It was as if he stood at the edge of a bottomless hole—more, the very outer edge of the world, so close his very toes projected over the emptiness. It filled him with wonder; he was startled, but not really afraid, because it might well be that to fall down and down into that endless place might be a very peaceful thing. He closed his eyes and slowly, very slowly, came back to reality, the kitchen. Bitty, Bitty’s words. “You mean … the av—the ordin—you mean, people aren’t really interested?”
“Not that interested.”
He blinked; he felt as if he had ceased to exist in his world and had been plunked down in a very similar, but totally new one. It was far less lonely here.
He hit the table and laughed into Bitty’s calm face. “I’m going to sleep,” he said, and got up; and he knew she had caught his exact shade of meaning when she said gently, “Sure you can.”
EXCERPT FROM FIELD EXPEDITION [NOTEBOOK]: [I] had thought up to now that in [Smith)’s [immorally] excessive enthusiasm and [bullheadedness] [I] had encountered the utmost in [irritants]. [I] was in [error]; [he] now surpasses these, and without effort. In the first place, having placated and outwitted the alerted specimen, [he] has destroyed [my] preliminary detailed [report] on him; this is [irritat]ing not only because it was done without consulting [me], not only because of the trouble [I] went to [write] it all up, but mostly because [he] is technically within [his] [ethics-rights]—the emergency created by [his] [bumbling mismanagement] no longer exists. [I] have [force]fully pointed out to [him] that it was only by the application of [my] kind of cautious resourcefulness that [he] succeeded, but [he] just [gloats]. [I] [most strongly affirm-and-bind-myself], the instant [we] get back home and are released from Expeditionary [ethic-discipline], [I] shall [bend] [his] []s over [his] [ ] and [tie a knot in] them.
[We] have now, no [credit-thanks] to [Smith], reached a point where all our specimens are in a state of [heavy] preconditioning of their unaccountably random Synapse Beta sub Sixteen. Being a synapse, it will of course come into full operation only on a reflexive level and in an extreme emergency, which [we] are now setting up.
Unless [Smith] produces yet more [stupidities], the specimens should live through this.
X
It had become impossibly hot, and very still. Leaves dropped at impossible angles, and still the dust lay on them. Sounds seemed too enervated to travel very far. The sky was brass all day, and at night, for want of ambition, the overcast was no more than a gauzy hood of haze.
It was the Bittelmans’ “day off” again, and without them the spine had been snatched out of the household. The boarders ate pokily, lightly, at random, and somehow got through the time when there was nothing to do but sit up late enough to get tired enough to get whatever rest the temperature would permit. It was too hot, even, to talk, and no one attempted it. They drifted to their rooms to wait for sleep; they slumped in front of the fans and took cold showers which generated more heat than they dissipated. When at last darkness came, it was a relief only to the eyes. The household pulse beat slowly and slower; by eight o’clock it was library-quiet, by nine quite silent, so that the soft brushing of knuckles on Miss Schmidt’s door struck her like a shout.
“Wh—who is it?” she quavered, when she recovered her breath.
“Sue.”
“Oh—oh. Oh, do come in.” She pulled the damp sheet tight up against her throat.
“Oh, you’re in bed already. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. It’s all right.”
Sue Martin swung the door shut and came all the way in. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse and a pleated skirt with three times more filmy nylon in it than one would guess until she turned, when it drifted like smoke. “My,” said Miss Schmidt enviously. “You look cool.”
“State of mind,” Sue smiled. “I’m about to go to work and I wish I didn’t have to.”
“And Bitty’s out. I’m honorary baby-sitter again.”
“You’re an angel.”
“No, oh, no!” cried Miss Schmidt. “I wish everything I had to do was that easy. Why, in all the time I’ve known you, every time I’ve done it, I—I’ve had nothing to do!”
“He sleeps pretty soundly. Clear conscience, I guess.”
“I think it’s because he’s happy. He smiles when he sleeps.”
“Smiles? Sometimes he laughs out loud,” said Sue Martin. “I was a little worried tonight, for a while. He was so flushed and wide-awake—”
“Well, it’s hot.”
