The boy was pleased. ‘Do you want to know who I really am? I’m not Tommy Marshall at all. I’m Tom Marshall, the father.’ He sat there in the dust, not moving, late at night, under the high and faraway light, with the late wind blowing his shirt collar gently under his chin, blowing the cool dust. ‘I’m Tom Marshall, the father. I know it’ll be hard for you to believe. But it is true. I was afraid for Tommy. I was the way you are now about Jim. So I made this deal with the Playground. Oh, there are others who did the same, here. If you look close, you’ll see them among the other children, by the expression in their eyes.’
Underhill blinked. ‘You’d better run home to bed.’
‘You want to believe me. You want it to be true. I saw your eyes just then! If you could trade places with Jim, you would. You’d like to save him all that torture, let him be in your place, grown-up, the real work over and done.’
‘Any decent parent sympathizes with his children.’
‘You, more than most. You feel every bite and kick. Well, you come here tomorrow. You can make a deal, too.’
‘Trade places?’ It was an incredible, an amusing, but an oddly satisfying thought. ‘What would I have to do?’
‘Just make up your mind.’
Underhill tried to make his next question sound very casual, a joke, but his mind was in a rage again. ‘What would I pay?’
‘Nothing. You’d just have to play in the Playground.’
‘All day?’
‘And go to school, of course.’
‘And grow up again?’
‘Yes, and grow up again. Be here at four tomorrow afternoon.’
‘I have to work in the city tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said the boy.
‘You’d better get home to bed, Tommy.’
‘My name is Tom Marshall.’ The boy sat there.
The Playground lights went out.
Mr Underhill and his sister did not speak at breakfast. He usually phoned her at noon to chat about this or that, but he did not phone. But at onethirty, after a bad lunch, he dialed the house number. When Carol answered he hung up. Five minutes later he phoned again.
‘Charlie, was that you called five minutes ago?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I thought I heard you breathing before you hung up. What’d you call about, dear?’ She was being sensible again.
‘Oh, just called.’
‘It’s been a bad two days, hasn’t it? You do see what I mean, don’t you, Charlie? Jim must go to the Playground and get a few knocks.’
‘A few knocks, yes.’
He saw the blood and the hungry foxes and the torn rabbits.
‘And learn to give and take,’ she was saying, ‘and fight if he has to.’
‘Fight if he has to,’ he murmured.
‘I knew you’d come around.’
‘Around,’ he said. ‘You’re right. No way out. He must be sacrificed.’
‘Oh, Charlie, you are odd.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s settled.’
‘Yes.’
I wonder what it would be like? he thought.
‘Everything else okay?’ he asked the phone.
He thought of the diagrams in the dust, the boy seated there with the hidden bones in his face.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.
‘Speak up.’
‘I’ll be home at three,’ he said, slowly, piecing out the words like a man hit in the stomach, gasping for breath. ‘We’ll take a walk, you and Jim and I,’ he said, eyes shut.
‘Wonderful!’
‘To the Playground,’ he said and hung up.
It was really autumn now, the real chill, the real snap; overnight the trees burnt red and snapped free of their leaves, which spiraled about Mr Underhill’s face as he walked up the front steps, and there were Carol and Jim bundled up against the sharp wind, waiting for him.
‘Hello!’ they cried to one another, with much embracing and kissing. ‘There’s Jim down there!’ ‘There’s Daddy up there!’ They laughed and he felt paralyzed and in terror of the late day. It was almost four. He looked at the leaden sky, which might pour down molten silver any moment, a sky of lava and soot and a wet wind blowing out of it. He held his sister’s arm very tightly as they walked. ‘Aren’t you friendly, though?’ she smiled.
‘It’s ridiculous, of course,’ he said, thinking of something else.
‘What?’
They were at the Playground gate.
‘Hello, Charlie. Hi!’ Far away, atop the monstrous slide stood the Marshall boy, waving, not smiling now.
‘You wait here,’ said Mr Underhill to his sister. ‘I’ll be only a moment. I’ll just take Jim in.’
‘All right.’
He grasped the small boy’s hand. ‘Here we go, Jim. Stick close to Daddy.’
