The Mind Thing

by Fredric Brown

  He had been born and raised in Bartlesville. His father had owned a not too prosperous feed business there and, after high school, he had worked in his father’s store until his father’s death.

  But he had never liked the feed business, and had always been interested in radio; he had made his own sets as a boy and understood a little, at least, of how they worked. He had talked his mother into selling the feed store—the only valuable part of his father’s estate—and using part of the proceeds to send him to Chicago for four months to attend a technical school that taught radio and television repairing. His mother had not been an invalid then, so it had been all right for him to leave her that long. At the end of the course, most of the rest of his father’s money had gone into setting him up in business as a repairman.

  The shop had never actually lost money, but it had earned pitifully little. A year later his mother had been partly paralyzed by a stroke, and doctor and hospital bills had taken the rest of her money. He had had to borrow several times from the bank and to stretch his credit to the breaking point with wholesalers to keep up his stock of tubes and other parts. Currently the shop brought him in barely enough to stave off foreclosure by paying interest on his loans, and to provide the absolute necessities of life for his mother and himself. At their home, a small rented cottage with the rent usually a month or two overdue, a neighbor came in to feed Mrs. Chandler at lunchtime; Willie did all the rest of the work himself.

  Except for his mother, whom he could not leave and who was unable to travel, he knew he’d be much better off to let the bank and his creditors foreclose and take his stock and equipment. In a city such as Milwaukee or Minneapolis, he could get a job as assistant in a repair shop big enough to use more than one man and make more money than he was making now, a lot more. But unless her condition should improve, and that seemed unlikely, he was stuck with the status quo. He couldn’t even call the deal off and take a job in some other store in town, selling groceries or hardware or whatever, since there weren’t any such jobs open. He’d even talked to the man who’d bought the feed store and had learned that there was no chance of his getting back the job he’d had with his father. He knew nothing of farming, and even if he could get a job as a farmhand he wouldn’t make enough to take care of his mother in town; a good part of a farmhand’s wages were in the form of room and board.

  He was stuck with doing the best he could with what he had, at least until someday his mother got well or— He loved his mother too much to think about the “or.”

  He left the bleak view from his front window and went back to his workbench. He cleared space on it and opened the lunch he’d put up for himself that morning. Wrapped with a small thermos jar of hot coffee, there were two sandwiches. One was peanut butter and the other jelly; he’d been having to watch pennies for so long that he was used to such fare. Only on special occasions did he splurge on buying sandwich meat for a lunch. At home they seldom had meat other than hamburger, the cheapest kind, or a soup bone. Rent, both for the house and for the store, came first, and while he and his mother got enough to eat in quantity, it was seldom they could afford really good eating. The last really good eating he could remember had been for a month about three months ago when Walter Schroeder had been short of cash to pay for repairs to his television set and had offered him a smoked ham instead. It had been a twenty-pound ham and a real bargain for him, because he’d only replaced a couple of small tubes in the set and wouldn’t have charged Schroeder more than six dollars in cash. The ham had been worth twice that and they’d eaten well for almost a month.

  He finished the peanut butter sandwich and most of the jelly one and was finishing the hot coffee when he heard a scratching sound and looked around to see where it came from.

  A cat was sitting on the sill of the side window, scratching at the glass with one paw. It was a big black cat and it looked as wet and bedraggled as though it had been in swimming. He walked over to the window and looked at the cat at closer range. He didn’t recognize it as any cat he’d seen before. “Well, what do you want, cat?” he asked it. He liked cats.

  This one looked gaunt and almost starved—although he realized that part of the reason for its looking that way was that the rain had plastered down its fur. As though in answer to his question the cat opened its mouth and probably miaouwed, although he couldn’t hear the miaouw through the glass, and then it pawed and scratched again at the pane.

  “Want to come in out of the rain? Sensible cat!” Willie opened the window and the cat dropped down lightly on the floor.