“It wasn’t that.” Sue chuckled. “His precious Boff was all over the place, ‘fixin’ things,’ Robin said. What he was fixing all over the walls and ceiling, Robin didn’t say. Whatever it was, it’s finished now, though, and Robin’s sound asleep. I’m sure you won’t even have to go in. And Bitty ought to be home soon.”
“You’ll leave your door open?”
Sue Martin nodded and glanced up at the large open transom over Miss Schmidt’s door. “You’ll hear him if he so much as blinks.… I’ve got to run. Thanks so much.”
“Oh, really, Mrs. M—uh, Sue. Don’t thank me. Just run along.”
“Good night.”
Sue Martin slipped out, silently closing the door behind her. Miss Schmidt sighed and looked up at the transom. After Sue’s light footsteps had faded away, she listened, listened as hard as she could, trying to pour part of herself through the transom, across the hall, through Sue Martin’s open door. A light sleeper at any time, she knew confidently that she was on guard now and would wake if anything happened. If she slept at all in this sticky heat.
She might sleep, at that, she thought after a while. She shifted herself luxuriously, and edged to a slightly cooler spot on the bed. “That wicked Sam,” she murmured, and blushed in the dark. But he had been right. A nightgown in weather like this?
Suddenly, she slept.
In O’Banion’s room, there was a soft sound. He had put off taking a shower until suddenly he had used up his energy, and could hardly stir. I’ll just rest my eyes, he thought, and bowed his head. The soft sound was made by his forehead striking the book.
Halvorsen lay rigid on his bed, staring at the ceiling. There, almost as if it was projected, was the image of a flimsy cylinder vomiting smoke. Go ahead, he thought, detachedly. Or go away. I don’t care which. Before I talked to Bitty, I wanted you. Now, I don’t care. Is that better? He closed his eyes, but the image was still there. He lay very quietly, watching the insides of his eyelids. It was like being asleep. When he was asleep the thing was there too.
Mary Haunt sat by her window, pretending it was cooler there than in bed. There was no anger in her, just now as she lay back and dreamed. The Big Break, the pillars of light at her premiere, her name two stories tall over a Broadway marquee—these had no place in this particular favorite dream. I’ll do over Mom’s room, she thought, dimity, this time, and full, full skirts on the vanity and the night table. She closed her eyes, putting herself in Mom’s room with such vividness that she could almost smell the cool faint odor of lavender sachets and the special freshness of sheets dried in the sun. Yes, and something else, outside the room, barely, just barely she knew bread was baking, so that the kitchen would be heavenly with it; the bread would dominate the spice-shelf for a while, until it was out of the oven and cooled. “Oh, Mom …” she whispered. She lay still in her easy chair, holding and holding to the vision until this room, this house, this town didn’t matter any more.
Some hours went by.
Robin floated in a luminous ocean of sleep where there was nothing to fear and where, if he just turned to look, there were love and laughter waiting for him. His left hand uncurled and he thrust the second and third fingers into his mouth. Somehow he was a big bulldozer with a motor that sounded like Mitster and tracks that clattered along like Coffeepot, and Boff and Googie were riding along with him and laughing. Then without effort he was a glittery Ferris wheel, but he could watch himself too in one of the cars, screaming his delight an
d leaning against Tonio’s hard arm. All this, yet he was still afloat in that deep bright place where there was no fear, where love and laughter hid around some indescribable corner, waiting. Brighter, brighter. Warm, warm, warmer … oh, hot hot!
XI
Miss Schmidt opened her eyes to an impossible orange glare and a roar like the end of the world. For one full second she lay still, paralyzed by an utter disbelief; no light could have become so bright, no sound could have risen to this volume, without waking her as it began. Then she found a way to focus her eyes against the radiance, and saw the flames, and in what was left to her of her immobile second, she explained the whole thing to herself and said redly, of course, of course; it’s only a nightmare and suppose there’s a fire? —and that’s so silly, Sam— And then she was out of bed in a single bound, standing in the center of the room, face to flaming face with reality. Everything was burning—everything! The drapes had already gone and the slats of the venetian blind, their cords gone, were heaped on the floor, going like a campfire. Even as she watched the screen sagged and crumpled, its pine frame glaring and spitting pitch through blistering paint. It fell outside.
Outside, outside! The window’s open, you’re on the ground floor; yes, and there on the chair, not burning yet, your bathrobe; take the robe and jump, quick!
