]]> Unknown AND READ THE FLESH BETWEEN THE LINES � by R. A. Lafferty � � Did you ever suspect that there were things left out of the history books, crucial connections not made and important explanations not given? There may be a reason, and it may be something a lot like R. A. Lafferty’s contention here�"whole millennia of history and breeds of men lost to us because we can no longer fit them in. But if they’re real, can they be lost forever? Probably not, certainly not. They’ll find their way back in through the nooks and crannies of history, and between the panels of cartoons. � * * * * � 1 � A Cave, a Cove, a Hub, a Club, A crowded, jumbled flame: The Magic Tree, the Future Shrub, Nostalgia is its name. � �"Old scribble on the wall of That Room by John Penandrew � � THERE HAD been a sort of rumbling going on in that old unused room over the garages at Barnaby Sheen’s place. Nobody paid much attention to it. After all, there were queerer things than a little rumble at Barnaby’s. � There were the spooks, there were the experiments, there was the houseboy and bartender who should have been dead for a million years. There were the jokers and geniuses who came there. Who notices a rumble in an unused room? There were rumbles of many sorts going on at Barnaby’s. � �śThe rumble in the old room is menacing and dangerous,” Barnaby told us one evening. �śNo, really, fellows, it isn’t one of my tricks. I don’t know what it is.” � �śIt sounds like a friendly rumble to me,” Harry O’Donovan said. �śI like it.” � �śI didn’t say that it was malevolent,” Barnaby gruffed with that odd affection which he sometimes put into his voice. �śI like it too. We all like it. It likes us. But it is dangerous, very dangerous, without meaning to be. I have been over everything there: I can’t find the source of the rumble or the danger. I ask you four, as a special favor to me, to examine the room carefully. You all know the place since years long gone by.” � The four of us, Dr. George Drakos, Harry O’Donovan, Cris Benedetti, who were three smart ones, and me, who wasn’t, went down and examined the old room. But just how thoroughly did we examine it? � We examined it, at least, in more ways and times than the present. For that reason it is possible that we neglected it a little bit in its present state. The past times of it were so strong that it may have intended its present state to be neglected, or it may have insisted that its whole duration was compressed in its casual present state. � Let’s hear a little bit about this room, then. � In the time of Barnaby Sheen’s grandfather, who came out here from Pennsylvania at the very first rumor of oil and who bought an anomalous �śmansion,” this was not a room over the garages, but over the stables and carriagehouse. � It was a hayloft, that’s what it was; an oatloft, a fodderloft. And a little corner of it had been a harness room with brads and hammers and knives and needles as big as sailmaker’s needles, and cobbler’s bench; and spokeshaves (for forming or trimming singletrees) and neat’s-foot oil and all such. The room, even in its latter decades, had not lost any of its old smells. There would always be the perfume of timothy hay, of sweet clover, of little bluestem grass and of prairie grass, of alfalfa, of Sudan grass, of sorghum cane, of hammered oats and of ground oats, of rock salt, of apples. Yes, there was an old barrel there that would remember its apples for a hundred years. Why had it been there? Do not horses love apples for a treat? � There was the smell of shorts and of bran, the smell of old field tobacco (it must have been cured up there in the jungle of rafters), the smell of seventy-five-year-old sparks (and the grindstone that had produced them was there, operable yet), the smell of buffalo robes (they used to use them for lap robes in wagons and buggies). There was a forge there and other farrier’s tools (but they had been brought up from downstairs no more than sixty years ago, so their smell was not really ancient there). � Then there were a few tokens of the automobile era, heavily built parts cabinets, tools, old plugs, old oil smell. There were back seats of very old cars to serve as sofas and benches, horns and spotlights and old battery cases, even very old carbide and kerosene headlights. But these were in the minority: there is not so much use for a room over the garages as for a room over the stables. � There was another and later odor that was yet very evocative: it could only be called the smell of almost-ape. � And then there were our own remnants somewhat before this latter thing. This had been a sort of clubroom for us when we were schoolboys and when we were summer-boys. There were the trunks full of old funny papers. They were from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the St. Louis Globe, the Kansas City Star, the