  He closed the window and looked down at the cat: “Hungry?” he asked. “’Fraid all I can offer you is bread crusts with a little jelly, and that’s not exactly cat food, but if you’re really hungry—”

  He sat down at the workbench again and broke a cat-sized piece off one of the crusts of the jelly sandwich. The cat sniffed at first, as though puzzled, and then ate the bit of crust. What was left of the crusts followed, in small pieces. Willie knew enough about cats to know that they would eat things handed to them in bite-sized pieces which they would ignore if offered in bulk.

  “Thirsty too?” Willie asked. He rummaged about the junk on the workbench until he found a tin lid that would hold water. He took it to the sink at the back and filled it, and put it down. “Sorry it isn’t milk,” he said, “but if you’re thirsty enough—”

  The cat took a few laps of the water. Willie looked at the two towels hanging over the sink. One of them was dirty enough to take home and wash, the next time he did washing. He took it down. “Rubdown’s the only other thing I can do for you, cat. I can’t get you dry, but I can get you less wet than you are now.”

  The cat held still and seemed to enjoy the rubbing. Willie had barely finished when the phone rang. He answered it, “Willie Chandler, radio and T.V. repairs.”

  “This is Cap Hayden, Willie.” Cap Hayden ran the general store and was postmaster on the side. “Asked me to call you when a package came from Chicago. Its here.”

  “Swell, Cap. I’ll be right over.”

  “Just a second, Willie. Bring some money with you. It’s C. O. D., six dollars and eighty cents. And I can’t put that on your bill ’cause it’s government money for the post office department and I got to keep those things straight, in cash.”

  “Damn it,” Willie said. “Listen, the reason I’m in a hurry for that package is that one tube in it, a kind I didn’t have in stock, is for Dolf Marsh’s T.V. set. I’ve put a lot of work in it already but I can’t finish it without that one tube. I’ll get twenty bucks for the job—put in plenty of time on it—and he pays cash on the barrelhead, so I won’t have to wait. But I’ve got only three dollars and some change in cash. If you can lend me the difference—out of your pocket, not putting it on the bill—I’ll pay you the minute Dolf pays me.”

  “Well—this one time, Willie. But like you said, in cash and you pay me when Dolf pays you.”

  “Thanks a lot, Cap. Seeing you.”

  Willie took his coat and hat from a hook on the wall, went to the door and turned. “Cat,” he said, “you keep shop while I’m gone. I won’t bother locking up, nothing worth stealing. If anyone comes in—but nobody will—tell ’em to wait, that I’ll be right back.”

  He opened the door and then turned back again. “Cat,” he said, “let’s get one thing straight. You’re welcome to stay here till it’s through raining and till you’re fully dry. But I can’t keep you. Ashamed as I am to admit it, I can’t afford to keep a cat, here or at home. If you heard that phone conversation, you know how broke I am. I hope you got a home to go back to, because I wouldn’t keep a cat unless I could feed it right—cat food and milk. And while that wouldn’t run much, not much is too much in my case, right now and for maybe a long time to come.”

  The cat didn’t answer and Willie went out and closed the door behind him. He ran to the general store and post office and, after getting his package, ran back again. He kept close to the buildings and didn
’t get wet enough for the rain to have soaked through his coat. He hung the coat and his hat up again and then went to his workbench to open the package.

  The cat had been up on the bench and had jumped down when he opened the door. Now, in the thin film of dust which covered most of the bench he saw tracks which showed that it had wandered about quite a bit up there. It had apparently examined and sniffed at two television-set chassis—the one he was going to work on now that he had the needed vacuum tube; and another that needed a new picture tube for which he had also sent away. And the cat had apparently examined various odd parts and tools that had been lying loose.

  Also there had been a loose-leaf handbook of circuits lying open at the back of the bench; and now it was open at a different page than the one he remembered. He said, “Cat, you been studying electronics?” and grinned down at it, amused at the thought. He’d thought he’d left the book open at the circuit for Dolf Marsh’s set, but he must have been wrong about that.

