He felt odd. Free, somehow. The world seemed a brighter, wider place, filled with possibilities. For instance, what should he do with the rest of his afternoon?
Benny knew he could go see Big Sid. There was a number runner job open, and Ardelia had made it clear that Sid was interested in keeping the boy close at hand. No, that didn't feel right.
The movies? There was a double bill: Gone With the Wind playing with a Flash Gordon chapter play, he thought. The idea didn't appeal to him. But what did?
Flash Gordon. The stars. Something about the stars.
Benny turned around, heading back toward the school, thinking about the library. The library, and all of its reference books.
For some reason that he couldn't quite understand, he wanted to find the location of a star called "Sirius."
SHUFFLE
CHAPTER
36
1953
FOR MOST OF NEW YORK, life continued unabated. Shows opened and closed on Broadway, the Empire State Building continued to light up the sky at night. The Statue of Liberty stood immortal in the harbor, holding her torch high in defense of liberty. Times Square churned with life, a twenty-four hour circus, top-heavy with monkeys and clowns.
Millions of people lived their lives, loved their loves, fought their own demons, each enmeshed in his own world, his own existential dilemmas. People care as much as they can, but ultimately each of us lives, and dies, alone.
A city is a nest, a hive, millions of separate minds blended into a superbeing, larger than any one of them, and uninvolved in the lives of any one—a creature ultimately concerned only with its own existence. Those who contribute to its existence are rewarded, regardless of their morality or worth. And those who act contrary to its survival—or those who it thought, in whatever way a living city might think—act contrary to its survival are punished regardless of the righteousness of their cause.
Every living organism craves homeostasis. Upset its internal equilibrium, and it will strike back. Its weapons are many: hormones, antibodies, enzymes. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the intruder, the betrayer, the guilty cell is a phagocyte, a virus, a cancer, a germ, or a Negro man named Benny Russell.
The body must defend itself, or it will die. The body lives in fear.
Winter came to New York. Although the wind had grown cold, the first snowflakes had yet to fall. Thanksgiving came, with its happiness and family cheer, and throughout the city, an awareness that another year had been survived was summoning the traditional holiday spirit.
There are those who say (cynically, of course) that the major drive of the holiday seasons is our own memories of a time simpler by far, when we, as children, remembered being cared for, and loved. A time when there were far fewer responsibilities. A time when our parents produced food, shelter, and clothing as if by magic. In that simpler world the concept of an elf easing down our chimneys to bring gifts to the good children, and lumps of coal to the bad was somehow palatable. The fact that that idea is inextricably tied up with the subliminal notion that those who have are good and those who do not have are bad was something that rarely detracted from the enjoyment of the holidays—the idea that Santa seemed to give more to the children of the wealthy than to the poor, more to American children than to those of other nations, more to whites than to blacks … this all seemed part of a proper universal order, never really to be questioned, as if the act of questioning itself brought misery into the world.
The decorations began on Broadway, with the extravagance of Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, with giant floats and stupendous toys of every description nodding and waving to a smiling crowd, floating above and crawling below, giant, swollen slogans of consumer delight.
And little black children watched the parade, wondering: where am I?
Where am I?
And no one thought to answer that question.
No one seemed to care. Nor would they, for another entire generation. That day would come, but for now, it seemed so achingly distant, so blindingly remote that, from the vantage of the year 1953, it seemed far beyond the stars themselves.
The joys of the holiday season reached also as far as Harlem, where the irony of worshipping a white Jesus was entirely lost on the churchgoers who stood in myriad storefronts, or in the great Episcopal edifice of Saint Phillips, or the Baptist fortress of Redeemer's Blood Church of Faith. There they sang spirituals, or gospel, or hymns every bit as solemn and traditional as those sung in white communities across America. They worshipped the same God, prayed to the same angels, and dreamt of the same heaven. And if they wondered why that God might have sent His only son to the land of their oppressors, they rarely questioned it. All questions would be answered in the next life. In this realm, this vale of tears, there were challenges to faith, but that is all that they were. The faithful had to learn to absorb these challenges, and still find their way in a strange and sinful world.
The alternative was unthinkable.
And so it was that Christmas music drifted up from the street as far as Benny's apartment that day, almost a month after his savage beating.
For that time, he had tossed in nightmare and fever, he had at times screamed out to the four walls around him that something was coming, coming, but nothing came.
He screamed that it wasn't fair, that Jimmy shouldn't have been taken from the world, shouldn't have been killed without a trial, and of course he shouldn't have been, but that was merely the way things were.
The world wasn't fair. The world wasn't unfair. The world merely was, and human beings, young and old, male and female, Negro and white, merely made their way in it as best they could, and much of the strife therein came from failing to see that we were, after all, merely human, and not the angels we aspire to be.
We are people, sometimes lost in loneliness and fear, and sometimes striking out from the depths of those feelings, sometimes destroying what we fear, but often killing what we love …
Or could have loved, had we but known to open our eyes.
