Shock
THE DISTRIBUTOR
July 20
Time to move.
He'd found a small, furnished house on Sylmar Street. The Saturday morning he moved in, he went around the neighbourhood introducing himself.
"Good morning," he said to the old man pruning ivy next door. "My name is Theodore Gordon. I just moved in."
The old man straightened up and shook Theodore's hand. "How do," he said. His name was Joseph Alston.
A dog came shuffling from the porch to sniff Theodore's cuffs. "He's making up his mind about you," said the old man.
"Isn't that cute?" said Theodore.
Across the street lived Inez Ferrel. She answered the door in a housecoat, a thin woman in her late thirties. Theodore apologized for disturbing her.
"Oh, that's all right," she said. She had lots of time to herself when her husband was selling on the road.
"I hope we'll be good neighbors," said Theodore.
"I'm sure we will," said Inez Ferrel. She watched him through the window as he left.
Next door, directly across from his own house, he knocked quietly because there was a Nightworker Sleeping sign. Dorothy Backus opened the door-a tiny, withdrawn woman in her middle thirties.
"I'm so glad to meet you," said Theodore.
Next door lived the Walter Mortons. As Theodore came up the walk, he heard Bianca Morton talking loudly to her son, Walter, Jr.
"You are not old enough to stay out till three o'clock in the morning!" she was saying. "Especially with a girl as young as Katherine McCann!"
Theodore knocked and Mr. Morton, fifty-two and bald, opened the door.
"I just moved in across the street," said Theodore, smiling at them.
Patty Jefferson let him in next door. As he talked to her Theodore could see, through the back window, her husband Arthur filling a rubber pool for their son and daughter.
"They just love that pool," said Patty, smiling.
"I bet they do," said Theodore. As he left, he noticed the vacant house next door.
Across the street from the Jeffersons lived the McCanns and their fourteen-year-old daughter Katherine. As Theodore approached the door he heard the voice of James McCann saying, "Aah, he's nuts. Why should I take his lawn edger? Just because I borrowed his lousy mower a couple of times."
"Darling, please" said Faye McCann. "I've got to finish these notes in time for the Council's next meeting."
"Just because Kathy goes out with his lousy son..." grumbled her husband.
Theodore knocked on the door and introduced himself. He chatted briefly with them, informing Mrs. McCann that he certainly would like to join the National Council for Christians and Jews. It was a worthy organization.
"What's your business, Gordon?" asked McCann.
"I'm in distribution," said Theodore.
Next door, two boys mowed and raked while their dog gambolled around them.
"Hello there," said Theodore. They grunted and watched him as he headed for the porch. The dog ignored him.
"I just told him." Henry Putnam's voice came through the living room window: "Put a coon in my department and I'm through. That's all."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Irma Putnam.
Theodore's knock was answered by the undershirted Mr. Putnam. His wife was lying on the sofa. Her heart, explained Mr. Putnam. "Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said.
In the last house lived the Gorses.
"I just moved in next door," said Theodore. He shook Eleanor Gorse's lean hand and she told him that her father was at work.
"Is that him?" asked Theodore, pointing at the portrait of a stony-faced old man that hung above a mantel crowded with religious objects.
"Yes," said Eleanor, thirty-four and ugly.
"Well, I hope we'll be good neighbours," Theodore said.
That afternoon, he went to his new office and set up the darkroom.
July 23
That morning, before he left for the office, he checked the telephone directory and jotted down four numbers. He dialled the first.
"Would you please send a cab to 12057 Sylmar Street?" he said. "Thank you."
He dialled the second number. "Would you please send a repairman to my house," he said. "I don't get any picture. I live at 12070 Sylmar Street."
He dialled the third number: "I'd like to run this ad in Sunday's edition," he said. "1957 Ford. Perfect Condition. Seven-hundred eighty-nine dollars. That's right, seven-hundred eighty-nine. The number is DA-4-7408."
He made the fourth call and set up an afternoon appointment with Mr. Jeremiah Osborne. Then he stood by the living room window until the taxicab stopped in front of the Backus house.
As he was driving off, a television repair truck passed him. He looked back and saw it stop in front of Henry Putnam's house.
Dear sirs, he typed in the office later, Please send me ten booklets for which I enclose one hundred dollars in payment. He put down the name and address.
The envelope dropped into the out box.
July 27
When Inez Ferrel left her house that evening, Theodore followed in his car. Downtown, Mrs. Ferrel got off the bus and went into a bar called the Irish Lantern. Parking, Theodore entered the bar cautiously and slipped into a shadowy booth.
Inez Ferrel was at the back of the room perched on a bar stool. She'd taken off her jacket to reveal a clinging yellow sweater. Theodore ran his gaze across the studied exposition of her bust.
At length, a man accosted her and spoke and laughed and spent a modicum of time with her. Theodore watched them exit, arm in arm. Paying for his coffee, he followed. It was a short walk; Mrs. Ferrel and the man entered a hotel on the next block.
Theodore drove home, whistling.
The next morning, when Eleanor Gorse and her father had left with Mrs. Backus, Theodore followed.
He met them in the church lobby when the service was over. Wasn't it a wonderful coincidence, he said, that he, too, was a Baptist? And he shook the indurate hand of Donald Gorse.
As they walked into the sunshine, Theodore asked them if they wouldn't share his Sunday dinner with him. Mrs. Backus smiled faintly and murmured something about her husband. Donald Gorse looked doubtful.
"Oh, please," begged Theodore. "Make a lonely widower happy."
"Widower," tasted Mr. Gorse.
Theodore hung his head. "These many years," he said. "Pneumonia."
"Been a Baptist long?" asked Mr. Gorse.
"Since birth," said Theodore with fervour. "It's been my only solace."
For dinner he served lamb chops, peas, and baked potatoes. For dessert, apple cobbler and coffee.
"I'm so pleased you'd share my humble food," he said.
"This is, truly, loving thy neighbour as thyself." He smiled at Eleanor who returned it stiffly.
That evening, as darkness fell, Theodore took a stroll. As he passed the McCann house, he heard the telephone ringing, then James McCann shouting, "It's a mistake, damn it! Why in the lousy hell should I sell a '57 Ford for seven-hundred eighty-nine bucks!"
The phone slammed down. "God damn" howled James McCann.
"Darling, please be tolerant!" begged his wife.
The telephone rang again.
Theodore moved on.
August 1
At exactly two-fifteen a.m. Theodore slipped outside, pulled up one of Joseph Alston's longest ivy plants and left it on the sidewalk.
In the morning, as he left the house, he saw Walter Morton, Jr., heading for the McCann house with a blanket, a towel and a portable radio. The old man was picking up his ivy.
