“What’ll it be?” the pert blonde waitress asked, a pencil behind her ear, her hair tied back in a tight bun. “Looks like you’ve got some hangover, mister.”
He ordered coffee and vegetable soup. Soon he was eating, his hands working automatically. He found himself devouring a hum and cheese sandwich; had he ordered it? The juke box blared and people came and went. There was a little town sprawled beside the road, set back in some gradual hills. Grey sunlight, cold and sterile, filtered down as morning came. He ate hot apple pie and sat wiping dully at his mouth with a paper napkin.
The café was silent. Outside nothing stirred. An uneasy calm hung over everything. The juke box had ceased. None of the people at the counter stirred or spoke. An occasional truck roared past, damp and lumbering, windows rolled up tight.
When he looked up, Silvia was standing in front of him. Her arms were folded and she gazed vacantly past him. A bright yellow pencil was behind her ear. Her brown hair was tied back in a hard bun. At the counter others were sitting, other Silvias, dishes in front of them, half dozing or eating, some of them reading. Each the same as the next, except for their clothing.
He made his way back to his parked car. In half an hour he had crossed the state line. Cold, bright sunlight sparkled off dew-moist roofs and pavements as he sped through tiny unfamiliar towns.
Along the shiny morning streets he saw them moving—early risers, on their way to work. In twos and threes they walked, their heels echoing in sharp silence. At bus stops he saw groups of them collected together. In the houses, rising from their beds, eating breakfast, bathing, dressing, were more of them—hundreds of them, legions without number. A town of them preparing for the day, resuming their regular tasks, as the circle widened and spread.
He left the town behind. The car slowed under him as his his foot slid heavily from the gas pedal. Two of them walked across a level field together. They carried books—children on their way to school. Repetitions, unvarying and identical. A dog circled excitedly after them, unconcerned, his joy untainted.
He drove on. Ahead a city loomed, its stern columns of office buildings sharply outlined against the sky. The streets swarmed with noise and activity as he passed through the main business section. Somewhere, near the centre of the city, he overtook the expanding periphery of the circle and emerged beyond. Diversity took the place of the endless figures of Silvia. Grey eyes and brown hair gave way to countless varieties of men and women, children and adults, of all ages and appearances. He increased his speed and raced out on the far side, on to the wide four-lane highway.
He finally slowed down. He was exhausted. He had driven for hours; his body was shaking with fatigue.
Ahead of him a carrot-haired youth was cheerfully thumbing a ride, a thin bean-pole in brown slacks and light camel’s-hair sweater. Rick pulled to a halt and opened the front door. “Hop in,” he said.
“Thanks, buddy.” The youth hurried to the car and climbed in as Rick gathered speed. He slammed the door and settled gratefully back against the seat. “It was getting hot, standing there.”
“How far are you going?” Rick demanded.
“All the way to Chicago.” The youth grinned shyly. “Of course, I don’t expect you to drive me that far. Anything at all is appreciated.” He eyed Rick curiously. “Which way you going?”
“Anywhere,” Rick said. “I’ll drive you to Chicago.”
“It’s two hundred miles!”
“Fine,” Rick said. He steered over into the left lane and gained speed. “If you want to go to New York, I’ll drive you there.”
“You feel all right?” The youth moved away uneasily. “I sure appreciate a lift, but…” He hesitated. “I mean, I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
Rick concentrated on the road ahead, his hands gripping hard around the rim of the wheel. “I’m going fast. I’m not slowing down or stopping.”
“You better be careful,” the youth warned in a troubled voice. “I don’t want to get in an accident.”
“I’ll do the worrying.”
“But it’s dangerous. What if something happens? It’s too risky.”
“You’re wrong,” Rick muttered grimly, eyes on the road. “It’s worth the risk.”
“But if something goes wrong—” The voice broke off uncertainly and then continued, “I might be lost. It would be so easy. It’s all so unstable.” The voice trembled with worry and fear. “Rick, please…”
Rick whirled. “How do you know my name?”
