A Fine and Private Place

by Peter S. Beagle

  "Okay," the man said. "Now I got to go. You stay here and stay put." He thrust the bottle into Mr. Rebeck's open hand. "Here." He chuckled tonelessly. "That'll keep you here. Be right back. You just stay the hell there."

  He turned around and walked quickly into a clump of bushes at one side of the lavatory. Hardly had he disappeared when the bushes crashed and chattered and the man's huge head stuck out, his eyes searching out Mr. Rebeck among the shadow-hounds.

  "You think I'm kidding, buddy?" the deep voice demanded threateningly.

  "No," Mr. Rebeck said, not daring to move. "I'm sure you're perfectly serious."

  "Show you who's kidding," the man mumbled. He shook a drum-sized fist at Mr. Rebeck, and his head disappeared in the bushes. Mr. Rebeck stood alone and waited for the man to return.

  Run now, he told himself. Keep out of the light and run. In two hundred yards he won't be able to see you. Run, fool! Has your mind finally forgotten to come home? But he stayed where he was, knowing that the man could simply wait until dawn, enlist the aid of a few guards, and run him down. They had cars and a truck. If they wanted to, they could find him in a day. There would be no dignity to it, only sweating and fear and the yells of discovery and the dragging him from wherever he was hiding, laughing at his bony efforts to escape. . . . It was quieter this way, and less painful. Running would be painful.

  He looked curiously at the long-necked bottle in his hand. It was too dark for him to read the label, and he assumed it was whisky. He had drunk very little in his days in the world and of course, not at all since the monumental bat that had brought him into the cemetery. He sniffed cautiously at the open neck of the bottle and found the smell dizzying and completely strange. There was not a part of him now that remembered the aroma of whisky. He imagined that he ought to be glad.

  The bushes crackled again, and the big man stood in the light, buckling his belt. His head turned slowly from side to side, like a cannon, as he looked for Mr. Rebeck. "You there, buddy?" his cannon-voice tolled into the night. "You there?" He seemed anxious.

  "I'm over here," Mr. Rebeck called. His common sense gave him up as senile, locked up for the night, and went home.

  "Good," the man said. He came toward Mr. Rebeck, who was sure that he could hear the ground shake.

  Mr. Rebeck remained where he was, holding the bottle as tightly as he could. A feeling of unreality shook him violently and left him feeling a little sick. "What am I doing here?" he said aloud. "I'm Jonathan Rebeck. I'm fifty-three years old. How did I get here?"

  The man took the bottle from Mr. Rebeck's hand. He drank from it, his Adam's apple bobbing like a bell buoy.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glared down at Mr. Rebeck. Big as a truck, big as a bulldozer, he was, and he rocked up and down on his heels and scowled at Mr. Rebeck, and his shadow moved with him on the hard pavement.

  Then, quite suddenly, he scratched his head. His right hand came all the way up from where it hung by his side and burrowed into his coarse hair, digging into his scalp with a sandpapery sound. He blinked. The two gestures made him look young and uncertain of his strength.

  "What'm I gonna do with you?" he asked. It was a direct question, and he waited for an answer.

  "I don't know," Mr. Rebeck said. He felt suddenly angry and put-upon. "That's your job. I'm not going to help you."

  "I got no more rum," the big man said defensively. He pressed the bottle he held against his thigh, as if trying to hide it. "This's all I got left. I need it."

  "All right," Mr. Rebeck said. "I don't want it."

  He wasn't all that big, Mr. Rebeck decided. Very big for a man, yes, but familiarity and the head-scratching had taken him out of the bulldozer class. In the light from the wide-open door of the caretaker's office Mr. Rebeck saw that the man's eyes were dark blue and, at the moment, puzzled. He felt somewhat better. He had expected the man's eyes to be colorless and no more expressive than tree trunks.

  "Ah, what the hell," the man said finally. "You come with me." He went toward the office, looking back occasionally to make sure Mr. Rebeck was following him. At the door he waved Mr. Rebeck to a stop and vanished into the small building. Mr. Rebeck heard something crash to the floor, heard the man's short, inventive obscenity, and the sound of a filing-cabinet drawer sliding open. He waited where the man had left him and thought, He must be new and unsure of himself, so he has gone to call his relief. In a few minutes there will be a man here who knows what to do with trespassers. People who knew what to do always impressed Mr. Rebeck in spite of himself.

