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

by R. A. Lafferty

  And I met Margaret, one of the “girl” singers. I had been wondering to which type of people I might show affinity. Now I knew. I was definitely a Beta type, for I was attracted to Margaret, who was unmistakably a Gamma. I began to understand the queer effect that these types have on each other.

  She came over to my cage.

  “I want to rub your head for luck before I go on,” she said.

  “Thank you, Margaret,” I replied, “but that is not my head.”

  She sang with incomparable sadness, with all the sorrow and sordidness that appear to be the lot of the unfortunate Gammas. It was the essence of melancholy made into music. It was a little bit like the ghost music of the asteroid Artemis, a little like the death chants on Dolmena. Sex and sorrow. Nostalgia. Regret.

  Her singing shook me with a yearning that had no precedent.

  She came back to my cage.

  “You were wonderful, Margaret,” I said.

  “I'm always wonderful when I'm singing for my supper. I am less wonderful in the rare times when I am well fed. But are you happy, little buddy?”

  “I had become almost so, till I heard you sing. Now I am overcome with a sorrow and longing. Margaret, I am fascinated with you.”

  “I go for you too, blob. You're my buddy. Isn't it funny that the only buddy I have in the world is a blob. But if you'd seen some of the guys I've been married to — boy! I wouldn't insult you by calling them blobs. Have to go now. See you tomorrow night if they keep us both on.”

  Now there was a problem to face. It was necessary that I establish control over my environment, and at once. How else could I aspire to Margaret? I knew that the heart of the entire place here was neither the bar nor the entertainment therein, nor the cuisine, nor the dancing. The heart of the enterprise was the casino. Here was the money that mattered; the rest was but garnish.

  I had them bring me into the gambling rooms.

  I had expected problems of complexity here where the patrons worked for their gain or loss. Instead there was an almost amazing simplicity. All the games were based on a system of first aspect numbers. Indeed everything on the Planet Florida seemed based on first aspect numbers.

  Now it is an elemental fact that first aspect numbers do not carry within them their own prediction. Nor were the people even possessed of the prediction key that lies over the very threshold of the second aspect series.

  These people were actually wagering sums — the symbols of prosperity — blindly, not knowing for sure whether they would win or lose. They were selecting numbers by hunch or at random with no assurance of profit. They were choosing a hole for a ball to fall into without knowing whether that was the right hole.

  I do not believe that I was ever so amazed at anything in my life. But here was an opportunity to establish control over my environment.

  I began to play the games. Usually I would watch a round first, to be sure that I understood just what was going on. Then I would play a few times… as many as it took to break the game.

  I broke game after game. When he could no longer pay me, Blackjack closed the casino in exasperation.

  Then we played poker, he and I and several others. This was even more simple. I suddenly realized that the grub-people could see only one side of the cards at a time.

  I played and won.

  I owned the casino now, and all of those people were now working for me. Billy Wilkins also played with us, and in short order I also owned the Reptile Ranch.

  Before the evening was over, I owned a race-track, a beach hotel, and a theatre in a place named New York. I had, in sufficient extent for my purpose, established control over my environment…

  Later. Now started the golden days. I increased my control and did what I could for my friends. I got a good doctor for my friend and roommate the python, and he was now receiving treatment for his indigestion. I got a jazzy sports car for my friend Eustace imported from somewhere called Italy. And I buried Margaret in mink, for she had a fix on the fur of that mysterious animal. She enjoyed draping it about her in the form of coats, capes, cloaks, mantles, and stoles, though the weather didn't really require it.

  I had now won several banks, a railroad, an airline, and a casino in somewhere named Havana.

