The Best of R. A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “And where do I put a coin in this contraption?” Christopher asked himself angrily and loudly. A hand extended itself, and Christopher put the coin in the hand. The hand belonged to an old wrinkled brown man, swathed in robes and folds of blackened leather, and sitting in the dust.

  The old man gave Christopher a newspaper, or gave him something anyhow. It was on leather that was almost board-stiff. It was illustrated, it was printed in a variety of hands; and here and there it had a little hair growing out of it as though its leather were imperfectly scraped.

  “Wait, your change,” the old brown man said. He gave Christopher seven small coins. These were neither metal nor stone: they were clay baked in the sun. The obverse of each was the head and fore of a badger, puffed and bristled and hissing in high defense. And the reverse was the reared rump of the same badger in embattled clawed stance.

  “Price go down a little but not a whole badger,” the old man said. “Take three puffs. It’s close as I can get to even change.” Wondering at himself, Christopher took three strong rich smoky puffs from the old pipe of the old man. He felt that he had received full value then. It was about all that he felt satisfied with. But is it wrong to feel unsatisfied, which is unsated? Christopher thought about it.

  He went over and sat on a bale of rags outside the shop with the sign HOT ROAST DOG FOR SALE OR GIVE. The bale of rags seemed somehow lively; it was as if there was no division between the animate and the inanimate this day. He tried to make something out of the strange newspaper or the strange day, or the newly strange man who was apparently himself.

  Oh, the newspaper was interesting. It could be read one way or another: by picture, by stylized pictograph, by various writings and printings. Here were anecdotes; wooly, horny, bottomlessly funny anecdotes: and they were about people that Christopher knew, or almost knew. And all the people passing by (Christopher realized it with a chuckling gasp) were also people that he knew or almost knew. Well, what made them so different then? They looked like familiar people, they smelled like familiar people (which the familiar people erstwhile had not done), they had the familiar name that came almost to the edge of the tongue.

  “But what town is this? What day is this? What is the context?” Christopher wailed out loud. “Why is everything so strange?”

  “Kit-Fox, you call me?” Strange Buffalo boomed at him. Strange Buffalo was a big and boisterous man and he had always been a good friend of Christopher. He had? Then why did he look so different? And why was his real name, or his other name, now unremembered?

  “Will the buffalo go to war, do you think, Kit-Fox?” Strange Buffalo asked him. “Do you believe that the two great herds of them will go to war? They come near to each other now and they swear that neither will give way.”

  “No, there will be only the pushing and goring of a few thousand bulls, not much else,” Christopher said. “The buffalo simply haven’t the basis for a real war.” He was surprised at his own knowledge of the subject.

  “But the buffalo have human advisers now,” Strange Buffalo said. “It began with the betting, of course, but now we can see that there is real cause of conflict on both sides. I dabble in this myself and have some good ideas. We are tying spear-shafts to the horns of some of the big bulls and teaching them to use them. And we’re setting up big bows and teaching them to bend them with their great strength, but they haven’t any accuracy at all.”

  “No, I don’t believe they were meant to have a real war. It’s a wonderful dust they raise, though, when they all come together. It makes you glad to be alive. And the thunder of their millions of hoofs!” (There was the distant sound of morning thunder.) “Or is that a thundering in the mountains?” Kit-Fox—ah, Christopher was asking.

  “Well, there is quite a clatter in the mountains this morning, Kit,” Strange Buffalo was saying in happy admiration. “The deep days, the grass days like this one aren’t come by easily. It’s a wonder the mountains aren’t knocked to pieces when the big prophets pray so noisily and wrestle so strong. But, as the good skin says, we must work out our salvation in fear and thundering.”

  “Is it not ‘In fear and trembling’?” Christopher asked as he lounged on the lively bale of rags.

  “No, Kit-Fox, no!” Strange Buffalo pealed at him. “That’s the kind of thing they say during the straw days; not here, not now. In the Cahooche shadow-writing it says ‘In fear and chuckling,’ but the Cahooche words for thunder and chuckling are almost the same. On some of the Kiowa antelope-skin drawings, ‘In scare-shaking and in laughter-shaking.’ I like that. I wish I could pray and wrestle as wooly and horny as the big ones do. Then I’d get to be a prophet on the mountain also, and I’d bring in more days of grass. Yes, and days of mesquite also.”

