No matter. What Simon Radert had to do was transfer all remaining Swag funds to the Radert account; he'd do it just as soon as he was Swag again. Then, right after one o'clock, when he had been returned to his proper body, he would withdraw and transmit all the swollen Radert funds. Then he'd skip (how he'd skip!) to Greener Grass. Thirty minutes later he would be in the air, and an hour later he would be out of the country.
And he wanted to kill Henry H. Swag while doing all the other things. This killing was the loose piece; it was to be played intuitively with the very fingertips. It was intended to keep the whole business loose: it were best so. The killing could be left out, but only with the deepest regret. One shouldn't leave so powerful an enemy as Swag (he might even be the devil himself) alive behind one. Besides, the killing of Swag was the enjoyment, the fun part. It was the part that made it all worthwhile. If you can't have fun doing a thing, is that thing worth doing?
It is worth doing only if it stores up future fun for one. And Project Greener Grass would do that.
Noon found Simon Radert walking through the street toward Pan-American Commercial, the bank where both he and Swag did business. Sometimes on these nooner changes he was yanked into Swag's office when the transfer occurred; but sometimes the transformation happened wherever he was. Now it took him in mid-stride, and he completed that stride into the bank building just as the bank chimes began their twelve count. “Punctual,” Simon said. “I like that in a situation or a world.” An officious official, probably a vice president, who had been told the day before by the inner Simon in the outer Swag that Swag funds would be transferred this day (“for a very special reason, for a very short time, but do not mention it at all; things like that might make the market nervous”) aided and expedited him. And when it was completed, there was really a concentration of funds in the Radert account.
“Simon Radert will probably be doing some massive fund-shifting in an hour or so,” the Simon-in-Swag's-body said, “but, as you know, it will be quite all right. Some of us are putting up rather large earnest-money on a special deal, and Radert is our front man. But it should all be completed tonight, and probably all the funds will be back and redistributed tomorrow.”
“Fine, fine,” said the officious vice president. “Oh, Mr. Swag, have you heard of the Okuma disaster? It just began to come to light a few minutes ago. There's a shortage of millions, and a complete clear-out. There's a warrant out for Okuma's arrest, but he cannot be found. A terrible thing!”
“Gaspar Okuma?” the Simon-in-Swag gasped in incredulity. “Good God, no! If Gaspar skips with a boodle, whom can we trust?”
Then the inner Simon strode out of Pan-American Commercial. “Not a worry in the world,” he said. “Everything on schedule.” But he was irritated if not worried. The Swag body that he wore was more distasteful to him than it had ever been before. Dammit, it stunk! And it was not a dishygienic stink. There was a whiff of primordial rottenness to that body.
But the inner Simon walked quickly to his home. Through his garden window he saw, with that daily sour feeling of resentment, that Swag-in-Radert was with Norah. Displeased but patient, the inner Simon shuffled into Henry H. Swag's house to pass the time of day with Buxom Jean.
“Oh, I'm so relieved to see you,” she said. “No, it's not you, is it? I mean that I don't believe you're Gaspar. Did you hear the terrible news about Gaspar Okuma?”
“Only a bit of it. Those that live by that caper must perish by that caper. Terrible, terrible, though.”
“Henry, you're not Gaspar today, are you? Tell me really if you are.”
“No, honestly I'm not, Buxom Jean,” the inner Simon said.
“Honey, there's two of you who are very much alike when you come as Henry. There's Gaspar, and there's the other one, you. I think the two of you must be just the same size, the way you rattle around inside Henry (really, that's an odd impression, but that's what it seems like). I am so fond of Gaspar (well, of you, too, it's nice to have men with a little bit of class come as Henry, but you won't tell me who you are) that I almost can't stand to have him in other trouble. There's his wife, Hilda Okuma, you know. She's nice, I suppose, but she's odd; in short left field at least. He's so committed to her, but I really believe he'd be happier if she were away somewhere. Have you a wife? Is she odd?”
“I have, and she is, Buxom Jean. Hardly in left field, or even short left, but a little bit behind the shortstop. Odd, yes.”
