Fantasy

by Rich Horton

  “Oh Mandy,” sighed Virginia Boote. “When you’ve tasted one beetle, you’ve tasted them all. And we all tasted several hundred species. At least the dung-beetles had a real kick to them.”

  “No,” said Jackie Newhouse, “that was the dung-beetle balls. The beetles themselves were singularly unexceptional. Still, I take your point. We have scaled the heights of gastronomy, we have plunged down into the depths of gustation. We have become cosmonauts exploring undreamed-of worlds of delectation and gour­man­derie.”

  “True, true, true,” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy. “There has been a meeting of the Epicureans every month for over a hundred and fifty years, in my father’s time, and my grandfather’s time, and my great-grandfather’s time, and now I fear that I must hang it up for there is nothing left that we, or our predecessors in the club, have not eaten.”

  “I wish I had been here in the Twenties,” said Virginia Boote, “when they legally had Man on the menu.”

  “Only after it had been electrocuted,” said Zebediah T. Craw­crustle. “Half-fried already it was, all char and crackling. It left none of us with a taste for long pig, save for one who was already that way inclined, and he went out pretty soon after that anyway.”

  “Oh, Crusty, why must you pretend that you were there?” asked Virginia Boote, with a yawn. “Anyone can see you aren’t that old. You can’t be more than sixty, even allowing for the ravages of time and the gutter.”

  “Oh, they ravage pretty good,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “But not as good as you’d imagine. Anyway there’s a host of things we’ve not eaten yet.”

  “Name one,” said Mandalay, his pencil poised precisely above his notebook.

  “Well, there’s Suntown Sunbird,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. And he grinned his crookedy grin at them, with his teeth ragged but sharp.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” said Jackie Newhouse. “You’re making it up.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” said Professor Mandalay, “But in another context. And besides, it is imaginary.”

  “Unicorns are imaginary,” said Virginia Boote, “But gosh, that unicorn flank tartare was tasty. A little bit horsy, a little bit goatish, and all the better for the capers and raw quail eggs.”

  “There’s something about Sunbirds in one of the minutes of the Epicurean Club from bygone years,” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy. “But what it was, I can no longer remember.”

  “Did they say how it tasted?” asked Virginia.

  “I do not believe that they did,” said Augustus, with a frown. “I would need to inspect the bound proceedings, of course.”

  “Nah,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “That’s only in the charred volumes. You’ll never find out about it from there.”

  Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy scratched his head. He really did have two feathers, which went through the knot of black-hair- shot-with-silver at the back of his head, and the feathers had once been golden although by now they were looking kind of ordinary and yellow and ragged. He had been given them when he was a boy.

  “Beetles,” said Professor Mandalay. “I once calculated that, if a man such as myself were to eat six different species of beetle each day, it would take him more than twenty years to eat every beetle that has been identified. And over that twenty years enough new species of beetle might have been discovered to keep him eating for another five years. And in those five years enough beetles might have been discovered to keep him eating for another two and a half years, and so on, and so on. It is a paradox of inexhaustibility. I call it Man­dalay’s Beetle. You would have to enjoy eating beetles, though,” he added, “or it would be a very bad thing indeed.”

  “Nothing wrong with eating beetles if they’re the right kind of beetle,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “Right now, I’ve got a hankering on me for lightning bugs. There’s a kick from the glow of a lightning bug that might be just what I need.”

  “While the lightning bug or firefly (Photinus pyralis) is more of a beetle than it is a glow-worm,” said Mandalay, “they are by no stretch of the imagination edible.”

  “They may not be edible,” said Crawcrustle. “But they’ll get you into shape for the stuff that is. I think I’ll roast me some. Fireflies and habanero peppers. Yum.”

  Virginia Boote was an eminently practical woman. She said, “Suppose we did want to eat Suntown Sunbird. Where should we start looking for it?”

