The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  Then he smiled at this dog-in-the-manger attitude and said it to himself. She was married, of course, and probably the mother of several children. In any case, the gay, wild young girl who'd slept till noon every day and stayed up at least half of every night was obviously and certainly gone — replaced by a sober, serene young woman, carrying a string bag of groceries to someone who depended on her. And Vic was content that this was so. Sipping his Pernod, he felt absolutely at rest and at peace, for now he knew why he'd come here, across an ocean. It wasn't Suzanne; nothing had prevented him from returning to her five years ago; but from the time he'd met Aileen, there had been no chance of that. It was something else, something that was no longer here or anywhere else. For now he understood what was simple enough but nevertheless he hadn't known till the moment of seeing Suzanne and her string bag — simply that his youth wasn't still here waiting to be returned to.

  He was married, the father of a child, no longer completely young, certainly not free, and this was not to be regretted very much, but accepted. Suzanne had — and willingly, Vic knew from her face — and now so did he. He'd left something here he'd never have again, but he'd gained more, and hoped Suzanne had, too. Looking down the street along which she'd disappeared forever, he hoped she felt about someone as he did about Aileen.

  Amused at himself, he sat at his table for some time longer — he ordered another Pernod and drank most of it — but he had already begun to leave Paris. He worked out a leisurely schedule for having dinner, seeing the one or two more things he wanted to see, getting to the aérogare in plenty of time. There wasn't a jet plane, so he was taking a slower one. Then he left the café, walked along the boulevard, and then back to the river and a restaurant he had once eaten at and had remembered ever since — very expensive, very fine, and several stories up in a building overlooking the Seine.

  He had time, after dinner, to cross on the Petit Pont, the Little Bridge, to the island in the Seine that was once the whole of the city, or village, of ancient Paris. Then he walked through the soft spring darkness across the great open plaza before the old cathedral. He was here simply so that he could walk under the flickering yellow illumination of the old glass-enclosed gaslights that follow the paths of this square. They didn't seem anachronistic, the softly hissing, gently incandescent old lights; here they seemed natural, entirely appropriate, and under the soft lighting of a better, more peaceful time, he felt himself surrounded by the beauty of the city. Presently — he was very tired now, and his feet hurt painfully — he crossed the river once more and began to look for a cab for the ride to the air-terminal building and the bus.

  He landed, the wheels of the plane touching the concrete of New York's International Airport, at seven-twenty-five in the morning, New York time. At fourteen minutes to nine, Vic was turning the key in the front door of his apartment. His family was home; from behind the closed swinging door of the kitchen, he heard the murmur of his wife's voice and the pounding of his son's spoon on the wooden shelf of his high chair.

  When, minutes later, his wife understood that he had actually been in Paris and sat staring at him in astonishment, wanting to know why, Vic turned back to the living room. Walking to the big chair in which he'd piled his things, he thought that maybe someday he'd try to tell her why. And then again, he thought, smiling a little, maybe he wouldn't; certainly he wouldn't try today.

  Pushing through the swinging door again, he answered his wife's question. You told me to get bread for breakfast this morning. He laid on the table the long, thin loaf he had bought; still fresh, he noticed, squeezing it. French bread, you said. Grinning at her, he shrugged. So I did, that's all.

  McCall's, February 1960, LXXXVII(5):44-45, 163-164, 166-168

  I Love Galesburg in the Springtime

  ... and in the summer when it sizzles, and in the fall, and in the winter when the snow lies along the black branches of the trees that line its streets.

  — Lines tapped out on his typewriter (when he should have been writing up the Soangetaha Country Club dance) by Oscar Mannheim, Galesburg, Illinois, Register-Mail reporter.

  I didn't make the mistake — he'd have thrown me down the elevator shaft — of trying to see E. V. Marsh in his room at the Custer. I waited in the lobby, watching the coffeeshop, till he'd finished breakfast and was sipping his second cup of coffee before I braced him, walking up to his table smiling my lopsided, ingratiating, Jimmy Stewart smile.

