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

by R. A. Lafferty

  Well, how had that period ended in the memories of the two of them? Oh, the memories of the two of them had simply ended after twelve years of it. But it still might be going on in some other time, as wonderful as ever.

  “Finnegan, a thing like ours could destroy Melchisedech's World and leave it in total wreckage,” Teresa complained. “How do we get around that?”

  “I think we have it backwards, Teresa. I believe that Melchisedech's World is shot through with such anomalies. Haven't you had the feeling, again and again, that not all the Duffeys are as contemporary with each other as they seem? One at least of those I confabbed with during the last two days is dead, but he doesn't seem dead. He is merely living in a past where he is still alive. Another of our close-knit group was killed in New Guinea during the war, and yet I talked with him less than an hour ago. Of course he's a ghost, but he's a convincing ghost, and I don't know whether or not he realizes that he is a ghost. Overseas, in the war in the South Pacific, we had a group that called ourselves, and was called THE SLEAZY SEVEN. But only five of us returned from that war. All seven of us are here at this confab though, five of us mostly alive, two of us a little bit less so. And Duffey himself (Oh Duffey Himself!) is mostly made up of a long series of ‘seven lost years’. Shall we play it that way, Teresa? It's as good a way as any to play it, isn't it?”

  “It's too funny not to play it that way, Finn. I'm all for it. But will our accepting it as that way make it that way?”

  “To some extent, Teresa. It'll help. If wanting things to be some way didn't help them to be that way, then there wouldn't be much left to Melchisedech's World, or to the generally accepted world either.”

  “Now, Finnegan, since we agree that it's funny, let's have a fun-fest for a few minutes. The night before last I got Duffey to sit on my saintly lap and ride on my saintly back. I really am a saint, you know.”

  “During the twelve years you certainly were. And I'm sure that you are in the present time. You were and are a hilarious saint.”

  “Let's have a little hilarity then. Sit on my lap, Finn, and then bounce on my torso. I have the bounciest torso I know of. Oof, oof, oof, I love to have the wind bounced out of me like that. Oh, how the time does fly when you're having fun! We'd better go out and show them that we're all right.” (This first meeting of Finnegan and Teresa took place in a room at the Stranahan's.)

  Then Teresa burst out of that room with Finnegan riding on her shoulders and both of them whooping and in high good humour.

  “Oh, isn't she wonderful, Finnegan!” Monica Murray Stranahan cried happily. “There seemed to be all sorts of storminess and apprehension when you two went into the room for your first meeting, but I'm delighted to see that you've come to perfect understanding with each other. Oh, I've never seen two more joyful people! Teresa, you're never so perfectly yourself as when you're giving a man a ride on your shoulders.”

  Teresa carried Finnegan through all of the rooms of the Stranahan Mansion and to every group of guests that was there.

  And yet this girl Teresa really did have things in her that are deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky.

  Vincent Stranahan was to marry Teresa Piccone on the first Saturday of May of that year. Melchisedech Duffey didn't know either of them. He almost didn't know anybody who knew knew either of them. But his ‘creatures’ the Duffeys seemed to have minds of their own. They had a strange homing instinct (had Duffey given it to them, or had it been otherwise generated?) to be in St. Louis for that event. “Where the eagles are gathered together, there will I be also,” Melchisedech Duffey said. The World of Melchisedech Duffey had many tendencies that Melchisedech himself didn't understand at all.

  But the World of Melchisedech Duffey did begin its reanimation with that St. Louis Conclave, in spite of it being all full of errors of time and space, in spite of erroneous names being used in several cases for the Persona of the Melchisedech World Drama. The reanimation began there, it found a validity in itself, and it is a living and growing world today.

  ‘Why haven't we seen hide nor hair of this world?’ somebody asks. Because you're on the inside of it and the hide and hair are on the outside. ‘Aren't the people of that so-called world pretty old by now?’

  Some of them are old, some of them are dead and their places taken by others. But Hilarious Saints do not age as fast as other people do. Notice it sometime.

