The Very Best of F & SF v1 (4 page)

Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote a
dozen books, including the masterpiece
The Haunting of Hill House,
but she is probably best-known for her short story, “The Lottery,”
which drew hundreds of outraged letters when it first appeared in
The New Yorker
in 1948. Barry Malzberg has pointed out that if
F&SF
had existed at the time, the story could easily have appeared in
our pages without raising any such fuss. And indeed, Ms. Jackson contributed
four imaginative tales during the ’50s, all of which were well received by our
readers, including this classic.

Mr.
John Philip Johnson
shut his front door behind
him and came down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that
all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn’t the sun warm
and good, and didn’t his shoes feel comfortable after the resoling, and he knew
that he had undoubtedly chosen the precise very tie which belonged with the day
and the sun and his comfortable feet, and, after all, wasn’t the world just a
wonderful place? In spite of the fact that he was a small man, and the tie was
perhaps a shade vivid, Mr. Johnson irradiated this feeling of well-being as he
came down the steps and onto the dirty sidewalk, and he smiled at people who
passed him, and some of them even smiled back. He stopped at the newsstand on
the corner and bought his paper, saying “
Good
morning” with real conviction to the man who sold him the paper and
the two or three other people who were lucky enough to be buying papers when
Mr. Johnson skipped up. He remembered to fill his pockets with candy and
peanuts, and then he set out to get himself uptown. He stopped in a flower shop
and bought a carnation for his buttonhole, and stopped almost immediately
afterward to give the carnation to a small child in a carriage, who looked at
him dumbly, and then smiled, and Mr. Johnson smiled, and the child’s mother
looked at Mr. Johnson for a minute and then smiled too.

When he had gone
several blocks uptown, Mr. Johnson cut across the avenue and went along a side
street, chosen at random; he did not follow the same route every morning, but
preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a
man intent upon business. It happened this morning that halfway down the block
a moving van was parked, and the furniture from an upstairs apartment stood
half on the sidewalk, half on the steps, while an amused group of people
loitered, examining the scratches on the tables and the worn spots on the
chairs, and a harassed woman, trying to watch a young child and the movers and
the furniture all at the same time, gave the clear impression of endeavoring to
shelter her private life from the people staring at her belongings. Mr. Johnson
stopped, and for a moment joined the crowd, and then he came forward and,
touching his hat civilly, said, “Perhaps I can keep an eye on your little boy
for you?”

The woman turned
and glared at him distrustfully, and Mr. Johnson added hastily, “We’ll sit
right here on the steps.” He beckoned to the little boy, who hesitated and then
responded agreeably to Mr. Johnson’s genial smile. Mr. Johnson brought out a
handful of peanuts from his pocket and sat on the steps with the boy, who at
first refused the peanuts on the grounds that his mother did not allow him to
accept food from strangers; Mr. Johnson said that probably his mother had not intended
peanuts to be included, since elephants at the circus ate them, and the boy
considered, and then agreed solemnly. They sat on the steps cracking peanuts in
a comradely fashion, and Mr. Johnson said, “So you’re moving?”

“Yep,” said the
boy.

“Where you
going?”

“Vermont.”

“Nice place.
Plenty of snow there. Maple sugar, too; you like maple sugar?

“Sure.”

“Plenty of maple
sugar in Vermont. You going to live on a farm?”

“Going to live
with Grandpa.”

“Grandpa like
peanuts?”

“Sure.”

“Ought to take
him some,” said Mr. Johnson, reaching into his pocket. “Just you and Mommy
going?”

“Yep.”

“Tell you what,”
Mr. Johnson said. “You take some peanuts to eat on the train.”

The boy’s
mother, after glancing at them frequently, had seemingly decided that Mr.
Johnson was trustworthy, because she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to
seeing that the movers did not—what movers rarely do, but every housewife
believes they will—crack a leg from her good table, or set a kitchen chair down
on a lamp. Most of the furniture was loaded by now, and she was deep in that
nervous stage when she knew there was something she had forgotten to
pack—hidden away in the back of a closet somewhere, or left at a neighbor’s and
forgotten, or on the clothesline—and was trying to remember under stress what
it was.

“This all, lady?”
the chief mover said, completing her dismay.

Uncertainly, she
nodded.

“Want to go on
the truck with the furniture, sonny?” the mover asked the boy, and laughed. The
boy laughed too and said to Mr. Johnson, “I guess I’ll have a good time at
Vermont.”

“Fine time,” said
Mr. Johnson, and stood up. “Have one more peanut before you go,” he said to the
boy.

The boy’s mother
said to Mr. Johnson, “Thank you so much; it was a great help to me.”

“Nothing at all,”
said Mr. Johnson gallantly. “Where in Vermont are you going?”

The mother
looked at the little boy accusingly, as though he had given away a secret of
some importance, and said unwillingly, “Greenwich.”

“Lovely town,” said
Mr. Johnson. He took out a card, and wrote a name on the back. “Very good
friend of mine lives in Greenwich,” he said. “Call on him for anything you
need. His wife makes the best doughnuts in town,” he added soberly to the
little boy.

“Swell,” said
the little boy.

“Goodbye,” said
Mr. Johnson.

He went on, stepping
happily with his new-shod feet, feeling the warm sun on his back and on the top
of his head. Halfway down the block he met a stray dog and fed him a peanut.

