Orbit 4 - Anthology

by Edited by Damon Night

  * * * *

  ONE AT A TIME

  By R. A. Lafferty

  Barnaby phoned up John Sourwine. If you frequent places like Barnaby’s Barn (there is one in every port city of the world, and John is a familiar in all of them) you may already know John Sourwine; and you will know him as Sour John.

  “There’s an odd one down here,” Barnaby told him.

  “How odd?” asked Sour John. He collected odd ones.

  “Clear coon-dog crazy, John. He looks like they just dug him up, but he’s lively enough.”

  Barnaby runs a fine little place that offers eating and drinking and conversation, all of them rare and hearty. And John Sourwine is always interested in new things, or old things returned. So John went down to Barnaby’s Barn to see the Odd One.

  There was no need to ask which one he was, though there were always strangers and traveling men and seamen unknown to John in the Barn. The Odd One stood out. He was a big, spare, rough fellow, and he said that his name was McSkee. He was eating and drinking with a chortling pleasure, and they all watched him in amazement

  “It’s his fourth plate of spaghetti,” Smokehouse confided to Sour John, “and that is the last of two dozen eggs. He’s had twelve hamburgers, six coney islands, six crab-burgers, five foot-long hot dogs, eighteen bottles of beer, and twenty cups of coffee.”

  “Blind blinking binnacles! He must be getting close to some of the records of Big Bucket Bulg,” Sour John exclaimed with sudden interest.

  “John, he’s broken most of those records already,” Smokehouse told him, and Barnaby nodded assent. “If he can hold the pace for another forty-five minutes, he’ll beat them all.”

  Well, the Odd One was still a spare fellow, with a great gangling frame designed to carry fifty or sixty pounds more than the lean fellow now owned. But he began to fill out even as John watched him; and it was not only that he bulked larger almost by the minute, it was also as though a light was being turned on inside him. He glowed. Then he shone. Then he began to sparkle.

  “You like to eat, do you, oldtimer?” Sour John asked the Odd One, the amazing McSkee.

  “I like it well enough!” McSkee boomed with a happy grin. “But, more than that, it’s just that I’m a bedamned showoff! I like everything in excess. I love to be in the roaring middle of it all!”

  “One would think that you hadn’t eaten in a hundred years,” Sour John probed.

  “You’re quick!” the illuminated McSkee laughed. “A lot of them never do catch onto me, and I tell them nothing unless they guess a little first. Aye, you’ve got the hairy ears, though, and the adder’s eyes of a true gentleman. I love a really ugly man. We will talk while I eat.”

  “What do you do when you’ve finished eating?” asked John, pleased at the compliments, as the waiters began to pile the steaks high in front of McSkee.

  “Oh, I go from eating to drinking,” McSkee munched out. “There’s no sharp dividing line between the pleasures. I go from drinking to the girls; from the girls to fighting and roistering. And finally I sing.”

  “A bestial procedure,” said John with admiration. “And when your pentastomic orgy is finished?”

  “Oh, then I sleep,” McSkee chuckled. “Watch how I do it some time. I should give lessons. Few men understand how it should be done.”

  “Well, how long do you sleep?” Sour John asked, “and is there something spectacular about your sleeping that I don’t understand?”

  “Of course it’s spectacular. And I sleep till I waken. At this also I set records.”

  And McSkee was wolfing the tall pile of steaks till Sour John had a mystic vision of a steer devoured entire except for head and hide and hooves, the slaughterer’s take.

  Later, they talked somewhat more leisurely as McSkee worked his way through the last half-dozen steaks—for now the edge was off his great appetite.

  “In all this ostentatious bestiality, was there not one gluttony more outstanding than the others?” Sour John drew him out, “one time when you outdid even yourself?”

  “Aye, there was that,” said McSkee. “There was the time when they were going to hang me with the new rope.”

  “And how did you eat your way out of that one?” Sour John asked.

  “At that time and in that country—it was not this one —the custom was new of giving the condemned man what he wanted to eat,” the incandescent McSkee limned it out in his voice with the lilt of a barrel organ. “I took advantage of the new usage and stripped the countryside. It was a good supper they gave me, John, and I was to be hanged at sunup. But I had them there, for I was still eating at dawn. They could not interrupt my last meal to hang me—not when they had promised me a full meal. I stood them off that day and the night and the following day. That is longer than I usually eat, John, and I did outdo myself. That countryside had been known for its poultry and its suckling pigs and its fruits. It is known for them no longer. It never recovered.”

  “Did you?”

  “Oh certainly, John. But by third dawn I was filled. The edge was off my appetite, and I do not indulge thereafter.”

  “Naturally not. But what happened then? They did not hang you, or you would not be here to tell about it.”

  “That doesn’t follow, John. I had been hanged before.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. But not this time. I tricked them. When I had my fill, I went to sleep. And then deeper and deeper into sleep until I died. They do not hang a man already dead. They kept me for a day to be sure. John, I get a pretty high shine on me in a day! I’m a smelly fellow at best Then they buried me, but they did not hang me. Why do you look at me so oddly, John?”

