The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “It was the clearing of a throat.”

  “What’re you saying, Arthur?”

  “I’m saying that Stanton C. Baravale was sitting up, looking terrible sick.”

  “Why shouldn’t he if he was dead?”

  “Wait a second, Rhoda. Let me get on with it. The man sat there an’ he looks at me, then he looks around, then to me, then he says—but soft, he was so soft I could hardly hear ‘im. Like this. He says, ‘Who’re you?’”

  Rhoda stacked their plates, pushed them aside, pulled the pie tin toward her and began cutting it, carefully.

  “Arthur, are you telling the truth?”

  “As God is my judge.”

  “Then go ahead,” said Rhoda. “Only speak up while I get the coffee off.”

  “In twenty-eight years,” shouted Arthur, “it’s happened to me twice only. The other time, you remember, the Winkleman boy how he came to in the shop an’ it was in all the papers, an’ he’s still around, I believe. Since nineteen twenty-eight.”

  Rhoda returned with the coffee-pot, sat down and poured two cups.

  “He’s still around,” she said, “and a very mean job he turned out. All the time in trouble.”

  “So when Stanton C. Baravale said, ‘Who’re you?’ like that, I told him. Naturally. An’ where he was an’ he asks me how come. So I said, ‘Well, the fact is, Mr. Baravale, you died last night. 10:53 p.m.’ ‘I knew it must be something like that,’ he says. ‘I feel light as a feather. An’ cold, too,’ he says. ‘I must have a temperature of below zero.’ So I says, ‘You just relax, sir, an’ I’ll get Summit General on the phone in one second.’ ‘Don’t do that,’ he says. ‘It’ll just cause talk, an’ I’m goin’ out again in a minute.’ “

  “Think of that,” said Rhoda, sipping her boiling coffee.

  “Darling,” continued the undertaker, “I want to tell you, I just stood there. I was in a state of shock. Next thing, he was talkin’ again. ‘What was it?’ he says, still whisperin’, y’know. ‘There was something worryin’ me I didn’t settle, that’s why I came back. I know,’ he says, a little louder. ‘You!’”

  “You?” echoed Rhoda.

  “That’s it. He says to me how like a fool he never specified any burial details, an’ just left it general. That it was the last thing he was thinkin’ about before he went off, an’ some kind of leftover power in his brain must’ve brought him back for long enough.”

  “Arthur, I don’t begrudge you that extry slug. Not for one moment.”

  “ ‘Now then,’ he says to me, ‘what’s it going to cost?’ ‘I really couldn’t say,’ I says. ‘You better,’ he says. ‘The way that fool Immerman drew the damn thing it reads “after all funeral expenses have been paid,” and so forth. Well, hell,’ he says, ‘that can mean anything. Moment like this, my kids feel bad, they’re bound to spend more’n is necessary and what’s the sense to that? Now what’s the cheapest?’ he says. ‘All depends,’ I answer him, ‘how many persons, cars, music or no, casket.’ At this he leans on his elbow an’ he says, ‘Six people, one car, no music, cheapest box you carry.’ So I says, ‘But what if the instructions I get—’ He never let me finish. ‘God damn it,’ he says. ‘Give me some paper an’ pen’n ink.’ I give it him, he writes a page, then he says, ‘You have any trouble, show that!’ Well, Rhoda, by this time I was comin’ to myself a little more. An’ I says, ‘Please let me use the phone.’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘just give me your gentleman’s word you’ll handle it my way.’ ‘But, look,’ I says, ‘this paper’s no good. You’re legally dead as of 10:53 p.m. last night. ‘That’s why I put last week’s date on,’ he says. ‘An’ it’s in my handwriting, no mistake about that.’ Then he says to me, ‘What’s the time now?’ ‘Eight thirteen a.m.,’ I says. ‘Well, let’s make it 8:15, officially,’ he says, and lays down again and says the date. ‘January five, nineteen fifty-six,’ he says. Thank you, Mr. Roos,’ he says. ‘Been nice talkin’ to you.’ An’ then, Rhoda, he just by God went out!”