The youth was crouched in a heap against the door. His face had a soft, molten look, as if it were losing its shape and sliding together in an unformed mass. “I want to come back,” he was saying, from within himself, “but I’m afraid. You haven’t seen it—the regions between. It’s nothing but energy, Rick. He tapped it a long time ago, but nobody else knows how.”
The voice lightened, became clear and treble. The hair faded to a rich brown. Grey, frightened eyes flickered up at Rick. Hands frozen, he hunched over the wheel and forced himself not to move. Gradually he decreased speed and brought the car over into the right-hand land.
“Are we stopping?” the shape beside him asked. It was Silvia’s voice now. Like II new insect, drying in the sun, the shape hardened and locked into firm reality. Silvia struggled up on the seat and peered out. “Where are we? We’re between towns.”
He jammed on the brakes, reached past her and threw open the door. “Get out!”
Silvia gazed at him uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean?” she faltered. “Rick, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Get out!”
“Rick, I don’t understand.” She slid over a little. Her toes touched the pavement. “Is there something wrong with the car? I thought everything was all right.”
He gently shoved her out and slammed the door. The car leaped ahead, out into the stream of mid-morning traffic. Behind him the small, dazed figure was pulling itself up, bewildered and injured. He forced his eyes from the rear-view mirror and crushed down the gas pedal with all his weight.
The radio buzzed and clicked in vague static when he snapped it briefly on. He turned the dial and, after a time, a big network station came in. A faint, puzzled voice, a woman’s voice. For a time he couldn’t make out the words. Then he recognized it and, with a pang of panic, switched the thing off.
Her voice. Murmuring plaintively. Where was the station? Chicago. The circle had already spread that far.
He slowed down. There was no point hurrying. It had already passed him by and gone on. Kansas farms—sagging stores in little old Mississippi towns—along the bleak streets of New England manufacturing cities swarms of brown-haired grey-eyed women would be hurrying.
It would cross the ocean. Soon it would take in the whole world. Africa would be strange—kraals of white-skinned young women, all exactly alike, going about the primitive chores of hunting and fruit-gathering, mashing grain, skinning animals. Building fires and weaving cloth and carefully shaping razor-sharp knives.
In China… he grinned inanely. She’d look strange there, too. In the austere high-collar suit, the almost monastic robe of the young Communist cadres. Parades marching up the main streets of Peiping. Row after row of slim-legged full-breasted girls, with heavy Russian-made rifles. Carrying spades, picks, shovels. Columns of cloth-booted soldiers. Fast-moving workers with their precious tools. Reviewed by an identical figure on the elaborate stand overlooking the street, one slender arm raised, her gentle, pretty face expressionless and wooden.
He turned off the highway on to a side road. A moment later he was on his way back, driving slowly, listlessly, the way he had come.
At an intersection a traffic cop waded out through traffic to his car. He sat rigid, hands on the wheel, waiting numbly.
“Rick,” she whispered pleadingly as she reached the window. “Isn’t everything all right?”
“Sure,” he answered dully.
She reached in through the open window and touched him implo
ringly on the arm. Familiar fingers, red nails, the hand he knew so well. “I want to be with you so badly. Aren’t we together again? Aren’t I back?”
“Sure.”
She shook her head miserably. “I don’t understand,” she repeated. “I thought it was all right again.”
Savagely he put the car into motion and hurtled ahead. The intersection was left behind.
It was afternoon. He was exhausted, riddled with fatigue. He guided the car towards his own town automatically. Along the streets she hurried everywhere, on all sides. She was omnipresent. He came to his apartment building and parked.
The janitor greeted him in the empty hall. Rick identified him by the greasy rag clutched in one hand, the big push-broom, the bucket of wood shavings. “Please,” she implored, “tell me what it is, Rick. Please tell me.”
