The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (54 page)

Immediately after saying this, his shoulders slumped and his normally ruddy face took on the color of an off-white sheet.

Grimbley’s eyes sparkled. He was on the precipice of a vast and strange knowledge and he perceived it readily. He took a few steps over to Harvey and spoke in a hushed voice.

“That’s the goods, isn’t it? he asked. “You
have
to tell the truth, don’t you? He shook his head from side to side. “That’s it! That’s the reason for the song and dance.
You have to tell the truth.”

Harvey smiled the kind of smile that on babies is considered gas. He made a halfhearted gesture toward the car.

“What about the model A? he said. “Outside of the fact that it’s haunted, it’s a. . .it’s a nice conversation piece.”

Grimbley held up a beefy hand. “For some people, maybe,” he said positively, “but not for old honest Luther Grimbley! Buddy boy, I’m in politics and when you tell me I gotta start tellin’ the truth all the time—” He pulled at his jowls and looked horrified. “Holy God!” He looked back over at the car. “Well, do you know something? I couldn’t make a single political speech! I couldn’t run for office again. Why, old honest Luther Grimbley . . . old honest Luther Grimbley would die on the vine!”

He carefully butted out the cigar on the sidewalk, scraped off the ashes, and deposited it in his pocket. He started off with a wave of his hand.

“See ya around, buddy boy,” he called over his shoulder.

“Hey!” Harvey yelled.

Grimbley stopped and turned to him. Harvey pointed to the car.

“Any suggestions?”

Grimbley looked thoughtful for a moment. “Suggestions? Yeah, maybe one. Why don’t ya hang yourself!” Then he turned and walked off.

Harvey leaned against the model A, staring down at his feet, feeling the weight of his depression like sandbags on his shoulders. He took a slow, rather aimless walk over to the shack. He had barely entered the small room when Irving appeared at the door.

He entered silently and picked up a paintbrush from a bucket in the corner. He held it up.

“I came back for this.”

Harvey nodded numbly and sat down at his desk.

“It belongs to me,” Irving said defensively.

Harvey shrugged again and looked at him blankly. “I’m happy for you.” He turned in the swivel chair and looked out the window. “I’m like Dante in the inferno,” he announced rhetorically. “I’m absolutely like that fella Dante—doomed, damned...bankrupt!”

He turned again in the chair to face Irving. “Booby...One man! One clod! One absolute idiot who’s got a thing for a pig-in-the-poke! Or one guy whose tellin’ the truth all the time might do some good!

Irving—is there no such patsy in this city? In this country?” Irving stared at him, totally without sympathy.

“You’re askin’ me? You got a helluva nerve! Askin’ me about patsies! After I’ve slaved and worked and broke my back and told lies for ya! You got a helluva nerve even sittin’ there talkin’ to me! My old man says you’re a son of a bitch! And ya know somethin’, Hennicutt?”

At this point, Irving slammed his small fist down on the desk. “My old man is right!”

Once again he pounded on the desk for emphasis, and it was then that Harvey noticed the newspaper lying there. He reached over and pulled it to him, turning it so that he could read the headlines. He stared at it for a long moment, then put it down and started to drum his fingers on the desk.

“And, furthermore,” Irving’s voice squealed, “my old man says that for two cents he’d come over here and give you such a hit in the head you’d never forget it! And, besides that—my sister’s husband is goin’ to law school at night and I’ve got every intention of talkin’ this whole thing over with him and maybe suing you for contributing to the delinquency of a minor!”

Harvey’s head was bent low over the paper. He gave no sign of hearing Irving’s soliloquy, much less being moved by it.

Irving slammed his bony little fist on the desk top again.

“when I think...When I think of the terrible things you had me do—like sellin’ that 1928 hearse and saw it was Babe Ruth’s town car!”

He shook his head at the enormity of his past transgressions, but still Harvey Hennicutt kept his eyes fastened on the paper. His lips moved soundlessly as he read something in it, and then, very slowly, he looked up into Irving’s face.

“Why not?” he whispered. “I ask ya, Irving,
why not?”

Irving thrust out a belligerent pointed jaw. “Why not what?”

Harvey slapped the newspaper. “Why not sell it to
him?
”

“Never mind
him
,” Irving screeched out. “What about my rights? What about my severance pay? What about my seniority?”

Harvey had the phone book in his hand and was riffling through the pages. He looked up briefly at Irving.

“Irving, booby...I am about to strike a blow for democracy! I don’t know how I’m goin’ to—but I’m goin’ to. You and me, booby,” he said, looking down at the phone book. “You and me. This moment is goin’ down in history right alongside of Washington crossing the Delaware, the invasion of Normandy, and the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment!”

Irving gaped at him. “What?” he inquired in a soft voice.

“Exactly!” Harvey said. “
And you are there!
”

He grabbed the phone and pulled it toward him. He started to dial a number, and at the same time looked up at Irving.

“You run out and dust off that Packard—the one with the sawdust in the wheel bearings.”

“Check, boss,” Irving said, as he turned smartly and headed for the door.

Harvey Hennicutt was functioning again. Irving could hear the great man’s voice on the telephone. It rang with some of the old assurance, the verve, and the grandeur of the man who had once actually sold a Mack truck to a midget along with a written guarantee that the midget would grow an inch and a quarter each year just by stretching to reach the pedals.

