The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  The Warden brought his fist down on the desk. "Some men will kill, Mr. Jarvis! Put them in the situation, and some men will kill to get out of it. And the situation is recapture; faced with it your brother will shoot! And he's going to be faced with it. The man who escapes and is never heard of again because he's leading a quiet exemplary life is so rare he hardly exists. It takes iron strength and self-discipline to break all ties and become a new man somewhere else, and your brother hasn't got it! He'll come sneaking back to his old ties and associations when he thinks it's safe. Or get into trouble again, as he did before. Sooner or later he will face recapture. Does your brother have a gun right now?"

  I hesitated, then shook my head.

  "Then it has to be now, while he's sleeping, and before he can get one," he said softly. "Where is he, Mr. Jarvis?"

  But I was hardly hearing him. My mind was fighting; the image of Arnie as he had once been was being replaced by a new and terribly different conception, and I was on my feet shouting against it. "But he wasn't that way! He wasn't like that!"

  "No," the Warden said slowly. "But now he is."

  "But why? Why? What happened?"

  He shrugged a little. "Prison; that's what happened. It takes strength to come through it whole."

  "So now, damn it" — I could feel my neck cords thrust out — "that's what you want me to send him back to! Back to your lousy pastel prison, painted on the outside, rotten on the inside!"

  He smiled a sad little smile. "Where else?" he said softly. "Do you have a better place? Have you got a good prison to send him to? Why, damn you!" he shouted suddenly, standing to face me, leaning far forward over the desk. "You never gave a thought in your life to the prisons you send men into, until now! We spend our lives and careers here — scrounging second-hand ball bats and discarded television sets, begging free movie films, fighting for an extra five-cent-a-day food allowance per man — trying to drag this prison a single step closer to what it ought to be! You'll spend millions for highways, but prisons …" He shook his head slowly. Then he said quietly, "We put in hours we're never paid for; we put in our lives, doing our damnedest with what we're given and what we can scrounge, trying to get these men through the prisons you provide and still keep some spark of humanity alive in them. The pastel prison — well, it's not gray concrete, and that's something at least! And we have to wheedle and cajole the very paint we use to do that much. Don't ask me where to send your brother, mister! I've spent my life for your brother."

  For several seconds he stood staring at me. Then, wearily, he turned away. "We'll do our best for him," he said quietly, and sat down. "That's all I can promise you. And it may not be enough. That's San Quentin, Mr. Jarvis. Not enough room, not enough money, not enough jobs, not enough teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, equipment, or even time to do much more than just lock these men up, and try to make their lives bearable. I believe San Quentin is one of the best prisons in the country, Mr. Jarvis. I know that it is. And it's a bad prison; there are no good ones. But I didn't send nearly five thousand men into a prison built for two thousand. You tell me where to put the overflow you and the rest of California send to me. I obey your orders.

  "We'll do the best we can for your brother, Mr. Jarvis, but for better or worse, he's got to come back here; there's no other place for him."

  "No other place but the gas chamber, Warden?"

  He smiled a little. "No, you don't ask a man to send his brother to the gas chamber. We don't know who hit the officer, and the only witness is back in Wyoming again. Tell me where your brother is, and I give you my personal word that the charge will be dropped; you'll have gained that much, and certainly I have to offer you that much. Mr. Jarvis, don't you realize that this is the only way you can save your brother from the gas chamber?"

  It almost succeeded. This man was speaking truth, and I knew it. And yet — I gave up thinking, because it didn't matter; I simply was not going to turn in my brother.

  He saw it in my face. "All right," he said gently, "I know." Then he shook his head in genuine sadness. Not hoping at all to affect me any more, he said, "But it's too bad, because he's a man who'll do anything. Cross him, take away what he wants, and he'll do anything. I tell you, it's true."