  When he learned I was from the paper, he tried to fend me off. I've got nothing for you, he said, shaking his head. He was a heavy man in his fifties, with straight, thinning hair. There's no story. There just won't be any factory of mine in Galesburg, that's all. I'm leaving this town on the first train I can get.

  Well, I'm sorry to hear that, I said untruthfully, and dragged up a chair from an adjacent table. Straddling it, I sat down, facing Marsh across the chair back, chin on my folded arms. But that's not why I'm here, I added softly, and waited. I'm a tall, bone-thin man; my pant legs flop like sails when I walk. I have a bony face, too, more or less permanently tanned, and straight, Indian black hair; and I'm still young, I guess. People generally like me all right.

  But Marsh was mad now, his face reddening, his jaw muscles working; he knew what I meant. I glanced quickly around the room; it was still early, and there were only a few people here. We were at a corner table looking out on Kellogg Street; no one was near us.

  Leaning closer to Marsh's table, my chair legs tilting forward, I said, I'd rather get the story from you, as it really happened, than try to piece it together from a lot of half-true rumors floating around town.

  He glared. Then he leaned toward me, voice quiet but furious. I wasn't drunk. I can tell you that!

  I'm sure you weren't. Tell me about it. And because I'm a reporter, he did.

  He sighed a little, going through the motions of reluctance, but actually — and this is usually true — he was glad to talk, now that he had to or thought he did. Ilene brought over the coffee I'd ordered when I walked into the room, and I picked up my cup and tasted it; the coffee's good at the Custer. Then I dropped my chin to my folded arms, feeling alive and eager, anxious to listen. Because the only reason I was here, the only reason I'm a reporter at all, was simple curiosity. Haven't you ever wished it were somehow possible to cross-examine an absolute stranger about something none of your business but damned interesting all the same? Well, think it over — if you're a reporter, you can. There's no law says it has to be printed.

  I had two drinks before dinner, Marsh said. We all did. We ate up in my suite — the property owner, a Chamber of Commerce man, an attorney from the city, and a couple councilmen. If you want a list of their names, ask them for it. After dinner, most of us had a brandy. But we sat at the table from seven till ten, and whatever drinks I had were spread over a considerable time; I wasn't drunk or even close. Marsh shrugged impatiently. We worked things out — the price of the factory site, option terms, the probable contractor. Both councilmen and the attorney assured me there'd be no trouble about changing zoning restrictions, if necessary, or running my trucks down Broad Street to the Santa Fe depot. All friendly and pleasant. Marsh took a cigar from the breast pocket of his suit coat and offered it. I shook my head, and he began pulling off the cellophane wrapper. But I like to sleep on a deal of any importance, and told them I'd think it over. They left about ten, and I took a walk.

  Marsh stuck the unlighted cigar in his mouth, bulging one cheek out, and leaned toward me. I always do that, he said angrily. I take a walk and go over the facts in my mind; then home to bed, and when I wake up in the morning, I usually know what I want to do. So I left the hotel here, walked up Kellogg to Main Street, then over to the Public Square, and when I came to Broad Street, I turned up it. Not because the proposed factory site was on Broad; it's way out near the city limits, a dozen blocks or more, and I wasn't planning to walk that. Besides, I'd been all over the site that day, and I couldn't have seen anything in the dark, anyway.
But Broad was as good a street as any other to walk along. Marsh brought out matches, prepared to strike one, then sat staring at the tabletop instead. At that, I walked a lot farther than I meant to. Pleasant street. He struck his match and looked up at me for comment, sucking the flame onto the cigar end.

  It's beautiful, I said, nodding. All those streets — Broad, Cherry, Prairie, Kellogg, Seminary, and all the others — are beautiful, and I was remembering the day my father, mother, sister, and I got off the train from Chicago at the Q depot. We rode through Galesburg then, in a taxi, to the house my father had bought on Broad Street. The driver took us up Seminary first, from the depot, then along Kellogg, Prairie, and Cherry — a few blocks on each street — before turning onto Broad. I was six, and as we rode, something in me was responding to the town around us, and I began falling in love with Galesburg even before we reached our house. It happened completely, love at first sight, just north of Main Street, when I first saw the thick old trees that line the streets of Galesburg, arching and meeting, high overhead as far as I could see. We moved along under those new-leaved trees, and the first warm-weather insects were sounding, and the street was dappled with shade and sun, the pattern of it stirring as the trees moved in the late-spring air. Then I heard our tires humming with a ripply sound that was new to me, and saw that the street was paved with brick. I guess that's not done any more; nowadays, it's concrete or asphalt, never brick.

