GRUBBY THE EIGHTH DWARF
A tall story about a short person
by Vaughan Tucker
Smashwords Edition
Copyright Vaughan Tucker 2001
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 9540198 0 6
Cover artwork by Harvey Thornewood
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CHAPTERS
Chapter 1 THE DINGHY IN THE FOUNTAIN
Chapter 2 THE SHORT MEASURE
Chapter 3 EVA AND BEER
Chapter 4 JULIA COCKBURN
Chapter 5 HUMAN COSTS
Chapter 6 THE MAN BAN
Chapter 7 FOOD, BOOZE AND DRUGS
Chapter 8 LITTLE DOLLS
Chapter 9 THE SPERM BAN
Chapter 10 THE STILLBORN CHAT
Chapter 11 THE SHYLOCK ARMS
Chapter 12 THE SQUASHED WILLY PIECE
Chapter 13 THE POISON CHEQUE
Chapter 14 JULIA'S ULTIMATUM
Chapter 15 THE PINK CAP
Chapter 16 THE GERIATRIC ARMY
Chapter 17 THE HERITAGE TRAP
Chapter 18 WARM, WET, WONDERFUL
Chapter 19 POLITICS IN PRACTICE
Chapter 20 THE SALE OF THE COUNTRY
Chapter 21 PLAYING STATUES
Chapter 22 HAPPY MESSENGERS
Some of the incidents in this book actually happened, but names and identifying features have been changed to protect me.
To Joss, who may have forgiven me by now
Short people are just the same as you and I. All men are brothers until the day they die.
Short People by Randy Newman
THE DINGHY IN THE FOUNTAIN
EARS the gossip strolled out of Bullshit Castle into the sunshine with a strange lightness of heart.
He'd just sold a very good story to the comix, which would take care of the bills for a while. Bernard Lesions, the one-legged Minister of Care had ordered the Ministry of Works to make him a hollow, transparent, false leg to be filled with water and tropical fish. He had also ordered 14 one-legged suits from the ministry. And the ministry, typically, had produced the suits with a short right leg and a long left leg. It was the left leg that Lesions lacked.
Ears had tried to contact Lesions at his brother's farm, which Lesions was minding while his brother defended a custody case against his transvestite wife. But Ears could not get near. Troops in a helicopter were firing at armed men hidden in the farm's marijuana patch who were returning the fire.
However, the story would keep going for a while. Ears took a spliff out of his pocket and smoked it as he walked towards the public gardens. But, according to the sign at the main gate, they were in fact 'pubic' gardens. Ears stopped and looked more closely. Someone had scratched the 'l' out of public.
Wandering through the gardens, Ears thought about his life as a gossip. He was fairly content. Once old-fashioned 'newspapers' had been replaced by comix he found he was lucky enough to be paid for doing what he enjoyed, gossiping and causing trouble.
Yet now and then a small, shadowy thought would cross his mind: there must be more than this.
He would occasionally have a day-dream of rushing into the main office and shouting: 'Hold the second page.' (The front page was strictly for breasts and competitions).
Sometimes he thought back to the stories about the old days when 'reporters' would print what the administration was actually doing, not just what the various factions wanted to read about each other.
He didn't know whether to believe it or not. It sounded unlikely.
As he floated into the rose garden he thought for a moment he'd overdone the spliff.
There in the central fountain was a green dinghy full of tiny men and one tired-looking woman. Two of the small men were rowing with an oar each. The others were laughing and calling 'Heigh ho, heigh ho' and drinking champagne. Ears realised this was not a drug dream and lay down on the grass to watch.
Two dour and hot-looking cops were standing nearby and watching the dwarves with ill-temper. Ears thought there might be saleable gossip here, but could not yet see a valid reason for the cops attacking the boat.
The dwarves were oblivious to this. Everybody was happy in the boat, a pun they made often during the afternoon.
There had not been one whiff of unpleasantness the whole day. The dinghy was old and lime-green. It had stayed under a tree for several years, left there by the former owner of the dilapidated white house above the gardens where the dwarves now lived.
They had dragged it down to the gardens, heigh ho heigh ho-ing all the way, and launched it into the shallow pool surrounding the fountain.
It was a ridiculous, intoxicating feeling. Even Cranky managed not to be in a foul mood. His scowl lightened and he stopped thinking about his piles.
Gleeful and Sheepish rowed. Champagne corks popped and splashed in the sunshine. The concrete pond was only knee-deep to the tallees around the fountain, but it was up to the dwarves crotches. Dwarves hate snowdrifts too.
The cops could have arrested them had they but known - for standing waist-deep in the water and piddling, giggling all the time.
