There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of

by Marcia Muller

  His panicky eyes moved back to me.

  “Tell me, Jimmy. What was it Yeats said about peace?”

  But he’d been brought back to reality by those footsteps. He made an inarticulate sound and whirled toward the door—just as a man blundered through it and down the stairs.

  Don.

  I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hurl my gun at his head. Instead, I said, “It’s okay, Jimmy. He’s a friend—”

  Don looked from me to Jimmy and back. I could tell he wasn’t really taking in what was happening. Instinctively, he crouched, ready to spring at Jimmy.

  Jimmy froze, then backed away. Don made a move toward him, and he growled like a cornered animal.

  I said, “Don, for Christ’s sake! It’s all right!”

  He looked at me, saw the gun, and relaxed slightly. The moment was all Jimmy needed; he bolted up the stairs and through the door.

  I went after him, slamming into Don and falling against the steps. “Wait, Jimmy!” I shouted. “Wait!”

  Don tried to get up the steps at the same time as I did and he threw me off balance again.

  “Dammit!” I said, pushing him furiously. “I told you to wait and call the cops.”

  “I couldn’t just sit there, knowing you might be in danger. . . .”

  I scrambled up the stairs. Don came after me.

  “Get out of here and call the cops!” I said.

  “I’m not leaving you—”

  “Go!” Far down one of the corridors, I could hear Jimmy’s footsteps clanging on the risers of one of the spiral iron staircases to the stage wings. I raced along, following the sound. Don didn’t come after me this time.

  By the time I reached the staircase, I heard Jimmy’s feet pounding hollowly on the stage above. I ran up the stairs, stumbling once and banging my shin on the metal tread. At the top, I was confronted by blackness. Standing there, I clutched the metal railing, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Somewhere in front of me and to my left, I heard Jimmy scrambling around muttering inarticulately in a frightened, high-pitched voice.

  Vague shapes began to emerge form the blackness, but nothing more. And my flashlight was on the floor of the speakeasy, where I’d set it before starting to untie Duc. I remained where I was, trying to visualize the layout of the stage as I’d seen it the night before. The stairway I’d run up came out in the right wing, where the players would wait to go on. The audience seating was to my right, backstage forward and to my left, where Jimmy was. He’d stopped moving now, but I could hear his labored, frightened breathing.

  I said, “Jimmy, it’s okay.”

  Even his breath stopped. Then it resumed, more quietly.

  I closed my eyes—in spite of the fact they could see so little—and pictured the stage again. Somewhere behind me on the wall was the panel of light switches the police had used to illuminate the crime scene. I turned, hands out, walking blindly that way. In a few yards, my fingers encountered rough concrete. I moved to the left, then to the right, feeling the wall. Finally I touched electric conduit, followed it to the plywood, metal sheathing, and switches.

  The night before the police had discovered that this board operated standard house lights rather than footlights or colored stage lights that were anchored high up on the grid. They had had flashlights to guide then, however, while I could only rely on touch. I fumbled around, then grasped an unidentifiable switch and pulled. Nothing happened. I pulled a second switch, and the stage was bathed in a sudden glare. Now that I could see them, I yanked on all the others in order to light the entire theatre. Then I went after Jimmy.

  He wasn’t on the stage proper, so he must be somewhere behind the second set of heavy blue curtains, at the extreme end where Otis Knox’s body had lain. I grabbed their velvet folds, raising clouds of dust, and pulled on them until I found an opening. Then I burst through it, holding my gun in front of me.

  The lights back there was not as intense as on the stage. It illuminated the scenery flats and ropes and metal supports I’d seen the night before. And the chalk marks where Knox’s body had been. But there was no sign of Jimmy.

  I was about to turn when I heard a whimper somewhere above me. Looking up, I spotted Jimmy near the top of one of the ladders to the catwalk.

  He cried, “No!”

  I said, “I won’t hurt you, Jimmy.”

  He scrambled up on the catwalk.