"Was it pulled up?" asked Theodore.
Joseph Alston grunted.
"So that was it," said Theodore.
"What?" the old man looked up.
"Last night," said Theodore, "I heard some noise out here. I looked out and saw a couple of boys."
"You seen their faces?" asked Alston, his face hardening.
"No, it was too dark," said Theodore. "But I'd say they were-oh, about the age of the Putnam boys. Not that it was them, of course."
Joe Alston nodded slowly, looking up the street.
Theodore drove up to the boulevard and parked. Twenty minutes later, Walter Morton, Jr., and Katherine McCann boarded a bus.
At the beach, Theodore sat a few yards behind them.
"That Mack is a character," he heard Walter Morton say. "He gets the urge, he drives to Tijuana, just for kicks."
In a while Morton and the girl ran into the ocean, laughing. Theodore stood and walked to a telephone booth.
"I'd like to have a swimming pool installed in my backyard next week," he said. He gave the details.
Back" on the beach he sat patiently until Walter Morton and the girl were lying in each other's arms. Then, at specific moments, he pressed a shutter hidden in his palm. This done, he returned to his car, buttoning his shirt front over the tiny lens. On his way to the office, he stopped at a hardware store to buy a brush and a can of black paint.
He spent the afternoon printing the pictures. He made them appear as if they had been taken at night and as if the young couple had been engaged in something else.
The envelope dropped softly into the out box.
August 5
The street was silent and deserted. Tennis shoes soundless on the paving, Theodore moved across the street.
He found the Morton's lawn mower in the backyard. Lifting it quietly, he carried it back across the street to the McCann garage. After carefully raising the door, he slid the mower behind the work bench. The envelope of photographs he put in a drawer behind a box of nails.
Returning to his house then, he phoned James McCann and, muffledly, asked if the Ford was still for sale.
In the morning, the mailman placed a bulky envelope on the Gorses' porch. Eleanor Gorse emerged and opened it, sliding out one of the booklets. Theodore watched the furtive look she cast about, the rising of dark colour in her cheeks.
As he was mowing the lawn that evening he saw Walter Morton, Sr., march across the street to where James McCann was trimming bushes. He heard them talking loudly. Finally, they went into McCann's garage from which Morton emerged pushing his lawn mower and making no reply to McCann's angry protests.
Across the street from McCann, Arthur Jefferson was just getting home from work. The two Putnam boys were riding their bicycles, their dog racing around them.
Now, across from where Theodore stood, a door slammed. He turned his head and watched Mr. Backus, in work clothes, storming to his car, muttering disgustedly, "A swimming pool!" Theodore looked to the next house and saw Inez Ferrel moving in her living room.
He smiled and mowed along the side of his house, glancing into Eleanor Gorse's bedroom. She was sitting with her back to him, reading something. When she heard the clatter of his mower she stood and left the bedroom, pushing the bulky envelope into a bureau drawer.
August 15
Henry Putnam answered the door.
"Good evening," said Theodore. "I hope I'm not intruding."
"Just chatting in the den with Irma's folks," said Putnam. "They're drivin' to New York in the mornin'."
"Oh? Well, I'll only be a moment." Theodore held out a pair of BB guns. "A plant I distribute for was getting rid of these," he said. "I thought your boys might like them."
"Well, sure," said Putnam. He started for the den to get his sons.
While the older man was gone, Theodore picked up a couple of matchbooks whose covers read Putnam's Wines and Liquors. He'd slipped them into his pocket before the boys were led in to thank him.
"Mighty nice of you, Gordon," said Putnam at the door. "Sure appreciate it."
"My pleasure," said Theodore.
Walking home, he set the clock-radio for three-fifteen and lay down. When the music began, he moved outside on silent feet and tore up forty-seven ivy plants, strewing them over Alston's sidewalk.
"Oh, No," he said to Alston in the morning. He shook his head, appalled.
Joseph Alston didn't speak. He glanced down the block with hating eyes.
"Here, let me help you," Theodore said. The old man shook his head but Theodore insisted. Driving to the nearest nursery he brought back two sacks of peat moss; then squatted by Alston's side to help him replant.
"You hear anything last night?" the old man asked.
"You think it was those boys again?" asked Theodore, open-mouthed.
"Ain't say in'," Alston said.
Later, Theodore drove downtown and bought a dozen postcard photographs. He took them to the office.
Dear Walt, he printed crudely on the back of one, Got these here in Tijuana. Hot enough for you? In addressing the envelope, he failed to add Jr. to Mr. Walter Morton.
Into the out box.
August 23
"Mrs. Ferrel!"
She shuddered on the bar stool. "Why, Mister-"
"Gordon," he provided, smiling. "How nice to see you again."
"Yes." She pressed together lips that trembled.
"You come here often?" Theodore asked.
"Oh, no, never'' Inez Ferrel blurted. "I'm-just supposed to meet a friend here tonight. A girl friend."
"Oh, I see," said Theodore. "Well, may a lonely widower keep you company until she comes?"
"Why..." Mrs. Ferrel shrugged. "I guess." Her lips were painted brightly red against the alabaster of her skin. The sweater clung adhesively to the hoisted jut of her breasts.
After a while, when Mrs. Ferrel's friend didn't show up, they slid into a darkened booth. There, Theodore used Mrs. Ferrel's powder room retreat to slip a pale and tasteless powder in her drink. On her return she swallowed this and, in minutes, grew stupefied. She smiled at Theodore.
"I like you Misser Gor'n," she confessed. The words crawled viscidly across her lolling tongue.
Shortly thereafter, he led her, stumbling and giggling, to his car and drove her to a motel. Inside the room, he helped her strip to stockings, garter belt and shoes and, while she posed with drugged complacency, Theodore took flashbulb pictures.
After she'd collapsed at two a.m. Theodore dressed her and drove her home. He stretched her fully dressed across her bed. After that he went outside and poured concentrated weed killer on Alston's replanted ivy.
Back in the house he dialled the Jefferson's number.
"Yes," said Arthur Jefferson irritably.
"Get out of this neighbourhood or you'll be sorry," whispered Theodore, then hung up.
In the morning he walked to Mrs. Ferrel's house and rang the bell.
"Hello," he said politely. "Are you feeling better?"
She stared at him blankly while he explained how she'd gotten violently ill the night before and he'd taken her home from the bar. "I do hope you're feeling better," he concluded.
"Yes," she said, confusedly, "I'm-all right."
As he left her house he saw a red-faced James McCann approaching the Morton house, an envelope in his hand. Beside him walked a distraught Mrs. McCann.
"We must be tolerant, Jim," Theodore heard her say.
