Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings Page 15

  “I know how you felt,” Mrs. James said. She went over and stood beside her husband’s chair. “I’m afraid we really must—”

  “And now you’ve got to drive out these people, too,” Mr. Smallwood said to his wife. “Any nice people who come to see us, with your Watkins and your money talk.”

  “No, really, it’s late,” Mrs. James said, and Mr. James added, “No, certainly not.”

  “He really did call me,” Mrs. Smallwood said. “He called me on the phone, long-distance from New York, and he said he wanted me to do their whole setup this year. He certainly did call me.”

  “One day while I was out, probably,” Mr. Smallwood said. “Watkins never talked to you since that trash you sent him three years ago.”

  “I did do some good pictures,” Mrs. Smallwood said. “I was looking for them.”

  Mr. Smallwood turned to Mr. and Mrs. James. “I feel as though I ought to apologize,” he said.

  “Not at all,” Mr. James said.

  Mrs. James added hurriedly, “If you would just show us where our coats—”

  “Don’t go,” Mrs. Smallwood said. She came over to Mrs. James and put a hand on her shoulder. “Please don’t go on account of me. I want to show you those pictures I did for Watkins. They’re really good, I promise you.”

  “You won’t be able to find them,” Mr. Smallwood said.

  “I’m afraid we haven’t time,” Mrs. James said.

  “Where did you put them?” Mrs. Smallwood asked her husband, and then, to Mrs. James, “It’s so early yet. You only just got here. Where are they?” she said to her husband insistently.

  “I’ll tell you where they are,” Mr. Smallwood said. He walked over to the table and picked up his drink, and went on, with his back to his wife. “You tore them up,” he said, “the last time we had company.”

  Six A.M. Is the Hour

  Six A.M. is an hour when dude ranch cowhands are still able to play at being real ranchers. Even the tired nags after a night in the fields are frisky, and there will be a half hour for coffee after the herd is locked in the paddock and before the earliest guest is out. But this morning the horses balked at the gate and, instead of crowding through to the feed troughs, turned, reared, and finally stood milling in obvious terror.

  Six A.M. is, too, the hour when tired jazz musicians, tired of other people’s voices and other people’s liquor, are finally able to play at being people themselves. After a night at the clubs, there is a half hour for coffee after the celebrants are sent home and the doors are closed at last.

  But this morning the sun did not rise clearly, and the early-morning passersby on the street turned apprehensively, hesitated, neglected bus schedules and trains, spoke nervously to one another, and waited.

  The front pages of the morning papers were given over, as if by common agreement, to the solemn but vague proclamation written for the President urging “every citizen to have faith.” The vague statement asserting that “the best scientists of the nation are cooperating with the Army” trailed off into a general assurance that instructions would be announced, possibly tomorrow. The radio pundits had retired, and the air sounded alternately with symphonic recordings and prayer.

  The fact that the sun did not shine was incidental, although there were those who felt that it was the main contributing factor to the air of general hysteria that was growing slowly and inexorably, in spite of the open doors of the churches, and the hymns sung on street corners by stars of stage, screen, and opera. There was a sizable portion of the population who felt that the sun’s vagueness was the beginning of the end; these people gathered on mountaintops previously decided upon, and spent the hours on their knees. There was a small select group among the panic-stricken who believed that their own personal destruction was the object of the general wholesale violence, and these few alternately repented and became brazen, depending upon whether it looked as though their own private deaths might save the rest of the country, or might only involve it in a great unending ruin.

  When the first hour of that day had passed, therefore, citizens began to watch for some sign. Apparently no one noticed that the clocks still said six o’clock. No one, that is, except Sossiter. In his luxurious midtown apartment, nothing stirred until noon. And then Sossiter awoke, looked at his watch, scratched his head, rose, dressed, and rang for his breakfast.

