by Anthology
There are those who say they’ve glimpsed a pattern in it all. That the whole thing, as seen from many different angles, is indeed like writing. That, I suppose, is the revelation, that we’re not the writers, we’re what’s being written.
I write now from the perspective of the day after my younger self stopped visiting. I’m relieved to be free of that bitch. Though, of course, I knew everything she was going to do. The rest of my life now seems like a blessed release. I wrote every note as I remembered them, and sometimes that squared with how I was feeling at the time, and sometimes I was playing a part . . . for whose benefit, I don’t know.
I remember walking back into my house and finding Ben just waking up. And he looked at me, at the doubtless strange expression on my face, and in that moment I recall thinking I saw his expression change too. By some infinitesimal amount. I have come to think that was when he started, somewhere deep inside, the chain reaction of particle trails that took him from potentially caring dad to letting himself off the hook.
But that might equally just be the story I tell myself about that moment.
What each of us is is but a line in a story that resonates with every other line. Who we are is distributed. In all sorts of ways. And we can’t know them all.
And then I felt something give. There was actually a small sound in the quiet. Liquid splashed down my legs. And as I knew I was going to, I went into labor on Christmas Day.
Ben leaped out of bed and ran to me, and we headed out to the car. Outside, the birds were singing. Of course they were.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’re going to be a great mother.”
“Up to a point,” I said.
THE GNARLY MAN
L. Sprague de Camp
Dr. Matilda Saddler first saw the gnarly man on the evening of June 14th, 1956, at Coney Island. The spring meeting of the Eastern Section of the American Anthropological Association had broken up, and Dr. Saddler had had dinner with two of her professional colleagues, Blue of Columbia and Jeffcott of Yale. She mentioned that she had never visited Coney, and meant to go there that evening. She urged Blue and Jeffcott to come along, but they begged off.
Watching Dr. Saddler’s retreating back, Blue of Columbia crackled: “The Wild Woman from Wichita. Wonder if she’s hunting another husband?” He was a thin man with a small gray beard and a who-the-Hell-are-you-Sir expression.
“How many has she had?” asked Jeffcott of Yale.
“Three to date. Don’t know why anthropologists lead the most disorderly private lives of any scientists. Must be that they study the customs and morals of all these different peoples, and ask themselves, ‘If the Eskimos can do it why can’t we?’ I’m old enough to be safe, thank God.”
“I’m not afraid of her,” said Jeffcott. He was in his early forties and looked like a farmer uneasy in store-clothes. “I’m so very thoroughly married.”
“Yeah? Ought to have been at Stanford a few years ago, when she was there. It wasn’t safe to walk across the campus, with Tuthill chasing all the females and Saddler all the males.”
Dr. Saddler had to fight her way off the subway train, as the adolescents who infest the platform of the B.M.T.‘s Stillwell Avenue Station are probably the worst-mannered people on earth, possibly excepting the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific. She didn’t much mind. She was a tall, strongly-built woman in her late thirties, who had been kept in trim by the outdoor rigors of her profession. Besides, some of the inane remarks in Swift’s paper on acculturation among the Arapaho Indians had gotten her fighting blood up.
Walking down Surf Avenue toward Brighton Beach, she looked at the concessions without trying them, preferring to watch the human types that did and the other human types that took their money. She did try a shooting-gallery, but found knocking tin owls off their perch with a .22 too easy to be much fun. Long-range work with an army rifle was her idea of shooting.
The concession next to the shooting-gallery would have been called a side-show if there had been a main show for it to be a side-show to. The usual lurid banner proclaimed the uniqueness of the two-headed calf, the bearded woman, Arachne the spider-girl, and other marvels. The piece de resistance was Ungo-Bungo the ferocious ape-man, captured in the Congo at a cost of 27 lives. The picture showed an enormous Ungo-Bungo squeezing a hapless Negro in each hand, while others sought to throw a net over him.
Although Dr. Saddler knew perfectly well that the ferocious ape-man would turn out to be an ordinary Caucasian with false hair on his chest, a streak of whimsicality impelled her to go in. Perhaps, she thought, she could have some fun with her colleagues about it.
