The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  His life was full of brimming small passions for all the direct and sudden things in the world: the paintings of Tsinnahjinnie and Woody Crumbo (for the logic of the line of the American Indian artists never fails), the music of the Cimmaron Valley Boys and of Victor Herbert (if one possesses these two peaks, let the lesser folks own the dim valley between), Louisiana Rice-Ribby, Indian Barbecue, choc beer (Stephen did not have stomach trouble), jug-fishing (the only effective and therefore the only logical sort), the annual rattlesnake round-up at Okeene (for Stephen was fascinated by this most direct of all creatures with its logic of lightning), Bowling with the Black Knights (his own team), membership in the Engineer's Club and the Neo-Thomists Society (the only two clubs in town where the philosopher's key fits the locks), pidgeon flying (the poetry of the proficient), and affiliation with the Brain Busters, a small group of petroleum geologists with a penchant for startling theories. Stephen was interested, interesting, and happy.

  And he had Vivian.

  At any one time (by the nature of a monogamous world) it is possible for only one man to have the finest wife in the world. That man at that particular time was Stephen Knight. It had been planned: a clear thinking man will stake out the best part for himself and take thought to obtain it, and a logical man will see the logic of having the best wife possible.

  There are tools unsuited to certain tasks, and words are inadequate tools to describe Vivian Knight. She made her presence and her comings felt. Other men, friends or strangers, would lift their heads like colts before she was even in sight. She was the heart of any group. When she was gone she left nothing at all tangible; but O the intangibles that surrounded that woman like an aura!

  Actually, as Professor Schlauch had told Stephen, she was a rather stupid person with a high vitality, brimming friendliness, and a magnetism that should have flicked instruments on Mars. But Stephen, who analyzed her as he did all things, knew that she was not stupid, knew that intelligence (like icebergs and the mounting of diamonds) should be four-fifths below the surface. With Vivian her intelligence was entirely below the surface, deeply hidden and of subliminal force.

  But on the surface she was a scatterbrain, a small intense cyclone with a curious calm at her center. Nobody who really understands such things could doubt that Stephen Knight had the finest wife in the world.

  And she was coming now. Stephen could sense it from a distance as any man could sense it; but he could analyze the sensing of it, sorting out the complex of sounds that was her coming, dredging the subliminal up over the limen. He liked to break up sensations into their component parts.

  On the two or three evenings a week when they were not together, he was sometimes in bed before she was. Now he was in bed, for in four more hours he must be up and off on a field trip. He was a petroleum geologist with a peculiar flair for seeing below surface indications, five thousand feet below surface indications. His talent for preliminary survey was unequaled; fine logic and sound information can reach very deep.

  He was right, as always, as to her coming. Her small car turned in. He saw the sweep of the lights past his window, and heard the car crunch on the soft snow. Vivian, brimful and bubbling!

  The bird downstairs broke into excited song; it always became excited when Vivian arrived. And just as her key was in the door its whistled song turned into ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ as she had taught it.

  Vivian was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stair (the tone of her footfall at a frequency of 265, just above middle C, compounded with a vagrant, two harmonics, and a mute). Few men could so analyze their wives' footsteps. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the ‘Dreamer’ as she ascended.

  A ringing knife cut across the rustle, a frequency of 313 wedded to a false harmonic 30 vibrations higher. The phone. The extension was on the stairs and she would be right at it. It rang again and the rustle had stopped. But she did not answer it.

  “Catch it, Vivian,” he called. But she did not. It rang again and again and he rose grumbling to answer it.

  “Knight here.”

  “Steady yourself, Mr. Knight. Something has happened to your wife. We will ask you to come down to the main station.”

  “My wife is here. She has just arrived.”

  “In that case there has been a misidentification, and another woman was carrying her credentials. Are you sure she is there?”

  “Yes. Just a minute.”

  He left the phone and went to the top of the stairs and switched on the light. He called loudly for Vivian there, and down the hall, and downstairs. He went down, switched on the outside light, and went out on the front porch.

  There were no footprints there but his own of an hour before now sifted over with a quarter inch of fresh snow. Her car was not in the drive, nor had any car turned in after his own. He went back in to the waiting phone.

  “I was mistaken. She is not here. I will be down at once.”

  Vivian Knight was dead in a brutal and senseless murder. That was the fact that could not be undone. But that was not the fact that seemed primary to Stephen. Indeed, to his friends, he appeared to be a little callous about the whole thing. Such a shock does not affect all men the same, and an interior desolation may be covered by an outward dullness. Still it was thought that he should have showed a little more emotion.

  “It may be, Stephen, that you still do not realize that she is dead,” one friend told him.

  “No. I am not absolutely sure of it, but for reasons too formless to even try to voice.”

  “You surely do not doubt the identity?”

  “Oh no. That is her body. There is no doubt of that. What I feel is something else. I always knew that I would lose her.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. She was too good to be true. I never believed that she was real.”