  “The mountain is a funny one this morning, Strange Buffalo. It doesn’t reach clear down to the ground,” Christopher said. “There’s a great space between, and there are eagles flying underneath it.”

  “Ah, it’ll fall back after a while, Kit-Fox, when they have won or lost the wrestling for the day; after they have generated sufficient juice for this day, for I see that they have already won it and it will be a day of grass. Let’s go have a rack of roast dog and a gourd of choc beer,” Strange Buffalo proposed.

  “In a minute, Strange Buffalo. I am in the middle of a puzzle and I have this fog in my head. What day is this?”

  “It’s one of the days of grass, Kit-Fox. I just told you that.”

  “But which one, Strange Buffalo? And what, really, are ‘days of grass’?”

  “I believe that it is the second Monday of Indian Summer, Kit-Fox,” Strange Buffalo was saying as he gave the matter his thought and attention. “Or it may be the first Monday of Blue-Goose Autumn. We’re not sure, though, that it is a Monday. It sounds and tastes more like a Thursday or an aleikaday.”

  “It sure does,” Christopher—ah, Kit-Fox agreed.

  * * *

  A laughing, dying man was carried past by four hale men. This fortunate one had been smashed by bear or rolled on by horse or gored by buffalo, and the big red blood in him was all running out. “It works,” the happy dying man cried out. “It works. I got a little too close to him and he ripped me to pieces, but it works. We are really teaching those big bulls to use the spears lashed to their horns. Others will carry on the work and the fun. I bet that I’ve had it.”

  “A little blood to bless me!” Strange Buffalo cried out, and the dying man splashed him with the rich and rigorous blood.

  “For me also,” Kit-Fox begged, and the dying man smeared him with blood on the brow and breast and shoulders and loins. Two other friends, Conquering Sharp-Leaf and Adoration on the Mountain, came and were blessed with the blood. Then the man died and was dead.

  “There is nothing like the fine rich blood to make a grass day sing in your head and in your body,” Strange Buffalo exulted. “On the straw days they try to hide the blood or they bleed in a dark corner.”

  (What was all this about the grass days and the straw days? There was now a sordid dull-dream quality, a day-of-straw quality that kept trying to push itself in. “For a little while,” it begged, “to reestablish rigor and rule and reason for just a little while.” “Go away,” said the day-of-grass quality. “The wrestle was won this morning, and this is a day out of the count.”)

  Kit-Fox and Strange Buffalo went in, past the booths and work areas of the coin-makers, past the stands of the eaglewing-bone-whistle makers, and into the shop which had roast dog for sale or give. Strange Buffalo had a shoulder of dog and Kit-Fox had a rack of ribs. There was fried bread also, and hominy and pumpkin. There was choc beer dipped with gourd dippers out of a huge crock. Thousands of people were there. It was crowded and it was supposed to be. The man named Mountain twinkled in the air. Why had they not noticed that about him before?

  Folks rolled up the walls and tied them. Now the strong smoke and savor could visit all the places, and the folks in every shop could see into every other shop. It was full m
orning and beginning to get warm.

  “But I still want to know the date,” Kit-Fox insisted, not quite converted to the day of grass, not quite clear of the head-fog that accompanies the sullen burning of the straw days. “What newspaper is this that doesn’t have a date? I want a date!”

  “Look at it. It tells,” said Strange Buffalo.

  “You want a date, honey?” the top of the newspaper writhed in sudden flickering of day-fire print. “Phone 582-8316 and I give you a real date.” Then the day-fire print was gone.

  “I hope I can remember that number,” Kit-Fox said anxiously. “Strange Buffalo, where is there a telephone exchange?”

  “They are the same and single and right outside past the booths,” Strange Buffalo said. “You were sitting upon it when I came upon you. And you, you old straw-head, you thought it was a bale of rags.”

