I wonder what that means, Stuart thought. It sounds like a megalomaniacal daydream, where he rules the world. Compensation because he’s defective… just what you’d expect a phoce to imagine.
It did not seem so interesting to Stuart, now that he had realized that. He moved away, back toward his booth, where his lunch waited.
The frycook was saying, “Is it a good world, there? Tell me if it’s better than this or worse.”
“Worse,” Hoppy said. And then he said, “Worse for you. It’s what everybody deserves; it’s justice.”
“Better for you, then,” Connie said, in a questioning way.
“Yes,” the phoce said.
“Listen,” Stuart said to the waitress from where he sat, “can’t you see it’s just psychological compensation because he’s defective? It’s how he keeps going, imagining that. I don’t see how you can take it seriously.”
“I don’t take it seriously,” Connie said. “But it’s interesting; I’ve read about mediums, like they’re called. They go into trances and can commune with the next world, like he’s doing. Haven’t you ever heard of that? It’s a scientific fact, I think. Isn’t it, Tony?” She turned to the frycook for support.
“I don’t know,” Tony said moodily, walking slowly back to his grill to pick up his spatula.
The phoce, now, seemed to have fallen deeper into his beer-induced trance; he seemed asleep, in fact, no longer seeing anything or at least no longer conscious of the people around him or attempting to communicate his vision– or whatever it was—to them. The séance was over.
Well, you never know, Stuart said to himself. I wonder what Fergesson would say to this; I wonder if he’d want somebody who’s not only physically crippled but an epileptic or whatever working for him. I wonder if I should or shouldn’t mention this to him when I get back to the store. If he hears he’ll probably fire Hoppy right on the spot; I wouldn’t blame him. So maybe I better not say anything, he decided.
The phoce’s eyes opened. In a weak voice he said, “Stuart.”
“What do you want?” Stuart answered.
“I—” The phoce sounded frail, almost ill, as if the experience had been too much for his weak body. “Listen, I wonder…” He drew himself up, then rolled his cart clowly over to Stuart’s booth. In a low voice he said, “I wonder, could you push me back to the store? Not right now but when you’re through eating. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Why?” Stuart said. “Can’t you do it?”
“I don’t feel good,” the phoce said.
Stuart nodded. “Okay. When I’m finished eating.”
“Thanks,” the phoce said.
Ignoring him stonily, Stuart continued eating. I wish it wasn’t obvious I know him, he thought to himself. I wish he’d wheel off and wait somewhere else. But the phoce had sat down, rubbing his forehead with the left extensor, looking too spent to move away again, even to his place at the other end of the coffee shop.
Later, as Stuart pushed the phoce in his cart back up the sidewalk toward Modern TV, the phoce said in a low voice,
“It’s a big responsibility, to see beyond.”
“Yeah,” Stuart murmured, maintaining ‘his remoteness, doing his duty only, no more; he pushed the cart and that was all. Just because I’m pushing you, he thought, doesn’t mean I have to converse with you.
“The first time it happened,” the phoce went on, but Stuart cut him off.
“I’m not interested.” He added, “I just want to get back and see if they fired off the rocket yet. It’s probably in orbit by now.”
“I guess so,” the phoce said.
At the intersection they waited for the light to change.
“The first time it happened,” the phoce said, “it scared me.” As Stuart pushed him across the street he went on, “I knew right away what it was I was seeing. The smoke and the fires… everything all smudged. Like a mining pit or a place where they process slag. Awful.” He shuddered. “But is this so terrffic the way it is now? Not for me.”
“I like it,” Stuart said shortly.
“Naturally,” the phoce said. “You’re -not a biological sport.”
Stuart grunted.
“You know what my earliest memory from childhood is?” the phoce said in a quiet voice. “Being carried to church in a blanket. Laid out on a pew like a—” His voice broke. “Carried in and out in that blanket, inside it, so no one could see me. That was my mother’s idea. She couldn’t stand my father carrying me on his back, where people could see.”
Stuart grunted.
“This is a terrible world,” the phoce said. “Once you Negroes had to suffer; if you lived in the South you’d be suffering now. You forget all about that because they let you forget, but me-they don’t let me forget. Anyhow, I don’t want to forget, about myself I mean. In the next world it all will be different. You’ll find out because you’ll be there, too.”
“No,” Stuart said. “When I die I’m dead; I don’t have a soul.”
“You, too,” the phoce said, and he seemed to be gloating; his voice had a malicious, cruel tinge of relish. “I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because,” the phoce said, “one time I saw you.”
Frightened in spite of himself, Stuart said, “Aw—”
“One time,” the phoce insisted, more firmly now. “It was you; no doubt about it. Want to know what you were doing?”
“Naw.”
“You were eating a dead rat raw.”
Stuart said nothing, but he pushed the cart faster and faster, down the sidewalk as fast as he could go, back to the store.
When they got back to the store they found the crowd of people still in front of the TV set. And the rocket had been fired off; it had just left the ground, and it was not known yet if the stages had performed properly.
Hoppy wheeled himself back downstairs to the repair department and Stuart remained upstairs before the set. But the phoce’s words had upset him so much that he could not concentrate on the TV screen; he wandered off, and then, seeing Fergesson in the upstairs office, walked that way.
At the office desk, Fergesson sat going over a pile of contracts and charge tags. Stuart approached him “Listen. That goddam Hoppy—”
Fergesson glanced up from his tags.
“Forget it,” Stuart said, feeling discouraged.
“I watched him work,” Fergesson said. “I went downstairs and watched him when he didn’t know I was. I agree there’s something unsavory about it. But he’s competent; I looked at what he’d done, and it was done right, and that’s all that counts.” He scowled at Stuart.
“I said forget it,” Stuart said.
“Did they fire the rocket off?”
“Just now.”
“We haven’t moved a single item today, because of that circus,” Fergesson said.
“Circus!” He seated himself in the chair opposite Fergesson, in such a manner that he could watch the floor below them. “It’s history!”
“It’s a way of you guys standing around doing nothing.” Once more Fergesson sorted through the tags.
“Listen, I’ll tell you what Hoppy did.” Stuart leaned toward him. “Up at the café, at Fred’s Fine Foods.”
Fergesson eyed him, pausing in his work.
“He had a fit,” Stuart said. “He went nuts.”
“No kidding.” Fergesson looked displeased.
“He passed Out because-he had a beer. And he saw beyond the grave. He saw me eating a dead rat. And it was raw. So he said.”
Fergesson laughed.
“It’s not funny.”
“Sure it is. He’s razzing you back for all the razzing you dish out and you’re so dumb you get taken in.”
“He really saw it,” Stuart said stubbornly.
“Did he see me?”
“He didn’t say. He does that up there all the time; they give him beers and he goes into his trance and they ask questions. About what it’s like. I just happened to be there, eating lunch. I didn’t even see him leave the store; I didn’t know he would be there.”