Dark Carnival (21 page)

    Emily confessed. 'I'm — scared.'

    Tildy planted fists on hips. 'Of
me
?'

    'Yes.'

    'Why? I'm no booger! You known me most your life! Now's no time to snivel-sopp. You fetch up on your heels or I'll slap you flat across your nose!'

    Emily rose in sobs, stood like something cornered, trying to decide which direction to bolt in.

    'Where's your car, Emily?'

    'Down at the garage — ma'am.'

    'Good.' Aunt Tildy hustled her through the front door. 'Now — ' Her sharp stare poked up and down the streets. 'Which way's the mortuary?'

    Emily held to the step rail, fumbling down. 'What're you going to do, Aunt Tildy?'

    'Do?' cried Tildy, tottering after her, jowls shaking in a thin, pale fury. 'Why, get my body back, of course! Get my body back! Go on!'

    The car roared, Emily clenched to the steering-wheel, staring straight ahead at the curved, rain-wet streets. Aunt Tildy shook her parasol.

    'Hurry, child, hurry! Hurry before they squirt juices in my body and dice and cube it the way them pernickety morticians have a habit of doin'. They cut and sew it so it ain't no good to no one!'

    'Oh, Auntie, Auntie, let me go, don't make me drive! It won't do any good, no good at all,' sighed the girl.

    'Humph!' was all the old woman would say. 'Humph!'

    'Here we are, Auntie.' Emily said, pulling to the curb. She collapsed over the wheel, but Aunt Tildy was already popped from the car and trotting with mincing skirt up the mortuary drive, around behind to where the shiny black hearse was unloading a wicker basket.

    'You!' she directed her attack at one of the four men with the wicker. 'Put down that basket!'

    The four men paid little attention.

    One said, 'Step aside, lady. We're doing our job. Let us do it, please.'

    'That's my body tucked in there!' She brandished the parasol.

    'That I wouldn't know anything about,' said a second man. 'Please don't block traffic, madame. This thing is heavy.'

    'Sir,' she cried, wounded. 'I'll have you know I weigh only one hundred and ten pounds!'

    He looked at her casually. 'I'm not interested in your hip measure, lady. I just wanna go home to supper. My wife'll kill me if I'm late.'

    The four of them forged ahead, Aunt Tildy in pursuit, down a hall, into a preparations room.

    A white-smocked man awaited the wicker's arrival with a rather pleased smile on his long eager-looking face. Aunt Tildy didn't care for the avidity of that face, or the entire personality of the man. The basket was deposited, the four men retreated.

    The man in the white smock, evidently a mortician, glanced at Auntie and said:

    'Madame, this is no fit place for a gentlewoman.'

    'Well,' said Auntie, gratified. 'Glad you feel that way. Them is my sentiments, neat, but I can't convince those fellows. That's exactly what I tried to tell that dark-clothed young man!'

    The mortician puzzled. 'What dark-clothed young man is that?'

    'The one who came puddlin' around my house, that's who.'

    'No one of that description works for us.'

    'No matter. As you just so intelligently stated, this is no place for a gentle lady. I don't want me here. I want me home. I want me cookin' ham for Sunday visitors, it's near Easter. I got Emily to feed, sweaters to knit, clocks to wind — '

    'You are quite philosophical, and philanthropical, no doubt of it, madame, but I have work. A body has arrived.' This last, he said with apparent relish, and a winnowing of his knives, tubes, jars and instruments.

    Tildy bristled. 'You lay so much as a cuticle on that body, I'll thrash you!' Again, the parasol.

    He laid her aside like a little old moth. 'George,' he called with a suave gentleness. 'Escort this little lady out, please.'

    Aunt Tildy glared at the approaching George.

    'Show me your backside, goin' the other way!'

    George took her wrists. 'This way, please.'

    Tildy extricated herself. Easily. Her flesh sort of — slipped. It even amazed Tildy. Such an unexpected talent to develop at this late day.

    'See?' she said, pleased with her ability. 'You can't budge me. I want my body back!'

    The mortician opened the wicker lid casually. Then, in a recurrent series of scrutinies he realized that the body inside was. . . it
seemed. . . could
it be?. . . maybe. . . yes. . . no. . . well, uh. . . it just
couldn't
be, but. . . 'Ah,' he exhaled, abruptly. He turned. His eyes were saucer-wide.

