Stranger Than You Think Read online

  “You speak of stories,” the mailman protested. “This really happened.”

  All the more reason for its suppression, I thought, but the little man was off again. “That night he took a small thing from his knapsack. It made a noise like beans when they are first dumped into a hot skillet, then a voice in some language I didn’t know and he answered questions.”

  “How big was this radio?” I asked.

  “It was like the cigarette pack radios the turistas carry now.”

  “And this really happened?” my mad friend asked, “In what year?”

  The Indian thought a moment. “1926,” he said.

  “I know the Indian has a flexible concept of time,” my friend said, “But this is carrying things too far.”

  “Later that night I woke and rolled a cigarette. It was that time of year when Woman Who Plants Squash is high in the sky. While I watched, the tip of her digging stick flared for just an instant, then suddenly the star was much tinier.”

  “Were any novas recorded in 1926?”

  “Search me,” my friend said, “I thought they lasted for days or months.”

  “I had seen falling stars,” the mail carrier continued, “But this was the first time I had seen a fixed star change. I turned to see the all-white man also sitting on his blanket. “Two minutes early,” he grunted.

  The sun had finally set and it was becoming endurable beneath the ramada. In ten minutes it would be dark and we had not yet decided where to spread our sleeping bags. The dancers and officials of the various societies had been on their feet and fasting since dawn. Soon they would eat and those whose vow of silence relaxed at sundown would be enjoying themselves before the tiny fires which rimmed the boundaries of sacred ground.

  “I dislike to freeload on people who can ill afford it,” my friend said, “But we’ll create a bad impression if we uncork K rations in front of them.”

  “You will be welcome at my house,” the mailman said.

  “We couldn’t impose on you like that.” Mentally, I was calculating how many times this offer must be refused to strike a balance between politeness and necessity. The mailman was the only one in this village who had regarded us with other than a faintly hostile curiosity. “You must dine and pass the night with me,” he repeated.

  A boy brought tizwín. My long empty stomach regarded it somewhat coldly. I wondered if its taste had something to do with the village custom of constant and indiscriminate expectoration.

  “So what’s with S. Murphy?” my mad friend inquired.

  “Ah yes, the errant scribe. Well, along with that stark and simple style he suddenly developed a plot sense. I read the first few chapters of his magnum opus as it came in. They were (and I say it with a wrenching in the cardiac region) far superior to anything I’ll ever do.”

  “So what’s the difficulty?”

  “They were good enough,” I continued, “To get the grand-daddy of all contracts. The prepublication campaign on this one will make the Peyton Place business sound like the hard sell on some starving poet’s slim volume.”

  My mad friend was still mystified.

  “The time is overripe,” I said. “If I can’t find this guy and talk him into completing those last three chapters within 60 days my shill may be forced to subsist exclusively on Brand X.”

  “Zo vot’s in it for you?”

  “If the wheels fall off his pushcart my apples also scatter.” By now I had fallen into the habit of automatically spitting after each sip of tizwín. The postman, apparently unused to stronger waters, had lost his Indian gravity and would soon by all portents approach orbital velocity.

  “S. Murphy,” he slurred, “A wonderful writer.”

  Somewhere across the plaza a harp tinkled and falsetto voices raised in plaint to the Great Mother. “I have read his books,” the mailman continued in a voice from which tizwín had dissolved all roughness. “Have you read one—I remember not the title under which it publishes.” He began sketching in plot and characters, using that verbal shorthand one writer employs with another. I decided he must know Murphy quite well to have picked it up. “Could you take me to see him?” I asked.

  The mailman shook his head. “Impossible. Much distance.”

  My mad friend listened boredly. The plot dealt with a bumbling Ugly American type who settled in a village remarkably like this one—a man whose roots became large and clumsy feet when he attempted to plant them. My mad friend became more apathetic as he listened to garbled authorese. “What happened to the all-white man who was using pocket radios and predicting stellar catastrophes in 1926?” he asked.

