Bradbury, Ray - Chapbook 18 (3 page)

 
          
Harris set out for M.
Munigant’s
office late in the day. Walking for half an hour
until he found the address, he caught sight of the name M. MUNI-GANT initialed
in ancient, flaking gold on a glass plate outside the building. Then, his bones
seemed to explode from their moorings, blasted and erupted with pain, Blinded,
he staggered away. When he opened his eyes again he had rounded a corner. M.
Munigant’s
office was out of sight.

 
          
The pains ceased.

 
          
M.
Munigant
was the man to help him. If the sight of his name would cause so titanic a
reaction, of course M.
Munigant
must
be just
the man.

 
          
But, not today.
Each time he tried to return to that office, the terrible pains look hold.
Perspiring, he had to give up and swayed into a cocktail bar.

 
          
Moving across the dim lounge, he
wondered briefly if a lot of blame couldn’t be put on M.
Munigant’s
shoulders. After all, it was
Munigant
who’d first
drawn specific attention to his skeleton, and let the psychological impact of
it slam home! Could M.
Munigant
be using him for some
nefarious purpose? But what purpose?
Silly to suspect him.
Just a little doctor.
Trying to be
helpful.
Munigant
and his jar of breadsticks.
Ridiculous.
M.
Munigant
was okay, okay…

 
          
There was a sight within the cocktail
lounge to give him hope.
A large, fat man, round as a
butterball, stood drinking consecutive beers at the bar.
Now
there
was a successful man. Harris repressed a desire to go up, clap the fat man’s
shoulder, and inquire as to how he’d gone about impounding his bones. Yes, the
fat man’s skeleton was luxuriously closeted. There were pillows of fat here,
resilient bulges of it there, with several round chandeliers of fat under his
chin. The poor skeleton was lost; it could never fight clear of that blubber.
It might have tried once—but not now, overwhelmed, not a bony echo of the fat
man’s supporter remained.

 
          
Not without envy, Harris approached
the fat man as one might cut across the bow of an ocean liner. Harris ordered a
drink, drank it, and then dared to address the fat man:

 
          
‘Glands?’

 
          
‘You talking to me?’ asked the fat
man.

 
          
‘Or is there a special diet?’
wondered Harris. ‘I beg your pardon, but, as you see, I’m down.
Can’t seem to put on any weight.
I’d like a stomach like
that one of yours. Did you grow it because you were afraid of something?’

 
          
‘You,’ announced the fat man, ‘are
drunk. But—I like drunkards.’ He ordered more drinks. ‘Listen close, I’ll tell
you. Layer by layer,’ said the fat man, ‘twenty years, man and boy, I built
this.’ He held his vast stomach like a globe of the world, teaching his
audience its gastronomical geography. ‘It was no overnight circus. The tent was
not raised before dawn on the wonders installed within. I have cultivated my
inner organs as if they were thoroughbred dogs, cats, and other animals. My
stomach is a fat pink Persian tom slumbering, rousing at intervals to purr,
mew, growl, and cry for chocolate
titbits
. I feed it
well, it will ’most sit up for me. And, my dear fellow, my intestines are the
rarest pure-bred Indian anacondas you ever viewed in the sleekest, coiled, fine
and ruddy health. Keep ’
em
in prime, I do, all my
pets.
For fear of something?
Perhaps.’

 
          
This called for another drink for
everyone.

 
          
‘Gain weight?’ The fat man savored
the words on his tongue. ‘Here’s what you do: get yourself a quarreling bird of
a wife, a baker’s dozen of relatives who can flush a covey of troubles out from
behind the
veriest
molehill. Add to these a
sprinkling of business associates whose prime motivation is snatching your last
lonely
quid,
and you are well on your way to getting
fat. How so? In no time you’ll begin subconsciously building fat betwixt
yourself and them.
A buffer epidermal state, a cellular wall.
You’ll soon find that eating is the only fun on earth. But one needs to be
bothered by outside sources. Too many people in this world haven’t enough to
worry about, then they begin picking on themselves, and they lose weight. Meet
all of the vile, terrible people you can possibly meet, and pretty soon you’ll
be adding the good old fat!’

 
          
And with that advice, the fat man
launched himself out into the dark tide of night, swaying mightily and
wheezing.

 
          
‘That’s exactly what Dr Burleigh told
me, slightly changed,’ said Harris thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that trip to
Phoenix
,
now, at this time—’

 
          
The trip from
Los
Angeles
to
Phoenix
was a sweltering one, crossing, as it did, the
Mojave Desert
on a broiling yellow day. Traffic was thin and inconstant, and for long
stretches there would not be a car on the road for miles ahead or behind.
Harris twitched his fingers on the steering wheel. Whether or not
Creldon
, in
Phoenix
,
lent him the money he needed to start his business, it was still a good thing
to get away, to put distance behind.

 
          
The car moved in the hot sluice of
desert wind. The one
Mr
H. sat inside the other
Mr
H. Perhaps both perspired. Perhaps both were miserable.

 
          
On a curve, the
inside
Mr
H. suddenly constricted the outer flesh,
causing him to jerk forward on the hot steering wheel.

 
          
The car plunged off the road into
boiling sand and turned half over.

 
          
Night came, a wind rose, the road was
lonely and silent. The few cars that passed went swiftly on their way, their
view obstructed.
Mr
Harris lay unconscious, until
very late he heard a wind rising out of the desert, felt the sting of little
sand needles on his cheeks, and opened his eyes.