Then, beyond belief, there was a second louder than the earth-filling roar, and different; fine hot powder and a hot hail of plaster showered on her shoulders; she looked up to see the main beam, right over her head, sag toward her and hang groaning, one part reaching to the other with broken flat fingers of splintered wood which gloved themselves in flame as she saw them. She cowered, and just then the handle of the door turned and a gout of smoke slammed it open and whisked out of sight in the updraft; and there in the hall stood Robin, grinding a fat little fist into one abruptly wakened eye. She could see his lips move, though she could hear nothing in this mighty bellow of sound. She knew it, though, and heard it clearly in her mind: “What’s ’at noice?”
The beam overhead grumbled and again she was showered with plaster. She batted it off her shoulders, and whimpered. A great flame must have burst from the roof above her just then, for through the window she saw a brilliant glare reflected from the white clapboards of the garage wall outside. The glare tugged at her—jump! —and besides, her robe.…
The beam thundered and began to fall. Now she must make a choice, in microseconds. The swiftest thought would not be fast enough to weigh and consider and decide; all that could matter now was what was inside her, throwing switches (some so worn and easy to move!). A giant was throwing them, and he was strong; his strength was a conditioning deeper than thou shalt not kill; he was a lesson learned before she had learned to love God, or to walk, or to talk. He was her mother’s authority and the fear of all the hairy, sweaty, dangerous mysteries from which she had shielded herself all her life; and his name and title were Cover Thyself! With him, helping him, was the reflexive Save Thyself! and against these—Robin, whom she loved (but love is what she felt, once, for a canary, and once for a Raggedy Ann doll) and her sense of duty to Sue Martin (but so lightly promised, and at the time such a meaningless formality). There could be no choice in such a battle, though she must live with the consequences for all her years.
Then—
—it was as if a mighty voice had called Stop! and the very flames froze. Half a foot above her hung the jagged end of the burning beam, and chunks of plaster, splinters and scraps of shattered lath and glowing joist stopped in midair. Yet during this sliver of a fraction of time, she knew that the phenomenon was a mental something, a figment, and the idea of time-cessation only a clumsy effort of her mind’s to account for what was happening.
Save Thyself was still there, hysterical hands clutching for the controls, but Cover Thyself disappeared into the background. Save herself she would, but it would be on new terms. She was in the grip of a reflex of reflexes, one which took into consideration all the factors a normal reflex would, to the end goal of survival. But along with these, it called up everything Reta Schmidt had ever done, everything she had been. In a single soundless flash, a new kind of light was thrown into every crevice and cranny of her existence. It was her total self now, reacting to a total situation far wider than that which obtained here in this burning room. It illuminated even the future—that much of it which depended upon these events, between them and the next probable major “crossroads.” It canceled past misjudgments and illogics and replaced them with rightness, even for the times she had known what was right and had done otherwise. It came and was gone even while she leaped, while she took two bounding steps across the floor and the beam crashed and crushed and showered sparks where she had been standing.
She scooped up the child and ran down the hall, through the foyer, into the kitchen. It was dark there, thick with swirling smoke, but the glass panels on the kitchen door glared with some unfamiliar light from outdoors. She began to cough violently, but grimly aimed at the light and drove ahead. It was eclipsed suddenly by a monstrous shadow, and suddenly it exploded inward. There were lights out there she had never seen before, and half-silhouetted in the broken doorway was a big man with a gleaming helmet and an axe. She tried to call, or perhaps it was only a scream, but instead she went into a spasm of coughing.
“Somebody in here?” asked the man. A beam of light, apparently from the street, lit up the shield on the front of his helmet as he leaned forward. He stepped inside. “Whew! Where are you?”
She went blindly to him and pushed Robin against his coat. “The baby,” she croaked. “Get him out of this smoke.”
He grunted and suddenly Robin was gone from her arms. “You all right?” He was peering into the black and the smoke.
“Take him out,” she said. “Then I’ll want your coat.”
He went out. Miss Schmidt could hear Robin’s clear voice: “You a fireman?”
“I sure am,” rumbled the man. “Want to see my fire engine? Then sit right there on the grass and wait one second. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The coat flew through the doorway.
“Got it?”
