I Love Galesburg in the Springtime

by Jack Finney

  But there was more to Charley than flash. In between his larger spectacular achievements ran a steady workaday stream of minor though always talented activity. He devised a simple effective method of dipping the entire supply of school blackboard chalk, stick by stick, into a thinned solution of shellac, coating each with a hard, invisible shell which eliminated blackboard instruction for a day and a half. Charley found the pet cock at the back of an untended pipe down at the pop-bottling plant, which, when turned, released a warm, uncarbonated delicious stream of grape pop, and we used it at intervals for a week till Ed Krueger got careless and was caught.

  And it was Charley, at the tattooing booth of a traveling carnival, who had a red-and-blue rose-wreathed heart labeled Mother worked onto his chest in genuine tattoo ink—though without the use of the needle—to the awe-struck envy of us all, till it began to wear off and he admitted the hoax.

  He made things work. The essence of success ran in his veins—there was the key to Charley's character. And when he showed up, that memorable morning, after breakfast and the mail delivery, with a paper-bound volume of instructions on hypnotism, we all felt in our bones that Charley would become—perhaps already had become-—a skilled practicing mesmerist.

  There were five of us—four boys and Agnes, the tomboy sister of one—and we had gathered, as we did often that summer, in Mrs. Councilman's back yard. I remember that day and all those long ago, deep-summer days in Galesburg, Illinois, with a terrible nostalgia. Already the sky was a hard hot blue, the air shimmering with sun. The grass under our bare feet was faded and dry and the tree locusts were sawing their wings for yards and blocks and miles around us.

  Today, I suppose, we would have known about the tiger hours earlier and been safe behind doors; radios would have been issuing urgent warnings and sound trucks would have been touring the streets. But in those days—on that day— news spread slowly and haphazardly, by word of mouth. And at the moment when Charley sat down on the grass to show us the book with the chin-bearded Svengali on the cover, only a handful of circus men knew that a young and thoroughly dangerous tiger was out of his cage and on the prowl.

  We discussed Charley's book for a time; then Ken Garver ran up the tree, and we all followed. The tree was the reason we so often gathered in Mrs. Councilman's yard. It was thick-boled and squat, the trunk slanting out from the ground at a forty-five-degree angle, so that with a short running start, a barefooted boy could run right up the trunk to the lowest branches. We sat roosting in the tree and talked desultorily about the circus out at the fairgrounds. I don't remember that we were ever especially excited over a circus, and none of us ever carried water for the elephants. We were taken to the circus every year by our parents, or given money to buy tickets, and we were reasonably interested and talked about it a little.

  But mostly, that morning, as at the beginning of every day, we were waiting for something to happen, for some activity, set off by a stimulus from outside or inside our minds, to begin. And the day, filled with promise, stretched far ahead, each hour infinitely longer and richer than any have ever been since.

  Mrs. Councilman came out of her house and greeted us pleasantly, and Agnes, lowering her voice sympathetically, said, "How's Mr. Councilman?" Mrs. Councilman nodded sadly and said, "Fine." One or the other of us inquired each day about her husband's health as though he were an invalid, and Mrs. Councilman responded as though he were. Actually, the man—slight, pale, and half his wife's buxom size—went to work every day in a machine shop. But he suffered, whin-ingly, from a perpetual plague of vague ailments.

  Once when Charley and I were in the bathroom of their house—we had the run of the place—the door of a large wooden cabinet on the floor was ajar and we stood astounded, staring at shelf after shelf crammed with prescriptions and pills, great bottles of tonic and liniment, Nerv-Aid and sleeping tablets, most of them with Mr. Councilman's name on the labels, and for a moment we had a dim awareness of the kind of half-life that poor man lived.

  Smiling benignly, Mrs. Councilman stood by our tree, enjoying the sun. Then Agnes, her voice surprised, said, "There's a tiger." She shrieked, and sat staring across the yard. There are, or were, no fences or alleys in Galesburg; all the back yards of a block blend into one and it is possible to walk, as we often did, for block after block through the gardens and back yards of the town. We all turned to look, and there, impossibly, ambling toward us from the next yard, his tail erect and switching slightly, was an enormous tiger.

  It was outside of all experience, past belief, yet there, indisputably, was a tiger; and we saw the muscles slide and the white hairs of his chest, just under the shoulders, spread apart and come together with each silent step.

