The fantastic adventures.., p.51
The Fantastic Adventures of Lefty Feep, page 51
“Just what we want!” exclaims Bernie the Attorney. “Feep, that is a very right and bright idea.”
Little Herman Hormone beams up at me. “Let us go now, Mr. Feep,” he suggests. “You and I have a lot of work to do.”
We seek the nearest exit and clatter down the stairs. Herman Hormone carries his briefcase full of Reekies and I carry my stomach full of same. Only I do not seem to be carrying it so well. As a matter of fact, I feel a little dizzy going downstairs. My legs ache and my head feels heavy. Something like a bad morning after — but I do not have any night before. It is vexing and perplexing.
However, I figure I need a little fresh air and so I huff and puff along the street. Herman Hormone trudges along, using his lung and tongue to describe how we will set up a factory to turn out Reekies and so forth. Me, I am still weak in the physique. I feel my forehead. The skin is rough and scaly.
“What’s the matter?” asks Herman Hormone. “You look a little off.”
“I feel funny,” I answer. “But not like laughing.” I get out my handkerchief to wipe my forehead. It is difficult for me to move my arms or bend them. But I wipe my forehead because I am sweating — and then I look down at my handkerchief and see —
“Sawdust!” gasps the little inventor. “You are sweating sawdust!”
I stare at it. Yes, little flakes of sawdust trickle from my brow! I am so staggered that I stagger and reach out to grab hold of an iron fence rail to keep my feet. My finger is scraped and begins to bleed. One look at my finger is enough. I am not bleeding red blood — but something mean and green!
“Chlorophyll,” whispers Herman Hormone. “It’s chlorophyll.”
“Like trees?” I whisper.
“Yes, like trees,” breathes Hormone.
I stand there, feeling like a sap, and looking at the sap that flows out of my hand. My fingers are stiff, numb. “It can’t be,” I mutter. I try to raise my hand. It jerks up very stiffly, but I manage to grab my hat and take it off to cool my head.
“Youoooffff!!!” Herman Hormone remarks, in a slight scream.
“Now what?” I wail.
“Your hair — it’s green and stringy — like vines!” Hormone stares at me with bulging eyes. “What can it be?” he pants. “Something you inherit from a branch of your family?”
“No vines in my branches,” I tell him.
But Herman Hormone thinks otherwise. He stares at me as I stand there, stiff as a board. Others notice my peculiar condition, too. A bird comes sailing around my head. A dog moseys up and begins to sniff at my feet. “Take me to a doctor!” I yell, trying to beat off the bird and kick the dog with wooden arms and feet.
“What doctor?” asks Hormone.
“Better make it a tree surgeon!” I gulp.
To make it so you can take it, I am suffering from a bad case of stiff limbs. I am afraid I am going to blossom right there in the street. I feel aged in the wood.
All I can do is lumber along.
Hormone guides me down the sidewalk, I bump into a guy accidentally. The guy turns to me and growls, “Where do you think you’re going, bud?”
Then he screams.
Because I do bud. Buds spring out of my ears. “Something in the Reekies,” Herman Hormone wails, pulling me away and trying not to look at me. “Something must cause a change in your system! You eat it and you turn into a —”
“Don’t say It,” I beg him. “Get me to the doctor, quick!”
Finally Herman Hormone guides me up the stairs to the office of a tree surgeon. This branch-butcher doesn’t need to take a second look at me to tell what the matter is. As a matter of fact, he refuses to take a second look. One glimpse is enough, and he hides his face in his hands and moans.
I make a pass at a looking glass and understand. I am a pretty weird specimen. My hair is green, and my skin seems to be covered with scales or bark. My arms and legs are stiff and little buds are shooting out from my ears, from under my sleeves, and at the bottom of my trouser legs. I look like a cross between a bad tree and a good camouflage job.
My stomach is heavy, my head is light, and I am losing all feeling. Except for a sort of pulsing inside — which must be the sap coagulating in my veins. “Come on, Doc, do your stuff,” urges Herman Hormone. “My friend here is in need of attention.”
“Take him away and plant him,” groans the Doc.
“I’m not dead,” I rasp. “But I will be unless you do something.”
