People had talked about the Fair all the previous summer, igniting in him the magic spark of desire, the compelling urge to see it, but in 1933 he had been but twelve years old and his aunt had firmly forbidden him the journey. Happily, unexpectedly, Chicago was repeating the wondrous exposition for a second time the following summer, and that summer he was no longer a child but a young man in his teens. The very first of the teens, but that was brushed aside as unimportant. His aunt still said no, meanwhile silently cursing those who were responsible for the repetition, those who would bleed a good thing for the last dollar—hadn’t the papers reported the Fair a tremendous financial success? Paul persisted, knowing that this second summer would be his final chance, and at last the badgered woman gave her reluctant permission but with a condition attached. The condition was her out, her excuse, her method of shifting the blame from herself to someone or something else. She thought she saw in the condition an opportunity of directing the boy’s coming disappointment another way. He could go—if he had the money to take care of himself. That was only sensible, and it relieved her of a decision, of a blame.
Paul surprised her two months later, in August. And in response to her curious, annoyed questioning he told in detail with the accumulation of each cent, each dollar, together with the names of men and places and dates and jobs. Seven dollars and fifty cents. That was more, much more, than some men owned in the summer of 1934.
Paul went to see the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.
He sensed the approach of the railroad detective before he saw the man, guessed the man’s identity before the questions revealed it.
“Hey there, buster. What you doing here?”
“Waiting for the train,” Paul told him.
“What train? The train stops down there at the station.” The man towered over him like an ogre.
“Waiting for the train,” Paul repeated inanely.
The detective studied him. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Your folks know about this?”
“I live with my aunt. She said I could go. If I had enough money.” The boy was faintly defiant, feeling the need to bolster his sagging nerve, but still hoping the belligerence wouldn’t be noticed by the detective. “I got enough.”
“How much?”
Paul brought out the knotted handkerchief to show it briefly and then thrust it back into his pocket again. “Seven dollars and fifty cents.”
“Seven dollars and fifty cents,” the detective repeated. “So you’re going up to the Fair?”
Now how had he known that? “Yes, sir.”
“Ever been to Chicago before?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, let me tell you something, buster. That freight doesn’t stop here and it’ll be rolling too damned fast for you to catch it. Now you go on up the line to the crossing; there’ll be a red light set against the freight and it’ll have to stop there. But don’t you climb on until it stops rolling, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir!” The darkness was chased away and the man wasn’t going to prevent his trip to the Fair. “Up at the crossing.”
“And let me tell you something else: don’t ride into the Chicago yards. They’ll pick you up for sure and throw you in jail. You don’t want to go to jail, do you?”
“No, sir!”
“All right then—when that drag slows down at the edge of the yards, you get off. And watch yourself.” His hand suddenly came out of his pocket. “Here.”
A half dollar. And now he had eight dollars.
Despite the warmness of the August day, the moving freight was chilly, and he was thankful for the jacket his aunt had insisted he take along. He put it on and stayed near the open door of the boxcar, half determined to jump if the drunken man riding at the opposite end of the car approached him. The drunk mumbled something at him, but kept his place, toppling over to sleep after a while. When the freight slowed at the outer edge of the Chicago yards he did jump out, stumbled and fell on the cinderbed, but got to his feet immediately and ran across the tracks to the street. His hands were dirty and scratched from the fall on the cinders, while his face felt grimy from the locomotive smoke.
He had never before entered a saloon, but he knew there were washrooms in them. Paul turned in at the door of the first one he came to—an easy thing in Chicago in 1934—but was just as promptly chased out again. For the second attempt he waited until he found one crowded with men and slipped in because the bartender was too busy to see him. He was seen as he emerged from the washroom and again ordered into the street, but he had accomplished his objective. A woman told him which streetcar would deliver him to the Loop. From there, special buses ran to the Fairgrounds. And he was in Chicago with a few cents less than eight dollars in his pocket.
With a single purposeness of mind he went directly to the Fair, bought his admission from a dazzling young woman in the box office, and in the next minute stood lost in rapturous wonder gazing down the beautiful Avenue of Flags.
Late at night, long after darkness had come and caused the modernistic buildings to be bathed in riotous electric colors, Paul left the exposition grounds to ride another bus back to the Loop. The street names there meant nothing to him and he didn’t bother to memorize them; the place where he would catch the bus again in the morning was fixed in his mind, and that was all that mattered. He knew he was in the Loop as long as he stayed within the shadow or sound of the elevated trains and so he wandered around. Supper was taken at a restaurant bearing a price sign on the window; one of the dark and noisy streets beneath the elevated structure had many such eating places. Full meal, 35¢. Complete dinner, 29¢. All you can eat, 24¢. Three-course dinner, 22¢. And the same street seemed to be crowded with hotels for men, in hot competition with one another; they bore their fees on the door. Rooms for the night, 50¢. Clean rooms, 35¢. Rooms with breakfast, 40¢. He decided on that one; not now, not just yet—it was too early to go to bed, but he would come back to that one. Breakfast thrown in for free was too tempting a bargain.
The street was a fascinating place.
There was a man standing in a dimly lighted store entrance, selling little paper clowns that seemed to dance unsupported in the air. The man would pick a clown from the cardboard box under his arm, reach down as though to set the clown on its feet, and the paper doll would madly dance on the dirty sidewalk. Paul looked at the black thread on which the clown had been fastened and followed the thread to a second man who stood eight or ten feet away. This other man stood with his hands behind him, jiggling the end of the thread in his fingers. Both peddlers, Paul noted, kept constant watch for a policeman.
There were drunken or sleeping men in all the darkened doorways, some of them lying flat on their backs or stomachs on the sidewalk, and no one stopped to look after them. There was a ragged man sitting on the curbstone with his shoes off, resting his feet in a pool of filthy water. There were men who looked at him, watched him walk by and were still looking as he passed down the block. And again there was a policeman who stopped him, questioned him, and he repeated the story of his aunt and the trip to the Fair.
There was a theater that remained open all night and the admission price was only a dime. He went in and watched the picture through twice, Marie Dressier in Tugboat Annie. He also found amusement in watching the usher making his rounds; every half hour the man walked up and down the aisles, searching out the sleepers, to awaken and eject them. Paul was dozing near the end of the second showing, but sensed the usher’s approach and turned wide-open eyes on the man when he paused near by. He left the theater shortly afterward.
Many of the lights were out and the street was considerably darker, considerably lonelier. The roaring, clattering din of passing elevated trains was heard less frequently. He walked aimlessly along the streets, turning corners at random, unsure of his directions and disoriented after the long stay in the theater. Another corner that seemed familiar, and he turned eagerly into the n
ew street—but it was not the one with the restaurants and hotels. He was about to reverse himself and continue along in his original direction when he saw the man.
At first he thought the man was drunk, but in the next instant Paul realized it was something else. The man was on his knees at the mouth of an alley, just hidden from the street. He seemed to be hurt—shot. The man was shot. Unthinkingly, Paul walked closer. The man in the alley heard him coming and twisted around to stare over his shoulder.
Paul stopped at the alley. “You’ve been shot.”
“Get out of here, kid. Get going!”
Paul stood his ground, frightened but fascinated. The fear in his mind urged him to run, to run as fast as his legs would carry him, but the man down on his knees was a policeman who had been shot. “You’ve got to get them! They can’t shoot a cop and get away with it.”
“Get the hell out of here now, you little fool!” The wounded man clutched his side, staring foggily at the boy. The short image seemed to waver and dance.
Paul hesitated an instant longer, suddenly knowing many things, suddenly aware of the terrible pain the man was experiencing. The man wasn’t an ordinary policeman, he was a G-man. From Washington. He wasn’t carrying a gun. And he had been shot in the side, high—near the shoulder, and it hurt like sin. The images of the street and the boy (himself) were foggy, wavering. The man’s name was Bixby.
“Mr. Bixby, I’ll go get help. They can’t shoot you and get away with it!”
Bixby turned startled, groggy eyes on the boy’s face. “How did you know . . .?” and he toppled over, the sentence unfinished.
Paul Breen stared down at the body with growing terror. He knew it was body, knew the government agent was dead. A black horror seemed to dance and settle on the man’s upturned face, an indefinable blackness that suggested fading. . . fading . . . fading. Paul turned and ran, ran until the breath choked up in his throat and the tears streaked his cheeks, ran until his legs ached and the long exertion pained his chest. He fell suddenly, stumbled and all but collapsed on the unswept sidewalk, brought down by the desperate shortness of breath and the strained leg muscles. He sat down then, sat on the sidewalk and held his hands to his face, fighting back the tears, gulping in the needed air, trying to calm himself. He was still there, not fully recovered and not yet free of the horror, when a man stopped beside him with the usual questions. This once he hadn’t sensed the stranger’s approach.
To evade the exact truth, Paul said that he had lost his street and hotel, had been wandering about for an hour trying to find them again. In response to the questions, he described the street as best he remembered it and told of the many restaurants and hotels with the cheap prices pasted over their doors and windows. The stranger pulled him to his feet, to walk him less than four blocks and put him on the desired street; he stayed with the boy until Rooms with breakfast, 40$ loomed up in the night ahead of them. Paul remembered to thank him, and climbed the stairs to the second-floor lobby.
The old, old man rocking contentedly in the lobby regarded him rather oddly when he came in, when he asked for a room, but the old one took his forty cents and locked it away in a cashbox, took up a flashlight and began climbing the stairs to the third floor. Paul sucked in his breath with disappointment and stared at the rooms.
There were many rows of cubicles, long rows of them and they appeared to be constructed of nothing more than heavy paper. Each had a door that could be closed, each was covered at the top with chicken-wire netting. A strong smell hung in the air. A single light bulb burned at the head of the stairs as they entered, while another red one could dimly be seen in the far dark reaches of the room. The old man flicked on the flashlight and led him down the aisle to an empty cell, pointed at it with the flashlight’s beam and then turned on his heel without a spoken word. Paul stood in the aisle and watched the oldster vanish down the stairs.
