THEODORE STURGEON

NEW YORK VIGNETTE

Ted Sturgeon's "The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast" appeared in volume 1, number 1 of
this magazine fifty years ago. His story "Blue Butter" appeared in our
Twenty-fifth Anniversary issue. Mr. Sturgeon himself didn't stick around to see
us hit the big five-oh, but it's sure nice to have something new from him.

Paul Williams and Noel Sturgeon discovered this story in the course of
assembling Sturgeon's complete stories. (The sixth volume of the collection,
entitled Baby Is Three, is due out shortly.) This vignette dates from 1955 or
thereabouts, when TS lived in Congers, New York, and the context of it should be
self-evident. While it's not a masterpiece to rival Mr. Sturgeon's greatest
works, "NY Vignette" is a lovely little examination of that realm between
reality and fantasy, a realm his brilliance often illuminated.

JOHN: WE WANTED TO TELL you a story this morning...a New York story but
something special...something different, and so we asked a special, different
sort of writer to send us one. His name is Theodore Sturgeon...and he's the
winner of the International Fantasy Award for the best science fiction novel of
1954 -- a beautiful and enchanted novel called...More Than Human. In just a few
days, you'll be able to see Ted's award, a gleaming chromium spaceship, in the
window of Brentano's Fifth Avenue shop.

We're really not altogether certain whether Ted's written us a story or
not...but I'll read you his letter.

It begins -- Dear Pulse:

MUSIC: OPENING CURTAIN... NICE, NORMAL... BRIGHT. UNDER FOR:

JOHN: When I got your note, I was delighted at the idea of doing a story for
you. I went straight to the typewriter, unwound the typewriter ribbon from the
neck and ears of my baby daughter, Tandy, sat down on my son Robin's plastic
automobile, got up again, picked the pieces of plastic out of myself and the
chair, dried Robin's tears, handed Tandy to her mother for a bath, rewound the
ribbon, put some paper in the machine, and nothing happened.

You see, what you did is ask for a story at one of those times when a writer
can't write and nothing can make him write. I tried, honestly I did. I played
all the tricks on myself I ever learned. I drank two cups of strong, black
coffee, I did some knee-bends, I filed my nails, read the morning paper all the
way through, ate a stale bagel and a handful of raisins, sniffed at a bottle of
aromatic spirits of ammonia to clear my head, and lit my pipe. I don't like a
pipe but it makes me feel like an author. I even had a small quarrel with my
wife, which sometimes works wonders. Still no story.

There was nothing for it but to go out and wander. They say New York has
something for everyone -- you just have to know where to look. I went looking
first on Rockefeller Plaza, which never fails to do something to me. I hung over
the rail and watched the skaters moving like moths and mayflies to music that
came from nowhere, everywhere...anyone who can pass them by without a glance has
lost his sense of wonder, and I'm sorry for him. I looked for sunlight high on
the clean, clever buildings reaching into the morning and found it. I listened
to the whisper of blades on ice, tires on asphalt, of a hundred thousand heels
on paving, all blended like a great breathing. But it was only magic, its own
special kind of magic it didn't give me a story idea for you.

So I left and walked west past the place where Dave Garroway holds forth in the
early, early hours, toward the Avenue of the Americas, where stores and theaters
were beginning to wake, where men can make keys for you and you can buy crepes
suzettes and cameras and luggage and lingerie; and I slowly became aware of a
neat pair of shoulders and a smooth neat hat. I must have been following the man
for minutes without quite realizing it. The coat was one of those banker's
specials m you know, flat and formal and with a smooth narrow collar that might
be velvet and might be fur.

And the hat was what some people call a bowler and some a derby. Hat and collar
were not black, but of the darkest possible brown, and the whole aspect was --
well, neat. He was strolling along, turning his head a little from time to time,
and though I couldn't see his face I somehow knew he was smiling at storefronts,
automobiles, marquees, people --smiling at the whole, wide world. I wondered
what he was smiling about. I wondered, too, what kind of a smile it might be.
Was he smiling at? Or smiling with?

