"Well--" He shrugged again and then made a decision. "You know, Ed,
it's a sort of a odd thing about Stanley. If you have a little time...?"
"Time is what I have."
Jones sighed. "It might turn out to be a problem, I think. Bothers me
some. It would be a kindness if you would let me talk to you about it."
I stood up. Jones, making a gesture that clearly set him apart, put
a quarter on the flat collection stone as he got up to join me. We
strolled off through the dusk in the park, quietly. Jones, even in a
state of some unease, was a comfortable presence. Over on the Broad
Street side of the Yard, we sat down on a bench.
"Don't rightly know how to begin," Jones said, scratching his head with
a fielder's-mitt-sized hand, "but--Ed, I expect you noticed something
funny about Stanley? Or maybe about me?"
"I noticed that sometimes I see Stanley and sometimes I don't. And
that sometimes you act as though you see him when he positively is not
there."
"Um, yes. Makes you kind of unusual too, Ed. Because with Stanley it
is mostly like this--when he is around, I mean. There are people who
see him; a few. But most people, they can't see Stanley at all. With
you, seems like it changes. Uptown you can't see him; down here you
can."
"What?"
"Now me, I see him most all the time. All the time when he's around,
that is; when he hasn't gone off someplace, like tonight. But most
people, what you might call really normal people--no offense, Ed--they
can't ever see Stanley."
* * * * *
It sounded silly. But Jones said it with a calm conviction that
carried weight. If I couldn't believe it exactly, I didn't disbelieve
him either. You hear plenty of queer stories on skid row--dreams,
nightmares, nonsense. There used to be one crummy, rummy old bum
around called Gov'nor who used to claim he really had been a governor.
He drank down some office duplicator fluid and died. Police routine
checked. He was an ex-governor. Probabilities eliminate no remote
possibilities; if you flip a coin long enough, someday it will stand on
edge.
"How do you figure that?" I asked Jones.
"I don't want to sound like I think I am a brain," Jones said. "I only
read some. But these men down here--you might say, couldn't you, that
they are maybe men who don't have much of a hold on the world any more?"
"True."
"And the world holds them mighty lightly. They are nothing. Nobody pays
them attention. They are outside of everything. They are pretty much
outside the world, even. Now you, Ed--you are mostly a part of the
normal world. But one time you were all the way on down here, right? So
you--"
"I have a feeling for it? Something like that?"
"Something like that. And so down here you are like the others; you can
see Stanley. Uptown, you couldn't see him."
"Sounds nuts. But how? Why?"
"That goes back, way back. Stanley and me, we were kids together.
Stanley, his people were what down there they call 'trash.' Fourteen,
fifteen kids. Who was whose pa, who would know? Or care? And Stanley,
he was kind of the runt of the whole litter. Nobody paid him any mind.
He never talked much 'cause nobody listened. Got to be a real dopey,
dreamy, moody kid. Not ever sick, but sickly. He was more like nothing
than any kid I ever did see.
"Me, I lived down the road a piece from Stanley. I don't know why, but
he took to following me around. Mostly because everyone else ran him
off, I expect. I don't guess I was real good to poor Stanley, but I let
him tag along. You would hardly know he was there; no trouble. And he
struck me so sort of lost and pitiful, you know? I never had the heart
to chase him. After a while, it got to where he even took to trailing
along after me to school.
"Now that was a funny thing; kind of got me to wondering. There was
a white kid down in that part of the country, running along after a
colored boy to a colored school. You would expect that to attract a
good deal of attention, wouldn't you? Maybe stir up a big storm in the
county. But nobody ever hardly seemed to notice Stanley at all. There
wasn't anything ever said about it.
"Well, you know, Ed, any kid, even Stanley, he wants some attention,
some affection from someone. Stanley, all he ever had was me and I
never more than about put up with him when we were kids. And any kid
likes to feel kind of important sometime. Be noticed. Be king of the
hill at recess. Win a spelling bee. Whup somebody, or even be the kid
that gets made to stay after school the most. He wants to feel like
he is somebody. Only Stanley, he never could. Seemed like the more he
wanted to push out into things, the more he would get shy and not able
to, and he would pull away back inside even more. He never could talk
much hardly, even to me. Got so I would scarcely know he was around
myself."
* * * * *
"He lost touch with the world?" I put in. "Well, that happens. There
are oddballs all over, you know."
"Oh, sure--sure there are, Ed," said Jones. "But Stanley wasn't like
that, not exactly; or only. Seemed like it was as much the world lost
touch with Stanley as it was the other way. He always did feel a
resentment about it, too, and I believe it turned him pretty bitter way
down someplace. 'Course he never did say much, but I could tell. I got
the feeling."
"So? How did you come here?"
"Well, my mammy, she passed on and there wasn't anything to hold me
back there around home, so I left. Stanley, he tagged right along after
me. Like a shadow. You might say he was a sort of a shadow's shadow,
huh? We bummed around. I worked here and there. Then I found out--we
found out--that most people couldn't even see Stanley at all any more."
"He got so far out he was really gone?"
