The Last of the Gullivers

by Carter Crocker

  It wasn’t an easy school: the days here were a full hour longer. And she was in there, he knew, that strawberry-haired girl from the car. A last bell rang and students poured out in their perfect uniforms—bloodred jackets, grey trousers, skirts—all healthy, all wealthy, like another race from another world. And then he saw her, the girl with the wondering eyes. She was walking with a friend.

  “Not you again,” she said when she saw him.

  “Me again.”

  “Who is this?” the friend asked. “You know him?”

  “Me and Dad have run into him before,” the girl answered and to Michael she said, “I’m Jane.”

  “Hi,” he said back. “My name’s Michael.”

  Her friend looked at him and the old bike and said, “I’m thinking . . . you don’t live around here.”

  “Nahhh,” and he waved a hand. “Over that way, I guess.”

  Jane was about to say something more when her father called from the car: “We’re in a hurry!”

  “Have to go,” she said, and, “Bye, Michael.”

  “Bye,” he told her.

  And when she was near the car, she stopped and called back, “See you around, I guess.”

  “I guess,” he called to her.

  Jane Teresa Mallery was not like Michael in a lot of ways and one was this: the course of her life had already been charted. She would graduate St. Brendan’s near the head of her class, would go to the university, have a brief but successful career in business, choose a husband from a very short list; and when both of her children were at St. Brendan’s, she would get involved with charitable organizations and do admirable work.

  That was the life waiting for her, and she knew it, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Mr. Fenn was hanging up the phone when Michael came in early the next morning, a Saturday. “Only one delivery today. For that—the crazy ol’ loon.”

  In a quarter hour, Michael was ready and he set out. The bike was heavy, even the wire trailer full: there were dozens of tins, meat, dog food, a few bottles of scotch, and all sorts of cleaning supplies, soaps, brushes, and such.

  Lemuel Gulliver, the order said. Fenn had told the boy to leave the groceries outside, on the step, don’t knock, crazy loon likes his privacy, respect it.

  When he got to the stone cottage, Michael knuckled the heavy oak door.

  And he waited. And waited. He pounded the door again.

  At last, he heard movement inside.

  When the door swung open Michael said, “I’m here with your groceries.”

  “You are.”

  “I can bring them in, if you like.”

  “All right then, bring them.”

  The boy stepped inside and was blind in a cool dim room. As he began to see, he saw that every inch held something, on every table, every shelf, in every corner, there was something. It was a museum, full of the treasures of one man’s travel through life: scarabs from the Egyptian desert, tile mosaics from ancient Italy, carpet from a shah’s palace, wood carvings of African bush spirits, a wide canvas of the American plains. There were stone devils from India, Chinese scroll-paintings, a blanket of wild goat hair and cedar bark, each a gift the old man had got on his journeys.

  There were books all around, big, small, new books and old, kept-behind-glass books. There were maps pinned to walls, maps to places the boy didn’t know were real or not. There was a globe as tall as he was, on a dark-wood base with legs like sea monsters. There were ships, in paintings, photographs. A complicated telescope stood by a fogged-over window. The room was full, not cluttered or chaotic, and Michael thought he could spend a year and not see it all.

  The old man led the way and the boy took the first load of groceries to the kitchen. The floor was limestone flag, wide and uneven; the walls were whitewashed, or had been. An old iron range covered most of one side. Michael set the bags on a plank table, by a battered wartime cabinet.

  He went back to the parlor, and the dog came at him from shadow. Michael jumped and fell against the globe and set it spinning.

  “Come on, Whitby, settle,” said Lemuel. “He’s here to help, isn’t he?” Mr. Gulliver rubbed the dog’s huge head behind the eyes, and Whitby settled. “How much help, well, that remains to be seen.” Michael went back, again and again, bicycle to kitchen, and the old man sat and drank.

  Michael brought in the last of the delivery and stood there, dumbly. He wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of anything.

  The old man watched him. And drank.

  Finally, the boy said, “My name’s Michael. Michael Pine.”

  And the old man said, “I’m Lem. Lemuel Gulliver.”