  That the bell should have rung at all is one of the minor miracles of that morning, when no sounds moved in an orderly fashion, when standard cause-and-effect were suspended in favor of a great, more supremely logical cause-and-effect; at any rate, when Sossiter rang, the bell also rang, and only the fact that the bell was not answered disturbed the regular routine of Sossiter’s well-paid existence. He rang again, and a third time, consulted his watch again, looked out at the sunless sky, and debated. The cigarette that he selected from the package on the dresser came to reach his hand already lighted; this he did not consciously observe. With his cigarette in his hand, he sat in the overstuffed chair in his bedroom and considered.

  How much time went by while he pondered, neither he nor his ornamental clock could say. All that is sure is that Sossiter smoked and waited. “It must have stopped,” he said. “The clock is stopped. But my watch stopped too. That is unlikely.” He was a logical man. He set himself to solving the mystery. So he went to the clock and heard it ticking. Still, it said six o’clock. It must have been some time since he had wakened. “Nevertheless,” he said, “it does move.”

  It had to move; all things moved and that was the secret of life. “Conservation of energy,” Sossiter told himself. “Admit no entities beyond necessity, all things have their opposites, a stitch in time saves nine.” He felt tremendously reassured by these incontrovertible facts, and he glanced at his watch with contempt; it must have stopped, after all. It occurred to him finally that, six o’clock or not, man must eat. Ignoring the bell, he put on a heavy figured silk dressing gown and opened his bedroom door. That, possibly, was when Sossiter first began to believe that perhaps thesis does not necessarily imply antithesis; birds of a feather, even, might not flock together. It was not even absolutely certain to Sossiter, after that first moment, that water seeks its own level. Because surely there had been a hall outside his bedroom door the night before? Surely, when he had retired with a highball and a mystery story at eleven o’clock the night before, surely there had been stairs going down to the first floor of his home? Surely, Sossiter thought, surely, without any doubt, there was something illogically, terribly wrong.

  Martians, he thought. Those crazy physicists that spend all day cooking themselves under an atomic reactor and all night writing stories for Weird World have done it. Spoiled my day completely. One of those idiots has hung the world up like a celluloid ball in an airstream. Serve him right if the moon fell in his lap. So Sossiter drew a breath, testing it. And sure enough, to his superdelicate senses the air plainly was the same he had breathed last night upon retiring. Now the problem became clear. He must find the crux of this hiatus and give the globe a shove before something slipped. “Think fast,” he said, “and don’t anybody move.”

  Move? Was movement one natural law that had been suspended for the duration of Sossiter’s supreme test? He lifted his hand tentatively, made the thought that indicated movement in the fingers, and was happy to see that where he dictated turning to the thumb, it was the ring finger that moved, in a particularly impossible gesture, and the hand itself that made the decision. This is it, then, Sossiter thought, and nodded gravely. Without any conscious weighing of his act he stepped firmly out into the infinite space that lay outside his bedroom door, and floated without fear down to the ground and the street that lay outside his house. Actually, it was not the street that lay outside his house normally; it was, to all appearances, the main street of a western ghost town; Sossiter noticed a sign saying SILVER DOLLAR SALOON, and nodded again. This is most certainly it, he thought. The Time is upon us.

  And Sossiter, leaving no foot
print in the dust, marched blithely backward until his elegant back had entered through the swinging doors. Of course, the doors did not swing. If they had, he would have known the game was up. But the doors hung dead center. “Stranger,” a voice intoned, “the game is about to start. Yer jest in time.” (Pretty shrewd, Sossiter noted.) “You may not know the rules. I cut, deal, and call. Don’t peek at the dealer. Lay yore poke out. And name yore pizen.” Sossiter seemed to shrink with the effort of his concentration.

  “I usually decline a game unless I know who I am playing against,” he said courteously, hoping to delay until he found some inkling of the rules, if any, that governed this game, if it could be called a game, when so obviously it seemed that more than Sossiter was at stake. “Would you consider telling me your names?”

  The voice that had spoken to him before made a sound of derision and said, “I cut, deal, and call; do you want to know my name too?”

  “I do indeed,” Sossiter said firmly.

