Jack Finney - From Time to Time

VIP免费
2024-12-19 0 0 573.97KB 157 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
From TimeTo Time
Jack Finney
PROLOGUE
The man at the end of the long table-he wore a trimmed black beard streaked white at the ends of his
mouth-looked up at the wall clock: three minutes past seven. "Okay, he said to the dozen men and
women around the table, "we better get started. But he turned once more to look at the open doorway
behind him, and so did everyone else. No one appeared, though, no footsteps approached along the
wood-floored hall outside, and he turned back to the group. He was the oldest of them, a trim youthful
forty, wearing blue denims and a plaid cotton shirt-and the only full professor. "Audrey, you want to
begin?
"Sure. She bent up the clasp of a manila envelope on the table beside her purse, and partly pulled out a
newspaper folded to quarter size. Only a portion of its masthead was visible, reading, vi'- York Courier,
and one or two people smiled at what they took to be the deliberate drama of this. All were casually
dressed, casually seated; aged from twenty-five to forty. This was the little Chemistry Department library,
cheerful with shelved books and framed sepia photographs of the old laboratories. It was early evening,
September and still light, and here in Durham still warm. Someone had opened the three tall
round-topped windows, and the\' could hear birds wrangling in the campus trees.
"So far my network is only four people, Audrey said. Her hand, wearing a plain wedding ring, lay on the
tabletop, curved forefinger just touching the word Courier. "If you can call that a network. One is my
brother-in-law, and I honestly never thought he'd turn up a thing. But he has. A friend of his owns a floor
covering store of some kind in Brooklyn, New York. One of his men was working in an old house there,
tearing up worn-out kitchen linoleum, and underneath- She stopped: rapid footsteps sounded woodenly
outside, and they all turned to watch the doorway. But the hurrying figure, glancing in at them, moved on
by. "Under the linoleum the floor was covered about half an inch thick with newspapers. To cushion it, I
suppose. And of course he looked at some of the papers, read the old comics-you know. I envied him.
They were all really old, been there for decades. And he kept this one. She drew the folded newspaper
from its envelope, and passed it to the man beside her.
He opened it, spreading it flat on the tabletop, and the others around the table hunched forward to look.
The New-York Courier, read the complete masthead, and the man who'd opened it began reading the
headline aloud. " President Urges Trade Recip-'
"No, not the news, the date.
"Tuesday, February 22, 1916.
After a moment she said, slightly annoyed and disappointed, "Well, don't you see? There was no
New-York Courier in 1916. It went out of business-I looked this up-on June 8, 1909.
"Hey, a woman across the table from her murmured, and someone else said, "Looks like a good one.
Let's see that thing, and the paper was passed down to him.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"Is that it, Audrey-the date? said the chairman.
"Yes.
"Okay, well, it's a good one. Write it up, will you? Use the new form; we got new ones, we're getting
organized, sort of. Can we keep the paper?
"Sure. Her face flushing with pleasure, she ducked to give close attention to bending down the clasp of
her envelope.
A woman of thirty, small, with straight dark hair, said, "Dick, I have to leave early; I've got a babysitter
who can't stay long. Can I he next?
"Sure, go ahead.
She touched a cardboard folder on the table before her. "I got this from my aunt in Newton, Kansas.
The local library there has a little history room. History of the town; people give them old photographs,
clippings, and so on, and she had one of these photos copied for me. Opening the folder, she exposed a
large, glossy black-and-white photograph. "This was taken in 1947 -she touched the date inscribed in
white in a lower corner of the photograph. "It shows the main street. As it was then, of course. It includes
the movie theater, and you can read the marquee. I'll pass this around in a minute, but let me just read it
to you first. From the table she picked up her reading glasses and put them on, bending over the photo,
pushing the glasses slightly higher on her nose. "It says, Clark Gable and Mary Astor in Devil's Judgment,
Cartoons, and Pathé News.'
