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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “All right, mama.”

  “Do you know what his name will be?”

  “Oh sure. It will be Greatheart Noble.”

  “Fine. I like that name,” Petronilla Ashling said. “I'll go get the marriage license now. And I'll go get something else.” She went out to go about her errands, and she waved across the street in a new friendly fashion to Strega O'Conner, who was jumping rope and singing a rhyme:

  “This is the wife who lost her man,

  And made her another from blood and bran.”

  The next morning, Petronilla Ashling was thrilled and chilled at the sight of her new man Greatheart Noble. Greatheart was very tall, and he wore some kind of shako on his head. He had hussar mustaches, and he was chested like a pouter pigeon. He wore a scarlet and purple cape and a scarlet and gold tunic, and he was belted and booted in black leather. He carried a ringmaster's whip in his hand. He was quite handsome in some old stylized and costumed fashion. He gave crisp green money to Gregory.

  “Go buy toy soldiers,” he said.

  He gave crisp green money to Petronilla.

  “Go buy toy dishes and toy tea service,” he said.

  “No, no, I'm not a little girl,” she explained. “I'm a big girl, but I'll keep the money. Come along now. We're going to City Hall to be married.”

  “Will it hurt?” Greatheart asked. He gave more crisp money to Gregory.

  “Go buy nuts. Go buy candy. Go buy ice skates. Go buy a pony,” he said.

  “We love your money, Greatheart,” Petronilla said, “but come, come, come! It's time for us to get married.”

  “Don't scare him, mama, or he'll melt,” Gregory cautioned. “Don't be rough with him. Don't frustrate him at all. Take all the money he wants to give you or he'll feel frustrated.”

  “I will be very careful of him,” Petronilla said. “With thirty-one boxes of bran and a whole hog invested in him, I will be most careful. And I'll not frustrate him by refusing his money. Come, dear Greatheart, it's married we will be.”

  Petronilla Ashling and Greatheart Noble went out into the street, past a dead hog that was there, a completely empty-looking dead hog (it had all the blood drained out of it), and down the street to City Hall.

  “It comes to me that I don't know where I am or what I'm doing here,” Greatheart said in his vaguely foreign voice. He gave Petronilla considerable money.

  “Buy a coach and eight,” he said. “Buy a footman and a postboy and a driver and four outriders.”

  “Thank you, dear Greatheart. I'll buy better things than those.”

  “I find myself among strange people in a strange land,” Greatheart said. “I am ensorcelled by sorcerers.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Petronilla said. “Let's hurry before it wears off.” They came to City Hall. They were married without particular incident, though there was some tittering about Greatheart flicking his ringmaster's whip during the ceremony.

  And then they made another stop, to finalize the insurance policies that Petronilla was taking out on her new husband. Greatheart passed his physical examination and was declared to be a perfect specimen (“Of what I'm not sure,” the examining doctor said) and was stated to be the best risk ever seen. (Petronilla had been afraid that they'd discover that he had pig's blood.)

  “Is it like a lottery tournament?” Greatheart asked at the insurance office. He gave Petronilla huge bunches of very large money. “Bet more on me, then,” he said. “In Transylvania it is the grandest men who have the most bet on them.”

  And Petronilla gladly increased the premium payment and then increased it again.

  And this was the beginning of the happiest three days ever in the life of Petronilla Ashling Noble. Greatheart wouldn't stand too close an examination, of course. In no detail was he really accurate, in some things he was ridiculous (like something a six-year-old boy would have thought of), and in other areas he was completely blank. “I'll just quit wearing my glasses, and then it'll be all right,” Petronilla said. “I never cared too much for fine detail anyhow.”

  So Petronilla and Greatheart began to give parties and bashes to celebrate their nuptials and their new roles in local society. They gave a “We Got Married” party, a “Welcome Greatheart” party, a “Honeymoon Buffet” party, and others. It was the same circle of friends who came to all of them: Clovis and Patsy Pettegolezzo, Grantland and Hermione Greygoose, Craig and Thecla Petersen, Driscol and Hyacinth Oldking, Adolph and Clementine O'Conner. And, of course, their little girl Strega O'Conner could not be kept out.

