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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Then he killed him.

  Donald Dalton had always been the richest man in town. He had been heir to much of the town's property from the day of his birth, and he inherited fully when he reached his majority. He wasn't a bad man; overbearing it's true, and vain to the point of offence; mule-headed and smug. Yet he was a cheerful man with a clattering laugh. It was just that he had the strange facility of souring those about him. He had four sons; three and a half really — Harold wasn't much of a son. Then there was Eugene, Carl J., and Donny, counting down by ages. Harold outraged what moral sense Donald had, and he did have a little. Eugene was a good man, and yet good for nothing; which is to say that he wasn't too competent. He was the only one who tended to business, and yet he wasn't good at it. Carl J. was a dude. And Donny was a wanderer.

  “I have four sons,” Donald said once, “a leecher, a nincompoop, a peacock, and a rolling stone. Yet it's mostly my fault. I am a little bit of all four myself. I haven't had the opportunity to leech or roll as much as I'd have liked. And I conquered an early tendency towards stupidity, though it was quite a struggle. I am somewhat proud of my appearance; why shouldn't I be?”

  For Donald Dalton had some talent for self-criticism, but he didn't overdo it. Really the only one in the family worth a second look was Betty Jo, the daughter of Eugene and granddaughter of Donald Dalton. We always did like that girl.

  Among the buildings that Dalton owned was a large frame structure on the corner of Main and Missouri Streets. This housed a furniture store, an appliance store, a plumbing and electric shop, a shoe shop, an undertaking establishment, and a termite exterminator business. The peculiarity of these firms was that they all interconnected; and they had but one proprietor, George Grimoire. For it was a small town and none of those businesses could of itself support a man. Sometimes, particularly in the summer, George had a boy to help him. More often not.

  George would sell you a sofa, new or used, bottom a chair, fix a radio or a faucet, half-sole your shoes, bury your grandmother, or exterminate your pests. He was a busy man, but he remained a poor one. All he made went for rent to Donald Dalton; for cigars, whiskey chops and ribs, a new suit on the even numbered years; and interest (again to Donald Dalton) on a loan that was a consolidation of several earlier loans. He lost a dollar a week shooting pool, a dollar a week playing dominoes, and anywhere from one-eighty-five to two-fifty a week playing poker. He ate well, dressed well, and enjoyed his cronies. Being a careful man with no vices he was able to make out. A less careful man would not have been able to make it in that town.

  It is true that he did not pay his bills to the plumbing suppliers or the furniture wholesalers; but nearly every year there are salesmen through there for new firms, and it is fair game to clip them all once.

  Doctor Land, Donald Dalton, and George Grimoire sat one night and talked over the whiskey. It was not Dalton's whiskey. He had learned one thing: that a rich man only remained rich by doing his talking over a poor man's whiskey. “The Doctor gives me a month to live, George,” said Donald Dalton.

  “The Doctor has it not to give,” said George Grimoire hollowly. He had developed his hollow voice; it was his undertaker's voice. He had also developed his salesman's voice, his tradesman's voice, his cobbler's voice, his termite exterminator's voice, his upholsterer's voice like old velvet. But privately he himself liked his somberly echoing undertaker's voice best, and this he used with his cronies over the whiskey.

  “No, I don't have it to give, George,” said Doctor Land, “but am a canny man with an estimate. I will bet a quart of the present that I do not miss by more than three days the time till you have Donald stretched on this very table.” For it was the laying-out table on which they drank.

  “Done,” said George Grimoire. It sounded like the croak of a sepulchral frog when he said it.

  “I wish that there were some way I could enter the bet,” said Donald Dalton. “I hate to be excluded from my own death bet. If the Doctor wins I will have little chance of sharing it. But if he loses by too much and I outlive the month by three days, I will be here to drink half of it, Grimoire, though it is the last I ever drink. And if he loses by too little, and I do not even last the month less three days, I ask you to breach the bottle here in my dead presence, Grimoire. Who knows but I may raise up a hand for that last drink. I believe that a man dies last in his drinking hand and esophagus.”

