Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets
Jack Finney
At the little living-room desk Tom Benecke rolled two sheets
of flimsy and a heavier top sheet, carbon paper sandwiched between
them, into his portable. Interoffice Memo, the top sheet was headed,
and he typed tomorrow's date just below this; then he glanced at a
creased yellow sheet, covered with his own handwriting, beside the
typewriter. "Hot in here," he muttered to himself. Then, from the short
hallway at his back, he heard the muffled clang of wire coat hangers in
the bedroom closet, and at this reminder of what his wife was doing he
thought: Hot, no--guilty conscience.
He got up, shoving his hands into the back pockets of his
gray wash slacks, stepped to the living-room window beside the desk,
and stood breathing on the glass, watching the expanding circlet of
mist, staring down through the autumn night at Lexington Avenue, eleven
stories below. He was a tall, lean, dark-haired young man in a pullover
sweater, who looked as though he had played not football, probably, but
basketball in college. Now he placed the heels of his hands against the
top edge of the lower window frame and shoved upward. But as usual the
window didn't budge, and he had to lower his hands and then shoot them
hard upward to jolt the window open a few inches. He dusted his hands,
muttering.
But still he didn't begin his work. He crossed the room to
the hallway entrance and, leaning against the doorjamb, hands shoved
into his back pockets again, he called, "Clare?" When his wife
answered, he said, "Sure you don't mind going alone?"
"No." Her voice was muffled, and he knew her head and
shoulders were in the bedroom closet. Then the tap of her high heels
sounded on the wood floor and she appeared at the end of the little
hallway, wearing a slip, both hands raised to one ear, clipping on an
earring. She smiled at him--a slender, very pretty girl with light
brown, almost blonde, hair--her prettiness emphasized by the pleasant
nature that showed in her face. "It's just that I hate you to miss this
movie; you wanted to see it too."
"Yeah, I know." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Got to get this done though."
She nodded, accepting this. Then, glancing at the desk across
the living room, she said, "You work too much, though, Tom--and too
hard."
He smiled. "You won't mind though, will you, when the money
comes rolling in and I'm known as the Boy Wizard of Wholesale
Groceries?"
"I guess not." She smiled and turned back toward the bedroom.
At his desk again, Tom lighted a cigarette; then a few
moments later as Clare appeared, dressed and ready to leave, he set it
on the rim of the ash tray. "Just after seven," she said. "I can make
the beginning of the first feature."
He walked to the front-door closet to help her on with her
coat. He kissed her then and, for an instant, holding her close,
smelling the perfume she had used, he was tempted to go with her; it
was not actually true that he had to work tonight, though he very much
wanted to. This was his own project, unannounced as yet in his office,
and it could be postponed. But then they won't see it till Monday, he
thought once again, and if I give it to the boss tomorrow he might read
it over the weekend. . . . "Have a good time," he said aloud. He gave
his wife a little swat and opened the door for her, feeling the air
from the building hallway, smelling faintly of floor wax, stream past
his face.
He watched her walk down the hall, flicked a hand in response
as she waved, and then he started to close the door, but it resisted
for a moment. As the door opening narrowed, the current of warm air
from the hallway, channeled through this smaller opening now, suddenly
rushed past him with accelerated force. Behind him he heard the slap of
the window curtains against the wall and the sound of paper fluttering
from his desk, and he had to push to close the door.
Turning, he saw a sheet of white paper drifting to the floor
in a series of arcs, and another sheet, yellow, moving toward the
window, caught in the dying current flowing through the narrow opening.
As he watched, the paper struck the bottom edge of the window and hung
there for an instant, plastered against the glass and wood. Then as the
moving air stilled completely, the curtains swinging back from the wall
to hang free again, he saw the yellow sheet drop to the window ledge
and slide over out of sight.
He ran across the room, grasped the bottom edge of the
window, and tugged, staring through the glass. He saw the yellow sheet,
dimly now in the darkness outside, lying on the ornamental ledge a yard
below the window. Even as he watched, it was moving, scraping slowly
along the ledge, pushed by the breeze that pressed steadily against the
building wall. He heaved on the window with all his strength and it
shot open with a bang, the window weight rattling in the casing. But
the paper was past his reach and, leaning out into the night, he
watched it scud steadily along the ledge to the south, half-plastered
against the building wall. Above the muffled sound of the street
traffic far below, he could hear the dry scrape of its movement, like a
leaf on the pavement.
