Out of Their Minds (22 page)

Although there was more than just sympathy and help; more than understanding. There was the remembrance of her body warm and sweet within my arms, the vision of her happy face looking up at me in the flaring light of the witch's fire. After many years, I thought, after many other women in strange and distant lands, here finally was Kathy. I had gone back to the land of boyhood, not certain it was right to go, not sure of what I'd find, and Kathy had been there.

The woman came in with the plate of eggs and bacon and I settled down to eating.

As I ate, an illogical idea crept into my mind and took hold of me. I tried to shake it off, for there was no basis for it and it was devoid of reason. But the more I tried to shake it off, the more it fastened to me—the conviction that I'd find Kathy, not in Gettysburg, but in Washington, in front of the fence that ran before the White House, feeding the White House squirrels.

We'd talked of the squirrels, I recalled, that night I'd walked her home and I tried to recall who had brought the subject up and how we'd talked about it, but all that I could remember was that we'd talked about it and there had been nothing in that talk, I was fairly sure, that should have made me think what I was thinking now. But despite all that, I went on harboring that senseless, deep conviction, that I'd find Kathy at the White House. And now, to make it even worse, I held not only the deep conviction, but a sense of urgency. I had to get to Washington as quickly as I could for fear of missing her.

“Mister,” said the woman behind the counter, “how did you get your face scratched up?”

“I fell,” I told her.

“That was a nasty wallop you got alongside your head,” she said. “Looks like there might be some infection in it. You ought to see a doctor.”

“I haven't got the time,” I said.

“Old Doc Bates is just down the street,” she said. “He hasn't got much practice and you wouldn't have to wait. Old Doc, he ain't no great shakes, but he could fix that cut.”

“I can't,” I told her. “I have to get to Washington, as fast as I can go. I can't waste any time.”

“I got some iodine out in the kitchen. I could wash it up and put on some iodine. There's probably a clean dish towel I could find that would keep the dirt out. You hadn't ought to run around with that cut infecting.”

She watched me eat awhile and then she said, “It wouldn't be no trouble, mister. And I know how to do it. I was a nurse at one time. Must be something wrong with my head to have given it up to run a joint like this.”

“You said your son had a bicycle,” I said. “Would he consider selling it?”

“Well, now, I don't know,” she said. “It's kind of rickety and it's not worth too much, but he sort of needs it to go and get the eggs.”

“I'd pay a good price for it,” I offered.

She hesitated; then she said, “I could ask him. But we can talk about it out here in the kitchen. I'll hunt up the iodine. I can't let you walk out of here with your head in that condition.”

18

The woman had said it would be a scorcher and it was. Heat waves shimmered off the pavement and came wavering to meet me. The sky was a brassy bowl and there was no breath of breeze to stir the scorching air.

I'd had some trouble with the bike to start with, but within a couple of miles or so my body had recaptured some of the data programmed into it during boyhood days and I began to get the hang of it again. It wasn't easy, however; a lot better than walking, of course, and that would have been my choice.

I had told the woman that I'd pay a good price for the bike and she'd taken me at my word. A hundred dollars, which had taken almost all the money that I had. A hundred for an ancient contraption tied together with baling wire and stove bolts, worth, at the most, ten bucks. But it was either pay the price or walk, and I'd been in a hurry. And, I told myself, if the situation which now existed should continue, perhaps the bike was not really overpriced. If I could only have kept the horse, I'd have had a piece of property that would have been worthwhile. Horses and bikes might be the coming thing.

The highway was littered with stalled cars and trucks, with here and there a bus, but there weren't any people. Everyone who'd been on the stalled vehicles had had plenty of time to get off the road. It was a depressing sight, as if all those vehicles had been living things that had been killed and just left lying there; as if the highway itself, had been a living thing full of sound and movement and now was lying dead.

I kept pedaling along, wiping the sweat out of my eyes with my shirtsleeve and wishing that I had a drink of water, and after a time I saw that I was in the city's outskirts.

