Sure the Kaw Indians flew kites back in the Indian Days, beaver-skin kites strung on frames of tough and springy Osage Orange wood. For kite-ropes they used twisted huckleberry vines. They flew the kites more than a mile high, and sometimes the kite-riders put on their Fat Air suits and jumped out of the high kites. They might drift as far as fifty miles, across the wide Missouri River and into the treacherous Missouri Territory. And their descendants, the Kaw-Germans, still do it.
Affected by the technology of the Settler-German element, the Fat Air suits are much better than they were in the Indian days. And so are the kites. Tough rubber-like polyethylene has taken the place of beaver skins for both the suits and the kites. The suits used to be blown up by mouth, and the air was stoppered inside the suits by big wooden corks. Now the suits have regular air-valves in them; and every suit-traveler carries a bicycle pump along with him when he goes drifting. A person encased in a Fat Air suit can walk along pretty well on the ground, or bounce along; and if he falls down, he can roll along and bounce up again. And in the air he can get along famously. Fat Suitors from Blackberry Patch, Kansas have floated across the Missouri River and clear across the state of Missouri and come down in Illinois. They carry dried blackberries with them to nibble on. And they wear advertisements on their Fat Air suits, and they always attract attention when they land. Often they are given rides back to Kansas by drivers for the Missouri Kansas Motor Freight Lines, as MK Freight Lines is one of the advertisements they most often wear on the backs of their suits.
There is another aspect of the Blackberry Patch kites and the Fat Air suitors that some people find hard to believe. It is the main secret thing about them. There being no burial grounds around Blackberry Patch itself, the Blackberry Patchers, when they find that their days have about run out on them, go by kite and suit to the secret place with the secret name: but the joking name for it is the Elephant Graveyard in the Sky. A person gets into his Fat Air suit and goes up about a mile high in a kite. He jumps out then, and he begins to glide. But he does not begin his gentle glide downward as usual. He glides upward across the Missouri River. He comes to the secret place that looks like a big cloud on the outside. But it is a special sort of cloud with its spherical silver lining on the inside. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside, and has running water and green pastures. And there he will be gathered to the bosom of his fathers (mothers too, maybe), and will find all the wonderful Blackberry Patch people who have ever passed over to their glory.
This last part may be inexact as nobody has ever entered the miscalled Elephant Graveyard in the Sky and returned to give an accurate report of it.
And just where is this big secret cloud with the joking name?
It is exactly over downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and exactly two miles up.
By John T. Woolybear in the Sunday Magazine Section of the Kansas City Star.
That was the last thing that Woolybear ever had published in the Sunday Magazine Section of the Kansas City Star. The Monday morning after it appeared, Peter J. Oldpeter was fired as editor of the Magazine Section and was replaced by a younger and less genial person.
And the Magazine Sections themselves in many Sunday newspapers were now being replaced by other things such as a second or even third section on TV personalities or Rock-Sockers.
3.
The Strange Case Of The Good Giant In Stone County, Missouri
The only things known for sure about Saint Christopher are that he was a very good person and that he was a giant. Other things about him, such as whether he ever really lived at all, or whether he ever really died at all, are not known for sure.
Dating from the third century AD, all around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, there are at least a hundred giant statues in various states of decay. In many cases the local belief is that they are statues of Saint Christopher. Some of the statues are fallen and broken badly. Some of them have lost heads and arms. But there is one thing missing from even the best-preserved of them, and that is the face. There are no faces on any of them, even those where the rest of the head is preserved. On the best-preserved of these statues, there is clear evidence that the faces were broken off with hammers or axes. So at least as many of the statues are called locally ‘The Giant Without a Face’ as are called ‘The Good Giant Saint Christopher’.
But what could have been so very wrong, or so very right, with the faces of the stone giants that people believed they had to break them off?
In Stone County, Missouri, in the United States of America, near the place called Talking Rocks, there lived until two years ago a man named Horace Goodjohn Christopher, a retiring sort of man who seemed to be liked and admired by everybody and everything except the coons and badgers and wolverines. These animals hated him, but dogs loved him, and people liked him. Horace G. Christopher, a giant of a man, was generous. And he always seemed to have money to be generous with. Nobody knew where he got his money for he never worked for pay, and he said that he didn't know where it came from either. “I just reach into one of my pockets and I find whatever I need,” he said. The good giant had giant pants, and the giant pockets in them were so deep that they never ran empty.
The good giant had never worked for pay, but he worked almost all the hours of almost all the days without pay, doing all sorts of things for people, especially for widows and orphans. He was a talented workman in every art and craft you could think of.
Besides his great height, there were two things a little bit unusual about this Giant John. He was seventeen-hundred-and-fifty years old. And he was dog-faced. That's right, dog-faced. In hair and hide and snout and eyes and ears and smell he was dog-faced. And it seemed a little bit weird to hear a man's voice (a clear, strong, friendly voice) coming out of his dog-face.