  The voice laughed and said, “Thor. The gent on your right is named Loki; we don’t let him touch the cards, and you’ll soon know why, if you don’t already. The other gent is Wotan; he runs the bank in this game. If you don’t like our rules, you can quit. Anytime, anytime at all.”

  The way the voice said “anytime at all” gave Sossiter a small icy chill down his back, and he caught his breath before he could say, “Sure, buddy. Play it any way you like.” Even in his own ears the words lacked conviction, had no authentic ring at all.

  Then, cautiously, Sossiter turned to find the table, his eyes obediently lowered but high enough to see that the three figures were seated—rather, were in a seated position—around a huge spinning iron pot suspended in air. Already it was warm enough to give off a slight acrid scent. With studied nonchalance Sossiter reached for his wallet and found a fistful of cartwheels, heavy-looking but weightless. He flipped one, and the rest followed in a cascade into the pot. Loki tittered, “Now the kitty.” And a soft cry followed by the odor of burned hair issued from the pot.

  “Good, brave man,” said Thor. “But you’ll make one of us in spite of that, I trow. This is going to be a brand of poker you never knew.”

  “I’m sure,” Sossiter said fervently. “Deal, bud.” Thor looked up sharply and seemed about to speak, but thought better of it and began solemnly to deal the cards; these were as large as slabs of marble, and seemed equally heavy, although Thor dealt them effortlessly. Next to him, Loki was examining each of his cards as they came, breathing quickly and laughing in a shrill, high giggle. Sossiter turned his cards up laboriously, and then said, “How do I bet?”

  A shout of laughter from Thor and Wotan greeted him, and Loki turned slightly and giggled again. “You’ve already bet,” Thor said, laughing still. With a quick memory of the lost sun, Sossiter was silent. “Well?” Thor said sternly, eyeing him.

  Casually Sossiter indicated his cards. “Straight flush,” he said. “To the jack.”

  “Straight flush to the king,” Loki said, next to him. “In spades.” With dismay Sossiter turned and saw Loki grinning evilly at him.

  “Next bet?” Thor said. “I’m ready to deal, mortal. Bet.”

  Sossiter’s mind, which had been relied upon in crises involving billions, in solving disputes on which hung issues of war and peace, behind great public and greater private plans a thousand times—Sossiter’s massive brain seemed to rattle in his aching skull. The decision, however, came in an instant: “New York,” he drawled. “Nine million people, and a tenth of America’s wealth.” The three sneered. “Silence, vermin,” said Thor. Then courteously to Sossiter, “I’ll see you a millennium of scalding lead and raise you a comet’s tail. Call it.”

  “Right,” said Sossiter. “Chicago. Almost as big as New York, but farther west.”

  “As far as Hollywood?” asked Loki with the first real interest he had so far shown.

  “Not quite,” said Sossiter, and Loki turned away crossly. Again Thor dealt the cards, and Sossiter, looking eagerly at his, found that he had four aces; this time he returned Loki’s sneer with a sneer of his own, and casually turned his cards over. “Four aces,” he said with vast indifference.

  “Five,” said Loki.

  “Five what?” said Sossiter.

  “Five aces, mortal fool,” Loki said.

  “The mortal loses,” said Wotan.

  “Bet, mortal,” Thor said.

  This time Sossiter in his agony looked up at the place where Thor was sitting. Only the happenstance that Loki in his writhing of delight at that moment tipped a whiskey bottle into the pot, raising a bitter cloud of smoke and steam, shielded our champion and saved us all. To gain a moment, Sossiter snickered. “You guys run a cheap game. You mean there’s no piano player, no girls?”

  Thor uttered a Beelzebubbling roar. “Lunkheads! Scuttlebumpkins! Suffering sulphuroids, didn’t I tell you to have the damned minstrels on hand? Bring out a fresh stinger for our guest and a brimstone daiquiri for me. Fly!”

