Collected Short Fiction, page 179
A man beside me I recognized as Orin Porter, the lawyer I would have if I ever needed a lawyer. “What’s happening?” I said.
“Shhh!” He raised a finger to his lips. He was listening to the testimony, too.
“. . . and I saw this man push the woman in front of the truck,” the witness was saying earnestly.
Standing near him was a dapper little man in a gray pinstripe suit. Lawyer? Prosecutor? “Did you ever see the man before?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“Here—in this courtroom.”
“Can you point him out?”
“Yes, sir. That’s him. That’s the man.” The finger of the witness pointed straight at me.
I jumped to my feet. “I didn’t push anybody, I shouted. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”
Porter yanked me down hard. “Shut up,” he said. “You’ll prejudice the judge—”
“The defendant will control himself or the court will be forced to do it for him,” the judge said coldly. He was a narrow-faced and obviously intolerant man. His eyes were too close together. To me he seemed determined that I should hang.
Only they didn’t hang people any more. Not in this state. “Look, I didn’t push anybody,” I whispered to Porter. “If they are talking about that accident, I was just a witness—”
“You have been positively identified six times,” Porter said, frowning. “Five of the witnesses saw you push the girl.”
“But I didn’t even know her. I had no reason—”
“It’s been established that you visited the girl’s apartment several times when you were supposed to be working.” A distaste disturbed Porter’s professionally neutral expression. Jane’s broken up about it.”
“Mad, mad,” I whispered, staring blankly into the distance. “Have they brought out the part about the sawdust? The sawdust and excelsior that came out of the woman, the stuffing—”
Porter studied me for a moment before he said, “Maybe you’re right. An insanity plea is your only hope.”
“What about the jailor?” I pleaded. “Did he die? Are they going to do anything about him?”
“What jailor?” Porter asked, his eyebrows compressed. “Are you holding something back?”
I shook my head and sat down. Life had suddenly become too twisted ever to be straightened out. I was on trial for pushing a woman I had never seen into the path of a truck. And the jailor was forgotten.
I needed some kind of explanation, but the only one I could think of was too terrible to entertain. If I were not mad, then someone was framing me with incredible efficiency for a crime I had not committed.
Why? There could only be one reason. I had seen the accident and recognized the truth about the woman who was killed. I knew she was not human.
Who was framing me was the unanswerable part. Because anyone who could frame me in that fashion—who could convince a dozen witnesses they had seen something they could not have seen, who could identify me when no one knew my name, who could shift me through space and time—why, such a person and his ways had to be beyond understanding.
Attribute it all to the supernatural? The terror lay chiefly in that thought. Yet it explained ever) thing so well. I had stumbled on a secret no one was supposed to know, the secret that some of us are not human, are not real, that some of us—the girl, the jailor—are stuffed with sawdust and excelsior like teddy bears, that even the real ones are moved about by supernatural beings for reasons we could never understand.
And, having stumbled on this basic truth, I had to die or be so discredited that my revelations would be discounted as madness or a self-serving simulation of it.
I looked around the courtroom. Anyone might be a puppet, a teddy bear: the witnesses who came to the chair and lied, the jury . . .
“. . . will consider its verdict,” the judge said grimly.
I hardly noticed the shifts any more. My fantastic speculations went on uninterrupted.
Fantastic, but not so hard to believe. The theory explained the observable facts of existence as well as our naive “realism.” What do we know, really? Only what we are told. And what we are told has no inevitable correlation with reality.
Why couldn’t people be stuffed? I had never seen an operation or an autopsy. All I knew about the interior of the human body was hearsay and the vague consciousness I had of my own inner workings.
Was it so incredible that there should be teddy bears among us, moved willy-nilly at the whim of supernatural beings? Was it fantastic that the whole world should be the stage for extra-dimensional puppeteers? Yes, yes it was. But no more incredible, no more fantastic, than what had happened to me.
A workable hypothesis has to account for every fact, and only mine accounted for my shattering experiences.
I tried to think. After all, what did I know, for instance, of other cities, foreign lands? I had visited some of them, sure—or at least I had a memory of doing so, which is not the same thing—but how little of the planet’s extent had I experienced myself. It was only an infinitesimal part of what I was asked to believe.
I accepted China on faith and India and all the vast, teeming East. Why, Africa could be a fiction, for all I knew. I had no trustworthy proof that Australia really existed or Europe or even England.
The testimony of maps was the chief evidence for the reality of much of the United States, and only history books propagated the illusion in me that the world had existed before my consciousness . . .
And what of memory, a poor fallible thing as everyone knows? Surely it was obvious that memories can be planted in people’s minds like tulip bulbs in flower beds. Let those who think they have special knowledge of this fact or that, of the nature of the world or the workings of the human body, which will shatter my feeble theory—let them reflect on the elusive origins of memory and the success of even us inept mortals in hypnosis and psychiatry and brain-washings . . .
And I must be immune from this tyranny of memory because I am real, I thought. I am human, and that is why my knowledge is dangerous.
And the independence of my thoughts proves my reality, my humanity, because surely a teddy bear can think only those thoughts that are thought for him.
