A Uniform Shade of Red

by J. Richard Jacobs

The road to judgement is a twisted one indeed.

Giving due consideration to the circumstances, Theodore Nathaniel Pendergast died well. He walked the long, dimly lit hall, chatting with his companions about the miserable conditions in the world, late-breaking news events, and traded plain old small talk with them. Even told a couple of jokes. For all outward appearances, one would not have known he was walking his last mile. At least not by the tone and tempo of his conversation. Anyway, that’s what they call that last walk, you know—the last mile. Of course, it was not even close to a mile. More like fifty yards. But that’s what they call it. The last mile. Who knows why?

When they entered a small room surrounded on three sides by windows with the blinds closed tightly so people could not see the preliminary activities, there were three attendants is white coats. Theodore walked over to a table. It was an antiseptic-looking thing, all stainless steel with a thin mat and white sheet on top. He laid down without anyone having to guide, force, or help him in any way. His companions said their goodbyes, shook hands with him as he lay on the table, then left. The three staff in white coats remained.

The doctors went through the motions of preparing him for his injections. There would be three injections. He’d read up on it, so he knew what to expect. They strapped him down to the table and someone, he wasn’t sure who, asked if he had any last words before they continued. Upon asking the question, the blinds snapped open. He rolled his head to the left so he could see through the large windows. On the other side of the glass sat an entourage of folks who had come to see him off. He smiled at them and gave them as much of a farewell wave as he could. He accompanied his wave with a thumbs up sign. It wasn’t much of a wave because of the restraints, but he was sure they recognized it as one, and he knew hardly anyone would mistake his show of a thumb up as representing anything but a positive attitude on his part. He wondered why they bothered to strap him down.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Words will only prolong what I have awaited for so many years.” Serenity tempered his voice as he continued, “So long everybody. I hope you find a way to fix the world. It’s in a real mess.”

***

Theodore felt good. He awoke, there’s no other word that fits what he experienced, in a huge room lined with chairs. It was like a doctor’s office but there were no boring magazines with articles about gallbladder operations and no bad art prints hanging on the walls. He sat alone, except for a shapely woman sporting too much makeup. She wore a comfortable and revealing white robe, slightly reminiscent of a toga. She sat at a desk against the far wall. To his astonishment, he wore a similar robe, but of more coarse fabric. Where had that come from? Who dressed him? The woman at the desk? He wondered how all that had happened without his knowledge. Anyway, because she sat at a desk, he decided she was the receptionist and probably not the one who had fitted him with his toga.

She looked up from doing her nails and said, “Mr. Pendergast, the Director will see you now.” Her voice, sexy and smooth, echoed in the vacant room of chairs.

She pointed to the only door in the surrounding walls. That’s odd, he thought. Where’s the door I came through to get in here? He stopped at the receptionist’s desk and asked, “Um, what…what is this place?”

“Why, this is the Hall of Final Decisions, Mr. Pendergast. Go on, the Director is waiting,” she said, waving her freshly painted nails at the door. Her nails were purple. Why would anyone want purple nails? What final decision?

Theodore passed through the door and entered another empty room. There stood a single chair in the center of the chamber. Everything radiated soft, white light—floor, ceiling, walls; even the chair. No shadows. A message in light blue letters appeared on the wall the chair faced.

“Please, have a seat, Mr. Pendergast. We will be with you shortly,” it said.

He sat down and laid his hands on his knees. Within what felt like no time at all, more letters appeared on the wall.

“Welcome, Mr. Pendergast. We trust you had a good trip?”

“I…I think so. Frankly, I don’t remember whether I did or not.”

“Well, that makes no difference. You are here now and we may begin—”

“Um, begin what?”

“Your last interrogation before we hand down the final decision, Mr. Pendergast.”

“Interrogation? Final decision?”

“Perhaps interrogation is not the proper word, because we have but one question to ask of you. We know all the minute details of your life. Please, do not include trifles. What we would like you to do is tell us, in your own words, what led up to your arrest and resulted in your being sent here. Do you now understand what it is we want?”

“I…think so. What’s this final decision business?”

“It is simply a decision about whether you will stay here, or be sent down there. The Council of Ten makes the decision based on the details we have and your explanation. In the rare case there is a tie, my vote will break the deadlock, forgive the expression. The decision made here is final. There is no appeal. Do you understand?”

