The Toynbee Convector (19 page)

“Here,” he whispered.

He touched them to her hand. She snatched her hand back. “Here,” he urged. “lake this,” he said, after a pause. He opened her fingers that were already dead and cold to the touch, and stiff and strange to manage, and he pressed the scissors into them. “Now,” he said.

He looked out at the moonlit sky for a long moment, and when he glanced back it was some time before he could see her in the dark.

“I waited,” he said. “But that’s the way it’s always been. I waited for the others, too. But they all came looking for me, finally. It was that easy. Five lovely ladies in the last two years. I waited for them in the ravine, in the country, by the lake, everywhere I waited, and they came out to find me, and found me. It was always nice, the next day, reading the newspapers. And you went looking to night, I know, or you wouldn’t have come back alone through the ravine. Did you scare yourself there, and run? Did you think I was down there waiting for you? You should have heard yourself running up the walk! Through the door! And locking it! You thought you were safe inside, home at last, safe, safe, safe, didn’t you?”

She held the scissors in one dead hand, and she began to cry. He saw the merest gleam, like water upon the wall of a dim cave. He heard the sounds she made.

“No,” he whispered. “You have the scissors. Don’t cry.”

She cried. She did not move at all. She stood there, shivering, her head back against the door, beginning to slide down the length of the door toward the floor.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered.

“I don’t like to hear you cry,” he said. “I can’t stand to hear that.”

He held his hands out and moved them through the air until one of them touched her cheek. He felt the wetness of that cheek, he felt her warm breath touch his palm hike a summer moth. Then he said only one more thing:

“Lavinia,” he said, gently. “Lavinia.”

How clearly he remembered the old nights in the old times, in the times when he was a boy and them all running, and running, and hiding and hiding, and playing hide-and-seek. In the first spring nights and in the warm summer nights and in the late summer evenings and in those first sharp autumn nights when doors were shutting early and porches were empty except for blowing leaves. The game of hide-and-seek went on as long as there was sun to see by, or the rising snow-crusted moon. Their feet upon the green lawns were like the scattered throwing of soft peaches and crab apples, and the counting of the Seeker with his arms cradling his buried head, chanting to the night: five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty..... And the sound of thrown apples fading, the children all safely closeted in tree or bush shade, under the latticed porches with the clever dogs minding not to wag their tails and give their secret away. And the counting done: eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five, a hundred!

Ready or not, here I come!

And the Seeker running out through the town wilder ness to find the Hiders, and the Hiders keeping their secret laughter in their mouths, like precious June straw berries, with the help of clasped hands. And the Seeker seeking after the smallest heartbeat in the high elm tree or the glint of a dog’s eye in a bush, or a small water sound of laughter that could not help but burst out as the Seeker ran right on by and did not see the shadow within the shadow....

He moved into the bathroom of the quiet house, thinking all this, enjoying the clear rush, the tumultuous gushing of memories like a waterfalling of the mind over a steep precipice, felling and felling toward the bottom of his head.

God, how secret and tall they had felt, hidden away. God, how the shadows mothered and kept them, sheathed in their own triumph. Glowing with perspiration how they crouched like idols and thought they might hide
forever
! While the silly Seeker went pelting by on his way to failure and inevitable frustration.

Sometimes the Seeker stopped right at your tree and peered up at you crouched there in your visible warm wings, in your great colorless windowpane bat wings, and said, “I see you there!” But you said nothing. “You’re up there all right.” But you said nothing. “Come on down!” But not a word, only a victorious Cheshire smile. And doubt coming over the Seeker below. “It is
you
, isn’t it?” The backing off and away. “Aw, I
know
you’re up there!” No answer. Only the tree sitting in the night and shaking quietly, leaf upon leaf. And the Seeker, afraid of the dark within darkness, loping away to seek easier game, something to be named and certain of. “All right for
you
!”

He washed his hands in the bathroom, and thought, Why am I washing my hands? And then the grains of time sucked back up the flue of the hour-glass again and it was another year....

