Part 4 (1/2)

She did not see Robert pick up the knife and hold it in his hand.

Robert had stopped thinking. Snowy flecks of saliva dotted his face, and his eyes had no life to them. He listened to his friends. The puppies, crawling about his feet, yipping painfully. The birds, dropping their b.l.o.o.d.y wings, flying crazily about his head, screaming, calling. And now the frogs, hopping, croaking.

He did not think. He listened.

”Yes . . . . . . yes.”

Miss Gentilbelle turned quickly, and her laughter died as she did so. She threw her hands out and cried--but the knife was already sliding through her pale dress, and through her pale flesh.

The birds screeched and the puppies howled and the frogs croaked. Yes, yes, yes, yes!And the knife came out and went in again, it came out and went in again.

Then Robert slipped on the wet floor and fell. He rolled over and over, crying softly, and laughing, and making other sounds.

Miss Gentilbelle said nothing. Her thin white fingers were curled about the handle of the butcher knife, but she no longer tried to pull it from her stomach.

Presently her wracked breathing stopped.

Robert rolled into a corner, and drew his legs and arms about him, tight.

He held the dead frog to his face and whispered to it . . .

The large red-faced man walked heavily through the cypressed land. He skillfully avoided bushes and pits and came, finally, to the clearing that was the entrance to the great house.

He walked to the wrought-iron gate that joined to the high brick wall that was topped with broken gla.s.s and curved spikes.

He opened the gate, crossed the yard, and went up the decaying, splintered steps. He applied a key to the old oak door.

”Minnie!” he called. ”Got a little news for you! Hey, Minnie!”

The silent stairs answered him.

He went into the living room, upstairs to Robert's room.

”Minnie!”

He walked back to the hallway. An uncertain grin covered his face. ”They're not going to let you keep him! How's that? How do you like it?”

The warm bayou wind sighed through the shutters.

The man made fists with his fingers, paused, walked down the hall, and opened the kitchen door.

The sickly odor went to his nostrils first. The words ”Jesus G.o.d' formed on his lips, but he made no sound.

He stood very still, for a long time.

The blood on Miss Gentilbelle's face had dried, but on her hands and where it had gathered on the floor, it was still moist.

Her fingers were stiff around the knife.

The man's eyes traveled to the far corner. Robert was huddled there, chanting softly--flat, dead, singsong words.

”. . . wicked . . . must be punished . . . wicked girl . . .”

Robert threw his head back and smiled up at the ceiling.

The man walked to the corner and lifted Robert to his chest and held him tightly, crus.h.i.+ngly.

”Bobbie,” he said. ”Bobbie. Bobbie. Bobbie.”

The warm night wind turned cold.

It sang through the halls and through the rooms of the great house in the forest.

And then it left, frightened and alone.

[CharlesBeaumontSelectedStories-pic1.jpg]

Introduction to

THE VANIs.h.i.+NG AMERICAN.

by John Tomerlin

On his way home, after working late at the office, Mr. Minch.e.l.l discovers that he is, in fact, vanis.h.i.+ng. To his employer, store clerks, bartenders--even his own family--he either has become literally invisible, or so insignificant that his presence no longer can be detected. Only through an act of daring, an a.s.sertion of his individuality, does Mr. Minch.e.l.l reappear; gain attention; prove his existence.

The pun is a recurrent theme in Charles Beaumont's t.i.tles--”Fair Lady” being another, obvious, example; ”Point of Honor” and Black Country” two less apparent ones--and is some indication of the sort of writer he was. A storyteller, a spinner of yarns, balladeer, prophet; a discoverer of the wonderous amidst the commonplace. His ideas sprang from the germinal ”What if...?”

What if h.o.m.os.e.xuality were the norm instead of inversion; what if a woman sought rape instead of avoiding it; and what if, in lieu of the a.s.similation of aboriginals, an American actually _did_ vanish?

The sometimes-obvious answers were couched in terms of characters and events so unexpected (occasionally unpleasant, frequently macabre, yet invariably real) that they laid bare new truths and new dimensions of understanding.

This is because the pure act of imagination that is a Beaumont story is deeply rooted in personal history. The office where Mr. Minch.e.l.l works adding up figures on a manifest, is the office of a southern California trucking firm for which Charles performed similar, agonizing services in 1950. ”King Richard”

is one of the stone lions at the entrance to the public library on 5th Avenue near 42nd Street, which he often visited while living in New York.

To those who knew him best, the trappings and imagery of his stories are fun house mirrors through which his real life can be glimpsed: people, places, actual events. There was the early loss of his father, and strained relations.h.i.+ps with his mother; a pair of maiden aunts in Was.h.i.+ngton who raised him--eccentrics to say the least; and periods of serious illnesses as a child. All appear repeatedly in his stories.

The most familiar character of all, though, one that appears time and again in different guises, is alone or has only one other equally powerless person to talk to; is sometimes the possessor of a unique gift or talent, sometimes not; and must, through an act of daring or personal risk, achieve recognition and appreciation.

”I'll be seeing you,” the stranger in the crowd says. ”That's right,” Mr. Minch.e.l.l says from his seat atop the lion. ”You'll be seeing me.”

Fear not, old friend, we see you still.

THE VANIs.h.i.+NG AMERICAN.