Three by Finney

by Jack Finney

For eight or ten seconds no one protested: the bridge lanes were narrow, and cars did sometimes stray over the line. Then a horn tapped. Behind the three windshields, Lew smiled tensely; Harry grinned; Shirley frowned, glancing anxiously into her mirror. A long moment, then again a horn sounded, blasting this time, and immediately several more. An instant of silence again, as they rolled on down the orange-lighted roadway exactly abreast, straddling the lines, blocking all traffic behind them. Then almost simultaneously dozens of horns blared and continued, some held down steadily, others honk-honking. It sounded almost festive; Lew thought of a wedding party.

  Again he and Shirley watched Harry. Leaning forward, Harry stared up at the north tower, rapidly growing in his windshield. Harry lifted a hand, brought it slowly down in signal, and they carefully slowed together: to thirty . . . twenty-five . . . twenty . . . and on down to seven or eight miles an hour, speedometers now wobbling erratically.

  Behind them horns raged. Far ahead, tail lights shrank in the distance, the strange emptiness before them lengthening. Across the road in the San Francisco-bound lanes, drivers slowed, rapidly cranking down windows, to stare over in wonder. Up ahead, her eyes wide, Jo stood at her post beside the north tower watching them approach.

  Staring up at the north tower, Harry again raised a hand, waiting until they were approximately a hundred yards from it, the length of a football field. Then, in signal, his hand flashed down like an ax.

  Instantly Shirley slammed the shift lever forward, flooring the gas pedal, and the Alfa shot ahead, burning rubber. In the same instant Harry swung his wheel to nose into the space she had just vacated, nearly brushing her rear bumper. And in the moment Harry moved so did Lew, yanking his wheel in a sudden right turn, his big wooden front bumper swinging in an arc toward Harry’s rear one. Then they hit their brakes, and stood motionless, almost sideways on the roadway, across all lane markers, blocking all four lanes.

  Brakes squealing behind them, the nearly solid four-lane commute mass came to a halt: from far behind as the stop moved peristaltically back toward the toll booths, they heard a bumper crash, then another. Ahead and still accelerating, the Alfa flashed along the empty roadway, body winking under the overhead lights. Behind van and camper slewed sideways on the road, the horns had gone momentarily silent in astonishment.

  Lew set his parking brake, turned off the engine, and flung open his door. He jumped to the road, slamming his door, yanked at the handle to be sure it had locked. Then, grinning, he drew his arm far back, and exuberantly threw the ignition keys curving over the bridge rail to the water below.

  Inside the camper, kneeling on the front seat to face the rear, Harry reached to the squat metal box bolted to the wooden framework there; the box stood directly beside the camper’s side window facing north toward Marin. From it, heavy insulated black wire led to the transformer and batteries on the floor. Harry’s hand smacked down on a toggle switch, and a brilliant, hard-edged beam of blue-white light shot from the lens of the squat metal box and through the camper window, whitening the air far ahead.

  Like a searchlight, this beam touched the curving green trunk of the speeding Alfa a hundred yards ahead in just the moment that Shirley pressed the brake pedal hard. In the white light, black smoke sprayed from the rear wheels, and the Alfa slid to a stop directly beside the great north tower of the bridge. Its door flew open, and Shirley sprang out to race for the sidewalk beside the car—across the roadway at the other tower leg Jo stood watching her.

  Waiting for Harry to jump down out of the camper, Lew simply stood beside the van; grinning and facing the massed headlights filling the four lanes for a mile behind them. Elation flowed wild in him. A driver in the front line of stopped cars sat watching him, and when Lew’s eyes met his, Lew winked at the man. From the camper window, Harry’s beam of light began to rise up through the night like a probing finger, reaching for something high above.

  Up ahead, Jo and Shirley now stood with their backs to this rising searching light, one on each side of the roadway and facing the north bridge tower. Their hands rose high, reaching, then each found the patch of orange tape she had smoothed onto the steel side of the tower last night. Each peeled loose her tape, and then in unison both women yanked hard on the two long lengths of orange fishline stretching invisibly up into the night—and the weighted plastic pole the men had left high on the bridge transverse over the roadway, dropped over the edge.