  “You are somebody now,” said Margaret. “You really ought to dress better. Or are you dressed? I never know. I don't know if part of that is clothes or if all of it is you. But at least I've learned which is your head. I think we should be married in May. It's so common to be married in June. Just imagine me being Mrs. George Albert Leroy Ellery McIntosh! You know, we have become quite an item. And do you know there are three biographies of you out, Burgeoning Blob; The Blob from Way Out; The Hidden Hand Behind the Blob, What Does It Portend? And the Governor has invited us to dine tomorrow. I do wish you would learn to eat. If you weren't so nice, you'd be creepy. I always say there's nothing wrong with marrying a man, or a blob, with money. It shows foresight on the part of a girl. You know you will have to get a blood test? You had better get it tomorrow. You do have blood, don't you?”

  I did, but not, of course, of the color and viscosity of hers. But I could give it that color and viscosity temporarily. And it would react negative in all the tests.

  She mused, “They are all jealous of me. They say they wouldn't marry a blob. They mean they couldn't. Do you have to carry that tin ball with you all the time?”

  “Yes. It is my communication sphere. In it I record my thoughts. I would be lost without it.”

  “Oh, like a diary. How quaint.”

  Yes, those were the golden days. The grubs now appeared to me in a new light, for was not Margaret also a grub? Yet she seemed not so unfinished as the rest. Though lacking a natural outer covering, yet she had not the appearance of crawling out from under a rock. She was quite an attractive “girl.” And she cared for me.

  What more could I wish? I was affluent. I was respected. I was in control of my environment. And I could aid my friends of whom I had now acquired an astonishing number.

  Moreover my old space-ineptitude sickness had left me. I never felt better in my life. Ah, golden days, one after the other like a pleasant dream. And soon I am to be married.

  IV

  There has been a sudden change. As on the Planet Hecube, where full summer turns into the dead of winter in minutes, to the destruction of many travelers, so was it here. My world is threatened! It is tottering, all that I have built up. I will fight. I will fight. I will have the best lawyers on the planet. I am not done. But I am threatened…

  Later. This may be the end. The appeal court has given its decision. A blob may not own property in Florida. A blob is not a person.

  Of course I am not a person. I never pretended to be. But I am a personage. I will yet fight this thing…

  Later. I have lost everything. The last appeal is gone. By definition I am an animal of indeterminate origin, and my property is being completely stripped from me.

  I made an eloquent appeal — and it moved them greatly. There were tears in their eyes. But there was greed in the set of their mouths. They have a vested interest in stripping me. Each will seize a little.

  And I am left a pauper, a vassal, an animal, a slave. This is always the last doom of the marooned, to be a despised alien at the mercy of a strange world.

  Yet it should not be hopeless. I will have Margaret. Since my contract with Billy Wilkins and Blackjack Bracken, long since bought up, is no longer in effect, Margaret should be able to handle my affairs as a person. I believe that I have great earning powers yet, and I can win as much as I wish by gambling. We will treat this as only a technicality. We shall acquire new fortune. I will re-establish control over my environment. I will bring back the golden days. A few of my old friends are still loyal to me, Margaret, Pete the python, Eustace…

  Later. The world has caved in completely. Margaret has thrown me over. “I'm sorry, blobby,” she said, “but it just won't work. You're still nice, but without money you are only
a blob. How would I marry a blob?”

  “But we can earn more money. I am talented.”

  “No, you're box-office poison now. You were a fad, and fads die quickly.”

  “But Margaret, I can win as much as I wish by gambling.”

  “Not a chance, blobby. Nobody will gamble with you any more. You're through, blob. I will miss you, though. There will be a new blue note in my ballads when I sing for my supper, after the mink coats are all gone. Bye now.”

  “Margaret, do not leave me. What of all our golden days together?”

  But all she said was “bye now.”

  And she was gone forever.

  I am desolate and my old space-ineptitude sickness has returned. My recovery was an illusion. I am so ill with awkwardness that I can no longer fly. I must crawl on the ground like one of the giant grubs. A curse on this planet Florida, and all its sister orbs! What a miserable world this is! How could I have been taken in by a young Gamma type of the walking grub? Let her crawl back under her ancestral rocks with all the rest of her kind… No, no, I do not mean that. To me she will always remain a dream, a broken dream.

