In the
bedroom Miss Reiss sat, her hands folded in her lap, her coat, hat, and purse
beside her. “I told him not to,” she said quietly to Hamilton. She
had taken off
her horn-rimmed glasses; they
rested loosely between her
fingers. Her eyes, exposed, were pale and
weak, almost colorless. “That’s not the way to do it”
“Then it was
planned?”
“Of
course. Arthur, the boy, and myself. We met today. That’s all we can count on.
We were afraid to
approach you, because of
your wife.”
“You
can count on me,” Hamilton said.
From her
purse, Miss Reiss took a small bottle and laid it on the bed beside her.
“We’re going to put her to
sleep,”
she said tonelessly. “She’s old and worn-out.”
Sweeping
up the bottle, Hamilton held it to the light. It was a liquid preparation of
chloroform, used in bio
logical specimen
fixing. “But this’ll kill her.”
“No, it won’t.”
David, the
boy, appeared anxiously in the doorway.
“You
better come back—Mother’s getting fretful.”
Rising to her feet, Miss Reiss took back the bottle and
stuffed it in her purse. “I’m all right, now. It was
the sudden shock. He had promised not to do it
…
but
these old soldiers—”
“I’ll do the job,” Hamilton told her.
“Why?”
“I don’t want you to kill her. And I know you will.”
For a
moment they faced each other. Then, with a brief, impatient twitch, Miss Reiss
fished out the bottle and pushed it in his hands. “Do a good job, then.
And do it tonight.”
“No.
Sometime tomorrow. I’ll get her outdoors—on a
picnic.
We’ll take her up into the mountains, early in the
day. As soon as it’s
light”
“Don’t
get frightened and back out”
“I
won’t,” he said, pocketing the bottle.
He meant
it.
XII
OCTOBER
sunlight hung cold and sparkling. A faint trace
of frost still lay over the lawns; it
was early morning and
the town of Belmont
steamed quietly in a dull cloud of
blue-white
mist. Along the highway, a steady stream of
cars moved up the peninsula
toward San Francisco,
bumper-to-bumper.
“Oh
dear,” Mrs. Pritchet said, distressed. “All that
traffic.”
“We
won’t be taking that rout,” Hamilton told her, as he turned the Ford
coupe
from Bayshore Freeway,
onto
a side road. “We’re going down toward Los Gatos.”
“And
then what?” Mrs. Pritchet asked, with avid, almost childish expectancy.
“Goodness, I’ve never been over
that
way.”
“Then all the way to the ocean,” Marsha said, flushed
with excitement “We’re going to drive down Highway
One, the coast highway, down to Big Sur.”
“Where’s that?” Mrs. Pritchet asked doubtfully.
“That’s
in the Santa Lucia Mountains, just below Monterey. It won’t take too long and
it’s a lovely place
for a picnic.”
“Fine,” Mrs. Pritchet agreed, settling back against the car
seat and folding her hands in her lap. “It certainly is
sweet of you to suggest a picnic.”
“Not at all,” Hamilton said, giving the
coupe
a vicious
spurt of gas.
“I
don’t see what’s wrong with Golden Gate Park,”
McFeyffe said suspiciously.
“Too
many people,” Miss Reiss said logically. “Big
Sur is part of a Federal Preserve. It’s still wild.”
Mrs. Pritchet looked apprehensive. “Will we be safe?”
“Absolutely,” Miss Reiss assured her. “Nothing will go
wrong.”
“Shouldn’t you be at work, Mr. Hamilton?” Mrs.
Pritchet asked. “This isn’t a
holiday, is it? Mr. Laws is
at work”
“I took the morning off,” Hamilton said sardonically.
“So I could pilot you
around.”
“Why, how sweet,” Mrs. Pritchet exclaimed, her pulpy
hands fluttering on her lap.