  And as he spoke, something rose up in my mind past all belief, and I sat stock still, no longer listening, knowing it was true. Cross him and he'll do anything — with a terrible finality something clicked into place in my mind. He told me, the Warden had said when I entered this room, that you moved up here from Los Angeles. It was such a little thing, utterly trivial, yet there was no escape from it — Nova did not know where I'd come from; he simply didn't. It was Arnie — frustrated and wild with rage, an Arnie who'd do anything, I knew now — who'd phoned Quentin about me early this morning, knowing I'd be certain to think it was Nova.

  I know I thought honestly in the terrible moments that followed; I wasn't revenging myself. I'd turned loose a sick and dangerous man, and finally I knew it; there was no longer a choice about what I could do. I was actually shaking my head as though to clear it as I got to my feet, and Ruth's arm slipped under mine as she stood up beside me. I felt the warm tears begin to slide down my face as I reached for the pad and pen on the desk before me; then I wrote. "Here's the address, Warden," I said, and I was crying for my lost brother, as he picked up his phone.

  THE END

  Cosmopolitan, July 1956, 141(1):90-116

  Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket

  At the little living-room desk Tom Benecke rolled two sheets of flimsy and a heavier top sheet, carbon paper sandwiched between them, into his portable. Interoffice Memo, the top sheet was headed, and he typed tomorrow's date just below this; then he glanced at a creased yellow sheet, covered with his own handwriting, beside the typewriter. Hot in here, he muttered to himself. Then, from the short hallway at his back, he heard the muffled clang of wire coat hangers in the bedroom closet, and at this reminder of what his wife was doing he thought: Hot, hell—guilty conscience.

  He got up, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his gray wash slacks, stepped to the living-room window beside the desk, and stood breathing on the glass, watching the expanding circlet of mist, staring down through the autumn night at Lexington Avenue, eleven stories below. He was a tall, lean, dark-haired young man in a pullover sweater, who looked as though he had played not football, probably, but basketball in college. Now he placed the heels of his hands against the top edge of the lower window frame and shoved upward. But as usual the window didn't budge, and he had to lower his hands and then shoot them hard upward to jolt the window open a few inches. He dusted his hands, muttering.

  But still he didn't begin his work. He crossed the room to the hallway entrance and, leaning against the doorjamb, hands shoved into his back pockets again, he called, Clare? When his wife answered, he said, Sure you don't mind going alone?

  No. Her voice was muffled, and he knew her head and shoulders were in the bedroom closet. Then the tap of her high heels sounded on the wood floor and she appeared at the end of the little hallway, wearing a slip, both hands raised to one ear, clipping on an earring. She smiled at him—a slender, very pretty girl with light brown, almost blonde, hair—her prettiness emphasized by the pleasant nature that showed in her face. It's just that I hate you to miss this movie; you wanted to see it too.

  Yeah, I know. He ran his fingers through his hair. Got to get this done though.

  She nodded, accepting this. Then, glancing at the desk across the living room, she said, You work too much, though, Tom—and too hard.

  He smiled. You won't mind though, will you, when the money comes rolling in and I'm known as the Boy Wizard of Wholesale Groceries?

  I guess not. She smiled and turned back toward the bedroom.

  At his desk again, Tom lighted a cigarette; then a few moments later as Clare appeared, dressed and ready to leave, he set it on the rim of the ash tray. Just after seven, she said. I can make the beginning of the first featu
re.

  He walked to the front-door closet to help her on with her coat. He kissed her then and, for an instant, holding her close, smelling the perfume she had used, he was tempted to go with her; it was not actually true that he had to work tonight, though he very much wanted to. This was his own project, unannounced as yet in his office, and it could be postponed. But then they won't see it till Monday, he thought once again, and if I give it to the boss tomorrow he might read it over the weekend … Have a good time, he said aloud. He gave his wife a little swat and opened the door for her, feeling the air from the building hallway, smelling faintly of floor wax, stream past his face.

