Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

“Oh, No,” he said to Alston in the morning. He shook his head, appalled.

Joseph Alston didn’t speak. He glanced down the block with hating eyes.

“Here, let me help you,” Theodore said. The old man shook his head but Theodore insisted. Driving to the nearest nursery he brought back two sacks of peat moss; then squatted by Alston’s side to help him replant.

“You hear anything last night?” the old man asked.

“You think it was those boys again?” asked Theodore, open-mouthed.

“Ain’t say in’,” Alston said.

Later, Theodore drove downtown and bought a dozen postcard photographs. He took them to the office.

Dear Walt, he printed crudely on the back of one, Got these here in Tijuana. Hot enough for you? In addressing the envelope, he failed to add Jr. to Mr. Walter Morton.

Into the out box.

August 23

“Mrs. Ferrel!”

She shuddered on the bar stool. “Why, Mister—”

“Gordon,” he provided, smiling. “How nice to see you again.”

“Yes.” She pressed together lips that trembled.

“You come here often?” Theodore asked.

“Oh, no, never’’ Inez Ferrel blurted. “I’m-just supposed to meet a friend here tonight. A girl friend.”

“Oh, I see,” said Theodore. “Well, may a lonely widower keep you company until she comes?”

“Why…” Mrs. Ferrel shrugged. “I guess.” Her lips were painted brightly red against the alabaster of her skin. The sweater clung adhesively to the hoisted jut of her breasts.

After a while, when Mrs. Ferrel’s friend didn’t show up, they slid into a darkened booth. There, Theodore used Mrs. Ferrel’s powder room retreat to slip a pale and tasteless powder in her drink. On her return she swallowed this and, in minutes, grew stupefied. She smiled at Theodore.

“I like you Misser Gor’n,” she confessed. The words crawled viscidly across her lolling tongue.

Shortly thereafter, he led her, stumbling and giggling, to his car and drove her to a motel. Inside the room, he helped her strip to stockings, garter belt and shoes and, while she posed with drugged complacency, Theodore took flashbulb pictures.

After she’d collapsed at two a.m. Theodore dressed her and drove her home. He stretched her fully dressed across her bed. After that he went outside and poured concentrated weed killer on Alston’s replanted ivy.

Back in the house he dialled the Jefferson’s number.

“Yes,” said Arthur Jefferson irritably.

“Get out of this neighbourhood or you’ll be sorry,” whispered Theodore, then hung up.

In the morning he walked to Mrs. Ferrel’s house and rang the bell.

“Hello,” he said politely. “Are you feeling better?”

She stared at him blankly while he explained how she’d gotten violently ill the night before and he’d taken her home from the bar. “I do hope you’re feeling better,” he concluded.

“Yes,” she said, confusedly, “I’m-all right.”

As he left her house he saw a red-faced James McCann approaching the Morton house, an envelope in his hand. Beside him walked a distraught Mrs. McCann.

“We must be tolerant, Jim,” Theodore heard her say.

August 31

At two-fifteen a.m. Theodore took the brush and the can of paint and went outside.

Walking to the Jefferson house he set the can down and painted, jaggedly, across the door-nigger!

Then he moved across the street allowing an occasional drip of paint. He left the can under Henry Putnam’s back porch, accidentally upsetting the dog’s plate. Fortunately, the Putnams’ dog slept indoors.

Later, he put more weed killer on Joseph Alston’s ivy.

In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, he took a heavy envelope and went to see Eleanor Gorse. “Look at this,” he said, sliding a pornographic booklet from the envelope. “I received this in the mail today. Look at it.” He thrust it into her hands.

She held the booklet as if it were a spider.

“Isn’t it hideous?” he said.

She made a face. “Revolting,” she said.

“I thought I’d check with you and several others before I phoned the police,” said Theodore. “Have you received any of this filth?”

Eleanor Gorse bristled. “Why should I receive them?” she demanded.

Outside, Theodore found the old man squatting by his ivy. “How are they coming?” he asked.

“They’re dyin’.”

Theodore looked stricken. “How can this be?” he asked.

Alston shook his head.

“Oh, this is horrible.” Theodore turned away, clucking. As he walked to his house he saw, up the street, Arthur Jefferson cleaning off his door and, across the way, Henry Putnam watching carefully.

She was waiting on his porch.

“Mrs. McCann,” said Theodore, surprised, “I’m so glad to see you.”

“What I came to say may not make you so glad,” she said unhappily.

“Oh?” said Theodore. They went into his house.

“There have been a lot of… things happening in this neighbourhood since you moved in,” said Mrs. McCann after they were seated in the living room.

“Things?” asked Theodore.

“I think you know what I mean,” said Mrs. McCann. “However, this-this bigotry on Mr. Jefferson’s door is too much, Mr. Gordon, too much.”

Theodore gestured helplessly. “I don’t understand.”

“Please don’t make it difficult,” she said. “I may have to call the authorities if these things don’t stop, Mr. Gordon. I hate to think of doing such a thing but—”

“Authorities?” Theodore looked terrified.

“None of these things happened until you moved in, Mr. Gordon,” she said. “Believe me, I hate what I’m saying but I simply have no choice. The fact that none of these things has happened to you—”

She broke off startledly as a sob wracked Theodore’s chest. She stared at him. “Mr. Gordon—” she began uncertainly.

“I don’t know what these things are you speak of,” said Theodore in a shaking voice, “but I’d kill myself before I harmed another, Mrs. McCann.”

He looked around as if to make sure they were alone.

“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a single soul,” he said. He wiped away a tear. “My name isn’t Gordon,” he said. “It’s Gottlieb. I’m a Jew. I spent a year at Dachau.”

Mrs. McCann’s lips moved but she said nothing. Her face was getting red.

“I came from there a broken man,” said Theodore. “I haven’t long to live, Mrs. McCann. My wife is dead, my three children are dead. I’m all alone. I only want to live in peace-in a little place like this-among people like you.

“To be a neighbour, a friend…”

“Mr.—Gottlieb” she said brokenly.

After she was gone, Theodore stood silent in the living room, hands clenched whitely at his sides. Then he went into the kitchen to discipline himself.

“Good morning, Mrs. Backus,” he said an hour later when the little woman answered the door, “I wonder if I might ask you some questions about our church?”

“Oh. Oh, yes.” She stepped back feebly. “Won’t you- come in?”