Bumper Crop (6 page)

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.

T
his 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.

O
ld 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. Perfect 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.

B
eat 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.

H
arry, 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
.

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.

T
he 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 each 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.

The Fat Man had two large trash cans next to him, and he was bending quite nimbly for a man his size (and as he bent the fat about his middle made three thick anaconda coils, one of which was spotted with the blue half-moon tattoo), picking up the boxes and tossing them in the cans.

Harold raised up for a look. Soon the cans were stuffed and overflowing and the Fat Man had cleared a space on the floor. With the handle of a can in either hand, the Fat Man swung the cans toward the door, outside and off the edge of the porch.

The Fat Man came back, closed the door, kicked his way through the containers until he reached the clearing he had made.