The First One, Herbert D. Kastle [speed reading book .txt] 📗

a bright smile and a quip something like, "Young for the Golden Age Center, you mean." This time she burst into tears. It shocked him. But what shocked him even more was the fact that no one looked up, commented, made any attempt to comfort her; no one indicated in any way that a woman was sobbing at the table.

He was sitting directly across from Mother, and reached out and touched her left hand which lay limply beside the silverware. She didn't move it—she hadn't touched him once beyond that first, quick, strangely-cool embrace at the door—then a few seconds later she withdrew it and let it drop out of sight.

So there he was, Henry Devers, at home with the family. So there he was, the hero returned, waiting to be treated as a human being.

The grapefruit shells were cleaned away and the soup served. Uncle Joe began to talk. "The greatest little development of circular uniform houses you ever did see," he boomed in his powerful salesman's voice. "Still going like sixty. We'll sell out before—" At that point he looked at Hank, and Hank nodded encouragement, desperately interested in this normalcy, and Joe's voice died away. He looked down at his plate, mumbled, "Soup's getting cold," and began to eat. His hand shook a little; his ruddy face was not quite as ruddy as Hank remembered it.

Aunt Lucille made a few quavering statements about the Ladies' Tuesday Garden Club, and Hank looked across the table to where she sat between Joe and Mother—his wife and son bracketed him, and yet he felt alone—and said, "I've missed fooling around with the lawn and the rose bushes. Here it is August and I haven't had my hand to a mower or trowel."

Aunt Lucille smiled, if you could call it that—a pitiful twitching of the lips—and nodded. She threw her eyes in his direction, and past him, and then down to her plate. Mother, who was still sniffling, said, "I have a dismal headache. I'm going to lie down in the guest room a while." She touched his shoulder in passing—his affectionate, effusive mother who would kiss stray dogs and strange children, who had often irritated him with an excess of physical and verbal caresses—she barely touched his shoulder and fled.

So now five of them sat at the table. The meat was served—thin, rare slices of beef, the pink blood-juice oozing warmly from the center. He cut into it and raised a forkful to his mouth, then glanced at Ralphie and said, "Looks fresh enough to have been killed in the back yard." Ralphie said, "Yeah, Dad." Aunt Lucille put down her knife and fork and murmured something to her husband. Joe cleared his throat and said Lucille was rapidly becoming a vegetarian and he guessed she was going into the living room for a while. "She'll be back for dessert, of course," he said, his laugh sounding forced.

Hank looked at Edith; Edith was busy with her plate. Hank looked at Ralphie; Ralphie was busy with his plate. Hank looked at Joe; Joe was chewing, gazing out over their heads to the kitchen. Hank looked at Lucille; she was disappearing into the living room.

He brought his fist down on the table. The settings jumped; a glass overturned, spilling water. He brought it down again and again. They were all standing now. He sat there and pounded the table with his big right fist—Henry Devers, who would never have thought of making such a scene before, but who was now so sick and tired of being treated as the First One, of being stood back from, looked at in awe of, felt in fear of, that he could have smashed more than a table.

Edith said, "Hank!"

He said, voice hoarse, "Shut up. Go away. Let me eat alone. I'm sick of the lot of you."

Mother and Joe returned a few minutes later where he sat forcing food down his throat. Mother said, "Henry dear—" He didn't answer. She began to cry, and he was glad she left the house then. He had never said anything really bad to his mother. He was afraid this would have been the time. Joe merely cleared his throat and mumbled something about getting together again soon and "drop out and see the new development" and he, too, was gone. Lucille never did manage to speak to him.

He finished his beef and waited. Soon Edith came in with the special dessert she'd been preparing half the day—a magnificent English trifle. She served him, and spooned out a portion for herself and Ralphie. She hesitated near his chair, and when he made no comment she called the boy. Then the three of them were sitting, facing the empty side of the table. They ate the trifle. Ralphie finished first and got up and said, "Hey, I promised—"

"You promised the boys you'd play baseball or football or handball or something; anything to get away from your father."

Ralphie's head dropped and he muttered, "Aw, no, Dad."

Edith said, "He'll stay home, Hank. We'll spend an evening together—talking, watching TV, playing Monopoly."

Ralphie said, "Gee, sure, Dad, if you want to."

Hank stood up. "The question is not whether I want to. You both know I want to. The question is whether you want to."

They answered together that of course they wanted to. But their eyes—his wife's and son's eyes—could not meet his, and so he said he was going to his room because he was, after all, very tired and would in all probability continue to be very tired for a long, long time and that they shouldn't count on him for normal social life.

He fell asleep quickly, lying there in his clothes.

But he didn't sleep long. Edith shook him and he opened his eyes to a lighted room. "Phil and Rhona are here." He blinked at her. She smiled, and it seemed her old smile. "They're so anxious to see you, Hank. I could barely keep Phil from coming up and waking you himself. They want to go out and do the town. Please, Hank, say you will."

He sat up. "Phil," he muttered. "Phil and Rhona." They'd had wonderful times together, from grammar school on. Phil and Rhona, their oldest and closest friends. Perhaps this would begin his real homecoming.

