Other Worlds, Better Lives, A Howard Waldrop Reader Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003

by Howard Waldrop

  Al hung upside down, still seated on the unicycle, six feet in the air over the head of the catcher, motionless, sailing forward in a long somersault.

  He came down on home plate with a thud and a bounce.

  “Safe!” said the ump, sawing the air to each side.

  The benches emptied as the catcher threw off his wire mask. Punches flew like they did after every close call.

  Teeheezal and Sgt. Hank stayed on the bench eating a bag of peanuts. The people in the stands were yelling and laughing.

  “Oh, almost forgot,” said Sgt. Hank, digging in his pants pocket. “Here.”

  He handed Teeheezal a postcard. It had an illegible postmark in a language with too many Zs. The front was an engraving of the statue of a hero whose name had six Ks in it.

  Well, was at a café. Bunch of seedy-looking students sitting at the table next to mine grumbling in Slavvy talk. This car come by filled with plumed hats, made a wrong turn and started to back up. One of the students jumped on the running board and let some air into the guy in the back seat—’bout five shots I say. Would tell you more but I was already lighting out for the territory. Place filled up with more police than anywhere I ever seen but the B.P.O.P.C. convention in Chicago back in ’09. This was big excitement last week but I’m sure it will blow over. Will write more soon.

  —Angus

  PS: Even here, we got the news the Big Ditch is finally open.

  It was the bottom of the eleventh and almost too dark to see when the bleeding man staggered onto left field and fell down.

  The man in the cloak threw off all six patrolmen. Rube used the emergency pistol he’d gotten from the wagon just before the horses went crazy and broke the harness, scattering all the picnic stuff everywhere. He emptied the revolver into the tall dark man without effect. The beady-eyed man swept Rube aside with one hand and came toward Teeheezal.

  The captain’s foot slipped in all the stuff from the ball game.

  The man in the dark cloak hissed and smiled crookedly, his eyes red like a rat’s. Teeheezal reached down and picked up a Louisville Slugger. He grabbed it by the sweet spot, smashed the handle against the ground, and shoved the jagged end into the guy’s chest.

  “Merde!” said the man, and fell over.

  Rube stood panting beside him. “I never missed, Chief,” he said. “All six shots in the space of a half-dime.”

  “I saw,” said Teeheezal, wondering at the lack of blood all over the place.

  “That was my favorite piece of lumber,” said Patrolman Mack.

  “We’ll get you a new one,” said the captain.

  They had the undertaker keep the body in his basement, waiting for somebody to claim it. After the investigation, they figured no one would, and they were right. But the law was the law.

  Sgt. Hank scratched his head and turned to the chief, as they were looking at the man’s effects.

  “Why is it,” he asked, “we’re always having trouble with things in boxes?”

  1915

  Teeheezal got off the streetcar at the corner of what used to be Sunset and Ivar, but which the village council had now renamed, in honor of a motion picture studio out to the northwest, Sunset and Bison. Teeheezal figured some money had changed hands.

  The P.E. Street Railway car bell jangled rapidly as it moved off toward Mount Lowe and the Cawston Ostrich Farms, and on down toward San Pedro.

  In the park across from the station, Patrolmen Chester and Billy, almost indistinguishable behind their drooping walrus mustaches, were rousting out a couple, pointing to the No Sparking sign near the benches. He stood watching until the couple moved off down the street, while Billy and Chester, pleased with themselves, struck noble poses.

  He went inside. The blotter on the desk was open:

  Tues. 2:14 a.m. Two men, Alonzo Partain and D. Falcher Greaves, no known addresses, moving-picture acting extras, arrested D&D and on suspicion of criminal intent, in front of pawn shop at Gower and Sunset. Dressed in uniforms of the G.A.R. and the Confederate States and carrying muskets. Griffith studio notified. Released on bond to Jones, business manager, 4:30 a.m. Ptlmn. Mack. R.D.O.T.

  The last phrase officially meant Released until Day Of Trial, but was station house for Rub-Down with Oak Towel, meaning Patrolman Mack, who was 6’11” and 350 pounds, had had to use considerable force dealing with them.

  “Mack have trouble?” he asked Sgt. Hank.

  “Not that Fatty said. In fact, he said when Mack carried them in, they were sleeping like babies.”

  “What’s this Griffith thing?”

  “Movie company out in Edendale, doing a War Between the States picture. Mack figured they were waiting till the hock shop opened to pawn their rifles and swords. This guy Jones was ready to blow his top, said they sneaked off the location late yesterday afternoon.”

  Teeheezal picked up the newspaper from the corner of the sergeant’s desk. He scanned the headlines and decks. “What do you think of that?” he asked. “Guy building a whole new swanky residential area, naming it for his wife?”

  “Ain’t that something?” said Sgt. Hank. “Say, there’s an ad for the new Little Tramp flicker, bigger than the film it’s playing with. That man’s a caution! He’s the funniest guy I ever seen in my life. I hear he’s a Limey. Got a mustache like an afterthought.”

  “I don’t think anybody’s been really funny since Flora Finch and John Bunny,” said Teeheezal. “This Brit’ll have to go some to beat John Bunny Commits Suicide.”

