by Jack Finney
He glanced at my hand on my hip pocket. All you've got. Including your small change. He smiled. You won't need it any more, and we can use your currency for operating expenses. Light bills, rent, and so on.
I don't have much.
That doesn't matter. From under the counter he brought out a heavy stamping machine, the kind you see in railroad ticket offices. We once sold a ticket for thirty-seven hundred dollars. And we sold another just like it for six cents. He slid the ticket into the machine, struck the lever with his fist, then handed the ticket to me. On the back, now, was a freshly printed rectangle of purple ink, and within it the words, Good this day only, followed by the date. I put two five-dollar bills, a one, and seventeen cents in change on the counter. Take the ticket to the Acme Depot, the gray-haired man said, and, leaning across the counter, began giving me directions for getting there.
It's a tiny hole in the wall, the Acme Depot; you may have seen it — just a little store front on one of the narrow streets west of Broadway. On the window is painted, not very well, “Acme.” Inside, the walls and ceiling, under layers of old paint, are covered with the kind of stamped tin you see in old buildings. There's a warn wooden counter and a few battered chrome and imitation red leather chairs. There are scores of places like the Acme Depot in that area — little theater-ticket agencies, obscure busline offices, employment agencies. You could pass this one a thousand times and never really see it; and if you live in New York, you probably have.
Behind the counter, when I arrived, stood a shirt-sleeved man, smoking a cigar stump and working on some papers; four or five people silently waited in the chairs. The man at the counter glanced up as I stepped in, looked down at my hand for my ticket, and when I showed it, nodded at the last vacant chair, and I sat down.
There was a girl beside me, hands folded on her purse. She was pleasant-looking, rather pretty; I thought she might have been a stenographer. Across the narrow little office sat a young Negro in work clothes, his wife beside him holding their little girl in her lap. And there was a man of around fifty, his face averted from the rest of us, staring out into the rain at passing pedestrians. He was expensively dressed and wore a gray Homburg; he could have been the vice-president of a large bank, I thought, and I wondered what his ticket had cost.
Maybe twenty minutes passed, the man behind the counter working on some papers; then a small battered old bus pulled up at the curb outside, and I heard the hand brake set. The bus was a shabby thing, bought third- or fourth-hand and painted red and white over the old paint, the fenders lumpy from countless pounded-out dents, the tire treads worn almost smooth. On the side, in red letters, it said “Acme.” and the driver wore a leather jacket and the kind of worn cloth cap that cab drivers wear. It was precisely the sort of obscure little bus you see around there, ridden always by shabby, tired, silent people, going no one knows where.
It took nearly two hours for the little bus to work south through the traffic, toward the tip of Manhattan, and we all sat, each wrapped in his own silence and thoughts, staring out the rain-spattered windows; the little girl was asleep. Through the streaking glass beside me I watched drenched people huddled at city bus stops, and saw them rap angrily on the closed doors of buses jammed to capacity, and saw the strained, harassed faces of the drivers. At Fourteenth Street I saw a speeding cab splash a sheet of street-dirty water on a man at the curb, and saw the man's mouth writhe as he cursed. Often our bus stood motionless, the traffic light red, as throngs flowed out into the street from the curb, threading their way around us and the other waiting cars. I saw hundreds of faces, and not once did I see anyone smile.
I dozed; then we were on a glistening black highway somewhere on Long Island. I slept again, and awakened in darkness as we jolted off the highway onto a muddy double-rut road, and I caught a glimpse of a farmhouse, the windows dark. Then the bus slowed, lurched once, and stopped. The hand brake set, the motor died, and we were parked beside what looked like a barn.
It was a barn — the driver walked up to it, pulled the big sliding wood door open, its wheels creaking on the rusted old trolley overhead, and stood holding it open as we filed in. Then he released it, stepping inside with us, and the big door slid closed of its own weight. The barn was damp, old, the walls no longer plumb, and it smelled of cattle; there was nothing inside on the packed-dirt floor but a bench of unpainted pine, and the driver indicated it with the beam of a flashlight. Sit here, please, he said quietly. Get your tickets ready. Then he moved down the line, punching each of our tickets, and on the floor I caught a momentary glimpse, in the shifting beam of his light, of tiny mounds of countless more round bits of cardboard, like little drifts of yellow confetti. Then he was at the door again, sliding it open just enough to pass through, and for a moment we saw him silhouetted against the night sky. Good luck, he said. Just wait where you are. He released the door; it slid closed, snipping off the wavering beam of his flashlight; and a moment later we heard the motor start and the bus lumber away in low gear.
