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In those busy early weeks of my new life as a freelance writer I turned out, on contract, a dozen or so stories for two minor science-fiction magazines called Imagination and Imaginative Tales, wrote the first of what would be a multitude of pieces for Scottie’s new s-f magazine Super Science-Fiction, managed to complete a novel (in collaboration with Randall Garrett) for Astounding Science-Fiction, the top-line s-f magazine of the era, rented that big apartment on West End Avenue, got married, and attended the World Science-fiction Convention in New York, where I was given an award for being the Most Promising New Author of the year. All that happened in June, July, and August of 1956. In the month of August alone I wrote twelve stories, most of them science-fiction (including the collaborative novel, The Dawning Light, for Astounding) plus one western story, and my third crime story for W.W. Scott, “It’s Always Night.” (The second one, “Clinging Vine,” dating from June, 1956, is not included here.)
“It’s Always Night” also had its origin in an actual event. While I was aboard a subway train in midtown Manhattan two itinerant musicians appeared at opposite ends of the train, one playing a saxophone and the other playing some other instrument, I know not what this long after the fact, and both hoping to collect small change from the passengers as they moved through the car. The storytelling part of my mind wondered what would happen when they met in the middle. Would they jostle and shove? Would they snarl angrily at each other about infringement on their territory? Would there be a fistfight?
In the end, nothing happened. They stepped around each other without any sort of interaction and each continued on his way. That wouldn’t make for much of a story, of course, so I began touching things up a little in my mind— one of them is blind, let’s say, or maybe both, and in happier days they had known each other, and—
Well, that’s how stories get made. I wrote it the next day and sold it to Scottie and he ran it in the April, 1957 issue of Trapped. The byline, once again, was Robert Silverberg. I had not yet begun selling so many stories to him that I needed to cook up a bunch of pseudonyms for his magazines.
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IT’S ALWAYS NIGHT
A blind man has it tough enough. Why make it tougher?
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I didn’t think I could drop much lower. I came home that night with my pockets empty, my girl gone, and my lips quivering from ten hours blowing into the sax. I didn’t know where to begin feeling sorry for myself. Knowing Karen was gone still hurt, but there was this new trouble now too: some bastard was running my route just ahead of me. I’d netted beans for my outing.
I could always have switched routes and to hell with him, I guess. But that meant giving up. And when you’ve got as little left as I have, brother, you cling to it. You cling.
When I woke up the next morning it still seemed like night. I groped for Karen, hoping her warm body would be lying next to me but the bed was cold. Everything was cold, that lousy morning. I’d had some rough days since Joey Graham had blinded me in that nightmare of a fight in Chicago, but now the bottom had dropped out.
Karen had been pretty nice about it. She hadn’t been crude. I’d come back from my run, three nights ago, and she was sitting up for me. I could tell she was all ready to leave. There was something funny about her when I kissed her.
She helped me off with my jacket and unloaded the change from the long pocket. Then she stood the sax up in its usual corner. All this time she didn’t say a word.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
“Joey’s in town,” she said. She paused. Then: “I’m going to him, Ben.”
“Joey?” I didn’t expect that. I started to feel sick.
I remembered Joey. He was a short, weaselly guy with a sharp nose, the trumpet man in our combo. I remembered a wild, drunken brawl, and a broken beer-bottle in his hand coming towards me, and the angry yell, “Cut it out, Benny!” Then a flash of bright light. That was the last thing I saw, the beer-bottle in his hand and the flash of light. After that, darkness. Twenty years of night. The last time I’d seen or heard from Joey, it was a year after the thing happened. He wrote to me saying he had a job with a big band, and sent me some money. Big consolation.
“Joey?”
“It was Joey twenty years ago, and it’s still Joey,” she said. I knew she felt sorry for me. “I ran into him yesterday. He’s back from Chicago. He’s here to stay. He asked me to come back. I’m going, Ben.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to hold myself together. It was like a nightmare. Joey hadn’t meant to do it, but he’d pushed me down in the gutter; I’d been washed up since the night of the fight. Blind men don’t last long in the jazz business, not unless they’re real top.
