The Shrinking Man (9 page)

Clouds of smoke obscured the face. “A most seemly boy, Od’s bodkins,” said the man. He missed the dashboard opening and the lighter thumped on the floor boards. “God’s hooks!” The man doubled over. The car veered wildly.

“I’ll get it,” Scott said quickly. “Look out!”

The man put the car back in its proper lane. He patted Scott’s head with a spongy palm. “A child of most excellent virtues,” he slurred. “As I have always said—” He drew up phlegm, rolled down the window, and gave it to the wind. He forgot what he had always said. “You live around here?” he asked, belching conclusively.

“In the next town,” Scott said.

“Vincent was a friend, I tell you,” the man said remorsefully. “A
friend
. In the truest sense of that truest word. Friend, ally, companion, comrade.”

Scott glanced back at the service station they had just passed. It looked closed. He’d better ride into Freeport and make sure he could get hold of someone.

“He insisted,” the man said, “in donning the hair shirt of matrimony.” He turned. “You
comprends
, dear boy? Do you, bless your supple bones,
comprends?”

Scott swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said.

The man blew out a puff of smoke. Scott coughed. “And what,” the man said, “was a
man
, dear boy, became, you see, a creature of degradation, a lackey, a serf, an automaton. A—in short—lost and shriveled soul.” The man peered at Scott dizzily. “You see,” he asked, “what I mean to say, dear boy?
Do
you?”

Scott looked out the window. I’m tired, he thought. I want to go to bed and forget who I am and what’s happening to me. I just want to go to bed.

“You live around here?” asked the man.

“Next town.”

“Quite so,” said the man.

Silence a moment. Then the man said. “Women. Who come into man’s life a breath from the sewer.” He belched. “A pox on the she.” He looked over at Scott. The car headed for a tree. “And dear Vincent,” said the man, “lost to the eye of man.
Swallowed
in the spiritual quicksands of—”

“You’re going to hit that tree!”

The man turned his head.

“There,” he said. “Back on course, Cap’n. Back in the saddle again. Back where a friend is a—”

He peered at Scott again, face aslant as though he were a buyer examining merchandise. “You are—” he said, purse-lipped and estimating. He cleared his throat violently. “You are twelve,” he said. “First prize?”

Scott coughed a little at the cigar smoke. “First prize,” he said. “Look out.”

The man repointed the car, his laugh ending in a belch.

“An age of pristine possibility, my dear,” he said. “A time of un-trammeled hope. Oh, dear boy.” He dropped a portly hand and clamped it on Scott’s leg. “Twelve, twelve. Oh, to be twelve again. Blessed be twelve years of age.”

Scott pulled his leg away. The man squeezed it once more, then reached back to the steering wheel. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” he said. “Still to meet your first woman.” His lips curled. “That experience which is analogous to turning your first rock and finding your first bug.”

“I can get off at—” Scott started, seeing an open gas station ahead.

“Ugly they are,” stated the heavy man in the dark, wrinkled suit. “Ugly with an ugliness that worries the fringes of phenomena.” His eyes moved, peering out at Scott over banks of crow-lined fat. “Do you intend to marry, dear boy?” he asked.

If I could laugh at anything these days, Scott thought, I could laugh at that.

“No,” he said. “Say, could I get off at—”

“A wise, a noble decision,” said the heavy man. “One of virtue, of seemliness.
Women
.” He stared wide-eyed through the windshield. “Append them to cancer. They destroy as secretly, as effectively, as—speak truth, O prophet—as
hideously
.” The man looked at him. “Eh, boy?” he said, chuckling, belching, hiccuping.

“Mister, I get off here.”

“Take you to Freeport, my boy,” said the man. “To Freeport away! Land of jollities and casual obliterations. Stronghold of suburban ax-grindings.” The man looked directly at Scott. “You like girls, my boy?”

The question caught Scott off guard. He hadn’t really been paying attention to the drift of the man’s monologue. He looked over at the man. Suddenly the man seemed bigger; as if, with the questions, he had gained measurable bulk.

“I don’t really live in Freeport,” Scott said. “I—”

“He’s
diffident
!” The heavy man’s heretofore husky chuckle suddenly erupted into a cackle. “O diffident youth, beloved.” The hand again went to Scott’s leg. Scott’s face tensed as he looked up at the man, the smell of whisky and cigar smoke thick in his nostrils. He saw the cigar tip glow and fade, glow, fade.

