by Jack Finney
This time she really looked suspicious and didn't answer for several seconds. Then, watching my face, her voice flat, she said, Mr. Gruener is dead.
She got her reaction; I was stunned. When? I managed to say, finally. I'm terribly sorry. When did it happen?
Her eyes narrowed. Who are you, mister? And what do you want?
I didn't know what to say. Don't you remember me?
No. Just what do you want, anyway?
I could hardly think, but there was something I suddenly had to know. I'm an old friend of his, and … didn't know he died. Tell me — please tell me — when did he die?
In a cold, utterly antagonistic voice, she said, He died twelve years ago, and all his ‘old friends’ knew it at the time.
I had to get out of there, but there was one more thing I had to say. I could have sworn I'd seen him later than that. Right here, too; and you were here at the time. You're sure you don't remember me?
She said, I certainly am. Far as I know, I never saw you before in my life, and I knew she was telling the truth.
I've quit looking up Harris L. Gruener in Brooklyn telephone books, because it's never there. But it was. It was there once, and I saw it; I didn't “dream” or “imagine” it, and all the Ted Haymeses in the world can't make me think so, and I'll tell you why! I phoned the doctor Gruener had mentioned. Why, yes, he said — he sounded like a nice guy — the cause of Gruener's death is public information; you could read it on the death certificate. Harris Gruener died of heart failure, twelve years ago.
I know it's not proof, I know that, but — don't you see? Out of the hundreds of cases that doctor must have treated in twelve years' time, why did he remember this one instantly? Unless there is something about it that will make it stick in his mind forever.
I know why, I know what happened. There in my living room, on that third night, knowing he had to make up his mind, Harris Gruener stood staring down at the street. For him it was twelve years ago — 1940 — and he stood waiting for a sign that would help him to do what he felt he had to. For me it was the present; and as I lay there a decision rose up in me, and I said suddenly, intensely, Do it! Damn it, go ahead; all it takes is nerve. And across the years, across whatever connection had been briefly evoked between us, Gruener heard. He heard it, perhaps, at only a whisper, or only in his mind.
But Gruener did hear it, I know, and, more than that, he understood what perhaps I did not — that, morally, it was a decision for suicide. Do it! he heard me say, and he of all people knew what that meant, and — he did it. He turned then, I am certain, back again in the year 1940, and he walked to the bathroom where the sleeping tablets were. Then he wrote a note to William Buhl, dropped it down the mail chute out in the hall and went to bed for the last time.
Don't ask me how it happened, or why — ask Einstein. I don't know if time shifts sometimes; if events that have already happened can be made to happen again, this time in another way. I don't know how it could happen; I only know that it did.
How do I know? That boy playing catch in the back yard of the Gruener home was the same boy I saw the first time, exactly. But the other boy, who was playing catch with him; I didn't see him the first time, because he wasn't there. He wasn't anywhere; he didn't exist. But he does now, and I know who he is; there's no mistaking the resemblance. He's the first boy's brother. They're alike as twins, though not the same height; the second boy is younger, by a year or so, I'd say. They're nice kids; I'm certain of that. And I'm certain that if old Mr. Gruener could see them, he'd be happy and proud of his grandchildren — both of them.
No one really believes me, and I can't blame them, I guess. Some people even think my story is a psychopathic excuse for failure; time is moving on and there's still an “Assistant” in front of my title. I wish I could say that Ted Haymes is grateful for that, and, while I doubt it, maybe he is. All morning, the day after I'd told him about Gruener's ghost, he'd amuse the whole office every chance he got by staring fatuously past my shoulder in horror as though he'd suddenly seen a ghost. With Ted, that kind of juvenile joke would ordinarily continue for weeks; but after I steered him off his sampling plan that afternoon, and explained why I had, he never pulled his joke again.
I doubt that it was from gratitude, but I do think he got a glimpse of the truth of what happened to me and was a little scared, for the same reason I was. And maybe from now on he'll be a little different sort of person, too; I really can't say.
But I'm grateful to Gruener, anyway. There in my living room he and I once stood at a crossroads together; and the decision I reached sent him in the direction, finally, that his whole life had led up to; he could not escape it. But when I understood what had happened, I took the other road, while I still had the chance. So I'm grateful to Harris Gruener and sorry for him, too. There is a tide, all right, but whether a man should take it or not depends on where he wants to go.
