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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Alex Carmi comes in often, as do other old-timers.

  Of Laughter And The Love Of Friends

  John Ginpole was genuine: that's the strong thing about him. In his own field he was a pro. He was genuine all the way, to the very end. And Gale Geier Ginpole was perfect, except for having no sense of humor. Her husband John Ginpole believed that she was perfect, and he was the one to whom it mattered most. Gale was large, even outsized: that's the way John liked her. She was gaudy: that also was the way he liked her. She was well-voiced and of quick emotions. You couldn't miss seeing her. You couldn't miss hearing her those rare times when she did speak. She stood out in a crowd, and that was the way John liked her too.

  And, even if she didn't have any sense of humor, she was good-humored. That was something. Maybe it was better that way, from John's viewpoint. There wasn't any humor in her. But, with her quick emotions and responses, one could get a lot of humor out of her.

  John Ginpole was a heavyweight humorist of almost champion rating. He did practical jokes, enormous jokes, clattering jokes, jokes to blow your top over. Some of them were funny, if they happened to someone else. John Ginpole lost a lot of jobs over his jokes, for many of his outlandish and damaging jokes had been played on his excellent employers. Some of those employers never did recover from the jokes, and some of the businesses did not. It was even felt in certain circles that job termination was not sufficient action against John Ginpole and his jokes.

  But John got along, and he stayed in the coin in one way or another. The flat truth was that people were afraid of him. Of his three powerful brothers-in-law, Sheldrake Geier, Culpepper Geier, and Gazebo Geier, there was a saying “The Geiers protect their own”. And people were nine parts afraid that John Ginpole might turn his cloud-cracking jokes on themselves. So, to be on the safe side, people gave John good orders (John was always a salesman, as are all out-of-bound jokers) for material that they did not even have need of that they could get at lower prices from higher caliber gentlemen. But it did no good. There were no sacred cows to John Ginpole, and there was no bull-of-the-woods so stalwart as to slip by him unscathed.

  But, in between the times when John Ginpole flourished with rich jokes, he was often moody and sulky. These were the times when he suffered Jokers' Block and could not come up with any real howlers at all. He blamed other people for his own inability to come up with truly great jokes. In particular he blamed his wife Gale.

  “We just do not go together, Gale,” he'd say. “You are a left-hand glove to my right hand. Other wives abet and aid their husbands in their inclinations and professions. But in my own chosen field, you and I have no point of contact.”

  “I know it,” Gale said, “and I'm not really sorry about it. All that joking stuff of yours just curdles me: I'm not there with that. But you'll find me more-than-there in everything else. So, I am a blank to your practical jokes. But do you know how many ways you are a blank? Besides, what are you going to do about it?”

  “I'll get another woman, I suppose, Gale. I'll get a woman who appreciates me and my humor. I've got just the one in mind too. Ramona Bellona.”

  “Oh, I won't like that!” Gale cried. “I won't like that at all.” Gale, being so humorlessly good-humored, was hard to start a fight with. But she was easy to hurt, and that was even more fun.

  John Ginpole kept on the theme of incompatible wife for nearly a week, and he worried and tortured Gale. She was patient; she was kind; she made up for her inadequate humor by her overflowing adequacy in other ways: but still John Ginpole kept it up. Gale heard that he was seeing Ramona on the sly, and on the not-so-sly. She heard that Ramona told her friends that there would be big news quite soon. So she suffered and had apprehensions.

  One afternoon, Gale had to be out and about, and she came back to the house just about the time that John usually got there. She let herself in and she called for him. He did not answer. And yet there was an answer on the bulletin board: the red flag was unfurled.

  The Ginpoles had this little arrangement that the red flag should be furled out and tacked up on the bulletin board whenever one of them had an urgent message for the other. The flag screamed at Gale's eyes now, and she went in great fright to read the letter that John had tacked up for her there. And she gave a sharp and well-voiced cry as she read the first words of it.

  “Gale, this is the end of it. We were never compatible. I don't know how we stuck it as long as we did. It was wrong from the start that the top joker in Perryville should be tied to a woman with no humor at all.