  Without hesitation the mailman shifted stories in mid-sentence. “It frightened me that this man with the pink eyes could know a star was going to die. I had always thought only Our Lord or Earth Mother could do these things. I thought of killing him but if he were what I thought, my bullets were of the wrong metal. For a moment I wondered if he might be the same one the island people burned.

  “The all-white man sensed my inquietude. ‘Everywhere it is the same,’ he said. ‘Most people are good. They hire someone to protect them from the bad and the foolish.’ ”

  “Always around when you don’t need one,” I grunted.

  My mad friend whistled from Gilbert and Sullivan to the effect that a policeman’s lot was not a happy one. While the postman had droned on with this utterly predictable bit of sf I had been thinking deep thoughts about the Murphy plot he’d been detailing.

  “¿y Murphy?” I asked.

  Murphy’s style seemed to have rubbed off on the mail carrier though, of course, all Spanish in literal translation has that florid, bigger-than-life quality.

  “There was a man in the village who could read,” the Indian continued, “So he received a salary from the Mexicans, ostensibly as mail carrier, though really they thought they were hiring a Judas. Since no one else could read, his job was a sinecure. To make ends meet on his microscopic salary he also kept store, burro-training back those bits of civilization—cartridges, matches, coffee—which cannot be grown in fields.

  “The postman and the stranger became friends. Both were initiates into the sacred mysteries of Alphabet. Both knew tales of the great world below. And there was the postman’s daughter, in imminent danger of becoming an old maid. She sat in inconspicuous comers while the white man told stories of a world which mountain-bred beauty would never see.

  “Murphy’s eyes seared the brown body which bulged beneath an all-concealing dress. The postman was optimistic. But . . .

  “Perhaps she reminded the white man too much of his own daughters who by now must have been considerably older. He made no overture. Meanwhile, young men of the village stayed away, knowing they could not compete with this blond Othello who held a maid enthralled with tales of distant lands.” The mailman spat again.

  It was totally dark now with that velvety blackness of the tropics, unrelieved at this altitude by any flicker of love-frenzied fireflies. From the tiny fires that ringed Sacred Ground came appetizing smells of coffee and broiling meat. “I don’t know about you,” I said to my friend, “But I could eat the gastric contents of a ñagual.”

  “There will be food at my house,” the mailman said.

  I slung saddle bags of emergency rations over one shoulder and loaded down the other with the gadget bags and cameras which I had learned earlier would be reduced to powder if I so much as popped a flashbulb toward Sacred Ground. My mad friend shouldered the sleeping bags and we trudged behind the mailman, across the plaza, up the widest of the streets which wriggled octopuslike away from it.

  A couple of hundred meters uphill we entered a larger than usual compound, fenced with the usual jumble of cactus and yitahaya stalks. With no great surprise, I recognized the store in Murphy’s novel. We passed through it into the patio between the Mother Cross and a drying rack for chiles, into a low, rambling structure whose wattle and daub walls were high enough for privacy, but lacked a full meter of reaching the o
val shaped palm thatch which shaded the house, stored maize out of the hogs’ reach, and sustained its own ecological cycle from cockroach to scorpion via mouse to snake. We suffered a visitaton of mosquitoes.

  “Burn a candle for whoever invented atabrine,” I muttered.

  My mad friend nodded and crossed himself.

  The postman’s wife was a tall, mahogany colored woman who wore abundant hair in a molote like Mrs. Katzenjammer. She greeted her minuscule husband with a respectful affection which explained the equanamity with which he faced a large and confusing world. She extracted a palm leaf from beneath the baby in her rebozo and knelt to revive the fire in the patio. A stairstep set of daughters joined her and the eldest began slapping tortillas while others brought out the best dishes.

  Soon my mad friend and I faced steaming bowls of the stewed squash blossoms which are one reason why I return regularly to this desolate land. We were poured countless cups of the asphaltum-like coffee which, after one disremembers American brews stands on its own peculiar virtue. There was chicken stewed in mole, a dark brown sauce made of 21 different chiles, peanut flour, ground chocolatl, and Ometecuhtl knows what else. When tamales de dulce appeared, made of fresh roasting ears macerated with stick cinnamon and loaf sugar, I began to suspect some runner had forewarned the household of our impending visit. The tizwín began to rest more comfortably.

