Rangle Dang Kaloof

The Gnome had been around for a month or so. There had been, there still were, others of them. But there was something a little mean about this one.

They weren't gnomes, of course. There are no such things as gnomes; and besides, gnomes are somewhat larger. These were small, smaller than squirrels. They had been harmless. It was rather pleasant to know that they were around, in the borderland. It was like having squirrels living in your walls, and these didn't damage or gnaw.

Flaherty would sit in that big chair in the evenings with that little table in front of him. He would read, he would write, he would doze. When he nodded a bit, when he dozed, that was when he saw them. He never saw them when waking and he never saw them when honestly asleep. He met them on that narrow border between the states.

And Flaherty knew better than to quarrel with them. He didn't want even the imaginary bad luck that might come from crossing imaginary creatures. He was peaceful, they were peaceful and there had been no reason for quarrel.

The quarrel, when it came, began over almost nothing, as do most quarrels in that borderland between sleep and wakefulness. The gnome was dragging off one of Flaherty's old slippers, the left one.

"I'd never take the right one," the gnome said. "I have no province at all over things of the right hand or the right foot. And you do need new slippers. These are a disgrace."

"Do not call my things a disgrace," Flaherty grumped. "Why do you want an old slipper?"

"I need it," the gnome said. "Certain details of my nest. It can be shored up in several places with pieces and fluff from the slipper. These are intimate things, though, and no business of yours. Do I ask what you want with such and such?"

"Go to hell," Flaherty said, and that was where he made his mistake.

"Now you are being vulgar," the gnome sulked, "and topographically ridiculous. I've nothing to do with hell. I'm of another country entirely. Last chance. Will you give me the slipper?"

"I'll give you nothing, you bug," Flaherty growled. "Begone."

"We'll see about it, then," the gnome said with a mean turn in his voice. "I have a little trick I can use. Ah, I love myself when I do things like this."

The gnome made a loop with a fine length of string or thread, or perhaps of spider silk. He spun it like a lasso. He threw it. Flaherty noticed that the loop entered his chest and made itself fast on something. And he felt a very weird little tug there in the middle of his heart.

"All right, all right, a trick's a trick and fun is fun," Flaherty said, "but you've hooked that loop around something inside me. What, and why?"

"One of the little intraventricular veins in your heart, between the atrium and the ventricle, actually. And for orneriness, that's why."

"Now you are the one who's being topographically ridiculous," Flaherty said. "There is no way that a loop may be thrown to encircle a line that is fast at both ends."

"I did it, though. Feels funny, doesn't it? Almost hurts."

"A queasy feeling," Flaherty said. "Leave off now. You can have the slipper."

"I intend to have it. And some fun with you, too. Feel when I pull it tighter."

"Oh! No! No! Stop it! Uncle!"

"Uncle isn't the word," the gnome said.

"For the love of Saint Polyander, what is the word, then?" Flaherty begged.

"Rangle dang kaloof," the gnome pronounced seriously.

"Rangle dang kaloof, then," Flaherty said, but he smiled a bit meanly when he said it, and he shouldn't have.

"Louder," the gnome ordered, and he pulled the loop tighter to create an alarming twinge.

"Rangle dang kaloof," Flaherty cried.

"When I say louder, I mean louder," the gnome said, and he pulled on the loop to give a true heart pang.

"Rangle Dang Kaloof," Flaherty screamed.

"That's good enough for now," the gnome said. He eased off on the loop. The heart pang ceased, but Flaherty fainted into real sleep.

Only for a moment, though. The telephone woke him up. It was a sorehead neighbor.

"Flaherty, what's that damned screaming over there?" the s.h.n. demanded.

"It was just a little misunderstanding," Flaherty excused himself lamely. "It's funny how sound carries in the evening. It won't happen again. At least I hope it won't."

"It better not," the sorehead said, and they hung up on each other. Flaherty went to bed.

He woke up in the morning feeling rotten and with a grave uneasiness in the region of the heart. Though it was two hours before the office girl could be there, he dialed the doctor's office every 15 minutes till he finally got a connection. And he got an early appointment by a combination of luck and bad-mannered shouting.

"Nothing much wrong with your heart," the doctor said several hours later. "I won't have the tracings of your EKG till tomorrow, but I believe your heart's nearly the soundest thing about you."

"Drop the other shoe," Flaherty said nervously. He knew this doctor.

"As I say, your heart's in good shape. Of course, it's going to kill you if you don't get those teeth out, take off sixty pounds, quit boozing. Still, don't worry. Worry's one of the hardest things on a person. But you can't blame your heart for the condition you've let yourself get into."

"Anything else?"

"This prescription. Oh, and smoking those cigars. Better cut them in half at least."

"That makes both halves harder to light."

