Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

Marón.

As for the fruit bread for the Feast of St. Joseph—

“Whats a matta you no shame?” screamed Philomena Rappini, of the Fresh Home-Made Sausage Today Market. “Put a some clothes on! You some kine comuniss? Marón, I no look!” But between her fingers, plump and be-ringed, ahaah, oh ho: she did look! And why not? So there he was, dark and well-thewed and imperially slim.

(Well-hung, too.)

“Your pardon, Matron, and a daughter to a Jeddak of Jeddaks I perceive you must be by your grace and slender high-arched feet: may I place my sword in pawn? A message to Ed Burroughs? Magnetic telegraph message to muh newew Ed Burroughs? Jest tell him it’s Uncle John. John Cyarter.

“Of Mars.”

As to how he had gotten here, here , I mean there , in The Village, across the countless leagues and aeons and ions of interstellar freezing space, who knows? Who knows, in fact, what song the sirens sang? Who gives a shit?

When one tired of the coffee-house scene in The Village, there was always The Museum. And by “The Museum” neither I nor any denizen of the Old Village Scene as it then obtained meant one of the sundry establishments displaying genuine old art or artifacts or modern exempla of the Dribble, Splotch, Drool, or Ejaculate, School(s): no. We meant The Museum, there on Great Jones Street, Bar num’s Museum. A mere shadow of itself, you say? May be. May have been . Old William Phineas, Jr. himself was then alive, great-nephew to the Yankee Showman himself. Billy Finn. The most recently painted sign was the one reading: Veterans of the World War, One-Half Price —and to this had been added by pen a new s after War , plus the words, in between lines, And of the Korean Conflict . These letters had a pronounced wobble, so indicative of the State of the Nation as well as of old Bill Barnum’s hand not being quite so firm as it once was. Inside? Jumbo’s hay-rack. A corset belonging to one of the Dolly Sisters. Anna Held’s bath-tub plus one of her milk bills for same. Genuine rhinestone replica of the famed Bicycle Set which Diamond Jim had given Lillian Russell. William Jennings Bryan’s hat. Calvin Cool idge’s hat. Old Cool Cal. The oldest wombat in the world, right this way, folks.

And so on.

Across the street the incredible wooden Scotchman, no mere Indian being good enough, was the emblematic figure in front of the establishment of MENDEL MOSSMAN, SNUFF AND SEGARS, also Plug, Cut-Plug, Apple Twist and Pigtail Twist . Also (though not openly designated as such, of course), behind the third mahogany door with opaque crystal glass window from the left, an entrance to a station of the Secret Subway System.

Officially, no, it was not officially called the Secret Subway System; officially it was called Wall Street, Pine Street, Bowling Green and Boulevard Line. The Boulevard, ask any old-timer in them days, was upper Broadway. Ask any one or more old-timer as to at what point “upper” Broadway begins: watch them flail at each other with their walking-sticks and ear-trumpets.

There is a Secret Station in the State Bank Notes Registry Room of the old Counting House (Where no state bank notes have been registered since about 1883, owing to a confiscatory Federal Tax on the process).

There is a Secret Station in the marble men’s room of the original Yale Club.

There is one beneath Trinity Church and one behind the North River Office of the State Canal Authority and one next to the Proving Room (Muskets) of the Mercantile Zouaves and Armory.

There are a few others. Find out for yourself…if you can.

The fare is and has been and always will be, one silver dollar each way. Or. For a six-day ticket good for round trips, one half-eagle (a five-dollar gold piece, to the ignorant).

The ticket agents are the color of those fungi which grow in the basements of old wood-and-stone houses on Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. It is intimated that these agents once held offices of responsibility above grounds, but Blotted Their Copy Books.

One of them is named Crater.

Crater, if you just think about it a moment, is very much like Carter.

La Belle Belinda lived upstairs over Mossman’s, which she insisted had the loveliest smell in the world.

And there are those who say that this distinction belonged to The Fair Belinda herself.

The Sodality of the Decent Dress (a branch of the Legion of Utmost Purity) had just let out into the street after its monthly meeting at Our Lady of Leghorn, and was threatening to cut up rough with John Carter: just then Gabriel C., Wendell G., Edward and myself chanced by; we caught his arcane references at once — although, of course, we did not believe a word of them, still, it was a madness which we not only recognized but respected — and, under pretense of assisting the man to send his message, we spirited him away; after having first clothed his virility under Wendell’s naval cloak.

We told the man that it had belonged to the Commanding Officer of the Confederate Ram Pamunkey. A faint mist of tears rose in his sparkling eyes, and his protests died away on his lips. His finely-chiseled lips.

“They’re after me, boys, you know,” he said, simply. “But they mustn’t find me. Not until I’ve obtained a replacement for the wore-out part of the oxygen machine. All Mars depends on that, you know.”

Exchanging significant glances, we assured him that we did indeed know.

We further assured him that we would with despatch arrange for sleeping silks and furs; meanwhile he consented to doss down for a much-needed nap on Gabriel’s Murphy bed (for once, not occupied by a listing wife). Edward agreed to stand by. Just In Case.

There we left him, his strong chest rhythmically rising and falling, and stepped down to the courtyard, where we exchanged a few more significant glances, also shaking our lips and pursing our heads. We were thus occupied when Mary Teresa passed by, holding Kevin Mathew Aloysius, her great-grand-nephew, in a grip which would have baffled Houdini.

“Stop tellin them lies,” she was adjuring him, “or yez’ll burn in Hell witt the Prodissint Bastidds.”

“No I won’t either, because I’m still below the age of reason, nyaa, and anyway, I did too seen it, Aunty Mary T’resa, it was all tall as the second-floor window and it looked in at me but I made the sign of the cross, I blessed myself, so it went away,” said Kevin Mathew Aloysius, rubbing some more snot on his sleeve.

Wendell, august and benevolent, asked, “What was it that you saw, my man?”

Kevin Mathew Aloysius looked at him, his eyes the same color as the stuff bubbling from his nostrils. “A mawnster,” he said. “A real mawnster, cross my heart and hope to die. It was green, Mr. Garrett. And it had four arms. And tux growing out of its mouth.”

Did some faint echo, some dim adumbration or vibration of this reach the sleeping man? Edward said some had. Edward said that the sleeping man stirred, half-roused himself, flung out an arm, and, before falling back into deep slumber, cried out:

“Hark! Was that the squeal of an angry thoat? Or the sound of a hunting banth in the hills? Slave! My harness — and my sword! ”

When I began corresponding with Avram, he was living in Belize, still British Honduras in those days. I mention this because Belize — under the alias of “British Hidalgo”—is not merely the setting for Avram’s stories about Jack Limekiller, but is in fact the real protagonist of these tales. We never learn much more about Limekiller than that he is Canadian, pushing thirty: an amiable, adaptable man who, longing for adventure and a new life in tropical waters, sold his car, bought a small sailboat, and now lives aboard it, mostly in the Port Cockatoo harbor, in company with his first mate — a tailless, off-white cat. He seems a pleasant sort, and can play a bit of banjo.