LITTLE PEOPLE!

by Gardner Dozois

  “Rosie!” he called in a hoarse whisper. “Sh! Where’s mamma?”

  His daughter sat on the studio couch and applied nail polish to her stubby fingers. “You look terrible,” she said in a conversational tone. “Aren’t you going to shave?”

  He recoiled at the sound of her voice, which, to him, roared out like a siren. “Quite, Rosie! Sh!” And for further emphasis, he shoved his lips out against a warning finger. He heard his wife striding heavily around the kitchen. “Rosie,” he cooed, “I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll mop up the water I spilled in the bathroom.”

  “I can’t papa,” she stated firmly. “I’m all dressed.”

  “Two dollars, Rosie—all right, two and a half, you blackmailer. “

  He flinched when he heard her gasp in the bathroom; but, when she came out with soaked shoes, he fled downstairs. He wandered aimlessly toward the village.

  Now he was in for it, he thought: screams from Esther, tears from Rosie—plus a new pair of shoes for Rosie and two and a half dollars. It would be worse, though, if he could not get rid of his whiskers—

  Rubbing the tender spots where his dry razor had raked his face, he mused blankly at a drugstore window. He saw nothing to help him, but he went inside anyhow and stood hopefully at the drug counter. A face peered at him through a space scratched in the wall case mirror, and the druggist came out. A nice-looking, intelligent fellow, Greenberg saw at a glance.

  “What you got for shaving that I can use without water?” he asked.

  “Skin irritation, eh?” the pharmacist replied. “I got something very good for that.”

  “No. It’s just—Well, I don’t like to shave with water.”

  The druggist seemed disappointed. “Well, I got brushless shaving cream.” Then he brightened. “But I got an electric razor—much better.”

  “How much?” Greenberg asked cautiously.

  “Only fifteen dollars, and it lasts a lifetime.”

  “Give me the shaving cream,” Greenberg said coldly.

  With the tactical science of a military expert, he walked around until sometime after dark. Only then did he go back to the hotel, to wait outside. It was after seven, he was getting hungry, and the people who entered the hotel he knew as permanent summer guests. At last a stranger passed him and ran up the stairs.

  Greenberg hesitated for a moment. The stranger was scarcely a boy, as Esther had definitely termed him, but Greenberg reasoned that her term was merely wish-fulfillment, and he jauntily ran up behind him.

  He allowed a few minutes to pass, for the man to introduce himself and let Esther and Rosie don their company manners. Then, secure in the knowledge that there would be no scene until the guest left, he entered.

  He waded through a hostile atmosphere, urbanely shook hands with Sammie Katz, who was a doctor—probably, Greenberg thought shrewdly, in search of an office—and excused himself.

  In the bathroom, he carefully read the directions for using brushless shaving cream. He felt less confident when he realized that he had to wash his face thoroughly with soap and water, but without benefit of either, he spread the cream on, patted it, and waited for his beard to soften. It did not, as he discovered while shaving. He wiped his face dry. The towel was sticky and black, with whiskers suspended in paste, and, for that, he knew, there would be more hell to pay. He shrugged resignedly. He would have to spend fifteen dollars for an electric razor after all; this foolishness was costing him a fortune!

  That they were waiting for him before beginning supper, was, he knew, only a gesture for the sake of company. Without changing her hard, brilliant smile, Esther whispered: “Wait! I’ll get you later—”

  He smiled back, his tortured, slashed face creasing painfully. All that could be changed by his being enormously pleasant to Rosie’s young man. If he could slip Sammie a few dollars—more expense, he groaned—to take Rosie out, Esther would forgive everything.

  He was too engaged in beaming and putting Sammie at ease to think of what would happen after he ate caviar canapés. Under other circumstances Greenberg would have been repulsed by Sammie’s ultra-professional waxed mustache—an offensively small, pointed thing—and his commercial attitude toward poor Rosie; but Greenberg regarded him as a potential savior.

  “You open an office yet, Doctor Katz?”

  “Not yet. You know how things are. Anyhow, call me Sammie.”

