The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (54 page)

“Jesse!” Rance screamed. “Jesse—”

‘‘Jesse!” Rance screamed, and the crew looked up, startled. There was Rance standing at the bar, staring at his reflection in the mirror. Above him he could see the lighting men, and behind his own reflection was that of Sy Blattsburg and the cameraman.

Sy hurried up to him, his face worried. “You all right, Rance?”

“Yeah,” Rance answered weakly. “Yeah, I’m all right.” Then, looking around, “But where’d you all go?”

The director exchanged a nervous glance with several of the crew. His voice was even more concerned. “Where did we go? We didn’t go anywhere, Rance. Nowhere at all, baby. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Rance gulped. “Sure...sure, I’m fine—I’m just fine.”

Sy turned to face the set. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get back to business now. Scene one hundred thirteen. Jesse’s on the floor—”

Rance gave a startled gasp. He almost had to force himself to turn from the bar to where the ersatz Jesse was lying.

“You think he’s unconscious,” Sy continued, “but he tries to get you in the back You fall to the floor, turn over with your gun in your hand, let him have it from on your belly.”

At this moment there was the loud honk of a Jaguar horn.

“Somebody wants to see you, Mr. McGrew,” one of the grips called from outside. “Says he’s your agent.”

Rance looked bewildered. “My agent?”

Sy Blattsburg closed his eyes and counted slowly to five under his breath. “Look, Rance,” he said, a slight tremor in his voice, “I don’t know what your chain of command is. So you go out and talk to your agent. Find out what it is that he wants, and what it is that you want, and what it is we can shoot.”

Trancelike, Rance walked out of the saloon and stopped dead in his tracks on the top step of the porch. There was his red Jaguar, just as if nothing had happened. Even the steer horns on the front of the hood were a reminder to him of the reality of Rance McGrew, idol of young and old. But standing alongside of the automobile was an apparition. It was the real Jesse James.

He wore Bermuda shorts, an Italian printed silk sport shirt, and a mauve beret. He was rolling his own cigarette but when he’d finished, he stuck it into a four-inch cigarette holder. He took a deep drag, flicked off the ash, then winked at Rance, who stood swaying between numbing fright and oncoming coma.

“Howdy, Marshal,” Jesse said warmly. “You said ‘
anything
,’ so ‘anything’ is the following: I’m jus’ gonna stick around from picture to picture and make sure you don’t hurt no more feelin’s.” He took out the cigarette holder and studied it thoughtfully, then he looked up and smiled. “Now, in this here scene, the guy that plays me don’t fire at your back He’s lost a lot of blood and he’s weak as tea, but he manages to git up to his feet, knock you through the window, and then make his getaway out the back” He put the cigarette holder between his teeth. “You dig, Marshal?”

Rance stared at him wide-eyed. “Knocks me through the window?
Rance McGrew
?”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed into slits, not unlike the openings in a Mark III tank. His pupils were the business ends of atomic cannons. “You heard me, Marshal,” he said. “Knocks you through the window and makes his getaway out the back”

Rance heaved a deep sigh, turned, and reentered the saloon.

Jesse could hear the mumble of voices from inside. There was one piercing wail that belonged to Sy Blattsburg, and some jumbled colloquy that sounded like “Areyououtofyourmothergrabbingmind? JesseJamesdoeswhat?!”

Jesse smiled and deftly plucked the cigarette out of the holder, stamping it under his patent-leather loafers.

Another voice came from inside. “Scene one hundred thirteen-take two.”

There was the sound of a scuffle, and then Rance McGrew came through the window in a welter of shattered glass.

Jesse walked over to stand above him, but in the process took a script from the front seat of the jag. “I was readin’ next week’s episode, Marshal. The one where ya knock a gun outta Frank James’s hand from a fourth-story window half a block away, usin’ the base of a lamp.”

Rance slowly and painfully got to his feet. “No good?” he inquired softly.

“Stinks!” said Jesse. “The way I see it, Frank hears ya, whirls around, fires from the hip—knocks the lamp outta your hand.”

Jesse opened the car door and motioned Rance inside. Then he walked around to the driver’s seat, got in, turned the key, and stepped on the gas. The car zoomed backward three quarters of the way across the street, stopped, and then roared forward.

