More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Well, they didn't find us for several years,” Sebastian said. “They didn't find us till our last day but one at this school. Tomorrow we'll go from here. You know that they won't be caught on the roof though.”

  “I know it,” Duffey said. But why wouldn't they be caught. The three sleazy youths couldn't be found on that twilight roof at all. And there was no way they could have gotten off of it.

  Book Two:

  Late Boyhood of a Magus

  “Then Melchisedech, the king of Salem, brought out bread and wine…” Genesis 14:18

  This is not leaving those earlier years forever. Neither those years nor the accounts of them are complete. Only a little bit of one of them and a hint of the other three have been given, but there was never any reason for these years to stand in strict sequence. Melchisedech one day had the feeling of coming to himself in an obscure place where the clear way was lost. He was in a large city, on a street that bordered a green park, and he was burdened with a very heavy suitcase. He was without instructions, but this was his case:

  Melchisedech had been told that everything had been done for him that could be expected. With all fine wishes and recommendations, he was on his own now. He had been given, in a final act of the hand-washing ceremony, one hundred dollars. This was quite a bit of money then. One could live on that for three or four months. It had also been pointed out to him that a willing worker could find a job without much trouble. This was true.

  Melchisedech Duffey was fifteen years old and he had just finished a good high school education. He came to this crossroads of life a little earlier than did many boys. He had a big suitcase full of clothes and tools, and he had six hundred and fifty dollars in money (this included the hundred dollars given him by the well-wishing kindred). Melchisedech had been a good merchant during his boarding school days, and he had sold out all those businesses to a consortium of other boys.

  It was the last day of May of the Year of the Lord 1915. It was on this day also that Melchisedech began to grow the first of his beards to make himself look older. He had an uncontrollable urge to travel, to go to one or another of his cities, to go to Chicago, to go to Boston, to go to New York. He began to snap his fingers, and golden sparks cascaded from them. This really happened. Melchisedech had the golden touch at his fullest then. A sturdy little girl saw it and ran over to him out of the park.

  “How do you do it?” she asked. “I'm a fan of yours, you know.”

  “I'm magic,” Duffey said, “but I haven't any fans.” He snapped his fingers once more and made another shower of gold sparks. From this he knew that he would have good fortune in all his enterprises for a while.

  “If I was magic I'd make a golden coin instead of golden sparks,” the sturdy little girl said. “I think you need a manager. You can make coins, you know.”

  “I love a practical woman,” Duffey said, and he kissed her. He snapped his fingers again, and a gold coin danced in the air and rang on the sidewalk. There is nothing that has so mellow a tone as a gold coin ringing its signature. “It's yours,” Duffey said, and the little girl picked up the five dollar gold piece. “You are my luck, you are my love,” Duffey said, and he kissed her again.

  “Why don't you do it all the time if you can do it?” she asked.

  “Because I forget that I can do it. I am always forgetting the wonderful things that I can do. It's nice to have one fan in the world.”

  “I'm Gretchen Sisler,” the girl said. “I'm almost nine. My mother works in restaurants, but she's just been fired. We can live for a while on this though.”

  “I'm almost sixteen,” Duffey grinned. “We will meet again, Gretchen.”

  “We certainly will,” she agreed. “I'll see to that.”

  Duffey set out traveling, on foot, with his suitcase that weighed a hundred pounds. He went downtown. He could have taken a streetcar, but there were certain thoughts and speculations that he could only experience while walking. He walked around for half a day with that heavy suitcase. This was to give fortune a chance to arrange things for him, to shift the scenery where needed, and to marshal the prospects and strike the tone. He went into the Dublin and had cheese and black bread and beer. He had tricked himself out of his traveling urge by his long walking, so he had saved train fare. He needn't go anywhere. He was already there, in one of his half dozen cities. He was a very strong boy, but he was tired now.

  One of the Dublin girls (she was named Evelyn London) came and sat with him. Oh, she was probably young. About ten years older than Duffey. What she really was was Duffey's second fan of that day, and both of them would be forever.

