Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

Many years earlier, about the time of his first cigarette, Bob had been led by a friend in the dead of night (say, half-past ten) along a quiet suburban street, pledged to confidence by the most frightful vows. Propped against the wall of a garage was a ladder — it did not go all the way to the roof: Bob and friend had pulled themselves up with effort which, in another context, would have won the full approval of their gym teacher. The roof made an excellent post to observe the going-to-bed preparations of a young woman who had seemingly never learned that window shades could be pulled down. Suddenly lights went on in another house, illuminating the roof of the garage; the young woman had seen the two and yelled; and Bob, holding onto the parapet with sweating hands and reaching for the ladder with sweating feet, had discovered that the ladder was no longer there…

He felt the same way now.

Besides feeling stunned, incredulous, and panicky, he also felt annoyed. This was because he acutely realized that he was acting out an old moving picture scene. The scene would have been close to the (film) realities had he been wearing a tattered uniform, and in a way he wanted to giggle, and in a way he wanted to cry. Only through obligation to the script did he carry the farce farther: wandering in and out of empty rooms, calling out names, asking if anyone was there.

No one was. And there was no notes or messages, not even Croatan carved on a doorpost. Once, in the gathering shadows, he thought he heard a noise, and he whirled around, half-expecting to see an enfeebled Mr. Benson with a bacon-fat lamp in one hand, or an elderly Negro, perhaps, who would say, tearfully, “Marse Bob, dem Yan-kees done burn all de cotton …” But there was nothing.

He trod the stairs to the next house and addressed inquiries to an old lady in a rocking-chair. “Well, I’m sure that I don’t know,” she said, in a paper-thin and fretful voice. “I saw them, all dressed up, getting into the car, and I said, ‘Why, where are you all going , Hazel?’ (“Hazel?” “Hazel Benson. I thought you said you knew them, young man?” “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Please go on.”) Well, I said, ‘Where are you all going , Hazel?’ And she said, ‘It’s time for a change, Mrs. Machen.’ And they all laughed and they waved and they drove away. And then some men came and packed everything up and took it away in trucks. Well ‘Where did they all go?’ I asked them. ‘Where did they all go?’ But do you think they’d have the common decency to tell me, after I’ve lived here for fifty-four years? Not-a-word. Oh—”

Feeling himself infinitely cunning, Bob said, offhandedly, “Yes, I know just the outfit you mean. O’Brien Movers.”

“I do not mean O’Brien Movers. Whatever gave you such an idea? It was the Seven Sebastian Sisters.”

And this was the most that Bob Rosen could learn. Inquiries at other houses either drew blanks or produced such probably significant items as, “Kitty said, ‘Here are your curlers, because I won’t need them anymore’”; “Yes, just the other day I was talking to Bart, Senior, and he said, ‘You know, you don’t realize that you’re in a rut until you have to look up to see the sky.’ Well, those Bensons always talked a little crazy, and so I thought nothing of it, until—”; and, “I said to Bentley, ‘Vipe, how about tomorrow we go over to Williamsbridge and pass the chicks there in review?’ and he said, ‘No, Vipe, I can’t make the scene tomorrow, my ancients put another poster on the billboard.’ So I said, ‘Ay-las,’ and next thing I know—”

“His who did what?”

“Fellow, you don’t wot this Viper talk one note, do you? His family , see, they had made other plans. They really cut loose, didn’t they?”

They really did. So there Bob was, neat and trim and sweet-smelling, and nowhere to go, and with a pocketful of money. He looked around the tree-lined street and two blocks away, on the corner, he saw a neon sign. Harry’s , it flashed (green). Bar and Grill (red).

“Where’s Harry?” he asked the middle-aged woman behind the bar.

“Lodge meeting,” she said. “He’ll be back soon. They aren’t doing any labor tonight, just business. Waddle ya have?”

“A ball of Bushmill,” he said. He wondered where he had heard that, last. It was cool in the bar. And then he remembered, and then he shuddered.

“Oh, that’s bad,” Stuart Emmanuel moaned. “That sounds very bad… And you shouldn’t’ve gone to the moving van people yourself. Now you probably muddied the waters.”

Bob hung his head. His efforts to extract information from the Seven Sebastian Sisters — apparently they were septuplets, and all had gray mustaches — had certainly failed wretchedly. And he kept seeing Kitty Benson’s face, framed in her golden hair like a sun-lit nimbus, kept hearing Kitty Benson’s golden voice.

“Well,” Stuart said, “I’ll do my damndest.” And no doubt he did, but it wasn’t enough. He was forced to come clean with Anhalt. And Anhalt, after puttering around, his sweet smile more baffled than ever, told Mac everything. Mac put the entire force majeure of the T. Oscar Rutherford organization behind the search. And they came up with two items.

Item. The Seven Sebastian Sisters had no other address than the one on Purchase Place, and all the furniture was in their fireproof warehouse, with two years’ storage paid in advance.

Item. The owner of the house on Purchase Place said, “I told them I’d had an offer to buy the house, but I wouldn’t, if they’d agree to a rent increase. And the next thing I knew, the keys came in the mail.”

Little and Harpey, as well as Scribbley’s Sons, reported only that Alt and Bart, Junior, had said that they were leaving, but hadn’t said where they were going.

“Maybe they’ve gone on a trip somewhere,” Stuart suggested. “Maybe they’ll come back before long. Anhalt has ears in all the publishing houses, maybe he’ll hear something.”

But before Anhalt heard anything, Mac decided that there was no longer anything to hear. “I wash my hands of it all,” he declared. “It’s a wild goose chase. Where did you ever pick up this crackpot idea in the first place?” And Phillips Anhalt’s smile faded away. Weeks passed, and months.

But Bob Rosen has never abandoned hope. He has checked with the Board of Education about Bentley’s records, to see if they know anything about a transcript or transfer. He has haunted Nassau Street, bothering — in particular — dealers specializing in Pseudo-Arabian air mail issues, in hopes that Mr. Benson has made his whereabouts known to them. He has hocked his watch to buy hamburgers and pizzas for the Vipers, and innumerable Scotches on innumerable rocks for the trim young men and the girls fresh out of Bennington who staff the offices of our leading publishers. He—

In short, he has taken up the search of Peter Martens (Old Pete, Sneaky Pete). He is looking for the sources of the Nile. Has he ever found anything? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he has.

The strange nature of cyclical coincidences has been summed up, somewhere, in the classical remark that one can go for years without seeing a one-legged man wearing a baseball cap; and then, in a single afternoon, one will see three of them. So it happened with Bob Rosen.

One day, feeling dull and heavy, and finding that the elfin notes of Kitty Benson’s voice seemed to be growing fainter in his mind, Bob called up her old landlord.

“No,” said the old landlord, “I never heard another word from them. And I’ll tell you who else I never heard from, either. The fellow who offered to buy the house. He never came around and when I called his office, he just laughed at me. Fine way to do business.”