  Michael turned when a new sound drifted in an open window. “You hear that? That music?”

  Mr. Gulliver nodded.

  “I heard it before,” the boy said.

  The old man only nodded.

  “It’s always the same. And it’s never the same. It doesn’t begin and it doesn’t end.”

  Another nod.

  “I wish I knew,” Michael said and nearly to himself, “where it was coming from.”

  “All right, then.” Lem Gulliver lifted himself from the chair, as if he’d decided something important. “You wish you knew and now you’ll know. Come with me.” The old man reached for a key on the back wall, a strange-looking key, ancient and rusted so black it almost glowed. “A very useful key, a key to all locks,” he said as he opened the door and waves of sunlight washed the cottage.

  They moved outside, down a brick path, and Michael followed the old man to the Garden City. It was bigger than he remembered, more houses, shops, churches than he’d seen the first time. The fire, too, was worse than he’d dreamed: across the town center, a dark scar of ruined buildings. What could be salvaged from these structures had been piled in sad sodden heaps by the stone fountain.

  Beyond the fire-blackened buildings, the little village was untouched. Neat narrow streets ran to every unseen corner of the garden and there must have been a hundred houses. Much of it was built from the same stone as Michael’s village, the same golden-wheat-colored stone. Roofs were rock tile, spotted with moss. The distant land was farm and there was a pond, wide as a lake by this scale, a small sailboat moored at a small dock.

  The old man tapped his cane on a church bell. “Friends,” he called out, “citizens, brothers, sisters,” and his voice carried across the city and to the great stone wall that held it in. “You have a guest.”

  Windows and shutters and doors opened and People appeared: children, men, women, young, old, more than a hundred of them and the tallest half a foot high. A few had tiny dogs on little leashes. Michael was sure they knew him, from the night of the fire, but their small faces were hard to read.

  “The music,” said Lemuel, “is theirs.”

  The odd little things came in every shape, every size, short, tall, heavy, thin, well-groomed, rumpled. Their clothes seemed to be a cross between old Asian and European styles and all brightly colored. They kept a wary distance from the boy, except one: a little man late in middle-age, thick in the gut and a full reddish face. “Good afternoon, Quinbus Flestrin.” It was the one Michael had seen on horseback that night.

  “It’s what they call me,” Lem told the boy, “and what they’ve called all the Gullivers.”

  “Roughly meaning the ‘Man Mountain,’” the little man went on, “in the lingua franca, that pidgin language binding our two great Races.” He wore a naval uniform, full dress, royal red: a surtout, or frock coat, with white piping; lively tasseled epaulettes; a wide-set row of buttons down the front. He had a crisp white shirt, red breeches, white stockings, well-shined boots, and a sword swinging at the waist.

  To top it off, he wore an amazing helmet, not from any uniform Michael knew, but wide-brimmed, made of pu
re gold, covered with jewels and tiny bird feathers decorating the crest.

  “These are the People of Lesser Lilliput,” said Lemuel, “and this is Burton Topgallant, the longest-serving of all their Grand Panjandrums.”

  Only the Grand Panjandrum could wear the Golden Helmet.

  “Call me G.P., if you like, Prime Minister, President, Potentate, or Pooh-Bah,” the little man went on, “Dispenser of Justice, Fighter for Truth, the Keeper of Hopes, Dasher of Dreams, the End-All, Be-All, and Admiral of the Fleet, I answer to any of these.”

  “What fleet?” Michael asked quietly.

  “The admiralty is hereditary here,” Lemuel answered. “A Panjandrum is elected whenever the mood strikes them.”

  The boy noticed another of them, a quiet young girl in a peasant smock, looking him over and making notes on the back of an envelope. “He’s young,” said Burra Dryth, and almost to herself. “I put him at fifteen pidriffs high, maybe weighing four dozen rinniks. That would make him no more than, say, 300, 350 humjinks old.”

  “But it’s impossible,” said another. “No giant can be that young.”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” from still another. “They’re almost extinct, aren’t they?”

