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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Show them in, spook Duke, the mayor is always available to his constituents.”

  “Constituents these are not,” said the Lob. “They are washed-out pale fellows, but they are solid.”

  “And one of those kegs of theirs got a smell I like, Mayor,” said the Sky. “I believe I remember that smell like it was born in me. You get that keg, Mayor.”

  “And those long crates got a heft I like,” said the Wideman. “I almost know what will be in those crates. You get those crates, Mayor.”

  “Those square boxes got a feel I like,” said the Lob. “I almost know what short-handled things will be in those square boxes. And the smallest package has a brass glint through a rip in it. You get those square boxes and that smallest package, Mayor.”

  “I don't understand this at all,” said John the mayor, rolling his red-rimmed eves in his constant pain. “Let the men and their baggage come in.”

  The three new men who came in had a certain animal power about them, and a certain human authority. Possibly they might be important enough to hold for hostages, but who was going to take the lead in holding them? Men, they moved like big cats. But they were dressed like businessmen of an earlier decade, an anomaly on the island, and they were lighter than any of the islanders there except Lawrence Sky. “You are the Mayor John-John?” asked one of the new men. “And you have authority to deal?”

  “I am the mayor,” said John, “and I have such authority as a shackled prisoner may have. For what do we deal?”

  “Oh, for the island. We've come to buy it. You'd like that, wouldn't you?”

  “What, what, who are you?”

  “I am Adrian Sweetsong,” said the first of the new men. “I'm a petroleum geologist by profession, which has nothing to do with the matter. And I'm an official of the Midlands Gun and Rod Club.”

  “I'm Dennis Halftown,” said the second of the new men. “I'm an electronic engineer by profession, which has nothing to do with the matter either. And I'm also an official of the Midlands Gun and Rod Club.”

  “I'm Freddy Flatfish,” said the third of the new men. “I'm a lawyer, which does have something to do with this matter. I am also an official of the Midlands Gun and Rod Club, and I have studied the legal aspects of this thing pretty thoroughly.”

  “Is it the Midlands Gun and Rod Club that is dealing for the island?” Mayor John asked.

  “That's right,” said Adrian Sweetsong, the first of the new men. “First installment! Set'em right there, boys.”

  Several of the colts, the strong rough island boys, set down two heavy square boxes, and Dennis Halftown (the second of the new men) broke them open with a pry-bar.

  “Man-eating Millie! Those things are for me!” the Lolo gasped, and she had a couple of them out in her hands.

  “Sweet little choppies!” the Sky drooled. “What's a knife along side of one of those?”

  “Hack-berry pudding!” cried the Cloud as he returned from his errand. “Here, here, they look good, let's get them tested. I'll just pass a dozen of those out the windows to some of the boys. Let them try them out! Let them fall in love with them!”

  “Fifty hatchets,” announced Adrian Sweetsong, “delivered and accepted. We record them.”

  “Wait! Wait!” howled Mayor John jangling his shackles. “What have fifty hatchets to do with dealing for the island? Who has used hatchets for a century?”

  “One-leg John,” the Duke crooned, “too bad your shackles won't let you get as far as the window. Some of the boys are using them now. Believe me, John, they're using them now!”

  “Mr. Sweetsong,” Mayor John explained patiently, “the last valuation of island property ever made set it at over a hundred billion dollars. Due to certain developments, it may be down a little now, but not that far. Hatchets will not get it. I can sell it only for Fair Value or Value Justified. My own shackling is governed by the Equity Factor.”

  “We know that, Mr. Mayor,” said Freddy Flatfish, the lawyer for the Midlands Gun and Rod Club. Freddy Flatfish was a tow-headed, twinkling man. “But the island has reverted. It's really worthless since it was left to the ten thousand gangs, which have since devoured themselves down to a hundred. Perhaps its reverted value is now its original value. Anyhow, the first approach was yours.”

  “Mine? Mine? I made no approach. I never heard of you fellows,” the Mayor said.

  “But we have monitored you, Mayor John. Two years ago you said to the commissioner ‘Can't we give it back to someone?’ And you are also recorded as saying ‘We ought to sell it back to—’ ”

  “Second installment!” announced Adrian Sweetsong. “Set them right there, boys.”