Behind the News
No one knew how the false and slanderous item on Police Chief Quayle got into the Clarion. The editor accepted all blame. It was Friday, press day, in the final lull before the old flat-bed press began clanking out the weekly twelve hundred copies, and everything in the one-room frame building seemed normal. Grinning insanely, young Johnny Deutsch, owner and editor, sat before a typewriter at a roll-top desk near his secretary — all three of which had been his father's before him. He sat as he did each week, his long, loose-jointed body hunched over the old machine, his big hands flying over the keys; then he flung himself back in his chair and read aloud what he had just written. Police Chief Slain by Wolf Pack! he cried.
An immature form of wish fulfillment, his secretary, Miss Gerraghty, murmured acidly — as she did each week.
Ignoring this, Johnny pounded at his typewriter again, the carriage jouncing. Then he threw himself back once more, a lock of jet-black hair dropping onto his forehead, his lean, roughhewn face happy, his brown eyes dancing. This morning, he read, Police Chief Wendall E. Quayle was set upon and slain by a mysterious pack of wolves that suddenly appeared on Culver Street. Before the eyes of horrified shoppers, the maddened animals tore Quayle to tattered shreds within seconds.
The Clarion's printer, Nate Rubin, an ink-smudged youth in blue denim apron, stood at his worktable, setting the back-page supermarket ad and, as he did each week, mournfully shaking his head at the prices. Johnny — he glanced up — Quayle's a slob, but harmless. What you got against him?
Nothing personal. Johnny grinned. But I'm a cop hater, he shouted, as all true Americans instinctively are. A foe from birth of officialdom, bureaucracy and the heel of tyranny! Nate considered this, then nodded in agreement and understanding. Johnny's typewriter clattered again for a time, then stopped. Eyewitnesses, he read, state that the surrounding area was a shambles, while dismembered limbs were found as far south as Yancy Creek. The body was identifiable only from indecent tattoos and the reek of cheap whisky, which characterized our undistinguished late sleuth.
This, finally, as also happened each week, was too much for Miss Gerraghty, and peering over her glasses like a benevolent grandmother, she said witheringly, A mature mind could never, week after week, compose these childlike fantasies to the uproarious amusement of no one but himself. Mayor Schimmerhorn Assassinated! she quoted contemptuously from a previous effort of Johnny's. City Council Wiped Out by Falling Meteor! An old memory awakened, she frowned, then shook her head disdainfully. Meteors. She sniffed. You're worse than your father.
What'd he do? Johnny looked up.
Lots of things, all foolish. Found an old lump of lead in a field, for one thing, and claimed it was a meteor. Threw it in the lead box on the Linotype machine to melt. Then he ran a story saying it was the first time in history a paper had been printed with type cast from a meteor. In a tone suggesting that both stories were equally absurd, she added, Same issue that carried your birth announcement, and nodded at the paperweight on Johnny's desk.
Johnny glanced at the paperweight, then picked it up, hefting it a
bsently. It was a rectangle of lead type, the letters worn almost smooth; he hadn't read it for years. But now his eyes scanned the blurred lines that had once announced to four hundred uncaring subscribers that he had been born. When he reached the last sentence, It is predicted he will make his mark on the world, Johnny's eyes flicked to the date line, October 28, 1933. All elation and well-being drained out of him then. He was twenty-three years old, the worn type reminded him, and there wasn't the least indication that he would ever make a mark or even a scratch on the world — and for the first time he was impressed with Miss Gerraghty's weekly tirade.
Recalling his idea, at University Journalism School a few years before, of what life as a newspaperman would be, he smiled bitterly, contrasting that picture with the life he now led. Owner by inheritance of a small-town weekly, its columns filled with stale and newsless news as boring to himself as to his subscribers, he reflected that Miss Gerraghty's contempt was deserved. For he simply went on, week after week, doing nothing to relieve his frustration but compose childish parodies of nonexistent news. He thought of a classmate, now a copy writer for a large advertising agency, earning an enormous salary. Then, with even greater longing, he thought of two other classmates, both of whom were actually married, he reflected bitterly. Glancing at the half-full sheet of copy paper in his typewriter, he felt with sudden force that he was just what Miss Gerraghty said he was, immature and childlike; and he looked down at the worn type in his hand with distaste. The very fact that he had kept it, he suddenly realized, could undoubtedly be explained by Miss Gerraghty in unpleasantly Freudian terms.
