Eldon Blaine thought, But Hoppy was not here in the Hall when Dangerfield said those words. How can he mimic something he did not hear?
And then he understood. It was obvious. The phocomelus had a radio receiver at his house; before coming to the Foresters’ Hall he had sat by himself in his house, listening to the satellite. That meant there were two functioning radios in West Marin, compared to none at all in Bolinas. Eldon felt rage and despair. We have nothing, he realized. And these people here have everything, even an extra, private radio set, for just one person alone.
It’s like before the war, he thought blindly. They’re living as good as then. It isn’t fair.
Turning, he plunged back out of the Hall, into the night darkness. No one noticed him; they did not care. They were far too busy arguing about Dangerfield and his health to pay attention to anything else.
Coming up the road, carrying a kerosene lantern, three figures confronted him: a tall, skinny man, a young woman with dank red hair, and between them a small girl.
“Is the reading over?” the woman asked. “Are we too late?”
“I don’t know,” Eldon said, and continued on past them.
“Oh, we missed it,” the little girl was clamoring. “I told you we should have hurried!”
“Well, we’ll go on inside anyhow,” the man told her, and then their voices faded away as Eldon Blaine, despairing, continued on into the darkness, away from the sounds and presence of other people, of the wealthy West Mariners who had so much.
Hoppy Harrington, doing his imitation of Dangerfield, glanced up to see the Kellers, with their little girl, enter the room and take seats in the rear. About time, he said to himself, glad of a greater audience. But then he felt nervous, because the little girl was scrutinizing him. There was something in the way she looked at him that upset him; it had always been so, about Edie. He did not like it, and he ceased suddenly.
“Go ahead, Hoppy,” Cas Stone called.
“Go on,” other voices chimed in.
“Do that one about Kool Aid,” a woman called. “Sing that, the little tune the Kool Aid twins sing; you know.”
“’Kool Aid, Kool Aid, can’t wait,’” Hoppy sang, but once more he stopped. “I guess that’s enough for tonight,” he said.
The room became silent.
“My brother,” the little Keller girl spoke up, “he says that Mr. Dangerfield is somewhere in this room.”
Hoppy laughed. “That’s right,” he said excitedly.
“Has he done the reading?” Edie Keller asked.
“Oh yeah, the reading’s over,” Earl Colvig said, “but we weren’t listening to that; we’re listening to floppy and watching what he does. He did a lot of funny things tonight, didn’t you, Hoppy?”
“Show the little girl that with the coin,” June Raub said. “I think she’d enjoy that.”
“Yes, do that again,” the pharmacist called from his seat. “That was good; we’d all like to see that again, I’m sure,” In his eagerness to watch he rose to his feet, forgetting the people behind him.
“My brother,” Edie said quietly, “wants to hear the reading. That’s what he came for. He doesn’t care about anything with a coin.”
“Be still,” Bonny said to her.
Brother, Hoppy thought. She doesn’t have any brother. He laughed out loud at that, and several people in the audience automatically smiled. “Your brother?” he said, wheeling his ‘mobile toward the child. “Your brother?” He halted the ‘mobile directly before her, still laughing. “I can do the reading,” he said. “I can be Philip and Mildred and everybody in the book; I can be Dangerfield—sometimes I actually am. I was tonight and that’s why your brother thinks Dangerfield’s in the room. What it is, it’s me.” He looked around at the people. “Isn’t that right, folks? Isn’t it actually Hoppy?”
“That’s right, Hoppy,” Cas Stone agreed, nodding. The others nodded, too, all of them, or at least most of them.
“Christ sake, Hoppy,” Bonny Keller said severely. “Calm down or you’ll shake yourself right off your cart.” She eyed him in her stem domineering way and he felt himself recede; he drew back in spite of himself. “What’s been going on here?” Bonny demanded.
Fred Quinn, the pharmacist, said, “Why, floppy’s been imitating Walt Dangerfield so well you’d think it was him!”
The others nodded, chiming in with their agreement.
