by Isaac Asimov
But he’d slip it over his head and grin at her like a little boy. Yes, her Joe would be pleased with the sweater. It was worth the pain from the arthritis in her fingers to make her boy happy. After all, what’s a mother for, if it isn’t to take care of her boys?
She dropped the yarn when the bell rang and went to the door. Peeking around the side of the curtain, she was relieved to see the doctor standing there.
“Dr. Reed, oh, thank you so much for coming over so quick. I’m so grateful—”
He brushed past her and strode into the hall.
“That’s all right, Mrs. Forte. Where is he?”
“What?”
“Joe. Where is he?”
“Oh. Well, if you could — if we could just talk for a bit first, in the kitchen, maybe?”
He sighed. “I really haven’t too much time, Mrs. Forte. It is Saturday afternoon, you know, and my office hours were supposed to be over an hour ago.”
“Please, Doctor?”
She stood there, her eyes pleading, and when she turned and went ahead of him into the kitchen he shrugged and followed her.
“A cup of coffee for you. Doctor?”
“No, I—”
“Ah, coffee for the good doctor. No matter how rich and important he gets, he still comes to our house to take care of us. For the good doctor a nice cup of coffee. Here, let me—”
She poured the steaming liquid into one of her two best china cups and pushed it across the table to him.
Sighing again, he picked it up and sipped. “These old women. These old women!” he thought with exasperation. “ ‘A cup of tea? A cup of coffee?’ And if you decline their hospitality they get so damned offended.”
“Now,” he said aloud, “what about Joe?”
“He’s in his room. Doctor, just sitting on his bed, staring at nothing. Been like that since he got home last night. He wouldn’t talk to me or nothing. Couple of hours ago he sort of came out of it for a few minutes and told me what the matter was, but then he turned his head away. He had tears in his eyes. Tears! My Joe!”
She shook her head with the memory of it.
“You’re not drinking your coffee, Doctor,” she said then.
“I am. I am. Please go on.”
“Well, my Joe, he’s an important man, really. In this group, you know.”
“No, I don’t know.” He drank the last of his coffee and started to rise.
“Doctor!”
The tone of her voice startled him and he sat down.
“The group,” she went on, “they call it ‘Our Thing’.”
Ignoring the intent look on the man’s face, she said, “They — the bosses, they gave Joe a job to do. And he has to do it. When they say do something, you do it or else, right?”
“Uh-huh,” replied the doctor.
“But my Joe, he’s so sensitive! He was always the most delicate of my boys.”
She smiled, remembering. “When he was only, oh, eight or nine, he fell off his bike and you had to sew up his knee. He fainted, remember? That’s how he is, Doctor. A real man, you understand, but so sensitive.”
Dr. Reed grunted.
“Well, it seems like there’s this man around the neighborhood who’s been — how did Joe put it? — ‘horning in on the drug traffic’ or something like that. And, see, they told Joe to get rid of him — to kill him, you know. Because they don’t like no competition, they don’t like that at all.
“But my Joe, he just couldn’t do it. ‘Maybe a stranger. Ma,’ he said, ‘but not—’. And he started to cry. Cry! Think of how I felt, his mother, when I saw them tears running down his face!”
“Ah,” said the doctor.
“This man Joe’s supposed to kill, he’s a real respected man around here. A doctor... Doctor?”
She watched impassively as the doctor slid off the chair and landed on her kitchen floor with a thud.
He hadn’t, she noted with relief, broken her china cup in his fall. She picked it up and carried it over to the sink, scoured it and the coffee pot with extra care; then, stepping over the doctor, she went to her son’s room. “Joe? Joe!”
He turned and looked at her dully. “What, Ma?”
“It’s all taken care of, just like I said. Come into the kitchen and look!”
That’s Ma for you. She always takes care of her boys.
