BANTAM BOOKS 990
Printing History:
Dutton Edition Published December, 1950
1st Printing October, 1950
Unicorn Mystery Book Club Edition Published February, 1951
Bantam Edition Published April, 1952
1st Printing March, 1952
Copyright, 1950, by Fredric Brown
ALL VERSES INTRODUCING
CHAPTERS ARE FROM THE WORKS
OF CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON,
KNOWN IN WONDERLAND AS LEWIS
CARROLL.
CHAPTER ONE
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
In my dream I was standing in the middle of Oak Street and it was dark
night. The street lights were off; only pale moonlight glinted on the huge
sword that I swung in circles about my head as the Jabberwock crept closer.
It bellied along the pavement, flexing its wings and tensing its muscles for
the final rush; its claws clicked against the stones like the clicking of
mats down the channels of a Linotype. Then, astonishingly, it spoke.
"Doc," it said. "Wake up, Doc."
A hand not the hand of a Jabberwock was shaking my shoulder.
And it was early dusk instead of black night and I was sitting in the
swivel chair at my battered desk, looking over my shoulder at Pete. Pete was
grinning at me.
"We're in, Doc," he said. "You'll have to cut two lines on this last
take and we're in. Early, for once."
He put a galley proof down in front of me, only one stick of type long.
I picked up a blue pencil and knocked off two lines and they happened to be
an even sentence, so Pete wouldn't have to reset anything.
He went over to the Linotype and shut it off and it was suddenly very
quiet in the place, so quiet that I could hear the drip of the faucet way in
the far corner.
I stood up and stretched, feeling good, although a little groggy from
having dozed off while Pete was setting that final take. For once, for one
Thursday, the Carmel City Clarion was ready for the press early. Of course,
there wasn't any real news in it, but then there never was.
And only half-past six and not yet dark outside. We were through hours
earlier than usual. I decided that that called for a drink, here and now.
The bottle in my desk turned out to have enough whisky in it for one
healthy drink or two short ones. I asked Pete if he wanted a snort and he
said no, not yet, he'd wait till he got over to Smiley's, so I treated
myself to a healthy drink, as I'd hoped to be able to do. And it had been
fairly safe to ask Pete; he seldom took one before he was through for the
day, and although my part of the job was done Pete still had almost an
hour's work ahead of him on the mechanical end.
The drink made a warm spot under my belt as I walked over to the window
by the Linotype and stood staring out into the quiet dusk. The lights of Oak
Street flashed on while I stood there. I'd been dreaming what had I been
dreaming?
On the sidewalk across the street Miles Harrison hesitated in front of
Smiley's Tavern as though the thought of a cool glass of beer tempted him. I
could almost feel his mind working: "No, I'm a deputy sheriff of Carmel
County and I have a job to do yet tonight and I don't drink while I'm on
duty. The beer can wait."
Yes, his conscience must have won, because he walked on.
I wonder now although of course I didn't wonder then whether, if he
had known that he would be dead before midnight, he wouldn't have stopped
for that beer. I think he would have. I know I would have, but that doesn't
prove anything because I'd have done it anyway; I've never had a conscience
like Miles Harrison's.
Behind me, at the stone, Pete was putting the final stick of type into
the chase of the front page. He said, "Okay, Doc, she fits. We're in."
"Let the presses roll," I told him.
Just a manner of speaking, of course. There was only one press and it
didn't roll, because it was a Miehle vertical that shuttled up and down. And
it wouldn't even do that until morning. The Clarion is a weekly paper that
comes out on Friday; we put it to bed on Thursday evening and Pete runs it
off the press Friday morning. And it's not much of a run.
Pete asked, "You going over to Smiley's?"
That was a silly question; I always go over to Smiley's on a Thursday
evening and usually, when he's finished locking up the forms, Pete joins me,
at least for a while. "Sure," I told him.
"I'll bring you a stone proof, then," Pete said.
Pete always does that, although I seldom do more than glance at it.
Pete's too good a printer for me ever to catch any important errors on him
and as for minor typographicals, Carmel City doesn't mind them.
I was free and Smiley's was waiting, but for some reason I wasn't in
any hurry to leave. It was pleasant, after the hard work of a Thursday and
don't let that short nap fool you; I had been working to stand there and
watch the quiet street in the quiet twilight, and to contemplate an
intensive campaign of doing nothing for the rest of the evening, with a few
drinks to help me do it.
Miles Harrison, a dozen paces past Smiley's, stopped, turned, and
headed back. Good, I thought, I'll have someone to drink with. I turned away
from the window and put on my suit coat and hat.
I said, "Be seeing you, Pete," and I went down the stairs and out into
the warm summer evening.
I'd misjudged Miles Harrison; he was coming out of Smiley's already,
too soon even to have had a quick one, and he was opening a pack of
cigarettes. He saw me and waved, waiting in front of Smiley's door to light
a cigarette while I crossed the street.
"Have a drink with me, Miles," I suggested.
