The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  CHAPTER II

  Underworld Handouts

  The old man was a straggler-without-a-country, the same as all of Lanky’s new companions who loitered here in the deep, shade of the park trees.

  But the Old Man seemed to be one of the cleaner of the underworld population. At least he kept his long fluffy beard as white as snow. Lanky watched him, that day they met, and learned many things from him in the week that followed.

  “Just because a man wears rags doesn’t mean he’s unhappy,” said the Old Man. “I’m happy because I’m at peace with the world. I’ve been happy ever since the war ended.” Lanky followed him along the gravel paths through miles of grassy parks. At such a slow hobbling pace it was surprising how much ground the Old

  Man covered.

  “It isn’t how fast you walk,” said the old man, “so much as how much you keep walking. We’ll go down to the river at the edge of the city. It’s a good place to bathe and wash our clothes. As long as there’s a river, every tramp and beggar has a right to keep clean.”

  “What do you do in the wintertime?”

  “Break the ice while it’s still thin. When it gets too thick you wait for spring.”

  “I think I’ll get a job before next winter,” said Lanky thoughtfully.

  “You should. You have your health and your youth. If you would get your shaggy locks trimmed you could almost look like a gentleman. How old are you?”

  “About thirty-five,” said Lanky. “You’re thin. But if you get a job and put yourself on full-feed you’d fat up. Some tramps can’t look like anything else. But you’ve got good eyes and a good forehead. Can you read and write?”

  “Yes. I used to read everything—before the war.”

  “The war,” the old Man echoed. “That’s what they all say. Up and down the parks and along the curbstones it’s still the war—As if every straggler got so shaken up he’ll never take root again. Some of them can’t. Others just don’t want to.”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  The Old Man reached as if to shake Lanky by the shoulders, but his frail old arms lacked the energy to carry through. “Of course it makes a difference. Not a sparrow falls without making a difference . . . Are you going with me again tonight to the plaza?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  The eagerness in Lanky’s voice made the Old Man twinkle.

  “That makes a difference, I can see. And no wonder. She is not only beautiful to the eyes. She is beautiful, in spirit. I believe she would never harm a living creature.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “About a year. Soon after William Lusk was established in the Pink Temple to prepare feasts for the Counsellors, he and his wife brought her to be their hostess.”

  “I saw her the evening I arrived.”

  “Through the glass walls of the porch? Did you realize you were looking through one-way glass? She doesn’t see the street crowds that throng past the Pink Temple except when she passes the oval windows. She is said to be somewhat shy.”

  “Shyness, then, is a part of her beauty,” said Lanky. “But I can’t imagine a shy girl getting along as a hostess to sixteen Counsellors.”

  “She is a mystery to them—a very attractive mystery . . . Can you imagine her playing hostess to a bunch of tramps and stragglers like us?”

  “Hardly!”

  “Then you have a surprise-in store for this very night.”

  The night’s gayety was in full sway around the brightly lighted plaza district. Lanky felt the disapproving eyes of passers-by. His rags must have offended them.

  “This way, Lanky,” said the Old man. “Don’t you see the policemen across the way? It’s best, to keep in the shadows?”

  Shadows were the shabby man’s friends. Bright lights and policemen and the gay throngs on dress parade—these were to be avoided.

  But man’s gregarious, instincts are strong. The tramps and vagrants were drawn toward the vortex of this whirl of life the same as the noble and the well-to-do.

  “The Counsellors are still dining,” the Old man observed. “We’ll have to wait until they are through before the beautiful Janette will serve us.” Lanky gazed in fascination at the glassed-in porch of the Pink Temple.

  Yes, young Milton Molander was there, seated among the other Counsellors. The eastern side of the circular porch was connected by wide marble stairs to the main government building. The officials who worked beneath the great copper dome had only to cross this glass-roofed esplanade to dine in conspicuous luxury.

