Phantoms

by Jack Cady

  When Murph arrived at the midway a Ferris wheel twirled, and kids yelped as they rode a baby roller coaster. Rides and booths lined the midway; pop a balloon, win a stuffed skunk. Colorful streamers flew above the booths of boat dealers, feed and implement dealers, car dealers, and a make-believe Indian selling patent medicine. Popcorn laid underfoot, a calliope clanged, cotton candy smeared cheerful faces; but then, of course, there was also the booth hosted by the Exalted Order of Beagles: the Fin, Fur, and Feather Division.

  These are the guys with rifle racks in their pickups, Jim Beam in the glove compartment, combat fatigues, tattoos reading "Poopsie" or "Mama," plus an occasional swastika. Their booth was just short of a full-fledged gun show. The only thing missing was ammo. These guys know each other well enough not to trust their buddies with weapons that work.

  So, here comes Murph, red-haired, smiling wide as a cornfield and just as corny, towing two cages on wheels and heading for the livestock show. Hamster Janders, overweight and with an attitude, is banging the side of his cage. Clarence sits silent, checking out the action, but with a gleam in his eye that should have been a warning.

  Fin, Fur, and Feathers were standing in a group before their booth pretending they knew something. As Murph’s little caravan passed, one of them worked his mouth real hard, tried to think, and was finally able to form words. "Hey, Murph." It was a real victory.

  Murph stopped. Fin, Fur, and Feathers gathered around his cages. They regarded Janders.

  "Ought to dress out at around two hundred. Be purty gamey."

  " . . . ever fried up any of these?"

  "Reminds me of my first wife. Looks like her, a little."

  You could tell that Janders’s attitude was getting even worse.

  Fin, Fur, and Feathers looked at Clarence.

  "This is the steeple-pooper."

  "Got to admit, he looks purty tasty." A Fin, Fur, and Feathers guy stuck a finger into the cage. Clarence pecked it. The Fin, Fur, and Feathers backed up yelping. He still had a finger, but barely. He choked back a sob.

  "We got shotguns for guys like you," he whispered, and no one, including him, knew whether he talked to Clarence or Murph.

  "I’ll be going," Murph murmured.

  "Nope," the Fin, Fur, and Feathers guy said: "You’ll be staying until I wring a neck." He reached to open the cage.

  "Better not," Murph said.

  "Don’t say I didn’t warn you," Murph said.

  "Oh, well," Murph said.

  Clarence came out of the cage singing. The Fin, Fur, and Feathers guy tumbled on his fanny, hollering. The rest of Fin, Fur, and Feathers stood with mouths open as they watched Clarence become a disappearing yellow spot in the blue sky. Clarence sang anthems as he cruised, and he would sing them again when he returned.

  Meanwhile, though, all heck broke loose on the midway because another guy had opened Janders’s cage, and Janders was primed. He lumbered down the midway, stopped at the first hamburger stand he found, ran everybody out and ignored all the hamburger. He grazed the lettuce, scorned the pickles, and moved on to the next stand. He clicked his teeth as he worked, and if you’ve never seen a hamster’s teeth well, imagine a pair of scissors big enough to snip through a bale of hay.

  By the time the sheriff arrived Janders had mopped up every piece of lettuce, carrot, spinach salad, and okra on the midway. He had cruised the Homemaker’s tent, licked up a few preserves, threatened the President of Ladies Aid, snarled at Murph’s attempts to lasso him, sniffed the rear end of the Temperance Union’s president as she fled past, and chewed the tassles off the Methodist preacher’s shoes. Janders then raised his snout to the wind, picked up the scent of a distant cabbage patch, and his bottom was last seen charging over the horizon like a brown and hairy sunset.

  The sheriff has a sense of humor. In this town you gotta. He drew Murph aside. They talked about payment for lettuce, general damages, and where, by all that is holy, did that blamed bird go?

  "I’m afraid," Murph admitted, "that he’ll return."

  The sheriff looked along the midway, looked at tumult and confusion. ". . . Temperance Union lady got her bottom sniffed. Maybe protective custody?"

  "I’ll tough it out," Murph said. He looked toward the sky. "Oh, Lordy," Murph said.

