Voices From the Street

  Turning it over in his hands, Hadley discovered that it was a membership card in the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus.

  “Put it in your wallet,” Beckheim said. “With your other cards. With the rest of Stuart Hadley.”

  He did so, with numb fingers. For a moment he stood by the desk, but Beckheim continued working. Presently Hadley gave up and started aimlessly from the study, toward the door.

  “A dollar fifty,” Beckheim said over his shoulder.

  Hadley came back. “What did you say?”

  “A dollar fifty. For your membership.”

  Crimson, Hadley dug out a paper dollar and two quarters. He clutched them, then convulsively dropped them on the desk. Beckheim put down his pen and accepted the money; he spread it out, got a large ledger from the center drawer of the desk, and entered a notation under “misc. received.” The dollar bill and the two silver quarters were placed in the square metal box with the other money and checks; and Beckheim resumed his work.

  When Hadley reentered the living room, Marsha was collecting the cups and saucers. She smiled at him fleetingly, apprehensively. “More coffee? Do you want something to eat?”

  “No,” Hadley said curtly.

  Hurriedly, Marsha carried the dishes to the kitchen. When she reappeared she was fastening on a short suede leather jacket; while he was talking to Beckheim she had changed her clothes. “It’s time to go,” she explained. “I’ll drive you back down…” She indicated the massive, hunched back of Theodore Beckheim. “He has to work.”

  “I see that,” Hadley agreed, his voice thick and stricken.

  Marsha opened the door to the front hall; the grim odor of stopped-up drains filtered into the living room, along with the tinny blare of radios and human voices.

  As the door closed after them, Hadley caught a last glimpse of Beckheim. The black man did not look up; he continued working, silent and intent, elbows resting on the desk, solemnly going through the heaps of letters.

  Before they left San Francisco, Marsha pulled the Studebaker into the parking lot of a vast neon-lit supermarket and locked the parking brake.

  “Wait here,” she instructed Hadley, sliding from the car. “I’ll be right back.”

  She skipped into the rear entrance of the supermarket, slim and boyish in her slacks and leather jacket. Hadley sat glumly waiting for her, watching the other shoppers coming out and going in, getting into their cars, driving off down the dark streets.

  It was hard to believe. He had met Beckheim, talked to him, and then been ushered out. The moment was over; already it had begun to sink into the past, like an object slowly settling into gray, leaden water.

  He felt cheated. Resentfully, he lit up a cigarette and then stubbed it furiously out. What had he expected? A miracle, perhaps. Something more than his brief interview and dismissal. But he had not been disappointed…he had been awed. Awed, and very much cheated at the same time. The power was there in the hunched, blackened old man with his horny skin, the heavy figure that smelled of stale sweat and musty closets, who looked as if he had already passed through the fire of Armageddon and come out again. Beckheim had power…but he had withheld it. That had been the cheating: Beckheim could have saved him, helped him, but he had not.

  Brooding over this, Hadley watched Marsha’s knife-sharp silhouette hurry from the supermarket and across the dark parking lot. He pushed open the car door and she slipped in breathlessly behind the wheel. A bulging paper bag was deposited in his lap; it clinked moistly as he took charge of it.

  “What’s this?” he demanded, opening it. In the paper bag was a fifth of John Jameson blended scotch whiskey.

  “That’s for us,” Marsha explained as she started up the car. “You never got your drink; God, I can use a drink now myself.”

  She drove across the streaming band of light that was Market Street and plunged into the Tenderloin beyond. Tiny shops pushed together in uneven rows, spread out on both sides of the narrow streets; crowds of men milled aimlessly between the cheap bars and cafés. Marsha turned off, past deserted factories and industrial warehouses; a few moments later the car entered the broad strips that made up the freeway.

  “We’ll make better time this way,” she explained as the little Studebaker gained velocity. Sodium vapor lamps flashed past them; beyond the dividing strip endless headlights glowed and slithered. “I’ll turn off at San Mateo.”

  They drove for a time without speaking. Finally Hadley asked: “Where did he come from?”

