The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

HICKORY, DICKORY, KEROUAC by Richard Gehman

The most frequent focus of speculation in s-f these days is on the cultural potential of humanity. One story may explore uncharted territory deep in the darkest interior of man; another may try to trace the tangled relationships between men and the world around them; a third might be a sort of aerial-photo view of the environment itself.

Richard Gehman is one of America’s most prolific magazine writers, and is an inquisitive and earnest student of our mores, including our fads in jazz and literature.

This story was first published under the by-line, Martin Scott. The name was new to me. I queried editor Ray Russell at Playboy, who wrote to tell me the author’s identity, and also said, “It certainly is an extremely clever piece, but I must admit I don’t see how the satire fits into your book.”

This shook me, because Russell is a type that digs s-f, mostly, and if this is not science fiction, it is what I mean by s-f, and—like, man, I mean, it is the greatest. . . .

It was a season of great restlessness and change for mice everywhere, a stirring time, a time of moods and urges and moves. The mouse felt it; his whiskers trembled in anticipation. One night there was a party in a stall, and an old badger came. He sat there drinking red wine and aspirin gravely, staring at a young and excitable squirrel who had been on cashews for months.

“It’s the time, man!” the squirrel kept saying to the badger, but the mouse knew the message was for him. It had to be for him; the badger had fallen asleep after his third Sneaky Pete. That was the badger’s way of rebellion. No squirrel could bug him.

The mouse got the message. He was quite possibly the hippest mouse that ever crept. He dug. He dug everything —he dug with his sharp little eyes, he dug with his pointy little nose, he dug with his little claws (under each of which he kept a bit of dirt at all times, in case he might be invited to the Actors’ Studio). The mouse dug the gray mice that lived in the universe that was his house, he dug the brown mice that were padded down in the vast unreachable reaches of the fields, and he dug the mice-colored mice that lived nowhere but stayed ever on the road. He even dug rats. Oh, how he dug; he dug the whole world, and he dug his hole-world. He was with it, he was of it, he was in.

This mouse was a cat.

He was well-known, too. He had eaten some pages of verse in some tiny magazines—Trap, Silo Review and Barley—and they had heard of him in San Francisco, where there was a small but pulsating and Mysterious mouse revival swinging. But the season of restlessness caught him and he was hung, and although he had finished chewing three pages of a novel, he said to his mother, “Dad, I got to go.”

There was reason enough: nothing charged him. He’d been on pot. Nothing. He’d gone on pot again; still nothing. He’d then gone on pan, kettle, roaster, colander, soup spoon; he’d tried everything in the kitchen cabinet. No kicks.

The word was out—he’d seen it in the squirrel’s eyes that night at the party. The hipsters had a new kick. Go on clock, the word came. Man, get with the clock-way; man, it’s time; make it man, it’s timeless.

The mouse rushed first to the First National Corn Crib, where all the squares kept their hoards. He started to spit— but he dug it too much, there was too much love in him for squares and everybody else, they were all Zenned up like he was, and he could not do it. He changed his mind, then changed it again. He rushed on. Man, this was living! He rushed over to a haystack where a beetle had a pad and gnawed anarchist poetry. He seized six of the beetle’s legs and shook them violently. The beetle opened three of his four eyes and regarded the mouse with utter serenity. He was stoned, but he had so many eyes he could be stoned and still see everything.

“Come on,” the mouse cried.

The beetle said nothing. That was what was so great about him, the mouse knew; he dug and he never spoke, like the crazy old mixed-up Zenners,

It was time to go again; time to go on time. The mouse ran and ran and ran and ran and finally he was there, at the clock. There it stood, wild as a skyscraper, tall and proud and like all America with a moon-face above it, waving its hands inscrutably and passively, cool as you please. The mouse wished he had a chick to dig it with him but knew that was childish; he was himself, he was with, in, of and it. The realization made his tail twitch. His ears rattled. Then the music came, long and mysterious, like some great old song chanted all the way from Tibet:

Hickory, dickory...

It was the moment of truth: reds and greens and blues crowded in and permeated his little red eyes, he broke out in a cold sweat, he broke in out of a hot sweat.

Dock!

That was it. He ran up, he ran down.

Nothing happened.

Hickory, dickory, dock! the unearthly music came again.

“I dig!” the mouse screamed, and ran up and down again.

“I’m on the clock, Dad!” he cried to no one in particular. Breathless, he shouted it again. A spider, observing him icily from a corner, shrugged and wondered what the younger generation was coming to.

The mouse glanced at the spider. That second was when he knew the truth. Pot was no good, pan was no good, clock was just as bad. There was no escaping it. In the final analysis, he had to look inward. He walked home slowly and chewed up the rest of his novel. Today he is rich, a trustee of the First National Corn Crib, and is thinking of eating another book as soon as he can find the time away from his job. The badger is dead, the beetle has turned chiropractor, and only God digs. Hickory, dickory, dock.