She sat back, snatching her glasses off, sliding the photograph to the man beside her. "I've checked
every old-movie book in the libraries here; listings of old pictures. And this summer in New York I
checked a lot more in the main library there. No such movie is listed. I wrote to the studio, never got an
answer, so I phoned, got through to someone eventually who said he'd check it out, and call me back.
To my amazement, that's just what he did. Phoned a couple days later. Very pleasant; had a nice voice.
They had no record of any such movie, he said. And-well, that's my offering. She glanced around at the
others.
The chairman said, "Well, it's interesting, but we've got to be rigorous. The movie listings could be
incomplete. Or the studio's mistaken. Or, nice as your man's voice was, maybe he didn't really look that
hard. Old pictures that weren't too popular get forgotten. Lost.
"But a Clark Gable?
"I know, but -he moved a shoulder reluctantlv- we've got to be impeccable. It could be only a title
change. Released as Devil's Judgment, then changed to something else. I think they do that.
"Okay. She reached across the table as someone returned her picture. "I had some more checking in
mind anyway, but I wanted to bring this to the meeting to show I haven't been loafing all summer.'
"Well, it sounds good. Keep on it, see if you can really pin it down. Steve, you got something?
"Yeah. Took me all summer. He was twenty-five, his extremely fine yellow hair thin on top. "Had to
write a million letters. With his knuckle he tapped a little pile of stacked papers. "Want me to read them,
or just tell you?
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"Just tell us for now. Can you xerox copies for next time?
"Sure. Ben Bendix put me in touch with this. Remember Ben? He was in my class. Parapsych degree
like me.
Someone said, "Sure, I remember him.
"Well, he's married now, lives in Stockton, California, and he put me in touch with this family. Their
name is Weiss; father, mother, two grown daughters. One married, the other divorced and back in
Stockton, living with the folks. Well, the divorced one remembers another sister. Sort of.
"Steve. The chairman sat shaking his head. "I don't know about the sort-ofs. Is this one of those little
fragments of memory things?
" Fraid so.
"Well . . . what's the rest?
"She thinks the other sister was called Naomi. Or Natalie. Not sure. A year younger, maybe. Thinks she
remembers them playing together, when she was around twelve.
"She says it reminds her of trying to remember a dream?
"Yep; one of those. Little memories like walking to school together. Dinner with the family. Just stuff like
that. And you know the rest: no one else in the family remembers this other sister, there never was
another daughter. The divorced daughter actually checked out birth records, and they finally insisted this
one cut it out, quit talking about it. He touched the papers before him. "What I got here is three letters,
pretty long, from her; what she remembers, what she doesn't. And one each from the others. They didn't
want to write at all, but I pestered them into it.
"I think we have to pass on this, Steve; sorry.
"That's okay.
"The vague ones, remember little hits and pieces-what can we do with them? Appreciate the effort,
though.
Footsteps coming fast sounded outside, and two men walked in quickly, the younger one tall and
stick-thin in a wrinkled white suit, saving, "Sorry, sorry, sorry! We're late, late, late! But you wont mind.
He nodlded proudly at the other man as they stopped beside the chairman, who was rising to greet them.
"Mv fault, the other man said; he looked about forty-five, lean in the face, and wore a blue nylon
windbreaker over a very clean white T-shirt. "I had to work, so supper was late.
To the group, the younger man said, "This is Lawrence Braunstein,' and Braunstein said, "Larry. The
younger added, "Larry drove in from Drexel.
People near the chairman were standing or leaning across the table to shake hands with Braunstein, or
smiling and flicking hands in greeting from the other end of the table. They were liking him because he
responded so pleasantly, nodding, looking pleased to be here. He was incompletely bald, a thinning,
straight stripe of brown hair from forehead to crown.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Someone moved to another chair so that he could sit at the middle of the table, and when he was seated,
the chairman said, "Larry, a lot of us know your story from Carl here, though I understand you have an
addition to it tonight. But some of us haven't heard; would you mind telling it over again? From the top?
