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

by R. A. Lafferty

  There were two of the buzzards in the air and two of them down on the eaves of a low shed not ten feet off the Lamotte kitchen. They were gazing with mournful intensity at that near part of the house called the cool pantry where Jules Lamotte (not yet removed, for the wheels turn slowly there) lay dead. There was a strong wolf scent and man scent mixed. Ragley had said, “Lamotte is the dead wolf now.” Was Lamotte right?

  Ragley, Scroggins, and several other men came out of the Lamotte house. Pidgeon knew that Scroggins was acting in his office of coroner, and that the others had been acting as sworn witnesses.

  “Pidgeon, I'm glad you're here,” Scroggins cried. “We've decided that it would be best if you arrested yourself for the murder of Jules Lamotte and then appointed an interim sheriff to handle things.”

  “No. I won't do it,” Pidgeon said.

  “We decided that it would be next best if we sent for the nearest other sheriff to come and arrest you. Who would he be?”

  “Sheriff Bartholdy across the river in Calvados Parish. I think I will go and have a talk with him right now.”

  Pidgeon went across the river to Calvados Parish. He went to the house of Bartholdy, walked in, and found the man. Sheriff Bartholdy gestured a welcome. Then he left the room. He came back with two bottles of white wine, a can of worms, a pail of minnows, and two fishing poles. He carried them all out to Pidgeon's pickup. The two men loaded in, and Pidgeon drove to a good spot on the red banks of the Red River. They fished there.

  “I don't know whether you have heard of it, but there is a puzzling little murder up in my district,” Pidgeon said finally.

  “Take your line out of the water,” Sheriff Bartholdy said. “No man can pay attention to two things at once. Have a drink of the white wine. It loosens the wits. Tell me about it. Who was murdered?”

  Pidgeon told about Jules Lamotte being murdered. Bartholdy knew Lamotte from of old. Pidgeon told about the nightmarish coincidences, loup-garou stories, wolf tracks, sheep kills, tail hunts, young wife tales, marked bullets, a rifle shot and a stake through a wolf, a shot man and a stake through the man, various things.

  “Is that all?” Bartholdy asked then. “What is the puzzling aspect that you mentioned? Why do you not simply arrest the two murderers?”

  “But everything is puzzling about it, Bartholdy!” Pidgeon screeched. “There's the dead man that I couldn't have shot. The stake through his heart that I couldn't have driven. My own marked bullet in his head. Being French, you would be superstitious. So I thought that you might understand about the unearthly aspects of the case. The werewolf stuff, I mean, and all that, and the wolf turning into a man.”

  “Are you out of your mind, Pidgeon? I never heard such nonsense.”

  “I tell you that there was a wolf. And there was the man.”

  “I don't mean that. You said ‘Being French, you would be superstitious.’ You'd have to be out of your mind to say a thing like that. There can no more be a superstitious Frenchman than there can be dry water or green horses. Think about the implications of that for a long time. Then your little problem will have solved itself.”

  Pidgeon thought about the implications for quite a while.

  “Not a bit superstitious, Bartholdy?” he asked once. “Not a bit?”

  “Not a bit,” said Bartholdy. “There can be stupid Frenchmen. There can be Frenchmen who rustle sheep. There can be Frenchmen who love other men's wives. There can be evil Frenchmen. But there cannot be superstitious Frenchmen.”

  “If that's so, then I don't live in the same sort of world as I'd supposed.”

  “No, not quite the same sort, Pidgeon.”

  Pidgeon thought about the implications some more. Then he rose with a sigh.

  “I never like these things,” he said, “but I guess I'd better go make the arrests.”

  So Sheriff Otis Pidgeon drove back to Royal Parish and arrested Ribaul and Madelon Lamotte for the murder of Jules Lamotte.

  “How'd you figure it out, Pidgeon?” Ragley asked as Pidgeon and Ragley and Clela Ragley walked over the rock pasture of the events area. “Checked perfect, did it?” “All but the three shadows,” said Pidgeon. “There were always three shadows of the wolf, and of Lamotte. I don't understand them. As to the rest, well here's how I did it. There were a pair of those folks who thought we were easily foxed up here. And because they thought so, they will hang for it. Who was it, I asked, who was clear enough of superstition to use superstition on us? It had to be French folks. You see, Ragley, the French aren't superstitious. But we are.”

