"Don"t take me from the road crew, man," Guillermo said.
"It"s the law that finds where people will be happy. But Christian Haroldsen broke the law. And he"s gone around ever since making people hear music they were never meant to hear."
Guillermo knew he had lost the battle before it began, but he couldn"t stop himself. "Don"t hurt him, man. I was meant to hear his music. Swear to G.o.d, it"s made me happier."
The Watcher shook his head sadly. "Be honest, Guillermo. You"re an honest man. His music"s made you miserable, hasn"t it? You"ve got everything you could want in life, and yet his music makes you sad. All the time, sad."
Guillermo tried to argue, but he was honest, and he looked into his own heart, and he knew that the music was full of grief. Even the happy songs mourned for something; even the angry songs wept; even the love songs seemed to say that everything dies and contentment is the most fleeting thing. Guillermo looked in his own heart and all Sugar"s music stared back up at him and Guillermo wept.
"Just don"t hurt him, please," Guillermo murmured as he cried.
"I won"t," the blind Watcher said. Then he walked to Christian, who stood pa.s.sively waiting, and he held the special tool up to Christian"s throat. Christian gasped.
"No," Christian said, but the word only formed with his lips and tongue. No sound came out. Just a hiss of air. "No."
The road crew watched silently as the Watcher led Christian away. They did not sing for days. But then Guillermo forgot his grief one day and sang an aria from La Boheme La Boheme, and the songs went on from there. Now and then they sang one of Sugar"s songs, because the songs could not be forgotten.
In the city, the blind Watcher furnished Christian with a pad of paper and a pen. Christian immediately gripped the pencil in the crease of his palm and wrote: "What do I do now?"
The driver read the note aloud, and the blind Watcher laughed. "Have we got a job for you! Oh, Christian, have we got a job for you!" The dog barked loudly, to hear his master laugh.
APPLAUSE.
In all the world there were only two dozen Watchers. They were secretive men, who supervised a system that needed little supervision because it actually made nearly everybody happy. It was a good system, but like even the most perfect of machines, here and there it broke down. Here and there someone acted madly, and damaged himself, and to protect everyone and the person himself, a Watcher had to notice the madness and go to fix it.
For many years the best of the Watchers was a man with no fingers, a man with no voice. He would come silently, wearing the uniform that named him with the only name he needed-Authority. And he would find the kindest, easiest, yet most thorough way of solving the problem and curing the madness and preserving the system that made the world, for the first time in history, a very good place to live. For practically everyone.
For there were still a few people-one or two each year-who were caught in a circle of their own devising, who could neither adjust to the system nor bear to harm it, people who kept breaking the law despite their knowledge that it would destroy them.
Eventually, when the gentle maimings and deprivations did not cure their madness and set them back into the system, they were given uniforms and they, too, went out. Watching.
The keys of power were placed in the hands of those who had most cause to hate the system they had to preserve. Were they sorrowful?
"I am," Christian answered in the moments when he dared to ask himself that question.
In sorrow he did his duty. In sorrow he grew old. And finally the other Watchers, who reverenced the silent man (for they knew he had once sung magnificent songs), told him he was free. "You"ve served your time," said the Watcher with no legs, and he smiled.
Christian raised an eyebrow, as if to say, "And?"
"So wander."
Christian wandered. He took off his uniform, but lacking neither money nor time he found few doors closed to him. He wandered where in his former lives he had once lived. A road in the mountains. A city where he had once known the loading entrance of every restaurant and coffee shop and grocery store. And at last to a place in the woods where a house was falling apart in the weather because it had not been used in forty years.
Christian was old. The thunder roared and it only made him realize that it was about to rain. All the old songs. All the old songs, he mourned inside himself, more because he couldn"t remember them than because he thought his life had been particularly sad.
As he sat in a coffee shop in a nearby town to stay out of the rain, he heard four teenagers who played the guitar very badly singing a song that he knew. It was a song he had invented while the asphalt poured on a hot summer day. The teenagers were not musicians and certainly were not Makers. But they sang the song from their hearts, and even though the words were happy, the song made everyone who heard it cry.
Christian wrote on the pad he always carried, and showed his question to the boys. "Where did that song come from?"
"It"s a Sugar song," the leader of the group answered. "It"s a song by Sugar."
Christian raised an eyebrow, making a shrugging motion.
"Sugar was a guy who worked on a road crew and made up songs. He"s dead now, though," the boy answered.
