by Gene Wolfe
“No.”
“That’s why, then. It’s a trick that they use to put more pressure on the rest, see? If you start and then you think my God, I’m going to die, and you back out, they say you’re crazy. Same thing happened to me.”
He said, “My chart says alcoholism.”
“You’re lucky.”
“Would you please let go of my hand?”
“No. And if you don’t keep the other one to yourself, I’ll take it too.”
He groped for a way to prolong the conversation; it seemed dangerous to let it lapse. “I don’t think alcoholism’s lucky.”
“Could have been acute manic schizophrenia. How’d you like that? Know what the stuff they do to you for acute manic schiz does to you? Do you?”
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
“Drives you crazy. Want to read what it says on my chart?”
“Sure, but I’ll have to turn on the light.”
“I’ll tell you. Acute manic schizophrenia. Ask me the President’s name.”
“Okay,” he said. It seemed to him that the room was colder than his own had been; he shivered in his thin hospital pajamas. There was an odor like almond blossoms.
“Go on, ask! ‘Who is the President of the United States?”’
Obediently he said, “Who’s President of the United States?”
“Richard Milhous Nixon!”
“Now how about letting go of my wrist?”
“You admit, you concede, that Richard Milhous Nixon is our President?”
He hesitated, fearful of some trap. “Well, they still call him President Nixon on the news.”
There was a long silence, a stillness that throbbed with the blood in his ears.
“He isn’t President any more?” the occupant of the room whispered. “But he was?”
“He was, sure. He resigned.”
“For the good of the nation, right? That would be just like him—give it up if he had to for the good of the nation. He was a patriot. A real patriot.”
He said diplomatically, “I suppose he still is. He’s still alive, I think.”
There was another long silence while the occupant digested this fact. He heard someone walk past, shuffling down the hall, passing the doorless doorway; he wondered if he should yell for help, but he did not even turn his head to look.
At last the occupant said, “Why didn’t you give it to that skater?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me!” The grip on his wrist tightened again.
“It just didn’t seem right. I’ve got a—” he groped for a word. “Somebody I care a lot about.”
“Girlfriend or boyfriend?”
“My girlfriend; I’m not gay. Lara. I’m looking for her.” Unable to help himself, he added, “She was gone this morning when I woke up.”
The occupant grunted. “And you know about the President. Tell me something—how about yesterday morning? Was she there when you woke up then?”
“Sure,” he said. “We had breakfast together, then I went to work and Lara went to look for a job.”
“You were shacking up.”
That was an old term, and it struck him that the occupant was older than he had thought, ten years older than he was at least. He said carefully, “We’ve been living together for the past few days. With no job, Lara couldn’t pay her rent.” The memory of his message, which had been driven from his mind by the occupant’s grip on his wrist and all the talk about Nixon, returned. He said, “I was supposed to tell somebody that Gloria Brooks did it to Al Bailey tonight. Billy North went into Al’s room to borrow a cigarette, and he caught her at it.”
The palm of the occupant’s hand slapped his right cheek with a forehand, twisting his head so far that the returning backhand struck him across the lips.
“My name’s William T. North,” the occupant told him softly. “You refer to me as Mr. William T. North or Mr. North. Get it?”
He jabbed for North’s face with his free hand, and though he could not get much weight behind the punch, he felt North’s nose give under his knuckles in a satisfactory way.
“Say, that was all right.” North’s voice was so calm they might have been discussing the weather. “I’d break your neck for you, but they’d put me in the violent ward. I’ve been there, and it’s no fun. Besides, I’ve got a little thing cooking. You want out of here?”
“Not without my clothes.”
“Right. Absolutely right. In hospital rags they’d spot us in half a minute, just in time to keep us from freezing to death. But if you could take your clothes?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Can you drive?”
“Sure,” he said. It had been a long time—he was not sure just how long—since he had driven.
“Now I’m going to let go of your wrist. If you don’t want to get out, all you’ve got to do is duck through that door. But if you want to come—well, you’ve got some guts and you’re from C-One. That counts with me.”