The dark barn was silent now, except for our breathing. Time ticked away, and I felt an urge, presently, to speak to whoever was next to me. But I didn't quite know what to say, and I began to feel embarrassed, a little foolish, and very aware that I was simply sitting in an old and deserted barn. The seconds passed, and I moved my feet restlessly; presently I realized that I was getting cold and chilled. Then suddenly I knew — and my face flushed in violent anger and a terrible shame. We'd been tricked! Bilked out of our money by our pathetic will to believe an absurd and fantastic fable and left, now, to sit there as long as we pleased, until we came to our senses finally, like countless others before us, and made our way home as best we could. It was suddenly impossible to understand or even remember how I could have been so gullible, and I was on my feet, stumbling through the dark across the uneven floor, with some notion of getting to a phone and the police. The big barn door was heavier than I'd thought, but I slid it back, took a running step through it, then turned to shout back to the others to come along.
You perhaps have seen how very much you can observe in the fractional instant of a lightning flash — an entire landscape sometimes, every detail etched on your memory, to be seen and studied in your mind for long moments afterward. As I turned back toward the open door the inside of that barn came alight. Through every wide crack of its walls and ceiling and through the big dust-coated windows in its side streamed the light of an intensely brilliant blue and sunny sky, and the air pulling into my lungs as I opened my mouth, to shout was sweeter than any I had ever tasted in my life. Dimly, through a wide, dust-smeared window of that barn, I looked — for less than the blink of an eye — down into a deep majestic V of forest-covered slope, and I saw, tumbling through it, far below, a tiny stream, blue from the sky, and at that stream's edge between two low roofs a yellow patch of sun-drenched beach. And then, that picture engraved on my mind forever, the heavy door slid shut, my fingernails rasping along the splintery wood in a desperate effort to stop it — and I was standing alone in a cold and rain-swept night.
It took four or five seconds, no longer, fumbling at that door, to heave it open again. But it was four or five seconds too long. The barn was empty, dark. There was nothing inside but a worn pine bench — and, in the flicker of the lighted match in my hand, tiny drifts of what looked like damp confetti on the floor. As my mind had known even as my hands scratched at the outside of that door, there was no one inside now; and I knew where they were — knew they were walking, laughing aloud in a sudden wonderful and eager ecstasy, down into that forest-green valley, toward home.
I work in a bank, in a job I don't like; and I ride to and from it in the subway, reading the daily papers, the news they contain. I live in a rented room, and in the battered dresser under a pile of my folded handkerchiefs is a little rectangle of yellow cardboard. Printed on its face are the words, Good, when validated, for one trip to Verna, and stamped on the back is a date. But the date is gone, long since, the ticket vo
id, punched in a pattern of tiny holes.
I've been back to the Acme Travel Bureau. The first time the tall gray-haired man walked up to me and laid two five-dollar bills, a one, and seventeen cents in change before me. You left this on the counter last time you were here, he said gravely. Looking me squarely in the eyes, he added bleakly, I don't know why. Then some customers came in, he turned to greet them, and there was nothing for me to do but leave.
Walk in as though it were the ordinary agency it seems — you can find it, somewhere, in any city you try! Ask a few ordinary questions — about a trip you're planning, a vacation, anything you like. Then hint about The Folder a little, but don't mention it directly. Give him time to size you up and offer it himself. And if he does, if you're the type, if you can believe — then make up your mind and stick to it! Because you won't ever get a second chance. I know, because I've tried. And tried. And tried.
Good Housekeeping, March 1955, 140(3):50-51, 144-146, 148-150
A Man of Confidence
At the dresser of a large, modernly furnished hotelroom overlooking a sun-yellowed beach, the man who had just registered as Alfred G. Henkle stood changing his clothes. Tossed onto the big bed lay the suit he had arrived in ten minutes before, of exquisitely tailored blue gabardine; beside it lay a rumpled silk shirt and a $15 Italian-silk tie. Now his fingers worked carefully at the knot of a new $5 tie until, presently, it was knotted to his satisfaction — the ends uneven by an inch or so, the knot bulky and awkwardly loose. Then, from the back of a chair, he lifted a white double-breasted suit coat that matched the trousers he now wore, and put it on.
