by Rod Serling
Sloan gazed down at the Park Avenue lights and thought about himself as a boy and the main street of his town and the drugstore that Mr. Wilson owned. Sporadic, unrelated remembrances, but part of a bittersweet pattern that made that room, the Scotch, the reflection in the mirror so unbearable. Again he felt that urge to cry and pushed it down deep inside of him along with the pain of the ulcer. A thought came to him. Get in the car and go. Get out of New York. Away from Madison Avenue. Away from the blathering, meaningless, mixed-metaphored jargon of his boss; the ratings and the “percentages-of-audience” and the cosmetic accounts and the three-million-dollar gross billings and that sick, ugly facade of good fellowship among strangers.
Some kind of ghostly billy club tapped at his ankles and told him it was later than he thought. He left his apartment, picked up his car, drove out on to Grand Central Parkway. Hunched over the wheel of his red Mercedes-Benz he asked himself very briefly just where the hell did he think he was going and he was undismayed by the fact that there wasn’t an answer. He wanted to think, that was all. He wanted to remember. And when he turned off on the New York Throughway and headed upstate he had no further resolves. He just kept driving on into the night and was only dimly aware that old man Wilson’s drugstore seemed strangely etched in his mind. It was this picture that sent his brain back on an errand to recapture memories of a time before. Memories of a place called Homewood, New York, a quiet, tree-filled little town of three thousand people. As he drove, he remembered what had been a minute fragment of his life, but God what a fragment! The wondrous time of growing up. Quiet streets on a summer night. The joy of parks and playgrounds. The uninhibited freedom of a child. Memories ebbed back and forth across his mind and left him with a strange, indefinable hunger that subconsciously he realized was not just for a place but for a time. He wanted to be a boy again. That was what he wanted. He wanted to turn around in his life and go backwards. He wanted to run past the years to find the one in which he was eleven years old.
Martin Sloan, in a Brooks Brothers suit, driving a red sports car, headed out into the night and away from New York. He drove with an urgency and a purpose without really knowing his destination. This was no week-end drive. It was no momentary turning of his back to convention and habit. This was an exodus. This was flight. Somewhere at the end of a long, six-lane highway that stretched out across the rolling hills of upstate New York, Martin Sloan was looking for sanity.
He stopped at a motel near Binghamton, New York, slept a few hours, and was on his way again, and at nine in the morning pulled into a gas station off the State highway. He’d been going fast and the car squealed to a stop sending up clouds of dust. A little of the drive that sustained him in New York, a little of the impatience that pushed him through the days, clung to him now and he honked the horn persistently. The attendant, a nice-looking kid in dungarees, looked up from the tire he was repairing a few yards away, wiped his hands with a cloth and stood listening to Martin Sloan’s horn.
“How about some service?” Martin yelled.
“How about some quiet?” the attendant answered him.
Martin bit his lower lip and turned away, gripping the steering wheel, studying the dashboard.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
The attendant came toward him.
“Would you fill it up, please?” Martin asked.
“Sure.”
“I said I was sorry,” Martin said.
“I heard you,” the attendant answered. “You take high-test in these things, don’t you?”
Martin nodded, handed him the keys to the gas tank. The attendant went around to the rear of the car and unlocked the tank.
“How about an oil change and a lube job, too?” Martin asked him.
“Sure,” the attendant said. “It’ll take about an hour.”
Martin said, “I’ve got plenty of time.”
He turned to look across the road at a sign which read, “Homewood, 1 ½ miles.”
“That’s Homewood up ahead, isn’t it?” Martin asked.
The attendant said, “Yep.”
“I used to live there. Grew up there as a matter of fact. I haven’t been back in eighteen...twenty years.”
He got out of the car, reached in his pocket for a cigarette and noticed that it was his last one. There was a cigarette machine in front of the station. Martin got a pack of cigarettes from it and came back, still talking. “Eighteen...twenty years. And then last night I—I just got in the car and drove. Reached a point where I, well—I had to get out of New York. One more board meeting, phone call, report, problem—” He laughed and the laugh sounded hollow and tired.
