by Jack Finney
There—well, there they were, the people of the stiff old woodcuts, only... these moved. The swaying coats and dresses there on the walks and crossing the street before and behind us were of new-dyed cloth—maroon, bottle-green, blue, strong brown, unfaded blacks—and I saw the shimmer of light and shadow in the appearing and disappearing long folds. And the leather and rubber they walked in pressed into and marked the slush of the street crossings; and their breaths puffed out into the winter air, momentarily visible. And through the trembling, rattling glass panes of the bus we heard their living voices, and heard a girl laugh aloud. Looking out at their winter-flushed faces, I felt like shouting for joy.
Within two blocks half a dozen people had climbed into the bus; one of the pince-nezed top-hatted men, several others, and then, somewhere along in the Forties we pulled to the curb, and a woman got on, walking past us to the fare box, her long skirt brushing our legs. She wore a flower-trimmed felt hat, a plain black coat, a long pale-green scarf around her neck, and the hem of her dress, just below her coat, was deep purple. She was a woman in her thirties, and my first impression as she walked down the narrow aisle past us was that she was beautiful. Hut then her coin rattled into the fare box, she turned back, and—Kate and I sat directly beside the door at the rear—she sat down up ahead. This is a drawing I've made from memory.
Now I saw her face clearly and glanced quickly away so that I wouldn't offend her, because her face was scarred with dozens of pitted cavities, and I remembered that smallpox was almost commonplace still. No one else paid her the least attention.
We passed the Windsor Hotel, the Sherwood, and then something called Ye Olde Willow Cottage, according to an old-English sign running the width of the building just over the doorway: a wooden colonial-looking building with shutters, a wide veranda, and a short flight of wooden steps, like a country store. In front of it a big tree grew out of the pavement, pedestrians walking around it, and if Ye Olde Willow Cottage didn't date from colonial times, it sure looked it. Right next door, on this astonishing Fifth Avenue, stood Henry Tyson's Fifth Avenue Market, apparently a butchershop because I caught a glimpse of skinned carcasses hanging in rows.
Street traffic had grown heavier. We were passing carriages now; and a light delivery wagon, enameled deep purple and lettered Moquin in gold script, cut around us. As I watched it, Kate touched my arm, and I turned. She was frowning, shaking her head. "Si, I've had enough. I'm seeing too much. I'd like to ... just retreat somewhere and close my eyes."
"I know: I know what you mean." I stood up, stooping to look ahead. I knew we must be approaching Forty-second Street and I was unconsciously looking for the landmark that would confirm it, the main library on the west corner just across Forty-second. Again a moment of utter disbelief, because of course it wasn't there. Where it should have been stood what looked like the base of an enormous pyramid: tall blank walls slanting inward, running clear down to Forty-first Street on Fifth, and west on Forty-second out of sight. Martin had briefed me with pictures, and I knew what this was: the Croton Reservoir. But it was one more bewildering sight in a city completely familiar to me and now terribly different. The bus was edging toward the curb, I beckoned to Kate, and we got off directly in front of a two-wheeled hansom cab parked just short of the corner. I opened the cab door and helped Kate in. Settling down beside her, I glanced at her, and her head was back, her eyes closed. The driver sat in the rear on a high seat where he could look over the top, and now I heard a sound overhead, and looked up to see a panel slide back and reveal a small open square in the roof. Framed in it a moment later, I saw one eye, half of the other, a nose red with cold, and the beginnings of a large and drooping mustache. "The main post office," I said; then I got out my watch, pressed the stud, and the lid sprang back to reveal the face. It was nearly five. "Can you do it in half an hour?"
"I don't know," he said disgustedly, and clucked at his horse, snapping the reins. We pulled out into the street. "The way traffic is nowadays, it gets worse every day, you never know anymore. We'll try it; straight down Fifth to the square shouldn't be too bad yet, this time of day. Then over to Broadway, and miss the damned El; pardon me, ma'am." My head was back, too, my eyes closed; I'd seen enough for the moment, almost more than I could take. But as the roof panel slid shut I was smiling; however different, New York wasn't really changed.
