The Tommyknockers Read online

  Ev, who saw much, and David, who saw more, could have told her.

  He wanted to make their eyes get so big they looked like they were going to fall out. He wanted to make the girls scream and the boys yell. He wanted to make everyone laugh when Victor came out of that hat with a ribbon in his tail and a chocolate coin in his mouth. He would have traded all the honest praise and genuine applause in the world for just one scream, one belly-laugh, one woman fainting dead away like the booklet says they did when Harry Houdini did his famous milk-can escape. Because honest praise means you only got good. When they scream and laugh and faint, that means you got great.

  But he suspected--no, he knew--that he was never going to get great, and all the want in the world would not change that fact. It was a bitter blow. Not the failure itself so much as the knowing it couldn't be changed. It was like the end of Santa Claus, in a way.

  So, while his parents believed his lapse of interest to be just another shift in the capricious spring wind that blows through most childhoods, it was, in fact, the result of Hilly's first adult conclusion: if he was never going to get great at magic, he ought to put the set away. He couldn't leave it around and just do a trick now and then as a hobby. His failure hurt too badly for that. It was a bad equation. Best erase it and try a new one.

  If adults could put aside their obsessions with such firmness, the world would undoubtedly be a better place. Robertson Davies does not say that in his Deptford Trilogy ... but he strongly hints at it.

  6

  It was on the Fourth of July that David came into Hilly's room and saw Hilly had gotten the magic kit out again. He had a lot of the tricks spread out in front of him ... and something else, as well. Batteries. The batteries from Daddy's big radio, David thought.

  "Watcha doon, Hilly?" David asked, companionably enough.

  Hilly's brow darkened. He sprang to his feet and shoved David out of the room so hard that David fell to the carpet. This behavior was so unusual that David was too surprised to cry.

  "Get out!" Hilly shouted. "Can't look at new tricks! The Medici princes used to have people executed if they caught them looking at tricks that belonged to their favorite magicians!"

  Having uttered this pronouncement, Hilly slammed the door in David's face. David howled for admittance, but to no avail. This unaccustomed stoniness in his harumscarum but usually sweet-natured brother was so unusual that David went downstairs, turned on the TV, and cried himself to sleep in front of Sesame Street.

  7

  Hilly's interest in magic had abruptly been rekindled at about the same time the picture of Jesus had begun speaking to 'Becka Paulson.

  A single powerful thought had seized his mind: if mechanical tricks like the Multiplying Coins were the best he could do, he would invent his own mechanical tricks. The best anyone had ever seen! Better than Thurston's clockwork or Blackstone's hinged mirrors! If what it took to elicit gasps and screams and belly-laughs was invention rather than manipulation, so be it.

  Lately he felt very capable of inventing things.

  Lately his mind seemed almost stuffed with ideas for inventions.

  This was not the first time the idea of inventing had crossed his mind, but his previous ideas had been vague, powered by daydreams rather than scientific principles--rocket ships made out of cardboard boxes, ray-guns that looked suspiciously like small tree-branches with pieces of Styrofoam packing pushed onto the barrels, things like that. He had had good ideas from time to time, ideas that were almost practical, but he had always dropped them before because he had no idea how to proceed with them--he could pound a nail straight and saw a board, but that was all.

  Now, however, the methods seemed as clear as crystal.

  Great tricks, he thought, wiring and bolting and screwing things together. When his mother told him, on July 8th, that she was going to Augusta to shop (she spoke in a distracted sort of way; for the last week or so Marie had had a headache, and the news that Joe and 'Becka Paulson had both been killed in a house fire had not helped it one little bit), Hilly asked her if she would stop at Radio Shack in the Capitol Mall and pick him up a couple of things. He gave her his list, the eight surviving dollars of his birthday money, and asked her if she could "kinda loan him" the rest.

  Ten (10) spring-type contact points @ $.70 ea (No. 1334567)

  Three (3) "T" contacts (spring-type) @ $1.00 ea (No. 1334709)

  One (1) coaxial cable "barrier" plug @ $2.40 ea (No. 19776-C)

  If it hadn't been for her headache and general feeling of listlessness, Marie would have doubtless wondered what this stuff was for. She would have doubtless wondered how Hilly could have gotten his information so exactly--right down to the inventory numbers--without making a long-distance call to the Augusta Radio Shack. She might even have suspected that Hilly had finally found it.

