Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson by Shirley Jackson Page B

clown in the sound truck, he’ll lose his job. With her free hand she reached up and felt that her hat was perched at the correct angle and her hair neat. I hope he does lose his job, she thought. What a thing to do! She could not help glancing over her shoulder to see what had become of the sound truck, and was shocked to find it creeping silently almost next to her, going along beside her in the street. When she looked around, the sound truck shouted, “Find Miss X, find Miss X.”
    “Listen,” Miss Morgan told herself. She stopped and looked around, but the people going by were moving busily without noticing her. Even a man who almost crashed into her when she stopped suddenly said only “Excuse me,” and went on by without a backward look. The sound truck was stopped by traffic, up against the curb, and Miss Morgan went over to it and knocked on the window until the driver turned around.
    “I want to speak to you,” Miss Morgan said ominously. The driver reached over and opened the door.
    “You want something?” he asked wearily.
    “I want to know why this truck is following me down the street,” Miss Morgan said; since she did not know the truck driver, and would certainly never see him again, she was possessed of great courage. She made her voice very sharp and said, “What are you trying to do?”
    “Me?” the truck driver said. “Look, lady, I’m not following anybody. I got a route I gotta go. See?” He held up a dirty scrap of paper, and Miss Morgan could see that it was marked in pencil, a series of lines numbered like streets, although she was too far away to see what the numbers were. “I go where it tells me,” the truck driver said insistently. “See?”
    “Well,” Miss Morgan said, her voice losing conviction, “what do you mean, talking about people dressed like me? Blue hats, and so on?”
    “Don’t ask me,” the truck driver said. “People hire this truck, I drive where they say. I don’t have nothing to do with what happens back there.” He waved his hand toward the back of the truck, which was separated from him by a partition behind the driver’s seat. The traffic ahead of him started and he said quickly, “You want to know, you ask back there. Me, I don’t hear it with the windows all shut.” He closed the door, and the truck moved slowly away. Miss Morgan stood on the curb, staring at it, and the loudspeaker began, “Miss X is walking alone in the city.”
    The nerve of him, Miss Morgan thought, reverting to a culture securely hidden beneath six years of working for Mr. Lang, the goddamn nerve of him. She began to walk defiantly along the street, now slightly behind the sound truck. Serve them right, she thought, if anyone says to me, “Are you Miss What’s-her-name?” I’ll say “Why, yes, I am, here’s your million dollars and you can go—”
    “Reddish tweed topcoat,” the sound truck roared, “blue shoes, blue hat.” The corner Miss Morgan was approaching was a hub corner, where traffic moved heavily and quickly, where crowds of people stood waiting to cross the street, where the traffic lights changed often. Suppose I wait on the corner, Miss Morgan thought, the truck will have to go on. She stopped on the corner near the sign “bus stop,” and fixed her face in the blank expression of a bus rider, waiting for the sound truck to go on. As it turned the corner it shouted back at her, “Find Miss X, find Miss X, she may be standing next to you now.”
    Miss Morgan looked around nervously, and found she was standing next to a poster that began “Find Miss X, find Miss X,” but went on to say, “Miss X will be walking the streets of New York TODAY. She will be wearing blue—a blue hat, a blue suit, blue shoes, blue gloves. Her coat will be red and gray tweed. SHE WILL BE CARRYING A LARGE PACKAGE. Find Miss X, and claim the prizes.”
    Good Lord, Miss Morgan thought, good Lord. A horrible idea crossed her mind: Could they sue her, take her into court,