Jesse’s voice could be heard over the sound of the engine. “Now, two weeks from now,” the voice said, “I think we oughta give Sam Starr a break He’s a nice fella—awful good to his mother—”

The rest of his voice was drowned out by the engine’s roar as the car disappeared down the dusty street.

While nothing is certain except death and taxes—and even these maybe somewhat variable—it seems reasonable to conjecture that the range riders up in Cowboy Heaven felt appeased. Jesse James used his mandate well, and from that moment on, Rance McGrew, a former phony-baloney, became an upright citizen with a preoccupation with all things involving tradition, truth, and cowboy predecessors.

It was Christmas. There was absolutely no question about that. Festive good will filled the air like the smell of maple syrup-sweet, sugary, and thick with insistence. There was one more day to complete Christmas shopping and this item of information was dinned into the minds of the citizenry like a proclamation of impending martial law “One More Shopping Day until Christmas!” It was the war cry of the big sell, and on this twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month of the one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-sixty-first year of our Lord, it served as a warning that just a few hours remained for people to open up their wallets and lay rather tired fingers on dog-eared credit cards.

“One More Shopping Day until Christmas.” The words were strung in tinseled lettering across the main floor of Wimbel’s Department Store. Mr. Walter Dundee, the floor manager of Wimbel’s, glanced at them briefly as he did his rounds up and down the aisles, casting businesslike eyes at the organized mayhem surrounding him.

He was a balding little fellow in his fifties, inclined to paunchiness, but briskly efficient in his movements and attitudes. Mr. Dundee could spot a shoplifter, a bum credit risk, or a grimy little child breaking a mechanical toy—he had an abhorrence of children of all ages—in one single all-pervading glance. He could also spot an ineffectual sales-person just by listening to a couple of sentences of the opening pitch.

Mr. Dundee walked through the aisles of Wimbel’s that December 24th, barking out orders, snapping fingers, and generally riding herd on these last few moments of Yuletide humbuggery. He extended watery smiles to harried mothers and their squalling children, and he gave explicit and terse directions to any and all questions as to where merchandise could be found, where rest rooms were located, and the exact times of delivery for all purchases over twenty-five dollars, no matter how far out in the suburbs they went. As he walked up the aisles past Ladies Hand Bags, toward the Toy Department, he noted the empty Santa Claus chair. One of his sparse little eyebrows, set at a rakish tilt over a tiny blue eye, shot up in fast-mounting concern. There was a sign over the chair which read, “Santa Claus will return at 6:00 o’clock”

The large clock on the west wall read “6:35.” Santa Claus was thirty-five minutes late. An incipient ulcer in Mr. Dundee’s well-rounded abdomen did little pincer things to his liver. He belched, and felt anger building up like a small flame suddenly blasted by a bellows. That Goddamn Santa Claus was a disgrace to the store. What was his name—Corwin? That Goddamn Corwin had been the most undependable store Santa Claus they had ever hired. Only yesterday Dundee had seen him pull out a hip flask and take an unsubtle snort—smack dab in the middle of a Brownie troop. Mr. Dundee had sent him an icy look which froze Corwin in the middle of his tippling.

Mr. Dundee was noted for his icy looks. As a boy, thirty-odd years before at military school, he had become Sergeant Major of the Fourth Form—the only non-athlete ever to achieve this eminence—because of the icy look that he carried with him throughout his professional career. It made up for the fact that he stood five feet four inches tall and had a figure like a coke bottle.

Now he felt frustrated that his rage had no outlet, so he scanned the store until he spotted Miss Wilsie, Ladies Inexpensive Jewelry, primping in front of a mirror. He stalked over to her, pinioned her with his look, and then announced:

“You have nothing better to do, Miss Wilsie? Preparing yourself for a beauty contest? There are customers waiting. Be good enough to attend to them!”

He waited only long enough for the color to drain out of the girl’s face as she hurried back to her place behind the counter, then he turned again toward the empty Santa Claus chair and cursed the errant Santa Claus, now thirty-eight minutes late.

Henry Corwin sat at the bar, a moth-eaten Santa Claus outfit engulfing his sparse frame. Discolored whiskers hanging from a rubber band covered his chest like a napkin. His cocky little cap, with the white snowball at the end, hung down over his eyes. He picked up his eighth glass of inexpensive rye, blew the snowball off to one side, and deftly slipped the shot glass toward his mouth, downing the drink in one gulp. He looked up at the clock over the bar mirror and noted that the two hands were close together. Precisely where they were he couldn’t tell, but he did feel a sense of time passing. Too much time.