  In a terrible sense, this was exactly what had happened.

  Instead, she simply agreed to pick the stuff up and "kinda loan him" the extra four dollars or so.

  By the time she and David came back from Augusta, some of these questions had occurred to her. The trip had made her feel much better; her headache had blown completely away. And David, who had been silent and introspective--not at all his usual bouncy, babbly, bubbly self--ever since Hilly had pushed him out of his room, also seemed to cheer up. He talked her ear off, and it was from David that she learned Hilly had scheduled his SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW for the back yard nine days hence.

  "He's gonna do lots of new tricks," David said, looking glum.

  "Is he?"

  "Yes," David said.

  "Do you think they'll be good?"

  "I don't know," David said, thinking of the way Hilly had pushed him from the room. He was on the verge of tears, but Marie didn't notice. Ten minutes before, they had passed from Albion back into Haven, and her headache was coming back ... and with it, that previous sense--now a little stronger--that her thoughts were somehow not under control as they should be. There seemed to be too many, for one thing. For another, she couldn't even tell what a lot of them were. They were like ... She thought carefully, and finally came up with it. In high school she had been in the dramatics society (she thought Hilly must get much of his love of dramatics from her), and the thoughts in her mind now were like the murmur of an audience heard through the curtain before the show starts. You didn't know what they were saying, but you knew they were there.

  "I don't think they'll be so hot," David finally said. He was looking out through the window, and his eyes were suddenly prisoner's eyes, lonely and trapped. David saw Justin Hurd out in his field, chugging along on his tractor, harrowing. Harrowing even though it was already the second week of July. For a. moment forty-two-year-old Justin Hurd's mind was totally open to four-year-old David Brown's, and David understood that Justin was ripping his entire garden to pieces, plowing the unripened corn back under, tearing up the pea-patch, squashing the new melons to pulp under the wheels of his tractor. Justin Hurd thought it was May. May of 1951, in fact. Justin Hurd had gone crazy.

  "I don't think they'll be good at all," David said.

  8

  There had been roughly twenty people at Hilly's FIRST GALA MAGIC SHOW. There were only seven at the second: his mother, his father, his grandfather, David, Barney Applegate (who was, like Hilly, ten), Mrs. Crenshaw from the village (Mrs. Crenshaw had dropped by in hopes of selling Marie some Avon), and Hilly himself. This drastic drop in attendance was not the only contrast with the first show.

  The audience at that first one had been lively--even a little cheeky (the sarcastic applause which greeted the Munchie Money when it fell from Hilly's sleeve, for instance). The audience at the second was glum and listless, sitting like department-store mannequins on the camp chairs that Hilly and his "assistant" (a pale and silent David) had set up. Hilly's dad, who had laughed and applauded and raised hell at the first show, interrupted Hilly's opening speech about "the mysteries of the Orient" by saying that he couldn't spare a whole lot of tim
e for those mysteries, if Hilly didn't mind; he had just finished mowing the lawn, and he wanted a shower and a beer.

  The weather had changed too. The day of THE FIRST GALA MAGIC SHOW had been clear and warm and green, the most gorgeous sort of late-spring day northern New England can offer. This day in July was hot and sullenly humid, with hazy sun beating down from a sky the color of chrome. Mrs. Crenshaw sat fanning herself with one of her own Avon catalogues and waited for this to be over. A person could faint, sitting out here in the hot sun. And that little kid up there on a stage made of orange crates, wearing a black suit and a shoepolish mustache ... spoiled ... showing off ... Mrs. Crenshaw suddenly felt like killing him.

  The magic this time was much better--startling, really--but Hilly was stunned and infuriated to find he was nonetheless boring his audience to tears. He could see his father shifting around, getting ready to leave, and this made Hilly feel frantic, because he wanted to impress his father above all others.

