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for a moment at their foot and it seemed for all the world that I was
standing in a circle of enchantment. For this, I thought, could not be the
old, familiar earth, this place of ghostly, brooding oaken sentinels, this
air so drenched with moonlight, this breathless, waiting silence hanging
over all, and the faint, other-world perfume that hung above the soft
blackness of the ground.
Then the enchantment faded and the glitter went away and I was back
once more in the world I knew.
There was a chill in the summer air. Perhaps a chill of disappointment,
the chill of being booted out of fairyland, the chill of knowing there was
another place I could not hope to stay. I felt the solid concrete of the
walk underneath my feet and I could see that the shadowed oaks were only
oaks and not graven monuments.
I shook myself, like a dog coming out of water, and my wits came back
together and I went on down the walk. As I neared the car, I fumbled in my
pocket for my keys, walking around on the driver's side and opening the
door.
I was halfway in the seat before I saw her sitting there, next to the
other door.
'I thought,' she said, 'that you were never coming. What did you and
Father find to talk so long about?
'A number of things,' I told her. 'None of them important.'
'Do you see him often?'
'No,' I said. 'Not often.' Somehow I didn't want to tell her this was
the first time I had ever talked with him.
I groped in the dark and found the lock and slid in the key.
'A drive,' I said. 'Perhaps some place for a drink.'
'No, please,' she said. 'I'd rather sit and talk.'
I settled back into the seat.
'It's nice tonight,' she said. 'So quiet. There are so few places that
are really quiet.'
'There's a place of enchantment,' I told her, 'just outside your porch.
I walked into it, but it didn't last. The air was full of moonbeams and
there was a faint perfume...'
'That was the flowers,' she said.
'What flowers?
'There's a bed of them in the curve of the walk. All of them those
lovely flowers that your father found out in the woods somewhere.'
'So you have them too,' I said. 'I guess everyone in the village has a
bed of them.'
'Your father,' she said, 'was one of the nicest men I ever knew. When I
was a little girl he always gave me flowers. I'd go walking past and he'd
pick a flower or two for me.'
Yes, I thought, I suppose he could be called a nice man. Nice and
strong and strange, and yet, despite his strength and strangeness, a very
gentle man. He had known the ways of flowers and of all other plants. His
tomato plants, I remembered, had grown big and stout and of a dark, deep
green, and in the spring everyone had come to get tomato plants from him.
And there had been that day he'd gone down Dark Hollow way to deliver
some tomato plants and cabbage and a box full of perennials to the widow
Hicklin and had come back with half a dozen strange, purple-blossomed wild
flowers, which he had dug up along the road and brought home, their roots
wrapped carefully in a piece of burlap.
He had never seen such flowers before and neither, it turned out, had
anybody else. He had planted them in a special bed and had tended them with
care and the flowers had responded gratefully underneath his hands. So that
today there were few flower beds in the village that did not have some of
those purple flowers, my father's special flowers.
'Those flowers of his,' asked Nancy. 'Did he ever find what kind of
flowers they were?'
'No,' I said, 'he didn't.'
'He could have sent one of them to the university or someplace. Someone
could have told him exactly what he'd found.'
'He talked of it off and on. But he never got around to really doing
it. He always kept so busy. There were so many things to do. The greenhouse
business keeps you on the run.'
'You didn't like it, Brad?'
'I didn't really mind it. I'd grown up with it and I could handle it.
But I didn't have the knack. Stuff wouldn't grow for me.'
She stretched, touching the roof with balled fists.
'It's good to be back,' she said. 'I think I'll stay a while. I think
Father needs to have someone around.'
'He said you planned to write.'
'He told you that?'
'Yes,' I said. 'he did. He didn't act as if he shouldn't.'
'Oh, I don't suppose it makes any difference. But it's a thing that you
don't talk about - not until you're well along on it. There are so many
things that can go wrong with writing. I don't want to be one of those
pseudo-literary people who are always writing something they never finish,
or talking about writing something that they never start.'
'And when you write,' I asked, 'what will you write about?'
'About right here,' she said. 'About this town of ours.'
'Millville?
'Why, yes, of course,' she said. 'About the village and its people.'
'But,' I protested, 'there is nothing here to write about.'
She laughed and reached out and touched my arm. 'There's so much to
write about,' she said. 'So many famous people. And such characters.'
'Famous people?' I said, astonished.
'There are,' she said, 'Belle Simpson Knowles, the famous novelist, and
Ben Jackson, the great criminal lawyer, and John M. Hartford, who heads the
department of history at...'
'But those are the ones who left,' I said. 'There was nothing here for
them. They went out and made names for themselves and most of them never set
foot in Millville again, not even for a visit.'
'But,' she said, 'they got their start here. They had the capacity for
what they did before they ever left this village. You stopped me before I
finished out the list. There are a lot of others. Millville, small and
stupid as it is, has produced more great men and women than any other
village of its size.'
'You're sure of that?' I asked, wanting to laugh at her earnestness,
but not quite daring to.
'I would have to check,' she said, 'but there have been a lot of them.'
'And the characters,' I said. 'I guess you're right. Millville has its
share of characters. There are Stiffy Grant and Floyd Caldwell and Mayor
Higgy...'
'They aren't really characters,' said Nancy. 'Not the way you think of
them. I shouldn't have called them characters to start with. They're
individualists. They've grown up in a free and easy atmosphere. They've not
been forced to conform to a group of rigid concepts and so they've been
themselves. Perhaps the only truly unfettered human beings who still exist
today can be found in little villages like this.'
In all my life I'd never heard anything like this. Nobody had ever told
me that Higgy Morris was an individualist. He wasn't. He was just a big
stuffed shirt. And Hiram Martin was no individualist. Not in my book, he
wasn't. He was just a schoolyard bully who had grown up into a stupid cop.
'Don't you think so?' Nancy asked.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I have never thought about it.'
And I thought - for God's sake, her education's showing, her years in
an eastern college, her fling at social work in the New York welfare centre,
her year-long tour of Europe. She was too sure and confident, too full of
theory and of knowledge. Millville was her home no longer. She had lost the
feel and sense of it, for you do not sit off to one side and analyse the
place that you call your home. She still might call this village home, but
it was not her home. And had it ever been, I wondered? Could any girl (or
boy) call a bone-poor village home when they lived in the one big house the
village boasted, when their father drove a Cadillac, and there was a cook
and maid and gardener to care for house and yard? She had not come home;
rather she had come back to a village that would serve her as a social
research area. She would sit up here on her hilltop and subject the village
to inspection and analysis and she'd strip us bare and hold us up, flayed
and writhing, for the information and amusement of the kind of people who
read her kind of book.
'I have a feeling,' she said, 'that there is something here that the
world could use, something of which there is not a great deal in the world.
Some sort of catalyst that sparks creative effort, some kind of inner hunger
that serves to trigger greatness.'
'That inner hunger,' I said. 'There are families in town who can tell
you all you want to know about that inner hunger.'
And I wasn't kidding. There were Millville families that at times went
just a little hungry; not starving, naturally, but never having quite enough
to eat and almost never the right kind of things to eat. I could have named
her three of them right off, without even thinking.
'Brad,' she said, 'you don't like the idea of the book.'
'I don't mind,' I said. 'I have no right to mind. But when you write
it, please, write it as one of us, not as someone who stands off and is a
bit amused. Have a bit of sympathy. Try to feel a little like these people
you write about. That shouldn't be too hard; you've lived here long enough.'
She laughed, but it was not one of her merry laughs. 'I have a terrible
feeling that I may never write it. I'll start it and I'll write away at it,
but I'll keep going back and changing it, because the people I am writing of
will change, or I'll see them differently as time goes on, and I'll never
get it written. So you see, there's no need to worry.'
More than likely she was right, I thought. You had to have a hunger, a
different kind of hunger, to finish up a book. And I rather doubted that she
was as hungry as she thought.
'I hope you do,' I said. 'I mean I hope you get it written. And I know
it will be good. It can't help but be.'
I was trying to make up for my nastiness and I think that she knew I
was. But she let it pass.
It had been childish and provincial, I told myself, to have acted as I
had. What difference did it make? What possible difference could it make for
me, who had stood on the street that very afternoon and felt a hatred for
the geographic concept that was called the town of Millville?
This was Nancy Sherwood. This was the girl with whom I had walked hand
in hand when the world had been much younger. This was the girl I had
thought of this very afternoon as I'd walked along the river, fleeing from
myself. What was wrong, I asked myself.
And: 'Brad, what is wrong?' she asked.
'I don't know,' I said. 'Is there something wrong?
'Don't be defensive. You know there's something wrong. Something wrong
with us.'
'I suppose you're right,' I told her. 'It's not the way it should be.
It's not the way I had thought it would be, if you came home again.'
I wanted to reach out for her, to take her in my arms - but I knew,
even as I wanted it, that it was not the Nancy Sherwood who was sitting here
beside me, but that other girl of long ago I wanted in my arms.
We sat in silence for a moment, then she said, 'Let's try again some
other time. Let's forget about all this. Some evening I'll dress up my
prettiest and we'll go out for dinner and some drinks.'
I turned and put out my hand, but she had opened the door and was
halfway out of the car.
'Good night, Brad,' she sad, and went running up the walk.
I sat and listened to her running, up the walk and across the porch. I
heard the front door close and I kept on sitting there, with the echo of her
running still sounding in my brain.
