until I’ve had a chance to give it some consideration.’
‘I tell you what,’ the voice said, ‘you consider it and then you call
us back. What was this you were saying about Stiffy being taken somewhere?’
‘A hospital,’ I said. ‘He was taken sick.’
‘But he should have called us,’ the voice said, aghast. ‘We would have
fixed him up. He knew good and well…’
‘He maybe didn’t have the time. I found him…’
Where was this place you say that he was taken?’
‘Elmore. To the hospital at…’
‘Elmore. Of course. We know where Elmore is.’
‘And Greenbriar, too, perhaps.’ I hadn’t meant to say it; I hadn’t even
thought it. It just popped into my mind, a sudden, unconscious linking of
what was happening here and the project that Alf had talked to me about.
‘Greenbriar? Why, certainly. Down in Mississippi. A town very much like
Millville. And you will let us know? When you have decided, you will let us
know?’
‘I’ll let you know,’ I promised.
‘And thank you very much, sir. We shall be looking forward to your
association with us.’
And then the line went dead.
Greenbriar, I thought. It was not only Millville. It might be the
entire world. What the hell, I wondered, could be going on?
I’d talk to Alf about it. I’d go home and phone him now. Or I could
drive out and see him. He’d probably be in bed, but I would get him up. I’d
take along a bottle and we’d have a drink or two.
I picked up the phone and tucked it underneath my arm and went outside.
I closed the door behind me. I snapped the padlock shut and then went to the
car. I opened the back door and put the telephone on the floor and covered
it with a raincoat that was folded on the seat. It was a silly thing to do,
but I felt a little better with the phone tucked away and hidden. I got
behind the wheel and sat for a moment, thinking, Perhaps, I told myself; it
would be better if I didn’t rush into things too fast. I would see Alf
tomorrow and we’d have a lot of time to talk, an entire week to talk if we
needed it. And that way I’d have some time to try to think the situation
out.
It was late and I had to pack the camping stuff and the fishing tackle
in the car and Ishould try to get some sleep.
Be sensible, I told myself. Take a little time. Try to think it out.
It was good advice. Good for someone else. Good even for myself at
another time and under other circumstances. I should not have taken it,
however. I should have gone out to Johnny’s Motor Court and pounded on Alf’s
door. Perhaps then things would have worked out differently. But you can’t
be sure. You never can be sure.
But, anyhow, I did go home and I did pack the camping stuff and the
fishing gear into the car and had a few hours of sleep (I wonder now how I
ever got to sleep), then was routed out by the alarm dock early in the
morning.
And before I could pick up Alf I hit the barrier.
7
‘Hi, there,’ said the naked scarecrow, with jaunty happiness. He
counted on his fingers and slobbered as he counted.
And there was no mistaking him. He came clear through the years. The
same placid, vacant face, with its frog-like mouth and its misty eyes. It
had been ten years since I had seen him last, since anyone had seen him, and
yet he seemed only slightly older than he had been then. His hair was long,
hanging down his back, but he had no whiskers. He had a heavy growth of
fuzz, but he’d never sprouted whiskers. He was entirely naked except for the
outrageous hat. And he was the same old Tupper. He hadn’t changed a bit. I’d
have known him anywhere.
He quit his finger-counting and sucked in his slobber. He reached up
and took off his hat and held it out so that I could see it better.
‘Made it myself,’ he told me, with a wealth of pride.
‘It’s very fine,’ I said.
He could have waited, I told myself. No matter where he’d come from, he
could have waited for a while. Millville had enough trouble at this
particular moment without having to contend once again with the likes of
Tupper Tyler.
‘Your papa,’ Tupper said. ‘Where is your papa, Brad? There is something
I have to tell him.’
And that voice, I thought. How could I ever have mistaken it? And how
could I ever have forgotten that Tupper was, of all things, an accomplished
mimic? He could be any bird he wanted and he could be a dog or cat and the
kids used to gather round him, making fun of him, while he put on a mimic
show of a dog-and-cat fight or of two neighbours quarrelling.
‘Your papa!’ Tupper said.
‘We’d better get inside,’ I told him. ‘I’ll get some clothes and you
climb into them. You can’t go on running around naked.’
He nodded vaguely. ‘Flowers,’ he said. ‘Lots of pretty flowers.’
He spread his arms wide to show me how many flowers there were. ‘Acres
and acres,’ he said. ‘There is no end to them. They just keep on forever.
Every last one purple. And they are so pretty and they smell so sweet and
they are so good to me.’
His chin was covered with a dampness from his talking and he wiped it
with a claw-like hand. He wiped his hand upon a thigh.
I got him by the elbow and got him turned around, headed for the house.
‘But your papa,’ he protested. ‘I want to tell your papa all about the
flowers.’
‘Later on,’ I said.
I got him on the porch and thrust him through the door and followed
after him. I felt easier. Tupper was no decent sight for the streets of
Millville. And I had had, for a while, about all that I could stand. Old
Stiffy Grant laid out in my kitchen just the night before and now along
comes Tupper, without a stitch upon him. Eccentrics were all right, and in a
little town you get a lot of them, but there came a time when they ran a
little thin.
I still held tightly to his elbow and marched him to the bedroom.
‘You stand right there,’ I told him.
He stood right there, not moving, gaping at the room with his vacant
stare.
I found a shirt and a pair of trousers. I got out a pair of shoes and,
after looking at his feet, put them back again. They were, I knew, way too
small. Tupper’s feet were all spraddled out and flattened. He’d probably
been going without shoes for years.
I held out the trousers and the shirt.
‘You get into these,’ I said. ‘And once you have them on, stay here.
Don’t stir out of this room.’
He didn’t answer and he didn’t take the clothes. He’d fallen once again
to counting his fingers.
And now, for the first time, I had a chance to wonder where he’d been.
How could a man drop out of sight, without a trace, stay lost for ten years,
and then pop up again, out of that same thin air into which he had
disappeared?
It had been my first year in high school that Tupper had turned up
missing and I remembered it most vividly because for a week all of the boys
had been released from school to join the hunt for him. We had combed miles
of fields and woodlands, walking slowly in line an arm’s length from one
another, and finally we had been looking for a body rather than a man. The
state police had dragged the river and several nearby ponds. The sheriff and
a posse of townspeople had worked carefully through the swamp below Stiffy’s
shack, prodding with long poles. They had found innumerable logs and a
couple of wash boilers that someone had thrown away and on the farther edge
of the swamp an anciently dead dog.
But no one had found Tupper.
‘Here,’ I told him, ‘take these clothes and get into them.’
Tupper finished with his fingers and politely wiped his chin.
‘I must be getting back,’ he said. ‘The flowers can’t wait too long.’
He reached out a hand and took the clothes from me. ‘My other ones wore
out,’ he said. ‘They just dropped off of me.’
‘I saw your mother just half an hour ago,’ I said. ‘She was looking for
you.’
It was a risky thing to say, for Tupper was the kind of jerk that you
handled with kid gloves. But I took the calculated risk and said it, for I