  ‘Can you not give me some corroborative proof that I can hold in my hand right now?’

  You are holding the corroborative proof in your hand right now. It is what you have just been reading. The chapbook or brochure with the name ANAMNESIS exists only in the World According to Melchisedech Duffey. Really.

  We defy you to find it in any of those minor alternative worlds.

  Introduction (Ringing Changes)

  Most of these stories were written in the years 1968-1974. They are of various sorts, but several of them are against-the-grain stories; songs-of-rebellion stories even, though their singing may be a little cracked and croaky. This is because the world was unpatterned and unstructured during those years, and intolerably narrowed and shriveled. (They conquered us so easily!) We were a mesmerized world, and we were lost on a day when there wasn't even a battle scheduled. So several of these pieces are restructuring and rebirthing myths, and there is a touch of groaning and travail in them. But most of them are no such things. The stories are these:

  “Parthen.” The aliens had landed!…The world rang with cracked melody and everyone was in love with life…Never had the girls been so pretty…I believe that our minds are now on a higher plane…And every one of those men died happy. That's what made it so nice.

  “Old Foot Forgot.” One does whatever one can for “the oneness that is greater than self.”…They say “Pray for the happy obliteration.”…But somewhere there is a person who revolts and cries, “I would rather burn in a hell forever than suffer happy obliteration. I'll burn if it be me that burns.”

  “Dorg.” Rain dances are good; fertility dances are good; so is prayer and chanting. But there is nothing like ritual drawing and painting on cave walls to keep the world well-fed. What did you think was keeping the world so fertile and burgeoning these days?

  “Days of Grass, Days of Straw.” Without the special days that are not in the regular count it just wouldn't be worthwhile. We need them, we need them, and some of the champions will have to wrestle with the principalities and powers to get them.

  “Brain Fever Season.” The seasons have returned in their appointed strengths. Now we can live again. Now we can be seasonable fools again.

  “And Read the Flesh Between the Lines.” We'll not allow ourselves to be narrowed down forever in a straited world. We'll explode and regain our real spaciousness. We'll explode, we'll explode!

  “Old Halloween on the Guna Slopes.” O ghostly night, O antic night, when we were ourselves young and ghostly.

  “The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos.” Maybe life is no more than globs of gas plasma, green and faintly translucent. But how is it possible to grow hairs on globs of gas? This is a sympathetic story about the only animals that everybody loves, mice.

  “The Wooly World of Barnaby Sheen.” Barnaby's world was about a cubic meter in volume and it weighed 4,500 pounds. It had a good selection of rocks, and it developed weather and lively inferior fauna. Then it got a little bit out of hand. This tale contains the saddest lament in all literature: “My house is on fire, my shirt is on fire, and my houseboy has fleas. What worse can happen?”

  “Rivers of Damascus.” There are several ways of looking at any past event in history. The para-archaeological probe, with a little dowsing added to it, may not be the ideal way, but it sure can cut through that polarized data of what is sometimes called “conventional history.”

  “Among the Hairy Earthmen.” This was the “Long Afternoon” that lasted two and a half centuries, possibly the most puzzling two and a half centuries in the history of our world.

  �
�In Outraged Stone.” This is the stubborn refusal to accept that there is no transcendence, that there is no ultimate reality.

  When they try to tell you that you are only an artifact in a collection, that you are not alive, that you have never been alive, that is the time to get mad.

  “And Name My Name.” Is it possible that our true identity has been taken away from all of us, that we are only an apish shambles now?

  “Why is our identity stolen from us. Why are we robbed of it?” we ask.

  “You aren't robbed of it. You threw it away,” we are told.

  “Sky.” Yes, you can pick and choose from among the various realities, selecting the best and most eventful of them and then selecting from the still more rarefied best. You can do this for quite a while, so long as you are not spooked by things that are the wrong color of white, so long as you are able to refinance your bill with the piper, so long as you have hollow bones and a hollow heart.

