Orbit 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  Russell shook his head. “If he ever falls out of there he’ll kill himself.”

  “Paul’s a good climber,” Morris said.

  “He’d have to be to build that thing.” Russell continued to stare, craning his body backward. Morris wished that he would return to the patio.

  “It took him almost two weeks,” Morris said.

  “He swiped the lumber off the housing project, didn’t he?”

  “I bought him some of it.” For an instant Morris had seen Paul’s small, brown head in one of the windows. He wondered if Russell had noticed it.

  “But he swiped most of it. Two-by-fours and four-by-fours; it looks solid.”

  “I suppose it is.” Before he could catch himself he added, “He’s got buckets of rocks up there.”

  “Rocks?” Russell looked down, startled.

  “Rocks about the size of tennis balls. Paul built a sort of elevator and hauled them up. He must have eight or ten buckets full.”

  “What’s he want those for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, ask him.” Russell looked angry at having his curiosity balked. “He’s your kid.” Morris swallowed the last of his second drink, saying nothing.

  “How does he get up there?” Russell was looking at the tree again. “It doesn’t look as if you could climb it.”

  “He cut off some of the branches after he got the place built. He has a rope with knots in it he lets down.”

  “Where is it?” Russell looked around, expecting to see the rope tangled in the tree’s branches somewhere.

  It was bound to come out now. “He pulls it up after him when he goes in there,” Morris said. The Scotch was lying like a pool of mercury in his empty stomach.

  “You mean he’s up there now?”

  Neither of them had heard Shelia come out. “He’s been up there since Thursday.” She sounded unconcerned.

  Morris turned to face her and saw that she was wearing a quilted pink housecoat. Her hair was still in curlers. He said, “You didn’t have to get up so early.”

  “I wanted to.” She yawned. “I set the clock-radio for six. It’s going to be hot in town, and I want to be right there when the stores open.”

  “I wouldn’t go today,” Russell said.

  “I’m not going down there—I’m going to the good stores.” Shelia yawned again. Without makeup, Morris thought, she looked too old to have a son as young as Paul. He did himself, he knew, but Sheila usually looked younger to him; especially when he had had something to drink. “Did you hear about the National Guard, though,” she added when she had finished the yawn.

  Russell shook his head.

  “You know how somebody said they were shooting at everything and doing more damage than the rioters? Well, they’re going to protest that. I heard it on the radio. They’re going to hold a march of their own today.”

  Russell was no longer listening. He leaned back to look at Paul’s treehouse again.

  “Ever since Thursday,” Sheila said. “Isn’t that a scream?”

  Morris surprised himself by saying, “I don’t think so, and I’m going to make him come down today.” Sheila looked at him coolly.

  “How does he live up there?” Russell asked.

  “Oh, he’s got a blanket and things,” Shelia said.

  Morris said slowly, “While I was at the office Thursday he took blankets out of the linen closet and a lot of canned food and fruit juice out of the pantry and carried it all up there.”

  “It’s good for him,” Sheila said. “He’s got his radio and scout knife and whatnot, too. He wants to get away and be on his own. So let him. He’ll come down when he’s hungry, that’s what I tell Morris, and meanwhile we know where he is.”

  “I’m going to make him come down today,” Morris repeated, but neither of them heard him.

  When they went away—Sheila to start breakfast, Russell, presumably, to finish clipping his side of the hedge—Morris remained where he was, staring up at the treehouse. After two or three minutes he walked over to the trunk and laid a hand on the rough bark. He had been studying the tree for three days now and knew that even before Paul had looped some of its limbs it had not been an easy tree to climb. Walking only a trifle unsteadily, he went to the garage and got the step-ladder.

  From the top of the ladder he could reach the lowest limb by stretching himself uncomfortably and balancing on the balls of his feet with his body leaning against the trunk. Suddenly conscious of how soft his palms had become in the last fifteen years, how heavy his body was, he closed his hands around the limb and tried to pull himself up. Struggling to grip the tree with his legs, he kicked the ladder, which fell over.

  From somewhere below, Russell said, “Don’t break your neck, Morris,” and he heard the sound of faint music. He twisted his head until he could see Russell, with a transistor radio clipped to his belt, righting the ladder.

  Morris said “Thanks” gratefully and stood panting at the top for a moment before coming down.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Russell said.

  “Listen,” Morris was still gulping for breath, “would you go up there and get him?” It was a humiliating admission, but he made it: “You ought to be able to climb better than I can.”

  “Sorry,” Russell touched his chest, “doctor’s orders.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Nothing serious, I’m just supposed to stay away from places where I might take a bad fall. I get dizzy sometimes.”

  “I see.”

  “Sure. Did you hear about the fake police? It came over our radio a minute ago.”

  Morris shook his head, still panting and steadying himself against the ladder.

  “They’re stripping the uniforms off dead cops and putting them on themselves. They’ve caused a lot of trouble that way.”

  Morris nodded. “I’ll bet.”

  Russell kicked the tree. “He’s your kid. Why don’t you just tell him to come down?”

  “I tried that yesterday. He won’t.”

  “Well, try again today. Make it strong.”

  “Paul!” Morris made his voice as authoritative as he could. “Paul, look down here!” There was no movement in the treehouse.

  “Make it strong. Tell him he’s got to come down.”

  “Paul, come out of there this minute!”

  The two men waited. There was no sound except for the tuneless music of the radio and the whisper of a breeze among the saw-edged leaves.

  “I guess he’s not going to come,” Morris said.

  “Are you sure he’s up there?”

  Morris thought of the glimpse of Paul’s head he had seen earlier. “He’s up there. He just won’t answer.” He thought of the times he had taken the pictures his mother had given him, pictures showing his own childhood, from their drawer and studied them to try and discover some similarity between himself and Paul. “He doesn’t want to argue,” he finished weakly.

  “Say.” Russell was looking at the tree again. “Why don’t we chop it?” He dropped his voice to a whisper.

  Morris was horrified. “He’d be killed.”

  The radio’s metallic jingling stopped. “We interrupt this program for a bulletin.” Both men froze.

  “Word has reached our newsroom that the demonstration organized by Citizens For Peace has been disrupted by about five hundred storm troopers of the American Nazi Party. It appears that members of a motorcycle club have also entered the disturbance; it is not known on which side.”

  Russell switched the radio off. Morris sighed, “Every time they have one of those bulletins I think it’s going to be the big one.”

  His neighbor nodded sympathetically. “But listen, we don’t have to cut the tree clear down. Anyway, it must be nearly three feet thick and it would take us a couple of days, probably. All we have to do is chop at it a little. He’ll think we’re going to cut it with him in it, and climb down. You have an ax?”

  Morris shook his h
ead.

  “I do. I’ll go over and get it.”

  Morris waited under the tree until he had left, then called Paul’s name softly several times. There was no reply. Raising his voice, he said, “We don’t want to hurt you, Paul.” He tried to think of a bribe. Paul already had a bicycle. “I’ll build you a swimming pool, Paul. In the backyard where your mother has her flowers. I’ll have men come in with a bulldozer and dig them out and make us a swimming pool there.” There was no answer. He wanted to tell Paul that they weren’t really going to chop down the tree, but something prevented him. Then he could hear Russell opening the gate on the other side of the house.

  The ax was old, dull and rusted, and the head was loose on the handle so that after every few strokes it was necessary to drive it back on by butting it against the trunk of the tree; each blow hurt Morris’s already scraped hands. By the time he had made a small notch—most of his swings missed the point of aim and fell uselessly on either side of it—his arms and wrists were aching. Paul had not come down or even looked out one of the windows.

  “I’m going to try climbing again.” He laid down the ax, looking at Russell. “Do you have a longer ladder than this one?”

  Russell nodded. “You’ll have to come over and help me carry it.”

  Russell’s wife stopped them as they crossed Russell’s patio and made them come inside for lemonade. “My goodness, Morris, you look as if you’re about to have heat prostration. Is it that warm out?” Russell’s house was air-conditioned, too.

  They sat in the family room, with lemonade in copper mugs meant for Moscow Mules. The television flickered with scenes, but Russell’s wife had twisted the sound down until Morris could hear only a faint hum. The screen showed a sprawling building billowing smoke. Firemen and soldiers milled about it. Then the camera raced down suburban streets and he saw two houses very like his own and Russell’s; he almost felt he could see through the walls, see the two of them sitting and watching their own houses—which were gone now as police fired up at the windows of a tall tenement. Russell, winking and gesturing for silence, was pouring gin into his mug to mix with the lemonade now that his wife had gone back to the kitchen.

  He felt sick when he stood up, and wondered dully if Sheila were not looking for him, angry because his breakfast was getting cold. He steadied himself on the doorway as he followed Russell out, conscious that his face was flushed. The heat outside was savage now.

  They moved cans of paint and broken storm windows aside to uncover Russell’s extension ladder. It was as old as the ax, dirtied with white and yellow splashes, and heavy as metal when they got it on their shoulders to carry outside.

  “This’ll get you up the first twenty feet,” Russell said. “Think you can climb from there?”

  Morris nodded, knowing he could not.

  They hooked the two sections together and leaned them against the tree, Russell talking learnedly of the proper distance between the bottom of the ladder and the base of the object to be climbed. Russell had been an engineer at one time; Morris had never been quite sure of the reason he no longer was.

  The ladder shook. It seemed strange to find himself surrounded by leaves instead of looking up at them, having to look down to see Russell on the ground. At the very top of the ladder a large limb had been broken off some years before and he could look straight out over the roof of his own home and all the neighboring houses. “I see smoke,” he called down. “Over that way. Something big’s burning.”

