She had spread word that, while it rained in every other place all over town, their concession was miraculously dry. So, besides a headache that made his body throb in rhythm to its vast pulse, Greenberg had to work like six men satisfying the crowd who mobbed the place to see the miracle and enjoy the dry warmth.
How much they took in will never be known. Greenberg made it a practice not to discuss such personal matters. But it is quite definite that not even in 1929 had he done so well over a single weekend.
###
Very early Monday morning he was dressing quietly, not to disturb his wife. Esther, however, raised herself on her elbow and looked at him doubtfully.
“Herman,” she called softly, “do you really have to go?” He turned, puzzled. “What do you mean—do I have to go?”
“Well—” She hesitated. Then: “Couldn’t you wait until the end of the season, Herman, darling?”
He staggered back a step, his face working in horror. “What kind of an idea is that for my own wife to have?” he croaked. “Beer I have to drink instead of water. How can I stand it? Do you think I like beer? I can’t wash myself. Already people don’t like to stand near me; and how will they act at the end of the season? I go around looking like a bum because my beard is too tough for an electric razor, and I’m all the time drunk—the first Greenberg to be a drunkard. I want to be respected—”
“I know, Herman, darling,” she sighed. “But I thought for the sake of our Rosie—such a business we’ve never done like we did this weekend. If it rains every Saturday and Sunday, but not on our concession, we’ll make a fortune!”
“Esther!” Herman cried, shocked. “Doesn’t my health mean anything?”
“Of course, darling. Only I thought maybe you could stand it for—”
He snatched his hat, tie and jacket, and slammed the door. Outside, though, he stood indeterminedly. He could hear his wife crying, and he realized that, if he succeeded in getting the gnome to remove the curse, he would forfeit an opportunity to make a great deal of money.
He finished dressing more slowly. Esther was right, to a certain extent. If he could tolerate his waterless condition—
“No!” he gritted decisively. “Already my friends avoid me. It isn’t right that a respectable man like me should always be drunk and not take a bath. So we’ll make less money. Money isn’t everything—”
And with great determination, he went to the lake.
###
But that evening, before going home, Mike walked out of his way to stop in at the concession. He found Greenberg sitting on a chair, his head in his hands, and his body rocking slowly in anguish.
“What is it, Mr. Greenberg?” he asked gently.
Greenberg looked up. His eyes were dazed. “Oh, you, Mike,” he said blankly. Then his gaze cleared, grew more intelligent, and he stood up and led Mike to the bar. Silently, they drank beer. “I went to the lake today,” he said hollowly. “I walked all around it hollering like mad. The gnome didn’t stick his head out of the water once.”
“I know,” Mike nodded sadly. “They’re busy all the time.”
Greenberg spread his hands imploringly. “So what can I do? I can’t write him a letter or send him a telegram; he ain’t got a door to knock on or a bell for me to ring. How do I get him to come up and talk?”
His shoulders sagged. “Here, Mike. Have a cigar. You been a real good friend, but I guess we’re licked.”
They stood in an awkward silence. Finally Mike blurted: “Real hot, today. A regular scorcher.”
“Yeah. Esther says business was pretty good, if it keeps up.”
Mike fumbled at the cellophane wrapper. Greenberg said: “Anyhow, suppose I did talk to the gnome. What about the sugar?”
The silence dragged itself out, became tense and uncomfortable. Mike was distinctly embarrassed. His brusque nature was not adapted for comforting discouraged friends. With immense concentration he rolled the cigar between his fingers and listened for a rustle.
“Day like this’s hell on cigars,” he mumbled, for the sake of conversation. “Dries them like nobody’s business. This one ain’t, though.”
“Yeah,” Greenberg said abstractedly. “Cellophane keeps them—”
They looked suddenly at each other, their faces clean of expression.
“Holy smoke!” Mike yelled.
“Cellophane on sugar!” Greenberg choked out.
“Yeah,” Mike whispered in awe. “I’ll switch my day off with Joe, and I’ll go to the lake with you tomorrow. I’ll call for you early.”
