Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

When they reached the door of the white brick house, he opened it for her but did not go in with her. The foyer was dark and musty; the drapes were drawn, and there was a smell of cooking, of much coffee and of ham. After a moment, a handsome, sallow woman pushed aside a curtain. There was a red kerchief knotted around her head, and she wore gold earrings and three gold chains.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I saw it.”

The witch nodded.

“You don’t believe me, huh? I did. I been tellin’ everybody for weeks. You ask the King.”

“I believe you, Rose.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Is he upstairs?”

“No, I’ll show you. Someday you and me are goin’ to be friends, Marie. If the King asks, tell him I was real nice to you, okay? He likes you. He talks about you. This way—” She motioned the other down a dark hall. “Maybe once a week. For him, that’s a lot.”

The door was closed. When the woman in the red kerchief opened it, she released a new smell, of woodsmoke and cigars.

The room itself was bright and cold. There were seven wide windows—four in one wall and three in another—and their blinds were up and their curtains drawn back. One window was half open. A big fire blazed in a big, fieldstone fireplace, watched by a big old man in a dark blue suit.

“Hello,” the witch said. “How are you?”

His eyes never left the fire. “Is that the way to talk to me? I am the King.”

“Should I talk like the gadje ? Should I say hello Your Majesty?”

“Our people say King. Here you are one of us.”

Her voice fell. “Always, King.”

Perhaps he had not heard. A poker with cruel hooks stood beside the fireplace. He picked it up and stirred the fire.

“I have something for you, King. A gift.” She held out the fifty dollars McAlister had given her; then, when he still did not turn to look at her, walked across the room to him and laid the money gently in his lap.

He glanced down. “Bah! Tens, twenties. Today they get you nothing! Paper! Just paper.” He wadded up the bills, rolled his big hands back and forth, flung crumpled green paper into the fire.

“Yes, King.”

For the first time he turned to look at her. “You’re cold in here, Marie?”

“I’m comfortable, King. I have my coat on.”

“When I was a boy, we used to move around more. We had trucks. When I was very little, there were still a few wagons, even. We used to camp every night. Open air. Open fire.”

“Yes, King.”

“You know how we were made? Out of the dust like other men, but ours was the dust that blew down the road. The old ways are best.”

“Yes, King.”

“I want to tell you stories of the days when I was a boy, but I know you have heard them all before, many times. You would only laugh when you left my house. Did you see me on TV?”

The witch shook her head. “No, King. I did not know you were on.”

“If you came to see me more often, you would know these things. The man before me had built a funny car. The woman after me had trained a bird. I talked, and Felix played his violin. I made them pay me, though they did not want to. I do not think the man with the car or the woman with the bird were paid.”

“The wind is free—go talk to the wind.”

He laughed, and his laughter was still deep, like wooden wheels rolling over cobbles somewhere near his heart. “You have not forgotten. Not you! You are the best and the wisest and the most beautiful.” His laughter faded. “But not the most generous, Marie, not the most faithful. You have come to see me, but you have brought me nothing.”

“You have the money I brought, King. How can you say I brought nothing?”

“It was nothing. I burned it.”

She threw herself on him, sobbing. “How can you say what I gave you was nothing? I am destitute! It was everything I had.”

He pushed her away. “No, not in the pockets of my vest. Not between the buttons either.” He held up the three crumpled bills.

“You felt me?”

“Of course, but I knew where to wait for the little fingers. When I was younger, I could have moved the money always ahead of them, so they smelled it in each place they went, but never found it. Now there is a stiffness in my hands.”

“I did not see you, when you changed the green paper for them; but because I am I, I knew, King.”

“What is this ‘King?’” the old man asked.

The lines at the post office were shorter than they had been. Barnes stood in one to buy a stamped envelope, then moved aside to address it. He put three completed order blanks inside, licked the flap, and dropped the envelope into a mail slot.

By the time he had done so, the line in front of the General Delivery window had disappeared. A clean-shaven fat man had replaced the bearded young clerk, and when Barnes asked for his mail, the fat man, after vanishing for some time, returned with a violet-coloured envelope. Barnes thanked him and retreated to the lobby, which was (however barren) far warmer than the street outside.

There he examined the letter with some curiosity. It was addressed to him, at Free’s, in a precise feminine hand and sealed with red wax. He could not recall having seen a letter sealed with wax before, though he had heard about them. The wax had been stamped with a heart. He slipped a finger under the flap of the envelope, and somewhat to his surprise the wax snapped. There was a letter and a snapshot of an oval-faced young woman with dark eyes and dark hair worn just off the shoulders. A strong face, as women’s faces go, Barnes decided. Calm and maybe smart.

Dear Osgood Barnes:

I know you won’t remember writing to me—that’s because you didn’t. A friend of mine put an ad in a certain paper (I think you know which one) and met a wonderful man. I came to her apartment today and she told me about it. And then she showed me all the letters she’d gotten, and since she doesn’t need them anymore, I took them. Most of them look pretty bad, so yours is the only one I’m answering.

Now I ought to tell you about myself. Yes, that’s my picture, taken last year. I’m twenty-nine now. I hope you’ll say I don’t look it. I’ve never been married—that’s because I took care of Mama until she passed away last year, and so I tried not to get involved with men. I’m in Civil Service here, the Bureau of Indian Affairs of the Dept. of the Interior. I used to be a secretary, but now my title is Asst. Supervisor, so I’m sort of a junior executive. I’m a Grade 3, if you know what that means.

That explained the letter-perfect typing, Barnes thought.

My phone number at work is 636-7100. At home 896-7357. Call me if you’re really interested and we’ll meet somewhere for a drink.

Okay?

Barnes put the picture back into the envelope and put that in the breast pocket of his suit coat. An old woman was standing near the door looking at the gaudy posters advertising the Postal Service’s latest stamps: a dejected revolutionary soldier, General Wood, and Aaron Burr. Barnes edged past her.

“I don’t think they ought to have real people’s pictures on them,” she said. “Do you? It makes the rest of us feel like we’re not much.”

“Well, we aren’t,” Barnes said. As the big glass door shut behind him and the cold struck his cheeks, he added to himself, “Who cares about us?” Wind rattled the violet paper.

There was a telephone booth on the corner; he remembered going into it when he had left the post office earlier. He went again now, fishing for dimes in his pocket, but there were already coins in the return, and he used those instead.