That was twenty years ago. Now he’d turned up like a bad penny, and was taking what little else I had.
“Good old Joey,” I said acidly. “How’s he been?”
“I don’t know,” Karen said. “He looked lousy. He’s a wreck. But I’m going back to him.”
I put my arm around her and pulled her close, so I could feel her breasts against me. I was shaking, and I wanted her to know how I felt. It hurt like hell to think of her going to Joey.
“Karen—”
“Don’t make it any worse, Ben. Joey wants me, and I’m going. I don’t owe you anything. It’s been swell, but let’s cut it smooth right here.”
“You don’t owe Joey anything either.”
“I loved him once,” she said.
I didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t.
–
I struggled out of bed and hunted for my clothes, sensing the morning sunlight streaming in through the window. I felt terribly alone, and hungry. Karen had become a habit. The hole where my stomach was supposed to be reminded me that she hadn’t been around to cook the night before, or the night before that. I missed her. It wasn’t only the cooking I missed her for.
I was all alone. That was when I decided I’d take it all out on this tramp on my trains. I didn’t know how I’d find him but I knew I would. And when I did—
I got dressed. From outside came morning noises, but it was still night for me. It’s always night.
Methodically, I polished my sax. I polished the sax every morning—every morning since the day I’d bought it. That had been a hot Monday afternoon in August 1926. I’m no youngster.
Karen had always wanted to polish it for me, but I never let her. I always did it myself. I thought of her with Joey. I had no claim on her, but it hurt.
In twenty years I’d forgotten what she looked like. She had been Joey’s girl, and I saw her often enough, but I couldn’t remember her face. She and Joey had busted up right after I got it. She probably was a homely bitch with a face like a poodle, else she wouldn’t be drifting around with blinkerless joes like me. But what she looked like never worried me much. I didn’t ever have to see her face. All I knew was the rest of her was all there, round and fully packed. I had a pretty good mental picture of her: long firm legs, proud breasts. I knew that, for sure. My mental picture of her had just a blank where her face was.
She’d come across me a while back, and moved in. Claimed she’d been hot for me since the old days. I didn’t argue. It had been eight years since I’d last had a woman. Eight years. That’s a hell of a long time, buddy. I’d almost forgotten how.
And now she had walked out. Joey came popping up out of the past to hurt me all over again.
I slipped the hood over my sax and clipped on the tin cup. I couldn’t worry about Karen any more. I had to start worrying about the punk who’d been cutting in on my route.
I wanted to kill him.
–
I started to tap my way down the dusty, rancid-smelling stairs, the way I had done every day for the last fourteen years. I went into the subways on April 14, 1942. I’m good that way; I can remember dates like nobody’s business.
I got my eyes put out September 16, 1935. Johnny was born December 12, 1935. Helen left me June 7, 1937. Karen moved in May 26, 1955. See? I’m good at dates.
I knew today’s date too. Today was the day I’d find that tramp and give him the heave. I wanted to take out on him all the sick, piled-up frustration that Karen’s walkout had built up in me.
And I hadn’t even realized what was going on, the first day he pulled it. My take was light, all right, but I couldn’t worry much about it. I was still too sick over Karen. But the second day, I heard some woman say as I went by, “It’s shameful the way these beggars are allowed to plague the subways. Imagine, two of them, one after another!”
That tipped me. I was tempted to tell her, Shove it, lady, this is the only way I can make a buck, but I didn’t. I just kept going, and now I knew why I wasn’t making any dough. Who likes to be pan-handled twice in five minutes?
I follow a schedule, regular as clockwork, and make the same trains every day. I’ve worked it out so I’m on the right trains at the right time for the best pot. This guy had caught on.
I begin with the 9:31 express downtown. I get on at 96th. Not too crowded, but the passengers are loose with change. This guy had been boarding the train up ahead of me; by the time it got down to 96th, he was halfway through and I got nothing.
I had to find this grifter and tell him off. We have an unwritten law that says one man keeps clear of the next, and he wasn’t obeying. The more I thought about it, the more worked up I got.
