"About your son . . ."
"So I beat him up!" the man yelled, suddenly belligerent. "Ain't I his father? He talks smart to me, I got a right to beat him some, ain't I? People don't appreciate . . ."
Old Foster lost interest and, mumbling, closed the door.
Mr. Edel walked slowly down the stairs, not able to forgive, but feeling at least the beginnings of eventual ease from the knowledge of why he was being destroyed.
<
~ * ~
RON GOULART
S.f. has its parodists and satirists and farceurs aplenty, but Ron Goulart is something much scarcer: a genuine s.f. humorist—a writer of gently hilarious not-quite-fiction in the tradition of Benchley and Thurber and Perelman. You’ll remember Letters to the Editor (the best from f&sf: second series); now Goulart casts his penetrating young eye upon the mysterious phenomena collected by the late Charles Fort.
A NEW LO!
i have been waiting for Charles Fort to become topical again. See, I have quite a collection of clippings about odd happenings that I’ve been thinking of getting up into a book.
It’s sort of singular how I came across most of these items. Some little boy came to the door saying he was working his way through Miskatonic and would I like to subscribe to a newspaper. From the moment I agreed, somebody has left a little bundle of clippings on my porch each morning. If I were trying to make this a real research piece I suppose some morning I should get up early enough to get a look at the delivery boy.
Anyway, as a feeler, a trial balloon, this little essay is intended to share some of my oddities with you. Then maybe enough acclaim will work up to warrant a whole book. I have an awful lot of these clippings.
~ * ~
In Budapest in 1874 a stableboy named Oscar Dunkel walked under a horse and was never seen again. Yet today the New York phone directory lists fourteen people named Oscar Dunkel. Teleportation? Or multiplication?
Or does Oscar Dunkel have fourteen telephones? Who does he talk to? He is 143 years old.
In Scarsdale, New York, a neck-tie salesman explodes in the fourteenth row of a motion picture theater. A small California town is shocked when a prominent dentist floats away during a windstorm.
And four years later three small boys in Vermont turn into one tall man during a Kiwanis picnic.
Your scholar will not give an answer, nor an explanation. Vague shakings of the head, mumblings about mass hallucination.
Why then did all the people I have just noted have overdue copies of Helen’s Babies in their possession when these so-called hallucinations affected them?
I add merely that in 1947 Warner Binns, the tall man, vanished shortly after being walked on by a horse in Little Rock.
And why at this very moment is it raining frogs outside my kitchen window?
~ * ~
In 1912 Earl Moonfry, who took subscriptions for The Century Magazine and was learning soft-shoe dancing from one of Chicago’s largest mail order houses, decided to go to Mexico and fight Pancho Villa. Earl Moonfry disappeared and to this day has not been found.
And so the happenings fall in line and two by two they go marching through. Earl Moonfry, who had to have soft shoes especially made for his own purposes, vanished. In 1925 in Detroit Earl Lumbard, an unemployed ventriloquist, walked around a horse and was never seen again. Strange. And what if I were to tell you that the horse was named Earl, too? That in 1926 when a delegation of 4-H Club members visited him he vanished?
An explanation? I say somebody was collecting Earls.
Still, in 1936 Georgia Moonfry, who operated her own hem-stitching business, was never seen after October 23.
Is somebody collecting Moonfrys?
~ * ~
In early May of 1932, near St. Paul, the St. Paul Post-Clarion reports, a man named Oscar Dunkel fell out of a clear, unclouded sky and landed on a horse. This Dunkel spoke nothing but Norwegian. Do passenger ships with strange cargoes traverse unseen beyond our sky? Did someone shout “Man overboard!” that day in 1932 on the deck of a phantom craft?
And why, when Norman Conover, the owner of the horse, walked behind it to check for damages, did he disappear with a popping sort of sound?
Laugh at teleportation, you scientists. I have my clippings.
~ * ~
Poltergeists, as we all know, do not exist. A clipping from the August 14, 1897, issue of the San Rafael Register-Star tells of a twelve-year-old girl who had graduated a year ahead of her class because four schoolhouses had burnt to the ground.
Two boys in Bristol, R.I., are arrested because all the furniture in their paternal grandmother’s summer home vanished during a thunderstorm.
The furniture, except for a wind-up Victrola, appeared six weeks later at the graduation exercises of the Bristol Speed Short-Hand School. It was sold to a junk man, who, when he got back on his wagon behind his horse, caught on fire. When they finally put him out three others had caught fire.
~ * ~
A young man named Ambrose Rheenes rented a canoe at the headwaters of the Mississippi in March of 1934. Two months later in Jackson, Tennessee, he caught fire while tap dancing at a social gathering. When his canoe was located it contained three small boys who claimed to be on their way to a Kiwanis picnic in Vermont.
~ * ~
I think there is something messing things up someplace.
Somewhere in New York, over twenty years ago, someone named Benchley wrote a piece very much like this one. In academic groves they scoff at teleportation. How else can you explain this?
