Collected Short Fiction, page 344
Mr. Peabody dropped the paper. He was puzzled. The liquid sparkle in her voice was proof enough that her moment of victory was at hand. Yet her purpose was still unrevealed.
“Ella, dear,” ne inquired meekly, “what do you know about the Transcendental Renaissance?”
“Don’t worry about that, darling. The young man at the library did the research and typed the paper for me, for only five dollars. But it’s so sweet of you to want to help me, and there’s one thing that you can do.”
Mr. Peabody squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. The trap was closing, and he could see no escape.
“I knew you’d understand, darling.” Her voice had a little tender throb. “And you know I didn’t have a decent rag to wear.
Darling, I’m getting that blue jersey that was in the window of the Famous. It was marked forty-nine eighty, but the manager let me have it for only twenty-nine ninety-five.”
“I’m awfully sorry, dear,” Mr. Peabody said slowly. “But I’m afraid we simply can’t manage it. I’m afraid you had better send it back.”
Ella’s blue eyes widened, and began to glitter.
“Darling!” Her throbbing voice broke. “Darling—you must understand. I can’t ready my paper in those disgraceful old rags. Besides, it has already been altered.”
“But, dear—we just haven’t got the money.”
Mr. Peabody picked up his paper again, upside down. After twenty-two years, he knew what was to come. There would be tearful appeals to his love and his pride and his duty. There would be an agony of emotion, maintained until he surrendered.
And he couldn’t surrender: that was the trouble. Tn twenty-two years, his affection had never swerved seriously from his wife and his children. He would have given her the money, gladly; but the bills had to be paid tomorrow.
He sighed with momentary relief when an unfamiliar motor horn honked outside the drive. William Peabody slouched, in ungraceful indolence, through the side door.
WILLIAM was a lank, pimpled sallow-faced youth, with unkempt yellow hair and prominent buck teeth. Remarkably, in spite of the fact that he was continually demanding money for clothing, he always wore the same dingy leather jacket and the same baggy pants.
Efforts to send him to the university, to a television school, and to a barber college, had all collapsed for want of William’s cooperation.
“Hi, Gov.” Lie was filling a black college-man pipe. “Hi, Mom. Dinner up?”
“Don’t call me Gov,” requested Mr. Peabody, mildly. “William!” He had risen and walked to the window, and his voice was sharper. “Whose red roadster is that in the drive?”
William dropped himself into the easy chair which Mr. Peabody had just vacated.
“Oh, the can?” He exhaled blue smoke. “Why, didn’t Mom tell you, Gov? I just picked it up.”
Mr. Peabody’s slight body stiffened.
“So you bought a car? Who’s going to pay for it?”
William waved the pipe, carelessly.
“Only ten a month,” he drawled. “And it’s a real buy, Gov. Only eighty thousand miles, and it’s got a super-charger. Mom said you could manage it. It will be for my birthday, Gov.”
“Your birthday is six months off.”
Silver, soothing, Mrs. Peabody’s voice floated from the kitchen:
“But you’ll still be paying for it when his birthday comes, Jason. So I told Bill it would be all right. A boy is so left out, these days, if he hasn’t a car. Now, if you will just give me the suit money—”
Mr. Peabody began a sputtering reply. He stopped suddenly, when his daughter Beth came in the front door. Beth was the bright spot in his life. She was a tall slim girl, with soft sympathetic brown eyes. Her honey-colored hair was freshly set in exquisite waves.
Perhaps it was natural for father to favor daughter. But Mr. Peabody couldn’t help contrasting her cheerful industry to William’s idleness. She was taking a business course, so that she would be able to keep books for Dr. Rex Brant, after they were married.
“HELLO, Dad.” She came to him and put her smooth arms around him and gave him an affectionate little squeeze. “How do you like my new permanent? I got it because I have a date with Rex tonight. I didn’t have any money, so I said I would leave the three dollars at Mrs. Larkin’s before seven. Have you got three dollars, Dad?”
“Your hair looks very pretty, dear.”
