Horn
Upon entering the woods I pulled out my saxophone from the closet “in” my bag (a battered, oiled leather valise, in answer to your query). I dropped my pretentious walking stick inside and took a few steps further into the trees. I began to play on the saxophone with the valise open before me on the ground.
The curious thing about this instrument is that it actually plays itself. I have never learned to play myself, being an electric guitar man from way back. My saxophone, built by an inventor in a far away land, allows me to play it as if it were a guitar (or a typewriter, for that matter) and then translates my playing into saxophone sounds. Of course, I still have to blow into it, my wind being its “food,” but there is a distinct difference between the rhythms of my exhalations and those of a “real” sax man.
Anyway, I eventually picked up a few coins from squirrely passersby who, interested in my sound (the squirrels aren’t much for Jazz, so I was forced to play in a more straightforward manner than I usually like), allowed conversation with me to proceed more than they usually would with a run-of-the-mill human.
“How do I get to Shedge?” I asked, and was told the way. I also picked up a few extra details through subtle verbal probing.
After another quarter of an hour or so of delicious, goose-like honking and as much friendly banter as I could stomach, I collected my earnings, put them in my pocket, replaced the saxophone, and continued on my way. Further in I saw fewer and fewer squirrels (they were high above in the trees) and more and more humans. These were the primitives that make their living harvesting what they can from the forest floor and lose themselves in their all-consuming religious duties. Almost uniformly clad in overalls, athletic shoes, and t-shirts, they nodded coldly at me whenever I saw them. I could see in their eyes the suspicion, so different from the squirrel’s caution.
“Do you know the Lord as your personal jesus and savior?” One woman caught me unaware as I snacked at a crudely built fruit stand beside the trunk of a tree as big around as a church.
Cheese
The cheese Brank’s staff served was some of the best I’ve ever eaten.
“Wine?” Brank offered.
“No thank you.” I waved a hand.
“Some of our unique tea, then?”
I readily agreed, and, upon sampling it, found it to be, like the cheese, excellent. It was quite acidic, however, and irritated an infection of some kind I had on part of my lips. I explained my wincing to Brank.
“This infection, it does not affect your saxophone playing?” He asked.
I only smiled and nodded, acknowledging his perception.
“Yes.” He confirmed. “We have known of your presence in the forest since you first set foot in it.”
I finished my tea and set the cup down on the low table.
“The only question is what you want.” Brank became serious.
“The only thing I want is information, something you seem to have in such abundance.”
Brank frowned, rolling his eyes to the side.
“What do you know about Shedge?” He asked.
“Not much. But, really, one place is very like another.”
“How true.” He seemed to consider a moment. “I, of course, have heard more about you than your saxophone playing.” He paused. “What does the name Paraftylloben mean to you?”
“Paraftylloben!” I snapped.
“I see it is not unfamiliar to you.”
I recovered my equanimity.
“Let me ask you: what does the name Turlobog mean to you?” I saw that the name was new to Brank.
“Of what connection is this Turlobog to Paraftylloben?” Brank asked.
“Do you serve Paraftylloben?” I countered.
“No.” Brank was firm. “We are not Bolsis, as much as they would like to co-opt us as they have the Hurrers.”
I took another piece of cheese.
“Some crackers would be really good with this.” I mused.
Pepper
“Fresh ground pepper, sir?” The waiter asked.
“Freshly ground, yes. Sure.” I corrected and assented. Was there a flash of resentment on the man’s face as he positioned the big Rubirosa over my eggplant linguine? I didn’t care. More than that, I made the man keep twisting until there was a thick, even dusting of multi-colored particles over the entrée. As the waiter went away, with a renewed determination to find another job, no doubt, my dinner companion, Malder Stang, asked,
“Do you think you got enough pepper on your food?”
“Just right.” I informed him after a forkful. “I like my food spicy. In fact,” I did not finish my sentence with words, but reached out for the bottle of hot sauce on the table, a locally made brand I’d never heard of.
“It’s been a long time.” Stang said between bites of his blackened meat.
“Yes, but I’d rather not talk about the old days, if I can avoid it.”
“Sure.” Stang frowned, puzzled, I’m sure.
“I don’t know how much you can tell me about the situation here. What do you know?” I drank grape juice with the meal. It provides most of the same health benefits as wine, but without the alcohol, which is, as you know, so inimical to my system.
Had I been willing to talk over old time with Stang, he could have spoken of, and I could then have conveyed to you, many instances of my drunken behavior, antics best left in the corners of the backdrop of my current career. This was not the only reason I didn’t want to talk of old times, but it was a good one. Such memories can be painful. Goulet knows they crop up often enough on their own, bidden by the most tenuous of associations with daily perceptions. That is why I carry a small charm in my pocket, a medallion bearing the image of the mighty pterosaur, the pinching of which between thumb and forefinger drives back the unwanted memory, be it of a drunken nature or not.
“Are you listening, Toadsgoboad?” Stang asked. Apparently I had been daydreaming. I found sweat starting out on my forehead from the heat of the food. Would Stang think I was drinking again? I didn’t care.
Please
I met Geoffrey Porter in the lounge of the Tapestry Club, a gentlemen’s club I gained entry to through the medium of some fellow who does not appear in this chronicle. Porter was introduced to me as a character of a similar, mysterious nature whose society I might find congenial. Within a thousand words or so of private exchange with him, I was privy to a selection of his most well-kept secrets, the most well-kept of which, and the one of the most interest to me, was that he was not actually a human, but a Hurrer, from another world. He explained to me that on his way to Shedge he had undergone surgery to remove the extra two legs that would betray him as an outsider.
“I think I look rather human, don’t you?” He asked.
“I should say so. More than that, you look rather dapper, in my opinion.”
“Thank you. At first I found the fashions here strange, but, as I suspected, I soon got used to them, and now I think them the most elegant I have ever seen.”
“Yes,” I mused, looking out the large archway that led from the lounge out into the corridor. From where I sat I could just see the entrance to the reading room. “If I stay any longer I shall be sorely tempted to purchase a whole new wardrobe.”
“How long do you plan on staying?”
“Only a day or two. Possibly more, if events warrant it. How about you?”
“Oh, I’ve burned my bridges.” Porter smiled wryly. “I’m here for good.”
I smiled, thinking about that phrase “for good.”
“I can tell you’re a bit more traveled than these other fellows.” Geoffrey Porter said. “What can you tell me about the worlds beyond this?” He nodded at the ceiling and for an instant I was on the verge of telling him about the worlds of manual labor, of desperate longings, and slinging heavy sacks of mail at the post office. Instead, I answered honestly and, as I’ve said before,
“One place is much like another.”
“Oh, please. Surely that’s an empty cliché.” Porter did not get what he wanted and signaled for another drink.
Standard
From my hiding place I had been observing Bunt Hangurin working in his office. A powerful, good-looking man, he reminded me of what I could have been had I not been circumcised or exposed to powerful neurotoxins as a child. He spent nearly an hour on the phone dealing with various persons in connection with his business. All the while he squeezed a grip-strengthening device, switching hands approximately every twenty-five squeezes. Just as I had begun to admire him in my own, never-to-be-acknowledged way, his secretary, whose name I never caught, entered. I noticed immediately that there was something strange about her walk. I gripped the cushioned arms of my chair in anticipation. The woman handed Hangurin some paper, ostensibly her reason for entering the room. However, I saw her whisper to him.
Exploding into action, too fast for even me to react, Hangurin lunged towards what we in the trade call the “fourth wall,” breaking glass, rending wood, and nearly seizing me in those thoroughly prepared hands. I put the chair between us just in time. As he threw it aside, I readied myself, taking up a fighting stance.
Used as he was to a weight advantage, Hagurin did not count on my weighing more than he, nor on my own strength, of a different nature from his, perhaps, but still more than a match for him. There would be no need to get some sort of weapon out of my bag, even if I had had the time, which I didn’t. With only a single grunt and a slight, painful shove off my left leg, I pushed Hangurin down like an ill-timed, burgeoning boner, then twisted his arms about in such a manner as to render them useless to him for the time it would take me to escape.
“Why are you spying one me?” Hangurin demanded, his voice calm and reasonable. His spirit was unbroken, despite his acceptance of defeat.
“It’s kind of my job.” I said, though I was under no compulsion to explain anything.
“I thought you were my friend.” Hangurin allowed himself to growl.
“I’ve never met you before.” I told him.
“Aren’t you Kiplough?”
How many of these look-alikes of me were there, I asked myself as I headed into the shopping district.
Abrasive
I found a comfortable chair in the bookstore and opened a copy of the recently published Nictating Macrame, by Laramie Schutser, the main protagonist of which, Rectanglo, was later said to be some kind of portrait of me. I admit there were some similarities, but as Schutser had never met me and had no way of knowing of my existence, these must be put down as coincidences. Of course, in my philosophy coincidence is a powerful tool, but only when consciously seen; that is, subjectively. I chose (and still choose) to regard the Rectanglo character as, at best, little more than a cartoonish version of me.
Other than that I found the book poorly written and far too dependent on plot for my taste. Worst of all, I found nothing in it of use to me. Its themes were concerns and viewpoints that I had long since outgrown. I could not understand the amount of talk the book had generated in the city, vaunting its author, a heretofore unknown, to the center of the literary world’s attention.
It was with some delight then that I came across a section of illustrations tucked into the middle of the book. These had apparently nothing to do with the text and were exceedingly engaging. Had the book been comprised of nothing but pictures of similar quality I would have willingly spent money on it. Obviously I wasn’t going to buy it as it was. These illustrations were but the simplest of cartoons; in fact, the most inept of cartoons; scribbles; doodles, really; and captioned with nonsensical phrases that, as far as I could tell, had more to do with the author’s mood on the day he had written them than anything else. But, had this Schutser drawn them? They weren’t signed. I flipped to the front of the book and found that they were attributed as “found art”. How interesting!
I tore the middle section out of the book as quietly as possible and slid it up my sleeve. Then I shoved the book behind some others on a nearby shelf and rose from my seat. I saw an announcement on my way out of the store that the author of Nictating Macrame, Laramie Schutser, would be signing copies of his work in the store the following week. It was too bad I would be gone by then.
Upended
“A college graduate!” Klaster’s mother scolded her son. “A doctoral candidate! Working as a janitor! What is wrong with you?”
Klaster was grateful he had the mop in his hands. It gave him some measure of moral support as he faced his mother. He was standing just inside the custodians’ supply room, his mother just outside.
“You wouldn’t understand.” Klaster said softly, keeping his eyes somewhere around his mother’s knees.
“What wouldn’t I understand? Why have you quit school?”
Klaster told me later that she finally left him alone not long after he answered the above question vaguely and made insincere promises to think about returning to school to get his doctorate.
“There was no way she would understand.” He told me. “All that stuff is meaningless now.”
“Because of Paraftylloben?” I sipped my hot tea and looked casually away, keeping the full power of my stare in check.
Klaster sighed. He was wearing green coveralls with his name embroidered in an oval patch over the right-hand breast pocket.
“Because of Don Kiplough.” He said. “Paraftylloben is… important too, but Kiplough is…” He faded away, lacking words.
“Does Kiplough fulfill some sort of avatar role?” I asked.
Klaster thought a moment.
“Yes. Yes, that’s… a good way to describe it.”
“An avatar of Paraftylloben?”
“In a way. More an embodiment of what Paraftylloben represents.”
“Yet still you serve Paraftylloben?” I turned my stare on him now.
“Certainly.” He said with a square’s seriousness.
I rose from the table.
“Thank you.” I said.
“Tell me,” Klaster rose also. “Why are you unaffected by Paraftylloben’s powers?”
“It is not that I am unaffected by Paraftylloben, though that is the case; it is that I am unaffected by the Bolsis.”
Old Truck
Mr. Groaf was in the driver’s seat. I rode on the passenger’s side of the cracked vinyl bench seat. Between us was a pile of dusty, yellowed papers, greasy tools, and dead leaves. The floor of the old truck was equally cluttered. My feet straddled an old alternator. We said nothing for some time as Groaf drove us to a place he knew.
“This is it.” He announced finally. He nodded ahead to a gap in what appeared to be an older section of the wall that surrounded the city, a section only half as high as the rest. We passed through the gap and into a field of weeds topped by white and yellow wildflower blossoms. Trees, smaller brothers of the titans in the woods outside, ringed the field.
“This is the oldest part of the city.” Groaf said. “All the buildings are gone, even their foundations. But this is where it all began.”
“Shedge may have begun here.” Said. “But it all didn’t begin here.”
“Shedge is all. For us.” He stopped the truck and switched off the engine. We both got out and faced each other over the hood of the truck.
“What about the woods?” I asked. “And the ocean.”
“Well,” He turned to look over the field. He was dressed casually, in a plaid shirt with its sleeves rolled up and a pair of jeans. “The woods will soon be under our control. As for the ocean, we have a plan for that as well, but it won’t be in my lifetime.”
“What about the squirrels?”
“The squirrels think that the Bolsis will help them become the masters of Shedge. The Bolsis only want unrestricted rights to the logging of the trees to provide more building material for their god. But they will enslave the squirrels, just as they have done dozens of other civilizations. They call it ‘procurement.’”
I looked at him sharply.
“They do? That is a perversion of the Toadic meaning of that term.” I was angry.
“Well, I’m sorry. Not everyone subscribes to your philosophy, apparently.
Knickers
Since accepting employment with the Extramortuary Speculation, the Bird had proved himself more than just a novel acquisition for the image-conscious department. He had shown himself to be a capable manager of personnel. On a hot day I went to see the Bird at his office in the western municipal tower. As he rose from behind his desk and came forward to greet me I saw that he was wearing knickers.
“Say, I really like those knickers.” I told him after shaking his wingtip through a special adapter.
“Ah, you know the proper term. Please have a seat.” He directed me to a cunning piece of modern design as he shifted the adapter to its pen-manipulation mode. “Not many people know the proper term. Most of them refer to them as Austrian ambulicans.”
“That’s funny.” I said. “The first pair I ever had were salvage from the Austrian army. Supposedly.” I added, musing back on my purchase of the pants nearly twenty years before. How odd it was that I should have blindly accepted the accreditation of a cardboard sign in red marker. That wouldn’t happen today. I had grown paranoid over the years. My friends of longstanding have put this down to heavy marijuana usage, but I am not convinced. What are they trying to conceal from me?
“So, Mr. Toadsgoboad, what can I do for you today?” The Bird asked.
“I understand your department rents out extramortuary assistants.”
“Well, the department does, but not specifically my unit. I believe that’s Chasings’ purview. I’ll just ring him…” He started to reach for his phone. I interrupted him.
“No, please, I have a reason for coming to you specifically.”
“Yes?”
“You were friends with Don Kiplough, weren’t you?” I asked.
He stared at me for a moment.
“Yes.” He said it blankly.
“I thought so.” I nodded.
“Is that all?”
“Well, don’t you think I resemble him somewhat?” I turned my profile to him. He looked and then shook his head.
“No, I’m sorry. But, the eyes of a bird are keener than those of a human.” He explained.
The End
The extramortuary assistant I rented, a young man named Wagler, accompanied me to the field of weeds and wildflowers that Mr. Groaf had first shown me.
“Did you have anywhere specific in mind?” Wagler asked as he pulled his tool kit out of our hired conveyance and looked around.
“I think over by that wall.” I pointed to a stretch of the ancient wall that was not overlooked by the newer, taller wall, nor was obscured by the trees.
“Was it anyone in particular you wanted to contact?” Wagler asked, fitting pieces of machinery together and erecting a tripod. “Or,” He looked me in the eye. “Is it not a person you are interested in?”
“Death comes to everyone and everything.” I said. “Including ideas.”
“Ideas?” He repeated. He nodded as he placed a heavy black box on top of the tripod. “Yeah, I can see that.”
I placed my ear to the section of wall we were standing beneath. I could hear the roar of the ocean beyond.
“OK, sir.” Said Wagler. “I’m going to need something tangible for the machine to lock on to. Even if it’s only a mental image.”
“I don’t want to risk a mental image.” I said. “Use this.” I opened my valise and pulled out a book. I handed it to Wagler.
“Dallas Pimiento.” He read the title. “Is it good?”
“It hasn’t been written yet.” I pointed to the pages, which were blank. Although confused and hesitant to use a blank book, Wagler sampled it with a wand connected to the box atop the tripod. Then he switched on the machine. In only a few seconds a bearded figure arose from the seemingly solid ground. It was Jerry Lancaster, my imaginary friend of many years.
“Toadsgoboad!” He saluted. “Where am I?”
“A place called Shedge.” I told him. “I’m about to leave and I was wondering if you’d like to come along.”
“Um,” Wagler objected. “The dead can’t leave the beam radius of the machine.”
“Oh, Jerry’s not dead.” I laughed. “He’s just really boring.”
THE END
Brutally Haggard, Part 9
The Fascination of the Toaster
“It’s so utilitarian.” Gnome said as he stared intently at the toaster.
“There was a time when toast was central to breakfast.” Shomki, not yet a PhD, rubbed his unshaven chin and mused.
Musing was a habit with these young men, later to become famous as the discoverers of the Gratuity Confusion Principle. At this time, however, they were but untested scholars, sitting in a small, brightly-lit dining room, waiting for the thrill of the expected toast popping back into view.
“Does that make the toast gratuitous?” Gnome asked. This may have been the first broaching of this important topic between them, the first inklin of what they were to expand into two volumes of observations three thousand pages long. Discussion of the topic was squelched by Shomki’s next words.
“Something is approaching the house.” He said.
Gnome looked out the window through which his friend was looking.
“What is it?” Gnome asked.
“Red, cylindrical, big, big like a… a vending machine.” Shomki commented.
“A snack cake vending machine or some sort of hot beverage machine?”
“Hard to tell. It’s moving quite rapidly.”
“It might hit the house!” Gnome ejaculated.
“That was my precise thought.” Shomki agreed, rising from his chair.
“The toast!” Gnome objected to panicky flight.
“Whistling wheat!” Shomki swore. This was no time to delay. And yet, he too felt the hypnotic pull of the toast. He leaned towards the toaster, his knuckles on the vinyl tablecloth.
“Pop up, damn you!” He growled.
Later, surveying the damage the red object had done to the garage, Gnome handed his uneaten crusts to Shomki.
“Here’s a little something extra for you.” He said.
Shomki took them without a word. He was looking at the red object, torn open by its impact with the garage. Its contents, hundreds of strange-looking and more strangely-packaged pastries, littered the area.
“I’m going to eat one.” Shomki finally declared.
“Bravado is your forte.” Gnome mispronounced the last word.
