We did our best to attempt to cheer him, inviting him to participate in our words games; nothing worked.
Gabe was not an old man, and he did not belong. Worst of all, there seemed to be no way out for him.
Then, quite by accident, as the by-product of one long and terrible and ugly night, it seemed a way had been found to fight back at the robots.
It was like this:
It was the middle of the night, dark as bat wings, most of us asleep. We might have remained asleep too, if Lib-by’s pillow had not fallen to the floor. He was muffling his sobs in it, and when it fell, he did not have the strength or the sense of balance to reach over the edge of the high bed and pick it up.
We were shaken from our sleep by sound of his weeping. I don’t think I have ever heard a sound like that. Libby wasn’t supposed to weep. He had been in for too many years; he was a veteran of it all; frustration should have been flushed from him long ago. Not only that. He had had a rough life too, rough enough to rule out crying. He came from Harlem. White parents in Harlem are one thing you can be sure: poor. He was raised in every degenerated part of New York City. He learned young where to kick to hurt the strange men who tried to tempt or drag him into alleys. He knew first hand about sex when he was thirteen—under a stairway in a tenement with a woman thirty-five. Later, he turned to the sea, worked as a dock hand, shipped the hardest runs, and always seemed to lose his money in a fight or on a dame. He had been and seen and felt too much to cry.
But that night it was Libby, heaving his guts out on the bed.
I too must have cried a bit, for Libby.
It was Gabe who put a first hand on his shoulder. We could see him there in the half-darkness of the ward, sitting on the edge of Libby’s bed, a hand on the old man’s shoulder. He moved it up and ran it through Libby’s hair. “What is it, Lib?”
Libby just cried. In the dark and the closeness and the shadows like birds, we thought he would make his throat bleed if he didn’t soon stop.
Gabe just sat there running gray hairs through his fingers and massaged Libby’s shoulder and said things to soothe him.
“Gabe, oh God, Gabe,” Libby said between gasps for air.
“What is it, Lib? Tell me.”
“I’m dying, Gabe. Me. It wasn’t ever going to happen to me.”
I shuddered. When Libby went, could I be far behind? Did I want to be far behind? We were inseparable. It seemed that if he went, I must die too—shoved into the ovens where they cremated us—side-by-side. God, don’t take Lib alone. Please, please, no.
“You’re as healthy as a rat, and you’ll live to be a hundred and fifty.”
“No I won’t—” He choked trying to stop tears that moved out of his eyes anyway.
“What’s the matter, pain?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Then why did you think you’re going to die, Lib?”
“I can’t piss. Goddamn, Gabe, I can’t even—”
We could see him then, lifting the thin, wrinkled body we called Libby, Bertrand Libberhad, lifting it against his young chest and holding it. He was quiet in the darkness for a time, and then he said, “How long?”
“Two days. God, I’m bursting. I tried not to drink, but—”
He seemed to crush Libby to him, as if the old man could gain some strength from the flower of his youth. Then he began a rocking motion like a mother with a babe in her arms. Libby cried softly to him.
“Did you ever have a special girl, Lib?” he asked finally.
We ‘could see the head rising off the young chest—just an inch. “What?”
“A girl. A special girl. One who walked just so and talked like wind scented with strawberries and flooded with warmth. A girl with smooth arms and nice legs.”