10
The slow absolutely regular clip-clop, clip-clop of our horse's hoofs on the hard-packed snow—a little louder and more ringing when we crossed bare cobbles—was soothing, and so was the rhythmical sway and slight jounce of the hansom body on its springs. I began to recover from too much all at once, and opened my eyes now and then. But the glimpses I had were more of the same: This was a narrow, pleasant, tree-lined, expensive residential street, mostly. Occasionally we passed hotels with strange names: St. Marc ... Shelburn. And the Union League Club looking just like a Union League Club.
Then I heard the distant frantic sound of a bell, growing louder with every clang, and as we crossed Thirty-third Street it was suddenly a brain-numbing fury of sound to the west. Kate scrambling upright beside me, I turned to look, and here it came straight for us, a team of immense white horses, manes flying, hoofs pounding, drawing a red-and-brass fire engine, the driver slashing his whip at the horses, a flat stream of white smoke lining out behind it like the wake of a ship. The bell was wild now, the pound of hoofs on the cobbles so fast and in such unison that the sound was a throb. It was frightening to see that smoke-belching fury roaring straight at us, and our driver lashed out at his horse, and we jolted on across the street and out of its way. Behind us, we saw it dash on across Fifth, red-and-gilt spokes flashing, drivers reining up to hold the path clear. Four or five blocks farther on we heard the sound again, this time to the south, and I remembered that this was a city of wooden beams, floors and walls, and of open-flame lighting and heat.
All the while we clip-clopped on, block after block downtown into the busy part of the city, the street traffic grew heavier, Then suddenly Kate and I were bumped hard against each other. The cab had stopped abruptly, slewing sideways in the slush of the pavement. Then it jerked, starting forward again, and I sat up, hearing our driver cursing, and I lowered my window to stick my head out, and the noise was hard to believe.
We were at the intersection where Broadway crosses Fifth, and vehicles were pouring from Broadway to join our traffic stream, which was just possible, or to fight their way across it, which was almost impossible. Nearly every vehicle had four wheels and every wheel was wrapped in iron that smashed and rang against the cobbles, every horse had four iron-shod hoofs that did the same, and there was no control whatsoever. Wheels clattered, wood groaned, chains rattled, leather creaked, whips cracked against horseflesh, men shouted and cursed, and no street I've ever seen of the twentieth century made even half that brain-numbing sound.
Bulling their way across Fifth or Broadway were varnished delivery wagons, each with a single slim horse; enormous-wheeled, flat-bedded wagons loaded sky-high with barrels, crates, sacks, some pulled by as many as three tandem teams of immense steam-breathing dray horses; carriages of black, maroon, green, brown, some shabby, some elegant and glinting with glass and polish. They trotted, lumbered, or rattled over the stones, or they slowed or stopped short in little knots and clusters; Kate was leaning out her window and we saw a carriage horse at the intersection rear high on his hind legs, whinnying, and I saw a truck driver come out of Broadway, standing before his seat to force his way across Fifth, slashing out with his whip at his own horses and at any others who got in his way. Other drivers simply sat in numb patience, hunched and motionless against the cold, completely out in the open on their high wooden benches, wrapped to the waist in drab torn-edged blankets, wearing fur or knit caps pulled down low, and enormous coats of stained cloth or balding fur. Then we were across, resuming our steady clip-clop down Fifth, and I yelled at the driver, "There ought to be traffic lights!" and he opened his slide.
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br /> "What's that?"
"They ought to have signal lights to control the traffic," I said, but of course he just looked at me, then slid the panel closed. At Washington Square we turned left—there was no arch at the entrance, and to me, again, it looked as though it had been removed—over to Broadway, and I sat with Kate's hand in mine, my body, senses, and capacity for surprise used up. Kate laid her head back on the hard tufted-leather upholstery, and I did, too, watching the telegraph wires, which had appeared as soon as we turned into Broadway, angle endlessly across the top of my window. I didn't sit up or look out again till Chambers Street. Then, a block ahead on Kate's side, I looked out and saw City Hall, and it was so good to see something familiar that I dragged out my watch; it was five twenty, there was time to walk, and I rapped on the roof.