At the corner,
where another wide avenue faced him, Mr. Johnson decided to go on uptown again.
Moving with comparative laziness, he was passed on either side by people
hurrying and frowning, and people brushed past him going the other way,
clattering along to get somewhere quickly. Mr. Johnson stopped on every corner
and waited patiently for the light to change, and he stepped out of the way of
anyone who seemed to be in any particular hurry, but one young lady came too
fast for him, and crashed wildly into him when he stooped to pat a kitten which
had run out onto the sidewalk from an apartment house and was now unable to get
back through the rushing feet.

“Excuse me,” said
the young lady, trying frantically to pick up Mr. Johnson and hurry on at the
same time, “terribly sorry.”

The kitten,
regardless now of danger, raced back to its home. “Perfectly all right,” said
Mr. Johnson, adjusting himself carefully. “You seem to be in a hurry.”

“Of course I’m
in a hurry,” said the young lady. “I’m late.”

She was
extremely cross and the frown between her eyes seemed well on its way to
becoming permanent. She had obviously awakened late, because she had not spent
any extra time in making herself look pretty, and her dress was plain and
unadorned with collar or brooch, and her lipstick was noticeably crooked. She
tried to brush past Mr. Johnson, but, risking her suspicious displeasure, he
took her arm and said, “Please wait.”

“Look,” she said
ominously, “I ran into you and your lawyer can see my lawyer and I will gladly
pay all damages and all inconveniences suffered therefrom but please this
minute let me go because
I am late”

“Late for what?”
said Mr. Johnson; he tried his winning smile on her but it did no more than
keep her, he suspected, from knocking him down again.

“Late for work,”
she said between her teeth. “Late for my employment. I have a job and if I am
late I lose exactly so much an hour and I cannot really afford what your
pleasant conversation is costing me, be it
ever so
pleasant.”

“I’ll pay for it,”
said Mr. Johnson. Now these were magic words, not necessarily because they were
true, or because she seriously expected Mr. Johnson to pay for anything, but
because Mr. Johnson’s flat statement, obviously innocent of irony, could not
be, coming from Mr. Johnson, anything but the statement of a responsible and
truthful and respectable man.

“What
do
you mean?” she asked.

“I said that
since I am obviously responsible for your being late I shall certainly pay for
it.”

“Don’t be silly,”
she said, and for the first time the frown disappeared. “
I
wouldn’t
expect you to pay for anything—a few minutes ago I was offering to pa
y you.
Anyway,” she added,
almost smiling, “it
was
my fault.”

“What happens if
you don’t go to work?”

She stared. “I
don’t get paid.”

“Precisely,” said
Mr. Johnson.

“What do you
mean, precisely? If I don’t show up at the office exactly twenty minutes ago I
lose a dollar and twenty cents an hour, or two cents a minute or...” She
thought. “...Almost a dime for the time I’ve spent talking to you.”

Mr. Johnson
laughed, and finally she laughed, too. “You’re late already,” he pointed out. “Will
you give me another four cents worth?”

“I don’t
understand why.”

“You’ll see,” Mr.
Johnson promised. He led her over to the side of the walk, next to the
buildings, and said, “Stand here,” and went out into the rush of people going
both ways. Selecting and considering, as one who must make a choice involving
perhaps whole years of lives, he estimated the people going by. Once he almost
moved, and then at the last minute thought better of it and drew back. Finally,
from half a block away, he saw what he wanted, and moved out into the center of
the traffic to intercept a young man, who was hurrying, and dressed as though
he had awakened late, and frowning.

“Oof,” said the
young man, because Mr. Johnson had thought of no better way to intercept anyone
than the one the young woman had unwittingly used upon him, “Where do you think
you’re going?” the young man demanded from the sidewalk.”

“I want to speak
to you,” said Mr. Johnson ominously.

The young man
got up nervously, dusting himself and eyeing Mr. Johnson. “What for?” he said. “What’d
I
do?”

“That’s what
bothers me most about people nowadays,” Mr. Johnson complained broadly to the
people passing. “No matter whether they’ve done anything or not, they always
figure someone’s after them. About what you’re going to do,” he told the young
man.

“Listen,” said
the young man, trying to brush past him, “I’m late, and I don’t have any time
to listen. Here’s a dime, now get going.”

“Thank you,” said
Mr. Johnson, pocketing the dime. “Look,” he said, “what happens if you stop running?”

“I’m late,” said
the young man, still trying to get past Mr. Johnson, who was unexpectedly
clinging.

“How much you
make an hour?” Mr. Johnson demanded.

“A communist,
are you?” said the young man. “Now will you please let me—”

“No,” said Mr.
Johnson insistently, “
how
much?”

“Dollar fifty,” said
the young man. “And
now
will you—”

“You like
adventure?”

The young man
stared, and, staring, found himself caught and held by Mr. Johnson’s genial
smile; he almost smiled back and then repressed it and made an effort to tear
away. “I got to
hurry”
he said.

“Mystery? Like
surprises? Unusual and exciting events?”

“You selling
something?”

“Sure,” said Mr.
Johnson. “You want to take a chance?”

The young man
hesitated, looked longingly up the avenue toward what might have been his
destination and then, when Mr. Johnson said, “
I’ll
pay for it,” with his
own peculiar convincing emphasis, turned and said, “Well, okay. But I got to
see
it first, what I’m
buying.”

Mr. Johnson,
breathing hard, led the young man over to the side where the girl was standing;
she had been watching with interest Mr. Johnson’s capture of the young man and
now, smiling timidly, she looked at Mr. Johnson as though prepared to be
surprised at nothing.

Mr. Johnson
reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. “Here,” he said, and handed a
bill to the girl. “This about equals your day’s pay.”