Once upon a time, a teeny tiny woman lived in a teeny tiny house with a teeny tiny cat and her dainty darling daughter who had a dainty darling dog.. The four of them loved their teeny tiny house, which was a teeny tiny walk from a teeny tiny town
One day, the teeny tiny woman put on her best teeny tiny dress and teeny tiny shoes and told her teeny tiny cat and dainty darling daughter with her dainty darling dog that they were going to the teeny tiny town to do some teeny tiny shopping.
They stopped at the teeny tiny grocery and the teeny tiny butcher shop and walked over to the teeny tiny lumberyard where the dainty darling daughter had a dainty darling chat with some strong stalwart men while her teeny tiny mother picked out some teeny tiny nails to fix the teeny tiny roof of the teeny tiny house.
On the way home, the four of them passed a teeny tiny graveyard, where the dainty darling daughter cried, “Oh, look! Look!”
A teeny tiny bony hand wearing a teeny tiny gold ring and a teeny tiny silver bracelet was lying atop a teeny tiny grave. The teeny tiny woman warned her dainty darling daughter, “Better not go near it. I have some teeny tiny experience with such things.” And so they went home to the teeny tiny house and had their teeny tiny supper. And after they had sat around a teeny tiny fire crocheting teeny tiny tea towels, everyone went off to their teeny tiny beds, the teeny tiny cat in the teeny tiny bedroom of the teeny tiny mother and the dainty darling dog in the dainty darling bedroom of the dainty darling daughter.
But the dainty darling daughter could not sleep under her dainty darling bedspread, for worrying about that teeny tiny gold ring and that teeny tiny silver bracelet, which would look so much nicer on a living dainty darling person. “And they’re just sitting outside,” thought the dainty darling daughter, “Where a bad person might come and STEAL them.”
So finally she pushed back her dainty darling bedspread and got out of her dainty darling bed. And putting her dainty darling coat over her dainty darling nightgown and slipping into her dainty darling slippers, she took a teeny tiny walk in the moonlight to the teeny tiny graveyard. She was very careful to leave the teeny tiny hand where it was, as she had heard her teeny tiny mother’s story about what had happened before, and the whole story sent dainty darling shivers up her dainty darling spine.
After admiring the teeny tiny gold ring on her dainty darling finger and the teeny tiny silver bracelet on her dainty darling wrist, the dainty darling daughter walked back to the teeny tiny house, eased open the teeny tiny door, and hurried back to her dainty darling bedroom. Soon she was asleep in her dainty darling bed, beneath the dainty darling bedspread.
But not long after she closed her dainty darling eyes and started to snore dainty darling snores, she heard a voice in her bedroom say “Give me back my bone.”
The dainty darling daughter snuggled deeper among the dainty darling bedspread and put the dainty darling pillow over her dainty darling head.
And the voice, louder now, called, “Give me back my bone!”
The dainty darling daughter reached up to pull the dainty darling pillow tighter around her dainty darling ears. “I haven’t got your old bone,” she grumbled.
The voice was quite loud now, and rather rude. “Give me back my bone!”
The dainty darling daughter threw the dainty darling pillow on the dainty darling floor and sat up. As she did so, she noticed her dainty darling dog was chewing on something. “Oh, dear me,” said the dainty darling daughter. She hadn’t even noticed that the dainty darling dog had followed her to the teeny tiny graveyard. She snatched the teeny tine bone from the dainty darling jaws and hurried to the teeny tiny door of the teeny tiny house.
“Here!” she shouted. “Take it!” And she ran back to her dainty darling bed and pulled up the dainty darling bedspread, first retrieving the dainty darling pillow from the dainty darling floor.
But she had hardly closed her dainty darling eyes when that nasty bossy voice called, “Bring me back my ring.”
“I should have known you’d be back,” muttered the dainty darling daughter, wriggling her dainty darling toes in annoyance.
“Bring me back my ring!” ordered the voice, louder now.
The dainty darling daughter sat up. “Can’t you just take it, the way you did your finger or whatever? It’s awfully late.”
“Bring me back my ring!” shouted the voice.
With a dainty darling sigh, the dainty darling daughter put her dainty darling coat on over her dainty darling nightgown, and shuffled down the teeny tiny road in her dainty darling slippers to the teeny tiny graveyard. She threw the teeny tiny ring down on the teeny tiny grave.
“There!” she said, and turned to go.
That nasty bossy voice called from the teeny tiny grave. “Give me back my bracelet.”
The dainty darling daughter had in fact left the teeny tiny bracelet behind in the dainty darling bedroom in the teeny tiny house, hoping the nasty bossy voice would forget about it. She stamped one dainty darling foot and cried, “Take it! Take anything you want, but just stop shouting!”
And that is how the dainty darling daughter found herself in the teeny tiny graveyard on a warm moonlit night, without her dainty darling slippers, without her dainty darling coat, and without her dainty darling nightgown, just as barefoot all over as the dainty darling day she was born.
Anyway, that’s the story she told her teeny tiny mother when she got back to the teeny tiny house at a teeny tiny hour of the morning.
I see by the number of views it received that my column about those who communicate on the Interwebs adding to world peace by just chilling a little and not feeling it is necessary to cry out in righteous indignation at every little thing was about as successful as a solicitation for funds to provide a home for orphan mosquitoes. So I shall give up and just join the seagulls which infest online commentary and cry out against life’s imperfections. Let’s start with postcard artists who can’t draw birds.
You may not think this is a major cause of pain and anguish in the world, but, hey, you must be one of those Luddites whose algorithms bring you nothing but bulletins on recent innovations in steam-powered bicycles. These sickly looking birds (who should be ill eagle) are everywhere in the postcard world. I am fighting to be fair about this. I will not include the two examples shown above, for example. These artists were not going for ornithological accuracy: they just wanted something looking vaguely like a rooster or a goose to make the joke. This is fair game.
This artist, too, was not out to look like a page torn from a Roger Tory Peterson field guide. His joke was about chicken scratches, and if the scratching bits are emphasized, we can all tell what the picture is going for. No complaints.
But had THIS artist ever seen a rooster before? I know, I know: he couldn’t go to Google Images and call up a picture of a rooster as reference. But gee golly whiz, was that any excuse for asking Uncle Jasper to pose with his head tipped back a little and then draw feathers on the result?
Let’s try again. Cobb Shinn here wanted to draw a cartoon duck, and succeeded. We can see what he intended.
This gag, however, is pointless unless we know the child is holding a duck. I guess we CAN see a duck…if we concentrate on the words of the joke and squint at the bird, which looks like that cousin the chicken and sparrow families don’t talk about. But we’re not going to convince that kid, who KNOWS this is a duck stand-in, a cheap duck substitute.
Because it talks, everyone assumes this is a parrot. It looks like a green cardinal, yes, but it handles just the afterjoke, and it appeared in a whole series of postcards where it comments with a wisecrack on the main gag of the card. (Besides, I have seen no cards where anyone claims he IS a parrot. He may just as well have BEEN a green cardinal.)
But no matter how much it looks like a pigeonhawk, THIS, I believe, is intended to be a parrot. (I could be wrong. Suggesting that your empty space at the family table could be filled by a parrot seems rather at odds with the folksy good humor of the image.)
And THIS artist, it is obvious, has been at great pains to draw a realistic image of…what is this thing? Is there a bread of chicken that looks like this, or is this postcard of 1908 or thereabouts evidence that the dodo was domesticated and survived unnoticed in chicken coops in the Midwest for years after it was assumed extinct?