  “They love to be watched,” said the Old Man. “Not all people of great wealth or power like to be watched, perhaps. But these fifteen Counsellors. are show-offs. They want people to know that they have the best of food and the best of service and the most beautiful of hostesses.”

  “There are sixteen Counsellors,” said Lanky.

  “I don’t know about the new one—whether he will be a show-off like the others. I haven’t observed him.”

  “Then look to the table on the left,” said Lanky. “That rather tall, handsome fellow in the tan suit is Molander. I’ve observed him from the day I arrived. Let’s don’t go too close. I don’t think he’ll want to see me.”

  “Remember we are looking through one-way glass. They are spared the pain of looking at the thousands of ordinary citizens who parade past their temple. But they have the satisfaction of knowing they’re being watched and talked about—and envied.

  Lanky murmured his amusement. “They’d better remind Molander he’s being watched.”

  At the moment the new Counsellor was making himself rather too conspicuous. He was clinging to the hand of the beautiful hostess, trying to get her to sit down with him. She refused politely and started away. He called at her angrily.

  By this time the street crowds were stopping to watch, and point, and laugh. Young Molander, oblivious to this, demonstrated a bit of bad temper. To the crowd he looked like a spoiled child threatening a playmate with dire consequences if she didn’t play his way.

  She countered with an amused smile and must have reminded him that he was being watched. For he suddenly turned to the nearest oval window and glanced out. A streetful of people laughed. They couldn’t help it.

  He turned, beet-red, and stormed off toward the esplanade and out of sight.

  The Old Man shook his head. “He might have laughed with them. The joke was on him.”

  “He’s not a man to take a joke on himself,” said Lanky. “He’s not only humorless. He’s rash and headstrong—and I suspect he’s a bit treacherous.”

  Just an hour later Lanky himself was holding the hand of the beautiful Janette. And she was not trying to walk away from him. She was looking into his eyes, talking with him in her kindly, sympathetic way.

  The Old Man and four or five hundred other denizens of the city’s underprivileged world, had taken their plates of food and gone on. Lanky was, the last man in the breadline.

  “You haven’t been here before,” Janette had said, handing him a paper tray of steaming food.

  “I just came to the city recently.” How strange, he thought, that the same beautiful girl who served the; Counsellors should be found managing a breadline for the city’s social outcasts.

  This street was a part of the lower level of the plaza. Trucks rumbled through the dimly lighted catacombs. The concrete walls and ceilings vibrated from the unseen plaza traffic somewhere overhead. Down here it was a different world—a world full of deeper shadows and dank smells, where hungry men could hide, and steal, and fight, and sleep—free, from the disapproving eyes of the polite people overhead.

  But these long wooden tables where Janette and her helpers handed out free food to hungry men belonged, Lanky had been told, to the same Pink Temple with the circular glass porch. This was the service entrance. Within this domain that remarkable chef, William Lusk, famous throughout the continent, supervised the preparation of all foods.

  “I hope you will enjoy your mea
l,” Janette smiled.

  Lanky returned the smile. “I’ll feel as if I’m eating at the same table with the Counsellors.”

  “That’s the way you should feel,” said Janette. “You may have had some hard luck. But you’ll find work again soon, I’m sure. The world needs all of us. Good-bye. Come back if you need to.”

  She made a little gesture with her white arms, as if asking him to go, warning him that he mustn’t linger. But he wasn’t ready to obey. He set the tray down.

  “Do you think the world needs me?”

  He was struck by the depths of sympathy in her pretty, girlish face. She was young—hardly twenty—and so very lovely, with blue eyes matched by the blue velvet evening gown, with dark tresses cascading over her white shoulders.

  She was nodding to him, still smiling.

  “Everyone has something to give. Will you remember that? It’s as true of you as anyone else. I don’t know you—you don’t know me—but I hope

  I can give you a little of my friendship. Some encouragement may be just what you need. Or perhaps only food—”

  “I’ll give you something in return,” said Lanky. “I can’t accept favors unless I can give favors.”