The Paper Leitmotif
“Whenever the paper appears, a little trill on the oboes will be played.” Explained Dinglord, the theater’s director. He cued Ms. Groop at the piano. She trilled out the series of notes.
“That’s a piano.” Hyram objected.
“I know it’s a piano.” Dinglord sang. “But in the actual performance of the piece we will have actual oboes here.” He pointed at the orchestra pit. “We have none at the moment.”
Hyram and Corky exchanged looks. No oboes! What kind of cheap company had they joined up with? Corky complained later that he had had to get his own coffee.
“You’re lucky.” Hyram countered. “I had to bring my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?” Hyram lowered his brows in confusion.
“I mean, what’s the difference?”
“You got your coffee: went and got it. I brought mine. Had to bring it from home.”
“Didn’t you know they had coffee here?”
“What’s the point in drinking their coffee if you have to go get it yourself? Besides, they have crappy coffee here.”
Summoned to their places, along with the rest of the cast, Hyram and Corky entered the blue, high-ceilinged room with the green shag carpeting covering what stood in for distant, mountainous terrain. The signal given, they began. Corky, in his role as the hermitical wise man, sat atop one of the shaggy peaks. Hyram, singled out from the crowd of squirrel-people, climbed up to this wise man.
“Oh, wise man!” Hyram called, once he had reached that high place.
“Yes?” Corky inhaled the rich aroma of the coffee in the cup in his hand.
“What is the right course of action for my people?”
“Well,” Said Corky, putting down his coffee and taking up a scroll. “According to this document…” Corky’s words were supplemented by the trilled notes of Ms. Groop’s piano.
Ric Ocasek in Gelatin
“Have you heard about Todd Rundgren?” Bantu Sani asked me,
“And the ‘New Cars?’” I replied.
“Yeah.” His eyes were wide, disbelief evident in every shake of his head.
“It is a sad day for all parties concerned.” I made my comment and returned to the planting of the baby beans. Of course, Bantu Sani would have pestered me further, had I allowed it, but finally he turned away finding me unwilling to talk. Even if he had said something most engaging (and just about anything to do with the Cars or Rundgren was potentially engaging) I would have denied both of us the pleasure of conversation. The beans must be planted today; there was no other time to perform this task. Besides, what a pleasurable task it was. I was in the greenhouse, not out on some dusty plain bending my back before the merciless sun. No, my garden was indoors, on a tabletop at hip level, each bean to be placed in moist black loam in its own florally patterned paper cup.
“Your smock is dirty.” My wife told me as she met me emerging from the greenhouse sometime later.
“Let it be dirty.” I smiled. “I never want to wash this smock again.”
“Smock, smock.” She said, a smile of her own on her face.
“Smock, smock.” I repeated.
“Are the beans planted, Papa?” My son asked that afternoon as we gathered around the radio to eat our toast while listening to the News from Inside My Head.
“Yes, my son.” I put a slice of bread for each of us (except Bantu Sani) into the toaster and pushed down the levers.
“When will they begin to grow?” Asked my daughter.
“They are already growing.” I said, tuning the dial of the radio until the familiar theme music came through the airwaves.
“I just want to be in your panorama.” Bantu Sani could be heard singing as he washed the dishes in the kitchen.
“I’ll deal with him.” I assured everyone as I rose from my chair and took down the riding crop from over the mantle.
Card Games of the Judiciary
I will admit that when first the subject of card games of the judiciary was suggested to me (by old man Cowold, out in his rough shack among the thickest part of the forest) I was reluctant to pursue it. After all, having been a frustrated card player for most of the latter half of my life, with no one to play with as the overwhelming bulk of humanity is now inextricably fused to their omnisensory televisual interfaces, well… let’s just leave it that I’m both a little burned out and bitter on the subject.
Of course, there are those who would play with me, if I only were willing. As a rule, however, these tend to be the same people that I avoid as I would the sight of ghostly figures in the periphery of my vision, when they emerge from their subterranean muckholes to seek out lonely people in need of their tedious jokes and commonplace opinions.
In my capacity as a judge, I am forever at odds with those who see the law as an entity unto itself. These are the people who say things like “we’re a nation of laws, not men,” which is patently absurd. Laws don’t eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, or have babies. It is individuals who do these things. The law is an abstraction used to make the lives of groups of individuals more pleasant by making their lives, as a group, more ordered.
“No one wants to hear your philosophizing.” One man told me. My reply, as usual, was,
“Old man’s breath smells like beef stew.”
“Shut up and deal the cards.”
“Very well.” I shuffled the deck as best I could with my work-swollen fingers and dealt the whole pack out among we four players, leaving only four cards face down in the middle of the table.
“What’s that?” One of the women asked me, pointing at these last cards.
“That’s the kitty.”
“The kitty?” She questioned, looking at her fellow female as if to confirm the validity of her shock.
“It’s vulgar, I know,” The other woman agreed. “But what can you expect of a man-created game?”
“This is a game?” The man queried with a shocked expression.
Backbeat of the Scholar
The drums I played on that famous series of albums were homemade, constructed of plastic buckets, blocks of wood, and some decorative miniature cymbals found at a thrift store.
“What an unusual drum sound!” Friends and acquaintances would comment on hearing the albums. When I explained the makeshift nature of the drums, the inevitable reaction (mostly on the part of the latter) was that they had been cheated, their listening experience had not been valid. When shown the error of their ways by the most elementary of arguments, these same critics were wont to sniff,
“Well, that’s not Jazz!”
“One hundred years ago you’d have said it wasn’t music.” I reply.
The liner notes, consisting of fragments of stream-of-consciousness-type fumings edited together into passable gibberish, were equally praised until it was discovered that they could accompany any of the other albums as well as the one in which they were included. This was discovered by the simple method of my admitting to the fact. I think my mistake in both cases was in fessing up that it was all a game, that the serious emotions engendered by the works of art were not inherent in them, but in the observer, the listener, the participant.
“You’re philosophizing again.” Was the third of the criticisms leveled at me.
Indeed, it is so. The point really is not that I am inventing new methods of artistic construction, but that I am surrounded by morons who ought never to be exposed to any of my work, as they are not familiar with any culture or entertainment not produced by a machine.
How best to describe my music? The term lo-fi comes to mind at once, at least to someone like me, deliberately adopting the term even as I know that terms and labels are ultimately unsatisfactory, becoming too broad to have any efficacy of indication. I might as well adopt “Jazz.” Much as I’d like to, however, I have such respect for the term that I won’t sully it by adding my stream-of-consciousness music to it. Perhaps a new term is necessary. I could call it “Toadic” or “Bean” or “Lottery.”
Full Motility
In the soup the vehicle moves like a magazine opening and closing, rifling its pages under its own power. It had been my privilege to see my enemies incorporate Miles Davis into their lexicon of touchstones. Soon they will burp out the name Captain Beefheart with their broadcast lips, robbing me of another (perceived) unique talisman. They will never take Jean Dubuffet, though. Dead too long, for one thing.
The smell of butter-flavored poison is filling the room. People stop and tell me the headlines. I continue to concentrate on my own aging. Will I become as they?
I am a man who likes Giacometti’s drawings and paintings more than his sculpture. I like Bacon from the mid-60’s onward. His popes and Van Goghs leave me unmoved, undisturbed, if disturbance is really what you want. My own art is not disturbing. At one time I wanted to make pictures that frightened me, but now I want to paint that which brings to mind all that my childhood had already envisioned years before all this.
The magazine is the imaginary one, not put out to contain as many ads as possible, but to be the compendium of which I have dreamed to discover. Every wonderful thing. Text and images. A dream of infinite comics. Every surface covered by tiny figures or Tarzan’s little bugs.
The soup? The soup of life, I guess. What a commonplace that is. Some split pea broth from the swamp, full of green brains and rising bubbles flatulent with mystery. Don’t you want a taste?
The easiest way for me to finish this segment is to include a little dialogue.
“Mr. Abandon, what do you think of my current conceit?” I asked with a devilish simper on my thug’s mug.
“I am uncertain of what it all means.” Mr. Abandon covered his genitals with a hastily submerged washcloth.
“I don’t think it’s really necessary that it means anything.” I suggested.
“It sounds like you’ve just given up.”
“Bah! Two pages out of a hundred. No one will notice.”
“I think it’s a little more than two.” Mr. Abandon motioned me to leave him to his bathing.
Walking Stick
By the time I found my walking stick the bus had pulled away ffrom the platform in front of my house.
“What will you do now?” My robotic female attendant asked.
“Get away from you, anyhow!” I snapped, shaking the walking stick furiously at her. I stormed out the front door, pulling my hat firmly over my eyes. As I walked down the narrow path through the knee-high grasses I kept my eyes fixes on the ground.
“Watch where you’re going!” I heard a hateful voice bark. I looked up in time to avoid two men carrying a large pane of glass towards me. To avoid them I had to step into the grass.
“Asshole.” The man walking at the rear muttered as he passed by. I hate these workingman types; they’re so certain that anyone who dresses as I do is pretentious and knows nothing of their lives. I reached out in my anger and smashed the pane of glass with my stick. The momentary look of shock on their faces was delightful. Just as their shock turned to wrath I tumbled backwards into the grass, snuggling down into it. As they hunted about for me I moved unseen far away, eventually coming to a neighborhood of small, mice-like people. The grass had scratched my face. I was hot and winded from the unfamiliar exercise. So I entered a small ice cream establishment and ordered, not ice cream, but a simple cup of cold lemonade.
“What town is this?” I asked, after I had gulped down the drink.
“This is Bosomill.” The shopkeeper and chief scooper told me.
“Bosomill!” I declared, as shocked as if I’d had a large pane of glass smashed by an asshole stranger.
“I know someone who lives here.” I said. “Do you know Craggy Izodi?”
“Sure.” He replied. He went on to give me directions to Craggy’s house.
Ten minutes later I was sitting with Craggy in his front yard sipping another lemonade, this one homemade and much tastier than the last.
“The squirrels are out of control.” Craggy told me. “My people have tried to reason with them, but they won’t listen. It’s not entirely their fault, and I see their side of it, but only bad stuff can come of this.”
Kiplough’s Transport
“In these uncertain times,” Said the salesman. “You need reliable transport.”
“What does it eat?” Asked Kiplough as he looked dubiously at the wheeled animal’s mouth. The vehicle looked sleepily back at him.
“Not as much as you’re thinking he does.” The salesman chuckled, shaking a finger of friendly admonition.
“Yeah, but what?” Kiplough turned from his inspection. He felt he should assert himself at least a little.
The salesman clapped his hands together and peered closely into Kiplough’s face.
“Household scraps, if you like. Whatever you eat, he can eat the leftovers. Or, feed him dry dog food, if you prefer.”
Convinced, Kiplough bought the vehicle and drove it there and then, from the salesman’s lot to a previously scouted-out location where a large door, big enough to accommodate the vehicle’s passage, could be accessed by the Bolsisean machinery in his apartment. One could not simply go through the door, however. One had to make use of the machinery. Kiplough, therefore, left the vehicle alone and returned to his apartment. Then he went through the machine back to the location (a historical site in a quaint district of Shedge) and retrieved the vehicle. Was it happy to see him? Kiplough wondered idly as he drove it back through the intervening space to his apartment.
There he loaded the vehicle up with a few personal items and all the supplies he had on hand. He scratched out a note for the Bird, left it on the kitchen table without much hope that his friend would ever see it, and exited the apartment for the last time.
Down the long corridor of green light he drove all day and on into a night he could only feel and not see, until he came to an ultimate door. Through this he passed out into a field of blue sketchily given depth by a few lines of black in the distance. As he drove he thought somewhat regretfully of his note to the Bird. Why he felt regret was unknown. He felt foolish for the regret, because he would never have to face any consequences for his note. Part of it read,
“Thank you for nothing, jerk!”
Hat
“Unusual hat you’re wearing.” Is a comment often addressed to me.
In most situations I am reluctant to share details about my belongings with strangers, who are the ones most likely to ask about them (friends would know better), but for you, on this important occasion, in this special setting, I will now reveal all, or at least as much as I am able to cover in the time we have available.
My hat, known by the name of the Gearender, is a semi-sentient creature shaped somewhat like a fedora. There have been times when I have wished it to be a homburg or a bowler, but I am stuck with the Gearender as it is, just as the Gearender is stuck with me as I am. I’m sure that must galling at times, considering my slight propensity to eat too much and lack of diligence in certain areas of grooming.
The Gearender has subtle facial features on its crown. These can be easily overlooked by casual passersby, as they are drawn in thin, black lines. Aside from its face the Gearender is, on the exterior, to all appearances a normal felt hat with a satin band. Inside, however, it is quite evidently abnormal. Tucked within are eight thick, purple tentacles and a complex nervous system. When the Gearender is put on, the tentacles reach down and, through a mysterious process, connect themselves to my brain. In some ways, my hat and I become a symbiotic organism, sharing input and output of data and sensation. Yes, some of my supposedly great powers are derived from the hat. I feel I can trust you with this information.
There is a possibility that there are similar hat-creatures in this universe centered around me. Only the other day some fellow freshly introduced to me said,
“Unusual hat you’re wearing. I know a guy in Greater Alu with one very like it.”
Do these hats have the same properties as the Gearender? Unlikely. But are they similar, having powers closely approximating those of my hat? If so, are they descendants of the Gearender? Do they come from the same manufacturer, if manufactured these hats be? I strongly suspect that I was manufactured, so who knows?
Bag
The Gearender is not the only item with special properties in my personal things. Why, the bag that I sent for as I tarried in Bosomill, preparing to see about this squirrel business, has a particularly interesting feature. I’m sure I won’t be putting myself at a disadvantage by telling you that the interior of this bag is actually one of my closets back home at what I humorously refer to as the palace (industrial-sized Chinese puzzle box is more like it, wheeled underneath, and looked down upon by the locals, for whom their mongrel, preassembled domiciles are symbols of unaccountable pride). I can put my arm into this bag and retrieve anything I want from the closet. I can even jump into the bag to hide or carry along a friend or two.
“Toadsgoboad,” Craggy Izodi called from the door. “That parcel you’ve been expecting: it’s here.” A delivery man dressed in traditional messenger’s garb handed the overwrapped parcel to Izodi, who brought it to me where I sat doodling comic figures for the amusment of his two small children.
“Ah!” I expressed satisfaction. “Here.” I turned over the pad and pen to the children to fight over.
“Craggy, I want you to have this.” I told my host and friend as I plunged my arm into the bag after I had freed it from my robot woman servant’s too-diligent efforts at packaging.
“Oh, no, Toadsgoboad, I couldn’t… “ He made a token gesture of renunciation.
“Shh.” I pulled out a smart little edition of my collected poems, bound in the finest of vinyls. “Here you go,”
“Oh, thank you. Our household shall treasure it always.” He opened the book to the flyleaf where an attractive engraving of my visage greeted him.
“And now, I must be on my way.” I hefted the bag and gripped my stick.
“No, don’t go! Don’t go!” The children surrounded me and jumped up like baby pigs in a cardboard box.
“Now, now, you have my words and my picture.” I gestured at the book. “And my blessing.”
“Tell your wife I am sorry I missed her.” I told Craggy.
“She will be sorry, too.” We shook hands and I departed, heading towards the woods at the edge of the field.
“It’s so utilitarian.” Gnome said as he stared intently at the toaster.
“There was a time when toast was central to breakfast.” Shomki, not yet a PhD, rubbed his unshaven chin and mused.
Musing was a habit with these young men, later to become famous as the discoverers of the Gratuity Confusion Principle. At this time, however, they were but untested scholars, sitting in a small, brightly-lit dining room, waiting for the thrill of the expected toast popping back into view.
“Does that make the toast gratuitous?” Gnome asked. This may have been the first broaching of this important topic between them, the first inklin of what they were to expand into two volumes of observations three thousand pages long. Discussion of the topic was squelched by Shomki’s next words.
“Something is approaching the house.” He said.
Gnome looked out the window through which his friend was looking.
“What is it?” Gnome asked.
“Red, cylindrical, big, big like a… a vending machine.” Shomki commented.
“A snack cake vending machine or some sort of hot beverage machine?”
“Hard to tell. It’s moving quite rapidly.”
“It might hit the house!” Gnome ejaculated.
“That was my precise thought.” Shomki agreed, rising from his chair.
“The toast!” Gnome objected to panicky flight.
“Whistling wheat!” Shomki swore. This was no time to delay. And yet, he too felt the hypnotic pull of the toast. He leaned towards the toaster, his knuckles on the vinyl tablecloth.
“Pop up, damn you!” He growled.
Later, surveying the damage the red object had done to the garage, Gnome handed his uneaten crusts to Shomki.
“Here’s a little something extra for you.” He said.
Shomki took them without a word. He was looking at the red object, torn open by its impact with the garage. Its contents, hundreds of strange-looking and more strangely-packaged pastries, littered the area.
“I’m going to eat one.” Shomki finally declared.
“Bravado is your forte.” Gnome mispronounced the last word.
The Paper Leitmotif
“Whenever the paper appears, a little trill on the oboes will be played.” Explained Dinglord, the theater’s director. He cued Ms. Groop at the piano. She trilled out the series of notes.
“That’s a piano.” Hyram objected.
“I know it’s a piano.” Dinglord sang. “But in the actual performance of the piece we will have actual oboes here.” He pointed at the orchestra pit. “We have none at the moment.”
Hyram and Corky exchanged looks. No oboes! What kind of cheap company had they joined up with? Corky complained later that he had had to get his own coffee.
“You’re lucky.” Hyram countered. “I had to bring my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?” Hyram lowered his brows in confusion.
“I mean, what’s the difference?”
“You got your coffee: went and got it. I brought mine. Had to bring it from home.”
“Didn’t you know they had coffee here?”
“What’s the point in drinking their coffee if you have to go get it yourself? Besides, they have crappy coffee here.”
Summoned to their places, along with the rest of the cast, Hyram and Corky entered the blue, high-ceilinged room with the green shag carpeting covering what stood in for distant, mountainous terrain. The signal given, they began. Corky, in his role as the hermitical wise man, sat atop one of the shaggy peaks. Hyram, singled out from the crowd of squirrel-people, climbed up to this wise man.
“Oh, wise man!” Hyram called, once he had reached that high place.
“Yes?” Corky inhaled the rich aroma of the coffee in the cup in his hand.
“What is the right course of action for my people?”
“Well,” Said Corky, putting down his coffee and taking up a scroll. “According to this document…” Corky’s words were supplemented by the trilled notes of Ms. Groop’s piano.
Ric Ocasek in Gelatin
“Have you heard about Todd Rundgren?” Bantu Sani asked me,
“And the ‘New Cars?’” I replied.