Chicago Tribune�"those were the big-city papers that were hawked in our town, and our own World and Tribune. There were a few New York and Boston and Philadelphia funny papers also. And the funnies of the different papers were not nearly so uniform then as they later became. � There were the comparatively more recent comic books. We had been older then, almost too old for such things. Yet there were a few thousand of them, mostly the original property of Cris Benedetti and John Penandrew. � There was the taxidermy of George Drakos: stuffed owls, snakes, barn swallows, water puppies, mountain boomers, flying squirrels, even foxes and wildcats. And there were the dissections (also of Drakos) of frogs, of cat brains, of fish, of cow eyes, and many other specimens. The best of these (those still maintaining themselves in good state) were preserved in formaldehyde in Pluto Water bottles. Pluto Water bottles, with their bevel-fitted glass corks and wire-clamp holders, will contain formaldehyde forever: this is a fact all too little known. (Is Pluto Water still in proper history, or has it been relegated out?) � There were the lepidoptera (the butterfly and night-moth collections) of Harry O’Donovan, and my own aggregations of rocks and rock fossils. And there were all the homemade radios, gamma-ray machines, electrical gadgets generally, coils, magnet wire, resistors, tubes, of Barnaby Sheen. � There were also�"hold it, hold it! If everything in that room were listed, there would not be books enough in the world to contain it all (there were even quite a few books there). There would be no limit to the remnants, not even to the remnants of a single day. � But we had all of us lived several mutually exclusive boyhoods that hinged on that room. Within the framework of history as now constituted, these variants could not all have happened. But they did. � * * * * � The room had developed a benevolent rumble that might be dangerous. Barnaby Sheen couldn’t find what it was; and we could not. It was a soundly built room, oak and hickory and black locust wood; it had been there a long time. It was older than the fine house that had replaced the anomalous old �śmansion” there. If it was dangerous (and Barnaby said that it was), we could not discover that danger. � The world itself had a deeper and more worrisome series of rumbles. We leave the room over the garages now and go to the world. We are sorry to have spent so much time on such a little thing as that room. It is just that it has stuck in our minds somehow. � * * * * � 2 � Young Austro said �ścarrock, carrock.” O’Donovan said �śgrumble.” Loretta gave with spirit knock. The room said �śrumble, rumble.” �"Rocky McCrocky (in cartoon balloon) � � We were together for the first time in eighteen months. Barnaby Sheen was back in the country, Cris Benedetti was back in the country, Harry O’Donovan was back in the state, George Drakos was back out of his seclusion. I was there; I hadn’t been anywhere. � Really, Barnaby was back for the second time. He’d been home two weeks before this, and that after more than a year’s absence. Then, after he’d unpacked most of his things, he snapped his fingers and said as though dreaming some lively dream, �śI forgot something over there. I’ll just go back and see about it. I’ll be back again in a couple of weeks.” � But �śover there” was halfway around the globe, in Ethiopia, about seventy miles northwest of Magdala on the Guna slopes. Barnaby had mineral concessions there. There also he had found a concentration of most interesting fossils, some of them still living and walking. Barnaby used a cover story of doing seismograph petroleum survey work, but he was into many things. � But now he was back for the second time and we were together. � Austro had just brought us our drinks, though listlessly. Austro was houseboy and bartender and was of an old and doubted species. But he worked distractedly now, not with his old sharpness. Since he had learned to read he always had some crude sheet or sheaf of gaudy and juvenile literature under his arm or in his hand. � �śWell, Barney, you went halfway around the world again,” Drakos said. �śDid you bring back what you went after?” � �śOh, no. It wasn’t a thing such as one can bring or carry. At least I don’t believe that it was.” � �śBut you said that you had forgotten something over there and that you were going to go back and see about it.” � �śYes, I said that, but I wasn’t too lucky in seeing about the matter. I couldn’t remember what it was; that’s the trouble. I still can’t quite.” � �śYou went halfway around the world to get something you had left behind? And when you got there you had forgotten what it was? Barney!” This was Harry O’Donovan chiding him. � �śNot quite right, Harry,” Barnaby said. �śI didn’t forget it when I got back there. I went back there because I had