Perhaps I am just too touchy. Perhaps I should take my own advice about not giving away to outrage over every little…. WHAT. IS. THIS? Did someone paint a parrot brown and teach it to say “Cluck Cluck?” Is the man lying in the bed trying to start an online career as a ventriloquist with a turkey puppet? Have the pigeons…. No. Enough. These are bygone birds all, drawn by cartoonists of distant generations, and there is nothing anyone can do about them. Not that THAT would ever stop any dedicated online complainer. I just think maybe I can do more good in the world by going back to learning why they crossed the road.
“They always talk about remembering.” Meadow Saffron took a double handful of flower petals and flung these after the couple moving along the sidewalk.
“It’s what we do,” Primrose told her. “They won’t forget when WE help them Do It. This one wasn’t so easy though.”
“It was fun.” Bluebell shaped a pyramid of flower petals before her, sighted along one edge, patted it flatter, and then kicked it toward the retreating couple. “I was going to tear a hole in one of the bags but SHE woon’t let me!”
“You just wanted one of those cans of oranges for your own self,” Sniffed Primrose. “I know YOU!”
“So what happens now?” demanded Sweet Pea.
Unfirom’s eyes went to the couple. “They will Do It rather later tonight, and again early in the morning.” He winced as the phronik applauded with all feet and hands. “He will be so impressed with himself that he will continue to see her, and will readily accept an invitation in November to come live with her. Under her influence, he will become more dependable at work, and move up through the ranks. His developing self-confidence will bring on more and more arguments, and after six years, he will leave her for a younger woman. Two years after that, when he learns he is dying of a cancer he left too long, he will seek her out. When he dies, she will be holding his hand.”
“But that’s so sad!” Sweet Pea had to fly to the grass and blow her nose on a French fry bag.
The angel lifted an eyebrow. “Not so sad as it would have been otherwise.”
“He dies a lot later this way,” Meadow Saffron agreed.
“And he’s…look! It’s Mollie!” Bluebell shot through the air followed by her three colleagues as their favorite poodle came up the sidewalk.
Unfirom watched them vie for seats, and then strode off through the grass. It was coming up on one of the quieter parts of the day. As various work shifts came to an end, the park would fill up again, but not many of these would be planning new phases of their romantic lives. That came more toward sunset.
He found a bench and sat down, hands on his knees, more for variation in routine than because he was tired: physically, at least. The park had been here a long time, and so had he. It had survived assorted waves of passive parkism before. He and the phronik had patrolled through all these phases until now, when things were quiet, the park seemed to him to be filled with ghosts.
Here, now, came Tom and Helen. The phronik had had to arrange a bicycle crash for them in 1965. Her left shoe hadn’t turned up for months. Donald and Linda were walking just behind them, knowing nothing about that bicycle accident in 1965, any more than Tom and Helen knew about their daughter’s mishap with that kite in 1977, which had led to her engagement to Donald. Unfirom missed Barry and Billie from the group, just to complete the group. He shuddered at the memory of what the phronik had done to Linda’s daughter’s brassiere in 1996, but it had done the trick.
Rain began to spatter the bench; the foursome hurried past the unseen angel. The shower passed quickly. Snow in winter was more of a problem. Not because of the cold, since he didn’t feel it, but Unfirom’s job was more difficult with fewer visitors, most of them too chilly to present much in the way of work. The phronik had to be kept busy with other things, like experimenting with cookies in the kitchen or throwing snowballs at angels. No one had thrown snowballs at him in his previous job. Griese was a man small children were inspired to throw snowballs at, but unfirom’s job had merely been to divert the projectiles.
Another bit of finished business strolled down the sidewalk. Unfirom glanced over his shoulder. The city had never repaired that gouge her car made in the lawn over there. The gully the phronik scooped out quickly to make her fall in the mud when she got out had taken years to refill. Meadow Saffron had won the betting on when that happened. Ghosts, all ghosts: his part in their lives came at one pivotal point. After that, their lives were usually irrelevant to the park, and vice versa.
Dusk came on reasonably dry. Cars spat up a fine spray as they sped past a little too fast on the way home, but the park was dry enough for a gentle stroll. Unfirom felt a shiver of premonition. When the air was this fresh and the sunset this golden, there could be eight to ten couples to attend to in ten minutes.
The angel rose: time to alert the troops again. Pity he couldn’t send them instructions telepathically: then he wouldn’t need to witness whatever devilry they were up to.
Booty Burgers had drifted into a clump along the fence of the softball diamond: no phronik were among these. They were not to be found under one of the benches at the playground, where fudgesicle wrappers tended to congregate. His mouth tightened, but a splash made him nod, and turn. Another splash drew him to a musical mud puddle.
“Arthur had a brainstorm for the telegraph
That cut the message-sending time to less than half;
He put it on the market; it was doing well
Until he heard from Alexander Graham Bell.
Percolator, coffeemaker,
Subaru and Studebaker:
All ya got is all yer gonna get,
Waddya bet?”
Primrose was squatting in the muddy water, shaking her situpon to the left and right. “That wasn’t refined at all,” she told Bluebell. “Start over.”
“Think yours is better?” Bluebell raised on her nose and then her hips. A face had been painted from one side of these to the other, using mud. “I could do a better mustache with both hands tied behind y back!”
“I’ll get some string and we’ll try that,” Primrose promised.
Sweet Pea screeched “Ooooh! That tickles!”
“Stand still!” Meadow Saffron commanded. “You want the bunny to have crooked ears?” She drew long lines of mud up her partner’s back.
“You could make it a lop-eared bunny,” Sweet Pea pointed out.
“Too late now.” Meadow Saffron stooped for another double handful of mud. “If the bunny had lopped-over ears, I’d need to draw ‘em on your legs.”
“Ooh, do both!” Sweet Pea clasped her hands, which were also full of mud. “Then he can choose which ears he wants to wear every morning!”
“Why? Don’t you want him to have color in his cheeks?”
“Ahem,” said the angel.
Four faces tipped up to gaze upon him, but not the faces he had been looking to attract. “The sun is starting down,” he sighed.
Sweet Pea added some mud to the face Meadow Saffron had aimed at Unfirom. “Did you find us some more to play with?”
“Not yet,” the angel admitted. “But it is getting to be that time. We may each have t be on the alert for couples.” As the faces pointed at him shook left and right in four negative responses, he added, “As well as people with their evening choices from Booty Burger.”
“I see a people!” squeaked Sweet Pea, one muddy finger pointed at alone woman. “What do I win?”
“Maybe we’ll all make sure your bunny has rosy cheeks,” said Meadow Saffron. “Just stand still, why don’t you?”
“She did see somebody,” Primrose pointed out. “A nice somebody.”
The head of the forces marshalled to save the park (and, today, the only one of those forces to show up) was moving across the grass, her damp banner wrapped around her like a long cloak. Her eyes were turned up, as if expecting more rain.
“I like her,” said Sweet Pea. “She’s cushy.”
Bluebell nodded. “I bet she has dimples.”
“I bet she has dimples on her dimples,” said Meadow Saffron.
“That’s boring,” Bluebell told her. “She needs hands on her dimples.”
Unfirom watched the protestor spread her banner out on a bench, and then sit down on a dry part of it. “Would you like her as much if she were working for the other side?”
“I would,” said Bluebell. “But I’d keep my mouth shut about it.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” said Primrose, and jumped away from the slap aimed at her lower face.
“I even think HE’S cute,” Bluebell went on, pointing to the developer. “And he’s the one who wants to take away the swings and the sandbox and the Booty Burger wrappers with pickles in ‘em.”
