Harlan Ellison - Up Christopher to Madness

GuidedRoman circii toursthose on wheelsof Greenwich Village and the Bowery, invariably include visits to (or passing notice of) such taverns as The White Horse, McSorleys, Juliuss, Leos, The Jumble Shop. But only Red Freds Village Voyages takes out-of-towners and uptowners to Aunt Annies Ale House. Which is, perhaps, the reason so few out-of-towners and uptowners are found weighted down with old typewriters in the East River. The Ale Houses clientele isin the parlance of the fuzzunsavory. A mugging-cum-swimfest w/typewriter was, therefore, not uncommon at Aunt Annies. (Times, of course, change, and He Who Would Stay Abreast must change with them: In the good bad old days a man who had been weighted down with an Oliver the size of a small threshing machine stayed weighted. Try that with an Olivetti or a Hermes thin as a wafer, and the victim-elect is not only likely to decline the nomination but to emerge, damp and annoyed, and start grinding an ice-pick pointor other uncivil, though not altogether unexpected, behavior.)

No matter what they may mutter at Charles Street Station House, it was accident, nothing but accident, which brought Red Fred and a bumper crop of sweating hayseeds (Royal Arch Masons from Chitling Switch, Nebraska: retired elocution teachers from East Weewaw, Wis., wearied with the seasons labors, shuddering at the very sight of prunes, prisms, and cheese: and other specimens habitans of The Great American Heartland) on the scene at the exact moment, Greenwich Village Meridian Time, when Angie the Rat, a prominent Six-for-Fiverhaving compounded his interest once too often to expect further indulgence of Big Patsy the horse-playerwas unceremoniously, but none the less effectively, sent where the bad loansharks go. One bullet in the left larynx, one bullet in the right larynx, and one bullet in the precise center of the umbilical quadrant. The reubens, male and female, scattering with shrieks and squeals, the assailants leisurely made their escape in an oyster-grey Edsel (which proved, of course, to be stolen).

Such amenities, confirming what had heretofore been mere wicked suspicions, instantly brought the yokels back for more. More, MORE; and, for the moment, left the competition nowhere. Fred might even have dispensed with the jumbo beret, the black tinted-lens horn rims, and the chestnut-colored beaver, which served him in lieu of neon signs and barkers; only he was stubborn.

And to be brutally honest (dealing as we are with clinical detail), Fred had to wear the beret, shades and foliage. He was not called Red Fred for naught. His name still appeared with inglorious regularity on subversive lists circulated by private, alphabetized agencies; and he thought it best to await the Revolution incognito.

It was, perhaps, because the assassins had hyped up his almost moribund business that Red Fred thought with mild kindnesses (when he thought of them at all) of Big Patsy and his two side-boys, whose names at this stage of narration are unnecessary. One can well imagine Red Freds dismay, then, at the appearance, the following Tuesday, of Gook, the blind beggar (whose bobby was serving alternate Thursday nights as a Civil Defense sky watcher), who informed him that Big Patsy was indeed anxious to see the tour guide posthaste. This, to make clear Red Freds attitude was (in the fullest Hitchcockian sense of the clich), for the birds.

Gook made it abundantly evident, however, that if Red Fred did not bust his tuchus getting down to the empty loft building, on the corner of Bleecker and Bank streets, it might well fall on him the next time he went by. And that Big Patsy would be most reluctantly compelled to come and get him.

There was even some mention of sulphuric acid.

Red Fred, as a consequence, put on a clean shirt (for had not Big Patsy once remarked in Aunt Annies that if there was one thing he could not abide, it was a slob?) and made haste to keep his appointment.

The loft building in point was a massive; brooding structure more reminiscent of a tyrannosaurus coprolite than a hideout for wayward horse-players. Big, black, brooding, it hovered over the corners of Bleecker and Bank as though it was hungry. Red Fred had the distinct impression it was hungry for him.

Red Freds height was five feet six inches, and his hair was not only thinning in front butas though anxious to do its part all down the linewas also departing steadily from the rear. The shades he wore were corrective lenses ground along the thickness lines of a cathode ray tube. He was, in short, short and balding and near-sighted.

He was also a coward, a thief, and scared out of his gourd.

The loading dock door of the old loft building stood ominously ajar, as though someone had been standing behind it, waiting for Red Fred to come in sight through a crack in the splintering jamb. Red Fred whistled a tremulous note or two from The Peat Bog Soldiers and opened the door, stepping through quickly.

When the length of rubber hose connected with his skull, it was arithmetically-placed at that soft juncture of temple and ear known to exponents of the sage art of karate as peachy-keen for sending an opponent to the land of turquoise torpors.

Red Fred gracefully settled across the polished shoes of Big Patsys chief arm-man, Wallace Gefilte Fish. The name now becomes of importance. Carry on.

It is not to be thought that Wallace was fond of gefilte fish; in point of fact, he detested it, but, just as a man with two left feet may admire the ability to dance, so did Wallace admire intelligence, a quality in which he was, lamentably, deficient. His knowledge of science could have been covered by a 1 grain kiddy aspirin tablet, and belongedif it belonged anywhereto the era of high-buttoned shoes and one-piece underwear: Wallace was convinced that sea-food was good for building up the brain.

Unfortunately, any item of this nature which derived from salt water caused Wallace to break out into something which resembled an illustration from a dermatology textbook. Enter (as Shakespeare might have said) gefilte fishan item of nourriture composed of carp, white-fish, and pike: every one of them strictly a fresh-water creature.

Keep this in mind.

When Fred returned to full cognizance of his surroundings, he saw what he by now was fully convinced was a dreadful sight, viz.: (reading from right to left) Wallace, Big Patsy, and the latters second assistant, a cat-like creature with ginger-colored hair, skin, and eyes, known far and wide simply as The Kerry Pig.

All three were dressed as if ready to attend an undertakers psalm-sing, and the expressions on their respective faces were approximately somber.

This, said Big Patsy, is a mere sample. Free. If you like it, we can supply the full treatment.

At, offered The Kerry Pig, no extra cost. The sound which Wallace uttered may perhaps not be precisely transliterable as Duh; but that is close enough for anyone not a registered phonologist. It was intended to indicate affirmation.

Gentlemen, said Fred, thinking it wise to remain flat on his back, but all set to roll like a hoop-snake at the first sign of a kick-twitchy foot; Gentlemen, I bear you no malice for this monstrous incivility, realizing as I do that you are victims of The System. Here he paused to turn aside his head to spit. And hence no better than pawns, as it were, of the War-mongers and their other ilk in the high councils of Monopoly Capitalism: but wherein have I offended thee, pray tell?

Big Patsy sneered. The Kerry Pig snorted. Wallace uttered The Sound. That is rich, said Big Patsy, sneering. That is very rich, indeed. You, he said, pointing a long, thick, impeccably manicured finger, are a