



Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







                         Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and
    Fantasy January 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
    that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Brown John's Body


                                 _by_

                           _Winston Marks_


     Erd Neff wanted as little to do with his fellow men as
     possible. So he lived alone in his big cash-vault. Alone,
     except for John....

       *       *       *       *       *




Erd Neff dropped a thin bundle of currency into the $100 bill drawer
of the flat-top desk and kicked the drawer shut with a dusty boot. He flicked the drip from his hooked nose, which was chronically
irritated by the wheat dust of the warehouse, then he wiped his
fingers down the leg of his soiled denims. Across the 12 X 12,
windowless room John stirred awake from the noise and began nosing in
the debris of his filthy cage. "Time for supper, John?" Neff tugged at the twine at his belt and
examined his $3 watch. He pinched a dozen grains of wheat from a
two-pound coffee can and let them sift through the wires of the cage. John pounced on the grain hungrily. "Wait a minute! What do you say, dammit?" Neff's hand reached for the
marshmallow-toasting fork that hung from a hook on the wall. He
touched the points, filed needle sharp. "What do you say?" he
repeated, twanging the tines like a tuning fork. John skittered to the far corner, tearing new holes in the old
newspaper with frantic claws. Cowering against the wires he spat
half-chewed flecks of wheat trying to say the magic words that would
spare him from the fork. "Tinkoo! Tinkoo!" he squeaked, straining to
make the two syllables distinct. Neff hung up the fork, and John turned to lick at the old scabs
clotted from earlier jabs, taking sullen inventory to be sure there
were no new crimson leaks in his louse-infested hide. Until two months
ago, he had been just one more gregarious specimen of Mammalia
Rodentia Simplicidentata Myomorphia Muridae decumanus. Now he had
another name. Like each of his predecessors in the cage, he was a
large, brown rat called John--after Erd Neff's despised and deceased
father. Neff named all his rats John. [Illustration]

"Well, don't get fat." John finished the grain, pawed the air and squeaked, "Mur!" "More, hey? You talk fine when you're hungry." "Peef, mur, mur!" John begged. He did well with his vowels, but "I"
and "s" sounds were beyond him. He said "f" for "s". "L's" he ignored
entirely. Neff gave him one more wheat head. "Okay, _get_ fat!" He turned to the door, lifted the inside, mechanical latch, shoved
with his foot and snatched his revolver from his hip-holster. The
vault door opened ponderously revealing an empty warehouse. Neff
peeked through the crack between the hinges to clear the area
concealed by the door itself. One hoodlum hopeful had hidden there. Spotting him through the crack,
Neff had simply beefed into the foot-thick slab of fireproof steel. Inertial plus surprise had disposed of that one. Neff hadn't even had
to shoot. *       *       *       *       *

Tonight there was no one. Funny. The wheat country was getting tame,
or else the tin-horns had learned their lesson. It was no secret that
Erd Neff never visited the local bank, yet it had been more than six
months since anyone tried to hold him up. The local bank hated him plenty. He was costing them. His five loan
offices in the rich wheat county skimmed the cream of the mortgage
loan business. Of course, nowadays most people paid off their loans,
and the low interest rates he charged to lure the business barely paid
expenses. Yet, he still picked up an occasional foreclosure. Farmers
still got drunk, divorced, gambled, broke legs or committed suicide
once in awhile, and Neff's loan documents were ruthless about
extensions of time. These foreclosed acreages he traded for grain elevators and warehouses
when crops were small and operators were desperate. Then came the
bumper years during and after World War II. Wheat on the ground and no
place to store it but in Erd Neff's sheds. It wasn't cheap to store
with Neff, and he had a virtual monopoly in Ulma County. Neff swung the great door back into place with its _whoosh--thunk_
that sealed in air, sound and nearly a hundred thousand dollars in
currency. He levered the bolts into place and spun the expensive
combination lock. The vault, tucked away in the front, left-hand corner of the old frame
warehouse expressed Neff's distrust and contempt for mankind. Concrete
and steel. Bed, shower, toilet and desk. In this walk-in cash box he
was fireproof, bomb-proof, theft-proof and, most important of all,
people-proof. There he consorted unmolested with the one mammal on
earth he found interesting--John, the brown rat. He slid the broad warehouse door closed behind him with a cacophony of
dry screeches and padlocked it. The dusty street was deserted except
for a black sedan which two-wheeled the corner a block away and sped
toward him. Neff dropped his pistol back in its holster. "Now, what
the hell--?" He waited on the splintery platform, a huge man, ugly of face,
shortlegged and long-bodied with a belly swollen from regular
overeating. His shaved head swivelled slowly as the police car leaned
into a skid-stop. Officer Collin Burns got out and stared up at the motionless statue in
sweat-dust stained denims. Burns was half Neff's 56 years, tall and
thin. He wore gray, a silver star and a big black hat. He said, "I'll
take your gun, Erd." "Now what? I got a permit." "Not any more. It's revoked." "For why?" "There were witnesses this afternoon." "Witnesses? What in hell are you--oh, no! Not that damned dog?" "The puppy belonged to a little girl. You can't claim self-defense
this time." "He was coming down here chasing the cats away every day." "So you shot him, like you did Greeley's collie." "Cats count for more. You know well as I do, you can't control the
rats around a warehouse without cats." "You've shot five men, too, Erd. Three of them are dead." "I was cleared, you know damned well! Self-defense." "You're too handy with that pistol. Anyway, I didn't file this
complaint. It was the child's mother, and she made it stick with the
chief. Give me the gun, Erd." "You got a warrant for my arrest?" "No, but I will have in an hour if you insist." "I got a perfect right to protect my property." "Not with a gun. Not any more." "I just get these punks convinced, and now you want to turn loose on
me again. Who put you up to this Collin?" "You did. When you shot that pup. I'm not here to debate it. You're
breaking the law from this minute on if you don't hand over the gun." "Dammit, Collin, you know how much money I got in there? You know how
much I pack around on me sometimes?" "That's your business.