The man stopped at a trash bin to unwrap his ice cream sandwich and drop the wrapper inside. “I wonder if he‘s got dimples,” said Primrose.
“Sometimes,” said Meadow Saffron, “It’s the ones you’d never suspect. Remember that wrestler from the high school?”
Sweet Pea jumped up and down, her bunny face alternately smiling and frowning as it bobbled. “I know, I know, I know!”
“So do I.” Primrose tipped her head to one side. “He was the one who kept moving his hat so he wouldn’t sunburn his….”
“No no no!” Sweet Pea was pointing straight ahead of her as she went on jumping. “Why don’t we make THEM fall in love next?”
Her fellow phronik were much struck by this. “They’d make a cute couple,” said primrose, wiping the mud from her hand with her nose. “Well, half of them would.”
Bluebell flew up toward the angel’s face. “Does he have somebody better to Do It with?”
“No,” said Unfirom. “His work schedule allows little time for a social life. However….”
“Well, let’s give him one, then,” said Meadow Saffron. Sweet Pea giggled
Bluebell grabbed up two handsful of mud and splopped them together to make a geyser. “Maybe we could get ‘em to Do It right here!”
“He couldn’t call it a passive park then,” said Primrose.
“Yeah,” Bluebell replied, joining her in a muddy high five. “And we’d find out about his dimples!”
“Anyways,” said Sweet Pea, “He’d be in love with her so much, he woon’t want to ruin the park where he met her!”
“Can you be sure it wouldn’t work the other way?” inquired the angel, his voice hinting at complete lack of faith in the plans of phronik. “She could be so in love with him that she gives up her crusade, and helps him implement the passive park.”
Sweet Pera whipped around. “Oh, she’d never! Would she?”
“We shall never know. Doing It is not part of their mutual destinies.”
Bluebell shook a finger at his nose. “Say, listen, Chuckles. If you see all that destiny, why don’t you just TELL us what’s going to happen to the park?”
“There are circumstances not yet determined.” The faintest touch of bitterness tinged the angel’s voice. “In any case, an angel can’t know everything.”
“Could’ve fooled us, the way you talk,” grumbled Meadow Saffron.
“In any case,” he informed them, “We have more pressing duties. As they finish eating and stroll out to enjoy the sunset, couples will be coming to the park. We will all need to keep watch for those more romantically inclined than others, so that you can let me know. If I identify such a couple first, I’ll need you to be ready for a summons, and not worrying about couples who are not your problem.”
The phronik saluted their commander with kissy faces—again with the wrong faces—and then shot up into the sky.
“I’ll go this way!”
“You went this way last time! I’m going this way!”
“Well, okay. If you’re going to be that way.”
“No, I’m going to be this way!”
Four tiny muddy bodies zipped out of sight. After half a minute, they had reunited on a side of the fieldhouse roof where the angel could not see them.
“Who’s he think he is, telling us what to do?” demanded Bluebell.
“The one who tells us what to do,” replied Primrose.
“Let’s work on them,” said Meadow Saffron. “It’ll work if it’s all four of us. And if we save the park without HIM, maybe we’ll get to be angels ourselves!”
“Angels never get to eat French fries.” Sweet Pea was peeking over the edge of the roof at the protestor on the bench. “He told us so.”
“Okay,” said Bluebell, hunkering down to draw a diagram which had nothing to do with the matter on a roof tile. “Let’s make ‘em do it right here in public, where everybody can see. That way we can save the park but nobody will make us angels for it.”
Sweet Pea bounced with approval. “And we might make him fall so much in love he drops his ice creams!”
I do not have all that many postcards in my inventory which feature rats. This is not something I ever expected to have to apologize for, but in my most recent column, in which I told the thrilling tale of my courage in the face of a nonexistent rat, I used as illustration a postcard featuring mice. And I was called out for this inaccuracy by one of the perhaps three people who actually read this exploit from the days of my youth. (Maybe I should have started with the story of the bat. Or the curlew: now THAT was a tale of someone with the courage to simply retreat to a neutral corner and allow nature to…where were we?)
Anyhow, I DO have lots of postcards which involve mice, and it occurs to me that I have not yet considered the attitude of our ancestors and their postcard cartoonists to this small visitor known to people of city and farm. (I KNOW that guy’s going to point out that the brown mouse of the countryside is quite separate from the gray mouse seen in more urban areas. Well, if it makes him a loyal reader to criticize my omissions, it counts as a hit in the analytics.)
Leaving aside for now the natural opposition of cats and mice, which we can always save for another blog, the most usual nemesis of the mouse in the house is the lady of said house. I may have that backward. As we see from these examples, the mouse is actually the nemesis of the resident female. Women were considered especially susceptible to attacks by mice back in the day because they had long dresses and plentiful underskirts, which meant that if a mouse took refuge somewhere in the folds, there was no telling how far it might go. Frantic dancing with wild shaking of skirts was the only remedy, and if that did not chase the intruder away, one might be faced by the necessity to undress (which would involve putting your hands among folds of cloth where a mouse—with teeth—might be lurking.)
So the natural clash was real, and serious, and had nothing to do with a cartoonist knowing that showing a lady’s ankles as she pulled her skirts out of the way would sell a lot of postcards.
But a mouse in the house had a life of its own, and even when not interacting with the human foe, had a tale of its own. (Yeah, but the cartoonist used it first.)
Left to its own devices, the mouse could be romantic, even musical, as it ravened through stored and unwatched food around the place.
Romance led to marriage, apparently. (And to expanded waistlines. Do you think she’s worried about the trap, or about what cheese is said to do to the blood pressure of the common house mouse?)
And, eventually, families to support, and a cozy little home where a worried mouse could rest his sole. (All right, I’ll stop now. By the way, if that fan of mine who likes to criticize is worried about it, that title at the top is a salute to animated cartoon cat Mr. Jinks, who famously hated meeses to pieces. No data on whether this influenced the makers of Reese’s pieces. The whole influence of mice on our culture deserves further…oh, I’m going to need to do another blog, aren’t I? Not only have we not discussed cats, but there are some animated mice—one in particular—whose influence…. Okay, shutting my trap.)
I have a question for you comic book experts out there. I did my time in the world of comics fandom, but that was back in the days when I could buy a boxful of new comics for about twenty bucks. No that was NOT in the days when they were a dime. I’m not quite that….
Anyway, what I wanted to ask is “Are there any cases of a superhero who acquired those special powers after the age of, oh, sixty or so?” I assume there may have been occasional gimmicks and gags where an innocent bystander with white hair temporarily achieved the power of invisibility or flight. But is there any chance of suddenly becoming a cover feature on a comic book after a certain…. Asking for a friend.
I don’t need any further powers myself, you understand. I am a blogger. I became a blogger during my years working with books, a period when I exposed my super powers moving boxes of books while successfully concealing my secret identity as a librarian with a genuine Master’s degree in the subject. This entitles me to hang out at eh bar after hours with Batman or the Hulk, discussing that time I carried a box of foreign editions of Playboy which weighed too much to be mailed or shipped. (For repacking, the man in charge of the scales took out half the magazines and after THAT, the box weighed 120 pounds.) I believe Batgirl started her days in the comics as a demure librarian (glasses and all), but did SHE ever have to cross a large room in three seconds flat to catch a bookcase someone had modified so they could get two more books on each shelf? I perfected a talent for leaping stacks of LPs in a single bound. As I was saying to Captain America over Shirley Temples at the….