The living room of the next apartment to the south projected
a yard or more farther out toward the street than this one; because of
this the Beneckes paid seven and a half dollars less rent than their
neighbors. And now the yellow sheet, sliding along the stone ledge,
nearly invisible in the night, was stopped by the projecting blank wall
of the next apartment. It lay motionless, then, in the corner formed by
the two walls--a good five yards away, pressed firmly against the
ornate corner ornament of the ledge, by the breeze that moved past Tom
Benecke's face.
He knelt at the window and stared at the yellow paper for a
full minute or more, waiting for it to move, to slide off the ledge and
fall, hoping he could follow its course to the street, and then hurry
down in the elevator and retrieve it. But it didn't move, and then he
saw that the paper was caught firmly between a projection of the
convoluted corner ornament and the ledge. He thought about the poker
from the fireplace, then the broom, then the mop--discarding each
thought as it occurred to him. There was nothing in the apartment long
enough to reach that paper.
It was hard for him to understand that he actually had to
abandon it--it was ridiculous--and he began to curse. Of all the papers
on his desk, why did it have to be this one in particular! On four long
Saturday afternoons he had stood in supermarkets counting the people
who passed certain displays, and the results were scribbled on that
yellow sheet. From stacks of trade publications, gone over page by page
in snatched half-hours at work and during evenings at home, he had
copied facts, quotations, and figures onto that sheet. And he had
carried it with him to the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, where he'd
spent a dozen lunch hours and early evenings adding more. All were
needed to support and lend authority to his idea for a new
grocery-store display method; without them his idea was a mere opinion.
And there they all lay in his own improvised shorthand--countless hours
of work--out there on the ledge.
For many seconds he believed he was going to abandon the
yellow sheet, that there was nothing else to do. The work could be
duplicated. But it would take two months, and the time to present this
idea was now, for use in the spring displays. He struck his fist on the
window ledge. Then he shrugged. Even though his plan were adopted, he
told himself, it wouldn't bring him a raise in pay--not immediately,
anyway, or as a direct result. It won't bring me a promotion either, he
argued--not of itself.
But just the same, and he couldn't escape the thought, this
and other independent projects, some already done and others planned
for the future, would gradually mark him out from the score of other
young men in his company. They were the way to change from a name on
the payroll to a name in the minds of the company officials. They were
the beginning of the long, long climb to where he was determined to be,
at the very top. And he knew he was going out there in the darkness,
after the yellow sheet fifteen feet beyond his reach.
By a kind of instinct, he instantly began making his
intention acceptable to himself by laughing at it. The mental picture
of himself sidling along the ledge outside was absurd--it was actually
comical--and he smiled. He imagined himself describing it; it would
make a good story at the office and, it occurred to him, would add a
special interest and importance to his memorandum, which would do it no
harm at all.
To simply go out and get his paper was an easy task--he could
be back here with it in less than two minutes--and he knew he wasn't
deceiving himself. The ledge, he saw, measuring it with his eye, was
about as wide as the length of his shoe, and perfectly flat. And every
fifth row of brick in the face of the building, he remembered--leaning
out, he verified this--was indented half an inch, enough for the tips
of his fingers, enough to maintain balance easily. It occurred to him
that if this ledge and wall were only a yard above ground--as he knelt
at the window staring out, this thought was the final confirmation of
his intention--he could move along the ledge indefinitely.
On a sudden impulse, he got to his feet, walked to the front
closet, and took out an old tweed jacket; it would be cold outside. He
put it on and buttoned it as he crossed the room rapidly toward the
open window. In the back of his mind he knew he'd better hurry and get
this over with before he thought too much, and at the window he didn't
allow himself to hesitate.
He swung a leg over the sill, then felt for and found the
ledge a yard below the window with his foot. Gripping the bottom of the
window frame very tightly and carefully, he slowly ducked his head
under it, feeling on his face the sudden change from the warm air of
the room to the chill outside. With infinite care he brought out his
other leg, his mind concentrating on what he was doing. Then he slowly
stood erect. Most of the putty, dried out and brittle, had dropped off
the bottom edging of the window frame, he found, and the flat wooden
edging provided a good gripping surface, a half-inch or more deep, for
the tips of his fingers.
Now, balanced easily and firmly, he stood on the ledge
outside in the slight, chill breeze, eleven stories above the street,
staring into his own lighted apartment, odd and different-seeming now.