  He could have reached Mrs. Councilman in a single leap, killing or maiming her with a swipe of his paw. But instead, just within our yard now, he sat down, a colossal cat with foot-long white whiskers, and returned our stare, gazing at us through the slitted pupils of his immense yellow eyes. For a moment frozen in time, we all simply stared, he at us, we at him. Then the animal's small ears flicked, one at a time, and flattened on his skull. Soundlessly, he opened his mouth, and we saw the great shiny-wet fangs.

  In a sudden hoarse whisper, Charley said, "Up in the tree!" and reached down and grabbed Mrs. Councilman's hair. Then Charley, and in a moment Ed Krueger, Ken Garver and I, clutching the branches with our legs, tugging at Mrs. Councilman's hair and the collar of her dress, tried to drag her up the slanting trunk of the tree. She came to life then, and grasping the trunk, scrambling awkwardly, managed to catch hold of the lowest limb and drag herself, moaning softly all the time, up into the branches with us.

  For perhaps a full half minute longer, the tiger sat in the sun, staring up at us with a lively and terrible interest. Agnes began to cry softly, and Mrs. Councilman, climbing higher, managed to reach up and get an arm around her waist to comfort her. Then the tiger's hind end raised, and he trotted to the house, and sat, his back toward us now, staring up at the partly opened first-floor window of Mrs. Councilman's pantry.

  Each of us, I'm sure, was certain that in only a moment this impossible situation must end; that, as always in any predicament beyond a child's ability, adult help would be quickly forthcoming. But time passed and the summer sound of the locusts droned on. Then, incredibly, in the street around at the front of the house, a car door slammed, and we heard a woman's voice call out, "Hello, Mrs. Garver. Hot, isn't it?" We heard Ken's mother reply cheerily. A screen door banged shut. The car started up; then the sound of its motor diminished, and once again there was no sound but the steady drone of the locusts. It came to us then that the world was going on about its business in blank ignorance of us, and no help was on its way.

  Now the tiger stood up, placed his forepaws up on the wood side of the house, straining his neck toward the window, and growled in his throat; and the prickling fright came washing over us.

  It was Charley who understood first. "The window reminds him of the place he's fed at," he said. At the sound of the voice, the tiger's head turned, and he stared at us over his shoulder for a moment. Then, once more, he strained up toward the window and growled, a deep terrible sound, and we heard his claws clinking and scratching on the painted clapboards, and knew this was a savage and dangerous beast.

  Carefully, Charley planted both feet in the main crotch of the tree, slid off his branch, and crouched, out of reach of Mrs. Councilman's free arm. "I think," he announced to us then, "that I can hypnotize that tiger."

  "Charley!" Mrs. Councilman shrieked. "Don't you move!" And again the tiger turned to stare.

  Charley didn't answer. From his back pocket he pulled a bandanna and handed it up to me. "If he comes running, throw this in his face; it'll confuse him," he told me. He pulled his book out of his pocket, opened it to the first page, and ran a finger down the table of contents. Then, looking up at us, smiling reassuringly, Charley nodded. "Yep," he said, "there's a chapter on animal hypnotism." He shoved the book in his p
ocket and dropped from the tree, landing on his feet beside it.

  For seconds Charley stood poised, ready to leap for the tree again, but the animal across the yard continued to stare up at the half-open window. Then—not calmly, I'm certain, but coolly—Charley began slowly walking toward the back steps and screen door which lead into the kitchen of Mrs. Councilman's house. At the third step, the tiger's head swung toward Charley, and Charley—helpless now, far from safety by several seconds and steps—could only walk on, an undersized ten-year-old boy staring at a four-hundred-pound tiger a dozen yards away. It sounds like incredible bravery, yet I doubt that courage had anything to do with it. It is simply that, for a mind like Charley's, some opportunities are just too big to lose.

  My faith in him wavered and died. This, I knew, was too big, beyond any boy, even Charley. I knew he'd overreached himself, that in the next seconds he might actually be killed before my eyes. But he went up the fourth step, the fifth, and the sixth; then his bare foot touched the porch and suddenly he bolted, stumbling and crashing in through the screen door. Then the kitchen door slammed shut, and we heard the sliding bolt on the inside shoot home. The tiger trotted to the stairs, gazed up them, then returned to his position under the window.

