The Shipshape Miracle: And Other Stories Read online

  Half an hour later he pulled up beside a small park and began to take stock of the situation.

  There was both good and bad.

  He had failed to harvest as much of the tree-grown money as he had intended and he had tipped his mitt to Metcalfe, so there’d not be another chance.

  But he knew now for a certainty that there were such things as money trees and he had a rolla, or he supposed it was a rolla, for whatever it was worth.

  And the rolla—so quiet now inside the sack—in its more active moments of guarding the money tree, had done him not a bit of good.

  His hands were dark in the moonlight with the wash of blood and there were stripes of fire across his ribs, beneath the torn shirt, where the rolla’s claws had raked him, and one leg was sodden-wet. He put down a hand to feel the warm moistness of his trouser leg.

  He felt a thrill of fear course along his nerves. A man could get infected from a chewing-up like that—especially by an unknown animal.

  And if he went to a doctor, the doc would want to know what had happened to him, and he would say a dog, of course. But what if the doc should know right off that it was no dog bite. More than likely the doc would have to make some report or other—maybe just like he’d have to make a report on a gunshot wound.

  There was, he decided, too much at stake for him to take the chance—he must not let it be known he’d found out about the money tree.

  For as long as he was the only one who knew, he might stand to make a good thing of it. Especially since he had the rolla, which in some mysterious manner was connected with the tree—and which, even by itself, without reference to the tree, might be somehow turned into a wad of cash.

  He eased the car from the curb and out into the street.

  Fifteen minutes later he parked in a noisome alley back of a block-long row of old apartment houses.

  He descended from the car and hauled out the sack.

  The rolla was still quiet.

  “Funny thing,” Doyle said.

  He laid his hand against the sack and the sack was warm and the rolla stirred a bit.

  “Still alive,” Doyle told himself with some relief.

  He wended his way through a clutter of battered garbage cans, stacks of rotting wood, piles of empty cans; cats slunk into the dark as he approached.

  “Crummy place for a girl to live,” said Doyle, speaking to himself. “No place for a girl like Mabel.”

  He found the rickety backstairs and climbed them, went along the hall until he came to Mabel’s door. She opened it at his knock, immediately, as if she had been waiting. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him in and slammed the door and leaned her back against it.

  “I was worried, Chuck!”

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Doyle. “Little trouble, that’s all.”

  “Your hands!” she screamed. “Your shirt!”

  Doyle jostled the bag gaily. “Nothing to it, Mabel. Got what done it right inside this sack.”

  He looked around the place. “You got all the windows shut?” he asked.

  She nodded, still a bit wide-eyed.

  “Hand me that table lamp,” he said. “It’ll be handy for a club.”

  She jerked the plug out of the wall and pulled off the shade, then handed the lamp to him.

  He hefted the lamp, then picked up the sack, loosened the draw string.

  “I bumped it couple of times,” he said, “and heaved it in the alley and it may be shook up considerable, but you can’t take no chances.”

  He upended the sack and dumped the rolla out. With it came a shower of twenty-dollar bills—the three or four handfuls he had managed to pick before the rolla jumped him.

  The rolla picked itself off the floor with a show of dignity and stood erect—except that it didn’t look as if it were standing erect. Its hind legs were so short and its front legs were so long that it looked as if it were sitting like a dog. The fact that its face, or rather its mouth, since it had no face, was on top of its head, added to the illusion of sitting.

  Its stance was pretty much like that of a sitting coyote baying at the moon—or, better yet, an oversized and more than ordinarily grotesque bullfrog baying at the moon.

  Mabel let out a full-fledged scream and bolted for the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  “For cripes sake,” moaned Doyle, “the fat’s in the fire for sure. They’ll think I’m murdering her.”

  Someone thumped on the floor upstairs. A man’s voice bellowed: “Cut it out down there!”

  The rolla’s gleaming chest lit up:

  HUNGRY. WHEN

  WE EAT?

  Doyle gulped. He felt cold sweat starting out on him.

  WASSA MATTER? spelled the rolla. GO AHEAD. TALK. I CAN HEAR.

  Someone started hammering on the door.

  Doyle looked wildly around and saw the money on the floor. He started scooping it up and stuffing it in his pocket.

  Whoever was at the door kept on hammering.

  Doyle finished with the money and opened the door.

  A man stood there in his undershirt and pants and he was big and tough. He towered over Doyle by at least a foot. A woman, standing behind him, peered around at Doyle.

  “What’s going on around here?” the man demanded. “We heard a lady scream.”

  “Saw a mouse,” Doyle told him.

  The man kept on looking at him.

  “Big one,” Doyle elaborated. “Might have been a rat.”

  “And you, mister. What’s the matter with you? How’d your shirt get tore?”

  “I was in a crap game,” said Doyle and went to shut the door.

  But the man stiff-armed it and strode into the room.

  “If you don’t mind, we’ll look the situation over.”

  With a sinking feeling in his belly, Doyle remembered the rolla.

  He spun around.

  The rolla was not there.