This suit too had been precisely tailored. Standing sideways before the mirror, he saw that the coat collar, as he had specified, just missed fitting, avoiding contact with his new ready-made shirt by a fraction of an inch. The hint of a long, slanting wrinkle shadowed the coat's back; the sleeves were barely too long; and a carefully misplaced button strained the cloth over his ribs into a narrow V. Satisfied, he turned to face the mirror and began to comb his hair.
His face, wary and alert, stared composedly back at him — a full, jovial fifty-year-old face, assured and intelligent; and his straight brown hair, freshly shampooed and no longer held down by hair oil, sprang up coarse and unruly from under the comb. He parted it on the left, then nudged a heavy lock till it fell onto his right temple. It was too long, nearly touching an eyebrow, and he picked up a pair of manicure scissors and hacked off an inch. It looked right now, he felt; the heavy brown lock curving onto his forehead reminded him a little of Will Rogers. Then he closed his eyes and began to think.
In a slow-moving, wordless stream of thought, he pictured himself as a salaried inventor who, in 17 years of work for a large industrial concern, had gradually achieved a salary of just under six thousand dollars a year. He was a widower, he wordlessly reminded himself, and had been for two years; and he concentrated on capturing the precise feeling of that.
None of this was phrased. The man at the mirror simply allowed these thoughts to drift through his mind as feelings, and he could feel the beginning muscle responses in his body and face. He was, he told himself, a not-quite-successful, faintly disappointed, yet only slightly embittered man. For — he worked for the feeling of this — he was essentially naive and trusting, a man who liked people; and now here, at this pleasant hotel, he was about to enjoy his first innocent taste of prosperity.
He opened his eyes. No shrewdness or wariness was left in the face that looked back at him. The lower rims of the eyes were relaxed and no longer ruler straight; and the brown irises, now completely exposed, were round and trusting. His face muscles had slackened; his jaw had lost its sharp definition. His mouth open slightly, the pressure was removed from his lips, and now they were full, the straight mouth line gone. He looked younger and softer; there was a middle-aged boyishness to his face; you would trust him.
A faint tapping sounded at his door; he called out in response, and his voice — friendly, cheerful, unsuspicious —matched the look of his face. Come in! he called instantly, in the authentic manner of a man with nothing to hide.
The door opened, and a younger man stepped into the room. His hair, just longer than crew cut, was coarse and dark yellow, his face lean and tanned; he looked like a pleasant, faintly dissipated, Eastern-college man some four or five years out of school. He wore lightweight gray trousers, white shoes, and an open-collared sport shirt. For a moment he studied the older man, then grinned. You convince me, he said, then pretended to reach for his wallet, nodding at an oddly shaped, airplane-luggage carrying case on the desk. I'll buy it, he said. Please take my money.
The other man smiled, loosened the brass fasteners of the case, opened it, and lifted out a machine, which he carefully set on the glass desk top. It was perhaps 2 feet long, 8 or 10 inches wide, half a foot high; a beautiful thing of chromeplated rods, disks, levers, studs, and brown crackle-finished metal. It bore a vague family resemblance to office machinery, though its actual purpose was impossible to guess. Wrapped around its base was a length of heavy rubber-coated wire, and this Henkle uncoiled, then plugged into a baseboard outlet. He pressed a stud in the base of the machine; a motor whirred softly inside it; and several of the chrome-plated parts began to move — a disk revolving rapidly, two shiny rods flashing back and forth like tiny pistons. From inside the machine a series of rapid clicks began to sound in short, staccato bursts, and Mr. Henkle shut off the motor, nodding without surprise. It stood the trip all right, he murmured, then touched the machine affectionately. A beauty, isn't it? he said softly.
Yeah. The other nodded without interest.
It cost over nine hundred dollars, Henkle said with quiet pride. Made up in four different machine shops, according to my specifications and drawings. None of them knew what they were making, and I assembled it myself. I could have been an engineer, Johnny.
The young man nodded at a familiar story. Yeah; it's a nice job all right. He smiled. But you'd never get me with it.
Yes, I would, the older man said quietly. You or anyone else with greed in his soul.
No.
Where are you now, Johnny?
The young man frowned.
Go ahead; say it. Where are you? Right now?
Florida. Miami Beach.
How do you know?
Why — the young man with the crew cut paused, at a loss for an answer. Because I am, that's all, he said then, irritably. I know I am, I can see that I am.
The man in white nodded. Right. Everything you observe, through every one of your senses, is absolutely consistent with having arrived in Miami Beach, Florida. While nothing — and this is what's important — absolutely nothing is inconsistent with that knowledge. And so you know; it's the only way you ever know anything. He reached out to lay a hand on the machine before him. And that's how you'd know this is what I told you — and showed you, and proved to you — it was. If you saw a two-headed man, Johnny, if you talked to him, touched him, examined him, then you'd believe in a two-headed man. You'd have to.
