“Bwana can’t grow hair on shrunken head.” The African grinned and poised his spear. It was then that everyone noticed what rattled on the end of the spear. There were two of them, neither in need of hair restorer.
Ruth hit the floor with a thud.
“I’d better get him the proof sheets,” Sam said. “If he’ll promise to get them to the KIER when he’s finished. You promise?” he asked the native.
“Witch doctors use hair grower to be number one place of honor again. Then me give proof sheets to brother number three boy in office of KIER. If witch doctors no eat powerful printed page,” he added.
“Then it’s not Mau mau,” Sam said. “It’s witch doctors?”
“White missionary send son U. S. A. medical school, come back, work big magic. Now witch doctor send son U. S. A. witch doctor formula. Work bigger magic. White doctor lose practice. Witch doctor take over.”
“And all this over the hair restorer,” Sam muttered. “I might have known my article on epigraphy wouldn’t stir up this much excitement. Well, I don’t care if you have the proof sheets.”
“Don’t give them to him, Sam,” Chuck shouted. “Look at him. He’ll kill us anyway.”
The native had gone into a light soft-shoe war dance, and the look in his eye was not gentle. He had started singing a jerky sort of song to himself and he was thrusting the spear nearer and nearer to the three white people.
Ruth groaned, sat up, looked at the African and shuddered. “Why the hell don’t you do some group thinking?” she snapped at Chuck.
“I am,” Chuck answered. “If I could only stop shaking long enough.”
“And you, Sam,” Ruth sneered at her husband. “What are you going to do? Just stand around and look apologetic while he sticks a spear into me?”
The African evidently had an itchy spear hand and was having trouble restraining himself. “Bwana no get proof sheets? Me find. Bwanas go to happy Methodist heaven. No need hair restorers.”
“Wait!” Sam cried. “I’m not a Methodist. Look. I’ve just remembered I left those proof sheets at the office. You’ll have to wait while I go get them.”
“Me no wait!” the native said.
“Don’t get the police,” Chuck yelled hysterically. “They’ll have your recipe in all the papers. My God!” he groaned. “I’d rather get hung on his spear than lose this thing now.”
“Me go with you,” the African boomed.
“I’ll be back,” Sam said cheerfully. “You two just wait here.”
“Don’t get the police!” Chuck shouted again.
“Oh, get the damn police,” Ruth said, sobbing. “Sam, this is the bravest thing you’ve ever done, getting him out of the apartment like this. Do you want me to c-a-l-l the p-o-l-i-c-e,” she spelled, glancing furtively at the dancing African, “after you leave?”
“By no means,” Sam said calmly. “Don’t forget, dear, that I’m a shipping clerk. I handle invoices from everywhere in town. I know exactly what to do with our elemental friend.”
Ruth and Chuck alternately glared at each other, had hysterics, and chewed on Miltown until Sam returned, some hours later.
“Your hair,” Sam remarked to Chuck when he walked in the door, “is growing out absolutely gray.”
Chuck ran to the living room mirror. “My God, there it is! Real hair! I don’t care if it’s purple.”
“Darling,” Ruth cried, throwing herself into her husband’s bony arms, “what did you do with Jumbo? And why were you gone so long? I was afraid!” She began to sob, unable to go on.
“I palmed him off on Abercrombie and Fitch,” Sam said. “First I went by the shipping office and I faked an invoice on him. Then I called Abercrombie and Fitch and convinced them they had ordered an African bearer with a spear. They had to come out, of course, suitably prepared to deal with him. I showed them the invoice and what could they do? He’s their problem now.”
“Oh, Sam, you’re just wonderful!” Ruth cried, clinging to her husband in abject admiration.
“Damn it,” Chuck said. “Now why don’t I have ideas like that? An idea like that could make a million dollars.”
“Oh, you go away,” Ruth told Chuck. “You’re not going to make a million dollars off our idea.”
“I’ve already got the formula,” Chuck said.
“Well, you might as well take the proof sheets,” Sam said. They were flapping in his hand. “But I want them back. I really had left them at the office.”