  “Sure we are. How's a redneck going to get any savor in his life if he doesn't spice it up with superstition? The French now, they use garlic instead. Yeah, I can see how they don't have to be superstitious.”

  “So, Ragley, when everything points to something happening that simply could not happen, then I ask ‘Who's trying to make it seem like it happened?’ So I pick out stories that will make a lot of things come clear if the stories are lies.”

  “Whose stories are that?” Ragley asked.

  “Those of Madelon Lamotte. And those of Ribaul.”

  “She tell you some rousers, Sheriff?”

  “She told me a couple of rousers, so convincingly that—”

  “I always said it was a mistake for a young man to be sheriff,” thirteen-year-old Clela said. “They're too easy taken in by fancy women.”

  “So I go back a little, Ragley; I asked myself who it was that started all those werewolf stories in the first place? Ribaul, that's who. And Madelon fed kindling to the fire. I myself saw wolf prints turn into man prints, but who was it made me see them?”

  “How did Ribaul do the tracks, Pidgeon? That's a stumbler.”

  “I don't know. He just grins (with his neck in a noose he grins) and says ‘A trick, Mr. Pidgeon, a trick.’ But with a tame wolf under his control, and husky as he is, he could have leaped down into the draw and had it jump onto his shoulder, or some such. Those tracks were made earlier, when it was still wetter in the draw; it was Ribaul who made me believe that they were more recent or immediate. And Ribaul's old shack was on Lamotte's rough land right near. He kept the wolf there. No wonder that wolf smell always came on so strong when we were near it. It was Ribaul all the way, that old carnival faker who tamed animals. He said that a wolf couldn't be tamed, but he lied.”

  “But Sheriff, Ribaul isn't smart enough to put all that together.”

  “He isn't. Madelon is. Ribaul had a tame wolf, but Ribaul was the tame wolf of Madelon Lamotte. He followed Madelon and Jules up from south of the river last year and conspired with Madelon to kill Jules. Madelon wanted the younger Ribaul, and Ribaul wanted the farm and money and Madelon. Ribaul was doing a pretty good business in shot sheep while he set the trap for Jules and for the town of Yellow Knife. To rub it in, he hauled the shot sheep in Lamotte's old truck, and all the suspicion fell on Jules. He gave Madelon at least two shot sheep, and she wouldn't tell Jules where she got them. But that was when Jules started to go man-hunting at night. The wolf took out the throat of at least one sheep at every place, and ate a little sheep shoulder.”

  “When did Ribaul shoot Jules?”

  “It was Madelon who shot her husband, in bed. Then she dressed him and carried him to the cool pantry.”

  “How was it done with your marked bullet?”

  “Ribaul was my helper and had access to my things. He saw me marking the lead shots. He marked one as close to mine as he could, and he substituted it for one of mine. I can tell now, though barely, the one that has his notch instead of mine on it.”

  “How about the stake?”

  “Ribaul cut two bois d'arc stakes as near as possible alike. He gave one to Madelon when he gave her the marked bullet to use. The maul marks don't mean anything. Someone made me see maul marks clearer than they were. Bois d'arc splinters a little bit, but it doesn't take a good mark. The blaze on the wolf's head was a fake. Ribaul had to put it on fresh every time he let the wolf out, but he had
sure made it to look like Lamotte's blaze. And every wolf looks at you with man's eyes. Notice it next time you trap a wolf. It startles us every time we see it, and then we forget. I had already told Ribaul that I intended to shoot the wolf right on the edge of the blaze, and he knows I'm a good shot. Madelon didn't have to be a very good shot to shoot Jules in the same place at very short range. Madelon was listening for my shot, and she set up that screaming to draw us to the house and away from the wolf, so Ribaul could get it out of the way.”

  “When did you find out that the wolf was in that shed not ten feet from dead Jules?”

  “Damn, I keep seeing three shadows following us even now. It can't be all imagination. Oh, I found that out quite late. I should have known it this noon when I saw the buzzards perched on the eaves. There was the smell of ripe man and ripe wolf together, but I thought it was werewolf.”