  I am no longer welcome at the casino. They kicked me down the front steps.

  I no longer have a home at the Reptile Ranch.

  “Mr. George Albert,” said Eustace, “I just can't afford to be seen with you any more. I have my position to consider, with a sport car and all that.”

  And Pete the python was curt.

  “Well, big shot, I guess you aren't so big after all. And you were sure no friend of mine. When you had that doctor cure me of my indigestion, you left me with nothing but my bad conscience. I wish I could get my indigestion back.”

  “A curse on this world,” I said.

  “World, world, water, water, glug, glug,” said the turtles in their tanks, my only friends.

  So I have gone back into the woods to die. I have located my ejection mortar, and when I know that death is finally on me, I will fire off my communication sphere and hope it will reach the Galactic drift. Whoever finds it — friend, space traveler, you who were too impatient to remain on your own world — be you warned of this one! Here ingratitude is the rule and cruelty the main sport. The unfinished grubs have come out from under their rocks and they walk this world upside down with their heads in the air. Their friendship is fleeting, their promises are like the wind.

  I am near my end.

  The Wagons

  “But when did they have them first? Did they always have them? Who were the first ones to have them?” “To have what?”

  “The wagons. Did they always have wagons?”

  “I guess they almost always had them. They had them a long time.”

  “Did the Indians have them?”

  “No. Not at first. They didn't have the horse or wagon either at first. But they had the one almost as soon as the other.”

  “Did the Spanish have them?”

  “Yes, they always had them. They used pack mules too. But they also used the wagon. Why do you ask?”

  “Every night after the fire dies down I hear wagons going along the ridge. They sound like real old wagons and I can never find the tracks in the morning. Is that an old wagon road along the ridge?”

  “Yes, I think that is an old wagon road. They often went along the ridge just below the sky line.”

  Jimmy was nine, and Jim was twenty years older. They both liked to camp out all summer. They traveled in a Ford pickup with an extra drum of gas in the back. They slept on the ground in their rolls and lived on coffee and bacon and flapjacks. They fished in the holes under the cottonwoods and shot jackrabbits and prairie dogs. The father and son were very close on these trips. And they went to ground in the short grass and brush country as though they had lived there for hundreds of years.

  “Did they always go west — the wagons?”

  “Why no, Jimmy, they couldn't always go west. They went in all directions.”

  “It seems to me they must have gone west most of the time.”

  Jimmy hacked out brush with a cradle and bolo. He gathered buffalo chips and cow chips. It was always his job to build the campfire.

  “Was there ever a town at Cielito?”

  “Yes, there was a little town there once I think, a tent town or a cabin town. I have heard that there was a little town there.”

  “I don't mean a little town. I mean a big town with square after square and wagons solid around them. Was there a big wagon town there a long time ago?”

  “I don't know, Jimmy. I never heard of it.”

  “Was there a different kind of wagon that didn't have the same sort of tongue? It had a different creak, and the horses didn't sound the same way when they stomp.”

  “There were the ox wagons. They were hitched higher and rolled more. And on very early wagons the front wheels did not pivot and the tongue was pegged some way to the under carriage or axle itself. And a very long time ago the wagons were pulled by Onagers and Przewalski horses.”

  “That's the kind of horses. That's what I hear at night.”

  They had cuervo to eat. They rigged it on a spit to roast. It wasn't so bad if you called it cuervo. Lots of birds are all dark meat. All the wild birds are all dark meat. If you want chicken you can eat it at home.

  “What did the Spanish call the wagons?”

  “Carro.”

  “That's a cart, that isn't a wagon.”

  “Carro grande.”

  “That's a big cart. A big cart isn't a wagon. They're different.”

  “I don't know what they called them then, Jimmy.”

  “I think they probably had a long name with a squeak in the middle. Were the wagons always covered?”

  “I guess they were covered for a long time.”

