The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  I pushed through the revolving glass door to run the gauntlet of a battery of receptionists and secretaries, at length to find myself in a waiting-room adjoining the Honorable Barnes’ sanctum. Wise and solid? He looked it, now that there was no reminder of Sally to take my eyes off him.

  I was given a sheaf of instructions and told to go to work at once. I started off.

  “One moment, Mr. Flinders.” Barnes cool gray eyes searched me. “You were talking with a young man outside my door. Where did you meet him?”

  “In one of the eastern cities—the suburbs.” I wondered if Barnes interpreted “suburbs” to mean the jungles of the unemployed. To my surprise he handed me a packet of redbacks.

  “Expense money, Mr. Flinders. You may require an assistant in this research. Possibly some friend in need of a job.”

  . “Such as that fellow Hammock?”

  “Er—I’ll leave that to your judgment,” said Barnes. He was nodding slightly. Then with an amused laugh, “What did you call him—Hammock?”

  “Bobbie Hammock. That’s his name.”

  Prescott Barnes suppressed his smile. “If you should employ this Mr. Hammock, you needn’t mention that the suggestion came from me.” That was that.

  I went to work in the Bureau of Biographical Records the next morning.

  That night I paid a visit to the village of the underfed, a jungle that extended eastward from the edge of the city. But I failed to make contact with Bobbie Hammock. For two or three successive nights I missed him. But this was not surprising in so large and badly organized a village. The none-too-popular leader, Hefty the Ramrod, was off on a tour of inspection to other boiling pots of revolution, and in his absence this group had broken down into quarreling factions.

  I would have to find Bobbie later. Meanwhile, my regular work hours brought back a little of that long-lost feeling of being a part of the world about me.

  Except for its extreme speed, this capital city was an attractive place. After half a week of riding those swift public conveyances I began to get the hang of those high-powered speed-up platforms.

  You had to cross from a narrow stationary platform to a narrower moving one, and thence to another moving at higher speed, and by the time you crossed a series of these you could step right into the open door of the passing train, no stop being necessary.

  It took me several weeks before I lost all my old habit of wanting to pay a fare. Here your monthly taxes took care of a multitude of evils. It was much too important to the welfare of the city to keep people moving swiftly, to slow up the process by collecting individual fares.

  In some ways this speed was less objectionable than that of 1950. There were neither noise nor crowded conditions on these public trains. But, by gollies, there can be “damn too much speed”—as old Mixy Metaphore on the Mercury used to say. You never had enough time to relax coming or going—which time I sorely needed.

  I got a letter from Bobbie toward the end of my first week of work. The news had reached him that I hoped to hire him, and he replied that he would talk with me soon.

  “First I must see some of these boys through a little patch of trouble,” he wrote.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Ominous things were brewing outside the city limits. Out of curiosity I made another trip to try to locate Bobbie.

  “Why the hell is everyone lookin’ ‘for Bobbie Hammock?” the bird on guard duty said as he let me through. “There was a starry-eyed blonde chasin’ after him not five minutes ago.”

  I hurried along through the twisted avenues of campfires and cardboard houses, ignoring the suspicious looks and epithets that my good clothes evoked.

  Presently I caught up with the blonde.

  “Hello! You’re looking for Bobbie Hammock, too? I’m Jim Flinders. I met him back East. Bumped into him here the other day.”

  “I’m Lucille Boyington,” said the blonde, and kept right on walking. The gateman’s description hadn’t done her justice. Those eyes he had called “starry” showed terror in the light of passing campfires. If she was “chasin’ after” Bobbie it was to warn him of danger.

  We threaded our way through the dark, shadowy jungle streets she explained. “That mad Hefty is threatening to throw monkey-wrenches. We ought to push him off his throne.”

  “What’s up?”

  “He’s got the South Side Jungle all stirred up ready to march on the Capitol whenever he says the word.”

  “You sure of this? I talked with Bobby the other day—”

  “Bobbie doesn’t know. That’s why I’ve got to find him. He can do more than anyone to head it off.” Lucille Boyington said it proudly.