  A yell of triumph in the office, another crash, and the man was in the doorway, holding up a fresh bottle. "Found the sonofabitch," he exulted. "Lying right under m' very nose." He held the bottle against his nose and giggled. "Lucky I had a very nose. Here." He offered the bottle to Mr. Rebeck. "Here. While I think what to do with you."

  Mr. Rebeck did not take the bottle. He tightened the belt of his bathrobe and demanded, "Are you the guard on duty?"

  The big man nodded. "Me. On duty from midnight to eight. Then I go home."

  "Well, for heaven's sake," Mr. Rebeck said indignantly, "guard something! What kind of a guard goes around offering drinks to everybody he meets?"

  The big man treated the question seriously. "Don't tell me," he said. He closed his eyes tightly, screwed up his forehead, and murmured possible answers to himself.

  "A generous guard," he suggested. "A dumb, generous guard. Right?"

  Mr. Rebeck was a neat man and a respecter of property. The man's attitude pained him. "Damn it," he said, "for all you know I might be a thief. How do you know I'm not trying to steal something?"

  Deep, rum-warmed laughter chugged out of the man. "Nothing to steal. Thieves don't come messing around cemeteries. What for?"

  "Body-snatchers do," said Mr. Rebeck, unwilling to concede the point. "Grave-robbers do. Maybe I'm a grave-robber."

  The blue eyes inspected him seriously. "Have to be a pretty small grave. You only got one pocket."

  Somebody was going to have to awaken this man to a sense of his responsibilities. It was lucky that he had come along, Mr. Rebeck thought. He set his feet firmly and tapped his open palm with a forefinger.

  "You're not supposed to make decisions," he said patiently. "You're not supposed to decide who's a thief and who isn't. That's not your job. Are you listening to me?"

  "Yeah," said the man. He shook the bottle in Mr. Rebeck's face. "Look, you want this or you don't?"

  "Give it to me," Mr. Rebeck said warily. He was glad that the man did not seem about to arrest him, but the man's cavalier dismissal of his duties saddened and faintly disgusted him. He thought of all the nights when he had sneaked fearfully into the lavatory, tiptoeing, desperately willing the door not to squeak, hearing his doom in every echoing step he took, afraid even to glance at the lighted building on the other side of the road because he might somehow draw the guard's attention. I could have come marching down in army boots, he thought bitterly, singing drinking songs and throwing rocks at his door, and he wouldn't even have turned in his sleep. He realized now that he had enjoyed the furtive excursions and was sorry that there would be none ever again.

  He drank from the bottle, not choking, although it was his first drink in nineteen years. The chocolate-charcoal flavor of the rum warmed the back of his throat as it went down. "Thank you," he said, and offered the bottle to the big man.

  The man shook his head. "Yours," he said, shoving the bottle back at Mr. Rebeck with enough force to send him staggering. "Until I finish mine."

  "Well, that's fair enough," Mr. Rebeck said, and drank again. Then, remembering his manners, he held out his hand to the man. "My name is Jonathan Rebeck," he said.

  "Campos," said the big man. He shook Mr. Rebeck's hand with the taut gentleness of a man who knows his own strength and released it almost at once. "Let's sit down somewhere with this stuff."

  "Very well," Mr. Rebeck said. "But I want one thing clear. You're a
fine fellow, and you set a fine table, but you are the worst guard I ever saw. Let there be no pretensions between us."

  "None," Campos agreed. "None of them. Only I always thought I was a pretty good guard."

  "You're a terrible guard," Mr. Rebeck said earnestly. He touched Campos's arm. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. But some things must be said."

  "I'm a terrible guard," Campos mused aloud. He shrugged lightly. "Well, learn something new every day. Come on, sit down."

  They sat down together in the grass in front of the caretaker's office. Campos immediately jumped to his feet and dashed into the office, returning almost instantly with a leather-covered portable radio clutched against his chest.

