A for Anything

by Damon Knight

  Chapter Five

  The Upper Hall was the crowded and stifling with noise. Women in clouds of chiffon and in bags of tweed, some with cheeks rouged in two staring disks, like dolls, others with honest country faces reddened by nothing but food, wine and fresh air, were complaining about the trip, fussing after children, nervously bowing when they encountered each other, like hens uncertain of whom to peck. Slobs were scuttling this way and that under mountainous loads of personal luggage—favorite tennis rackets, windbreakers, lounging robes, collapsible sedan chairs, all manner of unexpected and unsightly things. There were more children than ever, some with runny noses, some airsick, some running zigzags through the crowd, some sitting on the floor and howling. And the men themselves, all the lesser persons of the Poconos and surrounding areas, were stalking stiff-legged here and there with sidelong glances, conspicuously armed, pricking up their fierce mustaches, like dogs in a strange kennel.

  Dick glimpsed his father in the middle of a cigar-smoking group. He edged past. “Wanted to wait for her second heat to breed her, but …” “What do you think of this? (Here, boy, hand that case over.) Nice little needle-gun—the Chassepot design, 1870. Old Flack traded it to me for two Black Labradors and a kitchen wench with a mole on her hip …” “… as it happens, the only copies of these particular daily strips known to be in existence. Not many people have even heard of The Bungles, but to my mind …”

  That was his father, bright-eyed and flushed, the way he got when he talked about 20th-century newspaper comics. Tons of them, he had, all laminated in sheets of clear plastic and filed away, each in its wall slot, in the Comics Room; he had been collecting them since he was a boy. He saw Dick, nodded absently, and went on talking. “… for ironic commentary, the real heart of that age, you have to study The Bungles. Incidentally, I don’t suppose you know that Tuthill simply quit drawing the strip one day, when he felt tired of it. It ended there and then; no other artist took it over. Remarkable, when you remember how frantic everyone was for money …”

  Dick’s father, the fourth Man of Buckhill, was slender and not tall, fine-featured, rather delicately made, with a fair complexion. He was strong and agile, however, and his lack of commanding height never seemed to enter his mind. He ruled Buckhill firmly and efficiently; there was no better-run estate in the East.

  George Jones of Twin Lakes, the Man’s younger brother, seemed to have come from another stock altogether. He was tall and heavy-boned, with a brutish jaw and brow. He had grown fatter in the last few years, and now had an imposing stomach under the green brocade of his vest. Seeing the two brothers together, at first glance you would have thought George the older. His features had a faintly MacDonaldian heaviness, which he emphasized by combing his coarse hair, already sprinkled with an iron gray, into a forelock.

  “Be reasonable, Fred,” he was saying as Dick came up. “You’re rated at five hundred able bucks counting the guard, and I know for a fact you’re at least a hundred over. It’s disgraceful—you ought to have been drowning newborns five years ago, to teach ‘em a lesson.”

  Dick’s father shook his head decisively. “I would never do that, George. Not even to a slave.”

  “Well, then, you’d better start lopping their trigger fingers, then, that’s all there is of it. I’m telling you for your own benefit, Fred, you’re too soft with ‘em. You may think you can just go on like this forever, but sooner or later the Boss is going to send an inspector around, and then you’ll be in the s-o-u-p, soup.”

  Dick moved on restlessly. He had heard it all a hundred times before, and had expected to hear it all a hundred times again. A month or so ago, guest days, except for a few pleasurable aspects, had been a pain in the scut. Now he found himself listening and watching with an irritable hunger; it gave him no enjoyment, but he couldn’t take his attention away.

  There was a familiar shape, little Echols of Scaroon with his big stomach wrapped in a scarlet cummerbund, cigar in one hand and champagne glass in the other. He was not an esthetic sight by any means, but he turned up at every party in the district; and it struck Dick with a curious pang that he was not going to see that cummerbund any more—not for four years, perhaps not for ever.

