The Best of Henry Kuttner

by Henry Kuttner

  “You shore would,” I thunk back. “If you could. What’s up, Uncle Lem?”

  At that he slowed down and started to saunter back in a wide circle.

  “Oh, I just had an idy yer Maw might like a mess of blackberries,” he thunk, kicking a pebble very nonchalant. “If anybody asks you say you ain’t seen me. It’s no lie. You ain’t.”

  “Uncle Lem,” I thunk, real loud, “I gave Maw my bounden word I wouldn’t let you out of range without me along, account of the last time you got away—”

  “Now, now, my boy,” Uncle Lem thunk fast. “Let bygones be bygones.”

  “You just can’t say no to a friend, Uncle Lem,” I reminded him, taking a last turn of the wire around the runner. “So you wait a shake till I get this cream soured and we’ll both go together, wherever it is you have in mind.”

  I saw the checked pants among the bushes and he come out in the open and give me a guilty smile. Uncle Lem’s a fat little feller. He means well, I guess, but he can be talked into most anything by most anybody, which is why we have to keep a close eye on him.

  “How you gonna do it?” he asked me, looking at the creamjug. “Make the little critters work faster?”

  “Uncle Lem!” I said. “You know better’n that. Cruelty to dumb animals is something I can’t abide. Them there little critters work hard enough souring milk the way it is. They’re such teentsy-weentsy fellers I kinda feel sorry for ’em. Why, you can’t even see ’em without you go kinda crosseyed when you look. Paw says they’re enzymes. But they can’t be. They’re too teeny.”

  “Teeny is as teeny does,” Uncle Lem said. “How you gonna do it, then?”

  “This here gadget,” I told him, kinda proud, “will send Maw’s cream-jug ahead into next week some time. This weather, don’t take cream more’n a couple of days but I’m giving it plenty of time. When I bring it back—bingo, it’s sour.” I set the jug on the sled.

  “I never seen such a do-lass brat,” Uncle Lem said, stepping forward and bending a wire crosswise. “You better do it thataway, on account of the thunderstorm next Tuesday. All right now, shoot her off.”

  So I shot her off. When she come back, sure enough, the cream was sour enough to walk a mouse. Crawling up the can there was a hornet from next week, which I squashed. Now that was a mistake. I knowed it the minute I touched the jug. Dang Uncle Lem, anyhow.

  He jumped back into the underbrush, squealing real happy.

  “Fooled you that time, you young stinker,” he yelled back. “Let’s see you get your thumb outa the middle of next week!”

  It was the time-lag done it. I mighta knowed. When he crossed that wire he didn’t have no thunderstorm in mind at all. Took me nigh onto ten minutes to work myself loose, account of some feller called Inertia, who mixes in if you ain’t careful when you fiddle around with time. I don’t understand much about it myself. I ain’t got my growth yet. Uncle Lem says he’s already forgot more’n I’ll ever know.

  With that head start I almost lost him. Didn’t even have time to change into my store-bought clothes and I knowed by the way he was all dressed up fit to kill he was headed for somewheres fancy.

  He was worried, too. I kept running into little stray worrisome thoughts he’d left behind him, hanging like teeny little mites of clouds on the bushes. Couldn’t make out much on account of they was shredding away by the time I got there but he’d shore done something he shouldn’t. That much anybody coulda told. They went something like this:

  “Worry, worry—wish I hadn’t done it—oh, heaven help me if Grandpaw ever finds out—oh, them nasty Pughs, how could I a-been such a fool? Worry, worry—pore ole feller, such a good soul, too, never done nobody no harm and look at me now.

  “That Saunk, too big for his britches, teach him a thing or two, ha-ha. Oh, worry, worry—never mind, brace up, you good ole boy, everything’s bound to turn out right in the end. You deserve the best, bless you, Lemuel. Grandpaw’ll never find out.”

  Well, I seen his checkered britches high-tailing through the woods after a bit, but I didn’t catch up to him until he was down the hill, across the picnic grounds at the edge of town and pounding on the sill of the ticket-window at the railroad station with a Spanish dubloon he snitched from Paw’s seachest.

  It didn’t surprise me none to hear him asking for a ticket to State Center. I let him think I hadn’t caught up. He argued something turrible with the man behind the window but finally he dug down in his britches and fetched up a silver dollar, and the man calmed down.

