The Great Fog (27 page)

Authors: H. F. Heard

Yes, everything: for he now realized that not only was he helplessly paralyzed and his sight blurred but his mind was rapidly going. That was itâthe brain hemorrhage must be spreading rapidly. He couldn't think now of what he'd last been thinking, only a moment ago! What was that thing he meant to ask old sick men about? Something to do with what they felt when they were ill. Oh, well, it didn't matter. What would he be wanting to do, bothering old wrecks about what they felt or didn't feel! His mind was so light and gay that he couldn't keep it more than a moment on anything. And that, too, he found rather fun. Still, as things ran through his mind, it was jolly just to run after them, as it were. To keep track of the carnival, he began to talk aloud to himself as a sort of comment on his thoughts. Evidently his speech was left, or at least it seemed so.

But, before he'd time to check up on that, his voice was joined by another, or rather was collided into by it. “Don't keep on murmuring to yourself like that,” it said.

He stopped and listened. Another sound broke on his ear. It was a sort of breathless howl. A breathless howl? Why, of course, that was a
yawn!
Someone was in the room and was waking up. Mr. Bradegar raised his headâso that, too, wasn't paralyzed. And that movement discovered something else for himâhis eyes hadn't suddenly failed; fact was, they were as fresh as his mind. He laughed. He'd fancied he was going blind because his nose almost had been touching the raised wooden sidepiece of the bed headâthat silly boy's bed in which he was still made to sleep though he was far too big for it and could never stretch his legs. He flung them over the edge. What was that dream about his not being able to move? The sort of nightmare one would get in a suffocating little bunk like this. But he'd dreamed a lot more than that. If he could catch the whole spiel before it slipped away, he'd remember all sorts of odd things. Gosh! it was a dream as long as
David Copperfield;
longer, by gumâall about all sorts of things: being a success and arguing people down, far better than at the school debating club, and meeting a wonderful girl.

But, somehow, she didn't, he recollected faintly, turn out to be so wonderful after all. And other girls, small girls, small girls that he'd liked because they were small. But that was getting out of one's depth. How could one like little girls! He couldn't think up much more incidentâonly a general impression remained that he'd had a crackerjack dreamânot so nice in its way, but wonderful just because it had seemed so confounded real, as real as one's own life, as real as oneself in this little old sleeping room and Uncle Andy still snoozing in the big bed by the window.

Uncle Andy yawned again, snuffled, and remarked, “You been talking in your dreams jest like one of them thar Edison sound boxes I've jest been hearing of. You've gotten indigestionâeating all that punkin pie las' night.”

“It's this silly little bed. It gives me cramps. I was somehow fixed so I got dreaming I couldn't ever move again.”

“Indigestion; overdistended stummuck. You get a move on.”

“Well, I feel fine this morning.”

“Then get up and don't sit there yarning at me and complaining of your good bed that's held you well enough these twelve years.”

Uncle Andy was always a little sore in the mornings, Nick Bradegar remembered. Still, as he got out to fetch his towel and to go into the yard to splash under the pump, he felt, suddenly, that he must stop and ask a question. Why? It was the sort to make Uncle Andy sore. Still, something in the back of his mind made him feel it worth the risk.

“Uncle, what's it like really to be grown up, to be as old as you are?”

Over the crumpled sheet of the big bed a rheumy eye regarded him. He thought he was going to be bawled out. But no voice came. Only the old, tired, inflamed eye kept on looking at himâfirst, fiercely, next, defiantly, then, patheticallyâthat was worst. Or was it? For suddenly it didn't seem Uncle Andy's eye any longer. It seemed somehow a picture of some sort, a kind of mirror, or as though you were looking down the wrong end of a telescope. Ever so small and distant, but quite clear, he saw an old man lying with fixed, open eyes on a long bed. The light was still faint, as though the window had a curtain over it. The old man lay stiffly still, all save the lid of his eye, which seemed to flicker a bit as he lay on his side looking toward Nick. He was awful like Uncle Andy, and yet, somehow, he wasn't Uncle. The bed, too, looked far richer, just as the man in it looked even more tired than Andy.

The old, harsh clock began to strike, but it seemed more soft than usual. Still, it was enough to rouse Uncle. “You get along, you young lazy scamp. There's the half-hour gone and you still not even washed. You leave me alone with all your darn questions. You'll know soon enough what it is to be oldâthe heck you will! And, I'll lay it, you'll not have made the hand at living I've made when time comes to take a stretch, as I've a right to take. Get along and don't disturb me till you've the coffee ready and the bacon cooked!”

He nipped out of the room. If you didn't clear quickly when Uncle blew like that, you'd have his boots flying at your head a moment after, and, though old and lying down, Uncle had scored more hits than misses with those old hobnails of his, which were always close at hand when off his feet.

Under the yard pump the cold water on the top of his head made his brain tingle. Like rockets, thoughts shot through his mind. He wouldn't be a failure, like Uncle, or just conk out, the way he'd heard his parents had. He'd get through and make good. Why, he could always win in discussions at school, already. He was always twice as quick at answering back or thinking up a wisecrack. Yes, and some of those big hulks and lubbers who could kick him over a fence, they were afraid of his tongue, he knewâthe way things he said would stick to the person he said 'em about. He saw himself getting on. What did one do? Law, of course. As he rubbed his red, thin body with the coarse towel, he saw himself on his feet in court, winning big law cases, first here and there and then right and left; then marrying, of course, an admiring wife and having a large family that'd look up to him, because he was clever, rich, powerful.

He went in and started cooking the breakfast in the old squalid kitchen. But he hardly smelled the bacon and coffee, so strong was the daydream on him. Only the sound of Uncle's boots on the stairs, now, fortunately, on his old lame feet and not in his still flexible hands, roused him.

“Now, go and make the beds, you lazy fellow. I know you! If you have your breakfast first, then you never have time. You've got to go off to that darned school! Where they only teach you what you were born doing and do in your sleep and'll be doing when you die in the poorhouseâtalk, talk, talk. Get along with you!”

Nick Bradegar cut out of the kitchen and ran up the stairs into the frowzy bedroom. On the big bed he swung the old frayed stale sheets, worn blankets, and tattered coverlet into some sort of uneasy order. When he came to his cot, however, he paused, looking with a sort of helpless anger at the queer little cramped bed.

“Well, all I know,” he remarked to himself with vicious resolution, “if ever I make even a hundred bucks, I'll have a decent bed. First thing I'll have, I promise myself that. You spend nearly half your life on that one thing. Gum, if I could have a fine decent bed, I don't think I'd mind anything else much. You'd always be able to stretch yourself in that to your heart's content. And in a fine bed you can have fine dreams. That nightmare last nightâwhat was it? It's all gone, but the taste. I know the cause, thoughâthat blasted little bed!”

“Here, you come down! What ye doing all this while?” holloed Uucle Andy from below. “And wash up 'fore you go to that darned school!”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Henry FitzGerald “Gerald” Heard (1889â1971) was an English philosopher, lecturer, and author. The BBC's first science commentator, he pioneered the study of the evolution of consciousness, which he explored in his definitive philosophical work
The Ascent of Humanity
(1929). A prolific writer, Heard was also the author of a number of fiction titles, including mysteries and dystopian novels. He is best known for his beloved Mycroft Holmes mystery series.

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These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Andrea Worthington

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3778-5

This edition published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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