the booths in back and nurse a beer or two while I killed some time and
tried to do some thinking. My finances didn’t run to drinking, but a beer or
two wouldn’t make me much worse off than I was already, and there is, at
times, an awful lot of comfort in a glass of beer. It was too early for many
people to be in the place and I could be alone.
Stiffy Grant, more than likely, would be there, spending the dollar
that I had given him. But Stiffy was a gentleman and a most perceptive
person. If he saw I wanted to be by myself, he wouldn’t bother me.
The tavern was dark and cool and I had to feel my way along, after
coming in from the brilliance of the street. I reached the back booth and
saw that it was empty, so I sat down in it. There were some people in one of
the booths up front, but that was all there were.
Mae Hutton came from behind the bar.
‘Hello, Brad,’ she said. ‘We don’t see much of you.’
‘You holding down the place for Charley?’ I asked her. Charley was her
father and the owner of the tavern.
‘He’s catching a nap,’ she said. ‘It’s not too busy this time of day. I
can handle it.’
‘How about a beer?’ I asked.
‘Sure thing. Large or small?’
‘Make it large,’ I told her.
She brought the beer and went back behind the bar. The place was quiet
and restful not elegant, and perhaps a little dirty, but restful. Up front
the brightness of the street made a splash of light, but it faded out before
it got too far, as if it were soaked up by the quiet dusk that lurked within
the building.
A man got up from the booth just ahead of me. I had not seen him as I
came in. Probably he’d been sitting in the corner, against the wall. He held
a half-filled glass and he turned and stared at me. Then he took a step or
two and stood beside my booth. I looked up and I didn’t recognize him. My
eyes had not as yet become adjusted to the place.
‘Brad Carter?’ he asked. ‘Could you be Brad Carter?’
‘Yes, I could,’ I said.
He put his glass down on the table and sat down across from me. And as
he did, those fox-like features fell into shape for me and I knew who he
was.
‘Alf Peterson!’ I said, surprised. ‘Ed Adler and I were talking about
you just an hour or so ago.’
He thrust his hand across the table and I grabbed it, glad to see him,
glad for some strange reason for this man out of the past. His handclasp was
firm and strong and I knew he was glad to see me, too.
‘Good Lord,’ I said, ‘how long has it been?’
‘Six years,’ he told me. ‘Maybe more than that.’
We sat there, looking at one another, in that awkward pause that falls
between old friends after years of not seeing one another, neither one quite
sure of what should be said, searching for some safe and common ground to
begin a conversation.
‘Back for a visit?’ I inquired.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Vacation.’
‘You should have looked me up at once.’
‘Just got in three or four hours ago.’
It was strange, I thought, that he should have come back to Millville,
for there was no one for him here. His folks had moved away, somewhere east,
several years ago. They’d not been Millville people. They’d been in the
village for only four or five years, while his father worked as an engineer
on a highway project.
‘You’re going to stay with me,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot of room. I am
all alone.’
‘I’m at a motel west of town. Johnny’s Motor Court, they call it.’
‘You should have come straight to my place.’
‘I would have,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know. I didn’t know that you
were in town. Even if you were, I thought you might be married. I didn’t
want to just come barging in.’
I shook my head. ‘None of those things,’ I said.
We each had a drink of beer.
He put down his glass. ‘How are things going, Brad?’
My mouth got set to tell a lie, and then I stopped. What the hell, I
thought. This man across from me was old Alf Peterson, one of my best
friends. There was no point in telling him a lie. There was no pride
involved. He was too good a friend for pride to be involved.
‘Not so good,’ I told him.
‘I’m sorry, Brad.’
‘I made a big mistake,’ I said. ‘I should have gotten out of here.
There’s nothing here in Millville, not for anyone.’
‘You used to want to be an artist. You used to fool around with drawing
and there were those pictures that you painted.’
I made a motion to sweep it all away.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Alf Peterson, ‘that you didn’t even try. You were
planning to go on to school that year we graduated.’
‘I did,’ I said. ‘I got in a year of it. An art school in Chicago. Then
Dad passed away and Mother needed me. And there wasn’t any money. I’ve often
wondered how Dad got enough together to send me that one year.’
‘And your mother? You said you are alone.’
‘She died two years ago.’
He nodded. ‘And you still run the greenhouse.’
I shook my head. ‘I couldn’t make a go of it. There wasn’t much to go
on; I’ve been selling insurance and trying to handle real estate. But it’s
no good, Alf. Tomorrow morning I’ll close up the office.’
‘What then?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’
Alf signalled to Mae to bring another round of beers.
‘You don’t feel,’ he said, ‘there’s anything to stay for.’
I shook my head. ‘There’s the house, of course. I would hate to sell
it. If I left, I’d just lock it up. But there’s no place I want to go, Alf,
that’s the hell of it. I don’t know if I can quite explain. I’ve stayed here
a year or two too long; I have Millville in my blood.’
Alt nodded. ‘I think I understand. It got into my blood as well. That’s
why I came back. And now I wonder if I should have. Of course I’m glad to
see you, and maybe some other people, but even so I have a feeling that I
should not have come. The place seems sort of empty. Sucked dry, if you
follow me. It’s the same as it always was, I guess, but it has that empty
feeling.’
Mae brought the beers and took the empty glasses.
‘I have an idea,’ Alf said, ‘if you care to listen.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ll be going back,’ he said, ‘in another day or so. Why don’t you
come with me? I’m working with a crazy sort of project. There would be room
for you. I know the supervisor pretty well and I could speak to him.’
‘Doing what?’ I asked. ‘Maybe it would be something that I couldn’t
do.’
‘I don’t know,’ said All, ‘if I can explain it very logically. It’s a
research project – a thinking project. You sit in a booth and think.’
‘Think?’
‘Yeah. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s not the way it sounds. You
sit down in a booth and you get a card that has a question or a problem
printed on it. Then you think about that problem and you’re supposed to
think out loud, sort of talking to yourself, sometimes arguing with
yourself. You’re self-conscious to start with, but you get over that. The
booth is soundproofed and no one can see or hear you. I suppose there is a
recorder of some sort to take down what you say, but if there is, it’s not
in sight.’
‘And they pay you for this?’
‘Rather well,’ said Alf. ‘A man can get along.’
‘But what is it for?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know,’ said Alf. ‘Not that we haven’t asked. But that’s the
one condition of the job – that you don’t know what it’s all about. It’s an
experiment of some sort, I’d guess. I imagine that it’s financed by a
university or some research outfit. We are told that if we knew what was
going on it might influence the way we are thinking. A man might
unconsciously pattern his thinking to fit the purpose of the research.’
‘And the results?’ I asked.
‘We aren’t told results. Each thinker must have a certain kind of
pattern and if you knew that pattern it might influence you. You might try
to conform to your own personal pattern, to be consistent, or perhaps
there’d be a tendency to break out of it. If you don’t know the results, you