  Several of the colts set down the long crates, and Dennis Halftown broken them open with his pry-bar.

  “Oh, those long sweet songs!” the Wideman slavered. “Smooth bores! You can jam them with any kind of soup at all and pan-light them. You can shoot broken glass with them. You can shoot anything. Here, we'll just hand a few of them out the windows and let the fellows try them out. Get the heft of those things! Even as clubs your hands would fall in love with them! Blunderbusses!” And the Wideman handed half a dozen of them out the windows.

  “Twenty guns,” announced Adrian Sweetsong. “Delivered and accepted. We record them.”

  “Even if it were possible for me to deal the island for things of no value,” John the mayor began—and there was deep-throated roaring and death-screaming in the streets—

  “No value, Mayor?” the Duke Durango asked with deep irony. “Mayor, you should be able to watch them. They jam them with soup, and then ram in glass and nails for a load. They spark them off, and it's wonderful. Cuts people right in two. Don't talk no value about those things!”

  “Even if it were possible for me to deal the island for such things, what could the Midlands Gun and Rod Club possibly do with the island?” Mayor John asked.

  “Set up a hunting preserve,” Adrian Sweetsong said. “It's a nicely stocked jungle island seventeen miles by four. We'll hunt. We'll hunt.”

  “Hunt? What would you hunt?” the mayor wanted to know.

  “Big game, big game,” said Dennis Halftown lovingly.

  “But there is no big game, no game at all on the island,” the mayor insisted.

  “Remember what ancient Hemingway wrote,” said Freddy Flatfish. “ ‘There is no sport equal to the hunting of an armed man.’ Ah, we'll hunt them here, as will many of our well-heeled members.”

  “Third installment! Set it right there, boys,” Adrian Sweetsong ordered.

  The ragged island boys set down the bag, and Dennis Halftown broke it open with his pry-bar.

  “Boys, boys, that's the smell like was born in me!” the Sky chortled, and he had his arms up to the elbows in the dark grainy powder. “Sure it hasn't the power of soup. Sure it's clumsy and crude. But it's the grandpa of them all! The smell of it, the smell of it! Men, men, bust your noses on that smell!”

  “Twenty-five kilograms of gunpowder,” announced Adrian Sweetsong. “That's as close as we could figure it. Twenty-five kilos delivered and accepted. We record it.”

  “When you going to start, fellows, when you going to start?” the Duke asked the three new men in excitement, getting the idea. “How soon you be ready to start?” asked the Duke and the Sky and the Wideman and the Cloud and the Lolo, all going for it avidly.

  “Should be the first bunch of hunters here in the morning,” said Adrian Sweetsong.

  “Too long to wait,” the Lolo protested. “You three? How about you?”

  “We three will begin stalking and pot-shooting in a very few minutes,” said the Adrian, “just as soon as we can get title to this place from the reluctant mayor. We suggest you deploy your forces outside in the corridors. When we come out of this room we will come out rough, and it's rough animals we want to meet with.”

  “Rough it will be,” said the Cloud. “Colts, colts, you carry this stuff out to our place again just as soon as they have recorded it.
Men, we will have some sport! We will show these sports some sport!”

  “But this cannot be, even in a nightmare,” Mayor John protested. “You three pale-browns are not Wappingers or Manahattas, and we are not Dutch.”

  “I'm a Choctaw,” said Freddy Flatfish. “Dennis Halftown is a Shawnee. Adrian Sweetsong is an Osage. But we inherit. I have drawn up a legal brief to prove it. And you are double-Dutch if you don't accept. Awk, blew half my shoulder off! Those animals are jumping the gun. Now I know how the expression started. They really know how to handle those blunderbusses.”

  Freddy Flatfish had been shot by a blunderbuss blast from the corridor and was bleeding badly. So they hurried it along, anxious to close the bargain and get the hunting season started.

  “Bring them in fast, boys. Set them down till they are accepted and recorded. Then take them out again to your place,” Adrian Sweetsong ordered. And the rough colts brought in a variety of boxes and packages.