  The train was already puffing up smoke behind the station when Uncle Lem darted around the corner. Didn’t leave me much time but I made it too—just. I had to fly a little over the last half-dozen yards but I don’t think anybody noticed.

  Once when I was just a little shaver there was a Great Plague in London, where we were living at the time, and all us Hogbens had to clear out. I remember the hullabaloo in the city but looking back now it don’t seem a patch on the hullabaloo in State Center station when the train pulled in. Times have changed, I guess.

  Whistles blowing, horns honking, radios yelling bloody murder—seems like every invention in the last two hundred years had been noisier than the one before it. Made my head ache until I fixed up something Paw once called a raised decibel threshold, which was pure showing-off.

  Uncle Lem didn’t know I was anywhere around. I took care to think real quiet but he was so wrapped up in his worries he wasn’t paying no mind to nothing. I followed him through the crowds in the station and out onto a wide street full of traffic. It was a relief to get away from the trains.

  I always hate to think what’s going on inside the boiler, with all the little bitty critters so small you can’t hardly see ’em, pore things, flying around all hot and excited and bashing their heads together. It seems plumb pitiable.

  Of course, it just don’t do to think what’s happening inside the automobiles that go by.

  Uncle Lem knowed right where he was headed. He took off down the street so fast I had to keep reminding myself not to fly, trying to keep up. I kept thinking I ought to get in touch with the folks at home, in case this turned into something I couldn’t handle, but I was plumb stopped everywhere I turned. Maw was at the church social that afternoon and she whopped me the last time I spoke to her outa thin air right in front of the Reverend Jones. He ain’t used to us Hogbens yet.

  Paw was daid drunk. No good trying to wake him up. And I was scared to death I would wake the baby if I tried to call on Grandpaw.

  Uncle Lem scuttled right along, his checkered legs a-twinkling. He was worrying at the top of his mind, too. He’d caught sight of a crowd in a side-street gathered around a big truck, looking up at a man standing on it and waving bottles in both hands.

  He seemed to be making a speech about headaches. I could hear him all the way to the corner. There was big banners tacked along the sides of the truck that said, PUGH HEADACHE CURE.

  “Oh, worry, worry!” Uncle Lem thunk. “Oh, bless my toes, what am I going to do? I never dreamed anybody’d marry Lily Lou Mutz. Oh, worry!”

  Well, I reckon we’d all been surprised when Lily Lou Mutz up and got herself a husband awhile back—around ten years ago, I figgered. But what it had to do with Uncle Lem I couldn’t think. Lily Lou was just about the ugliest female that ever walked. Ugly ain’t no word for her, pore gal.

  Grandpaw said once she put him in mind of a family name of Gorgon he used to know. Not that she wasn’t a goodhearted critter. Being so ugly, she put up with a lot in the way of rough acting-up from the folks in the village—the riff-raff lot, I mean.

  She lived by herself in a little shack up the mountain and she musta been close onto forty when some feller from the other side of the river come along one day and rocked the whole valley back on its heels by asking her to marry up with him. Never saw the feller myself but I heard tell he wasn’t no beauty-prize winner neither.

  Come to think of it, I told myself r
ight then, looking at the truck—come to think of it, feller’s name was Pugh.

  Chapter 2. A Fine Old Feller

  Next thing I knowed, Uncle Lem had spotted somebody under a lamp-post on the sidewalk, at the edge of the crowd. He trotted over. It seemed to be a big gorilla and a little gorilla, standing there watching the feller on the truck selling bottles with both hands.

  “Come and get it,” he was yelling. “Come and get your bottle of Pugh’s Old Reliable Headache Cure while they last!”

  “Well, Pugh, here I am,” Uncle Lem said, looking up at the big gorilla. “Hello, Junior,” he said right afterward, glancing down at the little gorilla. I seen him shudder a little.

  You shore couldn’t blame him for that. Two nastier specimens of the human race I never did see in all my born days. If they hadn’t been quite so pasty-faced or just the least mite slimmer, maybe they wouldn’t have put me so much in mind of two well-fed slugs, one growed-up and one baby-sized. The paw was all dressed up in a Sunday-meeting suit with a big gold watch-chain across his front and the way he strutted you’d a thought he’d never had a good look in a mirror.