We walked south, on past City Hall and the little park before it. I said, "This is the original City Hall you can't fight, you know," and Kate smiled. Then we crossed the street to the big main post office which filled the triangle of land just across from City Hall Park where Park Row ends at Broadway. By the time we got around to the front entrance of the post office, Kate and I were grinning at each other; it was such a ridiculous building, all windows and ornamental stone columns rising five stories to a roof of shingled towers; cast-iron railings; an ornamental cupola; and, fluttering from a flagpole, a long pointed pennant on which was lettered POST OFFICE.
Inside, it was tiled floor and brass spittoons, dark wood, pebbled glass, and gaslights. We found an enormous panel of ornate brass letter-drops labeled CITY, BROOKLYN, STATEN ISLAND, ANNEXED DISTRICT, together with separate drops for each state and territory, and CANADA, NEWFOUNDLAND, MEXICO, SOUTH AMERICA, EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, and OCEANIA. Beyond this great panel was an entire wall of thousands of private numbered boxes. It was just past five thirty, and Kate at one side and I at the other, we took positions beside the big panel and began our wait.
I suppose some fifty-odd people came in and dropped letters into those slots in the next fifteen minutes, nearly all of them men; and the look of astonishment and disgust on Kate's face was something to see. Because just about every last man, without breaking stride, aimed a shot of thick brown tobacco juice at one of the several dozen cuspidors scattered around the big floor. Some were expert, hitting the mark squarely and audibly, then walking on toward or past us looking pleased and self-satisfied. Others missed by a foot or more, and now, our eyes used to the gloom of the feeble lighting, we saw that the floor was soiled everywhere you looked; and I saw Kate reach down the side of one leg, gather up her skirts, and stand holding them a good two inches from the floor.
We waited, minute after minute, people streaming in and out, the squeak and clatter of the hinged brass flaps of the many letter drops almost never entirely stopping. I was sure Kate was picturing, as I was, the blue envelope, singed at one end, covered on the back with a man's last words. Were we about to see it again? Maybe not; it was possible that it had been posted at an outside mailbox, and at the thought I was instantly certain it had been, that we were never going to see "the sending of" the letter that would "cause the Destruction by Fire of the entire World...."
And then here he came, at ten minutes of six by the big lobby clock, shoving through the heavy doors. Here he came, walking fast and full of purpose, a black-bearded round-bellied John Bull of a man, and the excitement flared so that for an instant I literally could not see. Filling my vision now, here he came heading across the great tiled floor directly for us, and his hairy right hand held the long slim robin's-egg-blue envelope. His stubby, flat-topped plug hat hung jauntily on the back of his head; and his unbuttoned overcoat, swept behind him by the speed of his walk, exposed the long curve of his belly shoved belligerently forward. His chin was lifted, thrusting his stiff beard almost horizontally outward as though he were defying the world, and a corner of his mouth gripped a cigar butt, lifting his lip so that he appeared to be snarling.
He was an imposing and memorable man, and he didn't see me, didn't see anyone; his brown fierce little eyes looked straight ahead, lost in his own concerns and purpose and the importance of the act he was about to perform. And then we saw what we had come across the years to see.
He thrust the long blue envelope toward the brass slot marked CITY and there was an instant when I had a glimpse of its face. I saw the strange green stamp, slightly tilted to the right; saw it in memory, canceled, and saw it in actuality, queerly unmarked; saw the slanted script, old and browning in memory, fresh-written and sharply black in actuality, but reading identically: Andrew W. Carmody, Esq., 589 Fifth Avenue.... The end of the envelope, unsinged and unopened now, pushed the brass flap inward, the hand holding it turned at the wrist, a diamond ring gleaming. Then the blue envelope was gone, the brass flap still swinging, its mysterious journey toward the future begun.