  “Sheriff, why did Lamotte really use so much rubbing alcohol?”

  “Like he said, he had sore ankles. But not from turning into a wolf. I believe that Corbey's account of how a man turns into a wolf was borrowed from a Ribaul account. And Ribaul already knew that Jules had sore ankles.”

  “Then that's all of it, except for the three shadows.”

  “Yes. But I can't solve the shadows of the wolf, or the shadows of Jules Lamotte. Madelon says that Jules didn't have any brothers or kindred, that there were no such three men visiting him or in the neighborhood at all. She says there was no such picture on their kitchen wall. Well, it isn't there now, and I can't find it. But there's one other loose end, and either you or your daughter here knows the answer. Clela, where did you get those horrible fang marks?”

  “I told you once. Say, why don't you cut off Jules' head and bring it to me? Then we'll see whether the teeth match the teeth marks. Cut off the wolf's head and bring it too. I like to have a lot of heads rolling around.”

  “Oh, that, Sheriff. Well, Clela here is a violent young girl and she is sometimes plagued by a personal sort of spooks,” Ragley said. “Most such spooks just pinch kids and leave them black and blue, but Clela is more violent and she has more violent spooks. The particular devils that haunt her slash her up pretty bad sometimes. It happens to all the women of our family. She'll outgrow it in a year or two. They all do.”

  “Ragley, you are a prize liar, but sometimes—”

  “But sometimes you can't be sure that I'm lying? And you never can be sure when Clela is. Let's leave it like that.”

  “Oh, it's real,” Clela said. “Like your three shadows. They're real too.”

  Ragley and Clela, both laughing, left the sheriff then and turned towards their own place. And Sheriff Pidgeon walked alone — for a very little while. Then there were three bristly men walking with him. Pidgeon was nervous at the sight of them.

  “What are you three men doing here?” Pidgeon asked them. “When did you come back?”

  “We came for the burial of our brother Jules,” one of the men said.

  “But you weren't at the service. And you weren't at the graveside.”

  “Yes. We were both places.”

  “Madelon says that there are not any three such men as you,” Pidgeon said, trying to make them not be.

  “Madelon is only at this minute dead in your jail,” said the spokesman of the three, “with man bites and with wolf bites in her throat. She dies for that lie, and for other things. We will not be disowned.”

  One of the men unhinged himself and went down. He turned rapidly. Yes, the account was true. The tail came last of all, and it popped like a cork when it came out. Pidgeon continued to feel very nervous as he walked with two strange men and one strange wolf in the shaggy daylight of Jules Lamotte's rock meadow.

  “You are the pieces left over,” Pidgeon said. “Ribaul explained most of the details, but he didn't explain you. He said he didn't believe in your sort of shadows.”

  “Ribaul is at this minute dead in your jail also, man-bit and wolf-bit. He dies for his unbelief, and for other things.”

  “For what other things?” Pidgeon asked with a little bit of boldness.

  “For knowing too much, and for not knowing enough,” the spokesman said. Another man unhinged himself and went down. He turned quickly. Yes, there was a terrible stretching of the ankle bones. Yes, he shivered his wolf's hair to the outside of his hide with convulsive movements. Yes, the tail came out last of all. Pidgeon was shaking like a quicken tree as he walked with one strange man and two strange wolves.

  “Ah, I turn off here,” Pidgeon said. “I have some business in this other direction.”

  “Turn off as much as you will,” the man said, “but your feet will continue on course with us.” And Pidgeon's feet did continue on the course with the man and the wolves. Then he knew that it was all over with him.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why me?”

  “As with Ribaul, you know too much and not enough. And we like to work by threes.”

  “Well, then, how will you do it, as man or as wolf?” Pidgeon demanded, shaking. And his feet wouldn't run.

  “Ah, they'll find two gashes of one sort and one of another on you,” the man said, and he fastened into Pidgeon's throat with long and tearing teeth.

  Pidgeon was down on the ground then, and the two wolves had moved onto him to consummate the work. The last bristly man, streaming with Pidgeon's blood, unhinged himself and went down. And turned. Pidgeon watched the turning listlessly as his death closed in on him.

