Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

by Philip Kindred Dick

  I guess I killed him, he realized. I got him yesterday, at Harman’s house. When I said that about his bankbook being a fake. It took him a while, though. Thank God he didn’t drop to the floor then and there. Thank God the machinery ran on awhile longer, probably out of habit rather than intent.

  Al thought, He always expected to get pinned under a car in his garage. That’s how he anticipated it. But that’s not how it worked out. He was killed by a flock of words. My words.

  Starting up his car he drove off in search of a coffee shop where he could get breakfast.

  On Sacramento Avenue he found a coffee shop which he knew, and there he ordered breakfast. Most of the customers were men; they read the sports section of the morning Chronicle, drank their coffee and ate their fried potatoes, bacon and eggs. The place was warm, yellow with light, and it cheered Al up. It made him feel less alone.

  While he was eating, a Negro customer came up and seated himself beside him. “Ain’t you Mr. Miller?” the man said.

  Al knew the man slightly; he had passed by the lot a couple of times. So he nodded.

  The man said, “The doctor looking for you.”

  “What doctor?”

  “Doctor Do,” the man said, and then slid from his stool, and sidled on out of the coffee shop, onto the sidewalk.

  As soon as he had finished eating, Al went to the pay phone booth and dialed Tootie’s number.

  “Hey, man,” Tootie said, when he recognized Al’s voice. “They looking for you.”

  “Who?”

  “Them guys. What don’t mean you not a bit of good.”

  “Sheoot,” Al said, falling into the vernacular.

  “You better not say that,” Tootie said. “You better get it into you crappy head you in trouble.”

  “Name the guys.”

  “I don’t know whom them is. I just heard them looking for you to get you. Didn’t you done them something in? Be frank. They not pick on you for nothing.”

  “Beats me,” Al said.

  Tootie said, “What I hear, you kill someone.”

  “Balls,” Al said.

  “And that cost them a lot of money. Somebody I hear say it cost them people around a hundred thousand dollar.”

  “There ain’t no hundred thousand dollar,” Al said angrily, caught up in spite of himself in Tootie’s mad account.

  “What you going to do?” Tootie said.

  “Nothing,” Al said.

  “You better buy yourself a gun and lay low.”

  “Balls on that,” Al said.

  “Anyhow, I warn you,” Tootie said. “I hear this kind of stuff and it always prove out to be correct. I think whether you know it or not, you up against the big.”

  “Okay,” Al said. He started to hang up.

  “I hear you scratching around there,” Tootie said. “Getting ready to ring off.”

  “I’ll go to the district attorney,” Al said, “and tell him all I know. They won’t touch me.”

  “Who you kill?” Tootie said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you know.”

  “Just some guy that got in my way.”

  “You daffy,” Tootie said. “I ring off myself.” The phone clicked. Presently Al hung up his own receiver and left the booth.

  Good of him to warn me, he said to himself.

  Maybe he’s right, he thought. I should buy a gun and lay low. But where can I go? The Harman organization has my complete record, all the facts about me: every place I’ve lived, where I was born, where my wife works, what I’ve done since I was in grammar school. They can probably turn it over to a psychologist and he can predict exactly what I’ll do. They’ll know exactly where to find me, what street, what number, which particular room. That’s what modern industrial technology can do.

  He bought a Chronicle, and, reseated at the counter, began to read over the “men wanted” ads. There were no jobs worth talking about. I could be a salesman, he decided. Or service penny-gum machines. He read the personals then, and after that the personals in business. Look how some guys stay alive, he thought. I will come into your own home and hypnotize you into not smoking. Or if you want, I will show up at your kid’s birthday party and entertain with puppets. His game went back to the personals. “Inside dope on bughouse,” he read. “Thank St. Jude for saving my heirloom furniture.” Christ. He put the paper away.

  Early in the afternoon Julie showed up at their apartment. He had been taking a nap. Astonished to see her so early, he sat up. But before he could speak, Julie said, “I’ve been fired.” She began taking off her shoes and stockings.

  “Why?” he said.

  Julie said, “Some customer called in and told the office manager that I didn’t believe in God. He had me come into his office and he asked me and I told him it was so, but it wasn’t any of Western Carbon and Carbide’s business. But he said the morals of the employees were Western Carbon and Carbide’s business. And he also said that they never found that college girls worked out. They’re never satisfied with their jobs. They’re always troublemakers.” She hung up her coat in the closet.

  So Tootie was right. They were out to get him.

  “Listen,” he said. “How would you like to leave the Bay Area?”

  “And go where?”

  “Beats me,” he said. “But we’ll work it out.”

  “There’re lots of jobs in the Bay Area,” Julie said, going into the kitchen and beginning to pile dishes into the sink. “I won’t have any trouble. I’ve already listed myself at some of the employment agencies. You have to expect this sort of thing. Anyhow, you have your job.”

  “No,” he said.

  “No what? What do you mean? You mean after one day you’re not working there anymore, for that man?” She ceased working with the dishes and came into the bedroom to stand facing him. “How come you’re home? Why aren’t you at work?”