Mr. Peabody patted his daughter’s shoulder, and dug cheerfully into his pocket. He never minded giving money to Beth—when he had it. Often he regretted that he had not been able to do more for her.
“Thanks, Dad.” Kissing his temple, she whispered, “You dear!”
Tapping out his black pipe, William looked at his mother.
“It just goes to show,” he drawled. “If it was Sis that wanted a car—”
“I told you, son,” Mr. Peabody declared positively, “I’m not going to pay for that automobile. We simply haven’t the money.”
William got languidly to his feet.
“I say, Gov. You wouldn’t want to lose your fishing tackle.”
Mr. Peabody’s face stiffened with anxiety.
“My fishing tackle?”
In twenty-two years, Mr. Peabody had actually found the time and money to make no more than three fishing trips. He still considered himself, however, an ardent angler. Sometimes he had gone without his lunches, for weeks, to save for some rod or reel or special fly. He often spent an hour in the back yard, casting at a mark on the ground.
Trying to glare at William, he demanded hoarsely:
“What about my fishing tackle?”
“Now, Jason,” interrupted the soothing voice of Mrs. Peabody, “don’t get yourself all wrought up. You know you haven’t used your old fishing tackle in the last ten years.”
Stiffly erect, Mr. Peabody strode toward his taller son.
“William, what have you done with it?” William was filling his pipe again. “Keep your shirt on, Gov,” he advised. “Mom said it would be all right. And I had to have the dough to make the first payment on the bus. Now don’t bust an artery. I’ll give you the pawn tickets.”
“Bill!” Beth’s voice was sharp with reproof. “You didn’t—”
Mr. Peabody, himself, made a gasping incoherent sound. He started blindly toward the front door.
“Now, Jason!” Ella’s voice was silver with a sweet and unendurable reason. “Control yourself, Jason You haven’t had your dinner—”
He slammed the door violently behind him.
II
THIS was not the first time in twenty-two years that Mr. Peabody had fled to the windy freedom of Bannister Hill. It was not even the first time he had spoken a wish to a star. While he had no serious faith in that superstition of his childhood, he still felt that it was a very pleasant idea.
An instant after the words were uttered, he saw the shooting star. A tiny point of light, drifting a little upward through the purple dusk. It was not white, like most falling stars, but palely green.
It recalled another old belief, akin to the first. If you saw a falling star, and if you could make a wish before the star went out, the wish would come true. Eagerly, he caught his breath.
“I wish,” he repeated, “I could do miracles!”
He finished the words in time. The star was still shining. Suddenly, in fact, he noticed that its greenish radiance was growing brighter.
Far brighter!
Abruptly, then, Mr. Peabody’s vague and wistful satisfaction changed to stark panic. He realized that the green meteor, like some celestial bullet, was coming straight at him! He made a frantic effort to duck, to shield hit face with his hand—Mr. Peabody woke, lying on his back on the grassy hill. He groaned and lifted his head. The waning moon had risen. Its slanting rays shimmered from the dew on the grass.
Mr. Peabody felt stiff and chilled. His clothing was wet with the dew. And something was wrong with his head. Deep at the base of his brain, there was a queer dull ache. It was not intense, but it had a slow, unpleasant pulsation.
His forehead felt oddly stiff and drawn. His fingers found a streak of dried blood, and then the ragged, painful edge of a small wound.
“Golly!”
With that little gasping cry, he clapped his hand to the back of his head. But there was no blood in his hair. That small leaden ache seemed close beneath his hand, but there was no other surface wound.
“Great golly!” whispered Mr. Peabody. “It has lodged in my brain!”
The evidence was clear enough. He had seen the meteor hurtling straight at him. There was a tiny hole in his forehead, where it must have entered. There was none where it could have emerged.
Why hadn’t it already killed him? Perhaps because the heat of it had cauterized the wound. He remembered reading a believe-it-or-not about, a man who had lived for years with a bullet in his brain.
A METEOR lodged in his brain! The idea set him to shuddering. He and Ella had met their little ups and downs, but his life had been pretty uneventful. He could imagine being shot by a bandit or run over by a taxi. But this—
“Better go to Beth’s Dr. Brant,” he whispered.
