Reynolds closed his eyes.
Pearson leaned back, ran his tongue along his mustache, bit off the end of a small cigar. “Well,” he said, “you’re all right, Wally, you’re okay.” He jerked a thumb at Reynolds. “Good man, Miss Kelly.”
Ruth smiled formally. A quick smile.
“Aye, got to hand it to the old mule-skinner.”
“Eddie,” Reynolds said, “if you don’t mind, it’s getting—”
“I mean,” Pearson pressed on, “I think it’s the greatest thing in the world. I swear to God I do.”
“What’s the greatest thing in the world?” Reynolds asked, feeling his throat tighten.
“What you’re doing, boy. What you’re doing! The way you’ve held up—it’s wonderful. By golly, I admire that in a man. Don’t you admire that in a man, Miss Kelly?”
“I certainly do, Mr. Pearson,” Ruth said.
“Yes, indeedy. But now, you take me for instance. Think I’d have that kind of guts? Heck no, I wouldn’t. I only been married half as long as old Wally here was, but if anything was to happen to Liz—well, you know me. First thing right off the bat I’d lose my grip, break all up, end of the world. You know what I mean? Seriously.” Pearson gulped his drink. “Like when we were having Eddie Junior—Wally can tell you—God, I fussed and fumed and bellered around like an idiot. For why? Because I was scared green about what might happen to the old lady. A simple thing like having a baby, and it set me off. And if she had kicked the bucket, believe me, I’d of just wizened up and died, like the fella says. But—” he shrugged, “—at least I’ve got sense enough to know it’s stupid. So I mean it when I say I’d give my right arm for Wally’s guts.”
Reynolds was silent. He watched Pearson, studied the man’s face, and felt a burning in his heart. Why had he and Janet ever let this blabbermouth into their house, anyway? Why? Sure, he’s loaded. But he knows what he’s doing. And I know what he’s doing. And it doesn’t help.
“Man’s got to be big,” Pearson was saying. “Me? I’m plain old not a big man. I know, I know—Liz tells me the same things Janet used to tell you, Wally. We get into those conversations once in a while; you’d be surprised. I mean, you know: ‘If I go first, dear, you’ve got to promise to go on. Your life can’t just stop . . .’ And that kind of stuff. Didn’t Janet say those identical same words to you?”
“Yes,” Reynolds said.
“There you are. She meant them, too. Doggone, but you had you a good woman, Wally. A real lady. But, I mean, Liz is the same way. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘Oh, sure, honey, don’t you worry, little Eddie’ll make out okay. In fact, I’ll probably go straight from the funeral and find me some classy broad—’ You know, kidding her along, making a joke out of it. But, brother! Just between you and me and the gate post, if it ever did happen, I’d not be around very long afterwards. She might just as well move on over . . .”
Ruth stared at her drink, silently.
Pearson laughed again and thumped the table. “No guts,” he said. “It’s nothing but weakness with a capital weak. And that’s the way human beings are.” He made an ice cube bob with his finger. “I don’t give a darn what they say, boy, you’re acting the way a man ought to, in my book. The sensible way. You’re picking up the pieces. You’re—”
“What do they say, Eddie?” Reynolds asked.
“Who?” Pearson looked confused. Then, “Oh—you know. What’s the diff? You’re above that kind of thing.”
“What do they say?”
“The usual guff, Wally, just what you’d expect. ‘Only one year’ and ‘Not even a year and already he’s stepping high’ and like that. Dopes. Like Liz—I mean, I ain’t trying to make her any better than she is. She’s got her faults, the good Lord knows. Liz don’t understand. Unless a man mopes around and bawls like a baby, she figures nothing means anything to him. He don’t really care.”
Reynolds’ fists were clenched now. “But—you tell her different, don’t you, Eddie?”