On impulse, a new will toward maturity flaming within him, Johnny stood up, walked to the Linotype machine, lifted the cover of the lead box, and dropped his paperweight into the molten metal. Miss Gerraghty, he said firmly, his voice several tones deeper, what would a mature mind compose?
She glanced up, surprised. If anything, she said, something at least distantly linked to the remotely possible. Then she turned back to her proof sheets.
Back at his desk after several minutes of frowning thought, his face set, he believed, in new lines of maturity, Johnny typed Police Chief Loses Pants. Then he went on, typing slowly, to compose a brief fictitious account of an attack on Police Chief Quayle by a large Dalmatian who, Johnny wrote, had torn out the seat of Quayle's pants. But he felt no urge to read this aloud. As he recalled later, Johnny yanked the sheet of paper from his typewriter, tossed it onto his desk, and then left, feeling depressed, for City Hall, informing his staff, who knew better, that he was going to hunt up some last-minute news.
The item appeared on page one, headline and all, just as Johnny had typed it. How it had gotten in with the remaining unset front-page items, no one knew. But it had, and Nate — with his astounding ability to set words and sentences, editing their spelling and punctuation, yet allowing no glimmer of their meaning to touch his mind — had turned it into type along with the others.
In any case, it was Johnny's responsibility to check the issue before the final press run, and he had not done so. Deprived by Miss Gerraghty of even the pretense that the Clarion might sometime carry a piece of news worth reading, he had lingered too long talking to the town clerk. This was Miss Miriam Zeebley, a blonde, lithe young woman who resembled Grace Kelly from the shoulders up, though better-looking; Anita Ekberg from waist to shoulders, though less flat-chested; and for the rest of her five feet six inches, as Marilyn Monroe as Miss Monroe undoubtedly wished she looked.
Seated at her desk, in a thin summer dress — polite, cordial enough, but coolly official — Miss Zeebley obviously didn't actually know or care that Johnny Deutsch was alive, and he didn't blame her. There were times when Johnny, staring into his mirror, could convince himself for as long as two or three seconds that he had a sort of offbeat, Lincolnesque good looks. But now, he felt his face flush as the certainty swept over him that he was actually an awkward, crag-faced lout. Then, grateful for even the crumbs of her attention, but knowing that for her anything less than a young Ronald Colman was absurd, he left.
Back at his desk, the Clarion already delivered into the official hands of the post office, Johnny reached the lowest ebb of his life. Staring numbly at the page-one libel on Police Chief Quale, knowing that any jury would regard it as tending to embarrass, humiliate and defame, he knew too that he was a failure and a misfit, inept in life, libel and love; and he considered simply walking to the edge of town, jumping a freight, and beginning life anew in the West.
The front door opened, and a small boy, wearing cowboy boots, the dress jacket of a full colonel in the Space Patrol, and a fluorescent green stocking cap, stepped into the office. He said, Hey, Johnny, you got some old type I can have for my newspaper?
Ask Nate. Johnny gestured wearily at the shabby sink at which Nate was scrubbing his forearms.
Okay. The boy suddenly grinned. Gee, it was funny. I sure laughed, he said.
What was funny?
Chief Quayle. Gettin' the seat of his pants tore off. Gee, it was funny; I sure laughed.
Oh. Johnny nodded. You've read the story?
The boy shook his head. No. I saw it.
Saw what? Johnny said irritably.
Saw the dog, the boy explained patiently, bite off his pants. Gee, it was funny. He laughed. I sure laughed.
Johnny pushed himself upright in his chair. You saw this happen?
Yeah.
Where?
On Culver Street.
You actually saw the dog tear the seat out of Quayle's pants?
Yep. The boy grinned. Gee, it was —
When?
I dunno. He shrugged. Few minutes ago. He ran all the way back to the station house. It was sure funny. Everybody laughed like anyth—
Grabbing the boy by both shoulders, his voice grown low and tense, Johnny said slowly, What kind of dog was it?
I dunno, the boy answered without interest. One of them big white dogs with black spots all over. He turned toward the sink at the back of the room. Hey, Nate! he called. Johnny says for you to gimme some type.
