The Normal Man

When Raymond Terris was thirteen years old he began to grow -- shooting upward like a rangy weed. He had always been a strong, handsome child with a big frame, taller than his age average, but otherwise not out of the ordinary. Both his parents were of middling size and his mother was on the short side. Alex Terris, his father, was rather proud at first when thirteen-year-old Raymond outgrew him, and used to say that Ray must be a throwback to his great-grandfather, the pioneer, who had been a kind of Paul Bunyan of the plains.

Mrs. Terris was not especially concerned either, except when it came to buying Ray's school clothes. When he was still a child, it was impossible to outfit him in either the high school or college departments of clothing stores. The sleeves of all commercially made shirts never reached his wrists and his shoes had to be made to order. But Ray was good-looking and healthy and people remarked favorably on what a big fellow (continued on page 88) Normal Man (continued from page 79) he was getting to be.

Mr. and Mrs. Terris both thought he was achieving his growth early and when he got to a normal six feet, he would stop. But this did not happen. When he was fifteen he was a head and shoulders taller than his father and still growing. His bed was too short for him and he had to stoop to get through doorways.

It was to be expected that Ray might feel sensitive about his height in the confusing years of adolescence when conformity is of such importance. His mother and father left nothing undone to prevent this. He was their only child and since they were people of means, they were able to spare him the preliminary jibes of the world by keeping him in expensive schools where the problem was thoroughly gone into with headmasters beforehand. He was encouraged to engage in sports, where he excelled. In football, track and basketball, he was expert by very reason of his abnormality, and since he was an amiable and goodhearted boy, he had ordinary popularity in his school life.

Meanwhile, Alex Terris began to go into his son's problem with medical authorities. Ray was put through a clinic, but reports merely bore out the fact that he was healthy. When local doctors could discover no reason for his abnormal growth, Mr. Terris got on the train and went East, where he discussed the subject with specialists in the pituitary gland. He instituted a tracing of his and his wife Millicent's ancestral strains trying to locate a tendency toward giantism in their hereditary history. There was nothing to indicate abnormality, and Mr. Terris was surprised and a little disappointed to find that his legendary grandfather had stood only six feet. Ray was already over seven feet tall. The doctors Mr. Terris consulted at Johns Hopkins, Philadelphia General and Cornell Medical Center advised him to bring Ray in for examination.

The following summer he proposed a trip to New York before Ray entered on his college career, and he and Mrs. Terris and the boy made the round of clinics and hospitals. Mr. and Mrs. Terris were, by now, seriously perturbed. They felt that some treatment to check the condition must be started immediately, for Ray had begun to experience the pangs of handicap. It was impossible for strangers not to be nonplused when they turned around and found themselves looking into the center of his belt buckle. He could not sleep in Pullman cars nor in hotel beds, since it was impossible for him to accordion his long legs into a sleeping position. He often had to sleep sitting up. The top of his head grazed the roofs of automobiles and even low ceilings, and he had to be constantly alert to keep from banging his cranium on doorways.

The best doctors pondered Ray Terris' case, studied his metabolism, sought for tumors which might bear upon the secretion of the pituitary, submitted him to mental tests, dismissed the possibility of acromegaly. In the end they told Mr. and Mrs. Terris that there was no apparent reason for his great size and that it occasionally happened that people of abnormally large frames were unexceptional in every other respect. They said that Ray in every other way was a normal individual with better-than-average intelligence and health and that there was no reason why he could not live a satisfactory life within the limits of what they were forced to refer to as his handicap. There was nothing which could be done to shrink his size or even to stop him from growing.

When his parents heard this, Mrs. Terris broke into weeping and Mr. Terris felt as if a death sentence had been pronounced upon his son. Ray, himself, was shattered. He had never thought much before about his physical nonconformity, but now his great body seemed to him an unbearable burden and he looked ahead into vacant years of loneliness and desperation.

"There is no reason," Dr. Frenaux said kindly, "to deny yourself any of the birthrights of the average man. It is not only highly probable but almost certain that your children will be of normal stature."

"My children!" Ray said bitterly. "Who would marry a man like me?"