  “Beckheim? He was born in Alabama; I told you that.”

  “I didn’t realize he was that old.”

  “He’s not so old. He’s tired… He’s done so much.” She turned curiously to him. “What did you think of him?”

  “It’s hard to say.” He felt that she was worried about his reaction, unsure of herself until she knew how she felt; as if her own opinion hung in the balance, too.

  “Were—you disappointed?” she asked.

  “No. Of course not—” Hadley broke off moodily. “I resented all those questions. What business is it of his, all those things he asked me? About Ellen and Pete. Looking through my wallet that way.”

  He glowered out the window at the dark countryside beyond the freeway. Neon signs beamed here and there. The night sky was vaguely purple. A few stars sputtered fitfully; the fog lay behind them now. Hadley rolled down the window, and warm night wind promptly whipped in around him. Fresh wind that smelled of baked fields and sagging wooden fences.

  He wondered if he would ever see Beckheim again. The Negro’s words faded and blurred together when he tried to remember them. What had Beckheim actually said? What had he meant? Hadley touched his wallet; the membership card was there, but what did it signify?

  The card lay against him, a seed slipped in close to his flesh. Warmed by his body, perhaps it would take root and grow. Perhaps the card was alive. Beckheim had buried the card in Hadley’s body; Hadley had received it for better or worse, whatever it meant. And that was all that had come out of the moment between the two of them: a thin blue pasteboard card. A dollar and fifty cents’ worth of membership in the Society, the same for him as for thousands of others: workmen and Negroes, the lowest elements of the cities and towns. Aimless, unsatisfied riffraff and cranks. Wakefield carried an identical card, no doubt. And Marsha, sitting beside him at the wheel; probably there was a stiff little pasteboard card somewhere in her purse. Only it wasn’t stiff any longer; it had been taken in long ago. It was limp and soiled by now.

  Beside him the woman sat gripping the wheel with one hand, her left arm resting on the sill of the open window. She leaned back against the seat, chin up, reddish hair tousled by the wind. The suede leather jacket flapped back and forth; Marsha turned suddenly and smiled at him, teeth white and even in the faint light of the sodium vapor lamps.

  “Nice,” she observed. “The wind, the motion of the car. This little car is so smooth… It’s like flying.” She pressed down on the accelerator; the car seemed to float forward over the dips and rises of the road. There was no sound or presence of the motor, only the roar of the wind as it entered the cabin and rushed around the man and woman. Presently the sodium vapor lights ceased and the highway became dark. There were fewer cars now. Marsha leaned forward and clicked off the dashboard lights. The luminous numbers, letters, dials, faded away; the cabin was totally dark. Ahead of them the bright swath of headlights was a circle of orange in the summer night.

  Conscious of the gradually increasing velocity of the car, Hadley closed his eyes and lay back against the seat. He sensed the dangerous murmur of motion under him; he knew without seeing that the car was going too fast. But there were no other cars; there was nothing else in the world but the little Studebaker and the slim figure beside him. He was tired. The interview with Beckheim had exhausted him. Now that he could look back at it he was conscious of the tension that had held the two of them; in the few words they had exchanged there was a tight ordeal of discovery and inves
tigation.

  He wondered vaguely if Beckheim was as curious about everyone as he had been about him. He wondered if Beckheim probed and needled everybody who came into his sphere. Hadley’s thoughts wandered off groggily. Perhaps Beckheim had taken a special interest… The giving of the card might signify something momentous. A sign. He could ask Marsha if it was common. Beckheim had singled him out… He yawned and relaxed. He had been selected. In the nebulous confusion of his thoughts the image of Beckheim arose briefly, large and heavyset, black horn-rimmed glasses, sleeves rolled up. In the warm night air Hadley smelled the presence of the black man, as if the summer mists settling over the fields and roads were perspiration collecting on the ancient black body.

  Opening his eyes he watched a long, extended ridge to the right of the highway. The car was moving toward it. In the corrugations of the hill he imagined Beckheim’s features: his nose and forehead, his thin lips. A portion of the ridge was Beckheim’s thick jaw and chin. Beckheim lay all around; it was a pleasant, comforting thought. Hadley could reach out his hand, through the open window, into the night, to touch Beckheim. Reach up and touch the dark, horny cheek. Run his fingers over the knobby cheekbones, the intense ridges of the old man’s brows.