August 31
At two-fifteen a.m. Theodore took the brush and the can of paint and went outside.
Walking to the Jefferson house he set the can down and painted, jaggedly, across the door-nigger!
Then he moved across the street allowing an occasional drip of paint. He left the can under Henry Putnam's back porch, accidentally upsetting the dog's plate. Fortunately, the Putnams' dog slept indoors.
Later, he put more weed killer on Joseph Alston's ivy.
In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, he took a heavy envelope and went to see Eleanor Gorse. "Look at this," he said, sliding a pornographic booklet from the envelope. "I received this in the mail today. Look at it." He thrust it into her hands.
She held the booklet as if it were a spider.
"Isn't it hideous?" he said.
She made a face. "Revolting," she said.
"I thought I'd check with you and several others before I phoned the police," said Theodore. "Have you received any of this filth?"
Eleanor Gorse bristled. "Why should I receive them?" she demanded.
Outside, Theodore found the old man squatting by his ivy. "How are they coming?" he asked.
"They're dyin'."
Theodore looked stricken. "How can this be?" he asked.
Alston shook his head.
"Oh, this is horrible." Theodore turned away, clucking. As he walked to his house he saw, up the street, Arthur Jefferson cleaning off his door and, across the way, Henry Putnam watching carefully.
She was waiting on his porch.
"Mrs. McCann," said Theodore, surprised, "I'm so glad to see you."
"What I came to say may not make you so glad," she said unhappily.
"Oh?" said Theodore. They went into his house.
"There have been a lot of... things happening in this neighbourhood since you moved in," said Mrs. McCann after they were seated in the living room.
"Things?" asked Theodore.
"I think you know what I mean," said Mrs. McCann. "However, this-this bigotry on Mr. Jefferson's door is too much, Mr. Gordon, too much."
Theodore gestured helplessly. "I don't understand."
"Please don't make it difficult," she said. "I may have to call the authorities if these things don't stop, Mr. Gordon. I hate to think of doing such a thing but-"
"Authorities?" Theodore looked terrified.
"None of these things happened until you moved in, Mr. Gordon," she said. "Believe me, I hate what I'm saying but I simply have no choice. The fact that none of these things has happened to you-"
She broke off startledly as a sob wracked Theodore's chest. She stared at him. "Mr. Gordon-" she began uncertainly.
"I don't know what these things are you speak of," said Theodore in a shaking voice, "but I'd kill myself before I harmed another, Mrs. McCann."
He looked around as if to make sure they were alone.
"I'm going to tell you something I've never told a single soul," he said. He wiped away a tear. "My name isn't Gordon," he said. "It's Gottlieb. I'm a Jew. I spent a year at Dachau."
Mrs. McCann's lips moved but she said nothing. Her face was getting red.
"I came from there a broken man," said Theodore. "I haven't long to live, Mrs. McCann. My wife is dead, my three children are dead. I'm all alone. I only want to live in peace-in a little place like this-among people like you.
"To be a neighbour, a friend..."
"Mr.-Gottlieb" she said brokenly.
After she was gone, Theodore stood silent in the living room, hands clenched whitely at his sides. Then he went into the kitchen to discipline himself.
"Good morning, Mrs. Backus," he said an hour later when the little woman answered the door, "I wonder if I might ask you some questions about our church?"
"Oh. Oh, yes." She stepped back feebly. "Won't you- come in?"
"I'll be very still so as not to wake your husband," Theodore whispered. He saw her looking at his bandaged hand. "I burned myself," he said. "Now, about the church. Oh, there's someone knocking at your back door."
"There is?"
When she'd gone into the kitchen, Theodore pulled open the hall closet door and dropped some photographs behind a pile of overshoes and garden tools. The door was shut when she returned.
"There wasn't anyone," she said.
"I could have sworn..." He smiled deprecatingly. He looked down at a circular bag on the floor. "Oh, does Mr. Backus bowl?"
"Wednesdays and Fridays when his shift is over," she said. "There's an all-night alley over on Western Avenue."
"I love to bowl," said Theodore.
He asked his questions about the church, then left. As he started down the path he heard loud voices from the Morton house.
"It wasn't bad enough about Katherine McCann and those awful pictures," shrieked Mrs. Morton. "Now this... .filth!"
"But, Mom!" cried Walter, Jr.
September 14
Theodore awoke and turned the radio off. Standing, he put a small bottle of greyish powder in his pocket and slipped from the house. Reaching his destination, he sprinkled powder into the water bowl and stirred it with a finger until it dissolved.
Back in the house he scrawled four letters reading: Arthur Jefferson is trying to pass the colour line. He is my cousin and should admit he is black like the rest of us. I am doing this for his own good.
He signed the letter John Thomas Jefferson and addressed three of the envelopes to Donald Gorse, the Mortons, and Mr. Henry Putnam.
This completed, he saw Mrs. Backus walking toward the boulevard and followed. "May I walk you?" he asked.
"Oh," she said. "All right."
"I missed your husband last night," he told her.
She glanced at him.
"I thought I'd join him bowling," Theodore said, "but I guess he was sick again."
"Sick?"
"I asked the man behind the counter at the alley and he said that Mr. Backus hadn't been coming in because he was sick."
"Oh," Mrs. Backus's voice was thinly stricken.
"Well, maybe next Friday," said Theodore.
Later, when he came back, he saw a panel truck in front of Henry Putnam's house. A man came out of the alley carrying a blanket-wrapped body which he laid in the truck. The Putnam boys were crying as they watched.
Arthur Jefferson answered the door. Theodore showed the letter to Jefferson and his wife. "It came this morning," he said.
"This is monstrous!" said Jefferson, reading it.
"Of course it is," said Theodore.
While they were talking, Jefferson looked through the window at the Putnam house across the street.
September 15
Pale morning mist engulfed Sylmar Street. Theodore moved through it silently. Under the back porch of the Jeffersons' house he set fire to a box of damp papers. As it began to smoulder he walked across the yard and, with a single knife stroke, slashed apart the rubber pool. He heard it pulsing water on the grass as he left. In the alley he dropped a book of matches that read Putnam's Wines and Liquors.
A little after six that morning he woke to the howl of sirens and felt the small house tremble at the heavy trucks passing by. Turning on his side, he yawned, and mumbled, "Goody."
September 17
It was a paste-complexioned Dorothy Backus who answered Theodore's knock.
"May I drive you to church?" asked Theodore.
"I-I don't believe I-I'm not... feeling too well," stumbled Mrs. Backus.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said. He saw the edges of some photographs protruding from her apron pocket.