  “Well, you should give him a try,” said Sgt. Hank. “Oh, forgot yes-terday. Got another from Captain Angus. Here go.” He handed it to Teeheezal.

  It had a view of Lisbon, Portugal, as seen from some mackerel-slapper church tower, the usual address, and on the other half:

  Well, I had another boat sink out from under me. This time it was a kraut torpedo, and we was on a neutral ship. Had trouble getting into the lifeboats because of all the crates of howitzer shells on deck. Was pulled down by the suck when she went under. Saw airplane bombs and such coming out the holes in the sides while I was under water. Last time I take a boat called after the Roman name for a third-rate country. Will write again soon.

  —Angus

  PS: How about the Willard-Johnson fight?

  The windows suddenly rattled. Then came dull booms from far away.

  “What’s that?”

  “Probably the Griffith people. They’re filming the battle of Chicka-mauga or something. Out in the country, way past the Ince Ranch, even.”

  “What they using, nitro?”

  “Beats me. But there’s nothing we can do about it. They got a county permit.”

  “Sometimes,” said Teeheezal, “I think motion picture companies is running the town of Wilcox. And the whole U. S. of A. for that matter.”

  * * *

  1916

  Jesus Christ, smoking a cigar, drove by in a Model T.

  Then the San Pedro trolleycar went by, full of Assyrians, with their spears and shields sticking out the windows. Teeheezal stood on the corner, hands on hips, watching them go by.

  Over behind the corner of Prospect and Talmadge the walls of Babylon rose up, with statues of bird-headed guys and dancing elephants everywhere, and big moveable towers all around it. There were scaffolds and girders everywhere, people climbing up and down like ants. A huge banner stretched across the eight-block lot: D.W. Griffith Production—The Mother and the Law.

  He walked back to the station house. Outside, the patrolmen were waxing the shining new black box-like truck with Police Patrol painted on the sides. It had brass hand-cranked sirens outside each front door, and brass handholds along each side above the running boards. They’d only had it for three days, and had yet to use it for a real emergency, though they’d joy-rode it a coup
le of times, sirens screaming, with the whole force hanging on or inside it, terrifying the fewer and fewer horses on the streets. Their own draught-horses had been put out to pasture at Sgt. Fatty’s farm, and the stable out back converted into a garage.

  The village fathers had also wired the station house for electricity, and installed a second phone in Teeheezal’s office, along with an electric alarm bell for the squad room on his desk.

  The town was growing. It was in the air. Even some moving pictures now said Made in Wilcox, U.S.A. at the end of them.

  The blotter, after a busy weekend, was blank.

  The postcard was on his desk. It had an English postmark, and was a view of the River Liffey.

  Well, with the world the way it is, I thought the Old Sod would be a quiet place for the holiday. Had meant to write you boys a real letter, so went to the Main Post Office. Thought I’d have the place to myself. Boy, was I wrong about that. Last time I look for peace and quiet on Easter Sunday. Will write more later.

  —Angus

  PS: This will play heck with Daylight Summer Time.

  Teeheezal was asleep when the whole force burst into his office and Sgt. Hank started unlocking the rack with the riot guns and rifles.

  “What the ding-dong?” yelled Teeheezal, getting up off the floor.

  “They say Pancho Villa’s coming!” yelled a patrolman. “He knocked over a coupla banks in New Mexico!”

  Teeheezal held up his hand. They all stopped moving. He sat back down in his chair and put his feet back up on his desk.

  “Call me when he gets to Long Beach,” he said.

  Sgt. Hank locked the rack back up; then they all tiptoed out of the office.

  “Look out!” “Get ’im! Get him!” “Watch it!!”

  The hair-covered man tore the cell bars away and was gone into the moonlit night.

  “Read everything you can, Hank,” said Teeheezal. “Nothing else has worked.”

  “You sure you know what to do?” asked the captain.

  “I know exactly what to do,” said Patrolman Al. “I just don’t like it. Are you sure Sgt. Hank is right?”

  “Well, no. But if you got a better idea, tell me.”

  Al swallowed hard. He was on his big unicycle, the one with the chain drive.

  There was a woman’s scream from across the park.

  “Make sure he’s after you,” said Teeheezal. “See you at the place. And, Al . . .”

  “Say ‘break a leg,’ Captain.”

  “Uh . . . break a leg, Al.”

  Al was gone. They jumped in the police patrol truck and roared off.

  They saw them coming through the moonlight, something on a wheel and a loping shape.

  Al was nearly horizontal as he passed, eyes wide, down the ramp at the undertaker’s, and across the cellar room. Patrolman Buster closed his eyes and jerked the vault door open at the second before Al would have smashed into it. Al flew in, chain whizzing, and something with hot meat breath brushed Buster.

  Patrolman Al went up the wall and did a flip. The thing crashed into the wall under him. As Al went out, he jerked the broken baseball bat out of the guy it had been in for two years.

  There was a hiss and a snarl behind him as he went out the door that Buster, eyes still closed, slammed to and triple-locked; then Mack and Billy dropped the giant steel bar in place.

