Wilson looked like a Martian to me. At least, what I had always seen represented in sf magazines as a Martian: skinny, large head, receding hairline, big eyes. He was, to me, a weird and fascinating man. He was into the Fortean Society and all its unexplained phenomena, Korzybskian General Semantics, heavyweight physical sciences, occultism, and he filed his socks under "S" in the filing cabinet. His place was a rabbit hole for me, and I fell down that hole willingly because my Dad was recently dead, I was lost and miserable, doing rotten in school, relating only to science fiction and the emerging world of sf fandom. So Al Wilson came around at just the right time. He wasn"t close enough physically or emotionally to be a father image for me, but he was the guru I needed at just that time.
So I started hanging around Al"s place all the time. He had a Multilith machine right in the middle of the floor, a Varityper for typing up issues of the club newsletter, and stacks of erudite and obscure books, like Tiffany Thayer"s novels, Fort"s studies of "excluded facts," what he called "a procession of the d.a.m.ned," James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft, Lincoln Barnett ... that whole crowd. There was a cot in the middle of the "apartment." No sheets. Al slept whenever he felt like it, ate whenever he felt like it, operated off no known clock.
One day, after I"d been playing Roo to his Kanga for some months, Al sat me down and asked me if I wanted a job.
I was seventeen, my Dad had died leaving my mother and myself not too well off, we were living in a resident hotel on East 105th Street, The Sovereign (where Joel Grey also lived when he was Joel Katz), and the best job I"d been able to get was in a bookstore. "How much and what do I have to do?"
"Two hundred a month and you"ll be sort of a bodyguard for me. Run errands. Be around when I need you."
I looked at him. Weird eyes looked back.
Al Wilson worked on the a.s.sembly line at Thompson Products--or maybe it was Fisher Body in East Cleveland, I don"t remember exactly--and I knew he made a good wage, but two hundred a month for a gopher?
I said okay, and went to work for Al Wilson.
I didn"t tell my Mother. She was always a little leery about those oddball sf people I was hanging out with, and if I"d told her I was making fifty a week, without deductions , for bodyguarding a Martian, she"d have ... well, she"d have done what she did later. So I kept it quiet and slipped a few bills into her purse when she wasn"t looking. Made up in a small way for all the money I"d stolen out of her purse when she was sleeping.
I ran peculiar errands for Al Wilson. Food, sometimes, which wasn"t peculiar, but books of a very peculiar nature other times, and strange messages to even stranger people. Then one day, Al brought home a package and unwrapped it on the feeder ledge of the Multilith. I came over and watched; it was a gun. And a shoulder holster. "What"s that for?"
He looked at me with those weird eyes and said, "You"ll need to wear this from now on when you"re running errands for me."
"To the supermarket?""
"You"ll be flying out this week. Other things."
So I started packing the heat. I thought it was funny; and I dug playing pistolero. Sue me.
He also said, "From time to time I want you to scare me." It was in one of those moments when Al wasn"t goofing or being weird. It was one of his pathetic moments. He was a lonely man leading an isolated life. He"d been married and divorced long before--even though he was only in his thirties--and now he was all alone inside his skull, thinking things no one else could understand, making friendships slowly, trusting no one. I didn"t ask him what he meant, I knew. He wanted me to feed his strangeness, whatever that was.
So I would leave, during the dark of the evening, and I"d go down the long hall and down the stairs and go outside and around the side of the building and there, where they"d rolled up the awnings that shaded the big display windows of the supermarket, I"d climb up the ratchet bar that raised and lowered the canvas awnings, and I"d stand on the rolled-up awning, which brought my face to just the level of the second storey window, and I"d make hideous sounds and tap on the windows and scream and scare the h.e.l.l out of him.
Did he know it was me? Of course he knew. He"d asked me to do it, hadn"t he? Move it.
Peculiar errands. "Take this briefcase and go to a man in Cincinnati whose name I"ll give you, and hand it to him and tell him the key to unlock it will come under separate cover by another route. If he asks you your name tell him it"s Roger Conroy, and spell it for him with two "y"s"."