"My boy, you will be surprised," Dr. Frenaux said. "You will be the answer to some beanpole maiden's prayer."

Ray winced at this casual levity, for he had become hypersensitive in the course of the medical investigations. Introspection had replaced his normal good spirits and he now shunned people and public places and stayed to himself. He dreaded going home and had already determined to spare himself the misery of college. The anxiety of his father and mother made him touchy and irritable and he even avoided their company. He could not bear his mother's pity nor his father's crestfallen concern. He felt, with anguish, that they were ashamed of him, as if they had borne and nurtured a monster.

"The thing to do in a case like this," Dr. Frenaux said, "is to make capital of your unconventionality. Do the kind of work where your height will be advantageous."

"Second-story man!" Ray rasped out. "Or telephone lineman. Or maybe I should go into the circus!"

"Railing against fate won't help," Dr. Frenaux said equably. "There is no reason for you to develop a psychosis which will be far more troublesome than your height. In my work I come across disabilities which make yours pale into insignificance. You are an exceptionally strong, handsome young man and I dare say you can make a remarkable life for yourself."

"I don't need platitudes," Ray said. "I just want to be alone."

"You have to make your own decisions on that subject," Dr. Frenaux said.

There seemed to be nothing more to say and the Terrises left. When they got out on the sidewalk a covey of urchins was playing in the muddy gutter. They stopped playing and gaped up at Ray.

"Look, guys," one of them said. "It's the Empire State!"

"How is the weather up there?"

Ray's face worked nervously. He felt as if he might be going to cry.

The years that followed were hardly happy. Alex and Millie Terris were people of some wisdom and they did what they could, but Ray had a bad time. He passed through many stages of despair. The first was a kind of numbed disbelief that he was condemned to be alien. The second was a railing at fate -- the harsh agony of the outsider who finds himself outside for no apparent reason -- when no one and no thing can be blamed. He eschewed company and brooded in angry solitude upon his misfortune. Eventually he began to read and took a perverse pleasure in studying the nature of his affliction. He searched history for accounts of men who had been physical giants and burrowed into their dead, forgotten lives. He read medical treatises, books about freaks, literature of abnormality. He became an authority on giants.

The more he read the more convinced he became that, while giants had accomplished a good many things, no one of them had ever lived a normal life, managed to be a normal man. His excitement mounted as this recurred to him, seeming to indicate a glimmer in his darkness. The day he decided to exist mentally and spiritually as a normal man, ignoring the physical husk which was depriving him of this status, he was like a scientist who at last discovers the formula he has sought.

This decision gave his interminable days a new purpose. Normalcy became a fetish with him, almost a neurosis. He laid intricate plans. He pondered schemes. He decided that first he must go to work. He went over all the professions and discarded them one after another. At last he decided that outdoor work -- hard work -- was what he must do. He went into the ranching business, salvaging a parcel of unprofitable land from Alex Terris' many properties. He (continued on page 142) Normal Man (continued from page 88) stocked his acres with blooded herds and began to breed cattle. He rode about on a great stallion -- a tall, powerful figure, and the outdoors seemed to diminish his size. It was only in houses that he seemed immense. He built a house in which everything was scaled to his height. He lived alone on the ranch and his progress was spectacular. He had the energy of five men and almost their strength, and he soon mastered the techniques of ranching and began to make money on his own. The men he met in the cattle business showed little surprise at his towering figure and he felt that he was meeting them on an equal basis. He made friends as well as money and for a considerable period he found him-self almost satisfied.

The only incident which marred this satisfaction concerned a girl. After he had been in the cattle business for about two years, he went to kansas city to the grand national where he was invited to dinner by one of the members of the commission who bought his steers. He met there the daughter of the house -- a pretty, slender flibbertigibbet of twenty named jeanne sayers. Ray, who automatically lowered his head when he went through doors now and hardly remembered his conspicuousness unless it was brought forcibly to his attention, was instantly taken with miss sayers, who, with the impeccable manners of a well-bred and well-trained young woman, made no overt show of curiosity when she looked at him.

