by Rod Serling
Over and over the raspy, grating voice tore at his nerve endings until finally he opened his eyes and shouted out into the car, “That’s enough!”
A surprised and frightened woman turned around to gape at him from the seat in front. Williams looked away, pretending not to notice her, and watched the bare, lifeless trees shoot by the window, the patches of duty, early snow, the dull gray-black of rolling hillocks, stripped of color. It was a naked winter twilight that stared back at him. After a while the humming clickety-click of the train softened and then blunted Williams’s consciousness and he fell asleep.
He didn’t know how long he dozed, but he was awakened by the noise of the train coming to a stop. A voice called out, “Willoughby! This is Willoughby.”
Williams opened his eyes, rubbed the sleep out of them, and looked out the window. He stared, first with incredulous amazement and then with fear, because outside was a summer afternoon.
The train had stopped at a small station with a sign that read, “Willoughby.” On the platform of the station were women with parasols and long dresses. Boys in knickers ran back and forth. One carried a fishing pole. Beyond the station was a small village square with a bandstand. Williams could hear the strains of the Sousa music, happily discordant and marvelously reminiscent. The whole scene was bathed in a hot summer sun. Williams tried to digest it, knowing it was a dream, but confused by the absolute reality.
Then he became aware of the railroad car he was sitting in. It was no longer the ugly chrome and green plastic of the car he’d entered in Grand Central Station. It was now the ornate nineteenth-century wood and velvet of trains he’d seen only in pictures or in Western movies on television. Gas lamps hung from the ceiling and soon a little, white-haired conductor appeared at the opposite end of the car dressed in a tight, brass-buttoned suit with an old-fashioned trainman’s cap. He sauntered slowly down the car, smiled at Williams and winked at him.
“This stop is Willoughby,” he announced again.
He started to walk past Williams, who grabbed him.
“What do you mean Willoughby? What’s Willoughby?”
The conductor smiled and nodded toward the window. “That’s Willoughby, sir. Right outside.”
“Wait a minute,” Williams said, his voice tight and unbelieving. “Wait just a minute. What’s going on? There’s no place called Willoughby on this line. And look at it outside. The sun is out. It’s... it’s summer.”
The conductor smiled and winked. “That’s what she is, mid-July and a real warm one, too.”
“But listen,” Williams said, “it’s November. What’s going on, anyway? Williams shut his, eyes tightly, then opened them again. “It’s November,” he repeated. “What is this place? Where are we? What’s happened!”
The conductor gently removed Gart’s hand from his sleeve.
“Please,” Williams said, lowering his voice, “please, what’s going on? Where is Willoughby?”
“Willoughby, sir,” the conductor answered. “That’s Willoughby right outside. Willoughby. July. Summer. It’s 1880. It’s a lovely little village.” His smile faded and something intense crept into his voice. “You ought to try it sometime. Peaceful, restful, where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure.”
He walked down the car toward the opposite entrance. “Willoughby,” he announced as he walked. “This stop is Willoughby”
Williams bolted from his seat. He raced down the car to the door that the conductor had closed behind him and out onto the train platform. The next car was completely empty The conductor had disappeared. Williams stopped, his face twisted with pain and bewilderment. His mouth opened to protest or question or plead for someone to give him understanding.
The train lurched, throwing him against the side of the car. He grabbed at the door for support. In that brief moment it had become dark outside and the train car that he walked through, going back to his seat, was once again full of fluorescent lights, reclining seats and ashtrays, with a sprinkling of tired-faced commuters. Williams sat down and gave a quick look out the window at the winter landscape.
“Westport-Saugatuck, next stop,” a man’s voice said.
Williams looked up to see the conductor he was familiar with.
“Have a good sleep, Mr. Williams.” he asked.
“Yeah,” Williams said. “I had a good sleep. A good sleep with an idiotic dream. Idiotic...At least...at least I guess it’s idiotic.” He looked up at the conductor. “Ever hear of a town named Willoughby?”
