"She won't do that," Chapman told him. "And I won't, either. You were the only man who was willing to go to bat for me."
"I didn't do a thing for you. I couldn't do a thing for you. It was just a four-flushing gesture. I knew at the time I couldn't help you."
"Mister," said Chapman, "that doesn't make a bit of difference. No matter what you could have done, you were willing to commit yourself. You won't get me to forget it."
"Well, then, do me a favor. You and Ann, too. Keep away from me. Don't get messed up with me. I don't want you to get hurt and if you keep fooling around, you will. There is no one who can be of any help. If it ever gets too bad, I have an easy out."
"I won't let you cut yourself off entirely," insisted Chapman. "Let's make a deal. I won't try to contact you again, but if you ever need anything, any kind of help, let's set up a place where you can find me."
"I won't come for help," said Frost, "but if it'll make you feel any better…"
"You'll be staying around this neighborhood?" "I doubt it. But I can always come back to it." "About three blocks from here there's a small neighborhood library. And a bench in front of it." "I know the place," said Frost.
"I'll be there every evening between nine and ten, say on Wednesdays and Saturdays."
"That's too much trouble for you. How long would you keep on coming back? Six months? A year? Two years?"
"So let's make a bargain on that, too. Six months. If you don't show up in six months, I'll know you aren't going to."
"You're a damned fool," said Frost. "I'm not going to contact you. I'm going to make a point not to. I don't want you involved. And, anyhow, six months is too long. In another month or so I'll have to start drifting south. I don't want to get caught up here by winter." "Ann sent you a package," said Chapman, changing the subject to indicate that he would not yield on the contact business. "It's over there by the packing case. Needle and thread. Matches. Pair of scissors. A knife. Stuff like that she thought you might use. I guess there's some cans of food as well."
Frost nodded. "Tell Ann I'm thankful for the package. I'm grateful for what she tried to do. But tell her, for the love of God, to stand clear. Don't do any more. Don't try to do any more."
Chapman said, gravely, "I'll tell her." "And thanks to you, too. You shouldn't have let her talk you into it."
"Once I knew about you," said Chapman, "she couldn't have talked me out of it. But answer me a question, if you will. How did it all happen? You told Ann you were in some sort of trouble. I figure someone framed you."
"Someone did," said Frost. "You want to tell me more?"
"No, I don't. Ann and you probably would go digging into it, trying to prove it. And it can't be done. No one can. It's all down, legal, on the books." "So you'll just sit here doing nothing?" "Not entirely. Some day I'll figure out how to even up the score with Appleton…" "Then it was Appleton?"
"Who else?" asked Frost. "And maybe you ought to get out of here. You make me talk too much. Stay around and I'll spill my guts and I don't want that."
Chapman got up slowly. "O.K.," he said, Til go. I hate to. Doesn't seem I have done too much."
He started to move away, then stopped and turned around.
"I have a gun," he said. "If you…" Frost shook his head emphatically. "No," he said, fiercely. "What do you want me to do, cancel out the one right that I have? You'd better get rid of it. You know that they're illegal—any kind of gun."
"It doesn't bother me," said Chapman. I'll keep it. I have even less to lose than you have." He turned around and moved toward the door. "Chapman," Frost said softly. "Yes."
"Thanks for coming. It was good of you. I'm not quite myself."
"I understand," said Chapman.
Then he was through the door and pulling it shut behind him. Frost listened to him going up the stairs and out into the alley and finally the footfalls faded into silence.
23
Would the lilacs smell as sweet, Mona Campbell wondered, when spring came around a thousand years from now? Could one still catch the breath in wonder at the sight of a meadow filled with daffodils, a thousand years from now? If there were, a thousand years from now, any room on earth for lilac or for daffodil.
She sat, rocking gently back and forth, in the rocker she'd found up in the attic and had carried down the stairs to wipe the dust and cobwebs off it, looking out the window at the full-leafed wonder of a late June dusk. In a little while there would be lightning bugs and the first faint smell of fog from the river valley.
She sat and rocked and the soft benediction of the summer evening fell in all its fullness on her, and in all the world, for this moment, there was nothing more important than just sitting there, rocking back and forth, looking out the window at the green that turned to black as the shadows deepened and the cool of the night hours settled down to chase away all but the memory of the hot blast of the daytime sun.
But here, right now, whispered one small portion of her brain that fought to stay efficient, was the place and time to start forming the decision that she had to make.
But the whisper died in the silence and the deepening darkness. And the fantasy, although it was far from fantasy, crept in to take the place of the brain's efficiency.
A fantasy, she thought—of course it's fantasy, it must be fantasy. For in this place and time, in this dusk, in this smell of new and damp and reawakened earth, it could never be. For here the smell of vital earth, the flitting lantern of the firefly, the appointed fall of dusk and the appointed brightening of the dawn spoke of cycles, and life and death must also be an intrinsic part of such a cosmic cycling. And this was the thought, she told herself, that she must remember through all the aeons that stretched ahead of mankind—not as a race, not as a species, but as individuals. But it was a thought, she knew, that she would not remember. For it was not a thought of youth. Rather, it was the thought of someone such as she—a middle-aged and dowdy woman who too long had been concerned with matters that were unwomanly. Mathematics—what had a woman to do with mathematics other than the basic arithmetic of fitting the family's budget to the family's need? And what had a woman to do with life other than the giving and the rearing of new life? And why must she, Mona Campbell, be compelled to reach a decision, all alone, that only God Himself (if, indeed, there were such an entity as God) should be called upon to make?
If she could only know what the world might be like a thousand years from now—not in its external aspects, for its external aspects would be no more than cultural coloration, but what it might be like in the core of mankind, in the hearts of men and women. What kind of world could there be, or would there be, when all of humankind lived eternally and in the flesh and guise of youth? Would wisdom come without gray hair and wrinkled brow? Would the old, long thoughts of aged people disappear and die in the exuberance of the flesh and gland and muscle that renewed itself? Would the gentleness and the tolerance and the long reflective thought no longer be with mankind? Would man ever again be able to sit in a rocking chair and gaze out an open window at the advent of the evening and find there, in that advancement of the darkness, an occasion for contentment?
Or might youth itself be no more than a trapping and a coloration? Would mankind finally sink into an atmosphere of futility, impatient with the endless days, disillusioned and disappointed with eternity? After the millionth mating, after the billionth piece of pumpkin pie, after a hundred thousand springs with lilac and with daffodil, what would there be left? Did man need more than life? Could he do with less than death? And these were questions, she knew, that she could not answer, but they were questions to which, in fairness to herself, if not to all those others, answers must be found.