The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories (46 page)

In the window of the television shop a big television set blinked and winked a soundless program, the images leaping merrily. Elwood watched passively. A woman in tights was doing acrobatics, first a series of splits, then cartwheels and spins. She walked on her hands for a moment, her legs waving above her, smiling at the audience. Then she disappeared and a brightly dressed man came on, leading a dog.

Elwood looked at his watch. Five minutes to one. He had five minutes to get back to the office. He went back to the pavement and looked around the corner. Ann and Charlie and Jack were no place to be seen. They had gone on. Elwood walked slowly along, past the stores, his hands in his pockets. He stopped for a moment in front of the ten cent store, watching the milling women pushing and shoving around the imitation jewelry counters, touching things, picking them up, examining them. In the window of a drugstore he stared at an advertisement for athlete’s foot, some kind of a powder, being sprinkled between two cracked and blistered toes. He crossed the street.

On the other side he paused to look at a display of women’s clothing, skirts and blouses and wool sweaters. In a color photograph a handsomely dressed girl was removing her blouse to show the world her elegant bra. Elwood passed on. The next window was suitcases, luggage and trunks.

Luggage. He stopped, frowning. Something wandered through his mind, some loose vague thought, too nebulous to catch. He felt, suddenly, a deep inner urgency. He examined his watch. Ten past one. He was late. He hurried to the corner and stood waiting impatiently for the light to change. A handful of men and women pressed past him, moving out to the curb to catch an oncoming bus. Elwood watched the bus. It halted, its doors opening. The people rushed on to it. Suddenly Elwood joined them, stepping up the steps of the bus. The doors closed behind him as he fished out change from his pocket.

A moment later he took his seat, next to an immense old woman with a child on her lap. Elwood sat quietly, his hands folded, staring ahead and waiting, as the bus moved off down the street, moving towards the residential district.

When he got home there was no one there. The house was dark and cool. He went to the bedroom and got his old clothes from the closet. He was just going out into the back yard when Liz appeared in the driveway, her arms loaded with groceries.

“E.J.!” she said. “What’s the matter? Why are you home?”

“I don’t know. I took some leave. It’s all right.”

Liz put her packages down on the fence. “For heaven’s sake,” she said irritably. “You frightened me.” She stared at him intently. “You took
leave?”

“Yes.”

“How much does that make, this year? How much leave have you taken in all?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, is there any left?”

“Left for what?”

Liz stared at him. Then she picked up her packages and went inside the house, the back door banging after her. Elwood frowned. What was the matter? He went on into the garage and began to drag lumber and tools out on to the lawn, beside the boat.

He gazed up at it. It was square, big and square, like some enormous solid packing crate. Lord, but it was solid. He had put endless beams into it. There was a covered cabin with a big window, the roof tarred over. Quite a boat.

He began to work. Presently Liz came out of the house. She crossed the yard silently, so that he did not notice her until he came to get some large nails.

“Well?” Liz said.

Elwood stopped for a moment. “What is it?”

Liz folded her arms.

Elwood became impatient. “What is it? Why are you looking at me?”

“Did you really take more leave? I can’t believe it. You really came home again to work on—on that.”

Elwood turned away.

“Wait.” She came up beside him. “Don’t walk off from me. Stand still.”

“Be quiet. Don’t shout.”

“I’m not shouting. I want to talk to you. I want to ask you something. May I? May I ask you something? You don’t mind talking to me?”

Elwood nodded.

“Why?” Liz
said, her voice low and intense. “Why? Will you tell me that? Why?”

“Why what?”

“That. That-that thing. What is it for? Why are you here in the yard in the middle of the day? For a whole year it’s been like this. At the table last night, all of a sudden you got up and walked out. Why? What’s it all for?”

“It’s almost done,” Elwood murmured. “A few more licks here and there and it’ll be—”

“And then what?” Liz came around in front of him, standing in his path. “And then what? What are you going to do with it? Sell it? Float it? All the neighbors are laughing at you. Everybody in the block knows—” Her voice broke suddenly. “—Knows about you, and this. The kids at school make fun of Bob and Toddy. They tell them their father is—That he’s—”

“That he’s crazy?”