Greenberg pressed his hand, too strangled by emotion for speech. When Esther came to relieve him, he left her at the concession with only the inexperienced griddle boy to assist her, while he searched the village for cubes of sugar wrapped in cellophane.
The sun had scarcely risen when Mike reached the hotel, but Greenberg had long been dressed and stood on the porch waiting impatiently. Mike was genuinely anxious for his friend. Greenberg staggered along toward the station, his eyes almost crossed with the pain of a terrific hangover.
They stopped at a cafeteria for breakfast. Mike ordered orange juice, bacon and eggs, and coffee half-and-half. When he heard the order, Greenberg had to gag down a lump in his throat.
“What’ll you have?” the counterman asked.
Greenberg flushed. “Beer,” he said hoarsely.
“You kidding me?” Greenberg shook his head, unable to speak. “Want anything with it? Cereal, pie, toast—”
“Just beer.” And he forced himself to swallow it. “So help me,” he hissed at Mike, “another beer for breakfast will kill me!”
“I know how it is,” Mike said around a mouthful of food.
On the train they attempted to make plans. But they were faced by a phenomenon that neither had encountered before, and so they got nowhere. They walked glumly to the lake, fully aware that they would have to employ the empirical method of discarding tactics that did not work.
“How about a boat?” Mike suggested.
“It won’t stay in the water with me in it. And you can’t row it.”
“Well, what’ll we do then?”
Greenberg bit his lip and stared at the beautiful blue lake. There the gnome lived, so near to them. “Go through the woods along the shore, and holler like hell. I’ll go the opposite way. We’ll pass each other and meet at the boathouse. If the gnome comes up, yell for me.”
“O.K.,” Mike said, not very confidently.
The lake was quite large and they walked slowly around it, pausing often to get the proper distance for particularly emphatic shouts. But two hours later, when they stood opposite each other with the full diameter of the lake between them, Greenberg heard Mike’s hoarse voice: “Hey, gnome!”
“Hey, gnome!” Greenberg yelled. “Come on up!”
An hour later they crossed paths. They were tired, discouraged, and their throats burned; and only fishermen disturbed the lake’s surface.
“The hell with this,” Mike said. “It ain’t doing any good. Let’s go back to the boathouse.”
“What’ll we do?” Greenberg rasped. “I can’t give up!”
They trudged back around the lake, shouting half-heartedly. At the boathouse, Greenberg had to admit that he was beaten. The boathouse owner marched threateningly toward him.
“Why don’t you maniacs get away from here?” he barked. “What’s the idea of hollering and scaring away the fish? The guys are sore—”
“We’re not going to holler anymore,” Greenberg said. “It’s no use.”
When they bought beer and Mike, on an impulse, hired a boat, the owner cooled off with amazing rapidity, and went off to unpack bait.
“What did you get a boat for?” Greenberg asked. “I can’t ride in it.”
“You’re not going to. You’re gonna walk.”
“Around the lake again?” Greenberg cried.
“Nope. Look, Mr. Greenberg. Maybe the gnome can’t hear us through all that water. Gnomes
ain’t hard-hearted. If he heard us and thought you were sorry, he’d take his curse off you in a jiffy.”
“Maybe.” Greenberg was not convinced. “So where do I come in?”
“The way I figure it, some way or other you push water away, but the water pushes you away just as hard. Anyhow, I hope so. If it does, you can walk on the lake.” As he spoke, Mike had been lifting large stones and dumping them on the bottom of the boat. “Give me a hand with these.”
Any activity, however useless, was better than none, Greenberg felt. He helped Mike fill the boat until just the gunwales were above water. Then Mike got in and shoved off.
“Come on,” Mike said. “Try to walk on the water.”
Greenberg hesitated. “Suppose I can’t?”
“Nothing’ll happen to you. You can’t get wet; so you won’t drown.”
The logic of Mike’s statement reassured Greenberg. He stepped out boldly. He experienced a peculiar sense of accomplishment when the water hastily retreated under his feet into pressure bowls, and an unseen, powerful force buoyed him upright across the lake’s surface. Though his footing was not too secure, with care he was able to walk quite swiftly.
