Driving Blind (16 page)

“H
e’s a very sick man.”

“Where is he?”

“Up above on Deck C. I got him to bed.”

The doctor sighed. “I came on this trip for a vacation. All right, all right. Excuse me,” he said to his wife. He followed the private up through the ramps of the spaceship and the ship, in the few minutes while he did this, pushed itself on in red and yellow fire across space, a thousand miles a second.

“Here we are,” said the orderly.

The doctor turned in at the portway and saw the man lying on the bunk, and the man was tall and his flesh was sewed tight to his skull. The man was sick, and his lips fluted back in pain from his large, discolored teeth. His eyes were shadowed cups from which flickers of light peered, and his body was as thin as a skeleton. The color of his hands was that of snow. The doctor pulled up a magnetic chair and took the sick man’s wrist.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

The sick man didn’t speak for a moment, but only licked a colorless tongue over his sharp lips.

“I’m dying,” he said, at last, and seemed to laugh.

“Nonsense, we’ll fix you up, Mr….?”

“Pale, to fit my complexion. Pale will do.”

“Mr. Pale.” This wrist was the coldest wrist he had ever touched in his life. It was like the hand of a body you pick up and tag in the hospital morgue. The pulse was gone from the cold wrist already. If it was there at all, it was so faint that the doctor’s own fingertips, pulsing, covered it.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Pale.

The doctor said nothing but probed the bared chest of the dying man with his silver stethoscope.

There was a faint far clamor, a sigh, a musing upon distant things, heard in the stethoscope. It seemed almost to be a regretful wailing, a muted screaming of a million voices, instead of a heartbeat, a dark wind blowing in a dark space and the chest cold and the sound cold to the doctor’s ears and to his own heart, which gave pause in hearing it.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” said Mr. Pale.

The doctor nodded. “Perhaps you can tell me …”

“What caused it?” Mr. Pale closed his eyes smilingly over his colorlessness. “I haven’t any food. I’m starving.”

“We can fix that.”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” whispered the man. “I barely made it to this rocket in time to get
aboard. Oh, I was really healthy there for awhile, a few minutes ago.”

The doctor turned to the orderly. “Delirious.”

“No,” said Mr. Pale, “no.”

“What’s going on here?” said a voice, and the captain stepped into the room. “Hello, who’s this? I don’t recall …”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” said Mr. Pale. “I’m not on the passenger list. I just came aboard.”

“You couldn’t have. We’re ten million miles away from Earth.”

Mr. Pale sighed. “I almost didn’t make it. It took all my energy to catch you. If you’d been a little farther out …”

“A stowaway, pure and simple,” said the captain. “And drunk, too, no doubt.”

“A very sick man,” said the doctor. “He can’t be moved. I’ll make a thorough examination …”

“You’ll find nothing,” said Mr. Pale, faintly, lying white and long and alone in the cot, “except I’m in need of food.”

“We’ll see about that,” said the doctor, rolling up his sleeves.

An hour passed. The doctor sat back down on his magnetic chair. He was perspiring. “You’re right. There’s nothing wrong with you, except you’re starved. How could you do this to yourself in a rich civilization like ours?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said the cold, thin, white man. His voice was a little breeze blowing ice through
the room. “They took all my food away an hour or so ago. It was my own fault. You’ll understand in a few minutes now. You see, I’m very very old. Some say a million years, some say a billion. I’ve lost count. I’ve been too busy to count.”

Mad, thought the doctor, utterly mad.

Mr. Pale smiled weakly as if he had heard this thought. He shook his tired head and the dark pits of his eyes flickered. “No, no. No, no. Old, very old. And foolish. Earth was mine. I owned it. I kept it for myself. It nurtured me, even as I nurtured it. I lived well there, for a billion years, I lived high. And now here I am, in the name of all that’s darkest, dying too. I never thought I could die. I never thought I could be killed, like everyone else. And now
I
know what the fear is, what it will be like to die. After a billion years I know, and it is frightening, for what will the universe be without me?”

“Just rest easily, now, we’ll fix you up.”

“No, no. No, no, there’s nothing you can do. I overplayed my hand. I lived as I pleased. I started wars and stopped wars. But this time I went too far, and committed suicide, yes, I did. Go to the port there and look out.” Mr. Pale was trembling, the trembling moved in his fingers and his lips. “Look out. Tell me what you see.”

“Earth. The planet Earth, behind us.”

“Wait just a moment, then,” said Mr. Pale.

The doctor waited.

“Now,” said Mr. Pale, softly. “It should happen about
now
.”

A blind fire filled the sky.

The doctor cried out. “My God, my God, this is terrible!”