  Another figure moved toward him through the crowd: one that he recognized without pleasure. It was his cousin Cashel, Uncle George’s only son. Cashel, two years older than Dick, was a louring, bullet-headed youth with dusty-black hair. He and Dick had fought in childhood as a matter of course each time the families met. No friendship had come out of the fighting, as might have happened. As they had grown older they’d learned to tolerate each other, but their mutual dislike was ingrained. Dick thought Cashel sullen and malicious, as well as ugly. He was aware that Cashel deeply resented being the eldest son of a cadet line; he coveted Buckhill, for all the wrong reasons.

  But as the heir, Dick shared the duties of a host. “Hello, Cash,” he said, putting out his hand. “Good you could come, and so on.” They shook hands stiffly, and let go with enthusiasm. “Uh, can I get you anything?” Dick asked. “Washroom’s in the alcove there, if you want to go.”

  “No thanks, I’ve been,” Cashel said, too promptly. His expression showed, an instant later, that he wished he had taken the excuse to leave. “I’m a little thirsty,” he added hopefully.

  Shackled by courtesy, Dick could only say, “Champagne? Tokay? Ale?” and put out an arm to snag a passing waiter. “Claret?” he went on, as Cashel hesitated. “Port? Riesling?”

  “No Riesling, misser,” said the waiter, shuffling the bottles on his cart.

  “Riesling,” Cashel said decisively. “Yes, I guess Riesling. Well, I suppose there’s another waiter around here somewhere—” He started to move away.

  The phrasing was unfortunate; Dick bristled. “I guess there are one or two,” he said emphatically. “Just wait a minute, won’t you?” He glared at Cashel briefly, then used the same expression on the unhappy waiter, who winced, bobbed his head, and trundled rapidly away into the crowd.

  Dick and Cashel stared uncomfortably over each other’s head until he came back. With him was a second waiter, pushing a similar cart. The second waiter uncorked a bottle of straw-colored wine and hastily poured two glasses, handing one to Cashel, one to Dick.

  “Riesling,” said Dick coldly.

  Cashel accepted his. “Just what I was wanting,” he said with false heartiness. He sipped at it. “This isn’t bad, really.”

  “Only Rudesheimer,” said Dick, indifferently. “I might be able to find you some of the Mohawk ‘75, if you want.”

  “No, no. This is fine.”

  They stared at each other blankly for a moment, holding the glasses. It was dawning on both of them that they had got themselves into a position from which neither could gracefully retreat. Cashel made a gesture as if to gulp down his wine, but checked it, to Dick’s relief: that would only have meant that as host, Dick would have had to force another glass on him, and as guest, Cashel would have had to drink it.

  “Oh, hell,” said Dick finally. “Look, Cashel, we both have our private opinion of each other, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stand each other for half an hour, does it? Come on, let’s listen to some music.”

  This was a major concession: he meant Dixieland, a form of noise to which Cashel was addicted, but which made Dick as restless as a turpentined hound. Cashel brightened perceptibly. “Fair enough!”

  They turned toward the inner rooms. On the way, Dick dropped his barely-tasted wineglass into the nearest glory hole, and Cashel followed suit.

  The mass of people was beginning to break up and scatter. Everywhere, as they walked deeper into the house, they found small groups: some looking over the collections and trophies, some watching TV or movies, or sitting down to card tables; some eating and drinking, some chalking pool cues, leafing through books, pinching serving girls; some already drunk and singing; some talking in clusters, some amiably wandering.

  Dick found the musicians he was looking fo
r in one of the smaller lounges; they were playing 20th-century ballads to half a dozen men and women, none of them listening.

  Dick caught the leader’s eye. He was a grizzled oldster named Bucky Williams; like all the musicians, he had been born on the estate and trained by his predecessor. Some people considered this kind of thing a waste of time—it was a lot simpler to make a prote of whatever artist you had, and dupe another of him when the first wore out—but Dick’s father had a prejudice against duping slobs.

  “Dixielan’?” said Bucky. “Yes, sir.” He exchanged glances with the other four. The reed men poised their lips, the piano player and the drummer unrolled an aimless little rhythm, and then, as far as Dick was concerned, the five of them began to emit independent cacophonies. There was an old-fashioned tune mixed in somewhere, but each time one of the players stumbled across it, the others seemed to feel they could safely leave it alone. Dick sat and suffered through the first paroxysm, and the second, and the third.