  Kit-Fox went outside, past the booths of the stone-buffalocoin makers and the clay-badger-coin makers, past the tents of the porcupine-quill dealers, to what he had thought was a bale of rags, a lively bale of rags as he now remembered it. Well, it was an ample lady in her glad rags and she was the telephone exchange lying there in the grass.

  “I want to call number 582-8316,” Kit-Fox said uneasily.

  “Here are a handful of dice,” the glad-rags lady told him. “Arrange them here in the short grass and make any number you want.”

  “But proper dice have numbers only to six,” Kit-Fox protested, “and some of the numbers are higher.”

  “Those are improper dice, they are crooked dice,” the lady said. “They have numbers more than six and numbers less than one. Number out your telephone number in the short grass with them.”

  “Are you sure this is the way to dial a number?” Kit-Fox asked.

  “Sure I’m not sure,” the lady said. “If you know a better way, do it that way. Worth a try, kid, worth a try.”

  Kit-Fox numbered out his numbers in the short grass.

  “Now what do I do?” he asked.

  “Oh, talk into the telephone here.”

  “That buckskin bag is a telephone?”

  “Try it, try it. Drop a badger coin in and try it.”

  Kit-Fox dropped the coin into the telephone. “Hello, hello,” he said.

  “Hello, hello,” the lady answered. “That’s my number you called. You want a date, I wait for you awhile. Believe me, I get pretty tired of waiting pretty soon.”

  “I don’t think this is a telephone exchange at all,” Kit-Fox grumbled.

  “How else I can get guys so easy to drop badger-coins in a buckskin bag,” the lady said. “Come along, lover man, we will have a grand time this day.”

  The lady was full-bodied and jolly. Kit-Fox remembered her from somewhere.

  “Who are you?” he asked her.

  “I’m your wife in the straw days,” she said, “but this is a grass day. They’re harder to find, but they’re more fun when you find one. They have something to do with grandfather’s brother and that wrestling of his.”

  “Days of grass, days of straw,” Kit-Fox said as he embraced the lady passionately. “How about a hay day?”

  “You mean a heyday? Those are special. We hope to make them more often, if only the wrestle is better. They’re fuller of juice than the grass days even. We try to make one now.”

  They made a heyday together (together with a whole nation of people); and it went on and on. Day-Torch (that was the lady in the glad rags, the lady who was Kit-Fox’s wife during the straw days) bought an eagle-wing-bone whistle from a dealer, and she whistled happy haunting tunes on it. The people followed Kit-Fox and Day-Torch out of town, out to the oceans of buffalo grass and blue-stem grass. They torched everything that was dry and set the blue-black smoke to rolling. But the fundamental earth was too green to burn.

  All mounted horses and took lances. They went out after buffalo. Word was brought to them that some of the newly armed buffalo bulls wanted to schedule battle with them. And the battle was a good one, with gushing blood and broken-open bodies, and many on each side were killed.

  Strange Buffalo was killed. That big boisterous man died with a happy whoop.

  “Strange Buffalo, indeed,” one of the buffalo bulls said. “He looks like a man to me.”

  When the ground there had become too soggy and mired in blood, they adjourned the battle till the next day of grass, or the one after that. Bloody battles are fine, but who wants to spend a whole day on one? There are other things. Kit-Fox and Day-Torch and a number of other folks went to higher ground.

  There was a roaring river on the higher ground, the biggest river ever and the loudest.

  “Oh be quiet,” Day-Torch said. “You’ve got the tune wrong.” The great river ceased to roar. Day-Torch whistled the right tune on the eagle-wing-bone whistle. Then the river resumed its roaring, but in this right tune now. This mightiest of all rivers was named Cottonwood Creek.

  Henry Drumhead added his beat to the tune. Then the folks had a rain dance till the sharp rain came down and drenched them through. They had a sun dance then, till the sun dried up the mud and began to burn the hides of the people. They had a cloud dance then. They had an antelope dance till enough antelope came to provide a slaughter and a feast. They had a pit dance, a fire dance, a snake dance, and an ashes dance: the ashes from pecan wood and hickory wood are a better condiment than salt to go with roast antelope. They had a feast dance. Then (after a while) a shakedown dance. They had a thunder dance and a mountain dance.