  “You are my boy, you are my love, you are my prince,” this Evelyn said as she played with Melchisedech's sorrel hair. “You are a gold star.”

  “Do you know anybody with a building to sell, Evelyn?” he asked her.

  “The building just across the street and down a block,” she said. “I will write down the name of the man who owns it, and where he is. And I will walk to it with you. It's just what you want. I knew you would come today to buy it.”

  The building was a large and rickety horse barn or livery stable, and it was empty. This was on Walnut Street downtown in St. Louis, Missouri.

  “It's just what you want,” Evelyn told him again. “It is big enough for you, and you can get it cheap. Oh you can get rich and glorious here, Melky! It will fit every one of your needs perfectly. To anyone else it looks like old horse manure there. It looks like that stable that Hercules had to clean. But for you it will be gold dust.”

  Duffey didn't quite know what his needs were. He was operating somewhere between impulse and intuition. The prospects were churning around in his head, but he couldn't see the answers yet.

  “You are my boy, you are my love,” Evelyn London said. She kissed him and left him for a while. And Duffey gazed at the horse barn, knowing that horse barns were not red hot items right then.

  The decline in horses had already begun in deep downtown. The streetcars had contributed to the decline in horses, and now the automobiles were contributing to it. Oh, there were still twelve thousand horses for hire downtown, but once there had been eighteen thousand.

  Duffey found the owner of the building. They made up a contract and a bill of sale and a deed. The price of the building was two thousand dollars. It was five hundred dollars now, and five hundred in six, twelve, and eighteen months. Melchisedech moved into the building by putting his suitcase on the slate-stone floor inside. He had a hundred and fifty dollars left after making the down payment, and there were people in St, Louis that he could have money from if he needed it. He wouldn't need it, but he wasn't friendless. Nobody who can snap his fingers and make gold sparks and golden coins shower out will ever be friendless.

  Duffey got the gas turned on, and he bought twelve mantles for gas fixtures, three for the torch-like post lamps in the horse barn itself, nine for the nine ramshackle rooms that were upstairs. He bought himself a cigar and he smoked it till he let it go out. He went to a junk store to buy an iron bed with mattress. They were so cheap that he bought three of each. He bought a table and a gas cook stove, a gallon can of red paints, and a swivel stool. He had a drayman bring the things to the building.

  There were several long loafers benches both outside and inside the building. Such benches were common around livery stables. There were fifty-five stalls and mangers in the horse barn, and twelve carriage bays. There was a lot of lumber in all that. Melchisedech plumbed up the cook store. A small vise, a hack saw, and a pipe die were among the tools that weighted down his suitcase.

  He went out and bought a five gallon jar of pigs feet, a five gallon jar of spiced Polish sausage, a five gallon jar of apple butter, ten pounds of cheese, ten loaves of black bread, a hundred pounds of potatoes, a dozen cups, a dozen glasses, a dozen plates, a gallon of whisky, five gallons of wine, a thirty gallon keg of beer. The same drayman brought these things to Duffey's place. Then Duffey painted a sign in red letters on a board
he took from a horse stall. Paintbrush and turpentine were other things that he carried in his suitcase.

  “Ten thousand items at reduced prices!” the sign read. “Food and lodging. Whisky, wine, and beer in convivial surroundings. Shaves, haircuts, and baths. Entertainment around the clock. A quality gentlemens' bar and club. Melchisedech Duffey Proprietor.” It was a well-lettered sign. Duffey was perfect on lettering.

  There was a cistern hand-pump that worked after a little priming. There were a few old buckets and pots and hand basins around. Duffey set potatoes to bake in the oven, and he set potato soup to simmer on top of the stove. There were old horse shoes and horse collars and various pieces of harness. There were two broken carriages that did not need to remain broken. There was probably five tons of livery stable junk around there. It couldn't be classified, it couldn't be described, but there were surely ten thousand items of it.

  Melchisedech Duffey was a fifteen year old man with a good start on a red or sorrel beard. He had his own residence and his own store and establishment. He was in business, though he could not say for certain what business it was. He had his prime stock already bought, and he had a little more than sixty dollars left in his pocket.