  “Well, I have taken care of that. I have gone away with Ramona Bellona on a sort of honeymoon. Ramona is a woman who can appreciate a thumping joke. You should have heard the way she laughed and chortled over this when I laid out the way we would do it. It's on you, of course; but even you would have to admit that it's pretty funny, if you had any sense of humor at all. ‘Oh, I can just see her face when she reads this!’ Ramona howled.

  “I've taken care of a lot of other things too, to save you the trouble. (Yeah, Ramona thinks that line is really funny, and so do I.) The joint bank accounts that we had, well, I've cleaned them all out. The bonds too. You remember that thing you signed the day before yesterday? Well, that should teach you not to sign things without reading them. You made everything over to me, that's what you did. And where I've got them now, well, forget it.

  “The payment on the house is due tomorrow. We haven't very much equity in it, so do whatever you want to. Hey, Ramona wants to tell you what you can really do—”

  Gale Ginpole fell to the floor, stunned and desolate. She had built, here with John, the fullest life and world she was able to build; and now it was shattered. She sobbed. She wailed. It was the end of everything with her. “Hey, Gale, where's the horseradish?” John Ginpole asked as he came in from the kitchen. Gale twisted on the floor like the gaudy, broken, tenth-of-a-ton butterfly that she was. John was holding a sandwich the size of a football and was pouring barbecue sauce into its depths.

  “John, you're here. You didn't go away with Ramona!” Gale gasped in well-voiced amazement.

  “Wow! Wow! Wowzer! Wow! Wow!” John Ginpole exploded with laughter. “You fell for it! You fell for it! It worked!” He flung five pounds of sandwich stuff to the four walls and ceiling of the room and rolled on the floor in roaring delight.

  “Wowser, Wow, Wow! You bit on it like a barracuda! Guffa, guffy Gow-Wow'”

  “Be careful, John, your hernia will be out again,” Gale spoke with concern, and she rose from the floor, wiped her eyes, and adjusted as well as she could. So, it has all been one of those jokes, and he hadn't left her at all. And it was ridiculous, now that she thought about it, even to imagine that somebody like the stylish Ramona Bellona would go off with somebody like John Ginpole.

  “If you keep playing such mean jokes, John, someday you won't have any friends left at all,” Gale warned.

  “Oh, I'll still have you and your three brothers,” John spoke with certainty. “Oh those Geiers, my hard-faced brothers-in-law. I'm sure glad they're on my side. I wonder whether any of the Geiers, in their several centuries in this region, ever pulled even one joke?”

  “Yes, they did, John. They've pulled five of them. Or I guess they pulled the same joke five times.”

  “I can't believe it! A Geier joke! I hope they pull it on me some day.”

  “I hope they don't, John.”

  So they had a reconciliation.

  So John was out of his slump now and onto another spate of bruising jokes that would go on for weeks. But, for Gale, a slight chill had come over things and it bid fair to be permanent. Traces of it would always remain, like the traces on the ceiling of John's whoopingly heaved sandwich.

  And some of the jokes of the new series left permanent stains. The run on the Perryville County Bank did. John Ginpole did not actually say that the Perryville County Bank was shaky and that a wise depositor might do well to take his money out of there pretty quick, like within the nex
t ten minutes. Where would the joke be if he had actually said such a thing? But John was an accomplished double-talker, and many of the citizens of Perryville were double-eared listeners.

  Maybe he did refer to the banking operations as being “sort of rash” rather than as “short of cash.” Maybe he did say that the bunch at the bank were “honest kids” rather than “on the skids”. It wasn't so much what he said as the way that he said it. And he did send Gale over to the bank with a big sack to draw all their cash out of their accounts. And pretty soon there were a lot of other people in line there with bags and sacks. And then a multitude of people saw the line, and they got their bank books and joined it.

