Steel

by Richard Matheson

  An old lady answered the door. My immediate assumption was that the house was hers and she was attempting to keep from losing it by renting out unused bedrooms.

  She smiled at me. “You’ve come looking for a place,” she said.

  Her assumption would, ordinarily, have offended me. But her demeanor was so friendly, her voice so agreeable, that I felt nothing but acceptance in her presence. “Yes, I am,” I answered her. Politely.

  “Come in then,” she said, still smiling.

  There was no mention of rental as she led me down the dimlit hall. Hung on both sides were old, faded photographs and paintings. She must be almost my age, I thought although I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking. Her hair was silvery-gray, her clothes outdated, her dark dress ankle-length. She walked with a youthful step, however.

  Reaching a door, she opened it. “Here it is,” she said. “Let me know if it’s what you need.” With that, she was gone.

  I closed the door behind me and looked around. What I need? An odd expression to use. Fundamentally true, though. I did need some place to hang my hat. (My cap.) I needed to give Miriam a much-needed breather from my presence.

  There were two windows in the room. Through the one in front of me, I could see Church Avenue, the passing cars and occasional pedestrians. Nothing special there. I looked around the room. Nothing special there, either. The furniture was as elderly as I was, equally so. No private bathroom, of course. I’d have to share. Not a problem. The house was pleasantly quiet except for the motor hum of passing vehicles. The room would do.

  I moved to the other window. It looked out on a barren lot. To the right was a view of Church Avenue. I looked at it for a few moments.

  And felt my spine turn to cold water. I shuddered so violently that I visualized my spine collapsing like a thin tower and splashing out of my body.

  It was Church Avenue all right. But not the avenue I was accustomed to. It was unquestionably—incredibly—different. In brief, I didn’t recognize it. It was different. How different, I had no idea.

  So what did I do? Old fool that I am, I raised the window and—bones creaking—climbed (clambered, actually) outside and dropped to the ground. The fall gave me spinal pain; now it was hard bone again. I ignored the pain and moved as quickly as I could to Church Avenue.

  “My God,” I remember muttering. (I muttered it innumerable times that afternoon.)

  It was different. Totally different. Appearing as it had when I was young.

  Young! I shuffled, unable to move distinctly, and looked at my reflection in the nearest store window. No difference there. My reflection was, as usual, that of an eighty-two-year-old man—white bearded (albeit well trimmed), face not too noticeably lined, white cap covering hair-receded skull. Not too bad looking. But still eighty-two. Church Avenue might have changed. I had not.

  I looked into the store. It was a butcher shop. There was a sign printed on the window: ESPOSITO MEATS.

  That cold, liquid sensation in my spine again. Johnny Esposito! The Y! The gang! Was that the time I’d reached? How old was I? Thirteen? Fourteen? What? “My God,” I said again. (As I mentioned, one of many I muttered that afternoon.)

  No, I was still eighty-two. But what year was I in? If Johnny Esposito was about, were Harry Pearce and Ken Naylor and all the others? Good God, could I walk up a few blocks, turn right and come to the YMCA? Would I see the old gang playing softball in the yard? Hit the porch column and get a double! Jesus, I hadn’t thought of that in ages!

  No. I had to shake my head. It was all too insane. What if I could reach the Y? What if I saw my young self playing in the yard? Pitching for the Ravens. Would I stare? Walk away? Yell to myself? “Hey, strike ’im out, Rich!” Impossible. Put the crazy notion aside. So Church Avenue had changed. That was no reason to believe that the area for miles around had changed too. I was sure it hadn’t.

  Or had it?

  Now the entire madness of what I was experiencing flooded through me. I had time traveled! I’d written television scripts about that, but now I was actually living it! Or was I dreaming it? Was I at home in Miriam’s house, sacked out on my bed, fantasizing about my past? But, if that was true, why was I still eighty-two? Why was I experiencing every moment in my brain and body?