  The terrible lengthening of the ankle bones, the softening of the skull with one part of it flowing forward and another part of it flowing backward, the eyes rolling around to the sides of the head, the shivering that brings the wolf hair to the outside, everything that marks the transition from man to beast!

  And then there was only one thing needed for that third of the shadow-persons to turn himself into a total wolf. But Pidgeon's vision and life were interfered with, and he never did get to see the tail appear.

  Old Halloweens On The Guna Slopes

  “Yah, yah!” Mary Mondo chanted. “You old men say ‘They don't make them like they used to.’ I think they don't even make old men like they used to. What they make now are nothing but old duffers.” “Be quiet, young girl!” Harry O'Donovan spoke. “Oh, damnation! There I go again, answering spooks and things that aren't even there; answering evening room-noises and windy talk. Talk about nothing people! Mary, you are a real nothing person.”

  Mary Mondo was a spook, which was to say that she wasn't anything at all. But it was easy to get into the habit of noticing her and even answering her. One had to watch it, or pretty soon one would be treating her like a person again.

  “The fact is that they don't have Halloweens like they used to,” Harry went on. “There used to be an old kraut-head named Kalbfleish who lived betwixt this place and Cris Benedetti's house. We plagued that man, and he plagued us. He was built like a barrel, and to us he seemed old. But he was fast. Whenever we made an evening disturbance on his front porch, started a little leaf fire there or broke a few bottles, set off a couple of stink bombs (you could get those little gas stink bombs two for a nickel at Selby's store then), whenever we did such things he would come tearing out of his front door, leap the side railing of the porch, and hit running. He knew which way we would go (there was only one way for us to go to find a hiding place), and he would collar a couple of us before we could get gone. And he would beat us till our tails howled like basset hounds.”

  “Carrock, get on with the story, Harry,” Austro said. Austro was a pleasant and hairy young man of the species Australopithecus.

  “Mrs. Kalbfleish would abet him,” Harry said. “She'd sound off like a preacher bird, and they'd come with a high-footed run, wary of our tripping ropes. So naturally both sides of the antagonism waited anxiously for Halloween every year. The Kalbfleishes were always ready for war, and I myself had assembled a good gang of young boys.”

  What was the matter with Harry? We had been his gang, or he had been
in our gang—and he hadn't been the leader. The gang had been made up of Barnaby Sheen, John Penandrew, George Drakos, Cris Benedetti, and Harry O'Donovan, those kids who knew everything, and myself who didn't. Well, why should Harry tell us one of our own adventures? Or maybe we had it remembered wrong and he would set us right.

  “Halloween was a very rainy afternoon and night that year,” Harry said, “and we were the only gang out. It had already rained for a week, and the mud was bottomless. You couldn't do much in that mud; but you could dig, if you didn't mind the mud. It was dark by five in the afternoon and the rain and the thunder were so loud that we couldn't be heard. We dug a pit eight feet square and eight feet deep along the side of the Kalbfleish's front porch. We jimmied several down-spouts, we dammed up a couple of runnels, and that pit was filling nicely.

  “One of us had a big can full of kerosene. Another of us had a pumpkin-head with a candle burning in it. That one was John Penandrew with his funny-shaped face and head. We always said that he still had a pumpkin-head after he threw his lighted pumpkin-head into the pit that night. We were going to start a fire on the Kalbfleish's front porch to devil them out. But the kid with the kerosene stumbled and fell into our own pit. He spilled three gallons of kerosene into it, less what he swallowed, and he nearly choked to death himself.

  “So John Penandrew went up to the Kalbfleish's ornate front door and began to break little panes of glass out of it with a hammer. That always brought them out, and it brought them out now like two thunderbolts, man and wife in that high-footed run and the wife sounding like a preacher bird. Penandrew, with those two big people after him, leapt the porch railing and almost leapt the pit. But he didn't quite make it. He was sliding on the edge of the pit and flailing about with that lighted pumpkin-head. The two Kalbfleishes leapt the railing right behind him and went in over their heads in the water and kerosene-filled pit. Penandrew, trying to get his balance, dropped the pumpkin-head; and the explosion blew him clear out of there. Man, that was an explosion of water and fire and mud! They don't have Halloweens like that anymore.”