  John Ginpole had told a few fast-reacting loafers that the bank was giving, as an advertising gimmick, a free block of rock salt to the first twenty people to come and pick it up, and this had brought quite a few people into the line. (Each fast-reacting loafer in Perryville had at least a hard-working jersey cow and a hard-working wife, so for cow and house they always needed a block of rock salt at least three times a year.) And a lot of people saw these loafers with their heavy tote bags in the line, so they had come with bags too, to get their money. But how could the humorous story that the bank was giving away twenty blocks of rock salt be construed as an attempt to start a run on the bank?

  Well, there was a run on the bank, and the bank did fold. It really had been shaky. It was a pretty good joke, but some of the depositors who suffered losses didn't think it was funny. Three of the depositors who didn't think it was funny were Sheldrake Geier the Doctor, Culpepper Geier the Undertaker who was also the radio and TV repair man, and Gazebo Geier who was the Sheriff and Coroner. But those three Geier brothers didn't think that anything was funny. They hadn't any sense of humor.

  These three Geiers were brothers-in-law of John Ginpole, brothers of Gale. Like Gale, they were outsized and gaudy and well-voiced. And the fact was that John Ginpole had played numerous jokes on his brothers-in-law on the theory that some things are so outrageously funny that they should be kept in the family. Sheldrake Geier the Doctor made both house calls and farm calls, some of them to a great distance. But he had long since grown tired of making long night calls to places where nobody was sick and no one had called him; no one, that is, except the joker brother-in-law disguising his voice.

  Culpepper Geier the Undertaker and repair man had also had some embarrassing encounters, going to pick up corpses and having the corpses insist that they had never felt better in their lives. And Gazebo Geier the Sheriff and Coroner had been on many a wild goose chase after false rumors of lawlessness and riot, or of unusual deaths and dispositions.

  But John Ginpole and his cronies had howling good times over all these misdirections. If those weren't first-rate practical jokes, then what kind of practical jokes do they have where you come from?

  John Ginpole, however, in spite of several sorts of shake-downs that he was able to effect, did not thrive nearly as well as did some of the honest citizens of Perryville. He lost his jobs and he got worse ones. In his efforts to recoup, he invested in some long-shot stuff that missed: and now his thimble-sized empire had the totters. He tried to borrow money from his three brothers-in-law, and they insisted on more security than he could give. And they warned Gale that her joker husband was just about on the rocks.

  But she didn't realize how dire the situation might be until she came into the house one day and saw the red flag flying from the bulletin board. With hurried hands, she took the letter that John Ginpole had tacked up there. She gave a heavy moan as she read the very first line.

  “Gale, this is the end of it. My fortunes are shipwrecked, and I have acquired debts that I am unable to pay and which I am too honorable to default on. The only way out is out. I had to cash my life insurance policy. I'm sorry about that. I had to mortgage the house and car for more than they are worth. I'm sorry about that too. And it's all gone. All that I have left is my old service revolver. When you read this, I will be up in the bedroom with the gun to my head and my finger on the trigger. All I wait for is your coming. I wish to hear your beloved footsteps just once more. When I hear them, I will pull the trigger and shatter my brains, even as my fortunes have been shattered. Yours in death, John Ginpole.”

  Gale Ginpole moaned a muffled moan, and she started up the stairs as silently as she could so that her husband would not hear her footsteps and pull the trigger. But then she went out of control and went up with a rush and a cry “Don't do it, John! John, John, I beg you don't do it! Somehow we will win through! I'll get back my old job at the feed mill!”

  “Bang!” spoke a little cast-iron pistol in the bedroom at the top of the stairs. And then it spoke three more times “Bang, Bang, Bang!”

  “John, no, no, no!” Gale screamed and rushed up and in.

  “Snap, snap, snap,” said the little cast-iron pistol.

  “Gale, they just don't make cap-pistols like they used to,” John Ginpole complained. “Every time you thread a new roll of caps into it, it fires a few times and then it begins to miss.”

  And then John Ginpole erupted in a roar of delight and rolled on the floor with whooping laughter.

  “Wow, wow, wowser, wow, wow! You fell for it. It worked!” he whooped.

