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Title: The Little Red Bag

Author: Jerry Sohl

Release Date: November 20, 2019 [EBook #60747]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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About an hour out of San Francisco on the flight to Los Angeles, I made the discovery. I had finished reading the Chronicle, folded and put it beside me, turned and looked out the window, expecting to see the San Joaquin Valley but finding only a sea of clouds instead. So I returned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde.

I had seen her in the concourse and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim ankle and calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a window where there was nothing to see.

I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a togetherness-type-magazine reader.

Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles for, and not wanting to.

So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps that sounds bad. It wasn't. I'd been doing it for years and nobody ever complained.

It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers and—well, human beings. But human beings aren't worth the trouble. It's like swimming through spaghetti. And I've got to stay away from electric wires. They hurt. Now don't ask me how they hurt.

Maybe you think it's fun. For the most part, it really isn't. I always knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and therefore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. I can't feel the color of anything, just its consistency. An apple senses about the same as a potato, except for the core and the stem. I can't even tell if there's writing on a piece of paper. So you see it isn't much. Just the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I've learned to become pretty good at guessing.

Like this woman next to me. She had a short, cylindrical metal object in her purse with waxlike stuff inside it—a lipstick. A round, hard object with dust inside—a compact. Handkerchief, chewing gum, a small book, probably an address book, money in a change purse—a few bills and coins. Not much else.

I was a little disappointed. I've run across a gun or two in my time. But I never say anything.

I learned the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction. Lunchtime was nearly over and we'd both finished eating; she said she'd be gone for a few moments and that I was to erase the blackboard during her absence, which I dutifully did.

Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk.

"It's in your purse," I blurted out.

I was sent home with a stinging note.

Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able to sense. I've known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other people are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine.

I used to think that some day I'd make a lot of money out of it, but how? I can't read thoughts. I can't even be sure what some of the things I sense in probing really are.

But I've learned to move things. Ever so little. A piece of paper. A feather. Once I stopped one of those little glass-enclosed light or heat-powered devices with vanes you see now and then in a jeweler's window. And I can stop clocks.

Take this morning, for example. I had set my alarm for five-thirty because I had to catch the seven o'clock plane at San Francisco International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escapement and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the balance wheel and its delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. I hung onto the wheel, exerting influence to decrease the restoring torque.

The wheel slowed down until there was no more ticking. It took quite a bit of effort, as it always does, but I did it, as I usually do. I can't stand the alarm.

When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. I even went to Las Vegas to try my hand, so to speak, with the ratchets and pawls and cams and springs on the slot machines. But there's nothing delicate about a slot machine, and the spring tensions are too strong. I dropped quite a lot of nickels before I finally gave up.

So I'm stuck with a talent I've found little real use for. Except that it amuses me. Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane.

The woman beside me stirred, sat up suddenly and looked across me out the window. "Where are we?" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, "Oh," glanced at her wristwatch and sank back again.

Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about Amos Magaffey, who was purchasing agent for a Los Angeles amusement chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a ukulele.

I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first.

The bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft, flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small, quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me was that something was taped to it. By the feel, I knew it must be electrician's tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my neck when I suddenly realized what it was.

The clock's balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go.

It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal.

My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was there. I glanced out the window again; clouds were still in the way. We'd be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles soon, if we hadn't left it already. No place to land the plane there.

But of course that had been the plan!

My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm; my mouth was dry and my mind was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be panic and they'd never get the plane down in time—if they believed me.

"Sir." My head jerked around. The stewardess stood in the aisle, smiling, extending a tray to me, a brown plastic tray bearing a small paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of coffee, a cellophane-wrapped doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a napkin.

I goggled at her, managed to croak, "No, thanks." She gave me an odd look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her.

I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that balance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morning. I tried to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the woman sipping coffee noisily beside me—and I went into the clock and surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back; when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to stop it.

Then, little by little, it started to slow its beat. But I could not afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn't dare release my hold until it came to a dead stop.

"Anything the matter?"

My eyelids flew open and I looked into the eyes of the woman next to me. There was sugar from the doughnut around her mouth and she was still chewing.

"No," I said, letting out my breath. "I'm all right."

"You were moaning, it sounded like. And you kept moving your head back and forth."

"Must have been dreaming," I said as I rang for the stewardess. When she came I told her I'd take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else, just coffee. I didn't tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good.

All right, so I had stopped the bomb's timer. My mind raced ahead to the landing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would start again. I wouldn't be able to stay with it, keeping it still. I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions. Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man literally with gimlet eyes.

Mountain crags jutted through the clouds. We were in the range north of the city. Here and there were clear spots and I could see roads below, but there were also clouds far above us. It was very beautiful, but it was also very bumpy, and we started to slip and slide.

To my horror I found that the balance wheel was rocking again. Closing my eyes and gritting my teeth, I forced my senses to the wheel, tugging and pulling and shoving and pushing until it finally stopped.