  A monster came in. He was the first customer, and he turned out to be a monster instead of a man. The monster might not have been much older than Melchisedech, or he might have been three thousand years old. But then so might Melchisedech have been three thousand years old. The monster was very dark and powerful, but he was put together carelessly. He wasn't completely ugly, but nobody else had ever looked like that. His shoes were serviceable though. They were very wide. Monsters have wider feet than do people. His pants and jacket were rough stuff in rivermans-blue, and they were sound.

  “Do you need something, sir?” Duffey called ringingly, for this was his first customer in his establishment.

  “Oh yes, I need so many things, so many!” the monster said.

  “A shave and a haircut?”

  “No, things like that don't do me any good.”

  “Something to eat and drink?”

  “Yes. And a place to take a bath. And a place to sleep,” the monster said.

  Melchisedech give the monster coffee, whisky, cheese, bread with apple butter, Polish sausage, pigs feet, and a plate of baked potatoes. And, while the monster was eating and drinking, Duffey began to heat buckets of water on the cook stove. He had selected the biggest of the horse troughs (livery stables always had such large and sectioned water troughs), and he spread old horse blankets on the stones around it. He would get the city water turned on tomorrow. The cistern pump was helpful but it would not be sufficient. He would buy a gas heater tomorrow and install it. He would have hot and cold running water. But for now he pumped and heated bucket after bucket of water, and began to fill one of the big sections of the watering trough with it.

  He set out his own white soap, almost a new bar of it, and a very big glob of the yellow, harness-and-horse soap that was already in the building. He put the cleanest of the horse blankets on the best of the iron beds with the best of the mattresses.

  The monster finished eating. He asked for more whisky, and Duffey gave him a full water glass of it. He asked for a cigar.

  “All I have is a cigar that is half-smoked,” Duffey said and he pulled it from his pocket.

  “That will be fine,” the monster said. He sipped whisky and smoked, and he seemed to find some peace there.

  “I am Melchisedech Duffey and I would like to make your acquaintance.”

  “I'm Giulio,” the monster said. “I work on the river boats sometimes. And other times I work on the ocean ships. Or on the docks. I don't know at what hour I will rise from my bed. How much is the count? I pay it all now.”

  “A dollar,” Duffey said.

  The monster paid Duffey a silver dollar. Then he went, taking whisky and cigar with him, to the watering trough where he took off his shoes and clothes. He dropped his clothes to the horse-blanketed floor, and he hung his brown scapulars on a peg on the wall there. He climbed into the warm water of the horse trough with a sigh of relief and pleasure.

  Another man came in. He looked familiar. Oh, he was an Irishman. Duffey remembered the saying, “The Irish haven't handsome faces, but they have memorable faces: it's hard to forget one.” This man had a memorable face, but whom was it remindful of?

  “I intended to buy this building,” the man said. “I was playing with that man who owned it. I didn't think there was another person in the city who was fool enough to pay eight hundred dollars for this building.”

  “Nah, man, man, be good,” Duffey chided him. “There was no eight hundred dollar price. There was never anything except the two thousand dollar price. And we were the only two persons in the city wise enough to see what an outstanding bargain it was. How can I serve you, sir?”

  “Shave and a haircut,” the man said. He was a humorously rough-looking man with beetling brows and a beetling belly. Young Duffey pulled up the swivel stool that he had bought that day, and he flapped a huge bib in the air in preparation for tying it around the man's neck.

  “Haven't you a proper barber chair?”

  “No. I'll get one soon,” Duffey said.

  “I have one,” the man told him. “I'll bring it over tomorrow. I'm Bagby.”

  “I'm Melchisedech Duffey.”

  “There can't be too many of that name. I believe that I knew your father.”

  “I had none.”

  “Can you be sure that you hadn't? What is your entertainment around the clock?”

  “Pitching horse shoes. And I also do magic.”

  “Magic tricks?”

  “No. Real magic.”

  “Oh yes. I know who you are now. You don't have a pool table?”