“And this decision depends upon what I tell you?”

“Short-term memory problems? I just told you it is made by taking into consideration what you have to say for yourself, and the other things that make up your life to this moment. Whatever you have done to bring you here, no matter how heinous it may have seemed, is subject to being forgiven in what we refer to as the Ultimate Judgment. We don’t want you to tell us your life history—as I said, we already have that—what we want to hear is what got you on the track that led to that pivotal moment in life on the other side and how you…justify it.”

“I think I understand, now. Where would you like me to begin?”

“From the moments after your arrest, Mr. Pendergast. Tell us what happened and how you feel, in your opinion, what you did was, well, acceptable under the circumstances as you present them. You may tell your story however you would like. We are also quite interested in what transpired to make you do what you did, and the feelings you had just before executing it. Again, forgive the expression.”

***

Theodore, a bit uncomfortable speaking to a blank wall, proceeded with his arrest and being taken downtown to the police station. He told the wall how he had been bound in chains and handcuffs, then taken to a large, steel-walled room for interrogation. He described briefly his confusion and extreme nervousness in the beginning, and how the detective in charge handled it.

***

Then the detective said to me, “All right, Mr. Pendergast, how are you feeling now? A little better?”

The detective, Lieutenant Belmont, was an all right guy. You know, not abrasive and nasty like most of them you see on TV. You know what I’m saying? I think he really was concerned about how I felt. He looked a lot like Kojack on a bad day, but acted a lot more like Columbo. You know, the funny little guy with the antique Peugeot? Well, maybe you don’t remember either one of them unless you stay up late to watch old reruns on the Crime and Punishment Channel…like I do—did.

“Yes, sir. Much better now, thank you,” I said.

“Do you feel like telling me about it now, or would you rather wait for your attorney?” he asked, then put a small recorder on the table in front of me. He smiled. It was a friendly kind of smile that helped make me feel at ease.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was serious all right. I couldn’t blame him for that. I mean, I’d done something pretty bad and, well, it was his job to get all the information he could about it. But I think he really wanted to make me feel comfortable…well, as comfortable as you can feel when you’re wrapped up in chains and locked in a little room with no windows like a solid cage for a wild animal. There was a tiny slit of a window high on the door and I could see shadows moving outside.

He didn’t resort to planting his nose against mine and shouting obscenities or pounding the table. He even brought me a glass of water and helped me drink it. He offered me a cigarette, too. Not at all like in the movies or on TV. I think they go way too far with that stuff, don’t you? I mean, it’s really not like what they depict in those shows at all.

That’s the reason I felt bad when I told him I wanted my attorney present before explaining why I had done it. I wasn’t trying being obstinate, I’ve just seen enough to know that Berni, he’s my attorney, might have been able to get me off on some obscure technicality if he wasn’t there when I talked. Something like that might not have set too well in Belmont’s record, you know. Anyway, I explained my reasoning and he sat back and laughed. I’m not sure why he did that, but I assume it was out of nervous relief for my having reminded him of that potential.

Berni arrived about five minutes later and insisted he be allowed some time with me—alone. Belmont smiled at him and said he didn’t see anything wrong with that. As soon as he left the room, Berni opened his briefcase and threw a big yellow pad down on the table. Then he screamed at me.

“Theodore, what the devil have you done? Tell me none of this is true!” I could tell Berni was upset because he always called me Ted when he wasn’t, and his ears, much too large for his little head, were all red around the edges.

“No, Berni,” I said. “I did it, all right.” His expression told me that was not at all what he wanted to hear.

“Are you aware they can hang you for this?”

“No they can’t,” I said. “I have my choice between the gas chamber and lethal injection, Berni. You’re thinking of some other state.”

Berni turned all pink until his face matched his ears. Then he slammed his fist down on the table. From the look on his face, it must have hurt. “What? Are you completely out of your mind, Theodore?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “You know, Berni, I think I’ll go for the injection.”

“Okay, okay, okay—do you want to tell me what really happened. This can’t be true. Not the way it reads in the crime report,” he said. He was almost crying. I had never seen him like that. Close a couple of times, but never like that.

“Oh, it’s true, Berni. And yes, I want to tell you and Lieutenant Belmont about it. Why don’t you call him back in now?”