“Please, E.J. Tell me what it’s for. Will you do that? Maybe I can understand. You never told me. Wouldn’t it help? Can’t you even do that?”

“I can’t,” Elwood said.

“You can’t! Why not?”

“Because I don’t know,” Elwood said. “I don’t know what it’s for. Maybe it isn’t for anything.”

“But if it isn’t for anything why do you work on it?”

“I don’t know. I like to work on it. Maybe it’s like whittling.” He waved his hand impatiently. “I’ve always had a workshop of some kind. When I was a kid I used to build model airplanes. I have tools. I’ve always had tools.”

“But why do you come home in the middle of the day?”

“I get restless.”

“Why?”

“I—I hear people talking, and it makes me uneasy. I want to get away from them. There’s something about it all, about them. Their ways. Maybe I have claustrophobia.”

“Shall I call Doctor Evans and make an appointment?”

“No. No, I’m all right. Please, Liz, get out of the way so I can work. I want to finish.”

“And you don’t even know what it’s for.” She shook her head. “So all this time you’ve been working without knowing why. Like some animal that goes out at night and fights, like a cat on the back fence. You leave your work and us to—”

“Get out of the way.”

“Listen to me. You put down that hammer and come inside. You’re putting your suit on and going right back to the office. Do you hear? If you don’t I’m never going to let you inside the house again. You can break down the door if you want, with your hammer. But it’ll be locked for you from now on, if you don’t forget that boat and go back to work.”

There was silence.

“Get out of the way,” Elwood said. “I have to finish.”

Liz stared at him. “You’re going on?” The man pushed past her. “You’re going to go ahead? There’s something wrong with you. Something wrong with your mind. You’re—”

“Stop,” Elwood said, looking past her. Liz turned.

Toddy was standing silently in the driveway, his lunch pail under his arms. His small face was grave and solemn. He did not say anything to them.

“Tod!” Liz said. “Is it that late already?”

Toddy came across the grass to his father. “Hello, boy,” Elwood said. “How was school?”

“Fine.”

“I’m going in the house,” Liz said. “I meant it, E.J. Remember that I meant it.”

She went up the walk. The back door slammed behind her.

Elwood sighed. He sat down on the ladder leading up the side of the boat and put his hammer down. He lit a cigarette and smoked silently. Toddy waiting without speaking.

“Well, boy?” Elwood said at last. “What do you say?”

“What do you want done, Dad?”

“Done?” Elwood smiled. “Well, there’s not too much left. A few things here and there. We’ll be through, soon. You might look around for boards we didn’t nail down on the deck.” He rubbed his jaw. “Almost done. We’ve been working a long time. You could paint, if you want. I want to get the cabin painted. Red, I think. How would red be?”

“Green.”

“Green? All right. There’s some green porch paint in the garage. Do you want to start stirring it up?”

“Sure,” Toddy said. He headed towards the garage.

Elwood watched him go. “Toddy—”

The boy turned. “Yes?”

“Toddy, wait.” Elwood went slowly towards him. “I want to ask you something.”

“What is it, Dad?”

“You—you don’t mind helping me, do you? You don’t mind working on the boat?”

Toddy looked up gravely into his father’s face. He said nothing. For a long time the two of them gazed at each other.

“Okay!” Elwood said suddenly. “You run along and get the paint started.”

Bob came swinging along the driveway with two of the kids from the junior high school. “Hi, Dad,” Bob called, grinning. “Say, how’s it coming?”

“Fine,” Elwood said.

“Look,” Bob said to his pals, pointing to the boat. “You see that? You know what that is?”

“What is it?” one of them said.

Bob opened the kitchen door. “That’s an atomic powered sub.” He grinned, and the two boys grinned. “It’s full of Uranium 235. Dad’s going all the way to Russia with it. When he gets through, there won’t be a thing left of Moscow.”