"Sure. Okay. And if you want to laugh, folks, go to it. I don't mind, I'm used to it.
"We won't laugh, the chairman said.
"Well. Braunstein slid down the zipper of his jacket and sat back, settling himself comfortably, one arm
lying relaxed on the tabletop, hand loosely clenched. "There's not that much to tell; it's just that I
remember Kennedy's second term. The group sat quiet and intent, some leaning forward to see him. "I
don't really remember a lot about it, tell you the truth. I vote. Sometimes. But I don't pay much attention
to the politicians. Never did; what's the use. They're all-well, you know well's I do. But I do remember
him running again. Watched a little of the convention. It was in Atlanta. Heard some of the campaign
speeches. Not much. A little of that goes a long ways, you know?
Someone said, "Who'd he run against?
"Dirksen-isn't that a shout? I remember the commentators, remember Cronkite, saying the Republicans
only ran Dirksen because they knew he didn't have a chance against Kennedy. And they were sure right.
Kennedy won forty-nine states and was close in the other; Illinois, or something. And that's about it. I
watched Dirksen concede less than an hour after the polls closed in California. And I remember
Kennedy headquarters then, the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, him there at the microphones smiling,
everybody yelling, then him lifting his arms, thanking his people, and-you know; all that stuff. Jackie was
there, and I think his mother. Don't remember about Bobby or Edward.
They sat silent for a moment. Then one of the men said, "I know you've already answered this, but do
you also remember-
"That he never had a second term? Sure. Carl asked me that first thing, and sure I remember, just like
everyone. He was shot. In Dallas. In . . . 1963? Then they shot Oswald. He shrugged, apologizing. "I
know it don't make sense, hut-I got both memories; what can I tell you?
"Do you remember where you were when he was shot?
The chairman said, "Okay. And tonight you've got something more?
"Yeah. A couple days after Carl came out and we talked, I remembered something, but I didn't get
around to it for a while. I run the shipping department at Vector over in Drexel, and we been working a
lot of overtime, sending out a lot of stuff. But last Sunday I got out my top dresser drawer and set it on
the bed. He smiled around at them, inviting them in on this. "That drawer is a joke at my house,
everybody laughs about my top drawer. It's my junk drawer. Packed full of nothing; you can hardly open
it. You know: old ticket stubs from movies, receipts from stores, guarantees from stuff we wore out years
ago. And snapshots, stuff I clip out of magazines, a couple of watches'll never run again, old lenses from
glasses after the prescription was changed. My high school graduation picture. And a coonskin tail I had
tied to my radiator in high school. Shoelaces, pencils, pens that don't write, match- books, soap from
motels, worn-out flashlight batteries. You name it, it's all there.
"Well, I dumped that whole drawer right out on the bed, and started putting stuff hack. One by one, till I
found this. He opened the fingers of his loosely clenched hand, exposing the palm, and at sight of what
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
lay there people shoved chairs back, legs scraping the wood floor, as they stood up to see. Faceup on
his palm lay a flat round object a little larger than a half-dollar. It was white, of plastic or enameled metal.
Imprinted on it in blue were the head-and-shoulders photographs of two men, facing each
other. The one on the left was a confidently smiling John Kennedy in three-quarters profile; the other, in
sharp profile, a serious, almost scowling Estes Kefauver. Above these photos, white letters on a red
band that followed the button's curve read: One Good Term. In a similar band of blue at the bottom of
the button: Deserves Another! Directly under the photos in a ribbon shape: Kenned y-Kefauver, 64.
"A campaign button, someone said softly, and another voice said, "I'll be goddamned. Someone said,
"May I? Braunstein nodded, and the button began moving slowly from hand to hand around the table.