  Imagine, if you will, a massive V of Canadian geese, a V filling the sky from east to west. Imagine the honking of a thousand geese. And high above the honking, the celebrating song of a giant baritone canary calling the shots.

  Imagine, if you will, a midway in total confusion as children flee screaming and adults stand stunned before a sight that nobody, nowhere has ever dreamed. Nightmares are made of such sights, at least the really bad ones.

  Imagine, if you will, dive-bomber geese descending on the booth of Fin, Fur, and Feathers. Imagine a gray and green rain so constant that the fastest windshield wipers in the world could not keep up. Imagine men in combat fatigues huddled in a collapsing tent beneath waves of shimmering gray and green slurry, while high above, a baritone canary sings something out of George M. Cohen.

  If you’ve imagined that, you’ve gotten hold of about ten percent of what was happening.

  The bombardment lasted for something less than half an hour, after which Fin, Fur, and Feathers emerged from a mountain of gray and green, to see Clarence leading his V of geese south, migrating.

  "I should have thought of that," Murph whispered. "It’s the duck gene influence. He’s gone. My masterpiece." Murph sat, head in hands, while all around him people stood and whispered. The members of Fin, Fur, and Feathers were also migrating to the nearest lake.

  People were confused. They had a sense of tragedy, but couldn’t figure who or what was tragic. They looked at each other, looked for a preacher or a president to tell them what to think. They looked at Murph, slumped before a sagging Homemaker’s tent as he tried not to weep.

  They watched the bank president approach. The bank president is a dapper little man, always well dressed, always well groomed. "You’re fired," the bank president said to Murph, although his voice was not unpleasant. "Business is business."

  Murph slumped further. He stared at spilled popcorn, while noxious odors coasted on a breeze. He did not notice when Janice pushed through the crowd and took a seat beside him.

  "We could emigrate until this blows over," she whispered. "Go to someplace new and crazy, like maybe Albuquerque."

  "You’d go along?" Murph whispered.

  "I expect," she said thoughtfully, "I’d better lead." She snuggled a little closer.

  "Witchery," I muttered to me. "Pretty dumb," I told myself. Nobody answered.

  The wedding took place in Oshkosh because there wasn’t a single preacher in this town who dared to touch it. Uncle Willie, Aunt Easy, and I rode in Willie’s ’49 Studebaker. Janice and Murph piddled along in Maytag.

  "There’s not an epic here," Uncle Willie said to the Studebaker, or maybe himself, because he sure wasn’t talking to me or Aunt Easy. "There are elements of epic, but somehow the damn thing is allegory. How best do we handle allegory?"

  "Niagara Falls," Aunt Easy murmured. Then she explained that with Murph comfortably married, the Ladies Aid would leap to defend him. "If Murph and Janice can hold out for a month," Aunt Easy told me, "they can come home." Aunt Easy’s eyes shone misty with romance.

  The wedding didn’t amount to much. "Do you take this woman, etc." "Yep." "Do you take this mad scientist, etc." "Yep." "You’re married. Pay the cashier on your way out . . ."

  Okay, so it was a good bit better than that. They had a real preacher and, unfortunately, Janice looked just smashing. Murph seemed a little less confused than usual. Before they left on the honeymoon Murph pulled me aside. "I’m worried about my critters," he whispered.

  "Trust me," I told him. "In spite of everything, I have a good heart." Then I stood and watched Maytag towing old shoes and sprinkled with rice as it became a diminishing spot along the highway. That darned Janice waved a hanky just before May
tag disappeared over a low rise.

  "It can be done in eight cantos," Uncle Willie muttered. "Or certainly no more than ten." He kept muttering all the way home. Aunt Easy sat beside him, but turned to me once in a while. She smiled and gave an occasional wink.

  Matters were quiet for a couple days and then reports began to surface on the evening news. Janders was seen here, there, always grazing. When he was shot at a couple of times, he began feeding at night. In less than a week he had raided cabbage patches as far south as Peoria, only to be adopted by a nearsighted lady famous for collecting stray cats.

  Other reports came from down around Redondo Beach where airline pilots reported a giant, buttercup-yellow bird sporting among clouds, and, apparently, singing. Pilots were amazed. They had never seen a bird that could outfly a crop duster. No one else paid much attention, because in California, stuff happens.

