Can and Can'tankerous (22 page)
Read Can and Can'tankerous Online
Authors: Harlan Ellison (R)
“Miz Brahm?”
“Uh, yeah…”
“We’re here with a search warrant and some legal folks, that lady and gentleman there…” He nodded over his shoulder at the pair of black suits, “…they’ve been okay’d by the Court to go through your propitty, lookin’ for some books your son took to sell on ebay or whatever, for a lady back East in New York. Is Billy here?”
“Billy don’t live here no more.” She started to close the door. The Sheriff pushed his palm against the screen door, making an oval depression. “I asked you if Billy was here, Ma’am.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“May we come in, please?”
“You g’wan, get offa my property!”
At the same moment Miz Brahm was ordering the Sheriff of Fremont, Nebraska off her porch, in Mbuji-Mayi, near the Southern border between The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia, a representative of Doctors Without Borders found his way to a small vegetable garden outside three hut-residences beyond a wan potato field. He carried two linen-wrapped packages, and when a nut-brown old man appeared at the entrance to the largest hut, he extended the small parcels, made the usual obeisance, and backed away quietly. Miz Brahm was still arguing with the Nebraska State Troopers and the men with shovels, and the duo in black suits, but mostly with the Sheriff of Fremont, Nebraska, nowhere near Zambia. There was, however, thunder in the near-distance and darkening clouds. The air whipped frenziedly. A drop of rain spattered on a windshield.
The argument would not end. Inevitably, the officers of the law grew impatient with diversionary answers, and yanked the screen door away from its rusted latch. It fell on the porch, Miz Brahm tried to push the front door closed on the men, but they staved her back, and rushed in. Shouts, screaming ensued.
A hairy, unshaven man with three pot-bellies charged out of a back hall, a tire iron double-fisted behind his head; he was yowling. One of the State Troopers clotheslined him, sending him spawling onto his back in the passageway. Miz Brahm kept up a strident shrieking in the background; one of the attorneys—when attention was elsewhere—chopped her across the throat, and she settled lumpily against a baseboard.
“That ain’t Billy,” Miz Brahm managed to gargle, phlegm and spittle serving as consonants. “Thas his
broth
-er!”
One of the Troopers yelled, “Let’s get ’em
both
!” He pulled his sidearm and snarled at the downed tri-belly, “Where’s yer brother?”
“You ain’t gonna take
neither
of ’em!” screamed the old lady: a foundry noon-whistle shriek; she was pulling a rusty hatchet out from behind a chifferobe. The Trooper kneecapped her. The hatchet hit the linoleum.
Four hours later two of the men with shovels, who had been stacking and restacking magazines, digging out rat nests and spading up rotted floorboards, found Billy hiding in the back corner of the last storage quonset behind the property. He tried to break through the wall, and one of the laborers slammed the spade across the back of his head. The search went on for the rest of that day, into the next, before the attorneys were satisfied. The weed-overgrown property was a labyrinth filled with tumbling-down shelves and closets, bookcases, cardboard boxes piled so high that the ones on the bottom had been crushed in: vintage pulp fiction magazines, comic books in Mylar sleeves, corded sheaves of newspapers, and the forty-seven pieces Billy had cozened out of the old woman Back East.
The next day, the entire family was in custody, and at the same time, but eight hours later by the clock, Greenwich Mean Time, the man in London who had been reading “The Red-Headed League” closed the book, looked long at the wonderful painting of an ancient butterfly above the mantel, smiled and said, “Ah, so
that’s
how it all comes together. ‘
Omne ignotum pre magnifico
.’ Clever.”
This story is dedicated to the memory
of my friend, Ray Bradbury.
Afterword
“He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes” was a conflation of the winds of time blowing exactly at that moment when I was able to do it—I’d finally gotten smart enough to do that story, and the people who wanted a story were exactly the people for whom that story had to be written.
As I wrote it, it unfolded before me. When I got done, I went back to go over it very carefully; I’d been writing it so fast I had left out a word or two, and when I added the word, it all came together. I realized at the end that this is what Churchill called “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It is a Chinese puzzle box of a story. The first clue is in the title.
It’s not a statue that you can walk around and look at. It’s like looking at Picasso’s
Guernica
; it is something other than poster art. This story goes on and on and on. Go back to it again and again. It’s supposed to perplex you until you’ve unraveled it.
Everybody says,
“Oh, my god! The recovery’s been miraculous!
It’s the same Harlan.”
Well, it’s not.
I’m discovering impairments.
When you ask me a question, instead of
being succinct and answering it directly,
I go the long way ’round Robin Hood’s barn.
I’m d r i f t i n g
That’s one of the symptoms of the stroke—
I drift a lot;
all the tales seem interlocking now.