As he left he saw the Mortons getting in their car, Bianca wordless, both Walters ill at ease. Up the street, a police car was parked in front of Arthur Jefferson's house.
Theodore went to church with Donald Gorse who said that Eleanor was feeling ill.
"I'm so sorry," Theodore said.
That afternoon, he spent a while at the Jefferson house helping clear away the charred debris of their back porch. When he saw the slashed rubber pool he drove immediately to a drug store and bought another one.
"But they love that pool," said Theodore, when Patty Jefferson protested. "You told me so yourself."
He winked at Arthur Jefferson but Jefferson was not communicative that afternoon.
September 23
Early in the evening Theodore saw Alston's dog walking in the street. He got his BB gun and, from the bedroom window, soundlessly, fired. The dog nipped fiercely at its side and spun around. Then, whimpering, it started home.
Several minutes later, Theodore went outside and started pulling up the door to the garage. He saw the old man hurrying down his alley, the dog in his arms.
"What's wrong?" asked Theodore.
"Don't know," said Alston in a breathless, frightened voice. "He's hurt."
"Quickly!" said Theodore. "Into my car!"
He rushed Alston and the dog to the nearest veterinary, passing three stop signs and groaning when the old man held his hand up, palsiedly, and whimpered, "Blood!"
For three hours Theodore sat in the veterinary's waiting room until the old man staggered forth, his face a greyish white.
"No," said Theodore, jumping to his feet.
He led the old man, weeping, to the car and drove him home. There, Alston said he'd rather be alone so Theodore left. Shortly afterward, the black and white police car rolled to a stop in front of Alston's house and the old man led the two officers past Theodore's house.
In a while, Theodore heard angry shouting up the street. It lasted quite a long time.
September 27
"Good evening," said Theodore. He bowed.
Eleanor Gorse nodded stiffly.
"I've brought you and your father a casserole," said Theodore, smiling, holding up a towel-wrapped dish. When she told him that her father was gone for the night, Theodore clucked and sighed as if he hadn't seen the old man drive away that afternoon.
"Well then," he said, proffering the dish, "for you. With my sincerest compliments."
Stepping off the porch he saw Arthur Jefferson and Henry Putnam standing under a street lamp down the block. While he watched, Arthur Jefferson struck the other man and, suddenly, they were brawling in the gutter. Theodore broke into a hurried run.
"But this is terrible!" he gasped, pulling the men apart.
"Stay out of this!" warned Jefferson, then, to Putnam, challenged, "You better tell me how that paint can got under your porch! The police may believe it was an accident I found that matchbook in my alley but I don't!"
"I'll tell you nothing," Putnam said, contemptuously. "Coon."
"Coon! Oh, of course! You'd be the first to believe that, you stupid-!"
Five times Theodore stood between them. It wasn't until Jefferson had, accidentally, struck him on the nose that tension faded. Curtly, Jefferson apologized; then, with a murderous look at Putnam, left.
"Sorry he hit you," Putnam sympathized. "Damned nigger."
"Oh, surely you're mistaken," Theodore said, daubing at his nostrils. "Mr. Jefferson told me how afraid he was of people believing this talk. Because of the value of his two houses, you know."
"Two?" asked Putnam.
"Yes, he owns the vacant house next door to his," said Theodore. "I assumed you knew."
"No," said Putnam warily.
"Well, you see," said Theodore, "if people think Mr. Jefferson is a Negro, the value of his houses will go down."
"So will the values of all of them," said Putnam, glaring across the street. "That dirty, son-of-a-"
Theodore patted his shoulder. "How are your wife's parents enjoying their stay in New York?" he asked as if changing the subject.
"They're on their way back," said Putnam.
"Good," said Theodore.
He went home and read the funny papers for an hour. Then he went out.
It was a florid faced Eleanor Gorse who opened to his knock. Her bathrobe was disarrayed, her dark eyes feverish.
"May I get my dish?" asked Theodore politely.
She grunted, stepping back jerkily. His hand, in passing, brushed on hers. She twitched away as if he'd stabbed her.
"Ah, you've eaten it all," said Theodore, noticing the tiny residue of powder on the bottom of the dish. He turned. "When will your father return?" he asked.
Her body seemed to tense. "After midnight," she muttered.
Theodore stepped to the wall switch and cut off the light. He heard her gasp in the darkness. "No," she muttered.
"Is this what you want, Eleanor?" he asked, grabbing harshly.
Her embrace was a mindless, fiery swallow. There was nothing but ovening flesh beneath her robe.
Later, when she lay snoring satedly on the kitchen floor, Theodore retrieved the camera he'd left outside the door.
Drawing down the shades, he arranged Eleanor's limbs and took twelve exposures. Then he went home and washed the dish.
Before retiring, he dialled the phone.
"Western Union," he said. "I have a message for Mrs. Irma Putnam of 12070 Sylmar Street."
"That's me," she said.
"Both parents killed in auto collision this afternoon," said Theodore. "Await word regarding disposition of bodies. Chief of Police, Tulsa, Okla-"
At the other end of the line there was a strangled gasp, a thud; then Henry Putnam's cry of "Irma!" Theodore hung up.
After the ambulance had come and gone, he went outside and tore up thirty-five of Joseph Alston's ivy plants. He left, in the debris, another matchbook reading Putnam's Wines and Liquors.
September 28
In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, Theodore went over. Eleanor tried to shut the door on him but he pushed in.
"I want money," he said. "These are my collateral." He threw down copies of the photographs and Eleanor recoiled, gagging. "Your father will receive a set of these tonight," he said, "unless I get two hundred dollars."
"But I-!"
"Tonight."
He left and drove downtown to the Jeremiah Osborne Realty office where he signed over, to Mr. George Jackson, the vacant house at 12069 Sylmar Street. He shook Mr. Jackson's hand.
"Don't you worry now," he comforted. "The people next door are black too."
When he returned home, there was a police car in front of the Backus house.
"What happened?" he asked Joseph Alston who was sitting quietly on his porch.
"Mrs. Backus," said the old man lifelessly. "She tried to kill Mrs. Ferrel."
"Is that right?" said Theodore.
That night, in his office, he made his entries on page 700 of the book.
Mrs. Ferrel dying of knife wounds in local hospital. Mrs. Backus in jail; suspects husband of adultery. J. Alston accused of dog poisoning, probably more. Putnam boys accused of shooting Alston's dog, ruining his lawn. Mrs. Putnam dead of heart attack. Mr. Putnam being sued for property destruction. Jeffersons thought to be black. McCanns and Mortons deadly enemies. Katherine McCann believed to have had relations with Walter Morton, Jr. Morton, Jr. being sent to school in Washington. Eleanor Gorse has hanged herself Job completed.