“Now what?” he asked, almost happily.
Mike had kept pace with him in the boat. He shipped his oars and passed Greenberg a rock. “We’ll drop them all over the lake—make it damned noisy down there and upset the place. That’ll get him up.”
They were more hopeful now, and their comments, “Here’s one that’ll wake him,” and “I’ll hit him right on the noodle with this one,” served to cheer them still further. And less than half the rocks had been dropped when Greenberg halted, a boulder in his hands. Something inside him wrapped itself tightly around his heart and his jaw dropped.
Mike followed his awed, joyful gaze. To himself, Mike had to admit that the gnome, propelling himself through the water with his ears, arms folded in tremendous dignity, was a funny sight.
“Must you drop rocks and disturb us at our work?” the gnome asked.
Greenberg gulped. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gnome,” he said nervously. “I couldn’t get you to come up by yelling.”
The gnome looked at him. “Oh. You are the mortal who was disciplined. Why did you return?”
“To tell you that I’m sorry, and I won’t insult you again.”
“Have you proof of your sincerity?” the gnome asked quietly.
Greenberg fished furiously in his pocket and brought out a handful of sugar wrapped in cellophane, which he tremblingly handed to the gnome.
“Ah, very clever, indeed,” the little man said, unwrapping a cube and popping it eagerly into his mouth. “Long time since I’ve had some.”
A moment later Greenberg spluttered and floundered under the surface. Even if Mike had not caught his jacket and helped him up, he could almost have enjoyed the sensation of being able to drown.
Send No Money
By Susan Casper and Gardner Dozois
In this world of relentless progress and run-away change, even the Wee Folk must keep up with the times. Or try to, anyway . . .
Susan Casper has sold fiction to Playboy, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone Magazine, and many original horror anthologies. She is co-editor, with Gardner Dozois, of the horror anthology Ripper! and has just completed her first novel, The Red Carnival.
Gardner Dozois has won two Nebula Awards for his short fiction and two Best Editor Hugos. He is the editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and the annual anthology series, The Year’s Best Science Fiction.
* * *
SEND NO MONEY! the postcard said, in dark blue letters against a bright orange background. Judy smiled, and pushed it into the stack. She liked her junk mail. Certainly it was less depressing than the load of bills that made up the bulk of her mail. She especially liked the computer-generated “personalized” ones, eternally optimistic, that excitedly announced, “You may have won a million dollars!” (Only Maybe Not), or the ones that promised to send you something “Absolutely Free!” for only $2 plus shipping and handling, or the ones that enclosed sample swatches of material, or paper thin slices of stale-looking fruitcake, or slightly squashed bits of cheese wrapped up in cellophane. Today’s stack of junk mail was particularly large. Who knew what might be in it?
She carried the mail inside, hung her coat neatly in the closet, and then went in search of something to eat. The freezer was packed with frozen food of the “gourmet dinner” variety. She stared at them listlessly, unable to work up any enthusiasm. Too much trouble after the kind of day she’d had at work. She settled for cold left-over spaghetti and a glass of milk. Sighing, she carried the food over to the table. Lately, it seemed like deciding what to have for dinner was the most important decision of her day; certainly it was the day’s most exciting moment, with the possible exception of the “Dark Shadows” reruns on TV . . . Well, whose fault was that she asked herself. Ginny and Lois weren’t eating leftovers tonight, were they? They had gone to dinner at Le Boeuf, and then on to Spangles for dancing, and they had wanted her to come, too. In fact, Ginny had spent the whole last week trying to talk her into it. Why had she refused?
The fact was, she was tired of the whole dating scene—the bars, the banal small talk, the clichéd pick-up lines, the loud insipid music, the leering faces. Anyway, all you ever seemed to meet were nerds, or narcissistic romeos in mirror sunglasses, or prowling husbands in clever plastic disguises . . .
So this is better? she thought. Oh yeah. Right. Sighing again, she sat down to go through the mail while she ate. Simple pleasures . . . but at least there was no cover charge.