  Zebediah T. Crawcrustle scratched the bristling seventh-day beard that was sprouting on his chin (it never grew any longer than that; seventh-day beards never do). “If it was me,” he told them, “I’d head down to Suntown of a noon in midsummer, and I’d find somewhere comfortable to sit—Mustapha Stroheim’s coffeehouse, for example, and I’d wait for the Sunbird to come by. Then I’d catch him in the traditional manner, and cook him in the traditional manner as well.”

  “And what would the traditional manner of catching him be?” asked Jackie Newhouse.

  “Why, the same way your famous ancestor poached quails and wood-grouse,” said Crawcrustle.

  “There’s nothing in Casanova’s memoirs about poaching quail,” said Jackie Newhouse.

  “Your ancestor was a busy man,” said Crawcrustle. “He couldn’t be expected to write everything down. But he poached a good quail nonetheless.”

  “Dried corn and dried blueberries, soaked in whisky,” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy. “That’s how my folk always did it.”

  “And that was how Casanova did it,” said Crawcrustle, “although he used barley-grains mixed with raisins, and he soaked the raisins in brandy. He taught me himself.”

  Jackie Newhouse ignored this statement. It was easy to ignore much that Zebediah T. Crawcrustle said. Instead, Jackie Newhouse asked, “And where is Mustapha Stroheim’s Coffee House in Sun­town?”

  “Why, where it always is, third lane after the old market in the Suntown district, just before you reach the old drainage ditch that was once an irrigation canal, and if you find yourself in One-eye Khayam’s Carpet shop you have gone too far,” began Crawcrustle. “But I see by the expressions of irritation upon your faces that you were expecting a less succinct, less accurate, description. Very well. It is in Suntown, and Suntown is in Cairo, in Egypt, where it always is, or almost always.”

  “And who will pay for an expedition to Suntown?” asked Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy. “And who will be on this expedition? I ask the question although I already know the answer, and I do not like it.”

  “Why, you will pay for it, Augustus, and we will all come,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “You can deduct it from our Epicurean membership dues. And I shall bring my chef’s apron and my cooking utensils.”

  Augustus knew that Crawcrustle had not paid his Epicurean Club membership in much too long a time, but the Epicurean Club would cover him; Crawcrustle had been a member of the Epicureans in Augustus’s father’s day. He simply said, “And when shall we leave?”

  Crawcrustle fixed him with a mad old eye, and shook his head in disappointment. “Why, Augustus,” he said. “We’re going to Sun­town, to catch the Sunbird. When else should we leave?”

  “Sunday!” sang Virginia Boote. “Darlings, we’ll leave on a Sun­day!”

  “There’s hope for you yet, young lady,” said Zebediah T. Craw­crustle. “We shall leave Sunday indeed. Three Sundays from now. And we shall travel to Egypt. We shall spend several days hunting and trapping the elusive Sunbird of Suntown, and, finally, we shall deal with it in the traditional way.”

  Professor Mandalay blinked a small grey blink. “But,” he said. “I am teaching a class on Monday. On Mondays I teach mythology, on Tuesdays I teach tapdancing, and on Wednesdays, woodwork.”

  “Get a teaching assistant to take your course, Mandalay O Man­dalay. On Monday you’ll be hunting the Sunbird,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “And how many other professors can say that?”

  * * * *

  They went, one by one, to see Crawcrustle, in order to discuss the journey ahead o
f them, and to announce their misgivings.

  Zebediah T. Crawcrustle was a man of no fixed abode. Still, there were places he could be found, if you were of a mind to find him. In the early mornings he slept in the bus terminal, where the benches were comfortable and the transport police were inclined to let him lie; in the heat of the afternoons he hung in the park by the statues of long-forgotten generals, with the dipsos and the winos and the hopheads, sharing their company and the contents of their bottles, and offering his opinion, which was, as that of an Epicurean, always considered and always respected, if not always welcomed.

  Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy sought Crawcrustle out in the park; he had with him his daughter, Hollyberry NoFeathers McCoy. She was small, but she was sharp as a shark’s tooth.

  “You know,” said Augustus, “there is something very familiar about this.”

  “About what?” asked Zebediah.

  “All of this. The expedition to Egypt. The Sunbird. It seemed to me like I heard about it before.”