He remembered that sometimes when he played hide-and-seek they did not find him at all; he would not let them find him. He said not a word, he stayed so long in the apple tree that he was a white-fleshed apple; he lingered so long in the chestnut tree that he had the hardness and the brown brightness of the autumn nut And God, how powerful to be undiscovered, how immense it made you, until your arms were branching, growing out in all directions, pulled by the stars and the tidal moon until your secretness enclosed the town and mothered it with your compassion and tolerance. You could do anything in the shadows, anything. If you chose to do it, you could do it. How powerful to sit above the sidewalk and see people pass under, never aware you were there and watching, and might put out an arm to brush their noses with the five-legged spider of your hand and brush their thinking minds with terror.

He finished washing his hands and wiped them on a towel.

But there was always an end to the game. When the Seeker had found all the other Hiders and these Hiders in turn were Seekers and they were all spreading out, calling your name, looking for you, how much more powerful and important
that
made you.

“Hey, hey! Where
are
you! Come in, the game’s
over
!”

But you not moving or coming in. Even when they all collected under your tree and saw, or thought they saw you there at the very top, and called up at you. “Oh, come down! Stop fooling! Hey! We see you. We know you’re there!”

Not answering even then—not until the final, the fetal thing happened. Far off, a block away, a silver whistle screaming, and the voice of your mother calling your name, and the whistle again. “Nine o’clock!” her voice wailed. “Nine o’clock! Home!”

But you waited until all the children were gone. Then, very carefully unfolding yourself and your warmth and secretness, and keeping out of the lantern light at corners, you ran home alone, alone in darkness and shadow, hardly breathing, keeping the sound of your heart quiet and in yourself, so if people heard anything at all they might think it was only the wind blowing a dry leaf by in the night. And your mother standing there, with the screen door wide….

He finished wiping his hands on the towel. He stood a moment thinking of how it had been the last two years here in town. The old game going on, by himself, playing it alone, the children gone, grown into settled middle age, but now, as before, himself the final and last and only Hider, and the whole town seeking and seeing nothing and going on home to lock their doors.

But tonight, out of a time long past, and on many nights now, he had heard that old sound, the sound of the silver whistle, blowing and blowing. It was certainly not a night bird singing, for he knew each sound so well. But the whistle kept calling and calling and a voice said, Home and Nine o’clock, even though it was now long after midnight. He listened. There was the silver whistle. Even though his mother had died many years ago, after having put his father in an early grave with her temper and her tongue. “Do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that, do this, do that “A phonograph record, broken, playing the same cracked turn again, again, again, her voice, her cadence, around, around, around, around, re peat, repeat, repeat.

And the clear silver whistle blowing and the game of hide-and-seek over. No more of walking in the town and standing behind trees and bushes and smiling a smile that burned through the thickest foliage. An automatic thing was happening. His feet were walking and his hands were doing and he knew everything that must be done now.

His hands did not belong to him.

He tore a button off his coat and let it drop into the deep dark well of the room. It never seemed to hit bottom. It floated down. He waited.

It seemed never to stop rolling. Finally, it stopped.

His hands did not belong to him.

He took his pipe and flung that into the depths of the room. Without waiting for it to strike emptiness, he walked quietly back through the kitchen and peered outside the open, blowing, white-curtained window at the footprints he had made there. He was the Seeker, seeking now, instead of the Hider hiding. He was the quiet searcher finding and sifting and putting away clues, and those footprints were now as alien to him as something from a prehistoric age. They had been made a million years ago by some other man on some other business; they were no part of him at all. He marveled at their precision and deepness and form in the moonlight. He put his hand down almost to touch them, like a great and beautiful archaeological discovery! Then he was gone, back through the rooms, ripping a piece of material from his pants cuff and blowing it off his open palm like a moth.

His hands were not his hands any more, or his body his body.