  "My music," he explained. He put it down on the ground, turned it on, and tuned it until he found a station that played classical music. Then he leaned back against the wall of the building and grinned at Mr. Rebeck. "Great stuff," he said. "Listen to it all the time."

  Mr. Rebeck settled himself beside him. "It's very pretty," he said comfortably. He held the bottle in his lap, rolling it between his palms.

  "Listen to it all the damn time," Campos said. "Ever since I been working here."

  "How long has that been?"

  "Year now. Walters got me the job."

  Mr. Rebeck was uncautious. "That's the man with light hair?"

  "Yeah." Suspicion flared for a moment in Campos's blue-ink eyes. "How come you know what Walters looks like?"

  The light-headed feeling of reprieve that Mr. Rebeck had been allowing himself died in his stomach with a reproachful murmur. A trickle of rum got into a cut on his lip and stung.

  "I've seen him," he said, "when I was here before. I saw him driving in the truck. I think you were with him at the time."

  Campos was not to be put off. His huge hand closed on the bottle that Mr. Rebeck held and jerked it away. "Don't go slopping my rum like that. How come you're in here this time of night anyway? We close at five."

  "I got locked in," Mr. Rebeck said promptly. He smiled appeasingly at Campos. "You know how time flies when you're visiting someone. And before I knew it—"

  "You didn't come in here running around in no bathrobe," Campos said. He pointed at Mr. Rebeck's feet. "Nor in no carpet slippers. Walters wouldn't let you. I might, because I might be listening to my music and not noticing things. You might get past me, because I don't notice things sometimes, but Walters wouldn't let you in here dressed all like that."

  He ended on a triumphant upbeat, and Mr. Rebeck twisted the hem of the terrycloth bathrobe and knew himself trapped. There was nothing for it now but to throw himself on Campos's mercy, and it had been Mr. Rebeck's experience of mercy that it had a tendency to buckle under the weight of a human soul. But he was tired, and it was three in the morning, and sitting side by side in a cemetery with this strange and suspicious man was aging him rapidly. If it must be, let it be now, before the rum and the appearance of friendship were quite finished.

  "I live here," he said evenly. "I live in an old mausoleum and have for a good while. Now either call the police or give me back that rum. I'm too old for this sort of thing."

  "Sure," Campos said. "Didn't even realize I had it." He gave the bottle back to Mr. Rebeck, who stared at him for a moment and then drank with painful-sounding gulps. Campos patted his back when he finally choked, and helped him to sit up straight.

  "See, I knew Walters wouldn't let you in," he explained, "so I figured it was something like that." He reached out to finger the material of the bathrobe. "Catch cold running around in that. Catch a real mean cold."

  "No I won't," Mr. Rebeck said. "It's a very warm night."

  "All the same," Campos said. He turned the radio up louder and listened intently to a string quartet. It was a Mozart piece, or a Haydn. The little Mr. Rebeck had ever known about classical music he had utterly forgotten. But he saw Campos looking at him for approval, and he closed his eyes and hummed softly to indicate that he was following the music.

  "Great, huh?" Campos's face was eager for endorsement of his taste. "All them fiddles. They make me feel loose."

  "Loose," said Mr. Rebeck. He was a little afraid to make a question out of it. "Yes. Loose."

  "Like I was twenty and not working for anybody and I could fly," Campos said. "Like that, loose."

  Together they listened to the string quartet. The music was happy on top and sad on the bottom, and it warmed Mr. Rebeck's stomach as much as the rum. He lay back on the grass with his hands beneath his head and the bottle of rum balanced on his chest and looked up through the trees at the few stars there were.

  This is very pleasant, he said to himself. It seems unusual to me because I haven't done very much of it, but this may be what a man is for. It may, of course, not be. It may be simply a very nice way to spend time, with music and something to drink and a friend—although he did not know if he could honestly consider Campos a friend. He was much too unpredictable, even for a friend—no more good or evil than the wind, and just as trustworthy. Still, there was a debt between them now, and drink shared, and this often makes a good friend-glue.

  When he heard Campos's cheerful "Hello," he was sure that the big man was greeting another guard, and he pressed himself flat against the earth, feeling pinned and helpless. But when he heard the familiar voice of Michael Morgan answer Campos, he sat up so quickly that the bottle of rum rolled off his chest and would have spilled its contents if Campos had not snatched it out of the air. He looked up the road and saw Michael and Laura coming down together.