The spieler went through his leather-lunged harangue. Dr. Saddler guessed from his expression that his feet hurt. The tattooed lady didn’t interest her, as her decorations obviously had no cultural significance, as they have among the Polynesians. As for the ancient Mayan, Dr. Saddler thought it in questionable taste to exhibit a poor microcephalic idiot that way. Professor Yogi’s legerdemain and fire-eating weren’t bad.
A curtain hung in front of Ungo-Bungo’s cage. At the appropriate moment there were growls and the sound of a length of chain being slapped against a metal plate. The spicier wound up on a high note: “. . . ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Ungo-Bungo!” The curtain dropped.
The ape-man was squatting at the back of his cage. He dropped his chain, got up, and shuffled forward. He grasped two of the bars and shook them. They were appropriately loose and rattled alarmingly. Ungo-Bungo snarled at the patrons, showing his even yellow teeth.
Dr. Saddler stared hard. This was something new in the ape-man line. Ungo-Bungo was about five feet three, but very massive, with enormous hunched shoulders. Above and below his blue swimming-trunks, thick grizzled hair covered him from crown to ankle. His short stout-muscled arms ended in big hands with thick gnarled fingers. His neck projected slightly forward, so that from the front he seemed to have but little neck at all.
His face—well, thought Dr. Saddler, she knew all the living races of men, and all the types of freak brought about by glandular maladjustment, and none of them had a face like that. It was deeply lined. The forehead between the short scalp-hair and the brows on the huge super-orbital ridges receded sharply. The nose, though wide, was not apelike; it was a shortened version of the thick hooked Armenoid or “Jewish” nose, The face ended in a long upper lip and a retreating chin. And the yellowish skin apparently belonged to Ungo-Bungo.
The curtain was whisked up again.
Dr. Saddler went out with the others, but paid another dime, and soon was back inside. She paid no attention to the spieler, but got a good position in front of Ungo-Bungo’s cage before the rest of the crowd arrived.
Ungo-Bungo repeated his performance with mechanical precision. Dr. Saddler noticed that he limped a little as he came forward to rattle the bars, and that the skin under his mat of hair bore several big whitish scars. The last joint of his left ring-finger was missing. She noted certain things about the proportions of his shin and thigh, of his forearm and upper arm, and his big splay feet.
Dr. Saddler paid a third dime. An idea was knocking at her mind somewhere, trying to get in; either she was crazy or physical anthropology was haywire or—something. But she knew that if she did the sensible thing, which was to go home, the idea would plague her from now on.
After the third performance she spoke to the spicier. “I think your Mr. Ungo-Bungo used to be a friend of mine. Could you arrange for me to see him after he finishes?”
The spieler checked his sarcasm. His questioner was so obviously not a—not the sort of dame who asks to see guys after they finish.
“Oh, him,” he said. “Calls himself Gaffney—Clarence Aloysius Gaffney. That the guy you want?”
“Why, yes.”
“Guess you can.” He looked at his watch. “He’s got four more turns to do before we close. I’ll have to ask the boss.” He popped through a curtain and called, “Hey, Morrie!” Then he was
back. “It’s okay. Morrie says you can wait in his office. Foist door to the right.”
Morrie was stout, bald, and hospitable. “Sure, sure,” he said, waving his cigar. “Glad to be of soivice, Miss Saddler. Chust a min while I talk to Gaffney’s manager.” he .tuck his head out. “Hey, Pappas! Lady wants to talk to your ape-man later. I meant lady. Okay.” He returned to orate on the difficulties besetting the freak business. “You take this Gaffney, now. He’s the best damn ape-man in the business; all that hair really grows outa him. And the poor guy really has a face like that. But do people believe it? No! I hear ‘em going out, saying about how the hair is pasted on, and the whole thing is a fake. It’s mortifying.” He cocked his head, listening. “That rumble wasn’t no roily-coaster; it’s gonna rain. Hope it’s over by tomorrow. You wouldn’t believe the way a rain can knock ya receipts off. If you drew a coive, it would be like this ” He drew his finger horizontally through space, jerking it down sharply to indicate the effect of rain. “But as I said, people don’t appreciate what you try to do for ‘cm. It’s not just the money; I think of myself as an ottist. A creative ottist. A show like this got to have balance and proportion, like any other ott . . .”