“You betcha my boots I do, pal. And how. As a matter of fact—” Pearson looked over his shoulder, bent forward “. . . we got into a beaut only last week. She’d heard, you know, that you and Miss Kelly here was seeing a little of each other—now don’t ask me how she knew! By Harry, you know women: noses in everybody’s business. Anyway, she made sort of a criticism, you see. Snotty remark. I rared back and said, ‘Look! Why don’t you make up your mind how you think a man ought to act? It just so happens I’m a good friend of Wally Reynolds’ and I don’t give a hoot and a holler what you think you know. I can guarantee you of one thing—’ Really give it to her, see what I mean? I says, ‘I never knew of any two people happier in my life than Janet and Wally Reynolds. And I never saw anybody who could’ve felt worse at his wife’s death. And you open your big yap about Wally again and I’ll let you have it!’ ” Pearson scowled and pulled at his drink. “They don’t understand,” he said.
Ruth took a cigarette case from her purse. Her cheeks were red. Reynolds looked at her and she looked back, helplessly.
“Just don’t understand,” Pearson stated. “Whole damn lot of them—excuse the language, Miss Kelly, but it makes me mad. Wally, what’s the matter with people? The boss, for instance. Now you’d think a man like O. D. would be able to tell the difference, wouldn’t you?”
“What did O. D. say?”
“I hate to tell you. ‘Well, well,’ he says to me in the hall one day, ‘Wallace seems to have made a quick recovery!’ Yeah. See what I mean, though? By him you’re a callous, hard-hearted—I don’t know what. You never was in love with Janet. Her dying of a disease didn’t faze you, didn’t mean nothing in the whole wide world to you—all because you didn’t stay broken up, because you’re trying to salvage something out of life, you know?” He looked at Ruth. “All because you’re trying to pick up the pieces.”
Reynolds drained his glass.
“Well, you know what Eddie Pearson says? Eddie Pearson says more power to you, boy. If a man can do it, by the Lord, more power to him! Right, Miss Kelly?”
Ruth’s eyes were moist. She did not answer. Reynolds got up, his legs trembling. “Thanks for the drink, Eddie,” he said. “Thanks for everything.”
Pearson stuck out his hand. “Guess I’ll stag it for a while. Old lady’ll kill me one way or the other. What the heck, I don’t know, maybe you’re not so bad off at that, in a way, huh, Wally?” He winked. “I ain’t forgot my batchin’ days. Won’t have one more real short one, will you? One little one?”
Reynolds pulled his hand away and helped Ruth with her jacket.
He did not say goodbye to Pearson.
Outside of the crowded room, outside in the cool night air, he drew reality into his mind. He opened one door and waited, got in the other side.
He drove from the lot out onto the wide dark sweep of highway that ran close to the ocean.
After a long while the girl next to him said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Miss Kelly,” he said, lighting a cigarette slowly and pulling the smoke deep into his lungs. “It isn’t your fault.”
It isn’t anybody’s fault, he thought. Pearson was a malicious, blundering fool—but he would have found out anyway. Or perhaps he’d known all along. And could he blame them, really?
He and Janet had loved one another, and they’d been happy, and it had been right. And can that happen twice in a man’s life?
He drove in silence, his mind webbed in memories, to the large tan-brick apartment unit; turned the key, started out of the car.
“Wait.”
He glanced over at the girl and saw, for the first time, that she had been crying. Her face was streaked, and in the soft amber lights she looked more lovely than ever. But there was something else there now. Something new. In her eyes.
“Are you going to take me out tomorrow night?” she asked, in a hushed voice. “And the night after that, and the night after that?” She moved close to him. “It would mean a lot to me.”
He thought of Janet and of the words she had said to him, of a thousand perfect hours.
“Why would it mean a lot to you?” he asked.
The girl touched his hand, and he felt the warmth of her. He saw the pleading in her eyes.
“Perhaps you’re not the only one who is lonely,” she said, softly. “Perhaps you’re not the only one who has lost something.”
He looked at her for a very long time, trying to understand; to believe. Then, suddenly, he took her into his arms and kissed her. And with her lips upon his, he knew that he was safe, now, from all the Pearsons in the world. He was safe from the Pearsons in his mind.
A heavy, dark weight seemed to slip away and vanish.
“You know something, Miss Kelly?” he said. “I think I love you.”
And he thought: Janet would have loved you, too.
