Free Dreams That Burn In The Night by Craig Strete Page A

When they ran out of
nuts, they did impressions. Crack. Crack. It brought tears into his eyes.
    An old
purple-headed man crawled out of one of the doorways to the huts. One of his legs looked like a
CARE package for Dr. Frankenstein.
    "I hurts my
hoofer," said the old man, smiling like he deserved praise. "Will Master look, see, view, get
eyeball of, leg?"
    The old man shook
his purple head from side to side like a dog suppressing a sneeze.
    "Nuts!" said
Sanderman with a look of disgust. "Can't you see I'm crazy?"
    "Eye is
twenty-twenty," said the old man. "You describe, I tell you if see it. What colors is it most
of?"
    "Nuts," said
Sanderman with very little feeling left in the statement by now.
    "Colors of nuts,
most sure," said the old man, and he fell over when his bad leg collapsed under him without
warning.
    Sanderman bent over
him and unwrapped the strip of bark that one of the native women had tied around it. An old dead
rat fell out of the wrappings. It was a dead rat of the long-dead variety.
    "What the hell is
this doing in there!" screamed Sanderman.
    "Lunch," said the
old man innocently.
    Without a moment of
hesitation, Sanderman turned around and tossed his cookies all over the ground. He tossed them in
one beautiful, continuous stream that splashed merrily over his shoes.
    The old man stared
at the remains of Sanderman's lunch on the ground with the respectful eye of the gourmet, with
the specula­tive eye of the comparison shopper. Fortunately, Sanderman was unaware of it or he
would have been bent over even longer, pumping long after his well was dry.
    "What you say,
Master? You cure leg up? Put the fix cure up?" said the old man, wanting to know.
    Sanderman, holding
his stomach with one hand, picked up the rat with the other and tossed it over his
shoulders.
    "Lunch," said the
old man sadly as it flew over Sanderman's shoulder.
    Sanderman ground
his teeth together so hard his gums got flesh wounds and bent over to examine the wound again. It
reminded him of a girl he knew in New York. The city, not the state. She always wore red socks.
She had a pimple on her right knee. Or was it her left? He couldn't remember her face but the
knees were very familiar.
    "Filthy!" said
Sanderman. "You're dying! I told you! I told you! How many times did I tell you?"
    "At least," said
the old man calmly.
    The whole leg was
rotten. It was falling off. It was so rotten moss was growing on one side of it. It was so rotten
the wood­peckers would be after him in a week or two, thought Sanderman with what was hardly a
rational thought since there were no woodpeckers in Mintfrappe.
    Everybody was sick
with something. It was the national pas­time. The climate of Mintfrappe was lousy. The weather
featured mild and balmy diseases, festering tomorrow with fever highs in the low hundreds. The
village idiot used to have worms in his ears. He had put them there himself. They kept crawling
out. He was the only one too stupid to catch something. He was the only healthy one in the whole
village and was universally despised. The village idiot was the old man. He finally settled on a
surprise amputation which didn't work. At least not completely. He fainted before he got halfway
to the bone of his leg. In that sense, he had failed, but the resultant infection had brought him
into his own socially. The fact that he was dying of it was the height of fashion. Of late,
however, the old man had begun to show a markedly hostile attitude toward the prevailing notions
of what was considered fashionable. That was why he was the village idiot. He had a short
attention span and could never finish any­thing.
    "Will you cure, fix
up, me with the stinger in seat box?"
    "Get out of here!"
roared Sanderman. "I hope the toes on your other foot fall off too!"
    "Why, thanking you
most much," said the old man, smiling happily at the thought of further deterioration of his
body.
    Sanderman watched
him limp away