already forgotten it: because I had always forgotten it, I guess. I went back there to try to remember it. I consulted with some of Austro’s elder kinsmen (he’s only a boy, you know). I meditated a bit in those mountains. I’m good at that: I should have been a hermit (why, I suppose that I am!) or a prophet. But I remembered only part.” � * * * * � These were really the men who knew everything? Sometimes it didn’t quite seem like it. � * * * * � �śHow does Austro handle things when you are gone?” George Drakos asked. �śBeing able to speak only one word might be a disadvantage, and beyond that he isn’t very bright. How is he accepted?” � �śAustro is quite bright, George,” Barnaby told him. �śHe is accepted within the house, and he doesn’t go out much. Here there are several persons who accept and understand him perfectly, in spite of his seeming to speak only one word.” � �śWhich several persons, Barney?” � �śOh, my daughter Loretta. And, ah, Mary Mondo.” � �śBarney, they don’t count!” Drakos shouted in near anger. � �śThey do with me. They do with Austro. They do with all of you a little.” � �śBarney, George means, or at least I mean, is Austro accepted as human?” Cris asked. � �śOh, well, yes, he’s accepted as of the kindred. It’s hard to put into words. There’s a missing kindred word, you know. Besides mother, father, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, uncle, aunt niece, nephew, cousin, female cousin, in-laws, there is yet another. Delineate it, name it: then we may know what Austro is.” � �śWhatever are you talking about, Barney?” Cris asked, puzzled. � �śKinship, apposition, parallelism, the riddle of flesh and of election. Austro was found in Ethiopia, on the Guna slopes, northwest of Magdala. But there is another Magdala, more blessed by its circumstance and location; it is near Tiberias on the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Its first name (the first name of both of them, I suspect) is Migdol, the Watch-Tower. Tell me the kinship between the two cities (there are very many analogs and references to the Two Cities) and then perhaps I can tell you the kinship between Austro and ourselves.” � (Austro, the houseboy and bartender, was of the species called Australopithecus, which is either ape or ape-man or man: we don’t really know. He could speak only one word, �ścarrock,” but he could speak it in a hundred different ways. And he had now learned to read and write very hairy English.) � (Loretta Sheen was a life-sized sawdust-filled doll: Barnaby always insisted that this object was the body of his real daughter Loretta. We all knew Barnaby very well from boyhood, but there was a cloud here. We couldn’t remember for sure whether he had ever had a real daughter or not.) � (Mary Mondo was a ghost. Actually she was the schizo-personality of the ghost of a girl named Violet Lonsdale who was long dead.) � Few households have three such unusual persons. � * * * * � �śI believe that Austro is a qualified col to us,” Harry O’Donovan tried to explain in his rather high voice. �śIn Irish, col means first a prohibition, a sin, a wickedness; and only after that does it mean a cousin. So first cousin (col ceathar) really means first impediment or first wickedness, and second cousin (col seisear) really means second impediment or second wickedness. But there is (yes, you are right, Barney) another relationship whose very name is forgotten. Perhaps it is col carraig or rock cousin. Whyever did I think of a thing like that? Tis flesh which is the opposite of rock. But this outside thing is at the same time a holy and a forbidden relationship. It is the Flesh Between.” � �śHas anyone ever sounded the real meaning of Dutch Uncle?” Cris asked. �śFrisia (which is Dutch) was the latest home in Europe of some almost-men or early-men.” � �śIn Greek, cousin is exadelphus,” George Drakos contributed as he studied the thing, �śthe out-brother or outer-brother. But it isn’t an old word. The old word for cousin is unwritten and forgot. And yet there is, or there was, another kindred name (as Barnaby says) that is not father or mother, not son or daughter, not brother, sister, niece or nephew, not uncle or aunt or maternal grandfather. There is another and expunged relationship name, I agree: and it does represent an expunged flesh. But all expunged things leave traces.” � �śAustro is such a trace,” Barnaby insisted. �śHe is the flesh between: not entirely expunged, though. Nor let us forget that we also have angelic and diabolic kindred. We’re a big family.” � �śIshmael was a more moral and more upstanding man than Isaac,” Cris Benedetti said suddenly. �śWhy was Isaac more blessed? Why are we more blessed than Austro?” � * * * * � These were the four men who knew everything? They may have been. Do you know other men who talk like that? � * * * * � �śCarrock, carrock,” said