They stepped down the hard concrete steps and stood in the flat dust. Before them, in a magical sequence, stood the diagrams, the gigantic ticktacktoes, the monstrous hopscotches, the amazing numerals and triangles and oblongs the children had scrabbled in the incredible dust.
The sky blew a huge wind upon him and he was shivering. He grasped the little boy’s hand still tighter and turned to his sister. ‘Good-by,’ he said. For he was believing it. He was in the Playground and believing it, and it was for the best. Nothing too good for Jim. Nothing at all in this outrageous world! And now his sister was laughing back at him. ‘Charlie, you idiot!’
Then they were running, running across the dirt Playground floor, at the bottom of a stony sea that pressed and blew upon them. Now Jim was crying, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ and the children racing to meet them, the boy on the slide yelling, the ticktacktoe and the hopscotchers whirling, a sense of bodiless terror gripping him, but he knew what he must do and what must be done and what would happen. Far across the field footballs sailed, baseballs whizzed, bats flew, fists flashed up, and the door of the Manager’s office stood open, the desk empty, the seat empty, a lone light burning over it.
Underhill stumbled, shut his eyes and fell, crying out, his body clenched by a hot pain, mouthing strange words, everything in turmoil.
‘There you are, Jim,’ said a voice.
And he was climbing, climbing, eyes closed, climbing metal-ringing ladder rungs, screaming, yelling, his throat raw.
Mr Underhill opened his eyes.
He was on top of the slide. The gigantic, blue metal slide which seemed ten thousand feet high. Children crushed at his back, children beat him to go on, slide! Slide!
And he looked, and there, going off across the field, was a man in a black overcoat. And there, at the gate, was a woman waving and the man standing there with the woman, both of them looking in at him, waving, and their voices calling. ‘Have a good time! Have a good time, Jim!’
He screamed. He looked at his hands, in a panic of realization. The small hands, the thin hands. He looked at the earth far below. He felt his nose bleeding and there was the Marshall boy next to him. ‘Hi!’ cried the other, and bashed him in the mouth. ‘Only twelve years here!’ cried the other in the uproar.
Twelve years! thought Mr Underhill, trapped. And time is different to children. A year is like ten years. No, not twelve years of childhood ahead of him, but a century, a century of this.
‘Slide!’
Behind him the stink of Musterole, Vicks VapoRub, peanuts, chewed hot tar, spearmint gum and blue fountain-pen ink, the smell of kite twine and glycerin soap, a pumpkin smell of Halloween and a papier-mâché fragrance of skull masks, and the smell of dry scabs, as he was pinched, pummeled, shoved. Fists rose and fell, he saw the fox faces and beyond, at the fence, the man and woman standing there, waving. He shrieked, he covered his face, he felt himself pushed, bleeding, to the rim of nothingness. Headfirst, he careened down the slide, screeching, with ten thousand monsters behind. One thought jumped through his mind a moment before he hit bottom in a nauseous mound of claws.
This is
hell, he thought, this is hell!
And no one in the hot, milling heap contradicted him.
Skeleton
It was past time for him to see the doctor again. Mr Harris turned palely in at the stairwell, and on his way up the flight saw Dr Burleigh’s name gilded over a pointing arrow. Would Dr Burleigh sigh when he walked in? After all, this would make the tenth trip so far this year. But Burleigh shouldn’t complain: he was paid for the examinations!
The nurse looked Mr Harris over and smiled, a bit amusedly, as she tiptoed to the glazed glass door, opened it, and put her head in. Harris thought he heard her say, ‘Guess who’s here, Doctor.’ And didn’t the doctor’s voice reply, faintly, ‘Oh, my God, again?’ Harris swallowed uneasily.
When Harris walked in, Dr Burleigh snorted. ‘Aches in your bones again! Ah!!’ He scowled and adjusted his glasses. ‘My dear Harris, you’ve been curried with the finest-tooth combs and bacteria-brushes known to science. You’re just nervous. Let’s see your fingers. Too many cigarettes. Let’s smell your breath. Too much protein. Let’s see your eyes. Not enough sleep. My response? Go to bed, stop the protein, no smoking. Ten dollars, please.’
Harris stood sulking.
The doctor glanced up from his papers. ‘You still here? You’re a hypochondriac! That’s eleven dollars, now.’