  He was feeling thoroughly purged, but sticking grimly to it, when the most welcome of all sounds overrode the combo’s music. “The small arms competition is about to begin,” said the room’s built-in loudspeaker. “Contestants assemble at the range, if you please. The first event will be rifle, open, free style, fifty and one hundred yards.”

  A hum and rustle went up, all through the adjacent rooms. There were jubilant whoops and running footsteps in the hall—collisions, curses, and over everything the angry droning of scores of body-slobs’ call buzzers. Dick took out his own signal box and pressed the button, but the response light did not glow. Probably Sam was too far away; the little wave-senders had a range of only about a hundred and fifty yards… . Or it might be that the sender had plonked out sooner than usual. This model had a bug in it that no one had ever identified, and was commonly good for about three weeks before it quit. In any case, he had a ready-made excuse to part company with Cashel, all at once and in a hurry. With a curt nod to his enemy, Dick plunged into the corridor and worked his way against the stream of guests back to the escalator.

  He found Sam without any trouble, down in the Big Hall where he had been pressed into service hanging decorations. Grinning with relief, the slob went off for Dick’s gun cart.

  The Hall was now almost ready, the walls banked proudly with hybrid blossoms from Dunleavy’s gardens; each linencovered table with its floral centerpiece, gleaming with crystal and silver under the chandeliers. The musicians were tuning up in their alcove; the waiters stood nervously in a clump near the kitchen doors, while Perse the major-domo and two head waiters went dancing from table to table, adjusting a goblet here, straightening a napkin there. Dick’s earlier meals seemed to have melted away; he discovered a hollow place inside him, and filched a handful of nuts from the sideboard to fill it.

  Then Sam was back with the cart. Dick checked its contents as they went: Marlin carbine, .375 Winchester, Remington 10, the Schloss over-and-under 12—a hand-made unique, with the “do not dupe” plate in its stock—the Männlicher-Schoenauer .308, and rounds for all of them; the fivefoot trophy stick; the scopes and binoculars in their padded clips; the Ruger .22 target pistol, .38 S. & W. everyday gun, Colt .45, and their ammunition. The bores looked clean, to a cursory inspection, but there was a spot of rust on the Remington’s barrel. He made a mental note: time to junk the lot, except for the hand-made, and get dupes from Fossum. He buckled on the everyday gun in its holster, out of habit: he was used to the weight on his hip when he was shooting, or going to shoot with any weapon.

  Nearly all the male guests were ahead of them; they passed through schools of more leisurely females, drifting in little cheerful clumps and gossiping as they went—their kindly faces aglow with liqueurs and sociability—and a scattering of stray children, dogs and mislaid servants. But there was plenty of time still: the grandstand above the rifle range was less than a quarter filled, and most of the young men were standing about in picturesque attitudes on the hillside, each negligently holding his trophy stick with its incised bands of white, yellow and red. Some of the youngest, particularly those whose trophy sticks were bare, were engaging in impromptu contests of their own—wrestling, slapping, boxing, judo, broad-jumping, spitting, tumbling, knife throwing and the like. Farther up the slope, the governesses had corraled several dozen of the small children and were trying to keep them occupied in ring-around-the-rosy, as usual without much luck: tiny voices raised in glee and anger came piping through the murmur of the crowd.

  They passed the Rev. Dr. Hamper, squatting on a hillock, hands clasped below his ecclesiastical knees, head bent, smiling around his pipe as he listened to the visiting Americo-Catholic priest from Fontainebleau. It was the general feeling at Buckhill that Hamper was a mediocre chaplain, his predecessor the Rev. Dr. Morningside being remembered as a model of succinct eloquence; but he was the best natural born Episcopalian minister Buckhill could get—so many were being duped by the big Eastern families that naturals were growing very scarce.

  There was an outbreak of yelping and snarling up ahead. Through the gathering crowd, Dick caught sight of the two dogs, one a handsome collie, the other a cur—a grotesque mongrel, part St. Bernard, part Doberman, by the look of him, and part God only knew what. Pressed into the wide circle as it formed, Dick and the slob watched with interest. It was a good fight, as far as it went; but when it seemed the collie was getting the worst of it, a man in green blouse and knee-breeches stepped up and fired a handgun. The collie broke away, startled. The cur was writhing, shot through the hindquarters. The green man aimed carefully and shot him again in the head.