  “It is nothing,” said Sour John, “a mere random objection which I will not even dignify with words.”

  * * * *

  McSkee was drinking now, first wine to give a bottom to his stomach, then brandy for its rumpled dignity, then rum for its plain friendliness.

  “Can you believe that all breakthroughs are achieved by common men like myself?” this McSkee asked suddenly.

  “I can’t believe that you’re a common man,” Sour John told him.

  “I’m the commonest man you ever saw,” McSkee insisted. “I am made from the clay and the salt of the Earth, and the humus from decayed behemoths. They may have used a little extra slime in making me, but I contain none of the rare earths. It had to be a man like myself who would work out the system. The savants aren’t capable of it; they have no juice in them. And by their having no juice in them, they missed the first hint.”

  “What is that, McSkee?”

  “It’s so simple, John! That a man should live his life one day at a time.”

  “Well?” Sour John asked with towering intonation.

  “See how harmlessly it slides down, John. It sounds almost like an almanac maxim.”

  “And it isn’t?”

  “No, no, the thunder of a hundred worlds rumbles between them. It’s the door to a whole new universe. But there’s another saying: ‘Man, thy days are numbered.’ This is the one inexorable saying. It is the limit that will not be bent or broken, and it puts the damper on us hearty ones. It poses a problem to one like myself, too carnal to merit eternal beatitude on another plane, too full of juice to welcome final extinction, and anxious for personal reasons to postpone the hardships of damnation as long as possible.

  “Now, John, there were (and are) smarter men than myself in the world. That I solved the problem (to an extent) and they did not, means only that the problem was more pressing on me. It had to be a coarse man to find the answer, and I never met a man with such a passion for the coarse things of life as myself.”

  “Neither did I,” Sour John told him. “And how did you solve the problem?”

  “By a fine little trick, John. You’ll see it worked if you follow me around through the night.”

  * * * *

  McSkee had left off eating. But he continued to drink while he indulged in girls, and in fighting and roiste
ring, and in singing. His girly exploits are not given here; but there is a fruity listing of them on the police blotter of that night. Go see Mossback McCarty some night when he is on desk duty and he will get it out and let you read it. It is something of a classic around the station house. When a man gets involved with Soft-Talk Susie Kutz and Mercedes Morrero and Dotty Peisson and Little Dotty Nesbitt and Hildegarde Katt and Catherine Cadensus and Ouida and Avril Aaron and Little Midnight Mullins all in one night, you are talking about a man who generates legends.

  McSkee did stir things up around town, and John Sourwine stayed with him. John fit in with McSkee well. There are many who would not.

  There are persons of finely-tuned souls who cringe when a companion becomes unusually boisterous. There are those who wince when a hearty mate sings loudly and obscenely. There are even those who attempt to disassociate when the grumblings of the solid citizenry rise to a sullen roar; and who look for cover when the first little fights begin. Fortunately, Sour John was not such a person. He had a finely-tuned soul, but it had a wide range.

  McSkee had the loudest and most dissonant voice in town, but would an honest friend desert him for that?

  The two of them cut a big swath; and a handful of rough men, rubbing big knuckles into big palms and biding their time, had begun to follow them from place to place: men like Buffalo-Chips Dugan and Shrimp-Boat Gordon, Sulphur-Bottom Sullivan, Smokehouse, Kidney-Stones Stenton, Honey-Bucket Kincaid. The fact that these men followed McSkee angrily but did not yet dare to close with him speaks highly of the man. He was pretty woolly.

  But there were times when McSkee would leave off his raucous disharmony and joyful battling, and chuckle somewhat more quietly. As—for a while—in the Little Oyster Bar (it’s upstairs from the Big Oyster).

  “The first lime I put the trick to a test,” McSkee confided to John, “was from need and not from choice. I have incurred a lot of ill will in my day, and sometimes it boils over. There was one time when a whole shipful of men had had enough of me. This time (it was far away and long ago in the ancient days of small sail) I was shackled about the ankles. and weighted and dropped overboard. Then I employed the trick.”

  “What did you do?” Sour John asked him.

  “John, you ask the damnest questions. I drowned, of course. What else could any man do? But I drowned calmly and with none of that futile threshing about. That’s the trick, you see.”

  “No. I don’t see.”

  “Time would be on my side, John. Who wants to spend eternity in the deep? Salt water is most corrosive; and my shackles, though I could not break them, were not massive. After a long lifetime, the iron would be so eaten through that it would part with any sudden strain. In less than one hundred years, the shackles gave way, and my body (preserved in a briny fashion but not in the best of condition) drifted up to the surface of the sea.”

  “Too late to do you any good,” Sour John said. “Rather a droll end to the story, or was it the end?”