First his right hand, then his left, he carefully shifted his
finger-tip grip from the puttyless window edging to an indented row of
bricks directly to his right. It was hard to take the first shuffling
sideways step then--to make himself move--and the fear stirred in his
stomach, but he did it, again by not allowing himself time to think.
And now--with his chest, stomach, and the left side of his face pressed
against the rough cold brick--his lighted apartment was suddenly gone,
and it was much darker out here than he had thought.
Without pause he continued--right foot, left foot, right
foot, left--his shoe soles shuffling and scraping along the rough
stone, never lifting from it, fingers sliding along the exposed edging
of brick. He moved on the balls of his feet, heels lifted slightly; the
ledge was not quite as wide as he'd expected. But leaning slightly
inward toward the face of the building and pressed against it, he could
feel his balance firm and secure, and moving along the ledge was quite
as easy as he had thought it would be. He could hear the buttons of his
jacket scraping steadily along the rough bricks and feel them catch
momentarily, tugging a little, at each mortared crack. He simply did
not permit himself to look down, though the compulsion to do so never
left him; nor did he allow himself actually to think.
Mechanically--right foot, left foot, over and again--he shuffled along
crabwise, watching the projecting wall ahead loom steadily closer. . . .
Then he reached it and, at the corner--he'd decided how he
was going to pick up the paper--he lifted his right foot and placed it
carefully on the ledge that ran along the projecting wall at a right
angle to the ledge on which his other foot rested. And now, facing the
building, he stood in the corner formed by the two walls, one foot on
the ledging of each, a hand on the shoulder-high indentation of each
wall. His forehead was pressed directly into the corner against the
cold bricks, and now he carefully lowered first one hand, then the
other, perhaps a foot farther down, to the next indentation in the rows
of bricks.
Very slowly, sliding his forehead down the trough of the
brick corner and bending his knees, he lowered his body toward the
paper lying between his outstretched feet. Again he lowered his
fingerholds another foot and bent his knees still more, thigh muscles
taut, his forehead sliding and bumping down the brick V. Half-squatting
now, he dropped his left hand to the next indentation and then slowly
reached with his right hand toward the paper between his feet.
He couldn't quite touch it, and his knees now were pressed
against the wall; he could bend them no farther. But by ducking his
head another inch lower, the top of his head now pressed against the
bricks, he lowered his right shoulder and his fingers had the paper by
a corner, pulling it loose. At the same instant he saw, between his
legs and far below, Lexington Avenue stretched out for miles ahead.
He saw, in that instant, the Loew's theater sign, blocks
ahead past Fiftieth Street; the miles of traffic signals, all green
now; the lights of cars and street lamps; countless neon signs; and the
moving black dots of people. And a violent instantaneous explosion of
absolute terror roared through him. For a motionless instant he saw
himself externally--bent practically double, balanced on this narrow
ledge, nearly half his body projecting out above the street far
below--and he began to tremble violently, panic flaring through his
mind and muscles, and he felt the blood rush from the surface of his
skin.
In the fractional moment before horror paralyzed him, as he
stared between his legs at that terrible length of street far beneath
him, a fragment of his mind raised his body in a spasmodic jerk to an
upright position again, but so violently that his head scraped hard
against the wall, bouncing off it, and his body swayed outward to the
knife edge of balance, and he very nearly plunged backward and fell.
Then he was leaning far into the corner again, squeezing and pushing
into it, not only his face but his chest and stomach, his back arching;
and his finger tips clung with all the pressure of his pulling arms to
the shoulder-high half-inch indentation in the bricks.
He was more than trembling now; his whole body was racked
with a violent shuddering beyond control, his eyes squeezed so tightly
shut it was painful, though he was past awareness of that. His teeth
were exposed in a frozen grimace, the strength draining like water from
his knees and calves. It was extremely likely, he knew, that he would
faint, slump down along the wall, his face scraping, and then drop
backward, a limp weight, out into nothing. And to save his life he
concentrated on holding on to consciousness, drawing deliberate deep
breaths of cold air into his lungs, fighting to keep his senses aware.
Then he knew that he would not faint, but he could not stop
shaking nor open his eyes. He stood where he was, breathing deeply,
trying to hold back the terror of the glimpse he had had of what lay
below him; and he knew he had made a mistake in not making himself
stare down at the street, getting used to it and accepting it, when he
had first stepped out onto the ledge.