  But a great many Galesburg streets are still brick-paved, and some of the curbing is still quarried stone. And in the grassways beside those brick-paved streets, there still remain stone curbside steps for entering or leasing carriages. Near them — not added for quaintness' sake, but remaining from the days when they were put there for use — is an occasional stone or cast-iron hitching post. Back past the grassways and the sidewalks (of brick, too, often), and beyond the deep front lawns, rise the fine old houses. Many are wood, often painted white: some are brick or time-darkened stone: but — there along Cherry, Broad, Prairie, Academy, and the other old streets — they have the half comically ugly, half charming look, made of spaciousness, dignity, foolishness, and conspicuous waste, that belongs to another time.

  I mean the curved bay windows with curving window glass: the ridiculous scroll- and lathwork at the eaves: the rounding, skyrocket-shaped tower rooms with conical roofs: the stained-glass windows (one of them, on Broad Street, I think, an actual pastoral scene); the great, wide front porches; the two stories with an attic above; the tall, lean windows beginning just over the floor. You know what I mean — you've seen them, too, and admired them wryly; the kind, old houses of other and better times. Oh, some of them are sagging and debauched, decrepit and in need of paint. Some have been modernized, and a few are new. These aren't museum streets, but streets where human beings live. But many of the old houses, here in Galesburg, stand as always, occasionally families living in them descendants of the families who built them in the deep peace of the eighties, nineties, the turn of the century, and the early twenties.

  Broad is a nice street, all right, I said to Marsh, and he nodded.

  Very attractive. Last night, when I walked along it, the crickets were buzzing in the trees. They weren't crickets, of course, but I didn't correct the man from Chicago. A lot of living-room lights were lighted, and now and then I heard voices murmuring from front porches. There were fireflies over the lawns and bushes, and all in all, I walked a lot farther than I'd meant to. So when I saw a streetcar coming toward me. I decided I'd ride back to Main Street. Marsh leaned toward me, his cigar between thumb and forefinger, pointing its butt end at me. You hear what I say? I said I saw that streetcar, and I heard it, too, I don't care what anyone tells you. He sat back in his chair, regarding me bitterly, then continued.

  It was still a long way off when I first noticed it. But I saw the single round headlight moving slowly along toward me, swaying above the track down the middle of the street. Then I saw the light begin to glint along the rails, and a moment later heard the sound — there's no other sound just like it; a sort of steady, metallic hiss — of a streetcar moving along the rails.

  I saw it, I heard it, and I stepped out into the street to wait for it — there was no other traffic. I just stood out there in the middle of the street beside the track, waiting and thinking absently about the new factory. Down the street somewhere, I became vaguely aware that a phonograph was playing. I recognized the tune; it was Wabash Blues, and it slowed down for a few moments, the notes growling as they got slower and deeper; then someone wound the phonograph, and it speeded right up.

  Now, that motorman saw me; he must have. I signaled to make sure, as the car came closer, stepping right up beside the rails to get into the beam of its light, and waving one arm. So he saw me, all right, and I saw him; very plainly. He had on a black uniform cap and wore a large mustache. He had on a blue shirt with a white stiff collar and a black tie, and a vest with flat metal buttons, and a gold watch chain stretching from pocket to pocket. That's how close I saw him, but he never so much as glanced at me. I stood right there in the beam of his light, waving my arm; it made a big, swaying shadow down the street past us. Then, all of a sudden, that car right on top of me, I saw that he wasn't going to stop, he hadn't even slowed down.

