A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (15 page)

The producer swears under his breath. “I didn’t climb up here to talk all night. What do you want?”

“I want to talk with the Creator. That’s you, Mr. Douglas. You created all this. You came here one day and struck the earth with a magical checkbook and cried, ‘Let there be Paris!’ And there
was
Paris: streets, bistros, flowers, wine, outdoor bookshops and all. And you clapped your hands again: ‘Let there be Constantinople!’ And there
it
was! You clapped your hands a thousand times, and each time made something new, and now you think just by clapping your hands one
last
time you can drop it all down in ruins. But, Mr. Douglas, it’s not as easy as that!”

“I own fifty-one percent of the stock in this studio!”

“But did the studio ever belong to you, really? Did you ever think to drive here late some night and climb up on this cathedral and see what a
wonderful
world you created? Did you ever wonder if it might not be a good idea for you to sit up here with me and my friends and have a cup of amontillado sherry with us? All right—so the amontillado smells and looks and tastes like coffee. Imagination, Mr. Creator, imagination. But no, you never came around, you never climbed up, you never looked or listened or cared. There was always a party somewhere else. And now, very late, without asking us, you want to destroy it all. You may own fifty-one percent of the studio stock, but you don’t own
them.
”

“Them!” cries the producer. “What’s all this business about ‘them’?”

“It’s hard to put in words. The people who
live
here.” The night watchman moves his hand in the empty air toward the half-cities and the night. “So many films were made here in all the long years. Extras moved in the streets in costumes, they talked a thousand tongues, they smoked cigarettes and meerschaums and Persian hookahs, even. Dancing girls danced. They
glittered,
oh, how they glittered! Women with veils smiled down from high balconies. Soldiers marched. Children played. Knights in silver armor fought. There were orange-tea shops. People sipped tea in them and dropped their
h
’s. Gongs were beaten. Viking ships sailed the inland seas.”

The producer lifts himself up through the trap door and sits on the plankings, the gun cradled more easily in his hand. He seems to be looking at the old man first with one eye, then the other, listening to him with one ear, then the other, shaking his head a little to himself.

The night watchman continues:

“And somehow, after the extras and the men with the cameras and microphones and all the equipment walked away and the gates were shut and they drove off in big cars, somehow something of all those thousands of different people remained. The things they had been, or
pretended
to be, stayed on. The foreign languages, the costumes, the things they did, the things they thought about, their religions and their music, all those little things and big things stayed on. The sights of far places. The smells. The salt wind. The sea. It’s all here tonight if you
listen.
”

The producer listens and the old man listens in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper, and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in the night, and the wind bringing that self-made sound high up here in the sky to these two men who stand listening and apart.

The producer laughs shortly and shakes his head.

“You
heard
,” says the night watchman. “You
did
hear, didn’t you? I see it in your face.”

Douglas shoves the gun in his coat pocket. “Anything you listen for you can hear. I made the mistake of listening. You should have been a writer. You could throw six of my best ones out of work. Well, what about it—are you ready to come down out of here now?”

“You sound almost polite,” says the night watchman.

“Don’t know why I should. You ruined a good evening for me.”

“Did I? It hasn’t been that bad, has it? A bit different, I should say. Stimulating, maybe.”

Douglas laughs quietly. “You’re not dangerous at all. You just need company. It’s your job and everything going to hell and you’re lonely. I can’t quite figure you, though.”

“Don’t tell me I’ve got you thinking?” asks the old man.

Douglas snorts. “After you’ve lived in Hollywood long enough, you meet all kinds. Besides, I’ve never been up here before. It’s a real view, like you say. But I’ll be damned if I can figure why you should worry about all this junk. What’s it to you?”

The night watchman gets down on one knee and taps one hand into the palm of the other, illustrating his points. “Look. As I said before, you came here years ago, clapped your hands, and three hundred cities jumped up! Then you added a half-thousand other nations, and states and peoples and religions and political setups inside the barbed-wire fence. And there was trouble! Oh, nothing you could see. It was all in the wind and the spaces between. But it was the same kind of trouble the world out there beyond the fence has—squabbles and riots and invisible wars. But at last the trouble died out. You want to know why?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting up here freezing.”

A little night music, please, thinks the old man, and moves his hand on the air like someone playing the proper and beautiful music to background all that he has to tell....

“Because you got Boston joined to Trinidad,” he says softly,, “part of Trinidad poking out of Lisbon, part of Lisbon leaning on Alexandria, Alexandria tacked onto Shanghai, and a lot of little pegs and nails between, like Chattanooga, Oshkosh, Oslo, Sweet Water, Soissons, Beirut, Bombay, and Port Arthur. You shoot a man in New York and he stumbles forward and drops dead in Athens. You take a political bribe in Chicago and somebody in London goes to jail. You hang a Negro man in Alabama and the people of Hungary have to bury him. The dead Jews of Poland clutter the streets of Sydney, Portland, and Tokyo. You push a knife into a man’s stomach in Berlin and it comes out the back of a farmer in Memphis. It’s all so
close,
so very
close.
That’s why we have peace here. We’re all so crowded there
has got to be peace,
or nothing would be left! One fire would destroy all of us, no matter who started it, for what reason. So all of the people, the memories, whatever you want to call them, that are here, have settled down, and this is their world, a good world, a fine world.”

