The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison Page 30

  They went under the spiked fence at a point where erosion had created a shallow gully. “Sonofabitch!” one of them said, as he slid through on his stomach. It was muddy. The front of his sateen roadie jacket was filthy. “Sonofabitch!” He was speaking in general of the fence, the sliding under, the muddy ground, the universe in total. And the old man, who would now really get the crap kicked out of him for making this fine sateen roadie jacket filthy.

  They sneaked up on him from the left, as far from the young guy in the trenchcoat as they could. The first one kicked out the shooting stick with a short, sharp, downward movement he had learned in his Tae Kwon Do class. It was called the yup-chagi. The old man went over backward.

  Then they were on him, the one with the filthy sonofabitch sateen roadie jacket punching at the old man’s neck and the side of his face as he dragged him around by the collar of the overcoat. The other one began ransacking the coat pockets, ripping the fabric to get his hand inside.

  The old man commenced to scream. “Protect me! You’ve got to protect me…it’s necessary to protect me!”

  The one pillaging pockets froze momentarily. What the hell kind of thing is that for this old fucker to be saying? Who the hell does he think’ll protect him? Is he asking us to protect him? I’ll protect you, scumbag! I’ll kick in your fuckin’ lung! “Shut ’im up!” he whispered urgently to his friend. “Stick a fist in his mouth!” Then his hand, wedged in an inside jacket pocket, closed over something. He tried to get his hand loose, but the jacket and coat and the old man’s body had wound around his wrist. “C’mon loose, motherfuckah!” he said to the very old man, who was still screaming for protection. The other young man was making huffing sounds, as dark as mud, as he slapped at the rain-soaked hair of his victim. “I can’t…he’s all twisted ’round…getcher hand outta there so’s I can…” Screaming, the old man had doubled under, locking their hands on his person.

  And then the pillager’s fist came loose, and he was clutching—for an instant—a gorgeous pocket watch.

  What used to be called a turnip watch.

  The dial face was cloisonné, exquisite beyond the telling.

  The case was of silver, so bright it seemed blue.

  The hands, cast as arrows of time, were gold. They formed a shallow V at precisely eleven o’clock. This was happening at 3:45 in the afternoon, with rain and wind.

  The timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.

  Then: there was space all around the watch, and in that space in the palm of the hand, there was heat. Intense heat for just a moment, just long enough for the hand to open.

  The watch glided out of the boy’s palm and levitated.

  “Help me! You must protect me!”

  Billy Kinetta heard the shrieking, but did not see the pocket watch floating in the air above the astonished young man. It was silver, and it was end-on toward him, and the rain was silver and slanting; and he did not see the watch hanging free in the air, even when the furious young man disentangled himself and leaped for it. Billy did not see the watch rise just so much, out of reach of the mugger.

  Billy Kinetta saw two boys, two young men of ratpack age, beating someone much older; and he went for them. Pow, like that!

  Thrashing his legs, the old man twisted around—over, under—as the boy holding him by the collar tried to land a punch to put him away. Who would have thought the old man to have had so much battle in him?

  A flapping shape, screaming something unintelligible, hit the center of the group at full speed. The carnaby-gloved hand reaching for the watch grasped at empty air one moment, and the next was buried under its owner as the boy was struck a crackback block that threw him face-first into the soggy ground. He tried to rise, but something stomped him at the base of his spine; something kicked him twice in the kidneys; something rolled over him like a flash flood.

  Twisting, twisting, the very old man put his thumb in the right eye of the boy clutching his collar.

  The great trenchcoated maelstrom that was Billy Kinetta whirled into the boy as he let loose of the old man on the ground and, howling, slapped a palm against his stinging eye. Billy locked his fingers and delivered a roundhouse wallop that sent the boy reeling backward to fall over Minna’s tilted headstone.

  Billy’s back was to the old man. He did not see the miraculous pocket watch smoothly descend through rain that did not touch it, to hover in front of the old man. He did not see the old man reach up, did not see the timepiece snuggle into an arthritic hand, did not see the old man return the turnip to an inside jacket pocket.