Austro, coming in and refilling Barnaby’s drink: spilling it too, for he was reading an old funny paper (Elmer Tuggle, it was) at the same time, and he wasn’t good at doing two things at once. � �śRumble, rumble,” said that old unused room a few yards distant. � * * * * � 3 � The past it is a big balloon, I blow it all I can. We all be ghost and all buffoon, A close, explosive clan. �"Lines expressed by Mary Mondo (medium unknown) � � Several evenings later it was, in the same place, and the talk had turned to ancient libraries. I don’t know how it had. I came late. � �śThe present explosion of knowledge is fact,” Barnaby Sheen was saying. �śBut there is also an occasional (though continuing) explosion of knowledge in another sense. One of the most false of legends is that the two great libraries at Alexandria, with their seven hundred thousand books or rolls, were deliberately destroyed, partly by Aurelian, more completely by Theodosius. That’s all false, I tell you. Those two royal gentlemen would no more destroy valuable books and scrolls than you royal gentlemen here would burn up hundred-dollar bills. They knew what things had money value, and those old book-rolls had it. � �śThe only thing correct about the story is the chronology. Actually the two libraries exploded: the one in the Serapeum in the time of Aurelian; the one in the Museum in the time of Theodosius.” � * * * * � Give him a while. Barnaby always liked to savor his own startling statements for a few moments after he had made them. Don’t ask him (for the while) what he’s talking about. He’ll clarify it in a few moments. � * * * * � �śAustro really looks more like a big frog than like an ape,” Harry O’Donovan commented as the unusual houseboy ambled (is it more froggish than apish to amble?) into the room. Austro winked at Harry. Austro had learned to wink; he had also learned how to draw cartoons. � * * * * � �śThere is the leaky past, but it cannot leak out fast enough for safety.” Barnaby had taken up his tale again. He always came as directly as possible to a point, but the point was often a tricky one. �śThe staggering corpus of past events is diminished swiftly. More and more of the things that once happened are now made not to have happened. This is absolute necessity, even though the flesh between the lines (it is, I guess, the supposedly expunged flesh) should scream from the agony of the compression. � �śVelikovsky was derided for writing that six hundred years must be subtracted from Egyptian history and from all ancient history. He shouldn’t have been derided, but he did have it backwards. Indeed, six times six hundred years must be added to history again and again to approach the truth of the matter. It’d be dangerous to do it, though. It’s crammed as tight as it will go now, and there’s tremors all along the fault lines. As a matter of fact, several decades have been left out of quite recent United States history. They should be put back in (for they’re interesting, and we lived through parts of them) if it were safe to do so.” � �śJust what do you have in mind, Barney?” Cris Benedetti asked him. � �śI have never discovered any historical event which happened for the first time. Either life imitates anecdote, or very much more has happened than the bursting records are allowed to show as happening. As far back as one can track it, there is history, and I do not mean prehistory. I doubt that there was ever such a time as prehistory. I doubt that there was ever uncivilized man. I also doubt that there was ever any manlike creature who was not full man, however unconventional the suit of hide that he wore. � �śBut when you try to compress a hundred thousand years of history into six thousand years, something has to give. When you try to compress a million years, it becomes dangerous. There comes the revenge of events left out. � �śWere there eight kings of the name of Henry in England, or were there eighty? Never mind: someday it will be recorded that there was only one, and the attributes of all will be combined in his compressed story. � �śThere is a deep texture of art and literature (no matter whether it is rock scratching or machine pressed) that goes back over horizon after horizon. There is the deeper texture of life itself that is tremendous in its material and mental and psychic treasures. There are dialects now that were once full vernaculars, towns now that were once great cities, provinces that were nations. The foundations and lower stories of a culture or a building are commonly broader than the upper stories. A structure does not balance upside-down, standing on a point. � �śA torch was once lighted and given to a man, not to a beast. And it has been passed on from hand to hand while the hills melted and rose again. What matter that some of the hands were more hairy than others? It was always a man’s