  It fell fast, the accordion folds of white sailcloth popping open, and now there in the darkness high above the orange lights of the bridge, a great white square of cloth hung swaying over the roadway, suspended between the enormous tower legs.

  In the camper swiveling the metal box, Harry moved the long finger of light, found the swaying square of sailcloth, and centered the beam upon it. Then his fingers twisted the stubby lens, and the intense blue-white beam illuminating the great cloth sheet changed from fuzzy indefinition to a gigantic hard-edged square of light. Far below in one of the stopped cars facing the great illuminated sheet, a woman in the front seat leaned intently toward the windshield, murmuring, “My God, it’s a screen.” Suddenly delighted, she swung around to the other carpool members—“We’re going to have a show!”

  Harry’s palm smacked down on a push switch. A black drum on top of the powerful outdoor-theater projector revolved fractionally, and onto the giant screen hanging over Golden Gate Bridge flashed half a dozen carefully lettered words, enormously enlarged. In Harry’s green, blue and red felt-pen lettering, they said, Settle back, folks. THIS . . . IS OUR LIFE! Harry jumped to the concrete, slamming and locking his door, and he and Lew began to run up the empty roadway toward the Alfa. Ahead and high above them, the huge screen went momentarily black, then lightened again, and Lew, running hard, began to laugh. A huge photograph now filled the screen—a face. Above it Harry’s hand-lettered caption read, LEWIS O. JOLIFFE, PROMINENT S.F. ATTORNEY. Under the photo, in the careful, long ago white-ink script of Lew’s mother: Aged 3 months. The photo itself, a sepia print, was a bonneted baby, the infant Lew Joliffe staring out as though astonished at the mile-long captive audience below—which stared back in equal astonishment at the huge round-eyed face in the night-time sky.

  The Alfa was backing toward the two running men now, fast and erratically. Then it stopped, black-streaking the pavement, and Shirley flung open her door, then slid to the right. Lew piled in, squeezing into the back to sprawl across the piled-up belongings there; and Harry slid under the wheel. In the darkness off to the right of the bridge they heard the rackety clatter of a helicopter, and saw its running lights and dim dark bulk swinging down toward the bridge. Harry released the hand brake, slamming his door, and the screen high above them brightened once more.

  They all leaned forward, staring up; an enormous black-and-white photograph filled the fifty-foot screen, a diapered baby on a lawn, an out-of-focus front porch in the background. JOSEPHINE DUNNE, said Harry’s yard-high felt-tip lettering, WELL-KNOWN S.F. BEAUTY! Far behind the screen, down on the oceanside walkway, the real Jo Dunne hurried toward the end of the bridge.

  Blades clacking the air, the helicopter swung low over the car roof, and Shirley cried, “Harry, move, move! Let’s go!”

  “Wait! I gotta see this next one!” Again the screen darkened, the helicopter hanging directly over the bridge now, slowly lowering to hang over the car-jammed roadway. Under the clattering blades its insect body turned to face north as another giant photo filled the opening between the great legs of the north tower. A naked infant lay on his stomach on a wide white towel staring with interest at the tiny helicopter before it. Across the picture’s top, hugely: HARRY D. LEVY. Underneath it: FAMOUS SAN FRANCISCO BAREASSTER. Harry yelled with laughter, shot the car forward, and punched a dashboard button.

  From the car radio as they raced toward the bridge end, a man’s voice over the running-water sound of his copter motor said, “—king all lanes is not a jackknifed truck as we thought at first sight. It looks like—whoops,
here’s another! Another child, this one in color! A girl of about two, looks like, leaning over the handlebars of her tricycle and smiling right at me. Written above it is, ‘Shirley Rosen,’ and underneath, ‘Harry’s bride-to-be.’ Folks, in fourteen years of commute-traffic broadcasting, I’ve never seen anything like this! We’re heading for the toll plaza now to see what’s happening back there.” Harry slowed, then swung off the freeway into the view parking lot. Almost directly below his wheels Jo raced along the dark length of the footbridge.

  “Here’s another!” said the voice from the Alfa’s radio. “A boy of about twelve. On the front porch of a house. Holding a diploma. Underneath in a woman’s handwriting it says, ‘He made it! Lew’s graduation, Proviso High School, 1958.’ I can’t believe it!”—the radio voice broke into astounded laughter. Harry pulled in beside Lew’s VW, turned off lights and engine, and they sat staring back at the foreshortened length of the bridge, its distant half brilliant with motionless headlights, the back of the huge white screen in the north tower going dark. “I’ve reported accidents, breakdowns, tieups of every kind,” the radio voice shouted delightedly, “but never anything like this! Down on the bridge below me people are standing between their cars, they’re up on both walks, they’re sitting on car hoods. A group of young people are sitting cross-legged on the roof of their van, and they’re applauding! There’s a highway patrol car down there, its dome light revolving, but it can’t move, it’s locked in, can’t move! Here at the toll plaza and beyond everything is bl—. There’s a report card up on the screen! I mean it! A tremendous yellow report card forty feet high!”

  Jo appeared beside the Alfa. “Did it work, did it work!?”

  “Take a look.” Pointing, Lew got out, sliding past Harry, and Jo turned to stare back at the bridge. The rear of the great screen hung in the black sky, yellowly tinted, and Lew said, “That’s your report card, and now the whole world knows: C in arithmetic.”

  “But A-plus in art.” The back of the screen went dim, and Jo said, “Listen . . .” Motionless, heads cocked, the four of them waited, hearing nothing, and Jo said, “The horns have stopped.”

  “Yeah!” Lew grabbed her, grinning. “They love it!”

  “They’ll want it every night now,” Shirley cried. From the north, very faintly, a siren sounded, and the radio voice said, “It’s a dog! A black-and-white mongrel with his head cocked looking out at us! Says, ‘Lew’s old dog, Jake: he could sit up, roll over, and play dead.’ Oh, my god!”

  Lew bent forward to lean in at Harry’s window. “Well, kids. We all better take off. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Right.” Harry put out his hand, they shook. “Good show,” he said quietly, smiling fondly at Lew, “in more ways than one.”

  Leaning across Harry, Shirley cried out, “You’ve got my folks’ phone number, Jo, and I’ve got your dad’s. You phone now! You hear?”

  “I will, I will!”

  Lew said, “So long, Shirl. Remember me whenever you lie down on the freeway,” and she nodded, blinking rapidly, unable to reply. The siren sounded, closer now, and Harry said good-by to Jo, kissed his fingers at her, then the Alfa’s lights came on, and he backed out.

  Behind the Alfa, letting the distance between them grow, Lew drove north on 101, beginning the Waldo Grade climb. A highway patrol car, dome light flashing, siren growling, flashed by on the other side toward the bridge, and Lew leaned forward to turn on his radio, punching the button for KGO. “—monitoring our radio,” said the helicopter-voice over the watery sound of its motor, “and the truck at this end can’t get through. But the truck that parks up at the tunnel during commute time is on its way down, and will be—here’s another: a color photo of a boy in scout uniform, a yarmulke, and the beginnings of a mustache—it’s our old buddy, Harry Levy, again! Written underneath—it must have been his mother—is: ‘Harry’s bar mitzvah. Life Scout the same day!’ Screen’s black now . . . I wish I had a TV camera to show you these things! Here’s another color photo: bald, middle-aged man in suntans, woman in a dress, girl in shorts. The caption—oh boy—the caption says, ‘Our summer in Yellowstone. Dad, Mom and Shirley.’ Oh, I tell you, there’ll be a lot of late suppers tonight, but what an excuse!”

  Driving through the night, the freeway strangely empty, Lew and Jo listened as the jubilant voice from the traffic helicopter described the scene on the bridge for late listeners, “There are a dozen or so men around the camper with the projector, but no one seems to be making any effort to break into it. They’re just standing there, leaning against it, arms folded, enjoying the show. And so am I, so am I—forget traffic conditions on the Nimitz Freeway tonight! There’s an enormous birthday cake filling the screen now high above San Francisco Bay: a woman’s hands tilting the cake toward the camera. It has eleven lighted candles, and says, ‘Happy Birthday, Jo!’ ”

  They listened as the voice described Lew in Little League uniform . . . Harry’s and Lew’s law-school diplomas . . . Shirley in white uniform . . . Jo working on her Town . . . “And here’s a great one—oh, this is great! Says, ‘Harry and Shirley meet Lew and Jo.’ A painted canvas; says ‘Disneyland’ in one corner. Shows four aerialists in costume: two men hanging from trapezes, arms out; one woman has just been caught by the wrists, the other is still flying through the air. And smiling out at us through cutout holes over the bodies are the four faces we’ve grown to know and love tonight! Oh man, I tell you! Screen’s going black again . . .”

  A huge tow truck, a Christmas tree of yellow, red, and white lights raced by across the freeway, and Lew glanced at Jo to smile. The radio voice described views of Lew, Jo, and the Levys skiing . . . playing tennis . . . lying by the apartment pool. “Here’s the tow truck,” the voice cried then, “racing along the bridge toward us! Up on the screen now there’s a car. Looks like it’s up on a—it’s the car on the roof of the Civic Center last night! It is! The police car! Up on the roof! And Harry and Shirley, Lew and Jo, are all over the car! With guns! The cop’s guns! Oh, my god, they did it! They put the cop’s car up on the roof! Oh, bless you, Harry and Shirley, Lew and Jo! . . . The tow truck is slowing . . . stopping. Now it’s swinging around on the bridge, getting into position to back up to the camper. The screen goes dark, and . . . oh, Jesus.” The voice suddenly choked. “Ladies and gentlemen, all I can do is report the facts. And the fact is that up there on the screen is good old Harry, Lew, Shirley and Jo . . . stark naked. They’re standing before a fireplace, looks like—dancing. Harry, modest Harry, is wearing a baseball cap and cigar. But Lew and the girls—bless you, girls, bless you!—are wearing only big wide smiles. Their thumbs are at their noses, all four of them, fingers spread, and the caption across the top says, ‘So long, Short Pants,’ and across the bottom, ‘And so long, California.’ One of the men from the truck is down on the pavement now signaling the driver . . . truck’s backing toward the camper . . . up on the screen the slide is still there . . . it doesn’t go off. The truck’s lowering its sling . . . slide is still there, our four naked friends thumbing their noses down at the whole length of Golden Gate Bridge at all of us . . . The front of the camper is lifting now, and Lew and Jo, Harry and Shirley are slowly sliding off the screen—and listen to those horns blast! Protesting, I do believe! . . . Screen’s dark, the beam of the projector shining off toward the ocean—and the show is over. Well, farewell to you, too, Lew and Jo, Harry and Shirley. Never knew you, but we’re gonna miss you now, believe me! I know I will! The first of the stalled cars is edging around the camper . . . Now here come the others, the tow truck leaving, the beam still shining out the camper window. Traffic flow resuming on the Golden Gate Bridge. Guess I better go report on the Nimitz now, but, oh man, it’s gonna be a letdown.”

  Lew reached out, turned off the radio, and they were silent for some seconds. Off to the right and below, Strawberry Point appeared, and their heads turned for a farewell look. They faced front, Jo sighing slightly, and she said, “Well. That’s that. Now on to Santa Fe, is t
hat the idea?”

  “Right.” Lew nodded, then glanced at her. “But you almost didn’t come this time.”

  “You knew that, did you?”

  “Well, it occurred to me.”

  “Well, you were right. I was going to help through tonight: leave a note in the VW for you when I parked it, go help drag the screen down, then just walk on across the bridge to the city and a motel. I very nearly didn’t come along when we moved from San Francisco.”

  “I know.”

  “You know a lot, don’t you.”

  “Not too much.”

  “Well, I still might not! I might just get out at the next bus stop and go back to the city.”

  “Right. But you might not, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jo, how come? How come you stick around? I want you to, but—why do you?”

  After a moment she shrugged slightly. “Same old reason, I suppose; the reason I came with you in the first place.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Who knows!” she said as though about to be angry. But then she looked at him, and smiled. “Maybe just to see what happens next.”

  BY JACK FINNEY

  NOVELS

  Time and Again

  Good Neighbor Sam

  Assault on a Queen

  The House of Numbers

  The Bodysnatchers

  Five Against the House

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  I Love Galesburg in the Springtime

  The Third Level

  About Time

  NONFICTION

  Forgotten News

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Touchstone eBook.

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