Peculiar errands. "I have this canister of fulminate of mercury," he said to me one day, showing me a large canister of fulminate of mercury, which explodes at the slightest friction or shock.
"Jesus Whirling Christ!" I said, with a decibel count that could have gotten me a booking as the PA system for Madison Square Garden. I jumped eleven feet, nine inches and came down running. Eventually he collared me and said I had to dispose of it. "You"re outta your meso-po-tam-i-an mind," I said, feet still running, body held aloft. "No way I"m gonna get near that stuff. That"s dangerous, Al! If it goes off there won"t be enough of me left to slip into an envelope and mail back to my Mummy."
So we did it together. We took a bus out Euclid Avenue to what used to be called the Nottingham area beyond East Cleveland. There was this idyllic little pastoral setting, all trees and low hills, right near a shopping area; and running through it, about three hundred yards from Euclid Avenue, which was the main thoroughfare bisecting the heart of Cleveland, was Euclid Creek. Pre-pollution time, it was a sort of park where people went to lie out under the trees and read, play with their children, walk their dogs, nice place.
Al and I got down from the bus, walked down the slope to the Creek, and Al uncapped the canister he"d been carrying in a paper bag. Those of you who know what fulminate of mercury does on contact with water will know what happened next. You will also understand that I had (and have) a very inadequate grasp of chemistry.
But Al should have known! (That has always been one of the big mysteries about him: he clearly did know a whole h.e.l.l of a lot about science ... why didn"t he know what would happen? Or did he?) He tossed the protective canister into the Creek and we turned to go, when the G.o.dd.a.m.nEDEST f.u.c.kING GIGANTIC CATACLYSMIC KRAKATOAN EXPLOSION!!! (East or West of Java!) went off and that b.l.o.o.d.y canister came erupting out of the Creek with a waterspout that drenched us both. And hurled the canister right back at us as if King Neptune had got it right in his kisser. Al grabbed for it, and chunks of mercury went all over the gra.s.s, sputtering and exploding and sparking and banging away with a million tiny reports like the Lilliputian militia on maneuvers. He grabbed the canister and flung it back in!
"No, no!" I screamed. But Al was busy picking up the bigger chunks of mercury with his bare hands, burning the s.h.i.t out of himself, and whipping the exploding chemical back into the Creek.
This time it went off with a series of explosions like giant firecrackers, and the canister came up out of the depths skipping across the water like a spasming submarine. I ran like a thief.
Behind me, last thing I could see, was Al Wilson, a deranged Martian elf, scampering around grabbing up burning mercury with his hands, throwing it into the Creek ...
In the distance I could hear police sirens ...
I didn"t see him for a week. but when I went back to his pad, he made no mention of the event, and I didn"t comment on his bandaged hands. Peculiar errands.
Then Al fell in love. Oh G.o.d.
He came home one night after working the swing shift, and his face was almost beatific with light. Seems there was this girl working a couple of lathes down from him, and he hungered for her soul as no one had hungered since Paolo and Francesca were condemned to an eternal f.u.c.k in THE DIVINE COMEDY. He set me to the task of shadowing her, to finding out where she lived. So I went to work with him one day, he pointed her out to me, and I came back when his shift was ended, and followed her. On the bus. I don"t remember where it was now, this many years later, but it was one of the suburban tract house areas. I trailed her for a week till I was pretty sure I knew her habits, and then I asked Al what he wanted to do about it.
"I don"t know."
"Well, why don"t you just go up to her and ask her for a date?"
"I can"t. I"m afraid."
"Oh, Al, for Christ"s sake!"
"I can"t. I need you to make an introduction for me."
"Me?!?"
"Sure. I"ll send her a gift, and you"ll be my John Smith."
"Oh, Gawd! Miles Standish was an a.s.shole. Al. No wonder Patricia Mullen flipped for John Smith. Do it yourself."