  And there's no doubt that Greatheart Noble made a strong impression at these parties, and Petronilla herself was the perfect picture of Pride Fulfilled. Greatheart was crude in some of his efforts (“You like it?” he asked Driscol Oldking, who gaped at the new Noble sports car. “Here, go get one for yourself.” And there was the cramming out of crisp, green hundred-dollar and thousand-dollar bills), but he was crude in the way of one who has a royal right to such crudity.

  And there's no doubt that Greatheart was unbelievably boyish and was the most flamboyant showboat ever seen. It would take only one “Show them your muscles, papa” from Gregory for tall and chesty Greatheart to throw off his scarlet and golden tunic and his scarlet and purple cape and strike the pose and send the rippling mountains of his muscles through their paces. But was there something wrong about those muscles?

  “I will admit I've never seen anything like them,” Driscol Oldking said, “but they're not valid. They're like burlesques of muscles, like caricatures. They're like balloons instead of sinews. They're like pictures of muscles as a little boy might draw them.”

  “I know,” said Clovis Pettegolezzo, “but what does it matter?”

  Greatheart had Tokay wines of obscure vintage, and sour milk dishes, and other specialties of Hungary and Rumania and Greece and Turkey flown in. He served a true Transylvanian board, with racked ribs of wolf as a main dish all three evenings. And Petronilla had all fill-in things catered by Mike McGoogan's Elite Catering Service. They had in a three-person combo to play for them on fiddle and piano and drums. And they made sparkling presentations of all they did. For three days and nights they were sparkling.

  But Greatheart wasn't as costumed a figure as he seemed, for sometimes he did speak searchingly and out of character.

  “I'm confused, confused,” he said to Driscol Oldking once. “I'm like a man in a dream, but I've always believed that a man was responsible for everything, even his dreams. I'm a person under sorcery; and all of you here are, to me, parts of the sorcerers' world. I believe that my real body is still sleeping in my castle in Transylvania,” (They cannot wake me up, they cannot wake me! What if they bury me as dead when they cannot wake me?) “and that only a vagrant portion of my sleeping self is present here in a way that I can't understand. Here is money, Driscol. Go to an alchemist or apothecary and see if you can buy a remedy for my condition.”

  Driscol Oldking took the money from Greatheart, but he did not find a remedy for his condition anywhere.

  But after three days of celebrating Petronilla turned a little bit disappointed. “I wonder if you could make an adjustment in your father, Gregory?” she asked.

  “I don't know what, mama. He's perfect, isn't he?”

  “Oh, I suppose so. But, ah, in one way he just doesn't work.”

  “I put in everything I could think of he ought to have. What does it matter if he doesn't work, mama? He gives us lots more money than fathers who do work.”

  “I don't mean ‘to work for a living.’ I mean like ‘to work, to function.’ ”

  “I don't understand what you mean, mama.”

  Strega O'Conner across the street was jumping a rhyme:

  “This is the man unblessed by kirk,

  But something about the man don't work.”

  “Strega understands what I mean,” Petronilla said.

  “No wonder. She's a week older than I am. But if you're through with Greatheart, mama, then we'll get rid of him
and I'll make someone else.”

  “Are you going to make that dirty little boy again? Can't you make someone else and still keep Greatheart? We will get more bran.”

  “No, I won't make Eugene again. He was getting in trouble at home going into those trances. But I want to make someone else. No, I can just make one of them at a time. I can't make anyone else till Greatheart is unmade.”

  “But I'd like to keep him,” Petronilla said, “even if he doesn't work in every respect. I'm getting attached to him.”

  “Mama, don't do that. You know he isn't real. He's like one of the figures on Huppett's Puppets. And anyway aren't you getting a little bit anxious to—”

  “To cash him in? Yes, I guess I am. What would happen if we had him run over with a car?”

