Little Big Man

But I have broken my promise not to digress.… It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Papp, say, or Tarr—or even Stab—had survived that terrible carnage and for his own peculiar reasons evaded the notice of the authorities, the journalists, historians, etc., for the next three-quarters of a century—perhaps had amnesia for most of those years—and suddenly chose to reveal himself at a place and time in which he would be disbelieved by his ancient fellows and attendants of the sort of Mrs. Burr. It was not impossible, but, I decided after months of fruitless search, highly unlikely. Besides which, Mrs. Burr herself had last seen the individual in question in 1945. As unreasonable as it might be for a man to live to 104, how much more absurd to survive to 111!

Downright ridiculous, in fact. I made the mistake when calling on my father to collect my monthly stipend—he demanded that regular personal appearance—I made the error of responding honestly to his query: “What are you up to this month, Ralph?”

He viciously bit into his cigar holder. “Looking for a one-hundred-and-eleven-year-old survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn!”

Luckily, at that point one of his flunkies entered the office with dispatches from Hong Kong concerning the hotel my father proceeded to build in that colony, and I was spared further aspersions on my alleged weak-mindedness. My father was nearly eighty years old. He and I had never been close.

Just at the point at which I was about to throw up the game and begin, instead, serious work on my long-deferred monograph on the origins of the Southwestern luminaria (the Christmas lantern comprising a lighted candle in a paper bag filled with sand), projected several years before during my residence in Taos, N.M.—I was just perusing my notes on the subject when I received a curious letter, which looked very much like a hoax.

Deer sir I hurd you was trying to fine me—I reckon its me you was trying to fine on account I never hurd of ennybody else among these here old burned out wrecks at this home who was ever a hero like myself and partipated in the glorus history of the Olden Time Fronteer and new them all Genl Custer, Setting Bull, Wild Bill, that mean man Earp, etc or went through the socalled Little Bighorn fight or Custers Last Stand.

I am being held prisoner here. I am One Hundred and 11 year old and if I had my single action Colt’s I wd shoot my way out but I aint got it. Being your a riter and all I will sell my story for 50 Thousand dollar which I figure to be cheap considering I am probly the last of the oldtimers

Yr Friend

Jack Crabb

The handwriting was vile (though not in the least feeble) and took me all day to decipher; the redaction published here can be described as only probable. The letter was written on a sheet bearing the rubric of the Marville Center for Senior Citizens, which as we have seen had been my first port of call and yielded negative results. The request for fifty thousand dollars suggested the work of a potential confidence man.

Yet the next day found me, at the end of a hundred-mile drive through scattered cloudbursts, maneuvering my Pontiac into one of the spaces marked “Visitors” in the asphalt parking lot at Marville. It was early afternoon. The administrative director looked slightly vexed to see me again, and downright contemptuous when I showed him the letter. He put me in the hands of the chief of the psychiatric section, forthwith: a whey-faced person named Teague, who impassively studied the gnarled calligraphy on my document, sighed, and said: “Yes, I’m afraid that’s one of ours. They occasionally get a letter past us. I am sorry that you were inconvenienced, but be assured this patient is altogether harmless. His suggestion of violence in the last paragraph is fantasy. Besides, he is physically debilitated to the degree that he cannot leave his chair without an attendant’s help, and his apperceptive faculties have degenerated. So have no fear that he can make his way to the city and do you hurt.”

I pointed out to the doctor that Mr. Crabb’s threat, if so it could be called, was directed at the staff of the Marville Center and hardly towards me, but of course he merely smiled compassionately. I am not without experience of these gentry, having done my stint at fifty dollars an hour, twice a week, for several years when I was a decade younger, without the least diminution of my nightmares and migraine headaches.

“Nevertheless,” I added, “I must insist on seeing Mr. Crabb. I have just driven a hundred miles and given up a morning that had more profitably been spent with my tax accountant.”

He instantly acquiesced. Members of his profession are very easy to impose one’s will upon, so long as one does so in economic rather than emotional terms.