“Melchisedech, I believe that you are insane,” Doctor Morris Poor said. “There are little pieces of insanity floating up to the surface of you constantly. You have a doubled, even a tripled personality. You believe special and legendary things about yourself. Those things will split you wide open. They will kill you. No person can maintain too many realities. There's no other possibility to be considered: you are insane, Duffey.”
The people of this mixed company looked at Morris with some distaste and astonishment. Judley and Pauline Peacock were present, Charlotte Garfield, Mary Lightfoot, Helen Batavia, Dan and Nan Donovan, two younger persons whose names will not be given at the moment, Mary Kay Pack, Hierome Groben, Demetrio Glauch, Tony and Evelyn Apostolo, Sebastian Hilton and his Countess Margaret, Rollo and Josephine McSorley, Elena O'Higgins, Ben and Shirley Israel, d'Alesandro, Margery Redfox. And Letitia Duffey and Lily Koch. And of course Melchisedech himself. They all looked at this Morris Poor who had thrown a sort of challenge.
“I believe that I am as sane as most persons, as sane as anybody here,” Duffey said. “But I can understand why there should be doubts about me. Yes, I do believe some special and legendary things about myself, but they are not imaginary things. Yes, it is difficult to maintain several realities, but I do it as well as I can. As many realities as are given to me cannot be too many realities. And persons have been split open before and have been killed. But I will not accept it from you that I am insane.”
“You told me once of fantasies that you had about giant hands that would come to your aid when commanded, and that could perform almost anything that was required,” Morris Poor said.
“I didn't tell you any such fantasy. I told you such a fact.”
“You maintain that it's true!” Morris demanded in a forensic sort of manner.
“True, yes, true,” Duffey and. “I am a magus and I have magic powers. But I may not use them without a reason. You are not a reason, Morris.”
“My challenge is a reason,” the newly-doctored Poor said. “You claim that you can order the navigable giant hands to move things.”
“Things. Yes, I suppose so. Things,” Melchisedech said.
“To move mountains, Duffey, you fake?”
“A mountain's a little big, Morris, though I suppose it could be done. I could move a mule, maybe, if there was good reason to move a mule. Now drop the subject.”
“No. Continue the subject, Morris,” Rollo McSorley instigated.
“There is good reason to move a mule, Duffey,” Doctor Poor said. “And the reason is that you're a fraud if you don't do it.”
“Ah, I'm a fraud nine times a day,” Duffey said, “but I'm not a fraud in this.” Shirley Israel had been plying the company with a new liquor or mixture. She decided that things should get riper here.
“I will bet one hundred dollars that he can't do it,” Rollo said.
“I will bet one hundred dollars that he can,” Tony Apostolo covered the bet. “I take you on it, Rollo. You are wrong in this as you are wrong in everything.”
“Fascist, it is a bet!” Rollo spat.
Lily and Letitia led the conversation to other channels, but it kept coming back.
“Does anybody know where the nearest mule can be found?” Margery Redfox asked.
“Now we're getting somewhere,” Tony Apostolo said. “Over by the Traffic Trestle. The street department still uses a few of them to pull the slip-shovels, and they're using some of them there this week. They're moving dirt and putting it in some new kind of reinforcements. The underpinnings of the Trestle keep getting wrecked.”
“Drink up, folks,” Shirley said. “I have something new I want you all to try.”
“I thought this was new,” Lily said.
“One more additive will make it perfect, I believe,” Shirley said. “You will all love it.”
“Not for a bet, Luffy Duffey,” sister-in-law Lily said. “Not for a notion. Only for need. And I don't believe there is a real need for you to move a mule by magic.”
“I know,” Duffey said. “But there may be need to blow down the blow-mouths.”
“There's no such need, man of my heart,” Letitia assured him. “And besides there will not be any proof. Oh, you will do it, and the crowd will see you do it. But someone will addle the wits of all of them, because such private powers are not meant to be published outside of the kingdom.”
