Time Travel Omnibus, page 735
He laughed. “I just didn’t know you two’d gotten lost. Not at first, anyway. When we arrived in London,” and he looked very pointedly at me, “you weren’t around,” and he looked as pointedly at Elizabeth, “and she wasn’t around, and I just sort of figured both of you’d run off into the crowd or, ah, somewhere.”
Beside me, Elizabeth groaned in disgust. “Give me a break!”
I took my cue from that and said to him, “We didn’t even know each other before we wound up here. We don’t seem to like each other now that we have gotten acquainted.”
“Pity. She’s really not bad-looking underneath all that dirt, you know.”
Elizabeth went straight at him, spewing curses. Though he would have made two and a half of her, he retreated, stepping surprisingly daintily through the plant debris as she reached for his lapels with her two very dirty hands. She was half-unshod, however, and there were thorns in the mat of plant stuff underfoot, and it was no time at all before her lavish description of his mating habits was cut short by a yelp of pain. She grabbed her foot and hopped backward a couple of steps to sit on a fallen bole.
I asked myself, bitterly and not for the first time in all the long while I had known John, why he had to be the one with the special affinity for my favorite place and period of history. I stepped over to Elizabeth and knelt before her. “Let me see your foot.”
“Oh God, what is this? Sight of blood turn you on or—ow! Damn it!”
I showed her the thorn, then tossed it aside. “John,” I said, “give me your handkerchief.”
I noted with a certain sense of satisfaction that he looked distressed as he drew the handkerchief from his pocket. “This is real silk, Lew. Silk.”
“So it is, John, so it is.”
“Ah, jeeze.”
“God,” Elizabeth murmured as I bound her foot, “for a guy who can’t find his own ass in the woods, you’re such a damn Boy Scout.”
She said it almost tenderly. Very surprised, I looked up at her face. She smiled fleetingly. After a moment’s hesitation, I smiled back. Removing a thorn from someone’s foot is vastly underrated as a bonding experience. I felt like Androcles.
Then her attention swung from me and her foot back to John, and she immediately took on the aspect of Mount Pelée about to blow.
“Hey,” he told her, “give me a break, okay? I did have other people to look after on this little excursion. I am sorry about losing you. But you know how it is. These little slippages happen.”
Mount Pelée exploded. “This little slippage nearly got us killed!”
“But it didn’t actually get you killed. And I did come looking for you as soon as I realized that you really weren’t around. And now I have found you, haven’t I? Well? Haven’t I?”
Elizabeth sullenly yeah-yeahed. I didn’t respond. I was dead tired. All I wanted to do was go home, and he grated on the little I had left that could be grated on. There is no one more smug than somebody who has your signed waiver stashed someplace safe.
A resounding crash of gunfire from downstream made us look around. John’s expression was mildly reproachful. “Boy,” he said, “everybody seems to have got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. But, as I was saying. Sorry it took so long to locate you. You’ve really got no idea how many time-travelers are wandering around this area right now, right at this very minute. Their trails are everywhere. I mean, everywhere. New trails and old ones, too. Who’d think so many people’d want to come watch two armed mobs chase each other around the countryside? Give me the good times, thank you.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said wearily. “The battle’s starting up again.”
He nodded, but he also said, “Where’s your spirit of adventure, Lew?”
“Same place as my sense of humor. Gone.”
“Boy, I guess so. Well, come on, the twenty-first-century express is now boarding.” He stepped closer, gave his spotless gloves a sorrowful look, held out his hands to us. I took one. Elizabeth started to take the other, then held back.
“My hands are dirty,” she told him. “Mustn’t mess up your nice clean gloves.”
She reached out and deliberately wiped her black fingers against the front of his coat.
“Much better,” she declared, and entwined her still-nasty fingers with his.
He sighed. “Lady, you are no lady.”
“Cut the crap,” she said, “and just take us home.”
There was a moment’s lightheadedness, a sensation of blacking out, and then the three of us were floating together through the treetops, unmindful of gravity and spiky branches alike. Now, as we emerged into the open sky, I saw the vast extent of the forest and caught a glimpse of a road below and ahead, and a long swarm of men.