  I visualized Knox’s body lying at the foot of that ladder, his neck bent at an odd angle. A shiver ran through me and I lowered my gun.

  “Please come down,” I called to Jimmy. “We have to go to the isle of Innisfree.”

  He hesitated a moment, but then began edging along the catwalk.

  I set my gun on the floor where he could see it and stepped back. “Look, I’ll leave the gun there. You can come down. We’ll talk.”

  He stood sill, staring down at me. I thought for a moment that I’d convinced him, but then he continued sidling along the narrow walk.

  I took a deep breath and started toward the ladder. “All right, Jimmy,” I said. “I’ll come up there. Then we can talk.”

  No response.

  “Jimmy, please wait.”

  All I heard was the metallic sound of his feet edging along the catwalk. The structure shuddered under his weight.

  I reached the bottom of the ladder and grasped it, feeling the vibrations. But hey didn’t mean anything; it had been built to accommodate more than one person’s weight, had probably been reinforced to comply with the modern safety regulations; after all, hadn’t Knox said they’d put on rock concerts here in the seventies?

  I started climbing the ladder. Halfway to the catwalk I was tempted to look down at the stage. I didn’t.

  Near the last run, my palms were sweating so badly that I almost lost my grip. I stopped, wiped one hand on my pants, got a firmer grip, then wiped the other. Finally I pulled myself up onto the catwalk and lay on my belly, listening to Jimmy’s harsh breathing. I kept my eyes closed, telling myself not to think of the long drop to the stage. When I opened them at last, I saw the catwalk was wider than it had appeared from below—scant comfort, though, since the width was only three feet.

  Finally I raised my head. The catwalk connected with the other ladder on the opposite side of the stage, the companion to the one I’d just climbed. Jimmy stood at its top, clinging to an upright support. It was shadowy up here, above the crisscrossed pipe of the lighting grid, so I couldn’t see his face too well, but I could hear him crying.

  Slowly I got up onto my knees, conscious of the catwalk’s vibration. Jimmy whimpered in fear.

  I said, “Aren’t we going away together?”

  He snuffled. “Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m never going anywhere but down there.” He jerked his chin at the stage below. “Just like Mr. Knox. I followed him up here and scared him, the way you’re scaring me,”

  I eased back, sitting on my heels. “Why did Otis come up here, Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know. I came home and found him. He had all the lights on, and he was up here singing and laughing.”

  “Maybe he was happy because he’d bought the theatre.”

  Jimmy flinched and the catwalk shook with the motion. “He shouldn’t have bought it! It was mine! It was my home!”

  I said quickly, “I know. He had no right to invade your home. How long had you been living downstairs—in the place like in ‘All Souls Night?’”

  The mention of the poem seemed to calm him. “About two months. I figured out a long time ago how to get into the theatre. I borrowed a hacksaw and filed through the bars on that hidden window. I didn’t mean to live here; the place was for sale and I knew they’d throw me out, like they did at all the other places I fixed up nice. All I wanted was somewhere I could be alone in the quiet.”

  Quiet. I couldn’t hear a sound but his voice. Had Don called the police? Where were they?

  I said, “But then you found All Souls Night.�
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  “Yes. I’d heard there once was a speakeasy. It’s an old story, and nobody believed it but me. But I had faith, and I found it. It was mine. It was home.”

  I waited a moment, then said, “Why don’t we go back there?”

  “No.” He shook his head violently.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not my home anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everyone knows about it now. They’ll take it away from me, just like all my other places. At first I thought it was going to be all right. The realtors came with lots of strangers. But they didn’t know about All Souls Night, and I didn’t mind them much. They never came back twice. But then one of them brought Mr. Knox. I liked Mr. Knox; he’d always been nice to me; but he kept coming back and coming back. Then he came without the realtor, carrying keys. And he had the electricity turned on. And he brought that girl.”

  “Dolly Vang?”

  “Yes.” He bobbed his head up and down. I winced at the vibration his motions set up.

  “And Dolly’s brother and his friend followed them. That made even more people who came to the theatre.”

