The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (32 page)

Small Dillinger walked slowly up to Dingle, his voice softened by a sudden reverence. “Hey, mister,” he asked raptly, “where’d you learn to fling a ball like that?”

Dingle gulped, squirmed, and then stammered, “I...I really don’t know.” He looked up toward the sky and directed the question to nobody in particular. “What’s happening to me?” he asked. “
What in the world is happening to me
?”

He looked down at his undersized right hand. It was as small and weak-looking as it had ever been. He decided that he had better stop work for the day. A sufficient number of odd occurrences had happened to warrant his knocking off at least until the next morning.

A taxicab was just pulling away from the curb half a block away and Dingle waved his hand and shouted to it. “Taxi! Cab!”

The cab pulled to a stop across the way and Dingle hurriedly rushed over to it. He reached for the handle of the rear door and it was a moment before he realized that the door had suddenly become unattached from the cab. He was holding it out in midair. The cab driver stared at him, formulating in his mind a rather long and comprehensive speech, but quite incapable of saying anything.

“Believe me,” Dingle said in a whisper, “this is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”

He scratched his jaw pensively, shook his head, looked around with a vast perplexity, then leaned against the cab. There was a wheezing, grinding, groaning noise, a wail of consternation from the driver, and suddenly the cab was lying on its side. The painter on the ladder three doors down dropped his bucket again and this time followed it to the ground.

At six-thirty in the evening, Mr. Dingle sat on a park bench, his vacuum cleaner at his feet like a faithful dog, as he stared across the park, past the thirty-foot statue of General Belvedere Washington Hennicutt, the hero of some obscure whiskey rebellion, and said nothing. A pretty nursemaid passed, wheeling a baby carriage. She looked at Dingle briefly and then, smiling, sat on the opposite end of the bench, gently rocking the carriage with a foot. After a suitable pause Dingle turned to her.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said diffidently.

“Yes?”

“I don’t want you to think that I’m a masher or anything like that. I’m certainly not a masher, but I wonder if you’d mind...I wonder if you’d mind answering a question?”

The nurse smiled. He was obviously harmless. “That depends.”

“What I mean is,” Dingle said, wetting his lips, “looking at me, would you say that at least upon a perfunctory, cursory, very initial surveyal...that I appear to be abnormal in any way?”

The nurse laughed. “Not at all.” She pointed to the vacuum cleaner. “Unless you plan to use that in the park.”

Dingle dismissed the handy-dandy, jim-cracker, A-one piece of merchandise with a perfunctory wave. “Oh
that
!” he said deprecatingly. “Up to a few hours ago I sold those things. Or at least I went through the motions.” He shook his head in dismal recollection of his lack of prowess as a salesman. “I was a miserably bad salesman. Just miserable. “Would you believe it?” he continued intently. “Last month I made exactly eighty-nine cents in commission. And that was for an attachment. An upholstery nozzle. And I sold it to a drunk who kept insisting it was a divining rod for alcohol.” He leaned forward wistfully. “I actually expected to be fired today. But that’s the least of my worries.” He cocked his head a little quizzically. “Would you be interested in listening to what are the
most
of my worries?”

“Go ahead.”

“Watch,” Dingle announced, as he left the bench and walked around behind it.

The nurse screamed as she felt the earth leaving her feet. Dingle, with one hand, had reached under the bench and lifted it eight feet into the air, then carefully set it down again as the nurse, eyes starting, stared at him in abject fear and utter amazement.

Dingle shrugged. “Now watch this.”

He walked over to a large boulder, picked it up and, with minimal effort, broke it in half, then threw the two pieces away. They landed with a thud, plowing two deep holes in the earth. Several yards away a photographer was taking shots of two attractive models. Through the corner of his eye he had seen Dingle perform the rock bit. He turned and walked hurriedly over to the little man.

“Say, buddy,” he said a little tentatively. “I’m a photographer with the
Bulletin
.” He waggled a finger toward the rocks. “What’s with the rock? I mean...what’s the gag?”

Dingle said, “No gag. Oh, there isn’t any gag. Watch.” He scanned the immediate area and then his eye lit on the statue of General Belvedere Washington Hennicutt. He went over to it, leaned down to the base of the Statue and, without so much as the suggestion of a grunt, lifted the thirty-foot bronze figure high into the air. It took the photographer an instant to recover before he could attach the flash bulb and snap the picture.

Several hours later he’d had the picture developed, had an argument with the city editor over what the latter claimed were wires obviously showing on the glossy print, persuaded the same gentleman that there were no wires and it was no gag, and then had gone out and gotten drunk.

The following morning the picture was on the front page of the
Los Angeles Bulletin
. The caption underneath it read, “Hercules? No, Luther Dingle, the Twentieth-Century Samson.” And there was Luther holding the statue aloft, smiling angelically and with vast satisfaction, like some overgrown boy who had stolen his dad’s car and then gone on to win the Indianapolis Five Hundred.

Mr. Dingle himself did not see the paper until some hours later. He was sleeping soundly in his bed when the alarm rang. He reached over sleepily to push the button. He did indeed push the button and in the process flattened the alarm clock into a thin metal pancake so that the numbers, the face, and the works all fused together like a Dali painting.

Realization and remembrance flooded back into Mr. Dingle’s mind and he got out of bed hurriedly. He looked at the flattened clock, then stared at himself in the dresser mirror across the room. He walked over to it, examined his face and was satisfied that it was the same face which had been staring back at him for many, many years. Then, with a kind of self-conscious ritual, he picked up the Los Angeles telephone book and tore it apart with two fingers. He dressed, shaved, mentally thumbed his nose at the vacuum cleaner which rested on the one chair in the room, and then took a walk over to O’Toole’s bar.