He shook his head regretfully. "Wish I could, Doc. But I got a job to
do later. You know, go with Ralph Bonney over to Neilsville to get his pay
roll."
Sure, I knew. In a small town everybody knows everything.
Ralph Bonney owned the Bonney Fireworks Company, just outside of Carmel
City. They made fireworks, mostly big pieces for fairs and municipal
displays, that were sold all over the country. And during the few months of
each year up to about the first of July they worked a day and a night shift
to meet the Fourth of July demand.
And Ralph Bonney had something against Clyde Andrews, president of the
Carmel City Bank, and did his banking in Neilsville. He drove over to
Neilsville late every Thursday night and they opened the bank there to give
him the cash for his night shift pay roll. Miles Harrison, as deputy
sheriff, always went along as guard.
Always seemed like a silly procedure to me, as the night side pay roll
didn't amount to more than a few thousand dollars and Bonney could have got
it along with the cash for his day side pay roll and held it at the office,
but that was his way of doing things.
I said, "Sure, Miles, but that's not for hours yet. And one drink isn't
going to hurt you."
He grinned. "I know it wouldn't, but I'd probably take another just
because the first one didn't hurt me. So I stick to the rule that I don't
have even one drink till I'm off duty for the day, and if I don't stick to
it I'm sunk. But thanks just the same, Doc. I'll take a rain check."
He had a point, but I wish he hadn't made it. I wish he'd let me buy
him that drink, or several of them, because that rain check wasn't worth the
imaginary paper it was printed on to a man who was going to be murdered
before midnight.
But I didn't know that, and I didn't insist. I said, "Sure, Miles," and
asked him about his kids.
"Fine, both of 'em. Drop out and see us sometime."
"Sure," I said, and I went into Smiley's.
Big, bald Smiley Wheeler was alone. He smiled as I came in and said,
"Hi, Doc. How's the editing business?" And then he laughed as though he'd
said something excruciatingly funny. Smiley hasn't the ghost of a sense of
humor and he has the mistaken idea that he disguises that fact by laughing
at almost everything he says or hears said.
"Smiley, you give me a pain," I told him. It's always safe to tell
Smiley a truth like that; no matter how seriously you say and mean it; he
thinks you're joking. If he'd laughed I'd have told him where he gave me a
pain, but for once he didn't laugh.
He said, "Glad you got here early, Doc. It's damn dull this evening."
"It's dull every evening in Carmel City," I told him. "And most of the
time I like it. But Lord, if only something would happen just once on a
Thursday evening, I'd love it. Just once in my long career, I'd like to have
one hot story to break to a panting public."
"Hell, Doc, nobody looks for hot news in a country weekly."
"I know," I said. "That's why I'd like to fool them just once. I've
been running the Clarion twenty-three years. One hot story. Is that much to
ask?"
Smiley frowned. "There've been a couple of burglaries. And one murder,
a few years ago."
"Sure," I said, "and so what? One of the factory hands out at Bonney's
got in a drunken argument with another and hit him too hard in the fight
they got into. That's not murder; that's manslaughter, and anyway it
happened on a Saturday and it was old stuff everybody in town knew about
it by the next Friday when the Clarion came out."
"They buy your paper anyway, Doc. They look for their names for having
attended church socials and who's got a used washing machine for sale and
want a drink?"
"It's about time one of us thought of that," I said.
He poured a shot for me and, so I wouldn't have to drink alone, a short
one for himself. We drank them and I asked him, "Think Carl will be in
tonight?"
I meant Carl Trenholm, the lawyer, who's about my closest friend in
Carmel City, and one of the three or four in town who play chess and can be
drawn into an intelligent discussions of something besides crops and
politics. Carl often dropped in Smiley's on Thursday evenings, knowing that
I always came in for at least a few drinks after putting the paper to bed.
"Don't think so," Smiley said. "Carl was in most of the afternoon and
got himself kind of a snootful, to celebrate. He got through in court early
and he won his case. Guess he went home to sleep it off."
I said, "Damn. Why couldn't he have waited till this evening? I'd have
helped him Say, Smiley, did you say Carl was celebrating because he won
that case? Unless we're talking about two different things, he lost it. You
mean the Bonney divorce?"
"Yeah."
"Then Carl was representing Ralph Bonney, and Bonney's wife won the
divorce."
"You got it that way in the paper, Doc?"
"Sure," I said. "It's the nearest thing I've got to a good story this
week."
Smiley shook his head. "Carl was saying to me he hoped you wouldn't put
it in, or anyway that you'd hold it down to a short squib, just the fact
that she got the divorce."
I said, "I don't get it, Smiley. Why? And didn't Carl lose the case?"
Smiley leaned forward confidentially across the bar, although he and I
were the only ones in his place. He said, "It's like this, Doc. Bonney
wanted the divorce. That wife of his was a bitch, see? Only he didn't have
any grounds to sue on, himself not any that he'd have been willing to
bring up in court, anyway, see? So he well, kind of bought his freedom.