"And bad jokes--take it easy on them."

• • •

Flaherty had all his teeth out and got crockery teeth in place of them. He began to take off weight. He did everything that was prescribed to him. Sometimes in the evenings he heard snickering when he drifted into that narrow borderland between wakefulness and sleeping. His pills, which he took faithfully, seemed to call out merriment from the lurking gnome.

"Valium," he heard it sneer once. "How are you going to get rid of a noose with Valium pills?" It was a good question. And Flaherty still had the heart twinges and pangs.

The next evening, he was compelled to squall, shout, scream the unmagical phrase rangle dang kaloof again and again. His reputation in the neighborhood deteriorated.

Flaherty had men in to soundproof his house. He continued to take off great globs of weight and he felt himself diminished in person and in spirit. He stayed off the juice and the smoke, and he felt his wit drying up from it.

"Ah, you're coming along fine, fine," the doctor told him. "Looking much better. Pulse and blood pressure greatly improved. Bet you're feeling a lot better, aren't you?"

"No, I'm feeling terrible," (continued on page 122)rangle dang kaloof(continued from page 100) Flaherty said. "How about giving me the names of a few heart specialists?"

"All right, if you want to go further and do worse."

• • •

Flaherty tried, in the evenings, to avoid that narrow borderland between wakefulness and sleeping. He rigged up devices to keep him out of the drowse till he was very tired, in the hope that he would go directly to sleep when he went to bed. He still had the twinges and the pangs. That loop was still around the little vein or whatever between atrium and ventricle in his heart. It was always there and sometimes it was there very tightly. And every now and then, in spite of all precautions, the gnome caught him wide-open in the borderland and compelled him into the roaring and screaming: Rangle Dang Kaloof!

"It doesn't sound just right," the gnome said one evening. "It doesn't echo as it should. You soundproofed the place, you piker! Open all the doors and windows!"

"No. There's a limit to this nonsense."

"There sure is!" the gnome swore. "I'll teach you to crawfish with me. Open all the doors and windows, I said. Better yet, go out into the street for it. We may as well put on a good show."

Oh, it was quite a concert that time and the heart pangs felt very like death pangs. Again and again, at the cracking top of his voice, he had to give it:

Rangle Dang Kaloof!

And the night echoed with it.

They came with the pokey wagon and took Flaherty to the pokey. And it was all a little hard to explain to the judge the next morning. Flaherty asked to be shown where there was any city ordinance forbidding a man to speak the words rangle dang kaloof or, indeed, any words not obscene or seditious in the street in front of his own house. He knew he wasn't helping his case. There were ordinances sufficient against making very loud disturbances. There were also nutty houses, he was told, for people who persisted in acting nutty. Flaherty paid his fine. It might be more than a fine if it happened again, so the man told him.

By and by, Flaherty had taken off 60 pounds. He no longer drank nor smoked nor got mad nor worried: All these things were forbidden to him, though the latter two abstentions had become difficult for him. All his heart readings checked as perfect.

"You must feel much better now, don't you?" the doctor, the fifth one he had been to, asked him.

"No. I still feel rotten," Flaherty said. "I still have the heart pangs, even though you say I can't be having them. There is still a stricture about a nameless vein in my heart, even though you say there is no such vein as I describe. And when he jerks it tighter and makes the pain unbearable, he can still compel me to-- ah, never mind. Who's another good heart doctor around here?"

"There aren't any. You've used us all up. There isn't anything wrong with your heart, Flaherty, and there aren't any heart doctors anywhere better than we are. None anywhere, except--well, he doesn't practice anymore, anyhow."

"What's his name? Why doesn't he practice anymore?"

"Dr. Silbersporen. And he doesn't practice now because he's agreed not to."

"He's disbarred?"

"Oh, no, absolutely not. So eminent a man would never be prohibited from practice except as a last resort. The great doctor has been quite reasonable and cooperative about it all. He's a gentleman and he stands by his gentleman's agreement to practice no more. A sad case, really."

"Something fishy here," Flaherty said, and he went off on the spoor of Dr. Silbersporen. He found the rather elderly doctor at his home in a secluded neighborhood. He received a friendly but somewhat breathless welcome from him.

"You are in trouble, of course," the good doctor said. "Only those in real trouble still come to see me. Now, then, tell me your trouble and I will get you out of it immediately." The doctor wheezed when he talked, but it was a kindly wheeze.

"I understand that you are, were, the finest heart doctor in the region," Flaherty said. "I also understand that you no longer practice. Ah, what is your own trouble, emphysema?"

"Not a trace of it. I've been to all the throat, lung and thorax experts and they say that there is nothing at all wrong with me, that I must feel wonderful. I feel rotten. What really troubles me, though, is a small red Indian. And you?"