The conductor screwed up his face thoughtfully “Willoughby? Willoughby where?”
“Willoughby, Connecticut, I guess, or Willoughby, New York.”
The conductor shook his head. “No, not on this run. There’s no Willoughby on the line. No town named Willoughby.”
“You sure?”
“No Willoughby that I’ve ever heard of.” He continued down the aisle. “Westport-Saugatuck, stop. Westport-Saugatuck.”
Gart Williams picked up his briefcase and, very slowly, questions pressing down on him, he walked to the end of the car and out into the winter night.
Gart stood at the bar in the ornate den adjoining the living room of his ranch-house home. He sipped slowly on a long bourbon, relishing the heat of it and the soothingness. It was dulling some of the sharp and ugly recollections of the afternoon and making even more dream-like his experience on the train.
He’d been on the phone to the office and received a complete report on everything that went on after he left. Misrell, it seemed, had shut himself up in his office, incommunicado, for at least two hours after the scene. Then, however, he had sent a memo to Gart’s secretary, announcing yet another meeting for the following day. So, it seemed, the wound had been deep and tearing, but not fatal.
His wife, Jane, came in. She was a striking blonde, with small, perfect features, large, wonderfully deep brown eyes. But her face was without laughter. He had discovered this twenty-four hours after their marriage ten years ago. This was a woman of plans and campaigns, but of little emotion. Life to her was something to be mapped out, not simply lived. She surveyed him analytically as she crossed the room and sat down facing the bar.
“And what are your plans this evening?” she inquired. “To get quietly plastered and then sing old college songs?”
Williams’s smile was wan. “It’s been one of those days—”
“I know all about it,” she interrupted him. “Bob Blair’s wife called me. Said he’d been in the meeting with you. You got—you got hysterical or something. She called to find out how you were.”
“They were all very solicitous,” Williams said wryly. “All the boys at the meeting.” He jiggled the ice in his glass. “That free-flowing compassion which is actually relief because I’m the victim—not they! They’ve mistaken an intake of breath for an outpouring of sympathy!”
He started to pour himself another drink, but his wife’s voice stopped him. It cut across the room like a lance.
“Would you spare me your little homilies now,” she said, “and just give me a simple, frank, and honest answer? Did you wreck a career this afternoon? Did you throw away a job?”
Williams grinned again. “It appears not. Mr. Misrell sent a message to my secretary after I left the office. He has found it in that giant, oversized heart of his to forgive. This somewhat obese but gracious gentleman will allow me to continue in his employ simply because he’s such a human-type fellah.” He grinned knowingly into his glass. “With a small, insignificant, parenthetical, additional reason that if I were to go to a competitive agency, I might possibly take a lot of business with me!”
“Go on,” Jane ordered.
Williams shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all of it.” He carried his drink across the room and sat down in a chair next to her. “I’m tired, Janie. I’m tired and I’m sick.”
Jane got up and walked away. “Then you’re in the right ward. We specialize in people who are sick and tired, Gart. I’m sic
k and tired of a husband who lives in a kind of permanent self-pity! A husband with a heart—bleeding sensitivity he unfurls like a flag whenever he decides that the competition is too rough for him.”
Williams’s head shot up. He was surprised, even after ten years, that so much coldness could come out in language; that so much utter distaste and dislike could be unmasked by a few sentences.
“Some people aren’t built for competition, Janie,” he said. He rose and carried his glass across the room to stand near her. “Or big pretentious houses that they can’t afford. Or rich communities they don’t feel comfortable in. Or country clubs that they wear around their necks like a badge of status—”
“And what would you prefer?” Jane shouted at him.