  “You may be right,” said Doctor Land. “Have you made a will?”

  “Four of them. Four undated holographic wills, each one giving all to one of the sons. As you see I play no favorites. And they are in the possession of the only honest member of the family, my granddaughter Betty-Jo, so none of them will be prematurely destroyed. There will be hell to pay when they try to settle things.” And he gave his clattering laugh so that both of the other men winced.

  “I had hoped that you would do a little for me,” said Doctor Land. “I have attended you faithfully for many years.”

  “Yet I've suffered years of pain for my youthful follies, and you have not been able to alleviate them. Nor can you now give me even an extra day of life. Were one to start lavishing bounty on Doctors, the whole roots of the world would be upturned.”

  “I also have hoped,” said George Grimoire, “though it is true that I hope without hope, that you might help me. I have paid a burdensome rent to you for many years. A hundred dollars a month for a row of stores is quite steep. Should I not take my bond and quickly write fifty? Who knows, we may gain you a little merit along the way by the act.”

  “If I am an unjust steward (and I am) I at least have the virtue of consistency. The rents will not be abated one jot. And it pleases me to prove one proverb wrong. I have squeezed quite a bit of blood out of turnips in my day. And George, old turnip, you must still bleed for my quarreling sons after I am gone.”

  Then he gave that clattering laugh again. When it hit you the wrong way it was really quite an offensive sound.

  Well, as it happened, George Grimoire the undertaker won the bet from Doctor Land. Donald Dalton died in twenty-seven days, and it was a thirty-one day month. So that was that. Grimoire collected the quart of whiskey from Doctor Land, and the body of Donald Dalton from his heirs. He placed both on the laying-out table with a sheet over the one and an old hat over the other. He had other things to do.

  He had that day to re-wicker an old chair. He was one of the last of the really good wicker men. He had to go and put in an outlet in the kitchen of Mrs. Thorndyke whose son had sent her an electric coffee pot. He had a radio to fix before a twilight program, and shoes to cobble. He had a rat killing job and a locksmithing job. He had a picture to frame and a small chest to refinish, both of which he had promised to have ready the first thing in the morning. So it was quite late at night when he returned to Dalton and the whiskey.

  He stripped the corpse and he uncorked the bottle. He made one small incision, and he had one small shot. Then he began to assemble all the tools of his trade.

  A long time ago he had learned the undertaker's trade (as well as the saddler's trade which he now seldom used) from an old Switzer. Now he remembered oddly as he took his second shot a caution that his old master had taught him.

  ‘If you follow the trade, once in your life it will happen to you. When it happens, if you have enough years in and are rich enough, the wisest thing is to give it up. And if you aren't rich enough, the wisest thing is to put it out of your mind completely and not to live with it. Of course, there are those it doesn't bother.’

  It was a chilly old thirty-one day month, and the town that was hardly a town faded away at night; and the old shackeldy building stood up and trembled in a storm-tossed wilderness.

  “It's not worth a hundred dollars a month, big as it is,” said Grimoire. “It's a badly made and noisy building. And as sure as my name is George Grimoire there is one noise here that I don't like. But how can I be sure unless I look? And if I look, the few remaining hairs that I have are likely to raise
out of my head. I can't chance a look till I've had another shot, and the blasted whiskey is with him.”

  He reached behind him and got the bottle. He had a drink and it calmed him a little.

  “ ‘If you follow the trade once in your life it will happen to you’, he told me. Well, so it is happening. What then?”

  For he knew that the dead man on the table had stirred.

  “After all, I am an undertaker. No man should fear the simple hazards of his own trade. I say, Donald, don't overdo it!”

  He faced around to the quasi-dead man. Yes, he had writhed and moved.

  But that was nothing to what happened now. There can be nothing more unnerving than to watch a dead man sit up; and this Dalton did, though with some difficulty. It was chilling.