  Wind, rain and Billy Kinetta pummeled two young men of a legal age that made them accountable for their actions. There was no thought of the knife stuck down in one boot, no chance to reach it, no moment when the wild thing let them rise. So they crawled. They scrabbled across the muddy ground, the slippery grass, over graves and out of his reach. They ran; falling, rising, falling again; away, without looking back.

  Billy Kinetta, breathing heavily, knees trembling, turned to help the old man to his feet; and found him standing, brushing dirt from his overcoat, snorting in anger and mumbling to himself.

  “Are you all right?”

  For a moment the old man’s recitation of annoyance continued, then he snapped his chin down sharply as if marking end to the situation, and looked at his cavalry to the rescue. “That was very good, young fella. Considerable style you’ve got there.”

  Billy Kinetta stared at him wide-eyed. “Are you sure you’re okay?” He reached over and flicked several blades of wet grass from the shoulder of the old man’s overcoat.

  “I’m fine. I’m fine but I’m wet and I’m cranky. Let’s go somewhere and have a nice cup of Earl Grey.”

  There had been a look on Billy Kinetta’s face as he stood with lowered eyes, staring at the grave he had come to visit. The emergency had removed that look. Now it returned.

  “No, thanks. If you’re okay, I’ve got to do some things.”

  The old man felt himself all over, meticulously, as he replied, “I’m only superficially bruised. Now if I were an old woman, instead of a spunky old man, same age though, I’d have lost considerable of the calcium in my bones, and those two would have done me some mischief. Did you know that women lose a considerable part of their calcium when they reach my age? I read a report.” Then he paused, and said shyly, “Come on, why don’t you and I sit and chew the fat over a nice cup of tea?”

  Billy shook his head with bemusement, smiling despite himself. “You’re something else, Dad. I don’t even know you.”

  “I like that.”

  “What: that I don’t know you?”

  “No, that you called me ‘Dad’ and not ‘Pop.’ I hate ‘Pop.’ Always makes me think the wise-apple wants to snap off my cap with a bottle opener. Now Dad has a ring of respect to it. I like that right down to the ground. Yes, I believe we should find someplace warm and quiet to sit and get to know each other. After all, you saved my life. And you know what that means in the Orient.”

  Billy was smiling continuously now. “In the first place, I doubt very much I saved your life. Your wallet, maybe. And in the second place, I don’t even know your name; what would we have to talk about?”

  “Gaspar,” he said, extending his hand. “That’s a first name. Gaspar. Know what it means?”

  Billy shook his head.

  “See, already we have something to talk about.”

  So Billy, still smiling, began walking Gaspar out of the cemetery. “Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”

  They were on the street, approaching Billy Kinetta’s 1979 Cutlass. “Where I live is too far for now. I’m beginning to feel a bit peaky. I’d like to lie down for a minute. We can just go on over to your place, if that doesn’t bother you. For a few minutes. A cup of tea. Is that all right?”

  He was standing beside the Cutlass, looking at Billy with an old man’s expectant smile, waiting for him to unlock the door and hold it for him till he’d placed his still
-calcium-rich but nonetheless old bones in the passenger seat. Billy stared at him, trying to figure out what was at risk if he unlocked that door. Then he snorted a tiny laugh, unlocked the door, held it for Gaspar as he seated himself, slammed it and went around to unlock the other side and get in. Gaspar reached across and thumbed up the door lock knob. And they drove off together in the rain.

  Through all of this the timepiece made no sound, no sound at all.

  Like Gaspar, Billy Kinetta was alone in the world.

  His three-room apartment was the vacuum in which he existed. It was furnished, but if one stepped out into the hallway and, for all the money in all the numbered accounts in all the banks in Switzerland, one were asked to describe those furnishings, one would come away no richer than before. The apartment was charisma poor. It was a place to come when all other possibilities had been expended. Nothing green, nothing alive, existed in those boxes. No eyes looked back from the walls. Neither warmth nor chill marked those spaces. It was a place to wait.

  Gaspar leaned his closed shooting stick, now a walking stick with handles, against the bookcase. He studied the titles of the paperbacks stacked haphazardly on the shelves.