He pushed past her, but she caught at him desperately. “Rick, I’m back. Don’t you understand? They took me too soon and then they sent me back again. It was a mistake. I won’t ever call them again—that’s all in the past.” She followed after him, down the hall to the stairs. “I’m never going to call them again.”
He climbed the stairs. Silvia hesitated, then settled down on the bottom step in a wretched, unhappy heap, a tiny figure in thick workman’s clothing and huge cleated boots.
He unlocked his apartment door and entered.
The late afternoon sky was a deep blue beyond the windows. The roofs of nearby apartment buildings sparkled white in the sun.
His body ached. He wandered clumsily into the bathroom—it seemed alien and unfamiliar, a difficult place to find. He filled the bowl with hot water, rolled up his sleeves and washed his face and hands in the swirling hot steam. Briefly, he glanced up.
It was a terrified reflection that showed out of the mirror above the bowl, a face, tear-stained and frantic. The face was difficult to catch—it seemed to waver and slide. Grey eyes, bright with terror. Trembling red mouth, pulse-fluttering throat, soft brown hair. The face gazed out pathetically—and then the girl at the bowl bent to dry herself.
She turned and moved wearily out of the bathroom into the living-room.
Confused, she hesitated, then threw herself on to a chair and closed her eyes, sick with misery and fatigue.
“Rick,” she murmured pleadingly. “Try to help me. I’m back, aren’t I?” She shook her head, bewildered. “Please, Rick, I thought everything was all right.”
THE COOKIE LADY
“Where you going, Bubber?” Ernie Mill shouted from across the street, fixing papers for his route.
“No place,” Bubber Surle said.
“You going to see your lady friend?” Ernie laughed an, laughed. “What do you go visit that old lady for? Let us in on it!”
Bubber went on. He turned the corner and went down Elm Street. Already, he could see the house, at the end of the street, let back a little on the lot. The front of the house was overgrown with weeds, old dry weeds that rustled and chattered in the wind. The house itself was a little grey box, shabby and unpainted, the porch steps sagging. There was an old weather-beaten rocking chair on the porch with a torn piece of cloth hanging over it.
Bubber went up the walk. As he started up the rickety steps he took a deep breath. He could smell it, the wonderful warm smell, and his mouth began to water. His heart thudding with anticipation, Bubber turned the handle of the bell. The bell grated rustily on the other side of the door. There was silence for a time, then the sounds of someone stirring.
Mrs. Drew opened the door. She was old, very old, a little dried-up old lady, like the weeds that grew along the front of the house. She smiled down at Bubber, holding the door wide for him to come in.
“You’re just in time,” she said. “Come on inside, Bernard. You’re just in time—they’re just now ready.”
Bubber went to the kitchen door and looked in. He could set. them, resting on a big blue plate on top of the stove. Cookies, a plate of warm, fresh cookies right out of the oven. Cookies with nuts and raisins in them.
“How do they look?” Mrs. Drew said. She rustled past him, into the kitchen. “And maybe some cold milk, too. You like cold milk with them.” She got the milk pitcher from the window box on the back porch. Then she poured a glass of milk for him and set some of the cookies on a small plate. “Let’s go into the living-room,” she said.
Bubber nodded. Mrs. Drew carried the milk and the cookies in and set them on the arm of the couch. Then she sat down in her own chair, watching Bubber plop himself down by the plate and begin to help himself.
Bubber ate greedily, as usual, intent on the cookies, silent except for chewing sounds. Mrs. Drew waited patiently, until the boy had finished, and his already ample sides bulged that much more. When Bubber was done with the plate he glanced towards the kitchen again, at the rest of the cookies on the stove.
“Wouldn’t you like to wait until later for the rest?” Mrs. Drew said.
“All right,” Bubber agreed.
“How were they?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good.” She leaned back in her chair. “Well, what did you do in school today? How did it go?”
“All right.”
The little old lady watched the boy look restlessly around the room. “Bernard,” she said presently, “won’t you stay and talk to me for awhile?” He had some books on his lap, some school books. “Why don’t you read to me from your books? You know, I don’t see too well any more and it’s a comfort to me to be read to.”