"Only it was kind of pitiful the way it made Stanley mad. Me, I got
vagged a few times. Only Stanley, he could be right beside me and spit
in the sheriff's face and they wouldn't touch him. They wouldn't even
know he was there. When I was locked up, he could walk in and out to
visit me. Nobody ever stopped him. Nobody saw him--except, we found out
then, that some of the prisoners could see Stanley plain enough."
"Oh?" I said.
"Yes. And that's the way it has been. Seems like the only people who
can see Stanley are people like, well, like the ones down here around
the Yard. The ones who are--how would you say it?--in the world but not
of it, huh? I read that somewhere. People who are far enough out can
see Stanley; only he is farther out than any of them."
"Hm-m. Well, the world being what it is, maybe Stanley is lucky."
"Ed, you don't really mean that."
He was right, of course. This world positively was not built according
to any specifications of mine, but still it is my world and I guess I
am pretty fond of it at that. Couldn't ever have managed to leave skid
row if I weren't.
"So," Jones said, "poor Stanley, he always has been mighty dependent on
me; more, maybe, since we been moving around. Until just lately."
"Kind of a damn nuisance, huh?"
"It never bothered me too much. Of course it keeps me down around
this part of every town we make and maybe this isn't the kind of life
I would have picked for myself. But Stanley has made me feel sort
of responsible. And some kind of responsibility is good for a man,
wouldn't you say?"
I couldn't argue with it; not me. Anyway, it proved what I had felt
from the start--Wino Jones wasn't a real or a natural skid-row type; he
was forcing himself.
"Well, Ed, Stanley has been trailing me around all the years--only
somehow I don't believe Stanley ever did really like me much. He
followed me because he couldn't do anything else, but he never took
to me. I guess maybe I couldn't ever quite look up to him the way he
wanted. So I suppose he has always been looking for something else.
Well, before we came here, we were stopping in a mission one evening
and I looked around when I finished my soup and I couldn't see Stanley.
It gave me a turn. But after a little while, there he was again. I
asked him where he went. He couldn't or wouldn't ever tell me much,
only that there was someplace he was trying to get to and friends he
wanted to meet.
"'I can almost get there,' Stanley told me. 'There's the border and
over there on the other side, they want me. I can feel they want me.
They understand that I am important to them. They want me to come. If I
could just find the way across to--'
"He never told me who it was wanted him, or where, or what for. But
ever since then, every once in a while I would look around and Stanley
would be gone. First part of this last week he was gone again--and
when he came back, he was changed. He was kind of superior-acting. Not
pleasant. Wherever he was trying to get, he had got there. 'Now,' he
told me, 'I have friends who know I am somebody.' He was real set up
over it. Tonight he went back again."
"Where?" I wanted to know.
* * * * *
Jones shook his head. "I told him, 'Stanley, we been together a long
time. You got friends besides me, I'm glad. Only, you know, I kind of
feel responsible. Maybe I ought to meet your friends, huh? Why don't
you take me to meet them?'
"'No,' says Stanley. 'Oh, no.' He wouldn't hear of it. I got to stay
here and wait for him, he tells me."
"Well, sure," I told Jones. "How could you go with a man into his
dream?"
"Yeah--only Stanley did take old Mr. Bootnose Bailey with him."
"_What?_" I exclaimed.
"Uh-huh. Stanley said he was going to prove it to me. He said he would
take somebody along with him to this place and then he would bring one
of his friends back here to visit. He said that would show me, would
show everybody. And you know, Ed, I don't believe I much liked the way
poor Stanley looked when he said that. He looked kind of mean."
"But they went? Both of them? And that's why old Bootnose isn't around?"
Jones nodded. "Yeah. Stanley promised Mr. Bootnose something would
give him a real boot. They went. Stanley, last thing he said before I
watched the two of them just sort of fade out, he said he would be back
tomorrow evening. He wanted me to be sure to wait for him in the Yard.
And fact is, Ed, I'm kind of uneasy about it all," he added.
There it was, Jonesy's story. A nonsense story? Sure. But it left
me feeling a little uneasy too. We talked it back and forth a while
longer, Jones and me, and the more we talked the more uneasy I got.
Foolish or not, Jones himself believed it. He wasn't trying to con me
into anything. There was no other point to it. And--well, maybe it was
simply the fact that Jones was a good deal of man. What he said had a
real conviction to it. Even if the story was hard to believe, still
there was what I had seen--and not seen--of Stanley. And even if there
was nothing that seemed particularly threatening about the business, it
made the two of us uneasy.
There was nothing for us to do about it, though. I went on home to my
apartment after I promised Jones I would be around the next night when
Stanley, alone or with company, was due back. I don't know what Jones
expected. I don't know what I expected. But Stanley's friend, no; we
didn't expect that.
The next day I was filling in on the desk, but my mind must have been
fumbling around with Stanley's other world. I fumbled all day and
finished by crossing up a couple of headlines. So I left the office
with the managing editor's curses ringing in my ears, even though he
had to admit that the "Present Stench--Future Disaster" line from the
sewer gas story did fit very nicely over the item on the mayoralty
campaign.