Gave her a settlement if she'd do the suing, and he admitted to the grounds
she gave against him. Where'd you get your version of the story?"
"From the judge," I said.
"Well, he just saw the outside of it. Carl says Bonney's a good joe and
those cruelty charges were a bunch of hokum. He never laid a hand on her.
But the woman was such hell on wheels that Bonney'd have admitted to
anything to get free of her. And give her a settlement of a hundred grand on
top of it. Carl was worried about the case because the cruelty charges were
so damn silly on the face of them."
"Hell," I said, "that's not the way it's going to sound in the
Clarion."
"Carl was saying he knew you couldn't tell the truth about the story,
but he hoped you'd play it down. Just saying Mrs. B. had been granted a
divorce and that a settlement had been made, and not putting in anything
about the charges."
I thought of my one real story of the week, and how carefully I'd
enumerated all those charges Bonney's wife bad made against him, and I
groaned at the thought of having to rewrite or cut the story. And cut it I'd
have to, now that I knew the facts.
I said, "Damn Carl, why didn't he come and tell me about it before I
wrote the story and put the paper to bed?"
"He thought about doing that, Doc. And then he decided he didn't want
to use his friendship with you to influence the way you reported news."
"The damn fool," I said. "And all he had to do was walk across the
street."
"But Carl did say that Bonney's a swell guy and it would be a bad break
for him if you listed those charges because none of them were really true
and"
"Don't rub it in," I interrupted him. "I'll change the story. If Carl
says it's that way, I'll believe him. I can't say that the charges weren't
true, but at least I can leave them out."
"That'd be swell of you, Doc."
"Sure it would. All right, give me one more drink, Smiley, and I'll go
over and catch it before Pete leaves."
I had the one more drink, cussing myself for being sap enough to spoil
the only mentionable story I had, but knowing I had to do it. I didn't know
Bonney personally, except just to say hello to on the street, but I did know
Carl Trenholm well enough to be damn sure that if he said Bonney was in the
right, the story wasn't fair the way I'd written it. And I knew Smiley well
enough to be sure he hadn't given me a bum steer on what Carl had really
said.
So I grumbled my way back across the street and upstairs to the Clarion
office. Pete was just tightening the chase around the front page.
He loosened the quoins when I told him what we had to do, and I walked
around the stone so I could read the story again, upside down, of course, as
type is always read.
The first paragraph could stand as written and could constitute the
entire story. I told Pete to put the rest of the type in the hell-box and I
went over to the case and set a short head in tenpoint, "Bonney Divorce
Granted," to replace the twenty-four point head that had been on the longer
story. I handed Pete the stick and watched while he switched heads.
"Leaves about a nine-inch hole in the page," he said. "What'll we stick
in it?"
I sighed. "Have to use filler," I told him. "Not on the front page, but
we'll have to find something on page four we can move front and then stick
in nine inches of filler where it came from."
I wandered down the stone to page four and picked up a pica stick to
measure things. Pete went over to the rack and got a galley of filler. About
the only thing that was anywhere near the right size was the story that
Clyde Andrews, Carmel City's banker and leading light of the local Baptist
Church, had given me about the rummage sale the church had planned for next
Tuesday evening.
It wasn't exactly a story of earth-shaking importance, but it would be
about the right length if we reset it indented to go in a box. And it had a
lot of names in it, and that meant it would please a lot of people, and
particularly Clyde Andrews, if I moved it up to the front page.
So we moved it. Rather, Pete reset it for a front page box item while I
plugged the gap in page four with filler items and locked up the page again.
Pete had the rummage sale item reset by the time I'd finished with page
four, and this time I waited for him to finish up page one, so we could go
to Smiley's together.
I thought about .that front page while I washed my hands. The Front
Page. Shades of Hecht and MacArthur. Poor revolving Horace Greeley.
Now I really wanted a drink.
Pete was starting to pound out a stone proof and I told him not to
bother. Maybe the customers would read page one, but I wasn't going to. And
if there was an upside-down headline or a pied paragraph, it would probably
be an improvement.
Pete washed up and we locked the door. It was still early for a
Thursday evening, not much after seven. I should have been happy about that,
and I probably would have been if we'd had a good paper. As for the one we'd
just put to bed, I wondered if it would live until morning.
Smiley had a couple of other customers and was waiting on them, and I
wasn't in any mood to wait for Smiley so I went around behind the bar and
got the Old Henderson bottle and two glasses and took them to a table for
Pete and myself. Smiley and I know one another well enough so it's always
all right for me to help myself, any time it's convenient and settle with
him afterward.
I poured drinks for Pete and me. We drank and Pete said, "Well, that's
that for another week, Doc."
I wondered how many times he'd said that in the ten years he'd worked
for me, and then I got to wondering how many times I'd thought it, which
would be
"How much is fifty-two times twenty-three, Pete?" I asked him.
"Huh? A hell of a lot. Why?"