It was only a glimpse, though. Among the trees were many opaque puffs of grayish-white smoke. Rising here and there were columns of darker stuff, some of it shot with red and orange flames. As far as the eye could see, the world lay obscured by a translucent, pungent haze.
Beside me, John said, “I even ran into some visitors from our own future. First time for me. It was some historian with a pack of grad students in tow. Fun bunch they were, too, let me tell you. They got all sniffy when I asked ’em about things up the way. Said it was against the rules. Rules? I said, and the old guy just grinned at me and cackled, There’ll be lawsone day, and cops, too. Can you imagine? Cops!”
I remembered the stranger’s smile as he talked of Yankees cooked just right, and I nodded, more to myself than to John. I could imagine cops.
Then, suddenly, we were going.
HOLE-IN-THE-WALL
Bridget McKenna
Morton Grimes knew it was going to be of those cases even before he walked inside the diner. Pulling the file from his portfolio, he scanned the application: Ladislaw Tomacheski—a communist name, for starters, and Grimes was no fool when it came to commies. He never missed an episode of “I Led Three Lives.” Ricking a thread from his coatsleeve, he opened the screen door and went inside.
The place seemed clean enough on the inside, but Grimes knew how clean a restaurant could look to the uneducated eye and still be a pesthole; knew all the places dirt could hide, breeding bacteria and foul smells. He shuddered as he bent down to check a red-upholstered stool, running his hand down the chrome column, bending low to see the interstices around the plate that bolted the stool to the linoleum. It all looked clean enough, but then, this place was operating on the temporary Ed Crawford had awarded last week. Give him a few more months to get sloppy, like they all did when they forgot Morton Grimes was watching.
“Can I help you with something? Maybe you lose something down there?” A heavily accented voice spoke from above him.
Grimes stood up quickly, rapping his head on the underside of the counter. Pain clouded his vision as he steadied himself with the chrome-studded seat of the stool and straightened his legs cautiously. “Mr. Tomacheski, I presume?” he said to the field of white before him which was slowly beginning to focus into a large beefy man a full head taller than he, in kitchen whites and apron.
“Tomacheski,” the figure said, extending a huge hand. Grimes tried to grasp it with the ends of his fingers, but the hand engulfed his and squeezed, pumping his arm up and down like an oil rig. He pulled loose and reached into his pocket for a card. “Morton Grimes. Health Department Officer.”
“Oh, yes. You came to grant my A-card! How do you do, Mr. Grimes!” The arm-pumping began all over again. “An unfortunate name for a man in your profession, yes?” Grimes stiffened. “An A-placard is not given lightly, Mr. Tomacheski. I’ll be making an extensive inspection of your premises.” Oh, indeed, I will, you Red bastard. The accent was definitely Russian, Grimes thought. This guy wasn’t even trying to sound like an American. Of course that could mean he wasn’t really a communist, since if he was, he probably wouldn’t sound so much like one. Well, he could decide about that later, he had an inspection to do.
“. . . Of course we weren’t expecting you until Wednesday,” the Russian was saying.
“Bacteria don’t make appointments, Mr. Tomacheski. A Health Department Officer is empowered to inspect a business at any time.”
“Of course. Well, where would you like to begin?”
“Let’s begin with the exterior of the premises. On the application here, it says that the name of the business is Tomacheski’s ‘Hole in the Wall.’ You would not appear to be doing business under that name.”
“But yes, of course. That’s the name. What it says right there on the paper.”
“Yet,” Grimes continued, warming up now, “there is no sign outside to that effect. There is only that.”
He pointed out the front window at the sign, which said only EAT, but said it so brightly that even in broad daylight it was sending coruscating pink and green waves through the glass bricks that made up most of the front wall.
“This is a little place, Mr. Grimes.” He put two huge hands close together to show how small. “The name is too big for the building. But EAT is what people come here to do, yes? So the sign says the important thing. Excuse me, but this is a concern of the Health Department, this sign business?”