“Yeah.” His eyes were wide, disbelief evident in every shake of his head.
“It is a sad day for all parties concerned.” I made my comment and returned to the planting of the baby beans. Of course, Bantu Sani would have pestered me further, had I allowed it, but finally he turned away finding me unwilling to talk. Even if he had said something most engaging (and just about anything to do with the Cars or Rundgren was potentially engaging) I would have denied both of us the pleasure of conversation. The beans must be planted today; there was no other time to perform this task. Besides, what a pleasurable task it was. I was in the greenhouse, not out on some dusty plain bending my back before the merciless sun. No, my garden was indoors, on a tabletop at hip level, each bean to be placed in moist black loam in its own florally patterned paper cup.
“Your smock is dirty.” My wife told me as she met me emerging from the greenhouse sometime later.
“Let it be dirty.” I smiled. “I never want to wash this smock again.”
“Smock, smock.” She said, a smile of her own on her face.
“Smock, smock.” I repeated.
“Are the beans planted, Papa?” My son asked that afternoon as we gathered around the radio to eat our toast while listening to the News from Inside My Head.
“Yes, my son.” I put a slice of bread for each of us (except Bantu Sani) into the toaster and pushed down the levers.
“When will they begin to grow?” Asked my daughter.
“They are already growing.” I said, tuning the dial of the radio until the familiar theme music came through the airwaves.
“I just want to be in your panorama.” Bantu Sani could be heard singing as he washed the dishes in the kitchen.
“I’ll deal with him.” I assured everyone as I rose from my chair and took down the riding crop from over the mantle.
Card Games of the Judiciary
I will admit that when first the subject of card games of the judiciary was suggested to me (by old man Cowold, out in his rough shack among the thickest part of the forest) I was reluctant to pursue it. After all, having been a frustrated card player for most of the latter half of my life, with no one to play with as the overwhelming bulk of humanity is now inextricably fused to their omnisensory televisual interfaces, well… let’s just leave it that I’m both a little burned out and bitter on the subject.
Of course, there are those who would play with me, if I only were willing. As a rule, however, these tend to be the same people that I avoid as I would the sight of ghostly figures in the periphery of my vision, when they emerge from their subterranean muckholes to seek out lonely people in need of their tedious jokes and commonplace opinions.
In my capacity as a judge, I am forever at odds with those who see the law as an entity unto itself. These are the people who say things like “we’re a nation of laws, not men,” which is patently absurd. Laws don’t eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, or have babies. It is individuals who do these things. The law is an abstraction used to make the lives of groups of individuals more pleasant by making their lives, as a group, more ordered.
“No one wants to hear your philosophizing.” One man told me. My reply, as usual, was,
“Old man’s breath smells like beef stew.”
“Shut up and deal the cards.”
“Very well.” I shuffled the deck as best I could with my work-swollen fingers and dealt the whole pack out among we four players, leaving only four cards face down in the middle of the table.
“What’s that?” One of the women asked me, pointing at these last cards.
“That’s the kitty.”
“The kitty?” She questioned, looking at her fellow female as if to confirm the validity of her shock.
“It’s vulgar, I know,” The other woman agreed. “But what can you expect of a man-created game?”
“This is a game?” The man queried with a shocked expression.
Backbeat of the Scholar
The drums I played on that famous series of albums were homemade, constructed of plastic buckets, blocks of wood, and some decorative miniature cymbals found at a thrift store.
“What an unusual drum sound!” Friends and acquaintances would comment on hearing the albums. When I explained the makeshift nature of the drums, the inevitable reaction (mostly on the part of the latter) was that they had been cheated, their listening experience had not been valid. When shown the error of their ways by the most elementary of arguments, these same critics were wont to sniff,
“Well, that’s not Jazz!”
“One hundred years ago you’d have said it wasn’t music.” I reply.
The liner notes, consisting of fragments of stream-of-consciousness-type fumings edited together into passable gibberish, were equally praised until it was discovered that they could accompany any of the other albums as well as the one in which they were included. This was discovered by the simple method of my admitting to the fact. I think my mistake in both cases was in fessing up that it was all a game, that the serious emotions engendered by the works of art were not inherent in them, but in the observer, the listener, the participant.
“You’re philosophizing again.” Was the third of the criticisms leveled at me.
Indeed, it is so. The point really is not that I am inventing new methods of artistic construction, but that I am surrounded by morons who ought never to be exposed to any of my work, as they are not familiar with any culture or entertainment not produced by a machine.
How best to describe my music? The term lo-fi comes to mind at once, at least to someone like me, deliberately adopting the term even as I know that terms and labels are ultimately unsatisfactory, becoming too broad to have any efficacy of indication. I might as well adopt “Jazz.” Much as I’d like to, however, I have such respect for the term that I won’t sully it by adding my stream-of-consciousness music to it. Perhaps a new term is necessary. I could call it “Toadic” or “Bean” or “Lottery.”
Full Motility
In the soup the vehicle moves like a magazine opening and closing, rifling its pages under its own power. It had been my privilege to see my enemies incorporate Miles Davis into their lexicon of touchstones. Soon they will burp out the name Captain Beefheart with their broadcast lips, robbing me of another (perceived) unique talisman. They will never take Jean Dubuffet, though. Dead too long, for one thing.
The smell of butter-flavored poison is filling the room. People stop and tell me the headlines. I continue to concentrate on my own aging. Will I become as they?
I am a man who likes Giacometti’s drawings and paintings more than his sculpture. I like Bacon from the mid-60’s onward. His popes and Van Goghs leave me unmoved, undisturbed, if disturbance is really what you want. My own art is not disturbing. At one time I wanted to make pictures that frightened me, but now I want to paint that which brings to mind all that my childhood had already envisioned years before all this.
The magazine is the imaginary one, not put out to contain as many ads as possible, but to be the compendium of which I have dreamed to discover. Every wonderful thing. Text and images. A dream of infinite comics. Every surface covered by tiny figures or Tarzan’s little bugs.
The soup? The soup of life, I guess. What a commonplace that is. Some split pea broth from the swamp, full of green brains and rising bubbles flatulent with mystery. Don’t you want a taste?
The easiest way for me to finish this segment is to include a little dialogue.
“Mr. Abandon, what do you think of my current conceit?” I asked with a devilish simper on my thug’s mug.
“I am uncertain of what it all means.” Mr. Abandon covered his genitals with a hastily submerged washcloth.
“I don’t think it’s really necessary that it means anything.” I suggested.
“It sounds like you’ve just given up.”
“Bah! Two pages out of a hundred. No one will notice.”
“I think it’s a little more than two.” Mr. Abandon motioned me to leave him to his bathing.
Walking Stick
By the time I found my walking stick the bus had pulled away ffrom the platform in front of my house.
“What will you do now?” My robotic female attendant asked.
“Get away from you, anyhow!” I snapped, shaking the walking stick furiously at her. I stormed out the front door, pulling my hat firmly over my eyes. As I walked down the narrow path through the knee-high grasses I kept my eyes fixes on the ground.
“Watch where you’re going!” I heard a hateful voice bark. I looked up in time to avoid two men carrying a large pane of glass towards me. To avoid them I had to step into the grass.
“Asshole.” The man walking at the rear muttered as he passed by. I hate these workingman types; they’re so certain that anyone who dresses as I do is pretentious and knows nothing of their lives. I reached out in my anger and smashed the pane of glass with my stick. The momentary look of shock on their faces was delightful. Just as their shock turned to wrath I tumbled backwards into the grass, snuggling down into it. As they hunted about for me I moved unseen far away, eventually coming to a neighborhood of small, mice-like people. The grass had scratched my face. I was hot and winded from the unfamiliar exercise. So I entered a small ice cream establishment and ordered, not ice cream, but a simple cup of cold lemonade.
“What town is this?” I asked, after I had gulped down the drink.
“This is Bosomill.” The shopkeeper and chief scooper told me.
“Bosomill!” I declared, as shocked as if I’d had a large pane of glass smashed by an asshole stranger.
“I know someone who lives here.” I said. “Do you know Craggy Izodi?”
“Sure.” He replied. He went on to give me directions to Craggy’s house.
Ten minutes later I was sitting with Craggy in his front yard sipping another lemonade, this one homemade and much tastier than the last.
“The squirrels are out of control.” Craggy told me. “My people have tried to reason with them, but they won’t listen. It’s not entirely their fault, and I see their side of it, but only bad stuff can come of this.”
Kiplough’s Transport
“In these uncertain times,” Said the salesman. “You need reliable transport.”
“What does it eat?” Asked Kiplough as he looked dubiously at the wheeled animal’s mouth. The vehicle looked sleepily back at him.
“Not as much as you’re thinking he does.” The salesman chuckled, shaking a finger of friendly admonition.
“Yeah, but what?” Kiplough turned from his inspection. He felt he should assert himself at least a little.
The salesman clapped his hands together and peered closely into Kiplough’s face.
“Household scraps, if you like. Whatever you eat, he can eat the leftovers. Or, feed him dry dog food, if you prefer.”
Convinced, Kiplough bought the vehicle and drove it there and then, from the salesman’s lot to a previously scouted-out location where a large door, big enough to accommodate the vehicle’s passage, could be accessed by the Bolsisean machinery in his apartment. One could not simply go through the door, however. One had to make use of the machinery. Kiplough, therefore, left the vehicle alone and returned to his apartment. Then he went through the machine back to the location (a historical site in a quaint district of Shedge) and retrieved the vehicle. Was it happy to see him? Kiplough wondered idly as he drove it back through the intervening space to his apartment.
There he loaded the vehicle up with a few personal items and all the supplies he had on hand. He scratched out a note for the Bird, left it on the kitchen table without much hope that his friend would ever see it, and exited the apartment for the last time.
Down the long corridor of green light he drove all day and on into a night he could only feel and not see, until he came to an ultimate door. Through this he passed out into a field of blue sketchily given depth by a few lines of black in the distance. As he drove he thought somewhat regretfully of his note to the Bird. Why he felt regret was unknown. He felt foolish for the regret, because he would never have to face any consequences for his note. Part of it read,
“Thank you for nothing, jerk!”
Hat
“Unusual hat you’re wearing.” Is a comment often addressed to me.
In most situations I am reluctant to share details about my belongings with strangers, who are the ones most likely to ask about them (friends would know better), but for you, on this important occasion, in this special setting, I will now reveal all, or at least as much as I am able to cover in the time we have available.
My hat, known by the name of the Gearender, is a semi-sentient creature shaped somewhat like a fedora. There have been times when I have wished it to be a homburg or a bowler, but I am stuck with the Gearender as it is, just as the Gearender is stuck with me as I am. I’m sure that must galling at times, considering my slight propensity to eat too much and lack of diligence in certain areas of grooming.
The Gearender has subtle facial features on its crown. These can be easily overlooked by casual passersby, as they are drawn in thin, black lines. Aside from its face the Gearender is, on the exterior, to all appearances a normal felt hat with a satin band. Inside, however, it is quite evidently abnormal. Tucked within are eight thick, purple tentacles and a complex nervous system. When the Gearender is put on, the tentacles reach down and, through a mysterious process, connect themselves to my brain. In some ways, my hat and I become a symbiotic organism, sharing input and output of data and sensation. Yes, some of my supposedly great powers are derived from the hat. I feel I can trust you with this information.
There is a possibility that there are similar hat-creatures in this universe centered around me. Only the other day some fellow freshly introduced to me said,
“Unusual hat you’re wearing. I know a guy in Greater Alu with one very like it.”
Do these hats have the same properties as the Gearender? Unlikely. But are they similar, having powers closely approximating those of my hat? If so, are they descendants of the Gearender? Do they come from the same manufacturer, if manufactured these hats be? I strongly suspect that I was manufactured, so who knows?
Bag
The Gearender is not the only item with special properties in my personal things. Why, the bag that I sent for as I tarried in Bosomill, preparing to see about this squirrel business, has a particularly interesting feature. I’m sure I won’t be putting myself at a disadvantage by telling you that the interior of this bag is actually one of my closets back home at what I humorously refer to as the palace (industrial-sized Chinese puzzle box is more like it, wheeled underneath, and looked down upon by the locals, for whom their mongrel, preassembled domiciles are symbols of unaccountable pride). I can put my arm into this bag and retrieve anything I want from the closet. I can even jump into the bag to hide or carry along a friend or two.
“Toadsgoboad,” Craggy Izodi called from the door. “That parcel you’ve been expecting: it’s here.” A delivery man dressed in traditional messenger’s garb handed the overwrapped parcel to Izodi, who brought it to me where I sat doodling comic figures for the amusment of his two small children.
“Ah!” I expressed satisfaction. “Here.” I turned over the pad and pen to the children to fight over.
“Craggy, I want you to have this.” I told my host and friend as I plunged my arm into the bag after I had freed it from my robot woman servant’s too-diligent efforts at packaging.
“Oh, no, Toadsgoboad, I couldn’t… “ He made a token gesture of renunciation.
“Shh.” I pulled out a smart little edition of my collected poems, bound in the finest of vinyls. “Here you go,”
“Oh, thank you. Our household shall treasure it always.” He opened the book to the flyleaf where an attractive engraving of my visage greeted him.
“And now, I must be on my way.” I hefted the bag and gripped my stick.
“No, don’t go! Don’t go!” The children surrounded me and jumped up like baby pigs in a cardboard box.
“Now, now, you have my words and my picture.” I gestured at the book. “And my blessing.”
“Tell your wife I am sorry I missed her.” I told Craggy.
“She will be sorry, too.” We shook hands and I departed, heading towards the woods at the edge of the field.
Brutally Haggard, Part 8
Historical Reluctance
Since the time of his “coronation” Rectanglo had been loath to dress less than fully and properly. However, during the week of the Bipedalism Festival, he found it necessary to adopt the guise of an average peasant (or “common man” as Rodney says). To this end, he secretly procured a pair of faded jeans that were too long for his legs and had acquired much wear on the cuffs from being stepped on. The seat of these jeans was too big for his butt and hung slackly. In addition to the jeans Rectanglo obtained a t-shirt with a well-washed and cracked iron-on transfer depicting an anthropomorphized horse dressed in the uniform of an American footballer. The legend printed in a font designed to mimic the scrawl of some angry demon below the horse was “WE GONNA FUCK YOU UP!!” The ensemble was completed by white athletic socks, expensive and elaborately detailed running shoes, and a baseball cap with a patch on the crown reading “ALCOHOLIC… AND LOVIN’ IT!”
Thus outfitted Rectanglo had himself driven down to the corner of Warmonger Square and dropped off.
“Meet me back here in three days.” He instructed the driver as he got out of the car.
“Sir, don’t you want to take a change of clothes? A toothbrush?”
“Ronnie,” Rectanglo informed the man. “That would be an obvious give-away that I wasn’t legitimately one of these people.”
Now alone, Rectanglo sauntered down to where a crowd was watching a scantily-clad young woman on a mobile stage jump around and speak of her intense desire to “do it” with an unnamed person while men in various funny animal costumes circled about her. Rectanglo bought a hot dog from an angry, but garrulous vendor and pretended to eat it by means of a special tube connected to a shopping bag.
He nearly gave himself away when, talking to a local, he was caught staring into the window of a bookshop.
“That big man carried the ball… hey, watcha lookin’ at?” His interlocutor demanded.
“Oh, sorry.” Replied Rectanglo. “I thought that woman in there was naked.”
“Yeah.” The other man chuckled. “Some of them bookworm women is freaky.”
Few Options
Forced into a dark alleyway that proved to be a dead-end, Rectanglo realized too late that the gang of teenagers had followed him. Of course, with his great strength he was not afraid of being bested by them. No, he feared being revealed. All his preparations would have been for naught, his experiment ruined. At the terminus of the alley, an oily black hole full of the smell of piss, surrounded on three sides by grimy brick walls reaching up to a waning crescent, Rectanglo quickly debated what to do. He rejected hiding in a trash container as little time remained before they were upon him. Instead, he did the only thing available to him: grabbing the exposed pipes on one of the walls, he clambered up as fast as his thirty-six-year-old frame would allow. Some twenty feet in the air, he levered open a tall window and threw himself inside.
Rectanglo landed rather painfully on a wooden floor in a dark room smelling of mold and spent flashbulbs. He stayed prostrate, tensing his left knee against the throbbing that passed through it and listening to the ignorant, violent youths below searching the alley. After perhaps two minutes, he rose and went to the door that led out of the room. Beyond he could hear the sound of voices and music. Brazenly, he slipped out to find himself in an art gallery.
It was an opening night reception. Two artists, one a painter, the other a sculptor, had filled the large room with their works. Rectanglo mingled in with the crowd, jerking the cap off his head and regretting his plebeian attire. He walked about admiring the paintings, but sneering at the sculptures, which were pieces assembled from garbage and electrically wired, turning them into large, ungainly lamps.
Rectanglo came across the sculptor surrounded by friends, gabbing about his music career. It was more difficult to find the painter, who was hiding in the corner, furtively sipping whiskey from a half-pint bottle concealed in his pants.
“I don’t know what to do.” He confessed to Rectanglo.
“Well, you can quit or you can go on.” Rectanglo advised. This advice, however well-meant or even how true it may have been, was not received well.
Impacted Affectations
“You’re not wearing a bow-tie!” My wife questioned; nay, challenged my choice of neckwear on this, the anniversary of my birth.
“As a matter of fact, I am.” I said, tugging the tie into shape.
“Then I’m not going.” The little lady announced. She tossed her socks on the bed and began to make herself comfortable.
Now, in the past I might have implored her to fall into line, perhaps even caved in and changed to what my wife referred to as a less-pretentious tie, begging and jokingly cajoling her to still accompany me. Not tonight. During the twenty-four hours prior to the above exchange, I had undergone a sea-change in my whole mentality. This alteration was symbolized, I felt, by just such an accoutrement as the bow-tie and my bold insistence on wearing it.
“Suit yourself.” I told her. I smiled insanely at myself in the mirror.
She had not been happy, but had decided to indulge me (seeing as how it was my birthday) and join me and the bow-tie. We sat atop a fully functioning interpretation of Dr. Seuss’ crunk-car. Another indulgence, but one which my wife took to quite readily, still refusing to look at me, lest she catch sight of the tie.
It was a black tie, covered with red and white mounted knights.
Due to the change that had come over me (or rather, that I had caused to come over me) I was not disturbed by the lingering bad feelings that I could sense within my wife. Indeed, I refused to allow myself to be bothered by them. More, I could no longer be disturbed by much of anything.