  After that people began to think of Stephen Knight as a little odd. He took no interest in the funeral arrangements.

  “Oh, put her anywhere. She won't mind. Wherever she's gone she already has them charmed.”

  Nor was he vengeful nor even particularly curious as to who her killer might be.

  “Any man might have done it. There's an impulse to take any perfect piece apart to see what motivates it, and to mar what is perfect. She hadn't a flaw in her. If she'd had any fault at all she might not have been killed. Can't you understand the feeling that nobody has the right to be perfect? I can understand it.”

  “Man, that was your wife that was murdered.”

  “I know that. I am not as far gone as you imagine. But I also understand that it had to happen; if not by that unknown, then by another; if not now, then at a later time.”

  From the funeral Stephen went directly to the doctor. He was not one to keep mysteries bottled up inside himself, and he knew that time is no ally in things like this. He told the whole story, completely and dully.

  “Well, I don't pretend to understand this, Knight,” the doctor told him. “It isn't a new story to me in its essentials. An old doctor never hears anything new. In literature and lore there are a few hundred cases (none of them really authenticated by their very nature) of death… instant visitations of the Departed to the one closest. Are you sure you were awake?”

  “Of course I'm not sure, in the light of what I know to have happened. But I have never been mistaken in my state before. I have no history of hallucinations, and I have always been considered a well-balanced man. I realize that the latter is meaningless, and that there is no such thing.”

  “True enough, there is not. But a few come closer to what we believe should be the norm, and you come quite close. In other words you are less crazy than almost anyone I know. You are hardly crazy at all. In a long life in the practice (and I was born to the profession) I have never known a single human who I could call unqualifiedly sane.”

  “Vivian was sane. That was the whole strange thing about her.”

  “Possibly. The Scatterbrain may be only anothe
r name for a wide-ranging intuitive comprehension. Now then, Knight, there is a set of things which you must say to yourself, and say over and over till you come to believe them. I do not know whether they are true, but you must accept them as true.

  “On that night, three nights ago, you were asleep. You stirred to a feeling of anticipation, and you lay half-awake waiting. The bird (tuned to the life of you two) caught your anticipation and broke into song, and this served as a feedback to your own sensations, for the bird only whistled the ‘Dreamer’ when it felt that Vivian was nearing. It was a bright night with the snow mantle, and the light on your window might have been a more distant reflection. It was a gusty night, and the rustle that you thought was your wife was only the wind having its way with the wooden house, and her footsteps were likewise. But she was dead, and had been dead for at least a half hour. You are a comparatively sane man, and you must go over that and over it until you believe it implicitly.”

  “But we do not know if it is actually true, do we?”

  “No, we do not. But we turn that ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ by careful credulity. The world is built on such a system of credulities and we have no wish to pull it down. Now then, this is what happened, and there is no alternative. You may well have fifty years ahead of you, and there is no point in your making problems where there are none.”

  “Then you can assure me that she is dead?”

  “Yes. And, more important, you must also assure yourself of it. It is closed. You had a wonderful wife and you will have none but wonderful memories of her.”

  “I have not slept in the house since that night.”

  “Then you must sleep in it tonight. Even if you intend to sell the house and make other arrangements yet you cannot have it hanging over you that you were afraid to go back.”

  “Yes, I will stay there tonight.”

  But he did not go there early, and the hours were hard to fill. He thought of shooting a few games of pool, it often relaxed him when he was tense, but it seemed an unfeeling thing for one to do who has just buried his wife. He thought of dropping into one of the clubs for a few drinks, but that seemed not quite right either. He was an incomplete man without Vivian, and he knew it. He drove west through town and out the river road where the snow glistened on the trees and hills. “Well, I had her for a few years, and nobody else had her at all. There is no one in the world who knows how pleasurable those years were. But also there is nobody who has lost as much as I have just lost.”

  He went home and opened the house again after dark. He had an ascetic's supper of tea and dry toast. The bird needed nothing, nothing that he could do for it. It essayed a few bars of the ‘Dreamer’, but its heart was not in it. Still, it was something, to have the bird. It's voice was really an extension of that of Vivian.

  Stephen played some of the stark dry fragments of Strilke. Stephen played the piano incomparably better than Vivian, yet he was sure that the playing that the piano would remember was that of Vivian and not his own.

  He went to bed. He wrote on the bedside pad the figure he would ask for the house. He slept fitfully, and when he woke he marked out that figure and wrote another one two thousand dollars lower. People would not understand that it had been a magic house; and vanished magic is not a marketable commodity.

  Then later he woke to the sense of her distant approach.

  “If only it could be! If wishing could bring her back, then she would be here. But there is the stumbling block. The doctor said that I was hardly crazy at all, and he meant it for praise. But to a man who is not crazy this can not happen. And I know that it will not happen.”

  Her car turned in, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

  “But what if I were not a craven? What if I were man enough to so want her back that it would not matter if it were impossible? But I am not that man, and to me such things do not happen.”

