[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction June 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
If Ollie knew the work he was doing, he would
have resigned--if resigning were possible!
If there had ever been a time when Ollie Keith hadn't been hungry, it
was so far in the past that he couldn't remember it. He was hungry now
as he walked through the alley, his eyes shifting lusterlessly from one
heap of rubbish to the next. He was hungry through and through, all
one hundred and forty pounds of him, the flesh distributed so gauntly
over his tall frame that in spots it seemed about to wear through, as
his clothes had. That it hadn't done so in forty-two years sometimes
struck Ollie as in the nature of a miracle.
He worked for a junk collector and he was unsuccessful in his present
job, as he had been at everything else. Ollie had followed the first
part of the rags-to-riches formula with classic exactness. He had been
born to rags, and then, as if that hadn't been enough, his parents had
died, and he had been left an orphan. He should have gone to the big
city, found a job in the rich merchant's counting house, and saved the
pretty daughter, acquiring her and her fortune in the process.
It hadn't worked out that way. In the orphanage where he had spent so
many unhappy years, both his food and his education had been skimped.
He had later been hired out to a farmer, but he hadn't been strong
enough for farm labor, and he had been sent back.
His life since then had followed an unhappy pattern. Lacking strength
and skill, he had been unable to find and hold a good job. Without a
good job, he had been unable to pay for the food and medical care, and
for the training he would have needed to acquire strength and skill.
Once, in the search for food and training, he had offered himself to
the Army, but the doctors who examined him had quickly turned thumbs
down, and the Army had rejected him with contempt. They wanted better
human material than that.
How he had managed to survive at all to the present was another
miracle. By this time, of course, he knew, as the radio comic put it,
that he wasn't long for this world. And to make the passage to another
world even easier, he had taken to drink. Rot gut stilled the pangs of
hunger even more effectively than inadequate food did. And it gave
him the first moments of happiness, spurious though they were, that he
could remember.
Now, as he sought through the heaps of rubbish for usable rags or
redeemable milk bottles, his eyes lighted on something unexpected.
Right at the edge of the curb lay a small nut, species indeterminate.
If he had his usual luck, it would turn out to be withered inside, but
at least he could hope for the best.
* * * * *
He picked up the nut, banged it futilely against the ground, and then
looked around for a rock with which to crack it. None was in sight.
Rather fearfully, he put it in his mouth and tried to crack it between
his teeth. His teeth were in as poor condition as the rest of him, and
the chances were that they would crack before the nut did.
The nut slipped and Ollie gurgled, threw his hands into the air and
almost choked. Then he got it out of his windpipe and, a second later,
breathed easily. The nut was in his stomach, still uncracked. And
Ollie, it seemed to him, was hungrier than ever.
The alley was a failure. His life had been a progression from rags to
rags, and these last rags were inferior to the first. There were no
milk bottles, there was no junk worth salvaging.
At the end of the alley was a barber shop, and here Ollie had a great
and unexpected stroke of luck. He found a bottle. The bottle was no
container for milk and it wasn't empty. It was standing on a small
table near an open window in the rear of the barber shop. Ollie found
that he could get it by simply stretching out his long, gaunt arm for
it, without climbing in through the window at all.
He took a long swig, and then another. The liquor tasted far better
than anything he had ever bought.
When he returned the bottle to its place, it was empty.
Strangely enough, despite its excellent quality, or perhaps, he
thought, _because_ of it, the whiskey failed to have its usual effect
on him. It left him completely sober and clear-eyed, but hungrier than
ever.
In his desperation, Ollie did something that he seldom dared to do. He
went into a restaurant, not too good a restaurant or he would never
have been allowed to take a seat, and ordered a meal he couldn't pay
for.
He knew what would happen, of course, after he had eaten. He would
put on an act about having lost his money, but that wouldn't fool the
manager for more than one second. If the man was feeling good and
needed help, he'd let Ollie work the price out washing dishes. If he
was a little grumpy and had all the dishwashers he needed, he'd have
them boot the tar out of Ollie and then turn him over to the police.
The soup was thick and tasty, although tasty in a way that no gourmet
would have appreciated. The mess was food, however, and Ollie gulped it
down gratefully. But it did nothing to satisfy his hunger. Likewise,
the stew had every possible leftover thrown into it, and none of it
gave Ollie any feeling of satisfaction. Even the dessert and the muddy
coffee left him as empty as before.
The waiter had been in the back room with the cook. Now Ollie saw him
signal to the manager, and watched the manager hasten back. He closed
his eyes. They were onto him; there was no doubt about it. For a
moment he considered trying to get out of the front door before they
closed in, but there was another waiter present, keeping an eye on the
patrons, and he knew that he would never make it. He took a deep breath
and waited for the roof to fall in on him.