I told myself that I was going home. I told myself that I would not go
near the office or the phone that was waiting on the desk until I'd had some
time to think. For even if I went and picked up the phone and one of the
voices answered, what would I have to tell them? The best that I could do
would be to say that I had seen Gerald Sherwood and had the money, but that
I'd have to know more about what the situation was before I took their job.
And that wasn't good enough, I told myself; that would be talking off the
cuff and it would gain me nothing.
And then I remembered that early in the morning I'd be going fishing
with Alf Peterson and I told myself, entirely without logic, that in the
morning there'd be no time to go down to the office.
I don't suppose it would have made any difference if I'd had that
fishing date or not. I don't suppose it would have made any difference, no
matter what I told myself. For even as I swore that I was going home, I
knew, without much question, that I'd wind up at the office.
Main Street was quiet. Most of the stores were closed and only a few
cars were parked along the kerb. A bunch of farm boys, in for a round of
beers, were standing in front of the Happy Hollow tavern.
I parked the car in front of the office and got out. Inside I didn't
even bother to turn on the light. Some light was shining through the window
from a street light at the intersection and the office wasn't dark.
I strode across the office to the desk with my hand already reaching
out to pick up the phone - and there wasn't any phone.
I stopped beside the desk and stared at the top of it, not believing. I
bent over and, with the flat of my hand, swept back and forth across the
desk, as if I imagined that the phone had somehow become invisible and while
I couldn't see it I could locate it by the sense of touch. But it wasn't
that, exactly. It was simply, I guess, that I could not believe my eyes.
I straightened up from feeling along the desk top and stood rigid in
the room, while an icy-footed little creature prowled up and down my spine.
Finally I turned my head, slowly, carefully, looking at the corners of the
office, half expecting to find some dark shadow crouching there and waiting.
But there wasn't anything. Nothing had been changed. The place was exactly
as I had left it, except there wasn't any phone.
Turning on the light, I searched the office. I looked in all the
corners, I looked beneath the desk, I ransacked the desk drawers and went
through the filing cabinet.
There wasn't any phone.
For the first time, I felt the touch of panic. Someone, I thought, had
found the phone. Someone had managed to break in, to unlock the door
somehow, and had stolen it. Although, when I thought of it, that didn't make
much sense. There was nothing about the phone that would have attracted
anyone's attention. Of course it had no dial and it was not connected, but
looking through the window, that would not have been apparent.
More than likely, I told myself, whoever had put it on the desk had
come back and taken it. Perhaps it meant that the ones who had talked to me
had reconsidered and had decided I was not the man they wanted. They had
taken back the phone and, with it, the offer of the job.
And if that were the case, there was only one thing I could do - forget
about the job and take back the fifteen hundred.
Although that, I knew, would be rather hard to do. I needed that
fifteen hundred so bad I could taste it.
Back in the car, I sat for a moment before starting the motor,
wondering what I should do next. And there didn't seem to be anything to do,
so I started the engine and drove slowly up the street.
Tomorrow morning, I told myself, I'd pick up Alf Peterson and we'd have
our week of fishing. It would be good, I thought, to have old Alf to talk
with. We'd have a lot to talk about -his crazy job down in Mississippi and
my adventure with the phone.
And maybe, when he left, I'd be going with him. It would be good, I
thought, to get away from Millville.
I pulled the car into the driveway and left it standing there.
Before I went to bed, I'd want to get the camping and the fishing gear
together and packed into the car against an early start, come morning. The
garage was small and it would be easier to do the packing with the car
standing in the driveway.
I got out and stood beside the car. The house was a hunched shadow in
the moonlight and past one corner of it I could see the moonlit glitter of
an unbroken pane or two in the sagging greenhouse. I could just see the tip
of the elm tree, the seedling elm that stood at one corner of the
greenhouse. I remembered the day I had been about to pull the seedling out,
when it was no more that a sprout, and how my dad had stopped me, telling me
that a tree had as much right to live as anybody else. That's exactly what
he'd said as much as anybody else. He'd been a wonderful man, I thought; he
believed, deep inside his heart, that flowers and trees were people.
And once again I smelled the faint perfume of the purple flowers that
grew in profusion all about the greenhouse, the same perfume I'd smelled at
the foot of the Sherwood porch. But this time there was no circle of
enchantment.
I walked around the house and as I approached the kitchen door I saw
there was a light inside. More than likely, I thought, I had forgotten it,
although I could not remember that I had turned it on.
The door was open, too, and I could remember shutting it and pushing on
it with my hand to make sure the latch had caught before I'd gone out to the
car.
Perhaps, I thought, there was someone in there waiting for me, or
someone had been here and left and the place was looted, although there was,
God knows, little enough to loot. It could be kids, I thought sonic of these
mixed-up kids would do anything for kicks.
I went through the door fast and then came to a sudden halt in the
middle of the kitchen. There was someone there, all right; there was someone
waiting.
Stiffy Grant sat in a kitchen chair and he was doubled over, with his
arms wrapped about his middle, and rocking slowly, from side to side, as if
he were in pain.
'Stiffy!' I shouted, and Stiffy moaned at me.
Drunk again, I thought. Stiffer than a goat and sick, although how in
the world he could have gotten drunk on the dollar I had given him was more
than I could figure. Maybe, I thought, he had made another touch or two,
waiting to start drinking until he had cash enough to really hang one on.
'Stiffy,' I said sharply, 'what the hell's the matter?'
I was plenty sore at him. He could get plastered as often as he liked
and it was all right with me, but he had no right to come busting in on me.
Stiffy moaned again, then he fell out of the chair and sprawled
untidily on the floor. Something that clattered and jangled flew out of the
pocket of his ragged jacket and skidded across the worn-out linoleum.
I got down on my knees and tugged and hauled at him and got him
straightened out. I turned him over on his back. His face was splotched and
puffy and his breath was jerky, but there was no smell of liquor. I bent
close over him in an effort to make certain, and there was no smell of
booze.
'Brad?' he mumbled. 'Is that you, Brad?'
'Yes,' I told him. 'You can take it easy now. I'll take care of you.'
'It's getting close,' he whispered. 'The time is coming dose.'
'What is getting close?'
But he couldn't answer. He had a wheezing fit. He worked his jaws, but
no words came out. They tried to come, but he choked and strangled on them.
I left him and ran into the living-room and turned on the light beside
the telephone. I pawed, all fumble-fingered, through the directory, to find
Doc Fabian's number. I found it and dialled and waited while the phone rang
on and on. I hoped to God that Doc was home and not out on a call somewhere.
For when Doc was gone, you couldn't count on Mrs Fabian answering. She was
all crippled up with arthritis and half the time couldn't get around. Doc
always tried to have someone there to watch after her and to take the calls
when he went out, but there were times when he couldn't get anyone to stay.
Old Mrs Fabian was hard to get along with and no one liked to stay.
When Doc answered, I felt a great surge of relief.
'Doc,' I said. 'Stiffy Grant is here at my place and there's something
wrong with him.'
'Drunk, perhaps,' said Doc.
'No, he isn't drunk. I came home and found him sitting in the kitchen.
He's all twisted up and babbling.'
'Babbling about what?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Just babbling - when he can talk, that is.'
'All right,' said Doc. 'I'll be right over.'
That's one thing about Doc. You can count on him. At any time of day or
night, in any kind of weather.
I went back to the kitchen. Stiffy had rolled over on his side and was
clutching at his belly and breathing hard. I left him where he was. Doc
would be here soon and there wasn't much that I could do for Stiffy except
to try to make him comfortable, and maybe, I told myself, he might be more
comfortable lying on his side than turned over on his back.
I picked up the object that had fallen out of Stiffy's coat. It was a
key ring, with half a dozen keys. I couldn't imagine what need Stiffy might
have for half a dozen keys. More than likely he just carried them around for
some smug feeling of importance they might give to him.
I put them on the counter top and went back and squatted down alongside
Stiffy. 'I called Doc,' I told him. 'He'll be here right away.'
He seemed to hear me. He wheezed and sputtered for a while, then he
said in a broken whisper: 'I can't help no more. You are all alone.' It
didn't go as smooth as that. His words were broken up.
'What are you talking about?' I asked him, as gently as I could. 'Tell
me what it is.'
'The bomb,' he said. 'The bomb. They'll want to use the bomb. You must
stop them, boy.'
I had told Doc that he was babbling and now I knew I had been right.
I headed for the front door to see if Doc might be in sight and when I
got there he was coming up the walk.
Doc went ahead of me into the kitchen and stood for a moment, looking
down at Stiffy. Then he set down his bag and hunkered down and rolled Stiffy
on his back.
'How are you, Stiffy?' he demanded.
Stiffy didn't answer.
'He's out cold,' said Doc.
'He talked to me just before you came in.'
'Say anything?'
I shook my bead. 'Just nonsense.'
Doc hauled a stethoscope out of his pocket and listened to Stiffy's
chest. He rolled Stiffy's eyelids back and beamed a light into his eyes.
Then he got slowly to his feet.
'What's the matter with him?' I asked.
'He's in shock,' said Doc. 'I don't know what's the matter. We'd better
get him into the hospital over at Elmore and have a decent look at him.'
He turned wearily and headed for the living-room.
'You got a phone in here?' he asked.
'Over in the corner. Right beside the light.'
'I'll call Hiram,' he said. 'He'll drive us into Elmore. We'll put
Stiffy in the back seat and I'll ride along and keep an eye on him.'
He turned in the doorway. 'You got a couple of blankets you could let
us have?'
'I think I can find some.'
He nodded at Stiffy. 'We ought to keep him warm.'