  “How’d you get next to this?”

  “My parents live in the South Side Jungle,” said Lucille. “Hefty has done some underhand organizing there, especially among those restless newcomers that haven’t learned to take it. They don’t realize how much they’ll hurt their own cause if they go off half-cocked.”

  “M-m-m-m. From what I hear of Hefty the Ramrod he’s an impatient sort.”

  “Too reckless to be a leader,” she said.

  I was beginning to like this girl. She was from the jungles of the underfed, there was no denying that. Her low-pitched voice was filled with a tragic quality that made you wonder. Strangely, her face was pretty, her eyes gleaming and childlike—full red lips. She could hardly have been more than seventeen. And yet you were somehow sure she knew her own mind, that she possessed extraordinary strength and determination.

  “Are you related to Bobbie Hammock?”

  “No, just a friend,” said the girl.

  Our trek came to a surprise halt when the campfires revealed some faces that Lucille recognized. Here were two or three families that she had known previously and they were ready to help her. Two of the older men bolted off toward the end of camp where Hefty the Ramrod was thought to be holding conferences. We waited.

  The news of Lucille’s warning must have grapevined rapidly across the underfed village, for we could soon hear the low jumble of voices rising into the sharpened pitch of excitement. We gathered that there was some hard-boiled resentment toward the Ramrod for trying to pull off this premature march. But on the other hand, the scheme was sure to catch fire among many.

  By two o’clock that night the talk quieted. Our friends returned to us, bringing Bobbie with them. We stirred the red coals and drank strong coffee and talked up our reassurances that trouble had been averted.

  “It’s hard to tell what the Ramrod’s planning,” said Bobbie. “But thanks to your warning, they’ve but him out of circulation for tonight.”

  “How?” Lucille was skeptical. But Bobbie’s reply made her smile.

  “They dragged him into a game.” Bobbie’s eyes showed the gleam of mischief-making. “Any time you can get him deep enough in cards that he freezes his face, with one bristling eyebrow up and the other down, you’ve restored peace over the jungle. He forgets his ambitions. That gives his lieutenants time to cool off, and the people are kept out of trouble.”

  “Frozen eyebrows—symbol of peace,” said Lucille slowly. “I wonder—”

  “Some day someone’ll knock his eyebrows off,” Bobbie mused, “and then where’ll we be?”

  “In the biggest dogfight you ever saw,” said the starry-eyed blonde.

  CHAPTER X

  Service for Suicides

  Bobby Hammock and Lucille walked back with me to the city limits as gray dawn softened the shabby village scene.

  I proposed to Bobby that he come to work for me. But he was too much afire with the destinies of downtrodden millions.

  And that wasn’t all. Just now those starry eyes and pretty red lips were exerting a powerful tug on his will. I didn’t press my request.

  “Sometime there’ll be a revolution,” said Lucille. “After that we can think of our own comforts—jobs, security, homes.”

  “And you, Bobbie—do you believe in revolution?” I asked.

  “Only a
s a last resort.”

  My instincts told me that Bobbie Hammock was no native of these underfed jungles. At some time he must have known high living standards. But his heart and soul were certainly wrapped up in Lucille Boyington and her people.

  “Maybe all our best-laid plans will be upset,” I suggested, thinking of Lord Temp. “Maybe some unforeseen catastrophe is ahead.”

  “Starvation is ahead,” said Bobbie Hammock bitterly. “Three avenues are open:

  “One: The unselfish men in the government may finally succeed with their plan to give us a chance to work again and eat again . . . But I doubt it.

  “Two: Our jumpy radicals may start some premature fireworks and the government will pitch in and cook our goose.

  “Three: We fifty million may organize and stage a swift, almost bloodless revolution. This would give us the government.”

  “And probably prove to us that we don’t know what to do with it,” Lucille commented.

  “Good morning, friends, and happier dreams some other night,” I said.