“Theodore, I don’t want you to say anything more to the police until I’ve had a chance to work up a defense. What have you told them, so far?”

“Not a whole lot, Berni. Just my name and address…stuff like that. I wanted you here before I told them about it.”

“Well, that’s something you’ve done right. If you give me a chance to do my job, I might just be able to get you out of this. Well, maybe not out of it—but we can bargain for a lesser charge or at least a more lenient sentence. All right, Theodore? Are you listening to me?” Berni’s nose pressed hard against mine and he was shouting.

“Berni, you’re getting all red in the face,” I said. “That can’t be good for you. Look, all I want to do is tell them why I did it…so they’ll understand. I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of a nut, you know.”

“If you haven’t told them anything, how can you be so sure they know you did it?”

“Because, Berni, the people who saw me do it told them. You didn’t read the whole report?”

“There were witnesses? Theodore, are you telling me people actually saw you do this…this thing?” He was beginning to wheeze and I was getting worried that he could have a heart attack, or something worse, maybe. It also bothered me that he hadn’t read the report.

“Sure there were witnesses, Berni. It was in the Tribune’s main office in the middle of the afternoon. That’s a morning paper, Berni. Deadlines, you know. There might have been thirty…maybe forty people in there at the time.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Forty people saw you? Actually saw you…do it? This is incredible! How can I possibly offer up a reasonable defense?” He stopped, dropped into a chair and began thinking. I knew he was thinking hard because he has a habit of sticking his pencil in his nose when deep in thought. It’s disgusting, I know, but that’s Berni.

I explained to him that they hadn’t actually seen me do it because the door was closed, but they saw me go into the office and the results when I’d finished.

He looked horribly perplexed, then, after a few minutes of maneuvering the eraser around in his nostrils, he slammed the pencil down on the table and announced, “I’ve got it! This case is so absolutely, utterly, totally absurd—I know it’ll work.”

“What’s that, Berni? What will work?” I asked.

“You, Ted.” I felt better because he called me Ted and that meant he was calming down. “You—you’re incompetent, Ted.”

“I beg your pardon?” I couldn’t believe Berni would actually try to hurt my feelings, so I hoped he would explain that remark.

“Mentally incompetent, Ted. You know very well what I mean. You…you blacked out. Something snapped in your mind. In a moment of heated passion—rage—you committed the crime and now…now you can’t remember a thing. You got that? You can’t remember anything between the time you entered the Tribune’s office and this morning. It’s all a blank. Just tell them you don’t remember anything. Can you do that for me, Ted?”

“Sure I can, Berni.”

Berni sighed and his body slumped back down in the chair. He looked…relieved.

“That’s my man, Ted,” he said, then called for Belmont.

“But I won’t.”

I couldn’t fight him off because of the chains and Berni was doing a good job of strangling the life out of me when Belmont pulled him away. I don’t know what got into him to cause him to do such a thing. A brief struggle ensued between Berni and Lieutenant Belmont. They scuffled for a minute or two, then the detective pushed Berni out into the hall. I think I remember Berni crying out something like, “The man’s insane and I’m going to kill-l-l-l him-m-m-m. Kill-l-l-l him-m-m-m.”

Anyway, he and Lieutenant Belmont returned a little while later—maybe fifteen minutes or so. Berni seemed unusually calm when they came back in. Subdued, you could say. There was a wad of toilet paper stuffed into his left nostril and his right eye looked a little swollen.

They both sat down on opposite sides of the table and Belmont pushed that little recorder in front of me again. Berni shriveled in his seat and said nothing.

“Now, Mr. Pendergast,” the lieutenant began, “the recorder is running and a Mr. Melvin L. Bernstein is present in the room. Is Mr. Bernstein your legal counsel?”

When we had dispensed with all the preliminaries, Belmont told me I could proceed with my story…in any way I wanted, like what you said a minute ago, you know? He showed a genuine interest in what I had to say, so I told him how, when I was very young, my father had it set in his mind that I would follow in his footsteps and take over the family shoe store. Three generations of Pendergasts had run that store and he let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that he was not about to see that chain broken.