He had never permitted himself to think of a girl during the difficult times; he had by now attained a composure which made him brave enough to seek out jeanne sayers. During his stay in kansas city, he took her to various functions and she seemed to find pleasure in his company. In her small, light head there was probably some perverse pride in having humbled a giant and she liked to be seen leading him around.

Ray, who insisted to himself over and over every day that he had made himself a normal man, eventually made the mistake of folding miss sayers in his long, powerful arms and kissing her. He was on the point of asking her to marry him when he looked at her face and saw in it such revulsion as shook him with horror. He let her go abruptly, fled the house and went back to the ranch where he brooded for a month upon his bleak fate. He then began to patiently rebuild his self-confidence and try to get back his sensations of normalcy. In time he was able to forget all about jeanne sayers as a person. What he could not forget was the recollection of her lips and the warm scent of her hair.

He knew then that he was terribly lonely.

From the crater of his loneliness he hit upon the notion of the romantic quest. He decided that he must find a woman to marry, and he determined that she should be of approximately his own stature.

At first this idea struck him as ridiculous and quixotic, but then it began to tease and plague him. All day at his work, he conjured up visions of a wife waiting at the house for him.

He started to plan. He went about it awkwardly at first. He feared and abhorred publicity and he did not know how to organize a search. He began to frequent freak shows and vaudeville theaters and to cultivate the tatterdemalion hangers-on of circuses. He was appalled at some of the things he saw. and while he met a woman giantess in a dismal carnival in southern Illinois, she was a pathetic sight -- a gross enormous woman of raddled middle age with a hairy chin. For days he was disgusted and repelled, but then his interest revived and he began to pursue his search again. He asked all these outcasts with whom he had become acquainted if they knew of any tall women and tracked down many false clues. He consulted newspaper records and followed up every lead. He met one presentable spinster who was six-feet-eleven, but she was an introverted, complaining, drab woman and he found that he could not even think of her with friendliness.

He realized then that there was more to his search than mere size. He was looking for someone to fall in love with.

There are few men who set out deliberately to fall in love, and those who do must leave a certain amount of the procedure to chance. Raymond Terris could leave nothing to chance. He was not only seven feet and four inches tall, he was perforce solitary and thoughtful and he was obsessed by his idea. He took to traveling, especially in the primitive regions of the United States, searching for legendary types. He haunted musical comedies and night-club revues, hoping to find some languorous showgirl who came to his shoulder. He stared at Wagnerian sopranos and went to swimming meets and to women's athletic events. The embarrassment that these expeditions cost him can hardly be calculated. Still, he did not give up.

He first heard about Laura Beck in a quite ordinary way. He was returning from one of these discouraging jaunts when he came down with a sore throat in Chicago and went to a doctor who was a stranger to him. As was to be expected, Dr. Menard commented upon his extraordinary height, with the clinical curiosity of a physician. Ray, who had been so frequently thrown with the medical profession, had lost his sensitivity where doctors were concerned and discussed his case quite frankly.

"Your parents, I take it, were of average size, then?" Dr. Menard said.

"Yes," Ray answered. "In fact, my mother is inclined to be dumpy."

"I know of but one similar case of incipient giantism. A girl ..."

"A girl?" Ray said. "How old?"

"She was about fourteen when I saw her as a patient," Dr. Menard said. "Lived in Minnesota. Daughter of Hardy Beck, a prominent citizen up there. Her father and mother brought her here seven or eight years ago. She must be about twenty-two now."

"There was nothing you could do?"

"There was nothing anybody could do. It was unfortunate. Except for her great size, she was a pretty child. Pretty and intelligent."

"Yes," Ray said. "It is unfortunate. Have you seen her since?"

"Once," said the doctor. "I met her and her mother in Marshall Field's. Of course, her life is miserable when she appears in public. People follow her around staring up at her. But I suppose she has to come to the city occasionally to get shoes and clothing made."

"I know," Ray said. His heart twisted strangely, as he thought of the small vanities of a woman and the abyss to which this girl must be relegated.

"She seemed cheerful enough," the doctor continued. "I stopped to speak to them and she laughed and chattered like any other young person. I couldn't help being struck with her real beauty, emphasized by its dimension. She was beautiful, only larger than life. Like one of those goddesses whose pictures you used to see in the mythology books. Or Brünnhilde, maybe."