“Let it go, Duffey,” said Mary Lightfoot who was always a peacemaker, as was her husband Isaac who was absent this evening however. “We are supposed to let the blow-mouths bloom along with the good people until the harvest time at the end of the world. And then they will be cut and bundled apart and burned in unquenchable fire.”
“It's too long to wait,” Duffey said.
“But let us not disregard how the blow-mouths come to be among us,” the Countess Margaret contributed. “Let us remember who sowed them. Do not forget that ‘an enemy has done this’.”
“Hold your mouth, skinny woman,” Morris Poor said to the Countess. “And you keep yours shut too, skinny man,” Rollo McSorley said to the companion of the countess who was Sebastian Hilton. (Watch it there, Rollo, you don't know what you're doing.)
“Duffey, you are less than a man if you don't come and move a mule,” Doctor Morris Poor declared. This new drink of Shirley Israel had struck with the force of a natural catastrophe.
“He is less than a man if he doesn't come to the Traffic Trestle right now,” Rollo McSorley stated in red-eyed wrath.
“Ah well, maybe I'm less than a man then, but I'm more of a man than the two of you together, Morris and Rollo. Little creatures, we will go over to the Traffic Trestle right now, and I will do one of two things. I will cause the mule to be moved. Or I will whup Rollo and Morris both at the same time. I will do whichever of these things comes first. One of them is as easy as the other.”
“I'll want this thing verified and witnessed,” Morris Poor said. “I'll want representatives of the press present.”
“Was there ever a more pressy crowd?” Tony Apostolo asked. “I'm a reporter. So is Rollo. And so is Elena O'Higgins. I'll call a photographer to come at once and cover it.”
“I'll not trust your photographer, Tony,” said Rollo. “I'll call one of my own I can trust.”
“Sometimes three heads are better than two,” Elena told them. “I'll call a lensman also.” And these three calls and appointments were quickly made.
Twenty-seven persons piled out of the Duffey establishment in loud and unsteady fashion. They went to the Pont du Sable Traffic Trestle. Fortunately it was only a few blocks, and the party came to the lower level down under the trestle. Yes, there were three mules there, inside a little fence with the grading equipment. The three photographers arrived within half a minute of each other, and the stage was set.
“All right, Duffey, you fink, order the giant hands to come down and lift the mule and transport him across that little traffic island!” Doctor Morris Poor crackled.
“Take it easy, Mule-Doctor,” the Countess said. “Duffey is no fink.”
“Shut your mouth, skinny crow,” Morris Poor said drunkenly.
“Duffey, you're not fit to be under a mule's tail,” Rollo McSorley bawled out. “You can't do it, and that's not all you can't do.”
“Blow it easier, loud-mouth,” Sebastian Hilton spoke softly. “We all know who does belong under a mule's tail.”
“Shut up completely, you damned runt,” Rollo barked. “I whipped your lying brother and I'll whip you. Hold off that skin-and-bones harpy, Morris.”
“Easy, men, easy,” Sebastian whined in that sissy half-sob that he used to pull so long ago. Duffey could almost hear the old words now, “Baw, lemmy alone, you big bully!” , so Duffey knew that one part of the project would be taken care of by Sebastian, and the other would fall to himself.
Duffey lifted his head to look at the lower or Fortean sky. And he ordered a silent order. It happened just as he ordered it. It's too bad that Roll
o and Morris, the two who had challenged it so loud, missed seeing it.
It was their own fault.
“Don't touch my girl there,” Sebastian Hilton had whined in that simulated, sissy way. And then two remarkable things happened in the same instant.
As to the one happening, twenty-four pairs of eyes and three cameras recorded twenty-four and three slightly different versions of it. Giant hands did come down. They were seen by some and sensed by all. They took the largest of the mules under the belly. The mule howled the horrible, clattering sound that only a frightened mule can give.
“Easy there, little fellow, easy there,” a huge, black-man voice whispered from the low sky, and the mule relaxed with the certainty that these were authorized hands taking him up. The mule arched his back, and he was lifted through the air; or anyhow he moved through the air, up over the fence and out of that little pen. And he came down again in that traffic island across a half-street.