  With a bucking jerk the car halted. Hadley sat up wildly; the car had stopped and Marsha was turning off the ignition. He had fallen asleep; the long ridge was gone, and they were no longer on the highway. The night was utterly still. The wind had ceased. There was no movement or sound, only the faint cheep of crickets a long way off. And now and then the occasional soft rustle of nearby shrubbery.

  “Where are we?” he murmured, pulling himself together and collecting his thoughts. “What time is it?”

  “About midnight.” Marsha struck a match in the gloom; it flared up briefly, and then glowed down to the dull red of a cigarette.

  “Where are we?” he repeated. He could see nothing outside the car, only the outline of bushes and the rock-strewn surface of the road. To the right was a vague opaque presence that might have been a building. Apparently they were between towns, out in the open country. He didn’t enjoy the feel of it one bit.

  “We’re almost there,” Marsha assured him. “A mile or so more. You fell asleep.”

  From his pocket Hadley got out his crumpled package of cigarettes. He leaned over to get a light from Marsha. “I know. That business with Beckheim wore me out.”

  In the darkness the woman’s cigarette glowed against his own; he inhaled deeply, his hand on the seat behind her shoulder, accepting light and warmth from her. The pungent smell of smoke mixed with the presence of her hair and skin; he could see her close to him, invisible and alive, leaning forward until their foreheads met.

  “Thanks,” he said, drawing away. A certain kind of tight stricture hardened around his chest; he breathed carefully and slowly, forcing himself to take things easy.

  After a moment Marsha said: “Get a glass out; there’s one in the glove compartment.” From her purse she got the key and handed it to Hadley. As he opened the glove compartment and fished around inside, she began on the bottle.

  “See it?” she asked.

  He found the glass and brought it out. Marsha filled it, and the two of them sat passing it back and forth, the car doors open, letting the night air swirl around them. Now Hadley could make out the woman’s figure. In the faint starlight Marsha’s features were sharp and small, transluscent as old parchment. Her warm bodily processes had calcified; she was hard as polished stone, her face faintly luminous, eyes and lips without color. Half smiling, lips apart, chin tilted up, she sat gazing off into the distance, a demure, thoughtful figure in leather jacket and slacks. Presently she kicked off her shoes; in the dim light her feet were bare and pale, ghostlike.

  Somewhere, a long time ago, he had sat in the darkness and quiet of a car, beside a woman. His mind focused, and he remembered. It was not a woman; it was a girl. Ellen and he had sat this way, in his little old Ford coupe, up in the hills at night. Dreaming and murmuring, exchanging plans and extravagant hopes. It seemed like a long time ago, but it was only a few years. Very much like this; the same crickets creaked in the shrubbery, the violet summer sky, the baked woolly smell of the car’s upholstery. But then there had been beer and potato chips, and the Andrews sisters on the radio. The jeans and T-shirt of adolescence…the plump, ripe body of his fiancée, flesh instead of polished bone. The woman beside him now was cold and hard and mature. The tempered skeleton, chipped and refined by experience.

  It seemed impossible that Marsha could ever have been a girl, young like his wife, foolish and silly and full of expansive nonsense. Giggling and murmuring and playing elaborate erotic games of chase and capture, teasing and fooling until dawn. The elaborate ritual of love… Marsha was bleak and austere, with an unchanging finality. Outside of time, perhaps. Not subject to the laws of development and decay.

  “Mulling away,” Marsha said softly. “Aren’t you, Stuart Hadley? Mulling and brooding and worrying your life away.” She reached out and touched his arm. “You worry so…all the time. You know, you have wrinkles; your forehead’s like an old man’s.”

  He grinned. “It’s you prophets of doom that make me worry. When I come to work on Saturday, there’s an old lady with a bunch of those ‘Prepare for the Day of Judgment!’ pamphlets.”