Although the ride in the crunk-car bad been the fulfillment of a thirty-year-old fantasy, it had been uncomfortable. My hair had gotten mussed by the humid breeze. Out butts were jarred by the machine’s lurching steps. We both agreed that more work would have to be done to the crunk-car before it was acceptable. Yet even this could not break my stranglehold on impassive happiness.
“You’re so calm tonight.” My wife said as we descended from the machine and began walking to the restaurant. “Are you resigned to the fact that after today you are officially middle-aged?”
Kiplough Selects a Work of Art
Don Kiplough, cash in hand, approached the starving artists’ sale with a giddiness he would have been hard-put to explain, should someone aware of his state asked him just why he felt so.
Perhaps it was because he felt that, in undertaking the purchase of a real painting by a real painter, one whose name signed on the work actually meant something, he was making a big decision, one that exemplified the change that had come over him since his exposure to the Bolsis people and their technology. He felt alive to the possibilities of art and the choices available to him, that much is certain. Stuffing his money into a pocket of his bog coat, he entered the warehouse through the balloon-ringed door.
“Sculpture!” He thought suddenly, seeing many pieces scattered among the framed canvases. He realized that this, too, was within hiss grasp. He walked about with a silly, pothead smile on his face, examining everything. As opposed to the usual dreck to be found at such sales (lighthouses, old sea captains, primitivist farm scenes, and tap-dancing fish) there were many idiosyncratic expressions and one-of-a-kind portraits that, while perhaps inept, were at least engaging.
A selection of triptychs by a bearded, nervous man sitting huddled on a folding chair particularly appealed to Kiplough. After he had looked at everything (he was a careful shopper) he came back to them in the nervous man’s pegboard booth.
“I like your work.” Kiplough said, working around to transacting business.
“Thank you.” The man said, his head vibrating to each enunciated sound.
“What does this one mean?” Kiplough asked, pointing at one of the triptychs.
“I have no idea.”
“But you of all people must have some idea.”
“None.” The man buried his face in his bony hands.
“But…” Kiplough was confused. He had been taught that everybody did everything for a reason. Eventually he settled on a pair of drunken policemen carved from wood. The price was right.
Cary Grant A Permanent Calendar Fixture
Each month I turn over my wall-mounted calendar and replace picture, which is of some scenic spot, with photographs of individuals who either are heroes of mine to a greater or lesser degree, or who exemplify qualities I currently am trying to acquire. In a little over a week as of this writing the month will change once again and the pictures, which right now are of Jackson Pollack, James Joyce, Gustav Klimt, and Hassan Nasrallah, will have to be superceded by others. In all likelihood, although I never know until the first of the month actually comes, one of the new persons on the calendar will be Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness. I am not a Hindu, not even a theist, but I have long wanted to start my own cult. In this I admire Prabhupada, but not only for that. From what I have read he was a man of purity and devotion, qualities I aspire to. I want to be a holy man. All of this in my own, atheistic, idiosyncratic, self-mythologizing system, of course.
As for the other persons to accompany Prabhupada, I don’t know yet. He won’t occupy the space alone. The only time I did that was when I covered a barn in Maine with a single large picture of Richard Nixon. No, I think I will install Jack London, Gore Vidal, Orson Welles, or Emma Thompson. As I say I won’t really know until the day. I may begin reading a book by somebody and, taken with it, put the author up there. For instance, I found out that Ernie Kovacs wrote a novel. I may read it and obtain his picture somewhere. But then, I think I already used Kovacs six months or so ago.
Hanging from the bottom of the calendar is a folder for bills and useful phone numbers. This folder always is in view no matter the month and so I put someone there who should also always be in view. As you already know from the title of this piece that person is Cary Grant. I like Cary Grant, but not so much for the reasons one might expect; i.e. his looks, charm, style, etc. No, it is more that he acquired all of those qualities. He set out to invent himself, as I have tried hard to do with my identity. I try to improve on what I was handed. Heroes are important in this regard. I have never had a hero yet who did not disappoint me, yet as examples or yardsticks they are useful.
The Unfortunate Surfacing
“Leader,” Mr. Brogan addressed me, having knocked on the door to my private cabin and put his head in at my invitation. “We’re surfacing.”
“How lone before we breach?” I asked. I had been reading a year-old issue of the Marinade Digest, but now looked up from it.
“Imminent, Leader.”
I closed the magazine and got to my feet.
“Very good.” I said. “I’m coming.” I indicated with a waggled finger that I would follow the man to the bridge of this submarine boat, the Prabhupada.
The captain was just peering into the periscope as I entered the bridge.
“A clear sky, by the look of it. Something odd about the…” He commented. Someone must have made some subtle, unheard sign to the captain that I had entered, for he broke off his narration to offer me a look.
“No thank you.” I decline. I then asked if we could have a look with our unaided eyes, up on the conning tower.
“Surely, Leader.” The captain replied. Together with Mr. Burnhep and Mr. Flozen we climbed the ladder to the open air.
“That smell…” Mr. Flozen said.
“Something odd about these waters.” Said the Captain.
“It’s a sea of brandy.” I announced coldly, definitively.
“Are you sure?” The captain broke the silence that had followed my remark.
“I know the smell of many liquors.” I replied.
“That’s why the moonlight reflects so strangely off its surface.” He said.
“The viscosity.” I affirmed.
“Look, Captain!” Mr. Burnhep cried. We all looked in the direction the man indicated. What met our eyes was horrifying. A large man, indeed, a giant, nearly as big as our submergible vessel, lay face down in a dead man’s float some dozen feet from our hull.
“He drowned.” The Captain said as we examined the body. “A shipwreck, do you think?” He asked, turning to me.
“No, Captain.” I replied in as self-consciously a dramatic a manner possible. “He tried to swim across this sea.”
A Government’s Denial
Working in tandem with the Director General, the Presidium was composed of approximately a dozen different departments. One of these, the shadowy Department 37, was controlled by a committee of five senior delegates. This committee had been convened in public session to discuss the rumors of invasion from another world that had been spreading through the city for the past few weeks. The committee’s meeting hall, not designed to hold a crowd of interested observers, was hot and dense with members of the press, the fortunate citizens who had been able to get a seat, and the slightly less fortunate who stood tightly together against the walls. The unfortunate throng outside received word from persons with their ears pressed to the closed doors of the hall, who passed it back.
“Enough of these preliminaries.” Mrs. Scrod, one of the delegates on the executive committee cut through Mr. Gold’s opening statement, which had been composed almost entirely of expressions of gratitude at seeing such a stunning display on the part of the citizenry of interest in the business of the department.
“Let’s get on with the reason for this unprecedented open meeting of the executive committee.” Mrs. Scrod continued.
“Very well.” Said Mr. Gold. “Mr. Fudgin, I believe you have the statement of official opinion. Would you read it, please?”
“Thank you, Mr. Gold. Let me first also express my deep gratitude at the members of the public who had today…” Fudgin, a stoop-shouldered mumble-mouth with a dirty-looking moustache was interrupted by an irritated grunt from Mrs. Scrod.
“This then is the statement of official opinion.” Fudgin picked up a stapled bundle of papers, only the first of which had anything printed on it.
“’There is no invasion, imminent or otherwise, being planned by persons from a world outside out own.’” Fudgin read the key part of the statement. “’In fact,’” he continued. “’Although our scientists tell us that the existence of other worlds is a possibility, we believe that Shedge and its environs is the only world that actually exists.”
“Then where do all those crappy TV shows come from?” Shouted a young man standing far at the back of the room.
Collected Squirrels
Out in the woods Mavez Abuelia, blindfolded and bound, had been captive for what she estimated was at least two hours when she was finally allowed to see her abductors.
“Are you hungry, Ms. Abuelia?” One of the squirrels asked as the female journalist gazed in astonishment at him and his associates.
“No.” Mavez gasped.
“Surely you must be thirsty then. Tackwell, pour our abductee a refreshing cup of tea.” The squirrel-ma (for such he was, being a little less than five feet tall, and having slightly humanoid hands and features) directed one of the others.
“Who are you?” Mavez asked.
“My name is Brank. But perhaps you were referring to…us?” Brank gestured about him at the comfortable room and the three other squirrels in it beside himself.
“Yes.” Mavez nodded.
“I see that the Director General of Shedge does not even confide in his new bride. He and the most senior delegates to the Presidium have known about us for years. Of course, this has been kept a secret from the people of Shedge. You see, Ms. Abuelia,” Said Brank, squatting on his haunches before the prisoner as she sat on a teal green sofa of modern design. “It is in actuality we who control the woods, not the scattering of humans who run the tourist complex near the city wall.”
“But what about the ground dwellers?”
“Oh, yes, there are a few primitives who live on the ground, but again, that is fairly near the city wall. The forest is far more extensive than the Shedgeans are permitted to know. So is the ocean, for that matter.”
“Why are you telling me all this… secret knowledge?” Mavez asked.
“Because the time is drawing near for the people of Shedge to discover the truth about many things, the least of which is out existence.”
The cup of tea, a cunning and, as Brank had said, refreshing infusion of roots and leaves, was brought in and held to Mavez Abuelia’s lips. Over the next half hour she heard more of the squirrels’ plans.
We Know What the Innuendoes Mean
Frick, silenced by the definitive “no” from the articulated mouth of the idol, spent some weeks in a near-funk. Then, revived during a routine walk from his back door to the edge of his property and back by the sudden flash of the phrase “Fake it” through his mind (and probably as much the walk itself as well), he began to take steps to make his vision a reality.
“I’ll come right out and say it:” One of Frick’s neighbors told a couple of others. “He’s insane.” They were standing at the juncture of three yards; Frick was but one of several topics of local interest they discussed.
“Probably.” Janson, one of the other neighbors, coughed and shifted his stance with discomfort at such straight talk.
“What about this barbecue fundraiser for the community fire department?” The third neighbor changed the subject.
Oblivious Frick, in his newly made costume of red pants, carpet remnant vest, and hat made of a paper sack, practiced conversation with the puppet on his left hand.
“This is my Monday costume. There will be one for each day of the week, once I’ve finished construction.” He told the puppet (tentatively named Boogin).
“What do you think the idol with say when he finds out?” The puppet asked.
“I no longer recognize either the reality of the idol or the legitimacy of the belief system surrounding him.” Frick replied, delighted that he had at last voiced these liberating words—and to such an important personality as Boogin, the spokesman for the Synthetic School of Thought.
Frick’s wife, long-suffering Georgia, bore all these doings with the indulgence of an ocean liner the improper use of shuffleboard sticks, until the day came when Frick announced that he would quit his job at the forge and pursue his dream of attracting followers.
“I would rather you start drinking again.” Georgia said.
“You would, eh?” Frick shook a talisman of great power at her in a menacing manner.
Perhaps after she had read his book, Frick thought later as he worked on it. He found it harder to codify his ideas about existence that he had expected. The thought “fake it” came back to him reassuringly.
Five-Legged Chair
“What is the fifth leg for, Toadsgoboad?” A young woman near the front of the seated crowd before me asked. There were some titters from the audience, but these petered out quickly enough when they had had time to ponder the woman’s question more closely.
The chair I sat upon had five legs. A gift from the Frawley, one of the tribes of the squirrel-people, I had not had a chance to use it in the year since its presentation until now, on the occasion of my lecture series at the university.
The topic of the lecture on that day was purism, its benefits and detractions. Personally, although ideally a purist in my approach to my life, in art and art criticism, however, I have always (as far as I can remember) fought against purism. It was a difficult lecture to get through, not only because I was so confused on the subject, but because I was extemporizing, using only the most meager of notes.
Luckily, I had brought along quite a number of visual aids. Little did I know that the chair was to be the most impressive of the lot.
“I appreciated your question.” I told the previously mentioned young woman (one of dozens) as she approached the dais after the lecture.
“I knew you would want it asked.” She was thin; dressed in tight, well-washed jeans and a long-sleeved button-down; a pale yellow ponytail drawn not too forcefully back from her high-cheekboned face. I merely smiled in response as I autographed the various products pushed at me by these knowledge-hungry youths.
No time for dalliances with the sexually desirable or the intellectually interesting, I returned to my quarters alone to commune with the powerful forces that indwell me, toting the chair on my back.
“Why does that chair have five legs?” Someone shouted at me as I made my way across the campus.
“Why indeed?” I thought. Was it really to do with anti-purism? What exactly, I asked myself, was the opposite of purism? Back in my room I looked myself hard in the mirror.
“‘High-cheekboned?’” I questioned.
Since the time of his “coronation” Rectanglo had been loath to dress less than fully and properly. However, during the week of the Bipedalism Festival, he found it necessary to adopt the guise of an average peasant (or “common man” as Rodney says). To this end, he secretly procured a pair of faded jeans that were too long for his legs and had acquired much wear on the cuffs from being stepped on. The seat of these jeans was too big for his butt and hung slackly. In addition to the jeans Rectanglo obtained a t-shirt with a well-washed and cracked iron-on transfer depicting an anthropomorphized horse dressed in the uniform of an American footballer. The legend printed in a font designed to mimic the scrawl of some angry demon below the horse was “WE GONNA FUCK YOU UP!!” The ensemble was completed by white athletic socks, expensive and elaborately detailed running shoes, and a baseball cap with a patch on the crown reading “ALCOHOLIC… AND LOVIN’ IT!”
Thus outfitted Rectanglo had himself driven down to the corner of Warmonger Square and dropped off.
“Meet me back here in three days.” He instructed the driver as he got out of the car.
“Sir, don’t you want to take a change of clothes? A toothbrush?”
“Ronnie,” Rectanglo informed the man. “That would be an obvious give-away that I wasn’t legitimately one of these people.”
Now alone, Rectanglo sauntered down to where a crowd was watching a scantily-clad young woman on a mobile stage jump around and speak of her intense desire to “do it” with an unnamed person while men in various funny animal costumes circled about her. Rectanglo bought a hot dog from an angry, but garrulous vendor and pretended to eat it by means of a special tube connected to a shopping bag.
He nearly gave himself away when, talking to a local, he was caught staring into the window of a bookshop.
“That big man carried the ball… hey, watcha lookin’ at?” His interlocutor demanded.
“Oh, sorry.” Replied Rectanglo. “I thought that woman in there was naked.”
“Yeah.” The other man chuckled. “Some of them bookworm women is freaky.”
Few Options
Forced into a dark alleyway that proved to be a dead-end, Rectanglo realized too late that the gang of teenagers had followed him. Of course, with his great strength he was not afraid of being bested by them. No, he feared being revealed. All his preparations would have been for naught, his experiment ruined. At the terminus of the alley, an oily black hole full of the smell of piss, surrounded on three sides by grimy brick walls reaching up to a waning crescent, Rectanglo quickly debated what to do. He rejected hiding in a trash container as little time remained before they were upon him. Instead, he did the only thing available to him: grabbing the exposed pipes on one of the walls, he clambered up as fast as his thirty-six-year-old frame would allow. Some twenty feet in the air, he levered open a tall window and threw himself inside.
Rectanglo landed rather painfully on a wooden floor in a dark room smelling of mold and spent flashbulbs. He stayed prostrate, tensing his left knee against the throbbing that passed through it and listening to the ignorant, violent youths below searching the alley. After perhaps two minutes, he rose and went to the door that led out of the room. Beyond he could hear the sound of voices and music. Brazenly, he slipped out to find himself in an art gallery.
It was an opening night reception. Two artists, one a painter, the other a sculptor, had filled the large room with their works. Rectanglo mingled in with the crowd, jerking the cap off his head and regretting his plebeian attire. He walked about admiring the paintings, but sneering at the sculptures, which were pieces assembled from garbage and electrically wired, turning them into large, ungainly lamps.
Rectanglo came across the sculptor surrounded by friends, gabbing about his music career. It was more difficult to find the painter, who was hiding in the corner, furtively sipping whiskey from a half-pint bottle concealed in his pants.
“I don’t know what to do.” He confessed to Rectanglo.
“Well, you can quit or you can go on.” Rectanglo advised. This advice, however well-meant or even how true it may have been, was not received well.
Impacted Affectations
“You’re not wearing a bow-tie!” My wife questioned; nay, challenged my choice of neckwear on this, the anniversary of my birth.
“As a matter of fact, I am.” I said, tugging the tie into shape.
“Then I’m not going.” The little lady announced. She tossed her socks on the bed and began to make herself comfortable.
Now, in the past I might have implored her to fall into line, perhaps even caved in and changed to what my wife referred to as a less-pretentious tie, begging and jokingly cajoling her to still accompany me. Not tonight. During the twenty-four hours prior to the above exchange, I had undergone a sea-change in my whole mentality. This alteration was symbolized, I felt, by just such an accoutrement as the bow-tie and my bold insistence on wearing it.
“Suit yourself.” I told her. I smiled insanely at myself in the mirror.
She had not been happy, but had decided to indulge me (seeing as how it was my birthday) and join me and the bow-tie. We sat atop a fully functioning interpretation of Dr. Seuss’ crunk-car. Another indulgence, but one which my wife took to quite readily, still refusing to look at me, lest she catch sight of the tie.
It was a black tie, covered with red and white mounted knights.
Due to the change that had come over me (or rather, that I had caused to come over me) I was not disturbed by the lingering bad feelings that I could sense within my wife. Indeed, I refused to allow myself to be bothered by them. More, I could no longer be disturbed by much of anything.
Although the ride in the crunk-car bad been the fulfillment of a thirty-year-old fantasy, it had been uncomfortable. My hair had gotten mussed by the humid breeze. Out butts were jarred by the machine’s lurching steps. We both agreed that more work would have to be done to the crunk-car before it was acceptable. Yet even this could not break my stranglehold on impassive happiness.
“You’re so calm tonight.” My wife said as we descended from the machine and began walking to the restaurant. “Are you resigned to the fact that after today you are officially middle-aged?”
Kiplough Selects a Work of Art
Don Kiplough, cash in hand, approached the starving artists’ sale with a giddiness he would have been hard-put to explain, should someone aware of his state asked him just why he felt so.
Perhaps it was because he felt that, in undertaking the purchase of a real painting by a real painter, one whose name signed on the work actually meant something, he was making a big decision, one that exemplified the change that had come over him since his exposure to the Bolsis people and their technology. He felt alive to the possibilities of art and the choices available to him, that much is certain. Stuffing his money into a pocket of his bog coat, he entered the warehouse through the balloon-ringed door.
“Sculpture!” He thought suddenly, seeing many pieces scattered among the framed canvases. He realized that this, too, was within hiss grasp. He walked about with a silly, pothead smile on his face, examining everything. As opposed to the usual dreck to be found at such sales (lighthouses, old sea captains, primitivist farm scenes, and tap-dancing fish) there were many idiosyncratic expressions and one-of-a-kind portraits that, while perhaps inept, were at least engaging.
