Charles Beaumont - Selected Stories Part 63

Then I went home and tried to laugh.

But laughing is a lonely thing when you've no one to share the joke. So I went back outside and drank whiskey until I couldn't think about the little man.

Next day Martin didn't show up for work. He called up and said he was sick.

He never came back.

But John Parker did. The big man with the crooked nose still comes up to browse through the books, every now and then. I chat with him: he even calls me Len now. But I don't like him. Not a bit.

Because he makes me think of Martin. Because he makes me wonder if I'd been so wrong, after all, if my imagination had run quite so wild.

Perhaps Martin did find what he had been looking for. And perhaps, once finding it, he had decided it was not worth having, or that he lacked the strength to keep it. And perhaps John S. Parker is something more than John S. Parker.

And perhaps not.I'm afraid I'll never know. But I'm also afraid that I'll never forget the little man with the bright eyes and the hurrying feet and the sad face.

I hope he's still taking his medicine, wherever he is.

THE CARNIVAL.

by Charles Beaumont

The cool October rain and the wind blowing the rain. The green and yellow fields melting into grey hills, into grey sky and black clouds. And everywhere, the smell of autumn drinking the coolness, the evening coolness gathering in leaves and wheat alfalfa, running down fat brown bark, whispering through rich gra.s.s to tiny living things.

The cool rain, glistening on earth and on smooth cement.

"_Come on, Lars, I'll beat you!_"

"_Like fun you will!_"

Two boys with fresh wet faces and cold wet hands.

"Last one there is a sissy!"

Wild shouts through the stillness and a scrambling onto bicycles. A furious pedaling through sharp pinpoints of rain, one boy pulling ahead of the other, straining up the s.h.i.+ning cement, laughing and calling.

"Just try and catch me now, just try!"

"I'll catch you all right, you wait!"

"Last one there is a sissy, last one there is a sissy!"

Faster now, flying past the crest of the hill, faster down the hill and into the blinding rain. Faster, small feet turning, wheels spinning, along the smooth level. Flying, past outdoor signs and sleeping cows, faster, past strawberry fields and haystacks, little excited blurs of barns and houses and siloes.

"Okay, I'm going to beat you, I'm going to beat you!"

A thin voice lost in the wind.

"I'll get to the trestle 'way before you, just watch!"

Lars Nielson pushed the pedals angrily and strained his young body forward, gripping the handlebars and singing for more speed. He felt the rain whipping through his hair and into his ears and he screamed happily.

He closed his eyes and listened to his voice, to the slas.h.i.+ng wind and to the wheels of his bicycle turning in the wetness. Whizzing baseb.a.l.l.s in his head, swooping chicken hawks and storm currents racing over beds of light leaves.

He did not hear the small voice crying to him, far in the distance.

"Who's the sissy, who'll be the sissy?" Lars Nielson sang to the whirling world beside him and his legs pushed harder and harder.

His eyes were closed, so he did not see the face of the frightened man. His ears were full, so he did not hear the screams and the brakes and all the other terrible sounds. The sudden, strange unfamiliarsounds that were soft and quiet as those in his mind were loud.

He pushed his young legs in the black darkness, harder, faster, faster . . - The room was mostly blue. In the places where it had not chipped and cracked, the linoleum floor was a deep quiet blue. The walls, specially handpattered, were soft greenish blue. And the rows of dishes on high display shelves, the paint on the cane rockers, the tablecloth, Mother's dress, Father's tie--all blue.

Even the smoke from Father's pipe, creeping and slithering up into the thick air like long blue ghosts of long blue snakes.

Lars sat quietly, watching the blue.

"Henrik." Mrs. Nielson stopped her rocking.

"Yes, yes?"

"It is by now nine o'clock."

Mr. Nielson took a large gold watch from his vest pocket.

"It is, you are right. Lars, it is nine o'clock."

Lars nodded his head.

"So." Mr. Nielson rose from his chair and stretched his arms. "It is time. Say goodnight to your mama."

"Goodnight, Mama."

"Goodnight."

"So."

Mr. Nielson took the wooden bar in his big hands and pushed the chair gently past the doorway and down the hall. With his foot he pushed the door open and when they were inside the bedroom, he pulled the string which turned on the electric light.

He walked to the front of the chair.

"Lars, you feel all right now? Nothing hurts?"

"No, Papa. Nothing hurts."