"Best d.a.m.n songs in the world," another boy said, and they all nodded.
Christian smiled. Then he wrote (and the boys waited impatiently for this speechless old man to go away): "Aren"t you happy? Why sing sad songs?"
The boys were at a loss for an answer. The leader spoke up, though, and said, "Sure I"m happy. I"ve got a good job, a girl I like, and man, I couldn"t ask for more. I got my guitar. I got my songs. And my friends."
And another boy said, "These songs aren"t sad, Mister. Sure, they make people cry, but they aren"t sad."
"Yeah," said another. "It"s just that they were written by a man who knows."
Christian scribbled on his paper. "Knows what?"
"He just knows. Just knows, that"s all. Knows it all."
And then the teenagers turned back to their clumsy guitars and their young, untrained voices, and Christian walked to the door to leave because the rain had stopped and because he knew when to leave the stage. He turned and bowed just a little toward the singers. They didn"t notice him, but their voices were all the applause he needed. He left the ovation and went outside where the leaves were just turning color and would soon, with a slight inaudible sound, break free and fall to the earth.
For a moment he thought he heard himself singing. But it was just the last of the wind, coasting madly through the wires over the street. It was a frenzied song, and Christian thought he recognized his voice.
A CROSS-COUNTRY T TRIP TO K KILL R RICHARD N NIXON.
SIGGY WASN"T THE killer type. Nor did he have delusions of grandeur. In fact, if he had any delusions, they were delusions of happiness. When he was thirty, he gave up a good job as a commercial artist and went down in the world, deliberately downward in income, prestige, and tension. He bought a cab. killer type. Nor did he have delusions of grandeur. In fact, if he had any delusions, they were delusions of happiness. When he was thirty, he gave up a good job as a commercial artist and went down in the world, deliberately downward in income, prestige, and tension. He bought a cab.
"Who is going to drive this cab, Siggy?" his mother asked. She was a German of the old school, well-bred with contempt for the servant cla.s.s.
"I am," Siggy answered mildly. He endured the tirade that followed, but from then on his sole source of income was the cab. He didn"t work every day. But whenever he felt like working or getting out of the apartment or picking up some money, he would take his cab out in Manhattan. His cab was spotless. He gave excellent service. He enjoyed himself immensely. And when he came home, he sat down at the easel or with a sketchpad on his knees, and did art. He wasn"t very good. His talents had been best suited for commercial art. Anything more difficult than the back of a Cheerios box, and Siggy was out of his element. He never sold any of his paintings. But he didn"t really care. He loved everything he did and everything he was.
So did his wife, Marie. She was French, he was German; they married and moved to America on the eve of World War II, bringing their families with them, and they were exquisitely well matched and happy through both of Siggy"s careers. In 1978, at the age of fifty-seven, she died of a heart attack, and Siggy took the cab out and drove for eleven hours without picking up a single fare. At four o"clock in the morning, he finally made his decision and drove home. He would go on living. And sooner than he expected, he was happy again.
He had never dreamed of conquering the world or of getting rich or even of getting into bed with a movie star or a high-cla.s.s prost.i.tute. So it was not in his nature to imagine himself doing impossible things. It took him rather by surprise when he was chosen to save America.
She was a Disney fairy G.o.dmother, and she came in the craziest dream he had ever had. "You, Siegfried Reinhardt, are the lucky winner of exactly one wish," she said, sounding like the lady from Magic Carpet Land the last time she called to offer a free carpet cleaning.
"One?" Siggy answered in his dream, thinking this was rather below standard for G.o.dmothers.
"And you have a choice," the fairy G.o.dmother answered. "You may either use the wish on your own behalf, or you may use it to save America."
"America"s going to h.e.l.l and needs all the wishes it can get." Siggy said. "On the other hand, I don"t really need anything I haven"t got already. So it"s America."
"Very well," she answered, and turned to go.
"Wait a minute," he said in his dream. "Is that all?"
"You asked for a wish for America, you get a wish for America. Which is a waste of a perfectly good wish, if you ask me, for thirty years America hasn"t been worth scheisse scheisse. Try not to mess things up too badly, Siggy. This wish business is pretty complicated, and you"re a simple type fellow." And then she was gone, and Siggy woke up, the dream impressed on his memory as dreams so rarely were.