A selection of triptychs by a bearded, nervous man sitting huddled on a folding chair particularly appealed to Kiplough. After he had looked at everything (he was a careful shopper) he came back to them in the nervous man’s pegboard booth.
“I like your work.” Kiplough said, working around to transacting business.
“Thank you.” The man said, his head vibrating to each enunciated sound.
“What does this one mean?” Kiplough asked, pointing at one of the triptychs.
“I have no idea.”
“But you of all people must have some idea.”
“None.” The man buried his face in his bony hands.
“But…” Kiplough was confused. He had been taught that everybody did everything for a reason. Eventually he settled on a pair of drunken policemen carved from wood. The price was right.
Cary Grant A Permanent Calendar Fixture
Each month I turn over my wall-mounted calendar and replace picture, which is of some scenic spot, with photographs of individuals who either are heroes of mine to a greater or lesser degree, or who exemplify qualities I currently am trying to acquire. In a little over a week as of this writing the month will change once again and the pictures, which right now are of Jackson Pollack, James Joyce, Gustav Klimt, and Hassan Nasrallah, will have to be superceded by others. In all likelihood, although I never know until the first of the month actually comes, one of the new persons on the calendar will be Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness. I am not a Hindu, not even a theist, but I have long wanted to start my own cult. In this I admire Prabhupada, but not only for that. From what I have read he was a man of purity and devotion, qualities I aspire to. I want to be a holy man. All of this in my own, atheistic, idiosyncratic, self-mythologizing system, of course.
As for the other persons to accompany Prabhupada, I don’t know yet. He won’t occupy the space alone. The only time I did that was when I covered a barn in Maine with a single large picture of Richard Nixon. No, I think I will install Jack London, Gore Vidal, Orson Welles, or Emma Thompson. As I say I won’t really know until the day. I may begin reading a book by somebody and, taken with it, put the author up there. For instance, I found out that Ernie Kovacs wrote a novel. I may read it and obtain his picture somewhere. But then, I think I already used Kovacs six months or so ago.
Hanging from the bottom of the calendar is a folder for bills and useful phone numbers. This folder always is in view no matter the month and so I put someone there who should also always be in view. As you already know from the title of this piece that person is Cary Grant. I like Cary Grant, but not so much for the reasons one might expect; i.e. his looks, charm, style, etc. No, it is more that he acquired all of those qualities. He set out to invent himself, as I have tried hard to do with my identity. I try to improve on what I was handed. Heroes are important in this regard. I have never had a hero yet who did not disappoint me, yet as examples or yardsticks they are useful.
The Unfortunate Surfacing
“Leader,” Mr. Brogan addressed me, having knocked on the door to my private cabin and put his head in at my invitation. “We’re surfacing.”
“How lone before we breach?” I asked. I had been reading a year-old issue of the Marinade Digest, but now looked up from it.
“Imminent, Leader.”
I closed the magazine and got to my feet.
“Very good.” I said. “I’m coming.” I indicated with a waggled finger that I would follow the man to the bridge of this submarine boat, the Prabhupada.
The captain was just peering into the periscope as I entered the bridge.
“A clear sky, by the look of it. Something odd about the…” He commented. Someone must have made some subtle, unheard sign to the captain that I had entered, for he broke off his narration to offer me a look.
“No thank you.” I decline. I then asked if we could have a look with our unaided eyes, up on the conning tower.
“Surely, Leader.” The captain replied. Together with Mr. Burnhep and Mr. Flozen we climbed the ladder to the open air.
“That smell…” Mr. Flozen said.
“Something odd about these waters.” Said the Captain.
“It’s a sea of brandy.” I announced coldly, definitively.
“Are you sure?” The captain broke the silence that had followed my remark.
“I know the smell of many liquors.” I replied.
“That’s why the moonlight reflects so strangely off its surface.” He said.
“The viscosity.” I affirmed.
“Look, Captain!” Mr. Burnhep cried. We all looked in the direction the man indicated. What met our eyes was horrifying. A large man, indeed, a giant, nearly as big as our submergible vessel, lay face down in a dead man’s float some dozen feet from our hull.
“He drowned.” The Captain said as we examined the body. “A shipwreck, do you think?” He asked, turning to me.
“No, Captain.” I replied in as self-consciously a dramatic a manner possible. “He tried to swim across this sea.”
A Government’s Denial
Working in tandem with the Director General, the Presidium was composed of approximately a dozen different departments. One of these, the shadowy Department 37, was controlled by a committee of five senior delegates. This committee had been convened in public session to discuss the rumors of invasion from another world that had been spreading through the city for the past few weeks. The committee’s meeting hall, not designed to hold a crowd of interested observers, was hot and dense with members of the press, the fortunate citizens who had been able to get a seat, and the slightly less fortunate who stood tightly together against the walls. The unfortunate throng outside received word from persons with their ears pressed to the closed doors of the hall, who passed it back.
“Enough of these preliminaries.” Mrs. Scrod, one of the delegates on the executive committee cut through Mr. Gold’s opening statement, which had been composed almost entirely of expressions of gratitude at seeing such a stunning display on the part of the citizenry of interest in the business of the department.
“Let’s get on with the reason for this unprecedented open meeting of the executive committee.” Mrs. Scrod continued.
“Very well.” Said Mr. Gold. “Mr. Fudgin, I believe you have the statement of official opinion. Would you read it, please?”
“Thank you, Mr. Gold. Let me first also express my deep gratitude at the members of the public who had today…” Fudgin, a stoop-shouldered mumble-mouth with a dirty-looking moustache was interrupted by an irritated grunt from Mrs. Scrod.
“This then is the statement of official opinion.” Fudgin picked up a stapled bundle of papers, only the first of which had anything printed on it.
“’There is no invasion, imminent or otherwise, being planned by persons from a world outside out own.’” Fudgin read the key part of the statement. “’In fact,’” he continued. “’Although our scientists tell us that the existence of other worlds is a possibility, we believe that Shedge and its environs is the only world that actually exists.”
“Then where do all those crappy TV shows come from?” Shouted a young man standing far at the back of the room.
Collected Squirrels
Out in the woods Mavez Abuelia, blindfolded and bound, had been captive for what she estimated was at least two hours when she was finally allowed to see her abductors.
“Are you hungry, Ms. Abuelia?” One of the squirrels asked as the female journalist gazed in astonishment at him and his associates.
“No.” Mavez gasped.
“Surely you must be thirsty then. Tackwell, pour our abductee a refreshing cup of tea.” The squirrel-ma (for such he was, being a little less than five feet tall, and having slightly humanoid hands and features) directed one of the others.
“Who are you?” Mavez asked.
“My name is Brank. But perhaps you were referring to…us?” Brank gestured about him at the comfortable room and the three other squirrels in it beside himself.
“Yes.” Mavez nodded.
“I see that the Director General of Shedge does not even confide in his new bride. He and the most senior delegates to the Presidium have known about us for years. Of course, this has been kept a secret from the people of Shedge. You see, Ms. Abuelia,” Said Brank, squatting on his haunches before the prisoner as she sat on a teal green sofa of modern design. “It is in actuality we who control the woods, not the scattering of humans who run the tourist complex near the city wall.”
“But what about the ground dwellers?”
“Oh, yes, there are a few primitives who live on the ground, but again, that is fairly near the city wall. The forest is far more extensive than the Shedgeans are permitted to know. So is the ocean, for that matter.”
“Why are you telling me all this… secret knowledge?” Mavez asked.
“Because the time is drawing near for the people of Shedge to discover the truth about many things, the least of which is out existence.”
The cup of tea, a cunning and, as Brank had said, refreshing infusion of roots and leaves, was brought in and held to Mavez Abuelia’s lips. Over the next half hour she heard more of the squirrels’ plans.
We Know What the Innuendoes Mean
Frick, silenced by the definitive “no” from the articulated mouth of the idol, spent some weeks in a near-funk. Then, revived during a routine walk from his back door to the edge of his property and back by the sudden flash of the phrase “Fake it” through his mind (and probably as much the walk itself as well), he began to take steps to make his vision a reality.
“I’ll come right out and say it:” One of Frick’s neighbors told a couple of others. “He’s insane.” They were standing at the juncture of three yards; Frick was but one of several topics of local interest they discussed.
“Probably.” Janson, one of the other neighbors, coughed and shifted his stance with discomfort at such straight talk.
“What about this barbecue fundraiser for the community fire department?” The third neighbor changed the subject.
Oblivious Frick, in his newly made costume of red pants, carpet remnant vest, and hat made of a paper sack, practiced conversation with the puppet on his left hand.
“This is my Monday costume. There will be one for each day of the week, once I’ve finished construction.” He told the puppet (tentatively named Boogin).
“What do you think the idol with say when he finds out?” The puppet asked.
“I no longer recognize either the reality of the idol or the legitimacy of the belief system surrounding him.” Frick replied, delighted that he had at last voiced these liberating words—and to such an important personality as Boogin, the spokesman for the Synthetic School of Thought.
Frick’s wife, long-suffering Georgia, bore all these doings with the indulgence of an ocean liner the improper use of shuffleboard sticks, until the day came when Frick announced that he would quit his job at the forge and pursue his dream of attracting followers.
“I would rather you start drinking again.” Georgia said.
“You would, eh?” Frick shook a talisman of great power at her in a menacing manner.
Perhaps after she had read his book, Frick thought later as he worked on it. He found it harder to codify his ideas about existence that he had expected. The thought “fake it” came back to him reassuringly.
Five-Legged Chair
“What is the fifth leg for, Toadsgoboad?” A young woman near the front of the seated crowd before me asked. There were some titters from the audience, but these petered out quickly enough when they had had time to ponder the woman’s question more closely.
The chair I sat upon had five legs. A gift from the Frawley, one of the tribes of the squirrel-people, I had not had a chance to use it in the year since its presentation until now, on the occasion of my lecture series at the university.
The topic of the lecture on that day was purism, its benefits and detractions. Personally, although ideally a purist in my approach to my life, in art and art criticism, however, I have always (as far as I can remember) fought against purism. It was a difficult lecture to get through, not only because I was so confused on the subject, but because I was extemporizing, using only the most meager of notes.
Luckily, I had brought along quite a number of visual aids. Little did I know that the chair was to be the most impressive of the lot.
“I appreciated your question.” I told the previously mentioned young woman (one of dozens) as she approached the dais after the lecture.
“I knew you would want it asked.” She was thin; dressed in tight, well-washed jeans and a long-sleeved button-down; a pale yellow ponytail drawn not too forcefully back from her high-cheekboned face. I merely smiled in response as I autographed the various products pushed at me by these knowledge-hungry youths.
No time for dalliances with the sexually desirable or the intellectually interesting, I returned to my quarters alone to commune with the powerful forces that indwell me, toting the chair on my back.
“Why does that chair have five legs?” Someone shouted at me as I made my way across the campus.
“Why indeed?” I thought. Was it really to do with anti-purism? What exactly, I asked myself, was the opposite of purism? Back in my room I looked myself hard in the mirror.
“‘High-cheekboned?’” I questioned.
Brutally Haggard, Part 7
Mrs. Cross and John Attend the Theater
“There’s the Duchess of Bicker.” Mrs. Cross whispered to John after they had settled into their seats and begun to look around at the people sitting by them and, above, those in the boxes.
“How do you know?” Asked John
“I’ve seen her face in People magazine.”
John studied the face below the pearl-studded tiara. He was thankful when the lights dimmed for the beginning of the play.
The first scene was the deck of a turn-of-the-century ocean liner. Two men stood by the railing. The first to speak, Emiliano, is dressed as a typical gentleman of the era corresponding to the liner. He is young, lean, and tall. The other gentleman, Garrett, is also lean, young, and tall. He is dressed equally as well as Emiliano, that is; they are evidently both men of leisure. The only difference between them is that Emiliano carries a leather satchel over one shoulder on a long strap.
Emiliano: Now you know why I must never return to Georgia.
Garrett: It is so sad!
Emiliano: Sad? Yes, I suppose it is sad, from the vantage point of human sentiment.
Garrett: But what other kind of sentiment is there?
Emiliano: There is that of the self-aware calculating machine.
Garrett: Oh, yes. So you have said before. The great machine you told me about, that can make so many computations that it rivals the human brain.
Emiliano: That is correct, Garrett. I see that you still doubt me.
Garrett: Never you, old man. Only…
Emiliano: Only my word.
Garrett: Don’t put it that way.
Emiliano: Never fear; I am not upset. I realize it must be hard for you to conceptualize, after all the indoctrination offered up by the church and modern sociology. But when you have seen for yourself…
Garrett: The man you have arranged to meet?
Enter Hashworthy
Geoffrey Porter Stumbles into the Secret Lab
Gravely, a metal cap securely attached to his shaven head, the cap connected to a tall wooden box by a dozen black cables, selected carefully among three seemingly indistinguishable glasses of clear fluid on a wheeled cart before him.
“Uhhhh…..” Gravely droned. His eyes moved slowly, but steadily among the three glasses. His tongue, slowly protruded from his mouth and pushed a stream of drool out.
“Take your time.” Becky, sitting on the other side of the cart, urged him.
“Uhhhh…..” Gravely’s head, bent forward, twitched as his eyes continued to rove the proffered choices.
“Becky.” A voice crackled through the speaker box mounted by the door.
“Yes, Mr. Fungral?” Becky turned her head slightly towards the speaker.
“I need you to come in here.”
“Now?”
“Now!”
“Excuse me.” Becky said to Gravely as she stood up.
“Uhhhh…..” Gravely’s eyes followed the woman to the door.
Becky entered the data collection center and saw Fungral standing in the opposite door. He gestured towards him.
“In here.” He said. She followed as he led her to the break room.
In the break room Becky met Geoffrey Porter. The Hurrer was seated at the newspaper and magazine strewn table looking askance at an open box of doughnuts. On the floor beside him was a knapsack. Behind him the door to the coffee vending machine was open revealing a deep dark hole.
“We have a visitor.” Fungral told Becky. Geoffrey Porter rose from his seat.
“My name is Geoffrey Porter, madam.” Said the Hurrer nobleman.
“How did you get in?” Becky asked.
“Quite simply, the workmen I hired did a shoddy job. I was supposed to arrive in the city of Shedge. I assume I am not there?”
Tracy Governor Acts
Systemica Gustaf, as portrayed by Tracy Governor, went to the window of her father’s beach house and watched idly for the arrival of Mr. Whale.
“Night is coming soon.” She said in a defeated voice.
“The sun sets out the opposite window.” Grumbled her father, played by some old actor I won’t bother to name. You’ve probably seen him in dozens of black and white movies on Saturday afternoons. Considered virtually worthless now by the film industry, he has found a niche on the legitimate stage, using all the sorrow and anger accumulated during his career.
Catching sight of Mr. Whale, Systemica made no sound, though the delight was clear enough on her face and in the life of her shoulders.
“I think I’ll go outside for awhile.” She said after a pause to compose herself.
“Better not stay out too long.” The father advised. “Night is coming soon.” He added in a sour voice, mocking the daughter who had returned to him only out of necessity, full of secrets, and tainted by contact with modern technology.
Systemica exited, only to return to the stage a second later, Tracy Governor looking expectantly down at the front row of seats in the auditorium.
“Somebody hand me my coffee.” The old actor called over his shoulder.
“That was very good, Tracy.” Phillipe Goosen told her.
The actress flushed and twirled half-way about.
“Thank you! I knew I could do this sort of thing if I was only given a chance!” She enthused.
The old actor took his coffee with a mumble and a nod. As the young man who had brought it to him began to leave he was called back by a murmured request to see if there were any pastries left.
“What I’d like to do, however,” considered Goosen, “Is to try a little something on your face.”
“What do you mean?” Tracy asked.
“He means you look too old to actually be my daughter.” Said the old actor without looking around.
Lady Revich Gardens
“My neck hurts today.” Lady Revich rubbed the back of her neck and then rubbed her hands together. Winter was coming. She picked up her watering can again and sprinkled the elevated row of potted sticks before her. “Poor babies.” She said to the members of her garden, meaning not only that the dead time was coming around once again, but also that she didn’t know how much longer she would be there to care for them. Not that she doubted she would be there that same time next year, though who could say with self-reflexive prophecy being virtually worthless, but that the inevitable loomed, her own dead time, with no hope for a spring on the other side.
Down in the village just over her balcony wall, Lady Revich heard a sudden cacophony of shouts and clangs. Peering down, the margravine saw nothing in the location the noise seemed to come from, a circle of cobblestones around a small fountain. Then she saw a half-dozen villagers emerge from a building abutting the circle, dragging two others, one of whom appeared to be a human.
“Drat this nonsense!” She said aloud.
“Ma’am?” Asked Darnana, standing in the doorway behind her.
“Darnana, look down there. Your eyes may be better than mine. Tell me what you see.” Lady Revich put her watering can down.
Darnana approached and looked down.
“They’re dunking somebody in the fountain.” She said. “Two somebodies.” She caught her breath.
“What is it?”
“It’s a hurra I saw at the store yesterday. And a trotdat that I saw talking to her.” Explained the servant.
“I see.” Lady Revich glanced down once more before stepping away. “I wish I could hurl that watering can down there among them.” She declared.
“Ma’am?” Darnana asked, wondering if her mistress approved or not the public humiliation by the mob. Little could she know that the margravine had once taken a trotdat as a lover, many years ago.
Brindel and Darnana Dispute a Contention
Darnana arrived home that evening less nearly exhausted than usual. She found her husband, Brindel, sitting at the kitchen table reading the doorknob-maker guild’s newspaper, The Waterfall’s Roar.
“Much excitement today.” She said somewhat breathlessly as she hung up her cloak.
“Oh, have you heard?” Brindel asked.
“I’m surprised you have.” Darnana looked at her husband with lowered brows.
“About the new brass forge dies? Why shouldn’t I have?”
“No, I’m talking about my news. Some of the citizens caught a society hurra, a pretty little rich girl, and a trotdat…”
“Oh, yes, gave them a dunking in the fountain of goats.” Brindel interrupted. “Yes, I heard about that. Max Leanwood came in the shop and told me.”
“Lady Revich and I saw it happen.”
“Oh yes?” Brindel turned over the newspaper.
“Yes, we were on the garden balcony. Lady Revich called me over…”
“Just a moment, dear, before I forget: when are you going to be able to get those old hasps?”
Darnana had begun fussing with the stove, which Brindel had lit as soon as he got home to have it ready for her. She looked at her husband.
“Brindel, I don’t know.” She said.