Once the children because used to the strange behaviour from the eight little men they sloshed through the water around the dinghy, giggling and possible piddling as well.
Snotty just sniffled occasionally. Spliffy kept trying to smash champagne bottles on the bow to christen the dinghy. Quack grew reflective and puffed on his glass pipe.
Only Grubby managed to lower the tone by announcing that members of the rock band The Mutant Cowboys had been admitted to a Paris clinic with AIDS. But then that was only to be expected. Grubby had always felt something of an outsider, and his habit of wrecking the good times before they fell apart anyway was ingrained deeply.
Snow White sometimes clambered out of the dinghy (the dinghy was only knee-deep to her but she held her dress up provocatively, loving the glances from the men) to smell the roses.
Grubby looked too. It's terrible to be both lustful and tiny.
The little people were celebrating, Ears would have been fascinated to know, because of a visit from Bernard Lesions.
At that time there was no love lost between dwarves and other people. Once the Patriotic Party came to power, persecution became routine. And the Patriots had certainly given refuge to a large number of scoundrels. The party had adopted fanatically the tenets of the ancient sage Randy Newman as outlined in his 'Short People' hymn. There was, party followers believed, no reason for short people to live.
Life had been made difficult and dangerous by the roving permaglue goons. Dwarf-throwing was a popular sport and sportspeople became very fond of their best throwing dwarves, so would have them coated in permaglue. There was also a thriving black market in permaglued dwarves for garden ornaments.
It was risky for a dwarf on their own in public in most areas, and downright dangerous at night. So the dwarves had disguises.
Most of them had circus experience and would wear stilts under long black trousers with jackets, hats and dark glasses.
Heightened, eight of them looked weird and crazy enough to be left alone.
They were armed too, with sawn-off (excuse me I mean cut-down, oh what the hell, sawn-off) shotguns and were prepared to use them. Whenever Grubby thought about whether he could kill a tallee he remembered his best friend from Adolph Eichmann School. He had been caught by permaglue goons.
Sometimes Grubby would pass the suburban garden where his friend sat encased in plastic holding a fishing rod with no hook or line above a slimy green concrete puddle containing no fish. Buried alive under the plastic, dressed in ridiculous clothes and trapped for all eternity in a fruitless pastime.
Cranky had been with Grubby one time as they passed the garden. Cranky leaned over the white-painted low rock wall and asked in a pleasant tone: 'Caught anything?'
That wasn't the way Grubby wanted to go.
Apart from their height they were reasonably normal people. They simply wanted to get high, get drunk and get laid - in that order. They were bewildered and hurt by the casual cruelty of the tallees.
So when Bernard Lesions, leader of the Patriots, pounded on their front door one night they froze with visions of the permaglue goons. Except for Snow White. She had no reason to fear the glue. And she'd always been able to pacify men.
'Hello little people,' called Lesions. 'I know you're in there. Don't worry. I'm on my own. I don't have any sticky substances with me.'
When there was no response from the white house Lesions tried again.
'I don't mind little people at all. I'm not exactly tall myself. I can well remember my father putting his ashtray on top of my head when I stood by his chair as a child.'
The cathedral-like silence finally got to him. 'All right then shortarses, you're perfectly safe with me because we can both make a lot of money together.'
'This guy could be on the level,' whispered Quack. Then Snotty sneezed.
Lesions' deal was that he would supply the dwarves with minced meat, which they could can at his factory. All they needed to supply was their labour. He would take care of the rest. The profits would be split. 'Fifty-fifty,' he said. 'Fifty-fifty.'
Bullshit, thought Grubby. Bullshit.
The idea didn't appeal that much, but neither did the idea of continuing to spend most of their time hiding in poverty. And Lesions appeared to have kept his side of the bargain. The dwarves had never had so much money.
THE SHORT MEASURE
EARS strolled back to Bullshit Castle and decided to take a look at the bear pit - the chamber where the ministers passed their laws. And vented their spleens. And exposed their bigotries and stupidity. And acted like spiteful children.
They were 'debating' the passing of the Randy Newman Bill. It would sentence everybody over 21 years and under four foot six inches in height to the permaglue. That way, the ministers said, a dangerous anti-social element would be neutralised. Ears thought about the happy dwarves in the fountain. The permaglue goons would have a field day now. He idly wondered which of the ministers were getting a pay-off from the glue manufacturers.
Although it was called debating, everybody who had anything to do with the bear pit knew the Patriotic Party had the numbers to push the Bill, they were calling it the Short Measure, into law.
