Mary And The Giant

This was her tormentor. Schilling saw a small man, in his middle fifties, a workingman hunched with fatigue from his day at the plant. The man, like most human beings, smelled of age and perspiration. His leather jacket was stained and crinkled and torn. He needed a shave. His glasses were too small for him, and probably the lenses were obsolete. Around one finger was a ragged strip of tape where he had cut or hurt himself. There was nothing evil or sadistic in the man. He was as Schilling had expected.

"Go on home," Schilling said, "and mind your own business. All you can give her is more trouble. She has enough of that." He closed the door and locked it.

After a conference with Mr. Reynolds, Dave Gordon again rapped on the glass. Schilling had returned to the counter. He went back and opened the door. Dave Gordon looked embarrassed and the girl's father was flushed and humble.

"Get out," Schilling said. "Get out." He slammed the door and pulled down the shade. The tapping began again almost at once. Schilling yelled through the glass: "Get out or I'll have you both arrested."

One of them mumbled something; he couldn't hear it.

"Get out!" he shouted. He unlocked the door and said: "She isn't even in town. She left. I gave her her money and she left."

"See," Dave Gordon said to the girl's father. "She went up to

San Francisco. She always wanted to; I told you."

"We don't want to bother you," Ed Reynolds said doggedly.

"We just want to find her. You know where in San Francisco she went?"

"She didn't go to San Francisco," Schilling said, half-closing the door. Then he went over to the counter and resumed his work. He did not look up; he concentrated on the Decca order sheet. In the darkness Dave Gordon and Ed Reynolds came softly into the store toward him. They stopped at the counter and waited, neither of them speaking. He went on with his work.

He could feel them there, waiting for him to tell them where she was. They would remain for a while, and then they would go to the Wren, and there they would find out where she was. And then they would go to her room, the room in which she looked out at neon signs. And that would be it.

"Leave her alone," he said.

There was no answer.

Schilling put down his pencil. He opened a drawer and took out a folded piece of notepaper, which he tossed to the two of them.

"Thanks," Ed Reynolds said. They shuffled away from the counter. "We appreciate it, mister."

After they had gone, Schilling relocked the door and returned to the counter. They had carried off the scribbled address of a San Francisco record wholesaler, an outfit on Sixth Street in the Mission District. That was the best he could do for her. By ten o'clock they would be back, and then they would go to the Lazy Wren.

There was nothing else he could do for her. He could not go to her, and he could not keep others away from her. In her twenty-dollar-a-month room, not more than a mile away and perhaps as close as a few blocks, she sat as she had sat in the restaurant: her hands in her lap, her feet together, her head slightly down and forward. He could help her only by not hurting her; he could keep himself from doing her further damage, and when he had done that he had done everything.

If she were let alone she would recover. If she had always been let alone she would not need to recover. She had been trained to be afraid; she had not invented her fear by herself, had not generated it or encouraged it or asked it to grow. Probably she did not know where it came from. And certainly she did not know how to get rid of it. She needed help, but it was not as simple as that; the desire to help her was no longer enough. Once, perhaps, it would have been. But too much time had passed, too much harm had been done. She could not believe even those who were on her side. For her, nobody was on her side. Gradually she had been cut off and isolated; she had been maneuvered into a corner, and she sat there now, her hands in her lap. She had no other choice. There was no other place for her to go.