He suddenly noticed his reflection in the mirror and realized that he was not drunk enough, because he still looked like a caricature. The Santa Claus uniform, which he had rented from Kaplan’s Klassy Costume Rental, had seen not only better days but many earlier ones. It was made out of thin cotton, patched and repatched. The color had faded to a kind of ailing pink and the white “fur” trim looked like cotton after a boll weevil assault. The cap was several sizes too small, and was actually a reconverted Shriner’s fez with the insignia taken off. The face looking back at him had gentle eyes and a warm smile that was slightly lopsided. It crinkled up at the ends and made you want to smile back.

Corwin was neutral to the face. He rarely took note of it. At this moment he was more concerned with the costume, fingering it and noting considerable lollipop stains, week-old ice-cream spots, and some brand-new holes, sizable enough to reveal the two pillows he had strapped over his union suit. He took his eyes away from the reflection and pointed to his empty glass.

The bartender walked over to him and gestured at the clock. “You told me to tell yuh when it was six-thirty,” he announced. “It’s six-thirty.”

Corwin smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly what it is,” he agreed.

The bartender picked his teeth. “What happens now? Yuh turn into a reindeer?”

Corwin smiled again. “Would that that were so.” He held up his empty glass. “One more, huh?”

The bartender poured him a shot. “That’s nine drinks and a sandwich—that’s four-eighty.”

Corwin took a single five-dollar bill from his pocket and put it on the counter. He started the shot glass toward his mouth. But as he did so, he noticed two little faces staring at him through the frosted glass of the front door. Big eyes looked at him in rapt attention and breath-catching worship—the eyes of every kid who, with the purest faith, had known that there
was
a North Pole, that reindeer
did
land on rooftops, and that miracles
did
come down chimneys. Even kids like this had this faith on grimy one-hundred-and-eighteenth street, where Puerto Ricans crowded into cold dirty rooms to gradually realize that poverty wore the same clothes both on lush islands and in concrete canyons a thousand miles away.

Corwin had to stare back at the little faces, and then he had to smile. They looked like slightly soiled cherubs on some creased and aged Christmas card. They were excited that the man in the red suit was looking at them.

Corwin turned his back to them, and quickly gulped the contents of the shot glass. He waited a moment, then looked at the door again. The two little noses pressed against the glass suddenly disappeared. But before they went they waved to Santa Claus at the bar and Corwin waved back.

He looked thoughtfully at the empty shot glass.

“Why do you suppose there isn’t really a Santa Claus?” he asked, speaking partly to the glass, partly to the bartender.

The bartender looked up tiredly from drying glasses. “How’s that?” he asked.

“Why isn’t there a
real
Santa Claus”—Corwin nodded toward the front door—“for kids like that?”

The bartender shrugged. “What the hell am I, Corwin—a philosopher?” He stared at Corwin for a long moment. “Do you know what your trouble is?” he said. “Yuh let that dopey red suit go to your head!”

He picked up the five-dollar bill, rang up the cash register, then put the change in front of Corwin.

Corwin looked at the coins and smiled a little crookedly. “Flip yuh—double or nothing.”

“What the hell do yuh think this is, Corwin—Monte Carlo? Go on—get outta here!”

Corwin rose somewhat unsteadily, testing soggy legs. Then, satisfied that they were serviceable, he walked across the room to the front door and out into the cold, snowy night, buttoning the top button of his thin cotton jacket, squeezing his cap down as far as it would go. He put his head into an icy wind and started across the street.

A big Caddie, with a Christmas tree protruding from the trunk, shot past him, honking. A red-faced, angry chauffeur shouted something as the car sped away. Corwin just smiled and went on, feeling the wet flakes cool on his hot face. He stumbled on the opposite curb and reached for the lamppost which was several feet away.

His arms encircled nothing but snowflakes and he pitched forward on his face, landing on a pile of snow next to a garbage can. With great difficulty he got to a sitting position, and became suddenly aware of four ragged little legs standing close by. He looked up to see the two scrawny Puerto Rican kids staring down at him, their little faces dark against the snow.