The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (51 page)

Stockton turned to him. “That’s all it takes,” he said. “That’s all it takes, huh?” he said. He looked at Marty Weiss. “Marty,” he said, “you want a block party and you want things back to normal. And Frank Henderson, over there—he wants us all to forget all about it. Chalk it up to a bad scare. And, Jerry—you’ll pay for the damages, huh? You’ll even put it in writing. You’ll pay for the damages...”

Harlowe nodded silently.

Stockton looked slowly around the room. “Do any of you have any remote idea just what the ‘damages’ are?” He paused. “Let me tell you something. They’re more than that broken door there. And they’re a lot deeper than the bruises on Marty Weiss’s face. And you don’t wipe them out by throwing a block party or a hundred block parties, every night of the year.”

He saw his wife step out of the shelter, and then his son Paul. They were staring at him with the others. The same questioning look. The same beaten and somehow haunted look. Stockton put his hand on the railing.

“The damages I’m talking about,” he said, “are the pieces of ourselves that we’ve pulled apart tonight. The veneer—the thin veneer that we ripped aside with our own hands. The hatred that came to the surface that we didn’t even realize we had. But, oh Jesus—how quick it came out! And how quickly we became animals! All of us.”

He pointed to himself. “Me, too—maybe I was the worst of the bunch. I don’t know.”

He paused for a moment and looked around. “I don’t think it’ll be normal again. At least, not in our lifetime. And if, God forgive, that bomb does fall—I hope we’ve made our peace
before
we suffer it. I hope that if it has to kill and destroy and maim, the victims will be human beings—not naked, wild beasts who put such a premium on staying alive that they claw their neighbors to death just for the privilege.”

He shook his head and then, very slowly, turned to look up toward the kitchen. “That’s what the damage has been,” he said, and he started up the steps. “It’s having to look at ourselves in a mirror and see what’s underneath the skin, and suddenly realizing that underneath...we’re an ugly race of people.”

He went up the steps, and after a moment, Grace, holding tight to Paul’s hand, moved through the silent people and followed him.

The silence stretched to a long moment, and then gradually, by two’s and three’s, the neighbors started out of the basement, through the garage and onto the street.

The street lights were bright, and the moon was up and high and full. A radio that had been left on blared out dance-band music. A television set once again uttered the canned laughter of a manufactured audience. A child cried, but was crooned to and hushed. It was any summer night again. There was the sound of the cicadas. There was the croaking rumble of distant bullfrogs. There was a gentle wind that touched the broad leaves with a rustling sound and sent patches of shadow crisscrossing on the sidewalks.

Bill Stockton stood in the dining room. At his feet was the remnant of the birthday cake lying on its side. A few broken candles, snuffed out, lay in a crumble of frosting. And he thought that for humanity to survive...the human race must remain civilized.

Funny, he thought, as he walked past the smashed, overturned furniture—really quite funny, how a simple thing like that could have eluded him.

He took his wife’s hand, and then Paul’s, and the three of them started up the stairs to their beds.

The night had ended.

The two cowboys walked out of the saloon down the three steps of the front porch and stood there peering down the length of the dusty main street. One of them spat out a blob of brown liquid, then wiped his beard-stubbled chin.

“He ain’t here yet,” he announced.

His companion took out a pocket watch and snapped it open.

“He will be. He knows what’s waitin’ for him!”

He snapped the watch shut and put it back into his leather vest.

The first cowboy squinted into the sun. “He’s gonna get shot this mornin’,” he announced laconically. “There ain’t no doubt about that.”

The second cowboy grunted in assent, then watched his friend stick another chunk of brown stuff into his mouth. “What is that?” he inquired.

“Hershey bar,” his companion said, “but the damn thing is stale and it don’t have no nuts in it neither.”

There came the sound of a roar. It was at first distant, like a far-off growl, then it built up until it was a full-throated shriek—and around the corner came a red Jaguar, chrome-spoked wheels churning their way through the dust, and screaming their protest as the car turned more sharply and headed down the main street. It threw up tons of dust as once again the driver jerked it abruptly to the right and slammed on the brakes. The car plowed to a stop a foot from the porch of the saloon, squatting there like some low-slung red animal. A horse tethered next to it stared at the driver, snorted, and looked away.

