“Where do you keep all that stuff? I never see any of it.”
“We keep it hidden. We put part of it in the cave under our first cave. We keep part of it in other places. I keep my slave-in-chains in a little room up in the attic of my house that nobody knows is there but me. At night he comes down to my room and makes gold money for me. He grinds it out with a little grinder.”
“What does he grind it out of?”
“He puts in old bolts and nuts and horseshoes and old milk-can covers.”
“And it comes out gold money?”
“Sure it does. I got a whole roomful of it.”
“Could I get a slave to make me some too?”
“No. You're too little. And besides, you'll be dead.”
“What do you trade to the pirates for all that?”
“Hickory nuts and pecans mostly. They can't get them at sea. And bird's eggs. But the thing that is worth more than anything else is eyes. That's what we kill all the boys for, to get their eyes to trade to the pirates.”
“What do they do with all the eyes?”
“Well, they nail them up on the top of the mast, or on one of those sticks that go out from the side of the mast. They tell those eyes to keep a sharp watch and give a signal if they see land or a ship or a whale.”
“Is that what will happen to my eyes?”
“Yes. They'll nail them up on the highest part of the ship for a lookout.”
“But if there's nothing left but my eyes, how will I give the signal when I see something? I won't have anything left to holler with.”
“I think they give you a little bell to ring,” Stanely said.
There was more to it than that, of course. When they kill you they do different things to different parts of you. They sell some of you to Mr. Hockmeyer to put in his sausage. You know how he jokes about grinding boys up in his machine? He isn't joking. He really does it. He doesn't use much of them in each batch though: only one boy to half a dozen hogs. People like the taste of the sausage but they wouldn't buy it if they knew what was in it. And some of the bones can be used. The shooter of Clifford Welch has a fork made from a boy's wishbone. But the eyes are the most valuable part.
It wasn't until Wednesday that Henry went into the cave itself. There wasn't much there: pieces of an old structo set, a hammer head without a handle, some hickory-nut shells, ashes from a fire, a jar full of poison water. Henry knew about the water: that is the way they killed you; they made you drink it and you fell down and died. It looked like other water, but it had scorpion poison in it. The doorway to the lower cave, however, was ingeniously hidden. There are three ways to open a secret door. One is to find the edge of it and pry it up. One is to say the words that will make it open. One is to have someone show you how.
But Henry couldn't find any edge to it however far he dug. He tried different words, but they were not the right ones. So somebody would have to show him how. At least he'd get to go down to the lower cave Saturday when they killed him.
The rest of the week was filled with great expectation. Henry dreamed it out in the mornings as he sat in the cave, and in the afternoons as he sat on top of Doolen's Mountain. The appeal of a completely untrammeled existence has always been strong. It would be perfect to be no more than a pair of eyes. To be on the highest stick of a ship and to be able to see further than anybody else in the world, that would be a new sort of ultimate. From the very top you would be able to see whole islands that nobody else had seen, to see whole ships before they came into view. Being so high, you could see the tops and the backs of the clouds, and look at the inside of the cloud rooms. You could look down and see the green whales, bigger than catfish, snoozing in the weeds. And some day you would be able to see what made the first wave. The first wave pushes the next one, and that one pushes the one you see. But nobody has ever seen the first wave that starts them all.
And if you are nothing but two eyes, you can turn one of them to look at the other one. Or, with the two of them not tied together, you can be in two different places at one time, which nobody else can do. You can roll like marbles and go wherever you want to. You can hide in places and see people who can't see you. It is to be invisible. Moreover, you get to travel all over the world and work for the king of the pirates who has one red eye and one black eye. It is a unique existence, and very few boys have ever experienced it.
And so it was all through the week and into Friday dusk that Henry thought, into howling locust time, cricket time, June bug time (in the South they have June bugs in April), street-light time, star-light time. Then, in the twilight, there was a big truck in town, square as a cracker box, big as a train, and with red lights on the back and front of it. Cursing and straining men were moving crates half as big as a room, and boxes and trunks. They had opened up the old Shane house that had always been dark and locked and drawn-blinded and weed-choked. This evening it was full of light.
A little later, Mrs. Glass told Henry to come into her house and have some cake. What matter that Howard Glass acted abominably to him and twisted his arm! It was worth it for the cake. Henry went home happy afterwards, for the next day was Saturday and he would get to be killed and turned into a pair of eyes and ride on the highest part of a pirate ship and ring a bell when he saw a whale or land or a boat. He would be the lookout for the pirate king with one red eye and one black eye. He would get to see the world.
“You can give all my clothes away,” he told his mother as he came home that evening. “After tomorrow, I won't be using them anymore.” But she didn't know what he meant. Often she didn't.
If you know what is going to happen, the last night in the old life can be an exciting one. The vision of the new and enlarged life will set you to dreaming without sleeping, and morning never comes soon enough. The sun comes up earlier in the South, and Henry was around very early that Saturday morning, banging on doors. But he could get nobody up, nobody but the new boy. All the front porch of the Shane house was still piled up with crates and chairs in spite of all that had already been taken inside.
