'You stole my story,' the man on the doorstep said. 'You stole my story and something's got to be done about it. Right is right and fair is fair and something has to be done.'
Morton Rainey, who had just gotten up from a nap and who was still feeling only halfway1 into the real world, didn't have the slightest idea what to say. This was never the case when he was at work, sick or well, wide awake or half asleep; he was a writer, and hardly ever at a loss when it became necessary to fill a character's mouth with a snappy comeback. Rainey opened his mouth, found no snappy comeback there (not even a limp one, in fact), and so closed it again.
He thought: This man doesn't look exactly real. He looks like a character out of a novel by William Faulkner.
This was of no help in resolving the situation, but it was undeniably true. The man who had rung Rainey's doorbell out here in the western Maine version of nowhere looked about forty-five. He was very thin. His face was calm, almost serene2, but carved with deep lines. They moved horizontally across his high brow in regular waves, cut vertically3 downward from the ends of his thin lips to his jawline, and radiated outward in tiny sprays from the corners of his eyes. The eyes were bright, unfaded blue. Rainey couldn't tell what color his hair was; he wore a large black hat with a round crown planted squarely on his head. The underside of the brim touched the tops of his ears. It looked like the sort of hat Quakers wore. He had no sideburns, either, and for all Morton Rainey knew, he might be as bald as Telly Savalas under that round-crowned felt hat.
He was wearing a blue work-shirt. It was buttoned neatly4 all the way to the loose, razor-reddened flesh of his neck, although he wore no tie. The bottom of the shirt disappeared into a pair of blue-jeans that looked a little too big for the man who was wearing them. They ended in cuffs5 which lay neatly on a pair of faded yellow work-shoes which looked made for walking in a furrow6 of played-out earth about three and a half feet behind a mule's ass7.
'Well?' he asked when Rainey continued to say nothing.
'I don't know you,' Rainey said finally. It was the first thing he'd said since he'd gotten up off the couch and come to answer the door, and it sounded sublimely8 stupid in his own cars.
'I know that,' said the man. 'That doesn't matter. I know you, Mr Rainey. That's what matters.' And then he reiterated9: 'You stole my story.'
He held out his hand, and for the first time Rainey saw that he had something in it. It was a sheaf of paper. But not just any old sheaf of paper; it was a manuscript. After you've been in the business awhile, he thought, you always recognized the look of a manuscript. Especially an unsolicited one.
And. belatedly, he thought: Good thing for you it wasn't a gun, Mort old kid. You would have been in hell before you knew you were dead.
And even more belatedly, he realized that he was probably dealing10 with one of the Crazy Folks. It was long overdue11, of course; although his last three books had been best-sellers, this was his first visit from one of that fabled12 tribe. He felt a mixture of fear and chagrin13, and his thoughts narrowed to a single point: how to get rid of the guy as fast as possible, and with as little unpleasantness as possible.
'I don't read manuscripts - ' he began.
'You read this one already,' the man with the hard-working sharecropper's face said evenly. 'You stole it.' He spoke14 as if stating a simple fact. like a man noting that the sun was out and it was a pleasant fall day.
All of Mort's thoughts were belated this afternoon, it seemed; he now realized for the first time how alone he was out here. He had come to the house in Tashmore Glen in early October, after two miserable15 months in New York; his divorce had become final just last week.
It was a big house, but it was a summer place, and Tashmore Glen was a summer town. There were maybe twenty cottages on this particular road running along the north bay of Tashmore Lake, and in July or August there would be people staying in most or all of them . . . but this wasn't July or August. It was late October. The sound of a gunshot, he realized, would probably drift away unheard. If it was heard, the hearers would simply assume someone was shooting at quail16 or pheasant - it was the season.
'I can assure you - '
'I know you can.' the man in the black hat said with that same unearthly patience. 'I know that.'
Behind him, Mort could see the car the man had come in. It was an old station wagon17 which looked as if it had seen a great many miles, very few of them on good roads. He could see that the plate on it wasn't from the State of Maine, but couldn't tell what state it was from; he'd known for some time now that he needed to go to the optometrist18 and have his glasses changed, had even planned early last summer to do that little chore, but then Henry Young had called him one day in April, asking who the fellow was he'd seen Amy with at the mall - some relative, maybe? - and the suspicions which had culminated19 in the eerily20 quick and quiet no-fault divorce had begun, the shitstorm which had taken up all his time and energy these last few months. During that time he had been doing well if he remembered to change his underwear, let alone handle more esoteric things like optometrist appointments.
'If you want to talk to someone about some grievance21 you feel you have,' Mort began uncertainly, hating the pompous22, talking-boilerplate sound of his own voice but not knowing how else to reply, 'you could talk to my ag -'
'This is between you and me,' the man on the doorstep said patiently. Bump, Mort's tomcat, had been curled up on the low cabinet built into the side of the house - you had to store your garbage in a closed compartment23 or the racoons came in the night and pulled it all over hell - and now he jumped down and twined his way sinuously24 between the stranger's legs. The stranger's bright-blue eyes never left Rainey's face. 'We don't need any outsiders, Mr Rainey. It is strictly25 between you and me.'