“What do you see?”

“Earth! It’s caught fire. It’s burning!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Pale.

The fire crowded the universe with a dripping blue yellow flare. Earth blew itself into a thousand pieces and fell away into sparks and nothingness.

“Did you see?” said Mr. Pale.

“My God, my God.” The doctor staggered and fell against the port, clawing at his heart and his face. He began to cry like a child.

“You see,” said Mr. Pale, “what a fool I was. Too far. I went too far. I thought, What a feast. What a banquet. And now, and now, it’s over.”

The doctor slid down and sat on the floor, weeping. The ship moved in space. Down the corridors, faintly, you could hear running feet and stunned voices, and much weeping.

The sick man lay on his cot, saying nothing, shaking his head slowly back and forth, swallowing convulsively. After five minutes of trembling and weeping, the doctor gathered himself and crawled and then got to his feet and sat on the chair and looked at Mr. Pale who lay gaunt and long there, almost phosphorescent, and from the dying man came a thick smell of something very old and chilled and dead.

“Now do you see?” said Mr. Pale. “I didn’t want it this way.”

“Shut up.”

“I wanted it to go on for another billion years, the high life, the picking and choosing. Oh, I was king.”

“You’re mad!”

“Everyone feared me. And now
I’m
afraid. For there’s no one left to die. A handful on this ship. A few thousand left on Mars. That’s why I’m trying to get there, to Mars, where I can live, if I make it. For in order for me to live, to be talked about, to have an existence, others must be alive to die, and when all the living ones are dead and no one is left to die, then Mr. Pale himself must die, and he most assuredly does not want that. For you see, life is a rare thing in the universe. Only Earth lived, and only I lived there because of the living men. But now I’m so weak, so weak. I can’t move. You must help me.”

“Mad, mad!”

“It’s another two days to Mars,” said Mr. Pale, thinking it through, his hands collapsed at his sides. “In that time you must feed me. I can’t move or I would tend myself. Oh, an hour ago, I had great power, think of the power I took from so much and so many dying at once. But the effort of reaching this ship dispersed the power, and the power is self-limiting. For now I have no reason to live, except you, and your wife, and the twenty other passengers and crew, and those few on Mars. My incentive, you see, weakens, weakens …” His voice trailed off into a sigh. And
then, after swallowing, he went on, “Have you wondered, Doctor, why the death rate on Mars in the six months since you established bases there has been nil? I can’t be everywhere. I was born on Earth on the same day as life was born. And I’ve waited all these years to move on out into the star system. I should have gone months ago, but I put it off, and now, I’m sorry. What a fool, what a greedy fool.”

The doctor stood up, stiffening and pulling back. He clawed at the wall. “You’re out of your head.”

“Am I? Look out the port again at what’s left of Earth.”

“I won’t listen to you.”

“You must help me. You must decide quickly. I want the captain. He must come to me first. A transfusion, you might call it. And then the various passengers, one by one, just to keep me on the edge, to keep me alive. And then, of course, perhaps even you, or your wife. You don’t want to live forever, do you? That’s what would happen if you let me die.”

“You’re raving.”

“Do you dare believe I am raving? Can you take that chance? If I die, all of you would be immortal. That’s what man’s always wanted, isn’t it? To live forever. But I tell you, it would be insanity, one day like another, and think of the immense burden of memory! Think! Consider.”

The doctor stood across the room with his back to the wall, in shadow.

Mr. Pale whispered, “Better take me up on this. Better
die when you have the chance than live on for a million billion years. Believe me. I
know
. I’m almost glad to die. Almost, but not quite. Self-preservation. Well?”

The doctor was at the door. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t go,” murmured Mr. Pale. “You’ll regret it.”

“You’re lying.”

“Don’t let me die …” The voice was so far away now, the lips barely moved. “Please don’t let me die. You need me. All life needs me to make life worthwhile, to give it value, to give it contrast. Don’t …”

Mr. Pale was thinner and smaller and now the flesh seemed to melt faster. “No,” he sighed. “No …” said the wind behind the hard yellowed teeth. “Please …” The deep-socketed eyes fixed themselves in a stare at the ceiling.

The doctor crashed out the door and slammed it and bolted it tight. He lay against it, weeping again, and through the ship he could see the people standing in groups staring back at the empty space where Earth had been. He heard cursing and wailing. He walked unsteadily and in great unreality for an hour through the ship’s corridors until he reached the captain.

“Captain, no one is to enter that room where the dying man is. He has a plague. Incurable. Quite insane. He’ll be dead within the hour. Have the room welded shut.”

“What?” said the captain. “Oh, yes, yes. I’ll attend to it. I will. Did you see? See Earth go?”

