The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (16 page)

He walked over to the side of the road, took out a cigarette and lit it. He stood there leaning in the shade of one of the giant oaks that flanked the road. And he thought: I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I am. But it’s summer and I’m out in the country someplace and this must be some kind of amnesia or something.

He drew deeply and enjoyably on the cigarette. As he took it out of his mouth and held it between his fingers, he looked at it. King-sized and filtered. Phrases came to him. “Winstons taste good like a cigarette should.” “You get a lot to like in a Marlboro.” “Are you smoking more now but enjoying it less?” That was for Camels—the kind you used to be willing to walk a mile for. He grinned and then laughed out loud. The power of advertising. He could stand there not knowing his name or where he was, but the twentieth-century poetry of the tobacco company cut across even the boundaries of amnesia. He stopped laughing and considered. Cigarettes and slogans meant America. So that’s what he was—an American.

He flipped away the cigarette and walked on. A few hundred yards up the road he heard music coming from around the bend ahead. Loud trumpets. Good ones. There was a drum in the background and then a single, high-flying trumpet that rode an obbligato to the percussion. Swing. That’s what it was, and again he was conscious of a word symbol that meant something to him. Swing. And this one he could relate to a specific time. It went with the 1910s. And this was beyond the thirties. This was the fifties. The 1950s. He let these facts pile up on top of one another. He felt like the key piece of a jigsaw puzzle, other pieces falling into place around him, forming a recognizable picture. And it was odd, he thought, how definite the pattern was, once they fell. Now he knew it was 1959. This was beyond doubt. Nineteen fifty-nine.

As he rounded the bend and saw the source of the music, he took a quick inventory of what he had discovered. He was an American, maybe in his twenties, it was summer, and here he was.

In front of him was a diner, a small, rectangular clapboard building with a sign on the front door which read, “OPEN.” Music was pouring out the front door. He went inside and got an impression of familiarity. He’d been to places like this before, this much he knew definitely. A long counter studded with catsup bottles and napkin holders; a back wall plastered with handwritten signs announcing kinds of sandwiches, soups, pie a la mode and a dozen other items. There were a couple of large posters with girls in bathing suits holding up Coke bottles, and at the far end of the room was what he knew to be a juke box, the source of the music.

He walked the length of the counter, swinging a couple of seats around as he passed. Behind the counter an open swinging door led to the kitchen where he could see a big restaurant stove, a pot of coffee perking on it. The gurgling sound of the coffee was familiar and comforting and sent an aroma of breakfast and morning into the room.

The young man smiled as if seeing an old friend, or better, feeling the presence of an old friend. He sat down on the last stool so that he could see into the kitchen. There were shelves laden with canned goods, a big double-door refrigerator, a wooden chopping table, a screen door. He looked up at the signs on the wall. The Denver sandwich. The hamburger. Cheeseburger. Ham and eggs. Again he was aware of the phenomenon of having to associate obviously familiar words with what they represented. What was a Denver sandwich, for example? And what was pie a la mode? Then, after a few moments of reflection, a picture came into his mind along with a taste. He had an odd thought then, that he was like an infant who was being exposed to the maturing process in a fantastically telescoped, jet-propelled way.

The music on the juke box broke through his thoughts, loud and intrusive.

He called out, toward the kitchen, “That loud enough for you, is it?”

There was a silence. Only the music answered him.

He raised his voice, “Can you hear it okay?”

Still no response. He went over to the machine, pushed it out a few inches from the wall and found a small volume-knob near the base. He turned it. The music fell away from him and the room seemed quieter and more comfortable. He pushed the machine back against the wall and returned to his stool. He picked up the cardboard menu that was leaning against the napkin holder and studied it, occasionally looking up into the kitchen. He could see four pies browning nicely through the glass door of the oven and again there was the sense of something familiar, something friendly that he could respond to.

He called out again: “I think I’ll have ham and eggs. Eggs up and easy and some hash browns.”

Still there was no movement from the kitchen and no answering voice.