“Where do you come from?” Henry asked the new boy.
“Kansas.”
“That isn't very far. We came through Kansas on our way down here. We came from three times that far away. What's your name?”
“Baxter.”
“I've got a better name than that. My name is Henry. We have a cave but you can't go in it until you've been here longer. We have a mountain but you can't climb it yet. And if I told you what was going to happen to me today you wouldn't believe it. I get to go away where nobody else ever went before. You're only a new boy and things like that can't happen to you.”
“A new boy!”
The world crashed to pieces. It clattered like tin cans on cement when it collapsed. For Baxter was a newer boy than Henry, and he would get to be killed instead of Henry. The greatest of all disasters had come as simply and quietly as that.
Baxter was a new boy moved to town. Baxter would get killed instead of Henry. And now Henry's chances were gone forever.
Henry howled and turned and ran away. Baxter's mother came out. “What did you do to that little boy to make him cry?” she asked.
“I didn't do anything to him. I don't know why he started to cry.”
“You must have done something to make him cry. You have to be good and try to get along with the other boys. We're in a new town now.”
Henry ran in black horror — (Baxter instead of him) — out to the edge of town — (it would be Baxter's eyes and not his eyes) — past the cave with the other cave under it — (Baxter would get to see the Islands and Whales, Henry wouldn't get to see anything) — sobbing up to the top of Doolen's Mountain. He flung himself down and wept bitterly over his lost hopes.
Try To Remember
1.
It isn't that professors are absent-minded. That is a canard, a joke thought up by somebody who should have been better employed. The fact is that sometimes professors have great presence of mind;
they have to have. The fact is that professors are (or should be) very busy and thoughtful men, and that they are forced in the interests of time and efficiency to relegate the unessentials to the background. Professor—what was that blamed name again?—well anyway, he had done so, he had swept all the unessentials quite out of the way. He carried a small black book prepared by his wife (it must have been his wife) in which all the unessential details of his regime were written down for his guidance and to save him time. On the cover were the words “Try to Remember,” and inside was information copious and handy.
He picked it up now, from the table in front of him, and opened it.
“You are professor J. F. E. Diller,” he read. “The J is for John. There is no use in burdening your mind with the meaning of the other two initials. You are known to your students as Killer Diller for no good reason beyond euphony, and you are called by me “Moxie” for my own reasons.
“You teach Middle Mayan Archeology. Please don't try to teach anything else. You don't know anything else. Your schedule is as follows: — But before you examine it, always look at your watch. It shows both the day of the week and the time of the day. It is on your left wrist. The best way I can tell you which is your left wrist is to say that it is the one that your watch is on.”
And there followed the schedule with times and classes and building and room number, and indications as to whether the class was elementary or middle or advanced, and which text was used, Boch, or Mendoza y Carriba, or Strohspalter. And below the class schedule were other varied notes.
“You like every kind of meat except liver. Don't order it. You think you like it but you don't. You are always fearfully disappointed when you try to eat it. Eat anything else; you fortunately do not have to watch your calories. You drink Cuba Libres. Never take more than four drinks at one session, they make you so nutty. There is a little drink-counter in your left-hand pants pocket that I made for you. Flip it every time that you have a drink. When you have had four, it will not flip again; so come on home. The best way I can tell you which is your left-hand pants pocket is that it is the one your drink-counter is in.”
There was much more. The professor looked at his watch, looked at his schedule, saw that he still had a little time before his final class, glanced at the final entry in the book, “I love you, Emily,” smiled, closed the small notebook, and put it in his pocket.
“Women have a satirical turn of mind,” he said to his companion.
“What? Are you sure?” the companion asked. “Blenheim denies it, and the evidence in Creager is doubtful. And Pfirschbaum in his monumental monogram ‘Satire und Geschlecht’ has gone into the problem rather more thoroughly than most, and he is not of your opinion. And we have here on our own campus a fellow, Kearney, who is widely read in the field. If you have independent new evidence, you might go to him with it. He will appreciate it.”
“No. I am sorry. I phrased myself badly. I should have said that my own wife, in a particular instance that has just come to my hand, shows flashes of satire. I realize the dangers of generalizing. As to making a statement about the mind of women generally, that is beyond my scope.”
His next class by the schedule, and the final one of the day, was an elementary one in Middle Mayan Archeology, and the text, of course, was that of Boch. But the professor seldom stayed with the text long. He would ask the place of a student, read a paragraph or two out loud, and then begin to talk. Talking was one of the things he did best. He had humor and verve, and the students always liked him. And, if a man knows his subject (Did he know his subject? What an odd question! How could he be a professor if he didn't know his subject?), if a man knows his subject thoroughly, then he can afford to handle it lightly, and to toy, to elucidate, to digress.