The boys went inside, the door slamming behind them.

Elwood stood looking up at the boat. In the next yard Mrs. Hunt stopped for a moment with taking down her washing, looking at him and the big square hull rising above him.

“Is it really atomic powered, Mr. Elwood?” she said.

“No.”

“What makes it run, then? I don’t see any sails. What kind of motor is in it? Steam?”

Elwood bit his lip. Strangely, he had never thought of that part. There was no motor in it, no motor at all. There were no sails, no boiler. He had put no engine into it, no turbines, no fuel. Nothing. It was a wood hull, an immense box, and that was all. He had never thought of what would make it go, never in all the time he and Toddy had worked on it.

Suddenly a torrent of despair descended over him. There was no engine, nothing. It was not a boat, it was only a great mass of wood and tar and nails. It would never go, never never leave the yard. Liz was right: he was like some animal going out into the yard at night, to fight and kill in the darkness, to struggle dimly, without sight or understanding, equally blind, equally pathetic.

What had he built it for? He did not know. Where was it going? He did not know that either. What would make it run? How would he get it out of the yard? What was it all for, to build without understanding, darkly, like a creature in the night?

Toddy had worked alongside him, the whole time. Why had
he
worked? Did he know? Did the boy know what the boat was for, why they were building? Toddy had never asked because he trusted his father to know.

But he did not know. He, the father, he did not know either, and soon it would be done, finished, ready. And then what? Soon Toddy would lay down his paint brush, cover the last can of paint, put away the nails, the scraps of wood, hang the saw and hammer up in the garage again. And
then
he would ask, ask the question he had never asked before but which must come finally.

And he could not answer him.

Elwood stood, staring up at it, the great hulk they had built, struggling to understand. Why had he worked? What was it all for? When would he know? Would he
ever
know? For an endless time he stood there, staring up.

It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.

They entered the great chamber. At the far end, technicians hovered around an immense illuminated board, following a complex pattern of lights that shifted rapidly, flashing through seemingly endless combinations. At long tables machines whirred—computers, human-operated and robot. Wall-charts covered every inch of vertical space. Hasten gazed around him in amazement.

Wood laughed. “Come over here and I’ll really show you something. You recognize
this,
don’t you?” He pointed to a hulking machine surrounded by silent men and women in white lab robes.

“I recognize it,” Hasten said slowly. “It’s something like our own Dip, but perhaps twenty times larger. What do you haul up? And
when
do you haul?” He fingered the surface-plate of the Dip, then squatted down, peering into the maw. The maw was locked shut; the Dip was in operation. “You know, if we had any idea this existed, Histo-Research would have—”

“You know now.” Wood bent down beside him. “Listen. Hasten, you’re the first man from outside the Department ever to get into this room. You saw the guards. No one gets in here unauthorized; the guards have orders to kill anyone trying to enter illegally.”

“To hide this? A machine? You’d shoot to—”

They stood, Wood facing him, his jaw hard.
“Your
Dip digs back into antiquity. Rome. Greece. Dust and old volumes.” Wood touched the big Dip beside them. “This Dip is different. We guard it with our lives, and anyone else’s lives; do you know why?”

Hasten stared at it.

“This Dip is set, not for antiquity, but—for the future.” Wood looked directly into Hasten’s face. “Do you understand? The future.”

“You’re dredging the future? But you can’t! It’s forbidden by law; you know that!” Hasten drew back. “If the Executive Council knew this they’d break this building apart. You know the dangers. Berkowsky himself demonstrated them in his original thesis.”

Hasten paced angrily. “I can’t understand you, using a future oriented Dip. When you pull material from the future you automatically introduce new factors into the present; the future is altered—you start a never-ending shift. The more you dip the more new factors are brought in. You create unstable conditions for centuries to come. That’s why the law was passed.”

Wood nodded. “I know.”

“And you still keep dipping?” Hasten gestured at the machine and the technicians. “Stop, for God’s sake! Stop before you introduce some lethal element that can’t be erased. Why do you keep—”