Moving like an old man, Benny dressed himself. Cassie watched him, not moving, not doing him the disservice of coddling him. He wouldn't want that, didn't need that. He had begun walking again only a week before, as if he had newly grown legs or recently thrown away crutches.
It was only when swollen fingers failed to meet the challenge of knotting the tie that she came to him wordlessly, and gave him the aid that he couldn't request. She whipped through a half-Windsor knot, and adjusted the tie as if she had been doing this all of her life, and then helped him on with his jacket.
He looked lumpy, somehow, as if the beating had changed his shape, rearranged the bones beneath his skin. He examined his image in a mirror, and groaned.
"I don't know. I'm not ready for this yet."
She shook her head, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I'm telling you baby," she said. "You've been cooped up in this apartment too long. Going down to the office will do you a world of good."
He sighed deeply and almost painfully. "I suppose I should be there when the first copies of the January issue are delivered."
"Absolutely," she said, and pushed as much of her high spirits to the fore as she could. "Didn't you say that the Christmas issue was special? That this was going to be the beginning of big things for you?"
He needed to hear her—or someone—say that, or things like it. He was far, far too close to the edge of his life. And the only tool she had to bring him back was love. "After all the work you did, you deserve to see your story in print," she smiled. "Just don't get too excited. I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself."
Benny smiled as if he had to pull the corners of his lips up with wires. Then the artifice melted. "I'll restrict myself to a proud grin," he said.
They kissed for a beat. Then Cassie pulled back from him, studying. "You're not having any more of those … hallucinations, are you?"
He shook his head. This had been a problem. She had told him that during fevers, he had occasionally
called out strange names, sometimes called her "Kasidy" instead of "Cassie." That he didn't seem to recognize where they were, acting as if his apartment was something called the "infirmary."
"I'm fine," he lied.
Cassie nodded her head slowly, and then let him go. Ultimately, he had to heal, or die, on his own. There was only so much that any woman's heart could do. For a woman like Cassie, that had to be the hardest lesson in the world.
They were interrupted by a tiny squeaking sound, and then the rustle of little rodent feet scampering across the floor. Benny groaned, and turned in time to see a fat gray shape disappearing into a closet.
She shuddered. "Baby, I really wish you'd get on your landlord. He needs to call the exterminator."
Benny was nodding agreement, when her last word suddenly popped back into his head. The Exterminator. Or some title very much like it. Images were suddenly flooding into his mind. "Hey," he said. "I just got an idea for another story. There's this killer robot, and maybe some time travel."
"And I suppose there's a Negro starship captain?" Cassie joked.
"No … but maybe there's a Negro scientist. Well meaning, but something goes wrong, and he almost destroys the world. An implacable, killer robot …" He mused.
"Didn't you tell me your friend Albert said robots couldn't hurt people? One of his laws or something?"
"You're right," he said, brow beetling. "All right then, it's half-robot and half human. Humans have no trouble killing each other at all."
Some of the old Benny seemed to have returned, and her heart rejoiced. She kissed him lightly. "Break a leg," she said.
"I'll be back," he replied.
The trip downtown to the Arthur Trill Building frightened Benny. He watched the people on the train, the faces growing increasingly pale as he traveled south. He knew that they wondered about him, wondered who he was and what he was doing traveling in their city, wondering what he wanted, and whether he represented a threat to them. He wondered what they would think if they knew that he was more frightened of them than they could possibly be of him.
He got off the train at the right station, and limped through the crowd, striving to ignore the pain in his hip, and the constant ringing sound in his ear. He hoped that it would eventually go away, but couldn't be sure. He couldn't be sure of anything any more.
But there was one thing that he knew, and that was that the Sisko stories were the best he had ever done, and that if people would just read them, they would make a difference. If people would just give them a chance.
He walked down the street with his mind divided, a part of him thinking about the world of his dreams, and another part keeping an eye open for the men who had nearly crippled him. What would he do if he ran into them on the street? More importantly, what would they do?
There had been no inquiry, no official or unofficial sanctions. As far as almost everyone was concerned, Benny was an uppity Negro who had interfered with police business, and gotten what he deserved. The cops had lied, and said that he fought back, that he had brandished weapons, and the other cops had winked and nodded.
If only it could have been recorded, he thought. If only someone had cared enough to make a film, certainly they would never have gotten away with something like that. Maybe in the future, every streetlight would have cameras built in, and the police would have to be more careful …
And his mind began to spin off another story, and he was happy for that, having begun to wonder if he would ever regain the facility for writing. It was unutterably satisfying to find that part of him beginning to function again.
And if it was, if that what-if spark that had sustained him through so many years had begun to work again, then why didn't he apply it to his life?
What if he and Cassie got married?
If only his stories were as popular as he knew they were capable of being, he would be able to afford to take care of her, to build a home.
Yes, a home.
And, if this goes on, he would eventually be able to let go of everything, every aspect of his past that had haunted him, and truly look forward to the future, not merely write about it.
And wouldn't that be wonderful.
By the time he had reached the Incredible Tales building, he was actually in a good mood, managing to put many of his doubts and most of his fears behind him.