Puffing moodily on his cigar, McFeyffe said, “What’s
going on, Hamilton? Are you trying to put something
over on somebody?” A tendril of sickening
cigar smoke
drifted to the back seat
where Mrs. Pritchet sat Frown
ing,
she abolished cigars. McFeyffe found himself clutch
ing empty air; for
an instant his face turned beet-red,
then,
gradually, the color faded. “Uh,” he muttered.
“What were you saying?” Mrs. Pritchet urged.
McFeyffe failed to answer; he was clumsily searching
his pockets, hoping that by some
miracle one cigar had
been
overlooked.
“Mrs. Pritchet,” Hamilton said casually, “has it ever
occurred to you that the Irish have
made no contribution
to culture? There are no Irish
painters, no Irish musi
cians—”
“Jesus God,” McFeyffe
said, stricken.
“No musicians?” Mrs.
Pritchet asked, in surprise. “Dear, dear, is that so? No, I hadn’t
realized that.”
“The
Irish are a barbaric race,” Hamilton continued,
with sadistic pleasure. “All they do is—”
“George
Bernard Shaw!” McFeyffe howled fearfully. “The greatest playwright in
the world! William Butler
Yeats, the
greatest poet. James Joyce, the—” He broke off
quickly. “Also a poet.”
“Author
of
Ulysses,”
Hamilton added. “Banned for
years because of its lewd and vulgar
passages.”
“It’s great art,” McFeyffe croaked.
Mrs. Pritchet reflected. “Yes,” she agreed finally, her
decision made. “That judge decided it was art. No, Mr.
Hamilton, I think you’re quite wrong. The Irish have been very talented in the
theater and in poetry.”
“Swift,”
McFeyffe whispered encouragingly. “Wrote
Gulliver’s Travels.
Sensational
work.”
“All right,” Hamilton agreed amiably. “I lose.”
Almost unconscious with terror, McFeyffe lay gasping
and perspiring, his face a mottled gray.
“How could you?” Marsha said accusingly, lips close
to her husband’s ear. “You—beast”
Amused, Miss Reiss contemplated Hamilton with new respect “You
came close.”
“As
close as I wanted to,” Hamilton answered, a little
shocked at himself, now that he thought it over. “Sorry,
Charley.”
“Forget it,” McFeyffe muttered hoarsely.
To the
right of the road lay an expanse of barren
fields.
As he drove, Hamilton searched his mind; hadn’t something been here? Finally,
after considerable effort,
he recalled. This was supposed to be a
roaring, ham
mering industrial section of
factories and refining plants.
Ink, tallow, chemicals, plastics, lumber
… now it was
gone. Only the open
countryside remained.
“I was by here once before,” Mrs. Pritchet said, seeing
the expression on his face. “I
abolished all those things.
Nasty, bad-smelling, noisy places.”
“Then
there aren’t any more factories?” Hamilton inquired. “Bill Laws must
feel disappointed, without his
soap
works.”
I left soap plants,” Mrs. Pritchet said sanctimoniously.
“The ones that smell nice, at least.”
In a kind of depraved way, Hamilton was almost be
ginning to enjoy himself. It was so
completely faulty, so
ramshackle and
precarious. With a wave of her hand, Mrs. Pritchet wiped out whole industrial
regions, the world over. Surely this fantasy couldn’t last. Its basic
substructure was breaking down, crumbling away.
No
body was born, nothing was manufactured … entire
vital categories simply didn’t exist. Sex and
procreation
were a morbid condition,
known only to the medical pro
fession. This fantasy, of its own innate
logic, was tum
bling.
That gave him an idea. Perhaps he was tugging at the
wrong end. Perhaps there was a quicker, easier way to pull
the fur off the cat.
Only,
there weren’t any cats. At memory of Ninny Numbcat a miserable, baffled fury
rose up and choked him. Because the tomcat had accidentally strolled in her way
… but, at least, cats existed back in the real
world. Arthur Silvester, Ninny Numbcat, gnats, ink
factories, and Russia, still muddled on in the
real world.
