L. Sprague De Camp - The Gnarly Man

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THE GNARLY MAN

DR. MATILDA SADDLER first saw the gnarly man on the evening of June ~

4th, 1g~6, at Coney Island. The spring meeting of the Eastern Section

of the American Anthropological Association had broken up, and Dr.

Saddler had had dinner with two of her professional colleagues, Blue

of Columbia and Jeffcott of Yale. She mentioned that she had never

visited Coney and meant to go there that evening. She urged Blue and

Jeff cott to come along, but they begged off.

Watching Dr. Saddler's retreating back, Blue of Columbia

crackled: "The Wild Woman from Wichita. Wonder if she's hunting

another husband?" He was a thin man with a small gray beard and a

who-the-Hell-are-you-Sir expression.

"How many has she had?" asked Jeff cott of Yale.

"Three to date. Don't know why anthropologists lead the most

disorderly private lives of any scientists. Must be that they study

the customs and morals of all these different peoples, and ask

themselves, 'If the Eskimos can do it why can't we?' I'm old enough

to be safe, thank God."

"I'm not afraid of her," said Jeffcott. He was in his early

forties and looked like a farmer uneasy in store-bought clothes. aI~m

so very thoroughly married."

"Yeah? Ought to have been at Stanford a few years ago, when she

was there. It wasn't safe to walk across the campus, with Tuthill

chasing all the females and Saddler all the males."~

Dr. Saddler had to fight her way off the subway train, as the

adolescents who infest the platform of the B.M.T.'s Stillwell Avenue

Station are probably the worst-mannered people on earth, possibly

excepting the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific. She didn't

much mind. She was a tall, strongly built woman in her late thirties,

who had been kept in trim by the outdoor rigors of her profession.

Besides, some of the inane remarks in Swift's paper on occulturation

among the Arapaho Indians had gotten her fighting blood up.

Walking down Surf Avenue toward Brighton Beach, she looked at

the concessions without trying them, preferring to watch the human

types that did and the other human types that took their money. She

did try a shooting gallery, but found knocking tin owls off their

perch with a .22 too easy to be much fun. Long-range work with an

army rifle was her idea of shooting.

The concession next to the shooting gallery would have been

called a sideshow if there had been a main show for it to be a

sideshow to. The usual lurid banner proclaimed the uniqueness of the

two-headed calf, the bearded woman, Arachne the spider-girl, and

other marvels. The piece de resistance was Ungo-Bungo the ferocious

ape-man, captured in the Congo at a cost of twenty-seven lives. The

picture showed an enormous Ungo-Bungo squeezing a hapless Negro in

each hand, while others sought to throw a net over him.

Although Dr. Saddler knew perfectly well that the ferocious

apeman would turn out to be an ordinary Caucasian with false hair on

his chest, a streak of whimsicality impelled her to go in. Perhaps,

she thought, she could have some fun with her colleagues about it.

The spieler went through his leather-lunged harangue. Dr.

Saddler guessed from his expression that his feet hurt. The tattooed

lady didn't interest her, as her decorations obviously had no

cultural significance, as they have among the Polynesians. As for the

ancient Mayan, Dr. Saddler thought it in questionable taste to

exhibit a poor microcephalic idiot that way. Professor Yogi's

legerdemain and fireeating weren't bad.

A curtain hung in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage. At the

appropriate moment there were growls and the sound of a length of

chain being slapped against a metal plate. The spieler wound up on a

high note:

o . ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Ungo-Bungo!" The

curtain dropped.

The ape-man was squatting at the back of his cage. He dropped

his chain, got up, and shuffled forward. He grasped two of the bars

and shook them. They were appropriately loose and rattled alarmingly.

Ungo-Bungo snarled at the patrons, showing his even yellow teeth.

Dr. Saddler stared hard. This was something new in the ape-man

line. Ungo-Bungo was about five feet three, but very massive, with

enormous hunched shoulders. Above and below his blue swimming trunks,

thick grizzled hair covered him from crown to ankle. His short stout-

muscled arms ended in big hands with thick gnarled fingers. His neck

projected slightly forward, so that from the front he seemed to have

but little neck at all.

His face- Well, thought Dr. Saddler, she knew all the living

races of men, and all the types of freaks brought about by glandular

maladjustment, and none of them had a face like that. It was deeply

lined. The forehead between the short scalp hair and the brows on the

huge supraorbital ridges receded sharply. The nose, though wide, was

not apelike; it was a shortened version of the thick hooked Armenoid

or "Jewish" nose. The face ended in a long upper lip and a retreating

chin. And the yellowish skin apparently belonged to Ungo-Bungo.

The curtain was whisked up again.

Dr. Saddler went out with the others, but paid another dime,

and soon was back inside. She paid no attention to the spieler, but

got a good position in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage before the rest of

the crowd arrived.

Ungo-Bungo repeated his performance with mechanical precision.

Dr. Saddler noticed that he limped a little as he came forward to

rattle the bars, and that the skin under his mat of hair bore several

big whitish scars. The last joint of his left ring finger was

missing. She noted certain things about the proportions of his shin

and thigh, of his forearm and upper arm, and his big splay feet.

Dr. Saddler paid a third dime. An idea was knocking at her mind

somewhere, trying to get in; either she was crazy or physical

anthropology was haywire or-something. But she knew that if she did

the sensible thing, which was to go home, the idea would plague her

from now on.

After the third performance she spoke to the spieler. "I think

your Mr. Ungo-Bungo used to be a friend of mine. Could you arrange

for me to see him after he finishes?"

The spieler checked his sarcasm. His questioner was so

obviously not a-not the sort of dame who asks to see guys after they

finish.

"Oh, him," he said. "Calls himself Gaffney-Clarence Aloysius

Gaff ney. That the guy you want?"

"Why, yes."

"Guess you can." He looked at his watch. "He's got four more

turns to do before we close. I'll have to ask the boss." He popped

through a curtain and called, "Hey, Morrie!" Then he was back. "It's

okay. Morrie says you can wait in his office. Foist door to the

right."

Morrie was stout, bald, and hospitable. "Sure, sure," he said,

waving his cigar. "Glad to be of soivice, Miss Saddler. Chust a mm

while I talk to Gaffney's manager." He stuck his head out. "Hey,

Pappas! Lady wants to talk to your ape-man later. I meant lady.

Okay." He returned to orate on the difficulties besetting the freak

business. "You take this Gaffney, now. He's the best damn ape-man in

the business; all that hair really grows outa him. And the poor guy

really has a face like that. But do people believe it? No! I hear 'em

going out, saying about how the hair is pasted on, and the whole

thing is a fake. It's mortifying." He cocked his head, listening.

"That rumble wasn't no rolly-coaster; it's gonna rain. Hope it's over

by tomorrow. You wouldn't believe the way a rain can knock ya

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L. Sprague De Camp - The Gnarly Man

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