by Jack Finney
I didn't want to stay a moment longer than I had to, and I closed the cupboard, as I'd found it, crossed to the window, and crawled out onto the side lawn again. What Becky's father would think of this broken window when he found it, I didn't know; but I knew I wasn't going to explain it.
In the car, drawing away from the curb, I nodded at Mannie, grinning a little sheepishly. "You were right," I said, and I glanced at Jack and shrugged.
Chapter eight
The human animal won't take a straight diet of any emotion: fear, happiness, horror, grief, or even contentment. It was queer; after the night we'd all spent, breakfast was a gay affair. The sun helped; it streamed in through the open windows and the kitchen door, yellow and warm and full of morning promise. Theodora was up when we got there, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with Becky. She stood up as we came in, Jack hurrying toward her, and then they held each other tight for a long moment, Jack kissing her hard. He drew back to look at her then, and Mannie and I looked, too. She was still tired, there were circles under her eyes, but the eyes were calm and sane now, and she smiled at us over Jack's shoulder.
Then, almost as though a signal had been given, we all began chattering, laughing a lot, making jokes; and the two women began turning on gas jets, getting out skillets and pans, opening cupboards and the refrigerator, while the three men sat down at the kitchen table. Becky poured us each some coffee. By a sort of unspoken consent, we didn't talk about the night before – not seriously, anyway – or about what Jack, Mannie, and I had just been doing, and the women asked no questions; they must have felt from our manner that things were all right.
Sausage began sputtering on the stove, Theodora turning it with a fork, and Becky began beating up eggs in a bowl, the metal spoon tapping rhythmically against the china, a nice sound. Theodora said, eyes laughing, "I've been thinking it over, and I could use a duplicate of Jack. One of them could moon around the house as usual, not hearing a word I say, working out whatever he's writing in his mind. And maybe the other would have time to talk to me, and even help with the dishes once in a while."
Jack smiled at her over the rim of his cup, his eyes happy and relieved to see her this way. "Might be worth trying," he said. "At times I think any change in me would be an improvement. Maybe the new one would actually know how to write, instead of beating his head against a stone wall just trying."
Becky was nodding. "There are advantages, all right," she said. "I like the idea of one me secretly carried through the streets in her nightgown, while the other is still home, properly alone in her bed, satisfying all the proprieties."
We rang the changes on that idea. Mannie wanted one Dr. Kaufman listening to his patients, while the other was out playing golf, and I said I could use a duplicate Miles Bennell to catch up on sleep.
The food tasted wonderful, and we ate and chattered all through breakfast, making what jokes there were to be made. Actually, I think, we were a little too gay, almost high, in reaction against what had happened. Presently Mannie touched his mouth with his napkin, glanced at the wall clock, and stood up. By the time he got home, he said, and shaved, changed clothes, and got to his office, he'd just have time to keep his first appointment. He said his good-byes, told me he planned to send me an enormous bill, charging his usual hourly rates, if not double, grinned, and I saw him to the front door. Then the rest of us all had second or third cups of coffee.
While I sipped mine, I lighted a cigarette, sat back in my chair, and told Theodora and Becky, briefly and factually, what had happened, what we'd found – or rather, hadn't found – in Jack's and Becky's basements, and what Mannie had told us, there on the road in front of Jack's house.
I expected what happened when I finished; Theodora simply shook her head, her lips compressed in quiet stubbornness. It just wasn't possible for her to believe that she hadn't seen what she was certain she had seen – and could still see in her mind's eye. Becky didn't comment, but I could see from the relief in her eyes that she'd accepted Mannie's explanation, and I knew she was thinking of her father. She looked cute, sitting there at the table beside me, very fresh and alive and good-looking, and it was exciting to see her wearing my shirt, open at the collar.