I got to the subway a little earlier than usual, choking over with fury. Life had been pretty good to me up to 1935, but since then it had all gone the other way. I was fed up to here, and I was all set to take it out on the grifter. So what if I got jail, I thought? At least it’s warm there, and they feed you.
By the time I reached the subway station, I was killing mad.
I’d never met this guy in my routes, so I figured he started from the same end I did and kept ahead of me. I always get on the back end of the train, the uptown end.
Fine. I saw how I’d catch him. I’d get on at the other end, the front of the train. I’d work my way up along the train till I collided with him, then ask him to step off and chat with me. I’m still pretty good with my hands. I’m a big man, and I have one extra weapon. Since Joey gave me the beer-bottle, I’ve developed incredible hearing. Sensory compensation, they call it. I hear like a bat.
Joey.
Karen.
It hurt. It hurt real bad.
–
“You’re early today,” said the usual deep voice from the changebooth. “It’s only twenty after.”
I nodded. “New working hours.”
I heard the clang as the door of the changebooth opened and shut, and the clerk came out. He knew me well, all right. I’d been in every morning at 9:27 since he’d been there, and before.
I handed him my three nickels, and he put a token in the slot for me and guided me through the turnstile. Actually, I didn’t need his help, but he made a little ritual out of it and I didn’t stop him. I don’t have so many friends that I can afford to be a snob.
“Thanks,” I said. I adjusted the sax so the cord wouldn’t slice through my neck. In fourteen years of subway tooting I’d worn quite a groove in the back of my neck, where I anchor the sax. I moved toward the uptown staircase. I wondered if he’d be where I could catch him.
I’ll lean on him when I do, I swore.
Karen, I thought. With Joey.
I tried not to think of it, but the picture kept hitting me: Karen wrapped around Joey. I didn’t remember what Karen looked like, but I remembered Joey. He was the last face I ever saw.
When he sobered up the next morning, I understand he was quite sincerely shocked at what he’d done. He’d paid my hospital bills and everything else, he was so sorry about the whole thing. Screw his sorrow. I was finished, right from there. It took a year for me just to straighten out and be able to talk to people without snarling, and by then it was too late. The jazz world forgets you in a hurry. Besides, by then the jam session was on its way out, and you had to read the sheets. I couldn’t get back in, though I tried. You can’t fight up from the bottom when you’re blind. I slid right out of sight.
I got a few bookings, but they were like charity and I couldn’t stand it. I used to have pride. Six years after it happened, I was begging in the subways. The last I heard of Joey, he was still on the way up, and apparently his deep sorrow for me wore off in a hurry.
–
I stood on the platform, waiting for the 9.31 express to show. I had twenty years of hate to unload on the unknowing head of that grifter aboard the train.
The express pulled in finally, and I got in the first car. I drew the hood off the sax and slid it into my pocket. Then I clipped in the tin cup to my cane, moistened the reed, and swung into my opening number. My working day had begun.
It was “Peg O’ My Heart,” as always. That had been Helen’s song, and I’d stuck with it, which is more than Helen had done with me. What’s good about the number is that it’s fairly slow and melodic, and everybody likes it. I started a bit sour, but caught on after a bar or two and ended up swell. I started down the aisle.
Clink.
The first one of the day. I guessed it was a nickel. “Thank you,” I said. I played my usual game of wondering what the marks looked like. Sometimes I pictured them as well-dressed lawyers in gray suits with pink-and-black silk neckties; at other times, the guy dropping the coin was a balding ex-pug with a flat nose and ears like an elephant’s.
Clink!
“Thank you.” Apparently my unknown friend hadn’t worked this car yet, because they were kicking in pretty readily. Good, I thought. He’s somewhere up ahead. I was hoping he was blind, not a cripple. It would be hell pushing around a man with no legs.
Clink-clink-clink-clink! A handful of pennies, I guessed. Who’d dumped them? How about a nun? A big, black stevedore? I’d never know.
I moved on through the train, tapping, listening for another tap. I’m very good that way: I never get lost in the car, and I don’t remember when I last nailed someone’s foot with the point of my cane.