  Our town has settled down as we coast toward winter. Uncle Willie spends his days in the quiet of the attic. Willie forgets to eat sometimes, and he talks to himself in iambs, and his silver hair frizzes, and Aunt Easy sometimes has to lead him in from the garden that apparently now grows symbols. Aunt Easy thinks he’s cute.

  And Aunt Easy is cute, herself. Now that she has shut out the Temperance Union, she takes a little white wine with supper. When she’s not doing crosswords she does picture puzzles. She and Canary Sylvester hold down that warm kitchen, while she waits for Willie to crash.

  And I sit in this lab surrounded by forty-seven white mice, fifteen white rats, a frowzy parrot, two exhausted rabbits who have been fulfilling their duty to their species, as I suppose Murph is fulfilling his. I oversee three guinea pigs, of whom one seems to be a good bit bigger than he oughta, plus Canary Jimmy, and Canary Cleopatra; and, oh, Lordy, Cleo has just laid an egg.

  And sweet sixteen has now become disillusioned seventeen. I think of Murph and Janice doing fulfillment, and wonder if all that householdy stuff is worth a snip, anyway. What I don’t wonder is what I’m gonna do, because this is my senior year.

  I’ll graduate and then I’m just plain gone. The big city. I’ll go to college, or become a poet, or a philosopher, or maybe a biologist, but two things are certain. I ain’t gonna do it in no attic, and I ain’t gonna do it here.

  The Art of a Lady

  We kept Uncle George alive during the summer of thirty-two by asking him how was business, which in his case and despite the depression, was excellent. About Miss Chloe Johansen we stopped asking. It would have been as tactful as inquiring of Lady Macbeth if something was bugging her.

  Unc was thirty-two in thirty-two, having hit the world at the turn of the century when social stability was beginning to be regarded as a hazard. It worked out perfectly in his case—the whole philosophy, I mean.

  He was fair-haired, tall and kind of skinny. Friends wavered over his looks which were between reflective and confused, although Chloe’s drinking uncle, Willie, described him as ‘Deeper than a gallon.’ Despite the increasing dabs at his freedom by the dedicated Chloe (he had given the engagement ring, she kept up the payments) he remained a bachelor.

  His main persuasion was that of an artist. Not a paint artist, but a carver of wood. Even though I was only a kid I knew that he was the best carver outside of the Orient, and is to this day. He could whip off a horse for a merry-go-round, shape down the reeds for a bassoon, or do your portrait in the grain of your choice. He did one of Pop in mahogany one time that caused a family scandal. The color of the wood got to him and he made the old man’s nose a little flat. Nobody had ever noticed the resemblance before.

  But that was his only venture to impressionism if you discount Chloe and Geraldine.

  Chloe was just fine. She wanted the same thing other girls wanted, which Unc thought was a glad and good attitude, but she also wanted a wedding band.

  Unc would look at her departing form as she moved down the road from his store and hum around in ‘Die Valkyrie.’

  I’d mutter "Freedom." Unc would take a hitch in his belt and another look, then pat my head.

  "Yeh," he would say. Sadly though. Very sad.

  He was right. Chloe had a great deal of everything. Geraldine, Chloe’s sister, also swung. With her it was mostly mental. She was twenty-eight and had the intellectual nudge on Chloe as well as on the rest of the town. Willie was also her drinking uncle. She claimed to understand Willie. But, while she was intelligent and pretty it was just not in the grand manner so she had plenty of time to think. It was whispered that she thought about Unc.

  Reality got them all in trouble. Mostly reality got to Uncle George. When he decided to do a piece of work he did it with the absolute conviction that he would fail. It was a part of his philosophy, one in which many great artists are trapped. He wanted to duplicate experience and nature. He wanted to show exactly how and what a thing was. If he carved a horse—I mean real horse, not merry-go-round, he wanted to be able to sit that horse beside a real horse and let you guess which one was breathing. About half the time you would guess wrong, but Unc always believed you were humoring him. Perfection was his long suit and perfection is what crossed him up in the big ‘Figurehead order,’ as it came to be known.