The Adventure of the Blind Alley
by Edward Wellen
Feeling his way through the pea-soup fog, Police Constable Cooper paused at the noise of a struggle. He stared hard to hear. At the first outcry and the noise of scuffling his hand had whisked to his whistle. But before he could blow a blast to frighten off the attacker, he heard the sickening sound of a cosh on a skull, then the thump of a falling body.
He withheld the blast and with heavy caution, in order to catch the assailant red-handed, he lifted his boots towards the rough breathing and the tearing of cloth.
P.C. Cooper smiled tightly to himself. He knew this to be a narrow cul-de-sac and himself to be between the attacker and escape. He had the culprit all but in his arms.
He winged out his cape and moved slowly but steadily into the blindness of the alley. But a kerb leaped out of nowhere. P.C. Cooper’s stumble and his muffled oath warned the attacker. The constable blew a savage blast. “In the name of the law, stand fast!”
P.C. Cooper heard fleeing footsteps, the ring of a hobnailed boot striking an iron mudscraper, then the creak of a door and the snick of a latch. The culprit, then, was a denizen of this unsavoury alley.
The constable swore under his breath. He had his man — and yet he did not have him. He knew there were a half-dozen doors on either hand. Unless the constable located the right door straightway, the culprit would have time to change from his wet outer clothes and to hide what he had stolen from the victim.
The victim. A dozen paces deeper into the alley, and the constable saw the shape of the victim on the cobblestones.
Feeling sudden clamminess and chill, P.C. Cooper stood over the fallen man. He eyed a familiar hawklike profile, a bloodied deerstalker cap, a still-clutched violin case. Rents showed in the victim’s clothes where hurried hands had torn away a watch chain and snatched a wallet. That the mighty manhunter should have fallen prey to a common robber!
The victim stirred. A word came forth. “Constable...”
P.C. Cooper knelt, careless that his knee touched the wet stones. The blood-blinded face had not turned towards him. How had the man known to call him constable?
The whistle, of course. The habits and skills of a lifetime would not have failed him even in the direst of moments. Though stunned, the great detective would have taken note of some clue, and most likely clung to consciousness now solely to impart that clue.
“Sir, did you see your assailant? Can you describe him?”
A painful shake of the hand.
“Do you know where he ran to?”
A painful nod.
P.C. Cooper’s heart surged, but the man only consciousness enough to point vaguely and gasp, “A flat...”
The constable grimaced in disappointment. The great detective had told P.C. Cooper only what P.C. Cooper already knew.
A flat, indeed! This was an alley of roominghouses — nothing but flats.
P.C. Cooper removed his cape and wadded it under the great detective’s head as a cushion. Then the constable rose and duty took over. His whistle guided answering whistles.
Each blast, each echo, ached. It hurt him to think that his colleagues would find him simply standing there, waiting, while the culprit was safe behind one of those unseen doors.
A flat...
P.C. Cooper shook his head. Why should those words keep ringing in his mind? They had originated in the poor stricken mind of the great detective.
A flat...
Pounding boots pulled up. P.C. Cooper recognised the figure of P.C. Lloyd.
Lloyd was a Welshman, and Welshmen are famous for having perfect pitch.
; Swelling with authority, Cooper seized Lloyd’s arm and pointed him.
“Man, hurry and kick the mudscrapers with your great hobnailed boots and find the one that sounds A flat.”
The Unfriendly Neighbor
by Al Nussbaum
When I sat down at the breakfast table today, my wife had the morning newspaper folded beside my plate as she always did. I took a sip of coffee, then opened the paper to the first page and got the shock of my life. There, staring back at me, was a picture of Elmer Sesler. I read the accompanying article and couldn’t keep from laughing.
“What’s so funny?” my wife asked.
“It’s a long story, honey. It began twenty years ago.” Then I told her about Elmer Sesler...
I was a freshman in high school when the Seslers moved in next door. There was just Elmer, who was my age, and his parents. His father, who was a minor executive with an insurance company, had been transferred to our city to work in the local office.