Crazy, crazy, he thought, laughing it off. I"m getting old, Marie dragged me to too many Disney movies, I"m too lonely. But for all that he knew the dream was nonsense, he could not forget it.
I mean, what if if, he told himself. What if if I had a wish. Just one thing I could change, to make everybody in America happier. What would it be? I had a wish. Just one thing I could change, to make everybody in America happier. What would it be?
"What"s wrong with America?" his mother asked, rolling her eyes and rocking back and forth in her wheelchair. To Siggy"s knowledge she had never had a rocking chair in her life, and compensated by moving in every other kind of chair as if it were a rocker. "Everything"s wrong with America," she said.
"But one thing, Mother. Just the worst thing to fix."
"It"s too late, nothing can fix it. It all started with him him. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, may he be reincarnated as a fly that I can swat. May he come back as a fire hydrant for all the dogs to pee against." Siggy"s mother was impeccably polite in German, but in English she was crude, and, as so often before, Siggy wondered why she still lingered on at a ridiculous ninety-two when Marie, who was delicate and sensitive, was dead. "Don"t be crude, Mother."
"I"m an American, I have the papers, I can be crude. Nineteen sixty-eight, that"s when everything went to h.e.l.l."
"You can"t blame everything on one man."
"What do you know? You drive a cab."
"One man doesn"t make that big a difference."
"What about Adolf Hitler!" his mother said triumphantly, slapping the arms of the wheelchair and rocking back and forth. "Adolf Hitler! One man! Just like Richard Nixon, may his electric razor short-circuit and fry his face."
She was still laughing and cursing Nixon when Siggy finally left. Fairy G.o.dmother, he said to himself. What do I need a fairy G.o.dmother for? I have Mom.
But the dream wouldn"t go away. The fairy G.o.dmother kept flitting in and out, hovering on the edges of all his dreams, wordlessly saying, "Hurry and make up your mind, Siggy. Fairy G.o.dmothers are busy, you"re wasting my time."
"Don"t push me," he said. "I"m being careful."
"I"ve got other clients, give me a break."
"I resent being pushed around by figments of my imagination," he said. "I get one wish, I want to use it right." When he woke up, he was vaguely embarra.s.sed that he was taking the fairy G.o.dmother so seriously in his dreams. "Just a dream," he said to himself. But dream or not, he started doing research.
He took a poll. He kept a notebook beside him in the cab, and asked people, "Just out of curiosity what"s the worst thing wrong with America? What"s the one thing you"d change if you could?"
There were quite a few suggestions, but they always came back to Richard Nixon. "It all started with Nixon," they"d say. Or, "It"s Carter. But if it hadn"t been for Nixon, Carter would never have been elected."
"It"s the unions, driving up prices," said a woman. And then, after a little thought, "If Nixon hadn"t screwed up we might have kept some control control in this country." in this country."
It wasn"t just that his name kept coming up. It was the way people said said it. With loathing, with contempt, with fear. It was an emotional word. It sounded evil. They said it. With loathing, with contempt, with fear. It was an emotional word. It sounded evil. They said Nixon Nixon the way they might say the way they might say slime slime. Or spider spider.
Siggy sat one night staring at the results of his poll, unable to get out of his cab because of the thoughts that had taken over his head. I"m crazy, he thought to himself, but his thoughts ignored him and went right on, the fairy G.o.dmother giggling in the background. Richard Nixon, said the thoughts. If there could be one wish, it must be used to eliminate Richard Nixon.
But I voted for him, dammit, Siggy said silently. He thought thought it would be silent, but the words echoed inside the cab after all. "I voted for him. And I thought he did a d.a.m.n good job sometimes." He was almost embarra.s.sed saying the words-they weren"t the kind of sentiment that made a cabby popular with his paying pa.s.sengers. But thinking of Nixon made him remember the triumphant moment when Nixon said Up Yours to the North Vietnamese and bombed the h.e.l.l out of them and got them to the negotiating table that one last time. And the wonderful landslide election that kept the crazy man from South Dakota out of the White House. And the trip to China, and the trip to Russia, and the feeling that America was maybe strong like it had been under Roosevelt when Hitler got his a.s.s kicked up into his throat. Siggy remembered that, remembered that it felt good, remembered being angry as the press attacked and attacked and attacked and finally Nixon fell apart and turned out to be exactly as rotten a person as the papers said he was. it would be silent, but the words echoed inside the cab after all. "I voted for him. And I thought he did a d.a.m.n good job sometimes." He was almost embarra.s.sed saying the words-they weren"t the kind of sentiment that made a cabby popular with his paying pa.s.sengers. But thinking of Nixon made him remember the triumphant moment when Nixon said Up Yours to the North Vietnamese and bombed the h.e.l.l out of them and got them to the negotiating table that one last time. And the wonderful landslide election that kept the crazy man from South Dakota out of the White House. And the trip to China, and the trip to Russia, and the feeling that America was maybe strong like it had been under Roosevelt when Hitler got his a.s.s kicked up into his throat. Siggy remembered that, remembered that it felt good, remembered being angry as the press attacked and attacked and attacked and finally Nixon fell apart and turned out to be exactly as rotten a person as the papers said he was.