  From the kitchenette came the sound of water running into a metal pan. Then tin on cast iron. Then the hiss of gas and the flaring of a match as it was struck; and the pop of the gas being lit.

  “Many years ago,” Gaspar said, taking out a copy of Moravia’s TWO ADOLESCENTS and thumbing it as he spoke, “I had a library of books, oh, thousands of books—never could bear to toss one out, not even the bad ones—and when folks would come to the house to visit they’d look around at all the nooks and crannies stuffed with books; and if they were the sort of folks who don’t snuggle with books, they’d always ask the same dumb question.” He waited a moment for a response and when none was forthcoming (the sound of china cups on sink tile), he said, “Guess what the question was.”

  From the kitchen, without much interest: “No idea.”

  “They’d always ask it with the kind of voice people use in the presence of large sculptures in museums. They’d ask me, ‘Have you read all these books?’” He waited again, but Billy Kinetta was not playing the game. “Well, young fella, after a while the same dumb question gets asked a million times, you get sorta snappish about it. And it came to annoy me more than a little bit. Till I finally figured out the right answer.

  “And you know what that answer was? Go ahead, take a guess.”

  Billy appeared in the kitchenette doorway. “I suppose you told them you’d read a lot of them but not all of them.”

  Gaspar waved the guess away with a flapping hand. “Now what good would that have done? They wouldn’t know they’d asked a dumb question, but I didn’t want to insult them, either. So when they’d ask if I’d read all those books, I’d say, ‘Hell, no. Who wants a library full of books you’ve already read?’”

  Billy laughed despite himself. He scratched at his hair with idle pleasure, and shook his head at the old man’s verve. “Gaspar, you are a wild old man. You retired?”

  The old man walked carefully to the most comfortable chair in the room, an overstuffed Thirties-style lounge that had been reupholstered many times before Billy Kinetta had purchased it at the American Cancer Society Thrift Shop. He sank into it with a sigh. “No sir, I am not by any means retired. Still very active.”

  “Doing what, if I’m not prying?”

  “Doing ombudsman.”

  “You mean, like a consumer advocate? Like Ralph Nader?”

  “Exactly. I watch out for things. I listen, I pay some attention; and if I do it right, sometimes I can even make a little difference. Yes, like Mr. Nader. A very fine man.”

  “And you were at the cemetery to see a relative?”

  Gaspar’s face settled into an expression of loss. “My dear old girl. My wife, Minna. She’s been gone, well, it was twenty years in January.” He sat silently staring inward for a while, then: “She was everything to me. The nice part was that I knew how important we were to each other; we discussed, well, just everything. I miss that the most, telling her what’s going on.

  “I go to see her every other day.

  “I used to go every day. But. It. Hurt. Too much.”

  They had tea. Gaspar sipped and said it was very nice, but had Billy ever tried Earl Grey? Billy said he didn’t know what that was, and Gaspar said he would bring him a tin, that it was splendid. And they chatted. Finally, Gaspar asked, “And who were you visiting?”

  Billy pressed his lips together. “Just a friend.” And would say no more. Then he sighed and said, “Well, listen, I have to go to work.”

  “Oh? What do you do?”

  The answer came slowly. As if Billy Kinetta wanted to be able to say that he was in computers, or owned his own business, or held a position of import. “I’m night manager at a 7-Eleven.”

  “I’ll bet you meet some fascinating people coming in late for milk or one of those slushies,” Gaspar said gently. He seemed to understand.

  Billy smiled. He took the kindness as it was intended. “Yeah, the cream of high society. That is, when they’re not threatening to shoot me through the head if I don’t open the safe.”

  “Let me ask you a favor,” Gaspar said. “I’d like a little sanctuary, if you think it’s all right. Just a little rest. I could lie down on the sofa for a bit. Would that be all right? You trust me to stay here while you’re gone, young fella?”

  Billy hesitated only a moment. The very old man seemed okay, not a crazy, certainly not a thief. And what was there to steal? Some tea that wasn’t even Earl Grey?