  Crawcrustle merely nodded. He was crunching something from a brown-paper bag.

  Augustus said, “I went to the bound annals of the Epicurean Club, and I looked it up. And there was what I took to be a reference to the Sunbird in the index for forty years ago, but I was unable to learn anything more than that.”

  “And why was that?” asked Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, swallowing noisily.

  Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy sighed. “I found the relevant page in the annals,” he said, “but it was burned away, and afterwards there was some great confusion in the administration of the Epicurean Club.”

  “You’re eating lightning bugs from a paper bag,” said Holly­berry Nofeathers McCoy. “I seen you doing it.”

  “I am indeed, little lady,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle.

  “Do you remember the days of great confusion, Crawcrustle?” asked Augustus.

  “I do indeed,” said Crawcrustle. “And I remember you. You were only the age that young Hollyberry is now. But there is always confusion, Augustus, and then there is no confusion. It is like the rising and the setting of the sun.”

  Jackie Newhouse and Professor Mandalay found Crawcrustle that evening, behind the railroad tracks. He was roasting something in a tin can, over a small charcoal fire.

  “What are you roasting, Crawcrustle?” asked Jackie Newhouse.

  “More charcoal,” said Crawcrustle. “Cleans the blood, purifies the spirit.”

  There was basswood and hickory, cut up into in little chunks at the bottom of the can, all black and smoking.

  “And will you actually eat this charcoal, Crawcrustle?” asked Professor Mandalay.

  In response, Crawcrustle licked his fingers and picked out a lump of charcoal from the can. It hissed and fizzed in his grip.

  “A fine trick,” said Professor Mandalay. “That’s how fire-eaters do it, I believe.”

  Crawcrustle popped the charcoal into his mouth and crunched it between his ragged old teeth. “It is indeed,” he said. “It is indeed.”

  Jackie Newhouse cleared his throat. “The truth of the matter is,” he said, “Professor Mandalay and I have deep misgivings about the journey that lies ahead.”

  Zebediah merely crunched his charcoal. “Not hot enough,” he said. He took a stick from the fire, and nibbled off the orange-hot tip of it. “That’s good,” he said.

  “It’s all an illusion,” said Jackie Newhouse.

  “Nothing of the sort,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle primly. “It’s prickly elm.”

  “I have extreme misgivings about all this,” said Jackie New­house. “My ancestors and I have a finely-tuned sense of personal preservation, one that has often left us shivering on roofs and hiding in rivers—one step away from the law, or from gentlemen with guns and legitimate grievances—and that sense of self-preservation is telling me not to go to Suntown with you.”

  “I am an academic,” said Professor Mandalay, “and thus have no finely developed senses that would be comprehensible to anyone who has not ever needed to grade papers without actually reading the blessed things. Still, I find the whole thing remarkably suspicious. If this Sunbird is so tasty, why have I not heard of it?”

  “You have, Mandy old fruit. You have,” said Zebediah T. Craw­crustle.

  “And I am, in addition, an expert on geographical features from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Timbuktu,” continued Professor Mandalay. “Yet I have never seen a mention in any books of a place called Suntown in Cairo.”

  “Seen it mentioned? Why, you’ve taught it,” said Crawcrustle, and he doused a lump of smoking charcoal with hot pepper sauce before popping it in his mouth and chomping it down.

  “I don’t believe you’re really eating that,” said Jackie Newhouse. “But even being around the trick of it is making me uncomfortable. I think it is time that I was elsewhere.”

  And he left. Perhaps Professor Mandalay left with him: that man was so grey and so ghostie it was always a toss-up whether he was there or not.

  Virginia Boote tripped over Zebediah T. Crawcrustle while he rested in her doorway, in the small hours of the morning. She was returning from a restaurant she had needed to review. She got out of a taxi, tripped over Crawcrustle and went sprawling. She landed nearby. “Whee!” she said. “That was some trip, wasn’t it?”

  “Indeed it was, Virginia,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “You would not happen to have such a thing as a box of matches on you, would you?”