  “We all but traded places there, Donald,” said George Grimoire, “and at the moment I am not sure which of us is the deadest. I will acknowledge that I have never been so frightened in my life. Yet there is no way you can hurt me, and there is every way I can hurt you…”

  Dalton was breathing with a sort of trembling wheeze. His eyes were opened, though dull; and in that moment it might still have been possible to have saved his life. He even reached out a stark shaking hand, though blindly.

  “Do you know something, Dalton, Doctor Land really won the bet. For it's after midnight and you're still alive. But he's a poor doctor to have certified a live man dead. I feel myself under no compulsion of returning the whiskey to him. I shall not tell him about it, and I doubt if you will. Now I remember that you said a man's drinking hand and esophagus die last. You said also that you might raise up a dead hand for a last drink. Here, I will give it to you and see if you can take it.”

  But it was Grimoire who was quite incapable of lifting or passing the bottle. There was something the matter with his own hand. He was trembling in pitiful fashion. He talked aimlessly to the once-dead man to work up his courage. But he was as frightened as a man can be.

  “I have always believed that you mistreated me, Dalton. I have, in fact, always been afraid of you, as are the poor of those with money. But I will have you for all that. I can let you die. Possibly I can save you. Or I can kill you. And for the full irony of it I have to kill you. I hope you can hear me.”

  Dalton may have heard him. He moaned; and his eyes (though still dull) had now some sort of recognition in them.

  “This will be a perfect murder, Donald. Who could ever suspect an undertaker of killing a man already dead? I will bleed you to death and eviscerate you. And what is wrong with that? Is that not the way you should end up? Do not all leave my table so? I will pump fluid into you, but not too much. For I'll tell you a secret now: I have always been a penny-pinching undertaker.

  “There is absolutely no way on earth that your murder could be suspected, traced, or proved. I will have performed the impossible, the perfect murder. Ah, now I see that you begin to understand me. You even plead a little with your eyes. I would be disappointed if you did not. And you are quite horrified are you not, old bat? The esophagus is not quite dead — but do you call that little croak a scream? Surely you can make more noise than that? No? Well, so much the better.”

  Grimoire said other things to Dalton then as he recovered his own courage. And, after he had bantered him a while, he opened his veins and killed him.

  He worked rapidly over the dead man then, for it was late at night, and he was tired and anxious to get it over with. He was a little disturbed by the look of horror on the finally-dead Dalton's face. From inside the mouth he cut into the cheek tendons and made them relax. And he loosened the taunt throat with several small incisions.

  “What have I forgotten? Nothing. What is there to forget? Not even a medical detective could find anything wrong, outside of my usual sloppy work. He could in no way discern murder here.”

  But Grimoire was wrong on that. A good medical detective would have been able to discern murder; if only he had examined the right man.

  Well, they buried Dalton in the morning. There was no question about anything except one odd one that Betty-Jo asked.

  “Mr. Grimoire, he was so serene appearing after he had just died. Now he looks frightened. How? Why?”

  “Miss Dalton, the dead never really look serene. They have put on the mask.”

  “Yes, he was serene then. He is not now.”

  She gazed at the card on the wall: ‘In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die, but they are in peace.’ George Grimoire had many pious quotations on the wall.

  “His face has changed, Mr. Grimoire. How could it have changed?” insisted Betty-Jo.

  “I am sure you are wrong.”

  “I am not wrong. How could it have happened?”

  “Well, there are such things as spasms post mortem that can affect the appearance. And then there is a general stiffness of face as well as body that sets in and seems to give a harsher expression.”

  “Spasms? You mean after he was dead? You mean he came back to life?”

  “Good God no! It is purely a mechanical reaction induced mostly by gas. With death the body becomes a broken machine; but sometimes it creaks a little as it settles.”

  “I see.”

  But it may be that she did not see completely. Or it may be that she saw too much.

