“You sound almost polite,” says the night watchman.
“Don’t know why I should. You ruined a good evening for me.”
“Did I? It hasn’t been that bad, has it? A bit different, I should say. Stimulating, maybe.”
Douglas laughs quietly. “You’re not dangerous at all. You just need company. It’s your job and everything going to hell and you’re lonely. I can’t quite figure you, though.”
“Don’t tell me I’ve got you thinking?” asks the old man.
Douglas snorts. “After you’ve lived in Hollywood long enough, you meet all kinds. Besides, I’ve never been up here before. It’s a real view, like you say. But I’ll be damned if I can figure why you should worry about all this junk. What’s it to you?”
The night watchman gets down on one knee and taps one hand into the palm of the other, illustrating his points. “Look. As I said before, you came here years ago, clapped your hands, and three hundred cities jumped up! Then you added a half-thousand other nations, and states and peoples and religions and political setups inside the barbed-wire fence. And there was trouble! Oh, nothing you could see. It was all in the wind and the spaces between. But it was the same kind of trouble the world out there beyond the fence has—squabbles and riots and invisible wars. But at last the trouble died out. You want to know why?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting up here freezing.”
A little night music, please, thinks the old man, and moves his hand on the air like someone playing the proper and beautiful music to background all that he has to tell....
“Because you got Boston joined to Trinidad,” he says softly,, “part of Trinidad poking out of Lisbon, part of Lisbon leaning on Alexandria, Alexandria tacked onto Shanghai, and a lot of little pegs and nails between, like Chattanooga, Oshkosh, Oslo, Sweet Water, Soissons, Beirut, Bombay, and Port Arthur. You shoot a man in New York and he stumbles forward and drops dead in Athens. You take a political bribe in Chicago and somebody in London goes to jail. You hang a Negro man in Alabama and the people of Hungary have to bury him. The dead Jews of Poland clutter the streets of Sydney, Portland, and Tokyo. You push a knife into a man’s stomach in Berlin and it comes out the back of a farmer in Memphis. It’s all so close, so very close. That’s why we have peace here. We’re all so crowded there has got to be peace, or nothing would be left! One fire would destroy all of us, no matter who started it, for what reason. So all of the people, the memories, whatever you want to call them, that are here, have settled down, and this is their world, a good world, a fine world.”
The old man stops and licks his lips slowly and takes a breath. “And tomorrow,” he says, “you’re going to stomp it down.”
The old man crouches there a moment longer, then gets to his feet and gazes out at the cities and the thousand shadows in those cities. The great plaster cathedral whines and sways in the night air, back and forth, rocking on the summer tides.
“Well,” says Douglas at last, “shall—shall we go down now?”
Smith nods. “I’ve had my say.”
Douglas vanishes, and the watchman listens to the younger man going down and down through the ladders and catwalks of the night. Then, after a reasonable hesitation, the old man takes hold of the ladder, breathes something to himself, and begins the long descent in shadow.
The studio police and the few workers and some minor executives all drive away. Only one large dark car waits outside the barbed-wire gate as the two men stand talking in the cities of the meadow.
“What are you going to do now?” asks Smith.
“Go back to my party, I suppose,” says the producer.
“Will it be fun?”
“Yes.” The producer hesitates. “Sure, it’ll be fun!” He glances at the night watchman’s right hand. “Don’t tell me you’ve found that hammer Kelly told me you were using? You going to start building again? You don’t give up, do you?”
“Would you, if you were the last builder and everybody else was a wrecker?”
Douglas starts to walk with the old man. “Well, maybe I’ll see you again, Smith.”
“No,” says Smith, “I won’t be here. This all won’t be here. If you come back again, it’ll be too late.”
Douglas stops. “Hell, hell! What do you want me to do?”
“A simple thing. Leave all this standing. Leave these cities up.”
“I can’t do that! Damn it. Business reasons. It has to go.”
“A man with a real nose for business and some imagination could think up a profitable reason for it to stay,” says Smith.
“My car’s waiting! How do I get out of here?”
The producer strikes off over a patch of rubble, cuts through half of a tumbled ruin, kicking boards aside, leaning for a moment on plaster facades and strutworks. Dust rains from the sky.
“Watch out!”
The producer stumbles in a thunder of dust and avalanching brick; he gropes, he topples, he is seized upon by the old man and yanked forward.
“Jump!”
They jump, and half the building slides to ruin, crashes into hills and mountains of old paper and lathing. A great bloom of dust strikes out upon the air.
“You all right?”
“Yes. Thanks. Thanks.” The producer looks at the fallen building. The dust clears. “You probably saved my life.”
“Hardly that. Most of those are papier-mâché bricks. You might have been cut and bruised a little.”
“Nevertheless, thanks. What building was that that fell?”
“Norman village tower, built in 1925. Don’t get near the rest of it; it might go down.”
“I’ll be careful.” The producer moves carefully in to stand by the set-piece. “Why—I could push this whole damn building over with one hand.” He demonstrates; the building leans and quivers and groans. The producer steps quickly back. “I could knock it down in a second.”