  He opened the package, threw the cardboard away, and put the various small items of its contents where they belonged, keeping out the tube for Dolf’s set and pulling its chassis along the bench in front of him.

  He patted the edge of the bench invitingly and said, “Come on, jump up again and watch me work. I don’t mind teaching you electronics, except I don’t know too much about it myself. Not the theory of it, that is. I just had a four months course. I can follow a circuit all right, but I don’t know why it works any more than you do. But come on up.”

  He patted the edge of the workbench again and this time the cat jumped up. It sat still, curled up and watching him with the intentness and alertness with which only a cat can watch something.

  He was lonesome and he talked to it while he worked. He seemed to feel its sympathy, or thought he did, when, after he had replaced the faulty tube and plugged in the set, he found that it still didn’t work properly. He told the cat what he was doing while he checked condensers and capacitances, and looked for loose connections.

  And then, having found the perfect audience, he found himself telling it his personal problems, his worries about the shop and whether he could keep it going, his worries about his mother, about his doubtful future. He could relieve his mind, he found, by telling the cat things he couldn’t possibly tell to any human being; not to his mother, because they would cause her more worry and grief than she already had; not to anyone else, because to no one else could he admit how hopeless his prospects looked to him—let alone how much he wanted to get married, but couldn’t see even dating a girl, under the circumstances. Even taking one to a movie would have taken money he could not afford from his slim budget.

  The cat was a good listener. When finally it jumped down from the bench and ran to the door, where it miaouwed and pawed at the glass, he walked to the door reluctantly to let it out.

  “Cat,” he said. “Come back any time. Same window, same signal. I’ll share my lunch with you if I can’t do anything more.”

  The rain had stopped. He watched the cat through the glass of the door as it ran across the street and disappeared into an areaway.

  Obviously it had a home somewhere. But, he thought, someday he’d have to get a cat of his own. It couldn’t cost him much to feed one, and it would be the first extravagance he’d allow himself, if and when the pressure on him ever eased off a little.

  He never knew, never suspected, that he had just been judged and found wanting; that he had been spared an experience which would have led soon to an early death.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Doc Staunton had spent the morning making voluminous notes on the two human suicides and the phenomena which seemed to have accompanied them—at least in regard to time and place, if no other connection could be traced. But he wanted more than notes; while statements at the inquest and conversations, especially the ones at the Gross farm, were so fresh in his mind he wanted them down on paper, as nearly verbatim as he could get them down.

  But getting everything down, he realized, was going to be one hell of a job, especially as he didn’t have a typewriter with him and was only a mediocre typist in any case. He spent half an hour writing in longhand and had only three pages, giving a detailed description of the manner of death of the dog and just a start into the inquest testimony of Charlotte Garner, when he began to get writer’s cramp. It was going to take him thirty to fifty pages, he realized, to get all the facts down in detail, let alone his deductions, his mental processes which refused to permit him to accept the allied phenomena—the apparently suicidal animal deaths and the missing soup stock and gravy from Mrs. Gross’s kitchen—as simply isolated and coincidental happenings having nothing to do with the human deaths. It would be almost as bad as writing a book in longhand.

  But it had to be put down, somehow, while it was fresh in his mind. He considered going into Green Bay to try to rent a tape recorder, or to buy one if he couldn’t rent one. But he hated the things, mostly because he liked to be able to pace while he dictated. And in any case he’d have to hire someone to transcribe the tapes, so it would be better to find a stenographer who could take his dictation in shorthand and transcribe it.

  Probably he’d have to find someone in Green Bay, but he’d try Bartlesville first on his way through it.

  The editor of the Clarion, Bartlesville’s weekly newspaper, would be his best source of information. And Doc knew him because by now he’d played in two poker games with him. Yes, Ed Hollis would be the best person to ask. He might even know someone in Wilcox, which was a little bigger than Bartlesville and only about half as far as Green Bay.