“I just want to look at the directions,” Chuck said. He seized the proof sheets and began to copy vigorously into his little black Idea book. After that he abandoned the last vestiges of decency. He grabbed the bottle of hair restorer Sam had mixed up and lit out.
“Sam,” Ruth said, “I’m sorry for all the things I’ve said about you. It was ingenious the way you got rid of that cannibal, or whatever he was.”
“It was not ingenious. It was merely a matter of attention to detail. If I had not made an exact copy of an Abercrombie and Fitch invoice, I would never have gotten away with it. You admit, then, that if a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well?”
“Oh, yes, darling.”
“And I am capable of deciding what’s worth doing?”
“Yes, yes.”
“But still,” Sam went on, like Socrates chasing down some point of logic, “you are sorry about the hair formula. Now tell the truth, Ruth. You still think money is important?”
“Yes,” Ruth admitted with the monosyllabic regularity of most of Socrates’ pupils.
“And you don’t think I’m capable of making money because all I can do is mess around with the meanings of words, in one language or another?”
“Now, Sam, I didn’t say that. I meant that you don’t even try to make money. Nobody can do it if they don’t try.”
“Well,” Sam said, “you just wait and see.”
“But Chuck’s gone off with your formula. And I know that kind of man. They’ll have the thing in full production in a week. Sam, maybe if we rush down to the patent office—”
“Dear,” Sam said, “I’m not even going to try.”
Ruth didn’t turn on the radio, go out of the house or watch television for the next week. The advertising was everywhere. “Full Head positively guaranteed to grow hair! Not more hair! Not less scalp! Just the same hair you had before. The hair of your blazing youth!”
A check for a thousand dollars came from Full Head a week after the meeting with Chuck Bradford. Ruth would have torn it up, except that she now had very good evidence that a Little One was, indeed, on the way.
“This” Ruth said, waving the check in Sam’s face, “is our share of the hair-restorer money.”
“Rather a handsome sum,” Sam said, quite pleased.
“Oh, Sam, you’re impossible. Do you know what they’re making out of it?”
“I don’t care what they make.”
“If I ever get my hands on that Chuck Bradford again,” Ruth said gritting her teeth, “I’ll—”
The doorbell rang.
It was Chuck.
“Don’t do it, Ruth,” Sam said. “He doesn’t look like he could stand it. He looks like a—” Sam groped for words because Chuck, indeed, looked awful. His new hair hung despairingly over a face now gaunt and haunted.
“Like an old hound dog,” Ruth concluded. “You have your nerve showing your face here, Chuck Bradford, after the swindle you pulled on us.”
“I have my nerve?” Chuck shouted. Then he sat down with his head in his hands. “I don’t even have any nerves left. They’ve all popped from overuse. Sam, you’ve perpetrated the worst horror since Nero burned Rome. Why couldn’t you just have been a pyromaniac or a sex fiend?”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Ruth asked.
“Don’t act innocent. You were in on it, too.”
“On what?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chuck said. “You got me into this mess, now you get me out.”
Sam
was looking even milder than usual. “Some hitch in the hair restorer?”
“You bet your sweet life there’s some hitch!”
“I was afraid something like that might happen,” Sam said.
“What is all this?” Ruth asked. “Nobody ever tells me anything. Your hair looks all right, Chuck.”
“Oh, yes,” Chuck moaned. “My hair is all right. I’ve pulled it out by the handfuls, believe me, and it all grows back. All the people we tried Sam’s bottle on grew hair. All the hair anybody would want. And it stayed. There’s just one trouble.”
“Get to the point!”’ Ruth said. “What’s the just one trouble.”
“We didn’t waste any time,” Chuck went on, ignoring her. “We got it into production in a matter of hours. Not days, I tell you, hours. Packaging, advertising, everything went out zip-bam-boom! It sold. Boy, it sold. Supermarkets, drug stores, hot-dog stands, everywhere. Then, guess what?”
“What!” Ruth screamed.
“The hair all sprouted out for one week and then it fell off. Not just the new hair, mind you, but the old hair, too. I tell you, if something isn’t done, you’re not going to be able to tell Times Square from a billiard table. And guess who gets the blame for all this? Me. Me!” Chuck sprang up and began pacing the floor and chewing on the edge of his handkerchief.