Elmer had stood out immediately, and not because of his jug-handle ears or freckled face. He had his own car. Few seniors had cars, but here was a lowly freshman who not only had a car, he had one that was almost new. A couple of guys tried to throw sour grapes on the situation by saying the car was probably his father’s, but I put a stop to that.
“His father drives this year’s model,” I said. “That one’s his, all right.”
If anyone was unconvinced, Elmer’s actions soon convinced them. He began to take the car apart. One day he’d arrive at school with the hood and trunk lid missing; the next day the doors might be gone. After the first few days, no one ever saw that car completely assembled again. The car had to be his. No one could get away with treating his father’s car that way.
On evenings and weekends I’d look across the hedge that divided our back yards and see him tinkering with his car or working on something else in his garage. He had a workbench set up and far more tools than I could name. One time he had his car’s engine completely disassembled and scattered across the ground with each separate part resting on a piece of clean newspaper. Other times he was hovering over an old TV and a vacuum cleaner he had spread out on his workbench. He seemed to have an insatiable curiosity and a genuine talent for taking things apart.
If it hadn’t been for his car, however, he’d have been a social failure. He had all the tact of a kick in the teeth. He always ignored me when he saw me watching him, even though he must have recognized me from school where we had several classes together. Finally I spoke to him, and he walked over to the hedge.
“Yes?” he said in a flat tone.
“I’m Bill Ford,” I said, reaching across the hedge to shake hands.
He ignored my hand and kept a level stare on me until I pulled my arm back in confusion.
“Just because we’re neighbors doesn’t mean you can ride to school in my car,” he said.
“Who said anything about riding to school in your car?” I demanded. “I didn’t say anything about your old car, or about riding in it.”
“No, but you were thinking about it,” he said.
He turned his back on me and returned to the garage where he had a washing machine torn apart on the cement floor.
I stood there for several minutes, shaking with anger. My fury was all the more intense because he’d been right. I had been thinking about how convenient it would be to have a ride to school, instead of having to walk the fifteen blocks every morning.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one he accused of having designs on his car. He accused almost everyone, but apparently I was the only one who hated him for it. Perhaps because he was wrong about them, the other kids at school were able to laugh it off, while I resented having my mind read.
From then on I belittled everything Elmer Sesler did, and never passed up a chance to attack him verbally. Though everyone else seemed to consider him some kind of budding, eccentric genius, I made it clear I thought he was just a lunatic.
“He might even be dangerous, the way he thinks everyone is trying to use him,” I said. “Just because he can take things apart doesn’t mean he’s a genius. I see him in his back yard every day, and half the stuff he tears into never does get back together. Take his car, for example — it doesn’t look or run as well as it did before he started messing with it.”
Nothing I said, though, had any effect. As far as the other students were concerned, Elmer Sesler was going to be famous someday. He was voted the most likely freshman to succeed, while I was given the wet blanket award.
Then, after that one year, Elmer’s father was transferred to another city, and I never saw or heard of Elmer again...
“So what was so funny in the newspaper?” my wife asked. “Did he invent something?”
“No, he didn’t invent anything,” I said, “and I guess it’s really not very funny. Elmer Sesler murdered his wife. The police found her body in Chicago, and Detroit, and Cleveland, and Buffalo.”
A Feline Felony
by Lael J. Littke
Jerome Kotter looked like a cat. However, this did not bring him any undue attention from his schoolmates since almost all of them had an unusual quality or two. Beverly Baumgartner had a laugh like a horse. Bart Hansen was as rotund as an elephant. Carla Seaver’s long neck resembled that of a giraffe. And Randy Ramsbottom always smelled remarkably like a dog on a rainy day.