“I saw a sign that there was a town up ahead. What’s the name of it?”

Coffee bubbled in the big enameled pot, the steam rising into the air. A light wind moved the screen door in a creaking four-inch arc back and forth, and the juke box continued to play quietly The young man was getting hungry now and felt a little nudge of irritation.

“Hey,” he called out, “I asked you a question in there. What’s the name of the town up ahead?”

He waited for a moment and when there was no answer he got up from the stool, vaulted the counter, pushed the swinging door open and went into the kitchen. It was empty. He walked through to the screen door, pulled it open and went outside. There was a big gravel back yard, unpunctuated by anything but a row of garbage cans, one of which had tipped over, littering the ground with a collection of tin cans, coffee grounds, egg shells and some empty cereal boxes; some orange crates; a broken, partially spokeless wheel; three or four piles of old newspapers. He was about to go back inside when something made him stop dead. He looked again at the garbage cans. There was something missing. An element not there that should have been there. He didn’t know what it was. It was just a minute tilt to the dial inside his head that registered balance and reason. Something was wrong and he didn’t know what it was. It left him with a tiny feeling of disquiet which he pushed into the back of his mind.

He returned to the kitchen, went over to the coffeepot, smelled it again, carried it over to the chopping table. He found a mug and poured himself a cup of hot coffee. He leaned against the back of the chopping table and sipped the coffee, enjoying it, liking its familiarity.

Then he went into the other room and took a large doughnut from a glass jar. He carried it back to the kitchen, and leaned against the jamb of the swinging door so that he could survey both rooms. He munched slowly on the doughnut, sipped at the coffee, and reflected. Whoever ran this place, he thought, is either in the basement or maybe his wife’s having a baby. Or maybe the guy’s sick. Maybe he’s had a coronary or something. Maybe he should look around and find a basement door. He looked over at the cash register behind the counter. What an easy set up for a heist. Or for a free meal. Or for anything, for that matter.

The young man reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins and a dollar bill.

“American money,” he said aloud. “That settles that. No question about it. I am an American. Two half-dollars. A quarter. A dime. Four pennies and a dollar bill. That’s American money”

He went into the kitchen again, looking up at the cereal boxes with the familiar names. The Campbell soup cans. Was that the one with the fifty-seven varieties? Again he reflected on who he was and where he was. On the disjointed non sequiturs that passed through his consciousness: his knowledge of music, the colloquialisms he spoke, the menu that he read and understood perfectly. Ham and eggs and hash browns—things he could relate to appearance and taste and smell. And then a phalanx of questions marched by. Exactly who was he? What the hell was he doing there? And where was “there”? And why? That was the big question. Why did he suddenly wake up on a road and not know who he was? And why wasn’t anyone in the diner? Where was the owner or the cook or the counterman? Why weren’t they there? And again the little germ of disquiet that he’d felt outside stirred inside him.

He chewed the last piece of doughnut, swigged it down with what remained of the coffee, and went back into the other room. Once again he vaulted over the counter; tossed a quarter on top of it. At the front door, he turned and surveyed the room again. Damnit, but it was normal, it was real, it was natural looking. The words, the place, the smell, the look. He put his hand on the knob of the door and pulled it open. He was about to step outside when a thought hit him. Suddenly he knew what had disturbed him about the garbage cans. He carried this disquiet with him as he walked out into the hot morning. He knew what was the missing element and the knowledge gave him a cold apprehension that he hadn’t felt before. It did little jarring things to his nerve endings because suddenly something formed and entered into his thoughts. Something that couldn’t be understood. Something beyond the norm. Beyond the word symbols, past the realm of logic that had been supporting him and answering his questions and giving him a link to reality.

There were no flies.

He walked around the corner of the building to stare again at the back yard with its row of garbage cans. There were no flies. There was a silence and nothing stirred and there were no flies.

