The Very Best of F & SF v1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

such fuss. And indeed, Ms. Jackson contributed
four imaginative tales during the ’50s, all of which were well received by our
readers, including this classic.
     
    Mr.
John Philip Johnson shut his front door behind
him and came down his front steps into the bright morning with a feeling that
all was well with the world on this best of all days, and wasn’t the sun warm
and good, and didn’t his shoes feel comfortable after the resoling, and he knew
that he had undoubtedly chosen the precise very tie which belonged with the day
and the sun and his comfortable feet, and, after all, wasn’t the world just a
wonderful place? In spite of the fact that he was a small man, and the tie was
perhaps a shade vivid, Mr. Johnson irradiated this feeling of well-being as he
came down the steps and onto the dirty sidewalk, and he smiled at people who
passed him, and some of them even smiled back. He stopped at the newsstand on
the corner and bought his paper, saying “ Good morning” with real conviction to the man who sold him the paper and
the two or three other people who were lucky enough to be buying papers when
Mr. Johnson skipped up. He remembered to fill his pockets with candy and
peanuts, and then he set out to get himself uptown. He stopped in a flower shop
and bought a carnation for his buttonhole, and stopped almost immediately
afterward to give the carnation to a small child in a carriage, who looked at
him dumbly, and then smiled, and Mr. Johnson smiled, and the child’s mother
looked at Mr. Johnson for a minute and then smiled too.
    When he had gone
several blocks uptown, Mr. Johnson cut across the avenue and went along a side
street, chosen at random; he did not follow the same route every morning, but
preferred to pursue his eventful way in wide detours, more like a puppy than a
man intent upon business. It happened this morning that halfway down the block
a moving van was parked, and the furniture from an upstairs apartment stood
half on the sidewalk, half on the steps, while an amused group of people
loitered, examining the scratches on the tables and the worn spots on the
chairs, and a harassed woman, trying to watch a young child and the movers and
the furniture all at the same time, gave the clear impression of endeavoring to
shelter her private life from the people staring at her belongings. Mr. Johnson
stopped, and for a moment joined the crowd, and then he came forward and,
touching his hat civilly, said, “Perhaps I can keep an eye on your little boy
for you?”
    The woman turned
and glared at him distrustfully, and Mr. Johnson added hastily, “We’ll sit
right here on the steps.” He beckoned to the little boy, who hesitated and then
responded agreeably to Mr. Johnson’s genial smile. Mr. Johnson brought out a
handful of peanuts from his pocket and sat on the steps with the boy, who at
first refused the peanuts on the grounds that his mother did not allow him to
accept food from strangers; Mr. Johnson said that probably his mother had not intended
peanuts to be included, since elephants at the circus ate them, and the boy
considered, and then agreed solemnly. They sat on the steps cracking peanuts in
a comradely fashion, and Mr. Johnson said, “So you’re moving?”
    “Yep,” said the
boy.
    “Where you
going?”
    “Vermont.”
    “Nice place.
Plenty of snow there. Maple sugar, too; you like maple sugar?
    “Sure.”
    “Plenty of maple
sugar in Vermont. You going to live on a farm?”
    “Going to live
with Grandpa.”
    “Grandpa like
peanuts?”
    “Sure.”
    “Ought to take
him some,” said Mr. Johnson, reaching into his pocket. “Just you and Mommy
going?”
    “Yep.”
    “Tell you what,”
Mr. Johnson said. “You take some peanuts to eat on the train.”
    The boy’s
mother, after glancing at them frequently, had seemingly decided that Mr.
Johnson was trustworthy, because she had devoted herself wholeheartedly to
seeing that the movers did not—what movers rarely do, but every