  Greenberg recognized the gambit with satisfaction, since it seemed to please Esther so much. At one stroke Sammie had ingratiated himself and begun bargaining negotiations.

  Without another word, Greenberg lifted his spoon to attack the soup. It would be easy to snare this eager doctor. A doctor! No wonder Esther and Rosie were so puffed with joy.

  In the proper company way, he pushed his spoon away from him. The soup spilled onto the tablecloth.

  “Not so hard, you dope,” Esther hissed.

  He drew the spoon toward him. The soup leaped off it like a live thing and splashed over him—turning, just before contact, to fall on the floor. He gulped and pushed the bowl away. This time the soup poured over the side of the plate and lay in a huge puddle on the table.

  “I didn’t want any soup anyhow,” he said in a horrible attempt at levity. Lucky for him, he thought wildly, that Sammie was there to pacify Esther with his smooth college talk—not a bad fellow, Sammie, in spite of his mustache; he’d come in handy at times.

  Greenberg lapsed into a paralysis of fear. He was thirsty after having eaten the caviar, which beats herring any time as a thirst raiser. But the knowledge that he could not touch water without having it recoil and perhaps spill, made his thirst a monumental craving. He attacked the problem cunningly.

  The others were talking rapidly and rather hysterically. He waited until his courage was equal to his thirst; then he leaned over the table with a glass in his hand. “Sammie, do you mind—a little water, huh?”

  Sammie poured from a pitcher while Esther watched for more of his tricks. It was to be expected, but still he was shocked when the water exploded out of the glass directly at Sammie’s only suit.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Sammie said angrily, “I don’t like to eat with lunatics.”

  And he left, though Esther cried and begged him to stay. Rosie was too stunned to move. But when the door closed, Greenberg raised his agonized eyes to watch his wife stalk murderously toward him.

  ###

  Greenberg stood on the boardwalk outside his concession and glared blearily at the peaceful, blue, highly unpleasant ocean. He wondered what would happen if he started at the edge of the water and strode out. He could probably walk right to Europe on dry land.

  It was early—much too early for business—and he was tired. Neither he nor Esther had slept; and it was practically certain that the neighbors hadn’t either. But above all he was incredibly thirsty.

  In a spirit of experimentation, he mixed a soda. Of course, its high water content made it slop onto the floor. For breakfast he had surreptitiously tried fruit juice and coffee, without success.

  With his tongue dry to the point of furriness, he sat weakly on a boardwalk bench in front of his concession. It was Friday morning, which meant that the day was clear, with a promise of intense heat. Had it been Saturday, it naturally would have been raining.

  “This year,” he moaned, “I’ll be wiped out. If I can’t mix sodas, why should beer stay in a glass for me? I thought I could hire a boy for ten dollars a week to run the hotdog griddle; I could make sodas, and Esther could draw beer. All I can do is make hotdogs, Esther can still draw beer, but twenty or maybe twenty-five a week I got to pay a soda man. I won’t even come out square—a fortune I’ll lose!”

  The situation really was desperate. Concessions depend on too many factors to be anything but capriciously profitable.

  His throat was fiery and his soft brown eyes held a fierce glaze when the gas and electric were turned on, the beer pipes connected, the tank of carbon dioxide hitched to the pump, and the refr
igerator started.

  Gradually, the beach was filling with bathers. Greenberg writhed on his bench and envied them. They could swim and drink without having liquid draw away from them as if in horror. They were not thirsty—

  And then he saw his first customer approach. His business experience was that morning customers buy only soft drinks. In a mad haste he put up the shutters and fled to the hotel.

  “Esther!” he cried. “I got to tell you! I can’t stand it—”

  Threateningly, his wife held her broom like a baseball bat. “Go back to the concession, you crazy fool. Ain’t you done enough already?”

  He could not be hurt more than he had been. For once he did not cringe. “You got to help me, Esther.”

  “Why didn’t you shave, you no-good bum? Is that any way—”

  “That’s what I got to tell you. Yesterday I got into an argument with a water gnome—”

  “A what?” Esther looked at him suspiciously.