“I get off here,” he said.

“Look thee, young chap,” said the heavy man, watching the road and Scott at the same time, “the night hath yet a measure of youth. It’s only a trifle past nine. Now,” his voice fell to cajoling, “in the icebox of my rooms there squats a squamous quart of ice cream. Not a pint, mind you, but—”

“Please, I get
off
here.” Scott could feel the heat of the man’s hand through his trouser leg. He tried to draw away but he couldn’t. His heartbeat quickened.

“Oh, come along, young dear,” the man said. “Ice cream, cake, a bit of bawdy badinage—what more could two adventurers like you and me seek of an evening? Eh?” The hand tightened almost threateningly.

“Ow!” Scott said, wincing. “Get your hand off me!”

The man looked startled at the adult anger in Scott’s voice, the lowering of pitch, the authority.

“Will you stop the car?” Scott asked angrily. “And look out!”

The man jerked the car back into its lane.

“Don’t get so excited, boy,” he said, beginning to sound agitated.

“I want to get
out
.” Scott’s hands were actually shaking.

“My dear boy,” the man said in an abruptly pitiful voice, “if you knew loneliness as I know it—black solitude and—”

“Stop the car, damn it!”

The man stiffened. “Speak with respect to your superior, lout!” he
snapped. His right hand drew back suddenly and smashed against the side of Scott’s head, knocking him against the door.

Scott pushed up quickly, realizing with a burst of panic, that he was no stronger than a boy.

“Dear boy, I apologize,” the man said instantly, hiccuping. “Did I hurt you?”

“I live down the next road,” Scott said tensely. “Stop here, please.”

The man plucked out his cigar and threw it on the floor.

“I offend you, boy,” he said, sounding as if he were about to cry. “I offend you with distasteful words. Please.
Please
. Look behind the words, behind the peeling mask of jollity. For there is utter sadness, there utter loneliness. Can you understand that, dear boy? Can you, in your tender years, know my—”

“Mister, I want to get out,” Scott said. His voice was that of a boy, half angry, half frightened. And the horror of it was that he wasn’t sure if there was more of acting or of actuality in his voice.

Abruptly the man pulled over to the side of the highway.

“Leave me, leave me, then,” he said bitterly. “You’re no different from the rest, no, not at all.”

Scott shoved open the door with trembling hands.

“Good night, sweet prince,” said the heavy man, fumbling for Scott’s hand. “Good night and dreams of plenteous goodness bless thy repose.” A wheezy hiccup jarred his curtain speech. “I go on—empty, empty… empty. Will you kiss me once? For good-by, for—”

But Scott was already out of the car and running, headlong toward the service station they had just passed. The man turned his heavy head and watched the youth racing away from him.

There was a thumping sound, like that of a hammer on wood; like the sound of a huge fingernail tapping, falsely patient, on a blackboard. The tapping pounded at his sleeping brain. He stirred on the bed, rolling over on his back with a fitful toss of arms.
Thump—thump—thump
. He moaned. At his sides, his hands raised up a trifle, then dropped again.
Thump. Thump
. He groaned irritably, still not fully conscious.

Then the water drop burst across his face.

Gagging and coughing, he reared up on the sponge, hearing a loud squishing noise. Another drop splashed off his shoulder.

“What!” His brain struggling to orient itself, his wide-eyed, startled gaze fled around the darkness.
Thump! Thump!
It was a giant’s fist beating at a door; it was a monster gavel pounding on a rostrum.

Sleep was gone. He felt his chest jerk with staggering heartbeats. “Good God,” he muttered. He threw his legs over the side of the sponge.

They landed in lukewarm water.

He jerked his legs back with a gasp. Overhead the noise seemed to be coming faster.
Thump-thump-thump!
Breath caught in his throat. What in God’s name…

Grimacing at the brain-jolting sound, he let his legs over the side of the bed again and let them sink in the warm water. He stood hastily, rigid hands clamped over his ears.
Thump thump thump!
It was like standing inside a fiercely beaten drum. Gasping, he lurched for the edge of the box top. He slipped on the water-slick surface, crying out as his right knee banged down on the cement. He pushed up with a groan, then slipped again.