What’s that, mortal? Did I ever rescue a damsel in distress? I shall ignore your attempts at bygone sexist stereotypes and answer, with a dignity becoming to those of us who change our clothes in telephone booths, “Why, yes. Yes, I did.”
No railroad tracks were involved. (Good thing, too: I never was good at knots.) I was dealing with a donation where someone had put an entire set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in one box when the phone rang. It was a call from my colleagues in the public part of the building. “Can you come to the bookstore and help us with something?”
Anything was better than dealing with one more Britannica (some of my most unbelievable exploits involved actually occasionally selling one of these, but no one ever believes THOSE stories.) So I trotted up to the A.C. McClurg Bookstore, where the ladies were unboxing a shipment of new books. THEY never dealt in 1945 editions of World Book, so I wondered what the problem was.
“Could you open this book?”
The manager handed me a nice shiny book, complete with crisp dust jacket. Then she and the assistant manager backed off five steps. “It’s probably nothing,” said the manager. “But if you….”
I had not seen it at first, but I sure did now. Extending from the spine was a long gray tapered object. Imagine a rat’s tail. Because that’s what the three of us were imagining.
“It HAS to be glue from the binding,” the assistant manager said. “Just extra glue that got stretched out and wasn’t cut off.”
“You’re right,” I said. But I didn’t open the book. Any one of the three of us could have taken hold of the tail, of course. I have no REAL data on the question, but a length of dried glue should NOT feel like an animal’s tail. I cleared my throat, shook my shoulders, and flexed my fingers over the cover.
“Just a minute,” I was told. “Could you open it over THERE?”
Of course a superhero must face the big villains alone. Book, and inhabitant, in hand, I retired to a neutral corner. Come on, I told myself. No way could a rat be pressed flat enough to….
I have no data on that, either. It turned out to be a thick strand of glue from the binding, just as we had all assumed. We laughed, and then I turned over the book and went back to my encyclopedias, secure in the knowledge that the hero had saved the day. (AND without having to face down an actual rat, which might have resulted in a completely different ending.)
Anna set her groceries down on the sidewalk first, and then let herself thump down on the bench. She swept the back of one hand across her eyes. Then she leaned back and crossed her ankles in front of her.
Anna Eleanor, she told herself, it’s a food thing your parents aren’t around to see you now. They named you after that First Lady so you’d grow up to be the first lady president.
She shook her hair out behind her; maybe she’d just sit here until it was mostly dry again. It was one of the nice things about unemployment: no need to hurry anywhere.
Without any real warning, the city had up and eliminated her entire department, director to receptionist. Never mind that no one else in the government had the expertise, the experience, or the connections to fill in for the missing employees. Getting the job done was not important in an election year: the point was to eliminate expensive workers and cut the deficit.
Well, she’d be all right. Things might get tight, but there’d be another job once the voting was done. She had her bank account to keep her warm. Rent, electricity, and telephone could be covered for about a year. And if she restricted expensive cuts of meat (anything not ground up) tpo her birthday and holidays, there should be no problem at all.
She glanced at the bags. Why, right here she had a week’s supply of Ramen and tubes of off-brand biscuits, six for a dollar. There was rice, pasta, and, as a special treat, a can of pork and beans. Between rice and Creamettes, that can could probably be stretched to two or three meals. But maybe she wouldn’t stretch it. You needed something extravagant for at least one meal, to keep up morale.
What to choose for supper tonight? Which of these wild treats…. Never mind, Anna Eleanor, she told herself, letting the scowl smooth from her face. Just lean back and let your hair dry. Important to keep a cool head.
Head tipped back, she didn’t see Shannon coming along the concrete. Shannon had seen her, but was paying no attention. His mind was busily working out how Chris pointing out mathematical errors in his work meant, really, that Chris was after his job. The problem was that, the way his brain worked, this had easily moved to Chris leading police to his apartment with a search warrant to make sure Shannon wasn’t smuggling office supplies out at the end of the work day.
Shannon shook his head. Had to break that habit. With little or no provocation, he could build a chance encounter with a stranger into a robbery at the grocery store, with himself as the hero, ripping the head off the stranger with the useless gun. He could as easily develop a story that began with his own arrest for jaywalking by the stranger with the hidden badge and ended with suicide in prison, a place he imagined was not ideal for a convict named Shannon.
He glanced up. Maybe it was the weather. A thunderstorm was on the way: his animal senses told him so. Those same animal instincts had convinced him to leave early today., claiming he was sick. He WAS sick. Sometimes it got so crowded in there that a man with such a highly developed animal nature couldn’t breathe. There were more people in the department every day: one day they’d discover there wasn’t enough work for them all and start trimming the dead wood. Chris would see to it that highly sensitive animal men who left work early would be the first to go.
He checked the clouds again; his nostrils told him the storm was nigh. It would be a nasty one, too. He’d have to double bolt the doors when he got home, so the lightning didn’t force him outdoors once the transformation had taken place.
While eyes were pointed up, a bag of groceries which had been sitting quietly, minding its own business, tipped forward. Flat packages of Ramen noodles rattled across the sidewalk, and a can of pork and beans rolled toward Shannon’s feet.
Halfway there, it seemed to catch on a crack in the concrete and roll on into the grass, bumping aside a can of mandarin oranges. This bounced a cylinder of cheap biscuits toward him.
“Oh, prunes!” The woman on the bench bent forward to gather in the noodle packages. Shannon, bending automatically, paid more attention to the biscuits than to their owner. He took a step back when he did see her. The clear complexion and bland face repelled him at once. She would have a particularly cruel smile. Women with cheeks like that always did.
He stood with the can of biscuits clutched in his hands. Now what? He didn’t want to have to talk to her, but he wasn’t going to walk away with her biscuits. She’d scream for the [police—he knew she would—and with that jaywalking charge already on his record…no, wait. That hadn’t happened, had it.
Anna looked up at the young man frowning at her biscuits. The sidewalk here was very dirty, of course: nice of him to check whether the tin had broken at the Easy-Open Seam. Most men his age would never think of things like that.
“I’m sure it’s all right,” she told him. “I don’t know what made everything fall all out that way.” Anna stood the bag up and piled the noodles inside, and then twisted it toward him so he could drop in the biscuits.
Shannon hesitated for a long time, and then sat down on the bench to slide the cylinder into the opening. “Is….” He had to lick his lips to go on. “Is that all there is?”
“I think so.”
The woman bent farther over the bag, presenting the back of her head to him. Shannon shuddered and turned away, checking the grass. “Oh! Here’s some oranges!”
Shoving his hand down to pick up the can, he rammed his thumb against the rim of another, heavily concealed by bending grass. With his luck, this can was old and rusty, and he’d die now of tetanus. With one thumb in his mouth, he brushed back grass with the other and spotted the familiar, not at all dirty, label of a can of pork and beans.
Anna, still rearranging things in the bag, exclaimed, “Oh, thank you!” He WAS a thoughtful young man. Poor fellow: anyone looking at him could see there was no one to think of HIM. His haircut was very bad, and the cuffs of that dress shirt were frayed to the point of dilapidation. He smelled far too strongly of Ivory, too.
She pushed the mandarin oranges down among the other groceries. “That bag’s just about full,” he said.
“Oh, that’s a sure sign,” she said, giving the groceries another shift. He was very young. She shrugged. Not everybody could be the right generation: he looked like one of those boys who always assumed an electric guitar and a stage would be their destiny, only to wind up working in an office. He just hadn’t learned yet how to fit into the civilized world. The civilized world had a way of teaching you, though.
Shannon held his breath until she sat back again. Then he saw her eyes go to his hands.