They had coffee, as they usually did, made in a cone-shaped Chemistry Department flask and glass
funnel with filter paper. And as they stood around or near the long table or sat on its edge sipping at their
Styrofoam cups, the button continued to move from one to another of them, inscription and printed
photos held close to the eyes, the little blue union bug on its reverse touched.
"All right, the chairman said presently, "let's finish up. Bring your cups to the table if you want. As they
took their seats again, he said, "Mr. Braunstein's leaving now; he's got a little drive ahead of him. Any last
questions?
"Yes, please, said Audrey. "Mr. Braunstein, did you ever run into anyone else who'd had this . . .
experience?
Braunstein, standing with the chairman at the head of the table, nodded. "Yeah, I did once. At my
brother's. He was on a softball team, and I was over to go with him to a game, watch him play. He had
another player there, a guy from Chicago originally. My brother had me tell my story, and the guy said
yeah, he'd heard that before. In Chicago.
Steve, the young man with the thinning yellow hair, said, "Well, did it check out the same? I mean about
Kefauver and Dirksen. And the convention in Atlanta?
Braunstein was shaking his head. "I asked him that but he said he didn't know or didn't remember or
something. Maybe he was just kidding me, you know? What's so hot about your story? I heard it
before!' But I don't think so. I think it's true.
Their guest left, well thanked, Carl walking out with him. The donated button remained lying on the table,
occasionally picked up and examined again during the rest of the meeting. The chairman said, "Okay,
we've got Teddy Lehmann to hear from, but - he nodded, smiling, at a young woman in an army
lieutenant's uniform seated near him- you're a new member?
"Yes. I hope so.
"You are if you want to be. Were you a student here?
"No, but my husband was. We're divorced now, but-I got interested. Still am.
"Good. Well, I'm sure whoever recruited you briefed you. Was it Frank?
Frank nodded. "How'd you know?
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
The chairman said, "Lucky guess, and several people smiled. To the young woman, he said, "Let me just
make sure everything's been covered. You understand what we're doing? Right now we're simply
gathering and recording certain incidents. Documenting them as well as we can. We don't know what
they mean yet. If anything. And may never know. We all have our guesses, of course, and it does seem
obvious that occasionally two versions of the same stretch of time seem to exist. Or to have existed, one
of them replacing the other. Looks that way, I should say. Maybe it's not what's happening at all. We're
not even close to formulating a theory yet, we're just tracking down incidents any way we happen to hear
about them. We're organized to do that, very loosely. And we keep a low profile. We're as secret as we
can reasonably manage without being nutty about it. Each of us is building a little network of friends,
relatives, acquaintances-anyone you might think would know, or hear of, or come upon the kind of
incident we're collecting. So start your own network. If you haven't already. Use your own best judgment
about who you should use and who not, that's about all I can tell you. And explain as little as you think
you can get by with. Make it seem as though you're alone; your own nutty little interest, nothing
important. Because above all . . ." He paused for emphasis. "We are not an official part of the
Parapsychology Department. Officially they know nothing about us; we're a private group of. . .
hobbyists. We've never even met in any of the department's rooms. I don't have to tell you why if your
husband was a student here. For forty years the department has taken a lot of guff'-his eves began to
narrow- from academics in other fields, the respectable fields, who wouldn't know solid evidence or
proof-or refuse to know, which is worse-if it came up and bit them in the ass. He smiled at her and at
himself. "Sorry. I'll wipe the flecks of foam from nw lips in a minute. But we're carefully unofficial. And as
secret as we can manage. Okay? Ready for the sacred blood oath?
The young lieutenant nodded, smiling.
"Then welcome aboard. Ted, I understand you took quite a trip on our behalf this summer. To Arizona?
"Well, I was in California anyway. On vacation. In L.A., if you can believe it. Ted, a researcher here,
was a handsome man who didn't seem to know it, his brown hair cut close, nothing made of its curl, his
glasses of wire-thin metal, the lenses round as a coin. He looked thirty, and wore a hand calculator in his
shirt pocket. "So I took a couple of days, flew over to Phoenix, rented a car, and drove out to this guy's
place.