Then Flaherty broke down and told Dr. Silbersporen all about his troubles, about the gnomes (who were not gnomes) who inhabited the narrow border between wakefulness and honest sleep, about the foolish quarrel over the slipper, about the gnome's throwing the lasso around the vein in the middle of his heart, about the heart doctors' insisting that there was no such vein as the one that Flaherty rather guardedly described to them.

"Why, if that's all that's troubling you, we'll fix it in a minute," Dr. Silbersporen wheezed and gasped. "They are right that there's nothing wrong with your heart. Once we take that little noose from around the conduit, you'll be as sound as ever. Oh, of course there's such a vein as you describe. I taught those heart experts, every one of them, but I wasn't able to teach them everything. It takes fine eyes to see that vein, I tell you that." Dr. Silbersporen himself had rheumy and blood-veined eyes, as well as trembling hands. He seemed a very sick man.

"This vein, which the lesser experts don't know about, is quite vulnerable to unusual attack. Sometimes a very small mole will get inside a person and gnaw on the vein. Sometimes a cocklebur gets inside the heart and afflicts the vein. No, there's nothing unlikely about a gnome's putting a noose around it and pulling it tight. Every now and then, you'll find one of those little guys with a mean streak in him. Take your shirt off and I'll cut that loop out of your heart in a minute."

Flaherty took his shirt off, but he was a little doubtful.

"It is said that you no longer practice," he objected, "and you don't seem to have instruments or facilities here. How will you do it?"

"A real expert doesn't need many instruments, Mr. Flaherty. Here's a little paring knife that I was just cutting up an apple with. That'll get us inside. And here's a little scissors I was trimming my hair with. I cut my own hair, you know. Don't go to the barbers anymore. The prices, for one thing, and then the little red Indian says he'll make the barber cut my throat if I go to one. I never know whether that Indian's kidding or not, but he sure kids mean. The scissors will do quite well to cut the gnome's loop, though, and then your troubles will be over."

"But is it sanitary?" Flaherty asked. There was something about this whole business that made him uneasy.

"No, of course it isn't," the good doctor admitted. "Neither is it sanitary to have that gnome's lasso inside you all the time. Gnomes have no concept at all of hygiene. Ah, one of my own seizures is upon me. He always allows me enough breath to go through the rite. Then I'll be ready for you."

Dr. Silbersporen was opening all the windows and doors in his house. "Easy, you little bugger, easy," he was wheezing. "I'll say it, I'll say it loud, just let me have my breath for a bit."

Then the good old doctor began to make sounds somewhere between those of a hyena and those of a rooster, very loud, very weird, very high and continuing for a long time: Shak shakowey shahoo! It wasn't the words themselves so much as the way the doctor intoned them that set the ears on edge.

Shak shakowey shahoo!

Shak shakowey Shahoo!

It went on for a long time and the neighbors were grumbling loudly. Then the doctor was finished with it for a while and he was smiling sadly.

"One learns to live with a thing like that," he said. "What it is is a small red Indian, less than an inch tall, with whom I quarreled irrevocably. He put a little rawhide thong around my glottis. He chokes me with this, so that it appears that (concluded on page 208)rangle dang kaloof(continued from page 122) I suffer from emphysema. I don't suffer from emphysema at all, I suffer from a small red Indian. Naturally, the experts can find nothing wrong with me. For some reason, they are unable to see either Indian or rawhide thong. Ah, well, ready for you now, Flaherty."

The doctor came with the paring knife in his trembling hand to lay open a passage to Flaherty's heart. He peered with his rheumy and blood-veined eyes, and it was necessary to remember that he was the foremost heart expert in that region. Even so, Flaherty found himself to be highly nervous. The doctor with the shaking hands hadn't made the cut a quarter of an inch deep when Flaherty gave it all up and threw away his chance of being freed from the lasso.

He cried out in quick terror and he ran out of the house. For Flaherty did have something the matter with his heart. He was chickenhearted.

He had twinges, he had pangs, he had palpitations from the strange turn of events. And there, in front of the secluded home of Dr. Silbersporen, Flaherty ran smack into a tree. This is something one should always avoid.

It didn't knock him clear out. It did something much worse. It knocked him into that narrow borderland between wakefulness and honest sleep. And the gnome was able to trap him there.

"Louder!"

"Rangle dang kaloof."

"Louder, I said."

"Rangle Dang Kaloof."

This went on for a long time. Then uniformed men were there with a paddy wagon. They took Flaherty away.

It is nice where they have him now. He still has heart twinges and pangs and the gnome still sets him to whooping every now and then. But Flaherty doesn't feel as isolated as he did before. There are other folks there who can see the gnomes in that narrow borderland between wakefulness and sleep. There are other folks there who suffer from them.