A Graveyard for Lunatics

I caught up with him in a cool grotto where Napoleon’s Empire furniture was hung on racks and Julius Caesar’s throne waited for his long-lost behind.

I looked around.

Nothing ever dies, I thought. It always returns. If you want, that is.

And where does it hide, waiting. Where is it reborn? Here, I thought. Oh, yes, here.

In the minds of men who arrive with lunch buckets, looking like workers, and leave looking like husbands or improbable lovers.

But in between?

Build the Mississippi Belle if you want to steamboat landfall New Orleans, or rear Bernini’s columns on the north forty. Or rebuild the Empire State and then steam-power an ape big enough to climb it.

Your dream is their blueprint, and these are all the sons of the sons of Michelangelo and da Vinci, the fathers of yesterday winding up as sons in tomorrow.

And right now my friend Roy leaned into the dim cavern behind a Western saloon and pulled me along, among the stashed facades of Baghdad and upper Sandusky.

Silence. Everyone had gone to lunch.

Roy snuffed the air and laughed quietly.

“God, yes! Smell that smell! Sawdust! That’s what got me into high school woodshop with you. And the sounds of the bandsaw lathes. Sounded like people were doing things. Made my hands jerk. Looky here.” Roy stopped by a long glass case and looked down at beauty.

The Bounty was there, in miniature, twenty inches long and fully rigged, and sailing through imaginary seas, two long centuries ago.

“Go on,” Roy said, quietly. “Touch gently.”

I touched and marveled and forgot why we were there and wanted to stay on forever. But Roy, at last, drew me away.

“Hot dog,” he whispered. “Take your pick.”

We were looking at a huge display of coffins about fifty feet back in the warm darkness.

“How come so many?” I asked, as we moved up.

“To bury all the turkeys the studio will make between now and Thanksgiving.”

We reached the funeral assembly line.

“It’s all yours,” said Roy. “Choose.”

“Can’t be at the top. Too high. And people are lazy. So—this one.”

I nudged the nearest coffin with my shoe.

“Go on,” urged Roy, laughing at my hesitance. “Open it.”

“You.”

Roy bent and tried the lid.

“Damn!”

The coffin was nailed shut.

A horn sounded somewhere. We glanced out.

Out in the Tombstone street a car was pulling up.

“Quick!” Roy ran to a table, scrabbled around frantically, and found a hammer and crowbar to jimmy the nails.

“Ohmigod,” I gasped.

Manny Leiber’s Rolls-Royce was dusting into the horse yard, out there in the noon glare.

“Let’s go!”

“Not until we see if—there!”

The last nail flew out.

Roy grasped the lid, took a deep breath, and opened the coffin.

Voices sounded in the Western yard, out there in the hot sun.

“Christ, open your eyes,” cried Roy. “Look!”

I had shut my eyes, not wanting to feel the rain again on my face. I opened them.

“Well?” said Roy.

The body was there, lying on its back, its eyes wide, its nostrils flared, and its mouth gaped. But no rain fell to brim over and pour down its cheeks and chin.

“Arbuthnot,” I said.

“Yeah,” gasped Roy. “I remember the photos now. Lord, it’s a good resemblance. But why would anyone put this, whatever it is, up a ladder, for what?”

I heard a door slam. A hundred yards off, in the warm dust, Manny Leiber had got out of his Rolls, and was blinking into the shade, around, about, above us.

I flinched.

“Wait a minute—” Roy said. He snorted and reached down.

“Don’t!”

“Hold on,” he said, and touched the body.

“For God’s sake, quick!”

“Why looky here,” said Roy.

He took hold of the body and lifted.

“Gah!” I said, and stopped.

For the body rose up as easily as a bag of cornflakes.

“No!”

“Yeah, sure.” Roy shook the body. It rattled like a scarecrow.

“I’ll be damned! And look, at the bottom of the coffin, lead sinkers to give it weight once they got it up the ladder! And when it fell, like you said, it would really hit. Look out! Here come the barracudas!”

Roy squinted out into the noon glare and the distant figures stepping out of cars, gathering around Manny.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Roy dropped the body, slammed the lid and ran.

I followed in and out of a maze of furniture, pillars, and false fronts.

Off at a distance, through three dozen doors and half up a flight of Renaissance stairs, Roy and I stopped, looked back, craned to ache and listen. Way off, about ninety to a hundred feet, Manny Leiber arrived at the place where we had been only a minute ago. Manny’s voice cut through all the rest. He told everyone, I imagine, to shut up. There was silence. They were opening the coffin with the facsimile body in it.

Roy looked at me, eyebrows up. I looked back, unable to breathe.

There was a stir, some sort of outcry, curses. Manny swore above the rest. Then there was a babble, more talk, Manny yelling again, and a final slam of the coffin lid.

That was the gunshot that plummeted me and Roy the hell out of the place. We made it down the stairs as quietly as possible, ran through another dozen doors, and out the back side of the carpenters’ shop.

“You hear anything?” gasped Roy, glancing back.

“No. You?”

“Not a damn thing. But they sure exploded. Not once but three times. Manny, the worst! My God, what’s going on? Why all the fuss over a damned wax dummy I could have run up with two bucks’ worth of latex, wax, and plaster in half an hour!?”

“Slow down, Roy,” I said. “We don’t want anyone to see us running.”

Roy slowed, but still took great whooping-crane strides.

“God, Roy!” I said. “If they knew we were in there!”

“They don’t. Hey, this is fun.”

Why, I thought, did I ever introduce my best friend to a dead man?

A minute later we reached Roy’s Laurel and Hardy flivver behind the shop.

Roy sat in the front seat, smiling a most unholy smile, appreciating the sky and every cloud.

“Climb in,” he said.

Inside the shed, voices rose in a late-afternoon uproar. Someone was cursing somewhere. Someone else was criticizing. Someone said yes. A lot of others said no as the small mob boiled out into the hot noon light, like a hive of angry bees.

A moment later, Manny Leiber’s Rolls-Royce streamed by like a voiceless storm.

Inside, I saw three oyster-pale yes-men’s faces.

And Manny Leiber’s face, blood-red with rage.

He saw us as his Rolls stormed past.

Roy waved and cried a jolly hello.

“Roy!” I yelled.

Roy guffawed, said, “What came over me!?” and drove away.

I looked over at Roy and almost exploded myself. Inhaling the wind, he blew it out his mouth with gusto.

“You’re nuts!” I said. “Don’t you have a nerve in your body?”

“Why should I,” Roy reasoned amiably, “be scared of a papier-mache mockup? Hell, Manny’s heebie-jeebies make me feel good. I’ve taken a lot of guff from him this month. Now someone’s stuck a bomb in his pants? Great!”

“Was it you?” I blurted, suddenly.

Roy was startled. “You off on that track again? Why would I sew and glue a dimwit scarecrow and climb ladders at midnight?”

“For the reasons you just said. Cure your boredom. Shove bombs in other people’s pants.”

“Nope. Wish I could claim the credit. Right now, I can hardly wait for lunch. When Manny shows up, his face should be a riot.”