It must have been an hour later when a slow, deep voice at the door said, “Did somebody want to see me?”
The gnarly man was in the doorway. In street-clothes, with the collar of his raincoat turned up and his hat-brim pulled down, he looked more or less human, though the coat fitted his great sloping shoulders badly. He had a thick knobby walking-stick with a leather loop near the top end. A small dark man fidgeted behind him.
“Yeah,” said Morrie, interrupting his lecture. “Clarence, this is Miss Saddler, Miss Saddler, this is our Mister Gaffney, one of our outstanding creative ottists.”
“Pleased to meetcha,” said the gnarly man. “This is my manager, Mr. Pappas.”
Dr. Saddler explained, and said she’d like to talk to Mr. Gaffney if she might. She was tactful; you had to be to pry into the private affairs of Naga head-hunters, for instance. The gnarly man said he’d be glad to have a cup of coffee with Miss Saddler; there was a place around the corner that they could reach without getting wet.
As they started out, Pappas followed, fidgeting more and more. The gnarly man said, “Oh, go home to bed, John. Don’t worry about me.” He grinned at Dr. Saddler. The effect would have been unnerving to anyone but an anthropologist. “Every time he sees me talking to anybody, he thinks it’s some other manager trying to steal me.” He spoke General American, with a suggestion of Irish brogue in the lowering of the vowels in words like “man” and “talk.”
“I made the lawyer who drew up our contract fix it so it can be ended on short notice.”
Pappas departed, still looking suspicious. The rain had practically ceased. The gnarly man stepped along smartly despite his limp. A woman passed with a fox-terrier on a leash. The dog sniffed in the direction of the gnarly man, and then to all appearances went crazy, yelping and slavering. The gnarly man shifted his grip on the massive stick and said quietly, “Better hang on to him, Ma’am.” The woman departed hastily. “They just don’t like me,” commented Gaffney. “Dogs, that is.”
They found a table and ordered their coffee. When the gnarly man took off his raincoat, Dr. Saddler became aware of a strong smell of cheap perfume. He got out a pipe with a big knobbly bowl. It suited him, just as the walking-stick did. Dr. Saddler noticed that the deep-sunk eyes under the beetling arches were light hazel.
“Well?” he said in his rumbling drawl.
She began her questions.
“My parents were Irish,” he answered. “But I was born in South Boston—let’s see—forty-six years ago. I can get you a copy of my birth-certificate. Clarence Aloysius Gaffney, May 2, 1910.” He seemed to get some secret amusement out of that statement.
“Were either of your parents of your somewhat unusual physical type?”
He paused before answering. He always did, it seemed. “Uh-huh. Both of ‘em. Glands, I suppose.”
“Were they both born in Ireland?”
“Yep. County Sligo.” Again that mysterious twinkle.
She paused. “Mr. Gaffney, you wouldn’t mind having some photographs and measurements made, would you? You could use the photographs in your business.”
“Maybe.” He took a sip. “Ouch! Gazooks, that’s hot!”
“What?”
“I said the coffee’s hot.”
“I mean, before that.”
The gnarly man looked a little embarrassed. “Oh, you mean the ‘gazooks’? Well, I—uh—once knew a man who used to say that.”
“Mr. Gaffney, I’m a scientist, and I’m not trying to get anything out of you for my own sake. You can be frank with me.”
There was something remote and impersonal in his stare that gave her a slight spinal chill. “Meaning that I haven’t been so far?”
“Yes. When I saw you I decided that there was something extraordinary in your background. I still think there is. Now, if you think I’m crazy, say so and we’ll drop the subject. But I want to get to the bottom of this.”
He took his time about answering. “That would depend.” There was another pause. Then he said, “With your connections, do you know any really first-class surgeons?”
“But—yes, I know Dunbar.”