He felt cheered.
Ninny
wouldn’t have liked it here, anyhow. Mice and flies and gophers had already
been eliminated. And, in
this distorted
existence, there wasn’t any back-fence car
nality.
“Look,” Hamilton said, as an initial experiment. They had
entered a run-down slum highway town. Pool halls,
shoeshine parlors, slatternly hotels.
“A disgrace,” he de
clared. “I’m outraged.”
Pools
halls, shoeshine parlors, and slatternly hotels ceased to exist. All over the
world, more blank spaces opened up in the fabric of reality.
“That’s
better,” Marsha said, a trifle uneasily. “But Jack, maybe it would be
better if—I mean, let Mrs.
Pritchet decide
for herself.”
“I’m
trying to help,” Hamilton said genially. “After all, I’m helping to
bring culture to the masses, too.”
Miss Reiss was not long in catching on. “Look at that
policeman,” she observed. “Giving that poor
motorist a ticket. How can he do such a thing?”
“I pity that motorist,” Hamilton agreed heartily. “Fall
ing into the clutches of that beefy
savage. Probably an
other
Irishman. They’re all that way.”
“He
looks more like an Italian to me,” Mrs. Pritchet
said critically. “But don’t the police do good, Mr. Hamil
ton? It was always my impression—”
“The police, yes,” Hamilton agreed. “But not the traf
fic cops. That’s different.”
“Oh,”
Mrs. Pritchet said, nodding. “I understand.” Traffic cops, including
the one on their left, ceased to
exist
Everybody, except McFeyffe, breathed more easily.
“Don’t blame me,” Hamilton said. “Blame Miss
Reiss.”
“Let’s abolish Miss Reiss,” McFeyffe said sullenly.
“Now,
Charley,” Hamilton said, grinning. “That isn’t a proper humanistic
spirit”
“Yes,” Mrs. Pritchet agreed severely. “I’m surprised at
you, Mr. McFeyffe.”
Lapsing into smoldering withdrawal, McFeyffe turned
to glare out the car window. “Somebody ought to get
rid of those marshes,” he announced. ‘They smell to
high heaven.”
The mud
flats ceased to smell. In fact, there were no
longer
any mud flats there. Instead, a kind of vague de
pression hung along the
edge of the road. Peering at it, Hamilton wondered how far down it went.
Probably not more than a few yards … the mud flats hadn’t been very deep.
Stalking morosely up onto the road came a handful of wild birds: inhabitants of
the ex-marshes.
“Say,”
David Pritchet said, “this is sorta fun.”
“Join
in,” Hamilton said expansively. “What are you
tired of?”
Speculatively,
David said, “I’m not tired of anything. I want to see all this
stuff.”
That
sobered Hamilton. “You’re all right,” he told the boy. “And
don’t let anybody change your mind.”
“How
can I be a scientist if there’s nothing to examine?” David wanted to
know. “Where’m I going to get pond water for my microscope? All the
stagnant ponds
are gone.”
“Stagnant
ponds,” Mrs. Pritchet repeated, with an effort. “What is that, David?
I’m not sure
—
”
“And there aren’t any more broken bottles lying
around in fields,” David complained resentfully.
“And I
can’t find any more beetles for
my beetle collection. And
you took all the snakes so I can’t set out my
snake trap. What am I going to do instead of watching them load
coal down at the railroad? There isn’t any more
coal. And
I used to go through the Parker Ink Company …
now it’s gone. Aren’t you going to leave
anything?”
“Nice
things,” his mother said reprovingly. “There’ll be all kinds of nice
things for you to think about. You
don’t
want to play with dirty, unpleasant things, do you?”
“And,”
David continued vigorously, “Eleanor Root, the girl who moved in across
the street, was going to show me something she had that I didn’t have, if I
went out back to the garage with her, and I did, and she didn’t have it after
all. And I don’t think much of that”