He heard the manager's foot-steps and opened his eyes. The manager
said, "Uh--look, bud, about that meal you ate--"
"Not bad," observed Ollie brightly.
"Glad you liked it."
He noticed little beads of sweat on the manager's forehead, and
wondered what had put them there. He said, "Only trouble is, it ain't
fillin'. I'm just as hungry as I was before."
"It didn't fill you up, huh? That's too bad. I'll tell you what I'll
do. Rather than see you go away dissatisfied, I won't charge you for
the meal. Not a cent."
Ollie blinked. This made no sense whatever. All the same, if not for
the gnawing in his stomach, he would have picked himself up and run. As
it was, he said, "Thanks. Guess in that case I'll have another order of
stew. Maybe this time it'll stick to my ribs."
"Not the stew," replied the manager nervously. "You had the last that
was left. Try the roast beef."
"Hmm, that's more than I was gonna spend."
"No charge," said the manager. "For you, no charge at all."
"Then gimme a double order. I feel starved."
The double order went down the hatch, yet Ollie felt just as empty as
ever. But he was afraid to press his luck too far, and after he had
downed one more dessert--also without charge--he reluctantly picked
himself up and walked out. He was too hungry to spend any more time
wondering why he had got a free meal.
In the back room of the restaurant, the manager sank weakly into a
chair. "I was afraid he was going to insist on paying for it. Then we'd
really have been on a spot."
"Guess he was too glad to get it for free," the cook said.
"Well, if anything happens to him now, it'll happen away from here."
"Suppose they take a look at what's in his stomach."
"He still won't be able to sue us. What did you do with the rest of
that stew?"
"It's in the garbage."
"Cover it up. We don't want dead cats and dogs all over the place.
And next time you reach for the salt, make sure there isn't an insect
powder label on it."
"It was an accident; it could happen to anybody," said the cook
philosophically. "You know, maybe we shouldn't have let that guy go
away. Maybe we ought to have sent him to a doctor."
"And pay his bills? Don't be a sap. From now on, he's on his own.
Whatever happens to him, we don't know anything about it. We never saw
him before."
* * * * *
The only thing that was happening to Ollie was that he was getting
hungrier and hungrier. He had, in fact, never before been so ravenous.
He felt as if he hadn't eaten in years.
He had met with two strokes of luck--the accessible bottle and the
incredibly generous manager. They had left him just as hungry and
thirsty as before. Now he encountered a third gift of fortune. On the
plate glass window of a restaurant was the flamboyant announcement:
EATING CONTEST TONIGHT AT MONTE'S RESTAURANT! FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP
OF THE WORLD! ENTRIES BEING TAKEN NOW! NO CHARGE IF YOU EAT ENOUGH FOR
AT LEAST THREE PEOPLE.
Ollie's face brightened. The way he felt, he could have eaten enough
for a hundred. The fact that the contestants, as he saw upon reading
further, would be limited to hard-boiled eggs made no difference to
him. For once he would have a chance to eat everything he could get
down his yawning gullet.
That night it was clear that neither the judges nor the audience
thought much of Ollie as an eater. Hungry he undoubtedly was, but it
was obvious that his stomach had shrunk from years of disuse, and
besides, he didn't have the build of a born eater. He was long and
skinny, whereas the other contestants seemed almost as broad and wide
as they were tall. In gaining weight, as in so many other things, the
motto seemed to be that those who already had would get more. Ollie
had too little to start with.
In order to keep the contest from developing an anticlimax, they
started with Ollie, believing that he would be lucky if he ate ten eggs.
Ollie was so ravenous that he found it difficult to control himself,
and he made a bad impression by gulping the first egg as fast as he
could. A real eater would have let the egg slide down rapidly yet
gently, without making an obvious effort. This uncontrolled, amateur
speed, thought the judges, could only lead to a stomachache.
Ollie devoured the second egg, the third, the fourth, and the rest of
his allotted ten. At that point, one of the judges asked, "How do you
feel?"
"Hungry."
"Stomach hurt?"
"Only from hunger. It feels like it got nothin' in it. Somehow, them
eggs don't fill me up."
Somebody in the audience laughed. The judges exchanged glances and
ordered more eggs brought on. From the crowd of watchers, cries of
encouragement came to Ollie. At this stage, there was still nobody who
thought that he had a chance.
Ollie proceeded to go through twenty eggs, forty, sixty, a hundred. By
that time, the judges and the crowd were in a state of unprecedented
excitement.