    'Madame,' he said, cautiously. 'Eh — this lady here. She is — a — relative — of yours?'

    'A very dear relation. Be careful of her.'

    'A twin sister, perhaps?' He grasped at a straw of dwindling logic, hopefully.

    'No, you fool. Me, do you hear?
Me!
'

    The mortician considered the idea. He shook his head. 'No,' he decided. 'No. Things like this don't happen.' He went on fumbling with his tools. 'Show her away, George. Get help from the others. I can't work with a crank present.'

    The four men assembled and converged. Aunt Tildy was a lace fortress, arms crossed in defiance. 'Won't budge,' she said. She repeated this as she was evicted in consecutive moves, like a pawn on a chessboard, from preparations room to slumber room, to hall, to waiting chamber, to funeral parlour, where she made her last fight by sitting down on a chair in the very centre of the vestibule. There were pews going back into grey silence, and a flower smell.

    'You can't sit there, mam,' said one of the men. 'That's where the body rests for the service tomorrow.'

    'I'm sittin' right plumb here until I get what I want.'

    She sat, pale fingers fussing with her fussy throat lace, jaw set, one high-ankled, button-shoe tapping irritated rhythms. If a man got in whopping distance, she gave him a parasol whop. And when they touched her, now, she sort of — slipped away.

    Mr. Carrington, Mortuary President, heard the disturbance in his office and came toddling down the aisle to investigate. 'Here, here,' he whispered to all of them, finger to mouth. 'More respect, more respect. What is this? Oh, madame, may I help you?'

    She looked him up and down. 'You may.'

    'How may I be of service, please?'

    'Go in that room back there,' directed Aunt Tildy.

    'Yee-ess.'

    'And tell that eager young investigator to quit fiddlin' with my body. I'm a maiden lady. My moles, birthmarks, scars and other bric-a-brac, including the turn of my ankle, are my own secret. I don't want him pryin' and probin', cuttin' it or hurtin' it any way.'

    This was vague to Mr. Carrington, who hadn't correlated bodies yet. He looked at her, in blank helplessness.

    'He's got me in there on his table, like a pigeon ready to be drawn and stuffed!' she told him.

    Mr. Carrington hustled off to check. After fifteen minutes of waiting silence and horrified arguing, comparing notes with the mortician behind closed doors, Carrington returned, three shades whiter.

    'Well?' said Auntie.

    'Uh — that is. Most irregular. You can't — sit — there.'

    'Can't I?'

    Carrington dropped his glasses, picked them up. 'You're making it difficult for us.'

    'I am!' raged Auntie. 'Saint Vitus in the mornin'! Looky here. Mister Blood and Bones or whatever, you tell that — '

    'But he's already pumping the blood from the body.'

    'What!'

    'Yes, yes, I assure you, yes. So, you just go away, now, there's nothing to be done. The blood's running and soon the body'll be all filled with nice fresh formaldehyde.' He laughed nervously. 'Our mortician is also performing a brief autopsy to determine cause of death.'

    Auntie jumped on to her feet, burning. 'Cuttin' me, is he?'

    'Y-yes.'

    'He can't do that; only coroners are allowed to do that!'

    'Well, we sometimes allow a little — '

    'March straight in and tell that Cut-‘em-up to pump all that fine New England blue blood right back into that fine-skinned body, and if he's taken anything out, for him to attach it back in so it'll function proper, and then turn that body, fresh as paint, over into my keepin'! You
hear!
'

    'There's nothing I can do. Nothing.'

    'All right. Tell you
what
. I'm settin' here the next two hunderd year. You hear? And every time anyone comes near I'll spit ectoplasm right squirt up their left nostril!'

    Carrington groped that thought around his weakening mind and emitted a groan. 'You'll dislocate our business. You wouldn't do that.'

    Auntie smiled pleasantly. '
Wouldn't
I?'

    Carrington ran up the dark aisle. In the distance he made a series of phone-calls. Half an hour later cars roared up in front of the mortuary. Three vice-presidents of the mortuary came down the aisle with their hysterical president.

    'What seems to be the trouble?'

    Auntie told them with a few well-chosen infernalities.

    They held a conference, meanwhile notifying the mortician to discontinue his homework, at least until such time as an agreement was reached. The mortician walked from his chamber and stood smiling amiably, smoking a big black cigar.

