Humpty Dumpty in Oakland Read online

  To his ears came the racket of machinery. Now he saw them, far off, like toiling insects. But he thought now, really thought, that he could see Marin Country Gardens; at least there was some sort of new housing development going up the side of a broad, brown hill. He could make out where the ground had been cleared, new narrow roads put in, foundations begun. Feeling buoyed up, he rolled the car windows down and let the warm summer air into the car, the dry country air, so different from the city’s. The smell of drying grass seemed satisfying and the sight of the flat fields gave him the absolute conviction that he had finally found it; the view which he now saw through his dust-and-bug-spattered windshield exactly fitted his expectations.

  Now, to his delight, the sign itself appeared. As he passed he made out only the larger words; the information, painted on the wood in blazing green and red, dwindled row by row into facts about down-payments, floor-plans, number of bricks in the fireplace, colors. He read:

  MARIN COUNTRY GARDENS

  ONLY ¼ MILE AHEAD

  OPEN FOR PUBLIC INSPECTION

  This no longer was a State or Federal construction project, this area of dirt and machines ahead; this was a private business enterprise. And yet it fit in. It was part of the general stirring, the activity. All joined, and here his part entered; here he fit in. His wrists and hands burned with perspiration; he blinked and felt a new kind of feeling, or rather an old one, left over from his childhood. He yearned to spill from the car and get his feet onto the ground; he wanted to run and leap and grab up things to throw.

  The road led to a small building with tar-paper roof and parking lot before it. A single dingy black Ford was parked there. The ground was muddy and trampled; he saw several rolls of roofing paper stacked up beside the small building. And a half-empty cement sack.

  When he had parked and put on the handbrake—he made himself act methodically—he walked to the building with slow, easy steps. The door was open to an office in which a man sat behind a desk with his feet up and crossed. He was reading a paperback book. The office smelled of varnish. On the desk were a telephone and wire baskets of papers, and on one wall was a glossy calendar, new and crisp, with a print of a girl in a long flowered skirt.

  “Greetings,” the man said. He turned the pages of his book as if discarding the unread part. Then he tossed it down on the desk, loudly, and folded his hands. He was young, with a long horse-face and thick hair. His suit was informal, single-breasted; his teeth projected and the skin of his neck was red and rough. Surprisingly, his socks hung in folds around his ankles. “You read these things?” he said, pointing with his thumb at the closed paperback book.

  “No,” Fergesson said, panting with exertion and excitement.

  The man picked up the book and regarded it. “Brain Wave? he said. “By Poul Anderson. Science fiction. I read all these science fiction books. I must have read fifty the last month or so. The desk’s full of them. People give them to me; I don’t have to buy them.”

  Fergesson, with his urgency, had arrived at this little closed spot of timelessness. The gigantic public works, protracted over decades, were unfolding close to this office and man; he had taken on their viewpoint. At his desk, with his heap of books, he was an Egyptian officer. Emotionless, cut off, he greeted Fergesson ponderously.

  “No,” Fergesson said, wanting to bring the man back into motion, back into time. “Say, you know Mr. Bradford?”

  The man nodded.

  “Is he here?”

  “Bradford isn’t here,” the man said. He rose to his feet and extended his hand, which Fergesson found heavy and dry. The man stooped from the low ceiling of the office and his height had gone into his shoulders. “My name is Carmichael. What is your name?” He asked it with a rising inflection, as if he had known it and forgotten it and expected to recognize it once he heard it repeated again.

  “Jim Fergesson.”

  “Hello, Jim,” Carmichael said, twisting his head on an angle and squinting. “Is that an Irish name?”

  “I guess so,”.Fergesson said. He was calming now, feeling his blood pressure wane.

  “Sit down, Jim.” Carmichael pushed a chair out and returned to his own chair facing across the desk. His two flinty hands rubbed together, upright, forming a vertical surface. Then, with his thumbnail, he tugged down his lip and pried at his gum. “Well, Jim,” he said. “What can I do for you? Can I sell you a house?”