“I saw it.”

They walked numbly away from each other. The doctor sat down beside his wife who did not recognize him for a moment until he put his arm around her.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

Her shoulders shook. He held her very tightly, his eyes clenched in on the trembling in his own body. They sat this way for several hours.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “Think of something else. Forget Earth. Think about Mars, think about the future.”

They sat back in their seats with vacant faces. He lit a cigarette and could not taste it, and passed it to her and lit another for himself. “How would you like to be married to me for another ten million years?” he asked.

“Oh, I’d like that,” she cried out, turning to him and seizing his arm in her own, fiercely wrapping it to her. “I’d like that very much!”

“
Would
you?” he said.

“Y
ou remember people by the things they do,” said Mrs. Coles, “rather than by how their face looks or what their tongues say, while they’re doing what they do. Now, if you ask me, this new woman across the street and down two houses, Kit Random, that her name? She is, to put it mildly, a woman of action.”

Everybody on the porch looked.

There was Kit Random with a flower in her hand, in the garden. There she was drawing the shade in the upstairs window. There fanning herself in the cool dark doorway of her front porch. There making mosquito-delicate etchings under a lemon-colored hurricane lamp at night. There throwing clay on a potter’s wheel early mornings, singing in a loud clear-water voice. There shoving dozens of ashtrays into a kiln she had built of bricks. And again you saw her baking pies for God
knows who in her empty house and setting them to cool in windowsills so men on the far side of the street crossed over, noses lifted, passing. Then, when the sun set, she swung in a great hairy hemp swing she had tied to the vast oak in her backyard. About nine at night, carrying a crank phonograph like the white Victrola dog in her hands, she’d come out, crank up the machine, put on a record, and swing in the giant child’s swing, being a poor butterfly or a red red robin hop hop hopping along.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tiece. “She’s either a very shrewd woman up to her feminine tricks or—” And here she debated a moment. “She’s that little bird that comes out of the clock … that little bird that comes out of the clock …”

All along the street, women tapped their heads with knowing forefingers and looked over her fence, like women peering over a cliff, ready to scream at how high up they were, but all they saw was the nine o’clock backyard, as dim as a cavern full of sprouting leaves, starred with flowers, the phonograph hissing and clearing its throat before launching itself down the grooves of “June Night” or “Poor Butterfly.” And there, with the regularity of an unseen, but nevertheless ticking pendulum, back and forth, one arm up to cushion her pink little pillow of cheek, sighing quietly to herself, was Kit Random, swinging in her swing, in rhythm to the things the phonograph said were poor about the butterfly or nice about the June night.

“Where’s she from?”

“No one knows.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“No one knows.”

“How long’s she going to stay?”

“Go ask
her!
”

The facts were simple enough. The house had been unrented for a year, and then it was rented. One April afternoon a large moving van drove up and two men ran in and out, like Keystone Cops, the nearest thing to collision, but always skidding around each other with a fast-action routine of clocks, lamps, chairs, tables, and urns. In what seemed a minute they had driven away. The house was left alone, unoccupied. Mrs. Coles had walked by it four times and peered in, and only seen that the moving men had hung the pictures, spread the rugs, adjusted the furniture, and made everything womanly and neat before they had come running out to go away. There was the nest, waiting for the bird.

And promptly at seven o’clock, just after supper, when everyone could see her, up drove Kit Random in a yellow taxicab, and moved into the waiting house, alone.

“Where’s Mr. Random?” asked everyone.

“There isn’t any.”

“Divorced, that’s what she is, divorced. Or maybe her husband dead. A widow, that’s better. Poor thing.”

But there was Kit Random smiling at every window and every porch, on her way to buy T-bone steaks, tomato soup, and dishwater soap, not looking tired, not looking sad, not looking alone, but looking as if a company
of clowns lived with her by day, and a handsome film gentleman with a waxed mustache by night.

“But no one ever comes
near
her place. At first I thought, well …” Mrs. Coles hesitated. “A woman living alone. Oh,
you
know. But there hasn’t even been an iceman close. So there’s only one thing to figure: as someone said, she’s that bird that comes out of the clock. Four times an hour,” she added.

At that very moment, Miss Kit Random called to the ladies, now her voice up in the soft green trees, now up in the blue sky on the opposite side of the yard. “Ladies?”

Their heads twisted. Their ears prickled.

“Ladies,” called Miss Kit Random, in flight. “I’ve come to get me a man. That’s
it
, ladies!”

All the ladies backed off to their houses.

It was the next afternoon that they found Mr. Tiece over in Miss Kit Random’s front yard playing marbles. Mrs. Tiece put up with it for about two minutes and thirty-five seconds and then came across the street, almost on roller skates.