When I felt the hard vibration of metal against metal come shivering up my cane, I stopped. I don’t like to cross from one car to the next when the train’s moving. I unclipped my cup and dumped the coins into the special long pocket in my jacket, and replaced it.
Then the train pulled into 72nd St, and I stepped into the next car. I started to plan how I’d handle it when I ran into the other.
I hit into “Peg” again, belting the notes out good and hard to put them over the noise of the train. God, I felt low. But I was going to get it all back.
Clink. “Thank you.”
Clink-clink. “Thank you very much.”
The day was starting out real well. I was hoping it would finish that way.
–
I kept thinking about Karen and Joey, while my fingers automatically ran up and down the sax. It was funny, Joey bouncing into town after all these years. I wondered if he knew I was still around, still playing the sax. I remembered the press clippings from the old days. The ones that talked of my great future with the sax.
Some future.
But they were right. Twenty years, and I’m still with the sax. The audience is different, that’s all.
I swung into “Peg” again, and then I heard him coming. I stiffened.
Tap-tap.
I can pick out a sound all the way across a train. I’ve got ears like a bat. It’s something you develop, when you’re blind. I heard this other guy coming toward me.
This is it, I thought coldly. Whoever he is, I’m going to pay it all back to him.
I noticed the chat-chat in the car drop away to practically nothing. They were all watching us, watching the two blind mice to see what happened when we met in the middle of the car.
I shifted to “Apple-Blossom Time,” playing good and hard to let the other man know I was there. He was blind—the tap-tap told me that. The prospect of combat made my heart start pounding hard, and I felt like singing. We were on equal terms.
I headed down to the middle of the car in a hurry.
“Oh, watch out!” yelled some woman’s anxious voice and the next minute there was the sour odor of exhaled alcohol in my face. We collided gently and stood together in a sort of clumsy embrace, the sax between us. I felt the train rocking from side to side, but it didn’t bother me. I have good balance.
I heard a little startled gasp come out of me as we met. I grabbed the initiative.
“Let’s both get off at the next stop, bum. I want to talk to you,” I said keeping it low so the passengers wouldn’t know what was coming off.
“I didn’t do nothin’ to you,” he said.
“You need your eyes opened, bud. We get off next stop.”
He didn’t say anything. I knew he was scared. The train slowed to a halt and the door opened. I nudged him. “Here. Let’s get out and talk a little.”
–
We stepped through the door and out onto the quiet station. It was Fourteenth Street. I reached out quickly and caught him by the collar. He was smaller than I was.
“Hey, fellow! I’m blind!” he protested. “What kind of stuff is this?” His voice was a hard, ratty sort of thing, high and sharp.
“I’m as blind as you, tramp,” I said. “You’ve been cutting my trains the last coupla days, haven’t you? Following me like my shadow!” I tightened my grip. The train we had been on pulled out.
“I never knew anyone else was on ’em, bud.”
I shook him. “You knew I was there. You had my route blanketed, you louse!” I held him off at arm’s length and tightened the grip. He squirmed, but he didn’t make any attempt to get free.
Twenty years. I decided I’d wait for the next train and let him have it.
Suddenly he choked out one sentence. “Cut it out, Benny!”
When he said that I knew who he was. I heard someone say that to me once before, just before a fight. Twenty years ago.
“Joey!” I said.
–
Joey—Joey was blind! I started to laugh so hard that tears ran out of my sockets. Joey, who had thrown me down here, had landed down here himself! It was incredibly, wonderfully perfect. Twenty years of bitter humiliation led straight to this day. I could even a bunch of different scores. It was a day I’d add to my collection of dates. January 15.
“Leggo,” he gasped. “You’re choking me!”
“Joey,” I repeated quietly, almost unable to believe it. I heard a train rumbling in somewhere in the background, pretty far away. I wondered how he’d look under its wheels. Pity I could never see it.
“It’s Karen who slipped you my route, isn’t it?”
“Please let go,” he begged. There was a desperate urgency in his voice. I felt his hands clawing at mine, but it was like I had no strength. He couldn’t get loose. I realized that there might be other people on the platform, watching us, but I didn’t care. I had him by the throat, and that was what I’d been waiting for.