"Okay. Tell us about it.
"My mother heard about this years ago from a friend, a woman her age; they both lived in New York
then. I phoned this woman, and got the man's name-my mother couldn't remember it. He used to be a
lawyer, a really big-time lawyer in New York, partner in a big firm, all that. He's well remembered, I've
discovered. Retired now. I tracked him down, which wasn't hard. Talked to him by phone, and arranged
to see him this summer. Ted reached down beside his chair, brought up a worn black leather briefcase
bearing a scuffed Stanford sticker, opened it on the table, and slid out a small, chrome-rimmed, gray
plastic recorder. He pushed in a control, and a beadlike bulb turned amber. "I taped what he told me, so
you might as well hear it from the source. Just picture us sitting by his pool, a nice Arizona morning,
getting hot but very dry. Pleasant. He had cactuses around, here and there, some natural, some in pots.
We were in the shade from his house, adobe painted so white it hurt your eyes.
"He's an old man now, but smart; no trouble imagining him as a damned effective lawyer. Intelligent face.
I don't think it was because I was in Arizona but he really did look-well, not truly like Barry Goldwater,
hut if someone told you they were maybe cousins you'd believe it. Had most of his hair, snow white, and
the same kind of bushy white sideburns. Wore expensive-looking tan linen pants, dark blue shirt. Name
is Bertram 0. I3ush, and he was stretched out in a lounge chair, me in a straight chair where I could
manage the recorder. I had it on a glass-top table between us, and we both had coffee, real big cups. It's
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
a nice place, some twenty-odd miles out of Phoenix. He and his wife retired there, but now he's a
widower. Lives alone, but he has grown children with families and two of them live near Phoenix. The
other in California. He seems to see them fairly often. And did I say he has money? Well, he obviously
has; it's a nice place.
"We got our preliminary chitchat out of the way, he said it was okay to record, and here's what I got.
Nice and clear; I'm a master with these things. He pushed another control, and after a second or two his
own voice came from the machine. "Okay, Mr. Bush, tell us about it if you will. Though you must be tired
of telling it.
"Well, I used to be, but it's been quite a while since I've told it. This voice was deep, measured, assured;
did not sound old. "When I was a kid in grade school and told this, I got hooted and jeered at, naturally,
boys being the sensitive considerate creatures they are. Which I didn't mind; I hooted right back, my
insults often superior to theirs. And it was somewhat the same in college. Mostly people assumed I'd
made this up, but at least I got credit for being mildly imaginative and entertaining, a clever fellow. But
always some people listened thoughtfully. And a few were impressed. When one of these was a girl, I
sometimes found that her interest and attention transferred to me, and I'm afraid I sometimes used my
story for the wrong reasons, though I feel no shame. But after I began practicing law in New York, and
particularly when I understood the solid possibility that I might someday become a partner of the firm in
which eventually I did just that, I stopped telling this story. It was harmful now, made me seem odd and
eccentric. So I shut up about it, except very occasionally to someone I knew would be interested and
could be trusted. Doesn't matter now, of course. I'm retired. Old.
"Oh, I don't think-"
"None of that. And if you dare even pronounce the term senior citizen,' I'll demonstrate that I'm capable
of throwing you into this pool. Headfirst. And hold you under. I am old. I xvas horn near the turn of the
century, so I've never had any trouble remembering mv age.
"Anyway, when I was a boy we lived in New York. On Madison Avenue. We hadl a house-long
gone-a four-story brownstone.