Mr. Underhill
Why, I was their oldest employee! I really was, and that thought never occurred to me until just now. I knew I’d been with the company quite a little while, but—twenty-seven years! Three-months-and-fourteen-days!
That’s what makes it harder than ever to understand. It isn’t, after all, that I wasn’t doing the work; and a body knows it couldn’t have been my joke that was responsible.
Something tells me it must have started when Soapy Levinson put the octopus in the water-cooler.
Of course, it wasn’t a real octopus—only one of those play rubber things you get in the dime store—but it sure stirred up a riot. That was the way with Soapy: He’s a very comical fellow, been with the firm only six years and already he’s a dispatcher, so you can see it wasn’t all shenanigans with him. But how those girls did laugh! They laughed until I was afraid they’d take the convulsions, especially Mrs. Fredrickson (she posts). And I’ll never forget how funny it was when he came into the office one day all stooped over like a midget, you see, and said to Maggie the switchboard operator: “I want to see the Big Man here!”
I’m not very funny, myself. Didn’t feel it was right to waste time with jokes when I was young, and then when I wasn’t young anymore there didn’t seem much point.
There was a time, though, when they all used to try to get me into their games and silly things like that, but I always frowned and pretended I was working. Pretty soon they stopped asking me, and I didn’t like that very much, either. And with the new crowd it got so finally they wouldn’t talk to me at all, except Mr. Norgesand and every once in a while he’d stop by the desk and say, “Well, how’s the old machine tickin’ today?” He didn’t mean anything wrong in that, but somehow it made me feel peculiar.
That’s what happened right after the joke about the octopus that Soapy pulled. Mr. Norgesand saying that about the machine ticking, I mean.
And it must have started me off thinking a little.
Now, I was what they call a Tracer, with the company. Naturally, I started out as an errand boy, but I gradually moved up and I imagine I did a pretty fair job, otherwise why would Mr. Nims say, and then Mr. Norgesand after him, that they didn’t think it would be right to move me up to anything else? They always said that I was one Tracer out of a million, which is a very nice thing for an employer to say.
That’s why I always tried to do a good job, because of the faith they had in me. Plus the fact that I never did get excited when customers would call up shouting about what happened to their shipments and what was wrong with our company anyway? I was always very courteous and only once did I ever shout back, and then nobody heard me and it was never reported so I imagine one slip didn’t work against me.
Well, about this time everybody in the office had all gone back to work and things were going right along schedule. Soapy and Mr. Norgesand and a few others were out to the coffee wagon downstairs, so it was quiet and peaceful, no one to bother me. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, I don’t think, so I didn’t know why I jumped when the teletype started buzzing.
The message was from San Francisco, from one of the girls there. It said: EMPIRE LAUNDRY SHORT THREE CTNS NBN I/S FTTGS. MUST HAVE IMMEDIATE REPLY.
And it was right then I got the idea of the joke, right at that minute! At first I was afraid to, but there wasn’t anybody watching, so I sent back: TELL THEM TO GET ANOTHER COMPANY IF THEY’RE SO FUSSY. MEANTIME WILL SEE WHAT CAN BE DONE.
From out of the blue sky I thought of a name and signed it: GEORGE W. UNDERHILL.
You see! I made it up out of my head, and I wish I could have seen that girl’s face in San Francisco when she got it. It was the same girl who’d been sending messages to me for seven years!
Later on, of course, I got the matter of the short straightened out. But even then I signed it UNDERHILL, only without the George W. on.
Well sir, I didn’t tell anybody about this until I’d done it two or three more times. The operators in the other stations just guessed it was some new man taken over my old job, though none of them ever asked what had happened to me, which hurt, kind of.
Finally I couldn’t hold it in, because I knew it was a really good joke that everybody would appreciate, counting Mr. Norgesand, who always laughed at Soapy Levinson. The first one I told was Joe Fadness (claims), asking him to keep it a secret, but I knew he wouldn’t.
I didn’t know what to think when Joe didn’t laugh. He just looked at me and said, “What’s the point, Mac?” And that spoiled the fun a little.
“No point, Joe,” I said, chuckling. “It was a joke.”