  Al said, “We’re in trouble.”

  “You held that job just one day, didn’t you?” Julie said. “That good job.”

  He nodded.

  “You quit?”

  “Yes,” he said finally.

  “Will you tell me why?”

  “I don’t know why,” he said. “I know what happened, but I don’t know why. You have to take my word. There wasn’t anything else I could do.” He faced her, his hands in his pockets. His wife had folded her arms tightly before her, as if she were cold. Her face had a withered, old expression, and all her features, her nose and eyes and mouth, became by degrees smaller. The bones themselves seemed to shrink. As if, he thought, the life-force inside her were thinning out. Turning to air. Vanishing. Puffing away as she breathed in and out. Maybe that was all it was anyhow, merely air. Air in all of them, that kept them alive.

  “I’m going to divorce you,” she said.

  He made a move toward her, to reassure her. To warm her back up to some kind of life. But she drew away. She avoided him.

  “This is no time for this,” he said. “This sort of thing.”

  “I suppose you’re going to hit me,” she said. “Like you did that poor man.”

  “What poor man?”

  “That drunk who got onto your lot, and you hit him.”

  He did not remember. He had no idea what she was talking about. “We’re both out of work,” he said, “and we’re going to have to start over, probably somewhere else entirely. But we’ll make it back up. I learned a lot from this.”

  “No,” she said. “We’re through.”

  After a time he said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you. Give it one month. If we—” He hesitated.

  “Yes,” she said with bitterness. “If we don’t find some sort of job. We. Not you.”

  He said, “If I don’t have something worthwhile in a month, then we’ll break up.”

  “I can’t make a deal with you,” Julie said, “because—do you want to know why? Can you face the truth? You’re not honest. You can’t be trusted.” She moved farth
er away, as if afraid. Dreading his reaction. But he did nothing. “Now hit me,” she said. “And prove how reliable you are. How honest you are.”

  The phone rang.

  As she went past him to answer it, he said, “Let it go.”

  “It’s probably one of the agencies,” she said. “For me.” She picked up the receiver, said hello. Then she put her hand over the receiver and said to him, “Do you know somebody named Denkmal?”

  “God no,” he said.

  “Anyway its for you,” she said. She held it out to him.

  He shook his head no.

  Julie, her hand over the phone, said to him in a soft voice, “I’m not telling your lies for you. You’ll have to do it yourself from now on.” Again she held the phone out.

  So he took the phone from her and said hello.

  A mans voice said, “Al Miller?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Say, Miller, my names Denkmal. I own the barbershop. You know, across from you. Listen, I can see your lot from here. You better get down here.”

  He hung up, ran past Julie and out of the apartment, downstairs and across the sidewalk, to the Chevrolet.

  When he pulled up at the curb before the lot, the barber in his white uniform came across the street, through traffic, and up beside him. They stood together, facing the lot. Nothing stirred.

  Denkmal said, “I don’t know what they did. I thought they were customers, looking at cars.”

  “Did they go in the back?” Al said. He walked onto the lot, and the barber followed. The cars in the first line seemed okay.

  “They were doing something,” the barber said.

  It was the Marmon, in the back. They had broken all the glass, slashed the tires, ripped the seats, smashed the gauges of the dashboard. When he lifted the hood he saw that they had cut wires, torn parts loose. And the paint was ruined. They had gouged and scratched it, and with a hammer, dented the hood and doors. The headlights had been wrenched loose and broken. Looking down he saw that water was leaking out in a pool. They had smashed the radiator.

  “You better call the Oakland Police Department,” Denkmal said. “You had it almost completely rebuilt, didn’t you? I’ve been watching you; good Lord, you’ve been working on it for a couple of years.”

  “The motherfuckers,” Al said.

  Denkmal said, “It didn’t look like juveniles. Usually it’s juveniles that do vandalism.”

  “No,” he said. “It wasn’t kids.”

  “The police will say it was kids,” Denkmal said.

  Al thanked the barber for calling him. The barber went back across the street to his barbershop. Al remained on the lot, standing with his back to the ruined car, watching the traffic pass. Then he went into the little basalt blockhouse and shut the door and sat down, by himself.

  What else can they do? he asked himself. They got my wife’s job; mine was already gone. They got my Marmon. Maybe Tootie was right; maybe they’ll stick a shiv into me, or beat me up. Or rape Julie. Who knows? He did not know. He had cost Harman forty thousand dollars at least; perhaps more.

  He remembered how, as a kid, he had used a gun. The only time. He had had the job of feeding the chickens and ducks in their pens. He had gone down there and found field rats galloping around; so his dad had given him the.22 rifle and he had clambered up on the roof of the chicken house and sat cross-legged, above the pen, watching for the field rats to come out of their burrows. He had shot one. He had hit it in the hindquarters and it had spun around like a gear in a clock, its feet flailing. Around and around it had gone, and then, just when he thought it was going to die, it bolted for its hole, made it, and disappeared.

