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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I was wondering whether you'd be smart enough to pick me,” Ennis said. “I was wondering whether you were smart enough even to know about me. I was sure you'd have to find a pitch, as soon as I learned that you'd picked Dave Concourse as a mask.”

  “Are you sure that you can handle this?” O'Donovan asked this Hardhandle.

  “Oh sure, Harry, sure. I'm smart enough not to let my smartness get in the way. I'm smart enough to be a brain in a group, but I'm also smart enough not to poach on the brain when I'm the pitch. You remember what Borges wrote: ‘the grossest temptation of art—that of being a genius’. But there is no great harm in being a genius if it can be kept under tight enough cover. Yet the most effective of all political speeches was composed by an open-minded idiot who must here be nameless out of common decency: and it was delivered by that near-perfect mask, Kennedy. I mean the Inaugural Address. I was too young to appreciate it at the time, but I have studied it often. Hundreds of phrases like ‘Let us never negotiate from fear’ (muted buzzing) ‘but let us never fear to negotiate!’ (wild applause). Juxtaposition of words, that's the whole thing.”

  “We understand each other,” Harry O'Donovan said.

  “Sure, I'll take the job,” Ennis Hardhandle told him. “And now you will be shopping for a brain. Let me write his name down. Don't read it, though, till you've made your selection.” Ennis wrote on a paper, folded and refolded it, and gave it to Harry O'Donovan. And Harry put it in his wallet and went out to find a brain.

  The first brain he called on was named Baxter Hungerman. Baxter was of that thing that must be called ethnic or multi-ethnic. He was an ugly and pleasant man. Sometimes he had a direct way about him, and sometimes a devious.

  “It's the O'Donovan, is it?” Hungerman more stated than asked. “He's here to pick a brain or to pick up a brain. But can you afford me?”

  “One way or another, yes,” Harry said. “And can you produce?”

  “You can afford, O'Donovan, but you came to me because I'm reputed to be cheap. That's a pleasant fiction that I started myself, but I'm priced higher than the more costly brains, when all the bills are in. And I haven't such presence or name or fame as the others. But I have overtaken and passed all the others, quite recently; and the community knew it when it happened. The only advantage you'll have in engaging me is the point at hand: I'm more of a brain than the other brains.

  “As to producing, that's always the gamble. In every campaign, even the most hopeless seeming one, there is a point where something happens, or it does not happen. It cannot be guaranteed, but probability can be built up for it. No, I'm not being cryptic. Somewhere in my unconscious I know what the happening is. It's of nightmare quality and I won't drag it out into the light. If it happens, the campaign succeeds. I'm a hook that very often catches the happening. I've been near the black lightning several times when it struck. I suppose that's why I have more nightmares than the other brains do. You want this David Concourse, this nobody man with the golden rumble in his voice, to be elected to the senate post. I believe it can be done. I go to work on it now. You will place funds at my disposal weekly. Then you stay out of the way, O'Donovan. Be invisible. The touch of respectability that you represent surely isn't needed now. I'll probably require your visible opposition to your man when we're a little further down the road. We understand each other?”

  “We understand each other,” Harry O'Donovan said. Harry went out from there. Then he took from his billfold the folded piece of paper that Ennis Hardhandle had given him. “The brain you hire will be Baxter Hungerman,” it said.

  There were quite a few groups that believed they needed a senator that year. David Concourse was but one of seven men running in the primary, and he was probably the least known one. The brain brained and planned for him. The pitchman wrote the pitches and the words. And David did have a golden rumble in his voice. Harry O'Donovan made available the money which he shook out of various trees. But the campaign was going badly. “It needs a shot in the arm, Harry, doesn't it?” George Drakos commented.

  “No clichés, please,” Harry O'Donovan said miserably.

  “You are a political manipulator and you say ‘no clichés, please’? Harry, that's what the whole thing runs on. You're out of your mind.” Drakos was having fun with O'Donovan.