I went to get the blankets. When I came back with them, Doc was in the
kitchen. Between the two of us, we got Stiffy all wrapped up. He was limp as
a kitten and his face was streaked with perspiration.
'Damn wonder,' said Doc, 'how he keeps alive, living the way he does,
in that shack stuck out beside the swamp. He drinks anything and everything
he can get his hands on and he pays no attention to his food. Eats any kind
of slop he can throw together easy. And I doubt he's had an honest bath in
the last ten years. It does beat hell,' he said with sudden anger, 'how
little care some people ever think to give their bodies.'
'Where did he come from?' I asked. 'I always figured he wasn't a native
of this place. But he's been here as long as I remember.'
'Drifted in,' said Doc, 'some thirty years ago, maybe more than that. A
fairly young man then. Did some odd jobs here and there and just sort of
settled down. No one paid attention to him. They figured, I guess, that he
had drifted in and would drift out again. But then, all at once, he seemed
to have become a fixture in the village. I would imagine that he just liked
the place and decided to stay on. Or maybe lacked the gumption to move on.'
We sat in silence for a while.
'Why do you suppose he came barging in on you?' asked Doc.
'I wouldn't know,' I said. 'We always got along. We'd go fishing now
and then. Maybe he was just walking past when he started to get sick.'
'Maybe so,' said Doc.
The doorbell rang and I went and let Hiram Martin in. Hiram was a big
man. His face was mean and he kept the constable's badge pinned to his coat
lapel so polished that it shone.
'Where is he?' he asked.
'Out in the kitchen,' I said. 'Doc is sitting with him.'
It was very plain that Hiram did not take to being drafted into the job
of driving Stiffy in to Elmore.
He strode into the kitchen and stood looking down at the swathed figure
on the floor.
'Drunk?' he asked.
'No,' said Doc. 'He's sick.'
Well, OK,' said Hiram, 'the car is out in front and I left the engine
running. Let's heave him in and be on our way.'
The three of us carried Stiffy out to the car and propped him in the
back seat.
I stood on the walk and watched the car go down the street and I
wondered how Stiffy would feel about it when he woke up and found that he
was in a hospital. I rather imagined that he might not care for it.
I felt bad about Doc. He wasn't a young man any longer and more than
likely he'd had a busy day, and yet he took it for granted that he should
ride with Stiffy.
Once in the house again, I went into the kitchen and got out the coffee
and went to the sink to fill the coffee pot, and there, lying on the counter
top, was the bunch of keys I had picked up off the floor. I picked them up
again and had a closer look at them. There were two of them that looked like
padlock keys and there was a car key and what looked like a key to a safety
deposit box and two others that might have been any kind of keys. I shuffled
them around, scarcely seeing them, wondering about that car key and that
other one which might have been for a safety box. Stiffy didn't have a car
and it was a good, safe bet that be had nothing for which he'd ever need a
safety deposit box.
The time is getting close, he'd told me, and they'll want to use the
bomb. I had told Doc that it was babbling, but now, remembering back, I was
not so sure it was. He had wheezed out the words and he'd worked to get them
out. They had been conscious words, words he had managed with some
difficulty. They were words that he had meant to say and had laboured to get
said. They had not been the easy flow of words that one mouths when
babbling. But they had not been enough. He had not had the strength or time.
The few words that he'd managed made no particular sense.
There was a place where I might be able to get some further information
that might piece out the words, but I shrank from going there. Stiffy Grant
had been a friend of mine for many years, ever since that day he'd gone
fishing with a boy often and had sat beside him on the river bank all the
afternoon, spinning wondrous tales. As I recalled it, standing in the
kitchen, we had caught some fish, but the fish were not important. What had
been important then, what was still important, was that a grown man had the
sort of understanding to treat a ten-year-old as an equal human being. On
that day, in those few hours of an afternoon, I had grown a lot. While we
sat on that river bank I had been as big as he was, and that was the first
time such a thing had ever happened to me.
There was something that I had to do and yet I shrank from doing it -
and still, I told myself, Stiffy might not mind. He had tried to tell me
something and he had failed because he didn't have the strength. Certainly
he would understand that if I used these keys to get into his shack, that I
had not done it in a spirit of maliciousness, or of idle curiosity, but to
try to attain that knowledge he had tried to share with me.
No one had ever been in Stiffy's shack. He had built it through the
years, out at the edge of town, beside a swamp in the corner of Jack
Dickson's pasture, and he had built it out of lumber he had picked up and
out of flattened tin cans and all manner of odd junk he had run across. At
first it had been little more than a lean-to, a shelter from the wind and
rain. But bit by bit, year by year, he had added to it until it was a
structure of wondrous shape and angles, but it was a home.
I made up my mind and gave the keys a final toss and caught them and
put them in my pocket. Then I went out of the house and got into the car.
A thin fog of ghostly white lay just above the surface of the swamp and
curled about the foot of the tiny knoll on which Stiffy's shack was set.
Across the stretch of whiteness loomed a shadowed mass, the dark shape of a
wooded island that rose out of the marsh.
I stopped the car and got out of it and as I did, my nostrils caught
the rank odour of the swamp, the scent of old and musty things, the smell of
rotting vegetation, and ochre coloured water. It was not particularly
offensive and yet there was about it an uncleanliness that set one's skin to
crawling. Perhaps, I told myself, a man got used to it. More than likely
Stiffy had lived with it so long that he never noticed it.
I glanced back toward the village and through the darkness of the
nightmare trees I could catch an occasional glimpse of a swaying street
lamp. No one, I was certain, could have seen me come here. I'd switched off
the headlights before I turned off the highway and had crawled along the
twisting cart track that led in to the shack with no more than a sickly
moonlight to help me on my way.
Like a thief in the night, I thought. And that, of course, was what I
was - except I had no intent of stealing.
I walked up the path that led to the crazy door fashioned out of uneven
slabs of salvaged lumber, dosed by a metal hasp guarded by a heavy padlock.
I tried one of the padlock keys and it fitted and the lock snicked back. I
pushed on the door and it creaked open.
I pulled the flashlight I had taken from the glove compartment of the
car out of my pocket and thumbed its switch. The fan of light thrust out,
spearing through the doorway. There was a table and three chairs, a stove
against one wall, a bed against another.
The room was clean. There was a wooden floor, covered by scraps of
linoleum carefully patched together. The linoleum was so thoroughly scrubbed
that it fairly shone. The walls had been plastered and then neatly papered
with scraps of wallpaper, and with a complete and cynical disregard for any
colour scheme.
I moved farther into the room, swinging the light slowly back and
forth. At first it had been the big things I had seen -the stove, the table
and the chairs, the bed. But now I began to become aware of the other things
and the little things.
And one of these smaller things, which I should have seen at once, but
hadn't, was the telephone that stood on the table.
I shone the light on it and spent long seconds making sure of what I'd
known to start with - for it was apparent at a glance that the phone was
without a dial and had no connection cord. And it would have done no good if
it had had a cord, for no telephone line had ever been run to this shack
beside the swamp.
Three of them, I thought - three of them I knew of. The one that had
been in my office and another in Gerald Sherwood's study and now this one in
the shack of the village bum.
Although, I told myself, not quite so much a bum as the village might
believe. Not the dirty slob most people thought he was. For the floor was
scrubbed and the walls were papered and everything was neat.
Me and Gerald Sherwood and Stiffy Grant - what kind of common bond
could there be among us? And how many of these dialless phones could there
be in Millville; for how many others of us did that unknown bond exist?
I moved the light and it crept across the bed with its patterned quilt
- not rumpled, not messed up, and very neatly made. Across the bed and to
another table that stood beyond the bed. Underneath the table were two
cartons. One of them was plain, without any lettering, and the other was a
whisky case with the name of an excellent brand of Scotch writ large across
its face.
I walked over to the table and pulled the whisky case out from
underneath it. And in it was the last thing in the world I had expected. It
was not an emptied carton packed with personal belongings, not a box of
junk, but a case of whisky.
Unbelieving, I lifted out a bottle and another and another, all of them
still sealed. I put them back in the case again and lowered myself carefully
to the floor, squatting on my heels. I felt the laughter deep inside of me,
trying to break out - and yet it was, when one came to think of it, not a
laughing matter.
This very afternoon Stiffy had touched me for a dollar because, he'd
said, he'd not had a drink all day. And all the time there had been this
case of whisky, pushed underneath the table.
Were all the outward aspects of the village bum no more than
camouflage? The broken, dirty nails; the rumpled, thread-bare clothing; the
unshaven face and the unwashed neck; the begging of money for a drink; the
seeking of dirty little piddling jobs to earn the price of food - was this
all a sham?
And if it were a masquerade, what purpose could it serve? I pushed the
case back underneath the table and pulled out the other carton. And this one
wasn't whisky and neither was it junk. It was telephones.
I hunkered, staring at them, and it now was crystal clear how that
telephone had gotten on my desk. Stiffy had put it there and then had waited
for me, propped against the building. Perhaps he had seen me coming down the
street as he came out of the office and had done the one thing that would
seem entirely natural to explain his waiting there. Or it might equally well
have been just plain bravado. And all the time he has been laughing at me
deep inside himself.
But that must be wrong, I told myself. Stiffy never would have laughed
at me. We were old and trusted friends and he'd never laugh at me, he. would
never do anything to fool me.
This was a serious business, too serious for any laughing to be done.
If Stiffy had put the phone there, had he also been the one who had
come back and taken it? Could that have been the reason he had come to my
place - to explain to me why the phone was gone?