Simon Radert passed a pleasant and bouncy time of day with Buxom Jean. Then he put himself on the alert. He saw Henry H. Swag leave the Radert house in the Radert body. So the inner Simon, the Simon-in-Swag, followed him. “Punctuality, punctuality,” he said in time to his own Swag-body heel-bouncing that he could not control. “Ah, you've always been so punctual, old Henry H., don't fail me now.” Came one o'clock, time for the change. And the change did not happen. Came another five minutes and still it did not happen.
“Whoa, boy,” the inner Simon cried, and he gripped his pocketed gun in his strong, stubby Swag-hand. “Will it come to the gunpoint scene and I have to force you to the exchange?”
Swag-in-Radert's body continued along unchanged and went into the Pan-American Commercial Bank. And Simon-in-Swag's-body followed him.
“Careful, careful,” said the inner Simon. “Such a thing need not be a disaster. Each such thing that surfaces in front of me is one less thing that might take me in the back. If he is doing my work, then I will let him do it. I'll let him carry my loot and luggage in his own stomach until the last possible minute. Then, like the good snake that I am, like the no-good snake that he is, I'll stretch my mouth over his and swallow his head. And then I'll swallow the rest of him.”
Swag-in-Radert's-body was joined by another man inside the bank. This man seemed to have an hypnotic quality (Simon could sense such things strongly) that rendered him almost invisible to the slow-eyed and the slow-minded. And the man of this hypnotic quality also had a concealing scarf pulled over his face.
“I'll not be complicated by him,” Simon swore inwardly. “I will know how to deal with him in a late and tricky second, if he is really a factor.”
And the Swag-in-Radert's-body was doing the Radert work for him very well. He was gathering the boodle all up and transmitting it or variously handling it. Swag might be a creep, but he had the magic fingertip touch and the fingertip mind when dealing with money.
Swag-in-Radert and the scarved man turned to go out when they had finished their swift and final transactions. And Simon-in-Swag stood in their way. But that inner Swag glazed his eyes and went by Simon without seeming to see him, and who can say what a man with a scarf over his face might see?
Those two men went out and took what seemed to be a prearranged taxi. Another taxi came out of the Fourth Street alley and followed them. By the time the inner Simon found a taxi, the first two vehicles were out of sight. “To the airport,” inner Simon told his driver. “Quickly, friend, quickly.” And they picked up the other two cabs when halfway there.
Simon saw that his wife Norah was in the second taxi, the baggage taxi. Norah was supposed to have had that taxi loaded and waiting for Simon at the Radert house. But the nooner-man must have changed her orders for her.
The taxis arrived. “Punctual, yes, punctual as if I had done it myself,” Simon said, “and part of it I did.”
The baggage from the middle taxi was loaded on the prearranged (by Simon) dray to go to the plane just in time. And Swag-in-Radert with the scarved man, with Norah Radert, with another woman that Simon did not know for sure, hurried to the Trans-Pan-Am-Rio-Lines waiting area whence travelers were already going down a ramp to board the Rio plane.
And it was just outside that waiting area that the Simon-in-Swag shouldered the Swag-in-Simon out of his parade (for he was the last man, the close-up man) and over into a corridor corner below a blasting speaker.
“All right, baggy-pants, we change bodies now,” Simon growled, “and then I shoot your body to
death just as soon as you are into it. Who will notice a little thing like that?” Simon had his gun into Swag's gut (though it gave him a twinge to threaten his own body like that), and he was turning on all the hypnotic power that he possessed so that the whole scene might be as invisible as possible. It worked. People bumped into them and bumped around them, but they did not notice the gun-play.
“But not too soon, Simon,” the Swag-in-Radert said. “You don't want to shoot your own body, surely.”
“No. No hurry,” Simon said like ice. “I want to be the last person in that boarding line and to move on quickly when I move.”
“That's also what I want to do,” Swag said. “You don't like my body, do you, Simon?”
“No, Swag. It's a devil's body, and you are the devil himself.”
“Not really, Simon, but I acknowledge that I've swapped bodies with him a few times. He's one of my most valued clients, and he's worn that body that you're wearing now. There's a stench that clings to it, isn't there?”
