The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “We will go get some cabrito,” said Lundquist, the real and not the imaged or imagined Airman, “we can get it a half block from here and it's real good. Or we can go about twelve miles out and get some that's always burned. That sure is a rough ride out there and it'll take a couple of hours. Let's go get some cabrito.”

  He left with his companion, the Irishman, and it seemed as if the two images of the Airman also followed, but invisibly. And all the rest of the evening they were following, for these as you have already guessed were fetches.

  “Irishman,” said Lundquist, “let's get in the buggy and go get some cabrito.”

  “Norwegian,” said the Irishman, “we could walk the half block.”

  “We will go farther and do worse.”

  The driver's name was Trevino and the horse was named Jaime. They went out past the end of the town and then they were like a boat in a sea of cactus with only a narrow moon shining on the narrow road. Jaime trotted at a terrific rate, a hundred, then five hundred, then a thousand paces a minute; and after an hour they left the road and went down a wagon road and came to a great barn-like building in the dark. There were a dozen buggies there and two dozen taxis and cars. They went in and the two fetches of the Norwegian followed them.

  There is an idea that only Irishmen have fetches or doubles and then only at the hour of death. This is not so. Only Irishmen can see them, but a great many people have them and the Norwegian had two of the best.

  While they waited for their cabrito they drank an old essence of cactus juice that had popped more skulls than it could remember. Rows and rows of cabritos were turned on big spits over the fiery furnace which was almost the only light in the room. And Amata came over to talk to them.

  “For a peso I will tell you a story, and if you like it I'll tell you another one for the same price. And if you like that one too (listen closely) the third one will cost you only half as much.”

  “Mama, tell them the one about las animas,” said Paco.

  “That is the second story. I can't be telling the second story first.”

  “Well, tell the first story first.”

  “All right. Did you ever wonder where all the cabritos come from? See, there are a hundred turning on the spits at once, and there are a hundred places just like this one; and all the markets in town have cabritos piled high. But you seldom see them in the pastures. You may drive ten miles and if you're lucky you may see one old nanny goat, no more. Then where do all the cabritos come from? Once the authorities became anxious and they came out here. They asked Luis, the old Modrego, ‘You butcher cabritos by the dozen and yet you don't raise goats. Where do you get them?’ ‘But I do raise goats. What is that yonder but a she-goat?’ ‘But you have only one.’ ‘When you have a good one that is enough.’ ‘That isn't possible. If she twinned every time she couldn't have more than four a year, it would be biologically impossible. And you butcher hundreds.’ ‘Well, because I'm a poor man who doesn't know it's impossible I've become a rich man who sells a lot of cabrito.’ So they went away baffled. But this is the real story that he didn't tell them. They aren't cabritos at all, they're dogs. A dog and a kid look just alike when they're skinned. You see all the dogs running around under the tables? Well, we feed them the bones from the cabritos. Then we butcher them and make cabritos out of them. The bones of these we again feed to the dogs so we have a never-ending supply and are never at any expense for food in raising them. Isn't that a good story? Give me a peso.”

  An old lady came over in a fury. “Did you tell them the dog story? I have forbidden you to tell the dog story. It unsettles some of the customers and they leave without finishing their supper. Believe me, gentlemen, it is a lie. We do not serve dog meat here.”

  “Is the old lady your mother, Amata?”

  “No, she is my granddaughter. I am enchanted so I always stay young and beautiful. But all my daughters aged and died, and then all my granddaughters except that old crone and she's about ready to go too.”

  “Mama, you know what grandma said she'd do to you if you told that story again.”

  “Oh, be quiet. She can't even hear us from here. Did you like the dog story? I will tell you another story for another peso.”

  The Irishman and the Norwegian listened attentively, and the two fetches of the Norwegian were entranced and crowded closer.

  “Well, the first story was a lie. But this is a true story. Those aren't really cabritos, they're animas. Did you know that an anima and a cabrito look just alike when they're skinned?”

  “I had thought the anima would be naturally skinless.”

  “Well, it is. When the soul is pulled out of the body it is just like the body only smaller. The same four limbs and all, but only the size of a cabrito, for the soul is the body in miniature. There is a place near here where there is an old volcano and there it is very shallow. There are seven brothers named Ibarra who are devils, and they thought of a way to make money. They take the animas and break their joints so they will look more like cabritos. Then they haul them up and load them on wagons. They take them around and sell them to places like this.”

  “What do they do with all the money they make?”

  “They spend it on whisky and girls. And they gamble a little. Then the next night they go down again and get seven more wagon-loads of souls. Do you like that story? Give me a peso.”

  They served the cabritos then, barbecued, sauced, peppered, bursting with juice.

  “I hardly know whether to eat it or not,” said the Irishman, “I don't believe I ever ate either dog or damned soul before.”