It seemed like a fairly typical assortment. The first three envelopes were bills, from, respectively, the electric company, the phone company, and the credit card company. One was awful, the others not as bad as she had feared. There was an unordered catalogue from one of those “naughty underwear” places; a solicitation from a local animal rescue shelter; a “Vote for So-and-So” political flyer; an offer of twenty-percent off on a diamond engagement ring with a genuine imitation diamond—guaranteed absolutely undetectable from the real thing at fifty feet or more—addressed to Mr. J.B. Pender; an offer of “personalized” ballpoint pens that promised an enormous money-saving discount on orders of 100 or more; and, finally, a little green postcard.
Green? She could have sworn that it had been orange. Or had there been two postcards, and she’d somehow dropped the orange one somewhere on the way in? She ate a forkful of spaghetti, and prodded the postcard idly with her finger. Strange . . . No company name, no return address. It was one of those “personalized” come-ons, and the front of the card shouted MS. JUDY PENDER!! in enormous glittery letters. She turned it over.
The card said: MS. JUDY PENDER, WHY ARE YOU SITTING THERE EATING COLD SPAGHETTI WHEN YOU COULD BE OUT HAVING THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE?
Whoo. She was startled enough to drop the card and sit back suddenly in her chair. Pretty strange. What were the odds against her reading that particular come-on pitch just at the exact moment that she actually did happen to be eating some cold spaghetti? Pretty astronomical. She tittered nervously, then began to laugh, perhaps a shade too loudly. Mind-boggling coincidences did happen, she knew that. But this one was weird. Ripley’s Believe It or Not would love it. They’d publish it right next to “Man Who Grew a Potato in the Shape of Anita Ekberg” and “Replica of the Titanic Made Entirely Out of Old Fingernail Parings.”
Still chuckling, she quickly finished her spaghetti. Almost time for her nightly fix of “Dark Shadows” reruns. She reached out and picked up the postcard again.
This time it said: IS A NIGHT SPENT WATCHING “DARK SHADOWS” RERUNS REALLY ALL YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE?
She dropped the card again.
She found that, without realizing it, she had pushed herself away from the table and was standing bolt upright, quivering, like a garden rake that’s been stepped on.
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Her mind was blank for several heartbeats, and then she began casting frantically about for explanations. She’d just missed that part of the text the first time she’d read the card, skipped right over it. Sure, that was it. And as for the card mentioning “Dark Shadows” . . . Well, coincidences did happen. Remember that. A man drops his watch in the ocean and twenty years later finds it inside the belly of a fish he’s just caught; another one jumps off the Empire State Building and survives because he happens to land on top of the long-lost twin brother he hasn’t seen since they both were five . . . It Happens All the Time. Or—and she grabbed for this one eagerly, although the ultimate implications of it were somewhat unflattering—she was just statistically predictable, normal, average, humdrum, easy meat for the trend-spotters and social analysts. Doubtless her habits were far from unique. Probably there were millions of bored young women just like her who spent their evenings eating cold spaghetti and watching “Dark Shadows.” Hence the card, addressed to her statistical type, a profile she just happened to fit embarrassingly well . . .
Nevertheless, she didn’t touch the card again.
Leaving it where it lay, she bustled nervously around, putting the spaghetti bowl into the sink to soak, picking up last Sunday’s paper (which was still strewn over the end of the couch), emptying the ashtrays, annoyedly pushing the term “displacement activity” out of her head every time it forced its way into it.
After a while, she began to get tired. She glanced at the television, but whoever the Machiavellian social researcher responsible for the postcard was, she’d be damned if she’d prove him right. Besides, “Dark Shadows” was almost over anyway. The only thing on now were “M*A*S*H” reruns, and she’d always thought that Hawkeye was a wimp, like one of those oh-so-sincere-and-sensitive types from the singles bars who suddenly turned into married men when the full moon came out. She could survive a night without television just fine, thank you. Decisively, Judy went into the bedroom to get the book she’d been reading and to pick up her double-acrostic magazine, and then headed back toward her favorite armchair.
LITTLE PEOPLE! Page 19