  “Ten shirts, accepted and recorded,” Adrian Sweetsong announced, hurriedly now. “Thirty pair socks, accepted and recorded. One hundred bullets, accepted and recorded. Forty kettles, accepted and recorded. One brass frying-pan, accepted and recorded.”

  And at the recording of the brass frying-pan, the leg-piercing pin was withdrawn from the leg of Mayor John and all his shackles fell off. The psychic-coded lock of his shackles had opened. He had finished his job and was released. He had disposed of the island in equity. He had gotten Fair Value for it, or Value Justified, or at least Original Value from Original Entailment. And it sufficed.

  Mayor John was free. He started to run from the room, fell down on his crippled leg, and arose and ran once more. And was caught in a blunderbuss blast.

  And then the great hunt began. The three members of the Midlands Gun and Rod Club had most sophisticated weapons. They were canny and smooth. This was the dangerous big-game hunt they had always dreamed of. And their prey were armed and wild and truculent and joyous.

  It would be good.

  Out between the orbs, several tentacles of Ultimate Justice came near together. “Was there not somewhere the mention of twenty-four or twenty-six dollars paid?” one tentacle asked the other. “I thought I remembered some such figure.”

  “No, no,” said the other tentacle, “That was only the estimated value placed on the material. There was no specie paid. The list is correct as rendered, and the repayment has been accepted and certified.”

  In a forgotten and half-filled basement on the island, two of the remaining old-folk people were still in hiding. They were startled by the new sort of noise. “What is it, papa? What have they done?” the old woman asked.

  “Sold it back to the Indians, mama,” the old man said.

  “Why have they not thought of that a long time ago?”

  The Hole On The Corner

  Homer Hoose came home that evening to the golden cliché: the un-noble dog who was a personal friend of his; the perfect house where just to live was a happy riot; the loving and unpredictable wife; and the five children — the perfect number (four more would have been too many, four less would have been too few). The dog howled in terror and bristled up like a hedgehog. Then it got a whiff of Homer and recognized him; it licked his heels and gnawed his knuckles and made him welcome. A good dog, though a fool. Who wants a smart dog!

  Homer had a little trouble with the doorknob. They don't have them in all the recensions, you know; and he had that off-the-track feeling tonight. But he figured it out (you don't pull it, you turn it), and opened the door.

  “Did you remember to bring what I asked you to bring this morning, Homer?” the loving wife Regina inquired.

  “What did you ask me to bring this morning, quick-heat blueberry biscuit of my heart?” Homer asked.

  “If I'd remembered, I'd have phrased it different when I asked if you remembered,” Regina explained. “But I know I told you to bring something, old ketchup of my soul. Homer! Look at me, Homer! You look different tonight! DIFFERENT!! You're not my Homer, are you! Help! Help! There's a monster in my house!! Help, help! Shriek!”

  “It's always nice to be married to a wife who doesn't understand you,” Homer said. He enfolded her affectionately, bore her down, trod on her with large friendly hooves, and began (as it seemed) to devour her.

  “Where'd you get the monster, Mama?” son Robert asked as he came in. “What's he got your whole head in his mouth for? Can I have one of the apples in the kitchen? What's he going to do, kill you, Mama?”

  “Shriek, shriek,” said Mama Regina. “Just one apple, Robert, there's just enough to go around. Yes, I think he's going to kill me. Shriek!”

  Son Robert got an apple and went outdoors.

  “Hi, Papa, what's you doing to Mama?” daughter Fregona asked as she came in. She was fourteen, but stupid for her age. “Looks to me like you're going to kill her that way. I thought they peeled people before they swallowed them. Why! You're not Papa at all, are you? You're some monster. I thought at first you were my papa. You look just like him except for the way you look.” “Shriek, shriek,” said Mama Regina, but her voice was muffled.

  They had a lot of fun at their house.

  Homer Hoose came home that evening to the golden cliché: the u.n.d.; the p.h.; and l. and u.w.; and the f.c. (four more would have been too many). The dog waggled all over him happily, and son Robert was chewing an apple core on the front lawn.