Chronology of Books by Harlan Ellison
®
1958-2015
RETROSPECTIVES:
ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW:
A 10-Year Survey
[1971]
THE ESSENTIAL ELLISON:
A 35-Year Retrospective
(Edited by Terry Dowling, with Richard Delap & Gil Lamont) [1987]
THE ESSENTIAL ELLISON:
A 50-Year Retrospective
(Edited by Terry Dowling) [2001]
UNREPENTANT:
A Celebration of the Writing of Harlan Ellison
(Edited by Robert T. Garcia) [2010]
The Top of the Volcano:
The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison
[2014]
OMNIBUS VOLUMES:
THE FANTASIES OF HARLAN ELLISON [1979]
DREAMS WITH SHARP TEETH [1991]
THE GLASS TEAT & THE OTHER GLASS TEAT [2011]
GRAPHIC NOVELS:
DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND (Adaptation with Marshall Rogers) [1986]
NIGHT AND THE ENEMY (Adaptation with Ken Steacy) [1987]
VIC AND BLOOD:
The Chronicles of a Boy and His Dog
(Adaptation by Richard Corben) [1989]
HARLAN ELLISON’S DREAM CORRIDOR,
Volume One
[1996]
VIC AND BLOOD:
The Continuing Adventures of a Boy and His Dog
(Adaptation by Richard Corben) [2003]
HARLAN ELLISON’S DREAM CORRIDOR,
Volume Two
[2007]
PHOENIX WITHOUT ASHES (Art by Alan Robinson and John K. Snyder III) [2010/2011]
HARLAN ELLISON’S 7 AGAINST CHAOS (Art by Paul Chadwick and Ken Steacy) [2013]
THE HARLAN ELLISON DISCOVERY SERIES:
STORMTRACK by James Sutherland [1975]
AUTUMN ANGELS by Arthur Byron Cover [1975]
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE by Terry Carr [1976]
ISLANDS by Marta Randall [1976]
INVOLUTION OCEAN by Bruce Sterling [1978]
NOVELS:
WEB OF THE CITY [1958]
THE SOUND OF A SCYTHE [1960]
SPIDER KISS [1961]
SHORT NOVELS:
DOOMSMAN [1967]
ALL THE LIES THAT ARE MY LIFE [1980]
RUN FOR THE STARS [1991]
MEFISTO IN ONYX [1993]
COLLABORATIONS:
PARTNERS IN WONDER:
Collaborations with 14 Other Wild Talents
[1971]
THE STARLOST:
Phoenix Without Ashes
(With Edward Bryant) [1975]
MIND FIELDS:
33 Stories Inspired by the Art of Jacek Yerka
[1994]
I HAVE NO MOUTH, AND I MUST SCREAM:
The Interactive CD-Rom
(Co-Designed with David Mullich and David Sears) [1995]
“REPENT, HARLEQUIN!” SAID THE TICKTOCKMAN (Rendered with paintings by Rick Berry) [1997]
2000
X
(Host and Creative Consultant of National Public Radio episodic series) [2000–2001]
HARLAN ELLISON’S MORTAL DREADS (Dramatized by Robert Armin) [2012]
THE DISCARDED (With Josh Olson) [Forthcoming]
AS EDITOR:
DANGEROUS VISIONS [1967]
NIGHTSHADE & DAMNATIONS:
The Finest Stories of Gerald Kersh
[1968]
AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS [1972]
MEDEA: HARLAN’S WORLD [1985]
DANGEROUS VISIONS (The 35th Anniversary Edition) [2002]
JACQUES FUTRELLE’S “THE THINKING MACHINE” STORIES [2003]
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:
THE DEADLY STREETS [1958]
SEX GANG (As “Paul Merchant”) [1959]
A TOUCH OF INFINITY [1960]
CHILDREN OF THE STREETS [1961]
GENTLEMAN JUNKIE
and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation
[1961]
ELLISON WONDERLAND [1962]
PAINGOD
and Other Delusions
[1965]
I HAVE NO MOUTH & I MUST SCREAM [1967]
FROM THE LAND OF FEAR [1967]
LOVE AIN’T NOTHING BUT SEX MISSPELLED [1968]
THE BEAST THAT SHOUTED LOVE AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD [1969]
OVER THE EDGE [1970]
ALL THE SOUNDS OF FEAR (British publication only) [1973]
DE HELDEN VAN DE HIGHWAY
(Dutch publication only) [1973]
APPROACHING OBLIVION [1974]
THE TIME OF THE EYE (British publication only) [1974]
DEATHBIRD STORIES [1975]
NO DOORS, NO WINDOWS [1975]
HOE KAN IK SCHREEUWEN ZONDER MOND
(Dutch publication only) [1977]
STRANGE WINE [1978]
SHATTERDAY [1980]
STALKING THE NIGHTMARE [1982]
ANGRY CANDY [1988]
ENSAMVÄRK
(Swedish publication only) [1992]
JOKES WITHOUT PUNCHLINES [1995]
BCE 3BYKN CTPAXA (ALL FEARFUL SOUNDS) (Unauthorized Russian publication only) [1997]
THE WORLDS OF HARLAN ELLISON (Authorized Russian publication only) [1997]
SLIPPAGE:
Precariously Poised, Previously Uncollected Stories
[1997]
KOLETIS, KES KUULUTAS ARMASTUST MAAILMA SLIDAMES
(Estonian publication only) [1999]
LA MACHINE AUX YEUX BLEUS
(French publication only) [2001]
TROUBLEMAKERS [2001]
PTAK OEMIERCI
(THE BEST OF HARLAN ELLISON) (Polish publication only) [2003]
DEATHBIRD STORIES (expanded edition) [2011]
PULLING A TRAIN [2012]
GETTING IN THE WIND [2012]
Coffin Nails [2015]
Pebbles from the Mountain [2015]
Can & Can’tankerous [2015]