He touched his bleeding forehead, and hoped the wound would heal safely. When he tried to rise, a faintness seized him. A sudden thirst parched his throat. “Water!” he breathed.
As he sank giddily back on his elbow, that thirst set in his mind the image of a sparkling glass of water. It sat on a flat rock, glittering in the moonlight. It looked so substantial that he reached out and picked it up.
Without surprise, he drank. A few swallows relieved his thirst, and his mind cleared again. Then tire sudden realization of the incredible set him to quivering with reasonless panic.
The glass dropped out of his fingers, and shattered on the rock. The fragments glittered mockingly under the moon. Mr. Peabody blinked at them.
“It was real!” he whispered. “I made it real—nut of nothing. A miracle—I worked a miracle!”
The word was queerly comforting. Actually, he knew no more about what had happened than before he had found a word for it. Yet much of its disquieting unfamiliarity was dispelled.
He remembered a movie that the Englishman, H. G. Wells, had written. It dealt with a man who was able to perform the most surprising and sometimes appalling miracles. He had finished, Mr. Peabody recalled, by destroying the world.
“I want nothing like that,” he whispered in some alarm, and then set out to test his gift. First he tried mentally to lift the small fiat rock upon which the miraculous glass had stood.
“Up,” he commanded sharply. “Up!”
The rock, however, refused to move. He tried to form a mental picture of it, rising. Suddenly, where he had tried to picture it, there was another and apparently identical rock.
The miraculous stone crashed instantly down upon its twin, and shattered. Flying fragments stung Mr. Peabody’s face. He realized that his gift, whatever its nature, held potentialities of danger.
“Whatever I’ve got,” he told himself, “it’s different from what the man had in the movie. I can make things—small things, anyhow. But I can’t move them.” He sat up on the wet grass. “Can I—unmake them?”
He fixed his eyes upon the fragments of the broken glass.
“Go!” he ordered. “Go away—vanish!”
They shimmered unchanged in the moonlight.
“No,” concluded Mr. Peabody, “I can’t unmake things.”
That was, in a way, too bad.
tie made another mental note of caution. Large animals and dangerous creations of all kinds had better be avoided. He realized suddenly that he was shivering in his dew-soaked clothing. He slapped his stiff hands against his sides, and wished he had a cup of coffee.
“Well—why not?” He tried to steady his voice against a haunting apprehension. “Here—a cup of coffee!”
Nothing appeared.
“Come!” he shouted. “Coffee!”
Still there was nothing. And doubt returned to Mr. Peabody. Probably he had just been dazed by the meteor. But the hallucinations had looked so queerly real. That glass of water, glittering in the moonlight on the rock—
And there it was again!
Or another, just like it. He touched the glass uncertainly, sipped at the ice-cold water. It was as real as you please. Mr. Peabody shook his bald aching head, baffled.
“Water’s easy,” he muttered. “But how do you get coffee?”
HE LET his mind picture a heavy white cup, sitting in its saucer on the rock, steaming fragrantly. The image of it shimmered oddly, half-real.
He made a kind of groping effort. There was a strange brief roaring in his head, beyond that slow painful throb. And suddenly the cup was real.
With awed and trembling fingers, he lifted it. The scalding coffee tasted like the cheaper kind that Ella bought when she was having trouble with the budget. But it was coffee.
Now he knew how to get the cream and sugar. He simply pictured the little creamer and the three white cubes, and made that special grasping effort—and there they were. And he was weak with a momentary unfamiliar fatigue.
He made a spoon and stirred the coffee. He was learning about the gift. It made no difference what he said. He had only the power to realize the things he pictured in his mind. It required a peculiar kind of effort, and the act was accompanied by that mighty, far-off roaring in his ears.
The miraculous objects, moreover, had all the imperfections of his mental images. There was an irregular gap in the heavy saucer, behind the cup—where he had failed to complete his picture of it.
Mr. Peabody, however, did not linger long upon the mechanistic details of his gift. Perhaps Dr. Brant would be able to explain it: he was really a very clever young surgeon. Mr. Peabody turned to more immediate concerns.