The only person who worried about Jerome’s unusual appearance was his father, who quietly set about arming his son to face a world in which he was a bit different. He taught Jerome gentle manners, assuring him that no matter how different he looked he would always get along fine if he acted right. He taught him to recite all the verses of The Star-Spangled Banner by heart. He encouraged him to read the Bible. And he taught him to sing the songs from the best-known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He felt Jerome was well equipped to face the world.
When Jerome got to high school he became the greatest track star that Quigley High had ever produced, although he had to be careful because the coaches from rival schools cried foul when Jerome resorted to running on all fours.
Altogether, Jerome’s school years would have been quite happy — if it hadn’t been for Benny Rhoades.
Whereas Jerome was tall, polite, studious, and well-groomed with silken fur and sparkling whiskers, Benny was wizened, unkempt, rude, and sly. His face was pinched and pointed and his hair stuck up in uneven wisps. He hated anyone who excelled him in anything. Almost everybody excelled him in everything, and since Jerome surpassed him in the one thing he did do fairly well — running — he hated Jerome most of all. When Jerome took away his title of champion runner of Quigley High, Benny vowed he would get even if it took him the rest of his life.
One of Benny’s favorite harassments was to tread on Jerome’s tail in study hall, causing him to yeowl and thereby incurring the wrath of the monitor. Benny tweaked Jerome’s whiskers and poured honey in his fur. He did everything he could think of to make Jerome’s life miserable.
When it came to Benny Rhoades, Jerome found it hard to follow the admonitions of his father — that he should love his enemies and do good even to those who used him spitefully. He looked forward to the day when he would finish school and get away, for he had to admit in his heart that he loathed the odious Benny. It rancored him to think that Benny was the only person who could make him lose his composure and caterwaul in public, thus making people notice that, despite his suave manner and intellectual conversation, he was a bit different. To keep his temper he took to declaiming The Star-Spangled Banner or passages from the Bible. Once he got all the way through the “begats” in Genesis before he took hold of himself and regained his composure.
Just before Jerome was graduated from college, Benny stole all the fish from Old Man Walker’s little fish cart and deposited them in Jerome’s car, after which he made an anonymous phone call to the police. The police, who had always regarded Jerome as the embodiment of what they would like all young men to be, preferred to belie
ve his claim of innocence; but then again, looking as he did, it was natural for them to believe that he might have swiped a mess of fish.
People began to whisper about Jerome when he passed on the street. They pointed out that although his manners were perfect, he did have those long sword-like claws, and they certainly wouldn’t want to be caught alone with him in an alley on a dark night. And wasn’t there a rather feline craftiness in his slanted eyes?
Jerome left town after graduation enveloped in an aura of suspicion and an aroma of rotting fish which he never could dispel completely from his car.
Jerome decided to pursue a career as a writer of advertising copy in New York, reasoning that what with all the strange creatures roaming about in that city no one was apt to notice anything a bit different about him. He was hired at the first place he applied, Bobble, Babble, and Armbruster, Inc., on Madison Avenue. Mr. Armbruster had been out celebrating his fourteenth wedding anniversary the night before and had imbibed himself into near-oblivion trying to forget what devastation those fourteen years had wrought. When Jerome walked into his office, he naturally figured him to be related to the ten-foot polka-dot cobra that had pursued him the night before and thought he would fade with the hangover. After ducking behind his desk for a little hair-of-the-dog, he hired Jerome. By the time Mr. Armbruster had fully recovered from his celebration, Jerome had proved himself capable at his job and affable with the other employees, so he was allowed to stay. Mr. Armbruster naturally put him on the cat food account.
Before long, Jerome fell in love with his secretary, Marie, a shapely blonde who thought Jerome’s sleek fur and golden eyes sexy. He wanted to ask her for a date, but first, in all fairness, he thought he should find out how she felt about him.
“Marie,” he said one day as he finished the day’s dictation, “do you like me as a boss?”
“Oh, yes,” breathed Marie. “Gee, Mr. Kotter, you’re the swellest boss I ever had. You’re so different.”
