Stop-Time

by Frank Conroy

  He believed he was potentially a great man, a visionary on the order of da Vinci or Jules Verne. At the same time he saw himself as a man of simple good sense whose mind was untainted by the prejudices of traditional education. He had no particular discipline, no way to show the world his talent, but far more important was his belief in himself. His fanatical faith in his own potential was the key to his personality and his reluctance to test that faith in the practical world the key to his behavior. “Look at Einstein,” he would say. “Failed mathematics in high school!” It was only the world that held Jean back, the petty machinations of a society all men knew to be unjust. He wouldn’t bother with the world, and yet, as he sat among men who actually held the power, he must have hoped that one of them would discover him. In the end it was all he could hope for.

  Of course no one offered him anything more significant than another glass of champagne. He was an obvious escort—tall, superbly handsome, and an expert dancer—an escort and no more, they must have thought, bought for show like her expensive clothes.

  After five or six weeks Jean began to get nervous. The novelty had worn off and she was still in the house, with all her belongings, making no preparations to leave. She’d run out of money and friends and her behavior was becoming stranger with every passing day. She hardly ever left the house, wandering back and forth from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom in a nightgown and pedal pushers, her hair uncombed, her eyes bright from barbiturates. She talked to herself in the hall, sometimes walking past me as if I wasn’t there, sometimes buttonholing me for an hour’s description of how sick she was. Occasionally a new note crept into her voice—a kind of whine, childlike, as if she were becoming a little girl again. She stopped eating, and even Jean was alarmed in the rapidity with which she lost weight from her already thin frame. She would burst from her room in a manic frenzy and make telephone calls all over the country, shouting into the mouthpiece, her body rigid with hate.

  At first Jean simply stayed out of the house, hoping she’d get bored and go away. He worked long hours and went to a lot of movies. He had coffee at Stanley’s Cafeteria instead of at home. Eventually he even stayed out for meals, but to no avail. Nell was dug in.

  In desperation he got the name of her lawyer and called for advice. He learned to his horror that she was highly suicidal and should be watched every minute of the day. For months people had been at work trying to arrange for her voluntary commitment when she had suddenly disappeared. The doctors believed that if she survived her suicidal compulsion a total nervous collapse was imminent As for immediate advice about getting her out of the house, the lawyer had nothing to say. Can we doubt that Jean’s hand shook as he hung up the phone?

  Panicked, he did the only thing he could think of. He sat down in front of the typewriter, two packs of Pall Malls and a pot of coffee at his elbow, and wrote a long, detailed letter to Dagmar explaining the entire situation from start to finish, showing clearly and indisputably the innocence and nobility of his motives, the sadness of life in general, and the extreme difficulty of his present situation in particular. Would she come home? Would she come home right away, thus forcing Nell to leave? He needed her help. There was no time to lose. Oh God, I can see him there at the kitchen table, the pages piled up in profusion his eyes squinting down through the cigarette smoke, his hands poised above the keyboard. I know his dizziness, the way he built the verbal edifice into an impenetrable fortress. He knew he was right! The clarity! The honesty! He’d been frightened, yes, badly frightened, but now he’d got things clear. Everything was going to be all right. Dagmar would have to return after reading the letter, she had no choice. As his hands came down to type out the final news, the topper, the supreme fact which by now he felt he didn’t even really need to include, that Nell was liable to kill herself at any moment right there in the house, he must have felt a tremendous sense of relief. His brain reeling with ten typewritten pages of nineteenth-century prose, he must have thought, as he divested himself of that ominous intelligence, that at last he could begin to discern the faint rays of a hopeful dawn.

  He mailed off his ten pages and waited an inordinately long time for the answer. It finally came. Eight words: “You got yourself into it. Get yourself out.” From the moment he read those words he stopped talking.

  A gray morning. I stood at the living room window looking down at the street. Behind me the apartment was empty —Alison still away, Nell Smith out to the druggist, and Jean somewhere on the streets of the city in his cab. Had Jean been home it would have made no difference—the most I saw of him since the letter was a brief flash as he came through the front door and crossed the hall to his room, locking the Yale lock quickly to seal himself in. I’d tried talking through the door but he wouldn’t answer. I stared at the meaningless stream of cars going by, my brain as empty and silent as the house around me. Within me sadness had given way to hopelessness. And I mean genuine hopelessness, when faith has evaporated and the imagination is dead, when life seems to have come finally and irrevocably to a standstill.

  It might have been that—the stillness inside me, the thanatoid silence frightening me into a last-ditch effort to stay alive, or maybe something pettier, the thought of school, the impossible prospect of another day in prison crystallizing my formless mind as the tap of a pencil will crystallize a supersaturated solution. The idea arrived in completed form. In a single breathless moment I became a new person. Run away! To Florida! Right now, this very moment! Blinded by revelation, it didn’t occur to me to make plans or preparations. I turned from the window, walked down the hall, and went out the door. It was as simple as that. I put my body into motion and disregarded the pounding of my heart.