  “A water gnome,” he babbled in a rush of words. “A little man so high, with big ears that he swims with, and he makes it rain—”

  “Herman!” she screamed. “Stop that nonsense. You’re crazy!”

  Greenberg pounded his forehead with his fist. “I ain’t crazy. Look, Esther. Come with me into the kitchen.”

  She followed him readily enough, but her attitude made him feel more helpless and alone than ever. With her fists on her plump hips and her feet set wide, she cautiously watched him try to fill a glass of water.

  “Don’t you see?” he wailed. “It won’t go in the glass. It spills over. It runs away from me.”

  She was puzzled. “What happened to you?”

  Brokenly, Greenberg told of his encounter with the water gnome, leaving out no single degrading detail. “And now I can’t touch water,” he ended. “I can’t drink it. I can’t make sodas. On top of it all, I got such thirst, it’s killing me.”

  Esther’s reaction was instantaneous. She threw her arms around him, drew his head down to her shoulder, and patted him comfortingly as if he were a child. “Herman, my poor Herman!” she breathed tenderly. “What did we ever do to deserve such a curse?”

  “What shall I do, Esther?” he cried helplessly.

  She held him at arm’s length. “You got to go to a doctor,” she said firmly. “How long can you go without drinking? Without water you’ll die. Maybe sometimes I am a little hard on you, but you know I love you—”

  “I know, mamma,” he sighed. “But how can a doctor help me?”

  “Am I a doctor that I should know? Go anyhow. What can you lose?”

  He hesitated. “I need fifteen dollars for an electric razor,” he said in a low, weak voice.

  “So?” she replied. “If you got to, you got to. Go, darling. I’ll take care of the concession.”

  Greenberg no longer felt deserted and alone. He walked almost confidently to a doctor’s office. Manfully, he explained his symptoms. The doctor listened with professional sympathy, until Greenberg reached his description of the water gnome.

  Then his eyes glittered and narrowed. “I know just the thing for you, Mr. Greenberg,” he interrupted. “Sit there until I come back.”

  Greenberg sat quietly. He even permitted himself a surge of hope. But it seemed only a moment later that he was vaguely conscious of a siren screaming toward him; and then he was overwhelmed by the doctor and two interns who pounced on him and tried to squeeze him into a bag.

  He resisted, of course. He was terrified enough to punch wildly. “What are you doing to me?” he shrieked. “Don’t put that thing on me!”

  “Easy now,” the doctor soothed. “Everything will be all right.”

  It was on that humiliating scene that the policeman, required by law to accompany public ambulances, appeared. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Don’t stand there, you fathead,” an intern shouted. “This man’s crazy. Help us get him into this strait jacket.”

  But the policeman approached indecisively. “Take it easy, Mr. Greenberg. They ain’t gonna hurt you while I’m here. What’s it all about?”

  “Mike!” Greenberg cried, and clung to his protector’s sleeve. “They think I’m crazy—”

  “Of course he’s crazy,” the doctor stated. “He came in here with a fantastic yarn about a water gnome putting a curse on him.”

  “What kind of a curse, Mr. Greenberg?” Mike asked cautiously.

  “I got into an argument with the water gnome who makes it rain and takes care of the fish,” Greenberg blurted. “I tore up his hat. Now he won’t let water touch me. I can’t drink, or anything—”

  The doctor nodded. “There you are. Absolutely insane.”

  “Shut up.” For a long moment Mike stared curiously at Greenberg. Then: “Did any of you scientists think of testing him? Here, Mr. Greenberg.” He poured water into a paper cup and held it out.

  Greenberg moved to take it. The water backed up against the cup’s far lip; when he took it in his hand, the water shot out into the air.

  “Crazy, is he?” Mike asked with heavy irony. “I guess you don’t know there’s things like gnomes and elves. Come with me, Mr. Greenberg.”

  They went out together and walked toward the boardwalk. Greenberg told Mike the entire story and explained how, besides being so uncomfortable to him personally, it would ruin him financially.

  “Well, doctors can’t help you,” Mike said at length. “What do they know about the Little Folk? And I can’t say I blame you for sassing the gnome. You ain’t Irish or you’d have spoke with more respect to him. Anyhow, you’re thirsty. Can’t you drink anything?”