The man had turned on his heel, was walking swiftly toward the outer doors, and—that was all we'd come to see but we simply weren't able to let him walk out and away, into the night and lost forever—Kate and I stepped forward to follow.
We pushed through the doors, and it was dark out now. Our man turned north, back the way we'd come, walking along the Broadway side of the post office. We followed, watching him pass through the yellowy circles at the base of each streetlamp, the light sliding along the silk curves of his hat. Beyond the curb Broadway lay in almost complete darkness, its traffic still noisy but much less heavy. And now the traffic was dim shapes and moving shadows visible only in bits and pieces. You'd see a fan shape of muddy spokes revolving through the swaying light of a lantern slung from a van's axle, but the wagon itself and its driver and team would be lost in the blackness; or see the shine of a silvery door handle and the waxed curve of a jouncing carriage body under its own flickering side lamp, and nothing more of it. Across the dark street, the windows and doorways of business houses were almost dark, their shapes silhouetted only by turned-down night-lights. Pedestrians—the last of the office workers, I supposed—hurried past us, their faces yellowing and coming momentarily clear as they approached and passed through the cones of dim street-lighting, pale and almost lost in the in-between blackness. Across the street a man, a dark blur against the dimly lighted doorways and windows, carried a pole, and with this, as he walked, he reached up into each dark streetlamp, touching it into light.
I'd felt Kate's arm tighten under mine, drawing my arm closer to her side, and I understood why. This strange dim street, still clattering steel against cobble in a blackness relieved by squares, rectangles and cones of vague light whose very color was strange, had me uneasy, too. And yet—oh, God, just to be here!—something in me responded to it and the mystery of the hurrying, dimly seen people around us, and I knew Rube Prien had been right: This was the greatest possible adventure.
My arm squeezed down on Kate's, halting her beside me. Just beyond a streetlamp ahead, our man had abruptly turned to the curb and stepped out into the street. Now he stood within the slightly trembling circle of light on the cobbles, hat gleaming on the back of his head, belly jutting, looking past us to the south, his head moving from side to side trying to see through the oncoming traffic in the unmistakable attitude of a man impatiently searching for a bus. Vague in the dark of the street beside us, a heavy wagon trundled past. Kate and I watched its lantern jolting and swaying under the rear axle, watched its heavy black bulk clatter toward the puddle of yellow light ahead and the man standing inside it. The driver stood up, sharply silhouetted for us against the streetlight ahead. He was shouting, cursing, and we saw his arm move fast and heard the crack of his whip. The man standing in the street facing him lifted his head, jutting his beard, and we stood watching him stare up at the driver high above him without a change of expression and without budging or intention to budge. We stared at the driver's back, saw his whip arm lift high in threat. Then we saw the move of his left shoulder as he twitched his left rein. And under the lamp the horse and then the wagon curved around the man on the street. Th
e upraised whip passed directly over the shining hat; but neither whip nor the man under it moved. Then, disappearing into the darkness ahead, the driver shouted an obscenity over his shoulder, and our man tossed back his head and—I thought his hat would tumble down his back, but it did not—he laughed.
We'd had to resume our walk, slowing our pace, but we were very nearly abreast of him as he peered once more to the south, then swung impatiently away toward the curb. "A bus?" he said, as though suddenly astonished. "Why should I ever wait for a bus again!" He stepped up onto the walk, Kate and I looking out into the street pretending to ignore him; he was only a step ahead of us now. He turned to walk rapidly north, and we stopped, giving him time to draw ahead.
He didn't go far. We stood waiting, watching, and he walked quickly along a row of four or five hansom cabs lined up to the street corner ahead, and stopped at the first in line. "Home!" he said, his voice ringing out happy and exuberant as he reached for the door handle. "All the way home, and in style!"
"And where might that be?" The faint silhouette of the driver leaned over the side of his exposed seat, his voice sardonic.