He forced himself to walk up the stairs, despite the pain, knowing that the exercise would be good for him. Benny was blowing air by the time he reached the right floor.
The office door yielded to a touch, and he was happy to see that the usual gang was there in the bull pen: Albert, Kay, Julius, and Herbert, talking and rousting each other as usual. Darlene sat at her desk, typing. They looked up and around variously as Benny entered.
Herbert was first to greet him. "Hey Benny," he said. "Long time no see!"
They gathered around, congratulating him on his recovery and expressing their regret with his recent problems. Benny politely accepted their congratulations, but couldn't wait to get to the only question which really absorbed him. "Is it here?" he asked.
Julius shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "Pabst is still at the printers."
"But," Kay said enthusiastically, "we're all waiting for his return with baited breath."
Albert turned to Benny. "We heard … you know, that you were … ah …," he began vaguely searching his pockets for a match.
"We heard you got the crap beat out of you," Kay said, finishing Albert's line. Albert looked embarrassed, but nodded.
The embarrassment seemed to spread through the office. What do you say to a man who was almost killed by the very people supposedly responsible for his welfare? Benny let them off the hook, shrugging.
"I'm okay," he said, and handed Albert a lighter.
Albert took it gladly, and began to puff. "Glad to see that you're … ah … you know, up … and about," he said vaguely between draws.
Darlene looked up from her typing, her face excited. "Tell him the good news, Albert."
Albert looked genuinely abashed at this point. "It's . . . nothing really."
Kay stamped her foot in disbelief. "Albert? I don't believe you. Nothing?" she linked her arm with his. "Here's 'nothing', Benny: he sold a novel to Gnome Press."
"That's a pretty big nothing," Benny said. "Gnome Press. Congratulations! Robots?"
Albert smiled, in spite of his shyness. "What else," he said. "It's called 'Infrastructure.'" He paused. "I think that it might be the first of three volumes."
Benny slapped his friend on the back. Life was good. This was all very good. There had been pain in the past, but things were working out, and he could build on that, he could take his dreams and turn them into something more substantial.
Suddenly, with a sound like a thunderclap, the door was flung open. Pabst stood there, empty-handed, looking somehow shrunken and swollen at the same time. He stared at them all accusingly, as if their very joy was somehow an affront.
Julius was oblivious to his mood. "It's about time," he said.
Pabst didn't answer him.
"Hey, Douglas," Herbert smiled. "Where's the magazine?"
Pabst opened his hands and held them out, emphasizing their emptiness. "There is no magazine," he said. He chose his words deliberately, with the care of a biologist moving a pathogen from one petri dish to another. "Not this month, anyway. Mister Stone had the entire run pulped."
Benny was dumbstruck. He felt as if every one of those words had smashed into his chest like a wrecking ball. All of his carefully constructed fantasies just seemed to wilt. "What?" he whispered. "He can't do that?"
Pabst glared at him, but there was something unutterably sad at the very back of his eyes. Something scared and lost, immediately covered up with a patina of anger. "He can and he did," Pabst said. "He believes that this issue quote, 'did not meet our usual high standards,' unquote."
The very air in the room felt as if it was frozen. "And just what is that supposed to mean?" R
ussell asked.
"It means," Pabst said as if explaining fire to a schoolchild, "that he didn't like it."
Pabst walked heavily to the window and gazed out of it, down into the street, his hands and arms seemed to work almost independently, pouring him a cup of coffee. He seemed to want to put the whole thing behind him. "It means," he said, warming to his subject, "that the public's simply going to have to get along without Incredible Tales of Scientific Wonder this month."
The silence tore at Benny as if it would eat him alive if he didn't hear the truth. "Douglas," he said. Anger boiled in his veins like lava, "you still haven't said what he didn't like. The artwork? The layout? Exactly what 'high standards' is he talking about?" His voice was rising, and he hated the sound of it, hoped that it wouldn't break before he had a chance to get it all out.
He looked down and realized that his hands were balled into fists.
He felt a gentle touch on his arm and snapped his head around, almost not recognizing Kay. "Take it easy, Benny," she urged.
But he couldn't. This was just too much, too infuriating, was cutting too deeply into his tattered pride. He felt something breaking inside him. Not just breaking, but shattering.
He took a deep breath. "It's about my story, isn't it? That's what this is all about. He didn't want to publish my story, and we all know why." His fists drummed against his legs rhythmically, and he had a terrible, almost aching need to hit something. "It's because my hero is a colored man."
Pabst's eyes seemed to have retreated behind shells of glass. "Hey. Mister Stone owns this magazine. If he doesn't want to publish this month—we don't publish this month. End of story."
Benny felt that blackness boiling behind his eyes again. "That doesn't make it right, and you know it."
Pabst squinted. "Don't tell me what I know. Besides, it's not about what's right. It's about what is." He took a deep breath, like a man steeling himself for a mighty effort, and laid the rest of his cards on the table. "I'm afraid I have some more bad news for you, Benny. Mister Stone has decided your services are no longer required here."
Far Beyond the Stars Page 17