  Only one way to validate. Keep moving. Keep looking. Should I try to find the Y? Probably not. I had no proof that this pocket of the past (insane notion) extended blocks beyond where I stood. Not knowing what had caused it in the first place, how could I be sure of its entirety? Better not, I decided. Stay on Church Avenue. Maybe that’s all there was. Go the other way. The Y and what I might find there was really immaterial anyway. The gang was part of my youth but not so important a part that I had to see it. And God knew I’d rather avoid seeing my young self playing softball. More important things to see. And who knew how long this mad excursion into yesteryear would last? I didn’t.

  So I started—what, east?—down Church Avenue toward, I believed, Flatbush Avenue. The accuracy of my impulse was verified by the sight of the Kenmore Theatre marquee. I was able to see the letters. LITTLE MISS MARKER. The sight of it thrilled me. I’d seen it one afternoon after Sunday school. My sister treated my mother and me to the show; they were coming from church. How old was I? Twelve? Thirteen? Impossible to recollect, but I was getting close, I thought.

  Before the show, we had lunch at Bickford’s Cafeteria, which (thrilled again) I could now see across the way, on Flatbush Avenue; I was at its intersection with Church. My God. One remembered sight followed another. Now the Flatbush Theatre on Church Avenue just past Flatbush. I could barely make out the letters on its smaller marquee. BROOKLYN, USA. I remembered seeing it. The scene in the barbershop, the customer, (a gangster, I recalled) getting murdered with an ice pick. Scary stuff to a—what?—thirteen-year-old. Fourteen? And just down the avenue was the bar-restaurant where real gangsters met and ate and even married. I’d read about it in the newspaper when I was—whatever age I was, I still didn’t know.

  It suddenly occurred to me—at once thrilling and frightening—that, if I walked further down Church Avenue, I might reach the ancient brick building I knew as P.S. 81. Was it still there? Why wouldn’t it be? Unless this section of the past did not extend that far. That’s the part that frightened me. Why was all this happening to me anyway? Should I stop someone and ask? No, that would be stupid. Everyone I passed obviously belonged in this time. I couldn’t prove it, but I’m sure my expression was one of constant awe. No one I passed wore such an expression. They were in their time. I was the dazed interloper.

  I wouldn’t try to explore the size of the past world. If P.S. 81 was actually there, I was too unnerved to try reaching it. What if I did reach it? Would I see my young self in one of the classrooms taking instructions (in what? Grammar? Arithmetic? Geography?) from Mrs. Ottolengui? Good God, I remembered her name! That frightened me, too. Did it mean I was being absorbed back into this time? I looked at the backs of my hands in alarm. (Or was it with hope?)

  No. Still old. As always, thickly veined in dark blue. I had not lost eighty-two years. Jesus Christ, what’s going on?! I wondered in sudden alarmed anger. What was the point of it all? For a moment (but only a moment) I considered rushing back to the house and climbing back through that window. Except, of course (a terrifying except), what if the house wasn’t there any longer? What if I was trapped in the past—a lone elderly gent caught in his own childhood?

  No, that was impossible. There had to be some logic left in the world. Some sense to what I was going through. Why reverse time itself if there was no point to it? Why should nature distort itself so bizarrely for no reason?

  All right, I decided (what other choice did I have?), I would continue and let the chronological chips fall where they may.

  I crossed Church Avenue, wondering what the consequences would be of allowing myself to be struck down by one of the passing cars. A screech of brakes, an impact, the old gent flying to the pavement, most likely to his
death. Who would gather up the body? Would my young self suffer the same fate when he reached eighty-two? Enigma piled on enigma. Would it happen again? A nightmarish possibility.

  Anyway, I reached the curb safely, ignoring the angry shout of a motorist who had just missed sideswiping me. In front of me was the Dutch Reform Church. I remembered playing basketball in its gym. A gym in a church? I thought, confused.

  With that, the charm of it all returned. No point in dark conjectures about the mystery of an eighty-two-year-old man at bay in his own past. Enjoy yourself, I thought.

  And so I did. Strolling down the Flatbush Avenue I recalled, newly moved by the sight of each spot I remembered vividly—at least when I saw it again. Loft’s Candy. We used to buy a package the size of a pound of butter in which was a thin layer of frozen strawberries, a thicker layer of vanilla ice cream. Enough for three, my sister, mother, and me, or four if my older brother Bob showed up, five if his fiancée, Mary, accompanied him. God, I thought. Any of my kids—John, Arthur, Miriam—could have single-handedly devoured the entire package.