The other thing that happened at the same moment was Morris Poor and Rollo McSorley being blinded and felled by slashing blows from the lightning-like Sebastian Hilton. Sebastian still wore a sharply embossed ring on either hand as he had when he was a school boy. Ah, those things could cut! Ah, Sebastian was fast with his hands! What a cocky sadist Sebastian was anyhow!
The piece in the Chicago Herald and Examiner (of November 14) was a modest one, and it tried to be factual. It was done by Elena O'Higgins. It made the simple statement that a mule had been transported thirty feet, before a score of witnesses, on the night before, under the Pont du Sable Traffic Trestle, transported through the air by mysterious conveyance. It said that the witnesses gave conflicting statements, but all agreed that the mule moved thirty feet through the air. The photograph that accompanied her story showed the mule in the air, but it did not show any giant hands supporting it.
The piece in the Daily News for November 14 was written by Rollo McSorley and was a bitterly facetious piece titled, “I was kicked by a flying mule.” Rollo claimed that he was really kicked by a drink known as The Green Mule. He said that this drink was given to a party of people by a nefarious Jewess, and that damned if he didn't think that he wanted another drink of it sometimes. Rollo wrote: “Whatever it was that I bet, I lost my bet. Whoever I said I could whip, I couldn't. Whatever I said that somebody couldn't do, he did it.” And the photo that accompanied this light-hearted story showed the mule in the air, and it showed giant hands holding it there. There were also brightish blurs here and there that might indicate some kind of double exposure. The three photographers had exchanged pictures, but the Tribune was the only paper that used all three of them.
The piece in the November 14 Chicago Tribune was done by Tony Apostolo. It had quite a bit of everything in it. It had statements from most of the witnesses:
“How did that mule get over the fence?” Judley Peacock had asked. “He jumped over it, that's how. I tended mules in the army and I know that a mule can outjump any horse. And the fence around that little pen wasn't more than seven feet tall. The mule jumped over the fence, and he got to the traffic island in two more jumps. On yes, there was a big black man up on the trestle, the biggest man I ever saw in my life. And he called something down to the mule. That's why the mule jumped. But the big man didn't lift the mule with his hands. It looked as if he did, and I thought at the time that he did. But he didn't. That would be silly. That mule got there in three big jumps.”
“When does a jump turn into a flight?” asked that beautiful and vulgar midget Charlotte Garfield. “That mule went thirty feet in the air, and that's all there was to it. No, it didn't exactly break it up into three jumps. It started to come down two times in between, but each time it got the elemental goad and it went up again without ever coming down to earth. Yeah, it was that big shine up there who did it. He reached down (his arm must have been fifty feet long) and put a three-stage firecracker under the mule's tail. He detonated that firecracker by voice, and every time the big coon hollered, the firecracker blew another stage and the mule went up in the air again before he had come down. I tell you, you could smell burnt mule all over the place.”
Really though, the evidence was pretty consistent. Three quarters of the witnesses said that it was a clear case that giant hands came down, lifted the mule, and transported it thirty feet and set it down again. That is what happened — a quite impossible thing.
Shirley Israel never did rediscover that combination of liquors to bring them all so near to the living edge.
4
Oh no, no, that wasn't Duffey's last public act of magic. We forgot about the frequent puppet acts that he put on, mostly for children. Melchisedech and Letitia Duffey would give these little magic puppet shows for the children. They would give them in fire stations, in community buildings of city parks, in lodge halls, in childrens' homes, in hospitals, in library meeting rooms, in special auditoriums, and in schools. Letitia would make some very good stringed puppets, and she could manipulate them and ventriloquize them well. Well, hers was a good puppet show in itself, and she had been putting it on for children ever since she was a child herself. Duffey would bring only his banjo with him, and the flat-boater straw hat that went with it. For his puppets, he used local talent. He used mice.
There was an exciting difference between the actors in these Puppet Shows. The puppets of Letitia were wooden, or they were made out of twisted wire and pieces of tin cans, or they were made out of cloth. But the puppets of Melchisedech were alive and real. Mice.