  “For All Poor Folks At Picketwire.” It wasn't a bad place at all compared to some others. Consider that you can have a workshop in total vacuum, that it is dust-free and without gravity, that it is spared the effect of every magnetized cloud, of every voltage differential, of every solar wind. And it's beyond the influence of time and temperature and hard radiation and “all baleful beams.” Nuggets of gold and orichalcum! What a place to work! Even the main disadvantage of it can be turned to an advantage, sort of, sort of.

  “Oh Whatta You Do When The Well Runs Dry?” On November 7, 1999, the well ran dry. This was the well of Wit and Idea. It was the Well of the World.

  Ah, but there was a way to get more water out of the well. There were shabby people who still had plenty of shabby water, and they were willing to share it. But it was stronger water than any of the people had met before. It was raunchy water, it was vile water. And the wit and ideas that came from the well now were raunchy also.

  There's a twist to the tale of course, but it doesn't make the condition any less raunchy.

  “And Some in Velvet Gowns.” Well, if you got all the skin burned off you by space winds, maybe you'd cover yourself with gaudy clothing too. This is a “the-aliens-are-in-town-and-they're-taking-us-over” story. But most of them weren't really wearing velvet gowns. They just had their torsos painted to look like that.

  “The Doggone Highly Scientific Door.” If you turned into a dog, would you be the first person or the last person to know it? And if you turned into a dog interiorly but still kept your human appearance, who would know it first? If there is an electronic device that can discern between dogs and people, where will it draw the line?

  These questions are important since a lot of people are turning into dogs lately.

  “Interurban Queen.” This is a “what-if” story. What if the gasoline-powered internal-combustion “automobile” had not been outlawed early in its career? What would the effect on manners and mores have been if the automobile. the “selfishness symbol,” had been allowed to compete with such communal symbols as the Interurban Electric Trolley Cars?

  “Been a Long Long Time.” We will not give a commentary or résumé of this story. Should we begin to do so, you'd say “Oh, that's old, I know that one,” and you'd be wrong.

  These stories are intended to be entertainments, even the several of them that leak a little blood out of them. They are amusements.

  Be entertained then, be amused! And the superior ones among you will even be delighted in several places.

  Table of Contents (alphabetical)

  Go to Table of Contents (chronological)

  Go to Table of Contents (by collection)

  Introduction

  A Special Condition in Summit City

  About a Secret Crocodile

  Adam Had Three Brothers

  All But the Words

  All Hollow Though You Be

  All Pieces of a River Shore

  All the People

  Almost Perfect

  Along the San Pennatus Fault

  Aloys

  Among the Hairy Earthmen

  Anamnesis

  And All the Skies Are Full of Fish

  And Mad Undancing Bears

  And Name My Name

  And Read the Flesh Between the Lines

  And Some in Velvet Gowns

  And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire

  And You Did Not Wail

  Animal Fair

  Apocryphal Passage of the Last Night of Count Finnegan On Galveston Island

  Assault on Fat Mountain

  Bank and Shoal of Time

  Barnaby's Clock

  Beautiful Dreamer

  Been a Long Long Time

  Bequest of Wings

  Berryhill

  Bird-Master

  Boomer Flats

  Brain Fever Season

  Bright Coins in Never-Ending Stream

  Bright Flightways

  Bubbles When They Burst

  Buckets Full of Brains

  By the Seashore

  Cabrito

  Calamities of the Last Pauper

  Camels and Dromedaries, Clem

  Cliffs That Laughed

  Company in the Wings

  Condillac's Statue

  Configuration of the North Shore

  Continued on Next Rock

  • How I Wrote “Continued On Next Rock”

