Wolfe, Gene: The Best of Gene Wolfe

T

aking off.

We are airborne at last. Oh, Mary! Mary starlight!

L

angi and I will take Adam to his grandfather’s, then come back and stay with Mark (Brisbane or Melbourne) until he is well enough to come home.

The stewardess is serving lunch, and for the first time since it happened, I think I may be able to eat more than a mouthful. One stewardess, twenty or thirty people, which is all this plane will hold. News of the shark attack is driving tourists off the island.

As you see, I can print better with my left hand. I should be able to write eventually. The back of my right hand itches, even though it is gone. I wish I could scratch it.

Here comes the food.

A

n engine has quit. Pilot says no danger.

H

e is out there, swimming beside the plane. I watched him for a minute or more until he disappeared into a thunderhead. “The tree is my hat.” Oh, God.

Oh my God!

My blood brother.

What can I do?

AFTERWORD

Some things you may have thought fantastic in this are simply true. There really were Japanese detachments left behind on various Pacific islands, marooned detachments that stayed right where they were until the local people turned on them and killed those left alive.

And there really are mysterious ruins on many South Pacific islands.

This story was done as a radio play by Lawrence Santoro, with Neil Gaiman playing Rev. Robbins. Gahan Wilson was our announcer—but when we closed our eyes it was Boris Karloff. There was weird music, and the whole production was far grander than I could have imagined. Thank you, Larry!

HAS ANYBODY SEEN JUNIE MOON?

T

he reason I am writing this is to find my manager. I think her name is really probably June Moon or something, but nobody calls her that. I call her Junie and just about everybody else calls her Ms. Moon. She is short and kind of fat, with a big, wide mouth that she smiles with a lot and brown hair. She is pretty too. Real pretty, and that is how you can be sure it is her if ever you see her. Because short fat ladies mostly do not look as good as Junie and nobody thinks, Boy, I would really like to know her, like I did that time in England when we went in the cave so she could talk to that crabby old man from Tulsa because Junie believes in dead people coming back and all that.

She made me believe it too. You would too if you had been with Junie like I have.

So I am looking for a Moon just like she is, only she is the Moon that I am looking for. The one she is looking for is the White Cow Moon. That is an Indian name and there is a story behind it just like you would think, only it is a pretty dumb story so I am going to save it for later. Besides, I do not think it is true. Indians are nice people except for a couple I used to know, but they have all these stories that they tell you and then they laugh inside.

I am from Texas, but Junie is from Oklahoma.

That is what started her off. She used to work for a big school they have there, whatever it says on that sweatshirt she wears sometimes. There was this cranky old man in Tulsa that knew lots of stuff, only he was like an Indian. He would tell people, this was when he was still pretty young I guess, and they would never believe him even if it was true.

I have that trouble too, but this cranky old man got real mad and did something about it. He changed his name to Roy T. Laffer and after that he would tell things so they would not believe him or understand, and then laugh inside. Junie never said what the T. stood for, but I think I know.

Do you know what it says on the tea boxes? The ones with the man with the cap on them? It says honest tea is the best policy. I know what that means, and I think that cranky old Roy T. Laffer knew it too.

He gave big boxes full of paper to the school Junie worked for, and Junie was the one that went through them and that was how she found out about White Cow Moon. He had a lot of stuff in there about it and Junie saw her name and read it even if his writing was worse even than mine. He had been there and taken pictures and she found those too. She showed me some.

It goes slow. Junie said that was the greatest secret in the world, so I guess it is. And there were pictures of a big old rock that Roy T. Laffer had brought back.

One picture that I saw had it sitting on a scale. The rock was so big you could not hardly see the scale, but then another picture showed the part with numbers and that big old rock was only about a quarter ounce. It was kind of a dirty white like this one cow that we used to have.

Maybe that was really why they call it that and not because a cow jumped over it like those Indians say. That would make a lot more sense, only I did not think of it till just now.

I ought to tell you things about me here so you understand, but first I want to tell more about Junie because I am looking for her, but I know where I am already, which is here in Florida at the Museum of the Strange and Occult. Only it is all big letters like this on our sign out front: THE MUSEUM OF THE STRANGE AND OCCULT ADMISSION $5.50, CHILDREN $2, CHILDREN IN ARMS FREE, SENIORS $3 OR $2 WITH ANOTHER PAID ADMISSION. The letters are gold.

Junie had been to college and everything and was a doctor of physic. When she got out, she thought she was the greatest since One Mug. That is what she says it means, only it is German. I do not remember the German words.

So she went to work at this big laboratory in Chicago where they do physic, only they had her answer the phone and empty the wastebaskets and she quit. Then she went back home to Oklahoma and that is why she was at the big school and was the one that went through Roy T. Laffer’s papers. Mostly I do not much like Oklahoma people because they think they are better than Texas people, only Junie really is.

So if you see her or even just talk to somebody that has, you could come by and tell me, or write a letter or even just phone. I will be glad any way you do it. Dottie that works in our office here is putting this in her computer for me and printing it too, whenever I have got a page done. She says you could send e-mail too. That would be all right because Dottie would tell me. I would be very happy any way you did it. Dottie says www.Hercules@freaky.com.

My name is not really Hercules; that is just the name I work under. My name is really Sam, and that is what Junie calls me. If you know her and have talked to her and she said anything about Sam, that was me. If you want to be really formal it is Sam Jr. Only nobody calls me that. Most people I know call me Hercules. Not ever Herk. I do not like it.

Let me tell you how bad I want to find Junie. Sometimes there is a man in the tip that thinks he is stronger. I really like that when it happens because it is usually fun. I will do some things that I figure he can do too, like bending rebars and tearing up bottle caps. Then if I see the tip likes him, I will say something hard and let him win.

A week ago maybe there was this one big guy that thought he was really strong, so I did him like I said. I threw him the two-hundred-pound bell and he caught it, and when he threw it back to me I pretended like I could not catch it and let it fall when I had my legs out of the way and everybody was happy. Only yesterday he came back. He called me Herk and he said I was afraid to go up against him again. The tip was not with him then. So I said all right, and when he could not lift my five-hundred-pound iron I did it with one hand and gave it to him. And when he dropped it I picked him up by his belt and hung him on this high hook. I use for the pulley. I left him up there until everybody was gone too, and when I took him down he did not say a word. He just went away.