There was a delay, almost as if the hand that grasped his wrist were arguing with its owner. Then it loosened, released its grip entirely, and drew away.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Step One: you must learn how to open these lockers. You can practice on mine, using my equipment; but you’re going to have to get your own and open your locker yourself, understand? I’m not going to do it for you.”
“You said I came from C-One,” he said. “What did you mean by that?”
“C-One’s the place we’re trying to get back to—President Nixon, and all that. Now listen. Here’s my pick.”
A small, stiff piece of metal was put into his hand. It had a small bend at one end, a much larger one at the other.
“These lockers have very simple locks. Have you seen one of the keys?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“They’re flat pieces of steel with one jagged side. The notches along that side are just to go around the wards of the lock, get it? When you use a pick, you bypass all the wards. The thing that does the business is the tip of the pick. All you have to do is get the tip of the pick where the tip of the key would be and work it around. Try it.”
It was remarkably easy. He seemed to become the bent wire, encountering the unyielding wards, and then, at the very back of the lock, something like a ward that gave to his pressure.
“That’s copper wire from a wall plug,” North told him. “Find one that’s got nothing plugged into it. There’s a wall plate held by a little screw; you can unscrew it with any piece of thin, flat metal. Pull the plate off. The plug’s held by two long screws. Take them out and pull the plug out. Don’t touch anything metal while you’re doing it, and work with your right hand only. Keep your left stuck in the shirt of your PJs, so you won’t forget and use it—that way a shock can’t go across your heart.”
He nodded, fairly sure he knew what would happen if one did.
“There’ll be two wires on the plug—a red one and a black one. The red one should be live; don’t touch it. The black one should be return. It’ll be insulated, and you touch it only by the insulation. That’s what’s black; the inside’s copper. Pull it out as far back as you can and bend it back and forth until it breaks. Then bend the part next to the plug back and forth the same way. When you’ve got your wire, put the plug back like it was and screw on the wall plate again. Then wipe the floor—there’ll be plaster dust on the floor. Meet me in the rec room after lunch and I’ll tell you the rest.”
“All right,” he said.
When he returned to his own room, he was exhausted and very sleepy. His cheek still hurt where North had slapped him. He rubbed it and discovered that his lower lip had split. A thin trickle of blood had run to his chin without his being aware of it. He groped for the light switch so that he could examine his face in the mirror, but there was no light switch.
He considered opening the wall plug, but he had no piece of metal to turn the screw, and he would not be able to distingu
ish the red wire from the black one in any case.
Determined at last, he picked up the telephone. Slowly, counting holes in the old-fashioned spinning dial, he entered the number of his apartment.
For a long time the earpiece buzzed and clicked. There was a twitter of bird-like voices, the voices of Japanese children, or of music boxes tuned to speak. At last a man’s deep voice asked, “Kay? Ist dis you, Kay?”
“I’m calling for Lara,” he said. He gave the address. “I think I must have the wrong number.”
The man announced, “Dis ist Chief of Department Klamm, Herr Kay,” and he slammed down the receiver.
The Club Fighter
He woke up wondering where he was. For a brief moment, the bed was almost his bed, the room nearly his apartment. Groping for the control of his electric blanket, he found a telephone.
It did not come rushing back to him. Rather it arrived in bits and pieces, like the guests at a masked ball, like dancers all dressed as dreams. It worried him that he could recall the dreams so very clearly, and the waking world not at all; he sat up in bed and saw the dim hallway outside.
Vaguely, he wondered what time it was. Down the hallway, very far down it, he could see a brightly lit nurses’ station. He discovered slippers beneath the bed.
“Can’t sleep?” the nurse on duty asked. She seemed neither friendly nor unfriendly.
“I just wanted to know what time it was.”
“What most of them do,” the nurse said slowly, “is turn on their TVs. Then they can tell what time it is from the shows. Or sooner or later they’ll give it.”
“Mine doesn’t work.”
The nurse considered this for a while, then looked—slowly—down at the desktop. He saw the brass back of a small clock there. “Eleven thirty-five,” she said.