“Damn it!” he screamed. He hardly heard his voice; the noise was
almost deafening. Frantic, he braced his feet and, reaching up, lifted the box-top edge and ducked out under it.

He slipped again, crashing down on an elbow. Pain knifed up his arm. He started up. A drop of water slammed across his back, sending him sprawling again. He twisted over like a fish and saw the water heater leaking.

“Oh, my God,” he muttered, wincing at the pain in his knee and elbow.

He stood up, watching great drops splatter off the box top and cement. The water ran warmly across his ankles; there was a minor waterfall of it flowing over the edge of the block, splashing on the cellar floor.

For a long moment he stood there indecisively, staring at the falling water, feeling the robe cling warm and wet to his body.

Then he cried out suddenly. “The crackers.”

He lunged at the box top again, sliding and struggling for balance. He lifted the top and carried it over the bed, feet almost slipping out from under him all the way. He dropped it, then flung himself across the sponge, hearing water burst out from its swollen pores.

“Oh,
no
.”

He couldn’t drag the package up, it was so water-logged. Face wild with frightened anger, he tore it open, the soggy paper parting like tissue in his hands.

He stared at the water-soaked cracker bits molded together into an ashen paste. He picked up a handful and felt the sodden drag of it, like day-old porridge.

With a curse he flung the dripping mass away. It flew over the edge of the block and splattered into a hundred pale scraps on the floor.

He knelt there on the sponge, oblivious now of the water that poured around and over him. His eyes were fastened to the pile of crumbs, his lips pressed into a blood-pinched hating line.

“What’s the use?” he muttered. His fists snapped shut like jaws. “What’s the
use?”
A water drop fell in front of him and he took a savage punch at it, losing balance and toppling over, face first, on the sponge. Water flooded from the compressed honeycomb.

He jolted to his feet on the block, hard with fury.

“You’re not going to beat me,” he said, he hadn’t the slightest idea
to whom. His teeth jammed together and it was defiance and a challenge that he hurled. “You’re not going to
beat
me!”

He grabbed up handfuls of the soggy cracker and carried it up to the dry safety of the first black metal shelf of the water heater. What good are soaked crackers? asked his brain. They’ll dry he answered. They’ll rot first, said his brain. Shut up! he answered.

He yelled it. “Shut up!” God! he thought. He flung a cracker snowball at the water heater and it spatted off the metal.

Suddenly he laughed. Suddenly the whole thing seemed hilarious—him four-sevenths of an inch tall, in a tentlike robe, standing ankle-deep in lukewarm water and throwing soggy cracker balls at a water heater. He threw back his head and laughed loudly. He sat down in the warm water and slapped his palms at it, splashing geysers of it across himself. He pulled off his robe and rolled around in the warm water. A bath, he thought. I’m having my goddam morning bath.

After a while he got up and dried himself on what was left of the handkerchief around the sponge. Then he squeezed the water from the robe and hung it up to dry. My throat is sore, he told himself. So what? he said. It’ll have to wait its turn.

He didn’t know why he felt so exhilarated and stupidly amused. He was certainly in a fix. It was just, he guessed, that when things got so bad they were absurd, you couldn’t take them straight any more; you had to laugh or crack. He almost imagined that if the spider came lumbering over the edge of the block now, he’d laugh at it.

He ripped up the handkerchief with teeth, nails, and hands, and made a flimsy robe of it, tying up the sides as he had done with the other robe. He put it on hastily. He had to get over to the sewing box.

Picking up the heavy pin, he threw it to the floor, then climbed down the cement block and retrieved it. I’ll have to find another sleeping place now, he thought. It was amusing. He might even have to go up the great cliff face after that slice of dry bread. That was amusing, too. He shook his head as he jogged across the floor toward the carton, sunlight streaming through the windows over him.

It was like the time after he’d broken the contract. There were all the bills, the pitiless insecurity, the problems of adjustment. He’d tried to go back to work. He’d begged Marty, and Marty had reluctantly agreed. But it hadn’t worked. It had got worse and worse until one day
Therese had seen him trying to climb onto a chair and had picked him up like a boy and set him on it.

He’d screamed at her and gone storming to Marty’s office; but before he could say a word Marty had shoved a letter across the desk at him. It had been from the Veterans Administration. The GI loan had been turned down.