The ministers would not be able to accept even valid arguments against their decisions. Their egos would not let them backtrack, not in public anyway.
He walked back to the comfortable shabbiness of his office and the phone rang.
'Hello, Zap Kapow's office,' said Ears.
'This is Bernard Lesions' office here,' said a voice on the line. 'The minister is inviting all the gossips to a conference on the subject of sub-post offices in two hours.'
'Oh right, more closures obviously,' said Ears.
'Don't assume too much,' said the voice smugly.
On a much higher level of Bullshit Castle Julia the Giantess walked into a far grander suite of offices than anything Ears would ever qualify for. Everybody in Bullshit Castle knew Julia. She had a very direct look which made people take her seriously. She was well over six foot in her bare feet, about the only thing she shared with Bernard Lesions. And she was built on a larger scale than any other woman she'd ever met. She was the opposite of the dwarves, but if she'd ever met one she would have understood them. They both suffered from feelings of being outsiders because they were so physically different from the rest.
Yet in Julia's case this somehow made her more popular, almost as though she was a mascot. She hated her nickname. She didn't realise people used it affectionately. The sight of Julia with her mane of blonde hair was an indelible impression for most of the schoolchildren taken on tours of the castle. When they had to write about their trip afterwards they always mentioned the tall lady with the blonde hair.
Julia's minister Tom Follery was a morose man, religious and constipated. He had been plagued since his elevation to ministerial status by the drain of the universal pension on government finances.
But today he was cheerful. He was in his office with the door open and drinking wine with a crowd of toadies. They were simpering and fawning outrageously.
Julia used to think the ministers could see through the toadies' behaviour, but she came to realise they could not.
Ministers believed the flattery. They came to accept it as their right. The longer they were ministers the more antagonistic they became to people who would not fawn to them.
'Ah Jenny,' said the minister, beaming. 'How are you today little lady?'
'No different,' said Julia.
She was going to walk away but curiosity overcame experience.
'You're looking very cheerful today minister.'
'Yes, and I have good reason to honey,' he said, coming over to her and putting his arm around her waist. He had to hold his arm at the level of his own shoulder to do it.
Julia controlled the impulse to stamp on his foot. 'It's all due, ahhh, due in part to my good friend Bernard Lesions. Everything is coming up trumps.'
This rang alarm bells in Julia's head. He loathed Lesions, as did everyone who got to know him.
'Why don't you get a glass and join us?'
'Ok pops,' said Julia.
'That is not the way to speak to a minister,' snapped one of the toadies.
Julia got a glass and joined them. She sat and listened, bored, while they talked about sport. And she puzzled over this sudden change. The problem of the universal pension had been the bane of her minister's job. As he himself complained, everyone expected him to do something about it, but it wasn't his fault the old buggers lived that long.
Suggestion after sensible suggestion had been refused and he knew why. No-one wanted to tell a large chunk of voters they were going to lose a tax-free income that they did nothing to earn, except get older.
It was true that a portion of those voters would die before the next election, but there was a never-ending stream of replacements happily hobbling through the age barrier to claim their cheques.
He had tried. His attempt to raise the qualification aged was turned down on the basis that it was unfair to make people wait the extra years when people before them had had it at an earlier age.
The attempt to bring in a means test was rejected because it would penalise those who made provision for their old age; in other words be unfair, and degrade those who were poor enough to qualify. In other words, be unfair.
And, because people were living longer, the size of the working population which paid for the pensions bill was shrinking while the pensions bill was increasing.
'Must get back to work,' said Julia after a glass of warm white wine and another of cold red wine. She went back to the stifling cube of an office she shared, or had shared, with a red-haired menial. The woman sitting there had green hair.
'Oh it's you Thea,' said Julia. 'I didn't recognise you with all that seaweed on your head.'
'You're putting on weight dear,' said Thea.
'Listen Kermit, I don't need a slanging match with you right now. The minister has just come up with something that has given him a new lease of life, and you and I know he doesn't have ideas. What's caused this?'
Thea didn't know why the celebrations were going on, but she told Julia about the comings and going and bottles and laughter.
While she was doing so a little ivory earring swayed from her left earlobe. It was a figurine of a baby which, on close inspection, turned out to have the legs of a goat. All day, five days a week, Thea sat at her desk and answered phones and ran errands and typed the drivel the toadies turned out. In her own time she was a witch. She had once hexed Bullshit Castle and ever since had been tortured with the idea that the bizarre and despicable fruits of the castle were her fault.
And witches, like dwarves, were pariahs. Witches were once thought of as evil and burnt. It was to save their souls, the clerics intoned.