He walked slowly back toward the highway, suddenly conscious of what was wrong. The trees were real and the highway and the diner with everything in it. The smell of the coffee was real and the taste of the doughnut and the cereals had the right names and Coca-Cola came in a bottle and cost a nickel. It was all right and proper and everything was in its right place. But there was no life to it! This was the missing element—activity! This was the thought he carried down the highway past a sign which said, “Carsville, 1 mile.”

He entered the town and it spread out in front of him, neat and attractive. A small main street circled a village park that lay in the center of everything. Set back in the middle of this park area was a large school. On the circular main street were a row of stores, a movie theater, more stores and a police station. Further down was a church, a residential street that lay beyond and finally a drugstore on the comer. There was a bookstore, a confectionery, a grocery store and out in front of it, a small sign which read “Bus Stop.” It lay there quietly and prettily in the mid-morning sun and it was quiet. There was no sound at all.

He walked down the sidewalk peering into the windows All of the stores were open. The bakery had fresh cake and cookies. The bookstore was running a special sale. The movie theater advertised a picture out front having to do with war in the air. There was a three-story office building that told of lawyers inside, public notary and a real estate firm. Further down there was a glass-enclosed public telephone and then a department store with a delivery entrance blocked off from the street by a wire mesh fence.

Once again he reflected on the phenomena. There were the stores, the park, the bus stop, the whole works, but there were no people. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. He leaned against the side of the bank building and scanned the street left to right, as if somehow he could find something stirring if he looked hard enough.

It was when his eyes reached the fence fronting the department store delivery entrance directly across the street, that he saw the girl. She was sitting in a truck parked inside the yard, plain as day—the very first person he’d seen. He felt his heart jump as he nervously stepped off the curb and started walking toward her. Halfway across the street he stopped, feeling his palms wet. He had an impulse to run like hell over to the truck or to stand there and shout questions at the girl. He forced a matter-of-factness into his tone, made himself smile.

“Hey, Miss! Miss, over here.” He felt his voice rising higher and again he made an effort to keep it low and conversational. “Miss, I wonder if you could help me. I was wondering if you knew where everyone was. Doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Literally...not a soul.”

Now he took what he hoped was a sauntering walk across the street toward her, noticing that she continued to look straight at him from inside the cab of the truck. He reached the other side of the street, stopped a few feet from the wire mesh gate and smiled at her again.

“It’s a crazy thing,” he said. “Crazy, oddball thing. When I woke up this morning—” He stopped and he thought this over. “Well, I didn’t exactly wake up; he said. “I just sort of—just sort of found myself walking down the road.”

He reached the sidewalk, went through the half-open gate to the passenger side of the truck. The girl inside wasn’t looking at him any longer. She was staring straight out through the front windshield and he saw her profile. Beautiful woman. Long blonde hair. But pale. He tried to think where he’d seen features like that—so immobile, so without expression. Bland, yes, but more than bland. Spiritless.

“Look, Miss,” he said. “I don’t want to frighten you, but there must be somebody around here who could tell me—”

His hand had opened the truck door when his voice was cut off by the girl’s body as she slumped over, past the wide, amazed eyes of the young man, and down, hitting the sidewalk with a loud, almost metallic clank. He stared down at the upturned face, then became aware of words on the panel of the truck, “Resnick’s Store Mannequins.” He looked back at her face—the wooden, lifeless face with the painted cheeks and the painted mouth and the formed half-smile, with the eyes that were wide open and showed nothing, told nothing. Eyes that looked exactly like what they were—holes in a dummy’s face. Something of the humor of it struck him now. He grinned, scratched his jaw, then slowly slid down, his back against the side of the truck till he was sitting next to the mannequin who lay there staring up at the blue sky and the hot sun.

The young man nudged her hard wooden arm, winked, clucked his tongue and said, “You’ll forgive me, babe, but at no time did I mean to be so upsetting. As a matter of fact”—he nudged her again— “I’ve always had kind of a secret yen for the quiet type.” Now he reached over to pinch the unyielding cheek and laughed again. “Get what I mean, babe?”