“Damn right it is! And Leslie’s no help—always reading his newspapers and talking to his brokers! But I can’t help myself, believe me.” She looked around wildly. “They’re going to start talking about us in a minute, Mr. Hallinan. Every time I talk to someone new they start whispering. But promise me something—”
“If I can.”
“Someday—someday soon—let’s get together? I want to talk to you. God, I want to talk to someone—someone who understands why I’m the way I am. Will you?”
“Of course, Mrs. Erwin. Soon.” Gently he detached her hand from his sleeve, held it tenderly for a moment, and released it. She smiled hopefully at him. He nodded.
“And now I must meet some of the other guests. A pleasure, Mrs. Erwin.”
He drifted away, leaving Lys weaving shakily in the middle of the parlor. She drew in a deep breath and lowered her décolletage again.
At least there’s one decent man in this town now, she thought. There was something good about Hallinan—good, and kind, and understanding.
Understanding. That’s what I need. She wondered if she could manage to pay a visit to the house on Melon Hill tomorrow afternoon without arousing too much scandal.
Lys turned and saw thin-faced Aiken Muir staring at her slyly, with a clear-cut invitation on his face. She met his glance with a frigid, wordless go to hell.
Mr. Hallinan moved on, on through the party. And, gradually, the pattern of the party began to form. It took shape like a fine mosaic. By the time the cocktail hour was over and dinner was ready, an intricate, complex structure of interacting thoughts and responses had been built.
Mr. Hallinan, always drinkless, glided deftly from one New Brewsterite to the next, engaging each in conversation, drawing a few basic facts about the other’s personality, smiling politely, moving on. Not until after he moved on did the person come to a dual realization: that Mr. Hallinan had said quite little, really, and that he had instilled a feeling of warmth and security in the other during their brief talk.
And thus while Mr. Hallinan learned from Martha Weede of her paralyzing envy of her husband’s intelligence and of her fear of his scorn, Lys Erwin was able to remark to Dudley Heyer that Mr. Hallinan was a remarkably kind and understanding person. And Heyer, who had never been known to speak a kind word of anyone, for once agreed.
And later, while Mr. Hallinan was extracting from Leslie Erwin some of the pain his wife’s manifold infidelities caused him, Martha Weede could tell Lys Erwin, “He’s so gentle—why, he’s almost like a saint!”
And while little Harold Dewitt poured out his fear that his silent 9-year-old son Lonny was in some way subnormal, Leslie Erwin, with a jaunty grin, remarked to Daisy Moncrieff, “That man must be a psychiatrist. Lord, he knows how to talk to a person. Inside of two minutes he had me telling him all my troubles. I feel better for it, too.”
Mrs. Moncrieff nodded. “I know what you mean. This morning, when I went up to his place to invite him here, we talked a little while on his porch.”
“Well,” Erwin said, “if he’s a psychiatrist he’ll find plenty of business here. There isn’t a person here riding around without a private monkey on his back. Take Heyer, over there—he didn’t get that ulcer from happiness. That scatterbrain Martha Weede, too—married to a Columbia professor who can’t imagine what to talk to her about. And my wife Lys is a very confused person too, of course.”
“We all have our problems,” Mrs. Moncrieff sighed. “But I feel much better since I spoke with Mr. Hallinan. Yes: much better.”
Mr. Hallinan was now talking with Paul Jambell, the architect. Jambell, whose pretty young wife was in Springfield Hospital slowly dying of cancer. Mrs. Moncrieff could well imagine what Jambell and Mr. Hallinan were talking about.
Or rather, what Jambell was talking about—for Mr. Hallinan, she realized, did very little talking himself. But he was such a wonderful listener! She felt a pleasant glow, not entirely due to the cocktails. It was good to have someone like Mr. Hallinan in New Brewster, she thought. A man of his tact and dignity and warmth would be a definite asset.
When Lys Erwin woke—alone, for a change—the following morning, some of the past night’s curious calmness had deserted her.
I have to talk to Mr. Hallinan, she thought.
She had resisted two implied and one overt attempts at seduction the night before, had come home, had managed even to be polite to her husband. And Leslie had been polite to her. It was most unusual.
