‘Pickard!’
The man would not reply. He simply stood there for a long while with the bubbles of rain breaking out in his whitened hair and manacles of rain jewels dripping from his wrists and neck.
‘Pickard! We’re leaving. We’re going on. Follow us.’
The rain dripped from Pickard’s ears.
‘Do you hear me, Pickard!’
It was like shouting down a well.
‘Pickard!’
‘Leave him alone,’ said Simmons.
‘We can’t go on without him.’
‘What’ll we do, carry him?’ Simmons spat. ‘He’s no good to us or himself. You know what he’ll do? He’ll just stand here and drown.’
‘What?’
‘You ought to know that by now. Don’t you know the story? He’ll just stand here with his head up and let the rain come in his nostrils and his mouth. He’ll breathe the water.’
‘No.’
‘That’s how they found General Mendt that time. Sitting on a rock with his head back, breathing the rain. His lungs were full of water.’
The lieutenant turned the light back to the unblinking face. Pickard’s nostrils gave off a tiny whispering wet sound.
‘Pickard!’ The lieutenant slapped the face.
‘He can’t even feel you,’ said Simmons. ‘A few days in this rain and you don’t have any face or any legs or hands.’
The lieutenant looked at his own hand in horror. He could no longer feel it.
‘But we can’t leave Pickard here.’
‘I’ll show you what we can do.’ Simmons fired his gun.
Pickard fell into the raining earth.
Simmons said, ‘Don’t move, Lieutenant. I’ve got my gun ready for you too. Think it over; he would only have stood or sat there and drowned. It’s quicker this way.’
The lieutenant blinked at the body. ‘But you killed him.’
‘Yes, because he’d have killed us by being a burden. You saw his face. Insane.’
After a moment the lieutenant nodded. ‘All right.’
They walked off into the rain.
It was dark and their hand lamps threw a beam that pierced the rain for only a few feet. After a half hour they had to stop and sit through the rest of the night, aching with hunger, waiting for the dawn to come; when it did come it was gray and continually raining as before, and they began to walk again.
‘We’ve miscalculated,’ said Simmons.
‘No. Another hour.’
‘Speak louder. I can’t hear you.’ Simmons stopped and smiled. ‘By Christ,’ he said, and touched his ears. ‘My ears. They’ve gone out on me. All the rain pouring finally numbed me right down to the bone.’
‘Can’t you hear anything?’ said the lieutenant.
‘What?’ Simmons’s eyes were puzzled.
‘Nothing. Come on.’
‘I think I’ll wait here. You go on ahead.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I can’t hear you. You go on. I’m tired. I don’t think the Sun Dome is down this way. And, if it is, it’s probably got holes in the roof, like the last one. I think I’ll just sit here.’
‘Get up from there!’
‘So long, Lieutenant.’
‘You can’t give up now.’
‘I’ve got a gun here that says I’m staying, I just don’t give a damn any more. I’m not crazy yet, but I’m the next thing to it. I don’t want to go out that way. As soon as you get out of sight I’m going to use this gun on myself.’
‘Simmons!’
‘You said my name, I can read that much off your lips.’
‘Simmons.’
‘Look, it’s a matter of time. Either I die now or in a few hours. Wait’ll you get to that next Dome, if you ever get there, and find rain coming in through the roof. Won’t that be nice?’
The lieutenant waited and then splashed off in the rain. He turned and called back once, but Simmons was only sitting there with the gun in his hands, waiting for him to get out of sight. He shook his head and waved the lieutenant on.
The lieutenant didn’t even hear the sound of the gun.
He began to eat the flowers as he walked. They stayed down for a time, and weren’t poisonous; neither were they particularly sustaining, and he vomited them up, sickly, a minute or so later.
Once he took some leaves and tried to make himself a hat, but he had tried that before; the rain melted the leaves from his head. Once picked, the vegetation rotted quickly and fell away into gray masses in his fingers.
‘Another five minutes,’ he told himself. ‘Another five minutes and then I’ll walk into the sea and keep walking. We weren’t made for this; no Earth Man was or ever will be able to take it. Your nerves, your nerves.’