“Yes.”
“I kind of like it,” Swag said.
Simon saw his wife Norah go down the ramp in the boarding line. He saw the other woman still waiting for the men. And (this is a little bit tricky) he saw Buxom Jean Swag standing near and a little behind him outside the waiting area.
Simon felt a pleasant pang when he watched Norah disappear down the ramp. “Isle of beauty, Fare thee well,” he said, out loud but softly, and he raised his ungunned hand in parting salute. The valediction was from an old verse. And it was really with a touch of disappointment that he then realized that he would be joining her on the plane in just seconds.
“Time enough!” Simon-in-Swag said then, and he practically buried his gun in the gut of Swag-in-Radert. “We change bodies now, or I blast whatever body is in front of this gun. Better to get away in a wrong body than not to get away at all.”
“Oh, all right,” Swag said in three furry words that began in the Radert voice and ended up in the Swag voice, and Swag was in his own body again. And Simon felt that queer jolt that meant body change. His clothes fitted him again. He had changed bodies also.
“You aren't forgetting one detail, are you?” the gun-pinned Swag asked insolently.
“No. Hand over everything from your inner coat pocket. Ah, they are a bunch of handy receipts and claims and verification. And my wife Norah will have all the other papers relating to the flight.” Simon didn't let his gun waver as he took the papers in his other hand, and he kept his eyes (except for one eye-corner on Buxom Jean Swag) locked on the tricky eyes of Swag. Perhaps he kept them locked too tightly there.
“Drop it, Simon,” came a too-familiar voice behind him, and a gun was shoved very sharply into his nether ribs. Simon didn't drop his gun. He crouched, and he spun swiftly on the new menace. It was the scarved man. The scarf fell away, and Simon looked into his own face. And the too familiar voice that he had heard had been his own.
Swag slapped the gun out of the hand of the momentarily bewildered inner Simon. And he slapped the papers out of his other hand.
Police were descending on them. Oh, yes. And they seized Simon-in-Whomever with big hands. “Thank you, Mr. Swag. Thank you, Mr. Radert,” said a gentleman who seemed to be in charge of the police. “Your tip-off was invaluable.”
“It makes me feel like a Judas,” said Swag. “Forgive me, Gaspar, but retribution must be extracted. However could you fall into so vicious a swindle, you who had everything? And how did you hope to get away with it?” And Swag was looking straight at Simon and calling him Gaspar.
“And forgive me also, Gaspar,” said the Whoever-in-Radert-body, “but who has the power of forgiving you? It is said that even the angels weep when one of the bright ones falls. Ah, the pity of it!” And this man with Simon's face and body also was looking at Simon and calling him Gaspar. That bleeding hypocrite! He was Gaspar with his mealy mouth, and he had stolen Simon's body in a three-way switch, and had left Simon to face the retributory music. And Simon knew that he himself was wearing Gaspar Okuma's face and body.
Simon-in-Gaspar now noticed that the woman waiting at the head of the ramp had become Buxom Jean Swag, and very soon she was joined there by Swag and by Gaspar-in-Simon. But she couldn't be Buxom Jean! Simon had had Buxom Jean in the corner of his eye all that time, even when he had locked eyes with Swag.
He looked. The other woman who for a while had been waiting at the head of the ramp was now where Buxom Jean had been. And she came to Simon-in-Gaspar. “I'll stand by you forever,” she said, and Simon knew that she was Hilda Okuma whose mind was somewhere out in short left field. Ah, this was the one who would visit him on visiting days when he was in durance. And it looked like the caught Simon-in-Gaspar was going to be in durance for a long while.
Had Gaspar Okuma been fond of this tilted-brained dame? Likely he had. And would he now be much fonder of her when they were separated forever? Very likely, yes.
But things were bad now.
It wasn't that Simon hadn't been cleaned out before.
It wasn't that he hadn't been in lock-up before. But those had been little things that can happen to any man on the rise. What was happening to him now was massive.