For a full quarter minute Miss Gerraghty just stared at Johnny. Then she blinked her eyes and announced firmly, Coincidence. An astonishing, yet mathematically predictable coinci—
Johnny slowly shook his head. No, he said numbly, his eyes astonished. It was no coincidence, as any but the scientific mind would know. He turned slowly toward Miss Gerraghty, and in his eyes a glow of triumph was kindling. Miss Gerraghty, he said slowly, I don't know how it happened, but what I wrote and printed in the Clarion came true. Immediately, and in every detail, Suddenly he grinned, snatching up as fresh sheet of paper, rolled it into his typewriter, and said, And nothing in the world is going to stop me from trying it again!
His eyes glittering, staring through the paper at a suddenly glorious and incredible future, Johnny typed Engagement Announced! The keys beat out a furious splatter of sound. Miss Miriam Zeebley to Wed Editor Deutsch! The type bars jammed, and Johnny frantically pried them apart, then continued. Town Clerk Zeebley, unexpectedly resigning her position, announced today-
One week later, the Clarion printed, addressed, carried to the post office, and even then, Johnny knew, being delivered, he sat at his desk waiting. Then, as he had hoped, the phone rang; and as he had also hoped, it was Miss Zeebley, her voice lovely as a temple bell. For a full minute Johnny sat listening. Once he said, But Miss Zeebley, it was an acci— A few moments later he began, Typographical err— During the one time she paused for breath, Johnny managed to say feebly, It must have been some kind of — joke. A disgruntled employee. Presently, voice dulled and hopeless, he said, Yes, I'll publish a retraction, and hung up.
For a while, lost in despair, Johnny sat with his head in his hands, staring down at the floor. Then, as some men turn to drink, others to drugs, women, or gambling, Johnny turned to his typewriter. Quayle Slain by Thug, he typed despondently. Early this morning, he continued, the decapitated body of Police Chief Wendall E. Quayl
e was discovered in an abandoned trunk. Minutes later, his head, shrunken to a fraction of its normal six-and-one-eighth-inch size —
Presently he tossed the finished story onto Miss Gerraghty's desk. It came true once, he said sadly, about Quayle's pants. If I'd only printed this instead.
It wouldn't have come true then, Miss Gerraghty said, glancing at the headline. Any more than Miriam Zeebley marrying you. There are some things that are just too ridiculous.
Johnny stared at her for several seconds, his eyes narrowing. Yeah, he said then, interest and excitement beginning to well up in his voice, maybe that's it. He nodded thoughtfully. It's got to be possible, at least; maybe that's the key. You can't go too far, you can't go overboard. Suddenly he was elated. You've hit it, Miss Gerraghty! He reached for a fresh sheet of copy paper.
As Miss Gerraghty stared at him in icy, unbelieving contempt, Johnny, choosing his words slowly and carefully, began to type. Among those attending the Old Nakomis Country Club Soirée tonight, he wrote, will be Miss Miriam Zeebley. It will surprise none who know our ever-popular town clerk to learn that, bearing no malice for an unfortunate error that appeared in these columns recently, she will attend escorted by Ye Ed, Johnny Deutsch.
He pulled the sheet of paper from his machine, dated it in pencil for the following week's issue, scribbled Social Notes at the top, then read it through again. Possible, he murmured approvingly. Or at least barely within the borders of conceivability. His eyes happy again, Johnny glanced at Miss Gerraghty and grinned. Shoot the works, he said, and rolled another sheet into his typewriter.
Psychotic, Miss Gerraghty murmured, nodding soberly. Like father, like son.
How do you spell ‘bubonic plague’? Johnny asked, then hastily added, Never mind; I'd better, make it mumps.
The following Saturday Johnny picked up the phone. Miss Gerraghty laid down her proof sheets to listen.
Miriam, Johnny said presently into the phone, his, voice brisk and confident, I want you to attend the Old Nakomis Country Club Soirée tonight; with me. He leaned back in his chair, feet up on his typewriter, listening. You have a date? Well, break it, he said firmly. A moment later he smiled and said, Fine. I'll call for you at eight. There was a pause; then Johnny said, Quayle, eh? What's the trouble? Then he nodded. Thanks; the story'll be in this issue. He replaced the phone, turned to Miss Gerraghty, and waited, humming softly.