  The bedroom door opened and Mabel came out. She was calm as ice.

  “You live here, lady?” asked the man.

  “Yes, she does,” the woman said. “I see her in the hall.”

  “This guy bothering you?”

  “Not at all,” said Mabel. “We are real good friends.”

  The man swung around on Doyle.

  “You got blood all over you,” he said.

  “I can’t seem to help it,” Doyle told him. “I just bleed all the blessed time.”

  The woman was tugging at the man’s arm.

  Mabel said, “I tell you, there is nothing wrong.”

  “Let’s go, honey,” urged the woman, still tugging at the arm. “They don’t want us here.”

  The man went reluctantly.

  Doyle slammed the door and bolted it. He leaned against it weakly.

  “That rips it,” he said. “We got to get out of here. He’ll keep mulling it over and he’ll up and call the cops and they’ll haul us in …”

  “We ain’t done nothing, Chuck.”

  “No, maybe not. But I don’t like no cops. I don’t want to answer questions. Not right now.”

  She moved closer to him.

  “He was right,” she said. “You are all bloody. Your hands and shirt …”

  “One leg, too. The rolla gave me a working over.”

  The rolla stood up from behind a corner chair.

  NO WISH EMBARRASS, he spelled out. ALWAYS HIDE FROM STRANGERS.

  “That’s the way he talks,” said Doyle, admiringly.

  “What is it?” asked Mabel, backing away a pace or two.

  I ROLLA.

  “I met him under the money tree,” said Doyle. “We had a little fracas. He has something to do with the tree, guarding it or something.”

  “And did you get some money?”


  “Not much. You see, this rolla…”

  HUNGRY, said the rolla.

  “You come along,” Mabel said to Doyle. “I got to patch you up.”

  “But don’t you want to hear …”

  “Not especially. You got into trouble again. It seems to me you want to get in trouble.”

  She headed for the bathroom and he followed.

  “Sit down on the edge of the tub,” she ordered.

  The rolla came and sprawled in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

  AINT YOU GOT NO FOOD? it asked.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mabel exclaimed in exasperation, “what is it you want?”

  FRUIT, VEGETABLES.

  “Out in the kitchen. There’s fruit on the table. I suppose I have to show you.”

  FIND MYSELF, the rolla said and left.

  “I can’t understand that squirt,” said Mabel. “First he chewed you up. Now he’s palsy-walsy.”

  “I give him lumps,” said Doyle. “Taught him some respect.”

  “Besides,” observed Mabel, “he’s dying of starvation. Now you sit down on that tub and let me fix you up.”

  He sat down gingerly while she rummaged in the medicine cabinet.

  She got a bottle of red stuff, a bottle of alcohol, swabs and cotton. She knelt and rolled up Doyle’s trouser leg.

  “This looks bad,” she said.

  “Where he got me with his teeth,” said Doyle.

  “You should see a doctor, Chuck. This might get infected. His teeth might not be clean or something.”

  “Doc would ask too many questions. We got trouble enough …”

  “Chuck, what is that thing out there?”

  “It’s a rolla.”

  “Why is it called a rolla?”

  “I don’t know. Just call it that, I guess.”

  “I read about someone called a rolla once. Rolla boys, I think it was. Always doing good.”

  “Didn’t do me a bit of good.”

  “What did you bring it here for, then?”

  “Might be worth a million. Might sell it to a circus or a zoo. Might work up a night club act with it. The way it talks and all.”

  She worked expertly and quickly on the tooth-marked calf and ankle, cleaning out the cuts and swabbing them with some of the red stuff that was in the bottle.

  “There’s another reason I brought the rolla here,” Doyle confessed. “I got Metcalfe where I want him. I know something he wouldn’t want no one else to know and I got the rolla and the rolla has something to do with them money trees…”

  “You’re talking blackmail now?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. You know I wouldn’t never blackmail no one. Just a little private arrangement between me and Metcalfe. Maybe just out of gratitude for me keeping my mouth shut, he might give me one of his money trees.”

  “But you said there was only one money tree.”

  “That’s all I saw, was one. But the place was dark and there might be more of them. You wouldn’t expect a man like Metcalfe to be satisfied with just one money tree, would you. If he had one, he could grow some others. I bet you he has twenty-dollar trees and fifty-dollar trees and hundred-dollar trees.”

  He sighed. “I sure would like to get just five minutes with a hundred-dollar tree. I’d be set for life. I’d do me some two-handed picking the like you never see.”

  “Shuck up your shirt,” said Mabel. “I got to get at them scratches on your ribs.”

  Doyle shucked up his shirt.

  “You know,” he said, “I bet you Metcalfe ain’t the only one that has them money trees. I bet all the rich folks has them. I bet they’re all banded together in a secret society, pledged to never talk about them. I wouldn’t wonder if that’s where all the money comes from. Maybe the government don’t print no money, like they say they do …”

  “Shut up,” commanded Mabel, “and hold still.”

  She worked swiftly on his ribs.

  “What are you going to do with the rolla?” she asked.