"No, no. I"ve made up my mind. I"ll send her a special gift and you"ll carry it for me and you"ll tell her all about me. She"ll like you."
Seers, sarvants and soothsayers will perceive what came next.
So will dummies.
I came waltzing up to this girl"s house one evening, carrying Al"s "special gift." All set to make the big pitch for the Martian. Now, you may ask, what special gift did Al Wilson, who thought like none of us, maybe not like anyone else who"d ever lived on the Earth, select for the girl of his s.e.x dreams? A brooch, an amethyst necklace, flowers, a five pound box of cherry-filled chocolates, an ermine cape, a complete set of the works of the Bronte sisters, a gift certificate for a year"s worth of McDonald hamburgers, a diamond ring ...?
Al Wilson had bought her an eleven lb. steak, had it wrapped in plastic, and had mounted it on an expensive Swedish serving tray.
Don"t ask and I won"t have to talk about it.
"Al," I said, "what the h.e.l.l kind of a gift is that to make an introduction?"
He insisted that was what he wanted her to have. Today, that might he a wild gift, the cost of meat being what it is, but this was in the early Fifties and a slab of meat was just plain crazy. But I took it. I was working for him.
Up to the door of the house, rang the bell, waited. She came to the door, opened it, and looked at me. Did I bother to tell you she was a sensational-looking girl?
"I was wondering how long it would take you to say h.e.l.lo," she said. "I"ve been watching you follow me home for a week."
Then she invited me in. She introduced me to her Mother. "Oh, you"re the one," her mother said. "We were going to call the police about you." I guess I giggled nervously.
"What"s with the steak?" the girl said.
"Ah-hmm. I am a messenger for Mr. Al Wilson, who works with you at the plant. Mr. Wilson, who is a very shy man, hut a very nice man, would like to come calling. He has sent me and this small token of his respect and admiration as a calling card."
They looked at the steak, then they looked at me, then they looked at each other.
"I think we should call the cops," her Mother said.
"No, no!" I said, my voice rising. "This is strictly legit. Al is just, well, you know, really quiet and bashful about women, and he"s seen you every day at the plant and he didn"t know how to strike up an acquaintance."
"You related to him?" the girl asked.
"I work for him."
"Doing what?"
How the h.e.l.l do you tell two total strangers that you are a hired gun. I mean, for chrissakes, I had zits ... I didn"t look a thing like d.i.c.k Powell or Bogart or even, G.o.d help me, Audie Murphy. I was just a kid with a dumb steak in my hands.
"I run errands for him. He has money."
That seemed to brighten both of them. "We"ll cook it for dinner," the Mother said. "Why don"t you stay?" said the girl. So I stayed. The night.
We talked through most of the night, the girl and I. It is not by chance that I keep calling her "the girl." After twenty-five years, I can"t recall her name. What I do recall is that she tried to get me to take her to bed, and I was a virgin, a scared virgin, and most of that night was spent in consummate horror of being deflowered. You must grasp that I was seventeen, had never even kissed a girl, and the idea of that lush creature and myself in a bed filled me with nameless terrors H. P. Lovecraft never imagined.
I fled the next day, in company with the girl, with whom I rode the bus back into Cleveland. When she got off at Fisher Body, I kept going and would gladly have motored right out of the state if it hadn"t been for having to report back to Al.
He wasn"t home when I got there, so I guess I went off to school. But at the end of the academic day I took the streetcar out to his apartment on St. Clair Avenue. and waited for him. When he showed, I thought the first thing he"d ask me was what had happened on his love-mission. But he didn"t. He told me he had a vital errand for me to run, that he"d been out getting me plane tickets, and I was going to Cincinnati.
"Don"t you want to know what happened with the girl and the steak?"
"Oh, sure. What happened ... but be brief."
So I told him she seemed like a nice girl (I didn"t mention that she wasn"t terribly bright, as far as I could tell) and that she seemed responsive to his overtures (I didn"t mention that she had spent the better part of the night trying to reap the dubious benefits of my post-p.u.b.erty tumescence) and that he should call her.
