The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (12 page)

Martin entered the drugstore and stood motionless near the door in the dark coolness. It was exactly as he remembered it. A narrow, high-ceilinged room with an old-fashioned soda bar on one side, a counter on the other. A wooden stairway that led to a small office off a tiny balcony. This was where Mr. Wilson, the owner, used to take his catnaps, Martin remembered. A thin little man with thick glasses wiped soda glasses and smiled at Martin across the fountain.

“What’ll it be?” he asked.

Martin looked at the posters on the walls, the old-fashioned hanging lights, the two big electric fans that hung down from the ceiling. He went to the counter and sat down. The five big glass jars of penny candy were just as he remembered them.

“You still make great chocolate sodas?” he asked the man behind the soda bar. “Three scoops?”

The man’s smile looked a little strained. “How’s that?”

Martin’s laugh was apologetic. “I used to spend half my life in this drugstore,” he explained. “I grew up here. The one thing I always remember ordering—that was a chocolate ice cream soda with three scoops. And it was ten cents, too.”

The little man looked at him quizzically and Martin studied his face.

“You know,” Martin said, ‘you look familiar to me. Have I seen you before?”

The clerk shrugged and grinned. “I got that kind of a face.”

“It’s been a long time,” Martin said. “Eighteen...twenty years. That’s when I left—” Then he laughed at a collection of secret thoughts that crossed his mind. “I wish I had a buck,” he continued, “for every hour I spent at this fountain though. From grammar school right through third-year high.” He turned on the stool to look out at the bright, sunny street outside. “Town looks the same too.” He turned back to the little man. “You know it’s really amazing. After twenty years to look so exactly the same.”

The little man in glasses fixed his soda and then handed it to him.

“That’ll be a dime.”

Martin started to fish in his pocket, then stopped abruptly. “A dime?” he asked incredulously. He held up the giant, richly dark glass. “Three scoops?”

The soda jerk laughed. “That’s the way we make ‘em.”

Martin laughed again. “You’re going to lose your shirt. Nobody sells sodas for a dime anymore.”

There was a moment’s silence then the little man asked, “They don’t? Where you from?”

Martin started to spoon down some of the chocolate ice cream. “New York,” he said between gulps. “Hey, you make a great soda!”

The little man leaned on the counter with his elbows. “Taste okay?” he asked.

“Wonderful.” He finished the ice cream and slurped up the last of the soda water. He grinned. “Like I never left home. That was great.” He turned to scan the room. “Funny,” he said, “how many memories you connect with a place. I always thought if I ever came back here, it’d all be changed.”

The store looked back at him. The counters and shelves and posters and lights. The electric fans. They looked back at him like old friends. “It’s just as if—” Martin said thoughtfully, “—as if I’d left yesterday.” He got off the stool and stood twirling it. “Just as if I’d been away overnight.” He smiled at the soda jerk. “I’d almost expect Mr. Wilson to be sitting up there in the office and sleeping away his afternoons just the way he always did before he died.”

He didn’t see the soda jerk start at this.

“That’s one of the images I have,” he continued. “Old Man Wilson sleeping in his big comfortable chair in his office up there. Old Man Wilson—may his soul rest in peace”

He reached in his pocket, took out a dollar bill and put it on the counter. The soda jerk stared at it, surprised. “That’s a buck!”

Martin smiled at him, tapped the glass with a finger. “That—” he looked around the room—“and all of this, they’re worth it.”

He went back out into the hot summer. The soda jerk leaned on the counter, wondering about Martin, then lifted up the top of the chocolate syrup container and peered inside. He replaced it, came around from behind the counter, climbed the stairs, and tapped gently on a door. A muffled, sleepy voice responded.

“Yes?”

The soda jerk opened the door a few inches. “Mr. Wilson,” he said to the white-haired old man, sitting in the heavy leather chair, one eye open, “We need more chocolate syrup.”

The old man winked, nodded and closed his eyes again. “I’ll order some this afternoon.”

In a moment he was fast asleep again. The soda jerk went back to the counter. He took Martin Sloan’s glass and started to wash it. Funny guy, he thought. Lose your shirt if you sell three scoops for a dime. He chuckled as he was drying the glass. Nobody sold three scoops for a dime any more. Then he shrugged and put the glass away. You met all kinds. You sure met all kinds. But this guy, this one was odd. This one had a look on his face. How would you describe the look? He was so...so happy. Just being in the dingy old drugstore, he looked happy. A woman came in with a prescription and the soda jerk didn’t think of Martin Sloan any more that day.

Martin walked down Oak Street—the street he’d grown up on. It stretched out ahead of him flanked by big, full-leafed maple trees that cast sharp black shadows against the brilliant whiteness of the sunshine. Big, two-story Victorian houses set back behind long, green lawns were old friends to him. He rattled off names of their owners as he walked slowly down the sidewalk. Vanburen. Wilcox. Abernathy. He looked across the street. Over there, Dr. Bradbury, Mulrooney, Grey. He stopped and leaned against a tree. The street was exactly as he remembered it. He felt the bittersweet pang of nostalgia. He remembered the games he’d played with the kids on this street. The newspapers he’d delivered. The small-boy accidents on roller skates and bicycles. And the people. The faces and names that fused in his mind now. His house was on the corner and for some reason he wanted to save this for last. He could see it ahead of him. Big, white, with a semi-circular porch running around it. Cupolas. An iron jockey in front. God, the things you remembered. The things you tucked away in an old mental trunk and forgot. Then you opened the trunk and there they were.