He opened the front door and went out and sat for a moment on the porch rail. He picked up the lemonade glass and drank what was left, made warm by an evening’s waiting, and pressed his fingers tight to the glass, tight, tight, very tight. Then he put the glass down on the railing.

The silver whistle!

Yes, he thought. Coming, coming.

The silver whistle!

Yes, he thought. Nine o’clock. Home, home. Nine o’clock. Studies and milk and graham crackers and white cool bed, home, home; nine o’clock and the silver whistle.

He was off the porch in an instant, running softly, lightly, with hardly a breath or a heartbeat, as one bare footed runs, as one all leaf and green June grass and night can run, all shadow, forever running, away from the silent house and across the street, and down into the ravine….

He pushed the door wide and stepped into the Owl Diner, this long railroad car that, removed from its track, had been put to a solitary and unmoving destiny in the center of town. The place was empty. At the far end of the counter, the counterman glanced up as the door shut and the customer walked along the line of empty swivel seats. The counterman took the toothpick from his mouth.

“Tom Dillon, you old so-and-so! What you doing up this time of night, Tom?”

Tom Dillon ordered without the menu. While the food was being prepared, he dropped a nickel in the wall phone, got his number, and spoke quietly for a time. He hung up, came back, and sat, listening. Sixty seconds later, both he and the counterman heard the police siren wail by at fifty miles an hour. “Well—hell!” said the counterman. “Go get ‘em boys!”

He set out a tall glass of milk and a plate of six fresh graham crackers.

Tom Dillon sat there for a long while, looking secretly down at his ripped pants cuff and muddied shoes. The light in the diner was raw and bright, and he felt as if he were on a stage. He held the tall cool glass of milk in his hand, sipping it, eyes shut, chewing the good texture of the graham crackers, feeling it all through his mouth, coating his tongue.

“Would or would you not,” he asked, quietly, “call this a hearty meal?”
“I’d call that very hearty indeed,” said the counter man, smiling.

Tom Dillon chewed another graham cracker with great concentration, feeling all of it in his mouth. It’s just a matter of time, he thought, waiting.

“More milk?”

“Yes,” said Tom.

And he watched with steady interest, with the purest and most alert concentration in all of his life, as the white carton tilted and gleamed, and the snowy milk poured out, cool and quiet, Like the sound of a running spring at night, and filled the glass up all the way, to the very brim, to the very brim, and over....

Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

It was just before midnight, on Christmas Eve when Father Mellon woke, having slept for only a few minutes. He had a most peculiar urge to rise, go, and swing wide the front door of his church to let the snow in and then go sit in the confessional to wait.

Wait for what? Who would say? Who might tell? But the urge was so incredibly strong it was not to be denied.

“What’s going on here?” he muttered quietly to himself, as he dressed. “I am going mad, am I not? At this hour, who could possibly want or need, and why in blazes should I—”

But dress he did and down he went and opened wide the front door of the church and stood in awe of the great artwork beyond, better than any painting in history, a tapestry of snow weaving in laces and gentling to roofs and shadowing the lamps and putting shawls on the huddled masses of cars waiting to be blessed at the curb. The snow touched the sidewalks and then his eyelids and then his heart. He found himself holding his breath with the fickle beauties and then, turning, the snow following at his back, he went to hide in the confessional.

Damn fool, he thought. Stupid old man. Out of here! Back to your bed!

But then he heard it; a sound at the door, and footsteps scraping on the pavestones of the church, and at last the damp rustle of some invader fresh to the other side of the confessional. Father Mellon waited.

“Bless me,” a man’s voice whispered, “for I have sinned!” Stunned at the quickness of this asking, Father Mellon could only retort: “How could you know the church would be open and I here?”
“I prayed, Father,” was the quiet reply. “God made you come open up.”

There seemed no answer to this, so the old priest, and what sounded like a hoarse old sinner, sat for a long cold moment as the clock itched on toward midnight, and at last the refugee from darkness repeated: