And the young girl had raised her head and said to the moon, “Precision?” Putting a weight on a word that later … three years later … had fallen heavy between them forever. So they had married well, each of them, but not each other.
The Judge sighed. He was wiser now. He remembered the suffering of the young. It was a part of his wisdom to remember. A word with a weight on it, that only two could know. Which goes to show, he told himself wryly, that when you hear a word, you mustn’t be too sure you know its meaning … precisely.
He sneaked over to his chamber door and put his ear upon the wood. He had a little hope, not much, yet some. Life was full of maybes … one maybe after another. So it took daring and would they dare?
Listening, he could hear, within, no words at all.
7.
The Conformers
The breakfast room was on the east, for the sake of the sun. The sun shone in. Bob Smite, husband and father, stabbed the yellow fluff of his scrambled eggs from the pale green plate. In his left hand he held a section of the morning paper, folded to reveal to him a quarter of the Editorial page.
Larry Smite, sixteen-year-old son, had his chin tucked in to permit him to pore down upon the Sporting Section. He had spilled a little cocoa on it.
Dorothy Smite, wife and mother, crunched toast in her good white teeth and looked out the window, crinkling her eyes against the double light, the sun, and the bounce of the sunlight from the shining machinery, the pop-up toaster, the percolater, the electric frying pan. On the fourth side of the table, cords snaked into the wall.
“Not going to be late tonight, are you?” she asked in the voice she used to her husband, not the voice she used to her son.
“Six-fifteen, as usual,” Bob answered. “Far as I know. Why?”
“I was thinking of a rib roast. But I guess I’ll just take a steak out of the freezer.”
“Nothing the matter with steak,” he said.
“Hey, Mom, could I use the car after school?” the boy asked.
“Why?” asked she and did not wait for the answer. “The thing is I’ve got some shopping and then I’m supposed to have my hair done. But if it’s important …”
“No, that’s O.K. I can get a ride,” her son said promptly.
“Ride where?”
“Game.”
“Who’s playing?” the father asked, looking up with his sense of duty showing.
“Jefferson.”
“Going to beat them?”
The boy shrugged.
“Well, good luck,” the father said, and looked at his watch. He went up to clean his teeth. When he got down, the boy had gone. He kissed Dorothy on her temple. “By the way, can you take my gray suit to the cleaners? Tell them, on special?”
“O.K.,” she said.
Such was breakfast time, at the Smite’s, an autumn morning.
Bob Smite, husband and father, householder, jobholder, proceeded in an easy gait, past two blocks’ worth of smart little houses like his own, each just as fresh and neat on its small plot. Leaves were falling from certain slender trees. The neighborhood was too new for trees of size. The neighborhood was proudly kept up. Leaves did not linger long upon these little green rugs of barbered grass.
Busline was certainly convenient. Nevertheless, he would soon have to have a second car. Bob’s attention flickered, unfocused, through layers of consciousness, weather, money, a slight pinch of his right shoe, and deep and far, a point in his mind from which he observed the commonplace luxury of his home, and, with a little blend of scorn and sorrow, assessed the table talk, considered his wife and her hairdo, his son and the football game, and himself moving in his groove.
When he came to the corner, he was suddenly focused and alert. Yes, there was time. If the first bus was not the one, he could afford to wait for another and maybe … He exchanged a placid “Good morning” with a passenger he had seen before, but he took care not to involve himself in conversation. The first bus was not the one. Bob Smite, risking some questioning looks … let it go.
Eight minutes later, on the second bus, he saw what he had been hoping to see.
He climbed aboard with a sense of delight and made his way well back, where he bent over the man in the aisle seat and said firmly, “Would you mind, sir, shifting to the other side? We’d … er … like to talk.”
The strange man shifted, with grace enough, and Bob thanked him and sat down with a sigh. “Well,” he said to the remaining passenger, “Here we are again. Now, where were we?”
The little man in the window-side seat had a face brown as a nut and wrinkled as a prune. He had pure white hair and white eyebrows as saucy as a cat’s whiskers on his brown brow. A merry little blue eye peered from under. Bob Smite did not know this man’s name, nor did this man know his.
They took a peculiar care not to know.
The little man said, “We were in outer space, I believe. Been troubling you?”
“Oh, I’ve been floating around out there,” said Bob genially. “Frankly, I don’t understand it. Stars and stuff. Masses and gases, and everything moving. I don’t see how we can ever understand. And sometimes I doubt that we ought to try.”
“There’s no doubt we are trying,” said the little man dryly. “If by ‘we’ you mean the human race. The human race keeps pushing its brains out, all the time, and proving how it has been all wrong, up to now.”
“Yeah,” said Bob. “Proving that about every two weeks, these days. It used to get proved every two or three centuries. What I was thinking …”
“Go ahead,” said the little man eagerly.
Bob plunged ahead. “Here is man, standing in the middle. Looking up and out at huge speeds and distances. Also, looking down and in, at microscopic …”
“Sub-microscopic.…” The little man nodded.
“Do you think we are actually in the middle?”
“Say,” said the little man, gleaming, “That’s an interesting question. From where man sits, of course, it would have to seem to be the middle. Is that your point?”
Bob felt a surge of pure affection for him. “Listen,” he said unnecessarily, for this man could and did listen, “we aren’t happy, suspended in the middle, are we? You might say the suspense is terrible. Why? Because we’d like to know, we’d like to feel satisfied. Look at the new thoughts about space—if I dig them, which maybe I don’t. They are saying maybe space curves around on itself. And there aren’t any ends. Well, that ties it up, in a way, doesn’t it? That’s a restful thought. That’s a kind of unity. Also, going the other way, man keeps trying to get to one thing. Maybe it’s all one thing. Energy, for instance. We want something simple and unified. We want something we can throw our brains all the way around. But the farther we explore … Don’t you think maybe we are going to have to settle for knowing that we can never throw our human brains all the way around?”
“And that’s rough on the human race, all right,” said the little man thoughtfully. “That’s makes us nervous, I guess.”
“Nervous, is right.” Bob fell silent.
He didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe it was science. He didn’t know much about science. Maybe it was philosophy. He didn’t know much about philosophy, either. But Bob Smite was a member of the human race, and within the limits of his ignorance, he, too, took pleasure in pushing his brain out … frightening himself, humbling himself … and wondering.
He couldn’t remember how he had got into this exchange with this stranger, but every once in a while, the two of them met on the bus and wondered together. Sometimes they wondered together without speaking. He looked, now, at his companion.
The little man’s head was nodding slowly and Bob’s pleasure was enormous.
“Can you,” the man said rather dreamily, after a while, “with your human brain, really imagine the true track of this bus in … well, in space. Here is this bus, going down this street westward, by our reckoning. It is also at the same time revolving with the earth on th
e earth’s axis. It is going around the sun as the earth goes. It is, furthermore, moving swiftly through space as the entire solar system is moving. Now what is its track, taking into account the speeds?”
“And such speeds,” said Bob, his brain creaking.
Too soon, it seemed, Bob had to get off at his corner. He felt strangely refreshed and fortified. He always did. The day closed around him, job-holder, breadwinner. He plunged into the day.
Larry Smite slouched along to high school, achieving a split-second rendezvous with a friend as if it were nothing but a coincidence, speaking of dual pipes, overdrive, and the first-string quarterback’s right knee … maintaining the necessary attitudes. Goons were goons. Squares were squares. Culture was for the birds.
He went through his first three classes looking as if he would at any moment topple and go to sleep. Fourth period, he had English with Mrs. Blair, who was a small, thin, middle-aged black-and-white-haired woman, with thick glasses that much magnified her brown eyes. Larry Smite looked sleepier than ever. But his ears missed not one syllable this woman said.
As class was dismissed, she spoke up carelessly. “Larry, would you stay a moment?”
The boy’s heart jumped but he took care to look as stupid as possible. When the students had gone, some few bothering to give him a sympathetic grimace. Larry closed the classroom door without instruction to do so. He approached the teacher. He stood quietly beside her desk.
Mrs. Blair opened the center drawer and took out his manuscript. He recognized the smudgy typing, and also the very shape of his words, as familiar to him as if, with fingers, he had pressed them into this shape and no other. Its sudden dearness shook his heart.
“This,” said Mrs. Blair, leaning back, seeming to let go and lose the tension of authority, and therefore show herself to be humanly fatigued, “is fine, on the whole. Now, I am pretty sure that your ear and your instinct is as good, and probably much better than mine, so I hesitate …”
“The seventh line and the eighth,” said Larry. “I knew it! I knew it! It’s too dum-de-dum. You mean the seventh and eighth lines, don’t you, Mrs. Blair?”
‘Yes, I do,” she said, her enlarged eyes meeting his eager eyes respectfully. “And now, if two of us notice the same thing, we can assume …”
“It’s wrong,” he said. “How can I fix it?”
“There are no rules I can quote to cover this,” said the teacher. “You are far beyond the doggerel stage, Larry. You are handling rhythms that …” She sighed. “I had a teacher once, myself, who compared them to the sea. The waves come in and break and you expect each breaking … but it never comes at the exact second that you expect. There is always the little surprise.”
“Not dum-de-dum,” said the boy. “Not bong-bong, like a drum. I know. I know. And I knew it wasn’t right, just in those two lines. But jeepers …” He rubbed the bristles on his head. He had forgotten himself completely.
“How did you know, I wonder?” murmured Mrs. Blair.
“I don’t mean I know,” the boy said. “I just kinda feel … I feel around …” Now he moved his fingers in the air. “Then, when it feels right to me … well, then it does. But I don’t know if I am right. That’s why …”
The teacher shook her head gently. “I can help you a little more. But not much more. The best I can do is encourage you. I think this is excellent, Larry. On the whole, excellent. The music … the images …” She stopped, feeling inadequate.
“It’s not music, though,” he said quickly. “In music, see, a note is a note. A certain sound. But this … is words.”
“And words,” said the teacher at once, “have other dimensions. Associations. Meanings.” She leaned forward. “Appendicitis is quite a pretty sound.”
The boy grinned at her appreciatively. “Sure,” he said. He picked up his manuscript, the one sheet with the poem on it. “I got to try and fix it,” he murmured.
“Yes, it’s up to you,” the teacher said in a humble way. “I have no rules to give out.”
The boy’s eyes were a greenish-blue, quite brilliant, when he let them be seen, although he wasn’t looking at her but through her now. “It’s not exactly by rule …” he began.
The teacher held her breath.
“It’s like the tail of a … of a …” He threw his arm out in a swinging curve. “Oh, I don’t know … not a breeze, exactly … but something that goes trailing through that we can’t see … but only by the bending of the grass …”
The teacher was absolutely quiet and motionless.
“Oblique …” the boy said, frowning. “That gets somewhere near what I’m trying …” Then he shook his head. “But not exactly.” He fell silent, with his head cocked. He seemed to be listening.
The teacher stirred in a moment. “After you fix it,” she said gently, “what shall we do with it? Would you like to see it printed somewhere?”
“Oh no,” he said, flustered, and jolted back. “I just fool around with this, Mrs. Blair. I mean, I wouldn’t want people to know.” His young cheeks were hot. “And anyhow, I’m not sure I can fix it.”
The teacher said quietly, “You must fix it. And that has nothing to do with other people.”
He met her eyes and his were intensely aware of her meaning and then they fell. He didn’t answer.
“But I’m bound to tell you, again, what I think is true,” said the teacher. “I think you are gifted. I think it is important.”
“Well, I just … Gee, thanks a lot, Mrs. Blair.” The strangely wise, or strangely new, spirit behind the greenish eyes winked out. This was an embarrassed high school boy. He wadded the paper into his pocket, pretending it didn’t matter much.