It was impossible to walk back. He simply could not do it. He
couldn't bring himself to make the slightest movement. The strength was
gone from his legs; his shivering hands--numb, cold, and desperately
rigid--had lost all deftness; his easy ability to move and balance was
gone. Within a step or two, if he tried to move, he knew that he would
stumble and fall.
Seconds passed, with the chill faint wind pressing the side
of his face, and he could hear the toned-down volume of the street
traffic far beneath him. Again and again it slowed and then stopped,
almost to silence; then presently, even this high, he would hear the
click of the traffic signals and the subdued roar of the cars starting
up again. During a lull in the street sounds, he called out. Then he
was shouting "Help!" so loudly it rasped his throat. But he felt the
steady pressure of the wind, moving between his face and the blank
wall, snatch up his cries as he uttered them, and he knew they must
sound directionless and distant. And he remembered how habitually, here
in New York, he himself heard and ignored shouts in the night. If
anyone heard him, there was no sign of it, and presently Tom Benecke
knew he had to try moving; there was nothing else he could do.
Eyes squeezed shut, he watched scenes in his mind like scraps
of motion-picture film--he could not stop them. He saw himself
stumbling suddenly sideways as he crept along the ledge and saw his
upper body arc outward, arms flailing. He was a dangling shoestring
caught between the ledge and the sole of his other shoe, saw a foot
start to move, to be stopped with a jerk, and felt his balance leaving
him. He saw himself falling with a terrible speed as his body revolved
in the air, knees clutched tight to his chest, eyes squeezed shut,
moaning softly.
Out of utter necessity, knowing that any of these thoughts
might be reality in the very next seconds, he was slowly able to shut
his mind against every thought but what he now began to do. With
fear-soaked slowness, he slid his left foot an inch or two toward his
own impossibly distant window. Then he slid the fingers of his
shivering left hand a corresponding distance. For a moment he could not
bring himself to lift his right foot from one ledge to the other; then
he did it, and became aware of the harsh exhalation of air from his
throat and realized that he was panting. As his right hand, then, began
to slide along the brick edging, he was astonished to feel the yellow
paper pressed to the bricks underneath his stiff fingers, and he
uttered a terrible, abrupt bark that might have been a laugh or a moan.
He opened his mouth and took the paper in his teeth pulling it out from
under his fingers.
By a kind of trick--by concentrating his entire mind on first
his left foot, then his left hand, then the other foot, then the other
hand--he was able to move, almost imperceptibly, trembling steadily,
very nearly without thought. But he could feel the terrible strength of
the pent-up horror on just the other side of the flimsy barrier he had
erected in his mind; and he knew that if it broke through he would lose
this thin artificial control of his body.
During one slow step he tried keeping his eyes closed; it
made him feel safer shutting him off a little from the fearful reality
of where he was. Then a sudden rush of giddiness swept over him and he
had to open his eyes wide, staring sideways at the cold rough brick and
angled lines of mortar, his cheek tight against the building. He kept
his eyes open then knowing that if he once let them flick outward, to
stare for an instant at the lighted windows across the street, he would
be past help.
He didn't know how many dozens of tiny sidling steps he had
taken, his chest, belly, and face pressed to the wall; but he knew the
slender hold he was keeping on his mind and body was going to break. He
had a sudden mental picture of his apartment on just the other side of
this wall--warm, cheerful, incredibly spacious. And he saw himself
striding through it lying down on the floor on his back, arms spread
wide, reveling in its unbelievable security. The impossible remoteness
of this utter safety, the contrast between it and where he now stood,
was more than he could bear. And the barrier broke then and the fear of
the awful height he stood on coursed through his nerves and muscles.
A fraction of his mind knew he was going to fall, and he
began taking rapid blind steps with no feeling of what he was doing,
sidling with a clumsy desperate swiftness, fingers scrabbling along the
brick, almost hopelessly resigned to the sudden backward pull and swift
motion outward and down. Then his moving left hand slid onto not brick
but sheer emptiness, an impossible gap in the face of the wall, and he
stumbled.
His right foot smashed into his left anklebone; he staggered
sideways, began falling, and the claw of his hand cracked against glass
and wood, slid down it, and his finger tips were pressed hard on the
puttyless edging of his window. His right hand smacked gropingly beside
it as he fell to his knees; and, under the full weight and direct
downward pull of his sagging body, the open window dropped shudderingly
in its frame till it closed and his wrists struck the sill and were
jarred off.