  Across the way was the high school Barbra Streisand had attended. At first, I couldn’t remember its name. Why not? I remembered Mrs. Ottolengui’s name. Then it came to me. Erasmus. He was what? A mathematician? A philosopher? Greek probably. So what? I thought. Too many mixed-up, meaningless recollections. Concentrate! I ordered myself.

  Which is when it occurred to me that Erasmus extended all the way to Bedford Avenue, a block away. How could that be? Did the past effect stretch that far? Had I merely been, for some unknown reason, a traveler back to an entire location? Was I in Brooklyn completely? If I took a BMT subway train downtown would it all be there? For God’s sake! came the stunned notion. I might get so enmeshed in the past that I could never get back to that damned window. Then what? An eighty-two-year-old man from the year 2009 trapped in the year—what year was it?

  I took a chance, risky or not. I stopped an old lady who looked kind. “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. “I’m lost. Could you tell me where I am?”

  “Brooklyn, of course,” she answered. “Flatbush.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And it’s nineteen hundred—?”

  Her lips pursed. Now I’d irritated her. “Forty-one,” she said as though addressing an aggravating child.

  “Forty-one,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, “and, if you’re lost, you’d better tell a policeman.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  She gave me a look which seemed to be one of suspicious curiosity. I didn’t want to intrude on her any longer so I repeated my thanks and continued on down the sidewalk of 1941 Flatbush Avenue. I was pleased that I had (successfully, it appeared) invaded the past without repercussion. Of course, I had displeased that old lady—at the end of our brief exchange she’d grown cautious. Why? I wondered. Was my 2009 outfit so different? Or was it simply that my queries had been peculiar, even suspect?

  I had to put that out of my brain. It was getting cluttered there. I stared at Erasmus as I walked, remembering, at that moment, that a few doors down from its Bedford Avenue side was the Jewish temple, (I recalled the sound of their chanting through their open back doorway) and, a few doors down from them, my aunt and uncle’s house, next to that the two-story office building where they did cleaning and where they took me one evening with my cousin Frances to look at the mass of axed pinball machines, the result of a local police attack. And on the first floor was the ice-cream parlor where I bought Gob’s ice cream cones—

  Too much! My brain was being consumed by unnecessary memories again! I had to control them! I had to. I washed them off with deliberate focus. I was on Flatbush Avenue. I’d keep my self—and brain—exclusively there, enjoy the nostalgic sights, not let my brain go haywire with mobbing remembrances. Good. I would not dream of ringing the doorbell of my aunt and uncle’s house. Assuming, as I now did, that the house was actually there, what impossible complications would arise if they answered the door? A slough of incredible explanations consumed my brain. Yes, I know I’m eighty-two, but I’m really fifteen; I’m your nephew Richard. I’m here from the year 2009. I went out a window in a house on Church Avenue and—lo and behold!—I’m in 1941. Strange, isn’t it?

  Impossible, isn’t it? I thought. Time traveling into one’s past had to impose certain rules, certain limitations. One of which is: Don’t try to think too much. Don’t try to contact anybody. Just be an observer.

  All right, all right. I got it. So down Flatbush Avenue I strolled, an observer in time. Only.

  I went back to Loft’s Candy and smiled at the display of candy boxes in the window. Most of them were for Easter. It must be April, then. A weekday in April judging from the movement of students in and out of Erasmus. The memory (I had to assume it was valid) that Miriam’s three boys were also in school. Sixty-eight years hence! That thought startled me. I blotted it out and continued my walk of memories. Before I left, I looked at my reflection in Loft’s window. Still old, still white bearded.

  Next, the pancake restaurant. A visual delight. I smiled as I watched the narrow stream of batter pour down on the revolving griddle. Watched the circles of batter—all perfect in size—bubble as they moved on the turning grill, then were flipped over as a spatula appeared magically to do so. And, at the end of this wondrous spectacle, another spatula, even more miraculously, placed three pancakes on each waiting plate. I watched this for about fifteen minutes, my face, I’m convinced, bathed with a constant smile.