He went inside and closed the door.
By peering closely in the dim light he could make out the message stenciled on the back of the panel. Lock the door. Paul moved the bolt that locked it, and sat down on the cot. There was one blanket, folded over to form a pillow. He unfolded it, lay down on the cot without removing his clothes and spread the blanket over him. After a while the pattern of the chicken wire-overhead was visible in the near darkness. There were many men sleeping in the large room, in many of the cubicles, and most of them were noisy in their sleep. Over all was the odor of strong disinfectant.
Paul drifted off to sleep.
He awoke sometime in the night, awoke suddenly and without reason to stare wildly around him, uncomprehending. Slowly the shapeless forms took substance in the poor light and he saw the walls of the cubicle, the stenciled message on the door and finally the wire overhead. And then he realized where he was. Chicago—at last, Chicago! The World’s Fair. The continued dream of two summers come true. He was in Chicago and that afternoon he had seen the Fair and tomorrow morning he was going back again. And what else?
Mr. Bixby.
Mr. Bixby was a government agent, a real G-man, and he had been shot down, sinking to his knees in that nameless alley. The G-man didn’t have a gun, but those two men had shot him.
What two men?
Why, those two men who were hiding in that upstairs window, across the street from the alley. Had he seen the men? Well . . . no, he hadn’t actually seen them but he knew they were there, knew they had fired the shots. How did he know that? Well, now . . . He didn’t know how he knew it. But he did know!
He had been walking along the street and had found Mr. Bixby in the alley, wounded. Two men concealed in a second-floor window across the street had done the shooting. Those two men still crouched there, watching, as he walked along the street, as he stopped to talk to Mr. Bixby, as the agent died, and finally as he fled in terror from the unknown black thing on the body. They had stayed behind the window curtain and seen it all. He had been fully aware of their presence at the time, but hadn’t given it any thought, being much too concerned with the wounded agent. Still, he knew all about them.
How had he known Mr. Bixby’s name, and that he was a G-man? That was puzzling. Had he seen the man before—in the movies maybe? No. Had he been told? No. Mr. Bixby was trying to ask that same question when he died. How then did he know all about the dying officer?
No answer. He just knew.
As soon as he stopped to talk to him, he knew. He became aware of who the man was, what he was, what had happened to him and who was responsible for it. And in the next moment he was aware of the two men crouching behind the curtains in the upper window. Mr. Bixby hadn’t told him anything; he just knew. And he knew he was right.
It was as puzzling as those other things, the thing that had happened to him before.
Like that railroad detective back home, and the cop out on the street that afternoon, like the usher in the theater who walked up and down the aisles waking everybody up. He had sensed the approach of each of them even though he hadn’t been looking their way, had known who each of them was and what they were going to do or say before they actually spoke. But the puzzle wasn’t confined to them. It had been that way with his aunt, too. For a long time now he had always known the nature of the questions she was going to ask before she actually asked them. Some of the time he had guessed the questions so far in advance that he had time to formulate an answer before the question came. Even the seven dollars and fifty cents, earned to insure his trip to the Fair. In his search about the town for odd jobs, he had only approached those men actually wanting jobs done. He had talked to no one who would turn him down.
But that’s the way things were.
Paul dozed off a second time.
Breakfast was the hotel’s second disappointment. The old man was still dutifully rocking in his chair as Paul descended the stairs and paused in the lobby, waiting. The aged one arose from the chair with a grunt and crossed the room to an oilcloth-covered table, flipping back a soiled towel to reveal a cold slab of
beef. He cut off two thin slices, rummaged in a bread sack for bread, and made the beef slices into a dry sandwich. And then he returned to the rocker and sat down.
Paul ate the sandwich, staring at the oldster.
“Have you got any writing paper?”
“No. Try the drugstore.”
“Where’s that?”
“Down on the corner there.”
He swallowed the last of the sandwich and glanced around for water. There was none. “Is that all I get for breakfast?”
“How much do you want for nothing?”
Paul left the lobby and went down to the street. He turned in at the first restaurant door and had a second breakfast for twenty-two cents. Afterwards he stopped at the drugstore and bought a stamp, but at the last moment decided not to purchase a paper and pencil because he remembered a place at the Fair where they gave the articles away free. And then he was running for the corner where the special bus stopped.
The Fair was the same wondrous, magical place it had been the previous day; he bought another ticket and entered, strode down the Avenue of Flags, passed the various buildings and exhibits until he found the railroad booth where stationery was available. There was even a special post office in the booth and letters mailed there would be stamped Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. On a letterhead bearing the name of a great Western railroad, Paul Breen wrote a note.
I know who shot Mr. Bixby. It was a man named Tony Bloch. There was another man he called Bob and they hid in the window across the street, upstairs.
Paul could think of nothing more to add, and was on the point of signing his name when he thought the better of it. He scratched out the initial P that he had already written, and hesitated. How should it be signed? How did Mr. Bixby sign the letters and telegrams he sent to Washington?
Wild Talent Page 2