“What can I do?” says the Doc, looking away from me and trembling. “Do you want me to comb the bird’s nests out of your hair? How can I help you? I think I’m going mad. This is the first time I ever see such a thing.”
“But there must be something you can do,” I yell. “Don’t leave me out on a limb.”
“I’d like to saw off your limbs,” says the Doc. “To think that I should ever hear a tree bark!”
“I’m not a tree,” I tell him. “I’m a man who is turning into a tree.”
“When does this condition begin?” asks the Doc, in a quavering voice. “I suppose you start out as a little shaver?”
“Not at all,” I inform him. “Kindly do not cast any aspersions on my family tree! All this starts about an hour ago.”
I tell him the story and Herman Hormone nods. At last the tree surgeon is convinced. “It must be a case of hamadryadism,” he says.
“Which?”
“Hamadryadism,” he insists, sticking to his story. “A hamadryad, in ancient legend, is a tree-spirit, or a human being imprisoned in a tree. Usually it is the result of a supernatural occurrence.”
“Super or natural,” I rave, “do something for me!”
“What can I do?” shrugs the Doc. “I am just a tree-surgeon.”
“Prune me,” I suggest. “Get these buds and twigs off me. And remove the bark from my skin. I do not wish to be a walking caterpillar cafeteria.”
“It may hurt,” the Doc warns me. It may and it does, but I grin and bear it as he stretches me out on the table and chops away at the buds and vines. Then he sandpapers my skin and removes the bark with a plane. By this time I am stiffer than ever, and I cannot feel the sandpaper or planing job at all.
“There,” sighs the Doc. “That’s that.”
“But I’m still stiff,” I object. “I feel more wooden than ever. What can I do to change?”
The Doc shrugs again. “I don’t know,” he sighs. “Speaking as a tree surgeon, I must admit the problem stumps me.”
I pay him off with money I borrow from Herman Hormone. “All you can do is go home and go to bed,” the Doc tells me. “Maybe it will wear off in time.”
Herman Hormone and I take our leave. Hormone has to carry me home, I am so rigid. And when I get there he leaves me, sighing and shrugging and promising to analyze the Reekies and see if he can discover some clue as to what makes the change and what can help me out of my fix. There is nothing left for me to do but follow the tree surgeon’s advice and go to bed.
I do.
I sleep like a log.
The next thing I know, I hear a banging and a thumping and a pounding outside my room. I open my eyes and somebody opens my door. Rather violently — with an axe. The axe smashes through the panel, followed by the hatchet face of my ex-wife, Joyce.
“There he is, girls!” she squeals. She rushes through the opening, and I see that Gloria and Aileen are right behind her. My three ex-wives give me a stare and a glare.
“Here it is tomorrow!” Gloria reminds me, in a mild tone of yell. “Where is our alimony?”
I do not answer. I merely keep a very wooden face. It is not hard for me to do so — because when I try to move, I suddenly discover that I can’t! I am stiff and solid — solid wood!
The tree surgeon removes my buds and bark, but that does not halt the process which goes on in my sleep. Now I am a wooden man — and with a slight amount of horror I realize I cannot stir a bit.
The three alimony moaners stand over my bed and shriek at me. “Get up out of bed, you lazy goon!” suggests Aileen.
“He’s too drunk to move,” Gloria guesses.
“He’s positively stiff!” Joyce sneers.
She reaches out a finger and touches my cheek. “Eeeek!” she complains. “He is stiff! Maybe he’s dead.”
Aileen reaches into her purse and pulls out a little bottle of whiskey. She waves it in front of my nose. “Yes,” she shudders. “He’s dead all right, if he doesn’t make a grab for that.”
“Wait a minute.” Gloria runs her hand along my shoulder. “Wait a minute, girls. This isn’t Lefty.”
“No?”
“No — it’s just a dummy.”
“How do you tell the difference?” Aileen wants to know.
“Really,” Gloria insists. “This is a dummy made up to look like Lefty.” She taps my chin. “See, it’s wood!”
“Just a chip off the old block, eh?” Aileen remarks.
“The dirty dog,” says Gloria. “He must skip town when he can’t pay us our alimony and leave this dummy for a decoy to fool us.”
