“Just a damned double-minute!” cried an underwarden coming into the room with no support other than the power of his office. “This juvenile boy is a walk-away from the Alabaster Hills Juvenile Correctional Institute on the North side of town. I am taking him back to allow him to complete his term. Stand aside, Cosmo Club Sergeant-at-Arms! Stand aside, Federal Marshals! I have a bill of particulars on this boy and I am taking him. He is the star of the Penitentiary Band. Without him, the band would just about fall apart.” And the under-warden took young Karl Effigy away with him.
But all is not lost. Even the device that was weighed and found wanting was pretty good. A person equipped as was Karl Effigy would feel wise to himself, and he would seem wise to many other people also. He would enjoy and spread the pleasure that almost-genuine wisdom gives. And you can get such a job done on yourself right today by almost any sly brain-man. And those preeminent brain-geographers, Clement Stringtown and Crowley Headcooper, are working on things that you'd hardly believe. And they are not the hard-hearted gentlemen that they are sometimes said to be. They visit Karl Effigy in his confinement almost every week. Karl says, though, that his next walk-away is likely to be down the other side of the hill.
But Karl is busy and happy enough, and he picked up quite a few scraps of wisdom while he was in the wisdom game. His next Effigy History is almost finished, though his counselor is worried about Karl's arithmetic.
The title is the Effigy History of Seven Months Five Days And One Hour And a Half In The Klinker, but Karl Effigy's sentence is for eighteen months.
John Salt
He had failed only once before, and that was in raising a man from the dead. It would seem that one is entitled to fail in this most difficult of feats once, considering that he had often been successful at it. And that once, so far as is known, had been the only previous failure of Joshua Halas. “The faith to move mountains is not an empty sophistry, not a hollow vessel of speech,” said Joshua. “There is a power, and we live by that power. The weakest of us live on the accumulation of power, and those of us who are stronger add continually to that power store. I say to you that it is not a great thing to move a mountain. I say that to hold a mountain in being is a much greater thing.”
Joshua Halas had the appearance of a levantine Lincoln. Indeed he moved mountains in his every gesture, for he was a complex of crags and cliffs and slanting chasms, and great heights marred by inexplicable shadows. And his voice was a rumble from the bowels of the mountains, rising from the depths in a theophany of passion and power, with irony and eloquence licking in and out of it like imps of the lightning.
“I don't know how he does it,” said Alex Carmi. “I have heard him often enough. But he's the only fraud who ever made my hair rise up like that. I'm almost afraid to pin the tail on him. He may already have the tail. Though he isn't what he says he is, he's more than they try to mark him down for. Every man has a power, but not every man has a power like this one. Just to be able to talk like that is to move mountains a little.”
“I guess I've known every kind there is to know,” said Mary Corsicana. “I have particularly been the consort of frauds. I've lived on shysters and cons and straight gun-down boys. I have known some very fast men at the materialization of a dollar, and a few quacks who would plain take your breath away with their audacity. And they all had an inordinate share of magnetism, some nearly equal to old Josh here. I tell you, Alex, I've traveled with some high old animals in my time.”
“Dynasthe piein to poterion?” cried Joshua loudly. “Can ye drink of the cup? Have ye been led into the desert? Have ye striven with principalities? Woe to thee, Corozain! Woe to thee, Bethsaida! Woe to thee, Ponca City! Thou shalt be thrust down to Hell. For if the miracles had been worked in Sodom that have been worked here, it would have remained till this day. An adulterous generation asks for a sign, and it shall not be given them. If they will not believe Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe a man risen from the dead. Yet, so that men may know where the Eagles are gathering, we may have a portent tonight. I say to you that it is no great thing to heal a man or a woman, to restore an eye, to loose the lame, to give speech to the dumb, to make straight the twisted foot or the withered hand. No, it is no great thing to cure a withered hand.”