<
~ * ~
JOHN SHEPLEY
All I’ve been able to learn about John Shepley is that he was born in 1925 in Minnesota, was once a silk-screen artist in New York, and is now a writer in Rome; that his work has appeared in various “little magazines” and in Martha Foley’s the best american short stories: 1956; and that this is his first published fantasy. Delightful in both its thinking and its writing, this hitherto unchronicled episode in the career of the great Toto should make you, like me, hungry for more Shepley soon.
GORILLA SUIT
Man with gorilla suit or gorilla to help publicize newest Bing Crosby—Bob Hope—Dorothy Lamour Technicolor Comedy “Road to Bali.” 1 day’s employment. Apply Bali-Bally Dept., Paramount Pictures, 11th floor, 1501 Broadway, Monday AM.
—Classified Advertisement in the New York Times
Sunday, January 25, 1953.
~ * ~
Toto judged it a very dull issue of the Sunday Times. He had read the theater section, admitting himself reluctantly in agreement with the critics: Broadway was having another disappointing season. He had not been impressed by any of the book reviews; the news was the usual alternating succession of horrors and trivia; the articles in the magazine section had left him cold. Finally, glumly, he had begun the crossword puzzle, much to the amusement of the crowd on the other side of the bars. They always distracted and irritated him particularly, these familial Sunday crowds, the mournful dutiful fathers, the stout women in hats, the noisy children with candy-smeared faces and sticky pointing fingers, but nevertheless he had become fairly absorbed . . . until he came to 143 Across: “U.S. experimental $4 gold pieces, 1879-80.” A seven-letter word, the sixth “A.” But who but a financial historian could be expected to know what it was? Specialization was creeping even into the simplest Sunday pastimes—it was unfair. Standing to the front of the crowd and holding the string of a pink balloon was a kind-looking lady with dim blue eyes. Perhaps she was a financial historian—Toto earnestly approached her. She shrieked, letting go of the balloon, and as it floated upwards, the children twittered in chorus and some cried. Toto gave up, threw down pencil and puzzle, and took refuge on the topmost perch of the cage, where he clung sulkily until the crowd, bored by his inactivity, moved away. Then he dropped back to the floor, and, consumed by a sense of futility, began leafing through the Classified Advertisements.
And there he came acros
s it. Incredulous, he blinked his eyes, scratched his head and sides, read it through a second, then a third, time . . . but no, it was no mistake: there in cold print was a job opening for a man with a gorilla suit or a gorilla to help publicize Dorothy Lamour’s latest picture. Toto pulled himself up, reflecting that he didn’t need a job, that in a sense he had one already, but the implications contained in the little boxed announcement would not be silenced, the fun it would be, the glory (he might even be photographed with Dorothy Lamour!), though only for one day. He found himself skipping and swinging all over the cage.
But when, with a certain critical caution, he returned to peruse the ad for a fourth time, subtle qualms began to arise in his mind. Perhaps what they wanted was a man with a gorilla suit or a man with a gorilla—in which case, there was no point in his applying. It was really rather obscure, just what they thought they wanted, and Toto, trying to figure it out, scratched himself for a long time. Yet, if the idea was to have a gorilla, simulated or otherwise, why shouldn’t one apply? And indeed, there was a simple solution: if they insisted that the gorilla be humanly escorted, why not show the ad to his keeper, Mr. McCready, while pointing with especial emphasis to 11th floor, 1501 Broadway, Monday AM”?
But no, that wouldn’t do, he immediately recognized the impracticality of it. It wasn’t that Mr. McCready would refuse—he wouldn’t—but he wouldn’t agree either. He would be doubtful; he would give a pompous little laugh, a nervous cough; he would look puzzled and hurt; until Toto, feeling guilty, would withdraw his request altogether. Or, on the off-chance that Mr. McCready did agree, it would be only with the understanding that he must first ask the directors, and he would so procrastinate in doing so that (even assuming that the directors ultimately gave their approval) it would then be too late to apply for the job. Someone else would already have enjoyed the brief, glorious limelight with Dorothy Lamour. No, the only thing to do, Toto decided, was to present Mr. McCready and the zoo authorities with a fait accompli.
He could hardly wait for closing time, when the visitors would vanish and the doors be locked, so that he might have a little quiet in which to think out a plan. Surely, he reasoned, as he watched the attendants sweeping up the trash left by the departed crowd, surely he would be hired in preference to any man dressed up like a gorilla. It shouldn’t be difficult to beat out that kind of competition. But suppose other gorillas applied, ones with previous experience in the theater or public relations? This prospect so frightened him that he decided to abandon the whole idea. He curled himself up in a fetid darkness, sadly caressing his toes and listening to familiar noises, metal somewhere scraping against cement, mechanical rumblings in an underground distance, the nightly asthmatic wheezing of his neighbor, an old prowling mandrill. Toto closed his eyes, covered his ears, went on arguing to himself . . . what was there to lose? Nothing, really. It wasn’t even as though he were risking anything, for the worst that could happen was that he simply wouldn’t get the job. All the same, it wouldn’t be easy to get out of the cage.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It was tiresome having to bolster oneself with truisms—still, cheerfully enough, he set about testing the bars, one by one. He went all over the cage, without finding a single loose bar. He groaned, realizing how much time he had already wasted, for not only must he be out of the cage and away from the zoo before Mr. McCready arrived in the morning, but he must be at 1501 Broadway in time to be among the first in line. Now, painfully, he tried to squeeze himself between the bars, aware that the mandrill had stopped his prowling, was crouching there on his haunches, his eyes a phosphorescent green, watching it all with the bemused curiosity of the senile. Toto went on pushing and lunging, but all he succeeded in doing was to scrape some patches of fur from his forearms and sides. And it was so important to look his best!
