no matter. He is my friend, and he has proved it in many ways. If he wishes to be a little smug, boastful, I can bear with it easily. Never in any way do I let on that his 'success' wears a striking resemblance to failure.
We were talking the other night about our early days here. And he, as he is wont to do, passed some remark as to his progress since then. I said that his was a career to be proud of, that very few lawyers had risen so high in so brief a time. He beamed and smirked; and then with that earnest warmth which only he is capable of, he said that he owed his success to me.
'Well,' I said. 'I've certainly boosted you whenever I could, but I'm afraid I-'
'Remember our first talk together? The day I was drawing up those papers for you?'
'Why, yes,' I said. 'Of course I remember. You set me straight here, saw that-'
'Sure! Uh-hah. You sly old rascal you!' He threw back his head, and laughed. 'I set
I didn't say anything. I was too bewildered. For I had told him nothing that day. Nothing until I had pretty well ascertained his own feelings.
'Oh, I understood you, all right!' he laughed. 'Naturally, you couldn't come straight out with it; you had to spar around a little, make sure of how I felt first. But…'
He winked at me, grinning. I stared at him, feeling my hands tighten on the arms of my chair; then, as the murderous hatred drained out of me, feeling them slowly relax and grow limp.
He had done me no injury. His intelligence, his moral stamina, that vaguely concrete thing called character-all had been stunted at the outset. Perhaps they would have amounted to little, regardless; perhaps environment and heredity would have dwarfed them, without the withering assistance of our long-ago, initial conversation.
At any rate, he had not harmed me; he had not changed me one whit from what I essentially was. Others, doubtless, many others, but not me.
If anything, it was the other way around.
He was frowning slightly, looking a little uncomfortable and puzzled. He repeated his phrase about my having had to spar around with him, until I was sure of how he felt.
'And how did you feel, Hank?' I said. 'Basically-deep down in your heart?'
'Oh, well,' he shrugged. 'You don't need to ask that, Jim. You know how I stand on those things.'
'But back then,' I insisted, 'right back in the beginning. Tell me, Hank. I really want to know.'
'We-el-' He hesitated, and spread his hands. 'You know, Jim. About like most people, I guess. A lot of people, anyway. Kind of on the fence, and wishing I could stay there. But knowing I had to jump one way or the other, and knowing I was pretty well stuck on the side I jumped to. I-well, you know what I mean, Jim. It's kind of hard to put into words.'
'I see,' I said. 'I hoped… I mean, I thought that was probably the way you felt.'
'Well,' he said; and, after a moment, again, 'Well.'
He studied me a trifle nervously; then, unable to read my expression, he gave out with that bluffly amiable, give-me-approval laugh of his.
It was a hearty laugh, but one that he was ready to immediately modulate. His face was flushed with high good humor: a mask of good-fellowish hilarity which could, at the wink of an eye, with practiced effortlessness, become the essence of gravity, sobriety, seriousness.
I laughed along with him. With him, and at myself. Our laughter filled the room, flowed out through the windows into the night; echoing and reechoing, sending endless ripples on and on through the darkness. It remained with us, the laughter, and it departed from us. Floating out across the town, across hill and dale, across field and stream, across mountain and prairie, across the night-lost farm houses, the hamlets and villages and towns, the bustling, tower-twinkling cities. Across-around-the world, and back again.
We laughed, and the whole world laughed.
Or should I say jeered?
Suddenly I got up and went to the window. Stood there unseeing, though my eyes were wider than they had ever been, my back turned to him.
And where there had been uproar, there was now silence. Almost absolute silence.
He could not stand that, of course. After almost twenty years, it dawned on me that he could not. Whenever there is silence, he must fill it. With something. With anything. So, after he had regained his guffaw- drained breath, after he had achieved a self-satisfactory evaluation of my mood, he spoke again. Went back to the subject of our conversation.
'Well, anyway, Jim. As I was saying, I'm eternally grateful to you. I hate to think what might have happened if we hadn't had that talk.'
I winced, unable to answer him for a moment. Immediately his voice tightened, notched upward with anxiety.
'Jim… Jim? Don't you look at it that way, too, Jim? Don't you kind of hate to think-'
'Oh, yes-' I found my voice. 'Yes, indeed, Hank. On the other hand…'
'Yeah? What were you going to say, Jim?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'Just that I doubt that it would have changed anything. Not with men like us.'
6:
MARMADUKE 'GOOFY' GANNDER
(INCOMPETENT)
When I awakened it was morning, and I was lying on the green pavement of The City of Wonderful People, and a hideous hangover held me in its thrall.
I sat up by degrees, shaking and shuddering. I massaged my eyes, wondering, yea, even marveling, over the complete non- wonderment of the situation. For lo! I invariably have a hangover in the morning, even as it is invariably morning when I awaken: and likewise, to complete the sequence of non-marvelousness, I invariably awaken in The City of Wonderful People.
'Hell,' I thought (fervently); 'the same today, yesterday and-Ouch!'
I said the last aloud, adding a prayerful expletive, For the sunlight had stabbed into my eyes, speared fierily into my head like a crown of thorns. In my agony, I rocked back and forth for a moment; and then I staggered to my feet and stumbled over to Grandma's bed.
It was not a very nice bed, compared to those of the City's other inhabitants. Untended, except for my inept ministrations, it was protected only by an oblong border of wine bottles, which seemed constantly to be getting broken. And it was sunken in uncomfortably: and the grass was withered and brown-yeah, generously fertilized as it obviously was by untold numbers of dogs, cats and rodents. The headboard of the bedstead was of weathered, worm-eaten wood, a dwarfed phallus-like object bearing only her name and the word 'Spinster': painfully, or perhaps, painlessly, free of eulogy.
I studied the bleak inscription, thinking, as I often do when not occupied with other matters, that I should do something about it. I had considered substituting the words 'Human Being,' with possibly a suffixed 'Believe It Or Not.' But Grandma had not liked that: she had considered it no compliment. And she had made no bones-no pun intended-about letting me know it.
I sat facing her bed, my head bowed against the sun, staring down into the sunken hummock. The grass rustled restlessly, whispering in the wind; and after a time there was a dry, snorting chuckle.
'Well?' Grandma said. 'Penny for your thoughts.'
'Now, that-' I forced a smile. 'Now, that is the sort of thing that brings on inflation.'
Grandma snickered. She asked me how I was getting along with my book.