  “It doesn't seem to be jelling, does it?” Cris Benedetti asked maliciously. “It isn't taking off like a skyrocket, is it?”

  “The fourth element isn't there yet,” Barnaby Sheen said simply. “For decency's sake I hope it doesn't appear, but of course no campaign can succeed without it.”

  Austro growled deeply in his throat. When Austro growled like that he almost seemed a little bit other than human.

  Baxter Hungerman the brain came into the room (it was Barnaby Sheen's private study-bar) without knocking. “Carrock,” Austro greeted him. Baxter wasn't the coming something that Austro didn't like.

  “All of you out!” Baxter said pleasantly. “For secret reasons we need a secret room. He says he won't meet us anywhere else. Everybody out.”

  Ennis Hardhandle came in. “Carrock,” Austro said. Ennis wasn't what he disliked.

  David Concourse came in. “Carrock,” Austro said. It wasn't David that Austro disliked either.

  “Out, men, out,” Baxter said. We went out, Harry O'Donovan, George Drakos, Cris Benedetti, Barnaby Sheen, those four men who knew everything, and Austro and myself who didn't. Baxter Hungerman closed the door behind us. Those three men, the mask, the pitch, the brain, waited in there for the fourth to join them.

  We sat outside in that hallway that leads to the study. The hallway, as a fact, was much larger and more richly appointed than the study that it led to. It was a cross between a hotel lobby and a special museum room. There was fine statuary in the hall niches. There were even finer paintings standing up in their great frames on the walls. The door to the private study-bar was disguised by one such painting, which was exactly the size of the door. “And we are waiting for—what?” Doctor George Drakos asked.

  “For the fourth element, of course,” Barnaby Sheen said. “The necessary part for the Faustine transaction.”

  “Will it be a man?” Cris Benedetti asked.

  “No, I don't think so,” Barnaby said, “but it will look like a man. It will be the Mysterious Stranger. Why are you all so naïve about this? It happens every time.”

  “Aye, but he looks different every time,” Harry O'Donovan said. “I wish he would play it straight once.”

  We hadn't long to wait. Austro gave another of his throaty growls. What was coming up the stairs now was something that Austro didn't like.

  But it looked like a man, a tall and angular man, dressed all in black, and with a tall black hat from another century on his head. He looked like an old-time itinerant hangman. No, you wouldn't remember them.

  “I'm expected. I'll go right in,” this somber person said. He went into the study through the door that looked like a picture.

  “Ah, he did play it straight for once,” Harry O'Donovan said. “It would be so much easier and cleaner if he always came in that appearance.”

  We sat and waited. Mary Mondo came out. “It's too spooky in there for me,” she wailed. “But poor Loretta is in there and can't come out.” “If any harm comes to her, I swear I'll hang that devil up by tongue and tonkis,” Barnaby Sheen barked.

  “No harm can come to her,” Cris Benedetti mumbled. “She's beyond harm.”

  We waited. Then it happened. It shook us all and it shook the house.

  “That didn't take long,” Barnaby said. “Hardly give a man time enough to sign his name in blood.” It had been like a flash of darkness.

  “What was it?” Harry O'Donovan asked. “I never know what to call it.”

  “Only the black lightning,” said Barnaby. “It struck. Whatever was going to happen has happened. Let's go in.”

  Inside, David Concourse was standing in the middle of the study, grinning grandly and rumbling tri
umphant things in his golden voice. He was victory invincible.

  Ennis Hardhandle was scribbling notes in a big drawing tablet that Austro had left there. And the notes crackled by their very brilliance, and sparked as he made them.

  Baxter Hungerman was talking on the phone, no, on three phones at once, and we all knew that he was talking to the three TV stations.

  “Yes, at once,” Hungerman was shouting, “in fifteen minutes. Clear the air! It's a skyrocket, I tell you. A prairie fire is nothing like this. Fifteen minutes, at our headquarters. All three of you rush your equipment there. Old golden voice will already be talking when he gets there, and this time he'll have something to say when he talks. Like a skyrocket, I tell you.”