  Well, what do they want? he asked himself angrily, sweating just as freely as Mrs. Crenshaw under his black wool Sunday suit. I'm doing great--betterthan Houdini, even--but they're not screaming or laughing or gasping. Why not? What the heck's wrong?

  At the center of Hilly's orange-crate stage was a small platform (another orange crate, this one covered with a sheet). Hidden inside this was a device that Hilly had invented, using the batteries David had seen in his room and the guts of an old Texas Instruments calculator that he had stolen (with no compunctions at all) from the bottom of his mother's desk in the front hall. The sheet covering the orange crate was pooled around its edges, and concealed in one of these pools of cloth was another of Hilly's out-of-character thefts--the foot-pedal of his mother's sewing machine. Hilly had connected the pedal to his gadget. He used the spring-connectors his mother had bought him in Augusta to do it.

  The device he had invented first made things disappear, then brought them back again.

  Hilly found this spectacular, mind-boggling. The reaction of his audience, however, started low and went downhill from there.

  "For my first trick, the Disappearing Tomato!" Hilly trumpeted. He pulled a tomato out of his box of "magic supplies" and held it up. "I would like a volunteer from the audience to verify this is a real tomato and not just a fake or something. You, sir! Thanks!" He pointed at his father, who just waved wearily and said, "It's a tomato, Hilly, I can see that."

  "Okay! Now watch as the Mysteries of the Orient ... take hold!"

  Hilly stooped, put the tomato in the center of the white sheet covering the crate, and then covered it with one of his mother's silk scarves. He waved his magic wand over the circular hump in the blue scarf. "Presto-majesto!" he yelled, and stepped surreptitiously on the concealed sewing-machine pedal. There was a brief low hum.

  The hump in the scarf disappeared. The scarf itself settled flat. He removed the scarf to show them the top of the platform was bare, and then waited complacently for the gasps and shouts of amazement. What he got was applause.

  Polite applause, no more.

  Clearly, from Mrs. Crenshaw's mind, this came: A trapdoor. Nothing to that. I can't believe I'm sitting out here in the sun watching this spoiled brat put tomatoes through trapdoors just so I can sell a bottle of perfume to his mother. Really!

  Hilly began to get mad.

  "Now another Mystery of the Orient! The Return of the Disappearing Tomato!" He frowned formidably at Mrs. Crenshaw. "And for those of you who're thinking about anything stupid like trapdoors, well, I guess even stupid people must know that a person could make a tomato go down through a trapdoor, but he'd have a pretty hard time trying to make it come back up, wouldn't he?"

  Mrs. Crenshaw just sat there, buttocks shlomping over the edges of the lawn chair she was slowly driving into the sod, smiling pleasantly. Her thoughts had faded from Hilly's head like a bad radio signal.

  He put the scarf on top of the platform again. Waved his wand. Stepped on the pedal. The blue scarf pushed up in a sphere. Hilly whipped it triumphantly off to reveal the tomato again.

  "Ta-daaa!" he shouted. Now the gasps and shouts would come.

  More polite applause.

  Barney Applegate yawned.

  Hilly could have cheerfully shot him.

  Hilly had planned to work his way up from the tomato trick to his Grand Finale, and it was a good plan, as far as it went. It just didn't go far enough. In his forgivable excitement at having invented a machine that actually made things disappear (he thought he might give it to the Pentagon or something after he had gotten his picture on the cover of Newsweek as the greatest magician in history), Hilly overlooked two things. First, that no one but infants and morons at any magic show believe the tricks are real, and second, he was doing essentially the same trick over and over again. Each fresh instance differed from the last only in degree.

  From the Disappearing Tomato and the Return of the Disappearing Tomato, Hilly pushed grimly on to the Disappearing Radio (his father's, considerably lighter with its eight D-cell batteries now in the guts of the gadget under the platform) and the Return of Same.

  Polite applause.

  The Disappearing Lawn Chair, followed by the Return of the You-Guessed-It.

  His audience sat lumpishly, as if sun-stunned ... or perhaps stunned by whatever was now in the air of Haven. If anything was oxidizing from the ship's hull and entering the atmosphere, it was surely heavy that day, which was without even a slight stir of wind.