Jack got up, walked to the living-room, and came back with the cardboard folder he'd brought from his house. Smiling, he sat down, saying, "I'm kind of a squirrel," and began peering into each section of the accordion-folder. "A collector of various things, without quite knowing why. And one of the things I save" – he reached into one section of his folder, and brought out a great handful of newspaper clippings – "are certain newspaper items. I brought them along, after we talked to Mannie." Pushing aside the plates before him, he put the clippings on the table, a mound of dozens of them, some yellowing a little with age, some new-looking, most of them short, a few of them long. Picking one from the pile at random, he glanced at the heading, then passed it over to me.
I held it so Becky could read, too. Frogs Fell on Alabama, the heading said. It was a little one-column story, a couple inches long, date-lined, Edgeville, Ala: "Any fishermen in this town of four thousand," it began, "had plenty of bait this morning – if there were only a place in this area to use it. Last night a shower of tiny frogs, of undetermined origin… " The little story – I skimmed through the rest of it – went on to say that a shower of small frogs had fallen on the town, pelting the roofs and windows like rain, for several minutes the previous night. The tone of the story was mildly humorous, and no explanation of the shower was given.
I looked up at Jack, and he smiled. "Silly, isn't it?" he said. "Especially since, as the story itself suggests, there was no place the frogs could have come from." He picked up another clipping and handed it to me.
Man Burned to Death; Clothes Unharmed this was headed, and it said that a man had been found burned to a cinder, in an Idaho farmhouse. The clothes he wore, however, weren't burned or even singed, and there wasn't a sign of fire damage or even smoke smudges in the house. The local coroner was quoted as saying it would take heat of at least 2000 degrees to burn a man as this one had been found. That's all the story said.
I half smiled, half frowned at Jack, wondering what this was all about. Theodora was looking at him over the rim of her coffee cup with the wryly amused look of affectionate scorn wives have for their husbands' eccentricities, and Jack grinned at us. "I've got a couple dozen like that, from all over – people burned to death inside their clothes. Ever read such nonsense in your life? Here's another kind."
Written in pencil on the margin of this one was, New Yk. Post, and the printed heading said, And There Was His Ambulance. The date-line was Richmond, Cal., May 7 (AP). The clipping read: " 'Hurry to San Pablo and MacDonald Ave.,' said the telephone voice. 'The Santa Fe streamliner just hit a truck and a man is hurt pretty badly.' Police dispatched a squad car and ambulance to the address. There was no accident. The train hadn't yet reached the scene. It did, though, just as the investigators were leaving, and just as a delivery truck driven by Randolph Bruce, 44, was on the crossing. Bruce is hurt pretty badly. He has a brain injury and a crushed chest."
I laid down the clipping. "What's your point, Jack?"
"Well" – he got slowly to his feet – "there are a couple hundred queer little happenings that I've collected in just a few years; and you could find thousands more." He began slowly pacing the kitchen floor. "I think they prove at least this: that strange things happen, really do happen, every now and then, here and there throughout the world. Things that simply don't fit in with the great body of knowledge that the human race has gradually acquired over thousands of years. Things in direct contradiction to what we know to be true. Something falls up, instead of down."
Reaching out to the toaster on the drainboard of the sink, Jack touched a finger tip to a crumb, and lifted it to his tongue. "So this is my point, Miles. Should they always be explained away? Or laughed away? Or simply ignored? Because that's what always happens." He resumed his slow pacing
about the big old kitchen. "I guess it's only natural. I suppose nothing can be given a place in our body of accepted knowledge, except what is universally experienced. Science claims to be objective, though." He stopped, facing the table. "To consider all phenomena impartially and without prejudice. But of course it does no such thing. This kind of occurrence" – he nodded at the little mound of paper on the table – "it dismisses with automatic habitual contempt. From which the rest of us take our cue. What are these things, says the scientific attitude? Why, they're only optical illusions, or self-suggestion, or hysteria, or mass hypnosis, or when everything else fails – coincidence. Anything and everything, except that possibly they really happened. Oh, no" – Jack shook his head smiling – "you must never admit for a moment that anything we don't understand may nevertheless have occurred."
As most wives, even the wisest, do with any real conviction held by their husbands, Theodora accepted this and made it her own. "Well, it's stupid," she said, "and how the human race ever learns anything new, I really don't know."