  He watched her walk down the hall, flicked a hand in response as she waved, and then he started to close the door, but it resisted for a moment. As the door opening narrowed, the current of warm air from the hallway, channeled through this smaller opening now, suddenly rushed past him with accelerated force. Behind him he heard the slap of the window curtains against the wall and the sound of paper fluttering from his desk, and he had to push to close the door.

  Turning, he saw a sheet of white paper drifting to the floor in a series of arcs, and another sheet, yellow, moving toward the window, caught in the dying current flowing through the narrow opening. As he watched, the paper struck the bottom edge of the window and hung there for an instant, plastered against the glass and wood. Then as the moving air stilled completely, the curtains swinging back from the wall to hang free again, he saw the yellow sheet drop to the window ledge and slide over out of sight.

  He ran across the room, grasped the bottom edge of the window, and tugged, staring through the glass. He saw the yellow sheet, dimly now in the darkness outside, lying on the ornamental ledge a yard below the window. Even as he watched, it was moving, scraping slowly along the ledge, pushed by the breeze that pressed steadily against the building wall. He heaved on the window with all his strength and it shot open with a bang, the window weight rattling in the casing. But the paper was past his reach and, leaning out into the night, he watched it scud steadily along the ledge to the south, half-plastered against the building wall. Above the muffled sound of the street traffic far below, he could hear the dry scrape of its movement, like a leaf on the pavement.

  The living room of the next apartment to the south projected a yard or more farther out toward the street than this one; because of this the Beneckes paid seven and a half dollars less rent than their neighbors. And now the yellow sheet, sliding along the stone ledge, nearly invisible in the night, was stopped by the projecting blank wall of the next apartment. It lay motionless, then, in the corner formed by the two walls—a good five yards away, pressed firmly against the ornate corner ornament of the ledge, by the breeze that moved past Tom Benecke's face.

  He knelt at the window and stared at the yellow paper for a full minute or more, waiting for it to move, to slide off the ledge and fall, hoping he could follow its course to the street, and then hurry down in the elevator and retrieve it. But it didn't move, and then he saw that the paper was caught firmly between a projection of the convoluted corner ornament and the ledge. He thought about the poker from the fireplace, then the broom, then the mop—discarding each thought as it occurred to him. There was nothing in the apartment long enough to reach that paper.

  It was hard for him to understand that he actually had to abandon it—it was ridiculous—and he began to curse. Of all the papers on his desk, why did it have to be this one in particular! On four long Saturday afternoons he had stood in supermarkets counting the people who passed certain displays, and the results were scribbled on that yellow sheet. From stacks of trade publications, gone over page by page in snatched half-hours at work and during evenings at home, he had copied facts, quotations, and figures onto that sheet. And he had carried it with him to the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, where he'd spent a dozen lunch hours and early evenings adding more. All were needed to support and lend authority to his idea for a new grocery-store display method; without them his idea was a mere opinion. And there they all lay in his own improvised shorthand—countless hours of work—out there on the ledge.

  For many seconds he believed he was going to abandon the yellow sheet, that there was nothing else to do. The work could be duplicated. But it would take two months, and the time to present this idea was now, for use in the spring displays. He struck his fist on the window ledge. Then he shrugged. Even though his plan were adopted, he told himself, it wouldn't bring him a raise in pay—not immediately, anyway, or as a direct result. It won't bring me a promotion either, he argued—not of itself.

  But just the same, and he couldn't escape the thought, this and other independent projects, some already done and others planned for the future, would gradually mark him out from the score of other young men in his company. They were the way to change from a name on the payroll to a name in the minds of the company officials. They were the beginning of the long, long climb to where he was determined to be, at the very top. And he knew he was going out there in the darkness, after the yellow sheet fifteen feet beyond his reach.

  By a kind of instinct, he instantly began making his intention acceptable to himself by laughing at it. The mental picture of himself sidling along the ledge outside was absurd—it was actually comical—and he smiled. He imagined himself describing it; it would make a good story at the office and, it occurred to him, would add a special interest and importance to his memorandum, which would do it no harm at all.