He floundered his way through a sea of slush and foliage and came to a small hill.
At a distance there was a faint yellow smudge in the cold veils of water.
The next Sun Dome.
Through the trees, a long round yellow building, far away. For a moment he only stood, swaying, looking at it.
He began to run and then he slowed down, for he was afraid. He didn’t call out. What if it’s the same one? What if it’s the dead Sun Dome, with no sun in it? he thought.
He slipped and fell. Lie here, he thought; it’s the wrong one. Lie here. It’s no use. Drink all you want.
But he managed to climb to his feet again and crossed several creeks, and the yellow light grew very bright, and he began to run again, his feet crashing into mirrors and glass, his arms flailing at diamonds and precious stones.
He stood before the yellow door. The printed letters over it said THE SUN DOME. He put his numb hand up to feel it. Then he twisted the doorknob and stumbled in.
He stood for a moment looking about. Behind him the rain whirled at the door. Ahead of him, upon a low table, stood a silver pot of hot chocolate, steaming, and a cup, full, with a marshmallow in it. And beside that, on another tray, stood thick sandwiches of rich chicken meat and fresh-cut tomatoes and green onions. And on a rod just before his eyes was a great thick green Turkish towel, and a bin in which to throw wet clothes, and, to his right, a small cubicle in which heat rays might dry you instantly. And upon a chair, a fresh change of uniform, waiting for anyone—himself, or any lost one—to make use of it. And farther over, coffee in steaming copper urns, and a phonograph from which music was playing quietly, and books bound in red and brown leather. And near the books a cot, a soft deep cot upon which one might lie, exposed and bare, to drink in the rays of the one great bright thing which dominated the long room.
He put his hands to his eyes. He saw other men moving toward him, but said nothing to them. He waited, and opened his eyes, and looked. The water from his uniform pooled at his feet, and he felt it drying from his hair and his face and his chest and his arms and his legs.
He was looking at the sun.
It hung in the center of the room, large and yellow and warm. It made not a sound, and there was no sound in the room. The door was shut and the rain only a memory to his tingling body. The sun hung very high in the blue sky of the room, warm, hot, yellow, and very fine.
He walked forward, tearing off his clothes as he went.
The Great Fire
The morning the great fire started, nobody in the house could put it out. It was Mother’s niece, Marianne, living with us while her parents were in Europe, who was all aflame. So nobody could smash the little window in the red box at the corner and pull the trigger to bring the gushing hoses and the hatted firemen. Blazing like so much ignited cellophane, Marianne came downstairs, plumped herself with a loud cry or moan at the breakfast table, and refused to eat enough to fill a tooth cavity.
Mother and Father moved away, the warmth in the room being excessive.
‘Good morning, Marianne.’
‘What?’ Marianne looked beyond people and spoke vaguely. ‘Oh, good morning.’
‘Did you sleep well last night, Marianne?’
But they knew s
he hadn’t slept. Mother gave Marianne a glass of water to drink, and everyone wondered if it would evaporate in her hand. Grandma, from her table chair, surveyed Marianne’s fevered eyes. ‘You’re sick, but it’s no microbe,’ she said. ‘They couldn’t find it under a microscope.’
‘What?’ said Marianne.
‘Love is godmother to stupidity,’ said Father detachedly.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Mother said to Father. ‘Girls only seem stupid because when they’re in love they can’t hear.’
‘It affects the semicircular canals,’ said Father. ‘Making many girls fall right into a fellow’s arms. I know. I was almost crushed to death once by a falling woman, and let me tell you—’
‘Hush.’ Mother frowned, looking at Marianne.
‘She can’t hear what we’re saying: she’s cataleptic right now.’
‘He’s coming to pick her up this morning,’ whispered Mother to Father, as if Marianne wasn’t even in the room. ‘They’re going riding in his jalopy.’