  Three avenues? No, four. The fourth was the one I was walking on. Victory Street. It led straight west across the city toward the red crags—the three giant dinner plates at the base of the mountains.

  After a full Saturday of work I wended my way westward. Highway lights and the silhouettes of forbidding mountain peaks against the stars guided my feet toward the appointed spot.

  “What kept you so long?” the skeleton asked, grinding his bare teeth as if he meant to bite me. “I had an interesting lesson in temporary death lined up for you, but you didn’t arrive so I postponed it.”

  “Very sorry, but don’t miss any fun on my account. I’m down to earth now, you know, rubbing elbows with civilization—”

  “Aha! You think you’re out of the mood to appreciate death! You should have seen the good work sny brother and I just cleaned up in that plague in the Middle Ages. But come, the night’s young. We’ll still manage to see a few sights.”

  As if in response to his will, the four white horses came pounding down the inclined surface of rock. The chariot wheeled up to us. Lord Temp tossed me in and caught the reins as he leaped in beside me.

  We bounded over the sprangling dead branches that crowned the crags, we circled back over the Indiana limestone mansion, whose side windows glowed with purple light. We rose high above it, and the trickle of midnight traffic to and from its driveway became lost among the million luminous diamonds.

  We galloped under a low cloud and raced down toward a broad highway bordered by amber floodlights. The car we descended upon was zigzagging across the road at high speed and it was an easy guess that the driver was intoxicated. Through the transparent top we could see him. His face showed in the glow of the dash lights, a contorted and painful looking countenance indeed.

  I thought he would surely crack into the cupped banks and turn himself over before we got to make anything of him. But Lord Temp thought otherwise.

  “Notice he isn’t quite letting go. Moreover, he isn’t drunk. He’s in a state of blind rage about something. I think you’ll find him an interesting study.”

  “I’ll find him—what do I have to do with him?”

  “I’ll drop you into the seat beside him. I’ll leave my robe in the chariot, so he won’t see me, and I’ll crawl into the rear seat.”

  “So we’ll all three crash.”

  “If there’s a crash, don’t worry. I don’t think he’ll be quite reckless enough to crash. Mark my words, he thinks he wants to get killed accidentally. But he doesn’t. No, Flinders, what he really wants is temporary death.”

  A moment later I found myself sitting in the front seat with this reckless driver turning his twisted and angry face in my direction. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the streak of white like a wisp of cloud, and I knew the horses and chariot were off for an exercise spree. I trusted that Lord Temp was here with me.

  “I don’t know when you got in here,” the man growled at me, “but if you’re smart you’ll get out. This car isn’t right. The steering gear’s busted.”

  “Why don’t you stop, you fool?”

  “ ’Cause I’m in a hurry, that’s why.”

  “Then let me take the wheel. You’re in no mood to be driving.”

  “Let me alone. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re trying to kill yourself,” I said. “Anyway, you think you are. What’s your trouble?”

  His face twitched with fury and his head shook a refusal to talk. Then he stared at me until I recoiled—not from the stare but from the swerve of the car toward the cupped bank. But he drew down on the wheel just in time to avert disaster. Mechanically he was taking care of his safety even though his consciousness seemed bent on self-destruction.

  “I’ll tell you why I’m heading for a crash.” His voice stiffened into a low mutter. “I can’t go home. I can’t face my wife and kids and mother-in-law and those two harping old aunts. I can’t do it. They’ve been warning me I’d lose my job, and they’ve made life a hell for me over it already. Now—”

  “Oh, so you’ve lost your job?”

  “It wasn’t my fault. They’re throwin’ more off every day. My turn had to come. And where’s a fellow gonna get any more work, with fifty million already out in the cold? We’re just one big human scrap heap.”

  “Hell, man, you can’t be whipped on your first layoff.”

  “First and last,” he said bitterly. There was no use talking to the fellow. My only advice to him was to take a vacation from everything and everybody for a couple of weeks to cool off and rest up. But he said that was impossible.