  He saw the sweep of the lights past his window, and heard the crunch of the car over the soft snow. But he was livid and scared liverless.

  “I must be objective. That has always been natural for me. He said that it was only a gusty night and that I mistook the noises. He said that I had to believe it.”

  And for a moment he did believe it. Then he went cold and all the juice drained out of his heart.

  “I am objective. And tonight is not gusty. Tonight is still.”

  The bird downstairs woke and broke into excited song. It always became excited when Vivian arrived.

  “Perhaps it is that I do not have an objective bird. That will be a little hard to remedy.”

  And just as her key was in the door, the whistled song of the bird turned into ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, clear and fine as she had taught it.

  “God, why didn't I bar the door? She has her key. But no, she does not have her key. It is with the rest of her effects locked in the deposit box. She is dead! I have to remember that she is dead! Let nothing confuse this issue. A sane man can account for every phenomenon. Somehow I will account for this.”

  She was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stairs, the tone of them just above middle ‘C’. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the ‘Dreamer’ as she ascended.

  “But she is dead! Is it that I am afraid of my own wife? She never harmed anything in her life. But— but— she is not in her life. Am I really afraid of Vivian?”

  And for answer he piled chairs and desk and wardrobe in front of the door in frantic terror.

  “Objective,” he moaned. “What is more objective than a pile of furniture?”

  And she came to the top of the stairs like music, humming the ‘Dreamer’.

  “Vivian!! You're dead! You've got to believe that you're dead. Go back! Go! Go!”

  Her hand was on the door. But in all reason her hand could not be on the door, dead or alive. And if she were a ghost it would not matter what furniture was piled there. Still she would come in.

  But in logic she could not be and could not come.

  But she came through the door.

  “Vivian! No! No! You're dead! You've got to believe—”

  Maleficent Morning

  The morning was much like other mornings inasmuch as they must be alike. But the aim is to keep them from becoming too much alike. One falls into the rut too easily. There is no reason to do so early in the day. So Isidore Isom tried to start each day just a little different.

  This took imagination, but he was a man of imagination. Not for nothing was he known as Izzie the Whizzie.

  He thought about it an instant as he still lay there. Then he bounced off his wife's stomach to wake her up, hit the floor, and was in the middle of the morning.

  “Where is my old straight razor?” he called. “I think I'll just shave with it this morning to be different.”

  “You don't have one,” said Irene. “You never did have one. They were before your time.”

  “That's right, they were. But I wanted to start the morning different.”

  “Then singe the stuff off with a blow torch.”

  “I loaned it to Barney.”

  So he shaved the way the Big-Leaguers do.

  “Irene, do we have any pomegranate juice?” “No. I didn't even know they had juice. What's the matter with orange? Or do you just want to do things different?”

  “I try, Irene, I try. But it's hard to do the same things different.”

  He ate breakfast, kissed Irene on the left collar-bone (it is hard to find a different place to kiss a wife every morning) and left.

  “Good morning, Mr. Isom,” said Cornelia, the elevator girl. “And a maleficent morning to you, miss,” said Izzie.

  “What kind of morning is that?”

  “That is a change-of-pace morning. I am tired of all mornings being good mornings.”

  “If you really want a change of pace, I could give you some ideas.”

  He looked down at her as she sat on that little stool. She seemed to be all knees and mouth. She was
a temptation, and nobody had ever wrestled with as many temptations as Izzie, nor had such a poor record in the encounters. But this one he put behind him.

  “I will prefer to misunderstand you this once, Cornelia. But let us both keep it in mind. Some other time we'll explore the possibilities.”

  “We'll do that, Mr. Isom.”

  He got his car and was on his way. He was a good driver, he had to be, the way he drove. Only a good driver can drive like a maniac and live through it. There are not too many different ways you can drive a car. There are only two sides of the street you can drive on, and only so many patterns you can follow in weaving back and forth. But he drove more carefully as there came to be more cars on the street.

  The dog came out suddenly, and he swerved. The woman may have stepped out more slowly; he did not see her at all till it was too late. He missed the dog, but he hit the woman. And then, before the shock had time to take effect they had swarmed all over him.

  He was angry and defiant when they yanked him in to question him, for he still did not realize how serious it was.

  “Now, according to your story, you hit the woman to avoid the dog. What dog? Nobody else saw a dog.”

  “There was a dog.”

  “And you would rather kill a woman than a dog?”

  Kill? Was she dead, or were they scaring him?

  “I think you have been mixed up with dogs before, Isom. Were you not up once for keeping a bad dog?”

  “No. He was a good dog. It was only that he bit some of the wrong people.”

  “And I think I have heard of you in other dog cases.”

  “Yes, there were others too numerous to mention.”

  “What's the matter? Can't you get your words straight? Are you drunk this early in the day? Why did you kill the woman instead of the dog?”