All the judges admired Zadig for his acute and profound discernment. The news of this speech was carried even to the king and queen. Nothing was talked of but Zadig in the antichambers, the chambers, and the cabinet; and though many of the magi were of opinion that he ought to be burnt as a sorcerer, the king ordered his officers to restore him the 400 ounces of gold which he had been obliged to pay. The register, the attorneys, and bailiffs, went to his house with great formality to carry him back his 400 ounces. They retained only 398 of them to defray the expenses of justice.
Zadig saw how extremely dangerous it sometimes is to appear too knowing, and therefore resolved that on the next occasion he would not tell what he had seen.
Such an opportunity soon offered. A prisoner of state made his escape and passed under the windows of Zadig’s house. Zadig was examined and made no answer. But it was proved that he had looked at the prisoner from this window. For this crime he was condemned to pay 500 ounces of gold; and, according to the polite custom of Babylon, he thanked his judges for their indulgence.
“Great God!” said he to himself, “what a misfortune it is to walk in a wood through which the queen’s dog or the king’s horse have passed! How dangerous to look out at a window! And how difficult to be happy in this life!”
Banquet and a Half
by Lee Hays
It is a long thirteen years since we first started writing the editorial comments which serve as forewords (and sometimes as afterwords) to most of the stories published in EQMM; and to the best of our recollection we have never consciously repeated ourselves. But, in one sense, a rule is only as good as its exceptions, and now we are deliberately going to make an exception and repeat, word for word, the beginning of our preface to Lee Hays’s “On the Banks of the Ohio,” which appeared in the March 1949 issue of EQMM. Yes, it has taken us more than five years to pull a second story out of Mr. Hays — but we think you are going to agree it was worth waiting for.
“Lee Hays [our original introduction began] has spent most of his 35 years collecting, singing, and writing American folk music, and delving into the fascinating mysteries of American folklore. He has sung on a few radio shows and in some folk music concerts, including one at Town Hall, New York City. He has worked with the leading figures in the field — Burl Ives, Josh White, and others. It is a medium which, unfortunately, does not pay off too well; as a result, Lee Hays has had to explore other channels to piece together a bare living. One of those bypaths is uniting, and we predict that one of these days the bypath will become Lee Hays’s main road. Right now he is devoting almost full time to giving ‘a local habitation and a name’ to ideas which have been shaping themselves in his head since that day, long ago, when he first began to think for himself... This man, Lee Hays, is a big fellow — make no mistake about that. Potentially, he has the stuff of great talent. You will be hearing from him, more and more, and in the voice of truth.”
Now, after five years, you are hearing from him, and while Lee Hays’s second story is only a short-short in length, it virtually fulfills the predictions we made for him in 1949. This is definitely not a big build-up for a little story. “Banquet and a Half” is a story of great power, yet it is tender, subtle, understanding, evocative, and packs enormous sociological implications. It is, to quote the author himself, a tale “of human need, of human misery, of unsung little people in trouble”...
Two young fellows named Jim and Buddy sat together one day and talked about a strange thing that was happening to them.
“It’s a mystery to me,” said Jim, who was skinny and seventeen.
Buddy, eighteen and skirtnier than Jim, said, “It don’t seem real to me. I never had a thing like this happen.”
The mystery was that a man had come to Jim and Buddy and said, “You boys don’t look like you’re getting enough to eat. Now, you name anything you want to eat and I guarantee to get it and bring it to you.”
The boys did not answer right away but they looked at the man and their faces showed plain disbelief, and some fear.
“I mean it,” the man said. “As much of it as you want. You boys can have a banquet and a half, and I’ll take pleasure in watching you eat it.”
Jim and Buddy looked at each other, wondering. They were two boys from deep in cotton country and they had never had any such favor done them, by anyone. Unexpected generosity was a mystery and it was frightening.
But the man had promised.
Food.
Jim and Buddy had big appetites. They had not yet stopped growing but never yet had they got enough food to tamp down the hungry pain in their bellies. In their part of the world people were said to live on the “three m’s” — meat, meal, and molasses. But Jim could remember his father saying, “Seems more like two m’s to me, I ain’t had a piece of meat in so long.”
Not since the fall, perhaps, when there was cotton-picking money to spend on salt pork and baloney and such.
One time company came to Jim’s house. His mother said, “You folks stay to supper. We have a plenty.”
Jim’s father said, “Plenty? Why, we got a thousand things to eat, and every one of them is beans!”
When Jim was born his mother said, “We got another man.” His father said, “We got another mouth to feed.” They lived on a plantation and the bossman said, “We got another plowhand,” and promised Jim’s folks another three acres to tend, when the boy was seven or eight and old enough to work.
The boy was picking cotton when he was six. Many a day he would come in from the fields, trudging along beside his father and sisters, and find nothing on the table but biscuits and thickening gravy. Flour and grease and water make thickening gravy and it is flavored with salt and much black pepper to make it taste like food.
Jim spoke often of these things to Buddy. The older boy said, “It was always just the same at my house.” He could remember one fine summer when a gallon jar of prepared mustard sat on the table. Jim could recall the time his mother set out a jar of fiery hot peppers.
Thinking of food made them hungrier. The man’s offer worried them. Why did he come to them now, when all their lives they had been hungry and had eaten food fit for hogs, and no one had ever offered better?
The man had promised to come back and write down everything they wanted. “I don’t believe it,” Buddy said.
Jim said, “I hope he does come back. I’d sure hate to make up a long list of good things to eat, and wait on it, and hope on it, and then never get any of it.”
Buddy said with anger, “I don’t want anything to do with it!”
“Me neither,” Jim agreed, but reluctantly.
They sat thinking for a long time, and Buddy let Jim have an occasional puff of a “Bull” Durham cigarette.
Presently Buddy said, “What are you studying about?”
Eagerly Jim said, “Buddy, we ain’t got a thing to do anyhow, so why don’t we study up something to tell the man? If he does come back.”
“All right,” Buddy said promptly. “Buffalo fish. A big fat buffalo with the grease just popping out all over.”
“You had buffalo before,” Jim objected. “Why don’t you study up something you never tasted? I mean like a roast leg of lamb or oranges or a malted milk—”