  Then it occurred to me—I knew that Charley was a showman, a lover of the hoax, but no fool—that he had no intention of trying any such nonsense as hypnotizing this tiger, and that he was simply going to telephone the police. When he did not appear at the pantry window, I was certain of it, and waited for the sound of the receiver being removed from the wall phone in the kitchen. But seconds passed, and I heard nothing. Then, presently, we heard Mrs. Councilman's icebox open, heard the clink of a milk bottle and the rattle of paper. Then the icebox door slammed shut, and a moment later Charley's composed face appeared at the window.

  He glanced down at the sitting tiger, who licked his chops. Then Charley spoke, raising one arm to show us the open book in his hand. "It says here"—he studied the text, apparently reading as he talked—"that in hypnotizing animals it is necessary first to obtain their attention and confidence with food." He laid the book down on the open working shelf just below the level of the window.

  Then he held up a large, shallow, thin wood dish, the kind butchers used in those days to pack ground meat in; it was heaped, we saw, with blood-red hamburger. Charley set the dish down at one side of the window. His hands were busy for a moment; then he held them up and we could see that he was packing a handful of ground meat into a baseball-sized sphere. Taking careful aim, he tossed the ball, underhanded. It struck the tiger squarely on the nose, and he recoiled, a blur of tan and black, snarling. But he had smelled the meat. His tongue swiped his nose, and he scooped the ball from the grass with his front teeth, swallowed it instantly, then stretched his neck toward the window, yearning up for more.

  Charley had a second meatball ready, poised in his left hand; now the fingers of his right hand began rhythmically extending and drawing back, his arm moving slowly back and forth, making passes in the air at the tiger's staring eyes. "Your eyes are getting heavy," he murmured to the tiger. "You are getting sleepier and sleepier." The animal growled, and Charley quickly tossed the meat. This time the tiger caught it in mid-air and swallowed it in a gulp, instantly staring up for more.

  Charley made another meatball, holding it up for the tiger to see, and the animal reared up, his forepaws scratching the side of the house, his face no more than four feet from Charley's unwavering eyes, his attention complete. Charley prudently lowered the window a bit more; then his fingers again undulated gracefully, his arm swaying like a charmed snake, and it would not have surprised me at all to sec miniature lightning lines dart from his fingertips to the tiger's fascinated eyes. "You want to sle-e-ep," he droned. "Your eyes are so-o-o heavy." He tossed the meatball, and again the tiger snapped it up in mid-air.

  The Councilmans' dinner made seven or eight meatballs; and, after each, Charley murmured steadily of sleep, sle-e-ep, his arm making graceful passes. Then the meat was gone, and the beast sat there growling, wide awake as ever, his appetite only tantalized, obviously. Charley left the window, the icebox door opened and slammed shut, and Charley reappeared with half a dozen pork chops lying on the butcher's paper they'd been wrapped in.

  Again Charley murmured to the tiger, while his arm swayed, the fingers curling. Then he tossed out a chop. The tiger caught it, chewed just once, and we heard the bone crunch to splinters. Then he gulped, the chop was gone, and still he yearned up for more, his tail switching, his ears steadily flattening and rising.

  In the tree, we sat silent and motionless—all but Mrs. Councilman. From time to time she would moan softly, and say, "Oh, my god," in utter anguish and despair. Charley must have seemed insane to her, tossing her pork chops to the tiger at regular intervals and murmuring unceasingly. "Your eyes are so heavy," he droned. "You want to relax. Relax and rest. Rest every weary muscle, and sleep, sleep, sle-e-ep." From time to time, he would glance down at his book, and once he raised it, and we all stared at the black-haired evening-clothed man on the cover while Charley turned back a page and studied the text.

  He must have seemed mad to Mrs. Councilman and even we had doubts that Charley really knew what he was doing. But we watched intently for any signs of success, and were not actually surprised when presently they appeared.

  "You can't keep your eyes open," Charley was saying, his fingers waving like ribbons in a breeze. "And now they are closing, closing." And they did. The tiger dropped to his belly, his forelegs extended, and yawned tremendously. Then he turned his head to look back at us, and his eyes blinked lazily, and actually closed for a moment.