My father, mother, two sisters, and me. And a dog actually named Fido. Plus several servants; my father
was a successful marine- insurance broker, and we were well-off. Every morning our whole family
breakfasted together, by paternal fiat, in the dining room. And one spring morning, a Wednesday, I
remember, my father asked me whether I'd like to skip school that day. Well, I was twelve years old,
and I acknowledged that just possibly I might; but why? Well, there was a ship coming in, he said, a liner,
and it had occurred to him that I might like to see her come in, from his office. He knew very well I
would. I was wild about the big liners in the same way, I suppose, that my grand- and
great-grandchildren are about planes today. Although come to think of it, I don't believe they really are.
They seem to take everything in stride, pretty hard to impress. They know more than I did when I was
twenty years old. And some things, I'm sure, that I don't know yet.
"But I loved the big liners. Thought about them, read about them, looked at their pictures and drew my
own. And would have given anything I had or ever would have to sail on one. As we all did four or five
years later. To Europe on the Leviathan. That was the old Vaterland, as you know. You do know, of
course?
"Sure, who doesn't?
The old man laughed. "In the years since, I've sailed on the Mauretania. More than once. The old
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Mauretania, of course. And the Normandie, the Lauren tic, the Isle de France, God bless her, and the
Queen Mary many times. Wonderful ship, the Mary, one of the great ones. Compares with even the
Mauretania, and I don't like it that she's tied up and engineless in southern California, where she doesn't
belong and never did. I suppose we should be grateful, though, that she still exists. None of the others
do. All scrapped the moment their profitable days were done. Suppose we'd saved them? Had them all
lined up in Southampton from the Kaiser Wilhelm on, say, right on through to the Mary. Be wonderful,
wouldn't it? Then someday finally we'd add the newest and last, the Queen Elizabeth, Second: the QE
Two. Which I'm happy to say is fully in the grand tradition. Modern, yes. As she should be. But a most
worthy successor to her ancestors. You must sail on her, mv boy, if you never have.
"Can't afford it.
"Stow away then, but do it. Because when she's gone, when they scrap the QE Two as of course they
will, picking her bones and selling the skeleton for the last dime of profit, there'll be no more Atlantic
liners. Not ever. She's your last chance to know one of man's most pleasurable experiences, including
sex, though a young man like you should be able to combine the two and avoid the comparison: I can
assure you it makes for a wonderful crossing. Sail on the QE Two while you still can; I insist. Where was
I?
"Your father.
"Yes. My father. Of course he knew what my response to his invitation would be, but he was aware, he
said, of my burning thirst for knowledge; maybe, after all, I'd prefer to go to school? He'd understand if I
did. My father liked to tease us a little, and we enjoyed it, at least I did.
"We went downtown to his office after breakfast, at Battery Place and West Street. The Whitehall
Building, new then; it had a good view of New York harbor, and the old Battery. I wore corduroy
knickerbockers, long black knit stockings, a kind of Norfolk jacket, and a cloth cap with a peak. All
boys did; it was compulsory. We took the El downtown to his office, which had a huge rectangular
window overlooking the entire harbor and bay as far as the eye could see. He had a big leather-bound
brass telescope on a wooden tripod. I expect every office on that side of the building had one.
"The ship was already visible when we arrived, still far out, hardly more than a speck, but my father
found it in the telescope, focused carefully, then turned it over to me, and I stood hardly breathing so as
not to jar the telescope, watching that ship grow in the tight little circle of my vision. She was coming
straight on, with a bit of white bow wave, and her stacks smoking; I could see that almost tangible
blackness curling straight back. She was coal- fueled, and I expect she had a full head of steam. She
grew, filling the circle, then expanding beyond it, and I stood erect and found her again with my own
vision, shrunk back down in size. But once more she grew, very fast, and then I could see the colors of
the pennants strung in her rigging for the occasion. Fireboats appeared, moving out to meet her; then they
swung around to escort her in, their long brass hose tips pointing up, pumping great pluming jets of white
water and spray. First time I'd ever seen that, though not the last.