But if it was no great thing to cure a withered hand, yet there was none who could wither one so well as could Alex Carmi. Carmi had been many things, but this was within his realm of a make-up man with a technique that verged on the magic.
And, with such arts as he possessed, he withered the hand of Mary Corsicana.
“Have you known him long?” Mary asked.
“Joshua? Yes, I knew him a long time ago when he was plain John Salt. His early training was as a pitchman. But he brought a pentacostal touch even to peddling potato peelers. He came very near to calling down the lightning of heaven onto those who would not buy. But I knew him before that, as a boy. And there are legends about him even from his boyhood, and mostly I know how they began.
“There was the bull terrier that he killed and dismembered in the presence of his cronies. And he announced that he would pray all night over the pieces, and in the morning he would put the dog together again and breathe life into it.
“And in the morning the dog was indeed alive and well. There were only faint red marks where the legs and shoulders had been severed and rejoined, and where the head had been cut off and replaced. Joshua was eleven years old then, and already he had the mystique. But I was the only one who knew that he had acquired two identical bull terriers. For I was his intimate; a man or boy must always have an intimate who is behind the scenes. I had shaved narrow streaks on one bull terrier and red-marked them to simulate rejoined cuts. It was one of my first make-up jobs. But knowing how it was done didn't lessen the effect on me. And I was the one who buried the cut-up dog. It was not the first nor the last thing that I buried for him.”
“I shouldn't really be taking part in a thing like this,” said Mary, “but I need the money. The Lord and I understand each other fairly well, but I have been running increasingly into his debt. Since I was last a magdaline, I have done well and done badly. A girl must live. But I have received more than one warning that I have disregarded. If there is a sign here, it may well be that the sign is on me.”
There were a little over one thousand people at the Evangel of Joshua Halas. It was a flare-lit night, for Joshua preferred kerosene torches to electric lighting. It was quite a small stage erected there, and Joshua was quite a large man upon it. He disdained the use of the microphone, but there was very little else that he disdained. “The Mountains and the Seas and all the Universe are held in being by the Faith of the Elect. Please understand what this means. It is we who hold the sun in the sky, it is we the elect who order the stars. It is we, the multitude of the faithful from the ages, yet small in number compared to the lost ones, who maintain all. The foundations of the Earth are maintained by our faith. Should a star stumble and fall, it is that an Archangel did not have faith enough. Should a man sicken and die, it is that he did not believe enough in his own life.
“It is because of my own great faith that I will never die. Know you that there are thousands of us on Earth who have lived for countless ages. We saw the beginnings of land as you know it. We heard the rise of the first wind, and we felt the fall of the earliest rain. All of the Sons of God did not fall. We saw first death and destruction appear, and have seen last sickness come onto the living. But, know you, all sickness and maiming and insufficiency is from lack of faith. And, where there is this lack, there can be no cure, except if one of us of the elder elect should give out of his own great store of grace and faith. Therefore, I say that it is no great thing to give sight to the blind or to straighten the lame. To heal a withered hand, or even to raise a dead man is no great thing for me.”
“How does he do it all?” Mary Corsicana asked. “Does he really raise the dead?” “Not now, Mary,” said Alex Carmi. “His subject for
this is following the berry-picker trade over in Arkansas at this season. And good subjects for the dead man ploy do not grow on bushes. But in the winter, on the southern circuit, and again in the early springtime, Joshua does indeed raise the dead. It is done by catalepsy. And it is done by an essence that smells of death and destruction and the grave. This essence is supplied to Joshua by a pharmacist in Sapulpa, the only one who understands how to compound it. But Joshua raises the dead less frequently than he once did. I believe that he is now a little bit frightened of it.”
“But what could ever frighten that man, Alex?”
“It was an unfortunate thing that happened several years ago, Mary, with another subject and in another state. He was not at that time able to raise the dead man to life.”
“What are you saying? He was not able to raise him to life?”