  Then it suddenly came to me that close by—nearly too close—was the stairway leading up to the second-floor dress suit rental shop and the third-floor apartment where I’d lived during much of my early high school years with my mother, sister, and brother. I say too close because it snatched back the adversity of time travel. If I went up those stairs and knocked on the door, would my mother open it? She might be working at Ebinger’s Bakery, my sister at Abraham & Straus. What if I answered the door? Such an enigma was beyond calculation. He would stare at me, no doubt blankly. I would be speechless. Or, worse, babble some sort of stupid remark. “Sorry, son, I thought this was the tuxedo rental place.” Utterly stupid. Could he possibly guess that I was an aged version of him? How could he? In any event, the moment would be embarrassingly awkward, or worse, frighteningly revealing. Most likely horrifying to both of us, especially me. No, forget that possibility. Just keep walking. God forbid I should ever confront my younger self during this incredible wandering. No, I’d just walk on.

  Next block. Grant’s five-and-ten. I crossed the street I used to walk to school on. Was P.S. 119 still there? I didn’t mean still, I meant now. No point in trying to reach it. What for? The long walk to it—at least three quarters of a mile—would surely catapult me back to 2009. Then what? Try climbing out that window again? (Assuming it was even there.) Surely it wouldn’t work a second time.

  No, stay on Flatbush Avenue. Observe. Don’t take any risks of losing this remarkable experience. God forbid trying to buy a souvenir. That would be a terrible mistake.

  Grant’s again. My aunt and cousin Vivian used to shop there the day after Thanksgiving. Or was it the day after Christmas? I couldn’t remember which. Taking advantage of what they called rummage sales. Useless articles. At cut-rate prices.

  On the next block down was Woolworth’s, another five-and-dime store. And across the avenue was the small grocery store where, I recalled, during some kind of strike, buying a quart of milk for a nickel. And Pechter’s rye bread for nine cents. And a pumpernickel for thirteen cents. Stop that, I told my crowding brain. Just look. Don’t dwell on memories of food. Like a trio of cream-filled cupcakes for a dime. Like Dusky Dan stone-hard caramel lollipops for—

  Stop! I ordered my losing-control brain. Just … stop.

  But I couldn’t. Past recollections kept infusing my consciousness. Merkel’s Meat Market across the avenue. A pound of bacon ends for nineteen cents. How I loved the sandwiches my mother made from toas
ted wheat bread and fried bacon ends and mayonnaise. I devoured them for lunch in high school. If I ate one now, at eighty-two, the combination would nauseate me. But then …

  And the fruit and vegetable store at the corner. I literally visualized my customary purchase, a nickel’s worth of “soup greens,” a full-size grocery bag loaded with carrots and onions and turnips and—

  Jesus Christ, cut it out! I begged my brain. Just look! But I couldn’t control it. On the next block, the Loew’s Kings where I saw the Marx Brothers in A Day at the Races. Further down, the Rialto theatre where I saw Gone With the Wind in its later run. The Chinese restaurant, the bowling alley. Was there no end to this? Was that the peril of time travel? At least, the time travel I was immersed in. I had to stop; simply had to stop this endless discharge of pointless memories, this brainless gushing of trivia. But how? I stopped walking and pleaded with myself. Do something right, I begged.

  Then it occurred to me.

  Adeline.

  Of course! How had I missed it? If there was any reasonable point to all this, it was Adeline, my first and only love. But where was she? Was it possible that she was, as I always remembered her, sitting on the porch of the Bedford Avenue apartment house?

  Directly across the avenue from the third-floor apartment I lived in with my mother and sister? The third-floor apartment where I stood at the window of my mother’s bedroom, looking across the way? Staring at Adeline.

  Why had I never had the courage to cross the avenue and speak to her? Why, when I was totally in love with her? Remember, I was fifteen years old. There would be other females in my life. Jane on Long Island. Lucille in Brooklyn. Mary at college. Agnes in my life. But none compared to Adeline. My angel. I always thought of her that way.

  Once, I stood right next to her in the delicatessen around the corner. Did I say hello? Say anything at all? I did not. I stood beside her in mute adoration, paralyzed by love.

  I had to speak to her now. I had to!