  “Yes, that is the end of that story, John. And another time, when I was a footsoldier in the service of Pixodarus the Carian (with his Celtic Mercenaries, of course)—”

  “Just a minute, McSkee,” Sour John cut in. “There’s something a little loose about all your talk, and it needs landmarks. How long have you lived anyhow? How old are you?”

  “About forty years old by my count, John. Why?”

  “I thought your stories were getting a little too tall, McSkee. But if you’re no more than forty years old, then your stories do not make sense.”

  “Never said they did, John. You put unnatural conditions on a tale.”

  * * * *

  McSkee and Sour John were up in night court, bloodied and beatific. It was only for a series of little things that they had been arrested, but it was really to save them from lynching. They had a palaver with all those fine officers and men, and they had much going for them. Sour John was known to them as an old acquaintance and sometime offender. It was known that John’s word was good; even when he lied he did it with an air of honesty. After a little time was allowed to pass, and the potential lynchers had dispersed, Sour John was allowed to bail them both out on their strong promise of good behavior.

  They swore and forswore that they would behave like proper men. They took ringing oaths to go to their beds at once and quietly. They went on record that they would carouse no more that night; that they would assault no honest woman; that they would obey the quirks of the laws however unreasonable. And that they would not sing.

  So the police let them go.

  When the two of them were out and across the street, McSkee found a bottle handy to his hand on the sidewalk, and let fly with it. You’d have done it yourself if you’d been taken by a like impulse. McSkee threw it in a beautiful looping arc, and it went through the front window of the station house. You have to admire a throw like that.

  We record it here that they arenot patsy cops in that town. They are respectable adversaries, and it is always a pleasure to tangle with them.

  Off again! And pursued by the Minions with shout and siren! It was close there! Half a dozen times it was close! But Sour John was a fox who knew all the dens, and he and McSkee went to earth for the while.

  “The trick is in coming to a total stop,” said McSkee when they were safe and had their breath again. They were at ease in a club less public than Barnaby’s Barn and even smaller than the Little Oyster. “I tell you a little about it, Sour John, for I see that you are a man of worth. Listen and learn. Everyone can die, but not everyone can die just when he wants to. First you stop breathing. There will be a point where your lungs are bursting and you just have to take another breath. Do not do it; or you will have the whole business to go through again. Then you slow your heart and compose your mind. Let the heat go out of your body and finish it.”

  “And then what?” Sour John asked.

  “Why, then you die, John. But I tell you it isn’t easy. It takes a devilish lot of practice.”

  “Why so much practice for a thing you do only once? You mean to die literally?”

  “John, I talk plain. I say die, I mean die.”

  “There are two possibilities,” said Sour John. “One is that I am slow of understanding. The other is that you are not making sense. On other evidence, I know the first possibility to be impossible.”

  “Tell you what, Sour John,” said McSkee, “time’s running short. Give me twenty dollars and I’ll overlook your illogic. I never did like to die broke, and I feel my time is upon me. Thank you, John! I had a full day, both before and after I met you, and a full night that is nearly over. I had a pleasant meal, and enough booze to make me happy. I had fun with the girls, especially Soft-Talk Susie, and Dotty, and Little Midnight. I sang several of my favorite songs (which are not everybody’s favorites). I indulged in a couple of good solid fights, and I’ve still got bells ringing in my head from them. Hey, John, why didn’t you tell me that Honey-Bucket was lefthanded? You knew it, and you let him sneak the first punch on me.

  “It’s been fun, John. I’m a boy that gets a lot out of this game. I’m a real juicy one, and I try to jam everything into a day and a night. You can get a lot into a period if you heap it up. Now, let’s gather up what’s left in the bottles, and go down to the beach to see what we can provoke. The night needs a cap on it before I go to my long slumber.”

  “McSkee, you’ve hinted several times that you had a secret for getting the most out of life,” said Sour John, “but you haven’t told me what it is.”

  “Man, I haven’t hinted; I’ve spoken plainly,” McSkee swore.

  “Then what in hog heaven is the secret?” John howled.

  “Live your life one day at a time, John. That’s all.”

  * * * *

  Then McSkee was singing an old hobo song, too old a song for a forty-year-old man, not a specialist, to have known.

  “When did you learn that?” John asked him.

  “Learned it yesterday. But I le
arned a bunch of new ones today.”

  “I noticed, a few hours back, that there was something curiously dated about your speech,” John said. “But it doesn’t seem to be the case now.”

  “John, I get contemporary real fast. I’ve a good ear, and I talk a lot and listen a lot, and I’m the perfect mimic. I can get up on a lingo in a day. They don’t change as fast as you’d imagine.”

  They went down to the beach to put the cap on the night. If you’re going to die, it’s nice to die within the sound of the surf, McSkee had said. They went down beyond the end of the sea wall and into the stretches where the beach was dark. Aye, McSkee had guessed it rightly, there was excitement waiting for them, or actually it had been following them. It was the opportunity for a last glorious fight.