So the hour went easily and pleasantly. Yet an odd thought began to crawl like a bug up his back, and it unsettled him. “I have been talking total nonsense,” said the thought. “Now why would I be talking nonsense when I am competent and know my subject?”
And the thought slept, but did not die, when after class was over he went to the Scatterbrain Lounge to drink.
“Cuba Libre,” he ordered confidently.
“Are you sure?” asked the girl.
It was only a split second to flip open the small pocket notebook. He had done it many times and was adept at it.
“That is correct,” he said. “A Cuba Libre.”
But a moment later there was another fly caught in the ointment where it beat futile wings and expired. In an indefinite manner things were not right.
“I have lost my drink-counter,” said the professor, “and I never lose things, only misplace them. It is not in my left pocket, if that is the left one. And if the other one is the left pocket, why it is not in that one either? How will I know when I've had four drinks?”
“That's easy enough,” said the girl. “I'll tell you.”
“So are all unusual problems solved,” said the professor, “by unusual means and flashes of intuition.”
After the girl had told him that the drink he had just finished was his fourth, the professor, feeling woozy, had her call a taxi for him; then, looking in his notebook for his home address, he gave it to the driver and rode off feeling rosy and fine.
Then, after he had paid the driver, and with a quick glance at “I love you, Emily” on the last page of the notebook he went up to the house, went in, and kissed the beautiful Emily as hard as he knew how to. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her lovingly, and she at him.
“This is quite the best thing that has happened to me in a wonderful day,” he said. “I had almost forgotten that you were so beautiful.”
“It had nearly slipped my mind also,” said Emily. “And it is very sweet to be reminded of it.”
She was beautiful. And she had a look at once very affectionate and very, very quizzical; a woman full of humor and satire indeed.
“Pfirschbaum is wrong!” said the professor positively, “cataclysmically wrong. Could he but see that look on your face, so kind, so amused, so arch; he would realize just how wrong he is.”
“I'm sure that he would. I would rather like to see the look on my face myself. It must be a study of mixed emotions. Oh, you're doing it again, you little wolf! How sweet you are! I wonder who invented kissing in the first place?”
“It is generally attributed to the Milesians, Emily, but there has lately appeared evidence that it may be even earlier. Emily, you are wonderful, wonderful.”
“I know it. But keep telling me.”
2.
Catherine came in then. She also had a quizzical look on her face, but there was something in it that was pretty dour too. And following her, and looking quite sheepish, was that little professor, what was his name? Oh yes, Diller. The professor gave Emily one more kiss, and then turned to greet them. And suddenly a strange disquietude caught him in a grip of ice. “If he is Professor Diller, then who in multicolor blazes am I?”
Professors aren't really absent-minded. It is just that they learn to relegate details to the background. But sometimes they don't stay in the background, and now this detail was much to the fore. But the professor could think like a flash when necessary, and in no time at all he remembered not only who he was, but just what kind of trouble he was in.
But it didn't help matters when, as he was leaving with Catherine, Emily called after him “It was fun, Tommy. Let's do it again sometime.”
Nor was Catherine inclined to be quiet when he sat at home next door with her and read in his own notebook (which he now had back from Professor Dillard, after that awful mix-up when the identical-appearing reminder books of the two men had apparently been lying together on the table in the teachers' lounge, and each man had mistakenly picked up the other's), — when he read in his own notebook:
“You are professor T. K. C. Cromwell. The T is for Thomas. You teach Provencal and Early French Literature and teach it badly, but we must eat. This is your schedule. Never devia
te from it or you will be lost—”
Now, if he had had his own notebook all the time, he would never have made such series of silly mistakes. Most of the trouble that comes to people in this world comes from reading the wrong books.
“To think,” said Catherine, “that a grown man could make a mistake like that, if it was a mistake. There is a point beyond which absent-mindedness is no longer a joke. How did you get by with your classes?” “I don't know. I suspected once that I was talking total nonsense.”
“And that little Killer Diller is as bad as you are. I was never so surprised in my life as when he waltzed in here and slapped me on… why I don't know how you men can get so confused.”
“But we've explained how the notebooks must have got mixed up.”
“I understand how the notebooks were mixed. I do not understand how you are so mixed. Emily is vastly amused over this. I am not so amused.”
It isn't that professors are absent-minded. Anybody should have had sense enough not to have made the notebooks that much alike.
Almost Perfect
George Grimoire grinned at Donald Dalton, yet there was something a little crooked about it. When a man grins at another as he kills him it would be odd if there were not something a little crooked about the grin. “This will be perfect, Donald. We talked once about a perfect killing; you said that there could be no such thing. It amuses me to prove you wrong.
“It is known that you are alone with me. And many people high and low will come to look at you dead here in my place, and to talk to me of your death; and we will say how tragic it all is. Yet never will I be suspected of your murder. Do you not find that ironic, Donald? You were always one to appreciate a good joke.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 20