Рафаэль Лафферти - The Best of R. A. Lafferty

“A little blood to bless me!” Strange Buffalo cried out, and the dying man splashed him with the rich and rigorous blood.

“For me also,” Kit-Fox begged, and the dying man smeared him with blood on the brow and breast and shoulders and loins. Two other friends, Conquering Sharp-Leaf and Adoration on the Mountain, came and were blessed with the blood. Then the man died and was dead.

“There is nothing like the fine rich blood to make a grass day sing in your head and in your body,” Strange Buffalo exulted. “On the straw days they try to hide the blood or they bleed in a dark corner.”

(What was all this about the grass days and the straw days? There was now a sordid dull-dream quality, a day-of-straw quality that kept trying to push itself in. “For a little while,” it begged, “to reestablish rigor and rule and reason for just a little while.” “Go away,” said the day-of-grass quality. “The wrestle was won this morning, and this is a day out of the count.”)

Kit-Fox and Strange Buffalo went in, past the booths and work areas of the coin-makers, past the stands of the eaglewing-bone-whistle makers, and into the shop which had roast dog for sale or give. Strange Buffalo had a shoulder of dog and Kit-Fox had a rack of ribs. There was fried bread also, and hominy and pumpkin. There was choc beer dipped with gourd dippers out of a huge crock. Thousands of people were there. It was crowded and it was supposed to be. The man named Mountain twinkled in the air. Why had they not noticed that about him before?

Folks rolled up the walls and tied them. Now the strong smoke and savor could visit all the places, and the folks in every shop could see into every other shop. It was full morning and beginning to get warm.

“But I still want to know the date,” Kit-Fox insisted, not quite converted to the day of grass, not quite clear of the head-fog that accompanies the sullen burning of the straw days. “What newspaper is this that doesn’t have a date? I want a date!”

“Look at it. It tells,” said Strange Buffalo.

“You want a date, honey?” the top of the newspaper writhed in sudden flickering of day-fire print. “Phone 582-8316 and I give you a real date.” Then the day-fire print was gone.

“I hope I can remember that number,” Kit-Fox said anxiously. “Strange Buffalo, where is there a telephone exchange?”

“They are the same and single and right outside past the booths,” Strange Buffalo said. “You were sitting upon it when I came upon you. And you, you old straw-head, you thought it was a bale of rags.”

Kit-Fox went outside, past the booths of the stone-buffalocoin makers and the clay-badger-coin makers, past the tents of the porcupine-quill dealers, to what he had thought was a bale of rags, a lively bale of rags as he now remembered it. Well, it was an ample lady in her glad rags and she was the telephone exchange lying there in the grass.

“I want to call number 582-8316,” Kit-Fox said uneasily.

“Here are a handful of dice,” the glad-rags lady told him. “Arrange them here in the short grass and make any number you want.”

“But proper dice have numbers only to six,” Kit-Fox protested, “and some of the numbers are higher.”

“Those are improper dice, they are crooked dice,” the lady said. “They have numbers more than six and numbers less than one. Number out your telephone number in the short grass with them.”

“Are you sure this is the way to dial a number?” Kit-Fox asked.

“Sure I’m not sure,” the lady said. “If you know a better way, do it that way. Worth a try, kid, worth a try.”

Kit-Fox numbered out his numbers in the short grass.

“Now what do I do?” he asked.

“Oh, talk into the telephone here.”

“That buckskin bag is a telephone?”

“Try it, try it. Drop a badger coin in and try it.”

Kit-Fox dropped the coin into the telephone. “Hello, hello,” he said.

“Hello, hello,” the lady answered. “That’s my number you called. You want a date, I wait for you awhile. Believe me, I get pretty tired of waiting pretty soon.”

“I don’t think this is a telephone exchange at all,” Kit-Fox grumbled.

“How else I can get guys so easy to drop badger-coins in a buckskin bag,” the lady said. “Come along, lover man, we will have a grand time this day.”

The lady was full-bodied and jolly. Kit-Fox remembered her from somewhere.

“Who are you?” he asked her.

“I’m your wife in the straw days,” she said, “but this is a grass day. They’re harder to find, but they’re more fun when you find one. They have something to do with grandfather’s brother and that wrestling of his.”

“Days of grass, days of straw,” Kit-Fox said as he embraced the lady passionately. “How about a hay day?”

“You mean a heyday? Those are special. We hope to make them more often, if only the wrestle is better. They’re fuller of juice than the grass days even. We try to make one now.”

They made a heyday together (together with a whole nation of people); and it went on and on. Day-Torch (that was the lady in the glad rags, the lady who was Kit-Fox’s wife during the straw days) bought an eagle-wing-bone whistle from a dealer, and she whistled happy haunting tunes on it. The people followed Kit-Fox and Day-Torch out of town, out to the oceans of buffalo grass and blue-stem grass. They torched everything that was dry and set the blue-black smoke to rolling. But the fundamental earth was too green to burn.

All mounted horses and took lances. They went out after buffalo. Word was brought to them that some of the newly armed buffalo bulls wanted to schedule battle with them. And the battle was a good one, with gushing blood and broken-open bodies, and many on each side were killed.

Strange Buffalo was killed. That big boisterous man died with a happy whoop.

“Strange Buffalo, indeed,” one of the buffalo bulls said. “He looks like a man to me.”

When the ground there had become too soggy and mired in blood, they adjourned the battle till the next day of grass, or the one after that. Bloody battles are fine, but who wants to spend a whole day on one? There are other things. Kit-Fox and Day-Torch and a number of other folks went to higher ground.

There was a roaring river on the higher ground, the biggest river ever and the loudest.

“Oh be quiet,” Day-Torch said. “You’ve got the tune wrong.” The great river ceased to roar. Day-Torch whistled the right tune on the eagle-wing-bone whistle. Then the river resumed its roaring, but in this right tune now. This mightiest of all rivers was named Cottonwood Creek.

Henry Drumhead added his beat to the tune. Then the folks had a rain dance till the sharp rain came down and drenched them through. They had a sun dance then, till the sun dried up the mud and began to burn the hides of the people. They had a cloud dance then. They had an antelope dance till enough antelope came to provide a slaughter and a feast. They had a pit dance, a fire dance, a snake dance, and an ashes dance: the ashes from pecan wood and hickory wood are a better condiment than salt to go with roast antelope. They had a feast dance. Then (after a while) a shakedown dance. They had a thunder dance and a mountain dance.

Say, it is spooky to come to the foot of the mountain itself and see the great gap between it and the ground! Rocks and boulders fell off of the bottom of the mountain and killed many of the people below. And, from the mountain itself, a broken, bloody, and headless torso fell down to the earth.

Helen Hightower—ah, that is to say the glad-rag lady Day-Torch—set up a rakish screaming, “The head, the head, somebody forgot the head!”

There was a thunderous grumbling, a mountain-shaking irritation, but the bloody head did come down and smash itself like a bursting pumpkin on the earth.