“Not exactly, Mr. Tomacheski, but the Department doesn’t operate in a vacuum. We have an understanding with other branches of city and county government to report possible violations of any nature.”
“Well, the sign has been approved by the county, Mr. Grimes. Now, where would you like to begin?”
“With the kitchen.” Grimes pushed ahead of the big man in the narrow space between the counter stools and the booths and walked into the back of the diner. “Well, here’s your first problem right here,” he said, pulling out a notepad and his Parker. “Peeling paint on the wall of the, uh . . .” He peered around the comer. “Ladies’ Room. Peeling paint is a serious health hazard in a food service establishment. Lead, you know.”
The paint seemed to melt and run even as Grimes looked at it. He put his finger to the wall to determine the degree of flaking. A hot tingling ran up his arm to the elbow and he pulled away, shaking his hand. “What have you got here, Tomacheski? Loose wiring in this wall? I think the Fire Department will want to know about this.”
“They were here yesterday, Mr. Grimes, and the wiring is good in this building. The paint is good too, I think. I saw this same thing yesterday morning, and I think it is only a trick of the light. Look.” He pointed at the wall. The spot was gone.
Grimes touched the wall lightly with an index finger. No shock. No paint. He stood there for a moment, feeling puzzled and not liking it. Then he turned on his heel and pushed through the swinging doors into the kitchen with Tomacheski following close behind. A row of high windows illuminated the room with a fine morning light. Grimes marched into the cooking area and stopped dead in his tracks. Tomacheski pulled up, but too late to avoid bumping Grimes, who was propelled forward into the arms of the very Negro whose presence in the kitchen had alarmed him so.
“You all right, Mister?” the Negro asked, setting him back on his feet.
Grimes pulled away from the man’s grasp and brushed off his clothes. “I’m fine,” he croaked. “Fine.” He stared for a moment at the black face, the white cap and apron, then spun around to face Tomacheski. “We need to talk. Out there.” He walked back through the kitchen doors and into the dining room.
“You weren’t in the kitchen very long, Mr. Grimes. You sure you saw everything you need to see?”
“I’m scarcely finished with my inspection, Mr. Tomacheski. In fact, you might say I’m just getting started.” He pointed back the way they had come. “Mr. Tomacheski, there’s a Negro in your kitchen.” He folded his arms across his chest and waited for the other man’s reply.
Tomacheski blinked, furrowed his brow, and blinked again. “Yes.”
“Well, who is he, and what is he doing there?” Grimes could hear his voice climbing a bit, like it always did when his blood pressure went up. He could definitely feel it going up now.
“He’s Leon Duffy and he washes dishes, and I’m training him to cook so maybe he won’t have to wash dishes the rest of his life.” He cocked his head slightly, narrowed his eyes at Grimes. “Is there a problem you have with this arrangement between Mr. Duffy and myself?”
“Just this, Mr. Tomacheski, there are a lot of men—white men—out of work in this country despite Mr. Eisenhower’s best efforts. We have an understanding in this town about Negroes, about selling property to them, and about encouraging them to settle here by giving them jobs that could go to white men. Do you take my meaning?”
“Not entirely, Mr. Grimes, but I don’t speak the language so well yet. This is a law, this thing about not hiring Negroes?”
“Not exactly a law, Mr. Tomacheski—an understanding.”
“There are a lot of these ‘understandings’ around here, yes?”
“Exactly. And they help keep things running smoothly with very little unpleasantness. That’s the way we like it. When you grasp the way things work here, things will run smoothly for you, too.” He reached into his portfolio and withdrew a shiny new A-placard with the seal of the Health Department emblazoned in gold in the center of the A. He smiled up at Tomacheski, waiting.
“Curse me for an ignorant immigrant, Mr. Grimes, but I don’t understand your ‘understanding.’ Every night, except for Saturday when I go see a movie, I study the U.S. Constitution for my citizenship test. Nowhere do I find it written that I can’t train a dishwasher to be a cook.” Grimes could have sworn that Tomacheski was deliberately avoiding his point. He felt the beginnings of a tension headache crawling up his neck to the back of his skull. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a careful breath. “He’ll have to have a blood test, a skin Tuberculin test, and a lung X-ray in order to obtain a food worker’s permit. Without a food worker’s permit, he cannot work in your kitchen. And to obtain such a permit, he will have to go through my department.”