Father patted his mouth with a napkin. ‘Was our daughter like this, Mama?’ he wanted to know. ‘She’s been married and gone so long, I’ve forgotten. I don’t recall she was so foolish. One would never know a girl had an ounce of sense at a time like this. That’s what fools a man. He says, Oh, what a lovely brainless girl, she loves me, I think I’ll marry her. He marries her and wakes up one morning and all the dreaminess is gone out of her and her intellect has returned, unpacked, and is hanging up undies all about the house. The man begins running into ropes and lines. He finds himself on a little desert isle, a little living room alone in the midst of a universe, with a honeycomb that has turned into a bear trap, with a butterfly metamorphosed into a wasp. He then immediately takes up a hobby: stamp collecting, lodge meetings, or—’
‘How you do run on,’ cried Mother. ‘Marianne, tell us about this young man. What was his name again? Was it Isak Van Pelt?’
‘What? Oh—Isak, yes.’ Marianne had been roving about her bed all night, sometimes flipping poetry books and reading incredible lines, sometimes lying flat on her back, sometimes on her tummy looking out at dreaming moonlit country. The smell of jasmine had touched the room all night and the excessive warmth of early spring (the thermometer read fifty-five degrees) had kept her awake. She looked like a dying moth, if anyone had peeked through the keyhole.
This morning she had clapped her hands over her head in the mirror and come to breakfast, remembering just in time to put on a dress.
Grandma laughed quietly all during breakfast. Finally she said, ‘You must eat, child, you must.’ So Marianne played with her toast and got half a piece down. Just then there was a loud honk outside. That was Isak! In his jalopy!
‘Whoop!’ cried Marianne, and ran upstairs quickly.
The young Isak Van Pelt was brought in and introduced around.
When Marianne was finally gone, Father sat down, wiping his forehead. ‘I don’t know. This is too much.’
‘You were the one who suggested she start going out,’ said Mother.
‘And I’m sorry I suggested it,’ he said. ‘But she’s been visiting us for six months now, and six more months to go. I thought if she met some nice young man—’
‘And they were married,’ husked Grandma darkly, ‘why, Marianne might move out almost immediately—is that it?’
‘Well,’ said Father.
‘Well,’ said Grandma.
‘But now it’s worse than before,’ said Father. ‘She floats around singing with her eyes shut, playing those infernal love records and talking to herself. A man can stand so much. She’s getting so she laughs all the time, too. Do eighteen-year-old girls often wind up in the booby hatch?’
‘He seems a nice young man,’ said Mother.
‘Yes, we can always pray for that,’ said Father, taking out a little shot glass. ‘Here’s to an early marriage.’
The second morning Marianne was out of the house like a fireball when first she heard the jalopy horn. There was no time for the young man even to come to the door. Only Grandma saw them roar off together, from the parlor window.
‘She almost knocked me down.’ Father brushed his mustache. ‘What’s that? Brained eggs? Well.’
In the afternoon Marianne, home again, drifted about the living room to the phonograph records. The needle hiss filled the house. She played ‘That Old Black Magic’ twenty-one times, going ‘la la la’ as she swam with her eyes closed in the room.
‘I’m afraid to go in my own parlor,’ said Father. ‘I retired from business to smoke cigars and enjoy living, not to have a limp relative humming about under the parlor chandelier.’
‘Hush,’ said Mother.
‘This is a crisis,’ announced Father, ‘in my life. After all, she’s just visiting.’
‘You know how visiting girls are. Away from home they think they’re in Paris, France. She’ll be gone in October. It’s not so dreadful.’
‘Let’s see,’ figured Father slowly. ‘I’ll have been buried just about one hundred and thirty days out at Green Lawn Cemetery by then.’ He got up and threw his paper down into a little white tent on the floor. ‘By George, Mother, I’m talking to her right now!’
He went and stood in the parlor door, peering through it at the waltzing Marianne. ‘La,’ she sang to the music.
Clearing his throat, he stepped through.
‘Marianne,’ he said.
‘“That old black magic…”’ sang Marianne. ‘Yes?’
He watched her hands swinging in the air. She gave him a sudden fiery look as she danced by.
‘I want to talk to you.’ He straightened his tie.
‘Dah dum dee dum dum dee dum dee dum dum,’ she sang.
‘Did you hear me?’ he demanded.
‘He’s so nice,’ she said.