“Hi,” a little boy’s voice said.

Martin Sloan looked down to see a four-year-old with syrup on his face, shooting marbles. “Hi,” Martin answered and sat down on the curb beside him. “You pretty good?” He pointed toward the boy’s marbles.

“At aggies?” the little boy said. “I’m not so bad.”

Martin picked up one of the marbles and looked through it. “I used to shoot marbles, too. We gave them special names. The steel kind, the ball bearings we took off old streetcars, we called them steelies. And the ones we could see through—we called them clearies. Still call them names like that?”

“Sure,” said the little boy.

Martin pointed across the street toward a telephone pole marked up by a thousand jackknives. “That’s where we used to play hide-and-seek,” he said to the boy He grinned. “Draw a circle around the old man’s back and who’s to punch it.” He laughed aloud as the thought warmed and delighted him. “Right on this street, every night in the summer we used to play that. And I used to live in that corner house down there,” he pointed. “The big, white one.”

“The Sloan house?” the little boy asked.

Martin’s eyes grew a little wider. “That’s right. You still call it that?”

“Still call it what?”

“The Sloan house. My name’s Sloan. I’m Martin Sloan. What’s your name?”

He held out his hand but the boy backed away, frowning at him. “You’re not Marty Sloan,” the boy said accusingly. “I know Martin Sloan and you’re not him.”

Martin laughed. “I’m not, huh? Well, let’s see what the driver’s license says.”

He reached into his breast pocket for his wallet. When he looked up the little boy was running down the street and then across a lawn to the house opposite his. Martin got slowly to his feet and began to walk again. It was the first slow walk, Martin reflected, that he’d taken in a long, long time. The houses and lawns went by and he drank them all in. He wanted this slow. He wanted to relish it all. In the distance he could hear children’s laughter and the tinkle of an ice-cream wagon bell. It all fitted, sight and sound and mood. He got a tight feeling in his throat.

He didn’t know how long he had walked but later he found himself in the park. Like the drugstore, like the houses, like the sounds—nothing had changed. There was the pavilion with the big, round, band-concert stand. There was the merry-go-round, loaded with kids, the brassy, discordant calliope music still chasing it round and round. There were the same wooden horses, the same brass rings, the same ice-cream stands, cotton candy vendors. And always the children. Short pants and Mickey Mouse shirts. Lollipops and ice-cream cones and laughter and giggling. The language of the young. The music—the symphony of summer. The sounds swirled around him. Calliope, laughter, children. Again the tight feeling in his throat. Bittersweet again. All of it he had left so far behind and now he was so close to it.

A pretty young woman walked by him, wheeling a baby carriage. She stopped, caught by something she saw in Martin Sloan’s face, as he watched the merry-go-round. She’d never seen a look quite like that before. It made her smile at him, and he smiled back.

“Wonderful place, isn’t it?” he said.

“The park? It certainly is.”

Martin nodded toward the merry-go-round. “That’s a part of summer, isn’t it? The music from the merry-go-round. The calliope.”

The pretty woman laughed. “And the cotton candy and the ice cream and the band concert.”

There was no smile on Martin’s face now. It had been replaced by an intensity, a yearning. “There isn’t anything quite as good ever,” he said softly. “Not quite as good as summer and being a kid.”

The woman stared at him. What was there about this man? “Are you from around here?” she asked.

Martin said, “A long time ago. I lived just a couple of blocks from here. I remember that bandstand. God, I should. I used to sneak away at night, lie over there on the grass staring up at the stars, listening to the music.” His voice took on an excitement now. “I played ball on that field over there,” he continued. “Third base. And I grew up with that merry-go-round.” He pointed to the concert pavilion. “I carved my name on that post over there one summer. I was eleven years old and I carved my name right on—” He stopped abruptly and stared.

There was a small boy sitting on the railing of the pavilion carving something on the post with a jackknife. Martin Sloan walked slowly toward him. He felt a sensation he had never felt before. It was cold and heat and excitement. It was shock and surprise and a mystery he couldn’t fathom. He looked up at the small boy and saw his own face of twenty-five years ago. He was looking at himself. He stood shaking his head from side to side, squinting up against the sun and then he saw what the boy was carving on the post. It was a kid’s printed scrawl, the letters uneven. It read, “Martin Sloan.” Martin caught his breath and pointed at the boy who was suddenly aware of him.

“Martin Sloan!
You’re Martin Sloan.
”

The boy slid down from the railing. He looked frightened. “Yes, sir, but I didn’t mean nothing, honest. Lots of kids carve their names here. Honest. I’m not the first one—”

Martin took a step closer to the boy. “You’re Martin Sloan. Of course you’re Martin Sloan, that’s who you are. That’s the way I looked.”

He was unaware that his voice had suddenly become loud and of course he couldn’t know how intense his face looked. The boy backed off and then scurried down the steps.

“Martin!” Sloan’s voice followed him. “Martin, please come back. Please, Martin.”

He started to chase him and the boy disappeared in the multi-colored crowd of shorts and Mickey Mouse shirts and mothers’ cotton dresses.

“Please, Martin,” Sloan called again, trying to find him. “Please—don’t be frightened. I don’t want to hurt you. I just wanted to—I just wanted to ask you some questions.