“New York, is that where you’re from?” the attendant asked.
“That’s right. New York.”
“I see you guys all the time,” the attendant said. “Take a drive in the country—gotta go a hundred miles an hour. Stop for a red light, somebody beats you startin’ up when she turns green, then your day’s ruined. God, how do you guys keep at it?”
Martin turned away and fiddled with the side mirror on his car. “We just do,” he answered. “We just keep at it and then there comes a June night—when we suddenly take off.” He looked across the road again toward the sign. “A mile and a half,” he mused. “That’s walking distance.”
“For some people,” the attendant answered him.
Martin grinned. “But not for New York executives in red sports cars, huh?”
The attendant shrugged.
“I’ll come back for the car later on.” Martin grinned. “A mile and a half—that’s walking distance!”
He took off his coat and slung it over his shoulder and tramped down the road to Homewood, a little over a mile away—and twenty years later.
Martin entered the drugstore and stood motionless near the door in the dark coolness. It was exactly as he remembered it. A narrow, high-ceilinged room with an old-fashioned soda bar on one side, a counter on the other. A wooden stairway that led to a small office off a tiny balcony. This was where Mr. Wilson, the owner, used to take his catnaps, Martin remembered. A thin little man with thick glasses wiped soda glasses and smiled at Martin across the fountain.
“What’ll it be?” he asked.
Martin looked at the posters on the walls, the old-fashioned hanging lights, the two big electric fans that hung down from the ceiling. He went to the counter and sat down. The five big glass jars of penny candy were just as he remembered them.
“You still make great chocolate sodas?” he asked the man behind the soda bar. “Three scoops?”
The man’s smile looked a little strained. “How’s that?”
Martin’s laugh was apologetic. “I used to spend half my life in this drugstore,” he explained. “I grew up here. The one thing I always remember ordering—that was a chocolate ice cream soda with three scoops. And it was ten cents, too.”
The little man looked at him quizzically and Martin studied his face.
“You know,” Martin said, ‘you look familiar to me. Have I seen you before?”
The clerk shrugged and grinned. “I got that kind of a face.”
“It’s been a long time,” Martin said. “Eighteen...twenty years. That’s when I left—” Then he laughed at a collection of secret thoughts that crossed his mind. “I wish I had a buck,” he continued, “for every hour I spent at this fountain though. From grammar school right through third-year high.” He turned on the stool to look out at the bright, sunny street outside. “Town looks the same too.” He turned back to the little man. “You know it’s really amazing. After twenty years to look so exactly the same.”
The little man in glasses fixed his soda and then handed it to him.
“That’ll be a dime.”
Martin started to fish in his pocket, then stopped abruptly. “A dime?” he asked incredulously. He held up the giant, richly dark glass. “Three scoops?”
The soda jerk laughed. “That’s the way we make ‘em.”
Martin
laughed again. “You’re going to lose your shirt. Nobody sells sodas for a dime anymore.”
There was a moment’s silence then the little man asked, “They don’t? Where you from?”
Martin started to spoon down some of the chocolate ice cream. “New York,” he said between gulps. “Hey, you make a great soda!”
The little man leaned on the counter with his elbows. “Taste okay?” he asked.
“Wonderful.” He finished the ice cream and slurped up the last of the soda water. He grinned. “Like I never left home. That was great.” He turned to scan the room. “Funny,” he said, “how many memories you connect with a place. I always thought if I ever came back here, it’d all be changed.”
The store looked back at him. The counters and shelves and posters and lights. The electric fans. They looked back at him like old friends. “It’s just as if—” Martin said thoughtfully, “—as if I’d left yesterday.” He got off the stool and stood twirling it. “Just as if I’d been away overnight.” He smiled at the soda jerk. “I’d almost expect Mr. Wilson to be sitting up there in the office and sleeping away his afternoons just the way he always did before he died.”