“Here’s another.” Keeping his eyes on her at all times, he set the pork and beans can on top of the other groceries. He could feel himself turning red, seeing in her eyes she thought he’d planned to steal her beans. Her face showed how superior she felt to the rest of the world. She looked the perfect image of his third grade teacher, the one with the paddle, who liked to hear little boyus scream. (His mother told him what he had seen was a clipboard. All these women worked together.) Twenty years gone, and he could still see those cruel eyes, and hear her voice saying, “Hush, Shannon. You’re making a show of yourself.”
Maybe it was time to make a show of himself. He’d been quiet, restraining his wolf persona for so long. Maybe the time had come to lope under the full moon, to let the werewolf slake its thirst in its victims’ blood. She could be the first.
“Well, now. What’s the problem here?”
Perhaps the cans were too heavy for the noodles to support: in any case, the bag tipped again before either pair of hands could stop it. The can of beans, particularly, was active, seeming to jump and roll for the street. Shannon went after it, but his left foot found the can of mandarin oranges. Flailing with the recaptured beans, he just missed slamming the can between her eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asked him. He took a few seconds to sit square on the bench again: Anna hoped he hadn’t twisted an ankle. He didn’t answer. Of course not: no man would admit he was hurt. His face was just like Colly, who had started as her doctor at that clinic in California, only to substitute himself for her other addictions and wind up addicted himself. He’d jumped in front of a train. She closed her eyes for a moment.
The young man rose and she opened her eyes to see him walk, without any sign of a limp, toward the packages of noodles, which had managed to fall in the shape of a little hut, with rwo walls and a roof. He touched the roof and the walls fell in, making him jump back.
“Bug,” he growled, sitting down again. “Bit my leg.”
She studied him as he bent farther forward to retrieve some more Ramen. “You know that’s the way trouble starts, Anna Eleanor,” she told herself. But her life was probably as full of trouble now as it could get, and he did seem to be built pretty much along the lines of Dr. Colly. From what she could see at this angle.
She had attracted a lot of attention from young and slow-moving types like this young man, after she deteriorated to California from dancing in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas it had been older men and some very nice suppers, and plenty of money for artificial life sweeteners. California’s men, not often as soft-spoken as this specimen, didn’t offer supper. And eventually one had to admit one wasn’t up to scandalous scanties on the stage and become an aging city employee. They talked about rehab these days as if it was like having the flu, but in those days it had been one step above…. An aging city employee. Former city employee.
“Where’d those biscuits go now?” the young man growled, showing himself to be intriguingly limber as he nearly stuck his head right under the bench to look.
Anna shrugged. Once you got old enough that nobody cared what you did, nobody cared to do it with you.
Shannon spotted the wretched biscuits, just beyond the reach of his fingers. Every time he even brushed it with his fingers it rolled back another half inch. He was getting confused: was he going to hit the old woman with the biscuits or hit the biscuits with the old woman? Which was making him madder?
He glanced back at her. Her expression was intent; she was plotting something. His third grade teacher had worn just that face when she put the curse on him, extending his suffering outside her classroom, so he would undergo the transformation every full moon. “I can hear you howl, even when we’re far apart,” was what she’d been thinking, on that last day of third grade, even though all she’d SAID was “Have a good summer.”
Ah! His fingers curled around the biscuit cylinder. Just at that moment, it somehow slid sideways. Shannon extended further, and found himself at the very end of the bench and about to fall facefirst in the scraggly grass. He was shifting his feet when he felt a tug on his belt. This startled him into a leap. He sat down hard on the sidewalk.
“I’m sorry,” said the old witch. “I thought I could hang on.”
Likely story, Shannon thought, but even as he growled his displeasure, his manners slipped in to gloss over the wolf, as usual. “Oh, that’s just what WOULD happen, with my luck. Someone put a curse on those biscuits.”
“I know what you mean.” She extended a hand, which he ignored. “Once your luck starts downhill, it keeps going, and faster.”
“True.” Shannon put a hand down to push himself up and squashed a box of Jell-0 pudding. “Drat!”
Anna Eleanor rolled her eyes, thinking, “And such manners! Would you have said ‘drat’ when you were his age, Anna Eleanor?” She leaned forward to peer at the box. “I don’t think you broke it.”
“I hope not.” Shannon checked the crumpled box. “Shame to waste the tapioca.”
“That’s for my birthday,” she said. “It’s always been my favorite.”
The box wasn’t leaking as Shannon picked it up. “I always loaded up at the college cafeteria. Especially when they put the pudding from the night before out at breakfast. It was good and thick by then.”
“The wonder is how it makes such a thick pudding and such a thin meatloaf.”
Shannon, his eyes wide, looked up from the grocery bag, his hand poised above it. “Oh, you don’t add the pudding,” she assured him. “Just loose tapioca.”
“I know that.” His eyes were still bulging. “I just never met anyone outside my own family who made that.”
“Really?” She sat back. “Me neither. You’d think we both came to the park through the Psychic Pals Congregation.”
“An accident of fate.” He put the pudding into the bag.
Her head tipped to the side. “Can you have an accident of fate? If something’s fated, can there be an accident?”
Shannon’s lips tightened; she was correcting him. Just as well. If they’d gone on discussing food they had in common, he might have found himself liking someone he hated. That was fate, surely: the first woman he’d found who could talk about useful things, like tapioca, and she was the utter opposite of his ideal. He’d been looking all this time for a short, slender young thing with big eyes and wispy hair across the back of her neck, and what he found to talk to was an old schoolteacher, half a witch. That was why he was still even here, probably: she’d put a spell on him.
“When they came out with chocolate tapioca pudding, I tried that,” she chattered on pretending not to notice he’d been frozen to the grass by black magic. “Waste of time. Gilding the lily.”
Shannon’s agreement was out before he could stop it. “Some people put cherry pie filling on top. Makes you wonder why people who hate tapioca pudding don’t just eat something else.”
An intelligent boy, she thought: a bright boy. She hadn’t found anyone who’d talk this way since Dr. Colly. The folks at the store used to talk food, but nowadays they’d hire anybody who’d run a box across a scanner for minimum wage. Only the butcher was required to know anything, and she couldn’t afford to hang around his counter these days. Oh, Anna Eleanor, couldn’t you be a dozen years younger? Of course, you’d probably be named Jacqueline.
“I know what you mean,” she told him. “It’s like all those people who can’t cook rhubarb without adding strawberries or marshmallows or something.”
His mouth flopped open again. “Rhubarb! I can’t find rhubarb to buy anywhere! Unless that’s what’s growing in the planters at Booty Burger. I keep thinking I should cut some and find out. But if I make a poison pie, that’s just wasting the lard for the crust.”
“Only lard for pie crust.” Anna sat back. It was years ago, of course, when a young man who knew anything about baking was considered uninterested in women, but nowadays…. Oh, Anna Eleanor what difference does it make? Whether he’s interested in men, women, or cabbages, it’s nothing to do with you.
“Easier to just make the pudding.” Her head bent over the bag of groceries, checking the arrangement.
“If it is rhubarb, it’s just going to waste,” he said, waving a hand in the general direction of the brger joint. “I could make the pie and the pudding, and have both on the same day.”
“That would be a red-letter day.”
Shannon studied the back of her head. She had no idea how red this red-letter day would be. Her cunning in keeping him here would backfire. He would just hold her in conversation as well, until he decided where to start.
“What would you pick for the main course? Or is two desserts enough?”
“I don’t think they’d go together.” Distracted, Shannon considered the question. “Pizza? Fried chicken? Steak? I don’t know. With those to follow, I could make do with a Booty Deluxe.”