Thinking of it, it didn't seem too likely.
But if it had not been Stiffy, then there was someone else involved.
There was no need to lift out the phones, for I knew exactly what I'd
find. But I did lift them out and I wasn't wrong.
They had no dials and no connection cords.
I got to my feet and for a moment stood uncertain, staring at the phone
standing on the table, then, making up my mind, strode to the table and
lifted the receiver.
'Hello,' said the voice of the businessman. 'What have you to report?'
'This isn't Stiffy,' I said. 'Stiffy is in a hospital. He was taken
sick.'
There was a moment's hesitation, thenthe voice said, 'Oh, yes, it's Mr Bradshaw Carter, isn't it. So nice that
you could call.'
'I found the phones,' I said. 'Here in Stiffy's shack. And the phone in
my office has somehow disappeared. And I saw Gerald Sherwood. I think
perhaps, my friend, it's time that you explained.'
'Of course,' the voice said. 'You, I suppose, have decided that you
will represent us.'
'Now,' I said, 'just a minute, there. Not until I know about it. Not
until I've had a chance to give it some consideration.'
'I tell you what,' the voice said, 'you consider it and then you call
us back. What was this you were saying about Stiffy being taken somewhere?'
'A hospital,' I said. 'He was taken sick.'
'But he should have called us,' the voice said, aghast. 'We would have
fixed him up. He knew good and well...'
'He maybe didn't have the time. I found him...'
Where was this place you say that he was taken?'
'Elmore. To the hospital at...'
'Elmore. Of course. We know where Elmore is.'
'And Greenbriar, too, perhaps.' I hadn't meant to say it; I hadn't even
thought it. It just popped into my mind, a sudden, unconscious linking of
what was happening here and the project that Alf had talked to me about.
'Greenbriar? Why, certainly. Down in Mississippi. A town very much like
Millville. And you will let us know? When you have decided, you will let us
know?'
'I'll let you know,' I promised.
'And thank you very much, sir. We shall be looking forward to your
association with us.'
And then the line went dead.
Greenbriar, I thought. It was not only Millville. It might be the
entire world. What the hell, I wondered, could be going on?
I'd talk to Alf about it. I'd go home and phone him now. Or I could
drive out and see him. He'd probably be in bed, but I would get him up. I'd
take along a bottle and we'd have a drink or two.
I picked up the phone and tucked it underneath my arm and went outside.
I closed the door behind me. I snapped the padlock shut and then went to the
car. I opened the back door and put the telephone on the floor and covered
it with a raincoat that was folded on the seat. It was a silly thing to do,
but I felt a little better with the phone tucked away and hidden. I got
behind the wheel and sat for a moment, thinking, Perhaps, I told myself; it
would be better if I didn't rush into things too fast. I would see Alf
tomorrow and we'd have a lot of time to talk, an entire week to talk if we
needed it. And that way I'd have some time to try to think the situation
out.
It was late and I had to pack the camping stuff and the fishing tackle
in the car and Ishould try to get some sleep.
Be sensible, I told myself. Take a little time. Try to think it out.
It was good advice. Good for someone else. Good even for myself at
another time and under other circumstances. I should not have taken it,
however. I should have gone out to Johnny's Motor Court and pounded on Alf's
door. Perhaps then things would have worked out differently. But you can't
be sure. You never can be sure.
But, anyhow, I did go home and I did pack the camping stuff and the
fishing gear into the car and had a few hours of sleep (I wonder now how I
ever got to sleep), then was routed out by the alarm dock early in the
morning.
And before I could pick up Alf I hit the barrier.
'Hi, there,' said the naked scarecrow, with jaunty happiness. He
counted on his fingers and slobbered as he counted.
And there was no mistaking him. He came clear through the years. The
same placid, vacant face, with its frog-like mouth and its misty eyes. It
had been ten years since I had seen him last, since anyone had seen him, and
yet he seemed only slightly older than he had been then. His hair was long,
hanging down his back, but he had no whiskers. He had a heavy growth of
fuzz, but he'd never sprouted whiskers. He was entirely naked except for the
outrageous hat. And he was the same old Tupper. He hadn't changed a bit. I'd
have known him anywhere.
He quit his finger-counting and sucked in his slobber. He reached up
and took off his hat and held it out so that I could see it better.
'Made it myself,' he told me, with a wealth of pride.
'It's very fine,' I said.
He could have waited, I told myself. No matter where he'd come from, he
could have waited for a while. Millville had enough trouble at this
particular moment without having to contend once again with the likes of
Tupper Tyler.
'Your papa,' Tupper said. 'Where is your papa, Brad? There is something
I have to tell him.'
And that voice, I thought. How could I ever have mistaken it? And how
could I ever have forgotten that Tupper was, of all things, an accomplished
mimic? He could be any bird he wanted and he could be a dog or cat and the
kids used to gather round him, making fun of him, while he put on a mimic
show of a dog-and-cat fight or of two neighbours quarrelling.
'Your papa!' Tupper said.
'We'd better get inside,' I told him. 'I'll get some clothes and you
climb into them. You can't go on running around naked.'
He nodded vaguely. 'Flowers,' he said. 'Lots of pretty flowers.'
He spread his arms wide to show me how many flowers there were. 'Acres
and acres,' he said. 'There is no end to them. They just keep on forever.
Every last one purple. And they are so pretty and they smell so sweet and
they are so good to me.'
His chin was covered with a dampness from his talking and he wiped it
with a claw-like hand. He wiped his hand upon a thigh.
I got him by the elbow and got him turned around, headed for the house.
'But your papa,' he protested. 'I want to tell your papa all about the
flowers.'
'Later on,' I said.
I got him on the porch and thrust him through the door and followed
after him. I felt easier. Tupper was no decent sight for the streets of
Millville. And I had had, for a while, about all that I could stand. Old
Stiffy Grant laid out in my kitchen just the night before and now along
comes Tupper, without a stitch upon him. Eccentrics were all right, and in a
little town you get a lot of them, but there came a time when they ran a
little thin.
I still held tightly to his elbow and marched him to the bedroom.
'You stand right there,' I told him.
He stood right there, not moving, gaping at the room with his vacant
stare.
I found a shirt and a pair of trousers. I got out a pair of shoes and,
after looking at his feet, put them back again. They were, I knew, way too
small. Tupper's feet were all spraddled out and flattened. He'd probably
been going without shoes for years.
I held out the trousers and the shirt.
'You get into these,' I said. 'And once you have them on, stay here.
Don't stir out of this room.'
He didn't answer and he didn't take the clothes. He'd fallen once again
to counting his fingers.
And now, for the first time, I had a chance to wonder where he'd been.
How could a man drop out of sight, without a trace, stay lost for ten years,
and then pop up again, out of that same thin air into which he had
disappeared?
It had been my first year in high school that Tupper had turned up
missing and I remembered it most vividly because for a week all of the boys
had been released from school to join the hunt for him. We had combed miles
of fields and woodlands, walking slowly in line an arm's length from one
another, and finally we had been looking for a body rather than a man. The
state police had dragged the river and several nearby ponds. The sheriff and
a posse of townspeople had worked carefully through the swamp below Stiffy's
shack, prodding with long poles. They had found innumerable logs and a
couple of wash boilers that someone had thrown away and on the farther edge
of the swamp an anciently dead dog.
But no one had found Tupper.
'Here,' I told him, 'take these clothes and get into them.'
Tupper finished with his fingers and politely wiped his chin.
'I must be getting back,' he said. 'The flowers can't wait too long.'
He reached out a hand and took the clothes from me. 'My other ones wore
out,' he said. 'They just dropped off of me.'
'I saw your mother just half an hour ago,' I said. 'She was looking for
you.'
It was a risky thing to say, for Tupper was the kind of jerk that you
handled with kid gloves. But I took the calculated risk and said it, for I
thought that maybe it would jolt some sense into him.
'Oh,' he said lightly, 'she's always hunting for me. She thinks I ain't
big enough to look out for myself.'
As if he'd never been away. As if ten years hadn't passed. As if he'd
stepped out of his mother's house no more than an hour ago. As if time had
no meaning for him - and perhaps it hadn't.
'Put on the clothes,' I told him. 'I'll be right back.'
I went out into the living-room and picked up the phone. I dialled Doc
Fabian's number. The busy signal blurped at me.
I put the receiver back and tried to think of someone else to call. I
could call Hiram Martin. Perhaps he was the one to call. But I hesitated.
Doc was the man to handle this; be knew how to handle people. All that Hiram
knew was how to push them around.
I dialled Doc once more and still got the busy signal. I slammed down
the receiver and hurried toward the bedroom. I couldn't leave Tupper alone
too long. God knows what he might do.
But I already had waited too long. I never should have left. The
bedroom was empty. The window was open and the screen was broken out and
there was no Tupper.
I rushed across the room and leaned out of the window and there was no
sign of him.
Blind panic hit me straight between the eyes. I don't know why it did.
Certainly, at that moment, Tupper's escaping from the bedroom was not all
that important. But it seemed to be important and I knew, without knowing
why, that I must run him down and bring him back, that I must not let him
out of my sight again.
Without thinking, I stepped back from the window and took a running
jump, diving through the opening. I landed on one shoulder and rolled, then
jumped up to my feet.
Tupper was not in sight, but now I saw where he had gone.
