Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Drownded,” she mutters. “If there was snapping turtles to drag them under . . . but there ain’t.”

  I do not understand what the fuss is about and ast her if she can’t sell them anyway. She says no, it wouldn’t be honest, and I should get a shovel and bury them. Then there is an awful bellering from the cowbarn. “Agnes of Lincolnshire!” Mrs. Parry squawks and dashes for the barn. “She’s dropping her calf ahead of time!”

  I run along beside her. “Should I call the cops?” I pant. “They always get to the place before the ambulance and you don’t have to pay them nothing. My married sister had three kids delivered by the cops—”

  But it seems it’s different with cows and anyway they have a different kind of flatfoot out here that didn’t go to Police Academy. Mrs. Parry finally looks up from the calf and says “I think I saved it. I know I saved it. I can tell when an animal’s dying. Bub, go to the phone and call Miz’ Croley and ask her if she can possibly spare Brenda to come over and do the milkin’ tonight and tomorrow morning. I dassn’t leave Agnes and the calf; they need nursing.”

  I stagger out of the cowbarn, throw up two-three times and go to the phone in the house. I seen them phones with flywheels in the movies so I know how to work it. Mrs. Croley cusses and moans and then says all right she’ll send Brenda over in the Ford and please to tell Mrs. Parry not to keep her no longer than she has to because she has a herd of her own that needs milking.

  I tell Mrs. Parry in the barn and Mrs. Parry snaps that Mrs. Croley has a living husband and a draft-proof farmhand and she swore she didn’t know what things were coming to when a neighbor wouldn’t help another neighbor out.

  I ast casually: “Who is this Brenda, ma’am?”

  “Miz’ Croley’s daughter. Good for nothing.”

  I don’t ast no more questions but I sure begin to wait with interest for a Ford to round the bend of the road.

  It does while I am bucking up logs with the chainsaw. Brenda is a blondie about my age, a little too big for her dress—an effect which I always go for, whether in the Third Ward or Chiunga County. I don’t have a chance to talk to her until lunch, and then all she does is giggle. But who wants conversation? Then a truck comes snorting up the driveway. Something inside the truck is snorting louder than the truck.

  Mrs. Parry throws up her hands. “Land, I forgot! Belshazzar the Magnificent for Princess Leilani!” She gulps coffee and dashes out.

  “Brenda,” I said, “what was that all about?”

  She giggles and this time blushes. I throw down my napkin and go to the window. The truck is being backed to a field with a big board fence around it. Mrs. Parry is going into the barn and is leading a cow into the field. The cow is mighty nervous and I begin to understand why. The truckdriver opens the tailgate and out comes a snorting bull.

  I think: well, I been to a few stag shows but this I never seen before. Maybe a person can learn something in the country after all.

  Belshazzar the Magnificent sees Princess Leilani. He snorts like Charles Boyer. Princess Leilani cowers away from him like Bette Davis. Belshazzar the Magnificent paws the ground. Princess Leilani trembles. And then Belshazzar the Magnificent yawns and starts eating grass.

  Princess Leilani looks up, startled and says: “Huh?” No, on second thought it is not Princess Leilani who says “Huh?” It is Brenda, at the other kitchen window. She sees me watching her, giggles, blushes and goes to the sink and starts doing dishes.

  I guess this is a good sign, but I don’t press my luck. I go outside, where Mrs. Parry is cussing out the truck-driver. “Some bull!” she yells at him. “What am I supposed to do now? How long is Leilani going to stay in season? What if I can’t line up another stud for her? Do you realise what it’s going to cost me in veal and milk checks—” Yatata, yatata, yatata, while the truckdriver keeps trying to butt in with excuses and Belshazzar the Magnificent eats grass and sometimes gives Princess Leilani a brotherly lick on the nose, for by that time Princess Leilani has dropped the nervous act and edged over mooing plaintively.

  Mrs. Parry yells: “See that? I don’t hold with artificial insemination but you dang stockbreeders are driving us dairy farmers to it! Get your—your steer off my property before I throw him off! I got work to do even if he hasn’t! Belshazzar the Magnificent—hah!”