“Any of that sounds good.” She patted her groceries.
She did seem a nice person…for a wicked witch and torturer of small children. But this was not enough to defeat his wolf nature. Whatever she said, she had to face retribution. He would have hius revenge on his third grade teacher, since if she wasn’t dead by now, she must surely be immortal, and thus as untouchable as always. This witch would be her reprsentative. He would play her body like a drum, rising in bloody crescendo.
He turned wolf eyes to look for a weapon. None of the big cans was within reach, but perhaps he could offer to haul her groceries for her. Or maybe his hands would do. The old lady looked tough, but the wolf was tougher. If he could keep an eye on her until dusk, the wolf would take charge.
“I can’t remember the last supper I didn’t make myself.” She shifted the cans below the Ramen and pudding, probably reading his mind about the heavy can of beans.
Shannon leaned in. “Sometimes I make my own supper.” Tonight, he did not add, I’ll be feasting on your life’s blood, spurting from your torn throat.
“Tiresome, cooking for one.”
“Supper usually takes about ten minutes.” Now. Right now. Before she could say anything more to his human side. Time to act. Be like the wolf: make your decision and act on it. He rose from the ground, a looming shadow.
Oh, he was so tall. Anna sighed. “Well, I’d best be going, too. Thanks for helping.”
Taking the handles, she rose, turning her back on her helper. Forget him, Anna Eleanor: you were a fool even trying. That line about cooking for one was old and musty. He’s no more interested in you than he is in this can of pork and beans. He was just a polite young man; he’d have done the same thing for his grandmother.
Shannon studied her neck, picking a place to take hold. He and his chosen victim were both too deep in thought to realize one can of mandarin oranges was still lurking in a clump of weeds. One of Anna’s footsteps must have shifted the plants enough for it to roll onto the sidewalk.
“Wowp!”
Arms flailing, her groceries bouncing everywhere, she went flopping backward. Shannon, reaching for her neck, could not get his arms out of the way before she fell into them. He staggered backward under the soft, warm weight. She smelled of some exotic scent which made him think, for some reason, of pink bathrooms with ruffled curtains.
She turned her head up, her hair tickling the underside of his chin. “Well, you’re just being helpful all over the place!” She thumped one fist softly against his chest. “Lucky thing you keep your muscles so hard. I’m heavier than a bag of pudding.”
Shannon had no idea what to do now. Now that he had her in his clutches, and could easily hurl her to the sidewalk to rip off her arms and legs, that all seemed kind of drastic. That she should throw herself into this fatal trap was unexpected; that she should pay him a compliment while she was there stunned him.
“Well.” He fought to bring back the wolf. He wanted to growl “With luck you won’t find out how hard” but it occurred to him that this wording could be misconstrued. But that was good, wasn’t it? If he really offended her, she might show her true nature.
Anna was in no hurry to extricate herself, but she could see no future in this conversation. Pulling herself upright, she bent over to snatch up the mandarin oranges and grab at the disobedient bag nearest her. It was not an accident that she did not step forward, so that she rubbed against him as she worked.
She hoped she was smiling and not leering. “Why not come with me so I could make you something to eat?”
Shannon shivered. Something about that maternal smile was sapping his wolf strength; he almost said he would come. He looked vainly into the sky for a full moon.
She went on smiling. He forced his mind back to his third grade teacher, and her smile as she waved goodbye at the end of that hideous year. Fake smile, fake smile, as if he didn’t know that as soon as he was out of sight she would put the mark of the wolf on him.
And he still couldn’t think of her name. Maybe it had been his SECOND grade teacher.
“It would be a supper you don’t have to buy,” she told him. “And you could…..” No, Anna Eleanor: he’s the timid sort. That line about bringing you breakfast will scare him away. And isn’t all that original.
“I….”
“I bet you’d like something that lasted more than ten minutes.” Anna Eleanor you are completely out of your tree! She caught up more of the groceries. What are you going to feed him, anyhow? Maybe…well, no, maybe NOT the pork and beans.
“Well, I….” She studied her smile. Her mind was too devious for a simple wolf; he couldn’t read what she was planning. “I could…I’d…have to…leave early. I…I can be…dangerous after dark.:
“I look forward to it.” She smiled into his eyes, and set the first bag on the bench, so he could pick it up, which would leave her a hand free to take his. This hand was good and solid, too, if a little damp. And suddenly he didn’t smell nearly so much of ivory.
He pulled back, his eyes narrowing. “How can I remember you already? We just met.”
‘Remember you?” she demanded at the same time. “You never lived in California, did you?”
They stared at each other, laughed, and set off down the sidewalk.
“Any you guys want to pray a bit, we got some time.”
It was not a whisper, but the gruff voice was no louder than one. I looked around to see if one of the neighbors had a window open, and I was getting some Sunday afternoon movie. Kneeling in the garden, I had not expected to find anything more warlike than cutworms.
“Sarge, I prayed so much when we met that troll at the tunnel, God’s just gonna to say, ‘You again?’”
The voices seemed to be coming from close by, and a little below my head. I peered among the sprouts and then around behind me to see if somebody dropped a phone and I’d set off an app.
“There it is, anyhow. All we got to do’s walk past the gate.”
“Is that all?”
“Sarge, why’d the captain send us?”
“Best men for the job, Collins.”
“Yeah?”
“He can spare us.”
There were five of them, in the shade of the cabbage. Military men maybe three inches tall, their shirts open to show sweat and orange dogtags. Orange feathers crested their helmets and they had swords in their hands. They stood in a semicircle facing a clump of arugula, which I’m sure I had not gathered up in a black wrought-iron fence, with a high spiked gate (well, nine inches high.) I couldn’t see what was inside this arugula castle, but whatever it was was worrying them.
“Don’t seem to know we’re here.”
“Won’t last.”
“Remember: as little fighting as possible. Secure the prisoner, then beat it back to the tunnel.”
“Tell you what, Sarge. In case I forget, I’ll start back now.”
“Make me laugh, Haines.”
I could see them as clearly as the veins in the cabbage leaves. Their faces were green, though that could have been camouflage. Their eyes and noses tipped up in a not purely human way, but I knew those faces all the same. I’d seen faces just like them in my company overseas. The one on the far right reminded me of me: absolutely fearless and scared to death. Faces like that fought for Pharaoh and Grant and Eisenhower, and would be seen in any fights beyond the world we know.
I reached for my phone to take a few pictures, but apparently I’d left it in the house when I changed into gardening clothes. If I shouted for Pat, would the little soldiers hear me? I checked the window to see if anyone happened to be looking out.
“You know the job. Get in without….”
“Aieee! He knows we’re here! He’s breaking loose!”
“Firpov, Haines! Cover the windows on your left!”
There had been no windows in the arugula thicket before, but there was one now, next to the gate. From it came a length of pure darkness, a thick curling tentacle. What the rest of the creature looked like I couldn’t tell for the arugula.
I turned to my tools: just about anything on the cart was bound to help. But what would they think of that? There was no sign they’d seen me. How would they react to a bolt from above? Either side might think I was attacking them: did anybody have weapons that could have an effect on me?
“Bust the gate! The amulet, Firpov: you had it!”
“Hope I didn’t use all its power on the troll.”
“We’ll find out.”
Tentacles stretched from two windows now. Two of the soldiers had raised their hands, sending little orange pulses through the air. The tentacle nearest them retracted. No one was doing anything to the tentacle by the thicket gate. It seemed to be growing, reaching for the invaders.