  “He'd melt.”

  “What would happen if we poisoned him?”

  “Nothing. He wouldn't poison.”

  “What would happen if we had an unknown gunman shoot him?”

  “He'd melt. I think that everybody melts a little bit if you scare them bad enough.”

  “Oh yes, there's an old connection between fear and puddles on the floor. And what would happen if we pushed him off the bridge and let him crash on the trafficway below?”

  “He'd melt. Almost anything you'd do to him, he'd either melt, or he wouldn't do anything at all.”

  “Melting doesn't leave very convincing remains, does it, Greg?”

  “Oh, they can analyze everything nowadays, mama, and tell just what it comes from. They get out their chemistry sets and analyze things with them.”

  “I suppose so. Well, let's get a lot of paper towels and spread them out here pretty thick. They should absorb the evidence as good as anything. Yes, that's fine. Get another roll, Greg, and spread them a little wider. Get two more rolls. We want to get every drop of him.”

  “All right,” Greg said.

  Then Petronilla brought Greatheart to the prepared place. “How about the cloak and the tunic and the shako and the belts and the boots and the whip?” she asked Greg. “Could we save them?”

  “No, I don't think so. They'll melt when he does.”

  Strega O'Conner came in from across the street. She always came in when something was going on.

  “Well, this is the end of the episode, Greatheart,” Petronilla said to her husband of three days. “But it isn't as though I hadn't arranged to have plenty to remember you by.”

  “Oh yes, I really must be getting back home,” Greatheart said. “If only I could escape from the sorceries I would go home now.”

  “I can help you to escape from the sorceries,” Petronilla said. “I can send you home. I'm going to do it right now.”

  “I'm embarrassed,” Greatheart told her. “I would like to give you a gift worthy of your kindness, but all I seem to possess at the moment is money.”

  “That will do nicely, Greatheart. Gregory, bring all the laundry baskets you can find, and we'll fill them up. Oh, that is pretty stuff, and you have so much of it, don't you? It was thoughtful of Gregory to give you the money trait and the glad-hand trait. Greg, press it down and the baskets will hold more. But that seems to be all that he has. The never-fail pockets have finally failed. But, after all, we aren't greedy, are we?”

  “I am, kind of,” Gregory said.

  “All right, stand right here, Greatheart. I will break the sorceries and I will send you home.”

  “Will it hurt?” Greatheart Noble asked.

  “I don't know,” Petronilla admitted. “If you're not real, then I guess it won't really hurt.”

  Petronilla pulled one arm clear off Greatheart, and he began to collapse. Then the other arm and part of a shoulder came loose. His head fell off and rolled around on the floor. Then he melted completely. He made a pretty large puddle, but the piles of paper towels would soak up most of it.

  Petronilla phoned the doctor and said that her husband had died in a household accident. She told the doctor to make out some sort of death certificate and to make it look good. Then she bundled up all the sopping paper towels and started over to the insurance office with them, to present the mortal remains of her husband and to collect the insurance on them.

  3

  Petronilla Ashling Noble was in chancery court on an insurance suit and countersuit, and things were going a little bit against her. She didn't have any lawyer. She said that after she had explained the simple facts of the case to three different lawyers, they had all walked away shaking their heads, and all of them had refused to represent her in the case. “I understand how they felt,” the chancery judge said. “I've been shaking my own head quite a bit. Are you sure that these two children have to be here?”

  “Yes. I've told you that they are the two witnesses to the melting, ah, death of my husband Greatheart Noble,” Petronilla said.

  “Oh yes. But does the little girl have to be jumping rope all the time that court is going on?”

  “Yes, she does,” said Strega's mother Clementine O'Conner. “Whenever she has to stop jumping rope she has a tantrum.”

  “Sometimes one must make a choice,” the judge said. “The tantrums, are they…?”