I was down at the Yard a little after five. Jones came along a few
minutes later. The group was there. It always is, except when there is
a city clean-up. Then it moves over behind the church. Today there was
a tension. Jones was smiling, gentle and friendly as always, but there
were nerves back of it. Probably the others were mostly just suffering
dry nerves. But I was rattled enough so I fumbled a five out and put
it on the rock. That, naturally, meant that Coaster Joe and Feeny, who
moved the quickest, went to make a run and didn't come back. With the
right change for the jug, the wino never skips; with change to bring
back, always.
* * * * *
Well, some more silver was painfully dredged up, mostly by Jones, and
somebody else went. The wine went around and I admit that this time I
took a swallow or two on my turn. I noticed Jones did too. Not much;
a little. We were cold sober. Too cold, actually. I needed the little
wine I had in me and a lot more.
That bottle and another went around. So did the talk. I was leaning on
the wall next to Jones. Neither of us had much to say. Finally, it was
just coming on dusk, I asked him, "You're sure he'll come here? Are you
sure he'll show at all?"
"He'll be here. Most any time now, Ed. I can feel it. Can't you?"
I could feel something, but it was only a contagion of tension, I told
myself.
Then Jones said, "Look there," and pointed.
I followed the line of his big, pink-nailed, black finger off along the
path through the park from Broad Street, a little hazy in the summer
evening. There was nothing. Then there was a darker spot in the haze
and then, not more than about twenty feet away, just about to pass back
of the row of bushes along the path, I saw Stanley. Tonight he seemed,
somehow, a more positive presence, even at that distance. There was a
cocky bounce in his walk and a tilt to his chin that announced "Here is
someone to reckon with." Other eyes in our little circle turned his way
as he passed behind the bushes. A couple of seconds more and he came
around the near side and moved in to join us.
"Hello there, Wino," he said to Jones and there was condescension in
it. "Fellows, I want"--proudly--"you should meet a friend of mine."
Around the bushes came a shape, a dark shape; Stanley's friend, from
some other place or world. In our group, Saint Betty, a retired queen,
choked on the jug and handed it to me. I shoved it along to Jones. The
paralyzing effect of Stanley's friend can be measured in the fact that
the jug went three times around that thirsty circle--and no one even
lifted it to his lips till it fell in the dust at my feet.
Stanley's friend was there all right; really there. What did I say he
was like? A dark shape? Yes. But that dark shape and the detail of that
shape came through as clear as a hot blue flame to me.
You weren't ever down that way, right? Not to stay, at least. Well,
one thing people there have in common is the horrors. Not just the
ordinary day-to-day horrors of a hard life but the big horrors. The
D.T.s. How do they go? The detail varies. With everyone, there is
something that really panics him, gives him that sense of unreasoning,
helpless, screaming fear. With a lot of people it is snakes. That's
the traditional. With others, it can be heights, or closed rooms;
rats, maybe. With me, it has always been spiders, ugly, hairy-legged,
bloat-bellied.
The horrors. The height man, when he gets them, will have the sensation
of falling, helplessly, endlessly. Once I had spiders. There were
hordes, millions of great, stickily scrabbling, poisonous spiders
crawling, crawling all over me, over everything--until I woke wrapped
up like an iced tamale in the cold wet sheet that is called "calming
restraint" in psycho wards.
Stanley's friend? Well, it's an ugly thought, but consider those
spiders of mine. And consider people. People, mostly, have religion.
"God made man in his image," they say, except God, of course, is the
infinitely greater. Now suppose that spiders had a god. A spider god.
"God made spiders in his image," the spiders might say, right? So
such a spider god, that almighty apotheosis of spiderdom--_that_ was
Stanley's friend as I saw him.
* * * * *
I don't know how I could see a thing like that. Maybe I didn't see it,
exactly. But absolutely, in some way, by whatever means, the positive
perception of such a thing burned itself into my eyes and mind.
The other fellows? No one screamed aloud, although my mind was
screaming. Horrors were not less horrible to us, only less unfamiliar
than to other people. One by one, the others quivered to shaky feet and
they stumbled off through the evening. The jug, three-quarters full
yet, stayed there in the dust of the Yard, forgotten.
How long it was, I don't know. Not long--and then only Jones and I
were left with Stanley and Stanley's friend. The rest of the park was
empty. Across Bug Alley in front of the church an old woman carrying a
sack of rubbish was impelled to look our way. She screeched in a high,
disappearing pitch and crumpled to the walk. The church was dark and
silent.
Jones stood there, big, powerful, leaning against the wall. He smiled
at Stanley, but it was a weak, sick smile. How he managed that much,
I'll never know. Weak, trembling, stomach churning, I dragged myself up.
"Uh--well," I mumbled, "f'you fellows will excuse me--guess I better be
moving along."
Stanley's lip curled. He was irritated. I couldn't help that.
"You see?" It wasn't speech, but the thought came plainly from
Stanley's friend, out of a churning of black, hungry thoughts, "You see
how it is? Even now, not even such as these will welcome us as friends
and equals."
"Yes," snapped Stanley, "I see. I should have known. All right then,
we'll do it your way. We will show them all."