The clippers should remove a tentacle or two, but if the soldiers charged, I might get one of them at the same time. There were all those spray cans and bottles, including a really old, slightly rusty can of bug spray; the kind they warn you on the evening news not to use. Would that doom them as well? I grabbed it up and checked the directions for any mention of leprechauns, gnomes, or pixies.
“Ha! That’s got it!”
“Go go go! Collins, Petrov, hold ‘em ‘til we hit the tunnel!”
Three of them were running as fast as they could when cushioning a wriggling black object covered with tentacles. The tentacles curled around their arms, as if holding on for dear life. Two others were swinging their swords against the advance of what seemed to be three princesses, in tall cone hats and flowing aprons. Red and orange pulses shot from hands on either side, and the swords clashed against raised ladles. One princess/chef swung up a small pot and the two soldiers fell back.
Their sergeant and two comrades vanished under a cabbage. Petrov and Collins continued to fight their way backward, pressed hard by the princesses. One soldier fell, but the other grabbed him by the collar and dragged him backward as two princesses dipped ladles in the pot and tried to splash him with whatever soup or potion was inside. I watched as both forces ground toward that particular cabbage and, pushing back and forth as the advantage shifted, slowly joined the others and their refugee in the tunnel.
I waited, but I couldn’t hear any more battle cries or sounds of swords against ladles. After a while, I risked leaning an ear down to the cabbage where I’d seen them last, but the only sound was from a bicycle going slowly by on the sidewalk. This made me realize what a show I was providing in my current position, and I straightened up, stretched my back, and gathered all my tools.
I took these back to the garage. Watching a ballgame was less likely to upset the balance of power.
In my boy days, we were always getting articles about how Jules Verne had predicted the future. This was a major theme in the world in those days: Jules Verne had predicted space travel, high-powered submarines, television, and who knows what all else. There was a reason that the government named its first nuclear submarine after the ship in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Jules Verne, as a prophet, had Nostradamus beat all hollow.
Those days have slipped off to wherever the good times go. People began to speak of mistranslations of the French original for English-speaking audiences, and the natural reaction to years of articles about how great were Verne’s powers of prophecy was a growing flood of articles to explain what Jules Verne got WRONG. Our own mission to the moon, for example, did not involve a spaceship fired from a very large cannon. And in all of this, the sheer adventure of many of Jules Verne’s tales was lost under other societal considerations.
The newest prophet of futuristic achievement and technology, according to articles and videos I have run into, is Star Trek, especially The Original Series (TOS, as it is known to acronym lovers). The writers in the Sixties were just making stuff up to look like the future, but they were not stupid, and they benefited from Gene Roddenberry’s requirement that the shows was not going to stop the plot to explain how all these devices worked. This was considered a nice bit of polish in the day, but it did not really impact today’s culture until someone sat up during the umpteenth rerun of The Trouble With Tribbles and exclaimed, “Hey! Thise communicators are really flip phones!”
So Star Trek has gotten the Jules Verne treatment, having correctly, with some adjustments for changing styles, predicted the desktop computer, the big screen television, and 3-D printing.
I am not here to start the anti-Verne effect on Star Trek (that’s already begun). But I think I’ve spotted something no one else has. And it struck me while I was considering the postcard shown above.
“Peaceful Thanksgiving”: curious wish. We usually wish people a Happy or a Merry or a Nice. But how many cards wish you a peaceful holiday?
A lot, as it turns out. I found dozens of cards from around 1909 wishing people a Peaceful thanksgiving. I wondered if there were some particular crisis that led to this, but the answer was right there on the postcards. Because the ones with longer captions wished you a “peaceful amd prosperous” Thanksgiving. Several had poems which spelled it out explicitly: Thanksgiving was a day for celebrating plenty, but prosperity was not possible without peace. Peace and prosperity, to our ancestors, were something to wish for, and be thankful for, on Thanksgiving.
And my mind went to “Day of the Dove”, a Star Trek episode in which weird things happen which keep the crew busy with a small invasion of Klingons. Both sides are upset by this turn of events, and spend their time fighting and killing, though they find their fallen foes brought back to life for another round, as if something is profiting from all the violence. They eventually deduce that an outside force IS, in fact, causing the events to feed its needs through hatred and violence. So the bitter enemies get together to laugh the alien out of existence.
So hey, yeah: Star Trek got it right. Predicted social media, didn’t it? An entity which, realizing more hits mean more profit, has perfected a system which brings you articles or videos to upset you. I started noticing it myself during all the alarums and excursions of 2020, when I learned from a lot of my friends on Facebook that it was okay to hate people if they weren’t the same (fill in blank) as you. Everyone who responded with an angry answer got an angry reply, and the number of hits grew, and the alien entity grew stronger and stronger.
It’s an Election Year again this year. Shortly after Election Day, we will hold Thanksgiving. Not that laughing at this alien entity instead of howling with anger will solve the WHOLE problem, but….
Just saying. Have a Peaceful Thanksgiving. And prosper.
“That was fun,” said Bluebell, tossing flower petals to the left and to the right, and then over her head.
Primrose, who was standing on her head to scratch an ankle with one hand, pointed an accusatory finger with the other. “You said they were boring.”
Blubell nodded. “That’s what it was fun to push them I the mud.”
“And we had puppies to play with.” Sweet Pea was wiping fragments of grass from a faucet on the side of the field house, using other fragments of grass.
Meadow Saffron sighed. “I hated breaking the leash that way.”
“Oh, yes.” Sweet Pea looked up. “I was afraid the puppies would get hurt, too.”
Meadow Saffron sat on the handle of the faucet. “Plus it tasted terrible.”
Sweet Pea flew to Unfirom, who was watching the couple depart. “Would the puppies have gotten hurt?”
“Perhaps.” The angel’s eyes remained on the couple. “None of us could have gone beyond the park to save them.”
“I grabbed the leash,” she pointed out. “But it just dragged me along.”
“Could have sworn you were fat enough to anchor it,” said Bluebell.
“So what’s going to happen?” asked Primrose, flying to the angel’s nearer ear as Sweet Pea shot off in pursuit of Bluebell, thumb and forefinger extended for a devastating pinch.
The angel’s head did not move. “I believe it will clear up.”
“No!” She kicked at his earlobe and missed. “To them!”
Now he looked down. “I meant them. They will Do It on exactly the same day as before, but eleven minutes later.”
Meadow Saffron tipped her head to one side and put a forefinger on her chin. “Does that make a difference?”
“It will.” The angel raised his eyes to Sweet Pea and Bluebell as they shot overhead, the phron in the lead shrieking “Yowp yowp yowp yowp yowp!”
“Come on, kid!” Primrose was above the angel’s head, shouting to her speeding sisters. “I could’ve pinched her pink and purple by this time!”
“As fat as you are?” demanded Meadow Saffron, flying up to pick out a patch to pinch. In moments, four phronik were shrieking back and forth through the sky.
Unfirom watched for a moment, but this was something he had seen before. And he knew that no matter how much they chased each other, they could not be worn down to a point at which they’d all be quiet. Hope was reserved for mortals.
Someone was hanging a sheet along the backstop of the softball diamond. Sytriding over, the angel found that hope had not yet forsaken the neighborhood activist, who was struggling to hang on to the middle of the big banner and adjust both corners at once.
Unfirom took a few steps back to study this new text, now obscured by a fold of fabric, and then by a gust of wind. He nodded.
FRIENDS OF GRIESE PARK NEED TO UNITE AGAINST MERCENARY BUREAUCRATS WHO WOULD RESTTRICT THE PARK TO ELITE PATRONS OF AN ART MUSEUM!!!!!