  “You’re very proud, aren’t you?” She touched his ragged shoulder lightly. “You and I are different in that way. You see, I was a straggler-without-a-country when the war ended.”

  “You?”

  “I’ve been through it all.” She nodded slowly. “I’ve heard that the crowds who see me talking with the counsellors think me an aristocrat, a person of high privilege. But these men like you, who come here for food, know that I understand them.”

  “Thank you for everything.” Lanky reached to take her hand. “The Old Man with the whiskers said you were beautiful in spirit—too—”

  Her fingertips were warm to the palm of his hand.

  “And what is it you’re going to remember?” she said.

  “I—I can’t have forgotten already.”

  “That everyone has something to give—”

  “Yes—yes. I do have something to give,” he said slowly. “And now I know it’s for you.”

  He drew a small package from his pocket, removed the soiled brown wrapping, opened the ball of fine white tissue paper, brought forth a wide silver bracelet set with eight clear blue sapphires.

  “This is for you,” he said. “No, please don’t try to refuse. Did I refuse your gift of encouragement?”

  “But—a bracelet! With such jewels—”

  “Is not to be compared with the gift of your friendship. Still, it isn’t an ordinary bracelet. I’ve been told that it bears a certain charm—a charm that works only if its beauty is matched by the beauty of the wearer . . . There. It fits you perfectly.”

  The girl could hardly speak. “You’re giving it to me—to keep?”

  “As long as you want it. And now—” he picked up his tray—“I’m nearly famished.”

  CHAPTER III

  Sapphire Lightning

  The first time that Janette noticed the strange warmth of the sapphire bracelet was at noon nearly a week later. She was waiting near an oval window, wondering how soon the Counsellors would come for their midday dinners.

  Idly she watched the street crowds. Somehow they made her feel lonely. If she could only have a little more freedom to join them—

  “I’m just an ornament,” she said to herself. “What chance do I have to get out among people and live my own life? All I’m supposed to do is stay here in my glass cage and look pretty.”

  Her wistful gaze followed the narrow marble side stairs that zigzagged down to one of the adjacent streets. She felt a longing to race down those steps and run out across the plaza lawn like a child.

  Then her wrist fell strangely warm, and she glanced at her bracelet. How bright those sapphires were glowing. Almost as if they were giving off a light of their own.

  “Ornaments,” she said to herself. “Even these poor homeless men make an ornament of me. I had just as well be a marble statue or a vase—or one of those jardinières.”

  Her eyes rested on the two massive blue jardinières that stood like sentinels at the landing of the zigzag side stairs. Their tops, she knew, could be seen from the street. But not their bases. That was why a lazy tramp could snooze his hours away, lying between them and never be noticed. The stairway walls hid him from view.

  He was there now, a fat and sleepy pig of a man in bare feet and a dirty orange mechanic’s suit, probably cast off by its owner a year or two ago.

  Someone was always sleeping there, it seemed, and you could never get anybody to do anything about it. Suddenly Janette felt a resentment toward that tramp, as if he were intentionally blocking her choice avenue of escape.

  “I really do want to run away,” she said to herself. “Run away and meet a handsome man and fall in love!”

  Vaguely she had wished such things before. Now all at once all her suppressed wishes were welling up strong . . . so strong that she was surprised, almost afraid. And the more she wished, the more her sapphire bracelet glowed.

  “But I’m just an ornament,” she said to herself. It was her duty to be pretty and charming, as the great chef and his wife wanted her to be. Uncle William, she called him.

  Dear old Uncle William. He had his ideas about this new post-war world. He didn’t believe in feeding tramps. She’d had to fight to win that right.

  He believed that the new nations would have their own aristocracy. He had fought his way to this Pink Temple to, be one of the country’s foremost aristocrats—an aristocrat on the basis of his skills and abilities. In his own estimation he was a nobleman not far removed from kings, presidents, and national managers, because he could prepare the world’s finest foods.