‘But why should my bones ache?’ asked Harris.
Dr Burleigh spoke as to a child. ‘You ever had a sore muscle, and kept irritating it, fussing with it, rubbing it? It gets worse, the more you bother it. Then you leave it alone and the pain vanishes. You realize you caused most of the soreness yourself. Well, son, that’s what’s with you. Leave yourself alone. Take a dose of salts. Get out of here and take that trip to Phoenix you’ve stewed about for months. Do you good to travel!’
Five minutes later, Mr Harris riffled through a classified phone directory at the corner druggist’s. A fine lot of sympathy one got from blind fools like Burleigh! He passed his finger down a list of Bone Specialists, found one named M. Munigant. Munigant lacked an M.D., or any other academic lettering behind his name, but his office was conveniently near. Three blocks down, one block over…
Mr Munigant, like his office, was small and dark. Like his office, he smelled of iodoform, iodine, and other odd things. He was a good listener, though, and listened with eager shiny moves of his eyes, and when he talked to Harris, his accent was such that he softly whistled each word: undoubtedly because of imperfect dentures.
Harris told all.
M. Munigant nodded. He had seen cases like this before. The bones of the body. Man was not aware of his bones. Ah, yes, the bones. The skeleton. Most difficult. Something concerning an imbalance, an unsympathetic coordination between soul, flesh, and skeleton. Very complicated, softly whistled M. Munigant. Harris listened, fascinated. Now, here was a doctor who understood his illness! Psychological, said M. Munigant. He moved swiftly, delicately to a dingy wall and slashed down half a dozen X-rays to haunt the room with their look of things found floating in an ancient tide. Here, here! The skeleton surprised! Here luminous portraits of the long, the short, the large, the small bones. Mr Harris must be aware of his position, his problem! M. Munigant’s hand tapped, rattled, whispered, scratched at faint nebulae of flesh in which hung ghosts of cranium, spinal cord, pelvis, lime, calcium, marrow, here, there, this, that, these, those, and others! Look!
Harris shuddered. The X-rays and the paintings blew in a green and phosphorescent wind from a land peopled by the monsters of Dali and Fuseli.
M. Munigant whistled quietly. Did Mr Harris wish his bones—treated?
‘That depends,’ said Harris.
Well, M. Munigant could not help Harris unless Harris was in the proper mood. Psychologically, one had to need help, or the doctor was useless. But (shrugging) M. Munigant would ‘try.’
Harris lay on a table with his mouth open. The lights were switched off, the shades drawn. M. Munigant approached his patient.
Something touched Harris’s tongue.
He felt his jawbones forced out. They creaked and made faint cracking noises. One of those skeleton charts on the dim wall seemed to quiver and jump. A violent shudder seized Harris. Involuntarily, his mouth snapped shut.
M. Munigant shouted. His nose had almost been bitten off! No use, no use! Now was not the time! M. Munigant whispered the shades up, dreadfully disappointed. When Mr Harris felt he could cooperate psychologically, when Mr Harris really needed help and trusted M. Munigant to help him, then maybe something could be done. M. Munigant held out his little hand. In the meantime, the fee was only two dollars. Mr Harris must begin to think. Here was a sketch for Mr Harris to take home and study. It would acquaint him with his body. He must be tremblingly aware of himself. He must be on guard. Skeletons were strange, unwieldy things. M. Munigant’s eyes glittered. Good day to Mr Harris. Oh, and would he care for a breadstick? M. Munigant proffered a jar of long hard salty breadsticks to Harris, taking one himself, saying that chewing breadsticks kept him in—ah—practice. Good day, good day to Mr Harris! Mr Harris went home.
The next day, Sunday, Mr Harris discovered innumerable fresh aches and pains in his body. He spent the morning, his eyes fixed, staring with new interest at the small, anatomically perfect painting of a skeleton M. Munigant had given him.
His wife, Clarisse, startled him at dinner when she cracked her exquisitely thin knuckles, one by one, until he clapped his hands to his ears and cried, ‘Stop!’
The rest of the afternoon he quarantined himself in his room. Clarisse played bridge in the parlor laughing and chatting with three other ladies while Harris, hidden away, fingered and weighed the limbs of his body with growing curiosity. After an hour he suddenly rose and called:
‘Clarisse!’