I figured it myself. "Fifty times twenty-three is one thousand one
hundred and fifty; twice twenty-three more makes eleven ninety-six. Pete,
eleven hundred and ninety six times have I put that paper to bed on a
Thursday night and never once was there a really big hot news story in it."
"This isn't Chicago, Doe. What do you expect, a murder?"
"I'd love a murder," I told him.
It would have been funny if Pete had said, "Doc, how'd you like three
in one night?"
But he didn't, of course. In a way, though, he said something that was
even funnier. He said, "But suppose it was a friend of yours? Your best
friend, say. Carl Trenholm. Would you want him killed just to give the
Clarion a story?"
"Of course not," I said. "Preferably somebody I don't know at all if
there is anybody in Carmel City I don't know at all. Let's make it Yehudi."
"Who's Yehudi?" Pete asked.
I looked at Pete to see if he was kidding me, and apparently he wasn't,
so I explained: "The little man who wasn't there. Don't you remember the
rhyme?
I saw a man upon the stair,
A little man who was not there.
He was not there again today;
Gee, I wish he'd go away."
Pete laughed. "Doc, you get crazier every day. Is that Alice in
Wonderland, too, like all the other stuff you quote when you get drinking?"
"This time, no. But who says I quote Lewis Carroll only when I'm
drinking? I can quote him now, and I've hardly started drinking for tonight
why, as the Red Queen said to Alice, `One has to do this much drinking to
stay in the same place.' But listen and I'll quote you something that's
really something:
`Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe"
Pete stood up. "Jabberwocky, from Alice Through the Looking-Glass," he
said. "If you've recited that to me once, Doc, it's been a hundred times. I
damn near know it myself. But I got to go, Doc. Thanks for the drink."
"Okay, Pete, but don't forget one thing."
"What's that?"
I said:
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird and shun
The frumious"
Smiley was calling to me, "Hey, Doc!" from over beside
the telephone and I remembered now that I'd heard it ring half a minute
before. Smiley yelled, "Telephone for you, Doc," and laughed as though that
was the funniest thing that had happened in a long time.
I stood up and started for the phone, telling Pete good night en route.
I picked up the phone and said "Hello" to it and it said "Hello" back
at me. Then it said, "Doc?" and I said, "Yes."
Then it said, "Clyde Andrews speaking, Doc." His voice sounded quite
calm. "This is murder."
Pete must be almost to the door by now; that was my first thought. I
said, "Just a second, Clyde," and then jammed my hand over the mouthpiece
while I yelled, "Hey, Pete!"
He was at the door; but he turned.
"Don't go," I yelled at him, the length of the bar. "There's a murder
story breaking. We got to remake!"
I could feel the sudden silence in Smiley's Bar. The conversation
between the two other customers stopped in the middle of a word and they
turned to look at me. Pete, from the door, looked at me. Smiley, a bottle in
his hand, turned to look at me and he didn't even smile. In fact, just as
I turned back to the phone, the bottle dropped out of his hand and hit the
floor with a noise that made me jump and close my mouth quickly to keep my
heart from jumping from it. That bottle crashing on the floor had sounded
for a second just like a revolver shot.
I waited until I felt that I could talk again without stammering and
then I took my hand off the mouthpiece of the phone and said calmly, or
almost calmly, "Okay, Clyde, go ahead."
CHAPTER TWO
"Who are you, aged man?" I said.
"And how is it you live?"
His answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.
"You've gone to press, haven't you, Doc?" Clyde's voice said. "You must
have because I tried phoning you at the office first and then somebody told
me if you weren't there, you'd be at Smiley's, but that'd mean you were
through for the"
"That's all right," I said. "Get on with it."
"I know it's murder, Doc, to ask you to change a story when you've
already got the paper ready to run and have left the office, but well,
that rummage sale we were going to have Tuesday; it's been called off. Can
you still kill the article? Otherwise a lot of people will read about it and
come around to the church Tuesday night and be disappointed."
"Sure, Clyde," I said. "I'll take care of it."
I hung up. I went over to the table and sat down. I poured myself a
drink of whisky and when Pete came over I poured him one.
He asked me what the call had been and I told him.
Smiley and his two other customers were still staring at me, but I
didn't say anything until Smiley called out, "What happened, Doc? Didn't you
say something about a murder?"
I said, "I was just kidding, Smiley." He laughed.
I drank my drink and Pete drank his: He said, "I knew there was a catch
about getting through early tonight. Now we got a nine-inch hole in the
front page all over again. What are we going to put in it?"
"Damned if I know," I told him. "But the hell with it for tonight. I'll
get down when you do in the morning and figure something out then."
Pete said, "That's what you say now, Doc. But if you don't get down at
eight o'clock, what'll I do with that hole in the page?"
"Your lack of faith horrifies me, Pete. If I say I'll be down in the
morning, I will be. Probably."
"But if you're not?"