    Auntie stared at the cigar.

    'Where'd you put the
ashes?
' she cried, in horror.

    The mortician only grinned imperturbably and puffed.

    The conference broke up.

    'Madame, in all fairness, you wouldn't force us out on the street to continue our services, would you?'

    Auntie scanned the vultures. 'Oh, I wouldn't mind at all.'

    Carrington wiped sweat from his jowls. 'You can have your body back.'

    'Ha!' shouted Auntie. Then, with caution: 'Intact?'

    'Intact.'

    'No formaldehyde?'

    'No formaldehyde.'

    'Blood in it?'

    'Blood, my God, yes, blood, if only you'll take it and go!'

    A prim nod. 'Fair enough. Fix ‘er up. It's a deal!'

    Carrington snapped fingers at the mortician. 'Don't
stand
there, you mental incompetent. Fix it up!'

    'And be careful with that cigar butt,' warned Tildy.

    'Easy, easy,' said Aunt Tildy. 'Put the wicker basket down to the floor where I can step in it.'

    She didn't look at the body much. Her only comment was, 'Natural-lookin'.' She let herself fall back into the wicker.

    A biting sensation of arctic coldness, a great unlikely nausea and a giddy whorling. Like two drops of matter fusing. Water trying to seep into concrete. Slow to do. Hard. Like a butterfly trying to squirm back into its discarded dry husk of flinty chrysalis!

    The mortuary people watched Aunt Tildy's wriggles. Mr. Carrington was deeply concerned. He wrung his fingers and tried to assist with boosting and grunting moves of his hands and arms. The mortician, frankly sceptical, watched with idle, amused eyes.

    Seeping into cold, long granite. Seeping into a frozen and ancient statue. Squeezing all the way.

    'Come alive, damn ye!' shouted Aunt Tildy to herself. 'Raise up a bit.'

    The body half rose, rustling in the dry wicker.

    'Find your legs, woman!'

    The body grabbled up, blindly groping.

    'See!' shouted Aunt Tildy.

    Light entered the webbed blind eyes.

    'Feel!' urged Aunt Tildy.

    The body felt the room warmth, the sudden reality of the preparations table on which to lean, panting.

    'Move!'

    The body took a creakingly unsteady step.

    'Hear!' she snapped.

    The noises of the place came into the dull ears. The harsh, expectant breath of the mortician, shaken; the whimpering Mr. Carrington; her own crackling voice.

    'Walk!' cried she.

    The body walked.

    'Think!' Auntie said.

    The old brain thought.

    'Now — speak!' she ordered.

    The body spoke, bowing to the morticians:

    'Much obliged. Thank you.'

    'Now,' she said, finally. 'Cry!'

    And she began to cry tears of utter happiness.

    And now, any afternoon about four, if you want to visit Aunt Tildy, you just walk around to her antique shop and rap on the door. There's a big black funeral wreath on the door. But don't mind that. Aunt Tildy left it there. She has
some
sense of humour. You rap on the door. It's double-barred and triple-locked, and when you rap her voice shrills out at you:

    'Is that the man in black?'

    And you laugh and say no, no, it's only me, Aunt Tildy.

    And she laughs and says, 'Come in, quick!' and she whips the door open and slams it shut behind you so no man in black can ever slip in with you. Then she escorts you in and pours you your cup of coffee and shows you her latest knitted sweater. She's not as fast as she used to be, and can't see as good, but she gets on.

    'And if you're ‘specially good,' Aunt Tildy declares, setting her coffee-cup to one side, 'I'll give you a little treat.'

    'What's that?' visitors will ask.

    'This,' says Auntie, pleased with her little uniqueness, her little joke.

    Then with modest moves of her fingers she will unfasten the white lace at her neck and chest and for a brief moment show what lies beneath.

    The long blue scar where the autopsy was neatly sewn together.

    'Not bad sewin' for a man,' she allows. 'Oh, some more coffee?
There
.'

'THAT'S the man, right over there,' said Mrs. Ribmoll, nodding across the street. 'See that man perched on the tar barrel afront Mr. Jenkens's store? Well, that's him. They call him Odd Martin.'

    'The one that says he's dead?' cried Arthur.

    Mrs. Ribmoll nodded. 'Crazy as a weasel down a chimney. Carries on firm about how he's been dead since the Flood and nobody appreciates it.'