“I would have thought it was later than that.”
“It’s eleven thirty-five,” she repeated. “It gets dark early, this time of year, and we put you to bed early.”
As he returned to his room, it occurred to him that North was probably asleep again. North had put the pick on the table beside his bed.
As quickly and as quietly as he could, he turned the corner instead. A big, blond man in a dark overcoat was lumbering down the hall toward him. He went into North’s room, pretending that it was his own.
North was no more than an indistinct pile of bedclothes, a scarcely audible breathing. On tiptoe, he crept to the table and ran his fingers over its surface. The pick was gone.
There was a small, shallow drawer. Carefully, he pulled it out. His fingers discovered a clutter of miscellaneous objects—a little book that felt like an address book, a pen, paper clips, a hex nut.
There’s nowhere else, he thought. And yet there was—the windowsill. As he turned to examine it, his hip bumped the open drawer ever so slightly. There was a faint, metallic tinkle, and North groaned softly, as though in the grip of a painful dream.
He knelt, sweeping the tiles with his fingertips. The pick lay in the angle between the nightstand and North’s bed.
As he stepped into the hallway, he noticed the light was on in the room next to North’s; curious, he stopped to look inside. The big, blond man he had seen in the hallway was on one of the tiny hospital chairs, holding a cloth cap. Walsh was sitting up in bed, looking alert and cheerful. “Come in, come in!” Walsh called. “I want ya ta meet Joe.”
Hesitantly, he stepped inside.
“Joe fought tonight. Ya see ’im on TV? It was beautiful, just beautiful! Third round KO.”
“My set’s broken.”
“Right. Sure. Ya told me, right. Well, let me tell ya, I watched ’im. I seen every second of it. I was cheering for ’im like crazy.” Walsh laughed. “No wonder they got me in ’ere.”
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“Joe didn’t miss ’im, let me tell ya.” Walsh’s small fists made boxing motions: one-two, one-two. “Joe, show ’im ya face. See? ‘Ardly marked ’im.”
There was a shadowy blue bruise on the big man’s jaw. “One time he got me pretty good,” Joe said. The voice was as big and as slow as the man, yet not deep, almost threatening to rise to an adolescent squeak. “He was a good fighter, a real good boxer. I had the reach on him.”
“Joe, ‘e wasn’t fit to get in the ring with ya.” Walsh frowned. “That’s the trouble with managing the champeen. Ya can’t ’ardly match ’im in ’is own class.”
Joe said, “I’ve got to go now, Eddie. The little woman’s waiting.”
“Come tomorrow—ya listening ta me? Ya’ll ‘ave plenty time ’cause I don’t want ya ta do no roadwork, understand? Too cold. Maybe ya could work out on the light bag a little, skip a little rope. But mostly ya oughta rest up from the fight. Get back ta training the next day.”
“Okay, Eddie.”
“Jennifer don’t never go ta see ’im fight. She’s always scared ’e’ll get ‘urt. She watches the TV and ’as ‘is dinner ready when ’e gets ’ome.”
“I see,” he said. “Eddie, I was supposed to tell you Billy North caught Gloria Brooks doing it to Al Bailey.” Doing what, he wondered; Walsh might tell him. “North went to Al’s room to borrow a cigarette.”
Walsh nodded. “Yeah, I bet ’e did, the mooching bastard. Ya know,” his face began to crumple, as a child’s does when the child is told of some tragedy too big to understand. “I always liked Al.” Two fat tears coursed down Walsh’s cheeks. “That bitch!”
Joe stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Eddie. That’s a real promise.”
“Fine, Joe. Ya my boy.”
He turned away, ready to follow Joe out the doorway. Walsh called him back. “Stay ’ere a minute, won’t ya? I need ta talk ta ya.”
“All right,” he said. “If you want me to.”
Joe gave him what might have been a significant look. The big, scuffed shoes made no more noise than a cat’s paws.
“Wish we could shut the door,” Walsh whispered when Joe was gone. “Stick ya ’ead out and take a look.”