Mrs. Blair said, yearningly, “Tell me, do your parents …?”
Larry caught his lip in his teeth and shook his head. The eyes were wary.
“I’d like to see it when you’ve fixed it,” she said carelessly, “Just privately. If you don’t mind.”
“O.K.” He let his breath out rather tremulously. “Well, so long, Mrs. Blair. Thanks, I mean for what you said.”
She nodded, withdrawn, as he wished her to be, and she began to shift other papers on her desk.
Larry went out into the corridor. He went, fast and swinging, toward the cafeteria, and he felt swell. That old Blairsey, she was smart and no kidding, because she spotted that bad place right away, and it made him feel good. And she knew how to keep quiet, too. (While his mom was shopping. Shopping, for Pete’s sake! And his pop went back and forth, back and forth, every day on the bus.) But of course he, Larry Smite, would never be a poet. A fellow doesn’t want to try and be a poet. For a living, for Pete’s sake? But in that seventh line he needed a different word, a word with the right feeling, soft and thick, and kinda black-dark, hanging on it like moss. And yet two syllables, ping pong … the pong darker.…
At this point in his reflections, Larry passed into the cafeteria and merged with his contemporaries. After school, he went to the game and sat in the card section and did his bit between the halves.
Dorothy Smite took the car that afternoon and made her rounds, accomplishing a lot of petty errands that she lumped under the term “shopping.” Took Bob’s suit to the cleaner. Bought a new plastic glass for the bathroom. A card of shirt buttons. Two pairs of nylons at a sale. The marketing.
At four o’clock she entered the beauty parlor.
Edna’s strong fingers felt wonderful on her scalp, so she let her neck muscles go and her head hang heavy over the washing tray. Wet-headed, she sat before the mirror in the little booth and Edna began to make pin-curls. Dorothy sighed.
“I waited for you, Edna,” she said. “I hope you realize that is why I was such a filthy mess.”
Edna had a long narrow face, and when she lifted her long upper lip, she revealed long narrow teeth. “I keep remembering what you said last time. About peace.”
“Yes. Yes, peace.” Dorothy closed her eyes.
“It sticks in my mind.”
“Which gives him the license to beat this perfect truth into somebody else’s head … with a bomb. Uh-huh. Well, I think you’re absolutely right,” said Edna with a certain impishness.
Dorothy beamed at Edna’s image in the mirror. “I used to worry about these things when I was a child. It’s funny. You’re supposed to grow up. The dirty word, these days, is ‘immature.’ But what do they mean, ‘mature’?”
Edna snorted. “These days, the thing is to go along without upsetting any apple carts at all. It’s called adjusting.”
Dorothy shivered. “Ooooh, how I hate that word. What if we see something going on that is wrong? We shouldn’t adjust to it, should we?”
“Right,” said Edna.
“We shouldn’t change ourselves to get along with it. Figure how to live with it.”
“Let the rest of the world adjust to us, eh?” said Edna cheerfully.
Dorothy closed her eyes once more. “Well, that depends. If we really knew what’s wrong, and what’s good. Of course, we think we are sure of some things. Peace, for instance. That’s good. Doesn’t everyone agree?”
“I think it is good,” said Edna soberly.
“Yet if people really wanted peace,” said Dorothy, “it could be had. We’re smart enough. We ought to be. Look at all we know already, about psychology and all? People keep talking about maturity and love and understanding. Then why aren’t we peaceful and good?”
Edna’s fingers went on working, while she considered. “I think everybody probably wants to be good, don’t you? The thing is, what does he mean by that? A juvenile delinquent, now, he probably thinks not to be ‘chicken’ is a good thing. So he breaks the law to show how brave he is. Well, bravery … that’s not bad, is it? I guess we all try pretty much to be good in our own way.”
Dorothy opened her eyes and stared at herself. “You know what I think? I don’t think we are on the track at all. Not yet. We get too mixed up. We try to do our duty but maybe we’re too quick …”
I See You Page 13
