Free Live Free

Vendo

Outside, the morning sun shone as though winter had never come. The snow, already churned to gray sludge along the middle of the sidewalk, had frozen hard in the night, but at the edges of this beaten track a white margin pure as the plastic flakes lingering in the corners of the department-store windows remained to reflect the sunshine and blue the shadow of each passerby.

Hurrying along, stumbling and slipping sometimes in the frozen gullies, tripping and sliding on the icy ridges, Barnes yearned for good boots and thick stockings, for a sweater too, and gloves. He was cold—nearly frozen, he told himself—despite his threadbare topcoat and his hat. Hocking the coat was out of the question until better weather arrived. After a big breakfast and innumerable cups of coffee, he was not hungry, but the need for money was like a hunger in him; he longed for it as a prisoner in some Siberian camp might long for bread.

As he walked, he watched the sidewalk and the gutter. In his mind’s eye, he could see plainly a bill lying in the snow where it had been dropped by someone paying off a cab, a coin trodden underfoot like a pebble. He watched the people who hurried past as well; it seemed possible—indeed, it seemed likely—that one of them would require some sudden service. He saw himself snatching a child from beneath the wheels of a truck for a fortune, collaring a runaway dog for a dollar.

His fingers toyed with the three locker keys in his pocket, but he did not go directly to the bus station. The branch post office that had served Free’s house while that house yet stood was only a block out of the way; he waited patiently in line there to reach a window. “You were supposed to hold my mail,” he told the bearded young clerk. “The house was torn down.” He gave the address.

The clerk vanished somewhere in the back of the post office. Barnes could feel the accusing eyes of the people behind him on the nape of his neck. I only came to buy stamps, the eyes of a thin woman there whined, it would only take a second. The eyes of a portly man in a five-hundred dollar suit said: My affairs are urgent. Very urgent. Barnes rubbed the back of his neck and pretended not to hear the eyes.

“Nothing,” the bearded clerk said, returning. “When was your last delivery?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Well, there was nothing yesterday, then. You got a new address?”

“Not yet,” Barnes said. “Just hold anything that comes for me.”

There were stamp machines in the lobby of the post office. He felt in the coin return of each, hoping for an overlooked dime or quarter.

That gave him an idea. Outside, he stopped at each curbside phone booth he passed. Sometimes, because he thought people were looking at him, he pretended to make calls, dropping imaginary money into the slot and groping in the cold metal receptacle as though the call had not gone through, as though he had failed to reach his party, as indeed he had.

The Greyhound station was a gem set in a coronet of cheap restaurants. It blazed with light and seemed designed for thousands of surging people, vivacious and gaily dressed, not for the thin, exhausted woman who slept with her exhausted infant on her lap (both worn out with weeping) or the red-headed sailor who had contrived with drunken ingenuity to sprawl across parts of several benches, or for Osgood M. Barnes with his creaseless trousers and thin-soled, frozen shoes.

There were two sample cases, and he had put them in two lockers because one would not hold them both. The lockers would be good now until evening, though he might, perhaps, carry everything to the Consort and smuggle them up to seven seventy-seven. For a moment he considered it, but he did not feel certain there would be anyone there to let him in. Candy would certainly be gone. It seemed likely that Stubb would be as well. Madame Serpentina might be there, but she might not. He tried to recall which case he had put in which locker, then realized he was no longer sure even of which of the three held his personal effects. In the end he chose a key at random, and when he swung back the locker door, he saw with pleasure the rectangular black bulk of a sample case. Thanks to his breakfast, it seemed a trifle lighter than it had the night before.

He had never called upon the restaurants around the bus station. The chain fast-food outlets would be out of the question, but some of the diners might sell a few novelties, cards behind the counter, possibly a display on the cigar case. The only question was where to start. He glanced about at the exits, and in the process noticed a wizened man rolling up the grills that had protected his magazine stand. In half a minute Barnes was there, his sample case open beside the cash register

“Now here’s a nice item—dog collars that glow in the dark. Say you’ve got a black dog, like one of those toy poodles, for instance. When he goes out at night, you can’t see the little devil. Put one of these on him and you can spot him right away. Twenty-two fifty for the card; when you sell the last collar—at the price printed right on the card—you’ve made forty-five bucks.”

“No,” the wizened man said.

“Okay, here’s another one. This can’t miss; they sell like hotcakes every place we get them in. I’ve had customers call me begging me to get them more. It’s a rose, see? Just an ordinary plastic rose like you might wear in your buttonhole if you were dressed up. Just twist the stem, the petals open, and there’s a lovely, naked centerfold inside. Of course, if the customer wants to, he can take that out and put in any picture he wants. He can put in his girl’s picture and give it to her. Card of six costs you five ninety-nine, and you sell them for a buck ninety-eight each—a real high-profit item.”

“No.”