The Friendly Giant had a mill and he ground grain for everybody who brought it. Like all millers, he took one tenth of the grain in fee for the grinding. And yet the nine-tenths of the grain that he returned ground and sacked to the customer was always of greater quantity and greater weight than had been the ten-tenths that the customer had originally brought to him. And he gave to the poor one-tenth amount of every grinding that he had kept from the customer.
The Giant had a hotel or roadside inn at the place called Talking Rocks in Stone County, Missouri. He was the patron of travelers, so he welcomed travelers of every sort at his hotel and offered the best bed-and-board anywhere. When travelers left him, they paid whatever they could afford. And they always found twice the amount of their payment back in their pockets after they were a mile or so down the road.
Everybody liked him except those animals, the coons, badgers, and wolverines, those animals that traditionally hate and fear dogs. Then there appeared a wolverine of genius in the neighborhood. In every species, whether wolverine or human or other, about one individual in five million will be an individual of genius. The gifted wolverine got about a hundred other wolverines to assemble. He had to be a genius because the slashing solitary wolverines are lone hunters who hate other wolverines only slightly less than they hate creatures of other species. But he assembled them.
The mob of savage wolverines ambushed the good giant Horace Goodjohn Christopher one night. They killed him, and they tore his hot flesh right off his bones and ate it completely.
Well, was the giant Horace Goodjohn Christopher the same person as the giant Saint Christopher of Chanaan? His age of seventeen-hundred-and-fifty years would fit just about right. And the mystery of the old faceless statues of Saint Christopher might have been that they were dog-faced statues, and persons might have felt that it was not fitting that a saint should be represented as dog-faced even if it was accurate. And two days after the death of Horace Goodjohn Christopher, there came further corroborations that he was indeed the same person as ancient Saint Christopher of Chanaan. A man came in a truck to the Talking Rocks site in Stone County.
“I travel for the Zolliger Church Goods Company,” he said. “If nobody objects, I w
ill take the holy bones of Saint Christopher with me. It isn't seemly that they should lie here in the dank ground and be gnawed on by every animal that comes along. How many thousand of holy relics will they make! A thousand sizable pieces could be made from just one of those giant tibia bones.”
“How do you know that they are really the bones of Saint Christopher?” someone asked him.
“Gentlemen, relics authenticate themselves,” the church goods man said. “And two nights ago, when I was in a hotel in Jefferson City, I dreamed that the holy bones of the good giant Saint Christopher could be found in this exact spot. I came here and found it to be so.”
I myself visited this church goods man, saw the bones and the relics that he was making from them, and was convinced of their authenticity. He even offered me a job selling them. “You are a charming man,” he said, “and I believe that you could sell anything.” There would be an incredible manner of relics made from those bones, and one man could not sell them all. But so far I have not taken the job.
By John T. Woolybear in the Sunday Magazine Section of the Saint Louis Globe, not too many years ago.
“This is the last thing I can ever buy from you, John,” the Magazine Section editor of the Globe told John Woolybear. “Were I not retiring at the end of this month I would not dare to buy and publish this. It's outrageous, of course, it's silly, it's garish.” “But a Magazine Section piece cannot be too garish!” John Woolybear protested. “Everybody knows that.”
“Maybe everybody knew it fifty years ago, John,” the editor said, “but it hasn't been true for a long time. This is the most inept and outrageous thing that I have ever encountered. But it served my purpose. What better way to thumb my nose at the powers at this newspaper where I have spent so many happy years! What a flood of protests they'll get when this silly thing appears!”
John T. Woolybear took his money and left the newspaper office with a touch of sorrow in his heart. Was it possible that the world was in the process of passing him by? Was flamboyance and garishness no longer wanted in the world? Could it be that even a true account like this one of the good giant at Talking Rocks was too garish and incredible to appear in a Sunday Magazine Section of a Newspaper? Woolybear felt bewildered. And in his bewilderment he experienced a sudden loneliness for his three wives, the one in Illinois, the one in Nebraska, and the one in Texas.
4.
Strange Account Of The Pike County, Pennsylvania Clonings
In the hamlet of Greely Gulch in Pike County, Pennsylvania, there are authentic cases of cloning. In fact, cloning is the way of life there. In my forty years of checking out strange-but-true stories all over the country I have investigated more than one hundred accounts of cloning in various regions and found them all to be false. But now I am prepared to state that the clonings that emanate from Greely Gulch are authentic.
In another Pike County town of Lackawaxed there was the case of three different sets of triplets going to work in the mill. These nine persons (of the three different sets) were all good workmen and they received good paychecks. But one of the auditors at the mill smelled fraud.
The auditor followed the nine workmen when they had finished work one evening. The nine of them walked behind some ornamental bushes at the front of the mill. Then only three men came out from behind the bushes. And the other six were not behind the bushes. They were nowhere. The auditor followed the remaining three to their boarding house. The three went in, ate their supper, opened their six packs of beer and watched TV, then went to bed. Well, the auditor was an adept at looking into windows; that's how he knew just how they spent their evening.
And in the morning the auditor was watching again. He saw the three rise, dress, eat their breakfasts, and then come out of their boarding house. He followed the three of them to the mill. Near the entrance to the mill, the three ducked for a moment behind some ornamental bushes. Then the full nine of them came out from behind the bushes, went into the mill and went to work. It was sheer fraud. Three men were holding nine jobs and drawing nine paychecks.
