by Charles Webb
“Hello Benjamin,” she said.
“Where is she!”
Without looking away from him Mrs. Robinson reached down for the receiver of a telephone on a table beside where she was standing and brought it up to her ear. Still keeping her eyes on him she jiggled the two buttons on the phone and waited.
“Hello,” she said finally. “Get me the police, please.”
Benjamin began walking toward her. Mr. Robinson rushed quickly between them and stared up into Benjamin’s face.
“I want you to send a police car to twelve hundred Glenview Road,” Mrs. Robinson said. “We have a burglar here.”
Benjamin started for her, then checked himself as Mr. Robinson suddenly crouched and clenched his fists in front of him.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Robinson said. “I’ll ask him. Are you armed, Benjamin?” She shook her head. “I don’t think he is,” she said. She nodded. “Thank you.” She hung up the phone.
The three of them stood perfectly still another few moments. Mrs. Robinson with her hand on the phone, her husband still crouched slightly in front of her and Benjamin leaning forward staring over Mr. Robinson’s head at his wife.
“Do you want a quick drink?” Mrs. Robinson said.
Mr. Robinson straightened up slowly and walked past Benjamin and back to his chair. He sat down, took a very deep breath, picked up his newspaper off the carpet and held it up in front of him. Mrs. Robinson walked back to the porch, seated herself next to the drink on the table and stared back out at the dark back yard. Benjamin took several steps out onto the porch after her, looked at her but then turned and crossed back through the living room without saying anything. He stood over Mr. Robinson’s chair. Mr. Robinson turned a page and started a new column.
“What have you done to her.”
Mr. Robinson smiled and looked up over the top of his page.
“What Ben?”
“I have to know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Ben says he has to know what we’ve done to Elaine,” he called to his wife.
She didn’t answer him.
“Tell you what, Ben,” Mr. Robinson said, looking back at him. “Why don’t you come back in a week or so.”
“What?”
“You come on back in a week or so,” Mr. Robinson said. “Then we’ll give you the whole story.”
Benjamin grabbed his paper away from him. “She’s not—” He shook his head. “She’s not getting—”
There were no sirens but Benjamin heard the car squeal to a stop in front of the house, then two doors being opened and banged shut. He looked up, dropped the paper, then ran quickly back through the dining room and through the dark kitchen, slamming his hip against a table, and out the back door. He picked up his shoes. Then he heard footsteps on the cement driveway. He raced for the fence on the other side of the driveway and leaped up onto it and let himself tumble down into the yard of a neighbor. Then he got up and ran.
Chapter Eight
The next day was Saturday. Just before dawn Benjamin landed at the San Francisco airport and hurried off the plane and into a phone booth. There was only one Carl Smith in the directory. He called but there was no answer. Then he tore the page out of the phone book and had a taxi take him to the address. The front door of the apartment building was unlocked. Benjamin pushed it open and hurried up the three flights of stairs and down a darkened hall to the door of Carl Smith’s apartment. Just as he was about to knock he noticed a white envelope thumbtacked into the wood of the door next to the doorknob. He tore it off and ran back down the hall with it to a window. On the front of the envelope the name Bob was written. Benjamin ripped it open, pulled out a sheet of paper from inside and read it quickly by the gray light coming in through the dirty glass of the window.
Bob,
Prepare yourself for a real jolt, old boy. Believe it or not I am getting hitched. Elaine Robinson, the girl I brought up to your party last month, has accepted my proposal and in fact insists that we tie the knot this very weekend. I cannot believe my luck and am, needless to say, in quite a daze at the moment so I know you will forgive me for canceling out on our plans.
It was all arranged in a midnight visit from her and her father. There are many strange and bizarre circumstances surrounding the whole thing which I don’t have time to go into now. Elaine is down in Santa Barbara staying with my folks and I am on my way down. We will be married in the First Presbyterian Church on Allen Street in S.B. at eleven o’clock Saturday morning. If perchance you find this note soon enough, be sure and hop it down there as I think I can promise you a pretty good show. Janie is frantically trying to dig up bridesmaids and Mother is telegramming invitations to everyone in sight. Dad is too stunned to do anything.
I will be back early in the week, bride in tow, and will see you then if not before. Hallelulia!
His airplane touched down in a small airport in the outskirts of Santa Barbara just at eleven o’clock. Benjamin was the first out of its door and down the ramp. Several minutes later his taxi pulled to a stop in front of the First Presbyterian Church on Allen Street. He jumped out and handed the driver a bill through the window.
The church was in a residential section of large houses and neat green lawns and was itself an extremely large building with a broad expanse of stained-glass windows across the front and wide concrete stairs leading up to a series of doors, all of which were closed. Benjamin squeezed between the bumpers of two limousines parked in front of the church and hurried up the stairs. He grabbed the handles of two doors and pulled, they were locked. He rushed to the next pair of handles and pulled again. They were also locked. He began banging with his fist on one of the doors, then turned around and ran down the steps. He ran to the side of the church. A stairway led up the wall of the church to a door. Benjamin hurried back along the wall, then ran two steps at a time up to the top of the stairs. He tried the door. It opened. Thick organ music poured out from inside the building. He ran down a hall to a door and pushed it open, then hurried through it and stopped.