“Why’d you tail me?”
“I was broke,” he said. His voice was a dead man’s. “I’ve got nothin’. Karen said you’d cleaned up this way. She told me when you worked. It sounded like my chance. I got a tin cup.”
I really let his throat have it. I heard that train coming in, hard.
“I still got my sax,” I said. “Where’s your horn, Joey? You need a horn. You just can’t hold out your cup without giving the audience something’ in return!”
He was silent. After a pause he said, “I can’t play it any more. I don’t have the touch. I’ve lost it. I got nothin’, Benny.” I felt him quivering. “I won’t bother you any more. I’ll get out of your way. I only wanted—I mean—”
He was almost crying. I heard the bugle fanfare in my head as the moment of triumph approached. I bunched my muscles to shove him off onto the tracks, and then suddenly let go of him. I just let go.
All the killing had drained out of me. I didn’t need to kill him. I didn’t even want to, any more. He was down lower than I was, down with the worms. I gave him a contemptuous shove, and spat.
“Here. Take that home to Karen.” Limp with played-out tension, I turned and started to walk away. I was disgusted.
I should have remembered he was Joey Graham. I hadn’t gotten ten paces before I heard him creeping up on me. I tell you, I hear like a bat. I counted footfalls and waited till he was within reach, just about to jump me. I figured out where he was, whirled, and bashed him, hard.
I felt the crunch as my fist hit him. He gave a moan and went skittering down somewhere, and as he fell I kicked him. He yelled and went sprawling away. I heard the thud as he fetched up against the stairs. He yelled again, a long, sobbing, despairing wail. It was the heart-freezing cry of a man who’s had it.
The train came along and I got aboard, breathing hard. I thought of him, lying there. He was better than dead. He was all used up. When he told me he didn’t even have his horn left, I knew I’d beaten him at last. I’d survived, and he hadn’t. I’d won.
Despite the beer-bottle, despite everything, I thought fiercely, I still have the sax. He was nothing. He had Karen, but nothing else. He could have her. He wasn’t even half-alive.
With a fierce surge of pride I put the sax to my lip and started playing. It was a Kern song. I’d forgotten the name. I first played it in Lakewood, New Jersey, October 1927. I hit it high and hard, and when the money started to drop into my cup it seemed like the sound wasn’t the clink of coin against tin but the roaring of a great big worshipping audience.
–
When I got back to my flat that night, pockets loaded with change, Karen was there. I was still so charged up I didn’t even care.
“What are you doing here?” I said bluntly.
“I’m back,” she said.
“What about Joey?”
“Joey told me the whole story, Ben. How you beat him up.”
“You want me to come over and say I’m sorry?”
“You don’t need to,” she said.
“How come you’re back?”
“I’ve got no place to go.”
“Joey?”
“Don’t ask about Joey. Joey’s gone.”
I caught my breath. For a wild minute I thought she meant that beating had killed him, and now I didn’t want to have killed him. Not when I’d crushed him deader than dead. I’d had victory enough.
“Where to? I scare him to death?”
“He was a bum, Ben. He was no good.” I felt her come close to me. “Those twenty years did a lot to him,” she said.
“Where’d he go?”
“He didn’t say where. Just said he couldn’t stay here. I’ve never seen a man so beat.”
One thing bothered me. Where’d he lose his eyes?
“His eyes are fine,” she said. “He’s no blinder than I am. The dark glasses were just a dodge so he could beg in the subways, just so he could make a buck. He ran away today. He’s dirt, and he found it out today. He got beat up by a real blind man and he can’t sink much lower than that.”
God help him, I thought. And then I laughed. Me, pitying him?
Then she was in my arms. “So I’m back to stay. Want me?”
I nodded and pushed her face next to mine— that blank face. I kissed her. She kissed back. Her body felt warm.
I knew she was going to head out again as soon as someone better came along. But I didn’t care. For the moment, she was mine. It was a good moment. I tried to freeze it, to hang on to it.
It was still night, but it felt brighter. I could live with myself again. There still was someone lower than me.
“Do I want you? Hell, yes,” I said.
Beggars can’t be choosers.