Mom, of course, had other ideas and tried to interest me in becoming a doctor. Their division over the issue persisted for several years until they reached a compromise they found mutually acceptable. I, they said, would become a podiatrist and my little brother, Danny, would run the store. Danny would lease me space above the store at cost-plus ten and we could feed off each other, like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to be a whateverologist or a somethingiatrist. I’m sorry, but all I’ve ever wanted to do is write. I want to be an…an author.”

I might as well have said I wanted to be a kiddy-porn baron, or that I was a serial rapist in training.

“What did I tell you, Martha? Your son’s going to be a no-account bum. He doesn’t even give us the courtesy of sinking into the gutter over time. No, he…he plans this idiocy in advance!”

“Son…Teddy, are you sure you don’t want to work for a living like normal people? Your father and I would like to see you make something of yourself, be somebody,” Mom said sweetly.

“Yer stupid, Teddy. Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Danny said.

During the next six years, Danny did well enough to open two new locations uptown, while I made it to Manager Third Class of our local BurgerBeast. It was in that year that I sold my first short story to one of the literary magazines. They paid me ten dollars and two free copies, neither one of which contained my story. I went to the corner newsstand and spent half of what they had paid me for a copy with my brilliant piece in it, you know, so I could give it to Mom for her birthday.

***

“Oh, look, Arthur, Teddy sold a story,” Mom said.

Dad picked up the magazine that I had cleverly folded so it would automatically open to my story. He grunted.

“Two pages. What did they give you for that, ten bucks?”

I was strongly tempted to lie up the amount but didn’t.

“Yes, plus two free editions.”

“Say, that’s not bad, Teddy.” He sounded sincere. “Let’s see now, that works out to…to a little less than four mils per day. That is, allowing for weekends. Not bad. If we count the holidays when you were here for your handouts as null time, you could say it was an even four mils per day.” Dad was always good with numbers.

“I told you, Dad. Teddy’s just plain stupid,” Danny said.

I intended to tell them I was working on a book but decided to hold off on that, at least until it sold. Too much good news in one day might not have been easy on Dad’s heart.

***

I finished the book a year later. It had been three years in the writing, but I finished my first novel-length western, Boots and Bullets. I boxed up a copy of the manuscript and gave it to Shirley; a friend who worked at the local library. She also served as a critic in the local writer’s club. She agreed to read it and give me her comments. After a few days, she called to let me know she thought it had promise and that she had passed it along to one of her friends. He is a retired literary agent named Ace, who lived somewhere in the backwoods of Nova Scotia. One year after handing the box to Shirley, Ace called…collect.

“Listen to me, Mr. Pendergast,” he said. “There are four things you must do before you’ll be able to sell your book. One; change the title to something a little more catchy and consistent with the content. Something like The Bootlicker of Buffalo Butte might do. Two; change the name of your protagonist. Timmy Tutweiler is not the sort of moniker a tough-as-nails saddle tramp is likely to have. Three; it’s all right for him to kiss the girl before he rides off, but making mad passionate love in the back of an abandoned stagecoach behind the jail is not acceptable western fodder, particularly not when we all know he’s going to ride off into the sunset, or whatever. Four; get yourself an agent. You’re not going to sell this kind of crap over the transom. Five; change your name. I mean, who the hell is going to buy a western by a guy named Pendergast? Use a nom de plume like Lance Lamont or Singing Threetrees, something catchy and western. No one is going to buy a western written by anyone with a name like yours.” All right, so he couldn’t count, but his comments sounded logical, so I took his advice and made the changes in the book.

I made up a long list of the roughest, tumblest names I could think of for my pen name and settled on Lash McGraw. Getting an agent, now that was something entirely different. One piece in a literary was not thought of as having been published, so the agents I contacted were not interested and few of the publishers wanted to see western manuscripts unless they came from agents. What was I supposed to do?

I called Ace and, after a lot of haggling, he agreed to come out of hiding just long enough to help market my book for what he said was a paltry twenty-five percent. I kicked a little, but he reminded me it was a small price to pay for dragging him from his comfy cottage to get my first book in print.

Five years after giving Mom a copy of that magazine, I had a contract and an advance for my book. My first book. The day the check arrived, Ace called…collect…to tell me he would be willing to drop his rate to twenty percent for the second book if I promised to get on it right away. I told him I had been working on it for some time and he insisted I send him a couple of chapters and an outline. What with all the attention I was getting, I was beginning to feel…well, successful.