His dewy tracks led across the grass, back around the house and down to
the old greenhouse. He had waded out into the patch of purple flowers that
covered the old abandoned area where once my father and, later, I myself had
tended rows of flowers and other plants. He had waded out some twenty feet
standing in a circle of enchantment. For this, I thought, could not be the
old, familiar earth, this place of ghostly, brooding oaken sentinels, this
air so drenched with moonlight, this breathless, waiting silence hanging
over all, and the faint, other-world perfume that hung above the soft
blackness of the ground.
Then the enchantment faded and the glitter went away and I was back
once more in the world I knew.
There was a chill in the summer air. Perhaps a chill of disappointment,
the chill of being booted out of fairyland, the chill of knowing there was
another place I could not hope to stay. I felt the solid concrete of the
walk underneath my feet and I could see that the shadowed oaks were only
oaks and not graven monuments.
I shook myself, like a dog coming out of water, and my wits came back
together and I went on down the walk. As I neared the car, I fumbled in my
pocket for my keys, walking around on the driver's side and opening the
door.
I was halfway in the seat before I saw her sitting there, next to the
other door.
'I thought,' she said, 'that you were never coming. What did you and
Father find to talk so long about?
'A number of things,' I told her. 'None of them important.'
'Do you see him often?'
'No,' I said. 'Not often.' Somehow I didn't want to tell her this was
the first time I had ever talked with him.
I groped in the dark and found the lock and slid in the key.
'A drive,' I said. 'Perhaps some place for a drink.'
'No, please,' she said. 'I'd rather sit and talk.'
I settled back into the seat.
'It's nice tonight,' she said. 'So quiet. There are so few places that
are really quiet.'
'There's a place of enchantment,' I told her, 'just outside your porch.
I walked into it, but it didn't last. The air was full of moonbeams and
there was a faint perfume...'
'That was the flowers,' she said.
'What flowers?
'There's a bed of them in the curve of the walk. All of them those
lovely flowers that your father found out in the woods somewhere.'
'So you have them too,' I said. 'I guess everyone in the village has a
bed of them.'
'Your father,' she said, 'was one of the nicest men I ever knew. When I
was a little girl he always gave me flowers. I'd go walking past and he'd
pick a flower or two for me.'
Yes, I thought, I suppose he could be called a nice man. Nice and
strong and strange, and yet, despite his strength and strangeness, a very
gentle man. He had known the ways of flowers and of all other plants. His
tomato plants, I remembered, had grown big and stout and of a dark, deep
green, and in the spring everyone had come to get tomato plants from him.
And there had been that day he'd gone down Dark Hollow way to deliver
some tomato plants and cabbage and a box full of perennials to the widow
Hicklin and had come back with half a dozen strange, purple-blossomed wild
flowers, which he had dug up along the road and brought home, their roots
wrapped carefully in a piece of burlap.
He had never seen such flowers before and neither, it turned out, had
anybody else. He had planted them in a special bed and had tended them with
care and the flowers had responded gratefully underneath his hands. So that
today there were few flower beds in the village that did not have some of
those purple flowers, my father's special flowers.
'Those flowers of his,' asked Nancy. 'Did he ever find what kind of
flowers they were?'
'No,' I said, 'he didn't.'
'He could have sent one of them to the university or someplace. Someone
could have told him exactly what he'd found.'
'He talked of it off and on. But he never got around to really doing
it. He always kept so busy. There were so many things to do. The greenhouse
business keeps you on the run.'
'You didn't like it, Brad?'
'I didn't really mind it. I'd grown up with it and I could handle it.
But I didn't have the knack. Stuff wouldn't grow for me.'
She stretched, touching the roof with balled fists.
'It's good to be back,' she said. 'I think I'll stay a while. I think
Father needs to have someone around.'
'He said you planned to write.'
'He told you that?'
'Yes,' I said. 'he did. He didn't act as if he shouldn't.'
'Oh, I don't suppose it makes any difference. But it's a thing that you
don't talk about - not until you're well along on it. There are so many
things that can go wrong with writing. I don't want to be one of those
pseudo-literary people who are always writing something they never finish,
or talking about writing something that they never start.'
'And when you write,' I asked, 'what will you write about?'
'About right here,' she said. 'About this town of ours.'
'Millville?
'Why, yes, of course,' she said. 'About the village and its people.'
'But,' I protested, 'there is nothing here to write about.'
She laughed and reached out and touched my arm. 'There's so much to
write about,' she said. 'So many famous people. And such characters.'
'Famous people?' I said, astonished.
'There are,' she said, 'Belle Simpson Knowles, the famous novelist, and
Ben Jackson, the great criminal lawyer, and John M. Hartford, who heads the
department of history at...'
'But those are the ones who left,' I said. 'There was nothing here for
them. They went out and made names for themselves and most of them never set
foot in Millville again, not even for a visit.'
'But,' she said, 'they got their start here. They had the capacity for
what they did before they ever left this village. You stopped me before I
finished out the list. There are a lot of others. Millville, small and
stupid as it is, has produced more great men and women than any other
village of its size.'
'You're sure of that?' I asked, wanting to laugh at her earnestness,
but not quite daring to.
'I would have to check,' she said, 'but there have been a lot of them.'
'And the characters,' I said. 'I guess you're right. Millville has its
share of characters. There are Stiffy Grant and Floyd Caldwell and Mayor
Higgy...'
'They aren't really characters,' said Nancy. 'Not the way you think of
them. I shouldn't have called them characters to start with. They're
individualists. They've grown up in a free and easy atmosphere. They've not
been forced to conform to a group of rigid concepts and so they've been
themselves. Perhaps the only truly unfettered human beings who still exist
today can be found in little villages like this.'
In all my life I'd never heard anything like this. Nobody had ever told
me that Higgy Morris was an individualist. He wasn't. He was just a big
stuffed shirt. And Hiram Martin was no individualist. Not in my book, he
wasn't. He was just a schoolyard bully who had grown up into a stupid cop.
'Don't you think so?' Nancy asked.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I have never thought about it.'
And I thought - for God's sake, her education's showing, her years in
an eastern college, her fling at social work in the New York welfare centre,
her year-long tour of Europe. She was too sure and confident, too full of
theory and of knowledge. Millville was her home no longer. She had lost the
feel and sense of it, for you do not sit off to one side and analyse the
place that you call your home. She still might call this village home, but
it was not her home. And had it ever been, I wondered? Could any girl (or
boy) call a bone-poor village home when they lived in the one big house the
village boasted, when their father drove a Cadillac, and there was a cook
and maid and gardener to care for house and yard? She had not come home;
rather she had come back to a village that would serve her as a social
research area. She would sit up here on her hilltop and subject the village
to inspection and analysis and she'd strip us bare and hold us up, flayed
and writhing, for the information and amusement of the kind of people who
read her kind of book.
'I have a feeling,' she said, 'that there is something here that the
world could use, something of which there is not a great deal in the world.
Some sort of catalyst that sparks creative effort, some kind of inner hunger
that serves to trigger greatness.'
'That inner hunger,' I said. 'There are families in town who can tell
you all you want to know about that inner hunger.'
And I wasn't kidding. There were Millville families that at times went
just a little hungry; not starving, naturally, but never having quite enough
to eat and almost never the right kind of things to eat. I could have named
her three of them right off, without even thinking.
'Brad,' she said, 'you don't like the idea of the book.'
'I don't mind,' I said. 'I have no right to mind. But when you write
it, please, write it as one of us, not as someone who stands off and is a
bit amused. Have a bit of sympathy. Try to feel a little like these people
you write about. That shouldn't be too hard; you've lived here long enough.'
She laughed, but it was not one of her merry laughs. 'I have a terrible
feeling that I may never write it. I'll start it and I'll write away at it,
but I'll keep going back and changing it, because the people I am writing of
will change, or I'll see them differently as time goes on, and I'll never
get it written. So you see, there's no need to worry.'
More than likely she was right, I thought. You had to have a hunger, a
different kind of hunger, to finish up a book. And I rather doubted that she
was as hungry as she thought.
'I hope you do,' I said. 'I mean I hope you get it written. And I know
it will be good. It can't help but be.'
I was trying to make up for my nastiness and I think that she knew I
was. But she let it pass.
It had been childish and provincial, I told myself, to have acted as I
had. What difference did it make? What possible difference could it make for
me, who had stood on the street that very afternoon and felt a hatred for
the geographic concept that was called the town of Millville?
This was Nancy Sherwood. This was the girl with whom I had walked hand
in hand when the world had been much younger. This was the girl I had
thought of this very afternoon as I'd walked along the river, fleeing from
myself. What was wrong, I asked myself.
And: 'Brad, what is wrong?' she asked.
'I don't know,' I said. 'Is there something wrong?
'Don't be defensive. You know there's something wrong. Something wrong
with us.'
'I suppose you're right,' I told her. 'It's not the way it should be.
It's not the way I had thought it would be, if you came home again.'
I wanted to reach out for her, to take her in my arms - but I knew,
even as I wanted it, that it was not the Nancy Sherwood who was sitting here
beside me, but that other girl of long ago I wanted in my arms.
We sat in silence for a moment, then she said, 'Let's try again some
other time. Let's forget about all this. Some evening I'll dress up my
prettiest and we'll go out for dinner and some drinks.'
I turned and put out my hand, but she had opened the door and was
halfway out of the car.
'Good night, Brad,' she sad, and went running up the walk.
I sat and listened to her running, up the walk and across the porch. I
heard the front door close and I kept on sitting there, with the echo of her
running still sounding in my brain.