Beneath him were the guests. They were standing. Nearly all of them were turned part way around and looking back toward the rear of the church under the balcony where he was standing. Most of the women were wearing white gloves. One was holding a handkerchief up to her eye. A man with a red face near the front of the church was turned around and was smiling broadly toward the back. Carl Smith and another boy were standing at the front of the church. Both were wearing black tuxedos with white carnations in their lapels. Benjamin saw Mrs. Robinson. She was standing in the first pew in the church and wearing a small hat on her head. He stared at her a moment, then a girl wearing a bright green dress came walking slowly under him and down the aisle of the church toward the altar. Another girl appeared, also wearing a bright green dress, then another and another. Then suddenly Elaine appeared. Benjamin rushed closer to the railing and leaned over to stare down at a piece of white lace on the top of her head. He began clenching and unclenching his hands in front of him. She was walking with her arm in her father’s arm and wearing a white wedding dress whose long train followed her slowly over the thick red carpet and toward the front of the church. Benjamin began shaking his head, still staring at her and clenching and unclenching his hands. The guests turned slowly as she passed them. The girls in green dresses formed two rows at either side of the altar. Then Benjamin slammed his hands down on the railing of the balcony and yelled.
“Elaine!!!”
The organ music stopped.
He slammed his hands down again. “Elaine!!! Elaine!!! Elaine!!!”
From the altar the minister looked up quickly. The girls in green all looked up toward the back of the church. Mrs. Robinson stepped part way into the aisle, stared up at him, then took another step toward him and began shaking her head. The man with the red face near the front of the church looked up and stopped smiling.
Benjamin slammed his hands down on the wooden railing. “Elaine!!!”
“No!!!”
Benjamin turned in a circle. Then he lifted one of his legs up and put it over the railing. A woman screamed. Several guests immediately beneath him began pushing and shoving each other to get out of the way. Elaine turned around and took several steps down the aisle toward the back of the church and stared up at him, holding her hands up over part of her face. Then her father grabbed her arm and pulled her back up to the minister again.
Benjamin removed his leg from over the railing. He ran across the balcony to the door and through the door and down through a wooden hallway leading to the front part of the church. At the end of the hallway were two doors. He threw one of them open and a man wearing black clergyman’s clothes looked up at him over a desk and began rising from his chair. Benjamin turned around and pushed open the other door. It opened onto a flight of wooden stairs. He ran down. There were two more doors. He grabbed the doorknob of one and pushed it open.
Mr. Robinson was waiting for him. He was standing crouched in front of Benjamin with his arms spread out beside him. Behind Mr. Robinson Elaine was standing staring at him with her hands still up beside her face. Benjamin jumped one way to get around him but Mr. Robinson moved in front of him. He jumped the other. Mr. Robinson dove in toward him and grabbed him around the waist. Benjamin twisted away but before he could reach Elaine he felt Mr. Robinson grabbing at his neck and then grabbing at the collar of his shirt and pulling him backward and ripping the shirt down his back. He spun around and slammed his fist into Mr. Robinson’s face. Mr. Robinson reeled backward and crumpled into a corner.
Benjamin hurried forward. Elaine stepped toward him and he grabbed her hand. “Come on,” he said. “Don’t faint.”
He pulled her part way back toward the door but then suddenly the man in black clergyman’s clothes from upstairs stepped in through it and closed it behind him.
“Get out of my way” Benjamin said.
The man didn’t move. Benjamin bent his knees slightly and was about to move toward the door when he felt an arm closing around his neck. He thrashed away. Carl Smith was standing behind him breathing heavily. His carnation had fallen off. Benjamin looked quickly back and forth from Carl Smith to the man still standing in front of the door then he grabbed a large bronze cross from off an altar beside him and raised it up beside his ear. He rushed at Carl Smith. Carl Smith stumbled backward, then turned and fled back down to the other guests. Benjamin gripped Elaine’s hand as tightly as he could and pulled her toward the door.
“Move!!!” he said. He drew the cross farther back behind his head. The man in clergyman’s clothes hurried away from the door. Benjamin dropped the cross and pulled Elaine through the door and across the hallway and out another door onto a sidewalk in back of the church.
“Run!” he said. He pulled her after him. “Run, Elaine! Run!”
She tripped and fell. “Benjamin, this dress!” she said.
“Come on!” he said. He pulled her up.
They ran for several blocks. Crossing one street a car had to slam on its brakes and turn up onto the curb to avoid hitting them. Finally Benjamin saw a bus stopped half a block ahead of them loading passengers.
“There!” he said, pointing at it as he ran.
The doors of the bus closed just as they reached it. Benjamin banged against them with his free hand and they were opened. He pushed Elaine up ahead of him and carried the train of her dress in after her.
“Where does this bus go,” he said to the driver, trying to catch his breath.
The driver was staring at Elaine and didn’t answer.
“Where does this bus go!”
“Morgan Street,” he said.
“All right then,” Benjamin said. He pulled a handful of change out of one of his pockets and dropped it in the coin box. Then he let go of Elaine’s dress and took her hand again to lead her toward the back of the bus. The driver got. up out of his seat to watch them. Most of the passengers stood part way up in their seats and stared at Benjamin’s torn shirt hanging down around his knees and then turned their heads to stare down at the train of Elaine’s dress as it dragged slowly past over the ends of cigarettes and gum wrappers in the aisle. There was a little girl sitting by herself on the seat at the rear.
“Excuse me,” Benjamin said. He helped Elaine in next to the window and sat down beside her.
Most of the passengers were standing, turned around in their seats. One old man was bending his head around someone and out into the aisle to look back at them. The driver was still standing in the front next to the coin box staring at them.
“Get this bus moving!” Benjamin said.
The driver stood where he was.
“Get it moving!” Benjamin said, beginning to rise up again from the seat. “Get this bus moving!”
The driver waited a moment, then turned around and climbed back up into his seat. He pulled a handle and the doors of the bus closed. Benjamin sat back down.
Elaine was still trying to catch her breath. She turned her face to look at him. For several moments she sat looking at him, then she reached over and took his hand.
“Benjamin?” she said.
“What.”
The bus began to move.