He did. “All clear.”
“Fine.” Walsh snuffled. “I wanna tell ya about Joe. I know ya gonna say ya can’t do nothin’ about ’im. I just wanna get it off my chest.”
“Sure,” he said. To his surprise, he found that he liked the little man. “Sure, Eddie. Go ahead.”
“Joe’s married ta this Jennifer. Ya ‘eard us talking about ’er.”
He nodded.
“She’s twenty, blond, a real looker. And sweet, ya know ‘ow they are? Butter won’t melt inner mouth. She tells Joe they’ll wait till she’s thirty-five. Gives Joe fifteen years. ’E goes for it. Ya know ‘ow kids ’is age are, they don’t think thirty-five ever comes. Say, ya ain’t married yaself, are ya?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Maybe never.”
“That’s the way, pal.” Walsh paused. “See, I don’t know if Jennifer’s letting Joe alone. That’s what ‘e says, but can ya believe ’im? Ya seen Joe. ‘E don’t never notice nothing till ya ’it ’im with a two-by-four. Joe ain’t dumb—that’s what people think, but they’re wrong—but ’e don’t notice. ’E’s busy inside. Ya know what I mean?”
“Sometimes I’m that way myself.”
“So I pray ta God Jennifer’s gonna get ‘it with a truck. But if something like that ’appens, Joe …”
He thought of the way he would feel if something happened to Lara, and he completed the sentence: “Might kill himself.”
Walsh nodded. “Not with liquor or jumping out a window—Joe ain’t that kind. But ‘e might ’ole up where ‘e could be by ’imself with nobody ta bother ’im. Out west someplace, I guess. ’E wouldn’t never fight again.”
He recalled that the red-faced man had said that Overwood was at the foot of the mountains, and asked, “Would Joe go to the mountains, you think? Somewhere around Manea?”
“Yeah.” Walsh nodded gloomily. “That’s just what ’e might do.”
The light went out.
Walsh’s gritty voice c
ame through the darkness. “Joe’s at the reception desk. They switch it off from there.”
As his eyes adjusted, he made out the dim outline of the doorway. “I’m surprised they let you have visitors this late.”
“One of the guys that works ‘ere’s Joe’s ’andler,” Walsh said. “’E knows I gotta see Joe after the fight.”
He hesitated, but there seemed to be nothing more to say. The little copper pick felt hard and heavy in his hand. “Well, good night, Eddie.”
“G’night.”
In the hall he saw (with a shock of déjà vu) Joe walking noiselessly toward him. He started to speak, but Joe raised a warning finger, and he did not. When they were some distance down the hall, Joe guiding him gently but firmly by the arm, Joe said, “Would you like some coffee? Or pop? They’ve got pop.”
He asked, “Will they give us some this late?”
“It’s machines. W.F. will let us in.”
Joe opened a door that appeared locked, a heavy metal door marked C, with a large lock clearly intended to keep people out. They went down flights of narrow concrete stairs, landing after landing, and through a second door into a wide, empty room where orderly rows of battered wooden chairs and tables stretched into the darkness. One corner of the room was lit, and the black man sat in that corner, still wearing his crisp white uniform, a cup of steaming coffee before him.
Joe waved to him, then fished in his pocket for a scuffed leather coin purse. “I’m going to have a cream soda,” he said. “What would you like?”
“Coffee, I guess. Cream and sugar.”
“All right.” Joe selected two nickels from the purse and snapped it shut. “You can sit down with W.F. if you want to. I’ll bring them.”
He nodded and did as he had been told, wishing he had seen the nickels better. They had not looked quite like the nickels to which he was accustomed.
W.F. said, “What I tell you ‘bout gettin’ out the bed, man? Woo-oh! You ass mud now.” He had an infectious smile.
“You’ll have to turn me in, I guess.”
“You guesses? What you mean, guess? You know I do! Goin’ to be KP for you all year. You get dishpan hands clean up the elbows. The women see you, they think you a hundred years old. Leave you alone for sure.”