It’s
He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.
In an instant, his body stiffened and all sound was paralyzed in his throat.
There, leaning over him, bare inches from him, was the whitest, the most hating face he had ever seen in his entire life.
He lay there, staring up in numb, open-mouthed horror at the face.
For a long time after the face had disappeared, Johnson lay there, barely able to breathe, his hands in rigid knots at his sides, his eyes wide and staring. He kept trying to think but the memory of the face and the words spoken petrified his mind.
He didn’t stay. When strength had returned, he got up, and managed to sneak out without attracting the attention of the woman. He drove quickly from the town, his face pale, thinking only of what he’d seen.
The face of himself when he was in college. His young self hating this coarsened interloper for intruding on what could never be his again. And the young man in the Golden Campus; that had been his younger self. The student passing the Campus Cafe had been himself as he once was. And the student in the hallway and the resentful presence that had followed him around the campus, hating him for coming back and pawing at the past- they had all been him.
He never went back and he never told anyone what had happened. And when, in rare moments, he spoke of his college days, it was always with a shrug and a cynical smile to show how little it had really meant to him.
16 – THE DISTRIBUTOR
Time to move.
He’d found a small, furnished house on Sylmar Street. The Saturday morning he moved in, he went around the neighbourhood introducing himself.
“Good morning,” he said to the old man pruning ivy next door. “My name is Theodore Gordon. I just moved in.”
The old man straightened up and shook Theodore’s hand. “How do,” he said. His name was Joseph Alston.
A dog came shuffling from the porch to sniff Theodore’s cuffs. “He’s making up his mind about you,” said the old man.
“Isn’t that cute?” said Theodore.
Across the street lived Inez Ferrel. She answered the door in a housecoat, a thin woman in her late thirties. Theodore apologized for disturbing her.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. She had lots of time to herself when her husband was selling on the road.
“I hope we’ll be good neighbors,” said Theodore.
“I’m sure we will,” said Inez Ferrel. She watched him through the window as he left.
Next door, directly across from his own house, he knocked quietly because there was a
“I’m so glad to meet you,” said Theodore.
Next door lived the Walter Mortons. As Theodore came up the walk, he heard Bianca Morton talking loudly to her son, Walter, Jr.
“You are not old enough to stay out till three o’clock in the morning!” she was saying. “Especially with a girl as young as Katherine McCann!”
Theodore knocked and Mr. Morton, fifty-two and bald, opened the door.
“I just moved in across the street,” said Theodore, smiling at them.
Patty Jefferson let him in next door. As he talked to her Theodore could see, through the back window, her husband Arthur filling a rubber pool for their son and daughter.
“They just love that pool,” said Patty, smiling.
“I bet they do,” said Theodore. As he left, he noticed the vacant house next door.
Across the street from the Jeffersons lived the McCanns and their fourteen-year-old daughter Katherine. As Theodore approached the door he heard the voice of James McCann saying, “Aah, he’s nuts. Why should I take his lawn edger? Just because I borrowed his lousy mower a couple of times.”
“Darling,
“Just because Kathy goes out with his lousy son…” grumbled her husband.
Theodore knocked on the door and introduced himself. He chatted briefly with them, informing Mrs. McCann that he certainly would like to join the National Council for Christians and Jews. It was a worthy organization.
“What’s your business, Gordon?” asked McCann.
“I’m in distribution,” said Theodore.
Next door, two boys mowed and raked while their dog gambolled around them.
“Hello there,” said Theodore. They grunted and watched him as he headed for the porch. The dog ignored him.
“I just
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Irma Putnam.
Theodore’s knock was answered by the undershirted Mr. Putnam. His wife was lying on the sofa. Her heart, explained Mr. Putnam. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Theodore said.
In the last house lived the Gorses.
“I just moved in next door,” said Theodore. He shook Eleanor Gorse’s lean hand and she told him that her father was at work.
“Is that him?” asked Theodore, pointing at the portrait of a stony-faced old man that hung above a mantel crowded with religious objects.
“Yes,” said Eleanor, thirty-four and ugly.
“Well, I hope we’ll be good neighbours,” Theodore said.
That afternoon, he went to his new office and set up the darkroom.
That morning, before he left for the office, he checked the telephone directory and jotted down four numbers. He dialled the first.
“Would you please send a cab to 12057 Sylmar Street?” he said. “Thank you.”
He dialled the second number. “Would you please send a repairman to my house,” he said. “I don’t get any picture. I live at 12070 Sylmar Street.”
He dialled the third number: “I’d like to run this ad in Sunday’s edition,” he said. “1957 Ford. Perfect Condition. Seven-hundred eighty-nine dollars. That’s right, seven-hundred eighty-nine. The number is DA-4- 7408.”
He made the fourth call and set up an afternoon appointment with Mr. Jeremiah Osborne. Then he stood by the living room window until the taxicab stopped in front of the Backus house.
As he was driving off, a television repair truck passed him. He looked back and saw it stop in front of Henry Putnam’s house.