“A vile trick,” Aileen declares. She raises the axe. “I’m going to chop this dizzy-looking dummy to splinters. At least we’ll have some kindling to split up for our furnaces, girls.”
It looks like I’m going to have a hot time in a little while. But I cannot move to avoid the axe, and I must lie there and listen. This talk about chopping me up gives me a splitting headache, too.
Aileen swings the axe. This is it. But —
“Hold it!” Gloria yells. “I’ve an idea! Why ruin a perfectly good dummy?”
“What’s good about it?” demands Joyce. “It looks like Feep.”
“Even so, a dummy is a dummy. Why can’t we sell it to a department store? They ought to pay something for clothing dummies. We can split up the dough and at least get something for our troubles breaking in here.”
“Why not?” Aileen lowers the axe. “Grab hold of it and we’ll carry the dummy out to the car.”
I lie there. I would like to quake with horror, but I cannot make with a shake. I would like to yell like hell, also, but I cannot talk or squawk. It is frightful, and far from delightful.
Just as the girls are about to grab me, I hear footsteps on the stairs. At least I can still hear, and what I hear makes me hope. But the footsteps turn out to belong to J. Selwyn Spellbinder and Bernie the Attorney. They stick their necks through the hole in the door.
“Pardon me,” says Bernie, “but we are looking for Lefty Feep.”
“You and the sheriff,” snaps Aileen. “We want him too. But the big lug skips town on us and leaves a dummy as a decoy.”
“Dummy?” asks J. Selwyn Spellbinder. “What dummy?”
“This one here,” says Aileen. “We are going to take it and sell it to a department store.”
Spellbinder gazes at me. Then he claps his hands together. “I’ve got it!” he shouts.
“What?” gasps Bernie the Attorney.
“I tell you, I’ve got it!”
“Well, get rid of it if it makes you holler so,” Bernie advises him.
“Wait until you hear this,” says Spellbinder. “I’ve got a terrific idea for our Reekies show.”
“We already have a show,” Bernie reminds him. “A serial program.”
“Nuts to the serial! Grape nuts to it!” says Spellbinder. “Listen to this! A serial show appeals only to women. Why not a show that will appeal to everyone? I mean a comedy program.”
“Comedy program?”
“Certainly — like Bergen and McCarthy, for instance. Take a look at that dummy. What a character! It’s much goofier looking than Charlie McCarthy. I’ll go on the air in a ventriloquist act with this life-sized dummy. We’ll change our opening program, build it around this act, play it up big! We can hold a big banquet for the opening, with lots of ballyhoo. We’ll cram Reekies down the throat of the nation.”
Bernie the Attorney catches some of the enthusiasm. I just lie there and catch the dirty digs. “You know radio, Spellbinder,” he says. “If you say that’s the thing to do, we’d better do it.” He turns to the women. “How much do you want for this dummy?” he asks.
“$100 in cash,” pipes Gloria.
“Don’t be silly, we can get more than that,” whispers Joyce.
“I doubt it— the thing is too silly-looking,” Gloria says.
I wince.
Bernie the Attorney beams. “Sold!” he says. He pulls out a handful of bills and the girls get busy fondling the currency.
“Come on,” says Spellbinder. “We have no time. First show is scheduled for tomorrow night. I’ll have to bat out a script and rehearse. You know, I always figure I want to be a radio comedian.”
They grab me and tote me down the stairs. I am helpless. The ideas these people have fairly makes the sap run cold in my veins. I will not bark a remark about what happens when I get to the broadcasting station. I am propped up against the wall while Spellbinder and a bunch of continuity writers go into a muddle and huddle and grind out some comedy dialogue between a ventriloquist and a dummy. Then Spellbinder holds a rehearsal with me on his lap.
I cannot say a word — except for the awful stuff Spellbinder’s ventriloquism puts into my mouth. He rehearses and curses and I just give him my wooden stare. It is late at night before the practising is over. Spellbinder puts me down and gets ready to leave. Bernie the Attorney comes in to pick him up and check over last-minute plans for the show.
“How’s the Reekies manufacturing going?” asks Spellbinder.