  And the somber person in black who had gone in wasn't there at all; and there was only one door to the study.

  The three of them, Concourse, Hardhandle, Hungerman, went out jubilantly together. They were shouting in triumph and they had their arms about each other. They had really become one creature.

  “It's always a little bit exciting, and little bit dirty, to see a new and great political career launched, and to see a political campaign come alive,” George Drakos said. “And it has never happened any other way? Curious.”

  “One apparatus, highly functioning,” said Barnaby Sheen. “They are merged into one thing that ignites and soars. It's almost as if it were alive.”

  “What is life?” Mary Mondo asked.

  “Hush, Mary,” Harry O'Donovan begged. “How have I done wrong? I merely wanted to get it off the ground.”

  They got it off the ground. In fifteen minutes, David Concourse was on the air with the triumphant boom of his golden voice. Yes, he was a skyrocket. And he rocketed for the following ten days. There had never been anything like this. (They always say that of a campaign that takes fire in the classic way.) How that David Concourse could talk! What slick stuff that Hardhandle could give him, and how that Hungerman could arrange events! David Concourse burned with a cool, slight metallic, slightly sulphurous fire. There was a new light in the sky. There was moment and momentum.

  In ten days, David Concourse came from dead last to win the primary vote. So he had the nomination of his party. It was then that Baxter Hungerman told Harry O'Donovan that he must come out strongly against Concourse, as did several of the other old manipulators. It was all timed and colored just right: and, of course, it rebounded triply to the credit of Concourse. Anyone who could shovel off the Old Guard was a man of virtue. Concourse seemed unbeatable now. He had the magic on him, and the opposition trembled in its boots.

  “I don't like it very much,” Cris Benedetti said. “It isn't quite clean. I believe that I could put my finger on what is wrong if I tried hard, but I have the feeling that I'd have that finger torn off by a bunch of those savage tropical fish.”

  “I don't like it at all,” George Drakos said. “It's the most noisome fraud ever in this state, which means the most noisome ever, anywhere.”

  “Should we jerk the rug out from under it?” Barnaby asked. “We all know it's wrong.”

  “What is wrong with my owning a senator?” Harry O'Donovan asked. “I almost always do. Myself and several of my group feel that we need a senator this year. And he is so much on the upsurge, a veritable skyrocket, as everyone says.”

  “The thing wrong with your owning this senator is that you won't own him,” Barnaby said. “He's already owned.”

  “I don't believe you can jerk the rug from under him,” Harry frothed. “I'll stick to my man (though opposing him in public, of course), and we'll sweep the election. You can't jerk the rug from under him. You don't even know what rug it is.”

  “I do, you don't,” Barnaby said. But Harry O'Donovan slammed out of the room in anger.

  “Can we jerk it from under?” Barnaby asked as Harry's departure still echoed.

  “I think we can,” Cris Benedetti said. “I know an old rite.”

  “Carrock, I know we can,” Austro said. “I know an older one.”

  But there would apparently be no pulling the rug from under David Concourse. On the eve of the general election he was in, in, in. He had it won. Everyone conceded before the vote. He'd be the brightest new ornament in the U.S. Senate. Barnaby Sheen went like a beggar to Harry O'Donovan, and we all trailed along.

  “Could we have your man come by the place for a very little while tonight, Harry?” Barnaby begged. “Yes, I know he will be very busy with a dozen election-eve victory parties. But could we have him for, say, five minutes?”

  “Is it some trick you are up to?” Harry asked. “Can I trust a pack of jackals?”

  “We all come to you humbly, hat in hand,” Barnaby wheedled.

  “Yes, I see that,” Harry crowed. “But there's a tricky shine on several of your pates, for all that you stand hat in hand.”

  “Harry, for old friendship, may we not even touch your triumph, even at second hand for a moment?” Barnaby begged with a pathos that sounded genuine.

  “I'll see what I can do, but don't count on it,” Harry O'Donovan told us.

