“I have to go now,” Vickers replied, a little frantically. “See you on my way back.”
He climbed into the car and sped away through the dowdy little village, anxious to go where there would be answers instead of questions, for he saw now that his own questions were even more urgent than he had suspected.
XIX
THE gate to the farm was chained and locked, so he parked the car beside the highway and walked the quarter mile down to the buildings.
The farm road was overgrown with grass in places and knee-high with weeds in others and only here and there could you find the sign of wheel-ruts. Some windows in the house were broken, probably by kids, and the door to the back porch had become unlocked and was swinging in the wind.
He waded through the sea of grass, walking around the house, astonished at how tenaciously the marks of living still clung about the place. There, on the chimney, running up the outside wall, were the prints of his ten-year old hands, impressed into wet mortar. At the corner of the house he found the old washtub where his mother each spring had planted the nasturtians, but the tub itself was almost gone, its metal turned to rust and all that remained was a mound of earth.
He did not try the door, for the outside was all he wished to see. There would be too much to see inside—the nail holes on the wall where the pictures had been hung and the marks on the floor where the stove had stood and the stairway with the treads worn smooth by beloved footsteps. If he went in, the house would cry out to him from the silences of its closets and the emptiness of its rooms.
He walked down to the other buildings and they, for all their own silence and emptiness, were not so memory-haunted as the house. The henhouse was falling in and the hoghouse was a place for the winter winds to whistle through and he found an old, worn-out binder stored in the back of the cavernous machine shed.
The barn was cool and shadowed. The stalls were empty, but the hay still hung in cobwebby wisps from the cracks in the floor of the mow and the place still had the half-misty, half-acid smell of living, friendly beasts.
He climbed the incline to the granary and, sliding back the wooden latch, went in. Mice ran squeaking across the floor and up the walls and beams. A pile of grain sacks was draped across the partition that held the grain back from the alley way and a broken harness hung from a peg upon the wall and there, at the end of alley, lay something that stopped him.
IT was a child’s top, battered now and with all its color gone, but once it had been bright and colorful and when it was pumped on the floor, it had spun and whistled. He had received it for Christmas and it had been a favorite toy of his.
He picked it up and held its battered metal with a sudden tenderness and wondered how it had gotten there. It was a part of his past catching up with him—a dead and useless thing to everyone in all the world except the boy to whom it had once belonged.
It had been a striped top and the colors had run in spiraling streaks when you spun it and there had been a point, he remembered, where each streak ran and disappeared. You could sit for hours watching the streaks come up and disappear, trying to make out where they went. For they must go somewhere, a boyish mind would figure. They couldn’t be there one second and be gone the next. There must be somewhere for them to go.
And there had been somewhere for them to go!
You could go where the streaks went, into the land they fled to, if you were very young and could wonder hard enough.
It was a sort of fairyland, although it seemed more real than a fairyland should be. There was a walk that looked as if it were made of glass and there were birds and flowers and trees and some butterflies and he picked one of the flowers and carried it in his hand as he walked along the path. He had seen a little house hidden in a grove and when he saw it, he became a little frightened and walked back along the path and suddenly he was home, with the top dead on the floor in front of him and the flower clutched in his hand.
He had told his mother and she had snatched away the flower, as if she’d been afraid of it. And well she might have been, for it was winter.
That evening Pa had questioned him and found, out about the top and the next day, when he’d looked for the top, he couldn’t find it anywhere. He had cried off and on for days, secretly of course.
And here it was again, an old and battered top, with no hint of the original color, but the same one, he was sure.
He left the granary, carrying the battered top along with him. Through all the years, he had not remembered it, had not even suspected that there was an incident such as this hidden in his mind.
But now the top was with him once again and the day was with him, too—the day he’d followed the swirling streaks and walked into fairyland.
XX
HE told himself he would not stop at the Preston house. He would drive by and have a look at it, but he would not stop. For he was fleeing now. He had found an artifact of childhood that now brought only pain and frustration.
He wouldn’t stop at the Preston house. He’d just slow down and look, then speed up the car and put the miles behind him.
He wouldn’t stop, he said.
But, of course, he did.
He sat in the car and gazed at the house and remembered that it once had been proud and had sheltered a family that had been proud as well—too proud to let a member of its family marry a country lad from a farm of sickly corn and yellow clay.
But the house was proud no longer. The shutters were closed and someone had nailed long planks across them. The paint was scaling and peeling from the stately columns that ran across its front.
He got out of the car and walked through the drooping front gate up to the porch. Climbing the stairs, he saw how the floor boards had rotted.
He stood where the two of them first had known their love would last forever and he tried to catch that moment of the past and it was not there. He tried to remember how the meadows and the fields and yard had looked from the porch, with the white moonlight upon them. He knew, but he could not feel or see them.