There were people, but no traffic was moving. Quite a lot of bicycles were on the street and I saw a few people who were using roller skates. There is nothing more ridiculous in the world than a man in a business suit, carrying an attaché case, and trying to be nonchalant as he proceeds down the street on a pair of roller skates. Everyone was either silently doing nothing—sitting on the curbs or on steps or out in their lawns and gardens—or going about their business in what seemed a rather desperate fashion.

I came to a little park, a typical Washington park, one block square with a statue in its center, benches set beneath the trees, an old lady feeding pigeons, and a drinking fountain. It was the drinking fountain that attracted me. The hours of pedaling in the sun had made my tongue feel like a mass of cotton that filled my entire mouth.

I didn't waste much time. I had a drink and rested for a moment on one of the benches, then got on the bike and set out again.

As I neared the White House I saw that a crowd had gathered, standing in a semicircle, filling the sidewalk and spilling out into the avenue, standing silently and staring, apparently at someone who stood beside the fence.

Kathy! I thought. For that was the exact place against the fence where I had expected her. But why should they be staring at her? What was going on?

I pedaled frantically up to the edge of the crowd and leaped off the bike. Letting it fall upon the sidewalk, I charged into the crowd, pushing and shoving. People swore at me and some pushed back and others shouted angrily, but I plowed my way through and finally staggered through the inner rank of people and out onto the sidewalk.

And there he stood—not Kathy, but the one, if I'd had good sense. I'd have expected to be there, Old Nick, His Satanic Majesty, the Devil.

He was dressed as I last had seen him, with his obscene belly hanging down over the dirty piece of cloth that afforded him a minimum of decency. He had his tail in his right hand and was using the barb of it as a toothpick to probe his mossy fangs. He leaned nonchalantly against the fence, with his cloven hoofs braced against a crack that ran along the concrete, and he was leering at the crowd in an infuriating manner. But at the sight of me, he dropped his tail forthwith and, advancing toward me, addressed me as a bosom pal for whom he had been waiting.

“Hail, the home-come hero!” he bugled, walking swiftly toward me with his arms outstretched. “Back from Gettysburg. I see that you got scotched. Where did you find the pretty baggage to tie up your head so becomingly?”

He went to throw his arms around me, but I jerked away. I was sore at him for being there when I'd expected to find Kathy.”

“Where's Kathy?” I demanded. “I expected her.”

“Oh, the little wench,” he said. “You can rest your apprehensions. She is safe. At the great white castle on the hill. Above the witch's house. I expect you saw it.”

“You lied to me,” I told him, furiously. “You told me …”

“So I lied to you,” he said, spreading his arms to indicate that it was of no consequence. “It is one of my most minor vices. What is a little lie among good friends? Kathy is safe so long as you play ball with me.”

“Play ball with you?” I yelped, disgusted.

“You want the pretty cars to run,” he said. “You want the radios to blat. You want the phones to ring.”

The crowd was getting restless. It was pressing closer and while the people in it might not know what was going on, they were all ears when the Devil spoke about the cars and radios.

But the Devil ignored them. “A hero you can be,” he said. “You can bring about negotiations. You can play the big shot.”

I didn't want to be a hero. The crowd, I sensed, was getting ugly.

“We'll go in,” the Devil said, “and talk turkey with them.” He made a thumb across his shoulder, pointing at the White House.

“We can't get in,” I told him. “We can't just go walking in.”

“Surely you have got a White House press card?”

“Yes, of course, I have. But that doesn't mean I can just walk in, anytime I wish. Especially with a bird like you in tow.”

“You mean you can't get in?”

“Not the way you think.”

“Look,” he said, almost pleading with me, “you have to talk with them. You can shoot the proper lingo and you know the protocol. I can't do anything by myself. They would not listen to me.”

I shook my head.