All this happened in time for Mom’s birthday, so I made copies of the stuff I had received and hurried across town. In the five years since my first bit of good news, my brother had obtained nine more locations and begun a chain of quick shoe outlets called Pendergast’s Pedifast. Danny had always been good at organizing and conniving. In fact, everybody said Danny would wind up running heaven a week after he got there. It was a joke, of course, but that’s what they said.

***

“Did they really say that?” the wall interjected.

“Yeah. It was always a comment presented in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, but, yeah, that’s what they said,” Theodore responded.

“Okay,” the wall said. “Please…continue with your story.”

***

Um, where was I? Oh, yeah, during the same period, I had acceded to full-time night manager of BurgerBeast.

Anyway, when I arrived at their house, I was so excited I forgot to turn off the engine of my car. I just jumped out and charged into the house waving the copies and shouting, “Mom. Dad. Great news. I sold my first book.”

“That’s nice,” they said in concert.

“Teddy, did you hear? Danny’s getting married,” Mom said. She was bubbling with excitement. Dad wrapped his arm tightly around my little brother and gave a little squeeze. A proud smile graced his face. Danny sneered at me.

“No. Really? Who’s the lucky girl?” What I really wanted to know was, who would voluntarily marry a putz like Danny?

“Milly Stapleton,” Danny said in his usual, snotty style. It was the first time he had spoken to me directly in eight years.

“You mean Milly, the daughter of Stapleton Shoes?” I was taken aback by that news. The Stapletons were worth more annually than the IRS could extort from the citizenry, or so the story went. By the time I left, my car had overheated and was squirting coolant from several new leaks. Not everything was going well.

Book two sold six months after Bootlicker went to print. I couldn’t go home with the news since my parents had moved into a house on a lake Danny bought for them upstate, both the house and the lake, and my schedule at BurgerBeast wouldn’t allow enough time to make the trip. I called Mom to tell her about what was happening, and to apologize for not visiting. She told me Danny and Milly were considering going international with a new idea in marketing.

My third book, Petticoats ‘N’ Pistols, got picked up by a different publisher and Ace assured me it was a good move. They had a better approach to marketing and guaranteed a larger first run, ergo, more money. He lowered his rate a couple of points in another show of confidence and demanded an outline for book number four immediately. In the meantime, I couldn’t walk three blocks without encountering a Staplegast International Factory Shoe Outlet.

Then it happened, the thing that started all that got me where I am now. I received a call from Ace, a call he paid for, although I knew it would be added to his fees later. Sales on Petticoats had fallen off drastically and the publisher, though not pulling out, threatened to shorten the first run on Range Revenge if the trend continued.

The trend continued and the publisher reduced the first printing of book four by twenty-five percent. That hit me hard. One month after release, the sales hovered between mediocre and dismal. Ace called…collect.

“Ted, we know why all the trouble,” he said. “Have you ever heard of a critic named Maxwell Storm?”

“No, I can’t say that I’ve had that pleasure,” I admitted.

“He writes for the Tribune. He started there at the same time Petticoats hit the stores.”

“Wait a minute. I thought all the reviews on Petticoats had been good. Maybe not raves or anything like that, but they were all positive, right?”

“They were, yeah. All but this jerk, Storm. He’s internationally syndicated and I heard through some of my sources that he’s paying those who wouldn’t buy his column to carry it anyway.”

“He sounds like a real schmuck, Ace,” I said. I was fuming. “So, what can we do about him?”

“We can’t do anything about him. He’s a critic—a critic with a lot of money—and critics can be as rotten as they want, as long as it’s opinion. They have what equates to diplomatic immunity. He’s said nothing libelous or slanderous, so he’s in the clear. I had quite a discussion with the editors and they told me they love your style.”

“That’s nice to hear, Ace, but it’s not selling.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but listen to this.” He sounded excited. “They said that if you can come up with something really different—not a western—they’ll take a chance and go with it. They think the guy might have some kind of personal problem with your Lash McGraw, and I agree with them. Change your name and give us anything but a western. Let’s see what happens.”

I did. I changed my name to Frederick Sharp and produced the bones of a mystery and horror piece that, after reading the outline, excited Ace. He hand-carried it to the editors.