“Thank you.” She put the huge garment on and went out. The fireman waited there, again holding Robin in his arms. “You all right, ma’am?”
Her lungs were an agony and she had burns on her feet and shoulders. Her hair was singed and one of her hands was flayed across its back. “I’m just fine,” she said.
They began to walk up the road. Robin squirmed around in the man’s arms and popped his head out to look back at the brightly burning house.
“ ’Bye, Boff,” he said happily, and then gave his heart to the fire engine.
XII
“Mother, the bread’s burning!”
Mary Haunt opened her eyes to an impossible glare and a great roaring. She shrieked and flailed out blindly, as if she could frighten it away, whatever it was; and then she came enough to her senses to realize that she still sat in her chair by the window, and that the house was on fire. She leaped to her feet, sending the heavy chair skittering across the room where it toppled over against the clothespress. As it always did when it was bumped, the clothespress calmly opened its doors.
But Mary Haunt didn’t wait for that or anything else. She struck the screen with the flat of her hand. It popped out easily, and she hit the ground almost at the same time it did. She ran off a few steps, and then, like Lot’s wife, curiosity overtook her and she stopped. She turned around in fascination.
Great wavering flames leapt fifty and sixty feet in the air and all the windows were alight. From the town side she could hear the shriek and clang of fire engines, and the windows and doors opening, and running feet. But the biggest sound of all was the roar of the fire, like a giant’s blowtorch.
She looked back at her own window. She could see into the room easily, the chair on its side, the bed with its chenille top-spread sprouting measles of spark and char, and the gaping doors of the— “M
y clothes! My clothes!”
Furiously she ran back to the window, paused a moment in horror to see fire run along the picture-molding of the inside wall like a nightmare caterpillar. “My clothes,” she whispered. She didn’t make much money at her job, but every cent that wasn’t used in bed and board went on her back. She mouthed something, and from her throat came that animal growl of hers; she put both hands on the sill and leaped, and tumbled back into the house.
She was prepared for the heat but not for that intensity of light, and the noise was worst of all. She recoiled from it and stood for a moment with her hands over her eyes, swaying with the impact of it. Then she ground her teeth and made her way across to the clothespress. She swept open the bottom drawer and turned out the neatly folded clothes. Down at the bottom was a cotton print dress, wrapped around a picture frame. She lifted it out and hugged it, and ran across to the window with it. She leaned far out and dropped it gently on the grass, then turned back in again.
The far wall, by the door, began to buckle high up, and suddenly there was fire up there. The corner near the ceiling toppled into the room with a crash and a cloud of white dust and greasy-looking smoke, and then the whole wall fell, not toward her, but away, so that her room now included a section of the corridor outside. As the dust settled somebody, a man, came roaring inarticulately and battering through the rubble. She could not know who it was. He apparently meant to travel the corridor whether it was all there or not, and he did, disappearing again into the inferno.
She staggered back toward the clothespress. She felt mad, drunk, crazy. Maybe it was the de-oxygenated atmosphere and maybe it was fear and reaction, but it was sort of wonderful, too; she felt her face writhing and part of her was numb with astonishment at what the rest of her was doing; she was laughing. She slammed into the clothespress, gasping for breath, filled her lungs and delivered up a shrill peal of laughter. Almost helpless from it, she fumbled down a dull satin evening gown with a long silver sash. She held it up in front of her and laughed again, doubling over it, and then straightened up, rolling the dress up into a ball as she did so. With all her might she hurled it into the rubble of the hallway. Next was a simple black dress with no back and a little bolero; with an expression on her face that can only be described as cheerful, she threw it after the evening gown. Then the blue, and the organdy with the taffeta underskirt, and the black and orange one she used to call her Hallowe’en dress; each one she dragged out, held up, and hurled: “You,” she growled between her convulsions of laughter, “you, and you, and you.” When the press was empty, she ran to the bureau and snatched open her scarf drawer, uncovering a flowerbed of dainty, filmy silk and nylon and satin shawls, scarves, and kerchiefs. She whipped out an over-sized babushka, barely heavier than the air that floated it, and ran with it to the flaming mass where her door once was. She dipped and turned like a dancer, fluttering it through flame, and when it was burning she bounced back to the bureau and put it in the drawer with the others. Fire streamed out of the drawer and she laughed and laughed.…
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