“No. That dead man remained dead. To the crowd it was merely a failure where they hardly expected success. But to Joshua Halas it was a shock. For in fact the man had not been really dead until the attempt to rouse him. He had been alive when last he laid himself down. So Joshua goes no longer into that state. Yet he remains a hard man to frighten. And, as he says, who is to know that it was not then that man's time to die? I am almost inclined to believe him when he says that he has crossed the line from life to death and back again more often than the busiest traveler has crossed the state line.”
But Joshua was talking loudly to the crowd.
“I have no need for money myself,” he said. “I do not eat. I have not eaten for many years, not of food as you know food. And the suit that I am wearing was given to me by Prester John himself more than a thousand years ago. I live anywhere or nowhere. But it is because I myself have no need that I am the one to be trusted with your money. It is in truth more blessed to give than to receive. And the poor you will always have with you. The rich man will come hardly into the Kingdom of Heaven. There is no coin that so handily buys merit as the coin of the realm. And with what easier coin could you possibly pay? You are not required to shed your blood, you are not asked to sacrifice your limbs or members. You need not forfeit wife or children if so be it you are blessed with them. You need only give of this least-esteemed of all things, and you will purchase merit for yourself in Heaven, and at the same time you will ease the misery of your less fortunate brethren. So, when the baskets are passed among you, they are passed with a purpose. Those of you with no higher gifts to give can only by giving of the common coin save your souls.”
It is no great thing to cure a withered hand, but it is a devilish hard thing to wither one in the first place. Alex used very fine piano wire, and black-and-blue paint of a water-soluble variety. The tightening of the fine-wire harness was effected now only minutes before the event. And this was the masterpiece of the make-up man, that the hand should appear such a shocking crippled and drawn thing as to compel the eyes with something quite near horror. Now the trick of the thing was that the harness of blood-stopping piano wire should be snipped very short seconds before the hand be brought to the public attention. So, when the Power of God was called down on it, it would already be free of obstacles but not yet of their effect.
In only short minutes the blood would begin to flow in the hand again. And in the living water, warmed and heady with the perfume of life (supplied by the same pharmacist in Sapulpa), the water-soluble blue and black paint should melt away and the restored hand be revealed clean and whole.
So Alex Carmi, the make-up man and old hanger-on, withered the hand of Mary Corsicana who had been a magdaline and the consort of frauds, and who had long sought the mystique.
“Know you all that there were other prophets than Jesus,” Joshua was saying. “There were many of us brothers. And one of my brothers wrote “Indeed we have readied Hell as the dwelling place for the unbelievers. And we will set Hell on that day before them!” Believe me, this is that day of which he spoke, and it is for you that Hell is set.” “There are one thousand gathered to hear me tonight. And of your one thousand, three will die tonight! Mark my words. Three of you here have seen the sun for the last time. And two of you will go to Hell tonight, and the third one will be saved. And you do not know who you are, but I know. I am looking at you now.”
“It is the peculiarity of all the magnetic ones,” said Alex Carmi, “that they can look into a crowd of a thousand people and seem to be looking at each one. I could do much if I had a little magnetism myself. But everything is not given to everyone.”
“One will be saved,” Joshua continued, “by my intercession. But I cannot withhold the Hand of God for long, or from all. By my faith I maintain the bolts of the iron door in the pit, but I cannot maintain them alone or forever. Repent, Oh True Believers! Turn unto God with sincere repentance and he will admit you to the gardens. So long have we held destruction at bay! So long have we protected the multitude! And what if it happened now that we should tire of protecting you? “In Nineveh they did penance, but in many a town they did not. And some of them had the sign, and some of them had it not. But you are blessed in this. I will give you a sign tonight to help your unbelief.”
“You are on, Mary,” Alex Carmi said. And with a small wire-cutter he cut the weird piano-wire harness from the hand of Mary Corsicana. “Now move out quickly and let him display you. Timing is important in this, for your hand will come to life by itself within five minutes. He will use you as a sign from God.” “I will be used as a sign. But that which is expected is never the sign. The sign startles when it appears.”