“But you wouldn’t want to do that,” says the watchman.
“Oh, wouldn’t I? What’s one French house more or less, this late in the day?”
The old man takes his arm. “Walk around here to the other side of the house.”
They walk to the other side.
“Read that sign,” says Smith.
The producer flicks his cigarette lighter, holds the fire up to help him squint, and reads:
“ ‘THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK, MELLIN TOWN.’” He pauses. “‘ILLINOIS,’” he says, very slowly.
The building stands there in the sharp light of the stars and the bland light of the moon.
“On one side”—Douglas balances his hands like a scales—“a French tower. On the other side—” He walks seven steps to the right, seven steps to the left, peering. “‘THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK.’ Bank. Tower. Tower. Bank. Well, I’ll be damned.”
Smith smiles and says, “Still want to push the French tower down, Mr. Douglas?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, hold on,” says Douglas, and suddenly begins to see the buildings that stand before him. He turns in a slow circle; his eyes move up and down and across and over; his eyes flick here, flick there, see this, see that, examine, file, put away, and re-examine. He begins to walk in silence. They move in the cities of the meadow, over grasses and wild flowers, up to and into and through ruins and half-ruins and up to and into and through complete avenues and villages and towns.
They begin a recital which goes on and on as they walk, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering.
“What’s this over here?”
“A Buddhist temple.”
“And on the other side of it?”
“The log cabin where Lincoln was born.”
“And here?”
“St. Patrick’s church, New York.”
“And on the reverse?”
“A Russian Orthodox church in Rostov!”
“What’s this?”
“The door of a castle on the Rhine!”
“And inside?”
br />
“A Kansas City soda fountain!”
“And here? And here? Arid over there? And what’s that?” asks Douglas. “What’s this! What about that one! And over there!”
It seems as if they are running and rushing and yelling all through the cities, here, there, everywhere, up, down, in, out, climbing, descending, poking, stirring, opening-shutting doors.
“And this, and this, and this, and this!”
The night watchman tells all there is to tell.
Their shadows run ahead in narrow alleys, and avenues as broad as rivers made of stone and sand.
They make a great talking circle; they hurry all around and back to where they started.
They are quiet again. The old man is quiet from having said what there was to say, and the producer is quiet from listening and remembering and fitting it all together in his mind. He stands, absentmindedly fumbling for his cigarette case. It takes him a full minute to open it, examining every action, thinking about it, and to offer the case to the watchman.
“Thanks.”
They light up thoughtfully. They puff on their cigarettes and watch the smoke blow away.
Douglas says, “Where’s that damned hammer of yours?”
“Here,” says Smith.
“You got your nails with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Douglas takes a deep drag on his cigarette and exhales. “Okay, Smith, get to work.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Nail what you can back up, on your own time. Most of the stuff that’s already torn down is a complete loss. But any bits and pieces that fit and will look decent, put ’em together. Thank God there’s a lot still standing. It took me a long time to get it through my head. A man with a nose for business and some imagination, you said. That is the world, you said. I should have seen it years ago. Here it all is inside the fence, and me too blind to see what could be done with it. The World Federation in my own back yard and me kicking it over. So help me God, we need more crazy people and night watchmen.”
“You know,” says the night watchman, “I’m getting old and I’m getting strange. You wouldn’t be fooling an old and strange man, would you?”
“I’ll make no promises I can’t keep,” says the producer. “I’ll only promise to try. There’s a good chance we can go ahead. It would make a beautiful film, there’s no doubt of that. We could make it all here, inside the fence, photograph it ten ways from Christmas. There’s no doubt about a story, either. You provided it. It’s yours. It wouldn’t be hard to put some writers to work on it. Good writers. Perhaps only a short subject, twenty minutes, but we could show all the cities and countries here, leaning on and holding each other up. I like the idea. I like it very much, believe me. We could show a film like that to anyone anywhere in the world and they’d like it. They couldn’t pass it up, it would be too important.”
“It’s good to hear you talk this way.”
“I hope I keep on talking this way,” says the producer. “I can’t be trusted. I don’t trust myself. Hell, I get excited, up one day, down the next. Maybe you’ll have to hit me on the head with that hammer to keep me going.”
“I’d be pleased,” says Smith.
“And if we do the film,” says the younger man, “I suppose you could help. You know the sets, probably better than anyone. Any suggestions you might want to make, we’d be glad to have. Then, after we do the film, I suppose you won’t mind letting us tear the rest of the world down, right?”
“I’d give my permission,” says the watchman.
“Well, I’ll call off the hounds for a few days and see what happens. Send out a camera crew tomorrow to see what we can line up for shots. Send out some writers. Maybe you can all gab. Hell, hell. We’ll work it out.” Douglas turns toward the gate. “In the meantime, use your hammer all you want. I’ll be seeing you. My God, I’m freezing!”