  “Yes, they're worse than the rope-jumping,” Clementine said, and the judge sighed.

  “I suggest again that this case be thrown out,” the insurance-company representative said. “I maintain that there never was such a person as the insured Greatheart Noble.”

  “But you yourself talked to him,” Petronilla argued, “and you yourself signed the receipt for the premium payments.”

  “I talked to a clown in some sort of costume,” the insurance representative said. “It is clear fraud.”

  “I have proof of my marriage to Greatheart,” Petronilla said.

  “I have proof of his appearance before the insurance people and of his physical examination. Why do all you people keep arguing with me? Pay me my money! I have proof of everything.”

  “Proof of everything except the husband's identity,” the judge said, “and his death.”

  “Well, what in jug-headed judgment would you call proof?” Petronilla demanded.

  “His mortal remains,” the chancery judge said.

  “Oh, you disgrace to the judiciary!” Petronilla squalled. “You have his mortal remains right in front of you on the bench!”

  “I have here a horrific mess of old paper towels,” the judge said. “They do not look like the mortal remains of a husband to me.”

  “You are supposed to have had those paper towels analyzed by experts to see what they soaked up.”

  “That has been done. And one of the experts is right here. And what the paper towels soaked up was water and nothing else. Or hardly anything else.”

  “What else? Tell me what else was found?” Petronilla demanded.

  “As would be expected, there were small quantities of foreign matter.”

  “Oh, blindfolded justice! That foreign matter was my husband! Wheat bran and hog's blood, that's what the foreign matter was. That's what they made my husband out of.”

  “Oddly enough, the foreign matter was wheat bran and hog's blood,” the expert said.

  “Quiet!” the judge croaked. “I adjourn this court till I don't know when.”

  “This is the plaintiff, this is the place,

  This is the judge all red in the face.”

  That was Strega O'Conner who had been singing a rope-jump song for quite a while and it had finally got under the subliminal skin of the judge.

  There was some confusion along about then, and unreal elements seemed to creep in.

  “You will not adjourn this court till you make them pay me my insurance money!” Petronilla said with such anger and violence that the judge seemed to go into a state of white-faced fear. “You will get back to that bench or I will drag you back,” Petronilla swore. Petronilla had hold of the judge and she had him scared. He began to cave in and to shrink. He almost began to disintegrate. And was that not a small puddle that had formed on the fl
oor, and was it not growing larger?

  “This is the puddle, thin as whey.

  A gentleman drowned in it today,” Strega jump-sang.

  Petronilla was attempting to drag the judge back to his place on the bench, and that shrinking judge was resisting.

  Then (oh horror!) Petronilla pulled one arm clear off the judge—

  And Strega was rope-jumping and rhyming—

  And the head fell off and—

  Chancery courts were very informal in those days. This condition has since been corrected.

  Thou Whited Wall

  False coinage will always drive true coinage to the wall, as it were.

  —Tully Ficticius

  “The wall washers are coming rather late tonight,” Evangeline Gilligan said. “Oh, I can see that it's going to be one of those days! It's already four thirty in the morning by Eastern time. They're doing a good job though. Ah, but it's nice to be a guided person and have — so much working for you. Who will hit the wall first today?”

  “The smart money's on the Rooky Duke,” said Evangeline's husband Mudge Gilligan. “But the smart money was also on Northside Public in Chicago for the wall of the night, and it turns out to be the Great North Wall of the men's room of Monorail Central in Atlanta.” Mudge recognized walls more readily than Evangeline did.

  The wall washers came every late night or early morning to clean and white all the big-name walls of the country. They went over those walls with their sophisticated paintwashes and their broad electric brushes. They obliterated every picture and scribble from those walls and left the stark and challenging surfaces in their clean emptiness. It was always a question which would be the prime wall for a coming day (this information was never leaked) and which of the prophetic artists would score first hit on the designated wall with his message. Many local people watched local walls and guided their lives by the messages that appeared on them. But the wide world watched the prime wall.