This morning they nodded to one another and read their folded papers as down the tracks came the Chicago express, two hours behind schedule and going about ninety miles an hour. Nailles grabbed for his hat, folded his paper and shut his eyes because the noise and commotion of the express was like being in the vortex of some dirty wind tunnel. When the express had passed he opened his eyes and saw the train helling off into the distance, gaily waving a plume of steam like a pig's tail. He had started to read the Times again when he noticed that Harry Shinglehouse had vanished. He swung around to see if Harry had changed his position but he was not on the platform. Looking back to the tracks he saw a highly polished brown loafer lying on the cinders. "My God," he finally said. "That fellow. What's his name. He was sucked under the train."
"Hmmmmm," said Hammer, lowering his paper.
"Shinglehouse. He's gone."
"By Jesus, so he has," said Hammer.
"Shinglehouse," Nailles shouted. "He's dead. I mean he was killed."
"What'll we do," said Hammer.
"I'll call the police," Nailles said. "I'd better call the police."
There was a telephone booth at the end of the platform and he ran to this and got the police.
"Patrolman Shea speaking," said a voice.
"Look," Nailles said. "This is Eliot Nailles. I'm at the station. The Chicago train just came through and Shinglehouse was sucked under the train."
"I don't get it," said the patrolman. Nailles had to repeat his story three times. The 7:56 came in and everyone but Hammer and Nailles boarded it. A few minutes later they heard the siren and saw the lights of a police car. Two policemen ran out onto the platform. "He was standing right there," Nailles said. "There's his loafer. He was standing right there and the train came through and he was gone."
"Where's the body?"
"I don't know," Nailles said.
"Well I guess you two had better come back to the stationhouse with me for questioning."
"But we have to go to work," Hammer said. "I have a meeting."
"So have I," Nailles said, "and anyhow we don't know anything about it. Why don't you call the railroad police?" This was a shot in the dark but someone had to do something to make that moment continuous and the police seemed grateful for the suggestion. One of them picked the shoe off the tracks and they went back to the patrol car. Suddenly Hammer began to cry. "There," Nailles said. "There. It's all right. Was he a friend of yours?"
"No," Hammer sobbed. "I didn't know the poor bastard."
"There, there," Nailles said, putting an arm around Hammer. They were merely acquaintances but the casualty had thrust them into an intimate relationship. Hammer controlled his sobbing but Nailles kept an arm around his shoulders and this curious couple were seen by the passengers of the 8:11. Nailles and Hammer rode into the city together, stunned by the mysteriousness of life and death.
The evening paper carried the story. The vanished man had been unemployed and had left a wife and three children. He had once run for town council on the Republican ticket and had formerly been in advertising. Nailles wanted to call the widow but he could think of nothing to say.
The next morning was dark and rainy. He overslept and missed the express train that usually took him to his office. The local that he traveled on made twenty-two stops between Bullet Park and Grand Central Station. The dirty train windows and the overcast sky seemed to have eclipsed his spirits. He remembered Shinglehouse's loafer. He felt peculiar. He read his Times but the news in the paper, with the exception of the sporting page, seemed to be news from another planet. A maniac with a carbine had massacred seventeen people in a park in Dallas, including an archbishop who had been walking his dog. The usual wars were raging. The Musicians' Union, Airplane Pilots, Firemen, Circus Performers and Deckhands were all threatening to strike. The White House secretary denied rumors of a fistfight between the President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. Drought threatened the wheat crop. An unidentified flying object had been seen in Ohio. A hairdresser in Linden, New Jersey, had shot his wife, his four children, his poodle and himself. A three-day smog in Chicago had paralyzed most transportation and closed many businesses. Nailles felt uncheerful and tried the naive expedient of bolstering his spirits by assessing his good fortune. Had he been indicted for grand larceny? No. Had he been murdered in a park? No. Had he been trapped in a burning building, lost on a glacier, bitten by a rabid dog? No. Then why wasn't he more cheerful?
The train stopped at Tremont Point, Greenacres, Lascalles, Meadowvale and Clear Haven. The trip seemed intolerable, but why? He had made it a thousand times. Why should this link between his home and his office seem torturous? His breathing was heavy, his palms were wet, there was a quaking feeling in his gut and the dark rain seemed to beat upon his heart. When the train reached Longbrook, Nailles suddenly grabbed his raincoat, pushed his way past the oncoming passengers and left the car. The train coasted on and he found himself alone in a suburban railway station at half past eight in the morning.
Nailles's sense of being alive was to bridge or link the disparate environments and rhythms of his world, and one of his principal bridges-that between his white house and his office-had collapsed. He stepped out of the rain into the waiting room. What he needed was guts but where could he find them? He could not summon them, that much was clear. Could he develop them in a gymnasium, win them in a lottery, buy them from a mail-order house or receive them as a heavenly dispensation? There was another local in fifteen minutes and commuters had begun to gather for this. Nailles boarded it, trying to sell himself a specious brand of cheerfulness. He stayed on that local for two more stops and got off again. Station by station he made a cruel pilgrimage into the city.
After dinner that night Nailles poured a strong whiskey and took it up to Tony's room. He sat in a chair beside Tony's bed as he had done so many times in the past when he used to read to the boy Treasure Island.
"How do you feel, Sonny?"
"About the same."
"Did you eat any supper?"
"Yes."
"There was a long thing in the paper on Sunday about how your generation thinks the world is terribly compromised. Do you think the world is terribly compromised?"
"No, I don't think it's compromised."
"You don't think this has anything to do with your trouble?"
"I love the world. I just feel sad, that's all."
"Well I suppose there's plenty to be sad about if you look around, but it makes me sore to have people always chopping at the suburbs. I've never understood why. When you go to the theater they're always chopping at the suburbs but I can't see that playing golf and raising flowers is depraved. The living is cheaper out here and I'd be lost if I couldn't get some exercise. People seem to make some connection between respectability and moral purity that I don't get. For instance, the fact that I wear a vest doesn't necessarily mean that I claim to be pure in heart. That doesn't follow. All kinds of scandalous things happen everywhere but just because they happen to people who have flower gardens doesn't mean that flower gardens are wicked. For instance, Charlie Stringer was indicted last year for sending pornography through the mails. He claims to be some kind of a publisher and I guess dirty pictures is his business. He lives in one of those Tudor houses on Hansen Circle and he has a pretty wife and three children. Flower gardens. Trees. A couple of poodles. The critics would say: Look, look, look what a big facade he's constructed to conceal the fact that he deals in obsceneness and corruption, but what's the point? Why should a man who deals in filth have to live in a cesspool? He's a bastard for sure but why shouldn't a bastard want to water his grass and play softball with the kids?