Ring Around the Sun

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

IT MUST have been going on for years before he noticed it. At first, having noticed it, he speculated on it somewhat idly. Then he began a detailed observation, and when the observation bore out the idle speculation he tried to laugh it off, but it wasn't a thing that you could laugh off. He went through the observation again, for a period of a month, keeping a written record of the facts he noted.

When the written record bore out the evidence of his earlier observation, he had tried to tell himself it was imagination, but by now he had it down in black and white and he knew there must be something to it.

The record said that it was worse than he had first imagined, that it concerned not only one phase of his existence, but many different phases. As the evidence accumulated, he stood aghast that he had not noticed it before, because it was something which should have been obvious from the very first.

The whole thing started with the reluctance of his fellow passengers to ride with him on the bus. He lived, at the time, at an old ramshackle boarding house at the edge of town near the end of the line. He'd get on in the morning and, being one of the few who boarded at that point, would take his favorite seat.

The bus would fill up gradually as the stops were made, but it would be almost the end of the run before he'd have a seat companion. It didn't bother him, of course; in fact, he rather liked it to be that way, for then he could pull his hat down over his eyes and slump down in the seat and think and probably even doze a little without ever considering the need of civility. Not that he would have been especially civil in any case, he now admitted. The hour that he went to work was altogether too early for that.

People would get on the bus and they'd sit with other people, not necessarily people whom they knew, for sometimes, Vickers noticed, they didn't exchange a single word for the entire ride with their seat mate. They'd sit with other people, but they'd never sit with him until the very last, not until all the other seats were filled and they had to sit with him or stand.

Perhaps, he told himself, it was body odor; perhaps it was bad breath. He made a ritual of bathing after that, using a new soap that was guaranteed to make him smell fresh. He brushed his teeth more attentively, used mouth wash until he gagged at the sight of it.

It did no good. He still rode alone.

He looked at himself in the mirror and he knew it was not his clothes, for in those days he was a smart dresser.

So, he figured, it must be his attitude. Instead of slumping down in the seat and pulling his hat over his eyes, he'd sit up and be bright and cheerful and he'd smile at everyone. He'd smile, by God, if it cracked his face to do it.

For an entire week he sat there looking pleasant, smiling at people when, they glanced at him, for all the world as if he were a rising young business man who had read Dale Carnegie and belonged to the Junior Chamber.

No one rode with him — not until there was no other seat. He got some comfort in knowing they'd rather sit with him than stand.

Then he noticed other things.

At the office the fellows were always visiting around, gathering in little groups of three or four at one of the desks, talking about their golf score or telling the latest dirty story or wondering why the hell a guy stayed on at a place like this when there were other jobs you could just walk out and take.

No one, he noticed, ever came to his desk. So he tried going to some of the other desks, joining one of the groups. Within a short time, the fellows would all drift back to their desks. He tried just dropping by to pass the time of the day with individual workers. They were always affable enough, but always terribly busy. Vickers never stayed.

He checked up on his conversational budget. It seemed fairly satisfactory. He didn't play golf, but he knew a few dirty stories and he read most of the latest books and saw the best of the recent movies. He knew something about office politics and could damn the boss with the best of them. He read the newspapers and went through a couple of news weeklies and knew what was going on and could argue politics and had armchair opinions on military matters. With those qualifications, he felt, he should be able to carry on a fair conversation. But still no one seemed to want to talk to him.

It was the same at lunch. It was the same, now that he had come to notice it, everywhere he went.

He had written it down, with dates and an account of each day, and now, fifteen years later, he sat on a box in a raw and empty attic and read the words he'd written. Staring straight ahead of him, he remembered how it had been, how he'd felt and what he'd said and done, including the original fact that no one would ride with him until all the seats were taken. And that, he remembered, was the way it had been when he'd gone to New York just the other day.

Fifteen years ago be had sat and wondered why and there had been no answer.

And here it was again.

Was he somehow, in some strange way, _different_? Or was it merely some lack in him, some quirk in his personality that denied him the vital spark, the ready glow of comradeship?

It had not only been the matter of no one riding with him, no groups gathering at his desk. There had been more than that — certain more elusive things that could not be put on paper. The feeling of loneliness which he had always had — not the occasional twinges that everyone must feel, but a continual sense of «differentness» that had forced him to stand apart from his fellow humans, and they from him. His inability to initiate friendships, his out-size sense of dignity, his reluctance to conform to certain social standards.

It had been these characteristics, he was certain — although until now he had never thought of it in exactly that way — that had led him to take up residence in this isolated village, that had confined him to a small circle of acquaintances, that had turned him to the solitary trade of writing, pouring out on paper and pent-up emotions and the lonely thoughts that must find some release.

Out of his differentness he had built his life; perhaps out of that very differentness had sprung what small measure of success he had achieved.

He had settled into a rut of his own devising, a polished and well-loved rut, and then something had come along to jolt him out of it. It had started with the little girl coming to the door, and after that Eb talking about the Forever car — and there had been Crawford, and Flanders' strange words on the porch and, finally, the notebook remembered after many years and found in an attic box.

Forever cars and synthetic carbohydrates, Crawford talking about a world with its back against the wall — somehow he knew that all these things were connected, and that he was tied up in some way with all of it.

It was maddening, to be convinced of this without a scrap of evidence, without a shred of reason, without a single clue as to what his part might be.

It had always been like that, he realized, even in little things — the frightening feeling that he had but to stretch out his hand to touch certain truth, but never being able to reach quite far enough to grasp it.

It was absurd to know that a thing was right without knowing why: to know that it had been right to refuse Crawford's offer, when every factor urged its acceptance; to have known from the very start that Horton Flanders could not be found, when there was no reason to suspect he might not be.

Fifteen years ago he had faced a certain problem and after a time, in his own way, had solved it, without realizing he had solved it, by retreat from the human race. He had retreated until his back was against the wall and there, for a while, he had found peace. Now, in some strange way, his sense of "hunch," this undefined feeling that was almost prescience, seemed to be telling him that the world and the affairs of men had sought him out again. But now he could retreat no further, even if he wanted to. Curiously, he did not seem to want to, and that was just as well, for there was no place to go. He had shrunk back from humanity and he could shrink no farther.

He sat alone in the attic, listening to the wind that whispered in the eaves.