“I don’t know,” says Bernie. “I do not see Herman Hormone all day. And Feep skips town. But Hormone must be busy.”
Hormone is busy.
As a matter of fact he is busy coming through the door right now. And he is still busier staring at me. “Lefty Feep!” he screams.
Bernie turns and laughs. “No,” he tells Hormone. “This is just a dummy of Feep.”
Herman Hormone comes over and touches me with a shaking finger. “No,” he says. “This is no dummy. This is Lefty Feep.
“Why it’s nothing but wood,” chuckles Spellbinder.
“You are mistaken.” Herman Hormone sighs. “It is Lefty Feep. He turns to wood after eating the Reekies.”
“No — you’re crazy!”
“Look at this.” Herman Hormone fumbles in his bulging briefcase and pulls out something. It is a wooden dog.
“I have a pet dog,” he says. “Last night I feed it some Reekies. Today I have a wooden toy.”
“But why — how —?” Herman Hormone explains everything. He tells what happens to me yesterday. The two high-pressure artists listen and gape.
“Last night I go home and experiment,” Hormone tells them. “I find that the vegetable substances I make my Reekies out of cause a strange reaction on the system of any form of animal life. Anyone who absorbs Reekies assumes the characteristics of vegetable life — particularly of trees. Feep eats Reekies and turns to wood. So does the dog. That proves something.”
“Maybe it proves Feep is a dog,” says Bernie, unkindly.
“I always figure only God can make a tree,” adds Spellbinder.
“Reekies can make a tree,” Hormone insists. “I swear to you this is not a dummy but Lefty Feep.”
Bernie the Attorney looks at me and shrugs. “Well,” he mutters, “he can’t talk or move. No harm in him. We’ll just go ahead as we plan, put the program on and forget about it.” He smiles. “Of course you must go to work and change that Reekies formula again before the show tomorrow. Otherwise everybody will turn to wood from eating Reekies. Not that I mind that, either — but wooden people won’t buy a second package.”
He laughs. Herman Hormone stares at him. I stand there, feeling like an overgrown toothpick. “You don’t mean it!” wails the inventor. “You can’t be so cold-blooded. This is a man — we must help him to get out of this terrible situation somehow! And I certainly can’t revise my Reekies and invent a new breakfast food in just one night .’
“Listen,” says Bernie the Attorney, chewing on a cigar. “You’re doing what I say. I have a contract with your signature on it. Get busy and keep your mouth shut.”
Spellbinder nods and looks very smug. Little Herman Hormone knows he can expect no sympathy from him. “I — I won’t do it,” he says, sticking out his chin. “It’s too inhuman.”
“Oh yes you will,” chuckles Bernie. “Because if you don’t, I will tell the police you feed breakfast food to Lefty Feep and turn him to wood. That’s murder.”
Hormone steps back in horror. The two men nod at him and wink. “Obey me or fry,” Bernie tells him. He scowls at my wooden face. “As for you, Feep — if you can still hear me — you’d better behave too. Or I’m liable to turn some woodpeckers loose on your face.”
“We’ll kick his slats for him,” grins Spellbinder.
“We’ll set him up as a cigar-store Indian!” Bernie guffaws. “But Feep will behave, I’m sure. And so will Herman, here. And nobody will ever know.”
“Knock on wood,” laughs Spellbinder, hitting me on the head.
“Uh — er —” Hormone gulps.
“What is it?”
“I would like to take Lefty home with me,” suggests the little inventor. “Maybe if I study his condition I can hit on a clue in changing the Reekies formula.”
“All right,” says Bernie the Attorney. “But no funny business — or you’re up for murder.” Hormone is almost down for the count when he hears this. But he picks up my wooden body in trembling hands and lugs me out to a car.
We drive home.
“Can you hear me, Lefty?” Hormone wails. I cannot answer him. He just looks at me and shakes. I wish I could.
“This is an awful spot,” he sighs. “I will never forgive myself for this. How can I get you out of this mess? And how can I get myself out of it? I do not tell Bernie the Attorney that almost all our money is being spent right now — I have a batch of Reekies waiting to be put in boxes that will cost us at least $50,000.
