Stranger Than You Think Read online

  I nodded. “Suppose they’ve burnt any ñaguales around here recently?”

  My mad friend tossed a gnarled mezquite branch on the fire and waited til it blazed. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear the mailman retching.

  “You mentioned that Murphy’s style changed. What about his typing?”

  “Suddenly every letter was slammed home as if he were whacking them out with a chisel.”

  “Sure mark of a one finger typist.”

  The retching had stopped and I could hear the postman rummaging somewhere in his house. The branch flared up and I saw the fifteen year old still regarding us unwinkingly from the shadows. She commenced protuberating.

  “He said Murphy had an end,” I mused. “Also mentioned that a visit constitutes formal engagement.” From the house I heard footsteps as the postman approached us. My mad friend looked at me and I looked at him. We both glanced at the hopeful sprite.

  The postman stepped into the circle of firelight bearing a rectangular box, subtly different from anything I’d ever seen. “This is the refrigerator which works forever without fuel,” he said.

  The girl stretched and protuberated some more. I caught my friend’s eye and we shared a common thought about an uncommon discovery. Suddenly we knew why Murphy’s typewriter was being one-fingered, why his spelling had suddenly gone to playing by ear, and what had happened to S. Murphy. My mad friend tilted his straight backed chair forward and began rising.

  But I beat him out the door.

  It was very late of a dark and moonless night. Crouching in thorny desert flora, we listened. “I don’t believe it,” my mad friend muttered.

  “So what are we running for?” I whispered back.

  Somewhere in the distance a bit clinked. We shrank behind an ocotillo while a rider with rifle at ready light-footed down the trail. “They’re ahead of us now,” I whispered.

  My mad friend pointed skyward. I sighted along his forearm at a line of minor but fixed stars which was slowly winking out. “Coming this way,” I whispered. “You suppose that starcop was for real?”

  My friend was muttering something in Latin.

  “Maybe we could teleport?” I suggested.

  “Please,” he hissed “I’ve got enough troubles already!”

  We started running again.

  THE THIRD BUBBLE

  THE YOUNG MAN WORE A white shirt opened nearly to his navel and tight black trousers. With the disdainful deliberation of a matador he aimed the blunt end of an ax. The turtle ceased moving and faced the end with a stoicism marred only by a hissing sigh and large oily tears.

  The ax crunched like a claw hammer hitting a ripe cantaloupe. Flippers thrilled. “The life is in the head,” a policeman standing next to me said, somewhat unnecessarily, I thought.

  “Or occasionally in the gonads,” my mad friend added sotto voce and in English.

  With an effortless flourish the young man cut around the bottom shell and lifted it to disclose an interesting array of innards and seven assorted hearts, all still beating. A semicylindrical swipe removed head and neck. Two slashes removed front flippers. The young man’s white shirt remained immaculate despite the welter of blood.

  I wondered at his flamboyance until I saw her. She was about seventeen, with long hair which would have looked more natural north of a southbound palomino. She wore a white blouse like the turtle butcher’s save that hers bulged more attractively. Her capris fit like epidermis burnished with stove blacking. She was witnessing the rite with none of those minuscule shrieks and head turnings which Anglosaxon females employ to disguise their taste for blood.

  Another magnificent slash and the turtle butcher lifted legs and tail. A shred of flesh held. He twisted. A sizeable sac of body fluids wrung out and wrought posthumous vengeance on his white shirt, face, and most of his trousers.

  “Ay ay ay!” the palomino exclaimed between giggles.

  My mad friend raised an eyebrow. “Pocha,” I muttered. My judgment was vindicated when she spoke Californian Spanish to her progenitors.

  Utterly crushed, the matador of sea turtles sloshed himself with clean water. He finished butchering silently, without flourishes.

  “He jests at scars who never felt a wound,” my friend quoted. I sighed and we trudged on through soft sand. The humidity approached turkish bath proportions. “What ever induced you to come to this Latin Limbo before we got the magazine launched?” my friend asked.

  “The Mohorovicic Discontinuity achieves a record thinness some miles due W of here.”