  “Hi, Robert,” Homer said, “what's new today?”

  “Nothing, Papa. Nothing ever happens here. Oh yeah, there's a monster in the house. He looks kind of like you. He's killing Mama and eating her up.”

  “Eating her up, you say, son? How do you mean?”

  “He's got her whole head in his mouth.”

  “Droll, Robert, mighty droll,” said Homer, and he went in the house.

  One thing about the Hoose children: a lot of times they told the bald-headed truth. There was a monster there. He was killing and eating the wife Regina. This was no mere evening antic. It was something serious.

  Homer the man was a powerful and quick-moving fellow. He fell on the monster with judo chops and solid body punches; and the monster let the woman go and confronted the man.

  “What's with it, you silly oaf?” the monster snapped. “If you've got a delivery, go to the back door. Come punching people in here, will you? Regina, do you know who this silly simpleton is?”

  “Wow, that was a pretty good one, wasn't it, Homer?” Regina gasped as she came from under, glowing and gulping. “Oh, him? Gee, Homer, I think he's my husband. But how can he be, if you are? Now the two of you have got me so mixed up that I don't know which of you is my Homer.”

  “Great goofy Gestalten!! You don't mean I look like him?” howled Homer the monster, near popping.

  “My brain reels,” moaned Homer the man. “Reality melts away. Regina! Exorcise this nightmare if you have in some manner called it up! I knew you shouldn't have been fooling around with that book.”

  “Listen, mister reely-brains,” wife Regina began on Homer the man. “You learn to kiss like he does before you tell me which one to exorcise. All I ask is a little affection. And this I didn't find in a book.”

  “How we going to know which one is Papa? They look just alike,” daughters Clara-Belle, Anna-Belle, and Maudie-Belle came in like three little chimes.

  “Hell-hipping horrors!” roared Homer the man. “How are you going to know—? He's got green skin.”

  “There's nothing wrong with green skin as long as it's kept neat and oiled,” Regina defended.

  “He's got tentacles instead of hands,” said Homer the man.

  “Oh boy, I'll say!” Regina sang out.

  “How we going to know which one is Papa when they look just alike?” the five Hoose children asked in chorus.

  “I'm sure there's a simple explanation to this, old chap,” said Homer the monster. “If I were you, Homer — and there's some argument whether I am or not — I believe I'd go to a doctor. I do
n't believe we both need to go, since our problem's the same. Here's the name of a good one,” said Homer the monster, writing it out.

  “Oh, I know him,” said Homer the man when he read it. “But how did you know him? He isn't an animal doctor. Regina, I'm going over to the doctor to see what's the matter with me, or you. Try to have this nightmare back in whatever corner of your under-id it belongs when I come back.”

  “Ask him if I keep taking my pink medicine,” Regina said.

  “No, not him. It's the head doctor I'm going to.”

  “Ask him if I have to keep on dreaming those pleasant dreams,” Regina said. “I sure do get tired of them. I want to get back to the other kind. Homer, leave the coriander seed when you go.” And she took the package out of his pocket. “You did remember to bring it. My other Homer forgot.”

  “No, I didn't,” said Homer the monster. “You couldn't remember what you told me to get. Here, Regina.”

  “I'll be back in a little while,” said Homer the man. “The doctor lives on the corner. And you, fellow, if you're real, keep your plankton-picking polypusses off my wife till I get back.”

  Homer Hoose went up to the street of the house of Dr. Corte on the corner. He knocked on the door, and then opened it and went in without waiting for an answer. The doctor was sitting there, but he seemed a little bit dazed.

  “I've got a problem, Dr. Corte,” said Homer the man. “I came home this evening, and I found a monster eating my wife — as I thought.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Dr. Corte. “Homer, we got to fix that hole on the corner.”

  “I didn't know there was a hole there, Doctor. As it happened, the fellow wasn't really swallowing my wife, it was just his way of showing affection. Everybody thought the monster looked like me, and Doctor, it has green skin and tentacles. When I began to think it looked like me too, I came here to see what was wrong with me, or with everybody else.”