  Gale shouldn't have fallen for it, she reflected. It was ridiculous, now that she thought about it. That John should ever have been too honorable to default, that he should ever have been too honorable for anything, that was impossible. And he had never had a service revolver. He had never had any service either. They had a reconciliation, of course, but it didn't reconcile all the way. Gale felt that she was unfairly put upon by all this squalid humor. And John felt that he was funnier and richer than ever.

  But Gale went and talked to her three brothers, and they agreed that things had gone far enough.

  “The next time it happens, we will take action,” Sheldrake Geier said. Then he explained what sort of action it might be, and each of them added a little bit to it. It was an old, grisley classic that they talked about.

  A joke? Well, some people might not quite call it a joke. But what do you call the ingenious things that people without humor cook up?

  “So that we may be clear in our consciences,” Sheldrake finished it off, “you must go and explain to John, Gale, that there must not be any next time.”

  Gale did explain that to her husband. And there were no more really outrageous jokes played on her for a full month. There were plenty of wild jokes played by John Ginpole on other people, yes, but none on his beloved wife Gale. And it was a full month before that red flag shrieked on the bulletin board again. Gale went with mixed anger and fear to read the note.

  “Gale, this is the end of it. I am touched with the ghostly rot of which you find mention in scripture. I am a leper. Aye, shudder, woman! I did not, of course, go to your inept brother Sheldrake for this, but to a competent doctor in the City. There is no doubt about the diagnosis. And there is no good in a face-to-face farewell, not in my highly contagious state.

  “I will be in the air on my way to the National Leprosarium in Carville Louisiana when you read this. Burn all the sheets from the bed, that's the main thing. Burn all the sheets in the house. And burn me out of your memory. Corruptly yours, John Ginpole.”

  Gale Ginpole moaned and groaned when she read this dire message. And then she went silent. She went and started a fire in the fireplace although it was a warm day. Then she went upstairs to get the sheets to burn them, but her eye and mind were struck by something else when she got there. She swept all of John's flashy suits into her arms and brought them down and threw them into the fire.

  “It's the first thing to do either way,” she said out loud to herself. “If the case is as John writes it, then John won't be needing these flashy suits, and they're just as contagious as the sheets are. And if the case is not as he writes that it is, Let them burn, Let them Burn!”

  Then there was a screaming, a horrible wailing that cut one to the bone
, or to the corrupt flesh. And it wasn't Gale screaming. It was John Ginpole himself.

  “Not my suits, Gale, dammit, not my suits!” he was howling, and he was fighting the fire to get the suits out of it. “I wrote the sheets, to burn the sheets, not the suits.”

  “Oh, the suits will be as leprous as the sheets, John. I'll burn them all.”

  “No, Gale, no! You spoil the joke besides burning my flashy suits.” John was dragging the suits out of the fireplace and stomping on them. “It was a joke, Gale, a joke. And you're spoiling it. I'm not really a leper. I'm not really flying to Carville in Louisiana.”

  “I still think I should go ahead and burn all your suits,” Gale insisted.

  “No, no, Gale. For you to burn all the bed sheets, that would be funny. But for you to burn my suits is not funny. Can't you see the difference?”

  “Sure. I paid for the sheets, and you paid for your suits, that's the difference. You burned me up, I know that, and it's for the last time. Where's the bell we got from the Liberty Bell Easy Loan Company? There it is! I'll warn everyone!”

  Then Gale Ginpole snatched up the hand-bell and ran out of the house ringing it and crying out “Ware, ware, ware, beware, unclean! My husband is a leper! Ware, ware!”

  Oh, that bell did have a loud and clear ring to it, and Gale Geier Ginpole had always been well-voiced. She ran a block in the street with her bell ringing and her crying out, and John Ginpole was running after her as hard as he could. But, as he ran, John Ginpole had a startling thought. “If Gale had a sense of humor, this would be kind of funny. Dammit, it is funny!” And his howling became then a mixture of merry roaring and outright fury. Such contrary emotions can be fatal to a man.

  Gale ran into the big house on the corner of the block. It was the house of her brother Sheldrake Geier the Doctor. And Gale's husband John was hot after her.