“Okay, look at this. In your location it can’t miss. You get lots of mothers through here with their kids, right? Sometimes they got two or three kids, right? They’re going to be on the bus three or four hours, and the mother’s going to go crazy. The mother can buy Redbook from you, but what are the kids going to do—read Newsweek? On this card here you get no less than twenty-five puzzles, for kids, for grown-ups, for anybody. You get the Pigs in Clover Puzzle, the five linked rings we call the Olympic Puzzle, you get the takeapart Three-D Jigsaw Puzzle.”

The wizened man leaned forward. “I used to have that one with the twisted nails when I was a kid.”

“So why not order a card? You can keep the nails for old times’ sake, and you’ll still stand to make over six bucks clear when you sell the last puzzle.”

Breath of mingled bourbon and pizza touched Barnes’s face. “Say, can I look at them?”

Barnes glanced around; it was the sailor. “Certainly, sir. There’s hours of amusement in every one.”

The puzzles were hung on tabs punched from the cardboard. After blinking and poking several with a long finger, the sailor selected a pencil with a cord through a hole near the eraser. “How does this work?”

The buttons of the sailor’s pea jacket were all unfastened. Barnes pulled at the uppermost buttonhole and thrust the pencil through it, then pulled the cord tight.

The sailor pushed the pencil back through the buttonhole, but the cord was too short for him to take it out entirely. “Hey,” he said, “that’s great. How much?”

“Like it says on the card, just seventy-nine cents.”

The sailor produced a wallet.

“This is my sample card, and I don’t usually sell from it, but in your case I’ll make an exception. I can get another card from the factory. Want me to take that off for you?”

“Hell no.” The sailor covered the puzzle with one hand. “I’m gonna do it myself.” He pulled out a crumpled dollar. “Got change?”

Barnes plucked it from his hand. “No, but I’m sure this gentleman does.” He handed the dollar to the wizened man. “Do you have change, sir? Seventy-nine cents for me, twenty-one for this serviceman here.”

“I’m Phil Reeder,” the sailor said, extending his hand.

“Ozzie Barnes,” Barnes said, shaking it.

“I’m from the John Bozeman,” the sailor told him. “She’s a destroyer. Docked at Norfolk now. I got two weeks shore leave.”

“Congratulations,” Barnes said. The wizened man handed him change; Barnes gave the sailor two dimes and a penny and dropped the rest into his pocket. Something that had been coiled tightly inside him seemed to relax slightly.

“Say, what’s that one?”

“This?” It was hard to tell just where Reeder was looking.

“No. Over there.”

“Oh, that? We call it the Houdini Puzzle.” Barnes pulled it free of its cardboard tab. “See, the little man is Houdini, and he’s locked in a cell. The trick is to get him out.” He took one of the toy figure’s hands and pulled; the toy figure wedged between the bars. “Wait a minute. It can be done.” He loosened the figure and twisted it; a tiny bar caught it between the legs.

“Ouch!” Reeder said. He laughed.

“I’ll say. Well, it can be done. I guess I’m out of practice.”

“I want that one too.” Reeder got out his wallet again.

The wizened man glanced at the card. “Eighty-nine cents.”

“Hey, the last one was only seventy-nine.”

“They got all different prices,” the wizened man said. “That last one was only a pencil with a string through it.” He looked at Barnes for confirmation.

“You haven’t bought it yet,” Barnes reminded him.

Reeder thought Barnes was talking to him. “I know. You got change for a five?”

“Sure,” the wizened man said. He rang up eighty-nine on the register and gave Reeder four dollars and a nickel. “Six cents tax,” he explained.

Barnes was making mental calculations. “The board’s usually eleven forty-five,” he said.

“So take off seventy-nine and eighty-nine for the ones that’s sold. Should be about nine fifty.” The wizened man turned aside to wait on a woman buying Cosmopolitan.

“You’ve already got the eighty-nine. Take off the seventy-nine and it comes to eleven thirty.”

“The hell it does.”

“With tax.”

“What the hell do you mean, tax? This ain’t no retail sale, I’m buying them to sell again.”

Barnes said mildly, “You’re not giving me an order, you’re buying my sample.”

“I still don’t pay no tax. You don’t collect sales tax.”

Without looking up from the Houdini Puzzle, Reeder said, “You got tax from me.”

“Okay,” Barnes told the wizened man. “I’ll knock off the tax for a quick sale. Ten sixty-five, cash.”

“Deal.” The wizened man rang No Sale on his register and gave Barnes the money.

Barnes stood the card of puzzles on some magazines. “Now here’s another beauty for a man in your business. It’s a hundred funny bookmarks, all different.”

“Nothing else,” the wizened man said. “I only got so much room for this kinda stuff.”

“I haven’t even showed you my best—”

“No more.”

“Okay. When you see how the puzzles go, you’ll want something else. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.”

“Not if I see you first,” the wizened man said; but it was routine bellicosity, without malice.

Reeder asked, “You know where we can get a drink around here, mate? I want to buy you a drink.”

“Not this early.” Barnes glanced at his wrist before he recalled that his watch was gone. “If you want to buy me something, how about a sandwich? There’s a place that looks good right outside the station.”

As they stepped outside, a bus turned a corner two blocks up, maneuvering as ponderously as a warship.