No reason we shouldn’t just walk out of here. Instead we sit here because we know he’d stop us: What were we doing back here? What’re we out for this time of night?”

  Jo said, “Well, it is kind of suspicious, don’t you think? Four people lurking around the back of a gas station. It’s only reasonable to stop us. Especially if he saw us on the freeway earlier.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t like the choice! Either go out, and we’re stopped: answer questions; produce identification, for crysake. All that shit—I hate it. You don’t have to produce identification, you know. All you have to do is identify yourself orally. But the dumb cops never know that. So you either do it or make a fucking court case out of it. Or sit back here hiding.”

  Another minute passed, then Harry got up suddenly, and walked restlessly to the back edge of the asphalted area. A fifty-gallon open-topped oil drum stood there, discarded grease rags draped over its rim, empty cartons and a discolored fluorescent tube protruding from the debris heaped inside it. Harry walked over to it, stared into it, then reached in, moving something aside, metal clinking on glass, and Shirley called, “Shhh!”

  Harry brought out his hand, something in it, and shook it vigorously. He tipped it toward the open drum, they heard a soft hiss, and saw a whitish glob piling up on one of the rags. He turned quickly to walk back, holding up the tall can. Standing, leaning close as Harry stopped before them, Lew could read the larger label type: ACEWAYS METAL CLEANER/ SPRAY ON, WIPE OFF!/ DISSOLVES GREASE INSTANTLY! He looked at Harry who grinned and said, “There’s some left.”

  Lew didn’t know what to reply. “Well, good: you can clean my nail clip.”

  Harry shook his head, still grinning. “If I could sneak out there, back of the cop car, I could write something on it. Spray it on the back.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. ‘Greetings!’ ‘Hello, there!’ ‘Fuck you!’ Anything—just so he’d drive off with a mysterious little souvenir. What do you think?”

  Shirley said, “I think you’ve lost your mind.”

  He didn’t look at her, just stood waiting, smiling, eyes on Lew’s.

  Lew said, “I don’t think so, Harry. Not a sound out there, nothing stirring, he’d be bound to see some movement or hear any little sound. And he’s facing the station: how would you walk past him?”

  “Clear out at the side, a long way from the car. Then I could—”

  Lew said, “Listen! Say I walk out. Just come walking out by myself! I don’t know he’s there, see, and I walk out, see the car, and do some kind of surprised take. He calls me over: What am I doing here, all that. I just shrug: I’m walking around, couldn’t sleep. I often do this, and so on, and so on. Was I on the other side of the road earlier? No, I came from another direction. His eyes are on me standing there by his door blabbing away. And you’re in back of the car spraying away!”

  “What’ll I write?”

  “Harry, I won’t have it,” Shirley said. “That’s not why we came out tonight!”

  A car door slammed. Almost running, Harry and Lew walked swiftly to the front corner again, but as they reached it, looking through the windows of the office, the car’s headlights were swinging away, sweeping through a quarter-circle as the car turned down toward the driveway. It bounced onto the service road, straightening, accelerating, heading north, then they watched it swing up into the driveway of the car wash next door. There the cop tested the office door, then shaded his eyes to peer inside as he shone a flashlight. He drove on to the next in line, McDonald’s, and Lew said, “Well, boss, we scared him off.”

  “Yeah.” Harry idly streaked the concrete with a long spatter of white, then tossed the can into the small open drum between the pumps.

  Walking home, back around the shoreline, they were quiet, and Lew felt with a host’s chagrin that the outing had failed. But passing the little bird sanctuary, Jo murmured, “Look,” pointing, and they stopped to stare out at the four motionless sleeping white birds, each standing on one astonishingly thin, sticklike leg, head under wing. “Isn’t that wonderful,” she said softly, then looked slowly around at the silent darkness, and up at the remoteness of the stars. “There’s something about being out here like this that’s—I don’t know—magical. I’ll think about it all day while I’m working tomorrow.”

  “I knew you’d love it,” Shirley said complacently, and Lew smiled. They walked on: Harry and Shirley, Lew and Jo. “Next week, then?” Shirley said, turning to look back at Lew. He shrugged, and she said, “Harry?”

  “Well. It’s weird. You’re a real freak, Lew. But I think maybe you’re onto something. Sure. Next Monday again?”

  “If you want,” Lew said. “But why don’t you lead, Harry? I’ve about shot my wad.”

  Before he could answer Jo said, “Let me!” And—surprised—the others nodded and agreed.

  • • •

  CHAPTER SIX

  • • •

  It was Lew’s week to drive, and in the morning the two men drove around the shoreline they had walked last night, then onto the service road: passing McDonald’s, where a boy stood beside a steaming bucket, squeejeeing the windows; past the car wash, a blue Volvo just emerging, front bumper dripping; past the Standard station, four cars at the pumps; past the pedestrian overpass, three men crossing toward the bus stop. They stared curiously at each of these places, then turned to glance at each other and smile.

  As they entered the freeway, sliding into an empty space in the slow lane, Harry shook his head in disbelief that they could ever have run and cavorted on this traffic-clogged road. He said, “I’ll admit it, Lew: there is something to nutsing around like that in the middle of the night. But what?”

  “Well”—Lew nodded toward the windshield—“take a look at this frigging freeway; you can hardly see the concrete. And look at us, sitting here breathing this stuff; y
ou can smell it today. I hate the freeways, but who doesn’t, and what can you do? We’re on it again, we’ll be back on it tonight, tomorrow morning, and for the rest of our lives—you know it.” He smiled. “But last night, at least, we defied it. Played on it, pranced around on it, thumbed our noses at it.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Harry waited as Lew, checking his rear-view, sped up slightly to slide over into the center lane, braking immediately. Then he said, “Something like that, anyway, but . . .”

  “But what?” Lew said after a moment.

  “But we didn’t defy anything, did we, Lew? We just sneaked onto it when it was safe. Looking both ways first. We were like kids making faces at Daddy when he’s taking a nap. The time to do it would be now.” He smiled, interested at the thought. “Seven-thirty in the morning. You and I climb the fence, and just bulldoze our way out into the middle of the god-damn road, cars hitting their brakes. We face the traffic, straddling the markers, and block all three lanes. The cars behind us move on, the road clears, and we turn around and start running all over the fucking freeway. Bring a real ball, and pass it, kick it, run with it, tackle. Cars backed up to San Rafael, every horn blasting, guys leaning out yelling blue murder.”

  “Be something,” Lew murmured, eyes on the rear-view, waiting for a chance to move into the next lane, and Harry nodded, then slumped down to try and nap.

  • • •

  The week passed. On Wednesday night Lew and Jo saw a double-bill Hitchcock at the Surf, in San Francisco, one of them being The Lady Vanishes, which they’d never seen. In the ticket line just ahead of them stood a college friend, Leonard Beekey, whom Lew hadn’t seen since Berkeley, and the two couples sat together, and had coffee in the little place next door.

  During the last half of the week he worked hard and well, finding citations for a memorandum, in the company library and on two afternoons in the law library at Hastings. He added an invented citation, City of San Francisco vs. Josephine Dunne, as explicitly described as the real ones; but before handing it over for typing, he crossed it out.