Teddy bear? I looked down. In the chair beside me was Brownie, still wearing the handkerchief around his middle. I picked him up. My probing finger found the gash.
That had not changed. Well, why should it? Which would have been proof of my suspicions: Brownie slashed or Brownie whole?
I shook my head angrily. There was no way of proving anything. I was hopelessly trapped. I might as well surrender to whatever fate was planned for me. A man cannot fight the gods.
Thrusting my hands deep in my pockets, I touched the knife. I pulled it out and snapped open the blade. It was sharp, honed—much keener than I had ever kept it. A few bits of sawdust clung to the blade.
Proof! Maybe not to anybody else, but to me. They could not think of everything—they made mistakes, like everybody else. I laughed. The little inconsistencies of life people dismiss so casually, I realized, were the ultimate and unshakable proof that we are not the masters of our world or of our destinies!
A world functioning according to orderly natural law—that’s the picture most people believe in even if they cannot see it. But such a hypothesis is really shaky, full of holes, tottering on a patch work foundation of faith. Too much is inexplicable—which is proof that the world is not a world of order, that nature is not understandable and subject to law.
Mysterious disappearances occur, like those of Ambrose Bierce and Judge Crater. (Had they learned too much?) And it came to me, here in the courtroom, that there are numerous small things that give the game away, if we would only notice. Objects, for example, are not where they should be or they are found where they should not be. We forget how often it happens because the objects are little and unimportant: clothing, toys, supplies, implements . . . Knives disappear, and needles, spools and spatulas; socks vanish and buttons, cuff links and belts; marbles are gone and jacks, tops and checkers; staples never diminish gradually—Suddenly the cupboard is bare.
Poor Mother Hubbard. Pitiful dog.
Other things: paper clips, clothes hangers, rubber bands, string, pencils, wrapping paper, glue, nails, screws . . . One person may find them always at hand although he never buys any of them. Another may buy these trifles constantly and never find any when he wants them.
Explain it? Shrug? Indict human memory? Exalt the supremacy of things? There’s a better explanation: carelessness.
Not our carelessness. Theirs.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. So Shakespeare said. What he would have added was that the play is too vast and obscure for us ever to understand. Why has no true science of psychology ever been developed? Why does a workable science of sociology seem impossible? Because of the teddy bears, I told myself. Stuffed people. Their actions can be explained never by human logic but by extra human whimsy.
Again I laughed. How clearly I saw it all!
Why do so many people refuse to be swayed by logic? Why do so many misguided idiots cling stubbornly to their false values, call their demagogues saviors, get into fights and riots and wars? Because they are teddy bears. Puppets manipulated by invisible gods or other supernatural beings. Judas goats leading the sheep into the slaughter house. The mob leading humanity into darkness and pain and distrust.
I slid the knife along my arm and watched the thin, red line follow behind it, broadening as the blood welled. I sighed. At least I wasn’t one of the teddy bears.
Porter was staring down at my arm and the knife in my hand. “For God’s sake, man,” he whispered fiercely “put that thing away!”
But the foreman of the jury was speaking. “Guilty,” he said, and the judge . . .
. . . felt limp and lifeless under my hand, clutching his shoulder. I was standing behind him, my right hand over the judge’s shoulder, pressed to his robe, and I was looking out over the court and all the horrified white faces.
One of them I knew. It was paler than all the rest, and the anguish in it brought tears to my eyes. I stepped back. The knife in my right hand came away. The judge, released, toppled slowly, turning a little in his chair. His thin vindictive face was relaxed; his close-set eyes unseeing.
Sawdust streamed out of the slit beneath his vest.
I started forward blindly toward Jane, in spite of the uniforms that rose in front of me, and the hands that clutched at me to hold me back, and I . . .
. . . was lying flat on the ground. It was night, and I was cold. The earth was cold under me, cold against my shirt, against my thin trousers, and I wondered where I was.
Bushes were in front of me, branching darkly against the night. As I reached out to part them, I realized that the knife was still in my hand. I closed it and put it away.
Something furry was beside me. Brownie. I smiled grimly. I could lose everything else—innocence, responsibility, love, life—but I could not lose Brownie. It was comforting to have him there.
I understood now why Kit could not go to sleep without his friend. Whatever terrifying shapes and places contorted the protean night, Brownie was the familiar, unchanging reality to which a frightened child could cling.
Kit and I, frightened children both.
I walked for a time, found myself on a dim, winding street that I recognized. Porter’s house was the nearest one, there with the light in the living room behind the picture window. That man reading in the chair, that must be Orin.
Whatever the risk, I had to see him. I had to know what had happened.
I crept toward his lawn between the bushes, and their bristles and brambles shredded my flimsy illusion of nightmare with their rough reality. Keeping to the shadows, watchful for movements or darkened cars, I edged toward the two-foot square slab of concrete that served the ranch-style house as porch.
I punched the bell and turned my back to the door so that I could watch the dark street, feeling like a character in a B-grade gangster movie.