  “No,” Fergesson said, “I want to talk to Mr. Bradford. I have something to discuss. When is he here?”

  “You do not want to buy a house,” Carmichael said. “I didn’t think you wanted to buy a house, actually. Mr. Bradford came out here once that I know of. Actually Bradford is part of the financial bunch that backs this place. The work is done by Gross and Duncan . . . contractors.” His voice slowed. “I represent the company. So you can talk to me.”

  Fergesson had decided that he would not give himself away, that he would pretend to be something else and not what he really was. He really was here to see what had been accomplished; he was passing judgment on Marin Country Gardens and the work and schemes of its backers. In him was the capacity to decide, not merely about himself but about them all. And Carmichael was in on it because he was being decided about; he was part of the subdivision and the new shopping center, as were the workmen with the bulldozer and the man in the business suit who had backed the Pontiac, and, in a way, the policeman and the mailman and the real-estate woman and all the rest of them.

  “I want to see what they’re doing,” Fergesson said. “Can we look?”

  “Why not?” Carmichael said, making no move to get up. He seemed resigned and pleasant, but not particularly involved. “What line of work are you in, Jim?”

  “Mechanics,” Fergusson said.

  “What do you do, design or invent or make machines? You work with machines?”

  “Cars,” Fergusson said.

  “Do you?” Carmichael seemed interested. “I used to have a souped-up buggy I worked on. During the war I was in the C.B.s. I had some engine designs I worked up . . . mostly carburetor changes. Feed for each cylinder. That’s why I read this stuff.” He picked up his science fiction book and dropped it flat to the desk again. “You know, these guys who write these things . . . these rocket ships and time-travel machines and faster-than-light drives, all that stuff. If you want the hero to be on Mars you say something like—‘he turned on the automatic high-gain propulsion tubes.’ This one isn’t so bad but some of them are. They go barreling around the universe. It must be easy to write this stuff; they must bat it out.”

  “I see,” Fergesson said, not following the man’s talk.

  “I’d like to meet one of these science fiction boys. I’d hire myself out as a technical consultant.” Carmichael’s great horse-teeth showed in irony. “Ten or fifteen percent of the price he gets. This stuff is just fake. They fake it as they go along. This one here,” he said, lifting the book around so that Fergesson could see it. “This is about the I.Q. of everybody going up overnight.” He laughed suddenly, a loud startling noise. “Animals become as smart as people. You ever read this stuff?”

  “No,” Fergesson said. He was impatient to go on; he walked to the door of the office and looked out at the half-completed houses.

  “What do you do with cars?” Carmichael asked from the desk.

  “Fix them. I have a garage. In Oakland.”

  “What part of Oakland?”

  “San Pablo Avenue,” he said, and opened the door to go outside.

  Carmichael pushed back his chair and followed after him. His hand descended on Fergesson’s shoulder. “You say you want to go look around?” He started down the gravel path beside Fergesson. “Well, I’ll show you around.”

  “Thanks,” Fergesson said. Straining, he saw the flat tract at the bottom of the hill; a muddy path went down and across a deep ditch, past heaps of pipe and piled lumber. Separate crews worked laying foundations. A cement mixer churned and the echoing racket of a
hammer stirred the midday air. The air smelled of fresh-cut wood.

  “Pretty nice,” Carmichael said, stopping to light a cigarette. He tossed the match a long distance off. “Don’t you think, so, Jim?”

  “Yes,” Fergesson said.

  They worked their way down the path. Under their feet clumps of dirt rolled and Fergesson tottered as his heels slid in the ooze. “Watch your step,” Carmichael said from behind him. He himself descended with calm. “No, Bradford doesn’t come out here. You see, Jim, I’ll tell you how this thing works. Bradford has nothing to do with the building. They put up the money and Gross and Duncan do the work. The selling is handled by two or three agents. Now the deal I have is, I live here on the tract. I get one of the houses rent-free for the first year or until the tract fills up. For each house I sell I get a flat five hundred dollars. Other than that I get no salary. But all I have to do is sell two houses a month. You can see my house. It’s a show house. Full of department-store furniture and an electric kitchen completely equipped. My wife’s there.” He pointed and Fergesson could see curtains in the windows of the house. It was a one-story California ranch-style house with a garage and a picket fence and a lawn bordered by flowers. The cement walk led to the mire of dirt that was the street. All the other houses were unfinished, unpainted and empty. Their skeletons were identical. He saw no variation along the rows.

