Philip Dick: Humpty Dumpty in Oakland

“Perhaps the words the wrong one. Pardon me if it is. I get a little clumsy sometimes when I try to express my deeper feelings; bear with me. You don’t deserve what happened to you, Al. You know it and I know it. Bob is aware of it. In fact we were all discussing it last night, when we learned that you had been picked up in Salt Lake City and were being held. My wife, Bodo, was especially concerned that something be done for you. I got in touch with Mrs. Fergesson’s lawyer…” Harman paused and grinned, almost a grimace. “She’s an incredible person, that Lydia. I had never met her before, of course. Until this business. I must say it’s a real experience to be around her for any length of time. But surprisingly, we found we had a great deal in common in terms of interests. She’s educated well beyond her external manner; once you get down to the authentic person—it makes you anxious to know her much better.”

Al nodded.

“She could hold her own in any salon,” Harman said. “Anywhere on the Continent.”

Al nodded.

“What’s your attitude toward me?” Harman said.

Al shrugged.

“Not too unfriendly,” Harman said. “Not something you can’t get over, in time. Although God knows you have no valid basis for any enmity toward me. But we’ll let that pass. The mind is a strange instrument.” He reflected. “At any rate,” he said, pacing around the living room of the apartment, “I want to rehabilitate you.”

Al said, “I see.”

“I feel,” Harman said, “that it’s my responsibility. In many ways. Some that you wouldn’t understand.”

They both were silent.

“How do you mean, ‘rehabilitate’?” Al said. “You mean send me to a psychiatrist?”

“Oh hell no,” Harman said. “What kind of rehabilitation is that? A perfunctory social means of providing custodial care, or some crackpot Freudian religion to make money off neurotic women. I mean through a decent job that will give you back your self-respect and dignity. By harnessing your ability.” He added, “Of which you have plenty. Perhaps more than you realize.”

“Would I work for your organization?” Al said. “Or do you mean you’d put in a word for me somewhere?”

“Frankly,” Harman said, meeting his gaze directly, “I’d like to have you with me. But if you don’t cotton to the notion—” He shrugged, still smiling. “It’s okay with me. I’ll see that you’re put on somewhere else.” He glanced at his watch.

“You have to go?” Al said.

“Yes. In a minute. Jim’s death was a terrible ordeal for all of us. God, he was so—” Harman gestured. “Lively. Animated. Full of his old good spirits. Like he was when I first started taking my cars to him. Cracking jokes.”

“Full of the old Jim,” Al said.

“As if,” Harman said, “what was left of him all sort of—how would you put it? Boiled up at once. And was consumed. There was nothing left, after that.”

“Really sad,” Al said. “And thought provoking.”

“Will you be thinking it over?” Harman said. “About going back and picking up? I mean the job.”

“Oh yes,” Al said. “Sure.”

“Good boy,” Harman said. “You know, Al, you always have to be able to pick up again. If you can learn that you have it. If you can put adversity behind you and resume. Resume and resume; never stop resuming. Because—well, here’s how I see it, Al. Nothing is that important. Not even death. You see?”

He nodded.

Harman s hand shot out and they shook. Then Harman opened the hall door, waved, smiled a short, penetrating, official smile at him, and was gone. But then, almost at once, the door flew partway open, and he was back. “You have no fundamental hard feelings toward me, do you, Al?” he said sharply.

“No,” Al said.

Nodding, Harman shut the door. This time he was really gone.

For a long time Al stood at the window of the empty apartment, by himself, watching the street below. Julie had not come back, even by six, and by then he was becoming too hungry to stay any longer. He went into the kitchen and fooled with dishes and cans, but it was no use. So he wrote a note to her and left the apartment.

As he came out onto the dark sidewalk he saw a shape at work off in the shadows, bouncing up and down. At first he thought it was an animal. But it was Earl McKeckney, busy with some matter of his own, toiling as silently as usual. The boy raised his head as Al passed him. They looked at each other, said nothing, and then Al went on down the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets.

A flapping sound made him pause at the corner. Behind him, at top speed Earl McKeckney came running along the sidewalk backward. He did not bump into anything, but veered as he came to each telephone pole and wall; he reached Al, danced around in a circle, and continued on, still backward, still avoiding all things.

“Hey,” Al said. “How do you do it?” Perhaps the kid had memorized the position of every object in the block.

Not stopping, Earl yelled, “I got my ring.” He held up his hand; on his finger was a ring with a bit of glass in it, a mirror. “My Captain Zero Secret Periscope Ring.” Eyes fixed on his ring, facing Al, he departed, hurrying deeper and deeper into the darkness, until he at last was gone.

Really weird, Al thought. Can’t make it out at all.

He continued on until he reached an Italian restaurant where he and Julie had often eaten. She was not there, but he went in and ordered dinner anyhow.

After he had eaten dinner he roamed around the evening streets for a while. And then he turned in the direction of Tootie Dolittle’s apartment.

“Hi,” he said, as Tootie let him in. The Dolittles were still eating dinner; he saw the table with its dishes and pans and silver. Leading Tootie off to one side, he said, “Listen, I want you to do something for me. I want you to get me something.” He wanted Tootie to get him a gun.

“That thing?” Tootie said. “That we were discussing you should have?”

“That’s right,” Al said.

Glancing at his wife, Tootie said in a low voice, “You can walk into a hardware store and buy one, man.”

“Oh,” Al said.

“Only it’ll be registered, and you know how they can do with those bullets.” Tootie’s voice was virtually inaudible. “You mean a gun what got found somewhere. That nobody bought.”

“Yes,” Al said.

“I don’t know,” Tootie said. “Anyhow, come in and have some dinner,” He moved Al toward the table.

“How do you do, Al?” Mary Ellen Dolittle said, as he seated himself. “Welcome, and have something with us, please.”

“Hi,” Al said. “Thanks.” He had a little of the dumplings and lamb stew. Tootie had already put a plate, silver, a napkin, plastic cup and saucer in front of him; Al stared down in bewilderment. The objects seemed to materialize out of nothing.

“You look really tired,” Mary Ellen said, with sympathy. “I think I never seen you so tired-looking, Al.”

Tootie said, “They still after you?”

“No,” Al said.

“They give up?”

“No,” he said. “They got me.”

Tootie’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Then you not here. You dead.”

Picking at his dumplings and lamb stew, Al did not answer.

“I like to inquire,” Mary Ellen said, “what this be about. But I know neither you boys ever going to say, so I save myself the bother. You going to go on the rest of your life like this, Al Miller? You not change, as a result of the big time job you got I hear of?” She waited, but he did not answer her either. “No,” she said. “You not.”

“Al don’t have the big-time job anymore anyhow,” Tootie said. “So lay off him.”

Mary Ellen said, “Well, Al Miller, eat up your dinner and then go on.”