On the slope behind the house were the barns. Beyond them, the ground sloped down and there stretched out before him the valley they had walked that last time he had seen her.
It had been an enchanted valley, he remembered, with apple blossoms and the song of lark.
It had been enchanted once. It had not been the second time. But what about the third?
He told himself that he was chasing rainbow ends, but while he told himself, he was walking down the slope, down past the barns and on into the valley.
At the head of it, he stopped and looked and it was not enchanted, but he remembered it, as he had remembered the moonlight on the columns. He saw the crab apple thickets, with the blossoms fallen now, and once a lark soared out of the grass and flew into the sky.
But the third visit here had been the same as the second. It had been she who had turned this prosaic valley into an enchanted place. It had been, after all, an enchantment of the spirit.
Twice he had walked in enchanted places.
Twice. Once because of a girl and the love between them. Once again because of a spinning top.
No, the top had been the first.
Yes, the top—
Now wait a minute! Not so fast!
You’re wrong, Vickers. It wouldn’t be that way.
You crazy fool, what are you running for?
XXI
THE manager of the dime store, when Vickers sought him out, seemed to understand.
“You know,” he said, “I understand just how you feel. I had a top like that myself when I was a kid. There’s nothing like a top to play with.”
“Especially those big ones,” said Vickers. “The ones with the handle on them and you pumped them on the floor and they whistled.”
“Sat and played with it for hours when I was a kid.”
“Watching where the stripes went?”
“I don’t recall I worried much about where the stripes might go.
&nb
sp; I just sat and watched it spin and listened to it whistle.”
“I used to worry about where they went. You know how it is. They travel up and then they disappear, somewhere near the top.”
“Tell me,” said the manager, “where do they go?”
“I don’t know,” Vickers admitted.
“There’s another dime store down the street a block or two. Carries a lot of junky stuff, but they might have a top like that left over.”
“Thanks,” said Vickers.
“You could also try the hardware store across the street. They carry quite a stock of toys, but I suppose they got them put away down in the basement. They only get them out at Christmas time.”
The man at the hardware store knew what Vickers wanted, but he didn’t have one. The other dime store didn’t either. No, said the girl, chewing gum and thrusting a pencil back and forth into the wad of hair above her ear, she didn’t know where he might get one. There were a lot of other things here if he wanted to get something for a little boy. Like those toy rockets or these—
He went out on the sidewalk, watching the late afternoon crowd of shoppers in the little Midwestern town. There were women in print dresses and other women in sleek business suits and there were high school kids just out of class and businessmen out for a cup of coffee. He saw a crowd of loafers gathered around his Forever car, parked in front of the first dime store. It was time, he thought, to feed that parking meter.
He reached into his pocket. The coins made him wonder about the money in his billfold, so he took it out and flipped it open and saw that all he had left were two dollar bills.
Since he couldn’t go back to Cliff wood, he had no place to call his home. He’d need money for lodging for the night and for meals and for gasoline—but more than that, more than anything, he was in need of a singing top that had colored stripes painted on its belly.
VICKERS stood in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about the top. It had worked once before, when he was a child, before Pa had taken the top away from him.
What would have happened to him if it had not been hidden away? He wondered if he would have gone again and again, once he had found the way, back into that fairyland and what might have happened there, whom and what he might have met and what he would have found in the house hidden in the grove. For he eventually would have gone to the house. Having watched it long enough to grow accustomed to it, he would have followed the path across the grove and gone up to the door and knocked.
He wondered if anyone else had ever watched a spinning top and walked into fairyland. And he wondered, if they had, what had happened to them.
The dime store manager had not done it. He had never wondered where the stripes might go. He had just sat and watched and listened to the whistle.
Vickers wondered what he was. that he should have found the way. And he wondered if the enchanted valley might not have been a part of fairyland as well and if somehow the girl and he might not have walked through another unseen gate. For surely the valley that he remembered was not the valley he had walked that morning.
A top, he thought. Somewhere, someplace, somehow, I must find a top.
But, of course, he had a top. The handle of it would have to be straightened and it might need a bit of oil to clear away the rust and it would have to be painted.
More than likely it would be better than any other he could get, for it would be the original top—and it pleased him to think that it might have certain special qualities, a certain mystic function no other top might have.
He was glad that he had thought of it, lying there, forgotten for the second time, in the glove compartment where he had tossed it after finding it again.
He walked up the street to the hardware store.
“I want some paint,” said Vickers. “The brightest, glossiest paint you have. Red and green and yellow. And some little brushes to put it on with.”
XXII
HE called Ann from his hotel room, collect, since, after eating dinner, he had only ninety cents.
She sounded harried. “Where in the name of heaven did you go?”
He told her where he was.