He didn’t see the soda jerk start at this.
“That’s one of the images I have,” he continued. “Old Man Wilson sleeping in his big comfortable chair in his office up there. Old Man Wilson—may his soul rest in peace”
He reached in his pocket, took out a dollar bill and put it on the counter. The soda jerk stared at it, surprised. “That’s a buck!”
Martin smiled at him, tapped the glass with a finger. “That—” he looked around the room—“and all of this, they’re worth it.”
He went back out into the hot summer. The soda jerk leaned on the counter, wondering about Martin, then lifted up the top of the chocolate syrup container and peered inside. He replaced it, came around from behind the counter, climbed the stairs, and tapped gently on a door. A muffled, sleepy voice responded.
“Yes?”
The soda jerk opened the door a few inches. “Mr. Wilson,” he said to the white-haired old man, sitting in the heavy leather chair, one eye open, “We need more chocolate syrup.”
The old man winked, nodded and closed his eyes again. “I’ll order some this afternoon.”
In a moment he was fast asleep again. The soda jerk went back to the counter. He took Martin Sloan’s glass and started to wash it. Funny guy, he thought. Lose your shirt if you sell three scoops for a dime. He chuckled as he was drying the glass. Nobody sold three scoops for a dime any more. Then he shrugged and put the glass away. You met all kinds. You sure met all kinds. But this guy, this one was odd. This one had a look on his face. How would you describe the look? He was so...so happy. Just being in the dingy old drugstore, he looked happy. A woman came in with a prescription and the soda jerk didn’t think of Martin Sloan any more that day.
Martin walked down Oak Street—the street he’d grown up on. It stretched out ahead of him flanked by big, full-leafed maple trees that cast sharp black shadows against the brilliant whiteness of the sunshine. Big, two-story Victorian houses set back behind long, green lawns were old friends to him. He rattled off names of their owners as he walked slowly down the sidewalk. Vanburen. Wilcox. Abernathy. He looked across the street. Over there, Dr. Bradbury, Mulrooney, Grey. He stopped and leaned against a tree. The street was exactly as he remembered it. He felt the bittersweet pang of nostalgia. He remembered the games he’d played with the kids on this street. The newspapers he’d delivered. The small-boy accidents on roller skates and bicycles. And the people. The faces and names that fused in his mind now. His house was on the corner and for some reason he wanted to save this for last. He could see it ahead of him. Big, white, with a semi-circular porch running around it. Cupolas. An iron jockey in front. God, the things you remembered. The things you tucked away in an old mental trunk and forgot. Then you opened the trunk and there they were.
“Hi,” a little boy’s voice said.
Martin Sloan looked down to see a four-year-old with syrup on his face, shooting marbles. “Hi,” Martin answered and sat down on the curb beside him. “You pretty good?” He pointed toward the boy’s marbles.
“At aggies?” the little boy said. “I’m not so bad.”
Martin picked up one of the marbles and looked through it. “I used to shoot marbles, too. We gave them special names. The steel kind, the ball bearings we took off old streetcars, we called them steelies. And the ones we could see through—we called them clearies. Still call them names like that?”
“Sure,” said the little boy.
Martin pointed across the street toward a telephone pole marked up by a thousand jackknives. “That’s where we used to play hide-and-seek,” he said to the boy He grinned. “Draw a circle around the old man’s back and who’s to punch it.” He laughed aloud as the thought warmed and delighted him. “Right on this street, every night in the summer we used to play that. And I used to live in that corner house down there,” he pointed. “The big, white one.”
“The Sloan house?” the little boy asked.
Martin’s eyes grew a little wider. “That’s right. You still call it that?”
“Still call it what?”
“The Sloan house. My name’s Sloan. I’m Martin Sloan. What’s your name?”
He held out his hand but the boy backed away, frowning at him. “You’re not Marty Sloan,” the boy said accusingly. “I know Martin Sloan and you’re not him.”