Ruth laughed until the tears ran down her face. “How marvelous!” she said, when she could talk. “How marvelous!”
“Sam,” Chuck said, going up and clutching his erstwhile friend by the lapels. “Sam, you’ve got to help me now. You’ve got to. What did you put in your formula that isn’t in the recipe?”
“Nothing,” Sam said, gently extricating his lapels. “Absolutely nothing else. Only what I told you. Mare’s milk, moly and white wine.”
“Then why did your mixture grow hair that stays and ours doesn’t?”
“It ain’t what you do,” Sam replied, “it’s the way that you do it. You probably processed it wrong.”
“We followed the directionsexactly, Sam. Exactly.”
“That’s the trouble. You got the wrong directions.”
“You mean you deliberately gave the wrong directions?”
“Nothing of the sort,” Sam said indignantly. “When I do something I do it right. My daddy used to say, ‘Son, if a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right.’ ”
“You’re just torturing me,” Chuck said. “Why don’t you put bamboo splinters under my fingernails? Let me know right now if you’re not going to explain yourself, and I’ll go ahead and jump out of the window.”
“I sent in a correct manuscript to the Kenya International Epigraphical Review. There was a misprint in the proof sheet. That was not my fault. Nor was it my fault that you assumed the recipe was correct and used it for your own purposes.”
“My God!” Chuck said. “I came to you as a last resort. I didn’t really think you’d know what was wrong. Our chemists are working on it night and day. They’ll probably come up with a solution in the next year or two, but we can’t wait that long. I can’t wait that long. I’ll be lynched. Sam, what is that misprint?”
Sam picked up his microfilm viewer and began looking through it and taking notes on 5x8 cards. “I’m not going to tell you.”
“You know it? One word? And you’re not going to tell me!”
“Why should I?”
“Oh, now we can talk business,” Chuck said, snatching the viewer away from him. “How much? Five thousand? Ten? Oh, the hell with it. My nerves are shot. We’ll go to a million. O. K. What’s the misprint?”
Sam retrieved his microfilm viewer and became absorbed in it again. “My daddy always said,” he remarked absently to Chuck, “ ‘Son, money isn’t important.’ ”
“But Sam!” Ruth cried, snatching the microfilm again. “A million dollars!”
“How much do you want, Sam?” Chuck asked, pale as a prepackaged mushroom.
“My daddy always said—”
“Never mind,” Chuck interrupted. “All right, you freak, money isn’t important to you. We’ll get you something else. What is important to you?”
“Well,” Sam murmured thoughtfully. The room was silent for the space of half a cigarette. “Epigraphy is important to me.”
“We’ll get you all the epigraphy you want,” Chuck said, panting heavily. “Tons of it. Miles of it. However it comes.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Sam said. “There’s only so much of it, and it’s all free.”
“Oh, my God,” Chuck cried. “Sam, isn’t there anything else in the world you want. Anything you’ll trade that misprint for?”
Sam thought and thought. “Yes. There is something else I want. But it isn’t the sort of thing you could do for me.”
“Full Head can do it. Full Head would sell human souls to correct the recipe for that hair restorer. What is the thing you want?”
“Oh, it would sound silly to you.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” Chuck grabbed Sam by the lapels again. “I swear, Sam. Nothing on God’s earth would sound silly to me. You can do anything. Anything. You want to chop the head off the Statue of Liberty? Put a goat on top of the Washington Monument? Tear a page out of the Gutenberg Bible? Shuffle the catalog cards in the Library of Congress? Come on, what is it?”
“You won’t laugh at me?” Sam asked anxiously.
“I’ll never laugh again as long as I live,” Chuck sobbed.
“Well, I’d like to convince my wife that money isn’t important.”
“Sam!” Ruth cried. “Get them to draw up a contract. I’ll admit it right now. And let me handle the business end of this.”
“Now, Ruth,” Sam said. “You obviously don’t mean it. You’ll sell the word for a million dollars, or however much you can get. That shows you think money is important.”