“You told me you were going to get them for me.” Brindel folded the paper in preparation to defend his memory of what was said, what had been promised.
“I told you nothing of the kind.” Darnana put a pot of water on the stove.
“You told me she had some old hasps in a disused storage room.” Brindel quoted as closely as possible the original statement.
“I never told you…”
“You said you would do your best to get them for me.”
“If I could. I’m not going to just steal them!”
“You’re not going to ask for them! You said you would do your best. Doing your best doesn’t involve waiting for a place in her will. It means sneaking them out behind her back.”
Nose
The nose lay just to one side of the still-quivering spear that had been imbedded in the bread-like surface by a powerful cast of some long, hairy arm far out among the assembly of puppets; mechanical trees; elegantly-attired, bipedal pachyderms; and delicate, segmented robots. The nose, naturally considering itself the centerpiece or focal point of the big face in the massive, free-standing frame, assumed with equal naturalness that he had been the intended target. I refer to the nose as a “he” out of an intuitive understanding of his position, his identity, his biologically-ordained aesthetic standards.
“This is horrible!” Moaned some backstage onlooker. I stood impassively in the wings watching the eyes, mouth, the tiny rioting denizens of the cheeks and chin, and the yellow-eyes beasts stalking through the eyebrows react in their various ways to the assault.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” The theater manager demanded of me.
I took the fake cigar out of my mouth with a stunned look on my own face, nearly as big a face, from my vantage point, as the one on stage.
“What would you have me do?” I said. I admit I was acting a bit, putting on a show of my own for the manager; I have always thought I would make a good actor, if only someone would give me the chance.
“Find out who threw that spear!” He suggested, tears of frustration trembling on the edges of his eyelids like baby birds about to take their first flight.
“Very well.” I agreed, more to get away from the man and the dark atmosphere behind the scenes than any spirit of cooperation. My cooperative spirit disappeared long ago, or evaporated, I should say, for I know where it went: up into the sky like a pan of water in the summer sun. The years of manual labor in the capitalist workforce had driven me to this place.
“You!” I barked, pointing at a sullen youth in the back row. “Did you throw that spear?”
“Are you accusing me of something?” The youth looked up from his handheld digital entertainment console and stared at me as I had stared at my father when he asked me when I was going to wash my car.
Tooth
The growth of a new tooth excited my imagination and thrilled me with new sensations. Fearful of media interest (I try hard to remain a nobody), I mentioned the tooth only to a couple of friends outside my immediate family. However, as the tooth was growing in a rather odd spot, I finally decided that the dentist must be consulted.
This posed a problem for me because my usual dentist, the one who had watched over my teeth since childhood, had recently retired, turning over his practice to a younger man. What would this new dentist say about my tooth and its unusual location?
“I don’t want it pulled.” I told the technician, the woman who did the actual work, leaving the dentist free to oversee the redecoration of the office.
“You don’t?” She was nonplussed. “Well, we’ll see what Dr. Goldbroom says.”
Dr. Goldbroom! The name was an affront to my obliviousness of the passage of time. How dare things change!
“Hello there.” A man of my own age came into the cell. He wore glasses with tiny additional lenses affixed over the larger ones. His bland face already was shadowed with incipient beard at this early hour.
“#13B shows signs of emendation.” He announced in a voice like a NASA flight controller as he climbed into my mouth and pressed here and there with a stainless steel prong.
“Mr. Ash was concerned about his… extra tooth.” The cleaning woman said in a low, matter-of-fact tone.
“Oh.” Said Goldbroom, just now noticing the novel protrusion. “Odd positioning.” He commented, pressing the new tooth hard with the dentrifice. “Not… quite textbook.”
“I don’t want it pulled.” I explained as he switched his tool for another. They were his tools now.
“It’s your decision.” He said, stripping off his latex gloves. “Keep up the good work.”
On my way out I noted the workmen carting away the wrought iron fixtures and sling chairs that had been part of the office as long as I could remember. I rubbed my tooth thoughtfully.
Forked Tree
“The recording device is hidden in the fork of a tree.” The man in the shadows told me.
“What tree?” I asked.
“It is a pecan tree just outside the window of the young lady’s room.” The Japanese lanterns that ringed the dance floor outside out private alcove were momentarily reflected in the man’s glass as he raised it to his lips. I heard the rattle of ice cubes as they crashed down against his mouth, the sigh of satisfaction as he finished the whiskey sour, the clunk of the glass as he put it back down on the table.
“I believe two hundred was the agreed-upon price.” I said after a moment of reflection, realizing there was nothing more to say.
“There’s one more thing.” The man told me.
I paused in the act of pulling out the small envelope with the money in it.
“What?”
“We’ve just found out that the young lady’s date has been called off.”
“Oh yes?”
“There is a possibility she will be in the room.”
I nodded, passed over the envelope, and rose from my chair.
“Wait until I’ve been gone five minutes before you leave.” I instructed.
“But of course, Mr. Lincoln.”
I moved through the sparse collection of dancing bodies feeling somehow more coolly confident and indifferent than usual due to being addressed by the pseudonym, one that I used from time to time in dealings of this sort. The illusion that I actually was Mr. Lincoln, an idealized, if secretive, version of myself, lasted until I was out in the parking lot, walking towards my car. There was no one about; therefore there was no reason for a false identity in order to feel how I wanted; indeed, needed to feel that evening. Other people were ever my problem. That was what this whole project was about. The recording device contained, it was to be hoped, candid observations and commentary about myself.
Upon climbing the tree to retrieve the device, however, I was confronted with a dilemma.
Analysis of Retirement
After bullying my way past the receptionist, I made my way to Andrea Yong’s office. Although the latter was not susceptible to bullying, it was still necessary for me to forcefully demand her cooperation before she would allow me into the file room.
“Whose records exactly do you need?” Ms. Yong asked me, making one last stand of defiance at the door with her key poised over the lock.
“As I said, I won’t know until I actually get looking. But I will tell you that it will be someone who retired from the garbage fleet no earlier than four or maybe five years ago.”
She nodded as if that bit of information had been sufficient to convince her to acquiesce, fitted the key, and turned the bolt. In truth her acquiescence at this point was moot; I was ready to bash her skull in and enter alone, having been shown the key and the door. I followed Ms. Yong into the immense room and stood in awe at the racks and racks of file boxes as she flipped on the lights.
“Now, the records you want are here,” She stepped over to the opening of an aisle. “Somewhere down on the right.”
I made to push past her and begin my search. She halted me with an outflung arm.
“Do you mind if I take your ID and call headquarters for confirmation?” She asked.
“Take it.” I said, fishing the ID out of the interior pocket of my coat. I handed it over and continued down the aisle.
Five minutes later, just as I had jerked out a box that looked promising, the woman returned. She returned the ID to me.
“I am sorry, sir.” She said, deferential now, though loath to show it. “But I had to know for sure.”
“Yeah.” I said, digging through the accumulated dreck.
Ms. Yong stayed where she was, hoping to help in some way. She reminded me of Judy Dench and her presence there was as unnecessary and unwanted as that of Dench in the role of M in the Bond films.
“Is there anything I can do?” She asked. I said, nothing, having finally found the incriminating document.
A Croaking Voice
“Who is making that horrible noise?” I asked, peering around furiously.
My luncheon companion, a relatively unsophisticated automaton roughly corresponding in form to that of a female human, answered,
“I don’t know.”
The noise was a basso profundo croak, the kind of noise a man-sized frog might make, should he happen to be in a busy cafeteria, expounding at length upon the current political situation, which the manipulator of this voice (for such the noise was) seemed to be doing.
“Have the hairs on your legs fully grown out?” My companion asked, eager, I guessed, to distract me from the croaking.
“Yes.” I said firmly, to finally dismiss this subject from out conversation. Then, looking at her suspiciously, I asked why she was trying to distract me.
“Who are you trying to protect?” I asked. I looked around more furiously than ever, though the croaking seemed to have ceased for the time.
“You.” She said.
“Me?” I thought that was bitterly funny. Where was she on the mountainside the week before? Hungry birds and an empty sky had been my only companions that day.
The croaking resumed. Forgetting my creamed corn and fried okra, I jumped up and prowled about the room. On the other side of a table of hulking youths I found the croaker.
He was a squat man of average height in a brown and black blazer. Around him at his table were a quarter dozen young women, each dressed in a monochromatic uniform of orange.
“Excuse me a moment, please.” He said to his audience before turning to me. I loomed over him with a migraine-inducing look on my face.
“Yes?” He asked.
“Are you the frog man?” I begged to know.
“Why? Are some people calling me that now?” He laughed. He sounded like some cosmic hinge of doom, rusty with disuse, forcibly opened by a being of my superhuman strength.
“There’s the Duchess of Bicker.” Mrs. Cross whispered to John after they had settled into their seats and begun to look around at the people sitting by them and, above, those in the boxes.
“How do you know?” Asked John
“I’ve seen her face in People magazine.”
John studied the face below the pearl-studded tiara. He was thankful when the lights dimmed for the beginning of the play.
The first scene was the deck of a turn-of-the-century ocean liner. Two men stood by the railing. The first to speak, Emiliano, is dressed as a typical gentleman of the era corresponding to the liner. He is young, lean, and tall. The other gentleman, Garrett, is also lean, young, and tall. He is dressed equally as well as Emiliano, that is; they are evidently both men of leisure. The only difference between them is that Emiliano carries a leather satchel over one shoulder on a long strap.
Emiliano: Now you know why I must never return to Georgia.
Garrett: It is so sad!
Emiliano: Sad? Yes, I suppose it is sad, from the vantage point of human sentiment.
Garrett: But what other kind of sentiment is there?
Emiliano: There is that of the self-aware calculating machine.
Garrett: Oh, yes. So you have said before. The great machine you told me about, that can make so many computations that it rivals the human brain.
Emiliano: That is correct, Garrett. I see that you still doubt me.
Garrett: Never you, old man. Only…
Emiliano: Only my word.
Garrett: Don’t put it that way.
Emiliano: Never fear; I am not upset. I realize it must be hard for you to conceptualize, after all the indoctrination offered up by the church and modern sociology. But when you have seen for yourself…
Garrett: The man you have arranged to meet?
Enter Hashworthy
Geoffrey Porter Stumbles into the Secret Lab
Gravely, a metal cap securely attached to his shaven head, the cap connected to a tall wooden box by a dozen black cables, selected carefully among three seemingly indistinguishable glasses of clear fluid on a wheeled cart before him.
“Uhhhh…..” Gravely droned. His eyes moved slowly, but steadily among the three glasses. His tongue, slowly protruded from his mouth and pushed a stream of drool out.
“Take your time.” Becky, sitting on the other side of the cart, urged him.
“Uhhhh…..” Gravely’s head, bent forward, twitched as his eyes continued to rove the proffered choices.
“Becky.” A voice crackled through the speaker box mounted by the door.
“Yes, Mr. Fungral?” Becky turned her head slightly towards the speaker.
“I need you to come in here.”
“Now?”
“Now!”
“Excuse me.” Becky said to Gravely as she stood up.
“Uhhhh…..” Gravely’s eyes followed the woman to the door.
Becky entered the data collection center and saw Fungral standing in the opposite door. He gestured towards him.
“In here.” He said. She followed as he led her to the break room.
In the break room Becky met Geoffrey Porter. The Hurrer was seated at the newspaper and magazine strewn table looking askance at an open box of doughnuts. On the floor beside him was a knapsack. Behind him the door to the coffee vending machine was open revealing a deep dark hole.
“We have a visitor.” Fungral told Becky. Geoffrey Porter rose from his seat.
“My name is Geoffrey Porter, madam.” Said the Hurrer nobleman.
“How did you get in?” Becky asked.
“Quite simply, the workmen I hired did a shoddy job. I was supposed to arrive in the city of Shedge. I assume I am not there?”
Tracy Governor Acts
Systemica Gustaf, as portrayed by Tracy Governor, went to the window of her father’s beach house and watched idly for the arrival of Mr. Whale.
“Night is coming soon.” She said in a defeated voice.
“The sun sets out the opposite window.” Grumbled her father, played by some old actor I won’t bother to name. You’ve probably seen him in dozens of black and white movies on Saturday afternoons. Considered virtually worthless now by the film industry, he has found a niche on the legitimate stage, using all the sorrow and anger accumulated during his career.
Catching sight of Mr. Whale, Systemica made no sound, though the delight was clear enough on her face and in the life of her shoulders.
“I think I’ll go outside for awhile.” She said after a pause to compose herself.
“Better not stay out too long.” The father advised. “Night is coming soon.” He added in a sour voice, mocking the daughter who had returned to him only out of necessity, full of secrets, and tainted by contact with modern technology.
Systemica exited, only to return to the stage a second later, Tracy Governor looking expectantly down at the front row of seats in the auditorium.
“Somebody hand me my coffee.” The old actor called over his shoulder.
“That was very good, Tracy.” Phillipe Goosen told her.
The actress flushed and twirled half-way about.
“Thank you! I knew I could do this sort of thing if I was only given a chance!” She enthused.
The old actor took his coffee with a mumble and a nod. As the young man who had brought it to him began to leave he was called back by a murmured request to see if there were any pastries left.
“What I’d like to do, however,” considered Goosen, “Is to try a little something on your face.”
“What do you mean?” Tracy asked.
“He means you look too old to actually be my daughter.” Said the old actor without looking around.
Lady Revich Gardens
“My neck hurts today.” Lady Revich rubbed the back of her neck and then rubbed her hands together. Winter was coming. She picked up her watering can again and sprinkled the elevated row of potted sticks before her. “Poor babies.” She said to the members of her garden, meaning not only that the dead time was coming around once again, but also that she didn’t know how much longer she would be there to care for them. Not that she doubted she would be there that same time next year, though who could say with self-reflexive prophecy being virtually worthless, but that the inevitable loomed, her own dead time, with no hope for a spring on the other side.
Down in the village just over her balcony wall, Lady Revich heard a sudden cacophony of shouts and clangs. Peering down, the margravine saw nothing in the location the noise seemed to come from, a circle of cobblestones around a small fountain. Then she saw a half-dozen villagers emerge from a building abutting the circle, dragging two others, one of whom appeared to be a human.
“Drat this nonsense!” She said aloud.
“Ma’am?” Asked Darnana, standing in the doorway behind her.
“Darnana, look down there. Your eyes may be better than mine. Tell me what you see.” Lady Revich put her watering can down.
Darnana approached and looked down.
“They’re dunking somebody in the fountain.” She said. “Two somebodies.” She caught her breath.
“What is it?”
“It’s a hurra I saw at the store yesterday. And a trotdat that I saw talking to her.” Explained the servant.
“I see.” Lady Revich glanced down once more before stepping away. “I wish I could hurl that watering can down there among them.” She declared.
“Ma’am?” Darnana asked, wondering if her mistress approved or not the public humiliation by the mob. Little could she know that the margravine had once taken a trotdat as a lover, many years ago.
Brindel and Darnana Dispute a Contention
Darnana arrived home that evening less nearly exhausted than usual. She found her husband, Brindel, sitting at the kitchen table reading the doorknob-maker guild’s newspaper, The Waterfall’s Roar.
“Much excitement today.” She said somewhat breathlessly as she hung up her cloak.
“Oh, have you heard?” Brindel asked.
“I’m surprised you have.” Darnana looked at her husband with lowered brows.
“About the new brass forge dies? Why shouldn’t I have?”
“No, I’m talking about my news. Some of the citizens caught a society hurra, a pretty little rich girl, and a trotdat…”
“Oh, yes, gave them a dunking in the fountain of goats.” Brindel interrupted. “Yes, I heard about that. Max Leanwood came in the shop and told me.”
“Lady Revich and I saw it happen.”
“Oh yes?” Brindel turned over the newspaper.
“Yes, we were on the garden balcony. Lady Revich called me over…”
“Just a moment, dear, before I forget: when are you going to be able to get those old hasps?”
Darnana had begun fussing with the stove, which Brindel had lit as soon as he got home to have it ready for her. She looked at her husband.
“Brindel, I don’t know.” She said.
“You told me you were going to get them for me.” Brindel folded the paper in preparation to defend his memory of what was said, what had been promised.
“I told you nothing of the kind.” Darnana put a pot of water on the stove.
“You told me she had some old hasps in a disused storage room.” Brindel quoted as closely as possible the original statement.
“I never told you…”
“You said you would do your best to get them for me.”
“If I could. I’m not going to just steal them!”
“You’re not going to ask for them! You said you would do your best. Doing your best doesn’t involve waiting for a place in her will. It means sneaking them out behind her back.”
Nose
The nose lay just to one side of the still-quivering spear that had been imbedded in the bread-like surface by a powerful cast of some long, hairy arm far out among the assembly of puppets; mechanical trees; elegantly-attired, bipedal pachyderms; and delicate, segmented robots. The nose, naturally considering itself the centerpiece or focal point of the big face in the massive, free-standing frame, assumed with equal naturalness that he had been the intended target. I refer to the nose as a “he” out of an intuitive understanding of his position, his identity, his biologically-ordained aesthetic standards.
“This is horrible!” Moaned some backstage onlooker. I stood impassively in the wings watching the eyes, mouth, the tiny rioting denizens of the cheeks and chin, and the yellow-eyes beasts stalking through the eyebrows react in their various ways to the assault.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” The theater manager demanded of me.
I took the fake cigar out of my mouth with a stunned look on my own face, nearly as big a face, from my vantage point, as the one on stage.
“What would you have me do?” I said. I admit I was acting a bit, putting on a show of my own for the manager; I have always thought I would make a good actor, if only someone would give me the chance.
“Find out who threw that spear!” He suggested, tears of frustration trembling on the edges of his eyelids like baby birds about to take their first flight.
“Very well.” I agreed, more to get away from the man and the dark atmosphere behind the scenes than any spirit of cooperation. My cooperative spirit disappeared long ago, or evaporated, I should say, for I know where it went: up into the sky like a pan of water in the summer sun. The years of manual labor in the capitalist workforce had driven me to this place.
“You!” I barked, pointing at a sullen youth in the back row. “Did you throw that spear?”
“Are you accusing me of something?” The youth looked up from his handheld digital entertainment console and stared at me as I had stared at my father when he asked me when I was going to wash my car.
Tooth
The growth of a new tooth excited my imagination and thrilled me with new sensations. Fearful of media interest (I try hard to remain a nobody), I mentioned the tooth only to a couple of friends outside my immediate family. However, as the tooth was growing in a rather odd spot, I finally decided that the dentist must be consulted.
This posed a problem for me because my usual dentist, the one who had watched over my teeth since childhood, had recently retired, turning over his practice to a younger man. What would this new dentist say about my tooth and its unusual location?