    'I see him sitting there every day,' cried Arthur.

    'Oh, yes, he sits there, he does. Sits there and stares at nothing. I say it's a crying shame they don't throw him in jail!'

    Arthur made a face at the man. 'Yah!'

    'Never mind, he won't notice you. Most uncivil man I ever seen. Nothing pleases him.' She yanked Arthur's arm. 'Come on, sonny, we got shopping to do.'

    They walked on up the street past the barber shop. In the window, after they'd gone by, stood Mr. Simpson, snipping his blue shears and chewing his tasteless gum. He squinted thoughtfully out through the fly-specked glass, looking at the man sitting over there on the tar barrel. 'I figure the best thing could happen to Odd Martin would be to get married,' he figured. His eyes glinted slyly. Over his shoulder he looked at his manicurist, Miss Weldon, who was busy burnishing the scraggly fingernails of a farmer named Gilpatrick. Miss Weldon, at this suggestion, did not look up. She had heard it often. They were always ragging her about Odd Martin.

    Mr. Simpson walked back and started work on Gilpatrick's dusty hair again. Gilpatrick laughed softly. 'What woman would marry Odd? Sometimes I almost believe he
is
dead. He's got an awful odour to him.'

    Miss Weldon looked up at Mr. Gilpatrick's face and carefully cut his finger with one of her little scalpels. 'Gol darn it!' He jumped. 'Watch what you're doin', woman!'

    Miss Weldon looked at him with calm little blue eyes in a small white face. Her hair was mouse-brown; she wore no makeup and talked to no one most of the time.

    Mr. Simpson cackled and snicked his blue steel shears. 'Hope, hope, hope!' he laughed like that. 'Miss Weldon, she knows what she's doin', Gilpatrick. Just you be careful, Miss Weldon, he give a bottle of eau de cologne to Odd Martin last Christmas. It helped cover up his smell.'

    Miss Weldon laid down her instruments.

    'Sorry, Miss Weldon,' apologized Mr. Simpson. 'I won't say no more.'

    Reluctantly, she took up her instruments again.

    'Hey!' cried one of the four other men waiting in the shop. 'There he goes
again!
' Mr. Simpson whirled, almost taking Gilpatrick's pink ear with him in his shears. 'Come look, boys!'

    Across the street the sheriff stepped out of his office door just then and he saw it happen, too. He saw what Odd Martin was doing.

    Everybody came running from all the little stores.

    The sheriff walked over and looked down into the gutter.

    'Come on, now, Odd Martin, come on now,' he shouted. He poked down into the gutter with his shiny black boot-tip. 'Come on, get up! You're not dead. You're good as me. You'll catch your death of cold there with all them gum wrappers and cigar butts. Come on, get up!'

    Mr. Simpson arrived on the scene and looked at Odd Martin lying there. 'He looks like a bottle a milk.'

    'He's takin' up valuable parkin' space for cars, this bein' Friday mornin',' whined the sheriff. 'And lots of people needin' the area. Here now,
Odd!
Hmm. Well. . . give me a hand here, boys.'

    They lifted the body up on to the sidewalk.

    'Let him stay here,' declared the sheriff, jostling around in his boots. 'Just let him stay till he gets tired of layin'. He's done this a million times before. Likes the publicity. Vamoose, you kids!'

    He sent a bunch of children skipping ahead of his cheek of tobacco.

    Back in the barber shop, Simpson looked around. 'Where's Miss Weldon? Unh.' He looked through the window. 'There she is, brushing him off again, while he lies there. Fixing his coat, buttoning it up. Here she comes back. Don't nobody fun with her, she resents it.'

    The barber clock said twelve and then one and then two and then three. Mr. Simpson kept track of it. 'I make you a bet that Odd Martin lies over there till four o'clock,' he said.

    Someone else said, 'I'll bet he's there until four-thirty.'

    'Last time — ' a snickering of the shears ' — he was there five hours. Nice warm day today. He may snooze there until six. I'll say six. Let's see your money, gents!'

    The money was put on the shelf by the hair-ointments.