A couple of guards had left the gate and were walking down the sidewalk.

The Devil saw me looking at them.

“Trouble?” he demanded.

“I think it is,” I said. “The guard probably has phoned the police—no, not phoned, I guess. But I imagine they have sent someone to tell the cops there might be trouble brewing.”

He moved closer to me and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Trouble with cops I don't need,” he said. He craned his neck to see the two guards. They still were walking toward us. He grabbed me by the arm. “Come on, let's go,” he said.

The world went out from under me with a clap of thunder and in its place was darkness and the roar of heavy winds. Then we were in a large room with a long table running down the center of it and many men around the table. The man at the head of the table was the President.

Smoke was rising in tendrils from a scorched place in the carpet where I stood beside the Devil and the air was heavy with the smell of brimstone and of burning fabric. Someone was hammering frantically on the two doors that led into the room.

“Tell them, please,” the Devil said, “that they can't get in. I'm afraid the doors are jammed.”

A man with stars upon his shoulder leaped to his feet. His outraged bellow filled the room. “What is the meaning of this!”

“General,” said the Devil, “please resume your seat and do your best to be at once an officer and a gentleman. No one will get hurt.”

He flicked his tail ferociously to emphasize his words.

I looked quickly around the room to check my first impressions and I saw that they'd been right. Here we were, in the midst of a cabinet meeting—perhaps something more than a cabinet meeting, for there were others there, the director of the FBI, the head of the CIA, a sprinkling of high military brass, and a number of grim-faced men I did not recognize. Along a wall a group of very solemn and apparently learned men sat stiffly on a row of chairs.

Boy, I thought, we have done it now!

“Horton,” said the Secretary of State, speaking gently to me, not flustered (he was never flustered), “what are you doing here? The last I knew of you, you were on a leave of absence.”

“I took the leave,” I said. “It seems it didn't last very long.”

“You heard about Phil, of course.”

“Yes, I heard of Phil.”

The general was on his feet again and he, unlike the secretary, was a very flustered man. “If the Secretary of State will explain to me,” he roared, “what is going on.”

The pounding still was continuing, louder than ever now. As if the Secret Service boys were using chairs and tables to try to beat in the doors.

“This is most extraordinary,” said the President, quietly, “but since these gentlemen are here, I would suspect they had some purpose in their coming. I suppose we should hear them out and then get on with business.”

It was all ridiculous, of course, and I had the terrible feeling that I'd never left the Land of Imagination, that I still was in it, and that all this business of the President and his cabinet and the other people here was no more than a half-baked parody good for little more than a panel in a comic strip.

“I think,” said the President to me, “that you must be Horton Smith, although I would not have recognized you.”

“I was out fishing, Mr. President,” I said. “I have had no time to change.”

“Oh, that's quite all right,” said the President. “We stand on no great ceremony here. But I don't know your friend.”

“I'm not sure, sir, that he is my friend. He claims he is the Devil.”

The President nodded sagely. “That is what I had thought, although it seemed farfetched. But if he is the Devil, what is he doing here?”

“I came,” the Devil said, “to talk about a deal.”

The Secretary of Commerce said, “About this difficulty with the cars …”

“But it's all insane!” protested the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. “I sit here and I see it happening and I tell myself it can't be happening. Even if there were such a personage as the Devil …” He turned to appeal to me. “Mr. Smith,” he said, “you know this is not the way to go about it.”

“Indeed I do,” I said.

“I'll admit,” said Commerce, “that these whole proceedings are most irregular, but this is an unusual situation. If Mr. Smith and his sulfurous friend have any information, we should listen to them. We've listened to great numbers of other people, including our scientific friends,” and he made a sweeping gesture to indicate the men ranged in the chairs along the wall, “and we haven't heard a thing except a large array of people telling us that what has happened is impossible. The scientific community informs us that these happenings defy all laws of physics and that they are frankly fuddled. And the engineers have told us …”