  “There’s four different styles,” Carmichael said. “But right now you can’t see the difference. It’s in the color and the lattice work and the number of bedrooms.”

  “I see,” Fergesson said.

  “Over there will be the shopping center.” Carmichael gestured. “That’s a separate enterprise. They think it’s too much of a gamble. They want it operated on its own. They’re sure the houses will go, but the shopping center is something else.”

  “Why?” Fergesson said. “People have to buy, and they live out here.”

  “They live here,” Carmichael agreed, “but did you ever see a woman that wanted to buy near home? The ladies want to go into town. They won’t buy here; they’ll drive to San Francisco. It’ll give them an excuse to go to the big downtown department stores. Maybe a food market here. A market and a gas pump and a lunch counter. But they’re talking in terms of—” He spread his arms.

  “Bakeries, and pottery shops, and circulating library, and shoe repair.

  “A town,” Fergesson said.

  Carmichael glanced at him. “The works, yes.”

  “You don’t think it’ll pay?”

  “Well, they don’t need it.”

  “They’re not risking anything.”

  “No,” Carmichael agreed, “they’ll leave it on its own. If it sinks they’ll be free.”

  “The garage,” Fergesson said. “I was thinking about buying into that.”

  Carmichael was still looking at him and Fergesson knew that he had been figured out from the start. The man had appraised him; that was his job. Fergesson walked across the flat ground. When he reached a group of workmen he halted. They were setting frames for concrete to be poured, for the foundations of the house.

  “Well,” Carmichael said, beside him. “It would cost you forty or fifty.”

  “Yes,” Fergesson said.

  “What about this garage in Oakland?”

  “I sold it. I’m selling it.”

  “Why?”

  Fergesson did not answer. He felt tense and disturbed and he walked away from Carmichael with his hands in his pockets.

  After a while Carmichael followed him. “Let’s go back to the office,” he said. “We can talk.”

  Fergesson said, “What do you get for these?” He meant the houses.

  “Twelve or fourteen. They’re good. Nothing special but they’re well built. Gross and Duncan know their business. Nobody’s getting swindled.” Carmichael ground his cigarette out in the mushy soil. “At one time I was thinking about the auto thing. The supply shop; me, I mean. But they want people to buy in to get in on that. I couldn’t raise that. When they talk that kind of money, I’m out. They’re sound enough on this auto business. The people who live this far out won’t be getting into town for their auto parts and work; they’ll have it done here because when they need it they’ll need it right away.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Fergesson said, and he thought then of something else. “The women won’t be going to the garage. The men bring in the car.”

  “How long have you been in the garage business?”

  “Most of my life.”

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s okay.” He felt impatient. “A lot of hard work crawling under cars.”

  “You like what you see here?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It’s a damn funny thing,” Carmichael said. “Come on, let’s go back.” He guided Fergesson with his arm and the two men walked toward the ditch and the rise. “People come out here, drive all the way from the City . . . they know it isn’t finished; they know the freeway isn’t done and the houses aren’t either, and when they get out here they look around and bellyache—like— hell. What do they want, for Christ’s sake? I can see this place; all you have to do is look. In two or three years this’ll be lawns and wives out watering and kids crawling everywhere. What do they need? These places look alike—so what; they won’t look alike when people get in them. It’s the people that makes them look different. You take any six blocks of empty houses; it’s scary. The people bring in the personal furniture and hangings.”

  “How many houses have you sold?” Fergesson said.