I wish I could tell you they got married and had nine kids, or that she spurned him in a flamboyant scene, or that he killed her, or she killed him ... but the truth of the matter is that I never heard another word from Al about The Great Love Affair of the Century.
Instead, I readied myself to go to Cincinnati.
(An Author"s Note: after the first section of this reminiscence was published, I received a call from an old friend of twenty years" standing, Roy Lavender, formerly of Ohio, now living in Long Beach. Roy remembered Al, remembered the period I had been working for Al. Remembered, in fact, things I"d forgotten. You can perceive with what joy I took the call after the long essays I have written about people thinking the weird things that happen to me are fever-dreams made up on the moment. Royis living verification of what I"ve set down here, and he gave me some facts about Al I never knew. He also pointed out that the content of the container Al threw into Euclid Creek--as reported earlier in this reminiscence--was not fulminate of mercury but, rather, metallic sodium. Hence, the explosions. Roy also reminded me of the time Al was beset by a group of juvies from the area, who came up over the grocery awning to rip him off and beat him up in the apartment, and how Al beat the s.h.i.t out of them, at one point using the handle from the Multilith press to slam a kid so hard it lifted him off through the window into the street below. Stay healthy and live long, Roy Lavender: you are my last touch with verification of this important life-experience.) Anyhow. Al handcuffed an attache case to my wrist, gave me a hundred bucks, and sent me off to the airport. I made a mistake, however. It was a school day, and I stopped off at the optometry shop of my brother-in-law, Jerry, on Prospect Avenue in Cleveland, to tell him I was going out of town and would be back the next day. Now, my family has always considered me something of an irresponsible, not to mention a dreamer who might as easily come home for dinner as show up ten hours later with a story that I"d been unavoidably delayed by puce-colored aliens from Proxima Centauri who had kidnapped me and taken me for a ride in their motorized garbanzo bean through the reaches of deepest s.p.a.ce. So when Jerry saw the attache case handcuffed to my wrist, he thought I was into another big lie. and he instantly called my Mother, to tell her to stop me at the airport.
Thus, when I got there, I was greeted by cops and airport fuzz who yanked me off the flight, searched me--they couldn"t search the case. they didn"t have a key--and finally had to release me, because I was legitimately ticketed.
I went to Cincinnati, really p.i.s.sed at my Mother, and ambivalent as h.e.l.l about my role in life. Was I, in fact, Ashenden the secret agent, or was I a punk kid who needed his Mommy"s approval before he could have an adventure? Not in the least ameliorating my feelings was the memory of Al"s words as he"d handcuffed the case to my wrist: "Be careful. There are people who will try to take this away from you." At that moment I decided to leave the Beretta with Al. Good thing I did: can you imagine the looks of lively interest on the faces of the airport cossacks?
When I got to Cincinnati, I took a cab to the address Al had given me, where I met Don Ford, a science fiction fan (now, sadly, deceased) whom I knew casually, but whom I knew to be a friend of Al"s. He unlocked the cuffs, took the case into the next room, and came back to offer me the hospitality of his home for the rest of the day and that night. I had no idea what was in the case, but Roy Lavender advises that Al Wilson, for all his weirdness, was a man who had invented a method for producing steel directly from iron ore without going through the pig iron stage. He had contacts in South America and in Newfoundland, and apparently there were big business interests that were willing to stop at very little to get the secret.
None of this did I know.
But when, the next day, I went to board the plane back to Cleveland, someone took a shot at me.
Okay, okay. I"m dreaming. Have it your way. All I know is that as I crossed the tarmac to board the plane--in the days before those access tunnels that take you from the plane"s pa.s.senger cab straight into the terminal--I heard what sounded like a gunshot, and a hole appeared in the fuselage of the plane. I may be making that up. I didn"t wait around to ponder the equation. I bolted past everyone else, shoved me widdle self up the gangway and was inside the liner before that pre-Sirhan Sirhan could get off another.