  “Can you get up to the boy?” Russell called back.

  Morris tried to leave the ladder, lifting one leg gingerly over the stub of the broken limb. Giddiness seized him. He climbed down again.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “If I had a rope,” Morris gestured with his hands, “I could put it around my waist and around the trunk of the tree. You know, like the men who climb telephone poles.” Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “I’ve got some.” Russell snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute.”

  Morris waited. The noise of the sirens died away, leaving only the talk of the leaves, but Russell did not return. Morris was about to go into the house when the truck pulled up at the curb. It was a stake-bed truck, and the men were riding on it, almost covering it. They were white and brown and black; most of them wore khaki shirts and khaki trousers with broad black leather belts, but they had no insignia and their weapons were clubs and bottles and iron bars. The first of them were crossing his lawn almost before the truck had come to a full stop, and a tall man with a baseball bat began smashing his picture window.

  “What do you want?” Morris said. “What is it?”

  The leader took him by the front of his shirt and shook him as the others circled around. A stone, and then another, struck the ground, and he realized that Paul was throwing them from his treehouse trying to defend him, but the range was too great. Someone hit him from behind with a chain.

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  * * * *

  The Price

  by C. Davis Belcher

  The green Chevrolet was stalled at the corner of Washington and Pine Streets. Behind it, the truck driver felt his patience drain away until, with a curse, he shifted gears and rolled his huge truck backward. The protruding sheets of steel sliced through the Volkswagen behind him and through the head of the driver, John Phillpott Tanker.

  The ambulance drivers who brought him in had little hope. The nurses in the Emergency Room had less. The residents struggled on, patching torn blood vessels, giving transfusions, wrapping his head in a new plastic bag, and trying every other trick any one of them could think of before they too admitted it was hopeless.

  Walter Sturbridge heard about it Sunday evening when an old friend, an elevator operator at University Hospital, called him on the phone. Sturbridge set a record for the trip in. Trotting down the basement corridors toward the north side of the hospital, he saw old Loomis waiting for him.

  “How is he?” Sturbridge said.

  “He’s messed up pretty bad.” Loomis steered him toward his elevator. “Let’s take this thing up to three where we can sit and talk a bit.” They settled, lit cigarettes. Sturbridge waited.

  “What they want, Mr. Sturbridge, is to transplant Mr. Tanker’s heart.”

  Sturbridge slouched down in the oversized red plastic chair that he had pulled into the patch of light from the elevator door. He stared back at Loomis. The deserted hospital office, empty since Friday, still held the lingering smells of the girls who worked here.

  “They got this fellow, Rowalski, they’re just achin’ to put a new heart in. Been in and out of here since high school. Four, five years ago they did a valve job. Worked for a little while,” Loomis said, “then went to pieces. These doctors do them transplants have to wait and wait. Sometimes work for days on someone and see them die before they can find what they need. They got maybe a dozen waiting, so they’re always looking.”

  Was he a feature writer, Sturbridge thought, or a stupid cub reporter feeling sorry for himself? So it was a hot night and he had missed the Ed Sullivan Show. This was University Hospital and not the Tankerville Herald. When they said, “What can we do for Tanker?” and got back a big fat “Nothing,” someone had surely asked, “What can we do with Tanker?” A healthy thirty-two-year-old with his head smashed by a truck. And all Sturbridge could think about was that ten million dollars rated a mighty big funeral. But not the characters in here that looked for wrecks like Tanker.

  Old Loomis wandered around the dark office looking for a wastebasket he could spit in. “Shakes you up when it’s someone you know,” he said. “They ain’t heartless, these fellers. Otherwise. Anything they could do for Mr. Tanker they would gladly do. But when it’s like this, they get to thinking about the ones needing transplants, and start nagging the office to get permission.”

  Years of war and newspaper’ reporting had toughened Sturbridge outwardly, but he remained tenderhearted. Thinking of John Phillpott Tanker being cannibalized
for spare parts like a wrecked car made him ill. When they had first seen him, they had known this was it. Right away someone had said, “Who owns Tanker? When he’s dead, that is.” Someone had said, “Get the papers signed so we’ll be all set to go.” As if Tanker were some casual bit of wreckage.

  The elevator buzzed and the big “7” lit up. “They’re getting ready up there,” Loomis said. “I’ll drop you off on six.”

  The corridors, crowded and endless, overwhelmed him with a dozen different hospital smells as he moved from ward to ward. What rankled in Sturbridge was that Hartman, that old poop of a family lawyer, had glimpsed this and brought along his partners to help with the family, while Sturbridge, the fair-haired boy of the Tankerville Herald, the lad from the big city, sat on his fat ass sketching out a flowery obituary.