He was shivering with cold. He decided against building a miraculous fire, and set out to make himself an overcoat. This turned out to be more difficult than he had anticipated. It was necessary to picture clearly the fibers if the wool, the details of buttons and buckle, the shape of every piece of material, the very thread in the seams.
In some way, moreover, the process of materializing was very trying. He was soon quivering with a strange fatigue. The dull little ache at the base of his brain throbbed faster. Again he sensed that roaring beyond, like some Niagara of supernal power.
At last, however, the garment was finished. Attempting to put it on, Mr. Peabody discovered that it was a very poor fit. The shoulders were grotesquely loose What was worse, he had somehow got the sleeves sewed up at the cuffs.
Wearily, his bright dreams dashed a little, he drew it about his shoulders like a cloak. With a little care and practice, he was sure, he could do better. He ought to be able to make anything he wanted.
Feeling a tired contentment, Mr. Peabody started back down Bannister Hill. Now he could go home to a triumphant peace. His cold body anticipated the comforts of his house and his bed. He dwelt pleasantly upon the happiness of Ella and William and Beth, when they should learn about his gift.
He pushed the ungainly overcoat into a trash container, and swung aboard the car. Fumbling for change to pay the six-cent fare, he found one lone nickel. A miraculous twin solved the problem. He pocketed the four pennies, and relaxed on the seat with a sigh of quiet satisfaction.
III
HIS son William, as it happened, was the first person to whom Mr. Peabody attempted to reveal his unusual gift. William was sprawled in the easiest chair, his sallow face decorated with scraps of court plaster. He woke with a start. His eyes rolled glassily. Seeing Mr. Peabody, he grinned with relief.
“Hi, Gov,” he drawled. “Got over your tantrum, huh?”
Consciousness of the gift lent Mr. Peabody a new authority.
“Don’t call me Gov.” His voice was louder than usual. “I wasn’t having a tantrum.” He felt a sudden apprehension. “What has happened to you, William?” William fumbled lazily for his pipe. “Guy crocked me,” he drawled. “Some tool in a new Buick. Claims I was on his side of the road. He called the cops, and had a wrecker tow off the bus.
“Guess you’ll have a little damage suit on your hands, Gov. Unless you want to settle for cash. The wrecker man said the bill would be about two hundred. . . . Got any tobacco, Gov?”
The old helpless fury boiled up in Mr. Peabody. He began to tremble, and his lists clenched. After a moment, however, the awareness of his new power allowed him to smile. Things were going to be different, now.
“William,” he said gravely, “I would like to see a little more respect in your manner in the future.” He was building up to the dramatic revelation of his gift. “It was your car and your wreck. You can settle it as you like.”
William gestured carelessly with his pipe.
“Wrong as usual, Gov. You see, they wouldn’t sell me the can. I had to get Mom to sign the papers. So you can’t slip out of it that easy, Gov. You’re the one that’s liable. Got any tobacco?”
A second wave of fury set Mr. Peabody to dancing up and down. Once more, however, consciousness of the gift came to his rescue. He decided upon a double miracle.
That ought to put William in his place.
“There’s your tobacco.” He gestured toward the bare center of the library table. “Look!” He concentrated upon a mental image of the red tin container. “Presto!” William’s mild curiosity changed to a quickly concealed surprise. Lazily he reached for the tin box, drawling:
“Fair enough, Gov. But that magician at the Palace last year pulled the same trick a lot slicker and quicker—” He looked up from the open can, with a triumphant reproof. “Empty, Gov. I call that a pretty flat trick.”
“I forgot.” Mr. Peabody bit his lip. “You’ll find half a can on my dresser.”
AS WILLIAM ambled out of the room, he applied himself to a graver project. In his discomfiture and general excitement, he failed to consider a certain limitation upon acts of creation, miraculous or otherwise, existing through Federal law.
His flat pocketbook yielded what was left of the week’s pay. He selected a crisp new ten-dollar bill, and concentrated on it. His first copy proved to be blank on the reverse. The second was blurred on both sides. After that, however, he seemed to get the knack of it.