 
          
Morning found him gritty-eyed and
wandering in thoughtless senseless circles, having, in his delirium, got away
from the road. At
noon
he sprawled in
the poor shade of a bush. The sun struck him with a keen sword edge, cutting
through to his—bones. A vulture circled.

 
          
Harris’s patched lips cracked open.
‘So that’s it?’ he whispered,
redeyed
,
bristle-cheeked. ‘One way or another you’ll walk me, starve me, thirst me, kill
me.’ He swallowed dry burrs of dust. ‘Sun cook off my flesh so you can peek
out. Vultures lunch off me, and there you’ll lie, grinning.
Grinning
with victory.
Like a bleached xylophone strewn and played by vultures
with an ear for odd music. You’d like that.
Freedom.’

 
          
He walked on through a landscape that
shivered and bubbled in the direct pour of sunlight; stumbling, falling flat,
lying to feed himself little mouths of fire. The air was blue alcohol flame,
and vultures roasted and steamed and glittered as they flew in glides and
circles.
Phoenix
.
The road.
Car.
Water.
Safety.

 
          
‘Hey!’

 
          
Someone called from way off in the
blue alcohol flame.

 
          
Mr
Harris
propped himself up.

 
          
‘Hey!’

 
          
The call was repeated.
A crunching of footsteps, quick.

 
          
With a cry of unbelievable relief,
Harris rose, only to collapse again into the arms of someone in a uniform with
a badge.

 
          
The car tediously hauled, repaired,
Phoenix
reached,
Harris
found himself in such an unholy state
of mind that the business transaction was a numb pantomime. Even when he got
the loan and held the money in his hand, it meant nothing. This Thing within
him like a hard white sword in a scabbard tainted his business, his eating,
colored his love for Clarisse, made it unsafe to trust an automobile; all in
all this Thing had to be put in its place. The desert incident had brushed too
close. Too near the bone, one might say with an ironic twist of one’s mouth.
Harris heard himself thanking
Mr
Creldon
,
dimly, for the money. Then he turned his car and motored back across the long
miles, this time cutting across to
San Diego
,
so he would miss that desert stretch between
El Centro
and
Beaumont
. He drove north along
the coast. He didn’t trust that desert. But—careful! Salt waves boomed, hissing
on the beach outside Laguna, Sand, fish and
crustacea
would cleanse his bones as swiftly as vultures. Slow down on the curves over
the surf.

 
          
Damn, he was sick!

 
          
Where to turn?
Clarisse?
Burleigh?
Munigant
?
Bone specialist.
Munigant
.
Well?

 
          
‘Darling!’
Clarisse kissed him. He winced at the solidness of the teeth and jaw behind the
passionate exchange.

 
          
‘Darling,’ he said, slowly, wiping
his lips with his wrist, trembling.

 
          
‘You look thinner; oh, darling, the
business deal—?’

 
          
‘It went through, I guess. Yes, it
did.’

 
          
She kissed him again. They ate a
slow, falsely cheerful dinner, with Clarisse laughing and encouraging him. He
studied the phone; several times he picked it up indecisively,
then
laid it down.

 
          
His wife walked in, putting on her
coat and hat. ‘Well, sorry, but I have to leave.’ She pinched him on the cheek.
‘Come on now, cheer up! I’ll be back from Red Cross in three hours. You lie
around and snooze. I simply
have
to go.’

 
          
When Clarisse was gone, Harris dialed
the phone, nervously.

 
          
‘M.
Munigant
?’

 
          
The explosions and the sickness in
his body after he set the phone down were unbelievable. His bones were racked
with every kind of pain, cold and hot, he had ever thought of or experienced in
wildest nightmare. He swallowed all the aspirin he could find, in an effort to
stave off the assault; but when the doorbell finally rang an hour later, he
could not move: he lay weak and exhausted, panting, tears streaming down his
cheeks.

 
          
‘Come in! Come in, for God’s sake!’

 
          
M.
Munigant
came in. Thank God the door was unlocked.

 
          
Oh, but
Mr
Harris looked terrible. M.
Munigant
stood in the
center of the living room, small and dark. Harris nodded. The pains rushed
through him, hitting him with large iron hammers and hooks. M.
Munigant’s
eyes glittered as he saw Harris’s protuberant
bones. Ah, he saw that
Mr
Harris was now
psychologically prepared for aid. Was it not so? Harris nodded again, feebly,
sobbing. M.
Munigant
still whistled when he talked;
something about his tongue and the whistling. No matter. Through his shimmering
eyes Harris seemed to see M.
Munigant
shrink, get
smaller. Imagination, of course, Harris sobbed out his story of the
Phoenix
trip. M.
Munigant
sympathized. This skeleton was a—a
traitor! They would fix him for once and for all!

 
          
‘
Mr
Munigant
,’ sighed Harris, faintly, ‘I—I never noticed
before. Your tongue, Round,
tubelike
, Hollow?
My eyes, Delirious.
What do I do?’

 
          
M.
Munigant
whistled softly, appreciatively, coming closer. If
Mr
Harris would relax in his chair, and open his mouth? The lights were switched
off. M.
Munigant
peered into Harris’s dropped jaw.
Wider, please? It had been so hard, that first visit, to help Harris, with both
body and bone in revolt. Now, he had cooperation from the flesh of the man,
anyway, even if the skeleton protested. In the darkness, M.
Munigant’s
voice got small, small, tiny,
tiny
. The whistling
became high and shrill.
Now.
Relax,
Mr
Harris, NOW!