  In his mind he tried to picture how a man would look, hit somewhere, spinning around and around. I can’t make it, he thought. Fuck it. I won’t buy a gun.

  For an indefinite long time he remained there, at his desk, in thought. And then he noticed that several cars were parked at the curb a little way down. The garage doors had been opened, and Lydia Fergesson was coming out of the garage. With her were several men in business suits, all looking grave.

  Seeing him in the little house, Lydia came across the lot toward him. “Mr. Miller,” she said, opening the door of the house. “We were able to stop the check. The money I have taken out and put for safekeeping in a safety-deposit box.” Her eyes flashed as she spoke. Her face had heavy makeup on it, and she wore a fur neckpiece, black coat, dark stockings, and carried a big leather purse. Her whole body vibrated with tension, almost a kind of excitement. Near even to frenzy.

  “Good,” he said.

  “The body lies in state at this mortuary. Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. Eh, Mr. Miller?” She put down a white embossed card on his desk. “The service will be tomorrow in the morning, at eleven. Then he will be cremated.”

  He nodded, picking up the card.

  “Do you wish to go to view the deceased?” Lydia said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t decide.”

  “There is always the problem of what clothes,” she said. “They contacted me in that matter. He had new ties he had bought, but it was my conclusion not to use anything but what we are all familiar with. The minister is Unitarian. Do you know songs he enjoyed?”

  “What?” Al said.

  “They play on the organ songs he enjoyed.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then they will play hymns,” Lydia said. “Worse luck.”

  Al said, “I hastened his death, by arguing with him at Harman’s house. Did you know that?”

  “You were doing your duty.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He gave me a complete account of the proceedings. He recognized that you were attempting to save him from himself.”

  Al stared down at his desk.

  “He did not hold it against you.”

  Al nodded.

  “Please go and view the remains,” Lydia said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Today,” she said. “Because if you do not do it today there will be no remains to view.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You’re not going to,” Lydia said. “Why not?”

  “I don’t see any point in it,” he said.

  Lydia said, “No one can make you do anything, Mr. Miller; I recognize that about you. You do exactly as you want. I have been thinking about you today; you are very much in my thoughts. I want to bestow on you enough money to get you started again.”

  He glanced at her, taken utterly off guard.

  “Your economic existence is in ruins,” Lydia said. “Is it not? Because of your obedience to duty. Someone must restore you by stepping in and aiding you, someone who can. I have the money.”

  He did not know what to say.

  “You are thinking,” she said, “that you would be sharing in the loot.”

  At that, he laughed.

  “Wash your conscience clear,” Lydia said. “You have nothing to feel guilty for.”

  “I want to feel guilty,” he said.

  “Why, Mr. Miller?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You want possibly to share in his death.”

  Al said nothing.

  “Instead of viewing him,” she said, “This is what you do. It is your system.”

  He shrugged, still gazing down at the desk.

  Opening her big leather purse, Lydia searched and then put out her hand with something; he saw that it was a five-dollar bill. She pushed the bill into his shirt pocket. As he stared at it, she said, “I want you to buy flowers to send to the mortuary for display.”

  “I can buy flowers,” he said.

  “No you can’t,” she said calmly. “Can you? Have you ever done that? Not in your life, my good young friend. Nor have you ever gone to a funeral. You do not know how. There are so many things in this world which you personally do not understand how to go about doing. You are, I would say, if it does not hurt, a barbarian.”


  “A barbarian,” he repeated.

  “But you have instincts,” she said. She was moving out of the little house, shutting the door after her. “Good instincts which will save you, if they have not already. You must depend on them, and also, my good young friend, on letting someone else show you how to get about in this cruel old world of ours which, alas, you understand so very little. So dreadfully very little.”

  “God in heaven,” he said, looking up at her. Her peculiar choice of words, for a moment, frightened him.

  She smiled. “What do you think? What do you feel? Tell me now, what your instincts say to you about how to live. How you should begin your life, really for the first time.”

  To himself he thought, They tell me to kill myself. But he did not say it aloud; he said nothing.

  The door closed. Lydia had gone. He remained where he was, glad to be alone again; glad she was gone. But a moment later the door once more opened. “Mr. Miller,” she said. “I notice that the superb old car of yours is in tatters. What happened to it?”

  Al said, “They took it out on the car.”

  “That was my impression,” she said, “upon seeing it with broken glass and the fabric ripped.” She re-entered and seated herself at the desk, facing him. “What I will do for you,” she said, “is buy that from you. I know from what I heard in the past, mostly from you, what you expected to get from it. About two thousand dollars. Did you not?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I will buy it for that.” She laid out a checkbook, and, with a fountain pen, began carefully to write out a check.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She smiled as she wrote.

  “Aren’t you surprised I’m taking it?” he said. It had surprised him, his reaction. His acceptance. “I need the two thousand dollars,” he said. It was as simple as that. With two thousand dollars he could get away. Otherwise, he could not. Probably the two thousand dollars would save his life and his wife’s life.