'I don't like being accused of plagiarism26, if that's what you're doing,' Mort said. At the same time, part of his mind was cautioning him that you had to be very careful when dealing with people of the Crazy Folks tribe. Humor them? Yes. But this man didn't seem to have a gun, and Mort outweighed27 him by at least fifty pounds. I've also got five or ten years on him, by the look, he thought. He had read that a bonafide Crazy Guy could muster28 abnormal strength, but he was damned if he was simply going to stand here and let this man he had never seen before go on saying that he, Morton Rainey, had stolen his story. Not without some kind of rebuttal.
'I don't blame you for not liking29 it,' the man in the black hat said. He spoke in the same patient and serene way. He spoke, Mort thought, like a therapist whose work is teaching small children who are retarded30 in some mild way. 'But you did it. You stole my story.'
'You'll have to leave,' Mort said. He was fully31 awake now, and he no longer felt so bewildered, at such a disadvantage. 'I have nothing to say to you.'
'Yes, I'll go,' the man said. 'We'll talk more later.' He held out the sheaf of manuscript, and Mort actually found himself reaching for it. He put his hand back down to his side just before his uninvited and unwanted guest could slip the manuscript into it, like a process server finally slipping a subpoena32 to a man who has been ducking it for months.
'I'm not taking that,' Mort said, and part of him was marvelling33 at what a really accommodating beast a man was: when someone held something out to you, your first instinct was to take it. No matter if it was a check for a thousand dollars or a stick of dynamite34 with a lit and fizzing fuse, your first instinct was to take it.
'Won't do you any good to play games with me, Mr Rainey,' the man said mildly. 'This has got to be settled.'
'So far as I'm concerned, it is,' Mort said, and closed the door on that lined, used, and somehow timeless face.
He had only felt a moment or two of fear, and those had come when he first realized, in a disoriented and sleep-befogged way, what this man was saying. Then it had been swallowed by anger - anger at being bothered during his nap, and more anger at the realization35 that he was being bothered by a representative of the Crazy Folks.
Once the door was closed, the fear returned. He pressed his lips together and waited for the man to start pounding on it. And when that didn't come, he became convinced that the man was just standing36 out there, still as a stone and as patient as same, waiting for him to reopen the door ... as he would have to do, sooner or later.
Then he heard a low thump37, followed by a series of light steps crossing the board porch. Mort walked into the master bedroom, which looked out on the driveway. There were two big windows in here, one giving on the driveway and the shoulder of hill behind it, the other providing a view of the slope which fell away to the blue and agreeable expanse of Tashmore Lake. Both windows were reflectorized, which meant he could look out but anyone trying to look in would see only his own distorted image, unless he put his nose to the glass and cupped his eyes against the glare.
He saw the man in the work-shirt and cuffed38 blue-jeans walking back to his old station wagon. From this angle, he could make out the license39 plate's state of issue - Mississippi. As the man opened the driver's-side door, Mort thought: Oh shit. The gun's in the car. He didn't have it on him because he believed he could reason with me ... whatever his idea of 'reasoning' is. But now he's going to get it and come back. It's probably in the glove compartment or under the seat
But the man got in behind the wheel, pausing only long enough to take off his black hat and toss it down beside him. As he slammed the door and started the engine, Mort thought, There's something different about him now. But it wasn't until his unwanted afternoon visitor had backed up the driveway and out of sight behind the thick screen of bushes Mort kept forgetting to trim that he realized what it was.
When the man got into his car, he had no longer been holding the manuscript.
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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cuffs
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| n.袖口( cuff的名词复数 )v.掌打，拳打( cuff的第三人称单数 ) | |
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furrow
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| n.沟；垄沟；轨迹；车辙；皱纹 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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sublimely
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| 高尚地，卓越地 | |
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reiterated
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| 反复地说，重申( reiterate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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overdue
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| adj.过期的，到期未付的；早该有的，迟到的 | |
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fabled
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| adj.寓言中的，虚构的 | |
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chagrin
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| n.懊恼；气愤；委屈 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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quail
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| n.鹌鹑；vi.畏惧，颤抖 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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optometrist
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| n.验光师，配镜师 | |
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culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eerily
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| adv.引起神秘感或害怕地 | |
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grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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pompous
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的 | |
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compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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sinuously
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| 弯曲的，蜿蜒的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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plagiarism
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| n.剽窃，抄袭 | |
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outweighed
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| v.在重量上超过( outweigh的过去式和过去分词 )；在重要性或价值方面超过 | |
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muster
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| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
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29
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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retarded
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| a.智力迟钝的，智力发育迟缓的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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subpoena
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| n.（法律）传票；v.传讯 | |
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33
marvelling
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的现在分词 ) | |
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34
dynamite
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| n./vt.(用)炸药(爆破) | |
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35
realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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37
thump
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| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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38
cuffed
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| v.掌打，拳打( cuff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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license
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| n.执照，许可证，特许；v.许可，特许 | |
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