Time Travel Omnibus, page 246
Our call came. We jammed plugs in Destiny’s ears and hoped the shouting wouldn’t terrify him too much. We ushered him through the jampacked aisle to his corner.
The announcer introduced Killer Metheny in glowing terms. Then he led John Doe Destiny to the center of the ring and sang out:
“They say he comes back from ten-nine-fifty, and what a nifty! His punch is a sensation to jolt you future generations! Ho-de-ho-de, the two-fisted fore-bodie, Buddy Destiny!”
Tumultuous applause and shouting. Velma Mack at my elbow chewed gum and pounded her hands like mad.
The fight was on. The gong brought Killer Metheny prancing out of his corner like a champ. He crouched, sprang, threw a volley of punches at the air. But he didn’t hit anything.
Buddy Destiny eluded him, sneaking out of reach with clever footwork that had the crowd gasping. Killer couldn’t close the gap. Round one ended without a blow landed.
Destiny skipped back to his corner but he didn’t sit. For some strange reason he just stood there surveying the crowd. Then he bent down to Beau Tassel.
“What are the gate receipts?”
Beau said he didn’t know.
“Find out,” said Destiny. “I don’t want to fight unless I can make all I need to build a house.”
He went back into Round two, and Beau turned to Velma and me with a gray face.
“The guy’s out of his head.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said Velma. “Go find out about that gate, and hurry.”
Round two was like Round one, but fast. It ended with Killer madder than a bull because he hadn’t been able to connect. The crowd was hooting.
Round three was a footrace spiced with the most amazing demonstration of ducking and dodging you ever saw. Buddy Destiny came back to his corner without being touched. But he looked sick. The boos were cutting him down. The crowd was all for Killer now. They wanted to see a fight.
Just before Round four Beau returned looking pale and scared. “Destiny, you’ve got to knock him out by the fifth. I can’t tell you why but you’ve got to. This time get in there and—”
Velma gave Beau a restraining pinch on the arm. Destiny only said, “How much was the gate?”
Beau gave him the figure.
“It’s not enough,” said Destiny. “I counted the crowd at the end of Round one and checked my figures during Rounds two and three.”
“A knockout by Round five!” Beau wailed.
“Go back and make them straighten up those accounts,” said Destiny. “I won’t strike a blow till you do.”
ROUND four looked bad. Yes, there were limits to tricky footwork and dodging, not to mention hurdling, even for the versatile Destiny. He slowed down a little, used his guard more, took a glancing blow here arid there. Killer was getting onto him at last, and did the crowd love it!
Still John Doe Destiny refused to strike a blow. His own camp groaned. Velma yelled at him wildly. The gong at the end of Round four was welcome music.
And the return of Beau Tassel, looking as eager as dynamite, was a welcome sight.
“You were right, Buddy. Someone tried to hold back part of the gate. The quick check-up caught him. Now, Buddy-boy, how about it?”
“Remember those poor little kids!” Velma cried into Destiny’s plugged ears. “Think of that new home, all the good you can do with that extra dough—”
She was still shouting as Destiny went into Round five. She shouted for undernourished kids, for orphans, for widows, for homeless cats—All at once you could see the imagination working in Destiny’s face. His memory of the house with the patched windows set him off like a trigger. He walked into Killer Metheny.
The surprise action took the crowd for a hush.
Then—spat.
Killer Metheny bounced into the ropes and hung there with the most completely cockeyed expression I ever saw. Probably an alltime high in cockeyed expressions, judging by the way the crowd hit the ceiling. Technically, Killer wasn’t down. That is, the ropes wouldn’t let him down. But he was completely out.
Under the deafening roar the baffled referee took the situation in. What a picture! Destiny’s photographic memory would preserve this one for a chuckle of pride nine thousand years hence—
But I was wrong. What John Doe Destiny saw was the stream of blood that oozed harmlessly from the nose of the veteran pugilist.
“I did it!” Destiny gasped. He fainted dead away and fell on his back in the center of the ring. The referee bent over him and counted him out.