“Can I have the rest of the cookies after?”
“Of course.”
Bubber moved over towards her, to the end of the couch. He opened his books. World Geography, Principles of Arithmetic, Hoyte’s Speller. “Which do you want?”
She hesitated. “The geography.”
Bubber opened the big blue book at random. PERU. “Peru is bounded on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the south by Chile, and on the east by Brazil and Bolivia. Peru is divided into three main sections. These are, first—”
The little old lady watched him read, his fat cheeks wobbling as he read, holding his finger next to the line. She was silent, watching him, studying the boy intently as he read, drinking in each frown of concentration, every motion of his arms and hands. She relaxed, letting herself sink back in her chair. He was very close to her, only a little way off. There was only the table and lamp between them. How nice it was to have him come; he had been coming for over a month, now, ever since the day she had been sitting on her porch and seen him go by and thought to call to him, pointing to the cookies by her rocker.
Why had she done it? She did not know. She had been alone so long that she found herself saying strange things and doing strange things. She saw so few people, only when she went down to the store or the mailman came with her pension check. Or the garbage men.
The boy’s voice droned on. She was comfortable, peaceful and relaxed. The little old lady closed her eyes and folded her hands in her lap. And as she sat, dozing and listening, something began to happen. The little old lady was beginning to change, her grey wrinkles and lines dimming away. As she sat in the chair she was growing younger, the thin fragile body filling out with youth again. The grey hair thickened and darkened, colour coming to the wispy strands. Her arms filled, too, the mottled flesh turning a rich hue as it had been once, many years before.
Mrs. Drew breathed deeply, not opening her eyes. She could feel something happening, but she did not know just what. Something was going on; she could feel it, and it was good. But what it was she did not exactly know. It had happened before, almost every time the boy came and sat by her. Especially of late, since she had moved her chair nearer to the couch. She took a deep breath. How good it felt, the warm fullness, a breath of warmth inside her cold body for the first time in years!
In her chair the little old lady had become a dark-haired matron of perhaps thirty, a woman with full cheeks and plump arms and legs. Her lips were red again, her neck even a litt
le too fleshy, as it had been once in the long forgotten past. Suddenly the reading stopped. Bubber put down his book and stood up. “I have to go,” he said. “Can I take the rest of the cookies with me?”
She blinked, rousing herself. The boy was in the kitchen, filling his pockets with cookies. She nodded, dazed, still under the spell. The boy took the last cookies. He went across the living-room to the door. Mrs. Drew stood up. All at once the warmth left her. She felt tired, tired and very dry. She caught her breath, breathing quickly. She looked down at her hands. Wrinkled, thin.
“Oh!” she murmured. Tears blurred her eyes. It was gone, gone again as soon as he moved away. She tottered to the mirror “above the mantel and looked at herself. Old faded eyes stared back, eyes deep-set in a withered face. Gone, all gone, as soon as the boy had left her side.
“I’ll see you later,” Bubber said.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please come back again. Will you come back?”
“Sure,” Bubber said listlessly. He pushed the door open. “Good-bye.” He went down the steps. In a moment she heard his shoes against the sidewalk. He was gone.
“Bubber, you come in here!” May Surle stood angrily on the porch. “You get in here and sit down at the table.”
“All right.” Bubber came slowly up on to the porch, pushing inside the house.
“What’s the matter with you?” She caught his arm. “Where you been? Are you sick?”
“I’m tired.” Bubber rubbed his forehead.
His father came through the living-room with the newspapers, in his undershirt. “What’s the matter?” he said.
“Look at him,” May Surle said. “All worn out. What you been doing, Bubber?”
“He’s been visiting that old lady,” Ralf Surle said. “Can’t you tell? He’s always washed out after he’s been visiting her. What do you go there for, Bub? What goes on?”
“She gives him cookies,” May said. “You know how he is about things to eat. He’d do anything for a plate of cookies.”