The young man didn't know what to say.
The old man looked at him and smiled. "I don't blame you," he said. "Not even a little bit. Maybe I am crazy."
They sat awhile longer with the desert night, and the old man took his false teeth out and poured some of the warm water on them to clean them of coffee and cigarette residue.
"I hope we don't need that water," the young man said.
"You're right. Stupid of me! We'll sleep awhile, start walking before daylight. It's not too far to the next town. Ten miles at best." He put his teeth back in. "We'll be just fine."
The young man nodded.
No fish came. They did not discuss it. They crawled inside the car, the young man in the front seat, the old man in the back. They used their spare clothes to bundle under, to pad out the cold fingers of the night.
Near midnight the old man came awake suddenly and lay with his hands behind his head and looked up and out the window opposite him, studied the crisp desert sky.
And a fish swam by.
Long and lean and speckled with all the colors of the world, flicking its tail as if in goodbye. Then it was gone.
The old man sat up. Outside, all about, were the fish—all sizes, colors, and shapes.
"Hey, boy, wake up!"
The younger man moaned.
"Wake up!"
The young man, who had been resting face down on his arms, rolled over. "What's the matter? Time to go?"
"The fish."
"Not again."
"Look!"
The young man sat up. His mouth fell open. His eyes bloated. Around and around the car, faster and faster in whirls of dark color, swam all manner of fish.
"Well, I'll be . . . How?"
"I told you, I told you."
The old man reached for the door handle, but before he could pull it a fish swam lazily through the back window glass, swirled about the car, once, twice, passed through the old man's chest, whipped up and went out through the roof.
The old man cackled, jerked open the door. He bounced around beside the road. Leaped up to swat his hands through the spectral fish. "Like soap bubbles," he said. "No. Like smoke!"
The young man, his mouth still agape, opened his door and got out. Even high up he could see the fish. Strange fish, like nothing he'd ever seen pictures of or imagined. They flitted and skirted about like flashes of light.
As he looked up, he saw, nearing the moon, a big dark cloud. The only cloud in the sky. That cloud tied him to reality suddenly, and he thanked the heavens for it. Normal things still happened. The whole world had not gone insane.
After a moment the old man quit hopping among the fish and came out to lean on the car and hold his hand to his fluttering chest.
"Feel it, boy? Feel the presence of the sea? Doesn't it feel like the beating of your own mother's heart while you float inside the womb?"
And the younger man had to admit that he felt it, that inner rolling rhythm that is the tide of life and the pulsating heart of the sea.
"How?" the young man said. "Why?"
"The time lock, boy. The locks clicked open and the fish are free. Fish from a time before man was man. Before civilization started weighing us down. I know it's true. The truth's been in me all the time. It's in us all."
"It's like time travel," the young man said. "From the past to the future, they've come all that way."
"Yes, yes, that's it . . . Why, if they can come to our world, why can't we go to theirs? Release that spirit inside of us, tune into their time?"
"Now, wait a minute . . ."
"My God, that's it! They're pure, boy, pure. Clean and free of civilization's trappings. That must be it! They're pure and we're not. We're weighted down with technology. These clothes. That car."
The old man started removing his clothes.
"Hey!" the young man said. "You'll freeze."
"If you're pure, if you're completely pure," the old man mumbled, "that's it . . . yeah, that's the key."
"You've gone crazy."
"I won't look at the car," the old man yelled, running across the sand, trailing the last of his clothes behind him. He bounced about the desert like a jackrabbit. "God, God, nothing is happening, nothing," he moaned. "This isn't my world. I'm of that world. I want to float free in the belly of the sea, away from can openers and cars and—"
The young man called the old man's name. The old man did not seem to hear.
"I want to leave here!" the old man yelled. Suddenly he was springing about again. "The teeth!" he yelled. "It's the teeth. Dentist, science, fool." He punched a hand into his mouth, plucked the teeth free, tossed them over his shoulder.
Even as the teeth fell the old man rose. He began to stroke. To swim up and up and up, moving like a pale, pink seal among the fish.
In the light of the moon the young man could see the pooched jaws of the old man, holding the last of the future's air. Up went the old man, up, up, up, swimming strong in the long-lost waters of a time gone by.
The young man began to strip off his own clothes. Maybe he could nab him, pull him down, put the clothes on him. Something
. . . God, something. . . . But, what if he couldn't come back? And there were the fillings in his teeth, the metal rod in his back from a motorcycle accident. No, unlike the old man, this was his world and he was tied to it. There was nothing he could do.
A great shadow weaved in front of the moon, made a wriggling slat of darkness that caused the young man to let go of his shirt buttons and look up.
A black rocket of a shape moved through the invisible sea: a shark, the granddaddy of all sharks, the seed for all of man's fears of the deeps.
And it caught the old man in its mouth, began swimming upward toward the golden light of the moon. The old man dangled from the creature's mouth like a ragged rat from a house cat's jaws. Blood blossomed out of him, coiled darkly in the invisible sea.
The young man trembled. "Oh God," he said once.
Then along came that thick dark cloud, rolling across the face of the moon.
Momentary darkness.
And when the cloud passed there was light once again, and an empty sky.