hand.” � �śIt may be that you are balancing upside-down on your pointed head, Barney,” Harry O’Donovan told him. � �śIt may be, but I believe that is not the case. Atrox Fabulinus, the Roman Rabelais, reconstructs some of the omissions and compressions in the form of fables. It is a common belief that a fable is less weighty than history and less likely to break down the great scaffold; it was a fabled straw, though, that broke the camel’s back (a real event). We know from Atrox that there were three Roman Kingdoms, three Roman Republics, and three Roman Empires, each series extending for more than a thousand years. We know that some of the later Roman Emperors (as today presented in history) are each composed of several men who may be a thousand or more years apart. We know that some of the more outré and outrageous of the Emperors (and Kings and Tyrants and Demagogs and Rebels and Tribunes) are no longer to be found in proper history at all. Clio is a skittish muse and very fearful of the breakdowns. � �śYet Humerus Maximus and Nothus Nobilis and Anserem-Captator and Capripex Ferox were in reality men of such bursting vigor and feats that history has not been able to contain them. But their suppression shouts at us and shocks us. � �śAnd it goes back many times farther, the stone pages that have been crowded (for a while) out of history. It was clear man from the beginning, but at its earliest it was man in an ape suit.” � * * * * � Austro had a bunch of patio blocks (thin concrete blocks) under his arm. Austro was very strong and he carried two dozen of them easily. He was drawing cartoons on them; no, he was drawing primordial pictures: they are almost, but not quite, the same. He drew with a bone stylus and used an ocher and water mixture for his paint. How had he known to do that? He showed his drawings to the saw-dusty Loretta Sheen and to the unbalanced ghostly Mary Mondo. They laughed gaily at the drawings, and then they laughed with a peculiar pathos. � Mary Mondo brought some of the stones to us. We looked and laughed. Then we looked more and laughed less. They were sharp cartoons, striking caricatures. They were something more. Once there was a species to which humor was more important than seriousness. Once there was a species so vivid and vibrant that it had to be forgotten by history (and Austro was a member of it). But, for a moment there, we almost knew what kindred Austro was to us. � * * * * � �śFran�żois, the French Rabelais, pulled greater tricks than did Atrox,” Barnaby Sheen was saying. �śAs you have probably suspected, there are a full thousand years lost out of the Lower Middle Ages. History ran up to the year fourteen hundred and fifty-three once, and then reverted to the year four hundred and fifty-three. It was a much different Year Four Hundred and Fifty-Three than had been the first time, though. The Millennium really has been and gone, you know. It’s forgotten now; it wasn’t what had been expected, but it was what had been promised. � �śNobody promised you that it would be a thousand years of peace and prosperity; nobody promised that it would be an era of learning and suavity; and certainly nobody promised that it would be a time of ease and gentility. � �śIt was the Millennium itself, and the Devil was bound for a thousand years. But he surely was not quiet about his binding. He clanked and howled; he shook the whole world and he caused land tides and sea tides. He caused mountains to collapse and people to go fearful or even to die literally petrified. And then the people discovered a cloud-capping and roaring humor in their tearfulness. A giantism appeared, a real awareness, a ridiculousness which has always been the authentic rib-rock of the world. � �śFran�żois Rabelais caught a little of that giantism and jollity. But it is banned from history (that thousand years) though it was more real than most things in history. History is too fragile to contain it. History, and all its annals and decades and centuries, would be shattered forever if these ten centuries were included.” � �śWhat happened afterwards, Barney?” Harry O’Donovan asked, �śwhen the Devil was unbound again and we resumed the historical count (wrong by a thousand years, of course, but who minds that?) and things became as they are now? How are they now?” � �śOh, the unbound Devil fragmentized (an old trick of his) and spread himself wherever he could. His is a feigned omnipresence, so there is a little of him in everything and every person. He believes (he isn’t really very bright) that he can’t be bound again if he keeps himself scattered. But his shriveling effect is on us all: we are no longer giants.” � * * * * � �śBarnaby, would you like your daughter to be carrying on seriously with an ape-man?” George Drakos asked with the veriest bit of mockery. � �śThere was never an ape-man, George,” Barnaby