"It takes a long time," Jack agreed. "Hundreds of years to accept the fact that the world is round. A century resisting the knowledge that the earth revolves around the sun. We hate facing new facts or evidence, because we might have to revise our conceptions of what's possible, and that's always uncomfortable."
Jack grinned, and sat down at the table again. "I should talk, though. Take any of these." He picked up a clipping. "This one from the New York Post, for example. Now, that isn't fiction. The New York Post is a real newspaper, and this little story was actually printed in the Post just a few years ago, and no doubt in a lot of other papers all over the country. Thousands read it, including me. But did we rise up insisting that our body of knowledge be revised to include this strange little occurrence? Did I? No; we wondered about it, were intrigued and interested momentarily, then dismissed it from mind. And now, like all the other odd little happenings that don't quite fit in with what we think we know, it's forgotten and ignored by the world, except for a few curiosa collectors like me."
"Maybe it should be," I said quietly. "Take a look at this." I'd been idly glancing through his clippings as Jack talked, and now I pushed one toward him. It was just a squib from the local paper, and it didn't say much. One L. Bernard Budlong, botany and biology professor at the local college, was quoted as denying a comment the paper had attributed to him the day before, about some "mysterious objects" found on a farm west of town. They were described as large seed pods of some sort or other, and now Budlong was denying having said that they'd "come from outer space." The Tribune apologized: "Sorry, Prof?" the story ended. It was dated May 9.
"What about that, Jack?" I said gently. "The collapse of one of your little items: a one-inch retraction buried in the paper a day or so later. Makes you wonder" – I nodded at his mound of clippings – "about all the rest, doesn't it?"
"Sure," Jack said. "That retraction belongs in the collection, too. And that's why it's there; I didn't exclude it." He picked up a handful of clippings and let them flutter down onto the table again. "Miles, these are lies, most of them, for all I know. Some are most certainly hoaxes. And maybe most of the rest are distortions, exaggerations, or simple errors of judgment or vision; I have sense enough to know that. But, damn it, Miles, not all of them, past, present, and fixture! You can't explain them all away, perpetually and forever!"
For a moment he sat glaring at me, then he smiled. "So is Mannie right? Should what happened last night be explained away, too?" Jack shrugged. "Maybe it should. Mannie makes good sense; he always does. And he's explained what happened almost satisfactorily; maybe ninety-nine per cent." For a moment Jack stared at us, then lowered his voice, and said very softly, "But there's a tiny one per cent of doubt still left in my mind."
I was looking at Jack, and feeling an actual, unpleasant, sluggish prickling along my spine at the simple thought that had just occurred to me. "The fingerprints," I murmured, and Jack frowned momentarily. "The blank fingerprints!" I shouted then. "Mannie thinks it's just an ordinary body. Since when do ordinary men have no fingerprints at all!"
Theodora was pushing herself up from her chair, arms straining against the table top, and her voice came out high and shrill. "I can't go back there, Jack! I can't set foot in that house!" Her voice, as Jack stumbled to his feet, rose still higher. "I know what I saw; it was turning into you. Jack, it was!" And as he took her into his arms, the tears were tumbling down her cheeks, and the fear stood naked in her eyes again.
After a moment I was able to speak quietly. "Then don't go," I said to Theodora. "Stay right here." They both turned to look at me, and I said, "You've got to, both of you." I smiled a little. "It's a big house; pick out a room and stay; bring your typewriter down, Jack, and work. I'd love to have you. I rattle around in this house, and I could use some company."
Jack studied my face for a moment. "You sure?"
"Absolutely."
He looked down at Theodora, and she nodded dumbly, pleadingly, "All right," Jack said to me then. "Maybe we'd better; for a day or so. Thanks, Miles, thanks a lot."
"You, too, Becky," I said then. "You've got to stay, too – for a few days, anyway. With Theodora and Jack," something made me add.
Her face was pale, but she grinned a little at that. "With Theodora and Jack," she repeated. "And where'll you be?"
My face flushed, but I smiled. "Right here," I agreed, "but you can ignore me."