  Got to do something, Hilly thought, panicked.

  He decided on the spur of the moment to skip the Disappearing Bookcase, the Disappearing Exer-Cycle (Mom's), and the Disappearing Motorcycle (Dad's, and in his dad's present mood, Hilly doubted if he would volunteer to drive it up onto the platform anyway). He would go right to the Grand Finale:

  The Disappearing Little Brother.

  "And now--"

  "Hilly, I'm sorry, but--" his father began.

  "--for my final trick," Hilly added quickly, and saw his father settle back reluctantly, "I need a volunteer from the audience. C'mere, David."

  David came forward with an expression in which fear and resignation were perfectly balanced. Although he had not been precisely told, David knew what the final trick was. He knew too well.

  "I don't wanna," he whispered.

  "You're gonna," Hilly said grimly.

  "Hilly, I'm scared." David was pleading, his eyes filled with tears. "What if I don't come back?"

  "You will, " Hilly whispered. "Everything else did, didn't it?"

  "Yeah, but you didn't disappear nothin that was alive," David said. Now the tears overspilled and ran down his face.

  Looking at his brother, whom he had loved so well and so successfully (he'd had more success loving David than he had doing anything else he had set his hand to, including magic), Hilly felt a moment of horrible doubt. It was like waking temporarily from a nightmare before it sucked you back down. You aren't going to do this, are you? You wouldn't push him out into a busy street just because you thought all the cars would stop in time, would you? You don't even know where those things go when they stop being here!

  Then he looked out at the audience--bored and inattentive, the only one who looked half-alive being Barney Applegate, who was carefully picking a scab off his elbow--and the resentment rose up again. He stopped seeing the frightened tears in David's eyes.

  "Get up on the platform, David!" Hilly whispered grimly.

  David's small face began to quiver all over ... but he walked toward the platform. He had never disobeyed Hilly, whom he had idolized all the fifteen-hundred-odd days of his life, and he did not disobey him now. Nevertheless, his pudgy legs could barely hold him as he stepped onto the sheet-covered orange crate with the nutty machine underneath.

  David faced the audience, a small round boy in blue shorts and a faded T-shirt that said THEY CALL ME DR. LOVE. Tears streamed down his face.

  "Smile, dammit," Hilly hissed, putting his foot on the sewing-machine ped
al.

  Weeping harder, David nevertheless managed a hideous parody of a smile. Marie Brown did not see her younger son's tears of terror. Mrs. Crenshaw had changed seats (half the aluminum legs of the one she had been in had now submerged in the lawn) and prepared to go. She didn't care if she sold the stupid cunt any Avon or not. This torture wasn't worth it.

  "And NOW!" Hilly blared at his dazed audience. "The biggest secret the Orient holds! Known to few and practiced by fewer! The Disappearing Human! Watch closely!"

  He threw the sheet over David's quivering form. As it billowed down to David's feet, an audible sob came from beneath. Hilly felt another quiver of what might have been fear or sanity struggling feebly to reassert itself.

  "Hilly, please ... please, I'm scared ..." The muffled whisper drifted out.

  Hilly hesitated. And suddenly thought: Off you go! Know that you can! Cause I learned this trick ... from the Tommyknocker Man!

  It was shortly after that when Hilly Brown really and truly lost his mind.

  "Presto-majesto!" he shouted, and waved his hand at the quivering sheet-covered form on the platform, and stomped the pedal.

  Hummmmmmmmmmmm.

  The sheet puffed down lazily, as a sheet will do when a man or a woman tosses it over a bed and allows it to settle.

  Hilly whipped it away.

  "Ta-daaaaa!" he shrieked. He was half-delirious with a mixture of triumph and fear, the two of them for the moment perfectly balanced, like children of equal weights on a teeter-totter.

  David was gone.

  9

  For a moment the general apathy was broken. Barney Applegate stopped picking his scab. Bryant Brown sat up in his chair, his mouth open. Marie and Mrs. Crenshaw broke off their whispered conversation, and Ev Hillman frowned and looked worried ... although this expression was not exactly new. Ev had looked and felt worried for some days now.