  Say, it is spooky to come to the foot of the mountain itself and see the great gap between it and the ground! Rocks and boulders fell off of the bottom of the mountain and killed many of the people below. And, from the mountain itself, a broken, bloody, and headless torso fell down to the earth.

  Helen Hightower—ah, that is to say the glad-rag lady Day-Torch—set up a rakish screaming, “The head, the head, somebody forgot the head!”

  There was a thunderous grumbling, a mountain-shaking irritation, but the bloody head did come down and smash itself like a bursting pumpkin on the earth.

  “A lot of times they forget to throw the head down if you don’t remind them,” Day-Torch said.

  The meaning of the fallen torso and head was that there was now one less prophet or wrestler on the mountain; that there was now an opportunity for one more man to ascend to glory and death.

  Several of the men attempted it by various devices, by piling cairns of stones to climb upon, by leaping into the air to try to grab one of the dangling roots of the mountain, by hurling lances with trailing lianas to fasten quivering in the bottom of the mountain. They played it out in the garish day there where all the colors were so bright that they ached. Many of the men fell to their deaths, but one ascended. There is always one who is able to ascend to the great wrestle when there is an empty place to receive him.

  And the one who ascended was—no, no, you’ll not have his name from us yet.

  Something was mighty odd here. There was just a little bit of something right about things.

  2.

  Draftsman, draftsman, what do you draw?

  Dog days, draggy days, days of straw.

  —Ballads, Henry Drumhead

  3.

  Indian Summer. A period of warm or mild weather late in autumn or in early winter.

  —Webster’s Collegiate

  So Webster’s Collegiate defines it, but Webster’s hasn’t the humility ever to admit that it doesn’t know the meaning of a word or phrase. And it doesn’t know the meaning of this one.

  There are intervals, days, hours, minutes that are not remembered directly by anyone. They do not count in the totality of passing time. It is only by the most sophisticated methods that even the existence of these intervals may be shown.

  There are whole seasons, in addition to the four regular seasons that are supposed to constitute the year. Nobody knows where they fit in, there being no room for them anywhere in the year; nobody has direct memory of being in them or li
ving in them. Yet, somehow, they have names that have escaped these obliterations. The name of one of the misfit seasons is Indian Summer.

  (“Why can’t the Indians have their summer in the summertime like the rest of us?” comes a high voice with a trace of annoyance. Not a high-pitched voice: a high voice.)

  But all that is neither here nor there. It is yonder, and we will come to it.

  * * *

  Christopher Foxx was walking down a city street. Things were mighty even here, mighty neat. There was just a little bit of something wrong about their rightness.

  The world was rubbed, scrubbed, and tubbed; it was shaved, paved, and saved; it was neat, sweet, and effete. Ah, the latter was possibly what was wrong with it, if anything could be wrong with perfection. The colors were all flat (flat colors had been deemed best for nerves and such), and the sounds were all muted. Christopher, for a moment, wished for a color that shrieked and for a sound that blazed. He put the thought resolutely out of his head. After all, he had for wife Helen Hightower, and he suffered much criticism because of her gaudiness and exuberance.

  Christopher took a paper from the slot on the corner, noted that it was a day in May (he had a queer feeling that he had been uneasy about the date, and yet all that registered with him was that it fell within a familiar month). He entered the North Paragon Breakfast Club. It was there that the Symposium would begin (it would last the whole day and into the night, and be held at various sites) on the multiplex subject “Spatial and Temporal Underlays to the Integrated World, with Insights as to Their Possible Reality and Their Relationship to the World Unconscious and to the Therapeutic Amnesia; with Consideration of the Necessity of Belief in Stratified Worlds, and Explorations of the Orological Motif in Connection with the Apparent Occurrence of Simultaneous Days.” It would have been an exciting subject if Excitement had not become another of the muted things.