Yes, mice. Local mice. Is there a place anywhere that does not have a few mice, inside its walls or under its floors or in its dark corners? It is no odd thing at all. It is almost universal.
Duffey would call for mice to come out of their crannies. And they would come, however many of them he commanded to come. Duffey had dominion over mice. They would come out, squealing fearfully. And Duffey would pick them up and place them on the table of the performance. Letitia would have token mouse costumes made, and would put them onto the mice who would now have been sweet-talked into friendly cooperation. There would be a funny hat put on one of the mice, a little jacket on another, a pair of mouse eye glasses on the third. This was to identify them in the characters they were playing. And then, the mice would take over the show and give superb performances. The Letitia Puppets would be only minor characters over against the mice majors. There is a lot of ham in all mice, and there was inspired ham in these Duffey-infused creations/contrivances. The mice would speak their lines in voice roles that could be understood perfectly. This was either first or second or third degree magic. That the mice should talk indeed would be magic of the first degree. That the voices of Melchisedech or Letitia should talk through the mice was second or third degree magic. And the way that the mice followed voice commands and made the right motions in the puppet dramas, and struck the right attitudes, that was first degree magic.
The mice were good. The puppet plays were good. The children knew that it was all magic, and they were right. And when all the plays were finished, the mice would take off their attributes and bits of costume and set them in front of Letitia. Then, at the hand-clap command of Melchisedech, the mice would all jump off the table and scamper into the walls again, or into their places under the floors.
Duffey would end up the shows with a few tunes on his banjo. That also was magic, the noises he could get out of that little pluck-box.
The Duffeys had been giving a lot of shows in the parish schools. Then a lively little female teacher came and asked them to give a show in one of the public schools. This was the Gurdon S. Hubbard Elementary School, absolutely the newest school on the north side.
“It is so clean, it is so tight, it is so perfect, it is so new,” the little teacher said, “and it would be so right if you would give one of your exquisite little shows for our children.”
“A public school?” Duffey questioned. “But we are not sent except to the children of the House of Israel.”
“Lis
ten, you flaming Irishman,” that little teacher said. “You have it all backwards. We are of the House of Israel. You aren't. Sixty-three percent of our students are of the House of Israel. You come.”
The Duffeys came. And the show started off well enough, with Letitia putting her un-live puppets through some of their stringed antics, and with Melchisedech making his banjo produce noises that were very like the fanfare of trumpets. Then a malfunction developed.
They ran into a snag as they had never run into before. Duffey had dominion over mice, and he commanded seven of them to come out and perform. And they did not come. He commanded again. Nothing. There was no refusal. What was it then?
There were no mice.
“What is the matter, Melchisedech?” Letitia asked.
“What is the matter, Mr. Duffey,” the lively little female teacher asked. “You seem very perturbed over something. What is the trouble?”
“No mice.”
“But I have seen your act before. There are no mice, and then you call them out of the vasty void as you say.”
“That is what I say for my patter, but I really call them out of the walls and out of the floor spaces and out of the crannies. I call them here, and there are none of them to come. In this brand new, squeaky-clean abomination there is not even one mouse, not one in the whole building.”
“Oh, I am very proud of that,” the little teacher said, “but I see the difficulty now. What is to be done?”
“Only prayer and fasting and virtual miracle will bring them when there are none,” Duffey said. “I pray, I fast now for several minutes, but will they come? Open the auditorium doors and the corridor doors and the front and back door of the building. Then we will see.”
“But we are very careful to keep the doors closed,” the little teacher said, “or things might get in.”
“I certainly hope that things will get in,” Duffey said. Then he went into an intensity of concentration or prayer. The little teacher did have all the doors opened. And Letitia took Duffey's banjo and gave a little entertainment while they waited. She was good on the banjo, but she wasn't Duffey. There was some apprehension that not even the happy banjo-plucking could dispel. Five minutes went by, then seven, then nine.
More Than Melchisedech Page 16