  After a terminal plate of beans with tortillas of the local, paper thin and yard wide variety, we stretched legs and tilted vertical backed rawhide bottomed chairs to a comfortable angle. I glanced at my mad friend who was more cognizant of local custom than I. He nodded so I extracted some emergency ration.

  A daughter brought glasses.

  The mailman regarded the label on my rations with respect and said something which astounded us: “I’ll bring some ice.”

  The wife had long since retired to her own part of the immense rambling structure. We were alone in the patio, save for the 15 year old daughter who bulged in all the proper places and was learning how to pose and project her protuberances. I wondered if this were instinct or sophistication. It occurred to me that this might be the same young lady who in her quiet way was giving Murphy the business.

  My mad friend was oblivious to her. “Where in the name of Our Lord and Saviour did he ever get ice?” he wondered. It flabber-goosed me too; the nearest natural ice was hundreds of miles higher in the sierra and the nearest machine at least 100 km below us at Road’s End.

  The postman returned with a dish of ice cubes and Desdemona ceased her siren act. My mad friend sipped resignedly at his coffee while I and the postman tried to forget the taste of tizwín. “This Murphy plot,” I pursued, “What did you say was the name of the book?”

  Beguiled by the smoothness of my K ration, the postman was underestimating its effect. “Don’t know,” he slurred, “Not finished yet.”

  My mad friend raised eyebrows and I nodded. “He’s been describing the one my shill sent me here to get finished.” I turned back to the postman. “Now when,” I insisted, “do I see S. Murphy?”

  The little man’s eyes flickered and he was suddenly cautious. “Not possible. Much distance.”

  The siren remained silent and watchful in her corner. I sneaked a glance at her and wondered why Murphy had hesitated. The postman caught me looking so I hastily poured him another drink. “What happened,” my mad friend asked, “To the pink-eyed cop who shrinks stars?”

  “He doesn’t.” I marvelled at the mailman’s ability to switch subjects as rapidly as my mad friend. He skipped hurriedly through the rest of the story: “The good people paid him to watch out for the bad ones—delincuentes juveniles—he called them.” Abruptly, the mailman lurched to his feet and staggered past the Mother cross into the darker portion of the patio. I heard sounds which suggested an incompatibility between squash blossoms and emergency ration.

  My mad friend glanced meaningly to my left and as a mezquite twig flickered I saw the 15 year old still studying us unblinkingly from her dark corner. “I think,” I said in English, “We observe the reason why Murphy has not finished his book.”

  My friend reflected a half second. “Still making up his mind how to end it?”

  I guessed so.

  ‘Where do you suppose he’s hiding and why won’t he see us?”

  I grinned. “Even without badge and nightstick there is in your freudian corpus a certain aura which probably shows—even through binoculars.

  My mad friend sighed and again began whistling Gilbert and Sullivan. “So what do we do?” he wondered.

  I shrugged. “There’s at least one member of the family who’d love to have us stay.”

  My friend glanced worriedly at her. The siren protuberated visibly when she saw him looking.

  Wiping away the remains of a cold sweat, the mailman returned to sit between us. “The pink-eyed man asked me,” he continued, “if I had ever sat by a fire as someone in drunken glee galloped a horse through it. I remembered when Mexican soldiers amused themselves that way at the expense of the meal my mother was cooking. Thinking about it, I was almost ready again to kill the pink-eyed man when he asked, ‘How would you like it if someone rode a great horse—’ “. The mailman stopped perplexed and looked at us. “I’ve seen horses drag men and cows but what kind of horse can drag a whole field with it?”

  My mad friend looked blankly at me.

  ‘The pink eyed one spoke of galloping too close to the sun and one field interfering with another until the fire flared and went out just as when the soldiers used to ride through our village. It was annoying when people had to leave their earth and synthesize new homes. It could even be dangerous for people who do not—what means teleport?”