I sighed. "Do anything you want." I knew Pete would fix it up somehow
if I didn't get down. He'd drag something from a back page and plug the back
page with filler items or a subscription ad. It was going to be lousy
because we had one sub ad in already and too damn much filler; you know,
those little items that tell you the number of board feet in a sequoia and
the current rate of mullet manufacture in the Euphrates valley. All right in
small doses, but when you run the stuff by the column
Pete said he'd better go, and this time he did. I watched him go,
envying him a little. Pete Corey is a good printer and I pay him just about
what I make myself. We put in about the same number of hours, but I'm the
one who has to worry whenever there's any worrying to be done, which is most
of the time.
Smiley's other customers left, just after Pete, and I didn't want to
sit alone at the table, so I took my bottle over to the bar.
"Smiley," I said, "do you want to buy a paper?"
"Huh?" Then he laughed. "You're kidding me, Doc. It isn't off the press
till tomorrow noon, is it?"
"It isn't," I told him. "But it'll be well worth waiting for this week.
Watch for it, Smiley. But that isn't what I meant."
"Huh? Oh, you mean do I want to buy the paper. I don't think so, Doc. I
don't think I'd be very good at running a paper. I can't spell very good,
for one thing. But look, you were telling me the other night Clyde Andrews
wanted to buy it from you. Whyn't you sell it to him, if you want to sell
it?"
"Who the devil said I wanted to sell it?" I asked him. "I just asked if
you wanted to buy it."
Smiley looked baffled.
"Doc," he said, "I never know whether you're serious or not. Seriously,
do you really want to sell out?"
I'd been wondering that. I said slowly, "I don't know, Smiley. Right
now, I'd be damn tempted. I think I hate to quit mostly because before I do
I'd like to get out one good issue. Just one good issue out of twenty-three
years."
"If you sold it, what'd you do?"
"I guess, Smiley, I'd spend the rest of my life not editing a
newspaper."
Smiley decided I was being funny again, and laughed.
The door opened and Al Grainger came in. I waved the bottle at him and
he came down the bar to where I was standing, and Smiley got another glass
and a chaser of water; Al always needs a chaser.
Al Grainger is just a young squirt twenty-two or -three but he's
one of the few chess players in town and one of the even fewer people who
understand my enthusiasm for Lewis Carroll. Besides that, he's by way of
being a Mystery Man in Carmel City. Not that you have to be very mysterious
to achieve that distinction.
He said, "Hi, Doc. When are we going to have another game of chess?"
"No time like the present, Al. Here and now?"
Smiley kept chessmen on hand for screwy customers like Al Grainger and
Carl Trenholm and myself. He'd bring them out, always handling them as
though he expected them to explode in his hands, whenever we asked for them.
Al shook his head. "Wish I had time. Got to go home and do some work."
I poured whisky in his glass and spilled a little trying to fill it to
the brim. He shook his head slowly. "The White Knight is sliding down the
poker," he said. "He balances very badly."
"I'm only in the second square," I told him. "But the next move will be
a good one. I go to the fourth by train, remember."
"Don't keep it waiting, Doc. The smoke alone is worth a thousand pounds
a puff."
Smiley was looking from me of us to the other. "What the hell are you
guys talking about?" he wanted to know.
There wasn't any use trying to explain. I leveled my finger at him. I
said, "Crawling at your feet you may observe a bread-and-butter fly. Its
wings are thin slices of bread-and-butter, its body a crust and its head is
a lump of sugar. And it lives on weak tea with cream in it."
Al said, "Smiley, you're supposed to ask him what happens if it can't
find any."
I said, "Then I say it would die of course and you say that must happen
very often and I say it always happens."
Smiley looked at us again and shook his head slowly. He said, "You guys
are really nuts." He walked down the bar to wash and wipe some glasses.
Al Grainger grinned at me. "What are your plans for tonight, Doc?" he
asked. "I just might possibly be able to sneak in a game or two of chess
later. You going to be home, and up?"
I nodded. "I was just working myself up to the idea of walking home,
and when I get there I'm going to read. And have another drink or two. If
you get there before midnight I'll still be sober enough to play. Sober
enough to beat a young punk like you, anyway."
It was all right to say that last part because it was so obviously
untrue. Al had been beating me two games out of three for the last year or
so.
He chuckled, and quoted at me:
" `You are old, Father William,' the young man said,
`And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Do you think, at your age, it is right?' "
Well, since Carroll had the answer to that, so did I:
" `In my youth,' Father William replied to his son,
`I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.' "
Al said, "Maybe you got something there, Doc. But let's quit
alternating verses on that before you get to `Be off, or I'll kick you
down-stairs!' Because I got to be off anyway."
"One more drink?"
"I think not, not till I'm through working. You can drink and think
too. Hope I can do the same thing when I'm your age. I'll try my best to get
to your place for some chess, but don't look for me unless I'm there by ten
o'clock half past at the latest. And thanks for the drink."
He went out and, through Smiley's window, I could see him getting into
his shiny convertible. He blew the Klaxon and waved back at me as he pulled
out from the curb.