“You have no brother, Edie,” Hoppy said to the little girl. “Why do you say your brother wants to hear the reading when you have no brother?” He laughed and laughed, The girl remained silent. “Can I see him?” he asked. “Can I talk to him? Let me hear him talk and—I’ll do an imitation of him.” Now he was laughing so hard that he could barely see; tears filled his eyes and he had to wipe them away with an extensor.
“That’ll be quite an imitation,” Cas Stone said.
“Like to hear that,” Earl Colvig said. “Do that, Hoppy.”
“I’ll do it,” Hoppy said, “as soon as he says something to me.” He sat in the center of his ‘mobile, waiting. “I’m waiting,” he said.
“That’s enough,” Bonny Keller said. “Leave my child alone.” Her cheeks were red with anger.
To Edie, ignoring the child’s mother, Hoppy said, “Where is he? Tell me where—is he nearby?”
“Lean down,” Edie said. “Toward me. And he’ll speak to you.” Her face, like her mother’s, was grim.
Hoppy leaned toward her, cocking his head on one side, in a mock-serious gesture of attention.
A voice, speaking from inside him, as if it were a part of the interior world, said, “How did you fix that record changer? How did you really do that?”
Hoppy screamed.
Everyone was staring at him, white-faced; they were on their feet, now, all of them rigid.
“I heard Jim Fergesson,” Hoppy said.
The girl regarded him calmly. “Do you want to hear my brother say more, Mr. Harrington? Say some more words to him, Bill; he wants you to say more.”
And, in Hoppy’s interior world, the voice said, “It looked like you healed it. It looked like instead of replacing that broken spring—“
Hoppy wheeled his cart wildly, spun up the aisle to the far end of the room, wheeled again and sat panting, a long way from the Keller girl; his heart pounded and he stared at her. She returned his stare silently, but now with the faint trace of a smile on her lips.
“You heard my brother, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” Hoppy said. “Yes I did.”
“And you know where he is.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Don’t do it again. Please. I won’t do any more imitations if you don’t want me to; okay?” He looked pleadingly at her, but there was no response there, no promise. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I believe you now.”
“Good lord,” Bonny said softly. She turned toward her husband, as if questioning him. George shook his head but did not answer.
Slowly and steadily the child said, “You can see him too, if you want, Mr. Harrington. Would you like to see what he looks like?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”
“Did he scare you?” Now the child was openly smiling at him, but her smile was empty and cold. “He paid you back because you were picking on me. It made him angry, so he did that.”
Coming up beside floppy, George Keller said, “What happened, Hop?”
“Nothing,” he said shortly.
Scared me, he thought. Fooled me, by imitating Jim Fergesson; he took me completely in, I really thought it was Jim again. Edie was conceived the day Jim Fergesson died; I know because Bonny told me once, and I think her brother was conceived simultaneously. But—it’s not true; it wasn’t Jim. It was—an imitation.
“You see,” the child said, “Bill does imitations, too.”
“Yes.” He nodded, trembling. “Yes, he does.”
“They’re good.” Edie’s dark eyes sparkled.
“Yes, very good,” Hoppy said. As good as mine, he thought. Maybe better than mine. I better be careful of him, he thought, of her brother Bill; I better stay away. I really learned my lesson.
It could have been Fergesson, he realized, in there. Reborn, what they call reincarnation; the bomb might have done it somehow in a way I don’t understand. Then it’s not an imitation and I was right the first time, but how’ll I know? He won’t tell me; he hates me, I guess because I made fun of his sister Edie. That was a mistake; I shouldn’t have done that.
“Hoode hoode hoo,” he said, and a few people turned his way; he got some attention, here and there in the room. “Well, this is your old pal,” he said. But his heart wasn’t in it; his voice shook. He grinned at them, but no one grinned back. “Maybe we can pick up the reading a little while more,” he said. “Edie’s brother wants to listen to it.” Sending out an extensor, he turned up the volume of the radio, tuned the dial.