No fish.
No shark.
And no old man.
Just the night, the moon, and the stars.
Author's Note on Chompers
This was brought about by seeing Gandhi on TV one day. It was a special on him, I think. He was grinning at the camera, and I thought, man, this guy has got some serious teeth problems. A dentist needs to get a hold of him.
I lay on the couch and fell asleep, this on my mind, and when I awoke, the whole story was there. I jumped up, wrote it quickly, sent it in to T. E. D. Klein at Twilight Zone and he bought it.
I loved the illustration that went with it.
And I was proud to be in that magazine.
I'm still proud to have been there.
Chompers
Old Maude, who lived in alleys, combed trash cans, and picked rags, found the false teeth in a puddle of blood back of Denny's. Obvious thing was that there had been a mugging, and some unfortunate who'd been wandering around out back had gotten his or her brains beaten out, and then hauled off somewhere for who knows what.
But the teeth, which had probably hopped from the victim's mouth like some kind of frightened animal, still remained, and the blood they lay in was testimony to the terrible event.
Maude picked them up, looked at them. Besides the blood there were some pretty nasty coffee stains on the rear molars and what looked to be a smidgen of cherry pie. One thing Maude could spot and tell with an amazing degree of accuracy was a stain or a food dollop. Cruise alleyways and dig in trash cans most of your life, and you get skilled.
Now, Maude was a practical old girl, and, as she had about as many teeth in her head as a pomegranate, she wiped the blood off on her dress—high fashion circa 1920—and put those suckers right square in her gummy little mouth. Somehow it seemed like the proper thing to do. P
erfect fit. Couldn't have been any better than if they'd been made for her. She got the old, blackened lettuce head out of her carpetbag—she'd found the lettuce with a half a tomato back of Burger King—and gave that vegetable a chomp. Sounded like the dropping of a guillotine as those teeth snapped into the lettuce and then ground it to smithereens.
Man that was good for a change, thought Maude, to be able to go at your food like a pig to trough. Gumming your vittles gets old.
The teeth seemed a little tighter in her mouth than awhile ago, but Maude felt certain that after a time she'd get used to them. It was sad about the poor soul that had lost them, but that person's bad luck was her fortune.
Maude started toward the doorway she called home, and by the time she'd gone a block she found that she was really hungry, which surprised her. Not an hour back she'd eaten half a hamburger out of a Burger King trash can, three greasy fries, and half an apple pie. But, boy howdy, did she want to chow down now. She felt like she could eat anything.
She got the tomato half out of her bag, along with everything else in there that looked edible, and began to eat.
More she ate, hungrier she got. Pretty soon she was out of goodies, and the sidewalk and the street started looking to her like the bottom of a dinner plate that ought to be filled. God, but her belly burned. It was as if she'd never eaten and had suddenly become aware of the need.
She ground her big teeth and walked on. Half a block later she spotted a big alley cat hanging head down over the lip of a trash can, pawing for something to eat, and ummm, ummm, ummm, but that cat looked tasty as a Dunkin' Donut.
Chased that rascal for three blocks, but didn't catch it. It pulled a fade-out on her in a dark alley.
Disgusted, but still very, very hungry, Maude left the alley thinking: Chow, need me some chow.
Beat cop O'Hara was twirling his nightstick when he saw her nibbling the paint off a rusty old streetlamp. It was an old woman with a prune face, and when he came up she stopped nibbling and looked at him. She had the biggest, shiniest pair of choppers he had ever seen. They stuck out from between her lips like a gator's teeth, and in the light of the streetlamp, even as he watched, he thought for a moment that he had seen them grow. And, by golly, they looked pointed now.
O'Hara had walked his beat for twenty years, and he was used to eccentrics and weird getups, but there was something particularly weird about this one.
The old woman smiled at him.
Man, there were a lot of teeth there. (More than awhile ago?) O'Hara thought: Now that's a crazy thing to think.
He was about six feet from her when she jumped him, teeth gnashing, clicking together like a hundred cold Eskimo knees. They caught his shirt sleeve and ripped it off; the cloth disappeared between those teeth fast as a waiter's tip.
O'Hara struck at her with his nightstick, but she caught that in her mouth, and those teeth of hers began to rattle and snap like a pound full of rabid dogs. Wasn't nothing left of that stick but toothpicks.
He pulled his revolver, but she ate that too. Then she ate O'Hara, didn't even leave a shoe.
Little later on she ate a kid on a bicycle—the bicycle too—and hit up a black hooker for dessert. But that didn't satisfy her. She was still hungry, and, worse yet, the pickings had gotten lean.
Long about midnight, this part of the city went dead except for a bum or two, and she ate them. She kept thinking that if she could get across town to Forty-Second Street, she could have her fill of hookers, kids, pimps, and heroin addicts. It'd be a regular buffet-style dinner.
But that was such a long ways off and she was sooooo hungry. And those damn teeth were so big now she felt as if she needed a neck brace just to hold her head up.
She started walking fast, and when she was about six blocks away from the smorgasbord of Forty-Second, her mouth started watering like Niagara Falls.
Suddenly she had an attack. She had to eat NOW—as in "awhile ago." Immediately.