  The car swelled out at the sides the way a streetcar does, protruding well past the rails, and I was right next to the tracks. I was about to be hit by that car, I suddenly realized; would have been hit if I hadn't dropped back, falling to the street behind me like a ballplayer at bat dropping away from a badly pitched ball. Right back and down on my haunches I went, then lost my balance and sprawled out flat on my back on the street as that car rocked past me, straight through the space I'd been standing in, and went on by like a little island of light swaying off down the rails.

  I yelled after it. I was badly scared, and I cursed that guy out. Still lying on my back in the dust of the street, I shouted so he could hear me, and a porch light snapped on. I didn't care; I was mad. Getting to my feet, I yelled after that guy some more, watching him shrink and disappear down the rails, his trolley sparking blue every once in a while, as though it were answering me. More porch lights were coming on now, and several men in shirt sleeves from the houses up beyond the lawns came walking toward me; I heard their feet scuffle as they crossed the walks.

  Well, I expect I was a sight, all right, standing in the middle of the street, shouting and shaking my fist after that streetcar, the entire back of my suit covered with dust, my hat in the gutter somewhere. They asked me, those men, stopping around me — speaking pleasantly and politely enough — what the trouble was. I could see women and children standing on porch steps, watching. I answered. I told them how that streetcar had nearly run me down. This might not be a regular stop, I said; I didn't know about that. But that was no excuse to run a man down, without even clanging his bell to warn me. No reason he couldn't have stopped, anyway; there were no other passengers, no reason to be in such a hurry. They agreed with me, helping me find my hat, dusting me off. I expect it was one of the women who phoned the police — one of the men signaling to her behind my back, probably. Anyway, they got there pretty quickly and quietly. It wasn't till I heard the car door slam behind me that I turned and saw the police car, a fifty-nine Plymouth with white doors, the two cops already out in the street and walking toward me.

  Drunk and disorderly, or something of the sort, was the charge they arrested me on. I argued, I protested; I wasn't drunk. But one of the cops just said, Show me the streetcar tracks, mister; just point them out, and we'll let you go. Marsh looked at me, his face set and angry. And of course there aren't any tracks. There haven't been any on Broad Street since —

  Since they tore them up sometime in the thirties, I said. I know.

  Marsh was nodding. So of course you don't believe me, either. Well, I don't blame you. No one else did; why should you? I had to phone one of the councilmen to come down to the jail and identify me, and when he arrived, he had the att
orney from the city with him. They vouched for me, and apologized, and got me out of jail, and kept their faces straight. Too straight; I knew they were laughing inside, and that it's a story I could never live down here, never at all. So I'm leaving Galesburg. There are plenty of other towns along the Santa Fe to build a factory in.

  I didn't say I didn't believe you. I leaned toward him and spoke quietly. Tell me something. How big was that streetcar?

  Marsh squinted at the ceiling. Small, he said then, his voice a little surprised. Very small, actually; wouldn't hold much more than a dozen people or so.

  I nodded, still leaning over the tabletop. You saw the motorman up close, you said, and it was a warm night. Did you happen to notice his cap? What was his cap like, besides being black?

  Marsh thought again, then smiled. I'll be darned, he said. Yes, I remember; it was wicker. It was a regular uniform cap, just like any other in shape, and with a shiny peak and a stiff, hard top. But the top was made of wicker — actual wickerwork — dyed black. I never saw a cap like that before in my life.

  Neither did I; nowhere else but here. But that's the kind of cap streetcar motormen used to wear in the summer in Galesburg, Illinois. I was just a little kid, but I remember them. What color was that streetcar, red or green?

  It was yellow, Marsh said quietly. I saw it pass under a street light just before it reached me, and it was yellow.

  That's right, I said. The streetcars in Galesburg were painted yellow, and the last of them quit running years ago. I stood up and put my knuckles on the tabletop, resting my weight on them, leaning down to look Marsh in the eyes. But you saw one last night, just the same. I don't know how or why, but you did, and I know it, and believe you. I smiled. straightening up to stand beside the table. But no one else ever will. Of course you're right; You'd never enjoy living in Galesburg now.