  “Wait'll she tells the next one,” said Paco. “I bet you throw up. Lots of them throw up.”

  “By all means eat first,” said Amata. “It is so much easier to keep it down once you have it down. I would hate to spoil your appetite before you have eaten. But it is an unusual story.”

  Lundquist, the Norwegian, decided he was eating damned soul, and he gave a small portion to the Irishman who had never tasted it before. And he in turn passed a joint of that wonderful old dog to the airman. And soon they were down to picking the bones.

  “The third story as I promised will only cost you half a peso. The first two stories were lies but this is the truth. When you leave here (if you leave) notice that the ruts as you circle around to drive out are not so deep as those where you came in. This is because fewer people and vehicles leave than arrive. You will also notice a pile of old buggy wheels in the backyard and another pile of old tires. This is all that is left of many who came. The last few parties who leave every night do not leave at all. We calculate just about how much we will need for the next night. And to tell you the truth they are calculating now. If by some accident you do leave you will be the last to go. Los hombres we put in one vat, and los caballos in another. And there we chop them up just to the size of cabritos. You can make six out of a man and thirty-one out of a horse. And this is what we serve our fortunate patrons on the next night. Wasn't that a good story? Give me a half peso, or more if you want to.”

  “Is it true?”

  “The last story is always true until it is superseded.”

  They brought them each a piece of bread when the cabrito was completely gone.

  “Do not be a barbarian and eat it,” the Norwegian explained to the Irishman who did not understand these things, “that would be worse than drinking out of a finger bowl.” They wiped their fingers on the bread and threw it to the dogs under the table, who perhaps would be cabritos the next night.

  And when they left, the old lady bowed them out. “My daughter likes to tell stories to amuse the people and to make a little money. We hope they haven't annoyed you.”

  And Amata came to them and told them not to pay any attention to her granddaughter, the old crone.

  They got in the buggy and Trevino whipped up Jaime and they left. And they noticed that the ruts where they circled around to drive out were not as deep as where they came in; for always fewer people lef
t than arrived.

  They got away safely, the last ones to do so that night. But the two fetches of the Norwegian were not so lucky. They stupidly allowed themselves to be caught just before they could jump on the back of the buggy. And despite their screams they were put in a vat and chopped up to the size of cabritos. And they were barbecued and served to the fortunate patrons the next night.

  Ghost in the Corn Crib

  “The reason Old Shep won't go near the corn crib is that he's the only one who ever saw the ghost there.” Old Shep was an ancient German Shepherd dog who had now grown silly and forgetful with age.

  “If he's the only one who ever saw it, how do you know what he saw?”

  “That's the only thing he's scared of is the ghost in the corn crib, so why else won't he go near it?”

  “But he's going over to lie in the shade of it right now.”

  “Well, that's because we're here and it's daytime. I bet you never noticed him going to the corn crib at midnight when there's nobody awake on the place.”

  “I've never been here at midnight, but I'll find out tonight. What does the ghost do in the corn crib?”

  “It isn't really in the corn crib. It's in the little tool room upstairs next to it. He comes there at midnight every night. My brother saw him once and died of fright.”

  “Which one of your brothers? They're all alive now.”

  “Well, it was another brother: or it was a boy anyhow once. They never did find anything left of him, and they never knew where he came from in the first place.”

  “Well, who saw him there if there wasn't anything left of him? Maybe he never was there at all.”

  “I forget that part of the story. George can tell it better than I can. But I bet you never have anything like that in town.”

  “No. We have a haunted house but nothing ever happens there. I don't know how they know it's haunted.”

  They went to get George to tell the story. They were Jimmy Laterdale the country boy, and Jimmy Johnston the town boy.

  “It wasn't a boy, it was a hired man,” George told them. “Papa hired him one night and gave him supper in the kitchen. Then he gave him a blanket and sent him to sleep in the room over the corn crib because he was too dirty to sleep in the house.

  “They went out to get him the next morning and there wasn't a thing left of him; the ghost had got him. That was the same night Johnny the pony ran away, the old Johnny that's out in the pasture now, we don't ride him anymore, he's too old. And he was saddled and bridled too; that was the spookiest part of it. They found him three days later clear over by Downer Town. The sheriff found him. When a pony is scared by a ghost he always runs three days before he stops.”

  “Papa told me that when they used to have livery stables sometimes at night at the livery stable when all the horses were stalled something would get one of them and ride it all night. It'd be all lathered and hot in the morning. But nobody ever saw who got it or who brought it back.”