  “We’ll put him in the car and drive down and have a talk with Metcalfe. You stay out in the car with the rolla and if there is any funny stuff, you get out of there. Long as we have the rolla we got Metcalfe across the barrel.”

  “You’re crazy if you think I’ll stay alone, with that thing in the car. Not after what it done to you.”

  “Just get yourself a stick of stove wood and belt him one with it if he makes a crooked move.”

  “I’ll do no such thing,” said Mabel. “I will not stay with him.”

  “All right, then,” said Doyle, “we’ll put him in the trunk. We’ll fix him up with some blankets, so he’ll be comfortable. He can’t get at you there. And it might be better to have him under lock and key.”

  Mabel shook her head. “I hope that you are doing right, Chuck. I hope we don’t get into trouble.”

  “Put that stuff away,” said Doyle, “and let us get a move on. We got to get out of here before that jerk down the hall decides to phone the cops.”

  The rolla showed up in the doorway, patting at his belly.

  JERKS? he asked. WHATS THEM?

  “Oh, my aching back,” said Doyle, “now I got to explain to him.”

  JERKS LIKE HEELS?

  “Sure, that’s it,” said Doyle. “A jerk is like a heel.”

  METCALFE SAY

  ALL OTHER

  HUMANS HEELS

  “Now, I tell you, Metcalfe might have something there,” said Doyle, judicially.

  HEEL MEAN

  HUMAN WITH

  NO MONEY

  “I’ve never heard it put quite that way,” said Doyle, “but if that should be the case, you can count me as a heel.”

  METCALFE SAY

  THAT WHAT IS

  WRONG WITH PLANET.

  THERE IS TOO

  LITTLE MONEY

  “Now, that is something that I’ll go along with him.”

  SO I NOT

  ANGRY WITH

  YOU ANY MORE.

  Mabel said: “My, but he’s turned out to be a chatterbox.”

  MY JOB TO

  CARE AND

  GUARD TREE.

  I ANGRY AT

  THE START.

  BUT FINALLY

  I THINK

  POOR HEEL

  NEED SOME MONEY

  CANNOT BLAME

  FOR TAKING.

  “That’s decent of you,” Doyle told him. “I wish you’d thought of that before you chewed me up. If I could have had just a full five minutes—”’

  “I am ready,” Mabel said. “If we have to leave, let’s go.”

  III

  Doyle went softly up the walk that led to the front of the Metcalfe house. The place was dark and the moon was riding homeward in the western sky, just above the tip of a row of pines that grew in the grounds across the street.

  He mounted the steps of mellowed brick and stood before the door. He reached out and rang the bell and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  He rang again and yet again and there was no answer.

  He tried the door and it was locked.

  “They flown the coop,” said Doyle, talking to himself.

  He went around the house into the alley and climbed the tree again.

  The garden back of the house was dark and silent. He crouched for a long time atop the wall and the place was empty.

  He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and played it downward. It cut a circle of uncertain light and he moved it slowly back and forth until it caught the maw of tortured earth.

  His breath rasped in his throat at the sight of it and he worked the light around to make sure there was no mistake.

  There was no mistake at all. The money tree was
gone. Someone had dug it up and taken it away.

  Doyle snapped off the light and slid it back into his pocket. He slid down the tree and trotted down the alley.

  Two blocks away he came up to the car. Mabel had kept the motor idling. She moved from behind the wheel and he slid under it and shoved the car in gear.

  “They took it on the lam,” he said. “There ain’t nobody there. They dug up the tree and took it on the lam.”

  “Well, I’m glad of it,” Mabel said defiantly. “Now you won’t be getting into trouble—not with money trees at least.”

  “I got a hunch,” said Doyle.

  “So have I,” said Mabel. “Both of us is going home and getting us some sleep.”

  “Maybe you,” said Doyle. “You can curl up in the seat. Me, I got some driving to do.”

  “There ain’t no place to drive.”

  “Metcalfe told me when I was taking his picture this afternoon about a farm he had. Bragging about all the things he has, you know. Out west some place, near a town called Millville.”

  “What has that got to do with it?”

  “Well, if you had a lot of money trees…”

  “But he had only one tree. In the backyard of his house.”

  “Maybe he has lots of them. Maybe he had this one here just to keep him in pocket money when he was in town.”

  “You mean you’re driving out to this place where he has a farm?”

  “I have to find an all-night station first. I need some gas and I need a road map to find out where is this Millville place. I bet you Metcalfe’s got an orchard on that farm of his. Can’t you see it, Mabel? Row after row of trees, all loaded down with money!”

  IV

  The old proprietor of the only store in Millville—part hardware, part grocery, part drugstore, with the post office in one corner—rubbed his silvery mustache.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Man by the name of Metcalfe does have a farm—over in the hills across the river. He’s got it named and everything. He calls it Merry Hill. Now, can you tell me, stranger, why anyone should name a farm like that?”

  “People do some funny things,” said Doyle. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “You asked?”

  “Sure I asked. I asked you just now …”

  The old man shook his head. “You been invited there? Metcalfe expecting you?”