Time to move.
THE END
Time to move.
He'd found a small, furnished house on Sylmar Street. The Saturday morning he moved in, he went around the neighbourhood introducing himself.
"Good morning," he said to the old man pruning ivy next door. "My name is Theodore Gordon. I just moved in."
The old man straightened up and shook Theodore's hand. "How do," he said. His name was Joseph Alston.
A dog came shuffling from the porch to sniff Theodore's cuffs. "He's making up his mind about you," said the old man.
"Isn't that cute?" said Theodore.
Across the street lived Inez Ferrel. She answered the door in a housecoat, a thin woman in her late thirties. Theodore apologized for disturbing her.
"Oh, that's all right," she said. She had lots of time to herself when her husband was selling on the road.
"I hope we'll be good neighbors," said Theodore.
"I'm sure we will," said Inez Ferrel. She watched him through the window as he left.
Next door, directly across from his own house, he knocked quietly because there was a Nightworker Sleeping sign. Dorothy Backus opened the door-a tiny, withdrawn woman in her middle thirties.
"I'm so glad to meet you," said Theodore.
Next door lived the Walter Mortons. As Theodore came up the walk, he heard Bianca Morton talking loudly to her son, Walter, Jr.
"You are not old enough to stay out till three o'clock in the morning!" she was saying. "Especially with a girl as young as Katherine McCann!"
Theodore knocked and Mr. Morton, fifty-two and bald, opened the door.
"I just moved in across the street," said Theodore, smiling at them.
Patty Jefferson let him in next door. As he talked to her Theodore could see, through the back window, her husband Arthur filling a rubber pool for their son and daughter.
"They just love that pool," said Patty, smiling.
"I bet they do," said Theodore. As he left, he noticed the vacant house next door.
Across the street from the Jeffersons lived the McCanns and their fourteen-year-old daughter Katherine. As Theodore approached the door he heard the voice of James McCann saying, "Aah, he's nuts. Why should I take his lawn edger? Just because I borrowed his lousy mower a couple of times."
"Darling, please" said Faye McCann. "I've got to finish these notes in time for the Council's next meeting."
"Just because Kathy goes out with his lousy son..." grumbled her husband.
Theodore knocked on the door and introduced himself. He chatted briefly with them, informing Mrs. McCann that he certainly would like to join the National Council for Christians and Jews. It was a worthy organization.
"What's your business, Gordon?" asked McCann.
"I'm in distribution," said Theodore.
Next door, two boys mowed and raked while their dog gambolled around them.
"Hello there," said Theodore. They grunted and watched him as he headed for the porch. The dog ignored him.
"I just told him." Henry Putnam's voice came through the living room window: "Put a coon in my department and I'm through. That's all."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Irma Putnam.
Theodore's knock was answered by the undershirted Mr. Putnam. His wife was lying on the sofa. Her heart, explained Mr. Putnam. "Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said.
In the last house lived the Gorses.
"I just moved in next door," said Theodore. He shook Eleanor Gorse's lean hand and she told him that her father was at work.
"Is that him?" asked Theodore, pointing at the portrait of a stony-faced old man that hung above a mantel crowded with religious objects.
"Yes," said Eleanor, thirty-four and ugly.
"Well, I hope we'll be good neighbours," Theodore said.
That afternoon, he went to his new office and set up the darkroom.
July 23
That morning, before he left for the office, he checked the telephone directory and jotted down four numbers. He dialled the first.
"Would you please send a cab to 12057 Sylmar Street?" he said. "Thank you."
He dialled the second number. "Would you please send a repairman to my house," he said. "I don't get any picture. I live at 12070 Sylmar Street."
He dialled the third number: "I'd like to run this ad in Sunday's edition," he said. "1957 Ford. Perfect Condition. Seven-hundred eighty-nine dollars. That's right, seven-hundred eighty-nine. The number is DA-4-7408."
He made the fourth call and set up an afternoon appointment with Mr. Jeremiah Osborne. Then he stood by the living room window until the taxicab stopped in front of the Backus house.
As he was driving off, a television repair truck passed him. He looked back and saw it stop in front of Henry Putnam's house.
Dear sirs, he typed in the office later, Please send me ten booklets for which I enclose one hundred dollars in payment. He put down the name and address.
The envelope dropped into the out box.
July 27
When Inez Ferrel left her house that evening, Theodore followed in his car. Downtown, Mrs. Ferrel got off the bus and went into a bar called the Irish Lantern. Parking, Theodore entered the bar cautiously and slipped into a shadowy booth.
Inez Ferrel was at the back of the room perched on a bar stool. She'd taken off her jacket to reveal a clinging yellow sweater. Theodore ran his gaze across the studied exposition of her bust.
At length, a man accosted her and spoke and laughed and spent a modicum of time with her. Theodore watched them exit, arm in arm. Paying for his coffee, he followed. It was a short walk; Mrs. Ferrel and the man entered a hotel on the next block.
Theodore drove home, whistling.
The next morning, when Eleanor Gorse and her father had left with Mrs. Backus, Theodore followed.
He met them in the church lobby when the service was over. Wasn't it a wonderful coincidence, he said, that he, too, was a Baptist? And he shook the indurate hand of Donald Gorse.
As they walked into the sunshine, Theodore asked them if they wouldn't share his Sunday dinner with him. Mrs. Backus smiled faintly and murmured something about her husband. Donald Gorse looked doubtful.
"Oh, please," begged Theodore. "Make a lonely widower happy."
"Widower," tasted Mr. Gorse.
Theodore hung his head. "These many years," he said. "Pneumonia."
"Been a Baptist long?" asked Mr. Gorse.
"Since birth," said Theodore with fervour. "It's been my only solace."
For dinner he served lamb chops, peas, and baked potatoes. For dessert, apple cobbler and coffee.
"I'm so pleased you'd share my humble food," he said.
"This is, truly, loving thy neighbour as thyself." He smiled at Eleanor who returned it stiffly.
That evening, as darkness fell, Theodore took a stroll. As he passed the McCann house, he heard the telephone ringing, then James McCann shouting, "It's a mistake, damn it! Why in the lousy hell should I sell a '57 Ford for seven-hundred eighty-nine bucks!"
The phone slammed down. "God damn" howled James McCann.
"Darling, please be tolerant!" begged his wife.
The telephone rang again.
Theodore moved on.
August 1
At exactly two-fifteen a.m. Theodore slipped outside, pulled up one of Joseph Alston's longest ivy plants and left it on the sidewalk.
In the morning, as he left the house, he saw Walter Morton, Jr., heading for the McCann house with a blanket, a towel and a portable radio. The old man was picking up his ivy.