And it wasn't that he hadn't been married to and been fond of a loony-June before. Ah, but that had been his own, his other heart (it was mostly left ventricle), his tribulation and his triumph.
He realized with secret pleasure that his own loony, sly Norah, was gone from him forever. Wonderful! Being gone was her best role. He could enjoy her so much more, in the remembered pleasure — and exasperation, when she was absent. Ah, that sly absence!
Oh, but not this new loony! Not (Oh, God!) a sympathetic loony.
“I'll stand by you forever,” that slant-brained woman said.
“Oh, God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” Simon said. He couldn't stand to be stood by forever.
The way of the Transgressor has all those rocks strewn in it. But when it also has — Oh, no, no, not forever!
Assault On Fat Mountain
If only, on that fateful day in 1788, that Spanish dollar had come up shields instead of crowns, would not a different acorn have grown into a different main tree? Would there not have been a great civilization based on the “heartland” hills and valleys? Would there not have been, under the fat-pig “child of God” flag, a burgeoning from the popcorn plantations of the Cumberland to the crackerjack factories of Council Bluffs? Would we not all be warm and splendid in bright Jim-pie-weed cloth? Would there not be natural wealth instead of the cheap-shot stuff we have now? Wouldn't things have been much better for everyone?
What do you mean, “Uh-uh”? What would have prevented it?
Envy? How would envy have entered into the affairs of human persons?
“The fruit of Confrontation, whether of animals or boys or parties or realms, is usually irreversible. At a crossroads or confrontation, one party (possibly the larger and richer and more powerful party) will back down. Then the party that has stood firm will be dominant over the other forever. The dominant party will thrive; it will grow fat in money and fruit; it will flourish in the arts and in the body politic; it will become inventive and vital. And the party or realm that has backed down will shrink and shrivel.
No matter what its natural advantages had been, they will now become inapplicable and spooked and sterile and unnatural. And they will fail as the opinion of them fails.
“Consider two acorns crowded together, arguing which of them shall root, and grow into a great tree. One will certainly preempt the other. The one will indeed become a great tree. The other will not root at all. It will rot and disappear. It will not even grow into a little treelet or boscage as will some of the other acorns that were not involved in the direct confrontation.
“Or notice the results of a close voting between two men for a high office. The victor will grow in stature and wisdom and achievement. The loser, usually of about equal capacity, will withdraw from action, will languish, an
d most likely he will die.
“But, while the fruit of Confrontation is usually irreversible, there will sometimes come (long after the primary decision) a late and inept revolt by the loser against that decision. This will likely be a senile, slobbering, tatterdemalion, witless, even insane revolt. And the established victor can only regard it with compassion and embarrassment.”
—Arpad Arutinov, The Back-Door of History
“Hey, I heard a new United-Statser joke. There were these two lowlanders or coasties, and —”
“Just a minute there. I'm a United-Statser.”
“That's all right. I'll tell it real slow.”
—United-Statser Jokes and Gollywogs.
Watauga Press.
A rabble-rooster in the town of Boston was saying some strident and unpleasant things about the Free Nation of Appalachia:
“Before God, it's not fair that one nation should be rich and fat forever, and its less favored neighbor should lie in the slough of poverty and hunger and despond. These are bitter grits that we eat from the trains of Appalachia; their own hogs eat finer than we do. Consider the wealths in High Appalachia; the red grapes of Roane and the white grapes of Smokey Mountain Vineyards; the sweet corn centers of fertile Shelby, and the popcorn plantations of Cumberland; the flax, the wool, the cotton, the Jim-pie-weed cloth; the peat and the coal and the pine-knots for fuel; the rock oil from the hills and the catfish oil from the streams; the pumpkin bread, the hickory nut bread, the bean bread every day of the week; fat beef, fat pork, fat mutton; ducks and geese and woodcock and savanna hen, turkey and guinea; the plump rabbits of Ozarkia and the meaty woodchucks of Doniphan; light wheat, dark rye, barley, and rolling fields of oats; sunflower seeds, pecans and peanuts. Would it be robbery if we took our fair share of these things, nor waited for their niggardly food trains?
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 189