Chuck was chewing on the shredded edge of his handkerchief again. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Maybe we can do something there. A psychologist, maybe. Or pamphlets on heart disease. Ruth, would you read the pamphlets?”
“You’re a wise one,” she answered. “Hell, no, I wouldn’t read the pamphlets. I’ve got a much better idea. Why don’t you convince Sam that money is important?”
“We’ll work on that angle, too,” Chuck said. “And the misprint. We ought to be able to work that out.”
“What were the directions to the recipe?” Ruth asked.
“The words,” Chuck answered, “are engraved on my heart in acid. ‘Pick a handful of moly in the early morning. Boil well in fresh mare’s milk. Pour in a healthy amount of pale wine. Drink.’ That’s all.”
“Well, let’s see,” Ruth said concentrating. “If I find the misprint, will you buy it from me?”
“Yes, yes,” Chuck said feverishly. “We’ll be working on that, too. Although I don’t know what we could do to that recipe that we haven’t tried. We’ve boiled it, baked it, broiled it, burned it, sun-dried it. We’ve tried it raw, slightly cooked, cooked solid. We’ve tried every possible amount of each ingredient.”
“The amounts and methods of preparation don’t matter that much,” Sam said maddeningly. “I wouldn’t go to all that trouble.”
Ruth and Chuck were muttering to themselves.
“Pick a canful?”
“Soil well in fresh mare’s milk?”
“Pick a handful in the barley morning?”
“Pour in a healthy amount ofstale wine?”
“Blink?”
“Pink?”
“Think?”
“Oh, hell,” Chuck said, “none of that makes sense. We’ll have experts working on this.”
“Don’t go sending any experts to work on me,” Ruth said. “Why don’t you just give us some money and when Sam sees what I can do with it, maybe he’ll change his mind.”
“We’ll see,” Chuck said. “I’m going to throw this one to a battery of idea men.” He dove out the door and went careening down the steps.
Sam spent the rest of the evenin
g with his microfilm viewer while Ruth sat around muttering to herself. “Store in a healthy amount of pale wine? Maybe it needs to age. Male wine? Sam, did they have a different wine for men and women?”
“What?”
“I said . . . Oh, never mind.Coil well in fresh mare’s milk? Maybe you just need to twist out a little of the juice. Like bruising mint gently for a julep. Oh, I won’t sleep until all this is cleared up.”
Her words were truer than she thought.
The next evening Sam was visited by an apparition from a calendar. She was the sort of woman about whom wives say, “Dear, that isn’t even artistic. No woman is actually built like that.” But this one was.
The girl ran a slim, white hand through her luxuriant blond hair and smiled. “Mind if I take off my wrap?”
“Of course I mind,” Ruth answered, eyeing the backless and almost frontless black velvet gown beneath. “But go ahead. I suppose Full Head sent you to show what money can buy.”
“By no means,” the girl said. She immediately pulled up a chair beside Sam and ignored Ruth completely. “Sam,” she said, “my name is Debbie. Full Head did send me. But not for the reason your wife thinks.” She gave Ruth a nasty look.
Sam looked at her and frowned. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch cold, Debbie?”
“Oh, no.” Debbie sprang a soft, contralto laugh that shimmied around the living room and made Ruth fear for her unborn child. “I’m so young, Sam. And warm. But how darling of you to be concerned.”
“Well, why did you come?” Ruth asked in a menacing tone.
“To learn,” the girl breathed. She breathed it on Sam’s neck. “Full Head has naturally developed an interest in epigraphy. Now, our people can’t hope to break the Scythian alphabet in a few days when it took Sam fifteen years. But we’re thinking of setting up a special department of research in epigraphy, in honor of Sam. And I’m here,” she went on, gazing up at Sam with eyes that would have been bovine had they not been blue, “to sit at the feet of the master.”
“Oh. I’m not that good,” Sam said modestly. “But if you’re really interested in epigraphy, I’d be glad to teach you a few basic rules.”
“Interested?” the girl cried. “I’mfascinated. I begged to be sent on this assignment. I think epigraphy is the most fascinating subject in the world.”
Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 6