    One of the younger men shaved a stick with his penknife. 'It's sorta funny how we joke about Odd. Sometimes I wonder if we ain't really just scared of him, inside us. I mean, we won't let ourselves believe he's really dead. We don't dare believe it. We'd never get over it if we knew. So we make him a kinda joke. We let him lay around. He don't hurt nobody. He's just there. But I notice old Sawbones Hudson's never really touched Odd's heart with his stethoscope. Scared of what he'd find, I bet.'

    'Scared of what he'd find!' Laughter. Simpson laughed and snished his shears. Two men with crusty beards laughed, a little too loud. The laughter didn't last long. 'Great one for jokin', you you are!' they all said, slapping their gaunt knees.

    Miss Weldon, she went on manicuring her clients.

    'He's gettin' up!'

    There was a general half-rising of all the bodies in the shop and a lot of neck twisting to watch Odd Martin gain his feet. 'He's up on one knee, now up on the other, now someone's givin' him a hand.'

    'It's Miss Weldon. She sure got over there in a rush!'

    'What time is it?'

    'Four-fifteen! You lose, Simp! Pay us!'

    The bet was settled.

    'That Miss Weldon's a queer beetle herself. Takin' after a man like Odd.'

    Simpson clicked his scissors. 'Being an orphan, she's got quiet ways. She likes men who don't say much. Odd, he don't say hardly anything. Just the opposite of us crude, crude men, eh, fellows? We talk too much. Miss Weldon don't like our way of speakin'.'

    'There they go. The two of ‘em. Miss Weldon and Odd Martin.'

    'Say, take a little more off around my ears, will you Simp?'

    Skipping down the street, bounding a red rubber ball, came little Radney Bellows, his blond hair flopping in a yellow fringe over his blue eyes. He bounced the ball abstractedly, tongue between lips, and the ball fell under Odd Martin's feet where he sat once more on the tar barrel. Inside the grocery, Miss Weldon was doing her supper shopping, putting soup cans and vegetable cans into a basket.

    'Can I have my ball?' asked little Radney Bellows upwards at the six feet two inches of Odd Martin. No one was within hearing distance.

    'Can you have your ball?' said Odd Martin haltingly. He turned it over inside his head, it appeared. His level, grey eyes shaped up Radney like one would shape up a little ball of clay. 'You can have your ball, yes; take it.'

    Radney bent slowly and took hold of the bright red rubber globe and arose slowly, a secretive look in his eyes.

    'I know something.'

    Odd Martin looked down. 'You know something?'

    Radney leaned forward. 'You're
dead
.'

    Odd Martin sat there.

    'You're really dead,' whispered little Radney Bellows. 'But I'm the only one who really knows. I believe you, Mr. Odd. I tried it once myself. Dying, I mean. It's hard. It's work. I laid on the floor for an hour. But my stomach itched, so I scratched it, and the blood got up in my head and made me dizzy. Then — I quit. Why?' He looked at his shoes. ' ‘Cause I had to go to the bathroom.'

    A slow, understanding smile formed in the soft pallid flesh of Odd Martin's long, bony face. 'It
is
work. It isn't easy.'

    'Sometimes, I think about you,' said Radney. 'I see you walk by my house. Nights. Sometimes two in the morning. I wake up. I know you're out walking around. I know I should look out, and I do, and, gee, there you are, walking and walking. Not going hardly any place.'

    'There's no place to go.' Odd sat with his large, square, calloused hands on his knees. 'I try thinking of some — place to — go — ' He slowed, like a horse to a bit-pull ' — but it's hard to think. I try and — try. Sometimes I almost know what to do, where to go. Then, I forget. Once I had an idea to go to a doctor and have him declare me dead, but, somehow — ' his voice was slow and husky and low ' — I never got there.'

    Radney looked straight at him. 'If you want, I'll take you.'

    Odd Martin glanced leisurely at the setting sun. 'No. I'm weary, tired, but I'll — wait. Now I've gone this far, I'm curious to see what happens next. After the flood that washed away my farm and all my stock and put me under water, like a chicken in a bucket, I filled up like you'd fill a thermos with water, and I came walking out of the flood, anyhow. But I knew I was dead. Late of nights I lay listening in my room, but there's no heartbeat in my ears or in my chest or in my wrists, though I lie still as a cold cricket. Nothing inside me but a darkness and a relaxation and an understanding. There must be a reason for me still walking, though. Maybe it was because I was still young when I died. Only twenty-eight, and not married yet. I always wanted to marry, never got around to it. Here I am, doing odd jobs around town, saving my money, ‘cause I never eat,
heck, I can't
eat, and sometimes getting so discouraged and downright bewildered that I lie in the gutter and hope they'll take me and poke me in a pine box and lay me away for ripening. Yet, at the same time — I don't want that. I want a little more. I realize it whenever Miss Weldon walks by and I see the wind playing her hair like a little brown feather — ' He sighed away into a pause.