For a single moment he knelt, knee bones against stone on the
very edge of the ledge, body swaying and touching nowhere else,
fighting for balance. Then he lost it, his shoulders plunging backward,
and he flung his arms forward, his hands smashing against the window
casing on either side; and--his body moving backward--his fingers
clutched the narrow wood stripping of the upper pane.
For an instant he hung suspended between balance and falling,
his finger tips pressed onto the quarter-inch wood strips. Then, with
utmost delicacy, with a focused concentration of all his senses, he
increased even further the strain on his finger tips hooked to these
slim edgings of wood. Elbows slowly bending, he began to draw the full
weight of his upper body forward, knowing that the instant his fingers
slipped off these quarter-inch strips he'd plunge backward and be
falling. Elbows imperceptibly bending, body shaking with the strain,
the sweat starting from his forehead in great sudden drops, he pulled,
his entire being and thought concentrated in his finger tips. Then
suddenly, the strain slackened and ended, his chest touching the window
sill, and he was kneeling on the ledge, his forehead pressed to the
glass of the closed window.
Dropping his palms to the sill, he stared into his living room--at the red-brown davenport
across the room, and a magazine he had left there; at the
pictures on the walls and the gray rug; the entrance to the hallway;
and at his papers, typewriter, and desk, not two feet from his nose. A
movement from his desk caught his eye and he saw that it was a thin
curl of blue smoke; his cigarette, the ash long, was still burning in
the ash tray where he'd left it--this was past all belief--only a few
minutes before.
His head moved, and in faint reflection from the glass before
him he saw the yellow paper clenched in his front teeth. Lifting a hand
from the sill he took it from his mouth; the moistened corner parted
from the paper, and he spat it out.
For a moment, in the light from the living room, he stared
wonderingly at the yellow sheet in his hand and then crushed it into
the side pocket of his jacket.
He couldn't open the window. It had been pulled not
completely closed, but its lower edge was below the level of the
outside sill; there was no room to get his fingers underneath it.
Between the upper sash and the lower was a gap not wide
enough--reaching up, he tried--to get his fingers into; he couldn't
push it open. The upper window panel, he knew from long experience, was
impossible to move, frozen tight with dried paint.
Very carefully observing his balance, the finger tips of his
left hand again hooked to the narrow stripping of the window casing, he
drew back his right hand, palm facing the glass, and then struck the
glass with the heel of his hand.
His arm rebounded from the pane, his body tottering. He knew he didn't dare strike a harder blow.
But in the security and relief of his new position, he simply
smiled; with only a sheet of glass between him and the room just before
him, it was not possible that there wasn't a way past it. Eyes
narrowing, he thought for a few moments about what to do. Then his eyes
widened, for nothing occurred to him. But still he felt calm: the
trembling, he realized, had stopped. At the back of his mind there
still lay the thought that once he was again in his home, he could give
release to his feelings. He actually would lie on the floor, rolling,
clenching tufts of the rug in his hands. He would literally run across
the room, free to move as he liked, jumping on the floor, testing and
reveling in its absolute security, letting the relief flood through
him, draining the fear from his mind and body. His yearning for this
was astonishingly intense, and somehow he understood that he had better
keep this feeling at bay.
He took a half dollar from his pocket and struck it against
the pane, but without any hope that the glass would break and with very
little disappointment when it did not. After a few moments of thought
he drew his leg onto the ledge and picked loose the knot of his
shoelace. He slipped off the shoe and, holding it across the instep,
drew back his arm as far as he dared and struck the leather heel
against the glass. The pane rattled, but he knew he'd been a long way
from breaking it. His foot was cold and he slipped the shoe back on. He
shouted again, experimentally, and then once more, but there was no
answer.
The realization suddenly struck him that he might have to
wait here till Clare came home, and for a moment the thought was funny.