Ray experienced a rush of fantastic excitement. He felt, inexplicably, that his search had at last been given direction. He was shy about speaking further on the subject with the impersonal doctor, nor could he bring himself to quiz him for particulars. Her name was Beck and she lived in Minnesota.

Ray didn't go home. He made inquiries at Chicago newspaper offices and consulted a few files in the library, located the address of Hardy Beck and as soon as he had recovered from his cold, got on a train and went to Minnesota. He registered at the Palace Hotel in the small city where the Becks lived and sequestered himself in his room for a day, trying to think how he could accomplish his objective in some dignified manner. Or at least, that was his rationale. In reality he was frightened and overstrained, for he did not feel that he could bear another failure.

Hunger at length forced him to the hotel's dining room, where he got into the usual conversation with the startled waiter.

"You any kin to the Becks?" the waiter asked.

"What did you say?" Ray asked.

"It's none of my business," the waiter said. "But you being so tall, I thought you might be related to Laura Beck."

"Laura," Ray said softly. "Laura Beck." It seemed the right name for her. "No, I never met her."

"She's a pretty girl," the waiter said. "Or she would be if -- -- " he paused in embarrassment.

"Is she here now?" Ray asked.

"Sure, saw her yesterday. Can't miss her," the waiter said sheepishly.

Ray paid his check and went upstairs to sleep fitfully on the diminutive hotel bed. He could no longer postpone his mission. Tomorrow, he would have to find out. He took the address out of his pocket and stared at it, as if it sealed his fate. The following afternoon he dressed with explicit care and started for Hardy Beck's residence.

He had imagined many versions of this encounter, but still he felt unprepared. His mouth was dry and his heart pumping. It was a bright northern afternoon. His grotesque shadow fell before him on the walk as he turned into the Beck gateway.

She came toward him as if she had been expecting him. She had been cutting flowers and she was holding a basket filled with great ragged dahlias. She had, as Dr. Menard had indicated, a beauty that was larger than life.

"Hello," she said. "Were you looking for someone?"

He swallowed and nodded. It was the first time in many years he could remember having looked straight into another pair of eyes.

At the end of six months they were married. Whatever misgivings the elder Becks and Terrises felt about such a match were swept away by the ardor of the principals. The only thing that ever marred Ray's courting was the hint of gratitude in the depths of Laura's eyes. Otherwise, he was as nervously happy as any bridegroom and congratulated himself that he enjoyed all the premarital doubts and misgivings of the average man. He looked forward to the contentment which went with the married state.

They spent an idyllic honeymoon, for while there was no great backlog of shared experience, the whole psychology of the minute minority which they represented made them closer to each other than most people ever get to be. He saw that she took pride in his physical appearance, just as he did in her noble looks, and they gave to each other mutual self-confidence. Ray was more and more persuaded that he had reached his coveted goal, but still he was never quite sure.

He did not recollect when he first began to feel restless. He found it hard to rationalize this development and guarded his emotions closely. They had been married about two years. Laura was as devoted as ever. Happiness had made her face lovelier. The sense of close companionship had not faltered, and when she stood beside him, her shoulder touching his, his loneliness subsided. Still there was something missing.

Laura was sensitive to this change, and frightened. She redoubled her efforts to please and placate him.

The shaft of thought which shattered his carefully constructed universe struck him like lightning felling the great tree. It happened on an evening in early spring. He remembered that the room was full of vases bearing great branches of plum blossoms that she had put there. They had a vague, wild scent. Laura, whose anxiety had caused her to dress with unusual care, was wearing a dull blue dress that became her coloring. She had been playing the big, concert-grand piano when he came in, but she stood up and moved toward him, preternaturally tall and beautiful, with all her love reflected in her face.

"I will never be unsure of her," he thought. "I won't have to struggle. No other man -- would be interested."

He could not understand why he was so shaken by this realization, feeling that nothing would ever be the same again, and that he had lost the battle for normalcy. In reality, he had never been nearer to the secret.