His control snapped and he shouted back at her. “I would prefer, though never asked before, a job! Any job...any job at all where I could be myself! Where I wouldn’t have to climb on a stage and go through a masquerade each morning at nine and mouth all the dialogue and play the executive and make believe I’m a bright young man on his way up.” The glass shook in his hand and he put it down on an end table. “Janie ...I’m not that person,” he said, his voice quieter. “You tried to make me that person, but that isn’t me. That isn’t me at all. I’m.. .I’m a not very young, soon to be old, very uncompetitive, rather dull, quite uninspired, average-type guy.” His mouth twisted. “With a wife who has an appetite.”
“And where would you be if it weren’t for my appetite?”
Williams sat down on the steps that led to the living room. “I know where I’d like to be,” he said.
“And where would that be?” Jane challenged him, her voice brittle and shrill.
“A place called Willoughby,” Gart said. “A little town that I charted inside my head. A place I manufactured in a dream.” His voice was low and reflective and he spoke almost as if to himself “An odd dream. A very odd dream. Willoughby It was summer. Very warm. The kids were barefooted. One of them carried a fishing pole. And the main street looked like...like a Currier and Ives illustration. Bandstand, old-fashioned stores, bicycles, wagons.” He looked toward his wife. “I’ve never seen such a...such a serenity. It was the way people must have lived a hundred years ago.” He looked down toward the floor again. “Crazy dream.”
Jane walked across the room to stand over him. The perfect face was lined with impatience and frustration; she had a deep-rooted and abiding lack of respect for this man, in addition to a sense of impotence. Her campaign, so perfectly planned, timed, and executed was turning into a miserable failure.
“My mistake, pal,” she said. “My error. My wretched, tragic error to get married to a man whose big dream in life is to be Huckleberry Finn!” She walked away.
“Janie,” Gart called after her.
She stopped at the door, her back to him.
“Janie.” His voice was yearning. “You should have seen this place. This...this Willoughby. It wasn’t just a place or a time. It was like—it was like a doorway that leads to sanity. A soundproof world where shouts and cries can’t be heard.”
She whirled around. Her words were thin, feminine daggers, jewel-encrusted and poison-tipped. “Nothing serious, Gart,” she said. “It’s just that you were born too late. That’s the problem. You were born too late, and your taste is a little cheap. You’re the kind of man who could be satisfied with a summer afternoon and an ice wagon pulled by a horse. That’s all it takes for you, isn’t it?”
“Something like that,” he answered her. “A place.. .a time...where a man can live his life full measure.” He frowned thoughtfully. “That’s what he said. That’s what that...that conductor said. A place where a man can live his life full measure!”
He picked up his glass again and drained it, unaware that he was now alone in the room, conscious only of a persistent little memory of a warm summer afternoon that was simply part of a fabric of a dream. A summer afternoon and a small town with a village square and a bandstand and people in old-fashioned dress. In his whole life, he thought, his whole forty-one years, he had never felt such a stirring deep inside, such a hunger to see a place again, such a yearning to recapture a moment that had slipped by too fast. Much too fast.
“Willoughby?” the conductor asked.
Gart Williams, half-dozing in his seat, sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and gaping. Then he saw the conductor smiling down at him. “What?”
“A while back you asked me about a town called Willoughby,” the conductor said. He scratched his jaw “I looked it up in every old timetable I could find. No such place as far as I could see.”
Williams relaxed against the back of his seat. “Thanks. It was a dream, that’s all.”
The conductor continued on down the car. “Probably was.” And then shouting out to the half-empty car, “Stamford next stop. Next stop Stamford!”
Williams put his head back and sighed deeply. Outside he could see nothing but an occasional gust of snow, the rest blackness. He could hear the conductor’s voice far off shouting “Stamford. Next stop Stamford.” He closed his eyes, felt the tiredness, the weakness, the resignation of the past few weeks. Almost a month had passed since the affair in the conference room, Jake Ross’s departure, and his own detonation. But nothing had changed really. He had gone back into a mold, acting and reacting much as he always had. Misrell had not changed. The company had not changed. The jingles and the overnight ratings and the product-pushing—they were as constant as weather.