The door opened. I turned. It was Orin, incandescence haloing his head. He blinked into the darkness. “Who is it?” he asked, and flipped on the little entrance light. He saw me and gasped. “Get in here!”
In the living room, I sank wearily into a chair. Orin pulled the draw drapes across the picture window and turned to me impatiently. I sat heavily, hugging Brownie to me, feeling a little foolish. “What’s happened?” I asked.
“Judge Marsh died twenty minutes ago. The police are turning the city upside down. They have orders to shoot if you resist arrest—”
“How did I escape from the courtroom?”
“Don’t you remember?” Porter exclaimed.
“The last I remember, a dozen men were reaching for me.”
Porter shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t understand how you got this far out. Your picture is all over town! No taxi would carry you, or a bus—and it’s almost ten miles. You didn’t walk, did you?”
“I don’t know,” I said wearily. “They’ve shifted me around too much. You saw the judge, I guess. You saw the sawdust spilling out of him?”
Porter stared at me with eyes that were suddenly wise. “So you’re crazy,” he whispered. “Truly crazy—”
“No,” I said quickly. “You see—” But words were not equal to the task of explaining, of convincing Porter.
“I’ll fix you a drink,” he said, heading for the kitchen. “Come on. It will do you good. Then you’re going to give yourself up. Don’t worry—we’ll get you off—”
“No! That’s what They want.”
“Sure. Come on. We’ll talk about it.”
He made the drink strong and tall and cool and left me with it. I sipped it numbly, trying to make sense out of insanity.
Maybe it’s like Miguel de Unamuno asked, I thought. I remembered well his remarkable speculation. Is the world—and mankind with it—only a dream of God? Are prayer and ritual nothing but attempts to make Him more drowsy so that He does not wake up and stop our dreaming?
But even if that were true, to call existence a dream would not diminish it. Dreams can bleed. I proved that.
I looked at my arm. A thin white scar crossed it. That was quick healing. Another slip?
Once more I took out the knife. I opened the blade and tapped the handle against my palm. Sawdust. The blade itself was untarnished, unstained. Surely if the judge and the jailor had been real, their blood would have clotted on the blade. They had not been actual humans, but teddy bears.
Yet how could I convince Porter or anyone else? They would see Brownie, and in their cynical wisdom would know where the sawdust came from. They would see stuffed humans and not believe their eyes, because they would not know where the sawdust came from.
Porter had been gone a long time. I got up, the knife forgotten in my hand, and pushed through the door and surprised him. He had the telephone to his ear. As he looked at me, his eyes were frightened before he veiled them. He said, “Well, that’s all right, then. Thanks for calling.”
He was putting on an act. The phone had not rung.
I moved toward him, hurt. “I didn’t think you’d turn me in.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said weakly. “I swear I wouldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t have turned me in, Orin. If you only knew what I’ve been through—”
“Put the knife away,” he said, his voice strained and off-key. “You don’t need the knife. You’ll hurt yourself.”
I looked down at the knife in my hand, and he sprang at me. Reflexively I raised my arm, twisted away from him. He plunged onto the knife.
PORTER’S face worked for a moment close to mine, trying to get out words through a strangled throat. A spasm crossed his face. He collapsed, pulling free of the knife.
How easily they die, I thought dully. You wouldn’t think a teddy hear would die so easily.
From the slash across his belly came a thin sifting of yellow saw . . .
. . . dust rose from my running feet. I could feel it deep in my lungs, and it sifted through the air, diffusing the radiance of the street light ahead. I was fleeing through an alley unpaved and rough under my feet.
“Stop!” bellowed a voice behind me. “Stop, you!”
I didn’t stop. A gun barked. The bullet whined past my head. I dodged, panting, into a dark yard, ducking clothes lines and avoiding the dark traps of bushes with an odd prescience until I reached a narrow walk between houses and raced along it.
“Stop!” the voice yelled again, far behind.
I had lost him. Lungs burning, I eased into a trot, turning down a driveway and reaching a sidewalk. The neighborhood was anonymous in the night. It could have been any collection of older five-room bungalows and thirty-foot frontages. When I reached the corner I would find out.
If I were not crazy, that is. I thought maybe I was crazy, after all. We’ve all had the thought that we were all alone in a hostile world, that we were the only real person in a make-believe world, that unseen, malicious forces are combined against us . . . that’s the common delusion of adolescence, and usually it fades.
If it does not, if the delusion becomes systematized and the senses begin to support it with false messages . . . that’s insanity. Oh, my case answered the classic description of paranoia: exaggerated suspicion leading to a lasting, irradicable, delusional system of persecution and grandeur . . .
Also, homicidal.
The only trouble with the theory was that I wanted too much to believe it. I would rather be insane than have my speculations true. It had to be one or the other, and I would rather believe that I was crazy than that everybody but me was a thing stuffed with sawdust and maneuvered by some supernatural or extradimensional intelligence to trap me into the monstrous and unthinkable . . .
Why should I be thus manipulated? I could not expect ever to know. The motives of the supernatural must be inexplicable, or it would be natural.
So it was either one or the other, and I thought: Let me he mad!