I called home to tell Mom about the problem, but she didn’t understand. She said Danny had bought some property in the south of France and, if I wanted to get out of the country for a while, she was sure he’d rent it to me for a reasonable price. Mom didn’t understand much of anything.

When No Rest for the Wicked hit the shelves, I began my surveillance of Storm Warnings, Storm’s column. Two days passed with no mention of my new book. On the third day, there it was.

“Well, well, well, folks. Seems Lash McGraw has changed his name and the genre of his so-called work—the two most creative things he’s done in his life. His latest, No Rest for the Wicked, released by Spellbindery this week, again insults his readers with the same tepid tripe in this hackneyed horrible horror as we found in his weeping willow westerns. There is one positive note here, though. He has, for the first time, given us a reasonably believable, though dark, twisted hero in the person of Don Sanders. Don is a disgruntled postal employee who wearies of delivering mail to top floor tenants in a rural, but vertically oriented town in the central U.S. Out of frustration with the way his life is going, Don returns to medical school where he graduates in the top ten percent of his class. The conflict of this story revolves around Don’s allegiance to the Hippocratic Oath. He grapples with the oath and his inability to give up his nocturnal hobby of performing gruesome axe murders. He feels that the two are incompatible. The murders, it turns out, get committed after Don has sex with his insipid little wife, Page. The mere presence of Page tends to take whatever color this uninspired saga might have had and turns it into a uniform shade of neutral (or should that be neutered?) gray. My advice to Don is, stop sleeping with Page, it might turn your whole life around. As for McGraw, now F. Sharp (hit that one on your piano, there’s a clue in the sound), as a writer, you’d make a far better shoe salesman.”

I can’t deny I was angry, but I was more nonplussed. Why? I set out for the Tribune’s downtown building to confront this Maxwell Storm. I wanted to find out why he had singled me out, and how he could have known McGraw and Sharp were one in the same. I mean, even the editors told me they wouldn’t have known, and they’re experts in things like that.

When I went into the main lobby at the Tribune to ask if I could see Storm, they showed me to one of the offices in the back corner by the fire exit. I couldn’t help noticing that only the name Maxwell Storm was on the frosted glass in gold. All the others were black. Ego, I thought. I stood by the door for a moment while I gathered up my courage, then tapped on the glass.

“Enter if you dare,” came the voice from inside. It was vaguely familiar.

I opened the door slowly and saw a man seated behind a huge walnut desk. Well, I didn’t actually see the man himself. He had his back to me and was looking out over the city. A bright purple beret showed above the high leather back of his chair. Smoke curled into the air from a particularly foul-smelling cigar, and a pair of the most expensive Staplegast wingtips lay heeled comfortably on the windowsill.

“Well, what is it, man? Time is money, you know, so get on with it.”

“Mr. Storm, my name is Frederick Sharp,” I said as boldly as I could. “I wrote No Rest for the Wicked.” He just sat there, looking out the window and sucking on that cigar. “I have nothing to say about your opinions, that is, other than that I disagree with them. What I really want to know is, how did you know I was also McGraw?”

“Mom told me, stupid,” he said and spun around to face me.

Detective Belmont hadn’t interrupted me once during the whole story and, oddly enough, neither had Berni.

“Then what did you do, Mr. Pendergast?” Belmont asked.

“I…I ran from his office and into the fire exit with every intention of leaving the building,” I said. “I swear, all I wanted to do was get out of there. I was enraged and not thinking at all. But…but then I saw the emergency firebox on the wall.” Berni turned ashen and shrank further down into his seat.

“Is that when you took the fire axe from the box, Mr. Pendergast?”

“Yes, sir. That’s when I turned Danny’s mere presence into a uniform shade of red.”

***

“Is that it?” the wall asked.

“Well, yeah, I guess it is. Except that Berni kept getting me stays of execution, even though I asked him—begged him not to. I spent twenty-one years trying to get him to stop. He failed, finally, and that’s how I got here—wherever here is.”

“Fine, Mr. Pendergast. Do you mind waiting a few minutes while we confer?”

“No. It doesn’t look like there’s anywhere else to go and I’m not doing anything at the moment, anyway.”

After a short time, the wall filled with letters again.

“We have reached our decision, but before I let you know what it is, there are a couple of things I need to tell you. First, you really would have made a better shoe salesman. Second, you’re still stupid, Teddy. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”