  To simply go out and get his paper was an easy task—he could be back here with it in less than two minutes—and he knew he wasn't deceiving himself. The ledge, he saw, measuring it with his eye, was about as wide as the length of his shoe, and perfectly flat. And every fifth row of brick in the face of the building, he remembered—leaning out, he verified this—was indented half an inch, enough for the tips of his fingers, enough to maintain balance easily. It occurred to him that if this ledge and wall were only a yard above ground—as he knelt at the window staring out, this thought was the final confirmation of his intention—he could move along the ledge indefinitely.

  On a sudden impulse, he got to his feet, walked to the front closet, and took out an old tweed jacket; it would be cold outside. He put it on and buttoned it as he crossed the room rapidly toward the open window. In the back of his mind he knew he'd better hurry and get this over with before he thought too much, and at the window he didn't allow himself to hesitate.

  He swung a leg over the sill, then felt for and found the ledge a yard below the window with his foot. Gripping the bottom of the window frame very tightly and carefully, he slowly ducked his head under it, feeling on his face the sudden change from the warm air of the room to the chill outside. With infinite care he brought out his other leg, his mind concentrating on what he was doing. Then he slowly stood erect. Most of the putty, dried out and brittle, had dropped off the bottom edging of the window frame, he found, and the flat wooden edging provided a good gripping surface, a half-inch or more deep, for the tips of his fingers.

  Now, balanced easily and firmly, he stood on the ledge outside in the slight, chill breeze, eleven stories above the street, staring into his own lighted apartment, odd and different-seeming now.

  First his right hand, then his left, he carefully shifted his finger-tip grip from the puttyless window edging to an indented row of bricks directly to his right. It was hard to take the first shuffling sideways step then—to make himself move—and the fear stirred in his stomach, but he did it, again by not allowing himself time to think. And now—with his chest, stomach, and the left side of his face pressed against the rough cold brick—his lighted apartment was suddenly gone, and it was much darker out here than he had thought.

  Without pause he continued—right foot, left foot, right foot, left—his shoe soles shuffling and scraping along the rough stone, never lifting from it, fingers sliding along the exposed edging of brick. He moved on the balls of his feet, heels lifted slightly; the ledge was not quite as wide as he'
d expected. But leaning slightly inward toward the face of the building and pressed against it, he could feel his balance firm and secure, and moving along the ledge was quite as easy as he had thought it would be. He could hear the buttons of his jacket scraping steadily along the rough bricks and feel them catch momentarily, tugging a little, at each mortared crack. He simply did not permit himself to look down, though the compulsion to do so never left him; nor did he allow himself actually to think. Mechanically—right foot, left foot, over and again—he shuffled along crabwise, watching the projecting wall ahead loom steadily closer ….

  Then he reached it and, at the corner—he'd decided how he was going to pick up the paper—he lifted his right foot and placed it carefully on the ledge that ran along the projecting wall at a right angle to the ledge on which his other foot rested. And now, facing the building, he stood in the corner formed by the two walls, one foot on the ledging of each, a hand on the shoulder-high indentation of each wall. His forehead was pressed directly into the corner against the cold bricks, and now he carefully lowered first one hand, then the other, perhaps a foot farther down, to the next indentation in the rows of bricks.

  Very slowly, sliding his forehead down the trough of the brick corner and bending his knees, he lowered his body toward the paper lying between his outstretched feet. Again he lowered his fingerholds another foot and bent his knees still more, thigh muscles taut, his forehead sliding and bumping down the brick V. Half-squatting now, he dropped his left hand to the next indentation and then slowly reached with his right hand toward the paper between his feet.

  He couldn't quite touch it, and his knees now were pressed against the wall; he could bend them no farther. But by ducking his head another inch lower, the top of his head now pressed against the bricks, he lowered his right shoulder and his fingers had the paper by a corner, pulling it loose. At the same instant he saw, between his legs and far below, Lexington Avenue stretched out for miles ahead.