  “And he wants me to be the world’s most charming hostess,” Janette sighed. “Wouldn’t he be terrified if he knew my secret wish to run away?”

  From across the glass porch William Lusk’s quick footsteps sounded. “Everything’s ready, Janette,” he called briskly. He was a merry, round little fellow, with great bushy gray eyebrows and sharp-pointed gray-mustaches and beard. He was never intentionally a tyrant, Janette thought. He arid his wife had meant well.

  “Anything wrong,” he asked, always alert to her slightest change of mood. He paced across to the oval window and shot a glance down toward the sleeping tramp.

  “I think I’m lonely, Uncle William.” She gazed across to the curved sidewalk where pedestrians were passing. A lady was leading a little black spaniel on a leash. Janette wished—

  “If I only had a little dog like that to play with—”

  Warmth suddenly surged through her wrist. The sapphires of her bracelet gave off a weird glow of blue light. For a moment the glass walls and ceilings caught a tinge of color like the reflection of soft lightning.

  William Lusk blinked his wide brown eyes, quite unaware of the source of the passing light.

  “A little dog, you say? Look—there comes a little dog on the run. Ha! Right up the steps! Just as you said it! Well, if that isn’t a coincidence. But it can’t come up here.” William Lusk started toward the stairs.

  The little spaniel had jerked away, leash and all, for no apparent reason. It was bouncing up the steps, looking up toward Janette.

  The owner called, stood mystified for a moment, then came running after her pet.

  “This won’t do,” thought Janette. “I wouldn’t want to take her property. No. Go back, doggie. Go back to your mamma.”

  Janette didn’t speak the words aloud. But at once the black spaniel stopped, cocked his head curiously, then turned and started off the way he had come.

  William Lusk stopped, again mystified by a flicker of blue light that caught the glass porch.

  “Did you see that, Janette?”

  “That dog?”

  “That blue flash.”

  “I—I think so.”

  “What was it?”

  “I think it was my bracelet.”


  “Nonsense. How could a bracelet—how could a—m-m-m. Where did you get that?”

  “Haven’t you seen it before?” said Janette evasively. “I’ve been wearing it for several, days!”

  William Lusk’s smile gave way to a fierce burst of temper. The bracelet was like an insult to his parental authority.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “A friend.”

  “What friend? One of the Counsellors? Which one? Hickering? Or Nigrapp? Or that new man, Molander? No? One of the married Counsellors, then.”

  “Why, Uncle William!”

  “Well, four or five of them are in love with you, you know. I know two that would divorce their wives in a minute if they thought there was a chance to win you.”

  “Uncle William!” she almost screamed. “Please don’t say such things . . . It wasn’t even a Counsellor.”

  “Who, then? You’ve no friends that know you well enough to give you such a gift. They’ve no right. You should have consulted me. Does Mrs. Lusk know?”

  “No.”

  William Lusk breathed heavily with anger. “You’re going to tell me who it was.”

  “I don’t even know his name. It was one of the down-and-outers who came by for a handout.”

  “A tramp!”

  “Yes. But very well mannered. I—I rather liked him.”

  “A tramp! Janette, how could you do such a thing? After all we’ve done to lift you out of the gutter—”

  “I was never in the gutter, Uncle William,” Janette said in an even tone.

  “After all we’ve done! You’ll get us into no end of trouble. He stole it, of course. You must have realized that. Why on earth—”

  “Uncle William, you’re shouting. Here come the Counsellors.”

  “Go to your room, Janette. We’ll talk with you later. And don’t let anyone see that bracelet. We’ll get rid of that.”

  “But Uncle William, I wish—” Janette didn’t finish, for the sudden warmth of the bracelet against her wrist warned her. For an instant there was a hint of soft blue lightning about her.

  Uncle William stood like a wide-eyed statue of bewilderment.