  “I have a book of matches on me somewhere,” she said, and she began to rummage in her purse, which was very large and very brown. “Here you are.”

  Zebediah T. Crawcrustle was carrying a bottle of purple methylated spirits, which he proceeded to pour into a plastic cup.

  “Meths?” said Virginia Boote. “Somehow you never struck me as a meths drinker, Zebby.”

  “Nor am I,” said Crawcrustle. “Foul stuff. It rots the guts and spoils the taste-buds. But I could not find any lighter fluid at this time of night.”

  He lit a match, then dipped it near the surface of the cup of spirits, which began to burn with a flickery light. He ate the match. Then he gargled with the flaming liquid, and blew a sheet of flame into the street, incinerating a sheet of newspaper as it blew by.

  “Crusty,” said Virginia Boote, “that’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

  Zebediah T. Crawcrustle grinned through black teeth. “I don’t actually drink it,” he told her. “I just gargle and breathe it out.”

  “You’re playing with fire,” she warned him.

  “That’s how I know I’m alive,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle.

  Virginia said, “Oh Zeb. I am excited. I am so excited. What do you think the Sunbird tastes like?”

  “Richer than quail and moister than turkey, fatter than ostrich and lusher than duck,” said Zebediah T. Crawcrustle. “Once eaten it’s never forgotten.”

  “We’re going to Egypt,” she said. “I’ve never been to Egypt.” Then she said, “Do you have anywhere to stay the night?”

  He coughed, a small cough that rattled around in his old chest. “I’m getting too old to sleep in doorways and gutters,” he said. “Still, I have my pride.”

  “Well,” she said, looking at the man, “you could sleep on my sofa.”

  “It is not that I am not grateful for the offer,” he said, “But there is a bench in the bus station that has my name on it.”

  And he pushed himself away from the wall, and tottered majestically down the street.

  There really was a bench in the bus station that had his name on it. He had donated the bench to the bus station back when he was flush, and his name was attached to the back of the bench, engraved upon a small brass plaque. Zebediah T. Crawcrustle was not always poor. Sometimes he was rich, but he had difficulty in holding onto his wealth, and whenever he had become wealthy he discovered that the world frowned on rich men eating in hobo jungles at the back of the railroad, or consorting with the winos in the park, so he would fritter his we
alth away as best he could. There were always little bits of it here and there that he had forgotten about, and sometimes he would forget that he did not like being rich, and then he would set out again and seek his fortune, and find it.

  He had needed a shave for a week, and the hairs of his seven-day beard were starting to come through snow white.

  * * * *

  They left for Egypt on a Sunday, the Epicureans. There were five of them there, and Hollyberry Nofeathers McCoy waved goodbye to them at the airport. It was a very small airport, which still permitted waves goodbye.

  “Goodbye, father!” called Hollyberry Nofeathers McCoy.

  Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy waved back at her as they walked along the asphalt to the little prop plane, which would begin the first leg of their journey.

  “It seems to me,” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, “that I remember, albeit dimly, a day like this long, long ago. I was a small boy, in that memory, waving goodbye. I believe it was the last time I saw my father, and I am struck once more with a sudden presentiment of doom.” He waved one last time at the small child at the other end of the field, and she waved back at him.

  “You waved just as enthusiastically back then,” agreed Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, “but I think she waves with slightly more aplomb.”

  It was true. She did.

  They took a small plane and then a larger plane, then a smaller plane, a blimp, a gondola, a train, a hot-air balloon, and a rented Jeep.

  They rattled through Cairo in the Jeep. They passed the old market, and they turned off on the third lane they came to (if they had continued on they would have come to a drainage ditch that was once an irrigation canal). Mustapha Stroheim himself was sitting outside in the street, sitting on an elderly wicker chair. All of the tables and chairs were on the side of the street, and it was not a particularly wide street.

  “Welcome, my friends, to my Kahwa,” said Mustapha Stroheim. “Kahwa is Egyptian for café, or for coffee-house. Would you like tea? Or a game of dominoes?”

  “We would like to be shown to our rooms,” said Jackie New­house.