  “I think they had tents on wagons before they had them anywhere else. I think they had houses on wagons before they had them anywhere else. I guess those were the first houses.”

  “They had them a long time ago.”

  “Do you think Cielito had another name once?”

  “I never heard of it if it had.”

  “I think that once it was called Hammadj or Plaustrumopolis.”

  “Where did you get names like that, Jimmy?”

  “I just remembered them. I remember a lot of things like that. I'm pretty sure the wagon town was called a name like those. Could we go to Cielito in the morning and camp there tomorrow night?”

  “Yes, we'll go there if you want to. There would be water there.”

  “Yes, there would have to be water there if they had all those horses there at one time.”

  “All what horses?”

  “Why, if they had about ten thousand wagons there every night, a lot of them would have four or six or even eight horses. That would be a lot of horses.”

  “That would be quite a few, Jimmy. There is an old windmill about a mile from here and you can hear it creak at night. That may be the sound you think is wagons.”

  “No, I know where that old windmill is. And I know where there's a second one that you don't know about. But that's not what I hear for the wagons. If I couldn't tell wagons from windmills I'd turn in my ears.”

  “You'd look funny without them, Jimmy.”

  “I look funny with them too. I don't believe you believe I hear the wagons at all.”

  “Yes, I think you hear them, Jimmy.”

  After supper Jimmy told his father a story about prairie dogs.

  “You think you know all about them but I bet you don't even know this. You see, in the very middle of every prairie dog town and about four feet down there is a pile of gold. The reason that the prairie dogs have little pouches in the sides of their cheeks is so they can carry the nuggets. All the prairie dog burrows in a town are connected and they all go back to the gold pile. Now this is the way it is run. When an owl comes to eat a prairie dog, the prairie dog has to give him one gold nugget to keep from being eaten. That's the only way they can do it, for the owl can go down the
holes too and see in the dark. When the rattlesnake comes to eat a prairie dog, the prairie dog has to give him two nuggets. That's the only way it can work. If they ever run out of gold, then pretty soon they will run out of prairie dogs. Sometimes you will see an old prairie dog town that is deserted. What happened is that they ran out of gold and were all eaten.”

  “What do the owls and rattlesnakes do with the gold?”

  “Different things. Sometimes the owls give it to the crows to keep them from pestering them in the daytime. Sometimes the rattlesnakes give it to the bull snakes to leave them alone. The rattlesnakes are afraid of the bull snakes.”

  “Well who gets the gold finally?”

  “Old sharpies, snake hunters and crow hunters, and coyote hunters. The coyotes get gold from both the snakes and the crows for not killing them. There are coyote hunters that people wonder how they make a living they kill so few coyotes and the bounty is so low. They don't kill hardly any coyotes, but they sure do get a lot of gold.”

  “Where did you get a story like that?”

  “I got it from a primitive. You remember the little Mexican at the store in Aguila that I talked to while you were buying supplies? He told me that story. He was pretty primitive. You said that when you get stories from the primitives themselves they are most likely to be authentic.”

  “Yes, I think your story is authentic.”

  Jimmy got out his guitar. He couldn't play very well but he liked to try. He played and sang Cattle Call, Rye Whisky, Wagon Wheels, Camp Town Race Track, Chisholm Trail, Wagon Wheels, Frankie and Johnny, Red Wing, Way Out West In Kansas, Wagon Wheels, Streets of Laredo, Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Golden Slippers, Wagon Wheels, Blue Tail Fly, Hot Time in the Old Town, Way Back in the Hills, Wagon Wheels, Blues in the Night, Wabash Cannon Ball, Wreck of the Old Ninety-Seven, Wagon Wheels, Empty Saddles, In a Little Spanish Town, The Old Grey Goose is Dead, Sweet Geneveve, Wagon Wheels, Ramona, Tree in the Meadow, Mule Train, Wild Goose Song, Wagon Wheels. He sang about an hour and a half. Then he did Wagon Wheels once more, and afterwards rolled up in his blanket and went to sleep.