  “Yes, but they had been here before. They’d found my way into the basement and would come now and then to explore. I had to frighten them off. I had to defend my home.”

  “So you frightened them, by creating disturbances at the Globe Hotel.”

  He clung to the support, looking down. “I thought if they had trouble there, they’d forget about this place.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “And you kept trying to frighten them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the last time you tried, Hoa Dinh surprised you in the furnace room. And you hit him with something.”

  “A pipe that was there. I took it away with me and threw it in a sewer. I didn’t mean to kill him; I was only defending myself.” He began to sob again.

  I heard the wail of the siren—muted but not far away. “Jimmy, let’s go down to All Souls Night.”

  “No. It’s not my home anymore.”

  I hesitated, then started moving slowly along the catwalk. “Jimmy, Duc’s waiting there. He wants to go to the isle of Innisfree with us.”

  “He can’t. Everybody’s looking for him. You made sure of that on that radio show. I called, you know.”

  “I know.” I kept inching along, not looking down.

  “How can he go with us if everyone’s looking for him?”

  “We’ll sneak away. They’ll never know. We’ll help you build your cabin and plant the beans—”

  He raised his head and stared at me through the murky light. I stood still, not wanting to frighten him.

  He said, “Yes, we’ll plant the beans. And tend the bees. And when we’re done we’ll go out into the hazelwood and cut wands for fishing poles. I did that once, you know. I went out and cut a wand and hooked a berry to it.”

  I realized Jimmy was paraphrasing his favorite poem, “The Song of Wandering Aengus,” and felt a flash of relief. He was returning to his dream world—or maybe to his reality. I inched further along the catwalk toward him. “And then what did you do?”

  “I waited until the moths and stars came out and then I went to the stream and fished.”

  “Did you catch anything?” I was only six feet from him.

  Jimmy seemed as oblivious to my approach as he was to the dizzying drop to the stage. “Yes. A trout. A little silver trout.”

  There were noises in the lobby now. I tensed, but Jimmy kept staring out into the shadows, his eyes focused on his other world.

  “And then what happened?” I was three feet away.

  “She turned into a girl. A glimmering girl. She called my name. She ran away.”

  He was within reach. The noises below were louder.

  “She had an apple blossom in her hair,” Jimmy said.

  I inched the remaining distance and grasped his arm, not hard. He looked at me in surprise and added, “I never found her again.”

  “Maybe you’ll find her at the isle of Innisfree.” I began moving him toward the ladder.

  There were quick footsteps below us. Jimmy came out of his trance. His face went rigid with fright.

  “What—?” he said.

  There were police on the stage below us. I shouted, “It’s all right! We’re coming down. Don’t do anything!”

  Jimmy struggled against me, panicking. I gripped him with one hand, grasped the ladder with the other. The catwalk swayed violently. He was too strong for me. He would slip and fall. We would both fall . . .

  And then suddenly—just as in the grade school spelling bees I’d always won—words appeared vividly in my mind. I said, “When we get to Innisfree, I want to go pick those silver apples. The golden apples too. The golden apples, Jimmy.”

  It cut into his panic long enough for me to tighten my hold on him. And once again it triggered a return to his other, gentler word. He looked at me for a moment and then said, “If you want to go with me, you’ll have to get the words right.”

  I glanced anxiously down at the police, but they were waiting, weapons trained on us. “Recite them to me.”

  “‘Though I am old with wandering . . . through hollow lands and hilly lands . . . I will find out where she has gone . . . and kiss her lips and take her hands. . . .’”

  I urged him toward the ladder. Slowly he began to climb down, still speaking.

  “‘And walk among long dappled grass . . . and pluck, till times and times are done . . . the silver apples of the moon . . . the golden apples of the sun.’”

  Wearily I started to climb down after him, my feet on the rungs his hands grasped. Jimmy fell silent, and I could think of nothing more to say. Halfway to the stage, his hand grabbed my right foot, and I fought off sudden panic. I pictured him yanking me from the ladder, and what it would be like to fall, screaming . . .