  My friend gazed at breaking surf and as we passed a cross where some fisherman had washed ashore he crossed himself. “How do you hold still long enough to drill a hole?”

  “Four engines,” I explained, “Propellors pointing in. different directions. One man sits before a radarscope pushing buttons.

  “My feet,” I groaned, “How much farther?”

  My mad friend hailed a capitalist with two burros.

  Built since the last hurricane, our hotel already showed signs of decay. Holes in its palm frond walls admitted mosquitoes, bats, and small pterodactyls. I glanced at the newspaper on a table across from the bar. It was in Spanish and its front page was filled with poorly reproduced pictures and misspelled names of the astronauts in the Russ-American two-weeks-in-orbit shot. “Outer space!” I groused, “When’ll we get enough money for some work on Inner Space?”

  My mad friend shrugged.

  “You should be on my side. The seas’ll fill more stomachs and save more souls than all that hardware. How long d’you think this Bruderschaft’s going to last before the comrades go off on a new kick anyhow?”

  “I didn’t vote for him,” my friend said.

  The barman was frantically sloshing booze into a row of glasses. His assistant struggled to extricate himself from a bulletheaded football type who was telling a story in some language the assistant didn’t know. He escaped and I saw he was the self-petarded turtle butcher.

  “Café,” my friend said, “And do you have some Noche Buena left from Christmas?”

  “I shall see.” The young man ducked the bulletheaded giant’s embrace on his way into the back room. The giant began staggering in our direction.

  “The End of a Perfect Day,” my friend growled, but a pair of companions hastily steered the giant back to the bar. One was dressed in subtly ill-proportioned trousers and a flowered sport shirt with a vaguely muscovite look. The other athletic looking young man had splurged himself for some American clothes. “Off some iron curtain freighter,” my friend hazarded.

  I heard occasional vowels, each within a fortification of high explosive consonants. “Couldn’t be,” I said, “No ships in except my tender.”

  The turtle butcher brought bituminous coffee and a bottle with a bright poinsettia label. “Real beer!” I marvelled. My mad friend smiled wistfully. “They only make it once a year,” he said.

  Two rather attractive latin women stood in the doorway. The sun made it apparent that they wore no slips. They removed wraparound skirts to reveal bermudas and the athletic types at the bar lost interest.

  “That wasn’t exactly cricket,” my mad friend said as they collapsed at our table. “If they don’t like it,” one replied, “Send a gunboat.”

  “Noche Buena!” the other wife exclaimed, “Where did you get it this time of year?”

  “Millinery secret,” my friend grunted.

  “Keeps it under his hat,” I explained.

  “Speaking of secrets,” my friend continued, “Why aren’t you still out on Blaspheme II?”

  “After months of mud, silt, strata of this’n thata, we hit something hard. I brought the tender in to pick up some diamond drill heads.”

  Wives abruptly ceased discussing whether haystack hair went with the new botch look. “Did somebody say diamonds?”

  “Too cheap to smuggle,” I said, “And you’d look better with a string of carborundum around your neck.”

  There was sudden laughter
at the bar. “That short one,” a wife said, “Is a woman.” My mad friend glanced at me and laughed.

  “Qué hubo?” a wife asked. “Everybody was well into the third reel of Eisenstein the Terrible before I could sort the boys from the girls.”

  A shadow fell across the table. The entire band of bulletheads was smiling hopefully.

  “Blow,” my friend said pleasantly in English. “These ladies don’t need any Cuban rubles.”

  They stared in mute Slavic incomprehension. The one in American clothes was opening his mouth when a small dark man elbowed through and bared brilliant teeth in a coprophagous grin.

  “I don’t believe it,” a wife said.

  The Byzantine had a way of popping up just as we were getting comfortable. No one had ever learned more of his past than he cared to divulge. These usually conflicting stories centered about a time machine and his birthdate some 500 years in a nonexistent future. I had seen him once as mate on a seagoing ferry, once as a Mexican army officer, once as an alleged Secret Service man. “What,” I asked, “Are you up to now?”