  Crocodile

  Day of the Glacier

  Days of Grass, Days of Straw

  Dorg

  Dream

  Endangered Species

  Enfant Terrible

  Entire and Perfect Chrysolite

  Episodes of the Argo

  Eurema's Dam

  Ewe Lamb

  Faith Sufficient

  Fall of Pebble-Stones

  Flaming Ducks and Giant Bread

  Flaming-Arrow

  Fog in My Throat

  For All Poor Folks at Picketwire

  Frog on the Mountain

  From the Thunder Colt's Mouth

  Funnyfingers

  Ghost in the Corn Crib

  Ginny Wrapped in the Sun

  Girl of the Month

  Golden Gate

  Golden Trabant

  Goldfish

  Gray Ghost: A Reminiscence

  Great Day in the Morning

  Great Tom Fool

  Groaning Hinges of the World

  Guesting Time

  Hands of the Man

  Happening in Chosky Bottoms

  Haruspex

  Heart Grow Fonder

  Heart of Stone, Dear

  Hog-Belly Honey

  Holy Woman

  Horns on Their Heads

  Hound Dog's Ear

  How Many Miles to Babylon?

  How They Gave It Back

  I Don't Care Who Keeps the Cows

  Ifrit

  I'll See It Done and Then I'll Die

  In Deepest Glass

  In Our Block

  In Outraged Stone

  In the Garden

  In the Turpentine Trees

  Incased in Ancient Rind

  Interurban Queen

  Inventions Bright and New

  Ishmael Into the Barrens

  Jack Bang's Eyes

  John Salt

  Junkyard Thoughts

  Land of the Great Horses

  • Afterword (Land of the Great Horses)

  Le Hot Sport

  Long Teeth

  Lord Torpedo, Lord Gyroscope

  Love Affair With Ten Thousand Springs

  Mad Man

  Magazine Section

  Make Sure the Eyes Are Big Enough

  Maleficent Morning

  Marsilia V

  Maybe Jones and the City

  McGonigal's Worm

  McGruder's Marvels

  Mr. Hamadryad

  Mud Violet

  Name of the Snake

  Narrow Valley

  New People

  Nine Hundred Grandmothers

  • Memoir
(Nine Hundred Grandmothers)

  Nor Limestone Islands

  Of Laughter and the Love of Friends

  Oh Happy Double-Jointed Tongues!

  Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight

  Oh Whatta You Do When the Well Runs Dry?

  Oh, Those Trepidatious Eyes!

  Old Foot Forgot

  Old Halloweens On The Guna Slopes

  Once on Aranea

  One at a Time

  One-Eyed Mocking-Bird

  Or Little Ducks Each Day

  Other Side of the Moon

  Panic Flight

  Parthen

  Phoenic

  Pig in a Pokey

  Pine Castle

  Pleasures and Palaces

  Polity and Custom of the Camiroi

  Posterior Analytics

  Promontory Goats

  Puddle on the Floor

  Quiz Ship Loose

  Rain Mountain

  Rainbird

  Rainy Day in Halicarnassus

  Rang Dang Kaloof

  Ride a Tin Can

  Rivers of Damascus

  Rogue Raft

  Royal Licorice

  Saturday You Die

  Scorner's Seat

  Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies

  Seven Story Dream

  Seven-Day Terror

  Six Leagues From Lop

  Sky

  Slippery

  Slow Tuesday Night

  Smoe and the Implicit Clay

  Snake in His Bosom

  Snuffles

  Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas

  Something Rich and Strange

  Splinters

  Square and Above Board

  St. Poleander's Eve

  Symposium

  Task Force Fifty-Eight and a Half

  The 99th Cubicle

  The All-At-Once Man

  The Casey Machine

  The Cliff Climbers

  The Doggone Highly Scientific Door

  The Effigy Histories

  The Emperor's Shoestrings

  The End of Outward

  The Forty-Seventh Island

  The Funny Face Murders

  The Hand with One Hundred Fingers

  The Hellaceous Rocket of Harry O'Donovan

  The Hole on the Corner

  The Last Astronomer

  The Man Underneath

  The Man Who Lost His Magic

  The Man Who Made Models

  The Man Who Never Was