“I don’t want it pulled.” I told the technician, the woman who did the actual work, leaving the dentist free to oversee the redecoration of the office.
“You don’t?” She was nonplussed. “Well, we’ll see what Dr. Goldbroom says.”
Dr. Goldbroom! The name was an affront to my obliviousness of the passage of time. How dare things change!
“Hello there.” A man of my own age came into the cell. He wore glasses with tiny additional lenses affixed over the larger ones. His bland face already was shadowed with incipient beard at this early hour.
“#13B shows signs of emendation.” He announced in a voice like a NASA flight controller as he climbed into my mouth and pressed here and there with a stainless steel prong.
“Mr. Ash was concerned about his… extra tooth.” The cleaning woman said in a low, matter-of-fact tone.
“Oh.” Said Goldbroom, just now noticing the novel protrusion. “Odd positioning.” He commented, pressing the new tooth hard with the dentrifice. “Not… quite textbook.”
“I don’t want it pulled.” I explained as he switched his tool for another. They were his tools now.
“It’s your decision.” He said, stripping off his latex gloves. “Keep up the good work.”
On my way out I noted the workmen carting away the wrought iron fixtures and sling chairs that had been part of the office as long as I could remember. I rubbed my tooth thoughtfully.
Forked Tree
“The recording device is hidden in the fork of a tree.” The man in the shadows told me.
“What tree?” I asked.
“It is a pecan tree just outside the window of the young lady’s room.” The Japanese lanterns that ringed the dance floor outside out private alcove were momentarily reflected in the man’s glass as he raised it to his lips. I heard the rattle of ice cubes as they crashed down against his mouth, the sigh of satisfaction as he finished the whiskey sour, the clunk of the glass as he put it back down on the table.
“I believe two hundred was the agreed-upon price.” I said after a moment of reflection, realizing there was nothing more to say.
“There’s one more thing.” The man told me.
I paused in the act of pulling out the small envelope with the money in it.
“What?”
“We’ve just found out that the young lady’s date has been called off.”
“Oh yes?”
“There is a possibility she will be in the room.”
I nodded, passed over the envelope, and rose from my chair.
“Wait until I’ve been gone five minutes before you leave.” I instructed.
“But of course, Mr. Lincoln.”
I moved through the sparse collection of dancing bodies feeling somehow more coolly confident and indifferent than usual due to being addressed by the pseudonym, one that I used from time to time in dealings of this sort. The illusion that I actually was Mr. Lincoln, an idealized, if secretive, version of myself, lasted until I was out in the parking lot, walking towards my car. There was no one about; therefore there was no reason for a false identity in order to feel how I wanted; indeed, needed to feel that evening. Other people were ever my problem. That was what this whole project was about. The recording device contained, it was to be hoped, candid observations and commentary about myself.
Upon climbing the tree to retrieve the device, however, I was confronted with a dilemma.
Analysis of Retirement
After bullying my way past the receptionist, I made my way to Andrea Yong’s office. Although the latter was not susceptible to bullying, it was still necessary for me to forcefully demand her cooperation before she would allow me into the file room.
“Whose records exactly do you need?” Ms. Yong asked me, making one last stand of defiance at the door with her key poised over the lock.
“As I said, I won’t know until I actually get looking. But I will tell you that it will be someone who retired from the garbage fleet no earlier than four or maybe five years ago.”
She nodded as if that bit of information had been sufficient to convince her to acquiesce, fitted the key, and turned the bolt. In truth her acquiescence at this point was moot; I was ready to bash her skull in and enter alone, having been shown the key and the door. I followed Ms. Yong into the immense room and stood in awe at the racks and racks of file boxes as she flipped on the lights.
“Now, the records you want are here,” She stepped over to the opening of an aisle. “Somewhere down on the right.”
I made to push past her and begin my search. She halted me with an outflung arm.
“Do you mind if I take your ID and call headquarters for confirmation?” She asked.
“Take it.” I said, fishing the ID out of the interior pocket of my coat. I handed it over and continued down the aisle.
Five minutes later, just as I had jerked out a box that looked promising, the woman returned. She returned the ID to me.
“I am sorry, sir.” She said, deferential now, though loath to show it. “But I had to know for sure.”
“Yeah.” I said, digging through the accumulated dreck.
Ms. Yong stayed where she was, hoping to help in some way. She reminded me of Judy Dench and her presence there was as unnecessary and unwanted as that of Dench in the role of M in the Bond films.
“Is there anything I can do?” She asked. I said, nothing, having finally found the incriminating document.
A Croaking Voice
“Who is making that horrible noise?” I asked, peering around furiously.
My luncheon companion, a relatively unsophisticated automaton roughly corresponding in form to that of a female human, answered,
“I don’t know.”
The noise was a basso profundo croak, the kind of noise a man-sized frog might make, should he happen to be in a busy cafeteria, expounding at length upon the current political situation, which the manipulator of this voice (for such the noise was) seemed to be doing.
“Have the hairs on your legs fully grown out?” My companion asked, eager, I guessed, to distract me from the croaking.
“Yes.” I said firmly, to finally dismiss this subject from out conversation. Then, looking at her suspiciously, I asked why she was trying to distract me.
“Who are you trying to protect?” I asked. I looked around more furiously than ever, though the croaking seemed to have ceased for the time.
“You.” She said.
“Me?” I thought that was bitterly funny. Where was she on the mountainside the week before? Hungry birds and an empty sky had been my only companions that day.
The croaking resumed. Forgetting my creamed corn and fried okra, I jumped up and prowled about the room. On the other side of a table of hulking youths I found the croaker.
He was a squat man of average height in a brown and black blazer. Around him at his table were a quarter dozen young women, each dressed in a monochromatic uniform of orange.
“Excuse me a moment, please.” He said to his audience before turning to me. I loomed over him with a migraine-inducing look on my face.
“Yes?” He asked.
“Are you the frog man?” I begged to know.
“Why? Are some people calling me that now?” He laughed. He sounded like some cosmic hinge of doom, rusty with disuse, forcibly opened by a being of my superhuman strength.
Brutally Haggard, Part 6
Kiplough Sees the Sea
What door led Kiplough to the sea is unknown. He had lost count of how many doors he had opened and shut. For him it was like flipping through channels on a TV in the hotel room of the gods. The riot of strange scenes before him as he moved along was infinitely mesmerizing. The fact that he had to physically move from door to door kept the analogy from exactly conforming to that of the TV-watching experience. The walking also served to keep Kiplough conscious of the time passing and distance between him and his apartment growing. He told me later that it was definitely the last door he planned to try that opened upon the sea.
“The greenish tint to the light in the hallway had slowly changed to a bluish one. I said to myself, ‘This will be the last door I try for now.’ For, of course, I planned on coming back. Just then, however, I had to end my first foray into the machine.”
“Could you still see the open door to your apartment?” I asked Kiplough.
“No. The hallway slowly curved up so that at this point I couldn’t look back and see where I’d started out from.”
“Did that scare you?”
“It might have only a week before, but since my exposure to the Bolsisometric Indoctrinator, I had become very trusting of their technology and its ramifications.”
“So what happened when you opened that door?”
“I realized immediately that I was looking into the sea. I could see fish swimming around. What I didn’t realize, until I put my hand out, was that I wasn’t peering through a glass or a barrier, but was actually looking at a vertical surface of water.”
“Your hand went into the water?”
“Yes. I drew it back immediately, and was shocked to find that it wasn’t wet.”
“Interesting.” I said dramatically, doodling some random face on the notebook I held during out interview.
“Yes. Even more interesting was that when I put my head in I found that I could breathe underwater.”
Kiplough Enjoys A Snack
The snack Kiplough enjoyed was a large slice of pizza and a small glass of grape soda. As he ate he thought about the advance of music recording technology and how, in truth, the only real difference between the music of today; that is, the music he heard when he went out among his fellow citizens, and the music of the past; that is, he actually chose to listen to in the intimacy of his private moments, was that the bass was much louder in the former.
“Millions of dollars spent on research and development and this is the end result.” He said to a stranger sitting beside him at the counter of the snack stand. This stranger smiled indulgently and made motions with his hands, to indicate that he was deaf.
“I’ve not had that combination of food, since I was a child.” Kiplough told me.
“Pizza and grape soda?” I queried. My thoughts were on my own lost food favorites of early days.
“Yes. And I always has that combination while enjoying a new paperback I had purchased.”
“What kind of stuff did you read?”
“I was into series fiction. Men’s adventure series. ‘The Reactor’; “The Stalwart’; ‘The Fate Measure’, that was my favorite.”
“Did you ever read any Westerns?”
“No, couldn’t stand ‘em.”
Kiplough went on to compare his dislike of Westerns with his contempt for country music, and contrast his disdain for the working class vogue for rural stuff and willful ignorance with his enjoyment of the outdoors.
“It’s like my love of exercise, contrasted with my hate of sports.” I commented.
“Exactly.” Kiplough said bending down to take another homemade peanut butter cracker from the pile of them on the platter on the coffee table. I asked him had he had the pizza and grape soda combo since that day. He told me he had not.
Kiplough and Klaster Discuss Matters
“What matters shall we discuss?” Kiplough asked Klaster after they had each made himself comfortable in cushioned wicker chairs.
“Well,” mused Klaster, “What matters?”
“That’s what I’m asking.” Kiplough had selected hot tea as his beverage for the discussion; Klaster had chosen coffee.
“No, I’m making a little joke:’What matters?’ What matters to us right now?”
“Hmm. Are we to discuss what matters to us, or to all of the people of Shedge?’
“Or the peoples of the Bolsis.” Added Klaster thoughtfully.
“Hmm. Yes. I suppose our worldview is now greatly expanded.”
They fell silent for a moment.
“Beef stew smells like old man’s breath.” Klaster finally said.
“What makes you say that?” Kiplough asked.
Klaster considered.
“Just thought of it all of a sudden.”
“Is my… are you calling me an old man?” Kiplough changed what he had been going to ask.
“No!” Klaster insisted. “No, not at all.”
“In a way I guess I think of myself as an old man.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“I’m twenty-six.” Retorted Klaster.
“Ten years.” Kiplough intoned. “What a difference ten years makes. Ten years ago I was a terrible drunk. I lived with my parents in a pretend house made of painted cardboard high inside the city wall. I was working for the municipal water supply, meter reader’s sector. It was not a good time.”
“Let’s see. Ten years ago I was sixteen.” Klaster responded eagerly to the exercise. “I was working as a bagboy at Grocerrefuge.”
“Really? I used to shop there. Do you remember me? I used to buy a lot of cooking wine on Sundays.”*
*Some parts of Shedge do not allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
Excerpt #3 From ‘Mealy-Mouthed’
Returning to the well by night, Rectanglo brought with him a briefcase full of items he might need on a journey of indeterminate duration. These were such things as reading material, socks, hats, and cans of beans. Looking about carefully by the dim light of the stars that mysteriously shone through the walls of that metafictional world. Rectanglo put his legs over the side of the well. With a smile at the wild promise of novelty, he dropped down, down, striking the surface of the water with his boots.
He had suspected that he could breathe underwater, given the right conditions, of course, and this he now found to be true. How long he swam down he was not sure. Time passed in a different fashion under the water than above it. He felt within a few minutes, however, the sides of the well expand until he was in a large open chamber lit by a dim greenish light.
Although technically swimming, he found after a while that he was actually walking, much like a cartoon character ambulating across a perspectiveless, monochromatic field.
“This is fun.” Went through his mind.
Eventually he came to a door, large and elaborate, set into what he assumed was the wall of his world. The immense doorknob was not easy to turn. Without his amazing strength there is no way he could have turned it. More strength was required to pull the door open after the knob had been turned. Rectanglo was at the limits of his powers in doing so.
With a rush he was sucked out into the black void, along with all of the water, probably, he suddenly thought in a panic, all the water in the world. Fighting free of the torrent, he found a place high up on the exterior surface of the translucent wall from where he could watch the water spreading out for what seemed half an hour. As the last rivulet dribbled out along with a couple of large fish and a tumble of toy boats, Rectanglo looked around at the object he sat upon. He was shocked to see that it was no bigger than a barn of relatively small size.
“A relatively small sized barn.” He said aloud dubiously.
Darnana Goes to the Store
The store Darnana patronized on the morning of the twelfth day of the month of Wasa, according to the Hurrer calendar, was Mobley’s, a chain owned by the Crabbintree Consortium. Passing by a young female Hurrer (or Hurra) holding her pet sabbij (a miniature one, of course) on a leash, Darnana thought wistfully of her own days of youth and freedom and what they might have led to, had she only been less impatient and more wealthy.
A human male (or trotdat in the nearly defunct Hurrer tongue), a fairly rare sight in this town of Hellowhale, was standing by the free political newsletter dispenser as Darnana, grocery list in hand, approached the door.
“Excuse me, madam.” Said the man.
“Hmm?” Darnana barely vocalized.
“I’m conducting a survey on behalf of the Flapdash Research Institute, an independent think tank based in Comaton. Would you mind answering a few questions?”
Darnana noticed he held a spiral-bound notebook in his hand.
“Do I have to give my name?” She asked.
“Yes, but that’s only for purposes of cross-referencing and protection against falsification.”
“Forget it.” Darnana passed on into the store.
She made her selections rapidly, always choosing the cheapest brands, no matter what her previous experiences had taught her about taste and quality. Better to save pennies now, she thought, and deal with any inconvenience than to wallow in luxuries.
As she exited the store she saw that the young hurra she had passed earlier was now talking to the man, only she wasn’t answering any questions, but asking them.
“So you’ve been to Comaton.” Was the gist of her framing the next question. “Have you actually seen Paraftylloben with your own eyes?”
Darnana imagined a sexual coupling between the young hurra and the man. Although unnatural, such unions were possible, especially to today’s immoral generation.
Grif Oberon Shakes off the Poison
The young woman Grif Oberon had went to bed with the night before did not wake up as Oberon grunted with pain and thrashed about. It took him falling to the floor to rouse her from her pony-and-cotton-candy dreams.
“Where am I?” She asked groggily.
“Help me.” Oberon commanded in a croak that had the woman been awake enough to analyze it, would have revealed the true extent of the powerful manager’s age.
When she finally fumbled to Oberon’s side she found him quivering spasmodically.
“What’s wrong?” She cried.
What was wrong was that Oberon had been poisoned. Someone, apparently at the party he and the woman had been to only hours earlier, to judge by the onset of the symptoms, had slipped sewerfish venom into something Oberon had consumed.
“Most likely a strong-tasted drink.” Explained the doctor to Mikla, the young woman, as the sun came on outside the hospital.
“He had a tequila sunrise at the party.” She said in a low, tired voice.
“That would be ideal.” Said the doctor. “You can go in and see him now. We’re keeping him awake for the time being with stimulants until the bulk of the toxins are dissipated.”
“I guess I’d better.” She resigned herself to a few more minutes of wakefulness.
“Thanks for hanging around.” Oberon dismissed the woman once his personal attorney arrived. Who manages managers? In the case of Grif Oberon it was an attorney named Flint Dogwhip.
“I want whoever did this broken like a saltine.” Oberon was fierce.
“He will be.” Promised Dogwhip. “Do you think the girl had anything to do with it?”
“Her? She’s as stupid as she is willowy. No, it was some jealous prick. I want him found.”
“By the way, Ben’s been calling.” Dogwhip said after a pause. “But he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted.”
Mr. Groaf Searches the House
It wasn’t like Mr. Groaf to panic. If asked, he wouldn’t call what he was doing panicking.
“I am merely responding promptly to external stimuli.” He would say, had he time to consider, which he hadn’t, let’s face it. The more the span of time increased between his discovery that Mavez Abuelia was missing and her recovery, the less of a chance that she actually would be recovered.
“Recovery—discovery; discovery—recovery.” Went absurdly through Groaf’s head over and over as he went through the treetop house.
One of the bodyguards entered the room where he found the Director General on his knees looking behind the sofa.
“Sir.” He announced his presence.
“Well?” Groaf demanded.
“Mrs. Groaf is not in the house, sir. None of the servants nor any of the neighboring residents report seeing her leave.”
“Mrs. Groaf!” Groaf thought contemptuously. Mavez had insisted on keeping her own last name.
“For my career.” She had said.
Groaf condensed all of his extensive mental dissertations on this aspect of their relationship to the single, somewhat irrational thought “What career?” as he got to his feet.
“She expressed a desire to see the forest floor.” He said, leaving the obvious conclusion to be drawn from that to linger in the air like the slow-brewed fart of a beer-drinking fat man.
“She wouldn’t just go out on her own without telling anyone.” Was the bodyguard’s first thought, quickly countered by a second: “Well, she is a journalist.”
“Gather all the guards.” Groaf ordered. “Tell Timothy Grade I want to see him before we leave.” Timothy Grade was the junior staffer at the honeymoon compound that day.
“We’re going to the forest floor?” The guard asked.
“Yes, and I’m going with you.”
Pellis Eaton Kisses a Man
“You’re a candy bar of consolation.” Pellis Eaton declared as he took Ben Stupor Little’s face in his hands and kissed him with a mixture of playfulness, delight, and lust perfected over the course of a rumored sixty years.
“Thanks.” Little said after the kiss, as his face was released. What he had said or done to earn the praise is not known, but what had motivated the kiss was obvious enough: Little’s beauty was a throwback to an earlier era, a time when Eaton himself had been young. Although being paid well for photographing Little, the older man would almost have done it for free.
The camera Eaton was using on this occasion was not one of the expensive new ones with all their complicated gimmickry, but an old box camera with a photographic plate the size of a toilet bowl lid. The photographer claimed that he had only used this camera for three previous subjects, each of them movie stars of the golden age, each now as dead as that by-gone time.
Little protested that he was only a TV celebrity, one with a cult following at best.
Eaton wanted to protest as well, but instead said,
“You must get into films as soon as possible. Have you anything lined up?”
“I’m looking into playing Toadsgoboad in a film Dalton Deet wants to do.”
“Toadsgoboad, eh?” Eaton shook his head and smiled, thinking about who knew what. Ancient history? Classical aesthetics? The collapse of the Ivy League look? The back cover of Revolver?
Little was wearing a red turtleneck sweater made of the finest wool fibers known: those of the chinchilla walrus. Over this he wore a mustard-colored suede sport coat with a pin stuck in the lapel. The pin bore a picture of Captain Beefheart. Little’s slacks were pocketless bellbottom hiphuggers of ice blue. For purposes of photography he was standing barefoot on the rug, his black shoes and socks to one side near various props that would not be utilized.