  Jimmy said, “I never found her.”

  When I could speak, I said, “Maybe you will someday.”

  “No, we’ll never get to the silver apples now. Or the golden apples. Or anyplace at all.” And he let go of my foot and continued to climb down.

  I kept going after him, on the verge of tears. Did any of us ever get to the silver apples, much less the golden ones? Did anyone, much less a lost soul like Jimmy?

  When he got to the stage, Jimmy stumbled from the ladder, staring at the police in terror. I jumped down and stepped protectively between him and the armed men. When I took his hand, he looked down at me and said, “Did I tell you I once had a poem published? In a little magazine, but published nonetheless?”

  I said, “Can you recite it for me?”

  He paused and then looked over my shoulder at the waiting policemen. When his eyes came back to mine, they were sad and growing dull. “You know, I can’t remember it. But what does it matter? Poetry’s been my life’s curse.”

  Then he raised his eyes once more, looked at the others, and said, “Can you imagine what it’s like to have the soul of a poet in this world?”

  I held Jimmy’s hand all the time the police questioned him, until they had to take him away from me. And then I ran to Don, who was standing on the fringes of the crowd, and held him close.

  Angry as I was with him, he was at least a silver apple—maybe even a golden one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The city didn’t look so bad from the roof of the Globe Hotel. Up there it was possible to pretend the squalor and ugliness in the streets below didn’t exist. Temporarily, that was.

  I stood by the cement parapet in the pale winter sunshine the Saturday after Jimmy Milligan had been arrested and looked out over the squat buildings of the Tenderloin to the graceful structures crowning Nob Hill. Then I turned and looked eastward, across roofs that stretched toward the industrial flatlands and the Bay. Somewhere over there was San Francisco General Hospital, where Jimmy was being held for psychiatric observation; if the people there were perceptive and
really cared, he’d get the help he’d needed for a long time. Whatever the outcome, he’d have a permanent home, at the expense of the state. It was a great pity he’d had to kill to achieve that.

  But this wasn’t a time for gloomy speculations; around me the roof thronged with people. Roy LaFond was there, conferring with Lan Vang and Mrs. Dinh about what kind of soil and seeds and tools they’d need to start their garden in the new redwood planter boxes he’d had constructed. Don was running around with a tape recorder, gathering material for a follow-up show on the refugees. The Vang girls—even Dolly, who seemed to have recovered from the shock of Knox’s death—clustered with others near the refreshment table, sipping sweet fruit punch and chattering about boys, clothes, and makeup—or whatever else American teenagers talked about. Even Duc, who had been uncommunicative for days, had come to the party. He sat on one of the lounge chairs LaFond had given the hotel, next to one of Hoa Dinh’s brothers.

  The owner had surprised me, surprised all of us except Mary Zemanek, who had been in on his plans for a couple of days. It was he who had brought the live tree and ornaments to the lobby after hearing from me about the destruction of the Globe’s Christmas tree—and act to which Jimmy Milligan had admitted. And the day I’d seen LaFond coming down the stairs from the roof, he’d been measuring for the planter boxes. Mrs. Zemanek had been so outraged at his taking the key away from her that he’d had to bring her in on his plans to appease her. She was the one who’d suggested they give a Christmas party for the residents. Mary had prepared the refreshments; the food was courtesy of the grocer, Hung Tran; and the corsages and boutonnieres everyone wore had come from Sallie Hyde.

  Now I turned and watched as Mary came through the door with a platter of cookies. She’d been grieving for days over Jimmy Milligan—and apparently had been worried about him before that, when she’d found the sack containing the olive-green sheet that I’d left in the lobby. She’d seen Jimmy washing his sheets at the nearby Laundromat, and when I’d inquired after the sack, she’d begun to suspect that he might be involved in the disturbances, as well as Hoa Dinh’s death. She looked reasonably cheerful today, though, and slapped Sallie Hyde’s hands when the fat woman grabbed a handful of cookies before the platter reached the table.