He could see Clare opening the front door, withdrawing her key from the
lock, closing the door behind her, and then glancing up to see him
crouched on the other side of the window. He could see her rush across
the room, face astounded and frightened, and hear himself shouting
instructions: "Never mind how I got here! Just open the wind--" She
couldn't open it, he remembered, she'd never been able to; she'd always
had to call him. She'd have to get the building superintendent or a
neighbor, and he pictured himself smiling, and answering their
questions as he climbed in. "I just wanted to get a breath of fresh
air, so--"
He couldn't possibly wait here till Clare came home. It was
the second feature she'd wanted to see, and she'd left in time to see
the first. She'd be another three hours or--He glanced at his watch:
Clare had been gone eight minutes. It wasn't possible, but only eight
minutes ago he had kissed his wife good-by. She wasn't even at the
theater yet!
It would be four hours before she could possibly be home, and
he tried to picture himself kneeling out here, finger tips hooked to
these narrow strippings, while first one movie, preceded by a slow
listing of credits, began, developed, reached its climax, and then
finally ended. There'd be a newsreel next, maybe, and then an animated
cartoon, and then interminable scenes from coming pictures. And then,
once more, the beginning of a full-length picture--while all the time
he hung out here in the night.
He might possibly get to his feet, but he was afraid to try.
Already his legs were cramped, his thigh muscles tired; his knees hurt,
his feet felt numb, and his hands were stiff. He couldn't possibly stay
out here for four hours, or anywhere near it. Long before that his legs
and arms would give out; he would be forced to try changing his
position often--stiffly, clumsily, his coordination and strength
gone--and he would fall. Quite realistically, he knew that he would
fall; no one could stay out here on this ledge for four hours.
A dozen windows in the apartment building across the street
were lighted. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the top of a
man's head behind the newspaper he was reading; in another window he
saw the blue-gray flicker of a television screen. No more than
twenty-odd yards from his back were scores of people, and if just one
of them would walk idly to his window and glance out. . . . For some
moments he stared over his shoulder at the lighted rectangles, waiting.
But no one appeared. The man reading his paper turned a page and then
continued his reading. A figure passed another of the windows and was
immediately gone.
In the inside pocket of his jacket he found a little sheaf of
papers, and he pulled one out and looked at it in the light from the
living room. It was an old letter, an advertisement of some sort; his
name and address, in purple ink, were on a label pasted to the
envelope. Gripping one end of the envelope in his teeth, he twisted it
into a tight curl. From his shirt pocket he brought out a book of
matches. He didn't dare let go the casing with both hands but, with the
twist of paper in his teeth, he opened the matchbook with his free
hand; then he bent one of the matches in two without tearing it from
the folder, its red tipped end now touching the striking surface. With
his thumb, he rubbed the red tip across the striking area.
He did it again, then again and still again, pressing harder
each time, and the match suddenly flared, burning his thumb. But he
kept it alight, cupping the matchbook in his hand and shielding it with
his body. He held the flame to the paper in his mouth till it caught.
Then he snuffed out the match flame with his thumb and forefinger,
careless of the burn, and replaced the book in his pocket. Taking the
paper twist in his hand, he held it flame down, watching the flame
crawl up the paper, till it flared bright. Then he held it behind him
over the street, moving it from side to side, watching it over his
shoulder, the flame flickering and guttering in the wind.
There were three letters in his pocket and he lighted each of
them, holding each till the flame touched his hand and then dropping it
to the street below. At one point, watching over his shoulder while the
last of the letters burned, he saw the man across the street put down
his paper and stand--even seeming to glance toward Tom's window. But
when he moved, it was only to walk across the room and disappear from
sight.
There were a dozen coins in Tom Benecke's pocket and he
dropped them, three or four at a time. But if they struck anyone, or if
anyone noticed their falling, no one connected them with their source.
His arms had begun to tremble from the steady strain of
clinging to this narrow perch, and he did not know what to do now and
was terribly frightened. Clinging to the window stripping with one
hand, he again searched his pockets. But now--he had left his wallet on
his dresser when he'd changed clothes--there was nothing left but the
yellow sheet. It occurred to him irrelevantly that his death on the
sidewalk below would be an eternal mystery; the window closed--why,
how, and from where could he have fallen? No one would be able to
identify his body for a time, either--the thought was somehow
unbearable and increased his fear. All they'd find in his pockets would
be the yellow sheet. Contents of the dead man's pockets, he thought,
one sheet of paper bearing penciled notations--incomprehensible.