I told myself that I was going home. I told myself that I would not go
near the office or the phone that was waiting on the desk until I'd had some
time to think. For even if I went and picked up the phone and one of the
voices answered, what would I have to tell them? The best that I could do
would be to say that I had seen Gerald Sherwood and had the money, but that
I'd have to know more about what the situation was before I took their job.
And that wasn't good enough, I told myself; that would be talking off the
cuff and it would gain me nothing.
And then I remembered that early in the morning I'd be going fishing
with Alf Peterson and I told myself, entirely without logic, that in the
morning there'd be no time to go down to the office.
I don't suppose it would have made any difference if I'd had that
fishing date or not. I don't suppose it would have made any difference, no
matter what I told myself. For even as I swore that I was going home, I
knew, without much question, that I'd wind up at the office.
Main Street was quiet. Most of the stores were closed and only a few
cars were parked along the kerb. A bunch of farm boys, in for a round of
beers, were standing in front of the Happy Hollow tavern.
I parked the car in front of the office and got out. Inside I didn't
even bother to turn on the light. Some light was shining through the window
from a street light at the intersection and the office wasn't dark.
I strode across the office to the desk with my hand already reaching
out to pick up the phone - and there wasn't any phone.
I stopped beside the desk and stared at the top of it, not believing. I
bent over and, with the flat of my hand, swept back and forth across the
desk, as if I imagined that the phone had somehow become invisible and while
I couldn't see it I could locate it by the sense of touch. But it wasn't
that, exactly. It was simply, I guess, that I could not believe my eyes.
I straightened up from feeling along the desk top and stood rigid in
the room, while an icy-footed little creature prowled up and down my spine.
Finally I turned my head, slowly, carefully, looking at the corners of the
office, half expecting to find some dark shadow crouching there and waiting.
But there wasn't anything. Nothing had been changed. The place was exactly
as I had left it, except there wasn't any phone.
Turning on the light, I searched the office. I looked in all the
corners, I looked beneath the desk, I ransacked the desk drawers and went
through the filing cabinet.
There wasn't any phone.
For the first time, I felt the touch of panic. Someone, I thought, had
found the phone. Someone had managed to break in, to unlock the door
somehow, and had stolen it. Although, when I thought of it, that didn't make
much sense. There was nothing about the phone that would have attracted
anyone's attention. Of course it had no dial and it was not connected, but
looking through the window, that would not have been apparent.
More than likely, I told myself, whoever had put it on the desk had
come back and taken it. Perhaps it meant that the ones who had talked to me
had reconsidered and had decided I was not the man they wanted. They had
taken back the phone and, with it, the offer of the job.
And if that were the case, there was only one thing I could do - forget
about the job and take back the fifteen hundred.
Although that, I knew, would be rather hard to do. I needed that
fifteen hundred so bad I could taste it.
Back in the car, I sat for a moment before starting the motor,
wondering what I should do next. And there didn't seem to be anything to do,
so I started the engine and drove slowly up the street.
Tomorrow morning, I told myself, I'd pick up Alf Peterson and we'd have
our week of fishing. It would be good, I thought, to have old Alf to talk
with. We'd have a lot to talk about -his crazy job down in Mississippi and
my adventure with the phone.
And maybe, when he left, I'd be going with him. It would be good, I
thought, to get away from Millville.
I pulled the car into the driveway and left it standing there.
Before I went to bed, I'd want to get the camping and the fishing gear
together and packed into the car against an early start, come morning. The
garage was small and it would be easier to do the packing with the car
standing in the driveway.
I got out and stood beside the car. The house was a hunched shadow in
the moonlight and past one corner of it I could see the moonlit glitter of
an unbroken pane or two in the sagging greenhouse. I could just see the tip
of the elm tree, the seedling elm that stood at one corner of the
greenhouse. I remembered the day I had been about to pull the seedling out,
when it was no more that a sprout, and how my dad had stopped me, telling me
that a tree had as much right to live as anybody else. That's exactly what
he'd said as much as anybody else. He'd been a wonderful man, I thought; he
believed, deep inside his heart, that flowers and trees were people.
And once again I smelled the faint perfume of the purple flowers that
grew in profusion all about the greenhouse, the same perfume I'd smelled at
the foot of the Sherwood porch. But this time there was no circle of
enchantment.
I walked around the house and as I approached the kitchen door I saw
there was a light inside. More than likely, I thought, I had forgotten it,
although I could not remember that I had turned it on.
The door was open, too, and I could remember shutting it and pushing on
it with my hand to make sure the latch had caught before I'd gone out to the
car.
Perhaps, I thought, there was someone in there waiting for me, or
someone had been here and left and the place was looted, although there was,
God knows, little enough to loot. It could be kids, I thought sonic of these
mixed-up kids would do anything for kicks.
I went through the door fast and then came to a sudden halt in the
middle of the kitchen. There was someone there, all right; there was someone
waiting.
Stiffy Grant sat in a kitchen chair and he was doubled over, with his
arms wrapped about his middle, and rocking slowly, from side to side, as if
he were in pain.
'Stiffy!' I shouted, and Stiffy moaned at me.
Drunk again, I thought. Stiffer than a goat and sick, although how in
the world he could have gotten drunk on the dollar I had given him was more
than I could figure. Maybe, I thought, he had made another touch or two,
waiting to start drinking until he had cash enough to really hang one on.
'Stiffy,' I said sharply, 'what the hell's the matter?'
I was plenty sore at him. He could get plastered as often as he liked
and it was all right with me, but he had no right to come busting in on me.
Stiffy moaned again, then he fell out of the chair and sprawled
untidily on the floor. Something that clattered and jangled flew out of the
pocket of his ragged jacket and skidded across the worn-out linoleum.
I got down on my knees and tugged and hauled at him and got him
straightened out. I turned him over on his back. His face was splotched and
puffy and his breath was jerky, but there was no smell of liquor. I bent
close over him in an effort to make certain, and there was no smell of
booze.
'Brad?' he mumbled. 'Is that you, Brad?'
'Yes,' I told him. 'You can take it easy now. I'll take care of you.'
'It's getting close,' he whispered. 'The time is coming dose.'
'What is getting close?'
But he couldn't answer. He had a wheezing fit. He worked his jaws, but
no words came out. They tried to come, but he choked and strangled on them.
I left him and ran into the living-room and turned on the light beside
the telephone. I pawed, all fumble-fingered, through the directory, to find
Doc Fabian's number. I found it and dialled and waited while the phone rang
on and on. I hoped to God that Doc was home and not out on a call somewhere.
For when Doc was gone, you couldn't count on Mrs Fabian answering. She was
all crippled up with arthritis and half the time couldn't get around. Doc
always tried to have someone there to watch after her and to take the calls
when he went out, but there were times when he couldn't get anyone to stay.
Old Mrs Fabian was hard to get along with and no one liked to stay.
When Doc answered, I felt a great surge of relief.
'Doc,' I said. 'Stiffy Grant is here at my place and there's something
wrong with him.'
'Drunk, perhaps,' said Doc.
'No, he isn't drunk. I came home and found him sitting in the kitchen.
He's all twisted up and babbling.'
'Babbling about what?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Just babbling - when he can talk, that is.'
'All right,' said Doc. 'I'll be right over.'
That's one thing about Doc. You can count on him. At any time of day or
night, in any kind of weather.
I went back to the kitchen. Stiffy had rolled over on his side and was
clutching at his belly and breathing hard. I left him where he was. Doc
would be here soon and there wasn't much that I could do for Stiffy except
to try to make him comfortable, and maybe, I told myself, he might be more
comfortable lying on his side than turned over on his back.
I picked up the object that had fallen out of Stiffy's coat. It was a
key ring, with half a dozen keys. I couldn't imagine what need Stiffy might
have for half a dozen keys. More than likely he just carried them around for
some smug feeling of importance they might give to him.
I put them on the counter top and went back and squatted down alongside
Stiffy. 'I called Doc,' I told him. 'He'll be here right away.'
He seemed to hear me. He wheezed and sputtered for a while, then he
said in a broken whisper: 'I can't help no more. You are all alone.' It
didn't go as smooth as that. His words were broken up.
'What are you talking about?' I asked him, as gently as I could. 'Tell
me what it is.'
'The bomb,' he said. 'The bomb. They'll want to use the bomb. You must
stop them, boy.'
I had told Doc that he was babbling and now I knew I had been right.
I headed for the front door to see if Doc might be in sight and when I
got there he was coming up the walk.
Doc went ahead of me into the kitchen and stood for a moment, looking
down at Stiffy. Then he set down his bag and hunkered down and rolled Stiffy
on his back.
'How are you, Stiffy?' he demanded.
Stiffy didn't answer.
'He's out cold,' said Doc.
'He talked to me just before you came in.'
'Say anything?'
I shook my bead. 'Just nonsense.'
Doc hauled a stethoscope out of his pocket and listened to Stiffy's
chest. He rolled Stiffy's eyelids back and beamed a light into his eyes.
Then he got slowly to his feet.
'What's the matter with him?' I asked.
'He's in shock,' said Doc. 'I don't know what's the matter. We'd better
get him into the hospital over at Elmore and have a decent look at him.'
He turned wearily and headed for the living-room.
'You got a phone in here?' he asked.
'Over in the corner. Right beside the light.'
'I'll call Hiram,' he said. 'He'll drive us into Elmore. We'll put
Stiffy in the back seat and I'll ride along and keep an eye on him.'
He turned in the doorway. 'You got a couple of blankets you could let
us have?'
'I think I can find some.'
He nodded at Stiffy. 'We ought to keep him warm.'