“Well, what’re we
doing?
” she demanded of the two hunched-down figures.

“Just a moment.” A marble spun bright under Henry Tiece’s thumb. Other marbles spat against each other and clacked away.

“Looks like you won,” said Kit Random. “You’re darned good at mibs, Hank.”

“It’s been years.” Mr. Tiece glanced uneasily at his
wife’s ankle. She had veins like runners of light blue ink on her legs. It looked like the map of Illinois. Desplaines River here, Mississippi there. He scanned up as far as Rock Island when his wife said:

“Isn’t it a little strange playing marbles?”

“Strange
thing?
” Mr. Tiece dusted himself off. “I
won!
”

“What you going to do with them marbles?”

“It’s not what I
do
with them, it’s victory that
counts
.”

Mrs. Tiece glared at them as if they were toadstools. “Thanks for giving Henry a game.”

“Anytime, Clara, anytime,” said Kit Random.

“I’ll just leave these with you.” Henry handed over the marbles hastily. “No room at my place.”

“I want you to cut the grass,” said Mrs. Tiece.

He and Mrs. Tiece sort of walked across the street, he not looking at her, she keeping up so he walked faster, she increasing her pace, he increasing his until they almost leaped up the porch steps. He ran to the door first, she tailed after. The door-slam was such that birds abandoned their nests three houses down.

The next incident occurred exactly an hour later. Mr. Tiece was out mowing the lawn, his eyes fixed to the rotating machine and each of one hundred clover blossoms, all with tiny heads like Mrs. Tiece. He cut furiously east, west, north, south, perspiring and wiping his brow as Mrs. Tiece shouted, “Don’t miss the outer
drive! And down the middle, you missed a ridge. Watch that stone, you’ll ruin the cutter!”

Exactly at two o’clock two trucks drove up in front of Miss Kit Random’s house and a couple of laborers began tossing dirt out of Miss Random’s lawn. By four o’clock they poured a solid sheet of cement all over Miss Random’s yard.

At five o’clock, the truck drove off, taking Miss Kit Randpm’s lawn with it, at which point Miss Kit Random waved over to Mr. Tiece. “Won’t have to mow this lawn again for a couple years I guess!” She laughed.

Mr. Tiece started to laugh back when he sensed someone hidden inside the dark screen door. Mr. Tiece ducked inside. This time, with the door-slam, two potted geraniums fell off the porch rail.

“The nerve of that woman.”

“Did it on purpose.”

“Trying to make us look like slave drivers. Putting cement over her lawn. Giving Mr. Tiece ideas. Well, we’re not cementing
our
lawn, he’ll cut it every week, or my name isn’t Clara Moon Tiece!”

The three ladies snorted over their knitting.

“Seems like some sort of plot to me,” said Mrs. Coles. “Look at her backyard, a jungle, nothing in its right place.”

“Tell us about the marble game again, Clara.”

“Good grief. There he was down on his knees, both laughing. I—wait a minute. You
hear
something?”

It was twilight, just after supper, and the three
women on Mrs. Coles’ porch right next door. “That Clock Woman’s out in her backyard again, laughing.”

“Swinging in her swing?”

“Listen. Shh!”

“I haven’t done this in
years!
” a man’s voice laughed. “Always wanted to, but folks think you’re crazy! Hey!”

“Who’s that?” cried Mrs. Coles.

The three women clapped their hands to their thumping chests and lurched to the far end of the porch, panicked excursioners on a sinking ship.

“Here you go!” cried Kit Random, giving a push.

And there in her backyard going up in the green leaves one way, then down and swooping up on the other, in the twilight air was a laughing man.

“Don’t that sound a bit like your Mr. Coles?” one of the ladies wondered.

“The idea!”

“Oh, Fanny.”

“The
idea!
”

“Oh, Fanny, go to sleep,” said Mr. Coles in bed. The room was warm and dark. She sat like a great lump of ice cream glowing in the dim room at eleven o’clock.

“Ought to be run out of town.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He punched his pillow. “It was just a backyard swing, haven’t swung in years. Big damn swing, plenty hefty to ride a man. You left me to finish the dishes so you could go out and blather with those hens, I went to toss out the garbage and
there she was swinging in the swing and I said how nice it looked and she said did I want to try? So, by God, I just climbed over to pump myself up for a ride.”

“And cackling like an idiot rooster.”

“Not cackling, damn it, ‘but laughing. I wasn’t pinching her behind, was I?” He punched his pillow twice more and rolled over.

In his sleep she heard him mumble, “Best damn swing I ever swung,” which set her off into a new fit of weeping.