Ned Feese Feeds His Ego
Sitting in the hidden listening chamber, Ned Feese could hear everything that was said in the room just outside.
“What do you think of his latest production?” Was the question he had instructed one of his flunkies to ask of the persons gathered. The first to answer this was an older woman, a duchess.
“I think it’s marvelous. Every production is better than the one before.” She said with all the dignified assertion her aged voice could summon.
“Really, Mama? I thought you said he sucked.” Said her grown, unmarried, and apparently unmarriable daughter.
“Phillipe Goosen suck? Never! I never made such an allegation!” The duchess’ silver tiara shook atop her pile of gray hair as she made her denial.
“No, no, madam.” Laughed a slick-haired adventurer. “We are speaking of Ned Feese, whose latest shallow piece of inconsequentia we have just seen the first act of.”
“Thank you for clearing that up in your own inimitable way, Claude.” Said another man, slightly stooped and bearing an ancient dueling scar on his ruddy cheek.
“Ned Feese?” The duchess barked. “Why the fellow is a hack! I have again and again given him the benefit of the doubt, only to be disappointed once more at his obviously expressed and dreadfully overcooked populism!”
“Then why did we come tonight?” Asked the daughter.
“Because, Charlotte, I wouldn’t keep you from your simple pleasures for the world.” The duchess puckered her lips as if making kissy faces at a small, pampered dog.
“If you will all excuse me,” Said the flunky unnecessarily, as no one paid him any attention. “I must go and see if the popcorn machine is plugged in.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand and exited quickly.
Inside his chamber Ned Feese giggled painfully, trying no to make a sound.
The Bird Hunts for Work
Using the beak adapter, the Bird laboriously filled out yet another employment application, this one at the Municipal Department of Extramortuary Speculation.
Mr. Galligook took the completed form and face it a cursory perusal.
“No previous work experience?” He asked with a puzzled face.
“That’s right.” Said the Bird nervously.
Mr. Galligook flipped a page.
“No education either?” He snorted.
“Well, as you can see in the box marked ‘Extra Remarks’ I did attend a class at the university.” The Bird gestured with a feather.
Mr. Galligook scanned the short paragraph.
“For one day?” He said.
The Bird said nothing in reply. He had received much the same reaction at the other government agencies and departments at which he had applied. He was beginning to think he would have to lower himself to bagboy, a job Klaster had told him about in some detail.
“Well, Mr. Bird.” Galligook said. “I’ll submit this application to our personnel department and, if it meets with their approval, you should hear something in a couple of days.” He smiled and dropped the form on a pile of papers to his left.
The Bird knew what that meant. He would hear nothing. Out in the street he walked with head bent low, heading aimlessly towards a future he could not foresee. Someone shouted behind him. He turned to look.
“You! The Bird!” Mr. Galligook was jogging towards him. “I am so sorry.” The man said when he had caught up with him. “One of the senior men here happened to look over your application just after you left. I didn’t realize you were an actual bird.” With these words and a friendly smiled Mr. Galligook cajoled the Bird into returning to the building, this time to the office of Mr. Gray, who sent Galligook on his way and bid the Bird have a seat.
What door led Kiplough to the sea is unknown. He had lost count of how many doors he had opened and shut. For him it was like flipping through channels on a TV in the hotel room of the gods. The riot of strange scenes before him as he moved along was infinitely mesmerizing. The fact that he had to physically move from door to door kept the analogy from exactly conforming to that of the TV-watching experience. The walking also served to keep Kiplough conscious of the time passing and distance between him and his apartment growing. He told me later that it was definitely the last door he planned to try that opened upon the sea.
“The greenish tint to the light in the hallway had slowly changed to a bluish one. I said to myself, ‘This will be the last door I try for now.’ For, of course, I planned on coming back. Just then, however, I had to end my first foray into the machine.”
“Could you still see the open door to your apartment?” I asked Kiplough.
“No. The hallway slowly curved up so that at this point I couldn’t look back and see where I’d started out from.”
“Did that scare you?”
“It might have only a week before, but since my exposure to the Bolsisometric Indoctrinator, I had become very trusting of their technology and its ramifications.”
“So what happened when you opened that door?”
“I realized immediately that I was looking into the sea. I could see fish swimming around. What I didn’t realize, until I put my hand out, was that I wasn’t peering through a glass or a barrier, but was actually looking at a vertical surface of water.”
“Your hand went into the water?”
“Yes. I drew it back immediately, and was shocked to find that it wasn’t wet.”
“Interesting.” I said dramatically, doodling some random face on the notebook I held during out interview.
“Yes. Even more interesting was that when I put my head in I found that I could breathe underwater.”
Kiplough Enjoys A Snack
The snack Kiplough enjoyed was a large slice of pizza and a small glass of grape soda. As he ate he thought about the advance of music recording technology and how, in truth, the only real difference between the music of today; that is, the music he heard when he went out among his fellow citizens, and the music of the past; that is, he actually chose to listen to in the intimacy of his private moments, was that the bass was much louder in the former.
“Millions of dollars spent on research and development and this is the end result.” He said to a stranger sitting beside him at the counter of the snack stand. This stranger smiled indulgently and made motions with his hands, to indicate that he was deaf.
“I’ve not had that combination of food, since I was a child.” Kiplough told me.
“Pizza and grape soda?” I queried. My thoughts were on my own lost food favorites of early days.
“Yes. And I always has that combination while enjoying a new paperback I had purchased.”
“What kind of stuff did you read?”
“I was into series fiction. Men’s adventure series. ‘The Reactor’; “The Stalwart’; ‘The Fate Measure’, that was my favorite.”
“Did you ever read any Westerns?”
“No, couldn’t stand ‘em.”
Kiplough went on to compare his dislike of Westerns with his contempt for country music, and contrast his disdain for the working class vogue for rural stuff and willful ignorance with his enjoyment of the outdoors.
“It’s like my love of exercise, contrasted with my hate of sports.” I commented.
“Exactly.” Kiplough said bending down to take another homemade peanut butter cracker from the pile of them on the platter on the coffee table. I asked him had he had the pizza and grape soda combo since that day. He told me he had not.
Kiplough and Klaster Discuss Matters
“What matters shall we discuss?” Kiplough asked Klaster after they had each made himself comfortable in cushioned wicker chairs.
“Well,” mused Klaster, “What matters?”
“That’s what I’m asking.” Kiplough had selected hot tea as his beverage for the discussion; Klaster had chosen coffee.
“No, I’m making a little joke:’What matters?’ What matters to us right now?”
“Hmm. Are we to discuss what matters to us, or to all of the people of Shedge?’
“Or the peoples of the Bolsis.” Added Klaster thoughtfully.
“Hmm. Yes. I suppose our worldview is now greatly expanded.”
They fell silent for a moment.
“Beef stew smells like old man’s breath.” Klaster finally said.
“What makes you say that?” Kiplough asked.
Klaster considered.
“Just thought of it all of a sudden.”
“Is my… are you calling me an old man?” Kiplough changed what he had been going to ask.
“No!” Klaster insisted. “No, not at all.”
“In a way I guess I think of myself as an old man.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“I’m twenty-six.” Retorted Klaster.
“Ten years.” Kiplough intoned. “What a difference ten years makes. Ten years ago I was a terrible drunk. I lived with my parents in a pretend house made of painted cardboard high inside the city wall. I was working for the municipal water supply, meter reader’s sector. It was not a good time.”
“Let’s see. Ten years ago I was sixteen.” Klaster responded eagerly to the exercise. “I was working as a bagboy at Grocerrefuge.”
“Really? I used to shop there. Do you remember me? I used to buy a lot of cooking wine on Sundays.”*
*Some parts of Shedge do not allow the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
Excerpt #3 From ‘Mealy-Mouthed’
Returning to the well by night, Rectanglo brought with him a briefcase full of items he might need on a journey of indeterminate duration. These were such things as reading material, socks, hats, and cans of beans. Looking about carefully by the dim light of the stars that mysteriously shone through the walls of that metafictional world. Rectanglo put his legs over the side of the well. With a smile at the wild promise of novelty, he dropped down, down, striking the surface of the water with his boots.
He had suspected that he could breathe underwater, given the right conditions, of course, and this he now found to be true. How long he swam down he was not sure. Time passed in a different fashion under the water than above it. He felt within a few minutes, however, the sides of the well expand until he was in a large open chamber lit by a dim greenish light.
Although technically swimming, he found after a while that he was actually walking, much like a cartoon character ambulating across a perspectiveless, monochromatic field.
“This is fun.” Went through his mind.
Eventually he came to a door, large and elaborate, set into what he assumed was the wall of his world. The immense doorknob was not easy to turn. Without his amazing strength there is no way he could have turned it. More strength was required to pull the door open after the knob had been turned. Rectanglo was at the limits of his powers in doing so.
With a rush he was sucked out into the black void, along with all of the water, probably, he suddenly thought in a panic, all the water in the world. Fighting free of the torrent, he found a place high up on the exterior surface of the translucent wall from where he could watch the water spreading out for what seemed half an hour. As the last rivulet dribbled out along with a couple of large fish and a tumble of toy boats, Rectanglo looked around at the object he sat upon. He was shocked to see that it was no bigger than a barn of relatively small size.
“A relatively small sized barn.” He said aloud dubiously.
Darnana Goes to the Store
The store Darnana patronized on the morning of the twelfth day of the month of Wasa, according to the Hurrer calendar, was Mobley’s, a chain owned by the Crabbintree Consortium. Passing by a young female Hurrer (or Hurra) holding her pet sabbij (a miniature one, of course) on a leash, Darnana thought wistfully of her own days of youth and freedom and what they might have led to, had she only been less impatient and more wealthy.
A human male (or trotdat in the nearly defunct Hurrer tongue), a fairly rare sight in this town of Hellowhale, was standing by the free political newsletter dispenser as Darnana, grocery list in hand, approached the door.
“Excuse me, madam.” Said the man.
“Hmm?” Darnana barely vocalized.
“I’m conducting a survey on behalf of the Flapdash Research Institute, an independent think tank based in Comaton. Would you mind answering a few questions?”
Darnana noticed he held a spiral-bound notebook in his hand.
“Do I have to give my name?” She asked.
“Yes, but that’s only for purposes of cross-referencing and protection against falsification.”
“Forget it.” Darnana passed on into the store.
She made her selections rapidly, always choosing the cheapest brands, no matter what her previous experiences had taught her about taste and quality. Better to save pennies now, she thought, and deal with any inconvenience than to wallow in luxuries.
As she exited the store she saw that the young hurra she had passed earlier was now talking to the man, only she wasn’t answering any questions, but asking them.
“So you’ve been to Comaton.” Was the gist of her framing the next question. “Have you actually seen Paraftylloben with your own eyes?”
Darnana imagined a sexual coupling between the young hurra and the man. Although unnatural, such unions were possible, especially to today’s immoral generation.
Grif Oberon Shakes off the Poison
The young woman Grif Oberon had went to bed with the night before did not wake up as Oberon grunted with pain and thrashed about. It took him falling to the floor to rouse her from her pony-and-cotton-candy dreams.
“Where am I?” She asked groggily.
“Help me.” Oberon commanded in a croak that had the woman been awake enough to analyze it, would have revealed the true extent of the powerful manager’s age.
When she finally fumbled to Oberon’s side she found him quivering spasmodically.
“What’s wrong?” She cried.
What was wrong was that Oberon had been poisoned. Someone, apparently at the party he and the woman had been to only hours earlier, to judge by the onset of the symptoms, had slipped sewerfish venom into something Oberon had consumed.
“Most likely a strong-tasted drink.” Explained the doctor to Mikla, the young woman, as the sun came on outside the hospital.
“He had a tequila sunrise at the party.” She said in a low, tired voice.
“That would be ideal.” Said the doctor. “You can go in and see him now. We’re keeping him awake for the time being with stimulants until the bulk of the toxins are dissipated.”
“I guess I’d better.” She resigned herself to a few more minutes of wakefulness.
“Thanks for hanging around.” Oberon dismissed the woman once his personal attorney arrived. Who manages managers? In the case of Grif Oberon it was an attorney named Flint Dogwhip.
“I want whoever did this broken like a saltine.” Oberon was fierce.
“He will be.” Promised Dogwhip. “Do you think the girl had anything to do with it?”
“Her? She’s as stupid as she is willowy. No, it was some jealous prick. I want him found.”
“By the way, Ben’s been calling.” Dogwhip said after a pause. “But he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted.”
Mr. Groaf Searches the House
It wasn’t like Mr. Groaf to panic. If asked, he wouldn’t call what he was doing panicking.
“I am merely responding promptly to external stimuli.” He would say, had he time to consider, which he hadn’t, let’s face it. The more the span of time increased between his discovery that Mavez Abuelia was missing and her recovery, the less of a chance that she actually would be recovered.
“Recovery—discovery; discovery—recovery.” Went absurdly through Groaf’s head over and over as he went through the treetop house.
One of the bodyguards entered the room where he found the Director General on his knees looking behind the sofa.
“Sir.” He announced his presence.
“Well?” Groaf demanded.
“Mrs. Groaf is not in the house, sir. None of the servants nor any of the neighboring residents report seeing her leave.”
“Mrs. Groaf!” Groaf thought contemptuously. Mavez had insisted on keeping her own last name.
“For my career.” She had said.
Groaf condensed all of his extensive mental dissertations on this aspect of their relationship to the single, somewhat irrational thought “What career?” as he got to his feet.
“She expressed a desire to see the forest floor.” He said, leaving the obvious conclusion to be drawn from that to linger in the air like the slow-brewed fart of a beer-drinking fat man.
“She wouldn’t just go out on her own without telling anyone.” Was the bodyguard’s first thought, quickly countered by a second: “Well, she is a journalist.”
“Gather all the guards.” Groaf ordered. “Tell Timothy Grade I want to see him before we leave.” Timothy Grade was the junior staffer at the honeymoon compound that day.
“We’re going to the forest floor?” The guard asked.
“Yes, and I’m going with you.”
Pellis Eaton Kisses a Man
“You’re a candy bar of consolation.” Pellis Eaton declared as he took Ben Stupor Little’s face in his hands and kissed him with a mixture of playfulness, delight, and lust perfected over the course of a rumored sixty years.
“Thanks.” Little said after the kiss, as his face was released. What he had said or done to earn the praise is not known, but what had motivated the kiss was obvious enough: Little’s beauty was a throwback to an earlier era, a time when Eaton himself had been young. Although being paid well for photographing Little, the older man would almost have done it for free.
The camera Eaton was using on this occasion was not one of the expensive new ones with all their complicated gimmickry, but an old box camera with a photographic plate the size of a toilet bowl lid. The photographer claimed that he had only used this camera for three previous subjects, each of them movie stars of the golden age, each now as dead as that by-gone time.
Little protested that he was only a TV celebrity, one with a cult following at best.
Eaton wanted to protest as well, but instead said,
“You must get into films as soon as possible. Have you anything lined up?”
“I’m looking into playing Toadsgoboad in a film Dalton Deet wants to do.”
“Toadsgoboad, eh?” Eaton shook his head and smiled, thinking about who knew what. Ancient history? Classical aesthetics? The collapse of the Ivy League look? The back cover of Revolver?
Little was wearing a red turtleneck sweater made of the finest wool fibers known: those of the chinchilla walrus. Over this he wore a mustard-colored suede sport coat with a pin stuck in the lapel. The pin bore a picture of Captain Beefheart. Little’s slacks were pocketless bellbottom hiphuggers of ice blue. For purposes of photography he was standing barefoot on the rug, his black shoes and socks to one side near various props that would not be utilized.
Ned Feese Feeds His Ego
Sitting in the hidden listening chamber, Ned Feese could hear everything that was said in the room just outside.
“What do you think of his latest production?” Was the question he had instructed one of his flunkies to ask of the persons gathered. The first to answer this was an older woman, a duchess.
“I think it’s marvelous. Every production is better than the one before.” She said with all the dignified assertion her aged voice could summon.
“Really, Mama? I thought you said he sucked.” Said her grown, unmarried, and apparently unmarriable daughter.
“Phillipe Goosen suck? Never! I never made such an allegation!” The duchess’ silver tiara shook atop her pile of gray hair as she made her denial.
“No, no, madam.” Laughed a slick-haired adventurer. “We are speaking of Ned Feese, whose latest shallow piece of inconsequentia we have just seen the first act of.”
“Thank you for clearing that up in your own inimitable way, Claude.” Said another man, slightly stooped and bearing an ancient dueling scar on his ruddy cheek.
“Ned Feese?” The duchess barked. “Why the fellow is a hack! I have again and again given him the benefit of the doubt, only to be disappointed once more at his obviously expressed and dreadfully overcooked populism!”
“Then why did we come tonight?” Asked the daughter.
“Because, Charlotte, I wouldn’t keep you from your simple pleasures for the world.” The duchess puckered her lips as if making kissy faces at a small, pampered dog.
“If you will all excuse me,” Said the flunky unnecessarily, as no one paid him any attention. “I must go and see if the popcorn machine is plugged in.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with a shaking hand and exited quickly.
Inside his chamber Ned Feese giggled painfully, trying no to make a sound.
The Bird Hunts for Work
Using the beak adapter, the Bird laboriously filled out yet another employment application, this one at the Municipal Department of Extramortuary Speculation.
Mr. Galligook took the completed form and face it a cursory perusal.
“No previous work experience?” He asked with a puzzled face.
“That’s right.” Said the Bird nervously.
Mr. Galligook flipped a page.
“No education either?” He snorted.
“Well, as you can see in the box marked ‘Extra Remarks’ I did attend a class at the university.” The Bird gestured with a feather.
Mr. Galligook scanned the short paragraph.
“For one day?” He said.
The Bird said nothing in reply. He had received much the same reaction at the other government agencies and departments at which he had applied. He was beginning to think he would have to lower himself to bagboy, a job Klaster had told him about in some detail.
“Well, Mr. Bird.” Galligook said. “I’ll submit this application to our personnel department and, if it meets with their approval, you should hear something in a couple of days.” He smiled and dropped the form on a pile of papers to his left.
The Bird knew what that meant. He would hear nothing. Out in the street he walked with head bent low, heading aimlessly towards a future he could not foresee. Someone shouted behind him. He turned to look.
“You! The Bird!” Mr. Galligook was jogging towards him. “I am so sorry.” The man said when he had caught up with him. “One of the senior men here happened to look over your application just after you left. I didn’t realize you were an actual bird.” With these words and a friendly smiled Mr. Galligook cajoled the Bird into returning to the building, this time to the office of Mr. Gray, who sent Galligook on his way and bid the Bird have a seat.
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