And she went out and let Joshua Halas call her up onto the little stage.
“Here is a woman come from afar,” said Joshua Halas. “And, though I have never seen her before, it is given to me to know much about her. It is on her that the sign will manifest itself tonight. Daughter of the world, ascend! I call all to look at her, how she is afflicted. See her hand, touch it, examine it. It is maimed. But by my faith I will lift this maiming. Daughter, plunge your hand into this Living Water, and I will call down upon you the invisible Lightning of Heaven. All be quiet! This is a holy moment. The air is full of giant wings, and below our feet monsters writhe. We strive with Principalities and Powers. Daughter of the World, what do you feel? Do you feel the resurrection and the life?”
“I feel nothing,” said Mary Corsicana.
“It will come. It will come in an instant. God will not fail where the Faith is firm. For one who can move mountains can also heal a hand. Look! All look! It changes! It begins to heal!”
“I cannot see any change,” said one man.
“Nor I neither,” said another. “There is no change.”
“The Devil delays it a little, but only a little,” said Joshua. “Now see! You can watch it come to life as the blood flows where the blood did not flow before.”
“I cannot see it come to life,” said a man.
“Nor I,” said another.
“Be you a Daughter of Hell?” asked Joshua Halas as he began to tremble. “Is it that you are a perverted sign? I command you, go out from her! Why does your hand not come whole?”
“You answer that,” said Mary Corsicana. “You are the healer man.”
People began to drift away. It is bad when people begin to drift away like that.
“People, do not leave. The sign is only tardy,” Joshua cried out. But there was a chill on Joshua that made the drifting away of the crowd seem a small thing. A chill wind came to him: it had blown across the icy moors beyond the edge of the world. An hour or much less ago there was nothing wrong with the hand of Mary Corsicana, and now it was withered as from birth.
“Alex Carmi, come here,” Joshua called softly. Then he harangued the spirit loudly for the benefit of the crowd. And then spoke softly to Alex again. “Did you not remove the wire harness, Alex?”
“You can see that I did.”
“Then what is obstructing the circulation? Why does it not come alive?”
“That I don't know.”
“It is a sign,�
�� said Mary. “The sign startles when it appears.”
“Mary,” said Joshua, “your hand was whole short minutes ago.”
“Aye, and now it is withered forever.”
Then it was that Joshua went to pieces in public. And many in the crowd who had started to leave turned back now to hear him again, for he was eloquent in his breakup. But, for all that, this was the end of Joshua Halas. (Both God and the Devil had always known him by his original name of John Salt anyhow.) “Everybody dies!” cried this Joshua, and there was a tightness in his throat when he talked. “Everybody dies once, and one cannot even say that it is unexpected when it comes. And, though a man should die when I bid him come to life, who is to say that it was not his ordained time to die?
“But a hand does not wither of itself. There is no ordained time for it to wither. When I bid the whole-but-disguised hand to appear whole for the edification of the crowd, and then that hand withers instead, then there is a greater Hand upon me. I shouldn't have played with it for so long. All that has withered here tonight is not a hand.”
Joshua Halas (as a boy he'd been plain John Salt) stood silent, and the crowd left him. Then he began to scream, thinly and steadily like a hurt dog, and they had to take him away.
He is not well yet.
“Is that all there was to him when you crack his shell a little?” Mary had asked.
Mary Corsicana still has a withered hand, and she will have it till the day she dies. But her luck has changed. For her lost hand, she received back her lost grin. Remember when it had been her trademark!
Her luck has shifted to the good. She no longer travels with the high old animals, nor is she consort to cons and frauds. She's a rather pleasant and serene woman now, and she runs a pleasant business: “Mary Corsicana's Coffee Corner, Mountain-Grown Berries, North Slope Only. Gored Ox and Italian Bread.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 316