The protestor stepped back herself, frowning either at the expressed sentiment or the draping of the banner. A corner slid toward the dirt and she lunged for it, which kept her from observing a flying oblong coming that direction.
Unfirom scanned the air for phronik. They were not to be found. He was supposed to be unsurprisable, but somehow it always startled him to find disaster striking without their assistance.
The developer, still reluctant to return to the office, passed the softball diamond which had had decided would be the easiest thing to tear down first. A woman all wrapped in canvas wobbled against the backstop while a greasy kid who should have been in school at this hour asked her if she’d seen his skateboard. He lingered, supposing this was just an excuse to mug the mummy. He disliked skateboards, which would be banned from the park, lest damage occur to the flowerbeds.
The boy was content to find his undamaged skateboard upright against the fence, and moved on. So did the developer, frowning at the horse-drawn carriages carrying a party of sightseers. Yjeu’d have to be prohibited in this neighborhood, too: they really played hob with the traffic.
Unfirom watched the protestor drop to the ground and start to roll herself free, smudging the banner in the mud at home base. She was one of those people positively destined to be bruised by everything she attempted. There was nothing he could do about that.
Something he could do was not far away: his eyes widened. The phronik, now that he needed them, were of course neither to be heard nor seen. Since they could not possibly stay quiet for long, he stayed where he was, head tipped to the side to listen.
The song grew louder as he marched toward the fieldhouse.
“Lola found a chemical I oxtail stew
That made a scratchy record sound like it was new;
It worked on shellac, doughnut discs, and thirty-threes
But didn’t do a thing for nasty old CDs.
Percolator, coffeemaker,
Subaru and Studebaker:
All ya got is all yer gonna get;
Waddya bet?”
Primrose was at it again in the kitchen, but this time she sat cross-legged on top of the stove. She wore a bay leaf behind one ear, and waved a wooden spoon to direct her forces.
“Do you have that cup of light brown sugar yet?” she demanded, directing the spoon at Meadow Saffron.
“Well….” Meadow Saffron stood back from the heaping cup of sugar. “It’s nice and light in the middle, but it’s white on top and way too dark on the bottom.” She flew back to the open bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, and tipped this forward. “It needs more work.”
Primrose twirled the spoon above her head. “Put that at the top, but if it’s still too dark at the bottom, add flour. That’s light.” She swiveled on her buttocks to swing the spoon toward Sweet Pea. “What about the six tablespoons of butter?”
Two of the siz tablespoons fanned out on the countertop had butter in them and three were empty. Sweet Pea was stomping butter into the remaining tablespoon, raising each knee nearly to her chin as she worked. “Oh, my feet go squishy squishy!” she squealed, paying no attention to Primrose at all.
The chef shrugged, and wriggled around toward the refrigerator. “We still need that egg!”
“I’ll get one over there yet!” Bluebell shot out of the fridge, an egg nearly as big as she was held above her head. She did, indeed, get halfway to the counter before this slipped and joined the five other piles of egg and shell on the floor.
She kicked herself in the right ear. “Why, oh why, can’t chickens make eggs with handles?”
“Just out of curiosity,” said Unfirom, stepping into the room. “Why are you just sitting there instead of helping to carry the eggs?”
Primrose stared at him, exasperation all across her expression. “The recipe says to preheat the oven,” she declared, swinging her spoon toward the battered blue cookbook, “So I’m sitting on it to warm it up!”
The angel accepted this without comment. “Do you suppose you could come out here and cook up something else?”
“Oh, I suppose.” Primrose tossed the spoon toward the book. “That would give me time to figure out where to find a vanilla to squeeze.”
Unfirom accepted this as well. None of the phronik objected to leaving the laboratory, though Bluebell flew backward, her eyes on the refrigerator as if longing for another try.
“There.” The angel indicated a park bench.
There was no sound—except for that of Sweet Pea sucking butter from her toes—for a moment as the phronik looked from the gray-haired woman on the bench to the black-haired man lurching along the sidewalk.
Then Meadow Saffron flew upside-down to a spot in front of the angel’s eyes. “You’re joking.”
“Them?” Primrose demanded. “When are THEY going to Do It?”
“She,” said Unfirom, “Is not going to Do It at all. He is going to Do It TO her. Then, because she won’t stop screaming, he will strike her repeatedly with a can of pork and beans from that bag. He will be caught two hours after he kills her, still carrying the pork and beans. He will manage things so they do not take him alive.”
“Oog,” said Primrose, her nose wrinkling so much it nearly disappeared. “Is he worth bothering about?”
The translator took its usual two-heartbeat delay in showing the reply. “Yes, Your Magnificence. With your digital signature, we can proceed immediately.”
Yellowe nodded, and typed in a question he’d had answered before but wanted to read again. “And my people won’t know it’s happening?”
Another pause. “We can’t guarantee complete secrecy, but we do our extractions very quickly.”
“Good. I don’t need anyone second-guessing me at this point.”
“Thank you, Your Magnificence. We hope the payment will benefit your people as much as this resource will benefit us. If you should ever require any….”
He pressed the tab to cut off the communication. The offworlders were very ceremonious and could go on for pages of text. The last thing he needed was for a journalist to hack into the system and get word of this arrangement out before everything was finished.
Yellowe moved to the window and nodded to himself. The translator had defined the resource the offworlders wanted to purchase was something they drank. Since his people didn’t drink, and he could very much use the economic boost they had given him in return, he felt this was a win-win for all concerned. The broad avenues and tall buildings were busy but peaceful under a clear green sky. With any luck, everything would stay that way.
He moved back to his desk and opened the channel to his executive secretary.
“No comments to the press until tomorrow, Gilbert.”
The reply showed on the screen at once. “Acknowledged, Your Magnificence.”
Yellowe looked out over the city again. The Council might complain he had acted unilaterally again, but when they saw the size of the payment the offworlders had made for an unused resource, all complaints would cease. Everyone would recognize Sticey Yellowe as the greatest chancellor….
He peered along the avenue that stretched beyond his window. Was the sky getting brighter? It hadn’t been overcast this morning. Any clouds….
Things were getting a lot brighter outside, brighter even than the usual noon in the capital. He reached to the computer, but stopped. The roof of the Union League Building had just peeled away. Was the building itself leaning? Workers rushed out of it, moving in swirls of panic. The Elder Library, a much wider building, started to incline toward the Union League.
He pressed the tab that summoned his Chiefs of Staff. His eyes went to the window again and he recoiled. The brightness was growing, invading even his own office. He closed his eyes to slits. The offworlders! There was more to this deal than they’d told him! They had acted as if…but they would learn not to fool with Sticey Yellowe!
He blinked at the message on his screen, suddenly unable to read it. The brightness grew, and with it, a hot, sickening feeling that started at his head and moved across his body. He dropped to the floor, feeling as if his weight had tripled.
The door burst open, and six of his security force tumbled into the room. They rolled forward on the floor, trying to reach him, their mouths open to call to him, but though he could see this, he could not hear a word.
He reached to his desk, trying to climb back to the computer screen, but breathing was difficult, bordering on impossible. The light stabbed his eyes. His research had missed something during the offworld deal. What was this “water” anyhow?
***
“And the Chancellor had no idea they all lived underwater?”
“Nobody did. Apparently, with no dry land and so few things growing to above the surface, hardly any of them even knew there was such a thing.”
“Is it all aboard?”
“Going through the strainer and purifier now.”
“Let’s go. Best sort of deal to make. No complaints.”
Blogsy Babbles 