He looked at me. “A joke, huh? Mean you wrote out this here message and signed somebody else’s name to it?”
“That’s what I did, Joe.”
He smiled and right then I saw he caught on. “Well now, Mac,” he said, “that’s a real funny one, you bet, a real funny one.”
I waited for him to stop laughing, then I went back to work.
But for some reason I couldn’t understand, Joe didn’t spread the word about my joke. Maybe it was because he thought I was spoofing him, and a serious person like myself wouldn’t do a kid’s trick.
But I got ashamed of myself after a while for keeping it all in and not telling everybody. The reason I didn’t before was I was afraid to, in a way, because then they might think I was another regular cut-up like Soapy and be at me all the time to join in their games, which didn’t really fit an older man. I was afraid of losing their respect.
Well, I was working away when Bakersfield teletyped down asking for a report on an overage, and I couldn’t resist one more time. Thought of the way one of those cocky young solicitors would do it, and sent: ARE THEY SUCH A BIG COMPANY THEY CAN’T USE A LITTLE EXTRA FREE MERCHANDISE? Signed: UNDERHILL.
And I like to died because Sophie the stenographer got ahold of the strip from the waste basket. The look on her face! First she stared at the strip, then at me (no one had used the teletype since), then back at the strip. Then she scratched her head and took it over to Bill Stoddard, and they talked about it.
Bill came over in a little while, grinning. “Hey, Mac,” he said, sitting down on my desk, “you do this?”
I frowned and looked at him through my eye-shade.
“Do what, Bill?” I winked at Joe, who had stopped his work.
“This business about Underhill? That your doing?”
“Well . . . to tell the truth . . .” I suppose I blushed, and snapped my black arm-guards. Bill didn’t do anything for a minute but stare at me, then all of a sudden he started to laugh, and I declare that boy laughed so hard I was sure he’d hurt his stomach!
Made me feel good, you know! Don’t see why, but it did, because in a minute Bill had told Sophie and Sophie had told Maggie and pretty soon Mrs. Fredrickson and all the rest were, well, they were almost crying!
Naturally, Mr. Norgesand came out to see what all the fuss was about.
“Settle down now,” he said in a loud voice. “Soapy, what’ve you been up to this time?”
But Soapy was laughing, too. He started to speak up, but then he turned red and he
could only point at me. By this time I was wishing they’d stop it.
“Mac, what in the world—”
“Really, Mr. Norgesand,” I tried to say, “it was only a little practical joke.” I explained it to him. But somehow it didn’t strike Mr. Norgesand funny: He looked at the rest and said something very peculiar. He said, “You ought to be ashamed, the bunch of you!” Then he went back in his office, but I could see from the corner of my eye that he only waited to be by himself to laugh too.
Oh, let me tell you, it went over big, all right.
They all started to call me Mr. Underhill after that. And it really got to be the office joke, as Joe or Maggie or whoever it happened to be, would do things like get calls and say: “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to turn you over to our Mr. Underhill. I’m sure he’ll be able to help you.” Then I’d be stuck with whoever it was, and there were some mighty embarrassing moments.
In a while I was sorry I’d started it at all, they ran it in the ground so. Every other call was for Mr. Underhill. “The most efficient, best-looking, go-getter in the business,” Bill Stoddard would say and then give me the call. It got to be awful and I dreaded it.
Once somebody called and asked Joe who was in charge of tracing.
“Our Mr. Underhill,” he said. “Best man on any tracing desk in the country.”
“New, isn’t he?” they asked.
“Only to this office. Been in the game a while, but that isn’t the point. That guy’s going up like a rocket. Another ten years he’ll have Norgesand’s job, between you and me. Never makes a mistake, always on time, always courteous! How could he lose?”
Now that was the silliest thing I’d ever heard. I never made mistakes, myself, I was always courteous and on time and everything Joe said. Yet it sounded hard to put together. He was describing me, in a way, then again he certainly wasn’t. I felt that something was missing, because I knew as well as my life they’d never put me anywhere else. After I heard Joe say these things, I couldn’t concentrate all day until quitting time.
A Touch of the Creature Page 13