“That Hallinan,” he had said. “He’s quite a guy.”
“You talked to him too?”
“Yeah. Told him a lot. Too much, maybe. But I feel better for it.”
“Odd,” she had said. “So do I. He’s a strange one, isn’t he? Wandering around that party, soaking up everyone’s aches. He must have had half the neuroses in New Brewster unloaded on his back last night.”
“Didn’t seem to depress him, though. More he talked to people, more cheerful and affable he got. And us, too. You look more relaxed than you’ve been in a month, Lys.”
“I feel more relaxed. As if all the roughness and ugliness in me was drawn out.”
And that was how it felt the next morning, too. Lys woke, blinked, looked at the empty bed across the room. Leslie was long since gone, on his way to the city. She knew she had to talk to Hallinan again. She hadn’t got rid of it all. There was still some poison left inside her, something cold and chunky that would melt before Mr. Hallinan’s warmth.
She dressed, impatiently brewed some coffee, and left the house. Down Copperbeech Road, past the Moncrieff house where Daisy and her stuffy husband Fred were busily emptying the ashtrays of the night before, down to Melon Hill and up the gentle slope to the split-level at the top.
Mr. Hallinan came to the door in a blue checked dressing gown. He looked slightly seedy, almost overhung, Lys thought. His dark eyes had puffy lids and a light stubble sprinkled his cheeks.
“Yes, Mrs. Erwin?”
“Oh—good morning, Mr. Hallinan. I—I came to see you. I hope I didn’t disturb you—that is—”
“Quite all right, Mrs. Erwin.” Instantly she was at ease. “But I’m afraid I’m really extremely tired after last night, and I fear I shouldn’t be very good company just now.”
“But you said you’d talk to me alone today. And—oh, there’s so much more I want to tell you!”
A shadow of feeling—pain? fear? Lys wondered—crossed his face. “No,” he said hastily. “No more—not just yet. I’ll have to rest today. Would you mind coming back—well, say Wednesday?”
“Certainly, Mr. Hallinan. I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”
She turned away and stared down the hill, thinking: He had too much of our troubles last night. He soaked them all up like a sponge, and today he’s going to digest them—
Oh, what am I thinking?
She reached the foot of the hill, brushed a couple of tears from her eyes, and walked home rapidly, feeling the October chill whistling around her.
And so the pattern of life in New Brewster developed. For the six weeks before his death, Mr. Hallinan was a fixture at any important community gathering, always dressed impeccably, always ready with his cheerful smile, always uncannily able to draw forth whatever secret hungers and terrors lurked in his neighbors’ souls.
And invariably Mr. Hallinan would be unapproachable the day after these gatherings, would mildly but firmly turn away any callers. What he did, alone in the house on Melon Hill, no one knew. As the days passed, it occurred to all that no one knew much of anything about Mr. Hallinan. He knew them all right, knew the one night of adultery twenty years before that still racked Daisy Moncrieff, knew the acid pain that seared Dudley Heyer, the cold envy glittering in Martha Weede, the frustration and loneliness of Lys Erwin, her husband’s shy anger at his own cuckoldry—he knew these things and many more, but none of them knew more of him than his name.
Still, he warmed their lives and took from them the burden of their griefs.
If he chose to keep his own life hidden, they said, that was his privilege.
He took walks every day, through still-wooded New Brewster, and would wave and smile to the children, who would wave and smile back. Occasionally he would stop, chat with a sulking child, then move on, tall, erect, walking with a jaunty stride.
He was never known to set foot in either of New Brewster’s two churches. Once Lora Harker, a mainstay of the New Brewster Presbyterian Church, took him to task for this at a dull dinner party given by the Weedes.
But Mr. Hallinan smiled mildly and said, “Some of us feel the need. Others do not.”
And that ended the discussion.
Towards the end of November a few members of the community experienced an abrupt reversal of their feelings about Mr. Hallinan—weary, perhaps, of his constant empathy for their woes. The change in spirit was spearheaded by Dudley Heyer, Carl Weede, and several of the other men.
“I’m getting not to trust that guy,” Heyer said. He knocked dottle vehemently from his pipe. “Always hanging around soaking up gossip, pulling out dirt—and what the hell for? What does he get out of it?”
