Mr. Scott was flexible—it was one of his great virtues as a salesman.
“Mr. Leverett,” he confessed simply, “I’ve never stood on this patio when I didn’t hear that sound. Sometimes it’s softer, sometimes louder, but it’s always there. I play it down, though, because most people don’t care for it.”
“Don’t blame you,” Mr. Leverett said. “Most people are a pack of fools or worse. Mr. Scott, are any of the people in the neighboring houses Communists to your knowledge?”
“No, sir!” Mr. Scott responded without an instant’s hesitation. “There’s not a Communist in Pacific Knolls. And that’s something, believe me, I’d never shade the truth on.”
“Believe you,” Mr. Leverett said. “The east’s packed with Communists. Seem scarcer out here. Mr. Scott, you’ve made yourself a deal. I’m taking a year’s lease on Peak House as furnished and at the figure we last mentioned.”
“Shake on it!” Mr. Scott boomed. “Mr. Leverett, you’re the kind of person Pacific Knolls wants.”
They shook. Mr. Leverett rocked on his heels, smiling up at the softly crackling wires with a satisfaction that was already a shade possessive.
“Fascinating thing, electricity,” he said. “No end to the tricks it can do or you can do with it. For instance, if a man wanted to take off for elsewhere in an elegant flash, he’d only have to wet down the lawn good and take twenty-five foot of heavy copper wire hi his two bare hands and whip the other end of it over those lines. Whang! Every bit as good as Sing Sing and a lot more satisfying to a man’s inner needs.”
Mr. Scott experienced a severe though momentary sinking of heart and even for one wildly frivolous moment considered welshing on the verbal agreement he’d just made. He remembered the red-haired lady who’d rented an apartment from him solely to have a quiet place in which to take an overdose of barbiturates. Then he reminded himself that Southern California is, according to a wise old saw, the home (actual or aimed-at) of the peach, the nut and the prune; and while he’d had few dealings with real or would-be starlets, he’d had enough of crackpots and retired grouches. Even if you piled fanciful death wishes and a passion for electricity atop rabid anti-communist and anti-machine manias, Mr. Leverett’s personality was no more than par for the S. Cal. course.
Mr. Leverett said shrewdly, “You’re worrying now, aren’t you, I might be a suicider? Don’t. Just like to think my thoughts. Speak them out too, however peculiar.”
Mr. Scott’s last fears melted and he became once more his pushingly congenial self as he invited Mr. Leverett down to the office to sign the papers.
Three days later he dropped by to see how the new tenant was making out and found him in the patio ensconced under the buzzing pole hi an old rocker.
“Take a chair and sit,” Mr. Leverett said, indicating one of the tubular modern pieces. “Mr. Scott, I want to tell you I’m finding Peak House every bit as restful as I hoped. I listen to the electricity and let my thoughts roam. Sometimes I hear voices hi the electricity— the wires talking, as they say. You’ve heard of people who hear voices in the wind?”
“Yes, I have,” Mr. Scott admitted a bit uncomfortably and then, recalling that Mr. Leverett’s check for the first quarter’s rent was safely cleared, was emboldened to speak his own thoughts. “But wind is a sound that varies a lot. That buzz is pretty monotonous to hear voices in.”
“Pshaw,” Mr. Leverett said with a little grin that made it impossible to tell how seriously he meant to be taken. “Bees are highly intelligent insects, entomologists say they even have a language, yet they do nothing but buzz. I hear voices in the electricity.”
He rocked silently for a while after that and Mr. Scott sat.
“Yep, I hear voices in the electricity,” Mr. Leverett said dreamily. “Electricity tells me how it roams the forty-eight states—even the forty-ninth by way of Canadian power lines. Electricity goes everywhere today—into our homes, every room of them, into our offices, into government buildings and military posts. And what it doesn’t learn that way it overhears by the trace of it that trickles through our phone lines and over our air waves. Phone electricity’s the little sister of power electricity, you might say, and little pitchers have big ears. Yep, electricity knows everything about us, our every last secret. Only it wouldn’t think of telling most people what it knows, because they believe electricity is a cold mechanical force. It isn’t—it’s warm and pulsing and sensitive and friendly underneath, like any other live thing.”
Mr. Scott, feeling a bit dreamy himself now, thought what good advertising copy that would make— imaginative stuff, folksy but poetic.
“And electricity’s got a mite of viciousness too,” Mr. Leverett continued. “You got to tame it. Know its ways, speak it fair, show no fear, make friends with it. Well now, Mr. Scott,” he said in a brisker voice, standing up, “I know you’ve come here to check up on how I’m caring for Peak House. So let me give you the tour.”
And in spite of Mr. Scott’s protests that he had no such inquisitive intention, Mr. Leverett did just that.
Once he paused for an explanation: “I’ve put away the electric blanket and the toaster. Don’t feel right about using electricity for menial jobs.”
As far as Mr. Scott could see, he had added nothing to the furnishings of Peak House beyond the rocking chair and a large collection of Indian arrow heads.
Mr. Scott must have talked about the latter when he got home, for a week later his nine-year-old son said to him, “Hey, Dad, you know that old guy you unloaded Peak House onto?”
“Rented is the only proper expression, Bobby.”
“Well, I went up to see his arrow heads. Dad, it turns out he’s a snake-charmer!”
Dear God, thought Mr. Scott, / knew there was going to be something really impossible about Leverett. Probably like hilltops because they draw snakes in hot weather.
“He didn’t charm a real snake, though, Dad, just an old extension cord. He squatted down on the floor— this was after he showed me those crumby arrow heads—and waved his hands back and forth over it and pretty soon the end with the little box on it started to move around on the floor and all of a sudden it lifted up, like a cobra out of a basket. It was real spooky!”
“I’ve seen that sort of trick,” Mr. Scott told Bobby. “There’s a fine thread attached to the end of the wire pulling it up.”
“I’d have seen a thread, Dad.”
“Not if it were the same color as the background,” Mr. Scott explained. Then he had a thought. “By the way Bobby, was the other end of the cord plugged in?”
“Oh it was, Dad! He said he couldn’t work the trick unless there was electricity in the cord. Because you see, Dad, he’s really an electricity-charmer. I just said snake-charmer to make it more exciting. Afterwards we went outside and he charmed electricity down out of the wires and made it crawl all over his body. You could see it crawl from part to part.”
“But how could you see that?” Mr. Scott demanded, struggling to keep his voice casual. He had a vision of Mr. Leverett standing dry and sedate, entwined by glimmering blue serpents with flashing diamond eyes and fangs that sparked.
“By the way it would make his hair stand on end, Dad. First on one side of his head, then on the other. Then he said, ‘Electricity, crawl down my chest,’ and a silk handkerchief hanging out of his top pocket stood out stiff and sharp. Dad, it was almost as good as the Museum of Science and Industry!”
Next day Mr. Scott dropped by Peak House, but he got no chance to ask his carefully thought-out questions, for Mr. Leverett greeted him with, “Reckon your boy told you about the little magic show I put on for him yesterday. I like children, Mr. Scott. Good Republican children like yours, that is.“ “Why yes, he did,” Mr. Scott admitted, disarmed and a bit flustered by the other’s openness.