It was useless, the space between the bars was too small. In a final, despairing, almost whimsical gesture, he tried the door—it opened easily. But that showed that they trusted him! Astonished, he could only stand there holding the catch of the door, wondering if it would not be ungrateful to take advantage of such trust. Ah, but if he got the job, how proud Mr. McCready would be! Or would he? Toto wavered . . . the mandrill resumed wheezing . . . familiar sounds. And then he heard an unfamiliar sound, a rustling of jungle leaves, and the bright image of Dorothy Lamour stepped out into the sunlight. Toto leapt confidently out of the cage.
But he had forgotten that the door of the building itself would be locked. He kicked it, pulled it, beat on it with his fists, which only awoke the spider monkeys, spiteful little creatures who tumbled and gibbered and pointed their fingers at him. Then the most fearful racket broke out—the chimpanzees woke up and began screaming, a chorus of baboons howled, even the mandrill joined in. “What’s going on in there?”— and the door opened, pressing Toto behind it, as the night guard came in, cursing softly and flashing his light about the cages. Everybody, blinking, became silent, and Toto had just enough time to slip around the door and hide himself behind a low cement wall before the guard re-emerged and turned the lock. Toto held his breath, but the guard merely went away whistling, swinging his extinguished light.
He rested, until the pounding of his heart subsided and the guard was out of sight. Then, happily, cutting a little caper, he set out across the park.
~ * ~
It was quarter to nine when he took the elevator to the eleventh floor at 1501 Broadway. Again he was feeling worried and uncomfortable. For one thing, he was hungry, and he was afraid he had caught cold during two hours of furtive slumber in some bushes near the skating rink. And all the way from the park, down Broadway to 44th Street, he had reproached himself for forgetting to bring along the Classified Advertisements Section of the Times. It would have been most helpful in explaining his presence on the streets had a policeman or anyone else stopped him. But fortunately no one had stopped him. The people in the street had all passed him by with Monday-morning expressions on their faces.
In the crowded elevator, he tried to spruce himself up, brushing from his shoulders and legs the bits of dried grass that clung there from his sleeping in the park. But a murmur of protest arose—”Hey, quit y’r shovin’, Mac,” said a man on his right, who, Toto suddenly saw, had a rolled-up gorilla suit under his arm. He resigned himself to standing quietly, fervently hoping that he had got rid of most of the grass.
The elevator emptied itself at the eleventh floor, they all streamed out together, and to Toto’s amazement, each of his fellow passengers was carrying a gorilla suit—some in a neat bundle with the jaws gaping out from under the owner’s arm, some draped across human shoulders with a gorilla head bobbing along ludicrously a few inches from the floor, some apparent only by the patches of fur sticking out from the apertures of shabby cardboard suitcases or corrugated boxes. He had not expected so much competition, but there was at least one cause for relief—neither getting out of the elevator nor in the crowd already waiting at the door of the Bali-Bally Department was there a single other real gorilla. He joined the increasing throng milling about the unopened office.
Although he knew it was not quite fair to do so, he could not help feeling a little contemptuous. Not only were they not gorillas, they were a sorry lot of men—wan, and thin, and old. He overheard a bit of conversation, one man saying to another, “Hey, I seen you before! Wasn’t you a Santa Claus in Herald Square last Christmas?”
“Yeah. But I don’t remember seein’ you.”
“I was there awright, Mac, you shoulda looked. I tried to get into Macy’s, Gimbel’s, anyplace warm, but the best I could get was one of them street jobs. It’s a tough racket.”
“Sure is,” the other agreed. “I got an Easter Bunny job lined up maybe, but I don’t know what I’ll do till then if I don’t get this thing.” And he patted his gorilla suit, while the first man eyed him jealously. “Even if it is just one day.”
And now Toto began to feel sorry for them, wondering if it was not grasping and presumptou
s of him to be there at all. He, for whom food and shelter had been generously provided, who had even a recognized social function, had descended to trying to take work away from individuals who really needed it. Perhaps he should turn back . . . but at that point the elevator opened again, another mob of men with gorilla suits poured out, and they were followed by a young woman, who, after fumbling in her purse, produced a key and unlocked the door of the Bali-Bally Department.
“Come in, all of you,” she said. “Take seats along the wall. Mr. Phineas will be here any minute to conduct the interviews.”
The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction 8 - [Anthology] Page 18