“Oh, he has these things already. He paid for all those tests last week.”
His vacation. Crawford had done it while he was away on vacation. The headache arrived in full force. Grimes slipped the A-placard back and pulled out a different one—sun-faded, fly specked, and marked with a large blue letter B. “My inspection reveals serious nonconformance with Health Department standards. You will remove your temporary permit and display this B-placard until my next inspection.”
“But you haven’t inspected anything yet!” Tomacheski protested. “This is terribly unfair, Mr. Grimes. You know I deserve an A-card. This restaurant is spotless. You could eat off this floor!”
Grimes glanced at the red and white linoleum, then up at Tomacheski. “County regulations require you to display this card until the premises have been inspected again.” He smiled briefly and turned to leave. That should take care of the Negro business.
Tomacheski followed him to the door. “Well, when is the next inspection?”
“You’ll have to call for an appointment, but I’ll warn you right now, I’m a very busy man. I may not be able to make it back for, oh . . . sixty days.”
“No customers will want to come to a B-card restaurant. In sixty days I could be closed down!”
Grimes tucked his portfolio up under his arm. “Business is uncertain in the best of times, Mr. Tomacheski. Perhaps the next proprietor at this location will prove more amenable to the way we do things around here. Good day.” He walked out onto the sidewalk. The screen door clicked shut—a lovely sound.
He arrived back at the department in the early afternoon. There was a message from Crawford. He left the day’s files on his desk and walked down the hall to Crawford’s office.
“Come in,” Crawford called from the other side of the door. Grimes walked in and stood before the hopelessly cluttered desk of the Chief Health Officer. He doubted Ed Crawford had seen the surface of his desk in months. “You asked to see me, Ed?”
“Yeah, Mort. What exactly is this Tomacheski business? Did you actually perform an inspection on his premises today, or didn’t you?”
So. The Russian had gone over his head. “There are serious problems at that place, Ed.”
“You have samples? Is the lab starting cultures?”
“This isn’t exactly something you can culture, Ed.” He crossed his hands behind his back, tapped his toe on the floor.
Crawford looked up at him expectantly. “Well?”
“This guy Tomacheski has a Negro working for him. As a cook.”
“Oh, yes. That would be the fellow who was in here getting tests last week. Don’t see too many Negroes applying for food cards around here. Came out clean as a whistle, though.” He shuffled through a stack of file folders, scattering loose papers across the desk.
Grimes went on tapping, a little harder now. “Ed, you’re a newcomer around here, relatively speaking, and if you’ll pardon my saying so, you haven’t gone out of your way to fit in—join up—you know what I mean, I guess. But there are things we do in this town and things we don’t do. Encouraging Negroes to live and work here is one of the things we just don’t do.” He nodded sagely, certain that Crawford would understand.
“Let me tell you what I do, Mort,” Crawford said, rising from his chair. “I enforce the health regulations and protect the health standards of this county. I do not decide who will live or work here, and neither do you. It’s simply not our job.” He handed Grimes a sheet of paper. “You have an appointment at ten a.m. tomorrow to conduct a genuine Health Department inspection of Tomacheski’s Hole in the Wall and grant or withhold his A-placard based on the results of that inspection. Is that clear?”
Grimes took the appointment slip and left the office. On his way back down the hall he reduced the paper to a tight, sweaty ball in his fist, and lobbed it at a wastebasket. It missed.
Tomacheski met him at the front door. “We’ve got a little problem back in the kitchen, Mr. Grimes. I don’t know if this would be such a good time for your inspection.” Grimes beamed. “You made an appointment. Tomacheski—I’m keeping it.” He advanced down the row of stools. Tomacheski retreating before his burning righteousness. “Just what is the nature of your problem?”