“Stamford,” the conductor’s voice called out, faintly now, and Williams leaned his head against the cold window, wishing in a portion of his mind that it was a longer trip; that he could sit there for a parcel of hours and sleep deep and undisturbed. He didn’t want to get home. He didn’t want to see Jane. He would never put this feeling into words, but he felt it and he knew he felt it.
“Willoughby,” a voice said, “next stop, Willoughby”
Gart Williams opened his eyes and felt the train pull slowly to a stop. The car seemed suddenly very warm and light played on his face. He stared out the window and there it was, the little station with the village behind it, the town square, the women in long dresses, carrying parasols. The men in tight pants and derbies. A teenager rode by on a bicycle with a huge front wheel and a tiny rear one. The musicians on the bandstand had paused for a break and were laughing and talking with the townspeople as they walked by. A bed of flowers went halfway around the square and added reds and whites and blues to the deep green of the lawn. An organ-grinder with a uniformed monkey came toward the train, followed by a troop of laughing kids. And there were two boys with fishing poles, barefoot like Tom Sawyer and Huck.
And then Williams realized that once again he stood in the middle of an old-fashioned train car and, approaching him from the opposite end, was the old conductor with the brass buttons and the old-fashioned cap.
“Willoughby,” the conductor smiled at him. “All out for Willoughby.”
Williams stood transfixed, tom between reluctance and a strange resolve. He made a move as if to run, then was thrown off balance by the jerk of the train as it started. He walked, lurching, to the platform at the end of the car.
The train was moving and the town was being left behind. Williams stood poised on the steps, fighting a battle whose rules and terms he didn’t understand. But after a moment it was too late. The decision had been made for him. The little station faded into the distance and it was night again, a night filled with snow; a railroad car filled with people in topcoats, carrying briefcases and waiting for Westport and points beyond.
He went back to his seat and sat down. He looked at his reflection in the window. He saw the pouched eyes, set deep in the tired face. He saw the age that was somehow deeper than years. He saw a Gart Williams who was like a small boy in a marbles trade. Only in his case, he had given away his freedom, his prerogatives and his self-reliance in exchange for a menu-planned life and a paycheck, and he’d been taken!
“Willoughby,”
he said softly to himself. “Next time...next time I’m going to get off!”
His face was grim and determined. “I’m going to get off at Willoughby!”
It was a January full of cold and dirty slush and a running battle each evening with Jane at home. And a running battle with everyone at the office. He sat at his desk talking on the phone with Oliver Misrell and the harsh voice of the fat man grated out of the receiver.
“What we need here, Williams,” the voice said, “is a show with zazz! An entertainer with moxie! We’ve got to take the audience by the ears and give ‘em a yank! Jar ‘em! Rock ‘em! Give them the old push, push, push!”
“I understand, Mr. Misrell,” Williams said into the phone, closing his eyes. He felt the pain in his stomach again and reached inside his shirt to massage the taut flesh.
“It’s got to be bright, though, Williams,” the voice persisted. “Bright with patter. Dancing, comedy, and everything push, push, push. ‘That’s the kind of show the client’ll like.”
“I understand, Mr. Misrell, I understand—”
“Tomorrow morning, Williams! Understand? I want at least a preliminary idea for the show. You know what I want—a rough format with some specifies as to how we integrate commercials within the body of the show.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Williams said.
“Do more than you can. With me, Williams? Aspire! Dream big and then get behind it. Push, push, push.”
Williams moved the phone away from him, listening to the “push, push, push” as it barked at him. He slowly hung the receiver up, feeling weak and inundated by pain. The phone rang again. This time a filtered voice blabbed at him at first unintelligibly, then with an urgent clarity.
“Well, I haven’t seen the ratings,” Williams tried to interject. “No. No, well it was the time slot the sponsor wanted—”
Another phone rang. “Hold on for just a second, will you?” he said into the first phone. He pushed the button and talked on the other line. “Yes? They were what? Wait a second.” He called out toward the half-open door, “Helen?”