When I got back to Cleveland, I tendered my resignation.
It had been a brief but fascinating sojourn in company with the mysterious Martian, Al Wilson, but I suddenly realized I had a deep-seated aversion to bullet holes in my as-then-s.e.xually-unexplored cuteness.
Al reluctantly let me off the hook, said he would miss me, and we went our separate ways.
There is an almost apocryphal afternote.
I never saw Al Wilson again, save once.
I was in Philadelphia in 1953, there for a science fiction convention, and on a dead Sunday morning, while everyone else slept off the effects of having drunk themselves into stupors the night before, I went looking for an open breakfast nook. You may have heard how dead Philly is on a Sunday morning. The reports are hardly exaggerated.
But as I walked the street seeking a breakfast counter, I saw a man walking toward me. As we neared each other, I recognized him as Al Wilson. I stopped. He came straight up to me, as though he"d known I would be there, and had hurried to meet me. There was no preamble, no greetings between two people who hadn"t seen each other in years. He merely came in close, looked straight at me with those faintly protruberant eyes, and said in an undertone, "When you see Stan Skirvin, tell him to examine pages 476 to 495 in T. E. Lawrence"s SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM."
Then he walked past me and was gone.
I have read those pages in every hardcover and paperback edition of Lawrence of Arabia"s book ever printed; I have never found the slightest clue to what mystery may be hidden there.
But I"ll tell you this: Al Wilson walked out of a chill Philadelphia morning in 1953 to tell me that, and I"ll be d.a.m.ned if I don"t believe that if I can ever unravel what he meant, I"ll be rich, w.i.l.l.y Loman, rich as Croseus!
And that"s the story of how I was a hired gun.
Honest.
--Los Angeles, 1973
A PATH THROUGH THE DARKNESS.
In a summer heavy with sunshine and promises, I came to New York. It was the end of the confused times for me--and in many ways the beginning of even more confusion.
College had confused me with its confounding regimentation and inability to provide realities, answers; my family had exposed itself for the inelastic failure I had always known it to be, unconsciously; love had been a high-flown word whose meaning had changed with every pretty smile; I was, simply enough, a seeker.
New York magically held all my answers. On streets of purest gold I would seek my fortune, find it, and mold a life of meaning, achievement and satisfaction.
I took a room uptown across from Columbia University, in what had once been (thirty years before) a fashionable hotel. I paid ten dollars a week for a room with an un.o.bstructed view of the air shaft, and cooking privileges I shared with two spinster schoolteachers, three college students, two Chinese exchange students and a constantly drunken Puerto Rican day-laborer. It was a quiet place, whose walls retained the odor of Cantonese cooking, Gallo Wine and that never-to-be-forgotten smell of disinfectant mixed with urine. I had my radio, my books, my typewriter and a good bed.
If there had ever been happiness, this was it, languishing in a simplicity of bodily functions that I had thought long since lost and forgotten.
At first the writing came slowly, amateurishly, but in my fervor to write, and say what I had to say--to h.e.l.l with the fact that others had said it all before me, far better; I had to write--I stayed behind the machine, working far into the nights, sleeping most of the mornings, then making the editorial rounds in the afternoon.
Again, it was the good life. Except for the loneliness.
There were friends, of course: Billy and Stella Soles who had come from California and subsisted on kidney bean soup, the publication of an amateur science fiction journal and endless bed-bouts; Aggie Vinson, a selling writer with a cool manner and a brotherly affection for my stumbling attempts at writing; Pernell Morris and his sister Beth, who ran a newsstand on Broadway and invited me over perhaps twice a week for a kosher meal; others.
But there was still the feeling I was walking alone, that I had no human goal toward which to work. That I was out there swinging by myself, and if it were to end tomorrow no one could really be troubled. The ripples would roll out and disappear, the water would close over and silence would replace me.
Perhaps that is the essence of loneliness: to feel that silence will replace you.