  “And the girls?” said Sossiter insidiously. Loki waved a hand casually, and Sossiter found a lovely girl sitting, most abruptly, in his lap; she was smiling and dark-haired and seemed most agreeable, except that she seemed to be made of white stone, probably marble, and her weight made Sossiter’s knees buckle. He slid her off, she landed on Loki’s toe, and Loki, rising with an immense shout of rage, aimed a blow at Sossiter that might have crushed him onto the floor; Sossiter ducked, the blow hit Wotan, and as Wotan, with a casual gesture of his left hand, let loose a lightning stroke at Loki, Sossiter fled. He ran, as silently as he could in his bathrobe and slippers, down the corridors of time, through the invisible barriers of space, back into his own apartment, where, sitting on his bed, he smoked a cigarette. He glanced at his watch. Six o’clock.

  He took a deep draft of the scented Turkish blend, briefly smiled at the remembrance of his days as a student at Beirut, when he smoked a true Middle East blend of camel droppings, mahorka, and goat’s hair…and rang for his breakfast. When it came, he studiously avoided looking at Thornton, the immaculate Thornton, whose clear eye and slender though aging figure was a reproach that Sossiter kept to scourge himself for his own sybaritic ways. “Thornton, get that clock fixed today, you knave. Do it, or you’ll find there’s the devil to pay.”

  “Clock, sir? The clock?” Thornton picked up the clock and examined it as though he had never seen a clock before.

  “Certainly,” said Sossiter, “the clock; what did you think I meant when I said ‘clock’? Have it fixed today.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Thornton indignantly. “What would you care to have done to it, sir?”

  “I want it fixed,” said Sossiter. “It says six o’clock.”

  “So does mine, sir,” said Thornton. “So do all of them.”

  “Is it only six o’clock, then?” Sossiter asked.

  “No, sir, no indeed,” Thornton said. “But they said on the radio that time has been suspended until the god Thor decides what to do with us. It seems he won us, sir, in an…er…a poker game.”

  Root of Evil

  Miss Sybil Turner opened the envelope and took out the enclosure, glanced at it, started to set it down on a stack of similar mail, and then took it back and glanced at it again; then she giggled. “Listen to this, Mabe,” she said, and her friend Mabel Johnson, working at an identical desk, but typing at the moment, said, “Wait a minute,” and finished her line before looking up. “What?” she said.

  Sybil was still holding the letter. “Listen,” she said. “Here’s a guy wants us to run an ad for money.”

  Mabel laughed shortly. “That’s no way to get it,” she said, looking down again at her typewriter. “Better he should go to work.”

  “No, listen. He says, ‘Money to give away’ and he’s got a post office box to write to and two dollars enclosed for the ad to run all week, and everything. Can you imagine?”

  “He must be crazy,” said Mabel Johnson.

  “Crazy it is,” Sy
bil Turner agreed devoutly.

  —

  “Here’s something funny,” Mr. George Carter commented to his wife the next evening. He had been quietly reading his evening paper and his wife was doing needlepoint; they sat peacefully in front of their living room fire, with the children soundly asleep upstairs. “Here’s a real good one,” George Carter said again, and his wife looked up patiently. “ ‘Money to give away,’ ” George Carter read, once he was sure he had her attention. “Right here in the paper. People think of the screwiest things.”

  “But so many people are taken in by a thing like that,” Ellen Carter said in her soft voice. “People writing to him, hoping.”

  “Paper has no right to print a thing like that,” George said.

  Ellen started to speak and then paused, her eyes lifted to the ceiling and her mouth open, listening. Then, reassured, she looked again at her husband and said, “Probably they run a thing like that to test how many people read the classified ads. Couldn’t that be it?”

  George was obviously sorry that he had not thought of this himself. “Maybe so,” he said grudgingly. “Wish they’d send some of that money along to us, though. We could use it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Ellen agreed with a sigh. “With prices the way they are, and meat…” She dropped her scissors onto the arm of the chair, and folded her hands in her lap, and sighed again. “George,” she demanded, as one who begins a long and intricate story, “just try to guess how much they had the nerve to charge for lamb today? Lamb!”

  “Things are pretty bad.” Mr. Carter hastily elevated the paper before his face. “Screwiest idea I ever heard,” he muttered.

  —