  “I won’t give those two old aunts the satisfaction of jumping on me,” he said. “Damn ’em, they’ve sponged on us for five years, and yow-yowed and bickered and stewed about the poverty we’re gettin’ into. And now that the worst has happened, I’m telling you, fellow, I’d not be able to take one more word offa them. Hell, I’d throw ’em out bodily.—”

  “Might not be a bad idea.”

  “Only I might lose control of myself and fire a revolver—no, no, no. That won’t do. The simplest way out is just to have a smash-up with the car. Kill myself, then let them draw their own conclusions.”

  “Oh, I see. You believe these aunts would think it over and realize that they were partly responsible.”

  “Sure they would. My blood would be on their hands.”

  “You’re killing yourself to get revenge.”

  “To put it bluntly, they’re murdering me. They’ve already hounded me to death. This is just the final crash.”

  “Lookout!” I thought we were gone for sure that time, but this madman wasn’t quite ready to die. He was getting too much satisfaction out of imagining the aftermath of his death. But there was something in the back of his mind, as Lord Temp pointed out to me afterward, that kept telling him his enjoyment of this revenge upon aunts and friends and family would end very abruptly the instant he cashed in.

  “Don’t you wish,” I asked, “that there was such a thing as temporary death?”

  “I sure as hell do.”

  At that moment Lord Temp’s rasping whisper sounded at my off ear. “Give him a card.”

  “Here,” I said to the man. “Here’s an invitation to Temporary Death. Take three or four cards while you’re at it. Any time you find a friend going through what you’re going through, give him one of these.”

  The man stuck the cards up in the windshield without examining them closely. “What the devil are they?”

  “Invitations,” Lord Temp whispered to me.

  “Invitations,” I repeated. “Invitations to Temporary Death.”

  “I accept,” said the man in the same reckless spirit that he might have bet his life on a sure loser at the races. “Now what do I do?”

  The invisible Lord Temp spoke aloud. “I’ll be there ready to pick you up at the right moment.”

  “And who are you?” the man asked, gaping around and seeing no one. />
  “I am Temporary Death.”

  Then Lord Temp and I flew off in the chariot, and the man shot on down the road as straight as an arrow.

  CHAPTER XI

  Legend of a Nameless Man

  This Leon King, who had fastened himself upon Prescott Barnes, as wastebasket boy and office prodigy, was also doing his best to impress Barnes’ fair daughter. He was a sharpnosed, sharp-tongued kid of twenty who was too egotistical ever to smile at anything less than his own jokes. Jealousy aside, I still wouldn’t have liked him. He reminded me of Hobbledehoy.

  Consequently I got a kick out of it that morning when Sally sent him merrily on his way.

  She had come to the Bureau of Biographical Records where I was working, and he’d tagged along.

  “For the tenth and last time, Leon,” she was saying as they came up to my desk, “you’re supposed to be at Father’s office. I can get around by myself, can’t I? I’m no baby.”

  “Don’t you like to have me come along?” he whined.

  “Not when you should be at work. Now go.”

  “All right,” he grumbled, sourly. “But I don’t like it.”

  She watched him out of sight and then her cool pleasant eyes turned upon me to smile.

  “Good morning, Mr. Flinders.”

  “Gee, you look sweet.” I said it before I could stop myself. She was so much like Sally Hart. At once my old habits were forcing their way to the surface; and they were decidedly the wrong tactics for a fellow like me to attempt toward the daughter of my employer.

  As for my amorous impulses—well, I had to put them under lock and key from the first.

  Sally Barnes removed her white gloves and broad-brimmed hat and sat down in my chair, crossing her stockingless legs and resting her graceful arms on my table. She skimmed over my notes with her cool blue-gray eyes. And I wanted to take her in my arms.

  She looked up suddenly. “Are you staring at me?”

  “How could I help it? Er—I mean, how about my notes? Do you like them?”

  “I’ve been reading all the reports you’ve turned over to father thus far. I seem to have come from a very dull family.”