“Maybe he’s practicing to be a saint,” Carl Weede remarked quietly. “Self-abnegation. The Buddhist Eightfold Path.”
“The women all swear by him,” said Leslie Erwin. “Lys hasn’t been the same since he came here.”
“I’ll say she hasn’t,” said Aiken Muir wryly, and all of the men, even Erwin, laughed, getting the sharp thrust.
“All I know is I’m tired of having a father-confessor in our midst,” Heyer said. “I think he’s got a motive back of all his goody-goody warmness. When he’s through pumping us he’s going to write a book that’ll put New Brewster on the map but good.”
“You always suspect people of writing books,” Muir said. “Oh, that mine enemy would write a book…!”
“Well, whatever his motives I’m getting annoyed. And that’s why he hasn’t been invited to the party we’re giving on Monday night.” Heyer glared at Fred Moncrieff as if expecting some dispute. “I’ve spoken to my wife about it, and she agrees. Just this once, dear Mr. Hallinan stays home.”
It was strangely cold at the Heyers’ party that Monday night. The usual people were there, all but Mr. Hallinan. The party was not a success. Some, unaware that Mr. Hallinan had not been invited, waited expectantly for the chance to talk to him, and managed to leave early when they discovered he was not to be there.
“We should have invited him,” Ruth Heyer said after the last guest had left.
Heyer shook his head. “No. I’m glad we didn’t.”
“But that poor man, all alone on the hill while the bunch of us were here, cut off from us. You don’t think he’ll get insulted, do you? I mean, and cut us off from now on?”
“I don’t care,” Heyer said, scowling.
His attitude of mistrust towards Mr. Hallinan spread through the community. First the Muirs, then the Harkers, failed to invite him to gatherings of theirs. He still took his usual afternoon walks, and those who met him observed a slightly strained expression on his face, though he still smiled gently and chatted easily enough, and made no bitter comments.
And on December 3, Wednesday, Roy Heyer, age 10, and Philip Moncrieff, age 9, set upon Lonny Dewitt, age 9, just outside the New Brewster Public School, just before Mr. Hallinan turned down the school lane on his stroll.
Lonny was a strange, silent boy, the despair of his parents and the bane of his classmates. He kept to himself, said little, nudged into corners and stayed there. People clucked their tongues when they saw him in the street.
Roy Heyer and Philip Moncrieff made up their minds they were going to make Lonny Dewitt say something, or else.
It was or else. They pummeled him and kicked him for a few minutes; then, seeing Mr. Hallinan approaching, they ran, leaving Lonny weeping silently on the flagstone steps outside the empty school.
Lonny looked up as the tall man drew near.
“They’ve been hitting you, haven’t they? I see them running away now.”
Lonny continued to cry. He was thinking, There’s something funny about this man. But he wants to help me. He wants to be kind to me.
“You’re Lonny Dewitt, I think. Why are you crying? Come, Lonny, stop crying! They didn’t hurt you that much.”
They didn’t, Lonny said silently. I like to cry.
Mr. Hallinan was smiling cheerfully. “Tell me all about it. Something’s bothering you, isn’t it? Something big, that makes you feel all lumpy and sad inside. Tell me about it, Lonny, and maybe it’ll go away.” He took the boy’s small cold hands in his own, and squeezed them.
“Don’t want to talk,” Lonny said.
“But I’m a friend. I want to help you.”
Lonny peered close and saw suddenly that the tall man told the truth. He wanted to help Lonny. More than that: he had to help Lonny. Desperately. He was pleading. “Tell me what’s troubling you,” Mr. Hallinan said again.
OK, Lonny thought. I’ll tell you.
And he lifted the floodgates. Nine years of repression and torment came rolling out in one roaring burst.
I’m alone and they hate me because I do things in my head and they never understood and they think I’m queer and they hate me I see them looking funny at me and they think funny things about me because I want to talk to them with my mind and they can only hear words and I hate them hate them hate hate hate—
Lonny stopped suddenly. He had let it all out, and now he felt better, cleansed of the poison he’d been carrying in him for years. But Mr. Hallinan looked funny. He was pale and white-faced, and he was staggering.