‘Evidently.’
‘Do you know, he bows and opens doors like a doorman and plays a trumpet like Harry James and brought me daisies this morning?’
‘I wouldn’t doubt.’
‘His eyes are blue.’ She looked at the ceiling.
He could find nothing at all on the ceiling to look at.
She kept looking, as she danced, at the ceiling as he came over and stood near her, looking up, but there wasn’t a rain spot or a settling crack there, and he sighed. ‘Marianne.’
‘And we ate lobster at that river café.’
‘Lobster. I know, but we don’t want you breaking down, getting weak. One day, tomorrow, you must stay home and help your aunt Math make her doilies—’
‘Yes, sir.’ She dreamed around the room with her wings out.
‘Did you hear me?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes shut. ‘Oh yes, yes.’ Her skirts whished around. ‘Uncle,’ she said, her head back, lolling.
‘You’ll help your aunt with her doilies?’ he cried.
‘—with her doilies,’ she murmured.
‘There!’ He sat down in the kitchen, plucking up the paper. ‘I guess I told her!’
But next morning he was on the edge of his bed when he heard the hotrod’s thunderous muffler and heard Marianne fall downstairs, linger two seconds in the dining room for breakfast, hesitate by the bathroom long enough to consider whether she would be sick, and then the slam of the front door, the sound of the jalopy banging down the street, two people singing off-key in it.
Father put his head in his hands. ‘Doilies,’ he said.
‘What?’ said Mother.
‘Dooley’s,’ said Father. ‘I’m going down to Dooley’s for a morning visit.’
‘But Dooley’s isn’t open until ten.’
‘I’ll wait,’ decided Father, eyes shut.
That night and seven other wild nights the porch swing sang a little creaking song, back and forth, back and forth. Father, hiding in the living room, could be seen in fierce relief whenever he drafted his ten-cent cigar and the cherry light illumined his immensely tragic face. The porch swing creaked. He waited fo
r another creak. He heard little butterfly-soft sounds from outside, little palpitations of laughter and sweet nothings in small ears. ‘My porch,’ said Father. ‘My swing,’ he whispered to his cigar, looking at it. ‘My house.’ He listened for another creak. ‘My God,’ he said.
He went to the tool shed and appeared on the dark porch with a shiny oil can. ‘No, don’t get up. Don’t bother. There, and there.’ He oiled the swing joints. It was dark. He couldn’t see Marianne; he could smell her. The perfume almost knocked him off into the rosebush. He couldn’t see her gentleman friend, either. ‘Good night,’ he said. He went in and sat down and there was no more creaking. Now all he could hear was something that sounded like the mothlike flutter of Marianne’s heart.
‘He must be very nice,’ said Mother in the kitchen door, wiping a dinner dish.
‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ whispered Father. ‘That’s why I let them have the porch every night!’
‘So many days in a row,’ said Mother. ‘A girl doesn’t go with a nice young man that many times unless he’s serious.’
‘Maybe he’ll propose tonight!’ was Father’s happy thought.
‘Hardly so soon. And she is so young.’
‘Still,’ he ruminated, ‘it might happen. It’s got to happen, by the Lord Harry.’
Grandma chuckled from her corner easy chair. It sounded like someone turning the pages of an ancient book.
‘What’s so funny?’ said Father.
‘Wait and see,’ said Grandma. ‘Tomorrow.’
Father stared at the dark, but Grandma would say no more.
‘Well, well,’ said Father at breakfast. He surveyed his eggs with a kindly, paternal eye. ‘Well, well, by gosh, last night, on the porch, there was more whispering. What’s his name? Isak? Well, now, if I’m any judge at all, I think he proposed to Marianne last night; yes, I’m positive of it!’
‘It would be nice,’ said Mother. ‘A spring marriage. But it’s so soon.’
‘Look,’ said Father with full-mouthed logic. ‘Marianne’s the kind of girl who marries quick and young. We can’t stand in her way, can we?’
‘For once I think you’re right,’ said Mother. ‘A marriage would be fine. Spring flowers, and Marianne looking nice in that gown I saw at Haydecker’s last week.’