"Was it pulled up?" asked Theodore.
Joseph Alston grunted.
"So that was it," said Theodore.
"What?" the old man looked up.
"Last night," said Theodore, "I heard some noise out here. I looked out and saw a couple of boys."
"You seen their faces?" asked Alston, his face hardening.
"No, it was too dark," said Theodore. "But I'd say they were-oh, about the age of the Putnam boys. Not that it was them, of course."
Joe Alston nodded slowly, looking up the street.
Theodore drove up to the boulevard and parked. Twenty minutes later, Walter Morton, Jr., and Katherine McCann boarded a bus.
At the beach, Theodore sat a few yards behind them.
"That Mack is a character," he heard Walter Morton say. "He gets the urge, he drives to Tijuana, just for kicks."
In a while Morton and the girl ran into the ocean, laughing. Theodore stood and walked to a telephone booth.
"I'd like to have a swimming pool installed in my backyard next week," he said. He gave the details.
Back" on the beach he sat patiently until Walter Morton and the girl were lying in each other's arms. Then, at specific moments, he pressed a shutter hidden in his palm. This done, he returned to his car, buttoning his shirt front over the tiny lens. On his way to the office, he stopped at a hardware store to buy a brush and a can of black paint.
He spent the afternoon printing the pictures. He made them appear as if they had been taken at night and as if the young couple had been engaged in something else.
The envelope dropped softly into the out box.
August 5
The street was silent and deserted. Tennis shoes soundless on the paving, Theodore moved across the street.
He found the Morton's lawn mower in the backyard. Lifting it quietly, he carried it back across the street to the McCann garage. After carefully raising the door, he slid the mower behind the work bench. The envelope of photographs he put in a drawer behind a box of nails.
Returning to his house then, he phoned James McCann and, muffledly, asked if the Ford was still for sale.
In the morning, the mailman placed a bulky envelope on the Gorses' porch. Eleanor Gorse emerged and opened it, sliding out one of the booklets. Theodore watched the furtive look she cast about, the rising of dark colour in her cheeks.
As he was mowing the lawn that evening he saw Walter Morton, Sr., march across the street to where James McCann was trimming bushes. He heard them talking loudly. Finally, they went into McCann's garage from which Morton emerged pushing his lawn mower and making no reply to McCann's angry protests.
Across the street from McCann, Arthur Jefferson was just getting home from work. The two Putnam boys were riding their bicycles, their dog racing around them.
Now, across from where Theodore stood, a door slammed. He turned his head and watched Mr. Backus, in work clothes, storming to his car, muttering disgustedly, "A swimming pool!" Theodore looked to the next house and saw Inez Ferrel moving in her living room.
He smiled and mowed along the side of his house, glancing into Eleanor Gorse's bedroom. She was sitting with her back to him, reading something. When she heard the clatter of his mower she stood and left the bedroom, pushing the bulky envelope into a bureau drawer.
August 15
Henry Putnam answered the door.
"Good evening," said Theodore. "I hope I'm not intruding."
"Just chatting in the den with Irma's folks," said Putnam. "They're drivin' to New York in the mornin'."
"Oh? Well, I'll only be a moment." Theodore held out a pair of BB guns. "A plant I distribute for was getting rid of these," he said. "I thought your boys might like them."
"Well, sure," said Putnam. He started for the den to get his sons.
While the older man was gone, Theodore picked up a couple of matchbooks whose covers read Putnam's Wines and Liquors. He'd slipped them into his pocket before the boys were led in to thank him.
"Mighty nice of you, Gordon," said Putnam at the door. "Sure appreciate it."
"My pleasure," said Theodore.
Walking home, he set the clock-radio for three-fifteen and lay down. When the music began, he moved outside on silent feet and tore up forty-seven ivy plants, strewing them over Alston's sidewalk.
"Oh, No," he said to Alston in the morning. He shook his head, appalled.
Joseph Alston didn't speak. He glanced down the block with hating eyes.
"Here, let me help you," Theodore said. The old man shook his head but Theodore insisted. Driving to the nearest nursery he brought back two sacks of peat moss; then squatted by Alston's side to help him replant.
"You hear anything last night?" the old man asked.
"You think it was those boys again?" asked Theodore, open-mouthed.
"Ain't say in'," Alston said.
Later, Theodore drove downtown and bought a dozen postcard photographs. He took them to the office.
Dear Walt, he printed crudely on the back of one, Got these here in Tijuana. Hot enough for you? In addressing the envelope, he failed to add Jr. to Mr. Walter Morton.
Into the out box.
August 23
"Mrs. Ferrel!"
She shuddered on the bar stool. "Why, Mister-"
"Gordon," he provided, smiling. "How nice to see you again."
"Yes." She pressed together lips that trembled.
"You come here often?" Theodore asked.
"Oh, no, never'' Inez Ferrel blurted. "I'm-just supposed to meet a friend here tonight. A girl friend."
"Oh, I see," said Theodore. "Well, may a lonely widower keep you company until she comes?"
"Why..." Mrs. Ferrel shrugged. "I guess." Her lips were painted brightly red against the alabaster of her skin. The sweater clung adhesively to the hoisted jut of her breasts.
After a while, when Mrs. Ferrel's friend didn't show up, they slid into a darkened booth. There, Theodore used Mrs. Ferrel's powder room retreat to slip a pale and tasteless powder in her drink. On her return she swallowed this and, in minutes, grew stupefied. She smiled at Theodore.
"I like you Misser Gor'n," she confessed. The words crawled viscidly across her lolling tongue.
Shortly thereafter, he led her, stumbling and giggling, to his car and drove her to a motel. Inside the room, he helped her strip to stockings, garter belt and shoes and, while she posed with drugged complacency, Theodore took flashbulb pictures.
After she'd collapsed at two a.m. Theodore dressed her and drove her home. He stretched her fully dressed across her bed. After that he went outside and poured concentrated weed killer on Alston's replanted ivy.
Back in the house he dialled the Jefferson's number.
"Yes," said Arthur Jefferson irritably.
"Get out of this neighbourhood or you'll be sorry," whispered Theodore, then hung up.
In the morning he walked to Mrs. Ferrel's house and rang the bell.
"Hello," he said politely. "Are you feeling better?"
She stared at him blankly while he explained how she'd gotten violently ill the night before and he'd taken her home from the bar. "I do hope you're feeling better," he concluded.
"Yes," she said, confusedly, "I'm-all right."
As he left her house he saw a red-faced James McCann approaching the Morton house, an envelope in his hand. Beside him walked a distraught Mrs. McCann.
"We must be tolerant, Jim," Theodore heard her say.