  “Howdy, Lem,” he said, casual-like. “Right on time, I see. Junior, say howdy to Mister Lem Hogben. You owe Mister Hogben a lot, sonny.” And he laughed a mighty nasty laugh.

  Junior paid him no mind. He had his beady little eyes fixed on the crowd across the street He looked about seven years old and mean as they come.

  “Shall I do it now, paw?” he asked in a squeaky voice. “Can I let ’em have it now, paw? Huh, paw?” From the tone he used, I looked to see if he’d got a machine-gun handy. I didn’t see none but if looks was ever mean enough to kill Junior Pugh could of mowed the crowd right down.

  “Manly little feller, ain’t he, Lem?” Paw Pugh said, real smug. “I tell you, I’m mighty proud of this youngster. Wish his dear grandpaw coulda lived to see him. A fine old family line, the Pughs is. Nothing like it anywhere. Only trouble is, Junior’s the last of his race. You see why I got in touch with you, Lem.”

  Uncle Lem shuddered again. “Yep,” he said. “I see, all right. But you’re wasting your breath, Pugh. I ain’t a-gonna do it.”

  Young Pugh spun around in his tracks.

  “Shall I let him have it, paw?” he squeaked, real eager. “Shall I, paw? Now, paw? Huh?”

  “Shaddup, sonny,” the big feller said and he whammed the little feller across the side of the haid. Pugh’s hands was like hams. He shore was built like a gorilla.

  The way his great big arms swung down from them big hunched shoulders, you’d of thought the kid would go flying across the street when his paw whopped him one. But he was a burly little feller. He just staggered a mite and then shook his haid and went red in the face.

  He yelled out loud and squeaky, “Paw, I warned you! The last time you whammed me I warned you! Now I’m gonna let you have it!”

  He drew a deep breath and his two little teeny eyes got so bright I coulda sworn they was gonna touch each other across the middle of his nose. His pasty face got bright red.

  “Okay, Junior,” Paw Pugh said, real hasty. “The crowd’s ready for you. Don’t waste your strength on me, sonny. Let the crowd have it!”

  Now all this time I was standing at the edge of the crowd, listening and watching Uncle Lem. But just then somebody jiggled my arm and a thin kinda voice said to me, real polite, “Excuse me, but may I ask a question?”

  I looked down. It was a skinny man with a kind-hearted face. He had a notebook in his hand.

  “It’s all right with me,” I told him, polite. “Ask away, mister.”

  “I just wondered how you feel, that’s all,” the skinny man said, holding his pencil over the notebook ready to write down something.

  “Why, peart,” I said. “Right kind of you to inquire. Hope you’re feeling well too, mister.”

  He shook his head, kind of dazed. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I just don’t understand it. I feel fine.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “Fine day.”

  “Everybody here feels fine,” he went right on, just like I hadn’t spoke. “Barring normal odds, everybody’s in average good health in this crowd. But in about five minutes or less, as I figure it—” He looked at his wrist-watch.

  Just then somebody hit me right on top of the haid with a red-hot sledge-hammer.

  Now you shore can’t hurt a Hogben by hitting him on the haid. Anybody’s a fool to try. I felt my knees buckle a little but I was all right in a couple of seconds and I looked around to see who’d whammed me.

  Wasn’t a soul there. But oh my, the moaning and groaning that was going up from that there crowd! People was a-clutching at their foreheads and a-staggering around the street, clawing at each other to get to that truck where the man was handing out the bottles of headache cure as fast as he could take in the dollar bills.

  The skinny man with the kind face rolled up his eyes like a duck in thunder.

  “Oh, my head!” he groaned. “What did I tell you? Oh, my head!” Then he sort of tottered away, fishing in his pocket for money.

  Well, the family always did say I was slow-witted but you’d have to be downright feeble-minded if you didn’t know there was something mighty peculiar going on around here. I’m no ninny, no matter what Maw says. I turned around and looked for Junior Pugh.

  There he stood, the fat-faced little varmint, red as a turkey-gobbler, all swole up and his mean little eyes just a-flashing at the crowd.