And the feeling of betrayal that he had felt all through 1973 came back, and Siggy said, "Nixon," and inside the cab his voice sounded even more poisonous than the pa.s.sengers".
If there was something wrong with America, Siggy knew then, it was Richard Nixon. Whether a person had ever liked him or not. Because those who liked him had been betrayed, and those who hated him had not been appeased, and there he was out in California breeding the hatred that surpa.s.sed even the hatred for the phone company and the unions and the oil companies and the Congress.
I will wish him dead, Siggy thought. And inside his mind he could hear the fairy G.o.dmother cheering. "Make the wish," she said.
"Not yet," Siggy said. "I"ve got to be fair."
"Fair, schmair. Make the wish, I"ve got work to do."
"I"ve got to talk to him first," Siggy said. "I can"t wish him dead without he has a chance to say his piece."
Siggy had planned to travel alone. Who would understand his purpose, when he didn"t really understand it himself? He told no one he was going, just pulled five hundred dollars out of the bank and got in his cab and started driving. New Jersey, Pennsylvania; found himself on I-70 and decided what the h.e.l.l, I-70 goes most of the way, that"s my highway. He stopped at Richmond, Indiana, to go to the bathroom and get something to eat, then decided to spend the night in a cheap motel.
It was his first night in unfamiliar surroundings in years. It bothered him; things were out of place, and the sheets were rough and harsh, and there weren"t a hundred reminders of Marie and happiness. He slept badly (but, thank heaven, without the fairy G.o.dmother), and when he left in the morning he realized that he was lonelier then he thought possible. He wasn"t used to driving without conversation. He wasn"t used to driving without a fare.
So he picked up a hitchhiker waiting by the on-ramp to the freeway. It was a boy-no, in his own eyes doubtless a man-in his early twenties. Hair fairly long, but cleaner than the usual scruffy roadside b.u.m, and he"d be somebody to talk to, and if there was any trouble, well, Siggy had always carried a tire iron beside the seat, though he was not quite sure what he would ever do with it, or when. It made him feel safe. Safe enough to pull over and pick up the boy.
Siggy reached over and opened the car door as the boy ran up.
"Hey, uh," the boy said, leaning into the car. "I don"t need a cab, I need a free ride."
"Don"t we all," Siggy said, smiling. "I"m from New York City. In Indiana, I give free rides. I"m on vacation."
The boy nodded and got in beside him. Siggy moved out and was on the freeway in moments, going at a steady fifty-five. He put on the cruise control and glanced at the boy. He was looking out the front window, his face glum.
"Where are you going?" Siggy asked.
"West."
"There"s lots of west in the world. Wherever you go, there"s still more west on ahead."
"They put an ocean at the end, I stop before I get wet, OK?"
"I"m going to Los Angeles," Siggy offered. going to Los Angeles," Siggy offered.
The boy said nothing. Obviously didn"t want to talk. That was all right. Lots of customers liked silence, and Siggy had no objection to giving it to them. Enough that there was someone breathing in the car. It gave Siggy a feeling of legitimacy. It was all right to drive as long as someone else was in the car.
But this couldn"t go on all the way, of course, Siggy realized. When he picked the boy up, he figured on St. Louis, maybe Kansas City, then the boy gets out and Siggy"s alone again. He"d have to stop for the night, Denver, maybe. Did the boy think a motel room went along with the ride?
"Where you from?"
The boy seemed to wake up, as if he had dozed off with his eyes wide open. Looking out on Indiana as it went by.
"What do you mean, from?" the boy asked.
"I mean from from, the opposite of to to. I mean, where were you born, where do you live?"