Characters in The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet

I remember—hazily—trying to tell a couple of them about how electricity and radiation leaks were fucking up everyone’s thinking, and when Andy Rivers, who edited fiction for American Crossing, suggested I ought to get some help, I told him he was the one who ought to get some help.

It got out rackne is d and then the y key stuck to the glue. I looked at it for a moment and then I reached out one finger and freed it. I don’t know if it—Bellis—could have freed it himself. I think not.

You thought so, anyway.” “Yes. But even as sick and hung over as I was, I knew perfectly well who the Fornit was.” He ticked off the points on his fingers. “First, Bellis was my mother’s maiden name. “Second, that phrase el bonzo seco.

The woman, Gertrude Rulin by name, laughed and said she’d done for people who were a whole lot stranger. Jane spent the first week of the Rulin woman’s employ pretty much the way she’d spent that first visit with the young people next door—waiting for some crazy outburst.

“Yuh, he was crazy,” the writer said, and they all laughed. “He wrote instead,” the editor said, flicking his cigarette in the direction of the lake. “His letter said this: ‘Dear Henry Wilson (or just Henry, if I may), Your letter was both exciting and gratifying.

Even an eighth of an inch to the right and he would have killed her. There is little doubt of that, and none at all that, if not for Jane Thorpe’s intervention, he would have surely killed Jimmy Rulin and quite possibly the boy’s mother as well.

“I got a buzz from my superior, Jim Dohegan. Could I come up and see him? I trotted into his office at ten in the morning, looking and feeling my very best. It didn’t occur to me until later that Janey Morrison, his secretary, looked like a wake in progress.

These other guys . . . well, the irony was just that a lot of them really were my friends. Jared Baker was the assistant fiction editor at Esquire in those days, and Jared and I were in the same rifle company during World War II, for instance.

I had put in a purchase order for a short story called ‘The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,’ by Reg Thorpe, first serial rights, proposed publication January 1970, proposed purchase price $800, which was standard then for a Logan’s lead story. “I got a buzz from my superior, Jim Dohegan.

” The editor finished his soda and put the can carefully aside. “Gertrude Rulin and Jimmy Rulin remember enough to make up for the lack,” he said. “Jane called out, ‘Reg, NO!’ and when he looked around at her, she got to her feet and grappled with him.

Thinking of that microwave oven explained everything. I had to get away from it. That was what made the headache so bad. I remember seeing Janey and Kate Younger from the ad department and Mert Strong from publicity in the outer office, all of them staring at me.

The machine jumped a space—very fast, like a hiccough—and the hand drew back down inside.” The agent’s wife giggled shrilly. “Can it, Marsha,” the agent said softly, and she did.

Perhaps I never had the correct listeners.” “Then tell away,” the writer said. “Paul—” His wife put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you think—” “Not now, Meg.” The editor said: “The story came in over the transom, and at that time Logan’s no longer read unsolicited scripts.

Thinking of that microwave oven explained everything. I had to get away from it. That was what made the headache so bad. I remember seeing Janey and Kate Younger from the ad department and Mert Strong from publicity in the outer office, all of them staring at me.

Perhaps I never had the correct listeners.” “Then tell away,” the writer said. “Paul—” His wife put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you think—” “Not now, Meg.” The editor said: “The story came in over the transom, and at that time Logan’s no longer read unsolicited scripts.

“Only two lines about the story this time. All credit thrown to the Fornit . . . and to me. The bologna had really been a fantastic idea. Rackne loved it, and as a consequence—” “Rackne?” the author asked. “That was the Fornit’s name,” the editor said. “Rackne.

And people read them. Anyway, the name of this story was ‘The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,’ and it was written by a man named Reg Thorpe. A young man about this young man’s age, and about as successful.” “He wrote Underworld Figures, didn’t he?” the agent’s wife asked. “Yes.

“Just thinking about those things made my headache worse. But I gave it one more try. I asked him if he would at least ask Sam Vadar, the editor-in-chief, to let the story stand in the January issue. As Logan’s fiction valedictory, if necessary. The final Logan’s short story.

I answered his letter at home, and I was very drunk. The apartment seemed much too empty. It had a stale smell—cigarette smoke, not enough airing. Things were going to seed with Sandra gone. The dropcloth on the couch all wrinkled. Dirty dishes in the sink, that sort of thing.