He understood fully that he might actually be going to die;
his arms, maintaining his balance on the ledge, were trembling steadily
now. And it occurred to him then with all the force of a revelation
that, if he fell, all he was ever going to have out of life he would
then, abruptly, have had. Nothing, then, could ever be changed; and
nothing more--no least experience or pleasure--could ever be added to
his life. He wished, then, that he had not allowed his wife to go off
by herself tonight--and on similar nights. He thought of all the
evenings he had spent away from her, working; and he regretted them. He
thought wonderingly of his fierce ambition and of the direction his
life had taken; he thought of the hours he'd spent by himself, filling
the yellow sheet that had brought him out here. Contents of the dead
man's pockets, he thought with sudden fierce anger, a wasted life.
He was simply not going to cling here till he slipped and
fell; he told himself that now. There was one last thing he could try;
he had been aware of it for some moments, refusing to think about it,
but now he faced it. Kneeling here on the ledge, the finger tips of one
hand pressed to the narrow strip of wood, he could, he knew, draw his
other hand back a yard perhaps, fist clenched tight, doing it very
slowly till he sensed the outer limit of balance, then, as hard as he
was able from the distance, he could drive his fist forward against the
glass. If it broke, his fist smashing through, he was safe; he might
cut himself badly, and probably would, but with his arm inside the
room, he would be secure. But if the glass did not break, the rebound,
flinging his arm back, would topple him off the ledge. He was certain
of that.
He tested his plan. The fingers of his left hand clawlike on
the little stripping, he drew back his other fist until his body began
teetering backward. But he had no leverage now--he could feel that
there would be no force to his swing--and he moved his fist slowly
forward till he rocked forward on his knees again and could sense that
this swing would carry its greatest force. Glancing down, however,
measuring the distance from his fist to the glass, he saw it was less
than two feet.
It occurred to him that he could raise his arm over his head,
to bring it down against the glass. But, experimenting in slow motion,
he knew it would be an awkward girl-like blow without the force of a
driving punch, and not nearly enough to break the glass.
Facing the window, he had to drive a blow from the shoulder,
he knew now, at a distance of less than two feet; and he did not know
whether it would break through the heavy glass. It might; he could
picture it happening, he could feel it in the nerves of his arm. And it
might not; he could feel that too--feel his fist striking this glass
and being instantaneously flung back by the unbreaking pane, feel the
fingers of his other hand breaking loose, nails scraping along the
casing as he fell.
He waited, arm drawn back, fist balled, but in no hurry to
strike; this pause, he knew, might be an extension of his life. And to
live even a few seconds longer, he felt, even out here on this ledge in
the night, was infinitely better than to die a moment earlier than he
had to. His arm grew tired, and he brought it down.
Then he knew that it was time to make the attempt. He could
not kneel here hesitating indefinitely till he lost all courage to act,
waiting till he slipped off the ledge. Again he drew back his arm,
knowing this time that he would not bring it down till he struck. His
elbow protruding over Lexington Avenue far below, the fingers of his
other hand pressed down bloodlessly tight against the narrow stripping,
he waited, feeling the sick tenseness and terrible excitement building.
It grew and swelled toward the moment of action, his nerves tautening.
He thought of Clare--just a wordless, yearning thought--and then drew
his arm back just a bit more, fist so tight his fingers pained him, and
knowing he was going to do it. Then with full power, with every last
scrap of strength he could bring to bear, he shot his arm forward
toward the glass, and he said, "Clare!"
He heard the sound, felt the blow, felt himself falling
forward, and his hand closed on the living-room curtains, the shards
and fragments of glass showering onto the floor. And then, kneeling
there on the ledge, an arm thrust into the room up to the shoulder, he
began picking away the protruding slivers and great wedges of glass
from the window frame, tossing them in onto the rug. And, as he grasped
the edges of the empty window frame and climbed into his home, he was
grinning in triumph.
He did not lie down on the floor or run through the
apartment, as he had promised himself; even in the first few moments it
seemed to him natural and normal that he should be where he was. He
simply turned to his desk, pulled the crumpled yellow sheet from his
pocket, and laid it down where it had been, smoothing it out; then he
absently laid a pencil across it to weight it down. He shook his head
wonderingly, and turned to walk toward the closet.
There he got out his topcoat and hat and, without waiting to
put them on, opened the front door and stepped out, to go find his
wife. He turned to pull the door closed and the warm air from the hall
rushed through the narrow opening again. As he saw the yellow paper,
the pencil flying, scooped off the desk and, unimpeded by the glassless
window, sail out into the night and out of his life, Tom Benecke burst
into laughter and then closed the door behind him.