I went to get the blankets. When I came back with them, Doc was in the
kitchen. Between the two of us, we got Stiffy all wrapped up. He was limp as
a kitten and his face was streaked with perspiration.
'Damn wonder,' said Doc, 'how he keeps alive, living the way he does,
in that shack stuck out beside the swamp. He drinks anything and everything
he can get his hands on and he pays no attention to his food. Eats any kind
of slop he can throw together easy. And I doubt he's had an honest bath in
the last ten years. It does beat hell,' he said with sudden anger, 'how
little care some people ever think to give their bodies.'
'Where did he come from?' I asked. 'I always figured he wasn't a native
of this place. But he's been here as long as I remember.'
'Drifted in,' said Doc, 'some thirty years ago, maybe more than that. A
fairly young man then. Did some odd jobs here and there and just sort of
settled down. No one paid attention to him. They figured, I guess, that he
had drifted in and would drift out again. But then, all at once, he seemed
to have become a fixture in the village. I would imagine that he just liked
the place and decided to stay on. Or maybe lacked the gumption to move on.'
We sat in silence for a while.
'Why do you suppose he came barging in on you?' asked Doc.
'I wouldn't know,' I said. 'We always got along. We'd go fishing now
and then. Maybe he was just walking past when he started to get sick.'
'Maybe so,' said Doc.
The doorbell rang and I went and let Hiram Martin in. Hiram was a big
man. His face was mean and he kept the constable's badge pinned to his coat
lapel so polished that it shone.
'Where is he?' he asked.
'Out in the kitchen,' I said. 'Doc is sitting with him.'
It was very plain that Hiram did not take to being drafted into the job
of driving Stiffy in to Elmore.
He strode into the kitchen and stood looking down at the swathed figure
on the floor.
'Drunk?' he asked.
'No,' said Doc. 'He's sick.'
Well, OK,' said Hiram, 'the car is out in front and I left the engine
running. Let's heave him in and be on our way.'
The three of us carried Stiffy out to the car and propped him in the
back seat.
I stood on the walk and watched the car go down the street and I
wondered how Stiffy would feel about it when he woke up and found that he
was in a hospital. I rather imagined that he might not care for it.
I felt bad about Doc. He wasn't a young man any longer and more than
likely he'd had a busy day, and yet he took it for granted that he should
ride with Stiffy.
Once in the house again, I went into the kitchen and got out the coffee
and went to the sink to fill the coffee pot, and there, lying on the counter
top, was the bunch of keys I had picked up off the floor. I picked them up
again and had a closer look at them. There were two of them that looked like
padlock keys and there was a car key and what looked like a key to a safety
deposit box and two others that might have been any kind of keys. I shuffled
them around, scarcely seeing them, wondering about that car key and that
other one which might have been for a safety box. Stiffy didn't have a car
and it was a good, safe bet that be had nothing for which he'd ever need a
safety deposit box.
The time is getting close, he'd told me, and they'll want to use the
bomb. I had told Doc that it was babbling, but now, remembering back, I was
not so sure it was. He had wheezed out the words and he'd worked to get them
out. They had been conscious words, words he had managed with some
difficulty. They were words that he had meant to say and had laboured to get
said. They had not been the easy flow of words that one mouths when
babbling. But they had not been enough. He had not had the strength or time.
The few words that he'd managed made no particular sense.
There was a place where I might be able to get some further information
that might piece out the words, but I shrank from going there. Stiffy Grant
had been a friend of mine for many years, ever since that day he'd gone
fishing with a boy often and had sat beside him on the river bank all the
afternoon, spinning wondrous tales. As I recalled it, standing in the
kitchen, we had caught some fish, but the fish were not important. What had
been important then, what was still important, was that a grown man had the
sort of understanding to treat a ten-year-old as an equal human being. On
that day, in those few hours of an afternoon, I had grown a lot. While we
sat on that river bank I had been as big as he was, and that was the first
time such a thing had ever happened to me.
There was something that I had to do and yet I shrank from doing it -
and still, I told myself, Stiffy might not mind. He had tried to tell me
something and he had failed because he didn't have the strength. Certainly
he would understand that if I used these keys to get into his shack, that I
had not done it in a spirit of maliciousness, or of idle curiosity, but to
try to attain that knowledge he had tried to share with me.
No one had ever been in Stiffy's shack. He had built it through the
years, out at the edge of town, beside a swamp in the corner of Jack
Dickson's pasture, and he had built it out of lumber he had picked up and
out of flattened tin cans and all manner of odd junk he had run across. At
first it had been little more than a lean-to, a shelter from the wind and
rain. But bit by bit, year by year, he had added to it until it was a
structure of wondrous shape and angles, but it was a home.
I made up my mind and gave the keys a final toss and caught them and
put them in my pocket. Then I went out of the house and got into the car.
A thin fog of ghostly white lay just above the surface of the swamp and
curled about the foot of the tiny knoll on which Stiffy's shack was set.
Across the stretch of whiteness loomed a shadowed mass, the dark shape of a
wooded island that rose out of the marsh.
I stopped the car and got out of it and as I did, my nostrils caught
the rank odour of the swamp, the scent of old and musty things, the smell of
rotting vegetation, and ochre coloured water. It was not particularly
offensive and yet there was about it an uncleanliness that set one's skin to
crawling. Perhaps, I told myself, a man got used to it. More than likely
Stiffy had lived with it so long that he never noticed it.
I glanced back toward the village and through the darkness of the
nightmare trees I could catch an occasional glimpse of a swaying street
lamp. No one, I was certain, could have seen me come here. I'd switched off
the headlights before I turned off the highway and had crawled along the
twisting cart track that led in to the shack with no more than a sickly
moonlight to help me on my way.
Like a thief in the night, I thought. And that, of course, was what I
was - except I had no intent of stealing.
I walked up the path that led to the crazy door fashioned out of uneven
slabs of salvaged lumber, dosed by a metal hasp guarded by a heavy padlock.
I tried one of the padlock keys and it fitted and the lock snicked back. I
pushed on the door and it creaked open.
I pulled the flashlight I had taken from the glove compartment of the
car out of my pocket and thumbed its switch. The fan of light thrust out,
spearing through the doorway. There was a table and three chairs, a stove
against one wall, a bed against another.
The room was clean. There was a wooden floor, covered by scraps of
linoleum carefully patched together. The linoleum was so thoroughly scrubbed
that it fairly shone. The walls had been plastered and then neatly papered
with scraps of wallpaper, and with a complete and cynical disregard for any
colour scheme.
I moved farther into the room, swinging the light slowly back and
forth. At first it had been the big things I had seen -the stove, the table
and the chairs, the bed. But now I began to become aware of the other things
and the little things.
And one of these smaller things, which I should have seen at once, but
hadn't, was the telephone that stood on the table.
I shone the light on it and spent long seconds making sure of what I'd
known to start with - for it was apparent at a glance that the phone was
without a dial and had no connection cord. And it would have done no good if
it had had a cord, for no telephone line had ever been run to this shack
beside the swamp.
Three of them, I thought - three of them I knew of. The one that had
been in my office and another in Gerald Sherwood's study and now this one in
the shack of the village bum.
Although, I told myself, not quite so much a bum as the village might
believe. Not the dirty slob most people thought he was. For the floor was
scrubbed and the walls were papered and everything was neat.
Me and Gerald Sherwood and Stiffy Grant - what kind of common bond
could there be among us? And how many of these dialless phones could there
be in Millville; for how many others of us did that unknown bond exist?
I moved the light and it crept across the bed with its patterned quilt
- not rumpled, not messed up, and very neatly made. Across the bed and to
another table that stood beyond the bed. Underneath the table were two
cartons. One of them was plain, without any lettering, and the other was a
whisky case with the name of an excellent brand of Scotch writ large across
its face.
I walked over to the table and pulled the whisky case out from
underneath it. And in it was the last thing in the world I had expected. It
was not an emptied carton packed with personal belongings, not a box of
junk, but a case of whisky.
Unbelieving, I lifted out a bottle and another and another, all of them
still sealed. I put them back in the case again and lowered myself carefully
to the floor, squatting on my heels. I felt the laughter deep inside of me,
trying to break out - and yet it was, when one came to think of it, not a
laughing matter.
This very afternoon Stiffy had touched me for a dollar because, he'd
said, he'd not had a drink all day. And all the time there had been this
case of whisky, pushed underneath the table.
Were all the outward aspects of the village bum no more than
camouflage? The broken, dirty nails; the rumpled, thread-bare clothing; the
unshaven face and the unwashed neck; the begging of money for a drink; the
seeking of dirty little piddling jobs to earn the price of food - was this
all a sham?
And if it were a masquerade, what purpose could it serve? I pushed the
case back underneath the table and pulled out the other carton. And this one
wasn't whisky and neither was it junk. It was telephones.
I hunkered, staring at them, and it now was crystal clear how that
telephone had gotten on my desk. Stiffy had put it there and then had waited
for me, propped against the building. Perhaps he had seen me coming down the
street as he came out of the office and had done the one thing that would
seem entirely natural to explain his waiting there. Or it might equally well
have been just plain bravado. And all the time he has been laughing at me
deep inside himself.
But that must be wrong, I told myself. Stiffy never would have laughed
at me. We were old and trusted friends and he'd never laugh at me, he. would
never do anything to fool me.
This was a serious business, too serious for any laughing to be done.
If Stiffy had put the phone there, had he also been the one who had
come back and taken it? Could that have been the reason he had come to my
place - to explain to me why the phone was gone?
Thinking of it, it didn't seem too likely.