I looked at myself in the mirror back of Smiley's bar and wondered how
old Al Grainger thought I was. "Hope I can do the same thing when I'm your
age," indeed. Sounded as though he thought I was eighty, at least. I'll be
fifty-three my next birthday.
But I had to admit that I looked that old, and that my hair was turning
white. I watched myself in the mirror and that whiteness scared me just a
little. No, I wasn't old yet, but I was getting that way. And, much as I
crab about it, I like living. I don't want to get old and I don't want to
die. Especially as I can't look forward, as a good many of my fellow
townsmen do, to an eternity of harp playing and picking bird-lice out of my
wings. Nor, for that matter, an eternity of shoveling coal, although that
would probably be the more likely of the two in my case.
Smiley came back. He jerked his finger at the door. "I don't like that
guy, Doc," he said.
"Al? He's all right. A little wet behind the ears, maybe. You're just
prejudiced because you don't know where his money comes from. Maybe he's got
a printing press and makes it himself. Come to think of it, I've got a
printing press. Maybe I should try that myself."
"Hell, it ain't that, Doc. It's not my business how a guy earns his
money or where he gets it if he don't earn it. It's the way he talks. You
talk crazy, too, but well, you do it in a nice way. When he says something
to me I don't understand he says it in a way that makes me feel like a
stupid bastard. Maybe I am one, but"
I felt suddenly ashamed of all the things I'd ever said to Smiley that
I knew he wouldn't understand.
I said, "It's not a matter of intelligence, Smiley. It's merely a
matter of literary background. Have one drink with me, and then I'd better
go."
I poured him a drink and this time a small one for myself. I was
beginning to feel the effects, and I didn't want to get too drunk to give Al
Grainger a good game of chess if he dropped in.
I said, for no reason at all, "You're a good guy, Smiley," and he
laughed and said, "So are you, Doc. Literary background or not, you're a
little crazy, but you're a good guy."
And then, because we were both embarrassed at having caught ourselves
saying things like that, I found myself staring past Smiley at the calendar
over the bar. It had the usual kind of picture one sees on barroom calendars
an almost too voluptuous naked woman and it was imprinted by Beal
Brothers Store.
It was just a bit of bother to keep my eyes focused on it, I noticed,
although I hadn't had enough to drink to affect my mind at all. Right then,
for instance, I was thinking of two things at one and the same time. Part of
my brain, to my disgust, persisted in wondering if I could get Beal Brothers
to start running a quarter page ad instead of an eighth page; I tried to
squelch the thought by telling myself that I didn't care, tonight, whether
anybody advertised in the Clarion at all, and that part of my brain went on
to ask me why, damn it, if I felt that way about it, I didn't get out from
under while I had the chance by selling the Clarion to Clyde Andrews. But
the other part of my mind kept getting more and more annoyed by the picture
on the calendar, and I said, "Smiley, you ought to take down that calendar.
It's a lie. There aren't any women like that."
He turned around and looked at it. "Guess you're right, Doc; there
aren't any women like that. But a guy can dream, can't he?"
"Smiley," I said, "if that's not the first profound thing you've said,
it's the most profound. You are right, moreover. You have my full permission
to leave the calendar up."
He laughed and moved along the bar to finish wiping glasses, and I
stood there and wondered why I didn't go on home. It was still early, a few
minutes before eight o'clock. I didn't want another drink, yet. But by the
time I got home, I would want one.
So I got out my wallet and called Smiley back. We estimated how many
drinks I'd poured out of the bottle and I settled for them, and then I
bought another bottle, a full quart, and he wrapped it for me.
I went out with it under my arm and said "So long, Smiley," and he said
"So long, Doc," just as casually as though, before the gibbering night that
hadn't started yet was over, he and I would not but let's take things as
they happened.
The walk home.
I had to go past the post office anyway, so I stopped in. The mail
windows were closed, of course, but the outer lobby is always left open
evenings so those who have post office boxes can get mail out of them.
I got my mail there wasn't anything important in it and then
stopped, as I usually do, by the bulletin board to look over the notices and
the wanted circulars that were posted there.
There were a couple of new ones and I read them and studied the
pictures. I've got a good memory for faces, even ones I've just seen
pictures of, and I'd always hoped that some day I'd spot a wanted criminal
in Carmel City and get a story out of it, if not a reward.
A few doors farther on I passed the bank and that reminded me about its
president, Clyde Andrews, and his wanting to buy the paper from me. He
didn't want to run it himself, of course; he had a brother somewhere in Ohio
who'd had newspaper experience and who would run the paper for Andrews if I
sold it to him.
The thing I liked least about the idea, I decided, was that Andrews was
in politics and, if he controlled the Clarion, the Clarion would back his
party. The way I ran it, it threw mud at both factions when they deserved
it, which was often, and handed either one an occasional bouquet when
deserved, which was seldom. Maybe I'm crazy other people than Smiley and
Al have said so but that's the way I think a newspaper should be run, and
especially when it's the only paper in a town.