  “Well, I never,” said Rhoda. “Gimme a hand here, will you, Arthur, please?”

  Together they cleared the table, replaced the lace centerpiece and the wax-fruit bowl. In the kitchen, he washed, she dried. They worked for a time with swift efficiency, without speaking. Finally Rhoda asked, “What’re you goin’ t’do?”

  “Y’got me there, dear.”

  “You mentioned to anyone? Thor?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “They ordered up anything yet?”

  “Doggone right. Man brought a letter from the lawyer’s place. Big chapel, minimum three hundred guests. Organ and string trio. Thirty cars. Canopy and chairs. Memorial reception after, main hall. Organ and string trio. Refreshments. Rhoda, one of the biggest things we’ve ever handled. I mean it’s between seven, eight hundred clear profit no matter how you look.”

  “You got the page he wrote there?”

  “Right here,” said Arthur.

  “Lemme have a look it.”

  “Wait’ll I wipe my hands here.” Having dried his hands, he took the paper from his breast pocket and handed it to his wife.

  She read it carefully. “Well,” she said. “Only one thing to do.”

  “That’s right,” said Arthur. “You want to or me?”

  “I’ll,” said Rhoda, stepping to the gas range.

  “Careful, dear,” cautioned Arthur. “Don’t burn yourself.”

  “No, darling,” said his wife. She turned on the gas jet nearest her. The automatic monitor ignited the burner and Rhoda held a corner of the paper over it. She turned the jet off as the paper began to burn, neatly. Holding it before her she crossed the kitchen to the sink and joined her husband. Now she carefully placed the flaming handful in the sink. They both stood there, watching the paper turn to ash. Arthur put his arm around his wife, tenderly.

  “It’s not like he couldn’t spare it,” he said.

  “An’ anyways,” added Rhoda, “why cheat family and friends from paying proper last respects?”

  “—crossed my mind, too,” said Arthur.

  “Furthermore, he had no right to do what he did.”

  “None whatsoever,” agreed Arthur. “A man legally dead, after all.”

  “You know where we’re gonna sit tonight?” asked Rhoda.

  “Loges.”

  “Yes. Costly, but smoking.”

  In the sink, the flame died. Rhoda slapped at the black ash, lightly, with her forefinger. Arthur turned on the faucet. Suddenly the sink was clear.

  The undertaker and his wife washed their hands together and went to the movies. They arrived in time to see not only the newsreel and the cartoon, but Coming Attractions as well.

  <>

  * * * *

  ANYTHING BOX

  by Zenna Henderson

  It is difficult to think about a Zenna Henderson story. When I pick it up and turn the pages to refresh my memory, the warm feeling comes back to me so strongly that it is next to impossible to remember that it is hunger she is writing about: the urgent crying hunger of human loneliness.

  Most frequently, as here, she writes about children; a child struggling against society’s insistence that as the skullbones harden, the soul must be locked inside, alone. In the hands of another writer, these could be ugly stories; but I saved this one for the last, because it left me feeling so good. . . .

  * * * *

  I suppose it was about the second week of school that I noticed Sue-lynn particularly. Of course, I’d noticed her name before and checked her out automatically for maturity and ability and probable performance the way most teachers do with their students during the first weeks of school. She had checked out mature and capable and no worry as to performance so I had pigeonholed her— setting aside for the moment the little nudge that said, “Too quiet”—with my other no-worrys until the fluster and flurry of the first days had died down a little.

  I remember my noticing day. I had collapsed into my chair for a brief respite from gu
iding hot little hands through the intricacies of keeping a Crayola within reasonable bounds and the room was full of the relaxed, happy hum of a pleased class as they worked away, not realizing that they were rubbing “blue” into their memories as well as onto their papers. I was meditating on how individual personalities were beginning to emerge among the thirty-five or so heterogeneous first graders I had, when I noticed Sue-lynn—really noticed her—for the first time.

