Charles Beaumont - Selected Stories Part 22

(_Better now; a little better; pa.s.sing_.) "Yeah."

"All right. The card you're holding . . . might it be the ace of spades?"

"G.o.d bless us, that's what it is, sure enough!"

"Thank you, sir, thank you. And now--"

The people of Two Forks listened to a speech made by a villainous looking dummy, they watched silver dollars appear from their vests, from their ears, from their hair . . .

(_The pain gathered in his heart, punched, and subsided_.) "If you found it on me, dammit, then I figure it's mine!"

And all the while, the children screeching, "_Please_ tell us! How'd you do that one, Dr. Silk?

Did it really come out of nowhere? Show us how! Please!"

Finally, it was time for the last magic. Perspiring, Dr. Silk told them about the years he had spent in Ethiopia, and how the maharaja had refused absolutely and how he'd had to creep into the palace in the dead of night, at great risk to his life, in order to steal the enchanted basket.

"Is it empty, sir?"

"Empty as it can be!"

"Nothing whatever inside? Hold it up for everybody to see, please. Nothing there?"

"Nope."

"I'd like a strong man, please. A man with muscles, who knows how to throw."

"Go on, Doody! Go on."

"Ah, thank you. Now then, I want you to take this empty basket and throw it straight up into the air, as high as you can. Is that clear?"

"Just toss it up in the air, you mean?"

"That's right. Ready? One . . . two . . . three . . . Throw it, sir!"The man threw the basket: it sailed upward. All eyes held it. Then there was an explosion, and eyes jerked back to Dr. Silk, who stood on the stage with the smoking pistol in his hand. The basket fell back to the stage, rolled, was still.

"Mr. Doody, would you care to remove the lid?"

The man poked tentatively at the basket's woven teapot lid. It fell aside.

"The Lord!"

And out of the basket shot a hundred snakes! Red ones, green ones, yellow ones--jerking, twitching serpentines, like a rainbow come suddenly apart.

Dr. Silk looked over at Obadiah, who grinned and winked and immediately hauled out the boxes of Wonderol.

The people stood smiling out as far as you could see. Bowing, Dr. Silk listened to their applause; he listened and felt the love as it cascaded over the oil lamps. And he knew it was the sweetest, most marvelous feeling that could be: he wished he could do more--something to repay them for this love which, if they knew it, kept him alive, nourished him, let the heart of Micah Jackson beat on. If he could make them see the magic around them, that would be a repayment--but how many ever saw this magic?

No, he couldn't do that for the people. Yet--.

"How'd you do it?" The high-voiced softly shrill question had become a chant. The children were ecstatic: "Tell us, tell us, please!"

Begging, imploring. Would he do this for them, would he, please?

Dr. Silk felt the applejack--"_Mr. Jackson, if you don't cut it out, you'll be dead in a year, I promise you_"--and his head seemed to dance with the children's question.

Then, all at once, he knew. He knew what he could give the people. He knew how he could say thank you and say good-by, gracefully, forever.

"All right," he called. "Gather round, now!"

"What are you gonna do? You gonna. . . show us how the magic's done? Are you?"

Dr. Silk looked at them. You know better than this, he thought, and he thought: It is because you're going to have the big tricks explained to you in a little while and you know how you'll feel and you want them to feel the same? No. It isn't. And it isn't a test, either. Or anything. Just a way to repay them.

"Yes," Dr. Silk said, "I am."

Obadiah's jaw fell. He walked over quickly. "You ain't really?" he said.

"I am. The children want it, Obadiah. I'll never be able to do anything else for them--you know that. And just look at their eyes."

"I wouldn't Doctor, swear to the Lord."

"He's gonna show us!"

The clapping began again. Everyone pressed close, expectant, waiting.

"Don't do it," Obadiah said. "Let's just sell us some medicine like we always do and scat."

But Dr. Silk was already reaching into the black box.

He removed the enchanted hoops. "Now I want you to pay close attention," he declared.

"We will." "Shhh!"

Carefully, then, with exaggerated simplicity, he showed how there were actually three hoops, how two of them fit together and where the third one came from.

"See?"

The children squealed incredulously and clapped their hands. Someone said, "I'll be d.a.m.ned, I will be d.a.m.ned."

"Show us more!"

Dr. Silk felt the pain again. "You want to see more?" he asked. "You really and truly do?"

"Yes!"

Obadiah grunted and sat down.

"Very well." And Dr. Silk went on to show them the magic cane, and how it wasn't magic at all.

"See," he smiled, "the flowers, which ain't real, they fold up, like this, inside the head. They're there all the time. Then I just press this here spring and it releases them. I bought it in Chicago at a warehouse. . ."One by one, carefully, Dr. Silk explained his miracles. The deck of cards that contained nothing but aces of spades; the eggs that really weren't eggs at all; the coffin that had no bottom . . .

"Just lift it off, you see, and put it back. Just like that!"

Gradually the squealings died. The audience thinned. But the Magic Man did not notice: he could think of nothing but the love the people had given him and how he _must_ repay them. So he did not feel the wrinkles jumping back into his face, or the dust of far-off places falling from his suit, or hear the way the crowd was turning quiet; or see the children's faces, with their hundred dimming lights.

When at last he had come to the enchanted basket--snakes coiled neatly in the flase bottom--Dr.

Silk stopped, and blinked away the wetness. "We're all magicians now," he said, his smile poised, waiting.

There were murmurs beyond the flickering of the lamps, and shufflings.

The people were silent. They looked at one another furtively, and a few giggled, while a few wore angry expressions.

Slowly, they began to disperse.

The people began to go away.

Dr. Silk felt the pain another time, more strongly than ever before: almost a new kind of pain, wrenching at his heart. He saw the boy with the freckles who had been with him this afternoon. The boy's eyes were moist. He paused, staring, then he wheeled and tore away into the shadows.