The first corner we came to was the one where the Radio City Music Hall squats
like a kneeling elephant with its big friendly mouth open, and in the entrance
stood two girls.

One of them reminded me of mint leaves and the other was as real and pretty as a
field of daisies. I saw the man in the brown bowler hat walk up to them and he
bowed from the waist, that stiff, slight, quaint little gesture that can only be
done by a certain sort of person, because it makes the rest of us look silly. He
raised the hard, neat hat a trifle and by the tilt of his head and the pleasure
just beginning on the girls' faces, I knew he was smiling a special smile. From
his pocket he drew something and handed it to one of the girls, the
field-of-daisies one, and without pausing, with never a break in his leisurely
stride, he went on.

Then it was my turn to pass the girls. They stared after the man and their
mouths were round as a thumb print. Then one of them looked down in her hand and
"Lark!" she said, "Oh, Lark, look: he gave us tickets for Jupiter's Darling! How
did he know I wanted to see it so much?" They stared after him spellbound as I
passed, and happy as Christmas. I followed the man across the avenue, thinking,
"Lark, Lark. Now what a nice name for a girl that is!" and watching him. A few
doors up from the corner is a hardware store, and the hardware man had set a
tall ladder against the building. He was up there looking at a place where his
awning had slipped off its little hooks where I suppose the wind had bent them.
And before I knew what was happening, my man in the brown bowler had skipped up
two rungs of the ladder. He stood there balanced easily, and with one hand he
tipped his hat and with the other he took from his pocket a pair of pliers and
handed them up to the hardware fellow. Then off he went again, up the Avenue,
and when I passed the ladder I could see by the hardware fellow's face that he,
too, had gotten a special smile from the man: a piece of it was on his lips. He
took the pliers, scratched his head. I heard him laugh, and then he began to fix
his awning as if the pliers were exactly the tool he needed, which I'm sure they
were.

I hurried then, because I wanted to see the face of such a man as this, and I
hadn't, yet. I caught up with him at 50th Street. He had paused there, waiting
for something. Maybe he was waiting to decide which way to go, and maybe he was
waiting for me; I don't know. As I drew abreast he turned to face me.

Now, I don't want to disappoint you but I can't tell you what his face was like.
All I can say is that it was as neat as the rest of him, everything about it
just where it should be. He smiled.

It was like looking into a bright light, but it didn't dazzle. It was warm, like
the windows of farmhouses late at night when there's snow. It made me smile too,
the biggest, widest smile that ever happened to me, so wide that I heard a
little...(ONE CLEAR CHUCK, AS WHEN ONE CHUCKS TO A HORSE: BUT ONLY
ONE)...somewhere in my back teeth. I must have been bemused for a second or two,
because when I blinked the feeling away, the man was gone. Still smiling, I got
into a cab that pulled up for the light just then; I suddenly wanted to be home,
next to Robin and Tandy and my wife, while I felt just that way.

As the cab started to move, I turned and looked through the rear window, and I
saw the man briefly, just once more. One of those poor, cowed, unhappy men had
sidled up to him, and in every line of his shabby figure I recognized him and
all like him, and I could all but hear the cringing voice, "Dime fer a cuppa
cawfee, mister?" And the last thing I saw was the reflection of that incredible
smile on the man's dirty face, as Mr. Brown Bowler Hat reached into his
impossible pocket and handed the man a thick, steaming china mug of hot coffee
and walked on.

I leaned back on the cushions and watched New York streaming past outside, and I
thought: well, if this city has something for everyone, then I suppose it has in
it a man who can reach into his pocket and grant anyone's smaller, happy-making
wishes. And then I thought, he has tickets and tools and cups of coffee and
heaven knows what else for other people, but he apparently couldn't give me the
one thing I wanted at the time, which was a little story for Pulse. So here I am
home again, feeling sort of nice because my wife and kids appreciate the bit of
smile I brought in, but otherwise disappointed because, whatever else happened,
I don't have a story for you. I guess the man in the brown bowler hat didn't
have one in his pocket at the time.
Yours very truly,
Theodore Sturgeon

P.S. On the other hand, maybe he did.