IT was noon the next day when a loud knocking awakened me. I roused up and let Beau Tassel in. He looked like something wild and hunted. “Have you seen Buddy Destiny?”
“No,” I said. “What about him?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
I wished I hadn’t asked the question, it brought such a whipped look to Beau’s face. He turned away and jammed his cigar in an ash-tray. I tried to smooth things over.
“Too bad. He was a good guy.”
“Yeah . . . No fighter, though.”
“No, no fighter . . . Didn’t he even leave a note?”
“He left nothing,” said Beau, “except a check to cover training expenses.
That and a fund for a new house for some slum kids. That rounded out his thirty percent.”
“Have you told Velma?”
Beau shook his head. I sensed that he was holding back something. I quizzed him and he admitted it. The plunger, he’d bet the last of our radio prize money that Destiny would win by the fifth. No wonder he didn’t want to face Velma.
“We’d better tell her, the sooner the better,” I said, so we made tracks for the Daily Beacon.
“Is she in?” Beau asked.
“Does her desk look it?” retorted Split-Infinitive. It didn’t. It was heaped high with mail. “Fan letters,” said Split, “on that special society broadcast she put over with your John Doe Destiny night before last.”
Broadcast? We hadn’t heard of any broadcast. Beau turned a little purple.
“She said Destiny needed some intellectual diversion or he’d go back home,” said Split. “She had him do a lecture on the future of culture and refinement.”
I fought for a deep breath.
“Do they get paid for that stuff?” Split smiled.
“And how. Velma’s got an advance for a whole series. You men should listen in. There’ll be talks on the decay of vaudeville and the death of pugilism—”
Beau gave a deep growl.
“Tell me, how can he give any more lectures? He’s gone.”
“He’ll be back from Atlantic City in a couple weeks,” said Split. “He told me to tell you.”
[*] It has actually been proven that it is possible to increase the speed of speech until it is almost impossible to follow the words. And yet, when it is recorded, and played back slowly, it does not reveal a slurring or omission of words. Some types of nervous disorders result in this quickening of the speech. The man from the future is probably taught from birth to speak with great rapidity, and thus, his hearing is also trained to distinguish between the syllables. But, if you have this ability today, it might be a good idea to go on the vaudeville stage!
A FRIEND TO ALEXANDER
James Thurber
“I HAVE TAKEN TO DREAMING ABOUT AARON BURR EVERY NIGHT,” Andrews said.
“What for?” said Mrs. Andrews.
“How do I know what for?” Andrews snarled. “What for, the woman says.”
Mrs. Andrews did not flare up; she simply looked at her husband as he lay on the chaise longue in her bedroom in his heavy blue dressing gown, smoking a cigarette. Although he had just got out of bed, he looked haggard and tired. He kept biting his lower lip between puffs.
“Aaron Burr is a funny person to be dreaming about nowadays—I mean with all the countries in the world at war with each other. I wish you would go and see Dr. Fox,” said Mrs. Andrews, taking her thumb from between the pages of her mystery novel and tossing the book toward the foot of her bed. She sat up straighter against her pillow. “Maybe haliver oil or B1 is what you need,” she said. “B1 does wonders for people. I don’t see why you see him in your dreams. Where do you see him?”
“Oh, places; in Washington Square or Bowling Green or on Broadway. I’ll be talking to a woman in a victoria, a woman holding a white lace parasol, and suddenly there will be Burr, bowing and smiling and smelling like a carnation, telling his stories about France and getting off his insults.”
Mrs. Andrews lighted a cigarette, although she rarely smoked until after lunch. “Who is the woman in the victoria?” she asked.
“What? How do I know? You know about people in dreams, don’t you? They are nobody at all, or everybody.”
“You see Aaron Burr plainly enough, though. I mean he isn’t nobody or everybody.”
“All right, all right,” said Andrews. “You have me there. But I don’t know who the woman is, and I don’t care. Maybe it’s Madame Jumel or Mittens Willett or a girl I knew in high school. That’s not important.”
“Who is Mittens Willett?” asked Mrs. Andrews.