But if it had not been Stiffy, then there was someone else involved.
There was no need to lift out the phones, for I knew exactly what I'd
find. But I did lift them out and I wasn't wrong.
They had no dials and no connection cords.
I got to my feet and for a moment stood uncertain, staring at the phone
standing on the table, then, making up my mind, strode to the table and
lifted the receiver.
'Hello,' said the voice of the businessman. 'What have you to report?'
'This isn't Stiffy,' I said. 'Stiffy is in a hospital. He was taken
sick.'
There was a moment's hesitation, thenthe voice said, 'Oh, yes, it's Mr Bradshaw Carter, isn't it. So nice that
you could call.'
'I found the phones,' I said. 'Here in Stiffy's shack. And the phone in
my office has somehow disappeared. And I saw Gerald Sherwood. I think
perhaps, my friend, it's time that you explained.'
'Of course,' the voice said. 'You, I suppose, have decided that you
will represent us.'
'Now,' I said, 'just a minute, there. Not until I know about it. Not
until I've had a chance to give it some consideration.'
'I tell you what,' the voice said, 'you consider it and then you call
us back. What was this you were saying about Stiffy being taken somewhere?'
'A hospital,' I said. 'He was taken sick.'
'But he should have called us,' the voice said, aghast. 'We would have
fixed him up. He knew good and well...'
'He maybe didn't have the time. I found him...'
Where was this place you say that he was taken?'
'Elmore. To the hospital at...'
'Elmore. Of course. We know where Elmore is.'
'And Greenbriar, too, perhaps.' I hadn't meant to say it; I hadn't even
thought it. It just popped into my mind, a sudden, unconscious linking of
what was happening here and the project that Alf had talked to me about.
'Greenbriar? Why, certainly. Down in Mississippi. A town very much like
Millville. And you will let us know? When you have decided, you will let us
know?'
'I'll let you know,' I promised.
'And thank you very much, sir. We shall be looking forward to your
association with us.'
And then the line went dead.
Greenbriar, I thought. It was not only Millville. It might be the
entire world. What the hell, I wondered, could be going on?
I'd talk to Alf about it. I'd go home and phone him now. Or I could
drive out and see him. He'd probably be in bed, but I would get him up. I'd
take along a bottle and we'd have a drink or two.
I picked up the phone and tucked it underneath my arm and went outside.
I closed the door behind me. I snapped the padlock shut and then went to the
car. I opened the back door and put the telephone on the floor and covered
it with a raincoat that was folded on the seat. It was a silly thing to do,
but I felt a little better with the phone tucked away and hidden. I got
behind the wheel and sat for a moment, thinking, Perhaps, I told myself; it
would be better if I didn't rush into things too fast. I would see Alf
tomorrow and we'd have a lot of time to talk, an entire week to talk if we
needed it. And that way I'd have some time to try to think the situation
out.
It was late and I had to pack the camping stuff and the fishing tackle
in the car and Ishould try to get some sleep.
Be sensible, I told myself. Take a little time. Try to think it out.
It was good advice. Good for someone else. Good even for myself at
another time and under other circumstances. I should not have taken it,
however. I should have gone out to Johnny's Motor Court and pounded on Alf's
door. Perhaps then things would have worked out differently. But you can't
be sure. You never can be sure.
But, anyhow, I did go home and I did pack the camping stuff and the
fishing gear into the car and had a few hours of sleep (I wonder now how I
ever got to sleep), then was routed out by the alarm dock early in the
morning.
And before I could pick up Alf I hit the barrier.
'Hi, there,' said the naked scarecrow, with jaunty happiness. He
counted on his fingers and slobbered as he counted.
And there was no mistaking him. He came clear through the years. The
same placid, vacant face, with its frog-like mouth and its misty eyes. It
had been ten years since I had seen him last, since anyone had seen him, and
yet he seemed only slightly older than he had been then. His hair was long,
hanging down his back, but he had no whiskers. He had a heavy growth of
fuzz, but he'd never sprouted whiskers. He was entirely naked except for the
outrageous hat. And he was the same old Tupper. He hadn't changed a bit. I'd
have known him anywhere.
He quit his finger-counting and sucked in his slobber. He reached up
and took off his hat and held it out so that I could see it better.
'Made it myself,' he told me, with a wealth of pride.
'It's very fine,' I said.
He could have waited, I told myself. No matter where he'd come from, he
could have waited for a while. Millville had enough trouble at this
particular moment without having to contend once again with the likes of
Tupper Tyler.
'Your papa,' Tupper said. 'Where is your papa, Brad? There is something
I have to tell him.'
And that voice, I thought. How could I ever have mistaken it? And how
could I ever have forgotten that Tupper was, of all things, an accomplished
mimic? He could be any bird he wanted and he could be a dog or cat and the
kids used to gather round him, making fun of him, while he put on a mimic
show of a dog-and-cat fight or of two neighbours quarrelling.
'Your papa!' Tupper said.
'We'd better get inside,' I told him. 'I'll get some clothes and you
climb into them. You can't go on running around naked.'
He nodded vaguely. 'Flowers,' he said. 'Lots of pretty flowers.'
He spread his arms wide to show me how many flowers there were. 'Acres
and acres,' he said. 'There is no end to them. They just keep on forever.
Every last one purple. And they are so pretty and they smell so sweet and
they are so good to me.'
His chin was covered with a dampness from his talking and he wiped it
with a claw-like hand. He wiped his hand upon a thigh.
I got him by the elbow and got him turned around, headed for the house.
'But your papa,' he protested. 'I want to tell your papa all about the
flowers.'
'Later on,' I said.
I got him on the porch and thrust him through the door and followed
after him. I felt easier. Tupper was no decent sight for the streets of
Millville. And I had had, for a while, about all that I could stand. Old
Stiffy Grant laid out in my kitchen just the night before and now along
comes Tupper, without a stitch upon him. Eccentrics were all right, and in a
little town you get a lot of them, but there came a time when they ran a
little thin.
I still held tightly to his elbow and marched him to the bedroom.
'You stand right there,' I told him.
He stood right there, not moving, gaping at the room with his vacant
stare.
I found a shirt and a pair of trousers. I got out a pair of shoes and,
after looking at his feet, put them back again. They were, I knew, way too
small. Tupper's feet were all spraddled out and flattened. He'd probably
been going without shoes for years.
I held out the trousers and the shirt.
'You get into these,' I said. 'And once you have them on, stay here.
Don't stir out of this room.'
He didn't answer and he didn't take the clothes. He'd fallen once again
to counting his fingers.
And now, for the first time, I had a chance to wonder where he'd been.
How could a man drop out of sight, without a trace, stay lost for ten years,
and then pop up again, out of that same thin air into which he had
disappeared?
It had been my first year in high school that Tupper had turned up
missing and I remembered it most vividly because for a week all of the boys
had been released from school to join the hunt for him. We had combed miles
of fields and woodlands, walking slowly in line an arm's length from one
another, and finally we had been looking for a body rather than a man. The
state police had dragged the river and several nearby ponds. The sheriff and
a posse of townspeople had worked carefully through the swamp below Stiffy's
shack, prodding with long poles. They had found innumerable logs and a
couple of wash boilers that someone had thrown away and on the farther edge
of the swamp an anciently dead dog.
But no one had found Tupper.
'Here,' I told him, 'take these clothes and get into them.'
Tupper finished with his fingers and politely wiped his chin.
'I must be getting back,' he said. 'The flowers can't wait too long.'
He reached out a hand and took the clothes from me. 'My other ones wore
out,' he said. 'They just dropped off of me.'
'I saw your mother just half an hour ago,' I said. 'She was looking for
you.'
It was a risky thing to say, for Tupper was the kind of jerk that you
handled with kid gloves. But I took the calculated risk and said it, for I
thought that maybe it would jolt some sense into him.
'Oh,' he said lightly, 'she's always hunting for me. She thinks I ain't
big enough to look out for myself.'
As if he'd never been away. As if ten years hadn't passed. As if he'd
stepped out of his mother's house no more than an hour ago. As if time had
no meaning for him - and perhaps it hadn't.
'Put on the clothes,' I told him. 'I'll be right back.'
I went out into the living-room and picked up the phone. I dialled Doc
Fabian's number. The busy signal blurped at me.
I put the receiver back and tried to think of someone else to call. I
could call Hiram Martin. Perhaps he was the one to call. But I hesitated.
Doc was the man to handle this; be knew how to handle people. All that Hiram
knew was how to push them around.
I dialled Doc once more and still got the busy signal. I slammed down
the receiver and hurried toward the bedroom. I couldn't leave Tupper alone
too long. God knows what he might do.
But I already had waited too long. I never should have left. The
bedroom was empty. The window was open and the screen was broken out and
there was no Tupper.
I rushed across the room and leaned out of the window and there was no
sign of him.
Blind panic hit me straight between the eyes. I don't know why it did.
Certainly, at that moment, Tupper's escaping from the bedroom was not all
that important. But it seemed to be important and I knew, without knowing
why, that I must run him down and bring him back, that I must not let him
out of my sight again.
Without thinking, I stepped back from the window and took a running
jump, diving through the opening. I landed on one shoulder and rolled, then
jumped up to my feet.
Tupper was not in sight, but now I saw where he had gone.
His dewy tracks led across the grass, back around the house and down to
the old greenhouse. He had waded out into the patch of purple flowers that
covered the old abandoned area where once my father and, later, I myself had
tended rows of flowers and other plants. He had waded out some twenty feet