"The tugs reached her next, as I recall, and now-she seemed very chose-she turned to port, and I saw
the full astounding length of her, the great stacks streaming smoke straight out over the port side. They all
had four stacks, you know, and I still think it's the way a liner should be. It's the only thing wrong with the
QE Two; she ought to have four stacks as God intended. Just as He meant automobiles to have running
boards, and airplanes two wings. Right, my boy? You agree, of course.
"Of course, said Ted's voice. "It's what I keep saying all the time.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"I'm sure you do, but you must try not to be boring about it; you're not old enough. She turned, as I say,
I saw the magnificent length of her, the sun lighting those millions of portholes, and of course in just that
moment she sounded her horn. I saw the steam puff first, a sudden whiteness, and then oh, the glory of
that deep sound. All the host sounds: wagon wheels, ships' steam horns, the whistle of steam
locomotives. Yes indeed. God also meant locomotives to run only by steam.
"I know. Diesels are the devil's work.
"You're right! You're right! You know, you don't hook eighty at all.
The chairman laughed. "You two got along, didn't you?
Ted poked a control, stopping the tape. "Yeah, we did. Course he's a lawyer, a pro; instinctively wants
you on his side, and knows how to get you there.
Ted started the machine again, the reels turned for a moment, then the old man's recorded voice
continued: "The sound, the cmv of that ship, actually rattled the windows, and I do remember clearly that
I could feel the vibration of it in my chest. So deep. Such a how, rough, growling, utterly thrilling sound.
"And then very quickly, the tugs assembling around her, little blobs of color fussing at her waterline, their
stacks blowing black, she was gone, cut from our view by buildings, but then I learned that the best was
yet to come. My father had passes, he announced now, which would admit us to her dock, on the
Hudson; she was a White Star liner. And if I hiked, we could go watch her dock, unless-and some more
nonsense then about my deep love of school and learning.
"The only thing that might conceivably have made that day more wonderful for me would have been to
find that down in the street at the cab rank one of the waiting cabs was an automobile. But this morning
there were only two waiting cabs, both horse- drawn, and we climbed in, and moved up Broadway,
through Washington Square, then over on Fourteenth, I think, and along the Hudson on West Street, to
the docks.
"We walked down the stairs onto the pier, a partly roofed but otherwise open platform of thick splintery
planking. It may be there yet for all I know, a long shedhike structure without sides, and our ship was
already in sight, out there on the river. She was already turning toward the pier, in fact. For a moment or
so as she made the quarter-turn, the black smoke boiled out-I loved this- more thickly than ever, and I
stood staring across the water at her, truly spellbound. Very suddenly the smoke abated, almost
stopping, as the tugs took over the work of moving her. Then, their own stacks pouring black, they
brought her in, quite slowly, slowing even more as they neared, heading straight for the pier as it seemed
to me. I stood watching, staring rather, and could not believe that anything could grow so large. The tugs
turned her very slightly, and now I saw her not quite head-on. Saw her stacks now, painted beige, as I
recall, with a black band at the tops. Four stacks, almost merged, like the pickets in a fence viewed at an
angle. She grew taller. And taller. More and more enormous as she came at us, almost frighteningly,
until-alongside the dock now, impossibly only a few feet away-she had become so tall, her sides swelling
outward so far, that I could no longer see her superstructure, and I stood there stunned at the enormity of
this thing.
"The tug far out at her stern suddenly boiled water, immense churning pools of greasy gray bubbles. At
her other side tugs shoved her sideways with a sudden rumbling sound, and the dirty water separating
ship from dock shrank to a yard, a foot, to inches, and then-very slightly, gently as an elephant accepting
a peanut-she touched, and through the soles of my shoes I felt the movement of the entire dock, and
heard the vast creak and groan of its planks and nails, and understood the enormousness of the weight
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
that had just barely nudged us.
"Now the ship was still, immense hawsers flying out from openings in her sides to drop, uncoiling, and he
snubbed tight to the hollards l)y waiting men. A gangplank, slanting up toward the black hull, was being
wheeled to her almost at a run, and before it could even be fully secured a swarm of uniformed porters in
white jackets and black-visored caps were running up it.