They hurry toward the gate. On the way, the old man finds his lunch box where he abandoned it some hours ago. He picks it up, takes out the thermos, and shakes it. “How about a drink before you go?”
“What’ve you got? Some of that amontillado you were yelling about?”
“1876.”
“Let’s have some of that, sure.”
The thermos is opened and the liquid poured steaming from it into the cup.
“There you are,” says the old man.
“Thanks. Here’s to you.” The producer drinks. “That’s good. Ah, that’s damned good!”
“It might taste like coffee, but I tell you it’s the finest amontillado ever put under a cork.”
“You can say that again.”
The two of them stand among the cities of me world in the moonlight, drinking the hot drink, and the old man remembers something: “There’s an old song fits here, a drinking song, I think, a song that all of us who live inside the fence sing, when we’re of a mind, when I listen right, and the wind’s just right in the telephone wires. It goes like this:
“We all go the same way home,
All the same collection, in the same direction,
All go the same way home.
So there’s no need to part at all,
And we’ll all cling together like the ivy on the old garden wall … ”
They finish drinking the coffee in the middle of Port-au-Prince.
“Hey!” says the producer suddenly. “Take it easy with that cigarette! You want to burn down the whole darn world?”
They both look at the cigarette and smile.
“I’ll be careful,” says Smith.
“So long,” says the producer. “I’m really late for that party.”
“So long, Mr. Douglas.”
The gate hasp clicks open and shut, the footsteps die away, the limousine starts up and drives off in the moonlight, leaving behind the cities of the world and an old man standing in the middle of these cities of the world raising his hand to wave.
“So long,” says the night watchman.
And then there is only the wind.
The Garbage Collector
This is how his work was: He got up at five in the cold dark morning and washed his face with warm water if the heater was working and cold water if the heater was not working. He shaved carefully, talking out to his wife in the kitchen, who was fixing ham and eggs or pancakes or whatever it was that morning. By six o’clock he was driving on his way to work alone, and parking his car in the big yard where all the other men parked their cars as the sun was coming up. The colors of the sky that time of morning were orange and blue and violet and sometimes very red and sometimes yellow or a clear color like water on white rock. Some mornings he could see his breath on the air and some mornings he could not. But as the sun was still rising he knocked his fist on the side of the green truck, and his driver, smiling and saying hello, would climb in the other side of the truck and they would drive out into the great city and go down all the streets until they came to the place where they started work. Sometimes, on the way, they stopped for black coffee and then went on, the warmness in them. And they began the work which meant that he jumped off in front of each house and picked up the garbage cans and brought them back and took off their lids and knocked them against the bin edge, which made the orange peels and cantaloupe rinds and coffee grounds fall out and thump down and begin to fill the empty truck. There were always steak bones and the heads of fish and pieces of green onion and stale celery. If the garbage was new it wasn’t so bad, but if it was very old it was bad. He was not sure if he liked the job or not, but it was a job and he did it well, talking about it a lot at some times and sometimes not thinking of it in any way at all. Some days the job was wonderful, for you were out early and the air was cool and fresh until you had worked too long and the sun got hot and the garbage steamed early. But mostly it was a job significant enough to keep him busy and calm and looking at the houses and cut lawns he passed by and seeing how everybody lived. And once or twice a month he was surprised to find that he loved the job
and that it was the finest job in the world.
It went on just that way for many years. And then suddenly the job changed for him. It changed in a single day. Later he often wondered how a job could change so much in such a few short hours.
He walked into the apartment and did not see his wife or hear her voice, but she was there, and he walked to a chair and let her stand away from him, watching him as he touched the chair and sat down in it without saying a word. He sat there for a long time.
“What’s wrong?” At last her voice came through to him. She must have said it three or four times.
“Wrong?” He looked at this woman and yes, it was his wife all right, it was someone he knew, and this was their apartment with the tall ceilings and the worn carpeting.
“Something happened at work today,” he said.
She waited for him.
“On my garbage truck, something happened.” His tongue moved dryly on his lips and his eyes shut over his seeing until there was all blackness and no fight of any sort and it was like standing alone in a room when you got out of bed in the middle of a dark night. “I think I’m going to quit my job. Try to understand.”
“Understand!” she cried.
“It can’t be helped. This is all the strangest damned thing that ever happened to me in my life.” He opened his eyes and sat there, his hands feeling cold when he rubbed his thumb and forefingers together. “The thing that happened was strange.”
“Well, don’t just sit there!”
He took part of a newspaper from the pocket of his learner jacket. “This is today’s paper,” he said. “December 10, 1951. Los Angeles Times. Civil Defense Bulletin. It says they’re buying radios for our garbage trucks.”
“Well, what’s so bad about a little music?”
“No music. You don’t understand. No music.”
He opened his rough hand and drew with one clean fingernail, slowly, trying to put everything there where he could see it and she could see it. “In this article the mayor says they’ll put sending and receiving apparatus on every garbage truck in town.” He squinted at his hand. “After the atom bombs hit our city, those radios will talk to us. And then our garbage trucks will go pick up the bodies.”