  It was close, but Harry did manage to bring David Concourse by for a very brief minute in the round of his election-eve victory parties. It was late for such; it almost wasn't election eve anymore when they came. It was just short of midnight. Then they came in, and it was like a great light. “For only a moment,” said David Concourse in his golden voice, and he was wrapped in victory like a mantle.

  “Time enough,” Cris Benedetti snapped in the strangest voice we had ever heard him use. “Ego praecipio tibi, exi ab eo: et amplius ne introeas in eum.”

  And David Concourse stood as though paralyzed.

  “Exi ab eo,” Cris repeated. “Go out from him.”

  David groaned mightily and staggered.

  “Carrock, kalos exitexto kabosh ghim, carrock,” Austro commanded in an even older rite. David Concourse fell to the floor like a huge tree falling, and he cried out weirdly. Then something went out from him.

  (In other places, similar things were happening to Ennis Hardhandle and Baxter Hungerman; but the tearing out wasn't so severe with them. After all, Concourse was the primary. This is not fiction. I later checked on these two men and found that they were stricken at that hour, and each had the impression of a small and unnatural creature going out from him.)

  Well, what went out from David Concourse was about eight inches high and it looked like a little man, an angular little man dressed all in black and with a tall black hat from another century on his head. It was the miniature of the somber person who had entered this room many days before and who had apparently entered David Concourse and the other two also. The thing scuttered away and out the door.

  Oh, yes, and its coat-tails were on fire; and it was in a hurry.

  “Well, what was it?” I asked.

  “The Devil, of course,” Barnaby said. “The Mysterious Stranger. He's not really very big when he's challenged: and he has to go out when he's told to in the proper ritual. It's the old Faustine deal that was made. All the sudden flaming men have made this deal. All! It's what sets them aflame and guarantees their success. But the deal can be broken, and we broke it for poor David.”

  David Concourse was sitting on the floor now, but he was dazed.

  “This little car,” he was saying, “will sing like a bronco and run like an ostrich. For only $285.00 it's a steal. We should be investigated, our prices are so low.”

  David Concourse was no longer a skyrocket. He was a cinder. But how does word of a thing like that get around? Election day had already arrived and the polls would be open at seven. How would all the conned people know that the rocket was no longer a rocket?

  Never mind, they knew. The feeling was everywhere immediately. Concourse was soundly trounced in the election he was supposed to have in the bag. He went back to selling cars, at a slight cut in pay.

  “How can you tell whether something like that is alive or whether there's just a little man inside working th
e pedals?” Mary Mondo asked. “It is sometimes hard to tell,” Barnaby admitted to the ghost-girl.

  A few months later, there was scheduled a little local special election to fill a dead man's shoes in the state senate. “I believe that I could use one more state senator,” said Harry O'Donovan who had not been doing much political manipulating lately.

  “Stuff it, Harry!” Cris said.

  “Some people never learn,” Drakos commented.

  “Hard-head Harry, don't try it again,” Barnaby Sheen warned. “Don't try it on the one you're thinking of.”

  “Carrock! Get that look out of your eye,” Austro said.

  “What I need for a starter,” Harry said (and he did have that look in his eye), “is a mask, a front man. I don't care how homely he is if he has a face that people will trust. I don't care how witless he is if he has real integrity shining out of him. And who, fellows, has the most honest face of anyone we know?”

  “Carrock, no, no!” Austro cried in alarm.

  “I don't care how rough-hewn he seems,” Harry was saying, and he was inching towards Austro in words and action. “Everything can be smoothed out with a good pitch-man and a good brain-man. But when you start with a really likeable—”

  “Carrock, no, no, not me,” Austro begged.

  “—with a really likeable person, you have a pearl beyond price in this political business. Born in a rock cave on the Guna slopes beats being born in a sod hut on Coyote Trail, even beats being born in a log cabin. We will sweep it all clean with the sunshine broom. We will bill you as the boy with the sunshine brains. For the clown with integrity shining out of him, the one person with an absolutely homely face, the one really likeable—”