Sheen said softly. �śThere was, and there still is, this not-quite series of cousins for whom we miss the name. But it’s a ghostliness, not an apishness, that sets him a little apart from us who are his kindred. And my daughter (whether she lived in flesh or not I no longer know for sure) is now no more than a girl-sized doll full of sawdust and a few words or mottos. And yet she is more than that. If not a true ghostliness, then she has at least a polter-ghostliness about her. So has Mary Mondo. � �śThe children, Austro and Loretta and Mary (none of the three is more than a child or at most an adolescent), are close kindred, closer to each other, perhaps, than to us. It is common, perhaps universal, that children are of a slightly different race (I mean it literally) than they will later become. But it is all right with them.” � �śWhen were the several decades left out of United States history, Barnaby?” Cris Benedetti asked him. � �śEarly, and recent, and present, for I rather suspect that our own contingent present will not be firmly inscribed in the records. I’ll give but one example: there is the case of father, son, and grandson from one family, John Adams, John Braintree Adams, and John Quincy Adams being Presidents of the United States. I notice, though, that only two of them are now believed in, or should I say are now written in? The best of the three (wouldn’t you believe it? it’s always the best) has been left out. And part of the foreshortening, I believe, took place during our own boyhoods. There was much more happened there (three times more) than we are allowed to remember. Sometimes it seems that it was a million years and not just a couple of decades left out here.” � �śYou don’t mean this literally,” said Harry O’Donovan. �śYou talk in parables, do you not?” � �śAm I Christ that I should talk in parables? No, I talk literally, Harry. These things have happened, or rather, they have been made to seem not to have happened.” � �śBy what possible process could it have been done? It would have required a simultaneous and multitudinous altering of records and of minds.” � �śBy the human process it was done, and I cannot say more about that mysterious process. It isn’t a natural thing, of course, for man isn’t a natural animal. He is supernatural, or he is preternatural or he is unnatural. I’m not sure which class this weird and repeating amnesia (with its mechanical adjuncts) belongs to.” � �śI suspect that I should professionally recommend you to an alienist, Barney,” said Dr. George Drakos. � �śI suspect that you should professionally study this problem yourself, George,” Barnaby said somewhat stubbornly. �śEven medical men have good ideas sometimes.” � * * * * � �śDid there used to be a funny paper named Rocky McCrocky?” Harry O’Donovan asked the ceiling (he always sat leaning far back in his chair). �śIt was about, it seems, cave men.” � �śI don’t remember it,” Cris said. �śIf there had been one, John Penandrew would know, but we seldom see John in these latter times. There was Alley Oop, of course, and later B.C. And many of the others, Happy Hooligan, Down on the Farm, Her Name Was Maud, Boob McNutt, Toonerville Trolley, were troglodyte or cave-man funny papers in disguise.” � �śI wonder if the, ah, troglodytes themselves had funny papers?” George Drakos asked. � �śCertainly,” said Cris. �śHas not Austro just been making such funny papers and passing them around? And he is a troglodyte, or a troll, which is the same thing. � �śAnd our older rock-uncles (they of the kindred forgotten, of the flesh between) have left such funny papers in thousands of places. Mostly they were scratched on slate-rock or on limestone or on old red sandstone; and they had, it seems to me, the intensity and context almost strong enough to move mountains.” � �śBy the way,” Barnaby Sheen said dreamily, �śthere was once an explosion or implosion of certain archives or annals at Migdol which in fact did move a mountain. It was quite a strong blast. And we are inclined to forget just what an explosive pun is the word �Śmagazine’ in its several senses. For it means a periodical publication, which is to say a Journal or Annals. But it also means a depot in which explosives and ammunition are stored. Every library, I believe, is a magazine in both these senses, and I use the word �Ślibrary’ quite loosely.” � �śYou’ve nibbled at it from every edge, Barnaby,” George Drakos said. �śYou might as well go ahead and tell us what you mean when you say that the two great libraries at Alexandria exploded, and when you say that the archives or annals at Migdol (the Magdala of the more blessed location, I presume) exploded so violently as to move a mountain.” � �śYes, I’ll get with it,” Barnaby said. �śWhere is that Austro? He’s never here when we want a refill.” � �śHe’s down in that funny room over the