  In archaic Sephardic Spanish he said, “I conduct a tour.”

  A bullethead winked at a wife. The wife withered him. My mad friend coughed into his handkerchief.

  “You could pass for American,” I told the withered one.

  With drunken solemnity he said, “My primary allegiance, suh, is to the sovereign State of Texas.”

  What kind of travel agency would mix up a group like this?

  The Byzantine bullied them into seats at the next table. After a wistful glance at the wives, they reverted to some plosive gabble where each sentence sounded like an ultimatum. The Byzantine wiped his face with a scented handkerchief before muscling a chair into our table. “Some wild cattle,” he said, using the latin term for streetwalkers, “Will drift in and keep them happy.”

  The turtle butcher deposited a half empty bottle. Over poorly drawn terriers was printed GENUINE SCOCH WISKY. The Byzantine gulped a gleason-sized belt. His eyes widened like a freshly alimonied Californian’s, then he smiled again. “Poor children,” he sighed, “They get restless in this climate.”

  “Why bring them to this third rate Fort Zindemeuf?”

  Given half a chance, the Byzantine would never stop. “What,” my friend hastily asked; “Will you accomplish with this Mohole?”

  “Search me. My job is just keeping the radar going so we can center over the hole.” I sipped beer and tried to answer his question. “We ought to break through any day. Maybe it’ll tell us how the earth was created.”

  “It’s all in Genesis,” my mad friend said, and made a ritual gesture of exorcism.

  Wives snatched bags from the table. Staring, the Byzantine overfilled his glass and was still pouring booze over the table. It wasn’t like him to get potted this early in the story. “Is your liver giving out?” I asked.

  There was a deafening silence at the next table. Bulletheads stared at the doorway where the late sun silhouetted an anatomical ensemble.

  ‘Tiger, tiger burning bright,” my mad friend muttered.

  “Rascuachitlan has joined the 20th Century,” I decided.

  “How?” a wife inquired.

  “Wild cattle who must face the magistrate without consul or counsel actually dare appear without skirts.”

  The silhouette was joined by two thicker ones. As they fumbled their sunblinded way across the floor I realized it was the palomino. The turtle butcher sidetracked his tray and rushed to escort them. Some instinct told me that the tight trousered palomino was communicating.

  Bulletheads returned resignedly to their drinking, save one who gazed regretfully at what might have been. Even iron curtain countries issue dresses for female tourists. I wondered if this one had lost her luggage.

  “Break through what?” my mad friend asked. I wrenched myself back to the Mohole.

  “The mantle; Earth’s outer covering.”

  “What do you expect to find?”

  “No two geologists agree.”

  The Byzantine glared morosely into his glass. “Is not good scotch,” he growled.

  “Could you do an article on it for the new magazine?” my friend asked.

  The Byzantine brightened. “I have a story,” he said.

  “We don’t plan to run fiction.”

  “At least we won’t call it that.”

  “But this is true.”

  My mad friend said something in Arabic. The sound alone could have provoked another crusade.

  “It starts with an astronaut just beginning turnover to go into orbit,” the Byzantine persisted.

  “At least it isn’t sf,” a wife said.

  “Then just at the moment of substitution—”

  “The moment of what?”

  “When the Great Ones pull him through the inspection hole and start the whirligig so radar will think he’s orbiting.”

  My friend flagged frantically and the turtle butcher came to our table. Not, I noted, without a swift glance at the palomino. “This sheep dip,” my friend said, “Is doing permanent damage to the small gentleman’s cerebrum. Kindly bring something less noxious.” He slopped the Byzantine’s glass on the floor and tossed a match. There was a sputtering whoosh. “Won’t even burn with a blue flame,” my friend grunted.

  The Byzantine screwed his boina down on his head. “The Great Ones,” he said, “Are not too different. They’re just waiting for us to catch up.”

  “I demand immediate integration,” my mad friend murmured.

  “Where do these Great Ones come from?” a wife asked.