“The guy who wears a purple gown when he operates? The guy who wrote a book on ‘God, Man, and the Universe’?”
“Yes. He’s a good man, in spite of his theatrical mannerisms. Why? What would you want of him?”
“Not what you’re thinking. I’m satisfied with my—uh—unusual physical type. But I have some old injuries—broken bones that didn’t knit properly—that I want fixed up. He’d have to be a good man. though. I have a couple of thousand in the savings-bank, but I know the sort of fees those guys charge. If you could make the necessary arrangements—”
“Why, yes, I’m sure I could. In fact I could guarantee it. Then I was right? And you’ll—” She hesitated.
“Come clean? Uh—huh. But remember, I can still prove I’m Clarence Aloysius if I have to.”
“Who are you, then?”
Again there was a long pause. Then the gnarly man said, “Might as well tell you. As soon as you repeat any of it, you’ll have put your professional reputation in my hands, remember.
“First off, I wasn’t born in Massachusetts. I was born on the upper Rhine, near Mommenheim, and as nearly as I can figure out, about the year 50,000 B. C.”
Dr. Saddler wondered whether she’d stumbled on the biggest thing in anthropology or whether this bizarre man was making Baron Munchausen look like a piker.
He seemed to guess her thoughts. “I can’t prove that, of course. But so long as you arrange about that operation, I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”
“But—but—how?”
“I think the lightning did it. We were out trying to drive some bison into a pit. Well, this big thunderstorm came up, and the bison bolted in the wrong direction. So we gave up and tried to find shelter. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with the rain running over me, and the rest of the clan standing around wailing about what had they done to get the storm-god sore at them, so he made a bullseye on one of their best hunters. They’d never said that about me before. It’s funny how you’re never appreciated while you’re alive.
“But I was alive, all right. My nerves were pretty well shot for a few weeks, but otherwise-I was all right except for some burns on the soles of my feet. I don’t know just what happened, except I was reading a couple of years ago that scientists had located the machinery that controls the replacement of tissue in the medulla oblongata. I think maybe the lightning did something to my medulla to speed it up. Anyway I never got any older afier that. Physically, that is. And except for those broken bones I told you about. I was thirty-three at the time, more or less. We didn’t keep track of ages. I look older now, because the lines in your face are bound to get so
rt of set after a few thousand years, and because our hair was always gray at the ends. But I can still tie an ordinary Homo sapiens in a knot if I want to.”
“Then you’re—you mean to say you’re—you’re trying to tell me you’re—”
“A Neanderthal man? Homo neanderthalensis! That’s right.”
Matilda Saddler’s hotel room was a bit crowded, with the gnarly man, the frosty Blue, the rustic Jeffcott, Dr. Saddler herself, and Harold McGannon the historian. This McGannon was a small man, very neat and pink-skinned. He looked more like a New York Central director than a professor. Just now his expression was one of fascination. Dr. Saddler looked full of pride; Professor Jeffcott looked interested but puzzled; Dr. Blue looked bored. (He hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.) The gnarly man, stretched out in the most comfortable chair and puffing his overgrown pipe, seemed to be enjoying himself.
McGannon was asking a question. “Well, Mr.—Gaffney? I suppose that’s your name as much as any.”
“You might say so,” said the gnarly man. “My original name was something like Shining Hawk. But I’ve gone under hundreds of names since then. If you register in a hotel as ‘Shining Hawk’ it’s apt to attract attention. And I try to avoid that.”
“Why?” asked McGannon.
The gnarly man looked a his audience as one might look at willfully stupid children. “I don’t like trouble. The best way to keep out of trouble is not to attract attention. That’s why I have to pull up stakes and move every ten or fifteen years. People might get curious as to why I never got any older.”
“Pathological liar,” murmured Blue. The words were barely audible, but the gnarly man heard them.
“You’re entitled to your opinion, Dr. Blue,” he said affably. “Dr. Saddler’s doing me a favor, so in return I’m letting you all shoot questions at me. And I’m answering. I don’t give a damn whether you believe me or not.”
McGannon hastily threw in another question. “How is it that you have a birth certificate, as you say you have?”