  Hollis was pounding an ancient Underwood when Doc walked in just before noon. He said, “Just a second, Doc,” and finished a sentence before he looked up. “What gives? And are you playing in the game tonight? Hans just phoned me that there’s one on—and there’s no way of reaching you by phone. Lucky you dropped in, if you want to take some more of our money.”

  “I’ll try to make it, Ed. But I dropped in to ask you something. Is there anyone in town here who can take shorthand and do typing?”

  “Sure. Miss Talley, Miss Amanda Talley.”

  “Is she working now? Would I have to use her evenings?”

  “She isn’t working now, except an occasional part-time job. She’s an English teacher at the high school. Summers—except for a short vacation, and she’s already taken one this year—she stays in town and takes any small jobs like that she can get. Bookkeeping too. When a merchant here gets his books in a mess she can straighten them out for him. Things like that.”

  “She fast at taking shorthand?”

  “She is,” Ed said. “I’ve used her a time or two myself when I’ve got behind on something. Used to teach shorthand, typing, bookkeeping at a business college before she got into high school teaching. That was a long time ago, but she’s kept up on it. She’s been trying to get the county board to let her teach commercial classes in the high school here, but she hasn’t got anywhere with them yet. Me, I’m for it, and I’ve run editorials saying so. Why make the kids here go to Green Bay or Milwaukee after high school and pay for a commercial course, if one can be given free here? Do ’em more good than a lot of other subjects they have to study.”

  “Sounds ideal,” Doc said. “If she teaches English, she can probably even spell. But do you know if she’s free now?”

  “I can find out.” Ed Hollis reached for the phone, but stopped before he picked it up. “How much of a job will it be? An hour or a week or what?”

  Doc said, “I’d guess about four hours’ dictation, give or take an hour. And then a day or two to transcribe it on a typewriter.”

  Hollis nodded and picked up the phone. He asked for a number and got it. “Miss Talley? Friend of mine here’s got a couple of days’ work, typing and shorthand. Can you do it for him?… Fine. Just a second.”

  He held his hand over the mouthpiece and looked up at Doc. “Says she can start whenever you want her. But it’s practicall
y noon now. Shall I tell her you’ll see her around one o’clock? I can tell you how to get there; it’s only a few blocks.”

  “Excellent”

  Hollis spoke into the phone again. “Right, Miss Talley. He’ll see you somewhere around one o’clock. His name’s Doc Staunton… Okay. ’Bye now.”

  He looked up at Doc again. “She reminded me to tell you her rates.” He grinned. “Guess she thought they might scare you. Ten bucks a day. Or buck and a half an hour for shorter jobs.”

  “Reasonable as hell. Have lunch with me, Ed, to help me kill time till one?”

  “Wish I could, but I’ve got about an hour’s work and then I’m knocking off for the day. Rather get it over with first, and then go home. Just phoned the missus I’d be home between one and half past and to hold lunch.”

  He gave Doc Miss Talley’s address and then walked to the door with him and showed him how to get to the place.

  When Doc got there at one o’clock, he found it a neat, well-kept little cottage. Matching it in size was a little Volkswagen in the driveway beside it.

  Miss Talley, when she answered his knock at the door, proved not to be equivalently small, at least vertically. She was almost a head taller than Doc, albeit so slender that their weight was probably just about the same. She could have been anywhere from fifty-five to sixty-five, and probably, Doc decided, was just about half way between. She wore steel-rimmed spectacles and was dressed neatly and conservatively in gray that just matched her hair, which she wore in a tight bun at the back of her neck.

  Add a frumpy hat and an umbrella, Doc thought, and she’d exactly fit his mental picture of Stuart Palmer’s female detective character, Hildegarde Withers. But she looked competent and, after all, he wasn’t hiring her as a party girl.