She had a way of dancing into any room, her body doing all sorts of soft, agreeable things to keep her feet from ever quite touching the nap of a rug. She excused herself from her friends and came to see him now, brightly. She found him re-seated in a far corner and she saw that he was staring at the anatomical sketch. ‘Are you still brooding, sweet?’ she asked. ‘Please don’t.’ She sat upon his knees.
Her beauty could not distract him now in his absorption. He juggled her lightness, he touched her kneecap, suspiciously. It seemed to move under her pale, glowing skin. ‘Is it supposed to do that?’ he asked, sucking in his breath.
‘Is what supposed to do what?’ she laughed. ‘You mean my kneecap?’
‘Is it supposed to run around on top of your knee that way?’
She experimented. ‘So it does,’ she marveled.
‘I’m glad yours slithers, too,’ he sighed. ‘I was beginning to worry.’
‘About what?’
He patted his ribs. ‘My ribs don’t go all the way down, they stop here. And I found some confounded ones that dangle in midair!’
Beneath the curve of her small breasts, Clarisse clasped her hands.
‘Of course, silly. Everybody’s ribs stop at a given point. And those funny short ones are floating ribs.’
‘I hope they don’t float around too much.’ The joke was most uneasy. Now, above all, he wished to be alone. Further discoveries, newer and stranger archaeological diggings, lay within reach of his trembling hands, and he did not wish to be laughed at.
‘Thanks for coming in, dear,’ he said.
‘Any time.’ She rubbed her small nose softly against his.
‘Wait! Here, now…’ He put his finger to touch his nose and hers. ‘Did you realize? The nose-bone grows down only this far. From there on a lot of gristly tissue fills out the rest!’
She wrinkled hers. ‘Of course, darling!’ And she danced from the room.
Now, sitting alone, he felt the perspiration rise from the pools and hollows of his face, to flow in a thin tide down his cheeks. He licked his lips and shut his eyes. Now…now…next on the agenda, what…? The spinal cord, yes. Here. Slowly, he examined it, in the same way he operated the many push-buttons in his office,
thrusting them to summon secretaries, messengers. But now, in these pushings of his spinal column, fears and terrors answered, rushed from a million doors in his mind to confront and shake him! His spine felt horribly—unfamiliar. Like the brittle shards of a fish, freshly eaten, its bones left strewn on a cold china platter. He seized the little rounded knobbins. ‘Lord! Lord!’
His teeth began to chatter. God All-Mighty! he thought, why haven’t I realized it all these years? All these years I’ve gone around with a—skeleton—inside me! How is it we take ourselves for granted? How is it we never question our bodies and our being?
A skeleton. One of those jointed, snowy, hard things, one of those foul, dry, brittle, gouge-eyed, skull-faced, shake-fingered, rattling things that sway from neck-chains in abandoned webbed closets, one of those things found on the desert all long and scattered like dice!
He stood upright, because he could not bear to remain seated. Inside me now, he grasped his stomach, his head, inside my head is a—skull. One of those curved carapaces which holds my brain like an electrical jelly, one of those cracked shells with the holes in front like two holes shot through it by a double-barreled shotgun! With its grottoes and caverns of bone, its revetments and placements for my flesh, my smelling, my seeing, my hearing, my thinking! A skull, encompassing my brain, allowing it exit through its brittle windows to see the outside world!
He wanted to dash into the bridge party, upset it, a fox in a chicken-yard, the cards fluttering all around like chicken feathers burst upward in clouds! He stopped himself only with a violent, trembling effort. Now, now, man, control yourself. This is a revelation, take it for what it’s worth, understand it, savor it. But a skeleton! screamed his subconscious. I won’t stand for it. It’s vulgar, it’s terrible, it’s frightening. Skeletons are horrors: they clink and tinkle and rattle in old castles, hung from oaken beams, making long, indolently rustling pendulums on the wind…
‘Darling, will you come meet the ladies?’ His wife’s clear, sweet voice called from far away.
Mr Harris stood. His skeleton held him up! This thing inside, this invader this horror, was supporting his arms, legs, and head! It was like feeling someone just behind you who shouldn’t be there. With every step, he realized how dependent he was on this other Thing.