The young man nodded impatiently. All right, all right; you know. You're the Man, you're the boss. Then he grinned. But just the same — I doubt it.
His friend smiled. You'll see. And before long.
That was Thursday. During the rest of that week, and until a few minutes past 11 on Monday morning, Mr. Henkle seemed to do nothing but enjoy himself. The hotel was ornate and lavish — acres of marble, polished metal, and great sheets of glass. It was expensive; at $45 a day, Mr. Henkle's room was one of the more modest ones. And it was large — fifteen stories high, containing well over five hundred rooms, and not just one but three dining rooms, in each of which Mr. Henkle took meals; two coffee shops, at each of which he leisurely and alternately took breakfast; four bars and two cocktail lounges, at and in which Mr. Henkle spent an hour or so each afternoon; a vast supper club, in which he ate dinner, watching the entertainment and laughing delightedly; five tennis courts, a game he seemed to enjo
y watching; a swimming pool larger than the average home building lot, at which Mr. Henkle lounged in the late mornings; a vast cardroom, in which he at first watched the games and later played; and 1100 feet of beach front, along which he strolled one or more times daily. Everywhere he made acquaintances, beginning conversations with the direct approach of an intelligent child. Quite obviously this friendly, faintly awkward man in ready-made clothes was simply enjoying an atmosphere and leisure that were new and altogether pleasing to him. In point of fact, the man who had registered as Alfred G. Henkle was working hard.
Wherever he walked, sat, stood, or lay, he was watching, listening, and quite often inquiring directly. In less than two days he knew very nearly every hotel employee, and the names of almost all the guests, and usually their room, suite, or cabana numbers. Of the couples registered he knew which were married and which only pretended to be. Of those who arrived alone, he knew which intended to remain so and which hoped not to. But most importantly, he knew, he was certain, which of the twelve-hundred-odd guests, all of whom appeared to have money, had money. And he was in the process of selecting one of them.
Money, however, was only his first requirement. Some of the many candidates he considered and discarded, bragged. And a man brags, Alfred Henkle believed, because he lacks self-confidence; lacking self-confidence, he does not trust his own judgment. Such a man was of no use to Mr. Henkle. Other potential candidates, he presently learned, were caught up in intense and immediate unhappinesses. Mr. Henkle believed such people to be temporarily incapable of real interest in anything else. Still other men, he found, were there with their wives, and Mr. Henkle, at work, was afraid of women; they tended to follow their instincts and intuitions, he had learned. But men trusted in logic, and Mr. Henkle greatly preferred this.
His search ended at three minutes past 11 o'clock Monday morning on the sunlit beach before the hotel. On the sand lay a young man in navy-blue swimming trunks, a Mr. Frank O. Lucca; and Mr. Henkle turned aside from his stroll at the water's edge to walk toward him. He had been waiting for some such opportunity since Mr. Lucca arrived, the morning before; and now, plodding through the shoe-deep sand, he considered what he already knew of this young man. Mr. Lucca, standing at the hotel desk to register, had been quietly and expensively dressed. But this had left Mr. Henkle unmoved; in this hotel he expected hand-stitched lapels and $25 neckties. It was Mr. Lucca's shoes that struck the first bright spark of his interest; they were custom-made. Few people recognize custom-made shoes; and therefore the wearers of them, Mr. Henkle believed, had money to spend even in places where it did not show. Mr. Lucca's bags, stacked against a hotel pillar, were of thick pigskin, but this was of no interest to Mr. Henkle; expensive secondhand luggage, he knew, can be bought at auction for astonishingly little. But the leather surfaces of those bags bore faint markings, which told him that a variety of foreign-hotel stickers had been carefully washed off. The man who would have that done — who would actually remove from the eyes of the world so obvious a badge of prosperity — had money, very likely, and to spare. Mr. Henkle liked the man's manner, which was quiet. He liked his appearance. Mr. Lucca was tall, slim, and well-built; his hair brown, wavy, and clipped short. His face was lean and handsome, and adding to that handsomeness were two as yet still faint and — this particularly interested Mr. Henkle — predatory cheek grooves. He liked the man's age, which was thirty-one or -two; old enough to have acquired money in quantity, young enough to want a great deal more. He even liked the man's name.