By noontime that day Mr. O’Toole’s bar was as crowded as a subway car and the table at which Mr. Dingle sat by himself was circled and re-circled by a mob of con men, public relations representatives, fight managers, talent agents, television executives, carnival advance men, theatre managers, Hollywood scouts, baseball scouts, football scouts, and a Boy Scout with an autograph pad.

“Mr. Dingle...you realize how much money can be made on a tour with our carnival?”

“Mr. Dingle...your future lies in television. You’re the walking, talking embodiment of every American male’s wish fulfillment. You’re John Q. Citizen, you’re Babbitt, you’re Tom, Dick and Harry. Now here’s our idea for the series. A simple fifteen-minute, across-the-board address by you with little examples of your physical prowess! A natural for breakfast cereals, tonics, vitamin pills, anything!”

“And I keep telling you, Dingle, Patterson is nothin’! You line up with me, I’ll get you a coupla real easy setups and inside eight months I’ll have you fightin’ for the world championship!”

The voices, the offers, the suggestions, the invitations flooded the air, came from all directions, and went past Mr. Dingle’s beaming face to mingle in a welter of jabbering talk somewhere behind it. His smile was constant and beatific and he was the happiest of all men. The only untoward reaction elicited from Mr. Dingle was when a high-voiced and quite subdued Mr. Kransky announced that the sales manager of the vacuum cleaner company was on the phone and wanted to talk to him.

Dingle snapped his fingers and airily waved Kransky back to the phone, with a very specific suggestion as to where the sales manager could place all his unsold vacuum cleaners.

Twenty minutes later someone had moved in a television camera and special lights had been strung up across the room. One Jason Abernathy, a thin, flannel-suited little man with squirrel-bright eyes, pushed his way importantly through the crowd of people, carrying a hand mike. He stood over Dingle, then looked at the camera.

“Fine here?” he inquired professionally, pointing first to Dingle, then to the lights overhead. “Getting a picture, are we?”

He acknowledged the nods of the cameraman, the floor director, and the director, who had been pulled aside by Mr. Kransky and was being given a rundown on what cost the Dodgers the pennant in 1960. A red light shone on the camera and Mr. Abernathy’s face was suddenly suffused in a hundred-watt smile.

“Hello there, everyone,” Mr. Abernathy gushed. “This is Jason Abernathy here with your show—’TV Probes The Unusual.’ And our unusual subject today...”

He moved aside and pointed to where Luther Dingle sat proudly like an underfed Cheshire cat who really didn’t care that he suffered from malnutrition.

“Mr. Luther Dingle,” Abernathy continued, “who, if what actual on-lookers say is true, is the world’s strongest man.” He carried the hand mike over to the table and thrust it in front of Dingle’s contented face.

“Mr. Dingle,” he asked, ‘Would you give us an example of this fantastic—” he cleared his throat—“
alleged
...strength of yours?”

“I’d be happy to,” Dingle answered. He stood up, and wiggled a couple of fingers in the direction of Anthony O’Toole who was behind the bar, furiously pouring drinks and depositing fistfuls of money in the cash register.

“Mr. O’Toole,” Dingle called across the room. “Is it all right? You know, the thing we discussed?”

O’Toole grinned happily. “Are you kiddin’? I ain’t done business like this since the night they repealed the Eighteenth Amendment! Be my guest, Dingle.”

The ex-vacuum cleaner salesman smiled, winked at the camera, and announced in a quietly prideful voice, “Well, I’ll start off with the simple things!”

He turned to the wall, chuckled a secret chuckle, and then plowed his right hand directly through it, creating a three-foot hole in the plaster. Then, still smiling, he winked broadly, walked around the table, patted the top of it as if testing it and then splintered it by simply slamming the palm of his hand on it. The table parted in the middle and collapsed on the floor. The crowd cheered and applauded. Jason W. Abernathy smiled happily and threw an “I-told-you-so” look at the camera. He then watched as Mr. Dingle went to the bar, took hold of the bottom section of one of the stool supports, and ripped it out of the floor. Dingle dusted his hands meticulously and walked past the gaping, ogling watchers toward the now white and stricken face of one Hubert Kransky.

Mr. Kransky rose, his hands held out defensively in front of him. “Now, wait a minute, Dingle,” he gurgled in a voice that sounded quite unlike his own. “Please, Dingle, wait a minute. Ain’t you ever heard of bygones being bygones?”

Mr. Luther Dingle, who obviously had forgotten all about bygones being bygones, if indeed, he had ever embraced the concept, lifted Mr. Kransky by the shirt, held him out at arm’s length and twirled him around in one hand like a baton. This went on for roughly a minute and a half. Finally Mr. Kransky was gently re-deposited on the bar stool. There he wavered back and forth as the room spun around in front of him, a mélange of faces, walls, television camera and—shooting by at intervals like telegraph poles outside a speeding train window—the smiling and satisfied face of Luther Dingle, who had at this moment reinstated himself in the company of men by paying back a debt of long, long standing.

Mr. Kransky, it was quite obvious, would never again extrapolate his innermost thoughts against Mr. Luther Dingle’s face, nose, and cheekbone. From this moment on he would be a good boy—not to say a deferential, fawning, desperately frightened drinking companion.

Once again the assemblage cheered and roared its delight as Mr. Dingle, with just the trace of a smirk, retraced his steps to what was left of his table. The cheering, however, was confined to that species of being known as “homo sapiens.” The other specimen in the room—one double-headed Martian whose family name was “Xurthya”—was somewhat less impressed. The two slightly green-tinged faces looked glumly at one another, disgust showing in all four orangish eyes.