  The turtle butcher deposited a bottle. My mad friend studied the seal and label. He passed it to me, looking exactly as someone might who had not had a drink since a soul shattering episode in Nord Afrique. I poured a short snort. “Legitimo; the leprechauns washed their feet in this poteen.”

  The Byzantine poured another gleason-sized belt.

  “Primoroso!” he exclaimed, “But why tastes Irish so different from scotch?”

  While my mad friend explained how smoke is flued under the Irish floor and boils up through the rye in Scotland I studied the menu. It consisted of turtle.

  “Hungry?” I asked. My friend nodded.

  “Cahuamar a wife exclaimed, “It makes years that I do not taste.”

  “Is it fit for human consumption?” my friend asked.

  “It has six flavors,” the wife continued, “Part tastes like beef, some like veal, some like pork, some like chicken. Once during difficult times we made chorizo,”

  The palomino progenitor leaned toward me and in English said, “I know cahuama is turtle but could you tell me about it?” He shrugged apologetically and continued in California Spanish, “First time I’ve ever been here.”

  “This wife,” I cautioned, “Grew up in an isolated fishing village. If you’ve been eating naught but fish it’s possible that hawkbill sea turtle will taste like beef, lamb, chicken, or consumi madrileno. If you’ve eaten these regularly, I’m afraid its going to taste fishy. As for the chorizo, I prefer my sausage of dog or iguana.”

  The palomino was turning green.

  “I still want some,” a wife insisted.

  “And you shall have some,” my friend said, “But let’s cut out where the rest of us can have something approved by Good Housekeeping and Leviticus.”

  “Dees gawhamma,” a bullethead asked in what was probably English, “Ees tortull?”

  I nodded.

  They turned on the Byzantine with angry expostulations. My friend flagged the assistant bartender, pressed a wadded bill in his hand, and said, “We wish to eat elsewhere.”

  “I don’t know my way,” the palomino progenitor said, “Do you mind if we go along?”

  “Why not?”

  As long as the bulletheads and the Byzantine had attached themselves . . .

  “In ten minutes,” the turtle butcher said, “I finish.”

  We finished our drinks and, after endless waits before
die door marked DAMAS, exited. Under bug-haloed streetlights waited three calandrias, the open carriages which handled most of the local transportation problem.

  “Courage,” I consoled, “The horses look tired.”

  The turtle butcher had shed his apron and combed his hair. He maneuvered the old folks into a calandria and crowded next to the palomino. My mad friend and I made room for the Byzantine. “After the astronaut has been pulled through the hole,” he said, “We flashback and explain about the Great Ones.”

  “Vamonoooooooos!” the turtle butcher shouted in imitation of a train conductor. Drivers flicked whips and whistled between their teeth. We passed to an older part of town. Open air restaurants sweltered astraddle the cobbled street’s central gutter. “La zona our hackman said.

  “Did he say Zona?” a wife asked.

  “Zona de Tolerancia,” the turtle butcher explained.

  My friend and I looked at each other in growing consternation. “Wrong appetite,” my friend muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” the palomino progenitor twittered.

  “We are enfiladed by whorehouses,” I grunted.

  “No importa,” the turtle butcher said, “Excellent restaurants. Families come.”

  The palomino abruptly stooped. “Eight to five,” my mad friend murmured. She straightened again and though strained, the capris had not burst. From the gutter she held a small neatly wrapped package.

  A policeman strolled down the street, gravely acknowledging greetings from the open doorways. “Everything managed with decorum,” my friend said. “T’was indeed a sad day when the Parlor House disappeared from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Women’s Club.

  “So.” He turned to the turtle butcher. “Which eating establishment gives you a kickback or just happens to belong to your uncle?”

  The young man led us through a heavy door into the patio of a large building with heavy windowless walls to shut out the noisome stinks of the Great World. Its two stories gave onto a cool central patio where an ancient woman fussed over washtub sized copper cauldrons. A small grizzled man in loose white trousers and guayabera was digging. His spade liberated a jet of steam. My friend absently hummed a snatch of Te Deum.