"Almost immediately then, hardly a minute's delay, down came the first-class passengers, the porters
carrying hand luggage spotted with colored stickers bearing the names of foreign hotels. Don't think of
these people moving down that gangplank as dressed in casual' clothes, sport' clothes, like tourists from
Hawaii with paper leis around their necks. There were no casual or sport clothes, unless you count the
white flannels in which men played tennis. These people, many smiling, some haughty, coming down from
that great ship, were dressed for arrival in New York, the City, the metropolis. And the women wore
hats. Huge wheels some of those hats, the brims wide as small umbrellas; I mean it. Others had jeweled
turbans of intricately folded cloth, feathered, and worn down to the eyebrows. And dresses to just above
the ankles, and sort of. . . curved in at the hem. Hobble skirts, yes. They wore or carried coats, some of
fur or fur-trimmed. These women, believe me, were dressed. Dressed, I suppose, for the uplifted eyes of
all of us down there on the dock, and for the reporters with press passes in their hatbands who had
boarded from the pilot ship to interview some of them.
"The men wore suits, mostly. With vests and ties. A few wore black frock coats with gray, striped
trousers, and stiff wing collars. A very few wore tall shiny silk hats-bankers and Wall Street people, I
suppose, going straight to their offices. My father wore a felt hat, as most younger men did.
"As these godlike passengers stepped onto the dock, they were met, and hugged, and kissed. They
were presented with bouquets, and with telegrams and cablegrams by uniformed boys. Nearby, waiting
and smiling, stood clusters of servants, the women not quite in uniform but you could tell who was maid
or nann. The chauffeurs, some carrying folded hap robes like badges of office, wore livery and polished
leather puttees. Out front, parked directly beside the dock entrance-we'd passed them coming in-stood a
line of limousines I knew every automobile made by sight, and these were Isotta-Fraschinis, Pierce
.Arrows, a Stutz roadster, and so on.
"The heavier luggage of these people was coming down from the side of the ship on a kind of plank of
rollers, sweating men in porters' smocks heaving them off at the end. Most of these were huge steamer
trunks lettered with names or initials followed by the name of the city: New York, Wien, Constantinople,
London.
"Not until the first-class passengers, except for stragglers, were gone from the pier to customs were
other gangphanks wheeled up for the second-class, third-class, and steerage passengers. Down they
came now, and I remember them as simply uninteresting. They walked down their sloping gangplanks
dressed like ordinary people you'd see on the streets. And not talking, almost as though they didn't have
the right. A few waved a little to waiting friends, smiling but not calling down to them. And for me it had
all turned drab. These people, I truly believe, knew their places in society. And without resentment. And
little snob that I suppose I was then, though I did not remain one, I had no interest in them.
"Yet I didn't want to leave. Couldn't. And my father indulged me. I walked on toward the
prow-wandered, really, sometimes stopping to lift my chin and look up at that immensity of curved black
plating all riveted together to form a ship. Along this portion of the dock were fewer and fewer people,
and as I approached the very nose of the ship, there were no others. But far up, several officers in their
visored caps leaned on the rail looking dow'n. I wanted to wave but didn't for fear they might simply
stare and not return it.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
摘要：

FromTimeToTimeJackFinneyPROLOGUEThemanattheendofthelongtable-heworeatrimmedblackbeardstreakedwhiteattheendsofhismouth-lookedupatthewallclock:threeminutespastseven."Okay,hesaidtothedozenmenandwomenaroundthetable,"webettergetstarted.Butheturnedoncemoretolookattheopendoorwaybehindhim,andsodideveryoneel...

展开>> 收起<<
Jack Finney - From Time to Time.pdf

共157页,预览32页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：157 页 大小：573.97KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-19

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 157
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注