  She turns on me. “Don’t just stand around gawking, Bub. When you get the stovewood split you can stack it in the woodshed.” I scurry off and resume Operation Woodlot, but I take it a little easy which I can do because Mrs. Parry is in the cowbarn nursing Agnes of Lincolnshire and the preemie calf.

  At supper Mrs. Parry says she thinks she better put a cot in the barn for herself and spend the night there with the invalids in case there is a sudden emergency. “And that don’t mean,” she adds, “that you children can be up half the night playing the radio just because the old lady ain’t around. I want to see the house lights out by 8:30. Understand?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Brenda says.

  “We won’t play the radio, ma’am,” I say. “And we’ll put the lights out.” Brenda giggled.

  What happens that night is a little embarrassing to write about. I hope, Mr. Marino, you won’t go telling it around. I figure that being a licensed mortician like you are as well as boss of the Third Ward you are practically like a doctor and doctors don’t go around shooting their mouths off about what their patients tell them. I figure what I have to tell you about what happened comes under the sacred relationship between a doctor and patient or a hood and his mouthpiece.

  Anyway, this is what happens: nothing happens.

  Like with Belshazzar the Magnificent.

  I go into her room, I say yes, she says no, I say yes please, she says well okay. And then nothing happens. I never, been so humiliated and I hope you will keep this confidential because it isn’t the kind of thing you like to have get around. I am telling you about it only because I never ast no favors but this is a very special case and I want you to understand why.

  The next morning at breakfast I am in a bad temper, Brenda has got the giggles and Mrs. Parry is stiff and tired from sleeping in the barn. We are a gruesome threesome, and then a car drives up and a kid of maybe thirty comes busting into the kitchen. He has been crying. His eyes are red and there are clean places on his face where the tears ran down. “Ma!” he whimpers at Mrs. Parry. “I got to talk to you! You got to talk to Bonita, she says I don’t love her no more and she’s going to leave me!”

  “Hush up, George,” she snaps at him. “Come into the parlor.” They go into the parlor and Brenda whistles: “Whoo-ee! Wait’ll I tell Maw about this!”

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “Miz’ Parry’s boy George. She gave him the south half of the farm and built him a house on it. Bonita’s his wife. She’s a stuck-up girl from Ware County and she wears falsies and dyes her hair and—” Brenda looks around, lowers her voice and whispers “—and she sends her worshing to the laundry in town.”

  “God in Heaven,” I say. “Have the cops heard about this?”

  “Oh, it’s legal, but you just shouldn’t do it.”

  “I see. I misunderstood, I guess. Back in the Third Ward it’s a worse rap than mopery with intent to gawk. The judges are ruthless with it.”

  Her eyes go round. “Is that a fact?”

  “Sure. Tell your mother about it.”

  Mrs. Parry came back in with her son and said to us: “Clear out, you kids. I want to make a phone call.”

  “I’ll start the milkin’,” Brenda said.

  “And I’ll framble the portistan while it’s still cool and barkney,” I say.

  “Sure,” Mrs. Parry says, cranking the phone. “Go and do that, Bub.” She is preoccupied.

  I go through the kitchen door, take one sidestep, flatten against the house and listen. Reception is pretty good.

  “Bonita?” Mrs. Parry says into the phone. “Is that you, Bonita? Listen, Bonita, George is here and he asked me to call you and tell you he�
�s sorry. I ain’t exactly going to say that. I’m going to say that you’re acting like a blame fool . . . No, no, no. Don’t talk about it. This is a party line. Just listen; I know what happened. George told me; after all, I’m his mother. Just listen to an older woman with more experience. So it happened.

  That don’t mean he doesn’t love you, child! It’s happened to me. I guess it’s happened to every woman. You mustn’t take it personally. You’re just sufferin’ from a case of newlywed nerves. After you’ve been married two years or so you’ll see things like this in better focus. Maybe George was tired. Maybe he got one of these flu germs that’s goin’ around. . . . No, I didn’t say he .was sick. No, he seems all right—maybe looks a little feverish. . . . Well, now, I don’t know whether you really want to talk to him or not, you being so upset and all. If he is sick it’d just upset him—oh, all right.” She chuckles away from the phone and says: “She wants to talk to you, George. Don’t be too eager, boy.”

  I slink away from the kitchen door thinking: “Ah-hah!” I am thinking so hard that Mrs. Parry bungles into me when she walks out of the kitchen sooner than I expect.

  She grabs me with one of those pipe-vise hands and snaps: “You young devil, were you listening to me on the phone?”

  Usually it is the smart thing to deny everything and ast for your mouthpiece, but up here they got no mouthpieces. For once I tell the truth and cop a plea. “Yes, Mrs. Parry. I’m so ashamed of myself you can’t imagine. I always been like that. It’s a psy-cho-logical twist I got for listening. I can’t seem to control it. Maybe I read too many bad comic books. But honest I won’t breath a word about how George couldn’t—” Here I have the sense to shut up, but too late.

  She drills me with a look and the pipe vise tightens on my arm. “Couldn’t what, Bub?”

  “Like Belshazzar the Magnificent,” I say weakly.

  “Yep,” she says. “I thought that’s what you were going to say. Now tell me, Bub—how’d you know? And don’t tell me you guessed from what I said. I been using party lines for thirty years. The way I was talkin’ to Bonita, it could’ve been anything from George hitting her with a brick to cornin’ home drunk. You picked a mighty long shot, you picked it right and I want to know how you did it.”

  She would of made a great D.A. I mumble: “The same thing happened to me last night. Would you mind lettin’ go of my arm, Mrs. Parry? Before it drops off?”

  She lets go with a start. “I’m sorry, Bub.” She walked slowly to the barn and I walk slowly beside her because I think she expects it.

  “Maybe,” I say, “it’s something in the water.”

  She shakes her head. “You don’t know bulls, Bub. And what about the ducks that sank and Agnes dropping her calf before her time?” She begins to breathe hard through her nostrils. “It’s hexin’, that’s what it is!” “What’s hexin’, ma’am?”

  “Heathen doings by that old Miz’ Sigafoos. She’s been warned and warned plenty to stick to her doctoring. I hold nothing against her for curing the croup or maybe selling a young man love potion if he’s goin’ down to Scranton to sell his crop and play around a little. But she’s not satisfied with that, I guess. Dud Wingle must of gone to her with a twenty dollar bill to witch my farm!”

  I do not know what to make of this. My mama of course has told me about la vecchia religione, but I never know they believe in stuff like that over here. “Can you go to the cops, ma’am?” I ast.

  She snorts like Belshazzar the Magnificent. “Cops! A fat lot old Henry Bricker would know about witchin’. No, Bub, I guess I’ll handle this myself. I ain’t the five-times-great-granddaughter of Pru Posthlewaite for nothin’!”

  “Who was Pru—what you said?”

  “Hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1680 for witchcraft. Her coven name was Little Gadfly, but I guess she wasn’t so little. The first two ropes broke—but we got no time to stand around talkin’. I got to find my Ma’s trunk in the attic. You go get the black rooster from the chicken run. I wonder where there’s some chalk?” And she walks off to the house, mumbling. I walk to the chicken run thinking she has flipped.

  The black rooster is a tricky character, very fast on his feet and also I am new at the chicken racket. It takes me half an hour to stalk him down, during which time incidentally the Ford leaves with Brenda in it and George drives away in his car. See you later, Brenda, I think to myself and maybe you will be surprised.

  I go to the kitchen door with the rooster screaming in my arms and Mrs. Parry says: “Come on in with him and set him anywhere.” I do, Mrs. Parry scatters some cornflakes on the floor and the rooster calms down right away and stalks around picking it up. Mrs. Parry is sweaty and dust’Covered and there are some dirty old papers rolled up on the kitchen table.

  She starts fooling around on the floor with one of the papers and a hunk of carpenter’s chalk and just to be doing something I look at the rest of them. Honest to God, you never saw such lousy spelling and handwriting. Tayke the Duste off ane Olde Ymmage Quhich Ye Myngel—like that.

  I shake my head and think: it’s the cow racket. No normal human can take this life. She has flipped and I don’t blame her, but it will be a horrible thing if she becomes homicidal. I look around for a poker or something and start to edge away. I am thinking of a dash from the door to the Willys and then scorching into town to come back with the men in the little white coats.

  She looks up at me and says: “Don’t go away, Bub. This is woman’s work, but I need somebody to hold the sword and palm and you’re the onliest one around.” She grins. “I guess you uever saw anything like this in the city, hey?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say, and notice that my voice is very faint.

  “Well, don’t let it skeer you. There’s some people it’d skeer, but the Probation Association people say they call you Tough Tony, so I guess you won’t take fright.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Now what do we do for a sword? I guess this bread knife’ll—no; the ham slicer. It looks more like a sword. Hold it in your left hand and get a couple of them gilded bulrushes from the vase in the parlor. Mind you wipe your feet before you tread on the carpet! And then come back. Make it fast.”

  She starts to copy some stuff that looks like Yiddish writing onto the floor and I go into the parlor. I am about to tiptoe to the front door when she yells: “Bub! That you?”

  Maybe I could beat her in a race for the car, maybe not. I shrug. At least I have a knife—and know how to use it. I bring her the gilded things from the vase. Ugh! While I am out she has cut the head off the rooster and is sprinkling its blood over a big chalk star and the writing on the floor. But the knife makes me feel more confident even though I begin to worry about how it will look if I have to do anything with it. I am figuring that maybe I can hamstring her if she takes off after me, and meanwhile I should humor her because maybe she will snap out of it.

  “Bub,” she says, “hold the sword and palms in front of you pointing up and don’t step inside the chalk lines. Now, will you promise me not to tell anybody about the words I speak? The rest of this stuff don’t matter; it’s down in all the books and people have their minds made up that it don’t work. But about the words, do you promise?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Anything you say, ma’am.”

  So she starts talking and the promise was not necessary because it’s in some foreign language and I don’t talk foreign languages except sometimes a little Italian to my mama. I am beginning to yawn when I notice that we have company.

  He is eight feet tall, he is green, he has teeth like Red Riding Hood’s grandma.

  I dive through the window, screaming.

  When Mrs. Parry comes out she finds me in a pile of broken glass, on my knees, praying. She clamps two fingers on my ear and hoists me to my feet. “Stop that praying,” she says. “He’s complaining about it. Says it makes him itch. And you said you wouldn’t be skeered! Now come inside where I can keep an eye on you and behave yourself. The idea! The very idea!
”

  To tell you the truth, I don’t remember what happens after this so good. There is some talk between the green character and Mrs. Parry about her five-times-great-grandmother who it seems is doing nicely in a warm climate. There is an argument in which the green character gets shifty and says he doesn’t know who is working for Miz’ Sigafoos these days. Miz’ Parry threatens to let me pray again and the green character gets sulky and says all right he’ll send for him and rassle with him but he is sure he can lick him.

  The next thing I recall is a grunt-and-groan exhibition between the green character and a smaller purple character who must of arrived when I was blacked out or something. This at least I know something about because I am a television fan. It is a very slow match, because when one of the characters for instance bends the other character’s arm it just bends and does not break. But a good big character can lick a good little character every time and finally greenface has got his opponent tied into a bowknot.

  “Be gone,” Mrs. Parry says to the purple character, “and never more molest me or mine. Be gone, be gone, be gone.”

  He is gone, and I never do find out if he gets unknotted.

  “Now fetch me Miz’ Sigafoos.”

  Blip! An ugly little old woman is sharing the ring with the winner and new champeen. She spits at Mrs. Parry: “So you it was dot mine Teufel half ge-schtolen!” Her English is terrible. A greenhorn.

  “This ain’t a social call, Miz’ Sigafoos,” Mrs. Parry says coldly. “I just want you to unwitch my farm and kinfolks. And if you’re an honest woman you’ll return his money to that sneakin’, dog-murderin’ shiftless squirt Dud Wingle.”

  “Yah,” the old woman mumbles. She reaches up and feels the biceps of the green character. “Yah, I guess maybe dot I besser do. Who der Yunger iss?” She is looking at me. “For why the teeth on his mouth go clop-clop-clop? Und so white the face on his head iss! You besser should feed him, Ella.”