August 31
At two-fifteen a.m. Theodore took the brush and the can of paint and went outside.
Walking to the Jefferson house he set the can down and painted, jaggedly, across the door-nigger!
Then he moved across the street allowing an occasional drip of paint. He left the can under Henry Putnam's back porch, accidentally upsetting the dog's plate. Fortunately, the Putnams' dog slept indoors.
Later, he put more weed killer on Joseph Alston's ivy.
In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, he took a heavy envelope and went to see Eleanor Gorse. "Look at this," he said, sliding a pornographic booklet from the envelope. "I received this in the mail today. Look at it." He thrust it into her hands.
She held the booklet as if it were a spider.
"Isn't it hideous?" he said.
She made a face. "Revolting," she said.
"I thought I'd check with you and several others before I phoned the police," said Theodore. "Have you received any of this filth?"
Eleanor Gorse bristled. "Why should I receive them?" she demanded.
Outside, Theodore found the old man squatting by his ivy. "How are they coming?" he asked.
"They're dyin'."
Theodore looked stricken. "How can this be?" he asked.
Alston shook his head.
"Oh, this is horrible." Theodore turned away, clucking. As he walked to his house he saw, up the street, Arthur Jefferson cleaning off his door and, across the way, Henry Putnam watching carefully.
She was waiting on his porch.
"Mrs. McCann," said Theodore, surprised, "I'm so glad to see you."
"What I came to say may not make you so glad," she said unhappily.
"Oh?" said Theodore. They went into his house.
"There have been a lot of... things happening in this neighbourhood since you moved in," said Mrs. McCann after they were seated in the living room.
"Things?" asked Theodore.
"I think you know what I mean," said Mrs. McCann. "However, this-this bigotry on Mr. Jefferson's door is too much, Mr. Gordon, too much."
Theodore gestured helplessly. "I don't understand."
"Please don't make it difficult," she said. "I may have to call the authorities if these things don't stop, Mr. Gordon. I hate to think of doing such a thing but-"
"Authorities?" Theodore looked terrified.
"None of these things happened until you moved in, Mr. Gordon," she said. "Believe me, I hate what I'm saying but I simply have no choice. The fact that none of these things has happened to you-"
She broke off startledly as a sob wracked Theodore's chest. She stared at him. "Mr. Gordon-" she began uncertainly.
"I don't know what these things are you speak of," said Theodore in a shaking voice, "but I'd kill myself before I harmed another, Mrs. McCann."
He looked around as if to make sure they were alone.
"I'm going to tell you something I've never told a single soul," he said. He wiped away a tear. "My name isn't Gordon," he said. "It's Gottlieb. I'm a Jew. I spent a year at Dachau."
Mrs. McCann's lips moved but she said nothing. Her face was getting red.
"I came from there a broken man," said Theodore. "I haven't long to live, Mrs. McCann. My wife is dead, my three children are dead. I'm all alone. I only want to live in peace-in a little place like this-among people like you.
"To be a neighbour, a friend..."
"Mr.-Gottlieb" she said brokenly.
After she was gone, Theodore stood silent in the living room, hands clenched whitely at his sides. Then he went into the kitchen to discipline himself.
"Good morning, Mrs. Backus," he said an hour later when the little woman answered the door, "I wonder if I might ask you some questions about our church?"
"Oh. Oh, yes." She stepped back feebly. "Won't you- come in?"
"I'll be very still so as not to wake your husband," Theodore whispered. He saw her looking at his bandaged hand. "I burned myself," he said. "Now, about the church. Oh, there's someone knocking at your back door."
"There is?"
When she'd gone into the kitchen, Theodore pulled open the hall closet door and dropped some photographs behind a pile of overshoes and garden tools. The door was shut when she returned.
"There wasn't anyone," she said.
"I could have sworn..." He smiled deprecatingly. He looked down at a circular bag on the floor. "Oh, does Mr. Backus bowl?"
"Wednesdays and Fridays when his shift is over," she said. "There's an all-night alley over on Western Avenue."
"I love to bowl," said Theodore.
He asked his questions about the church, then left. As he started down the path he heard loud voices from the Morton house.
"It wasn't bad enough about Katherine McCann and those awful pictures," shrieked Mrs. Morton. "Now this... .filth!"
"But, Mom!" cried Walter, Jr.
September 14
Theodore awoke and turned the radio off. Standing, he put a small bottle of greyish powder in his pocket and slipped from the house. Reaching his destination, he sprinkled powder into the water bowl and stirred it with a finger until it dissolved.
Back in the house he scrawled four letters reading: Arthur Jefferson is trying to pass the colour line. He is my cousin and should admit he is black like the rest of us. I am doing this for his own good.
He signed the letter John Thomas Jefferson and addressed three of the envelopes to Donald Gorse, the Mortons, and Mr. Henry Putnam.
This completed, he saw Mrs. Backus walking toward the boulevard and followed. "May I walk you?" he asked.
"Oh," she said. "All right."
"I missed your husband last night," he told her.
She glanced at him.
"I thought I'd join him bowling," Theodore said, "but I guess he was sick again."
"Sick?"
"I asked the man behind the counter at the alley and he said that Mr. Backus hadn't been coming in because he was sick."
"Oh," Mrs. Backus's voice was thinly stricken.
"Well, maybe next Friday," said Theodore.
Later, when he came back, he saw a panel truck in front of Henry Putnam's house. A man came out of the alley carrying a blanket-wrapped body which he laid in the truck. The Putnam boys were crying as they watched.
Arthur Jefferson answered the door. Theodore showed the letter to Jefferson and his wife. "It came this morning," he said.
"This is monstrous!" said Jefferson, reading it.
"Of course it is," said Theodore.
While they were talking, Jefferson looked through the window at the Putnam house across the street.
September 15
Pale morning mist engulfed Sylmar Street. Theodore moved through it silently. Under the back porch of the Jeffersons' house he set fire to a box of damp papers. As it began to smoulder he walked across the yard and, with a single knife stroke, slashed apart the rubber pool. He heard it pulsing water on the grass as he left. In the alley he dropped a book of matches that read Putnam's Wines and Liquors.
A little after six that morning he woke to the howl of sirens and felt the small house tremble at the heavy trucks passing by. Turning on his side, he yawned, and mumbled, "Goody."
September 17
It was a paste-complexioned Dorothy Backus who answered Theodore's knock.
"May I drive you to church?" asked Theodore.
"I-I don't believe I-I'm not... feeling too well," stumbled Mrs. Backus.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said. He saw the edges of some photographs protruding from her apron pocket.
As he left he saw the Mortons getting in their car, Bianca wordless, both Walters ill at ease. Up the street, a police car was parked in front of Arthur Jefferson's house.