It's not, I might mention, the best way to make money. It had made me
plenty of friends and subscribers, but a newspaper doesn't make money from
its subscribers. It makes money from advertisers and most of the men in town
big enough to be advertisers had fingers in politics and no matter which
party I slammed I was likely to lose another advertising account.
I'm afraid that policy didn't help my news coverage, either. The best
source of news is the sheriff's department and, at the moment, Sheriff
Rance Kates was just about my worst enemy. Kates is honest, but he is also
stupid, rude and full of race prejudice; and race prejudice, although it's
not a burning issue in Carmel City, is one of my pet peeves. I hadn't pulled
any punches in my editorials about Kates, either before or after his
election. He got into office only because his opponent who wasn't any
intellectual heavyweight either had got into a tavern brawl in Neilsville
a week before election and was arrested there and charged with assault and
battery. The Clarion had reported that, too, so the Clarion was probably
responsible for Rance Kates' being elected sheriff. But Rance remembered
only the things I'd said about him, and barely spoke to me on the street.
Which, I might add, didn't concern me the slightest bit personally, but it
forced me to get all of my police news, such as it is, the hard way.
Past the supermarket and Beal Brothers and past Deak's Music Store
where I'd once bought a violin but had forgotten to get a set of
instructions with it and the corner and across the street.
The walk home.
Maybe I weaved just a little, for at just that stage I'm never quite as
sober as I am later on. But my mind ah, it was in that delightful state of
being crystal clear in the center and fuzzy around the edges, the state that
every moderate drinker knows but can't explain or define, the state that
makes even a Carmel City seem delightful and such things as its squalid
politics amusing.
Past the comer drugstore Pop Hinkle's place where I used to drink
sodas when I was a kid, before I went away to college and made the big
mistake of studying journalism. Past Gorham's Feed Store, where I'd worked
vacations while I was in high school. Past the Bijou Theater. Past Hank
Greeber's Undertaking Parlors, through which both of my parents had passed,
fifteen and twenty years ago.
Around the corner at the courthouse, where a light was still on in
Sheriff Kates' office and I felt so cheerful that, for a thousand dollars
or so, I'd have stopped in to talk to him. But no one was around to offer me
a thousand dollars.
Out of the store district now, past the house in which Elsie Minton had
lived and in which she had died while we were engaged, twenty-five years
ago.
Past the house Elmer Conklin had lived in when I'd bought the Clarion
from him. Past the church where I'd been sent to Sunday School when I was a
kid, and where I'd once won a prize for memorizing verses of the Bible.
Past my past, and walking, slightly weaving, toward the house in which
I'd been conceived and born.
No, I hadn't lived there fifty-three years. My parents had sold it and
had moved to a bigger house when I was nine and when my sister now married
and living in Florida had been born. I'd bought it back twelve years ago
when it happened to be vacant and on the market at a good price. It's only a
three-room cottage, not too big for a man to live in alone, if he likes to
live alone, and I do.
Oh, I like people, too. I like someone to drop in for conversation or
chess or a drink or all three. I like to spend an hour or two in Smiley's,
or any other tavern, a few times a week. I like an occasional poker game.
But I'll settle, on any given evening, for my books. Two walls of my
living room are lined with them and they overflow into bookcases in my
bedroom and I even have a shelf of them in the bathroom. What do I mean,
even? I think a bathroom without a bookshelf is as incomplete as would be
one without a toilet.
And they're good books, too. No, I wouldn't be lonely tonight, even if
Al Grainger didn't come around for that game of chess. How could I be
lonesome with a bottle in my pocket and good company waiting for me? Why,
reading a book is almost as good as listening to the man who wrote it
talking to you. Better, in one way, because you don't have to be polite to
him. You can shut him up any moment you feel so inclined and pick someone
else instead. And you can take off your shoes and put your feet on the
table. You can drink and read until you forget everything but what you're
reading; you can forget who you are and the fact that there's a newspaper
that hangs around your neck like a millstone, all day and every day, until
you get home to sanctuary and forgetfulness.
The walk home.
And so to the corner of Campbell Street and my turning.
A June evening, but cool, and the night air had almost completely
sobered me in the nine blocks I'd walked from Smiley's.
My turning, and I saw that the light was on in the front room of my
house. I started walking a little faster, mildly puzzled. I knew I hadn't
left it on when I'd left for the office that morning. And if I had left it
on, Mrs. Carr, the cleaning woman who comes in for about two hours every
afternoon to keep my place in order, would have turned it off.
Maybe, I thought, Al Grainger had finished whatever he was doing and
had come early and had but no, Al wouldn't have come without his car and
there wasn't any car parked in front.
It might have been a mystery, but it wasn't.
Mrs. Carr was there, putting on her hat in front of the panel mirror in
the closet door as I went in.
She said, "I'm just leaving, Mr. Stoeger. I wasn't able to get here
this afternoon, so I came to clean up this evening instead; I just
finished."