Rance McGrew climbed carefully out of the front seat, swiped the dust off his cream-colored whipcord pants and white silk shirt, straightened the black and yellow ascot around his neck, and carefully tilted the brim of his white Stetson. He kicked the car door shut and started up the steps of the saloon.

“Howdy, Mr. McGrew,” one of the cowboys said.

“Howdy,” Rance answered, clutching at the post at the top of the steps as one of his boots turned inward, and he teetered momentarily.

Rance wore the only elevator boots in the business, with two-inch lifts inside and three-inch heels on the bottom. This shot him up to five feet seven.

The door to the saloon opened and Sy Blattsburg came out. He was a bald, dapper little man in a sport shirt. The shirt was soaked with perspiration. He looked worriedly at his wristwatch and then at Rance.

“You’re an hour and fifteen minutes late, Rance,” he announced with suppressed anger. “We should’ve had this scene all shot by now.”

Rance shrugged his shoulders under their padding, and swaggered past him through the swinging doors into the make-believe saloon, where a camera crew and a party of extras sat around looking relieved and bored at the same time.

Sy Blattsburg, who had spent twenty years directing all kinds of phony-balonies, followed this particular phony-baloney into the saloon. “Makeup,” he called, as he padded after the star.

The makeup man hurried onto the scene. Forcing a beatific smile at the “cowboy,” he pointed to the wooden stool in front of the makeup mirror.

“Right over here, Mr. McGrew,” he said pleasantly.

Rance sat down on the stool and surveyed his reflection.

“Make it kind of quick, will you?” the director said, his lips twitching ever so slightly. “We’re quite a bit behind, Rance—”

Rance turned, knocking the powder puff out of the makeup man’s hand. “Don’t bug me, Sy,” he said with a fast burn. “You know what emotional scenes do to me just before we shoot!”

The director smiled and closed his eyes, then patted the star on his padded shoulders. “Don’t get upset, Rance baby. We’ll try to knock this one out in a hurry. What do you say we get started—huh? Okay, baby? This is scene seventy-one.”

He snapped his fingers and the script girl handed him the manuscript. “Here it is, right here,” he said, pointing to one of the pages.

Rance languidly held out his hand and Blattsburg gave him the script. Rance looked at it briefly, then gave it back. “Read it to me,” he said.

Blattsburg cleared his throat. His hand shook as he clutched at the script. “Interior saloon,” he read. “Cover shot of two bad men at bar. Rance McGrew enters. He walks to bar. He glances sideways left and right.”

Rance pushed the makeup man’s arm away and turned slowly to stare at the director. “He glances sideways left and right? Is my head supposed to be built on a swivel?”

He grabbed the script out of the director’s hand. “I’m gonna tell you something, Sy,” he announced. “When a cowboy walks into a bar, he walks to the far end of the room. He takes his drink. He looks at it. Then he looks straight ahead. He doesn’t look left and right.”

With this, Rance McGrew turned back toward the mirror, his face white under the powdered makeup, his lips twitching. His large baby-blue eyes clouded like those of a high-school sophomore cheerleader whose megaphone had just been dented.

Sy Blattsburg closed his eyes again. He knew only too well the tone of Rance McGrew’s voice and he was also familiar with the look on the face. It boded no good—either for that moment or for the day’s schedule.

“All right, Rance,” he said softly. “We’ll shoot it your way. Anyway you want.” He wet his lips. “Now can we begin?”

“In a moment,” Rance said, his eyes half closed in what appeared to be a very special and personal agony. “In just a moment. My stomach’s killing me. These scenes,” he said, as one hand massaged his belly. “These miserable emotional scenes.”

He pointed to a large hide-covered box on the floor near him. There, in hand-stitched elegance, was the name “Rance McGrew.” Two stars were underneath it. A prop boy opened it up and rummaged through its interior. There were bottles of medicine, throat lozenges, sprays, and a large stack of autographed publicity pictures of Rance fanning a six-gun. The prop boy took out one of the bottles of pills and brought it over to the makeup chair.

Rance opened the bottle and popped two of the pills into his mouth, swallowing them whole. Then he sat quietly for a moment—the makeup man waiting motionless. Rance slowly opened his eyes and nodded, whereupon the makeup man continued his ministrations.