  “Not a thing,” Greenberg said mournfully.

  They entered the concession. A single glance told Greenberg that business was very quiet, but even that could not lower his feelings more than they already were. Esther clutched him as soon as she saw them.

  “Well?” she asked anxiously.

  Greenberg shrugged in despair. “Nothing. He thought I was crazy.”

  Mike stared at the bar. Memory seemed to struggle, behind his reflective eyes. “Sure,” he said after a long pause. “Did you try beer, Mr. Greenberg? When I was a boy my old mother told me all about elves and gnomes and the rest of the Little Folk. She knew them, all right. They don’t touch alcohol, you know. Try drawing a glass of beer—”

  Greenberg trudged obediently behind the bar and held a glass under the spigot. Suddenly his despondent face brightened. Beer creamed into the glass—and stayed there! Mike and Esther grinned at each other as Greenberg threw back his head and furiously drank.

  “Mike!” he crowed. “I’m saved. You got to drink with me!”

  “Well—” Mike protested feebly.

  By late afternoon, Esther had to close the concession and take her husband and Mike to the hotel.

  The following day, being Saturday, brought a flood of rain. Greenberg nursed an imposing hangover that was constantly aggravated by his having to drink beer in order to satisfy his recurring thirst. He thought of forbidden ice bags and alkaline drinks in an agony of longing.

  “I can’t stand it!” he groaned. “Beer for breakfast—phooey!”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Esther said fatalistically.

  “So help me, I don’t know if it is. But, darling, you ain’t mad at me on account of Sammie, are you?”

  She smiled gently. “Poo! Talk dowry and he’ll come back quick.”

  “That’s what I thought. But what am I going to do about my curse?”

  Cheerfully Mike furled an umbrella and strode in with a little old woman, whom he introduced as his mother. Greenberg enviously saw evidence of the effectiveness of ice bags and alkaline drinks, for Mike had been just as high as he the day before.

  “Mike told me about you and the gnome,” the old lady said. “Now I know the Little Folk well, and I don’t hold you to blame for insulting him, seeing you never met a gnome before. But I suppose you want to get rid of your curse. Are you repentant?”

/>   Greenberg shuddered. “Beer for breakfast! Can you ask?”

  “Well, just you go to this lake and give the gnome proof.”

  “What kind of proof?” Greenberg asked eagerly.

  “Bring him sugar. The Little Folk love the stuff—”

  Greenberg beamed. “Did you hear that, Esther? I’ll get a barrel—”

  “They love sugar, but they can’t eat it,” the old lady broke in. “It melts in water. You got to figure out a way so it won’t. Then the little gentleman’ll know you’re repentant for real.”

  “Aha!” Greenberg cried. “I knew there was a catch!”

  There was a sympathetic silence while his agitated mind attacked the problem from all angles. Then the old lady said in awe: “The minute I saw your place I knew Mike had told the truth. I never seen a sight like it in my life—rain coming down, like the flood, everywhere else; but all around this place, in a big circle, it’s dry as a bone!”

  While Greenberg scarcely heard her, Mike nodded and Esther seemed peculiarly interested in the phenomenon. When he admitted defeat and came out of his reflected stupor, he was alone in the concession, with only a vague memory of Esther’s saying she would not be back for several hours.

  “What am I going to do?” he muttered. “Sugar that won’t melt—” He drew a glass of beer and drank it thoughtfully.

  “Particular they got to be yet. Ain’t it good enough if I bring simple syrup—that’s sweet.”

  He pottered about the place, looking for something to do. He could not polish the fountain on the bar, and the few frankfurters broiling on the griddle probably would go to waste. The floor had already been swept. So he sat uneasily and worried his problem.

  “Monday, no matter what,” he resolved, “I’ll go to the lake. It don’t pay to go tomorrow. I’ll only catch a cold because it’ll rain.”

  At last Esther returned, smiling in a strange way. She was extremely gentle, tender and thoughtful; and for that he was appreciative. But that night and all day Sunday he understood the reason for her happiness.