  “There was another one the ghost got. I don't know his name but he had the same name as the dirty hired man. He was a tinker man and knife sharpener who came by one evening. He said he would work in the little tool room over the corn crib by candlelight and have all the knives sharpened and the kettles mended by morning. But in the morning he was gone, and his cart and his donkey, and all the knives and pots and a lot of tools that were up there and some harness. The ghost didn't leave a thing of him. He got them right at midnight. You see, a ghost comes in like the wind and blows out the light. Then he gets you in the dark. And there was another one too a long time ago.”

  “Wasn't there anything left of him either?”

  “There sure was. There was everything left of him. He hanged himself up there.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don't know his name, but he had the same name as the dirty hired man and the tinker man. He was some kind of harvest hobo. They fired him over at Towner's, and they fired him over at Hofmeyer's and they put the dogs on him at Schnitzger's. He was kind of drunk and nutty. When he came here we had a hired man named Smitty then, and he gave him some more red-eye and told him to go sleep in the room over the corn crib. And at midnight the ghost came with a rope and made him hang himself.”

  “How do you know that the ghost made him do it? Maybe he hanged himself just because he wanted to.”

  “Gees, his eyes were bugged out when they cut him down. He was scared to death by the ghost all right. That ghost made about a dozen more hang themselves up there too.”

  “That many?”

  “Three or four anyway. You see, when the ghost was a man they hanged him. Somebody lied about him and got him hanged. This was a long time ago. So whatever the man's name was that lied about him, we don't know what his name was, whenever anyone of that name is in the country, something makes him come here and go to that little room. And at midnight the ghost gets him. He has a rope and tells them they can either hang themselves or if they won't do that he'll do something a hundred times worse to them.”

  “Why does he just keep it up on the one name?”

  “The ghost doesn't know what the man looked like that lied about him, he just knows what his last name was. They all had the same last name that something happened to. It might be any name. It might be yours!”

  “But why is old Shep afraid of the ghost?”

  “All dogs are afraid of ghosts. Once papa chained Shep up there with a log chain three inches thick. And at midnight he broke the chain and came howling to the house. There was a furrow in the ground from his tail, he had it so far between his legs.”

  Well, they wandered around the place all day, but there was always something to bring up the same story. There was a hammock in the hay meadow by the creek. “That's where one of them buried himself,” said Jimmy Laterdale. “He had to come down here and dig his own grave and bury himself. He'd have been better off if he'd have hanged himself without any nonsense.”

  “How did he cover himself after he was in the grave?”

  “Papa said he pulled the grave in after him, but I don't know how he did it either.”

  “Let's dig him up and see if there's really someone there.”

  “No sir. Anybody that digs down there doesn't walk away from here alive.”

  “Has anybody ever tried it?”

  “Everybody has better sense than to try it.”

  They worked a while mending the little dam to bring up the water level. And after the water in the hole was about waist deep they went swimming.

  “There was one of them drowned himself right here. It looks like it's shallow all the way, but sometimes there's a hole that isn't there all the time. And one of them went down in it. It doesn't have any bottom.”

  They went back to the house and loaded a couple of large cans of water on a hay rick to take them out to the fields. This was the last day of the threshing. They still threshed at that time.

  The father of Jimmy Laterdale gave them some more details as he cooled off.

  “It's about every seven years it happens, and always just on the last day of the threshing. It's been just seven years since we had one. I wouldn't be surprised if we had one tonight. I guess you boys better stay in bed after you go there tonight. I'd like to see you both at breakfast in the morning.”

  That night after supper they listened to the radio, and then they all played cards until it was late. On the last pot the rule was always that as soon as one lost his pile he had to go to bed. And then a couple of hours later:

  “What time is it?”

  “It's ten minutes till eleven.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Jorgensen's red calf starts to bawl at ten. And at ten thirty the windmill makes a groan as the wind shifts, and that was twenty minutes ago. We can tell when it's eleven, the little Ford always pulls away from Kenyon's then it backfires.”

  “I'll go out if you will.”

  “All right. We can go out at eleven and stay for fifty-nine minutes and leav
e before the ghost gets there.”

  They went out the window and onto the roof and down a pillar.

  They got a lantern in the milk shed and went out to the little room above the corn crib.

  “I don't have anything to worry about. My name is Laterdale. We live here and the ghost never hurts us. But what if the name of all of them is your name? Boy, you gotta hang yourself then.”

  “I'm not afraid of it. I only believe about half of it anyhow.”

  They listened while the hoot owl sounded in the brake, which it always did at a quarter after eleven. They heard the old jack snort in the lot as he always did at eleven-thirty. And when the younger dogs scented weasel and gave voice they knew it was a quarter to twelve. “We'd better each get one foot on the ladder so we can get down fast when he comes.”

  “Will we leave the lantern on?”

  “Leave it on? When he comes he'll blow it out and then we can run. Like as not Shep will howl two seconds before he comes and that'll give us time to get away.”