The old man stops and licks his lips slowly and takes a breath. “And tomorrow,” he says, “you’re going to stomp it down.”

The old man crouches there a moment longer, then gets to his feet and gazes out at the cities and the thousand shadows in those cities. The great plaster cathedral whines and sways in the night air, back and forth, rocking on the summer tides.

“Well,” says Douglas at last, “shall—shall we go down now?”

Smith nods. “I’ve had my say.”

Douglas vanishes, and the watchman listens to the younger man going down and down through the ladders and catwalks of the night. Then, after a reasonable hesitation, the old man takes hold of the ladder, breathes something to himself, and begins the long descent in shadow.

The studio police and the few workers and some minor executives all drive away. Only one large dark car waits outside the barbed-wire gate as the two men stand talking in the cities of the meadow.

“What are you going to do now?” asks Smith.

“Go back to my party, I suppose,” says the producer.

“Will it be fun?”

“Yes.” The producer hesitates. “Sure, it’ll be fun!” He glances at the night watchman’s right hand. “Don’t tell me you’ve found that hammer Kelly told me you were using? You going to start building again? You don’t give up, do you?”

“Would you, if you were the last builder and everybody else was a wrecker?”

Douglas starts to walk with the old man. “Well, maybe I’ll see you again, Smith.”

“No,” says Smith, “I won’t be here. This all won’t be here. If you come back again, it’ll be too late.”

Douglas stops. “Hell, hell! What do you want me to do?”

“A simple thing. Leave all this standing. Leave these cities up.”

“I can’t do that! Damn it. Business reasons. It has to go.”

“A man with a real nose for business and some imagination could think up a profitable reason for it to stay,” says Smith.

“My car’s waiting! How do I get out of here?”

The producer strikes off over a patch of rubble, cuts through half of a tumbled ruin, kicking boards aside, leaning for a moment on plaster facades and strutworks. Dust rains from the sky.

“Watch out!”

The producer stumbles in a thunder of dust and avalanching brick; he gropes, he topples, he is seized upon by the old man and yanked forward.

“Jump!”

They jump, and half the building slides to ruin, crashes into hills and mountains of old paper and lathing. A great bloom of dust strikes out upon the air.

“You all right?”

“Yes. Thanks. Thanks.” The producer looks at the fallen building. The dust clears. “You probably saved my life.”

“Hardly that. Most of those are papier-mâché bricks. You might have been cut and bruised a little.”

“Nevertheless, thanks. What building was that that fell?”

“Norman village tower, built in 1925. Don’t get near the rest of it; it might go down.”

“I’ll be careful.” The producer moves carefully in to stand by the set-piece. “Why—I could push this whole damn building over with one hand.” He demonstrates; the building leans and quivers and groans. The producer steps quickly back. “I could knock it down in a second.”

“But you wouldn’t want to do that,” says the watchman.

“Oh, wouldn’t I? What’s one French house more or less, this late in the day?”

The old man takes his arm. “Walk around here to the other side of the house.”

They walk to the other side.

“Read that sign,” says Smith.

The producer flicks his cigarette lighter, holds the fire up to help him squint, and reads:

“ ‘
THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK, MELLIN TOWN
.’” He pauses. “‘
ILLINOIS
,’” he says, very slowly.

The building stands there in the sharp light of the stars and the bland light of the moon.

“On one side”—Douglas balances his hands like a scales—“a French tower. On the other side—” He walks seven steps to the right, seven steps to the left, peering. “‘
THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK
.’ Bank. Tower. Tower. Bank. Well, I’ll be
damned.
”

Smith smiles and says, “Still want to push the French tower down, Mr. Douglas?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, hold on,” says Douglas, and suddenly begins to see the buildings that stand before him. He turns in a slow circle; his eyes move up and down and across and over; his eyes flick here, flick there, see this, see that, examine, file, put away, and re-examine. He begins to walk in silence. They move in the cities of the meadow, over grasses and wild flowers, up to and into and through ruins and half-ruins and up to and into and through complete avenues and villages and towns.

They begin a recital which goes on and on as they walk, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering.

“What’s this over here?”

“A Buddhist temple.”

“And on the other side of it?”

“The log cabin where Lincoln was born.”

“And here?”

“St. Patrick’s church, New York.”

“And on the reverse?”

“A Russian Orthodox church in Rostov!”

“What’s
this?
”

“The door of a castle on the Rhine!”

“And
inside?
”

“A Kansas City soda fountain!”

“And here? And here? Arid over
there?
And what’s
that?
” asks Douglas. “What’s this! What about that one! And over
there!
”

It seems as if they are running and rushing and yelling all through the cities, here, there, everywhere, up, down, in, out, climbing, descending, poking, stirring, opening-shutting doors.

“And this, and this, and this, and
this!
”

The night watchman tells all there is to tell.

Their shadows run ahead in narrow alleys, and avenues as broad as rivers made of stone and sand.

They make a great talking circle; they hurry all around and back to where they started.

They are quiet again. The old man is quiet from having said what there was to say, and the producer is quiet from listening and remembering and fitting it all together in his mind. He stands, absentmindedly fumbling for his cigarette case. It takes him a full minute to open it, examining every action, thinking about it, and to offer the case to the watchman.