"But, I thought you wanted--" Dr. Silk saw the dark night faces clearly. No one looked back.

The bartender from the Wild Silver Saloon seemed about to say something--his face was red and embarra.s.sed, not angry--but then he turned and walked off too.

In moments the tiny stage, the wagon, stood alone. Dr. Silk did not move. He kept staring over the lights, just standing there, staring.

"Boss, let's go. Let's us go."

"Obadiah--" Dr. Silk took a hold of the Negro's thin shoulders. "They didn't actually believe in me, did they? Did they honestly believe I could--"

Obadiah shrugged. "Let's us get on out of here," he said. Then he began to pick up the tarnished wonders, quickly, and hurl them into the box.

"All right." Dr. Silk looked down at his hands, at the lint-flecked, worn black suit, at the cracking patent-leather shoes. "All right." He thought of the children and all their dying faces, of the men and their faces--hard and astonished and dumbfounded as if they'd heard G.o.d snore, and watched Him get drunk, and found that He was no different from them, and so, once more, they were left with nothing to believe in.

He felt the pain come rushing.

"Why? Lord, tell me that."

Dr. Silk went through the curtained tunnel back into the wagon and sat down on the straw pallet and sat there, quietly, and did not move even when the wagon lurched and began to sway.

After a long time, he took off the black suit, the green vest, the white shirt. He got the wax out of his mustaches.

Then he went to the window and stood there, looking out over the prairie, the moon-drenched, cool eternal prairie, moving past him. For hours, for miles.

And while he stood there, the hurting grew; it came back into his body, piercing, hard, familiar hurting.

"Why?"

The wagon stopped.

"You feel all right now, Doctor?" Obadiah held onto the door. He looked frightened and lost.

The Magic Man studied his friend; then he snorted and leaned back and closed his eyes. He tried not to think of the people. He tried not to think of Micah Jackson asking _How's it done?_ and then learning as he would, so soon now, so very soon.

"It reminds me of the time," he said softly, "in Calcutta, when I went six months without hearing the sound of a human voice . . ."Obadiah walked over to the pallet and sat down, smiling. "I don't recall you ever mentioned that experience to me, Dr. Silk," he said. "Tell me about it, would you, please?"

Introduction to

FAIR LADY.

by George Clayton Johnson

When I was offered an opportunity to select a story of Charles Beaumont's for this collection, I immediately thought of "Fair Lady."

It may seem an odd choice.

As many of you know it is a slight story that takes up only 5 pages in Beaumont's 183 page _THE HUNGER And Other Stories_, his first story collection. Before being published in _THE HUNGER_, "Fair Lady" had never been printed before, written while Beaumont was still an unknown young man striving to become a published writer.

A mainstream story like "Fair Lady" has a tough time of it in the marketplace, even though it may have great merit, simply because it doesn't fit into a convenient genre. Its very ordinariness and simplicity works against it. And yet, there is a lot of fragile magic packed in these few plain pages. The story's tone perfectly matches its subject matter, and one feels as he reads it that each word has been chosen with special precision to carry a freightload of delicate a.s.sociations. Its pace is slow and yet the story is a model of terseness and suspense containing that quality which people call "cla.s.sic" when they encounter it.

"Fair Lady" is Charles Beaumont's tenderest short story.

It is about the joys and perils of living in a dreamworld and deals in what Beaumont called "The Greater Truth."

Cold facts never had much appeal to Beaumont. He was aware of them, but would search around and over and behind them looking for something better. It was one of his greatest talents as a storymaker, what William F. Nolan called "thinking sideways"--a way of deliberately ignoring obvious connections to look for the unlikely and to be able to make an emotion-laden case for it--to discover the warm facts that often made the cold ones irrelevant. "If you want your castles to last forever, make them out of sand," he Once told me.

I know from my own experience that many of a beginning writer's first stories are written blindly, on speculation, often at night on the kitchen table and submitted, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope to addresses culled from the back pages of popular magazines. When the story comes back more frayed than before with a printed rejection form that gives no reason for the rejection the writer will re-examine the ma.n.u.script again seeking the flaw that has betrayed him, trying to see with fresh eyes and, having decided to alter it he must retype it again before submitting it to a new potential market to have it returned again and again.

A would-be writer must be very devoted to his goal of publication and be prepared for a lot of emotional punishment along the way.If he perseveres he will learn to rewrite, which is the art of it.

As anyone will tell you who has never written a story, it is a simple thing to do. You just put a sheet of paper in a typewriter and let the words flow. The result is a story that reads as though it wrote itself.

As anyone will tell you who has written a story, it is not quite that simple. There are usually many revisions, editings, and re-writings necessary in order to make a story appear as though there were little effort involved in its creation.

"Fair Lady" gives evidence of such close rewriting and, oddly for a story with so few events or characters, is very strongly plotted in that the reader quickly senses that the writer knows his destination exactly although it may be an unexpected one, and, although he may take a deceptive path to get there, and further, that one will learn something important if he reads to the end.

Rereading this story in order to write an introduction to it I was struck by how much of the story I remembered from my first reading of it almost 30 years ago--how much detail, how many dazzling lines and flashes of insight were etched into my mind--to me the sign of a first-rate work.

The ingredients are simple: Elouise Baker, an elderly schoolteacher ('. . . unbeautiful and old. And what is a thing after all, when it is no longer young, if it is not old?'), and Oliver O'Shaugnessy, a genial bus driver ('. . - a broad burly man behind the wheel who smiled at her with his eyes.), and an early morning bus ride, but from these familiar elements Beaumont has fashioned a deeply felt excursion into the human heart, reaching out to touch your emotions at will ('. . . and who could speak with her about love and be on safe ground?).