  “No, not yet. I'll get one soon perhaps.”

  “I have one. I'll bring it over tomorrow. Have you only three beds?”

  Duffey was shearing the rough hair off of Bagby and turning him into a dude. Other people were in the doorways sizing up the place.

  “Yes,” Duffey said. “I'll get more beds as trade improves.”

  People had seen the sign, and the word had already gone out that a new man in the block was selling whisky in both nickel and dime shots. One of the loafer benches soon had eight drinking gentlemen of the shabby sort. They sipped very slowly, and they talked low and pleasantly. There would be no loneliness in the establishment from now on. Those men could sit there and drink almost forever.

  “The man who last used this horse barn for a flop house, he didn't use beds at all,” Bagby began to unflex his tongue for this new proprietor. But Duffey knew oil-of-the-tongue better than most boys of his age. This man was a loose one.

  “What did he use?” Duffey asked.

  “See those rafters running to the tops of the horse stalls from the front wall,” Bagby pointed. “There are fifty-five of them. Calculate the length of them now. Would you not say that each of them was a ten-man rafter? Notice the several hooks hanging from some of them by leather thongs. See where the other hooks might have hung before they were taken down or lost. Allowing ten of them to a rafter, there would have been five hundred and fifty of those hooks dangling overhead.”

  “That's right,” said Duffey, and he lathered Bagby. The monster had now got out of the horse trough bathtub. He had rolled his clothes and shoes into a pillow and had stretched out on the bed and pulled the clean horse blanket over him. This was for modesty, not for the cold.

  “Now see those several padded leather straps in your junk pile,” Bagby said to Duffey. “Be advised that there were once five hundred and fifty of them. Are they not padded nicely? There is no way that they could hurt anything with such fine padding. And have they not fine adjustable buckles? They would never creep. They would never slip. Simplicity is the answer. Do you understand how they were used, Duffey?”

  Say, this man was a ruddy kidder! Well, what were those several padded leather straps for anyhow? They we
re some part of horse harness or rigging, but Duffey had harnessed lots of horses and he had never used any straps like that. He cut Bagby gently on the check with the razor just to keep the man from getting too far ahead of him.

  “Oh sure,” Duffey said as a hint of an answer was whispered to him by an ebony giant. “Right around a man's neck would one of them go. They are too well-padded to give injury and too well buckled to slip. They wouldn't strangle a man all the way, but they'd insure that he slept deeply. Strap their necks into the straps and then hang the gentlemen up on hooks for the night. And five hundred and fifty men could be accommodated in this comparatively small area in that manner. What did he get for each one, Bagby? Is ten cents too much?”

  “He got ten cents each per ordinary, but he never slept more than about two hundred a night at that.”

  “That isn't bad: twenty dollars a night almost clear. All, but then there were the Wednesday Night Specials! That was nickel night in the old horse barn: and I tell you, Duffey, there was always a sell-out. There was never an empty berth on Wednesday night. Ah, it was a beautiful sight to gaze at five hundred and fifty snoring gentlemen each hanging on his hook! And that nickel potato whisky that he sold them for each slumber was three cents profit a shot.”

  Duffey had finished shaving and haircutting Bagby. He untied the big bib and snapped and popped it like a pistol. “Twenty cents sir,” he said briskly. Bagby paid promptly and in cash. How else can one make so much money so easily and so quickly?

  Duffey picked up one of those padded leather straps and whacked it across the palm of his hand several times as he walked past the bemused drinkers on the loafers bench.

  “Nay, boy, nay,” they said. “It was a joke. It wasn't really that way.”

  Most of them knew Bagby, and they knew his jokes. But bemused drinkers always have the worry that such jokes might take a turn to their peril. One of those drinkers on the bench said that the leather straps went with Greely Pack Saddles. Pack horses and pack mules used to be rented out of the livery stable to people who wanted to pack into the hills and woods for a few days to get away from it all. And the former proprietor had provided Greely Pack Saddles which were the best kind, the aristocrats of the field. He rented these to go with his pack horses and mules.