  “Six. Seven. There’s other salesmen, back in the City.” They crossed the ditch and halted so that Fergesson could get his breath. “Would you bring anybody else in with you?” Carmichael asked.

  “No.” He was panting again with the exertion of climbing. To excuse himself, he looked back at the houses to see them once more before they took the rise. “I could run it alone, the financial part.

  “But you’d hire mechanics.”

  “Yes,” Fergesson said.

  “You’re married? You have a family?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Carmichael started leisurely up the hillside and Fergesson followed. The old man’s shoes disappeared into the yellow clay, and the grass, as he clutched for support, slid through his fingers. Carmichael climbed upright, with ease and sureness, talking slowly.

  “It would be up to you. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t work out. They have a mint tied up in this place and it’s all geared in with the freeway. They know approximately when they should have most of the houses sold. You’d start getting a return on your investment right from the start anyhow, because there’re a lot of other tracts around here, a lot of them filled, and people coming down from Petaluma. And on weekends this is busy with traffic going up to the Russian River. You saw the number of cars on 101. This is a busy area, and getting more busy all the time. What else can it do but grow?”

  Jim Fergesson climbed with effort. Ahead of him Carmichael talked on and he listened as best he could. His hands were wet and they stung from the edges of the grass. At one point he stumbled and fell against the dirt; his fingers dug and floundered and he shut his eyes. Carmichael was at the top and going on, slowing because he saw that the old man was not keeping up with him. Fergesson stood up and stepped widely, to finish in three last strides. At the top was a collection of steel support bars and as he reached them his toe caught in the dragging weeds that had grown across them. He stepped forward and his body collapsed. The air rushed out of him and he fell into darkness, fell so suddenly that he could say nothing. It was as if the ground had magnetized him. He went over on his face like metal, with his arms out; he did not feel the ground come up and he did not hear himself fall. One moment he was laboriously climbing behind Carmichael and then he lay face down in the ooze.

  Carmichael, still talking, walked a few paces. He said, “Oh hell,” and came back, bending, with his placid horse-face dipping
toward Fergesson. The old man felt his presence and grunted, wanting to lift himself. But he couldn’t. He had no strength. A distant humming was all he could hear and although he could remember Carmichael’s voice, he could not really catch the sound of it.

  Taking hold of the old mans arm Carmichael tried to lift him. He lifted with both hands but Fergesson did not budge; Carmichael could not budge him and Fergesson felt his own weight, heavy and dead, snapped tight by the magnetic ground. He had been snared and he could do and say nothing; he could only wait. He hoped that Carmichael would have an answer.

  “Hey,” Carmichael said to some workmen along the hillside. “Give me a hand.”

  The workmen walked over. Fergesson did not feel foolish or frightened; he felt a little sick at his stomach and now his chest was beginning to hurt. He could, with his mind, trace the outline of the steel support bars. They were under him. The pressure became pain and he winced.

  “What happened?” a workman said.

  “He fell,” Carmichael said. They lifted the old man to his feet; they tipped him back to a standing position. Fergesson found himself upright, dripping mud and crushed weeds. The pressure remained on his chest, however; he lifted his hand and brushed reflexively. His face seemed puffy and leaking, as if it were drizzling blood.

  “Thanks,” Carmichael said; the workmen went off. “Hey,” he said to Fergesson. “You really took a spill.”

  Fergesson nodded. The pain in his chest numbed him. He touched himself with his stiff fingers but he felt nothing at all. He could not talk, either. Now he was frightened.

  “Let’s go into the office,” Carmichael said. With his hand on Fergesson’s shoulder he walked him toward the tar-paper-roofed shack. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  “No,” Fergesson said. His voice sounded a long way from him and discordant. As if he were hearing it through a wire. “I have to get back.”

  “You want to get into your car?”

  Fergesson nodded, and Carmichael walked with him to the parked Pontiac. Carmichael opened the door and the old man got in behind the wheel. He leaned back against the upholstery and sucked in huge gusts of air. The air hurt his throat, as if it too were skinned by the fall. He held his hand against his chest and pushed in.