  Al stopped, then he and the unicycle fainted.

  There were crashes and thumps for two hours, then whimpering sounds and squeals for a while.

  They went in and beat what was left with big bars of silver, and put the broken Louisville Slugger back in what was left of the hole.

  As they were warming their hands at the dying embers of the double fire outside the undertaker’s that night, it began to snow. Before it was over, it snowed five inches.

  1917

  The captain walked by the No Smooching sign in the park on his way to talk to a local store owner about the third break-in in a month. The first two times the man had complained about the lack of police concern, first to Teeheezal, then the mayor.

  Last night it had happened again, while Patrolmen Al and Billy had been watching the place.

  He was on his way to tell the store owner it was an inside job, and to stare the man down. If the break-ins stopped, it had been the owner himself.

  He passed by a hashhouse with a sign outside that said “Bratwurst and Sauerkraut 15¢.” As he watched, the cook, wearing his hat and a knee-length apron, pulled the sign from the easel and replaced it with one that said “Victory cabbage and sausage 15¢.”

  There was a noise from the alleyway ahead, a bunch of voices “get ’im, get ’im”; then out of the alley ran something Teeheezal at first thought was a rat or a rabbit. But it didn’t move like either of them, though it was moving as fast as it could.

  A group of men and women burst out onto the street with rocks and chunks of wood sailing in front of them, thirty feet behind it. It dodged, then more people came from the other side of the street, and the thing turned to run away downtown.

  The crowd caught up with it. There was a single yelp, then the thudding sounds of bricks hitting something soft. Twenty people stood over it, their arms moving. Then they stopped and cleared off the street and into the alleyways on either side without a word from anyone.

  Teeheezal walked up to the pile of wood and stones with the rivulet of blood coming out from under it.

  The captain knew the people to whom the dachshund had belonged, so he put it in a borrowed toe sack, and took that and put it on their porch with a note. Sorry. Cpt. T.

  When he got within sight of the station house, Patrolman Chester came running out. “Captain! Captain!” he yelled.

  “I know,” said Teeheezal. “We’re at war with Germany.”

  A month later another postcard arrived. It had a view of the Flatiron Building in New York City, had a Newark New Jersey postmark, and the usual address. On the left back it said:

  Well, went to the first Sunday baseball game at the Polo Grounds. New York’s Finest would have made you proud. They stood at attention at the national anthem then waited for the first pitch before they arrested McGraw and Mathewson for the Blue Law violation. You can imagine what happened next. My credo is: When it comes to a choice between a religion and baseball, baseball wins every time. Last time I go to a ball game until they find some way to play it at night. Ha ha. Will write more later.

  —Angus

  PS: Sorry about Buffalo Bill.

  1918

  If every rumor were true, the Huns would be in the White House by now. Teeheezal had just seen a government motion picture (before the regular one) about how to spot the Kaiser in case he was in the neighborhood spreading panic stories or putting cholera germs in your reservoir.

  Now, last night, one had spread through the whole California coast about a U-boat landing. Everybody was sure it had happened at San Pedro, or Long Beach, or maybe it was in Santa Barbara, or along the Sun River, or somewhere. And somebody’s cousin or uncle or friend had seen it happen, but when the Army got there there wasn’t a trace.

  The blotter had fourteen calls noted. One of them reminded the Wilcox police that the President himself was coming to Denver Colorado for a speech—coincidence, or what?

  “I’m tired of war and the rumors of war,” said Teeheezal.

  “Well, people out here feel pretty helpless, watching what’s going on ten thousand miles away. They got to contribute to the war effort somehows,” said walrus-mustached Patrolman Billy.

  Innocently enough, Patrolmen Mack and Rube decided to swing down by the railroad yards on their way in from patrol. It wasn’t on their beat that night, but Sgt. Fatty had told them he’d seen some fat rabbits down there last week, and, tomorrow being their days off
, they were going to check it over before buying new slingshots.

  The patrol wagon careened by, men hanging on for dear life, picked up Teeheezal from his front yard, and roared off toward the railroad tracks.

  The three German sailors went down in a typhoon of shotgun fire and hardly slowed them down at all.

  What they did have trouble with was the giant lowland gorilla in the spiked pickelhaube helmet, and the eight-foot-high iron automaton with the letter Q stenciled across its chest.

  The Federal men were all over the place; in the demolished railyard were two huge boxes marked for delivery to the Brown Palace in Denver.

  “Good work, Captain Teeheezal,” said the Secret Service man. “How’d you get the lowdown on this?”

  “Ask the two patrolmen,” he said.

  At the same time, Mack and Rube said, “Dogged, unrelenting police procedures.”

  The postcard came later than usual that year, after the Armistice.

  It was a plain card, one side for the address, the other for the message.

  Well, here in Reykjavik things are really hopping. Today they became an independent nation, and the firewater’s flowing like the geysers. It’s going to be a three-day blind drunk for all I can figure. Tell Sgt. Fatty the fish are all as long as your leg here. Pretty neat country; not as cold as the name. Last time I come to a place where nobody’s at work for a week. Will write more later.