    Radney Bellows waited a minute, then cleared his throat and darted away, bouncing his ball. 'See you later!'

    Odd stared at the spot where Radney had been. Five minutes later he blinked. 'Eh? Somebody here? Somebody speak?'

    Miss Weldon came from the grocery with a basket of food.

    'Like to walk me home, Odd?'

    They walked along in a comfortable silence, she careful not to walk too fast, because he set his feet down carefully. The wind rustled in the cedars and in the elms and the maples all along the way. Several times his lips parted and he glanced aside at her, and then he shut his mouth tight and squinted ahead, as if looking at something a million miles off.

    Finally, he said, 'Miss Weldon?'

    'Yes, Odd?'

    'I been saving and saving my money. I've got quite a handsome sum. I don't spend much for anything, and — you'd be surprised,' he said, sincerely. 'I got about a thousand dollars. Maybe more. Sometimes I count it and get tired and I can't count no more. And — ' He seemed baffled and a little angry with her, suddenly. '
Why
do you like me, Miss Weldon?' he demanded.

    She looked a little surprised, then smiled up at him. It was almost a child look of liking she gave him. 'Because. You're quiet. Because. You're not loud and mean. Like the men at the barber's. Because. I'm lonely, and you've been kind. Because you're the first one that ever looked at me. The others don't even see me, not once. They say I can't think. They say I'm senseless because I didn't finish sixth grade. But I'm so lonely, Odd, and talking to you means so much.'

    He held her small white hand, tight.

    She moistened her lips. 'I wish we could do something about the way people talk about you. I don't want to sound mean, but if you'd only stop telling them you're dead, Odd.'

    He stopped walking. 'Then you don't believe me, either,' he said, remotely.

    'You're ‘dead' for want of a good woman's cooking, for loving, for living decent, Odd. That's what you mean by ‘dead'; nothing else!'

    His grey eyes were deep and lost. 'Is that what I mean?' He saw her eager, shiny face. 'Yes, that's what I mean. You guessed it right. That's what I mean.'

    Their footsteps went along together, drifting in the wind, like leaves floating, and the night got darker and softer and the stars came out.

    Two boys and two girls stood under a street lamp about nine o'clock that evening. Far away down the street someone walked along slowly, quietly, alone.

    'There he is,' said one of the boys. '
You
ask him, Tom.'

    Tom scowled uneasily. The girls laughed at him. Tom said, 'Okay, but you come along.'

    Odd Martin walked along, pausing now and then to examine a fallen leaf with the tip of his shoe, turning and lifting it.

    'Mr. Odd? Hey there, Mr. Odd!'

    'Eh? Oh, hello.'

    'Mr. Odd, we — ' Tom swallowed and looked around for assistance. 'That is — we want you to — well — we want you to come to our party!'

    A minute later, after looking at Tom's clean, soap-smelling face and seeing the pretty blue jacket his sixteen-year-old girl friend wore, Odd answered. 'Thank you. But I don't know. I might forget to come.'

    'No, you wouldn't. You'd remember, because this is Hallowe'en!'

    Tom's girl pulled his arm. 'Let's go, Tom. Let's not have him. Let's not. Please. He won't do, Tom.'

    'Why won't he do?'

    'He's — he's not scary enough.'

    Tom shook her off. 'Let
me
handle this.'

    The girl pleaded. 'Please, no. He's just a dirty old man. Bill can put candle-tallow on his fingers and those horrid porcelain teeth in his mouth and the green chalk marks under his eyes and scare the ducks out of us. We don't need
him!
' And she perked her rebellious head at Odd.

    Odd Martin stood watching the leaves under his shoe-tips. He heard the stars sitting in the sky for ten minutes before he knew the four young folks were gone. A round dry laugh came in his mouth like a pebble. Children. Hallowe'en. Not scary enough. Bill'd do better. Candle-tallow and green chalk. Just an old man. He tasted the laughter, found it both strange and bitter.