“But why are you there?” she asked him. “What is the matter with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” said Vickers. “That is, nothing yet. I am just a fugitive.”
“You are what?”
“I got run out of Cliff wood. They were fixing up a necktie party. Somehow or other they got it into their heads that I had killed a man.”
“Now I know you’re crazy. You wouldn’t kill a fly.”
“But I couldn’t explain that to them. I didn’t have a chance.”
“Why,” said Ann, “I talked to Eb . . .”
“You talked to who?”
“You know, the man in the garage. For two whole days I beat the bushes for you. I called your home and there was no one there, so I remembered you talking about Eb, the garageman, and I asked the operator to let me talk to him.”
“What did Eb say?”
“He said he hadn’t noticed you around, but he didn’t know where you were. He told me not to worry.”
“Eb was the one who tipped me off,” said Vickers. “He gave me a car and some money and saw me out of town.”
“Of all the silly things. Who was it they thought you killed?”
“Horton Flanders. He’s the old man that got lost.”
“But you wouldn’t kill him. You said he was a nice old man. You told me so yourself.”
“Look, Ann,” said Vickers, “I didn’t kill anyone. Someone just got the boys stirred up.”
“But you can’t go back to Cliffwood.”
“No, I can’t.”
“What will you do, Jay?”
“I don’t know. Just stay hid out, I guess.”
“WHY didn’t you call me right away?” demanded Ann. “What are you way out West for? You should have come straight to New York. New York is the swellest place there, is for someone to hide out. You might at least have called me.”
“Now wait a minute,” Vickers said. “I called you, didn’t I?”
“Sure. You called me because you’re broke and want me to wire some money and you—”
“I haven’t asked for any money yet.”
“You will.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m afraid I will.”
“Aren’t you interested in why I was trying to get hold of you?”
“Mildly,” said Vickers. “Because you don’t want me to get out from under your thumb. No agent wants their best author to get from under—”
“Some day I’m going to crucify you and hang you up along the roadside as a warning.”
“I would make a most pathetic Christ. You couldn’t choose a better man. All right, why did you want me?”
“Because Crawford’s practically frantic. He won’t quibble. I mentioned a fantastic figure and he didn’t even shiver.”
“I thought we disposed of Mr. Crawford,” Vickers said.
“You don’t dispose of Crawford.” Her voice was quiet but strained. “Crawford is a badly frightened man. He came to me. Imagine that! He came into my office, puffing and panting, and I was afraid I didn’t have a chair in the place strong enough. But you remember that old oak one over in the corner? It was one of the first sticks of furniture I ever bought for my office and I kept it as a sentimental piece. Well, it did the trick.”
“What trick?”
“It held him,” said Ann, triumphantly. “He’d have simply crushed anything else in the place. You remember what a big man he is.”
“Gross,” said Vickers. “That’s the word you want.”
“He said, ‘Where’s Vickers?’ And I said, ‘Why ask me? I don’t keep a leash on Vickers.’ And he says, ‘You’re his agent, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes, the last time I heard, but Vickers is a very changeable sort of man. There’s no telling about him.’ He says he’s got to have Vickers. And so I said, ‘Well, go get him. You’ll
find him around somewhere.’ He said, ‘The sky’s the limit. Name any price, make any terms you want.’ ”
“The man’s a crackpot,” Vickers said.
“There’s nothing crackpot about the kind of money he’s offering.”
“How do you know he’s got the money?”
“Well, I don’t know. Not for sure, that is. But he must have.”
“Speaking of money,” Vickers said, “have you got a loose hundred lying around? Or fifty, even?”
“I can get it.”
“Wire it here. I’ll pay you back.”
“All right,” she said. “It isn’t the first time I’ve bailed you out and I don’t imagine it will be the last. But will you tell me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“What are you going to do?”
“As soon as I get through talking to you,” said Vickers, “I’m going to do some painting.”
“A house?”
“No, a top.”
“The top of what?”
“Not the top of anything. A top. A toy kids play with. You spin it on the floor.”
“Now listen to me,” she said. “You cut out this playing around and come home to Ann.”
“After the experiment,” said Vickers.
“Tell me about it, Jay.”
“I’m going to try to get into fairyland.”
“Quit talking foolish.”
“I did it once before. No, twice.”
“Listen, Jay. This business is serious. Crawford is scared and so am I. And there’s this lynching threat, too. There’s no time for kidding or playing games.”
“Send me the money,” Vickers said.
“Right away.”
“I’ll see you in a day or two.”
“Call me tomorrow. Take care of yourself. I don’t know what you’re up to, but take care of yourself.”
“I’ll do both,” Vickers promised. “Take care of myself and call you tomorrow.”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“Ann,” he said unhappily, “you could choose your colloquialisms a little more tactfully.”
The Complete Serials Page 44