garages, the one that rumbles,” Mary Mondo expressed. �śHe lives there now.” � �śCan you tell him to come here, Mary?” Barnaby asked. � �śI just have,” Mary expressed. �śHe says there’s no great hurry. He says he’ll be along by and by.” � �śThank you, Mary,” Barnaby said. �śAh, you slipped one over on me that time.” � (Barnaby Sheen ordinarily did not recognize the presence or existence of the schizo-ghost Mary Mondo, but she was handy at communicating at a distance.) � * * * * � �śGentlemen,” said Barnaby then, �śthere are very many cases of archives and libraries exploding; cases that seem incredible. Some of them were libraries whose books were tablets of hewn stone, some of baked brick, some of glazed tile, some of flaky clay, some of papyrus rolls or other split reeds made into near-paper, some of parchment or thinned sheepskin, some of vellum or scraped calfskin or kidskin, some of velum or the palate membrane of the common dragon (�Śvellum’ and �Śvelum’ are sometimes confused by the ignorant; just remember that the latter is fire-resistant), some of paper of the modern sort” � �śSome of the libraries consist of trunks filled with pulp-paper funny papers and comic books,” the sawdust-filled doll named Loretta conveyed. � �śThese collections,” said Barnaby (not having received the message his daughter had given), �śbeing of such diverse material, would seem to have nothing in common to make them explode. But the annals and decades and centuries that were excised from them did very often force their way back in with great power. Nothing is forgotten forever. The repositories very often did explode.” � �śHow, Barney, how?” Harry O’Donovan challenged. � �śI believe that it always begins with an earth-rumble, with a cavern-rumble,” Barnaby said. � �śWith a room-rumble,” contributed a sawdust-filled doll, but Barnaby did not attend the message. � �śDecades and centuries refusing to be suppressed!” said Barnaby. � �śPoor relations refusing to be suppressed,” said Harry O’Donovan with sudden insight. � �śA million years refusing to be frozen out,” expressed Mary Mondo. �śSay, do you know the real process responsible for the ice ages? Oh, never mind. A thrice-repeated boyhood refusing to be suppressed. A group ghosthood refusing to give itself up. They all build power.” � �śFortunately my own library is quite small and quite technical,” Barnaby said. �śI carry so much in my head, you see. Were it not so, I could almost feel the rumble of a coming explosion now.” � �śOh, brother! Cannot we all?” Dr. Drakos cried in sharp-eared comprehension. � * * * * � 4 � �śKabloom, kabloom!” Said McCrocky’s room. �"Motto taken from the rubble and dust of Loretta Sheen � � It was that old room over the garages that now rumbled fearfully as though to illustrate Barnaby’s words. This was no ordinary rumble. We were all white-faced with fear. Then it exploded Kabloom!! � It stunned ears, it paralyzed throats, it singed eyes. It buckled the floor of the study where we were, even though the exploding room was in a building apart. It shook sawdust out of Loretta Sheen. It gave Harry O’Donovan a nosebleed, and it knocked Barnaby Sheen out cold. It is believed that it moved a small mountain over behind us, a small mountain known as Harrow Street Hill. � * * * * � A little while, a little while, and the dazed Austro came in, singed but laughing. He was a tough one. �śCarrock, carrock, we bust the crock,” he said. It was the first complete sentence that he had ever spoken. He winked; he winked crookedly; he would never wink straight again. One of his eyes had been blasted askew. But he had salvaged an armload of blackened patio blocks and he was drawing on them with happy abandon. And what he was drawing was the million-year-long saga of Rocky McCrocky. � We remembered now. John Penandrew used to draw Rocky McCrocky when we were boys. But Austro was Rocky McCrocky. No wonder he had always looked familiar. � �śCousin, rock-cousin,” said Harry O’Donovan, �śyou have given me back the lost two thirds of my boyhood. You have intruded a lost million years into a small room. We will never remember it all, but we have remembered part of it that we thought lost forever.” � �śIt could not have happened,” Barnaby muttered, still out, still overpowered. �śThat room was not library, that room was not annals.” � It was, though. � Somewhere there is the true full story about man and his kindred (Austro winked crookedly; Loretta dribbled sawdust and a profound written motto fell from her open throat), about their origins and destinations (Mary Mondo, that schizo-ghost, laughed in that way they have: she had remembered it all the time), about who and what they are. � How is it that this story has become so forgotten? � * * * * � Well, you see, it has a tendency to explode when�" �

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