“She was a famous New York actress in her day, fifty years ago or so. She’s buried in an old cemetery on Second Avenue.”
“That’s very sad,” said Mrs. Andrews.
“Why is it?” demanded Andrews, who was now pacing up and down the deep-red carpet.
“I mean she probably died young,” said Mrs. Andrews. “Almost all women did in those days.”
Andrews ignored her and walked over to a window and looked out at a neat, bleak street in the Fifties. “He’s a vile, cynical cad,” said Andrews, suddenly turning away from the window. “I was standing talking to Alexander Hamilton when Burr stepped up and slapped him in the face. When I looked at Hamilton, who do you suppose he was?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Andrews. “Who was he?”
“He was my brother, the one I’ve told you about, the one who was killed by that drunkard in the cemetery.”
Mrs. Andrews had never got that story straight and she didn’t want to go into it again now; the facts in the tragic case and her way of getting them mixed up always drove Andrews into a white-faced fury. “I don’t think we ought to dwell on your nightmare,” said Mrs. Andrews. “I think we ought to get out more. We could go to the country for weekends.”
Andrews wasn’t listening; he was back at the window, staring out into the street again.
“I wish he’d go back to France and stay there,” Andrews snapped out suddenly the next morning at breakfast.
“Who, dear?” said his wife. “Oh, you mean Aaron Burr. Did you dream about him again? I don’t see why you dream about him all the time. Don’t you think you ought to take some Luminal?”
“No,” said Andrews. “I don’t know. Last night he kept shoving Alexander around.”
“Alexander?”
“Hamilton. God knows I’m familiar enough with him to call him by his first name. He hides behind my coattails every night, or tries to.”
“I was thinking we might go to the Old Drovers’ Inn this weekend,” said Mrs. Andrews. “You like it there.”
“Hamilton has become not only my brother Walter but practically every other guy I have ever liked,” said Andrews. “That’s natural.”
“Of course it is,” she said. They got up from the table. “I do wish you’d go to Dr. Fox.”
“I’m going to the Zoo,” he said, “and feed popcorn to the rhinoceros. That makes things seem right, for a little while anyway.”
It was two nights later at five o’clock in the morning that Andrews bumbled into his wife’s bedroom in pajamas and bare feet, his hair in his eyes, his eyes wild. “He got him!” he croaked. “He got him! The bastard got him. Alexander fired into the air, he fired in the air and smiled at him, just like Walter, and that fiend from hell took deliberate aim—I saw him—I saw him take deliberate aim—he killed him in cold blood, the foul scum!”
Mrs. Andrews, not quite awake, was fumbling in the box containing the Nembutal while her husband ranted on. She made him take two of the little capsules, between his sobs.
Andrews didn’t want to go to see Dr. Fox but he went to humor his wife. Dr. Fox leaned back in his swivel chair behind his desk and looked at Andrews. “Now, just what seems to be the trouble?” he asked.
“Nothing seems to be the trouble,” said Andrews.
The doctor looked at Mrs. Andrews. “He has nightmares,” she said.
“You look a little underweight, perhaps,” said the doctor. “Are you eating well, getting enough exercise?”
“I’m not underweight,” said Andrews. “I eat the way I always have and get the same exercise.”
At this, Mrs. Andrews sat straighter in her chair and began to talk, while her husband lighted a cigarette. “You see, I think he’s worried about something,” she said, “because he always has this same dream. It’s about his brother Walter, who was killed in a cemetery by a drunken man, only it isn’t really about him.”
The doctor did the best he could with this information. He cleared his throat, tapped on the glass top of his desk with the fingers of his right hand, and said, “Very few people are actually killed in cemeteries.” Andrews stared at the doctor coldly and said nothing. “I wonder if you would mind stepping into the next room,” the doctor said to him.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied,” Andrews snapped at his wife as they left the doctor’s office a half-hour later. “You heard what he said. There’s nothing the matter with me at all.”
“I’m glad your heart is so fine,” she told him. “He said it was fine, you know.”
“Sure,” said Andrews. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” They got into a cab and drove home in silence.