Halfway up her arm, she tried to stop. But my, was that tasty. Those teeth went to work, a-chomping and a-rending, and pretty soon they were as big as a bear trap, snapping flesh like it was chewing gum.
Wasn't nothing left of Maude but a puddle of blood by the time the teeth fell to the sidewalk, rapidly shrinking back to normal size.
Harry, high on life and high on wine, wobbled down the sidewalk, dangling left, dangling right. It was a wonder he didn't fall down.
He saw the teeth lying in a puddle of blood, and having no choppers of his own—the tooth fairy had them all—he decided, what the hell, what can it hurt? Besides, he felt driven.
Picking up the teeth, wiping them off, he placed them in his mouth.
Perfect fit. Like they were made for him.
He wobbled off, thinking: Man, but I'm hungry; gracious, but I sure could eat.
Author's note on The Fat Man
I don't remember a damn thing about this one. All I can say is it's obviously a Bradbury influenced story and it takes place in my fictional town of Mud Creek. And, I like it. I suspect, but can't verify, popcorn had something to do with it.
The Fat Man
The fat man sat on his porch in his squeaking swing and looked out at late October. Leaves coasted from the trees that grew on either side of the walk, coasted down and scraped the concrete with a dry, husking sound.
He sat there in his swing, pushing one small foot against the porch, making the swing go back and forth; sat there in his faded khaki pants, barefoot, shirtless, his belly hanging way out over his belt, drooping toward his knees.
And just below his belly button, off-center right, was the tattoo. A half-moon, lying on its back, the ends pointing up. A blue tattoo. An obscene tattoo, made obscene by the sagging flesh on which it was sculptured. Flesh that made the Fat Man look like a hippo, if a hippo could stand on its hind legs or sit in a swing pushing itself back and forth.
The Fat Man.
Late October.
Cool wind.
Falling leaves.
The Fat Man with the half-moon tattoo off-center beneath his navel.
The Fat Man. Swinging.
Everyone wondered about the Fat Man. He had lived in the little house at the end of Growler Street for a long time. Forever it seemed. As long as that house had been there (circa 1920), he had been there. No one knew anything else about him. He did not go to town. He did not venture any farther than his front porch, as if his house were an oddball ship adrift forever on an endless sea. He had a phone, but no electric lights. He did not use gas and he had no car.
And everyone wondered about the Fat Man.
Did he pay taxes?
Where did he get the money that bought the countless boxes of chicken, pizza, egg foo yung, and hamburgers he ordered by phone; the countless grease-stained boxes that filled the garbage cans he set off the edge of his porch each Tuesday and Thursday for the sanitation men to pick up and empty?
Why didn't he use electric lights?
Why didn't he go to town?
Why did he sit on his porch in his swing looking out at the world smiling dumbly, going in the house only when night came?
And what did he do at night behind those closed doors? Why did he wear neither shirt nor shoes, summer or dead of winter?
And where in the world—and why—did he get that ugly half-moon tattooed on his stomach?
Whys and whats. Lots of them about the Fat Man. Questions aplenty, answers none.
Everyone wondered about the Fat Man.
But no one wondered as much as Harold and Joe, two boys who filled their days with comics, creek beds, climbing apple trees, going to school . . . and wondering about the Fat Man.
So one cool night, late October, they crept up to the Fat Man's house, crawling on hands and knees through the not-yet-dead weeds in the empty lot next to the Fat Man's house, and finally through the equally high weeds in the Fat Man's yard.
They lay in the cool, wind-rustled weeds beneath one of the Fat Man's windows and whispered to e
ach other.
"Let's forget it," Harold said.
"Can't. We come this far, and we swore on a dead cat."
"A dead cat don't care."
"A dead cat's sacred, you know that."
"We made that up."
"And because we did that makes it true. A dead cat's sacred." Harold could not find it in his heart to refute this. They found the dead cat on the street next to the curb the day before, and Joe had said right off that it was sacred. And Harold, without contesting, had agreed.
And how could he disagree? The looks of the cat were hypnotizing. Its little gray body was worm-worked. Its teeth exposed. Its lips were drawn back, black and stiff. All the stuff to draw the eye. All the stuff that made it sacred.
They took the cat over the creek, through the woods and out to the old "Indian" graveyard and placed it on the ground where Joe said an old Caddo Chief was buried. They took the cat and poked its stiff legs into the soft dirt so that it appeared to be running through quicksand.
Joe said, "I pronounce you a sacred cat with powers as long as there's hair on your body and you don't fall over, whichever comes first."
They made an oath on the sacred cat, and the oath was like this: They were going to sneak over to the Fat Man's house when their parents were asleep, and find out just what in hell and heaven the Fat Man did. Maybe see him eat so they could find out how quickly he went through those boxes and cartons of chicken, pizza, egg foo yung, hamburgers, and the like.
Above them candlelight flickered through the thin curtains and window. Joe raised up cautiously for a peek.
Inside he saw the candle residing in a broken dish on an end table next to the telephone. And that was it for the Fat Man's furniture. The rest of the room was filled with food boxes and cartons, and wading knee-deep in their midst was the Fat Man.