  They looked extremely tangible, he noticed, extremely human. Part of that was understandable—their transparence was not evident against the blackness behind them. But there was more to it than that. There was an edged clarity about them, and a new sharpness of detail about their faces and bodies, as if they had looked at each other's eyes and suddenly remembered how their own were set. They walked easily; Michael did not stamp on the earth nor Laura flinch from it with each footstep. They looked almost real enough to cast shadows or be reflected in mirrors.

  But this shivered through his mind and vanished. Now he stared from Campos to Michael and heard the man and the ghost call to each other. He heard both of them laugh and could tell only that one laugh was deeper and rougher than the other. Laura saw him and called his name. He nodded stiffly in reply, feeling older than he was.

  "Can you see them?" he asked Campos in a wondering whisper.

  "Sure," Campos said. "What kind of a dumb question is that?" Mr. Rebeck did not answer.

  Campos stood up as Michael and Laura approached and demanded, "Where you been?"

  "All the hell over," Michael answered. "We've been selling beads and pottery to the tourists. It's not much, but we manage in our primitive way. Sometimes she does a little primitive dance for them while I'm filling out the primitive sales slip. Sends them away happy."

  "Hello," Laura said to Mr. Rebeck. She sat beside him and put her hand on his. He could not feel her fingers, but his own felt suddenly cold.

  "Hello, Laura," he said. And because he could think of nothing else to say, he added, "I haven't seen you in a while."

  "We meant to come," Laura said. "We'd have come." She followed his glance at Michael and Campos and smiled. "Are you surprised that we can talk to Campos too?"

  "Very," Mr. Rebeck said. "I don't quite understand it."

  "Neither do we, honestly," Laura said. "It was Michael. He ran into Campos first. I only met him later."

  Michael turned his head to her. "What did I do?"

  "You met Campos," Laura said. "I was telling Mr. Rebeck."

  "So I did," Michael said complacently. "He was driving along in his truck and I stepped into the road and tried to put the whammy on him, because I wanted to see if there was anything to all the old ghost stories. The dirty dog ran right over me. Through me, really."

  "I knew you were a ghost," Campos said. "Anyway, didn't I go back to make sure?"

  "Oh, you did that. That I will gr
ant you. To make sure you hadn't spoiled the pelt." He looked at Mr. Rebeck. "Well, it turned out that he could see me and talk to me, the same way you can. And Laura and I got into the habit of coming down to visit him when he's on the night shift. We sing to him and tell him stories. It keeps him awake."

  "I see," Mr. Rebeck said. He sighed, and his body relaxed. "Excuse me for seeming startled. It's just that I always wondered if I might not be the only man in the world who could see ghosts. I know it sounds greedy, but after a while I began to feel that I was."

  "There's never just one of anything in the world," Michael said casually. He turned back to Campos. "Listen, night watchman, watcher of the night, sing me that song about the tree. I keep forgetting it."

  "It's not about a tree," Campos said. "I tell you and tell you."

  "All right, it's not about a tree. It has nothing to do with trees. Now sing it."

  Campos began to sing very softly. The string quartet was still going on the radio, and Campos's guttural, almost rasping, voice sounded like a fifth stringed instrument, tuned to a different scale from that of the other four and playing a completely irrelevant melody that prowled around the closed circle of the quartet, hoping to be let in.

  No hay arbol que no tenga

  Sombra en verano.

  No hay niña que no quiera

  Tarde o temprano. . . .

  "And repeat," Michael said eagerly. "I know that." His own voice joined Campos's, and they sang the verse again. Michael's voice was lighter than Campos's, and more distant; he sang the words clearly and on pitch, but his voice seemed very slightly reduced in scale, like a voice on a telephone. Mr. Rebeck had never heard a ghost sing before. They usually forgot music before they forgot the name of the street on which they had lived, and, once forgotten, the songs were never remembered. But Michael sat with the big Campos and sang a song that Mr. Rebeck did not know, and did not seem in the least aware that he was doing something unusual.