  She had finished her paper—far ahead of the others as usual—and was sitting at her table facing me. She had her thumbs touching in front of her on the table and her fingers curving as though they held something between them—something large enough to keep her fingertips apart and angular enough to bend her fingers as if for corners. It was something pleasant that she held—pleasant and precious. You could tell that by the softness of her hold. She was leaning forward a little, her lower ribs pressed against the table, and she was looking, completely absorbed, at the table between her hands. Her face was relaxed and happy. Her mouth curved in a tender half-smile, and as I watched, her lashes lifted and she looked at me with a warm share-the-pleasure look. Then her eyes blinked and the shutters came down inside them. Her hand flicked into the desk and out. She pressed her thumbs to her forefingers and rubbed them slowly together. Then she laid one hand over the other on the table and looked down at them with the air of complete denial and ignorance children can assume so devastatingly.

  The incident caught my fancy and I began to notice Sue-lynn. As I consciously watched her, I saw that she spent most of her free time staring at the table between her hands, much too unobtrusively to catch my busy attention. She hurried through even the fun-est of fun papers and then lost herself in looking. When Davie pushed her down at recess, and blood streamed from her knee to her ankle, she took her bandages and her tear-smudged face to that comfort she had so readily—if you’ll pardon the expression—at hand, and emerged minutes later, serene and dry-eyed. I think Davie pushed her down because of her Looking. I know the day before he had come up to me, red-faced and squirming.

  “Teacher,” he blurted. “She Looks!”

  “Who looks?” I asked absently, checking the vocabulary list in my book, wondering how on earth I’d missed where, one of those annoying wh words that throw the children for a loss.

  “Sue-lynn. She Looks and Looks!”

  “At you?” I asked.

  “Well—” He rubbed a forefinger below his nose, leaving a clean streak on his upper lip, accepted the proffered Kleenex and put it in his pocket. “She looks at her desk and tells lies. She says she can see—”

  “Can see what?” My curiosity picked up its ears.

  “Anything,” said Davie. “It’s her Anything Box. She can see anything she wants to.”

  “Does it hurt you for her to Look?”

  “Well,” he squirmed. Then he burst out. “She says she saw me with a dog biting me because I took her pencil— she said.” He started a pell-mell verbal retreat. “She thinks I took her pencil. I only found—” His eyes dropped. “I’ll give it back.”

  “I hope so,” I smiled. “If you don’t want her to look at you, then don’t do things like that.”

  “Dern girls,” he muttered, and clomped back to his seat.

  So I think he pushed her down the next day to get back at her for the dogbite.

  Several times after that I wandered to the back of the room, casually in her vicinity, but always she either saw or felt me coming and the quick sketch of her hand disposed of the evidence. Only once I thought I caught a glimmer of something—but her thumb and forefinger brushed in sunlight, and it must have been just that.

  Children don’t retreat for no reason at all, and though Sue-lynn did not follow any overt pattern of withdrawal, I started to wonder about her. I watched her on the playground, to see how she tracked there. That only confused me more.

  She had a very regular pattern. When the avalanche of children first descended at recess, she avalanched along with them and nothing in the shrieking, running, dodging mass resolved itself into a withdrawn Sue-lynn. But after ten minutes or so, she emerged from the crowd, tousle-haired, rosy-cheeked, smutched with dust, one shoelace dangling, and through some alchemy that I coveted for myself, she suddenly became untousled, undusty and un-smutched.

  And there she was, serene and composed on the narrow little step at the side of the flight of stairs just where they disappeared into the base of the pseudo-Corinthian column that graced Our Door and her cupped hands received whatever they received and her absorption in what she saw became so complete that the bell came as a shock every time.