  “It’s a hex,” I thought to myself, perfectly calm. “I’d never have believed it but it’s a real hex. Now how in the world—”

  Then I remembered Lily Lou Mutz and what Uncle Lem had been thinking to himself. And I began to see the light.

  The crowd had gone plumb crazy, fighting to get at the headache cure. I purty near had to bash my way over toward Uncle Lem. I figgered it was past time I took a hand, on account of him being so soft in the heart and likewise just about as soft in the haid.

  “Nosirree,” he was saying, firm-like. “I won’t do it. Not by no manner of means I won’t.”

  “Uncle Lem,” I said.

  I bet he jumped a yard into the air.

  “Saunk!” he squeaked. He flushed up and grinned sheepish and then he looked mad, but I could tell he was kinda relieved, too. “I told you not to foller me,” he said.

  “Maw told me not to let you out of my sight,” I said. “I promised Maw and us Hogbens never break a promise. What’s going on here, Uncle Lem?”

  “Oh, Saunk, everything’s gone dead wrong!” Uncle Lem wailed out. “Here I am with a heart of gold and I’d just as soon be dead! Meet Mister Ed Pugh, Saunk. He’s trying to get me kilt.”

  “Now Lem,” Ed Pugh said. “You know that ain’t so. I just want my rights, that’s all. Pleased to meet you, young fellow. Another Hogben, I take it. Maybe you can talk your uncle into—”

  “Excuse me for interrupting, Mister Pugh,” I said, real polite. “But maybe you’d better explain. All this is purely a mystery to me.”

  He cleared his throat and threw his chest out, important-like. I could tell this was something he liked to talk about. Made him feel pretty big, I could see.

  “I don’t know if you was acquainted with my dear departed wife, Lily Lou Mutz that was,” he said. “This here’s our little child, Junior. A fine little lad he is too. What a pity we didn’t have eight or ten more just like him.” He sighed real deep.

  “Well, that’s life. I’d hoped to marry young and be blessed with a whole passel of younguns, being as how I’m the last of a fine old line. I don’t mean to let it die out, neither.” Here he gave Uncle Lem a mean look. Uncle Lem sorta whimpered.

  “I ain’t a-gonna do it,” he said. “You can’t make me do it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Ed Pugh said, threatening. “Maybe your young relative here will be more reasonable. I’ll have you know I’m getting to be a power in this state and what I says goes.”r />
  “Paw,” little Junior squeaked out just then, “Paw, they’re kinda slowing down. Kin I give it to ’em double-strength this time, Paw? Betcha I could kill a few if I let myself go. Hey, Paw—”

  Ed Pugh made as if he was gonna clonk the little varmint again, but I guess he thought better of it.

  “Don’t interrupt your elders, sonny,” he said. “Paw’s busy. Just tend to your job and shut up.” He glanced out over the moaning crowd. “Give that bunch over beyond the truck a little more treatment,” he said. “They ain’t buying fast enough. But no double-strength, Junior. You gotta save your energy. You’re a growing boy.”

  He turned back to me. “Junior’s a talented child,” he said, very proud. “As you can see. He inherited it from his dear dead-and-gone mother, Lily Lou. I was telling you about Lily Lou. It was my hope to marry young, like I said, but the way things worked out, somehow I just didn’t get around to wifin’ till I’d got well along into the prime of life.”

  He blew out his chest like a toadfrog, looking down admiring. I never did see a man that thought better of himself. “Never found a woman who’d look at—I mean, never found the right woman,” he went on, “till the day I met Lily Lou Mutz.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, polite. I did, too. He musta searched a long, long ways before he found somebody ugly enough herself to look twice at him. Even Lily Lou, pore soul, musta thunk a long time afore she said yes.

  “And that,” Ed Pugh went on, “is where your Uncle Lem comes in. It seems like he’d give Lily Lou a bewitchment quite some while back.”

  “I never!” Uncle Lem squealed. “And anyway, how’d I know she’d get married and pass it on to her child? Who’d ever think Lily Lou would—”

  “He gave her a bewitchment,” Ed Pugh went right on talking. “Only she never told me till she was a-layin’ on her death-bed a year ago. Lordy, I sure woulda whopped her good if I’d knowed how she held out on me all them years! It was the hex Lemuel gave her and she inherited it on to her little child.”