Theodore went to church with Donald Gorse who said that Eleanor was feeling ill.
"I'm so sorry," Theodore said.
That afternoon, he spent a while at the Jefferson house helping clear away the charred debris of their back porch. When he saw the slashed rubber pool he drove immediately to a drug store and bought another one.
"But they love that pool," said Theodore, when Patty Jefferson protested. "You told me so yourself."
He winked at Arthur Jefferson but Jefferson was not communicative that afternoon.
September 23
Early in the evening Theodore saw Alston's dog walking in the street. He got his BB gun and, from the bedroom window, soundlessly, fired. The dog nipped fiercely at its side and spun around. Then, whimpering, it started home.
Several minutes later, Theodore went outside and started pulling up the door to the garage. He saw the old man hurrying down his alley, the dog in his arms.
"What's wrong?" asked Theodore.
"Don't know," said Alston in a breathless, frightened voice. "He's hurt."
"Quickly!" said Theodore. "Into my car!"
He rushed Alston and the dog to the nearest veterinary, passing three stop signs and groaning when the old man held his hand up, palsiedly, and whimpered, "Blood!"
For three hours Theodore sat in the veterinary's waiting room until the old man staggered forth, his face a greyish white.
"No," said Theodore, jumping to his feet.
He led the old man, weeping, to the car and drove him home. There, Alston said he'd rather be alone so Theodore left. Shortly afterward, the black and white police car rolled to a stop in front of Alston's house and the old man led the two officers past Theodore's house.
In a while, Theodore heard angry shouting up the street. It lasted quite a long time.
September 27
"Good evening," said Theodore. He bowed.
Eleanor Gorse nodded stiffly.
"I've brought you and your father a casserole," said Theodore, smiling, holding up a towel-wrapped dish. When she told him that her father was gone for the night, Theodore clucked and sighed as if he hadn't seen the old man drive away that afternoon.
"Well then," he said, proffering the dish, "for you. With my sincerest compliments."
Stepping off the porch he saw Arthur Jefferson and Henry Putnam standing under a street lamp down the block. While he watched, Arthur Jefferson struck the other man and, suddenly, they were brawling in the gutter. Theodore broke into a hurried run.
"But this is terrible!" he gasped, pulling the men apart.
"Stay out of this!" warned Jefferson, then, to Putnam, challenged, "You better tell me how that paint can got under your porch! The police may believe it was an accident I found that matchbook in my alley but I don't!"
"I'll tell you nothing," Putnam said, contemptuously. "Coon."
"Coon! Oh, of course! You'd be the first to believe that, you stupid-!"
Five times Theodore stood between them. It wasn't until Jefferson had, accidentally, struck him on the nose that tension faded. Curtly, Jefferson apologized; then, with a murderous look at Putnam, left.
"Sorry he hit you," Putnam sympathized. "Damned nigger."
"Oh, surely you're mistaken," Theodore said, daubing at his nostrils. "Mr. Jefferson told me how afraid he was of people believing this talk. Because of the value of his two houses, you know."
"Two?" asked Putnam.
"Yes, he owns the vacant house next door to his," said Theodore. "I assumed you knew."
"No," said Putnam warily.
"Well, you see," said Theodore, "if people think Mr. Jefferson is a Negro, the value of his houses will go down."
"So will the values of all of them," said Putnam, glaring across the street. "That dirty, son-of-a-"
Theodore patted his shoulder. "How are your wife's parents enjoying their stay in New York?" he asked as if changing the subject.
"They're on their way back," said Putnam.
"Good," said Theodore.
He went home and read the funny papers for an hour. Then he went out.
It was a florid faced Eleanor Gorse who opened to his knock. Her bathrobe was disarrayed, her dark eyes feverish.
"May I get my dish?" asked Theodore politely.
She grunted, stepping back jerkily. His hand, in passing, brushed on hers. She twitched away as if he'd stabbed her.
"Ah, you've eaten it all," said Theodore, noticing the tiny residue of powder on the bottom of the dish. He turned. "When will your father return?" he asked.
Her body seemed to tense. "After midnight," she muttered.
Theodore stepped to the wall switch and cut off the light. He heard her gasp in the darkness. "No," she muttered.
"Is this what you want, Eleanor?" he asked, grabbing harshly.
Her embrace was a mindless, fiery swallow. There was nothing but ovening flesh beneath her robe.
Later, when she lay snoring satedly on the kitchen floor, Theodore retrieved the camera he'd left outside the door.
Drawing down the shades, he arranged Eleanor's limbs and took twelve exposures. Then he went home and washed the dish.
Before retiring, he dialled the phone.
"Western Union," he said. "I have a message for Mrs. Irma Putnam of 12070 Sylmar Street."
"That's me," she said.
"Both parents killed in auto collision this afternoon," said Theodore. "Await word regarding disposition of bodies. Chief of Police, Tulsa, Okla-"
At the other end of the line there was a strangled gasp, a thud; then Henry Putnam's cry of "Irma!" Theodore hung up.
After the ambulance had come and gone, he went outside and tore up thirty-five of Joseph Alston's ivy plants. He left, in the debris, another matchbook reading Putnam's Wines and Liquors.
September 28
In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, Theodore went over. Eleanor tried to shut the door on him but he pushed in.
"I want money," he said. "These are my collateral." He threw down copies of the photographs and Eleanor recoiled, gagging. "Your father will receive a set of these tonight," he said, "unless I get two hundred dollars."
"But I-!"
"Tonight."
He left and drove downtown to the Jeremiah Osborne Realty office where he signed over, to Mr. George Jackson, the vacant house at 12069 Sylmar Street. He shook Mr. Jackson's hand.
"Don't you worry now," he comforted. "The people next door are black too."
When he returned home, there was a police car in front of the Backus house.
"What happened?" he asked Joseph Alston who was sitting quietly on his porch.
"Mrs. Backus," said the old man lifelessly. "She tried to kill Mrs. Ferrel."
"Is that right?" said Theodore.
That night, in his office, he made his entries on page 700 of the book.
Mrs. Ferrel dying of knife wounds in local hospital. Mrs. Backus in jail; suspects husband of adultery. J. Alston accused of dog poisoning, probably more. Putnam boys accused of shooting Alston's dog, ruining his lawn. Mrs. Putnam dead of heart attack. Mr. Putnam being sued for property destruction. Jeffersons thought to be black. McCanns and Mortons deadly enemies. Katherine McCann believed to have had relations with Walter Morton, Jr. Morton, Jr. being sent to school in Washington. Eleanor Gorse has hanged herself Job completed.
Time to move.
THE END
