Morgan sighed and looked past the messenger at the endless row of streetlights leading down into the city. “Oh… oh, I appreciate your going to this trouble for me, delivering such a personal message and all.” He stared at the messenger’s sweaty face. “You’re really too kind.”
At four in the morning the messenger had returned. He was pale, his eyes bright red from lack of sleep. “Oh… ohhhh. I’m so sorry. You see, they keep calling me, telling me to come down here. With these horrible messages. I don’t understand it.”
“And who, exactly, are they?”
The Western Union man just stood there, watching him.
“Who?”
“I… I don’t know.”
Morgan looked down at the messenger’s hands. “You’re holding the message in your hands.” He smiled at the little man. “I’d suggest you read it.”
“I haven’t slept for days,” the man whispered, shaking his head.
“You’re a very dedicated man. Won’t you come in?”
The messenger appeared suddenly frightened. “No… oh, no. I’ll just deliver the message and be off. I don’t… don’t want to bother you longer than necessary.”
“And the message?”
The messenger read slowly. “Your parents have murdered each other. They… they were found with their fingers wrapped around each other’s throats. You’re all alone now.” He opened his mouth, gulping for air. “It says here… the message is dated fifteen years ago!”
“You do well at your assigned task. Your employers must be quite pleased with you.”
The Western Union man shuffled his feet, staring at the welcome mat beneath them. “I suppose I should be leaving you… to your grief.”
At six in the morning the messenger returned. He was agitated, running his thin hands up and down the front of his uniform blazer. He squinted as if he could barely see.
“Why?” The messenger gazed at him helplessly. “Why does this continue to happen? I haven’t slept. I don’t even remember how I received these messages. I lie down to sleep and the next thing I know I’m ringing your doorbell, and you’re answering the door.”
Morgan looked at him impatiently. “You have your task to perform.”
The messenger clutched at Morgan’s sleeve. “Please. Please, this has to stop.”
“You have your sacred task. Read me the message.”
“I really need this job, you know? I have an old mother to support. And the prices these days, you know what I mean? It takes money.”
“Just read me the message. I don’t need to know all that; I don’t want to know all that. It’s not your job to relay your life history to your customers.”
“There’s so little caring in the world. We’re strangers to other people.”
“That’s simply human nature, my man. Just read me the message.”
The messenger moaned and stared at the paper. After a few seconds Morgan reached over and pulled the paper out of his hands, almost tearing it, the messenger’s grip was so tight.
Morgan began to read. “You will commit murder.”
The Western Union man whimpered. Morgan put his hand on the little man’s shoulder. “You’re a fine messenger, a credit to the company.”
“I’m really tired. This must stop.”
“Get some rest. Drink some coffee. Soon you must make your rounds again.”
Morgan closed the door on the slumped figure of the messenger and walked back into his study.
He sat at his desk. He gazed up into the memorial alcove he had prepared above the desk, at the black-framed pictures of his parents, his dead wife and children. “You do a good job, little man.”
He ran his narrow fingers over the top message scribbled hastily on his message pad. Morgan read the message silently to himself.
You will be cruel. You will have no compassion. The world has treated you badly.
At seven the doorbell rang once again. He was chuckling as he walked down the hallway from his office. By the time he reached the door there were tears in his eyes from the paroxysms of laughter wracking his body. He was barely able to nudge open the door, so great was his hilarity.
The Western Union man was down on his knees in front of the door, one hand out beseechingly, his eyes white coins, speechless. The little man was weeping.
Morgan howled with a raw laughter as he removed the gun from his coat, aimed, and pulled the trigger.
THE HIJACKER
He thinks that the stewardess is pretty enough to be a high-fashion model. “You’re pretty enough to be a high-fashion model,” he tells her in a cheery voice. She smiles at him, although he knows she must think him a pathetic youth with his greasy hair and vaguely foreign accent—obviously she has heard this many times before—and her expression tells him everything. She’s incapable of secrecy. He almost asks her to go out with him after they land—a fleeting insanity—he has never, ever, asked a woman for a date before, though he is almost thirty, and this would not be the time to begin.
He spreads his overcoat wide to show her the twenty sticks of dynamite, the coiled wire, and timer strapped to his flat, Italian belly. She falls to her knees in submission and once again he tells her she might be a model, she needn’t be here at all—in the clutches of this mad man, this human bomb—she could be modeling expensive gowns at fifty dollars per hour, courted by actors, recognized by the most casual passer-by as a real live “cover girl.” She takes this proposition more seriously now, nodding her head stonily as he dances up and down the aisles of the plane, his dynamite jiggling lewdly.
He listens to the sound of his own voice. It always amazes him, so soft and gentle. Not the voice of one who might commit so desperate an act. But, he had failed his religion, he knew that. He hadn’t had it in him to become the priest. And perhaps his friends were right; perhaps he was homosexual? What would his mother think?
His body feels very, very heavy.
He had been followed—that much was obvious. Explosives had been wired to his automobile ignition, poison laced through his broccoli and mint tea. The saboteurs were men like his father, violent drinkers, hostile toward every good impulse in mankind. He sorely wished he could have made it to the priesthood.
He thinks back to the night before. He couldn’t sleep. He knew something awful was about to happen.
The captain begs and pleads with him, a nobody, the sickly Italian lad, although a son of hearty stock who might have become a prize fighter if this had only been the fifties, to sit down, let him turn the plane back before it’s too late. The young hijacker knows that the captain has been through many such hijackings, but now he is old, his hands shake, his wife has left him, or so the young hijacker imagines, his children hate him—in short, he has lost his nerve. The co-pilot, who despises this disgusting coward, surely must envy the Italian boy from the Bronx. He must realize that the hijacker now controls the entire plane; he controls the destinies of two hundred people. The handsome Italian boy smiles, and offers the co-pilot the position of Air Force general when they land.
He leans against an empty seat, closing his eyes and reliving momentarily the great exhilaration he felt upon breaking free of the ground, like an enormous balloon popping, as he escaped into thin air.
Perhaps he would land in Cuba. Perhaps the godless Communists would put him to death. They would bear down on him with tanks and flamethrowers, and he would be unable to move. His feet would be glued to the spot. He would weigh ten tons.
He had been a good boy. He didn’t use bad words and he didn’t laugh at dirty jokes. His only vice was sleepwalking.