  “Is it possible that it was not perfect after all?” asked Grimoire of himself. “Could I myself be giving it away?”

  But anyhow he was relieved when Donald Dalton was covered up for good.

  Grimoire did not work that day. Instead he locked up his enterprises and went to bed to rest. And late in the afternoon when he rose, and washed, and shaved, he discovered a thing about himself. One hand had lost its cunning (he had suspected this the night before); and his face appeared in the mirror to be asymmetrical.

  One side was drawn and dull.

  “I am not a doctor, though I may be as good as Doctor Land. This is easily read. I suffered a slight stroke in the excitement of last night and it has left its mark on me. I will never be quite the same.”

  He felt badly. He thought of calling Dalton to come and have a drink with him, as he often did when he was low. Then he remembered that Dalton would not be coming anymore.

  “The stroke may also have touched my brain a little. I am addled.”

  It was three days later that Eugene Dalton came to see him: Eugene who was a good man, and yet good for nothing. But he soon revealed that he had been misjudged, and that he was not a good man at all. “I will come to the point at once, Mr. Grimoire. I am a blunt man.”

  “No you are only a dull man, Eugene. There is a difference.”

  “My father left me everything in a clear will.”

  “Why tell me?”

  “But there are complications.”

  “Yes, your father left three other wills, one for each son. He was a remarkably impartial man.”

  “He must have been a remarkably forgetful man, though I hadn't thought so.”

  “No, he was not forgetful. It was quite intentional.”

  “But why?”

  “A legacy of chaos. Perhaps he did not want you to quickly forget his unique personality, so he left a bit of it with you.”

  “Well, I am the most deserving son. I should have it, and I mean to get it by fair ways or cloudy. On this matter I approached Dr. Land with a reasonable bargain. He rejected it. I was amazed to find that he was an honest man. With you I trust that I will not be so amazed.”

  “What is the bargain?”

  “My father always treated you badly and overcharged you for years on the rent.”

  “Never mind the palaver. What is the bargain?”

  “I believe that in simple justice the building should go to you.”

  “What is the bargain?”

  “If I inherit, I will immediately deed it to you.”

  “What is the bargain?”

  “That you help me inherit.”

  “How?”

  “Dr. Land refused a simple suggesti
on and so lost a part of the inheritance by his stubbornness. His loss can be your gain.”

  “Avarice and doubt have started a little war in me, son. Pull the cork out of the proposition and let it bubble. We are alone.”

  “Dr. Land was alone with my father when he died, and had been so on and off for several hours. What more easy than a simple sworn statement by the doctor that my father in one of his last rational moments had wished to clarify the confusion of a multiplicity of wills, and name that which was to be authentic?”

  “What more easy? And the doctor refused a simple thing like that for a consideration? I would not have refused had I had his opportunity.”

  “You have it. We will change the roles. We will make you the man who was with my father when he really died. And to you he made the avowal.”

  “I am an old man, Eugene, and I cannot smell a trap as I once did. And I have always wondered one thing about you: are you a little smarter or a little stupider than you appear?”

  “A little smarter, Mr. Grimoire, a little smarter. There is such a thing as a man being certified as dead who is in a trance and not dead. It would be possible for him to come briefly conscious in the presence of the undertaker and to talk rationally.”

  “In half a century in the trade I haven't met such a case.”

  “Then meet it now. It would be much easier for you to own this building than to pay rent on it.”

  “Is that a stick you have in your hand behind you?”

  “Both my hands are on the table here. Is your eyesight failing? Oh, I see what you mean. Have I a threat that I am holding back? Perhaps.”

  “Or did I just now hand you the stick for you to grab, and to figure out later what it is?”

  “It may be so.”

  “Is Betty-Jo in on this?”

  “Naturally not. My daughter would not touch such a thing. She is too honest. I don't know where she gets it. She had all four wills in her possession and could have destroyed three of them to my advantage, and did not. A perfidious offspring if ever there was one.”