  The body kicked once and was still. The crowd began to disperse. As he left with Sam, Dick glanced back and saw a distasteful sight: a small slob-boy dressed in the Buckhill colors, kneeling with his head on the dead dog’s chest, and a tray of drinks spilled beside him on the grass.

  Well, if the slobs wanted to keep pets, and let them breed at will, what could you do? Down on the flat, the band was beginning to blare “Buckhill Forever”; it was time to get on the line.

  The range was almost filled; some of the other first contestants were already firing, and the bitter tang of smokeless powder drifted across. Dick carelessly took the first vacant place, and discovered when it was too late that Cashel was his neighbor. Cash looked around at the same moment, and they stared at each other with helpless distaste; then Cash shrugged and turned away, saying something to his bodyslob.

  The breeze was light, from nine o’clock. Sam handed him the loaded carbine. Beside him, Cash fired and a voice called, “Ten!”

  Dick nodded to the slob at the TV monitor, took his stance and fired. “Ten!” called the slob.

  Spah! went Cashel’s gun at his ear, and the slob called, “Nine!”

  Dick fired again. “Seven!” Not so good, but he’d make it up. He was a better shot than Cash, always had been.

  Not today, though. Something in the noisy crowd, or maybe in the morning’s frustrations, seemed to have thrown him off. Cash was lining up a good series of tens and nines, while Dick, though he squeezed off each shot with care, was shooting unevenly. “Seven,” called the monitor slob. “Nine … seven … seven …” There was an embarrassed pause. “Miss.”

  A miss, at fifty yards, with his own carbine! Mortification overwhelmed him; he wanted to sink through the shooter’s stand, or wrap his gun-barrel around the TV monitor and stalk away. What wouldn’t Blashfield say to him on Monday! …

  But there wasn’t going to be any Monday: there, he’d forgotten again. Abruptly the sun-warmed cloth over his shoulderblades was no longer pleasant; the carbine had turned to a dead stick of metal in his hands. What was he doing here in a silly picnic shoot, when he ought to be using his last minutes at Buckhill saying good-by to the lake, or the pheasant woods, or down at the stables …?

  “Ten!” said Cashel’s monitor slob, cheerfully.

  Dick glanced over involuntarily, and saw Cashel’s gloomy face illuminated by an oafish pleasur
e. His hands began to shake and his mouth went dry. It seemed to him that the one thing that could give him satisfaction would be to trample that face and kick dirt over it… .

  Trembling, he turned away. He knew he had a temper; he got it from his mother’s family—all the Dabney men were quarrelsome and short-lived. “If y’ want for die in you bed,” Blashfield kept telling him, “you’ll have to watch y’ temper, or either be twice the man of y’ guns as y’ be.”

  Somehow he got through the first event, with a score just above the worst duffer’s. The second went no better, although he took care to put plenty of distance between himself and Cash. Afterward, he went past the scoreboard with only a glance. He didn’t see his own name, but Cash’s was conspicuous, just under the first ten.

  His bad luck still held: the pause was just long enough for Cashel himself to blunder out of the crowd and fall into step beside him. All the guests were drifting back toward the house now; with no excuse to break away, they plodded along dumbly together.

  Finally Cash said, “By the way, Dick—”

  “Yes?”

  Cashel licked his lower lip, looking uncomfortable. “About tomorrow—” he said, and stopped.

  Dick turned aside impatiently to pass a gossiping group of matrons. “What about tomorrow?”

  “I mean,” said Cash, following, “about you going to Colorado, and so on.”

  Dick looked at him.

  “I mean,” Cash said, with a final burst of candor, “about you going instead of me. I mean it’s all right.”

  Dick stared at him speechlessly for a moment; then his fists clenched and his neck grew swollen. He closed his jaws tight. It was no good: he couldn’t contain it. “Oh, go to hell!” he shouted. He made an impotent gesture, whirled and strode away.

  After a moment Cashel caught up with him. His long face had turned pale. “Look, Dick, you had no call to talk to me that way—”