Do the town? They'd paint it and then tear it down!

It didn't turn out that way. He was disappointed; but then again, he'd also expected it. This entire first day at home had conditioned him to expect nothing good. They went to the bowling alleys, and Phil sounded very much the way he always had—soft spoken and full of laughter and full of jokes. He patted Edith on the head the way he always had, and clapped Hank on the shoulder (but not the way he always had—so much more gently, almost remotely), and insisted they all drink more than was good for them as he always had. And for once, Hank was ready to go along on the drinking. For once, he matched Phil shot for shot, beer for beer.

They didn't bowl very long. At ten o'clock they crossed the road to Manfred's Tavern, where Phil and the girls ordered sandwiches and coffee and Hank went right on drinking. Edith said something to him, but he merely smiled and waved his hand and gulped another ounce of nirvana.

There was dancing to a juke box in Manfred's Tavern. He'd been there many times before, and he was sure several of the couples recognized him. But except for a few abortive glances in his direction, it was as if he were a stranger in a city halfway around the world.

At midnight, he was still drinking. The others wanted to leave, but he said, "I haven't danced with my girl Rhona." His tongue was thick, his mind was blurred, and yet he could read the strange expression on her face—pretty Rhona, who'd always flirted with him, who'd made a ritual of flirting with him. Pretty Rhona, who now looked as if she were going to be sick.

"So let's rock," he said and stood up.

They were on the dance floor. He held her close, and hummed and chatted. And through the alcoholic haze saw she was a stiff-smiled, stiff-bodied, mechanical dancing doll.

The number finished; they walked back to the booth. Phil said, "Beddy-bye time."

Hank said, "First one dance with my loving wife."

He and Edith danced. He didn't hold her close as he had Rhona. He waited for her to come close on her own, and she did, and yet she didn't. Because while she put herself against him, there was something in her face—no, in her eyes; it always showed in the eyes—that made him know she was trying to be the old Edith and not succeeding. This time when the music ended, he was ready to go home.

They rode back to town along Route Nine, he and Edith in the rear of Phil's car, Rhona driving because Phil had drunk just a little too much, Phil singing and telling an occasional bad joke, and somehow not his old self. No one was his old self. No one would ever be his old self with the First One.

They turned left, to take the short cut along Hallowed Hill Road, and Phil finished a story about a Martian and a Hollywood sex queen and looked at his wife and then past her at the long, cast-iron fence paralleling the road. "Hey," he said, pointing, "do you know why that's the most popular place on earth?"

Rhona glanced to the left, and so did Hank and Edith. Rhona made a little sound, and Edith seemed to stop breathing, but Phil went on a while longer, not yet aware of his supposed faux pas.

"You know why?" he repeated, turning to the back seat, the laughter rumbling up from his chest. "You know why, folks?"

Rhona said, "Did you notice Carl Braken and his wife at—"

Hank said, "No, Phil, why is it the most popular place on earth?"

Phil said, "Because people are—" And then he caught himself and waved his hand and muttered, "I forgot the punch line."

"Because people are dying to get in," Hank said, and looked through the window, past the iron fence, into the large cemetery at the fleeting tombstones.

The car was filled with horrified silence when there should have been nothing but laughter, or irritation at a too-old joke. "Maybe you should let me out right here," Hank said. "I'm home—or that's what everyone seems to think. Maybe I should lie down in an open grave. Maybe that would satisfy people. Maybe that's the only way to act, like Dracula or another monster from the movies."

Edith said, "Oh, Hank, don't, don't!"

The car raced along the road, crossed a macadam highway, went four blocks and pulled to a stop. He didn't bother saying good night. He didn't wait for Edith. He just got out and walked up the flagstone path and entered the house.

"Hank," Edith whispered from the guest room doorway, "I'm so sorry—"

"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's just a matter of time. It'll all work out in time."

"Yes," she said quickly, "that's it. I need a little time. We all need a little time. Because it's so strange, Hank. Because it's so frightening. I should have told you that the moment you walked in. I think I've hurt you terribly, we've all hurt you terribly, by trying to hide that we're frightened."

"I'm going to stay in the guest room," he said, "for as long as necessary. For good if need be."

"How could it be for good? How, Hank?"

That question was perhaps the first firm basis for hope he'd had since returning. And there was something else; what Carlisle had told him, even as Carlisle himself had reacted as all men did.

"There are others coming, Edith. Eight that I know of in the tanks right now. My superior, Captain Davidson, who died at the same moment I did—seven months ago next Wednesday—he's going to be next. He was smashed up worse than I was, so it took a little longer, but he's almost ready. And there'll be many more, Edith. The government is going to save all they possibly can from now on. Every time a young and healthy man loses his life by accident, by violence, and his body can be recovered, he'll go into the tanks and they'll start the regenerative brain and organ process—the process that made it all possible. So people have to get used to us. And the old stories, the old terrors, the ugly old superstitions have to die, because in time each place will have some of us; because in time it'll be an ordinary thing."

Edith said, "Yes, and I'm so grateful that you're here, Hank. Please believe that. Please be patient