  Like all artists: painters, writers, perhaps even musicians and acrobats, Uncle George thought of the passing of sail as a loss to part of the soul of man. Being from small town Indiana, he had only a passing notion of what constituted a seaworthy vessel or of the practicality and beauty of a steamship. He just knew sails were beautiful and smoke was not. Also, in the time of sail woodcarvers were in their heyday. Perhaps that had something to do with the figurehead compulsion because he did not really know much about the sea. His only experience with water was the lake where we fished, which on a stormy night would whip up a trough of maybe an inch and a half.

  He had a picture book of ship’s figureheads that I used to hook while he was at the store, mostly because there were three of the figureheads who (or which) were ladies who (or which) were undressed on top. Uncovered tops were interesting to me. These were well done. Later, when I arrived at high school age I remember being vaguely disappointed.

  Chloe and the month of April were surrounding the store at the start of the trouble. Unc had a little house on the highway where he sold antiques, old magazines, his carving and pottery by Geraldine and Chloe who were part-time instructors of the 4-H Club. The pottery was splotchy jugs, vases and decorated souvenirs of Hereford City, Indiana. People who had never heard of Rorschach tests became uneasy. Most of the antiques were not really antique, just old. It seldom mattered. Nearly everyone who came in bought something, usually carvings by Unc or pottery by Geraldine which had the most brilliant splotches of all. I guess Uncle George grossed as high as fifteen dollars most weeks, and it was clear profit since he closed at dark. Taxes on the place were a dollar sixty-three cents a year. He did a fair mail order business with regular customers and worked at finished and rough carpentry around the county. I judge he made as high as three thousand in most years. That was good business then. In terms of what it would buy he was no pooch of a marriage prospect.

  I was at the store with Chloe and Unc when the Duesenberg pulled up. It was a beautiful car, painted a lovely money-color green. The youngish looking man and woman who got out and traipsed up the path were obviously accustomed to having doors opened for them, so George did. Later, he said he should have locked it.

  Entering the tiny, over-stuffed house, the lady tripped over a replica of Doc Sams’s prize Poland sow. She staggered here and there, then sat down with a pretty good bump for one so apparently frail. She ended up looking the sow in the face and letting out a fetching scream. I told you Unc had realism cold.

  The greasy-haired little guy who was dressed like a house pet and who, we learned later, was a house pet, cursed and kicked the sow in the snoot, chipping it a trifle. He nearly chipped his meal ticket at the same time. To make up for it maybe, he started to threaten a lawsuit. She shut him up pretty quick.

 
"This man is an artiste," she said, in a phony, rhubarby way that hit Chloe fairly stiff. There was a kind of threat mixed with the rhubarb, even while the lady was still on her can facing the sow. Chloe held herself in, but her blue eyes were hot and she mixed up her blonde hair trying to get it smooth. Who could blame her? She was twenty-three and had given her best years to Unc, the way she figured. She meant in waiting, of course. Maybe it occurred to her that she had never called Unc an ‘artiste.’

  "An artiste," the lady smiled as George gave her a hand up. She half-whispered to him, asking if he had ever done a self-portrait.

  Chloe looked about the way Delilah would have looked if someone told her that on his way over, Samson had been scalped.

  After a lot of bazazz from the little rich lady Unc sold the sow on discount because it had a chipped snoot. He also sold a small carving of Chloe’s drinking uncle who was his best friend. Willie was county judge and town drunk, held both offices. After two successes, Unc tried to get the lady interested in his impression of an ill duck which looked exactly like an ill duck.

  It was just then that the gigolo rolled his eyes and smacked his hand to his forehead so hard he staggered.

  "Godiva," he yelled, "he can do Godiva!" Everyone stopped what they were doing to admire the performance. The little woman smiled and nodded.

  He had bought her a one hundred-ninety foot schooner to celebrate their great love. Her money, of course, but it was the thought that counted. The vessel had been a bargain. It was the last important thing left from an ex-millionaire’s estate who had engaged in 1929 sky diving.

  Deceased must have been as bad at seamanship as he was at margins. Before the big crash he had worked up a pretty monumental one of his own. Coming alongside he moved the port of Boston as much as three inches out of line when he hit the entire town. They had the schooner Exchange in drydock for major repairs including bowsprit and figurehead. The plan was to rename her Godiva II. Unc was courteous enough not to ask who was Godiva I. The old figurehead would not have been fitting anyway. It had been of a broker in a derby hat.