He put his glass down on the table and sat down across from me. And as he did, those fox-like features fell into shape for me and I knew who he was.
"Alf Peterson!" I said, surprised. "Ed Adler and I were talking about you just an hour or so ago." He thrust his hand across the table and I grabbed it, glad to see him, glad for some strange reason for this man out of the past. His handclasp was firm and strong and I knew he was glad to see me, too.
"Good Lord," I said, "how long has it been?"
"Six years," he told me. "Maybe more than that." We sat there, looking at one another, in that awkward pause that falls between old friends after years of not seeing one another, neither one quite sure of what should be said, searching for some safe and common ground to begin a conversation.
"Back for a visit?" I inquired.
"Yeah," he said. "Vacation."
"You should have looked me up at once."
"Just got in three or four hours ago." It was strange, I thought, that he should have come back to Millville, for there was no one for him here. His folks had moved away, somewhere east, several years ago. They'd not been Millville people. They'd been in the village for only four or five years, while his father worked as an engineer on a highway project.
"You're going to stay with me," I said. "There's a lot of room. I am all alone."
"I'm at a motel west of town. Johnny's Motor Court, they call it."
"You should have come straight to my place."
"I would have," he said, "but I didn't know. I didn't know that you were in town. Even if you were, I thought you might be married. I didn't want to just come barging in."
I shook my head. "None of those things," I said.
We each had a drink of beer.
He put down his glass. "How are things going, Brad?" My mouth got set to tell a lie, and then I stopped. What the hell, I thought. This man across from me was old Alf Peterson, one of my best friends. There was no point in telling him a lie. There was no pride involved. He was too good a friend for pride to be involved.
"Not so good," I told him.
"I'm sorry, Brad."
"I made a big mistake," I said. "I should have gotten out of here. There's nothing here in Millville, not for anyone."
"You used to want to be an artist. You used to fool around with drawing and there were those pictures that you painted."
I made a motion to sweep it all away.
"Don't tell me," said Alf Peterson, "that you didn't even try. You were planning to go on to school that year we graduated."
"I did," I said. "I got in a year of it. An art school in Chicago. Then Dad passed away and Mother needed me. And there wasn't any money. I've often wondered how Dad got enough together to send me that one year."
"And your mother? You said you are alone."
"She died two years ago."
He nodded. "And you still run the greenhouse."
I shook my head. "I couldn't make a go of it. There wasn't much to go on; I've been selling insurance and trying to handle real estate. But it's no good, Alf. Tomorrow morning I'll close up the office."
"What then?" he asked.
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it." Alf signalled to Mae to bring another round of beers.
"You don't feel," he said, "there's anything to stay for."
I shook my head. "There's the house, of course. I would hate to sell it. If I left, I'd just lock it up. But there's no place I want to go, Alf, that's the hell of it. I don't know if I can quite explain. I've stayed here a year or two too long; I have Millville in my blood."
Alt nodded. "I think I understand. It got into my blood as well. That's why I came back. And now I wonder if I should have. Of course I'm glad to see you, and maybe some other people, but even so I have a feeling that I should not have come. The place seems sort of empty. Sucked dry, if you follow me. It's the same as it always was, I guess, but it has that empty feeling." Mae brought the beers and took the empty glasses.
"I have an idea," Alf said, "if you care to listen."
"Sure," I said. "Why not?"
"I'll be going back," he said, "in another day or so. Why don't you come with me? I'm working with a crazy sort of project. There would be room for you. I know the supervisor pretty well and I could speak to him."
"Doing what?" I asked. "Maybe it would be something that I couldn't do."
"I don't know," said All, "if I can explain it very logically. It's a research project — a thinking project. You sit in a booth and think."
"Think?"
"Yeah. It sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it's not the way it sounds. You sit down in a booth and you get a card that has a question or a problem printed on it. Then you think about that problem and you're supposed to think out loud, sort of talking to yourself, sometimes arguing with yourself. You're self-conscious to start with, but you get over that. The booth is soundproofed and no one can see or hear you. I suppose there is a recorder of some sort to take down what you say, but if there is, it's not in sight."
"And they pay you for this?"
"Rather well," said Alf. "A man can get along."
"But what is it for?" I asked.
"We don't know," said Alf. "Not that we haven't asked. But that's the one condition of the job — that you don't know what it's all about. It's an experiment of some sort, I'd guess. I imagine that it's financed by a university or some research outfit. We are told that if we knew what was going on it might influence the way we are thinking. A man might unconsciously pattern his thinking to fit the purpose of the research."
"And the results?" I asked.
"We aren't told results. Each thinker must have a certain kind of pattern and if you knew that pattern it might influence you. You might try to conform to your own personal pattern, to be consistent, or perhaps there'd be a tendency to break out of it. If you don't know the results, you can't guess at the pattern and there is then no danger." A truck went by in the street outside and its rumble was loud in the quietness of the tavern. And after it went past, there was a fly buzzing on the ceiling. The people up in front apparently had left — at least, they weren't talking any more. I looked around for Stiffy Grant and he wasn't there. I recalled now that I had not seen him and that was funny, for I'd just given him the dollar.
"Where is this place?" I asked.
"Mississippi. Greenbriar, Mississippi. It's just a little place. Come to think of it, it's a lot like Millville. Just a little village, quiet and dusty and hot. My God, how hot it is. But the project centre is air conditioned. It isn't bad in there."
"A little town," I said. "Funny that there'd be a place like that in a little town."
"Camouflage," said All. "They want to keep it quiet. We're asked not to talk about it. And how could you hide it better than in a little place like that? No one would ever think there'd be a project of that sort in a stuck-off village."
"But you were a stranger…"
"Sure, and that's how I got the job. They didn't want too many local people. All of them would have a tendency to think pretty much alike. They were glad to get someone from out of town. There are quite a lot of out-of-towners in the project."
"And before that?"
"Before that? Oh, yes, I see. Before that there was everything. I floated, bummed around. Never stayed too long in any spot. A job for a few weeks here, then a job for a few weeks a little farther on. I guess you could say I drifted. Worked on a concrete gang for a while, washed dishes for a while when the cash ran out and there was nothing else to do. Was a gardener on a big estate down in Louisville for a month or two. Picked tomatoes for a while, but you can starve at that sort of work, so I moved on. Did a lot of things. But I've been down in Greenbriar for eleven months."