  My mad friend sipped coffee. “Well, Dr. OneStone, there’s the missing link in your Unified Field Theory.”

  I looked at the mailman. “Possibilities,” I said. “I can’t remember it’s being used in sf before. Where did you get this idea?”

  “That’s what the pink-eyed man said. I don’t understand it.” He threw a stick on the fire.

  “After smoking a cigarette I went back to sleep. At dawn the all-white man’s radio began sizzling like frying beans. He asked questions in that other language and finally put the small radio away. He opened the cold box and took out beer. ‘I must leave,’ he said, handing me one and biting the top from his own. ‘Do you like cold drinks?’ I nodded for the sun had been up 10 minutes and the day was already hot. ‘Keep the box,’ he said, ‘Do not open the bottom and it will never harm you. Treat it with respect and it will run forever. Anything you put in it will be cold.’

  “ ‘I am poor’ I protested, What can I give you?’ The all-white man gave a strange, twisted smile. ‘To me, nothing. But next time you’re ready to kill a cop, stop and think how your world would be if there were none.’

  “I tried to understand what he meant. I was asking him to explain when I noticed that he was gone. I looked all around the hacienda buildings but did not find him.”

  My mad friend sipped coffee and whistled Policeman’s Lot in a minor key. It was quite late and I wondered where we would unroll our sleeping bags. A mezquite twig flared and illuminated the mailman’s mahogany face. Some trick of the light reminded me of an idol on a vine-tangled trail halfway between Persepolis and San Francisco.

  “Naguales,” my friend grunted, and halfheartedly mumbled an exorcism. I decided to make a final lunge toward the main chance, “¿y Murphy?”

  The brown man emerged from his white study. “Wonderful writer.” He fished a melting ice cube from the dish and bathed it with K ration. I admired his fortitude. He took a long swallow which wavered briefly in his gullet before going down. “The ending is written. The pages will leave for New York whenever the post office makes up a bag.”

  “Didn’t he send them airmail?”

  “Is there need for haste?”

  “Much need,” I groaned, “Also much need to see Murphy.”

  The postman ign
ored this. “Two endings,” he continued, “Which is most artistically satisfying? Should the bumbling stranger marry the girl and live happily or should he be consistent and put his foot in this as in everything else?”

  My mad friend and I waited with unbated breath. The postman took another swallow and continued more slowly: “The stranger did not even realize that to visit the girl’s father so often constituted a form of engagement. If he did not marry her the girl would never find another husband in the village.”

  My mad friend yawned. “And you never saw the pink-eyed cop again?”

  The mailman wagged his finger.

  “Good idea,” I said “But it has the same defect as Murphy’s book. You’ll never get away with these up-in-the-air endings. Pin it down now—what happened to your all-white cop?—just as Murphy’ll have to pin down what happened to his multiple-thumbed hero.”

  “Murphy had an ending,” the mailman said.

  My mad friend fanned himself and assassinated a brace of mosquitoes. “Might drag that wireless icebox back into the plot somehow,” he maundered, “By the way, where’re you getting all this ice?”

  “From the icebox?”

  “That one?”

  “Couldn’t be,” I said in English. “No electricity; he’s probably got a kerosene powered Servel.”

  The postman shook his head. “Please,” my mad friend said tiredly, “No extraterrestrials at this hour of the morning.”

  “I’ll bring it,” the mailman said. He staggered to his feet and left the circle of firelight. In a moment I heard the sound of K ration leaving by that same door wherein it went.

  “I wonder what Monkey Ward Marvel he’s going to palm off on us?” my friend mused.

  I shrugged. “You may have noticed certain obvious parallels in this Murphy book,” I began, “Also, a certain talent in our host.” My friend nodded. “Suppose he learned all his English in the last year from Murphy?”

  “Probably chopped beets or picked lettuce in the States between revolutions.”

  “Have you considered,” my friend asked, “How far we are from civilization and/or law enforcement?”