It was eight in the morning when a long, sleek black limousine pulled into Harvey Hennicutt’s used-car lot. Harvey, hearing it stop, left the shack and went over to it. He noticed immediately that it was driven by a chauffeur who had a build like Mickey Hargitay.

There was a huddled figure in the back seat who sat motionless with his coat collar hiding his face, but the front door opened and out stepped a dapper little man with a face like a chicken hawk. He gave Harvey a no-nonsense nod, looked around at the various cars, with a raised eyebrow, then pointed to the model A.

“This is the car, I presume?”

Harvey nodded. “That’s the baby.”

“Baby?”

“It’s an American expression,” Harvey explained. “We call everything ‘baby.”‘

He looked over the little man’s shoulder at the black limousine. “That’s not a bad-lookin’ baby you’re drivin’. You’re not thinkin’ of trading that in, are you?”

The little man shook his head decisively. “I am interested only in this so-called model A you described on the telephone.”

Harvey smiled at him. Then he winked, and jammed an elbow into the little man’s rib cage.

“Got to ya, didn’t I?”

He jerked a thumb in the direction of the model A. “Wouldn’t that be a blast. You take that car back to your country, tell ‘em that this is a sample of what the capitalists drive?” Again he rammed an elbow into the little man’s side. “That’s worth six points, ain’t it?”

The little man dusted off his coat, moved a step back, and surveyed Harvey, half with horror and half with a curious, clinical interest.

“Precisely what we choose to do with the automobile,” he said tersely, “is our business, so long as we agree on the terms. You said that the automobile was three hundred dollars?”

Harvey noted that the little man was already reaching into his coat for a wallet.

“Three hundred dollars,” Harvey explained hurriedly, “is for the car without the extras.”

He felt his eyeballs swell as the little man dug into the wallet and started to extract bills.

“The hubcaps are extra—that’s twenty bucks. The hand crank— not that you’ll probably need it—that I’ll practically give away for twelve.”

His practiced eye was a gimlet microscope as he looked over at the model A.

“That special window glass—” He felt the truth rising up in him and heard himself say at this point, ‘.It ain’t unbreakable, I mean.”

“Not unbreakable?” the little man inquired.

“It breaks, is what I mean,” Harvey explained, and then deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, he wordlessly pulled out several papers, spread them out on the hood of an incredibly aged Jordan 8.

“Now if you’ll just sign here,” Harvey said, whipping out a pen. “That’s the transfer of ownership, title, and memorandum of sale. Each one is in triplicate and I put an X where you gotta sign each one.”

The little man collected the papers and carried them over to the black limousine. He tapped on the rear window and a large, pudgy hand came out to take the papers. It disappeared with them into the dark confines of the rear seat. There was a muffled inquiry in a strange language. The little man turned, called out to Harvey.

“My—my ‘employer’ would like to know if a guarantee comes with this automobile.”

Again, Harvey had that ice-cold feeling. It had come—that moment of truth again. He smiled weakly. Coughed. Blew his nose. Hummed a short selection from
Guys and Dolls
. Looked wildly over his shoulder to see if he could find Irving and change the subject. But the question hung over him like Damocles’ sword, and all of his ritual, he knew very well, was simply a delaying rearguard action. He had to make his stand—and make it he did.

“The car’s haunted,” he said, in a hollow, muffled voice.

The little man looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Haunted?” he inquired.

Harvey unloaded his caution in one fell swoop. “Haunted it is,” he said. “Real haunted. I mean, it’s like...it’s like
haunted!
And that’s somethin’ you can’t say about any other car you’ve ever seen!”

Harvey’s voice went on, buoyed up by truth, propelled out by honesty, and given a lyrical quality by his sheer desperation.

“Lemme tell ya somethin’, buddy,” he said, walking over to the little man to poke him with a forefinger. “A lot of these cars are real gone. I mean
long
gone. And some of ‘em are absolute first-rate bonafide lemons. I got some I keep behind the shack, camouflaged, because they’re the old busteroo’s!”

He whirled around and pointed dramatically toward the model A. “But that car—that model A—That car is absolutely haunted. I guarantee it.
It is like absolutely haunted!
”

The interpreter, or whoever he was, turned and said a few words into the back seat of the car, and, after a moment, was handed some papers by the person sitting there. He passed these over to Harvey.

“Here you are,” he said. “All signed.” He looked at the model A over Harvey’s shoulder. “Now, I presume the car has petrol?” he inquired.

“Petrol?” Harvey made a face. “You mean like—like—”

“Gasoline,” the little man interrupted. “Does it have a full tank of gasoline?”

“She’s loaded up,” Harvey said. “You can just drive ‘er away, buddy.”

Tine little man nodded, satisfied, motioned to the chauffeur, who got out of the limousine. Harvey turned, kicked his heels together in the air, and then waltzed back over to the shack like some ponderous ballet dancer. He took the four steps. in one leap, slammed his way into the room, grabbed Irving by the ears, and planted a big wet kiss on his forehead. He held out the papers, and studied them. For the first time in days he felt an incredible lightness of mind and body, as if he had just been removed from a concrete cast.