  And each time, before she joined the rush to Our Door, her hand would sketch a gesture to her pocket, if she had one, or to the tiny ledge that extended between the hedge and the building. Apparently she always had to put the Anything Box away, but never had to go back to get it.

  I was so intrigued by her putting whatever it was on the ledge that once I actually went over and felt along the grimy little outset. I sheepishly followed my children into the hall, wiping the dust from my fingertips, and Sue-lynn’s eyes brimmed amusement at me without her mouth’s smiling. Her hands mischievously squared in front of her and her thumbs caressed a solidness as the line of children swept into the room.

  I smiled too because she was so pleased with having outwitted me. This seemed to be such a gay withdrawal that I let my worry die down. Better this manifestation than any number of other ones that I could name.

  Someday, perhaps, I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut. I wish I had before that long afternoon when we primary teachers worked together in a heavy cloud of Ditto fumes, the acrid smell of India ink, drifting cigarette smoke and the constant current of chatter, and I let Alpha get me started on what to do with our behavior problems. She was all raunched up about the usual rowdy loudness of her boys and the eternal clack of her girls, and I—bless my stupidity—gave her Sue-lynn as an example of what should be our deepest concern rather than the outbursts from our active ones.

  “You mean she just sits and looks at nothing?” Alpha’s voice grated into her questioning tone.

  “Well, I can’t see anything,” I admitted. “But apparently she can.”

  “But that’s having hallucinations!” Her voice went up a notch. “I read a book once—”

  “Yes.” Marlene leaned across the desk to flick ashes in the ash tray. “So we have heard and heard and heard!”

  “Well!” sniffed Alpha. “It’s better than never reading a book.”

  “We’re waiting,” Marlene leaked smoke from her nostrils, “for the day when you read another book. This one must have been uncommonly long.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Alpha’s forehead wrinkled with concentration. “It was only about—” Then she reddened and turned her face angrily away from Marlene.

  “Apropos of our discussion—” she said pointedly. “It sounds to me like that child has a deep personality disturbance. Maybe even a psychotic—whatever—” Her eyes glistened faintly as she turned the thought over.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, surprised into echoing her words at my sudden need to defend Sue-lynn. “There’s something about her. She doesn’t have that apprehensive, hunched-shoulder, don’t-hit-me-again air about her that so many withdrawn children have.” And I thought achingly of one of mine from last year that Alpha had now and was verbally bludgeoning back into silence after all my work with him. “She seems to have a happy, adjusted personality, only with this odd little—plus.”

  “Well, I’d be worried if she were mine,” said Alpha. “I’m glad all my kids are so normal.” She sighed complacently. “I guess I really haven’t anything to kick about. I seldom ever have problem children except wigglers and yakkers, and a holler and a smack can straighten them out”

  Marlene caught my eye mockingly, tallying Alpha’s class with me, and I turned away with a sigh. To be so happy— well, I suppose ignorance does help.

  “You’d better do somethin
g about that girl,” Alpha shrilled as she left the room. “She’ll probably get worse and worse as time goes on. Deteriorating, I think the book said.”

  I had known Alpha a long time and I thought I knew how much of her talk to discount, but I began to worry about Sue-lynn. Maybe this was a disturbance that was more fundamental than the usual run of the mill that I had met up with. Maybe a child can smile a soft, contented smile and still have little maggots of madness flourishing somewhere inside.

  Or, by gorry! I said to myself defiantly, maybe she does have an Anything Box. Maybe she is looking at something precious. Who am I to say no to anything like that?

  An Anything Box! What could you see in an Anything Box? Heart’s desire? I felt my own heart lurch—just a little—the next time Sue-lynn’s hands curved. I breathed deeply to hold me in my chair. If it was her Anything Box, I wouldn’t be able to see my heart’s desire in it. Or would I? I propped my cheek up on my hand and doodled aimlessly on my time schedule sheet. How on earth, I wondered—not for the first time—do I manage to get myself off on these tangents?