  As I walked across the George Washington Bridge toward New Jersey the sun broke from behind the clouds. Bright rays caught the highest cables first and slipped down along the long, sweeping curves like molten silver until the whole airy structure shone with radiance. Far below, the water was still dark. A stiff breeze kept whipping my hair over my eyes but I paid no attention. I was seeing a new world. Everything seemed special—a telephone call box, the surface of the walkway, the cables, the cars rushing by—all of it was super-real, each image sharply defined in space and shimmering with vibrancy. The air itself was triple strength and seemed to clean out my lungs as I marched along.

  Descending into the architectural chaos on the other side I looked around at the public world—the sidewalks, empty lots, signs, diners, phone booths—conscious that these things were now the furniture of my life, that until I got to Florida they were all I had. I stood for a moment in front of a coin-operated milk machine, paralyzed by its significance. Put a quarter in the slot and the milk would come out. No questions, no ramifications, just the milk. One could live without words and without people.

  Route One wasn’t far away. I slipped across the traffic and turned south, walking steadily for a couple of miles before I found a long, fairly open stretch of road where cars could stop easily. Then I turned (for some reason I remember this precisely), put my left hand in my pocket and my right thumb in the air. I didn’t make the familiar long, sweeping gesture as the cars went by, I just held out my thumb. I was wearing khaki trousers, a light-blue shirt, and a leather jacket.

  My first ride was a ’49 Dodge. Running down the road to where it waited, I glanced at the license plate, only mildly disappointed to see “New Jersey.” (I’d been daydreaming of a single ride all the way to Florida.) I pulled open the door and jumped in quickly. “Thanks,” I said, breathing hard. The driver, a man of about thirty, pulled back into the traffic. A briefcase lay on the seat beside him and in the back I could see what looked like folded cardboard boxes, stacked flat and tied with string. A few loose papers lay beside the briefcase.

  “How far you going?” he asked.

  “To Florida. Fort Lauderdale, Florida.”

  “Well, I can take you about twenty miles before I turn off. ”

  “That’s fine. Thanks a lot.” />
  We rode in silence for some time. Now that I was on my way I felt almost lighthearted. Inside the comfortable car, mile after mile falling behind me, I felt myself growing expansive. I glanced down at the papers and read a letterhead.

  “How’s the cardboard box business?” I asked, pleased at my own cleverness.

  “Not bad,” he said. “It’s a living. Gets a little dull sometimes.”

  “Do you make them?”

  “No, I just sell them. Go around to factories and manufacturers and take their orders.”

  “I had a job working in a drugstore but I got fired for sleeping in the stockroom.”

  He laughed. “Aren’t you a little young to be going off to Florida?”

  I watched the road, not turning my head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, maybe not,” he said slowly, “maybe not.”

  “I’m fifteen.”

  “You don’t look fifteen, I can tell you that.”

  “I know, but it’s the truth.”

  “Well, I believe you. No reason why you should lie to me.” He drove for a while without saying anything. “Florida’s a long way. I guess you’re going to hitch all the way down?”

  “That’s right. I’m hoping for long rides, maybe even someone going to Miami.”

  “You figure on coming back?”

  “No.”

  “Not ever, uh?”

  “Nope. Not ever.”

  “Well there you are,” he said, and gazed out through the windshield.

  The flat, green Jersey meadows slipped by outside, wiped every few seconds by the dark blur of a telephone pole.

  “I ran away when I was seventeen,” he said suddenly, after miles of silence. “I never went back.”

  My head whipped around. “You did?” It seemed an incredible coincidence, but I believed him.

  “My old man was a bastard.” A faint smile appeared on his face. “He beat us up all the time. Best thing I ever did was leave.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “One morning he came at me in the barn and before I knew it I laid him out with a pitchfork. Wham! Right on the ear.” The smile was broader now. “He went down like a tree. I thought sure he was dead but of course he wasn’t. Just out cold.” He laughed. “I didn’t wait for him to come around, though. No sir. I left immediately.”

  I laughed with him. “Where’d you go?”

  “Well, I had a little money. Enough to eat for a while, anyway. I skipped the state on a freight train and moved around the country picking up work here and there. I was a big kid so I didn’t have much trouble. Then I got a job on a farm out in Iowa and the people were really nice—best people I’d ever met—so I stayed on there. Every winter I thought about coming East but somehow I’d wind up staying. Finally did leave when their boy came back from the Marines.”

  I sat silently for a while, absorbing the story. “When you got here you found a job and just ...” I hesitated, unsure how to phrase it, “... just went on?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “This same company, matter of fact. I started in the shop as a cutter.”

  His words were momentous. I drank them in and stored them away, hoping they could somehow protect me from the dangers ahead. He’d run away, he’d started from nothing as I was starting—and there he was, looking like everyone else in his suit and tie, driving a car, holding down a decent job, living proof that one could bring it off. Perhaps I wouldn’t have to live in the woods eating food Tobey stole for me. Maybe I could get a job and begin a new life. I might even learn to laugh at the old days as the man beside me had learned to laugh at the image of his unconscious father. I began to see possibilities I hadn’t considered in the heat of my escape. I could even get married in a few years and start a family of my own.

  The car was slowing down.

  “I have to turn off here,” he said. “It’s a good spot, though. They’ll be able to see you from pretty far back.”