Mr. Nielson put his hands into his pockets and sat on the sideboard of the bed.

"Mama is worried."

"Mama shouldn't."

"She did not like for you to be mean to the dog."

"I wasn't mean."

"You did not play with it. I watched, you did not talk to the dog. Boys should like dogs and Mama is worried. Already she took it away."

Lars sat silently.

"I'm sorry, Papa."

"It isn't right, my son, that you should do nothing. For your sake I say this."

"Papa, I'm tired."

"Three years, you do nothing. See, look in the mirror, see at how pale you are getting. Sick pale, no color."

Lars looked away from the mirror.

"I tell you over and over, you must read or study or play games."

"Play games, Papa . . . ?"

Mr. Nielson began to pace about the room.

"Sure, certainly. Games. You can, you can make them up. Play them in your head. You don't have to run around and wave your arms to play games!"

Lars looked down, where the carpet lay thin and unmoving.

"But you do nothing. All day I work, and _hard_ I work, lifting many pounds, and I come home tired. All day I use my arms and feet and back and I do not want to any more, when I come home, so I don't. I sit in the chair and read. I _read_, Lars, and I smoke my pipe and I talk to Mama. I sit still, likeyou, but I do something!"

With Mr. Nielson's agitated movement, the room started to pick at the Feeling. Lars concentrated on white.

"And it don't take my arms and legs to do it. They are tired, they are every way like yours. I am you at night, Lars. And I am old, but I don't sit with nothing. I am always playing games, _in my head_. I don't move, but I don't worry Mama who loves me. I don't move, but I don't say nothing to my Mama and Papa, ever, just sit staring!"

"I'm sorry, Papa."

"Yes, for _yourself_ you are sorry! You are sixteen years old and should be thinking about how to live, how to get along when Papa is no more here to take care of you and there is no money."

"Yes, Papa."

"Then begin to think, Lars. When I come home at night, let me see you talking to Mama, planning things with your brain. The big men are big because of their brains, my son, not their arms and legs.

Nothing is wrong with your brain, you didn't hurt it. You have time to learn, to learn anything!"

"I will begin to think, Papa."

Mr. Nielson rubbed his hands together. They made a rough grating sound.

"All right. Tomorrow you tell Mama you are sorry and want to play with the dog. She will get it back for you, and you should smile and thank her and talk to the dog."

"I--I can go to bed now?"

"Yes."

Mr. Nielson leaned forward and slid one arm behind Lars' back, another beneath his legs.

"We are not like others," he said slowly. "When I am gone, there will be nothing, no money.

Don't you see why you got to--are you ready?"

Mr. Nielson lifted Lars from the wheelchair and laid him on the bed. He sucked on his pipe as he removed s.h.i.+rt, trousers, stocking, shoes and underwear; grunted slightly as he pulled a faded tan nightgown over heavy lengths of steel and rubber.

Then he smiled, broadly.

"You should say big prayers tonight, my son. You have worried Mama but even so, tomorrow is a surprise."

Lars tried to lift his head. Father stood near the bed, but in the corner, so the big smiling face was hidden.

"Tomorrow, Papa?"

"I tell you nothing now. But you are a young man now, nearly, and you have promised me that you will begin to think. Isn't that what you promised, Lars?"

"Yes."

"So. And I believe you. No longer coming home to see you sitting with no thoughts. I believe you and so, tomorrow you get your reward. Tomorrow you will see happiness and it will clear your head; then you will be a man!"

Lars stopped trying to move his head. He closed his eyes so that he would not have to stare at the electric light bulb.

"Hah, but I don't tell you. Say _big_ prayers, my son. It is going to be good for you from now on."

"I will say my prayers tonight, Papa."

"Goodnight, now. You sleep."

"Tell Mama--that I'm sorry."

Mr. Nielson pulled the greasy string and the room became black but for the coals in his pipe.

Lars waited for the door to close and Father's footsteps to stop. Then he moved his lips, rapidly, quietly, fas.h.i.+oning the prayers he had invented. To a still, unmoving G.o.d, that he could stay forever in the motionless room, to fight the Feeling. That he could think of colors and nothing and keep the Feeling--the feet across meadows, the arms trembling with heavy pitchforks full of hay, all the parts of life--in a small corner in a far side of his mind.Lars prayed, as Father had suggested. His head did not move when sleep came at last.