Now they were locked up in mental hospitals. To save their minds, the clerics intoned.
EVA AND BEER
EARS was listening to Eva Braun, head of the Department of Wimmin's Affairs. Having succeeded in one goal of the separatist lesbian - separatism - Eva had run into problems.
The wimmin's utopias, where no males apart from children were allowed except in exceptional circumstances, were not fecund places.
Those sticky drops the male supplied had been, to use a favourite phrase of Eva's, cut off.
Steve Beer, head of the Department of Leisure, had lobbied successfully, using the precedent of the lesbians' own legislation providing for separation, to block access to the sperm banks.
The present set-up, he argued, was not separate enough in terms of the legislation. A man's prime animal function should be the last thing the lesbians were entitled to under their own law.
Eva was miffed, but confident she could have it reversed. She was a formidable woman. She wore a button saying: 'The meek shall inherit the shit'.
One problem was that Eva had, apart from the wimmin, only the liberals lined up in support. Facing them was the awesome firepower of the patriots and the godbotherers.
The problem with liberals was that they always believed their opponents had an inalienable right to their opinions, not matter how stupid or vicious. The patriots and the godbotherers didn't have that problem. And they had Steve Beer on their side. For the time being anyway.
Ears first met Steve Beer at 2.30am in a rose garden in front of Bullshit Castle. Beer was on his hands and knees amongst the roses ripping off the blooms and putting them in his hair.
There was a party going on in the castle and people had started putting flowers behind their ears. As usual, Beer was taking it too far. Ears watched in the still night as the powerful minister scrabbled around in the garden laughing and talking nonsense to himself.
'He's a silly bastard,' Ears said to the person standing next to him, who he realised in the next instant was wearing a police uniform. Two cops strode into the garden and grabbed Beer and marched him out of the garden. Ears was sobering up rapidly.
'You're for it my little flower,' said one of the cops to Beer, who made an incoherent reply with a wide grin on his sweaty face.
A sergeant got out of the car. He looked at Beer and then at Ears. 'It's all right,' he said. 'It's only Steve Beer.'
The other two let Beer go and Beer and Ears swayed their way back into the castle.
'But bloody hell,' one of the cops said when all three were back in their car. 'He's pissed as a doctor and he was damaging government property. How the hell can he get away with that/'
'Beer can,' said the sergeant.
Ears found Beer fascinating. He was a strange mixture of talent, brains and boorishness. He was a professional politician who didn't seem to take himself seriously, and Ears had never met one of those before.
He was also the only person who made Ears feel like a moderate drinker.
Beer had a special gun on his office desk. It was attached to a flexible plastic pipe which was attached to a pressurised container of beer. Beer would pull the gun from a hook on his desk, point the muzzle at his mouth, pull the trigger and shoot a stream of booze down his throat.
Ears had watched him at a party drink so much that it was sloshing around in the back of his throat. He belched and doused the people near him with a warm spray of recycled alcohol.
Julia met Beer at a diplomatic reception. Beer lurched over to her and asked why she had been invited. She said it was because she had just come back off post in Cairo, and the reception was for the new Egyptian ambassador.
'I've always wanted to see the pyramids,' said Beer, grabbing the front of her blouse and pulling it towards him.
Julia butted him in the nose and was subsequently demoted to researcher, a job she found she enjoyed far more.
She found out later Beer had protested vociferously but in vain at her demotion. He often told people about the woman who had given him a Liverpool kiss.
'What's a Liverpool kiss?' asked one unsuspecting drinking companion.
'This,' said Beer, butting him.
He had a T-shirt which read: 'Women - can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em'. He was, in other words, the perfect foil for Eva Braun.
JULIA COCKBURN
ears decided he would go to Lesions' press conference rather than a bar. This decision made him feel righteous. And it might be good for a laugh. He enjoyed, sometimes, watching Lesions in action. The man had style and unwittingly had given Ears much amusement over the years. There was the time Lesions had ordered furniture from overseas. The freight container had been damaged and the furniture inside ruined. Lesions had used an administration helicopter to carry the container back to the shipping company and drop it through the warehouse roof.
On his way he met Hans, one of the security guards. Ears sometimes wondered whether the security corps at Bullshit Castle was part of the administration's decrepit social welfare system. One of the guards walked with a stick. Another was nearly blind and hard of hearing. Another was often caught dozing at his post.
There was one, a tall, stooped man with staring eyes, who trembled uncontrollably. Ears had found out that security had mounted an operation to try to find who was stealing booze from ministers' offices. When they found the tall guard asleep and reeking of alcohol on a minister's couch one night they quietly cancelled the operation.