“I’m dying,” coughed the man, “and you debate. God, God, man!” There was a fierce wrestling and a pounding inside. “This place in here is full of dirt and leaves and paper. I can’t move!”
Mr. Britt stood there. “It is not possible,” he said, clearly and firmly, at last, “that a man could be in my machine. I know my machine. You do not belong in there. I did not ask you to be in there. It is your responsibility.”
“Bend closer …”
“What?”
“Listen!”
He put his ear to the warm metal.
“I am here,” whispered the high voice, the sweet high fading voice. “I am in here and I wear no clothes.”
“What!”
He felt his hands jerk, his fingers twitch in on themselves. He felt his eyes squeeze up almost to blind him.
“I am in here and I have no clothes,” said the voice. And after a long while, “Don’t you want to see me? Don’t you? Don’t you want to see me? I’m in here now. I’m waiting …”
He stood by the side of the great machine for a full ten seconds. The echo of his breathing jumped off the metal a foot from his face.
“Did you hear what I said?” whispered the voice.
He nodded.
“Well then, open the lid. Let me out. It’s late. Late at night. Everyone asleep. Dark. We’ll be alone …”
He listened to his heart beating.
“Well?” said the voice.
He swallowed.
“What are you waiting for?” said the voice, lasciviously.
The sweat rolled down his face.
There was no answer. The fierce breathing that had been in the machine for a while now suddenly stopped. The thrashing stopped.
Mr. Britt leaned forward, put his ear to the machine.
He could hear nothing now but a kind of soft inner squeaking under the lid. And a sound like one hand, cut off from the body perhaps, moving, struggling by itself. It sounded like a small thing moving.
“I climbed in to sleep,” said the man.
“Oh, now you are lying,” said Mr. Britt.
He climbed up on his silent machine and sat in the leather saddle. He put his foot down to start the motor.
“What are you doing?” the voice shouted from under the lid suddenly. There was a dull stir. There was a sound as of a large body again. The heavy breathing returned. It was so sudden it made Mr. Britt almost fal
l from his perch. He looked back at the lid.
“No, no, I won’t let you out,” he said.
“Why?” cried the failing voice.
“Because,” said Mr. Britt, “I have my work to do.” He started the machine and the whisking thunder of the brushes and the roar of the motor drowned out the screams and shouts of the captured man. Looking ahead, eyes wet, hands hard on the wheel, Mr. Britt took his machine brooming down the silent avenues of the night town, for five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour, an hour, two hours more, sweeping and scouring and never stopping, sucking in tickets and combs and dropped soup-can labels.