  “Or maybe,” said the Grand Panjandrum, “the Ancient Texts have it wrong. Maybe more of them have survived than we dared imagine.”

  “I won’t stand for this!” came a shrill and vigorous new voice. “Arrest the hooligan! Throw the Giant in SHACKLES!” Hoggish Butz looked like a very full tick. He had a fungus-like beard over all his chins, pinhole eyes and a nose like a bird’s beak. He was the one Michael had left pee-soaked. “He’s committed HIGH TREASON! The Blefuscudian Lump must be Hung, Drawn and Quartered! By the Great Ghost of Bolgolam, I demand it!” (The Lesser Lilliputians, especially when stressed, tended to lapse into this sort of Babble-Speak.)

  “He’s your friend,” Lemuel said to them all. “He’s come here to help you.”

  And at that, they moved closer, smiling shyly, waving warily, calling out greetings, sometimes in a language Michael knew, sometimes not. Some kept a safe distance and some reached to touch his trousers, unsure, cautious, while others climbed onto his shoes like eager, curious children.

  And the boy could only wonder, what did the old man mean? How could he, Michael Pine, help anyone?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LIKE THE PHOENIX, REBORN

  Ah, crud,” Freddie said when Nick came looking. “I don’t know where the brat is an’ I don’t care.”

  “You tell him come see me.”

  “Tell him yourself.” Freddie couldn’t stand the sight of Nick Bottoms. Nick was another Freddie, but a lot younger and a lot better-looking. “He’s not my kid. What’s he mixed up in now?”

  “Nothing you need to know. All I want to know is, where is he and why does he keep letting me down.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” Freddie said. “There’s nothin’ wrong with the brat that a good beatin’ wouldn’t fix. I’d do it myself, but they’d take him away and my three hundred pounds a month, too. You want to see him, tell him yourself. You want to keep him in line, beat him up a few times. Beat him up good, that’s what he needs.”

  Nick Bottoms made a living selling what he stole, but business was down. Rumor was, Lyall Murphy and his Gang from Ambridge wanted to move into Moss-on-Stone. Lyall’s Gang was doing well, marking their growing territory, tagging it 7-A-M, for Seven-Ambridge-Men.

  Nick’s Boys were barely hanging on.

  “Let’s rob that place with the old sisters,” this from Gordy, who was nosing around in a rubbish bin behind the pub. “We never tried there before.”

  “It’s a bookshop, y’twallop,” said Peter.

  “Well, how’m I s’posed to know,” sniffed Gordy. “Nobody ever told me.”

  “We’re going to hit one of the big places on the hill,” Nick told them.

  “Nah, Nick, not that,” said Peter. The Boys had never broken into houses before. It was too risky. So many people had alarms and dogs these days. “Let’s hit some cars.”

  “We can’t keep doing the one thing,” Nick said. “We have to try new things. That’s how you get ahead, am I right?”

  “Nick’s right,” from Phil, the only thing he said all night.

  “Who goes in first?” Robby wanted to know.

  “One thing’s sure, it’s not gonna be ol’ Gordy,” snorted ol’ Gordy. “It was Gordy did all the car break-ins last night, wasn’t it. Now it’s somebody else’s turn, am I right, Nick?”

  “You’re going in first,” Nick told him. “Then Phil, and Peter.”

  “Ahhhh, c’mon, Nick! I get caught again, I’ll go to YOI,” said Gordy, one second before he nearly lost a fingertip to a trap meant for vermin.

  “Then don’t get caught,” Nick said, and they climbed into his Dad’s old Victor and went looking for houses to rob.

  Burton Topgallant, the Grand Panjandrum of Lesser Lilliput, climbed atop the tiny town fountain and called with all his voice: “Citizens, Brothers, Sisters—a friend of Flestrin is a friend of everyone! Welcome, Quinbus Ninneter!”

  “Meaning, roughly, ‘the Boy Mountain,’” Lem said.

  “Great Ghost of Bolgolam,” was all Hoggish Butz had to say as he left.

