Jack Crabb, Oldtimer

LITTLE BIG MAN by Thomas Berger. 440 pages. Dial. $5.95.

Deer sir I hurd you was trying to fine me--I reckon its me you was trying to fine on account I never hurd of ennybody else among these here old burned out wrecks at this home who was ever a hero like myself and partipated in the glorus history of the Olden Time Fronteer and new them all Genl Custer, Setting Bull, Wild Bill, etc or went through the socalled Little Bighorn fight or Custers Last Stand.

I am being held prisoner here. I am One Hundred and 11 year old and if I had my single acton Colt's I wd shoot my way out but I aint got it. Being your a riter and all I will sell my story for 50 Thousand dollar which I figure to be cheap.

In this fashion, Author Thomas Berger introduces Jack Crabb, who surely must be one of the most delightfully absurd fictional fossils ever unearthed from the Olden Time Fronteer. Berger solemnly declares that Crabb was "either the most neglected hero in the history of this country or a liar of insane proportions." Crabb, in fact, is both, which is just what Berger intended him to be. As relived by Crabb in Berger's telling, the legends and the romanticized history of the West are comically disassembled, like Hamlets seen from backstage. Typical is Crabb's meeting with Wyatt Earp. "You just spoke my name," says the skinny stranger. "I don't know your name," says Jack. "It is Earp," says the stranger. "Oh," says Jack, "what I done was belch."

Wild Bill Hickok appears as the sort of feller who loved to talk about guns with the expertise of an Ian Fleming. "Now then, about that S & W you carry," said Wild Bill. "It is a handsome weapon, but the shells have a bad habit of erupting and jamming the chambers. I'd lay the piece aside and get me something else: a Colt's, with the Thuer conversion." Crabb reports that Hickok knew an hombre who carried a small pistol in his crotch. When cornered, the fellow would ask permission to relieve himself before dying, open his fly, and fire. "The trouble was one time he got overhasty and shot off his male parts."

Betwixt and between, Berger-Crabb is a spellbinding storyteller with a fine feel for frontier manners and morals and for fascinating Indian lore. And why didn't the Sioux scalp Custer? Jack Crabb knows (because he was there): Custer was getting bald.

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