"Fine," I said. "By the way, there's a blizzard out."
"A what?"
"Blizzard. Snowstorm." I held up the wrapped bottle. "So maybe you'd
better have a little nip with me before you start home, don't you think?"
She laughed. "Thanks, Mr. Stoeger. I will. I've had a pretty rough day,
and it sounds like a good idea. I'll get glasses for us."
I put my hat in the closet and followed her out into the kitchen.
"A rough day?" I asked her. "I hope nothing went wrong."
"Well nothing too serious. My husband he works, you know, out at
Bonney's fireworks factory got burned in a little accident they had out
there this afternoon, and they brought him home. It's nothing serious, a
second degree burn the doctor said, but it was pretty painful and I thought
I'd better stay with him until after supper, and then he finally got to
sleep so I ran over here and I'm afraid I straightened up your place pretty
fast and didn't do a very good job."
"Looks spotless to me," I said. I'd been opening the bottle while she'd
been getting glasses for us. "I hope he'll be all right, Mrs. Carr. But if
you want to skip coming here for a while"
"Oh, no, I can still come. He'll be home only a few days, and it was
just that today they brought him home at two o'clock, just when I was
getting ready to come here and That's plenty, thanks."
We touched glasses and I downed mine while she drank about half of
hers. She said, "Oh, there was a phone call for you, about an hour ago. A
little while after I got here."
"Find out who it was?"
"He wouldn't tell me, just said it wasn't important."
I shook my head sadly. "That, Mrs. Carr, is one of the major fallacies
of the human mind. The idea, I mean, that things can be arbitrarily divided
into the important and the unimportant. How can anyone decide whether a
given fact is important or not unless one knows everything about it; and no
one knows everything about anything."
She smiled, but a bit vaguely, and I decided to bring it down to earth.
I said, "What would you say is important, Mrs. Carr?"
She put her head on one side and considered it seriously. "Well, work
is important, isn't it?"
"It is not," I told her. "I'm afraid you score zero. Work is only a
means to an end. We work in order to enable ourselves to do the important
things, which are the things we want to do. Doing what we want to do
that's what's important, if anything is."
"That sounds like a funny way of putting it, but maybe you're right.
Well, anyway, this man who called said he'd either call again or come
around. I told him you probably wouldn't be home until eight or nine
o'clock."
She finished her drink and declined an encore. I walked to the front
door with her, saying that I'd have been glad to drive her home but that my
car had two flat tires. I'd discovered them that morning when I'd started to
drive to work. One I might have stopped to fix, but two discouraged me; I
decided to leave the car in the garage until Saturday afternoon, when I'd
have lots of time. And then, too, I know that I should get the exercise of
walking to and from work every day, but as long as my car is in running
condition, I don't. For Mrs. Carr's sake, though, I wished now that I'd
fixed the tires.
She said, "It's only a few blocks, Mr. Stoeger. I wouldn't think of
letting you, even if your car was working. Good night."
"Oh, just a minute, Mrs. Carr. What department at Bonney's does your
husband work in?"
"The Roman candle department."
It made me forget, for the moment, what I'd been leading up to. I said,
"The Roman candle department! That's a wonderful phrase; I love it. If I
sell the paper, darned if I don't look up Bonney the very next day. I'd love
to work in the Roman candle department. Your husband is a lucky man."
"You're joking, Mr. Stoeger. But are you really thinking of selling the
paper?"
"Well thinking of it." And that reminded me. "I didn't get any story
on the accident at Bonney's, didn't even hear about it. And I'm badly in
need of a story for the front page. Do you know the details of what
happened? Anyone else hurt?"
She'd been part way across the front porch, but she turned and came
back nearer the door. She said, "Oh, please don't put it in the paper. It
wasn't anything important; my husband was the only one hurt and it was his
own fault, he says. And Mr. Bonney wouldn't like it being in the paper; he
has enough trouble now getting as many people as he needs for the rush
season before the Fourth, and so many people are afraid to work around
powder and explosives anyway. George will probably be fired if it gets
written up in the paper and he needs the work."
I sighed; it had been an idea while it lasted. I assured her that I
wouldn't print anything about it. And if George Carr had been the only one
hurt and I didn't have any details, it wouldn't have made over a one-inch
item anyway.
I would have loved, though, to get that beautiful phrase, "the Roman
candle department," into print.
I went back inside and closed the door. I made myself comfortable by
taking off my suit coat and loosening my tie, and then I got the whisky
bottle and my glass and put them on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
I didn't take the tie off yet, nor my shoes; it's nicer to do those
things one at a time as you gradually get more and more comfortable.
I picked out a few books and put them within easy reach,. poured myself
a drink, sat down, and opened one of the books.
The doorbell rang.
Al Grainger had come early, I thought. I went to the door and opened
it. There was a man standing there, just lifting his hand to ring again. But
it wasn't Al; it was a man I'd never seen before.