Theodora looked up from Jack's shoulder, and now she was able to smile, too. "It might be fun, Becky," she said. "And I'll chaperon."
Becky's eyes were dancing. "It might at that, a sort of house party that goes on for days." Then the fear came into her eyes again. "I was just thinking of my dad, that's all," she said to me.
"Phone him," I said, "and just tell him the truth. That something has upset Theodora pretty badly, she's going to stay here, and she needs you. That's all you have to say." I grinned. "Though you might add that I have some wicked, sinful plans in mind that you simply can't resist." I glanced at the wall clock. "I've got to get to work, pals; the joint is yours." Then I went upstairs to get ready for the office.
I was more irritated than scared, standing at my bathroom mirror, shaving. A part of my mind was frightened at the fact we'd just faced downstairs: that the body in Jack's basement, incredibly, impossibly, and undeniably, had had no fingerprints. We hadn't imagined that, I knew, and it was a fact Mannie's explanation couldn't cover. But mostly, leaning toward the mirror scraping my face, I was annoyed; I didn't want Becky Driscoll living here in my house, where I'd see her more every day than I ordinarily would in a week. She was too attractive, likeable, and good-looking, and the danger in that was obvious.
I talk to myself when I shave. "You handsome bastard," I said to my face. "You can marry them, all right; you just can't stay married, that's your trouble. You are weak. Emotionally unstable. Basically insecure. A latent thumb-sucker. A cesspool of immaturity, unfit for adult responsibility." I smiled, and tried to think of some more. "You are undoubtedly a quack, and a Don Juan personality. A pseudo – " I cut it out, and finished shaving with the uncomfortable feeling that for all I knew it wasn't funny but true, that having failed with one woman, I was getting too involved with another, and that for my sake and hers, she should be anywhere but here under my roof.
Jack rode downtown with me to talk to Nick Grivett, the local police chief; we both knew him well. Jack had, after all, found a dead body; and it had disappeared. He had to report that. But we decided, on the way down in my car, that he'd report just those bare facts, nothing more. We couldn't explain his delay in reporting, so we decided he'd alter the time sequence a little, and say he found the body last night, instead of the morning before; it might just as well have happened that way.
Even at that, there'd be a little delay to account for; why hadn't he phoned the police last night, then? We decided Jack would explain that Theodora was upset and hysterical; he couldn't think of anything el
se till she was taken care of, and had rushed her to a doctor, me. She'd had a bad shock, so they were staying at my place, and Jack had gone home to pick up some clothes before phoning the police; and then he'd discovered the body was gone. We figured Grivett would bawl him out a little, but there wasn't much else he could do. Smiling, I told Jack to act as dopy and absent-minded as he could, and Grivett would put it all down to his being an impractical literary type.
Jack nodded and smiled a little at that, then his face went serious again. "Forget the fingerprints, too, you think? When I talk to Grivett?"
I shrugged and grimaced. "You'll have to. Grivett would have you committed if you mentioned that." We'd pulled up at the police station, Jack got out, and I grinned and waved then, and drove on.
Chapter nine
But I was in a bad mood when I parked my car – on a side street near my office, just out of the parking-meter zone. Worry, doubt, and fear were twisting through my mind as I walked the block and a half to the office, and the look of Main Street depressed me. It seemed littered and shabby in the morning sun, a city trash basket stood heaped and unemptied from the day before, the globe of an overhead street light was broken, and a few doors from the building where my office was a shop stood empty. The windows were whitened, and a clumsily painted For Rent sign stood leaning against the glass. It didn't say where to apply, though, and I had the feeling no one cared whether the store was ever rented again. A smashed whisky bottle lay in the entranceway of my building, and the brass nameplate set in the grey stone of the building was mottled and unpolished. All up and down the street, as I stopped for a moment to look, not a soul was out washing down a store window as the shop-owners usually were of a morning, and the street seemed oddly deserted. It was simply the mood I was in, I told myself; I was looking at the world in fear and worry, and I reprimanded myself; it's no way to let yourself feel when you're diagnosing and treating patients.
