Skeleton Crew

'He was not there. His forwarding address was a place on the East Side, a slightly lesswell- off neighborhood of nonetheless respectable brownstones. He had left those lodgings a full month before the poker game, and the new address was in the East Village, an area of ramshackle tenements.

'The building superintendent, a scrawny man with a huge black mastiff snarling at his knee, told me that Brower had moved out on April third—the day after our game. I asked for a forwarding address and he threw back his head and emitted a screaming gobble that apparently served him in the place of laughter.

' 'The only forradin' address they gives when they leave here is Hell, boss. But sometimes they stops in the Bowery on their way there.'

'The Bowery was then what it is only believed to be by out-of-towners now: the home of the homeless, the last stop for the faceless men who only care for another bottle of cheap wine or another shot of the white powder that brings long dreams. I went there. In those days there were dozens of flophouses, a few benevolent missions that took drunks in for the night, and hundreds of alleys where a man might hide an old, louse-ridden mattress. I saw scores of men, all of them little more than shells, eaten by drink and drugs. No names were known or used. When a man has sunk to a final basement level, his liver rotted by wood alcohol, his nose an open, festering sore from the constant sniffing of cocaine and potash, his fingers destroyed by frostbite, his teeth rotted to black stubs—a man no longer has a use for a name. But I described Henry Brower to every man I saw, with no response. Bartenders shook their heads and shrugged. The others just looked at the ground and kept walking.

'I didn't find him that day, or the next, or the next. Two weeks went by, and then I talked to a man who said a fellow like that had been in Devarney's Rooms three nights before.

'I walked there; it was only two blocks from the area I had been covering. The man at the desk was a scabrous ancient with a peeling bald skull and rheumy, glittering eyes. Rooms were advertised in the flyspecked window facing the street at a dime a night. I went through my description of Brower, the old fellow nodding all the way through it. When I had finished, he said:

' 'I know him, young meester. Know him well. But I can't quite recall... I think ever s'much better with a dollar in front of me.'

'I produced a dollar and he made it disappear neat as a button, arthritis notwithstanding.

' 'He was here, young meester, but he's gone.'

' 'Do you know where?' 'I can't quite recall,' the desk clerk said. 'I might, howsomever, with a dollar in front of me.'

'I produced a second bill, which he made disappear as neatly as he had the first. At this, something seemed to strike him as being deliciously funny, and a rasping, tubercular cough came out of his chest.

' 'You've had your amusement,' I said, 'and been well paid for it as well. Now, do you know where this man is?'

'The old man laughed gleefully again. 'Yes—Potter's Field is his new residence; eternity's the length of his lease; and he's got the Devil for a roommate. How do you like them apples, young meester? He must've died sometime yesterday morning, for when I found him at noon he was still warm and toasty. Sitting bolt upright by the winder, he was. I'd gone up to either have his dime against the dark or show him the door. As it turned out, the city showed him six feet of earth.' This caused another unpleasant outburst of senile glee.

' 'Was there anything unusual?' I asked, not quite daring to examine the import of my own question. 'Anything out of the ordinary?'

' 'I seem to recall somethin'... Let me see...'

'I produced a dollar to aid his memory, but this time it did not produce laughter, although it disappeared with the same speed.

' 'Yes, there was something passin odd about it,' the old man said. 'I've called the city hack for enough of them to know. Bleedin Jesus, ain't I! I've found 'em hangin from the hook on the door, found 'em dead in bed, found 'em out on the fire escape in January with a bottle between their knees frozen just as blue as the Atlantic. I even found one fella that drowned in the washstand, although that was over thirty years ago. But this fella—sittin bolt upright in his brown suit, just like some swell from uptown, with his hair all combed. Had hold of his right wrist with his left hand, he did. I've seen all kinds, but he's the only one I ever seen that died shakin his own hand.'

'I left and walked all the way to the docks, and the old man's last words seemed to play over and over again in my brain like a phonograph record that has gotten stuck in one groove.

He's the only one I ever seen that died shakin his own hand.

'I walked down to the end of one of the piers, out to where the dirty gray water lapped the encrusted pilings. And then I ripped that cashier's check into a thousand pieces and threw it into the water.' George Gregson shifted and cleared his throat. The fire had burned down to reluctant embers, and cold was creeping into the deserted game room. The tables and chairs seemed spectral and unreal, like furnishings glimpsed in a dream where I past and present merge. The flames rimmed the letters cut into the fireplace keystone with dull orange light: IT is THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT.

'I only saw him once, and once was enough; I've never forgotten. But it did serve to bring me out of my own time of mourning, for any man who can walk among his fellows is not wholly alone.

'If you'll bring me my coat, Stevens, I believe I'll toddle! along home—I've stayed far past my usual bedtime.' And when Stevens had brought it, George smiled and pointed at a small mole just below the left corner of Stevens's mouth. 'The resemblance really is remarkable, you know—your grandfather had a mole in that exact same place.' Stevens smiled but made no reply. George left, and the rest of us slipped out soon after.

 

 

Beachworld

FedShip ASN/29 fell out of the sky and crashed. After a while two men slipped from its cloven skull like brains. They walked a little way and then stood, helmets beneath their arms, and looked at where they had finished