  But he growled immediately, opened his eyes, and stood up once again, and Charley tossed him another chop. The tiger caught it, but this time he lay on his belly to chew, lazily, the bone crunching again and again. He swallowed, dropped his chin to his paws, and gazed dreamily up at Charley. "Sleep," said Charley. He glanced at his book, then nodded to us vigorously, smiling. "Sleep," he said, "you are so very tired." And the tiger yawned, and rolled on his side, blinking repeatedly. "Rest." Charley's voice dropped to a whisper. "Rest and sleep. You are, oh, so weary."

  He stood for a moment, looking down at the tiger, then tossed the last chop, which fell on the grass not an inch from the tiger's nose. The animal sniffed it without stirring, his nose twitching, and seemed to debate whether to bother taking it or not. Then he did, raising his head just far enough to pull the chop into his mouth with his teeth. He lay back then, chewing slowly, his eyes heavy and blinking. "Yes," said Charley, more softly than ever, "you are going to sleep." In a soft soprano, he began to sing, leaning far out the window, "Sweet and low, sweet and low; wind of the west-ern sea-ee. Sweet and low, sweet and low …" He paused, humming softly, studied the motionless tiger, then turned from the window.

  A moment later we heard the telephone receiver being lifted from the hook and I waited to hear Charley ask for the police. "Give me the Register-Mail office," he said briskly. "Emergency." There was a pause; then Charley said, "Send someone down here, quick," and he gave the address. "There's a tiger in the back yard. We captured it. Yes, the one from the circus. He's here, right now, hypnotized, but I don't know how long the trance will last, so get down here fast. And be sure you bring a cameraman!" Then he hung up.

  The screen door opened slowly, and Charley cautiously appeared on the top step and looked down at the tiger who was lying with his head on his forepaws, his huge tongue occasionally flicking out to lick his whiskers, his eyes closed. "Sleep," said Charley, slowly coming down the stairs. Both hands, now—one a little behind the other—-were at work, die fingers curling and uncurling at the tiger's head. "Rest," said Charley, "every muscle relaxed." The tiger sighed, his striped side and white belly swelling tremendously; then the breath hissed through his nostrils and he lay there in the grass breathing quietly, fast asleep.

  I suppose it must have taken several minutes but it seemed to me t
hat almost instantly we heard car brakes squeal, then the sound of running feet approaching. The Register-Mail reporter came charging around the corner of the house into the yard, his camera in his hand, then stopped, his heels digging into the grass, as he saw the tiger on the ground. A split second later the chief and another policeman came plunging into him, almost knocking him over. Then they all stood gaping, staring down at the tiger, then up at Charley. Casually, Charley stepped forward, his thumbs hooked in his belt, to the tiger's side. "Don't worry," he said. "He's scientifically mesmerized."

  The newspaperman recovered first, and raised his camera. "Wait," said Charley. He took his book from a back pocket, opened it and held it at chest level, as though he were reading, the cover facing the camera. He spread the fingers of his other hand, aimed at the tiger's nose, lifted one foot and planted it gently on the tiger's ribs. "Okay," he said then, and the man snapped the picture that appeared in over one hundred papers in nine different states.

  We were climbing down from the tree and the yard was suddenly filling with people, the newspaperman snapping photographs of the house, the open window, us, the tiger, Charley, and everything else in sight. I am sure, in spite of the evidence lying on the ground before them, that the newspaperman and the police would never quite have believed what had happened, but an adult, Mrs. Councilman, had been there too, and she confirmed in excited almost hysterical detail the fact that Charley had indisputably hypnotized the tiger.

  It seems strange, now, to recall this omen of the future. I still had Charley's bandanna in my hand and I wanted to return it. But even as I approached him I was dimly aware that he had passed irrevocably into a sphere beyond and above me, and I stopped beside him in awe. He was talking easily to the adults crowded around him, and I'd no more have interrupted than I'd interrupt the President of the United States. So I simply tucked the bandanna part way into his hip pocket, opening the pocket gently and cautiously so as not to disturb him. I caught a glimpse of, and for an instant touched, an object in his pocket. Then Charley turned, smiling graciously, and pushed his handkerchief deep into his pocket. The circus men arrived at that moment with a huge net, and then—all at once and all together—the frantic mothers came and we were all, including even Charley, whisked from the scene.