Fifty-odd people began quietly setting up the scene. The cameraman checked the position of his camera, nodded his approval to the operator, and everyone turned to look expectantly toward Sy Blattsburg.

Sy checked the angle of the camera, and then called, “Second team out! The star is here!”

Rance McGrew’s stand-in left his place close to the swinging doors and Sy turned toward Rance.

“All set, Rance baby,” he said diffidently. ‘‘And we’ll shoot it just the way you want.”

Rance McGrew rose slowly from his wooden stool and stood looking at himself in the mirror. The makeup man put on the final touches of powder. A wardrobe man puttered around his leather vest.

Rance, still looking at himself, cocked his head, snapped his fingers, and pointed to one shoulder. The wardrobe man hurriedly inserted an inch of additional padding. Again Rance stared into the mirror and then snapped his fingers again. “Holster,” he said tersely.

A property man trotted to his side and began to tie on his holster.

Rance checked it by holding one arm straight down at his side and sighting down at it. “An inch more hang,” he ordered.

The property man quickly obeyed, loosening the belt one notch as Rance checked himself again in the mirror, moving his head around so that he could survey himself from several different angles. He stepped away from the mirror and then advanced on it, arms held away from his body in the manner of every fast gun since the beginning of time,

It might be parenthetically noted here that there was a point in history when there actually were top guns. They were a motley collection of tough mustaches who galloped and gunned their way across the then new West. They left behind them a raft of legends and legerdemains. But heroics or hambone—it can be stated quite definitely that they were a rough and woolly breed of nail-eaters who in matters of the gun were as efficient as they were dedicated. It does seem a reasonable guess, however; that if there were any television sets up in Cowboy Heaven, so that these worthies could see with what careless abandon their names and exploits were being bandied about—not to mention the fact that each week they were killed off afresh by Jaguar-drawn Hollywood tigers who couldn’t distinguish between a holster and hoof and mouth disease—they were very likely turning over in their graves or, more drastically, getting out of them.

None of this, of course, occurred to Rance McGrew as he swaggered across the set to the bat-wing doors, losing his balance only once or twice as his boots gave slightly to the left—much in the manner of a nine-year-old Brownie wearing her mother’s high heels.

When Rance reached the swinging doors he squared his padded shoulders, snapped his fingers again, and ordered tersely: ‘“My gun. “ This, of course, was the final item in the ritual of Rance McGrew’s preparation, and it occurred at the same time each morning. The prop man pitched underhanded an ugly-looking six-shooter which Rance caught deftly, spun around on the trigger finger of his right hand, and then with equal deftness, flipped it to his left hand. He then let it spin over his shoulder, putting his right hand behind him to catch it. The ugly-looking six-shooter didn’t know about the plan. It sailed swiftly over Rance, over the cameraman, over the bartender, and slammed against the bar mirror, smashing it into a million pieces.

Sy Blattsburg shut his eyes tightly and wiped the sweat from his face. With a heroic effort, he kept his voice low and untroubled. “Dress it up,” he ordered. “We’ll wait for the new glass.” He pulled out a five-dollar bill and handed it to the cameraman.

He had now lost four hundred and thirty-five dollars over the three-year span of Rance McGrew’s television show. In one hundred and eighteen films, this was the eighty-fourth time that Rance had broken the bar mirror.

Twenty minutes later the set had been dressed and a new mirror put up. Blattsburg stood alongside the cameraman. ‘‘All right,” he said, “ready...action!”

The camera began its quiet hum. Outside a horse whinnied, and through the swinging doors swaggered Rance McGrew in simple, powdered elegance, a noncommittal sneer on his face. The two “bad guys” stood at the bar and watched fearfully as he approached them. Rance went up to the bar and slammed the palm of his hand down on top of it.

“Rotgut whisky,” he said in a deep voice, perhaps one octave lower than Johnny Weissmuller’s. And while he may have walked like a Brownie, Rance’s ordinary speaking voice was that of a grocery boy in the middle of a voice change.

The bartender yanked a bottle from the shelf and slid it down the length of the bar. Rance nonchalantly held out his hand for it and looked mildly surprised as the bottle sped past him to break against the wall where the bar ended.