It remained only for Mr. Clements to jump off the cliff the next afternoon. Mrs. Clements found him blowing bubbles on Miss Kit Random’s back garden wall, discussing the formation, clarity, and coloration of same with her. Her phonograph was warbling an old tune from World War I sung by the Knickerbocker Quartet titled “The Worst Is Yet to Come.” Mrs. Clements acted out the song’s words by grabbing Mr. Clements by the ear and lugging him off.

“That woman’s yard,” said Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements, and Mrs. Tiece, “is, as of this hour, day, and minute, forbidden territory.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mr. Coles, Mr. Clements, and Mr. Tiece.

“You are not to say good morning or good night, Nurse, to her,” said Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements, and Mrs. Tiece.

“Of course not, dear,” said the husbands behind their newspapers.

“You
hear
me?”

“Yes, sweetheart,” came the chorus.

From then on Mr. Coles, Mr. Clements, and Mr. Tiece could be seen mowing lawns, fixing lights, trimming hedges, painting doors, cleaning windows, washing dishes, digging bulbs, watering trees, fertilizing flowers, rushing to work, rushing back, bending, flexing, running, pausing, reaching, busy at a thousand and one tasks with a thousand and one perspirations.

Whereas in Kit Random’s clocks had stopped, flowers died or went insane with abundance. Doorknobs fell off if you tapped them, trees shed their leaves in mid-summer for lack of water; paint flaked from doors, and the electric light-system, burnt out, was replaced with candles rammed in wine jugs: a paradise of neglect, a beautiful chaos.

Somewhere along the line Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements and Mrs. Tiece were stunned at the pure unadulterated nerve of Kit Random shoving notes in their mailboxes during the night, inviting them to come by at four next day for poisoned tea.

They absolutely refused.

And
went
.

Kit Random poured them all the orange pekoe which was her favorite and then sat back, smiling.

“It was nice of you ladies to come,” she said.

The ladies nodded grimly.

“There’s a lot for us to talk about,” she added.

The ladies waited stone-cold, leaning toward the door.

“I feel you don’t understand me at all,” said Kit Random. “I feel I must explain everything.”

They waited.

“I’m a maiden lady with a private income.”

“Looks
suspiciously
private to me,” observed Mrs. Tiece.

“Suspiciously,” echoed Mrs. Cole.

Mrs. Clements was about to toss her teabag in the cup when Kit Random uncorked a laugh.

“I can see no matter what I say you’ll add sugar lumps and stir your spoons so loud I can’t be heard.”

“Try us,” said Mrs. Tiece.

Kit Random reached over to pick up a shiny brass tube and twist it.

“What’s
that?
” asked all three at once and then covered their mouths as if embarrassed not one of them had said anything original.

“One of them toy kaleidoscopes.” Kit Random shut one eye to squint through the odd-colored shards. “Right now I’m examining your gizzards. Know what
I find?
”

“How could we possibly care?” cried Mrs. Clements. The others nodded at her snappy retort.

“I see a solid potato.” Kit Random fixed the device to X-ray Mrs. Tiece, then moved to the others. “A rutabaga and a nice round turnip. No innards, stomach, spleen, or heart. I’ve listened. No pulse, just solid flesh, fit to burst your corsets. And your tongues? Not connected to your cerebral cortex …”

“Our cerebral
what?
” cried Mrs. Tiece, offended.

“
Cortex
. Not as off-color as it sounds. And I’ve made a brave decision. Don’t get up.”

The three women squirmed in their chairs and Kit Random said:

“I’m going to take your husbands, one by one. I’m going to, in the words of the old song, steal their hearts away. Or what’s there if you left any on the plate. I’ve decided that flimsy-whimsy as I am, I’ll be a darn sight better midnight or high-noon companion than all of you in a bunch. Don’t speak, don’t leave. I’m almost done. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Oh, yes, one thing. Love these fine men. But I don’t think it crossed your minds, it’s so long ago. Look at their faces. See how they crush their straw hats down hard over their ears and grind their teeth in their sleep. Heck, I can hear it way over
here!
And make fists when they walk, with no one to hit. So stand back, don’t even try to interfere. And how will I do it? With cribbage and dead man’s poker, and miniature golf in my garden, I’ll pull flowers to sink par-three holes. Then there’s blackjack, dominoes, checkers, chess, beer and ice cream, hot dogs noons, hamburgers midnights, phonograph moonlight dancing, fresh beds, clean linens, singing in the shower allowed, litter all week, clean up on Sundays, grow a mustache or beard, go barefoot at croquet. When the beer stops, gin stays. Hold on! Sit!”