Brutally Haggard, Part 10

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