The auditor followed the nine/three men every evening. And they ate their three suppers and went to their three beds. But on Friday evening, the three basic men went to the bus station instead of the boarding house. They got on a bus and went away on it. The auditor went to the ticket window.
“Where did those last three fellows buy tickets for?” he asked the ticket seller.
“To Greely Gulch,” the ticket seller said.
I found that in a dozen other towns in a sort of circle around Greely Gulch the same thing was happening. The community of Greely Gulch was guilty of fraud by means of cloning at the expense of all its neighboring towns. Then I went to Greely Gulch myself, and I found—
“I have read enough,” the Editor of the Sunday Magazine Section of the Scranton Scanner told John T. Woolybear. “It's drivel, John. No more, John. You're not the man you used to be, John.” “But read on, Mr. Farmington. Read how I myself went to Greely Gulch and how I became sure that all the people of Greely Gulch could clone. Read how I myself—”
“No, John, no,” the Editor of the Magazine Section of the Scranton Scanner said. “No more ever.”
“What will I do now?” John T. Woolybear asked himself. “I have always been the best Sunday Magazine Section Feature Story Writer in the World, and I got to be the best by following the adage that a Sunday Magazine Section piece cannot be too garish. I'll not admit that I am wrong about this, but I must admit that the world has gone wrong about it. I've failed to place the last twelve Sunday Magazine Section pieces I've written. And all of them were amazing and all of them were true. “My STRANGE CASE OF THE UFO NESTS AT WILDCAT, WYOMING was shuffled off as fiction. Fiction? I was there; I learned everything; I even soloed in one of the Wildcat Wyoming's UFO's.
“I know that the clonings of Greely Gulch were real because I myself—
“But what's the use of arguing? My life is a bust. I am separated from all three of my wives and I miss them all uncommonly. I miss the one in Illinois. I miss the one in Nebraska. I miss the one in Texas. I must find a way to make things up to all three of them, but it's against the law to make things up with all three of them.
“It's time I hit the road again.”
John T. Woolybear went to his own boarding house and pulled his big heavy suitcase out from under the bed. Now it seemed to be bigger and heavier than ever before. He knew he would not be able to go hitchhiking with it again. It was as if he had become older and weaker in the four days since he had come to town and gone to work for the Scranton Scanner.
“What makes the thing so heavy, anyhow?” he asked himself, and he opened up the suitcase. “Oh yes,” he said. He took a bulky Fat Air suit out of it. He took a bulky folded-up man-carrying kite out of it. And a bicycle pump. It was still a pretty heavy suitcase. What to do?
“I am, after all, a charming man,” he said. “At least three persons in this world have found me so. But how will my charm work now? I could go back to Blackberry Patch in Doniphan County, Kansas. I learned their tricks when I was there. I could get into my Fat Air suit, go up in my kite, and jump out. As I am getting to my last years, I would probably glide up instead of down. I could drift into that cloud that is jokingly called The Elephant Graveyard in the Sky. It is exactly over Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, two miles over it. And there I would be with all the Blackberry Patch people who have passed over to their glory. I would be with them, aye, but I'd be as dead as they all are. I'm not quite ready for that yet.
“Or I could go back to Missouri and go to work with that friend of mine with the Zolliger Church Goods Company. I have heard that he is badly in need of an assistant to sell Saint Christopher relics. That big skeleton broke up into so many thousand genuine relics that there will be good business in them for as long as one can see into the future. But I know that I'd have a dog-faced feeling if I went into that line of work.
“Or I could go back to Greely Gulch and check in at the Outwo
rker Agency. Then I would go to one of the nearby towns and get three jobs and draw three paychecks. But great howling thunder! I don't want three jobs. I don't want hardly one.
“But what will I do? There must be something for me. I am, after all, a charming man.”
He went out of his boarding house and to the variety store.
“Let me see that small suitcase,” he said. “Fine, fine, it's just what I want. Let me have three of them. No, no, what am I thinking about. Let me have just one of them.”
John Woolybear took the small suitcase back to his boarding house and set it on the floor in his bedroom. Then the little suitcase seemed to become three little suitcases on the floor.
“I am a charming man,” John Woolybear reassured himself again. “Three persons in this world have found me especially so. It may be that I won't have to work at all, not if I spread myself properly. And all three of those special persons are well-fixed now, so I have heard.”
John T. Woolybear who had once been the King of the Sunday Magazine Section Fabricators began to fill the three little suitcases out of the one big suitcase. And, by leaving out the Fat Air suit and the folding man-carrying kite and the bicycle pump and a few other items, he made the transfer perfectly.
Just before dawn the next morning, three men took their places at a good hitchhiking highway nexus just outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The three men looked somewhat alike. Each of them had pale blue eyes. Each of them was flecked with large tan freckles, and each of the freckles had a slight blue ring about it as if it had been drawn by a cartoonist. The three suitcases of the three men were just alike, almost just alike. Each of the suitcases had a lettered sign on it.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 324