“I was just thinking,” said Mrs. Andrews, as the cab stopped in front of their apartment building, “I was just thinking that now that Alexander Hamilton is dead, you won’t see anything more of Aaron Burr.” The cab-driver, who was handing Andrews change for a dollar bill, dropped a quarter on the floor.
Mrs. Andrews was wrong. Aaron Burr did not depart from her husband’s dreams. Andrews said nothing about it for several mornings, but she could tell. He brooded over his breakfast, did not answer any of her questions, and jumped in his chair if she dropped a knife or spoon. “Are you still dreaming about that man?” she asked him finally.
“I wish I hadn’t told you about it,” he said. “Forget it, will you?”
“I can’t forget it with you going on this way,” she said. “I think you ought to see a psychiatrist. What does he do now?”
“What does who do now?” Andrews asked.
“Aaron Burr,” she said. “I don’t see why he keeps coming into your dreams now.”
Andrews finished his coffee and stood up. “He goes around bragging that he did it with his eyes closed,” he snarled. “He says he didn’t even look. He claims he can hit the ace of spades at thirty paces blindfolded. Furthermore, since you asked what he does, he jostles me at parties now.”
Mrs. Andrews stood up too and put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “I think you should stay out of this, Harry,” she said. “It wasn’t any business of yours, anyway, and it happened so long ago.”
“I’m not getting into anything,” said Andrews, his voice rising to a shout. “It’s getting into me. Can’t you see that?”
“I see that I’ve got to get you away from here,” she said. “Maybe if you slept someplace else for a few nights, you wouldn’t dream about him any more. Let’s go to the country tomorrow. Let’s go to the Lime Rock Lodge.”
Andrews stood for a long while without answering her. “Why can’t we go and visit the Crowleys?” he said finally. “They live in the country. Bob has a pistol and we could do a little target-shooting.”
“What do you want to shoot a pistol for?” she asked quickly. “I should think you’d want to get away from that.”
“Yeh,” he said, “sure,” and there was a far-off look in his eyes. “Sure.”
When they drove into the driveway of the Crowleys’ house, several miles north of New Milford, late the next afternoon, Andrews was whistling “Bye-Bye, Blackbird.” Mrs. Andrews sighed contentedly and then, as her husband stopped the car, she began looking around wildly. “My bag!” she cried. “Did I forget to bring my bag?” He laughed his old, normal laugh for the first time in many days as he found the bag and handed it to her, and then, for the first time in many days, he leaned over and kissed her.
The Crowleys came out of the house and engulfed their guests in questions and exclamations. “How you been?” said Bob Crowley to Andrews, heartily putting an arm around his shoulder.
“Never better,” said Andrews, “never better. Boy, is it good to be here!”
They were swept into the house to a shakerful of Bob Crowley’s icy Martinis. Mrs. Andrews stole a happy glance over the edge of her glass at her husband’s relaxed face.
When Mrs. Andrews awoke the next morning, her husband lay rigidly on his back in the bed next to hers, staring at the ceiling. “Oh, God,” said Mrs. Andrews.
Andrews didn’t move his head. “One Henry Andrews, an architect,” he said suddenly in a mocking tone. “One Henry Andrews, an architect.”
“What’s the matter, Harry?” she asked. “Why don’t you go back to sleep? It’s only eight o’clock.”
“That’s what he calls me!” shouted Andrews. “ ‘One Henry Andrews, an architect,’ he keeps saying in his nasty little sneering voice. ‘One Henry Andrews, an architect.’ ”
“Please don’t yell!” said Mrs. Andrews. “You’ll wake the whole house. It’s early. People want to sleep.”
Andrews lowered his voice a little. “I’m beneath him,” he snarled. “I’m just anybody. I’m a man in a gray suit. ‘Be on your good behavior, my good man,’ he says to me, ‘or I shall have one of my lackeys give you a taste of the riding crop.’ ”
Mrs. Andrews sat up in bed. “Why should he say that to you?” she asked. “He wasn’t such a great man, was he? I mean, didn’t he try to sell Louisiana to the French, or something, behind Washington’s back?”