A jab in the shoulder. I jumped, startled.

"Your cup," my seat partner said, pointing.

I looked down at the coffee cup I had crushed in my hands. Then I looked up into the eyes of the stewardess. I handed it to her. She took it without a word and went away.

"Were you really asleep that time?"

"Not really," I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to fits, but I didn't.

It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when the plane dipped and bumped to a landing.

Leaving the apron with the other passengers, I tried to walk as unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other. So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been.

It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The assortment of bags—a strange conglomeration of sizes and colors—was packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where I was standing. I didn't know whether to stay or run, imagining the balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded and placed in a long rack. I went with it.

There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases, and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one.

I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously.

I didn't moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward and grabbed the balance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes.

The baggage claim attendant was staring at me. For only a moment I stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I was ready to yell at him. But then, matching numbers on the tags with his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it toward me.

"Thanks," I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually toward the remaining bag. "One left over, eh?"

"Yeah." He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But he was eying me with a "well-why-don't-you-get-along?" look.

I said, "What happens if nobody claims it?"

"Take it inside. Why?"

He was getting too curious. "Oh, I just wondered, that's all."

I stepped on my cigarette and walked toward the air terminal entrance and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying over.

"Cab?"

I shook my head. "Just waiting."

Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb.

I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied me.

I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o'clock, discussing something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until—until what?

A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of the entrance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the whole thing. Then it would be his baby and I would be off on my own business.

But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him, "Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag." But I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim counter out of the side of my eye.

The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag on the scales at the airline desk and say something to the clerk. The clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room.

I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How many minutes—or seconds—were left? I was sweating when I moved to the counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the clock again.

"Can I help you?" the clerk asked.

"No. I'm waiting for someone."

I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the counter and reached out for the wheel. I found I could reach the device, but it was far away. When I tried to dampen it, the wheel escaped my grasp.

"Do you have my suitcase?"

I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand she had a green baggage claim check.

The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up, glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it.

"Just a moment," I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying after her.

At her side and a little ahead of her, I said, "Listen to me."

She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door.

"It's a matter of life or death," I said. I wanted to wrest the bag from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I restrained myself.

She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled suitcoat and unpressed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said, "Please put the bag down. Over there." I indicated a spot beside a telephone booth where it would be out of the way.

She didn't move. She just said, "Why?"

"For God's sake!" I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was, I'm glad the bomb didn't go off; these eyes wouldn't be looking at me or anything else right now if it had.

"I've got to talk to you. It's very important."

The girl said, "Why?" I was beginning to think it was the only word she knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill someone so lovely.

"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a telephone call." I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, "And don't ask me why."

She gave me a speculative look.

I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, "All right, but—"

I didn't listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door, pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this range it wasn't difficult to stop the balance wheel.

Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet.

"Now will you please tell me what this is all about?" she said stiffly.

"Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I'll explain."

She glanced at the bags. I told her they'd be all right. We followed the short, fat man into the coffee shop.

Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag.

During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag.

"Joe did," she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but staring vacantly across the room. "Joe put it there." Behind her eyes she was reliving some recent scene.

"Who is Joe?"

"My husband." I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got control again. "This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my sister." Her smile was bleak. "I see now why he wanted to put in those books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he must have put the—put it in there."

I said gently, "Why would he want to do a thing like that?"

"I don't know." She shook her head. "I just don't know." And she was close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, "I'm not sure I want to know." I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy.

"It's all right now?" she asked.

I nodded. "As long as we don't move it."

I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it would have to do.

"We've got to get it deactivated," I said, watching the fat man pay for his coffee and leave. "The sooner the better."

I finished my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her. I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy for a long while.

"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried. She said she isn't feeling well and asked me to take a cab." She smiled a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all for me. "That's where I was going when you caught up with me."

It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again when we reached the lobby.

The two bags weren't there.

I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the redcap.

"See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered suitcase?"

"Bag? Suitcase?" he mumbled. Then he became excited. "Why, a man just stepped out of here—" He turned to look down the street. "That's him."

The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off; Julia's bag in his right hand, mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry.

"Hey!" I shouted, starting toward him.

The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in.

The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the redcap, who said, "That man steal them suitcases?"

"That he did," I said.

Just then the airport policeman started across the street from the parking lot. Redcap said, "Better tell him about it."

The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, "We'd better get over to the office."

But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard.

"Jets," the redcap said, eying the sky.

"I don't know," the policeman said. "Didn't sound much like a jet to me."

We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was thinking.

She said, "About those bags," and looked at me.

The officer said, "Yes, miss?"

"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it."

"I feel the same way," I said. "Would it be all right if we didn't bother to report it?"

"Well," the policeman said, "I can't make you report it."

"I'd rather not then," Julia said. She turned to me. "I'd like some air. Can't we walk a little?"

"Sure," I said.

We started down the street, her arm in mine, as the air began to fill with the distant sounds of sirens.

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