Martin laughed. “I’m not, huh? Well, let’s see what the driver’s license says.”
He reached into his breast pocket for his wallet. When he looked up the little boy was running down the street and then across a lawn to the house opposite his. Martin got slowly to his feet and began to walk again. It was the first slow walk, Martin reflected, that he’d taken in a long, long time. The houses and lawns went by and he drank them all in. He wanted this slow. He wanted to relish it all. In the distance he could hear children’s laughter and the tinkle of an ice-cream wagon bell. It all fitted, sight and sound and mood. He got a tight feeling in his throat.
He didn’t know how long he had walked but later he found himself in the park. Like the drugstore, like the houses, like the sounds—nothing had changed. There was the pavilion with the big, round, band-concert stand. There was the merry-go-round, loaded with kids, the brassy, discordant calliope music still chasing it round and round. There were the same wooden horses, the same brass rings, the same ice-cream stands, cotton candy vendors. And always the children. Short pants and Mickey Mouse shirts. Lollipops and ice-cream cones and laughter and giggling. The language of the young. The music—the symphony of summer. The sounds swirled around him. Calliope, laughter, children. Again the tight feeling in his throat. Bittersweet again. All of it he had left so far behind and now he was so close to it.
A pretty young woman walked by him, wheeling a baby carriage. She stopped, caught by something she saw in Martin Sloan’s face, as he watched the merry-go-round. She’d never seen a look quite like that before. It made her smile at him, and he smiled back.
“Wonderful place, isn’t it?” he said.
“The park? It certainly is.”
Martin nodded toward the merry-go-round. “That’s a part of summer, isn’t it? The music from the merry-go-round. The calliope.”
The pretty woman laughed. “And the cotton candy and the ice cream and the band concert.”
There was no smile on Martin’s face now. It had been replaced by an intensity, a yearning. “There isn’t anything quite as good ever,” he said softly. “Not quite as good as summer and being a kid.”
The woman stared at him. What was there about this man? “Are you from around here?” she asked.
Martin said, “A long time ago. I lived just a couple of blocks from here. I remember that bandstand. God, I should. I used to sneak away at night, lie over there on the grass staring up at the stars, listening to the music.” His voice took on an excitement now.
“I played ball on that field over there,” he continued. “Third base. And I grew up with that merry-go-round.” He pointed to the concert pavilion. “I carved my name on that post over there one summer. I was eleven years old and I carved my name right on—” He stopped abruptly and stared.
There was a small boy sitting on the railing of the pavilion carving something on the post with a jackknife. Martin Sloan walked slowly toward him. He felt a sensation he had never felt before. It was cold and heat and excitement. It was shock and surprise and a mystery he couldn’t fathom. He looked up at the small boy and saw his own face of twenty-five years ago. He was looking at himself. He stood shaking his head from side to side, squinting up against the sun and then he saw what the boy was carving on the post. It was a kid’s printed scrawl, the letters uneven. It read, “Martin Sloan.” Martin caught his breath and pointed at the boy who was suddenly aware of him.
“Martin Sloan! You’re Martin Sloan.”
The boy slid down from the railing. He looked frightened. “Yes, sir, but I didn’t mean nothing, honest. Lots of kids carve their names here. Honest. I’m not the first one—”
Martin took a step closer to the boy. “You’re Martin Sloan. Of course you’re Martin Sloan, that’s who you are. That’s the way I looked.”
He was unaware that his voice had suddenly become loud and of course he couldn’t know how intense his face looked. The boy backed off and then scurried down the steps.
“Martin!” Sloan’s voice followed him. “Martin, please come back. Please, Martin.”
He started to chase him and the boy disappeared in the multi-colored crowd of shorts and Mickey Mouse shirts and mothers’ cotton dresses.
“Please, Martin,” Sloan called again, trying to find him. “Please—don’t be frightened. I don’t want to hurt you. I just wanted to—I just wanted to ask you some questions.