In alarm, Lonny extended his mind to the tall man. And got:
Too much. Much too much. Should never have gone near the boy. But the older ones wouldn’t let me.
Irony: the compulsive empath overloaded and burned out by a compulsive sender who’d been bottled up.
…like grabbing a high-voltage wire…
…he was a sender, I was a receiver, but he was too strong…
And four last bitter words: I…was…a…leech…
“Please, Mr. Hallinan,” Lonny said out loud. “Don’t get sick. I want to tell you some more. Please, Mr. Hallinan.”
Silence.
Lonny picked up a final lingering wordlessness, and knew he had found and lost the first one like himself. Mr. Hallinan’s eyes closed and he fell forward on his face in the street. Lonny realized that it was over, that he and the people of New Brewster would never talk to Mr. Hallinan again. But just to make sure he bent and took Mr. Hallinan’s limp wrist.
He let go quickly. The wrist was like a lump of ice. Cold—burningly cold. Lonny stared at the dead man for a moment or two.
“Why, it’s dear Mr. Hallinan,” a female voice said. “Is he—”
And feeling the loneliness return, Lonny began to cry softly again.
BLAZE OF GLORY
Horace Gold, the editor of Galaxy, was another one back in that long-ago era who kept hammering away at my willingness to turn out anything, anything at all, for the sake of a ready paycheck. He knew I was a capable writer who was going to have a significant career; and so he yelled at me and yelled at me, and sent me one irate rejection slip after another, until I started to live up to his high expectations for me. I didn’t always agree with his reactions to specific stories—he rejected some that I worked over as lovingly as I could, and felt were the best that I had in me—but his fundamental principle of pushing me to reach toward the highest possible level of achievement I could muster, and then to reach a little beyond that, eventually sank in.
“Blaze of Glory” was the second story I sold him, in January, 1957. (The first, I think, which he bought while I was still in college in the spring of 1956, is best left where it is. It was a great thrill to sell it to him, and thus complete my sweep of the Big Three magazines, but the story itself now seems non-wonderful to me: like any editor, Horace had some weak spots as an editor, and that fir
st story must have located one of them.) I’m pretty sure he was expecting even better fiction from me than this second one, too, and eventually I wrote some for him; but it must have showed him that I was at least starting to get the message, and my reward was a check for $150—something worth celebrating, back then. He published the story in the August, 1957 Galaxy.
——————
They list John Murchison as one of the great heroes of space—a brave man and true, who willingly sacrificed himself to save his ship. He won his immortality on the way back from Shaula II.
One thing’s wrong, though. He was brave, but he wasn’t willing. He wasn’t the self-sacrificing type. I’m inclined to think it was murder—or maybe execution—by remote control, you might say.
I guess they pick spaceship crews at random, probably by yanking a handful of cards from the big computer and throwing them up at the BuSpace roof. The ones that stick get picked. At least, that’s the only way a man like Murchison could have been sent to Shaula II in the first place.
Murchison was tall, bullnecked, coarse-featured, hard-swearing, a spaceman of a type that had never existed except in storytapes for the very young—the only kind Murchison was likely to have studied. He was our chief signal officer.
Somewhere, he had picked up an awesome technical competence; he could handle any sort of communication device with supernatural ease. I once saw him tinker with a complex little Caphian artifact that had been buried for half a million years and have it detecting the 21-centimeter “hydrogen song” within minutes. How he knew the little widget was a star-mapping device, I will never understand.
But coupled with Murchison’s extraordinary special skill was an irascibility, flaring into seemingly unmotivated anger at unpredictable times, that made him a prime risk on a planet like Shaula II. There was something wrong with his circuit-breaker, you could never tell when he’d overload, start fizzing and sparking, and blow off a couple of megawatts of temper.
You must admit this is not the ideal sort of man to send to a world whose inhabitants are listed in the Extraterrestrial Catalogue as “wise, somewhat world-weary, exceedingly gentle, non-aggressive to an extreme degree and thus subject to exploitation. The Shaulans must be handled with great patience and forbearance, and should be given the respect due one of the galaxy’s elder races.”