  Marsha reflected. “No…it’s the other way around. The worried old lady is you, Stuart Hadley. All the worried old ladies go out, sooner or later, with their pamphlets. They’re standing out there because people are already afraid.”

  “I was just kidding,” Hadley said. With the close, personal intimacy of a woman’s body nearby him, he did not particularly feel like discussing abstract topics. He wanted to think about what lay close at hand, the immediate reality of the car.

  “You don’t like being called an old lady, do you?”

  “Of course not.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. Did Ted hurt your feelings?”

  “No.” Hadley dismissed the subject. He sipped more of the whiskey; it was thick and alive as it felt its way down his throat. A furry, fluid shape without distinct form…the water of life. He choked a trifle; he wasn’t used to straight whiskey. And it was lukewarm.

  He yawned sleepily. “I’m tired. But not in the same way I was. I’m relaxed… This stuff unfastens.”

  “Remember, you have to go to work tomorrow.” Her voice sounded a long way off. Remote and small. “It’s late.”

  “Maybe I won’t go to work.” Hadley said boldly.

  “What instead?”

  He hadn’t worked that out. So many things… The world faded off into infinite being. But nothing specific, only the vague sense of futility that tomorrow at work brought him. “Anything,” he said lazily. “Picking apples down in the valley. Shoveling gravel on a road gang. Sailor. Truck driver. Forest fire-fighter.”

  “You’re a romantic little boy,” Marsha said gently.

  “Maybe.” He peered stupidly forward, out into the darkness, his mind fuzzy with fatigue and the fumes of the John Jameson. The unbinding warmth made him sink easily down; it was no longer easy to place himself in time and space. He wondered dully where he was…when he was. Which Stuart Hadley was it, along the chain of Stuart Hadleys? Child, boy, adolescent, salesman, middle-aged father… Dreams rustled drowsily in his mind. Stirred from corners and compartments, blends of ambitions and fears drifted here and there, eddying currents that had always been a part of him.

  “Go away,” he muttered. “Not you,” he explained to Marsha. “The inside bees.”

  She smiled. “Inside bees? You’re a strange one, Stuart Hadley.”

  Annoyed, he scowled. “Why do you always call me Stuart Hadley? Either Stuart or Hadley, not both.”

  “Why not?”

  He concentrated, but nothing came. Irritably, he swept the question away. “For God’s sake, what kind of a person are you? I don’t understand any of you??
?a bunch of toadstools popping up. Preying on us—what are you after?” He pulled angrily away from her. “What am I supposed to do, get down on my hands and knees and pray?” His resentment surprised him; it boiled up in and around him, carrying away his tongue. “I came all the way up here—what’s he want me to do? He tells me it’s up to me; you think if I knew what to do I’d be here?”

  Listening intently, soberly, Marsha said: “I didn’t realize you were so angry.”

  “Of course I’m angry! I came all the way up here for nothing…” His voice blurred off in baffled confusion. “I don’t think it’s fair. He didn’t do anything; he just sat there working.”

  “What did you want him to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Miracle healing?” Gently, she continued: “He’s not a saint; he can’t raise the dead and multiply bread.”

  “At least he could have listened to me!”

  Queerly, she asked: “What did you have to say?”

  Hadley shook his head dumbly. “He should have known. I thought he would know. I wanted his help—I didn’t get a damn thing except a blue card. And it cost me a dollar and fifty cents.”

  “Maybe,” Marsha said, “it’s too late to help you. I don’t know, either. Probably he understands you better than I do… I’ll ask him.”

  “How could he? He only glanced my way a couple of times!”

  Marsha’s even white teeth flashed in laughter. “He sized you up, Stuart Hadley.”

  Shocked fear swept over Hadley. “Oh, you mean I didn’t measure up?” His voice shook. “I’m not worth saving? I’m not part of the select group, is that it?”

  “Stuart Hadley—”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  The woman’s nostrils flared. “Nobody decides who can be saved. Nobody selects, like a draft board picking eligible men. You’re saved for the same reason a ball rolls downhill—because of natural laws.”