  I felt a faint twinge at the sight of the deserted intersection. Somehow I’d forgotten that I’d ever have to get out. But I was ready as we came to a stop.

  “Now son,” he said, turning to me, “if I were you I’d stay away from trains and railroad yards. Just keep hitching and don’t get in with anybody who looks funny.”

  “All right.” I nodded. “Why do you say that about trains?”

  “Well the bums and the winos. They get rough sometimes.”

  “Thanks for telling me. I’ll be careful.” I pulled back the handle and opened the door. As I looked back I could see him hesitate, and then speak.

  “Do you know about queers?”

  For a moment I thought he meant something specific rather than just whether I knew they existed. “Yes,” I finally answered.

  “Because they don’t always look like queers. That’s what I meant about the yards. Some of those bums will do anything. Don’t let them catch you.”

  I nodded and started out of the car.

  “If you do get caught tell them you’re a very religious boy and you couldn’t do anything like that. Tell them Jesus would punish you for the rest of your life. That got me out of a tight spot in Kansas once.”

  “Okay. I’ll remember that.” I stepped out into the sunshine. “Goodbye, and thanks a lot.”

  “So long, kid,” he yelled through the window. “Good luck!”

  I watched the car pull away and head west, its rear end sinking slightly as the driver accelerated. There was a flash of brake lights as the car approached a curve and then the road was empty. A blast of air struck my ankles and neck as a big semi roared by behind me.

  I was in the cab of an old Studebaker truck. The driver, an immensely fat man whose belly cleared the steering wheel by no more than an inch, had told me he was carrying a load of Kotex from a wholesaler in Jersey City to a warehouse south of Camden.

  “I’ve carried everything in my time,” he said. He drove with his shoulders, his pudgy hands holding the wheel as if the palms were grafted on. “Pineapples, horseshit, paper clips, bathtubs, you name it. Even a little booze in the old days but my wife made me stop. Yes sir, nothing surprises me any more. I just drive along and work on the old voice.” He threw back his head and began to sing. “When that red red robin comes bob bob bobbin’ along, a-LONG!” His voice rang out clearly over the whine of the engine. “How about that, kid? Pretty good, eh? Someday I’ll go on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. Oh boy. George Platz the Singing Truck Driver! I’ll win in a breeze. Did you see that movie where Mario Lanza is a truck driver and he delivers this piano, you know, and he thinks he’s alone and sits down and plays a little and makes with the old voice? Boy, what a terrific movie. It turns out the piano is for some great-looking opera star and she hears him from the other room and he winds up a star too, you know, going around in those monkey suits and drinking champagne all the time. Dee-eep river, my home is O-ver Jordan! That guy can really sing. You gotta give it to him.” He beeped the horn as we passed a car.

  We rumbled on through town after town. I watched the sun sinking in the sky and realized I should have stolen something from Jean’s cash tray. I had a dollar fifty in my pocket and the trip was going to be longer than I’d thought. It was afternoon already and I was still in New Jersey.

  The truck slowed down and we pulled up in front of a roadside stand. “Come on kid, let’s eat.”

  I was hungry, but I hesitated.

  “Come on,” he said, descending from the cab. “It’s on me.”

  “Thank you. I have some money, though.” I opened my door and jumped to the ground.

  “Don’t be silly, kid,” he said as we walked through the dust. “Keep it for later. You’ll need it.” He spoke softly, as if not to embarrass me. At the stand he slapped both hands on the counter. “Hiya gorgeous! How ya been keeping since I saw you last?”

  “What’ll it be?” the waitress asked, smiling.

  “Five hot dogs, coffee, and a big glass of milk for the kid, here.”

  As s
he went off to prepare the food he turned and leaned back against the counter, balancing his weight on his elbows. He winked at me, gave his belly a slap and very delicately crossed one leg over the other. I could hear the hot dogs sizzle as they hit the griddle.

  “Some enchanted evening,” he sang in full voice, “you will see a strange-ahh! You will see a strange-ahh, across a crowded room....”

  Night. I walk along the side of a road, my way lighted by the headlights of cars whipping past. I’ve been walking for a long time, not bothering to hitch since the sun went down. The rhythm of my body takes up my entire attention. I’m faintly drunk with movement. Ahead I see the lights of a town. Suddenly there’s a sidewalk under my feet. Houses, most of them dark, are set back behind hedges and lawns. A dog barks a block or two behind me.

  Moving through the center of town I am only dimly aware of my surroundings. The shops are closed and the streets nearly empty. I watch for the route signs. The state is Delaware. I don’t know the town. I pass under the darkened marquee of a movie theater. The street widens. More houses behind lawns. Tall trees above. My breath makes smoke in the damp air.

  On the far side of town I approach the intersection of two gigantic highways. There are lights everywhere—gas stations, restaurants, liquor stores. I stop in front of an all-night diner. A couple necks in a car in the shadows. I go into the diner. Sitting on a stool near the end of the counter, my legs prickling with a thousand minuscule pulse beats, I eat tomato soup and a cheese sandwich. Finished, I push the plates away and order a Coke and a piece of layer cake. On my way out I buy a nickel cigar from a machine near the door.