  “Sure. That’ll be okay. But I won’t be coming back till two am. So just close the door behind you when you go; it’ll lock automatically.”

  They shook hands, Billy shrugged into his still-wet trenchcoat, and he went to the door. He paused to look back at Gaspar sitting in the lengthening shadows as evening came on. “It was nice getting to know you, Gaspar.”

  “You can make that a mutual pleasure, Billy. You’re a nice young fella.”

  And Billy went to work, alone as always.

  When he came home at two, prepared to open a can of Hormel chili, he found the table set for dinner; with the scent of an elegant beef stew enriching the apartment. There were new potatoes and stir-fried carrots and zucchini that had been lightly battered to delicate crispness. And cupcakes. White cake with chocolate frosting. From a bakery.

  And in that way, as gently as that, Gaspar insinuated himself into Billy Kinetta’s apartment and his life.

  As they sat with tea and cupcakes, Billy said, “You don’t have any place to go, do you?”

  The old man smiled and made one of those deprecating movements of the head. “Well, I’m not the sort of fella who can bear to be homeless, but at the moment I’m what vaudevillians used to call ‘at liberty.’”

  “If you want to stay on a time, that would be okay,” Billy said. “It’s not very roomy here, but we seem to get on all right.”

  “That’s strongly kind of you, Billy. Yes, I’d like to be your roommate for a while. Won’t be too long, though. My doctor tells me I’m not long for this world.” He paused, looked into the teacup and said softly, “I have to confess…I’m a little frightened. To go. Having someone to talk to would be a great comfort.”

  And Billy said, without preparation, “I was visiting the grave of a man who was in my rifle company in Vietnam. I go there sometimes.” But there was such pain in his words that Gaspar did not press him for details.

  So the hours passed, as they will with or without permission, and when Gaspar asked Billy if they could watch the television, to catch an early newscast, and Billy tuned in the old set just in time to pick up dire reports of another aborted disarmament talk, and Billy shook his head and observed that it wasn’t only Gaspar who was frightened of something like death, Gaspar chuckled, patted Billy on the knee and said, with unassailable assurance, “Take my word for it, Billy…it isn’t going to
happen. No nuclear holocaust. Trust me, when I tell you this: it’ll never happen. Never, never, not ever.”

  Billy smiled wanly. “And why not? What makes you so sure…got some special inside information?”

  And Gaspar pulled out the magnificent timepiece, which Billy was seeing for the first time, and he said, “It’s not going to happen because it’s only eleven o’clock.”

  Billy stared at the watch, which read 11:00 precisely. He consulted his wristwatch. “Hate to tell you this, but your watch has stopped. It’s almost five-thirty.”

  Gaspar smiled his own certain smile. “No, it’s eleven.” And they made up the sofa for the very old man, who placed his pocket change and his fountain pen and the sumptuous turnip watch on the now-silent television set, and they went to sleep.

  One day Billy went off while Gaspar was washing the lunch dishes, and when he came back, he had a large paper bag from Toys R Us.

  Gaspar came out of the kitchenette rubbing a plate with a souvenir dish towel from Niagara Falls, New York. He stared at Billy and the bag. “What’s in the bag?” Billy inclined his head, and indicated the very old man should join him in the middle of the room. Then he sat down crosslegged on the floor, and dumped the contents of the bag. Gaspar stared with startlement, and sat down beside him.

  So for two hours they played with tiny cars that turned into robots when the sections were unfolded.

  Gaspar was excellent at figuring out all the permutations of the Transformers, Starriors and GoBots. He played well.

  Then they went for a walk. “I’ll treat you to a matinee,” Gaspar said. “But no films with Karen Black, Sandy Dennis or Meryl Streep. They’re always crying. Their noses are always red. I can’t stand that.”

  They started to cross the avenue. Stopped at the light was this year’s Cadillac Brougham, vanity license plates, ten coats of acrylic lacquer and two coats of clear (with a little retarder in the final “color coat” for a slow dry) of a magenta hue so rich that it approximated the shade of light shining through a decanter filled with Château Lafite-Rothschild 1945.