  The G.P. declared this a New Quinbus Day and shops were closed and celebrating began. Tiny paper lanterns were strung from the branches of small trees, and tables were piled with mountains of food and drink: salmon in paper-thin slivers, roast lamb with mint sauce, little servings of fisherman pie and steak-and-kidney pudding, walnut shortbread, fresh peach in vanilla syrup, and magnums of the old wine they called Glimigrim. One of them tried to share her meal with Michael, but a full serving here filled half a human spoon and he took only enough to be polite.

  Little men and little women started dancing when the orchestra played that music again. It was, Lemuel explained, their one eternal song: a serenade, a symphony, dance, dirge, always the same notes, never the same tune. As the music went on, with no beginning or end, the old man introduced the boy to more and still more of them.

  There were Bankers, Bakers, Census-Takers, Schoolchildren, Teachers, Congregants, Preachers, Pipe-Fitters, House-Sitters, the wrong, the right, the profound and the trite. Evet Butz was a Farmer, a small man of few words and those not well-chosen. His brother Hoggish was round and LOUD, a self-obsessed Rouser of Rabble. Hoggish’s one friend was the Surgeon, Dr. Ethickless Knitbone, an edgy and underfed woman. He met gangly young Philament Phlopp, a Fireworks Fanatic whose eyebrows had been singed so many times, they’d stopped growing.

  There were Students from a local public school; and Thudd Ickens, Bookkeeper and Amateur Acrobat; Upshard Tiddlin, Mother of Slack and Frigary; Mumraffian Rake, a Locksmith; the Editor of The Scribblerus; and more and still more. Lemuel took the boy past Mount Oontitump University, a fine campus, built on a mountain that had been a molehill. Michael met the Oontitumpity Dons in their billowing bell-shaped robes and bright green caps, distinguished-looking men, highly revered among themselves. These aged Dons had spent so many years together, they’d forgot the native tongue and spoke a dialect based on several dead languages.

  The population averaged around two hundred over the years; there were a hundred ninety-three of them now. At least ten buildings had been lost to the fire Michael started; the Blood Moon Fire, they called it. Sixty shops and businesses remained, intact, untouched, in the town center. There were offices, a theatre, a museum, near a hundred houses in the neighborhoods beyond. Michael counted a half-dozen mills in the manufacturing district. A small resort sat on the shore of their lake.

  The farthest land was farmed in tiny fields of wheat and barley, neatly marked by stone walls and hedgerows. Cattle the size of mice grazed here, and there were also horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, geese. Dogs and cats smal
ler than Michael’s thumb were kept as pets, and he saw one caged bird no bigger than a housefly. The narrow tracks of a steam locomotive bound the Nation in an endless circle, and Eddish Rantipole sorted mail on the night train.

  And the old stone wall held it all in.

  You can ask almost any anthropologist and you will hear that Culture is Cumulative, that who we were makes us who we are. Through the centuries, these Lesser Lilliputians had evolved a society like and unlike our own: they were a fascinating and frustrating race, a jumble of endless contradictions. They were weak and they were strong, persevering and passive, resilient, fragile, resourceful, helpless, industrious, lazy, trivial and remarkable.

  Their technology was primitive, at least a hundred years behind. They had no television, telephones, no computers; they were not wasteful; their air and waterways were clear.

  Their outlook on life was quaint, old-fashioned: there was no crime, because they still felt shame; they admired common sense and didn’t have lawyers. Cynicism, they knew, was the First Refuge of Scoundrels and they’d found that Incivility could be treated with Essence of Bergamot. They understood that Rights meant Responsibilities and Chocolate was better than War.

  They were passionate about everything, full of big ideas. Whatever they did, they did with all their hearts, at least until their interest began to fade and they wandered on to new things. They were impulsive, impatient, curious and adventurous, the way children are.

  Three centuries back, the original Lemuel Gulliver—the first Quinbus Flestrin—helped them craft a Constitution and its simple philosophies guided them still. The earliest copy had been damaged in the Blood Moon Fire, but Thudd Ickens saved it from burning entirely. Michael used a magnifying glass to read: