Walkabout and Rocketry

Pinny walked out his skin that fateful day (the day after he died in the cold county jail, victim of the United States Postal Service). Pinny walked down the street and up to the house of the man who was rumored to give rocketry instruction to anyone who was interested. That is exactly what the sign on his lawn said: “Free Rocketry Instruction to Anyone Who is Interested.” Pinny figured he had nothing to lose. He had been dead for a day, after all. What could it hurt?

Right?

With a deft rap on the door, Pinny summoned Rocketman, who quickly appeared.

“You're the meth addict who died in the county hoosegow, ain't you?” asked Rocketman.

“Sure am,” said Pinny, rubbing his tender noggin with a piece of flannel soaked in camphor. “And I'd like some rocketry instruction.”

Rocketman studied Pinny's eyes and his nose and his mouth. He went on, studying his chin and the lump on the side of Pinny's neck. Pinny shifted uncomfortably.

“What 'cha doin'?” asked Pinny.

“I'm studying you...as one must study oneself. You got it, or do I gotta' pop you one? Now shut up, while I study.” Rocketman seemed impatient.

Pinny could feel the insects beneath his flesh begin to move again, and he was afraid that his beloved necklump might be shifting in shape or size. He raised his hand to cover it, and then lowered it again, afraid that it might call attention to him in a way that he did not desire.

“Is that the cha-la salute?” asked Rocketman, noticing Pinny's raised and then lowered hand. “You a cha-la boy?”

“I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about,” said Pinny, blushing bright red (bright red for someone who has been dead for a day, anyhow. These things are rather relative, you know).

Rocketman stopped his study and stood close (very close, in fact) to Pinny's face. He locked his little beady eyeballs onto Pinny's little beady eyeballs. And he leaned in close. Close. Real close.

And he stuck out his tongue.

The serpentine tongue must have measured at least eighteen inches on a good day, but Rocketman only needed an inch or so of it just now, as he placed but the very tip upon the very tip of Pinny's nose. It felt cool, and then warn to Pinny, who very nearly drew back, but stood still and allowed Rocketman's tongue to linger for at least a minute.

Rocketman withdrew his suddenly rainbow-colored tongue and turned back into his house.

“Where you going?” asked Pinny. “You going to go get your rocketry supplies so's you can teach me?”

“I will not teach you,” said Rocketman. “I will not give you instruction.”

“Why?” asked a saddened Pinny. “Do I taste bad?”

“Steel,” said Rocketman. “Steel dreams. They ooze out of a man's flesh. And I can tell your dreams, even if you cannot tell them yourself. Be off. And be well.”

Pinny turned to a deserted street – nowhere to wander for a lonely meth-ghost, but the abandoned avenues of Rocketman dreams.

Breakwander

Once, twice, a fourth time the bell sounded. It skipped right over the third ring and made the fourth ring louder than ever. Eyes shot heavenward to see if the bell was right. Eyes shot up, eyes came down. Eyes closed and deep breaths came in...deep breaths went out. It was the fourth sounding.

The man down the road who kept pigs in his backyard “lifted a finger,” but not to help. The man (he was a priest, but not the typical kind) made a motion. A gesture. A sign. He lifted his finger, so that no one could say “he didn't even lift a finger,” but it made no difference whatever the case. Sometimes you have been on the right side of a thing like that, sometimes on the wrong side. Sometimes it makes a difference, sometimes it doesn't. The best part is when the person (the man with the pigs in this case) offers you something really fun to eat.

Consider the fun things you may have eaten when you were a child. You may have been given all sorts of sweet things and precious crumb-cakes. I might as well have called this clappy-doodle tale a “precious crumb-cake,” for I love the tale with the same affection I pour out of my very soul for that wondrous baked good. Don't you? The fun things you ate as a child might even come back to haunt you, for just last week I was visited in my dreams by a horrendous meatloaf. I loved meatloaf, and I still do, especially such as my mother made, complete with a hard-cooked egg in the middle. My mother always said there was a “surprise” in the meatloaf, but I knew better. I knew it was just a hard-cooked egg.

But in my dreams it was a horrendous meatloaf that came to me. I struggled to wake up, and I tried calling out. While I thought I was screaming, when I began to come to consciousness I realized I was making only a quiet “engh, engh, engh” sound (as in “what sound does a turtle make, Timmy?”). The meatloaf in my dream was not, in and of itself, horrendous, but rather it was the spectre that carried it that was so horrendous. I cast my mental gaze upon him, and did not even ask why he was carrying a meatloaf. I just tried to move, to scream, to flee. For there are awful things that a spectre with a meatloaf can do to you in your dreams. Don't even ask me to elaborate.

And so he made no sign, he lifted not a finger. It was just as it always had been. I was on the right side, but I noticed that no finger was lifted. And the bell sounded again – a fifth time, a sixth time, a seventh time. It fell silent, never to ring again.

And the man down the road, the man who kept the pigs, he said the same thing. The same thing that always gets said. By someone. Anyone. The same thing I have told you all a thousand times if I told you but once. The same six words that make me want to break into a wander. That make me break and wander. That make or break a wander. A breakwander. Breakwander.

I told you once before to go and consider what this means, and nothing changes. You know that.

“I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

The Boss

As long as we have been on the topic of the Trudgey Mint®, we had best say a few words about the Lumpy Burger®, and the psychic benefits of consuming this most delectable treat.

Crafted entirely from reclaimed and karmically-neutralized human flesh, the Lumpy Burger® is the fast-food delicacy you have been looking for! Aside from the golden-brown spelt and glucose-ethylene bun that serves as a royal throne to this king of meat-wiches, the Lumpy Burger® is 100% gluten-free, and produced exclusively from the donated limbs of free-range Chicagoans. Bone fragments are carefully removed, and the resulting meat is ground to a smooth and even texture.

Before we go any further, please note that this entire account is fictitious, and neither the blog, the editors, the writer of a Martini and a Pen, the board of directors of Tom Janikowski Industries, Inc., or the Monika Luukkonen Literary Agency advocates cannibalism or the eating of human flesh in any way.

Little Mikey Nitrous knew just how beneficial the Lumpy Burger® could be, and he would save up the nickels and dimes that he earned from mowing old Mr. Swicknipple's lawn just so he could enjoy the meaty treat at least once a week. When Mr. Swicknipple's lawn did not need mowing, Mikey would break into his house in the middle of the night, flood the basement with a garden hose, and then offer to help Mr. and Mrs. Swicknipple bail it out later in the morning. Mr. Swicknipple was always confused, but grateful. Little Mickey would squirrel away the loose change in the tin-foil brassiere that he had crafted in art class and that he kept on a high shelf in his bedroom. Sometimes when the moon was full and bright, its light would reflect off the brassiere at night and keep Mikey awake. A small price to pay for such fine artwork, he felt.

Good art is like that, isn't it? More on that on another day.

When the time was right and his brassiere was full, Mikey would ride his little scooter-contraption down to the local Lumpy Burger® franchise and order up “a double”. This was always a little dicey, as each Lumpy Burger® was crafted from the flesh of a single limb, but there was no such guarantee made about the continuity of limbs when more than one patty were combined. The diner might be consuming the calf-meat of a dental hygenist from Cicero and the forearm of an accountant from Westchester, or the bicep of a transient from downtown and the thigh-meat of a shop owner from Skokie.

Psychic and karmic confusion could likely ensue.

After consuming his Lumpy Burger®, little Mikey would recline on the cool, cool lawn outside the restaurant (for Lumpy Burger® restaurants were always, by contract, encircled by a wide swath of cool, green grass). He would look up into the sky and watch the puffy, white clouds float by as he waited for the spirits of those whose flesh he had just consumed to talk to him. Often, with a double, he might be liable to hear from spirits on “both shores,” as it were, for about half of the Lumpy Burger® donors were still alive and merely getting by with prosthetic limbs.

On one fine day, after having just enjoyed a double with friend onions, little Mikey Nitrous lay in the grass, listening for voices and looking at clouds. He did not have to wait long.

“Make peace with your creator every day,” said the spirit of a librarian from Lincoln Park who had met her end by a falling brick.

“Give me back my stapler, you idiot,” said the spirit of a graphic artist currently working in Elmhurst.

Michael swallowed and then sat down the rest of the burger. Using his little entrenching tool (he always carried his little entrenching tool), he dug a small grave in the soft green lawn. He placed the remains of the Lumpy Burger® in the shallow hole, and carefully covered it with soft, cool earth. He picked up his things and, wiping the dirt from his hands as he walked from the grave, got back on his scooter-contraption and zoomed home, feeling his neutralized-karma levels to be at a dangerously low level. Mikey contemplated this as he arrived at his house and went inside.

He went to the den and plopped down in his father's overstuffed recliner. “Aww, fiddlesticks,” he said, flipping the TV to the shopping network, “the hell with Karma. I'm just gonna' buy me some herbal samsara inhibitor.”

Trudgey Mint®

When Mr. Michael Nitrous of West 43^rd Street was still a tender youth of only ten years, and still known to the world as “Little Mikey Nitrous,” (you remember him, don't you? He would grow up to hold a respectable position within an advertising agency. Of course you remember him. Who can forget him?) he opened the door of his parents' suburban home one fine, shiny day.

(If you can make sense out of long, convoluted parenthetical asides such as the one in the last paragraph, more power to you, you freak of nature.)

(The biretta calling the cassock black, you might say.)

Enough. It was a fine and shiny day, and Little Mikey Nitrous had just taken his prescription pain killers, downed a pint of his father's bourbon, and was weaving his way to the little corner store, known for penny candy and Polish sausage. The lady who owned the place liked Mikey, and would sometimes give him a bonus gift of a free piece of penny candy or a shot of neutral grain spirits. Mikey was hopeful.

As long as we are one the subject, my brother Patrick had struck up a cordial relationship with the owner of a similar corner store in our hometown – of course having no relationship to the one in Little Mikey Nitrous' hometown. The owner of the store that my brother would visit often gave him small gifts such as the broken nibs of ink-pens and tiny bits of blueprints that had been torn up or fashioned into works of origami. Patrick never quite knew what to do with these little gifts, so he stored them all in an old coffee can that smelled of rancid bacon fat. He kept them there for many years, until the day that his gardener mistook them for garbage and threw them into the incinerator along with the Styrofoam packing peanuts that he burned every Tuesday – Tuesday was Styrofoam packing peanut day in his community. Thursday was bubble wrap day. The incinerators burned overtime both days.

Little Mikey Nitrous walked through the door of the shop, making the little bell tinkle merrily. It had the same effect on old Mr. Potchford, sitting near the counter. He shifted his weight on the rickety chair fashioned from the staves of a cracker barrel, broke wind, wet himself, and scowled at Mikey. “Damn kids,” he said in a creaky voice, “all that damn racket...”

“Good morning Mr. Potchford, you old loon,” said Mikey.

“Go to blazes, you lil' injun,” said Mr. Potchford, motioning rudely with his middle finger.

“Awww...Mr. Potchford,” said Mikey, “I'm sorry, I shouldn't call you a loon. I apologize.”

“You still go to blazes, you lil' injun.”

“That is hardly the politically correct term to use, Clarence,” said Mrs. Potchford, walking up and calling her husband by his name. Nobody else dared to call Mr. Potchford by his first name. Anyone foolish enough to do so would risk a severe finger-waving and dressing-down at the hands and mouth of Mr. Potchford. He had a reputation.

The old man grumbled, closed his eyes, and lowered his head to his chest.

“What can I get you, Mikey?” asked Mrs. Potchford, beaming at him in his Opossum-tagged Garanimals.

“Just an ice cream sandwich, please, ma'am.”

“That's all?” asked Mrs. Potchford. “No carburetor fluid or ice picks?”

“No thank you, ma'am...just the ice cream sandwich.” Little Mikey Nitrous slapped two thin dimes on the counter.

Mrs. Potchford produced a fine, fine ice cream sandwich from the folds of her apron. No one pondered quite how unlikely and incongruous this was, aside from Mr. Potchford, who merely feigned sleep.

“Thank you, ma'am,” said Mikey. “Keep the change!”

“Of course, Mikey.” said Mrs. Potchford, pocketing the money. “Oh, and Mikey...” she trailed off.

“Yes, Mrs. Potchford?”

“Here is a little Trudgey Mint® for you to suck on.” Mrs. Potchford slid the large, ominous capsule across the counter.

“Oh boy!” exclaimed Little Mikey Nitrous, “I love sucking on a Trudgey Mint®! There is nothing quite like the fresh, clean taste of a Trudgey Mint®! Thank you!”

Little Michael Nitrous skipped to the door of the Potchford's store, thinking of the delightful afternoon he would have, nestled safely in the secure bosom of his beloved treehouse, listening to old polka albums and sucking on a Trudgey Mint®. He paused before he left, and turned once again to the old man sitting near the counter on the rickety chair fashioned from the staves of a cracker barrel. “See ya, Mr. Potchford,” he said with a smile and a wave of his hand.

“Go to blazes, you lil' machine designed to convert thermal energy into mechanical energy for the purpose of producing force and motion,” said Mr. Potchford, his breath reeking of Trudgey Mint®.

Pull-Through (or "It Took Me Five Days")

It seems to always be the men with the biggest belt buckles who have the widest-brimmed hats. Perhaps you have noticed this. Perhaps you have also noticed that there is a greater pressure exerted upon those belt buckles than upon other belt buckles. Whether or not this is just a function of physics remains to be seen.

There was one particular fellow with a wide-brimmed hat and a large belt buckle that wandered into myth (his ears didn't get to itching – he just had wandered into myth. I know that you are expecting me to give you his name so that you can keep track of him. I refuse to accommodate your desire in this case. I will refer to him as Puller, for he was very good at pulling, and most people that he knew would refer to him behind his back as their friend “who is good at pulling.” If someone needed something pulled, they would go to him. They would fly to his side and request that he pull. “Pull,” they would cry, “pull!”

Puller wore his wide-brimmed hat to conceal a balding pate (no one calls it that anymore, you know), and to shade his eyes from the glare of the radioactive sun. When the winds blew hot and fierce, likewise, he would pull the brim down just a little bit, so as to offer some protection from sun and blowing sand. The wide-brimmed hat was a beauty, all right, encircled with a ht band made of woven calf intestine. When Puller told people about the hat band, he would pronounce the word “intestine” with a hard accent on the second syllable, and would make the third syllable rhyme with “fine.” What a riot. Fun for the whole family, that crazy, crazy Puller is.

Puller stepped out of his cocoon to watch the dance of the mitzi-puffon ballerina fairies one intensely windy day. The samite gowns that adorned the fairies' bodies blew in the hot, dry wind, and offered little protection from the elements for their fair, fair skin. Puller noticed this and offered each one of them a small suit of glittering armor, which they declined to a fairy. Puller laughed ad shook his head, thinking them foolish. More than foolish, they were immune, you might say, to such ravages.

Mitzi-puffon ballerina fairies are stronger than you think.

With a rough and calloused hand the sketchy Puller reached out to stroke a fairy, which was not allowed (but Puller had no way of knowing this, as you could imagine). As he opened his had the dry, dry skin cracked open so that red, sore flesh could be seen underneath the epidermis. A slow trickle of blood began to issue from the cracks in the proud flesh, and it dripped onto a samite gown. Tragedy of tragedies.

(Let me mention, by way of my patented aside, that samite is difficult to wash. Further, it is symbolic of a purity mostly unseen these days, and so for a trickle of blood to stain such a pristine piece of fabric would naturally dredge up thoughts of similar inconsistencies. Blood on a white sheet. Nails through pure, innocent flesh. An ensign before the entire world. The moon in a sun-dappled sky. The sun appearing at midnight.)

(For the night is as clear as the day.)

(As one said.)

Puller paused. He dropped to a knee and watched his blood drip onto the sand beneath his holy, holy boots. The mitzi-puffon ballerina fairies all flitted away and disappeared. Puller was left by himself – aloone with the wind, alone with the sun, alone with the sand. Alone with his belt buckle and wide-brimmed hat.

And a perfect red heifer.

A Different Pile (Trinity IV)

“As long as that swarthy Slavic word merchant is in the business of telling stories about infectious disease doctors and the lovely lobes of pestilence they encounter, I might as well tell you about the universal affliction.” Mangey Paul always liked to talk about the so-called universal affliction and he was going to take this opportunity to indulge himself.

“The universal affliction makes us groan,” he said, stretching back into his wicker chair. “Listen to that wicker cry out under the pressure. If I were naked, I would have read Marx! Ha! Sumblymitch!” Mangey Paul always made that joke while sitting in his wicker chair, and I know that I have shared it with you before.

When you cop, either cop from the best or cop from yourself.

“The universal affliction was not achieved by choice. You might say that we all just kind of fell into it, the same way that some very lucky sumblymitch falls into an inheritance. 'Ceptin' it sure wasn't an inheritance in the typical sense. You know how some inheritances consist of a block of rabbit culture and a 78 of Hoagey Carmichael? That's more of what it was like. And still is.” Mangey Paul took something out of his pocket, brushed off an imaginary (or real?) piece of pocket lint, and stuffed it into his mouth. He chewed vigorously and held up an index finger (his own) to indicate that his story would continue in but a moment. At length he swallowed, cleared his throat, rolled his eyes, and went on with telling the tale.

“I am not immune to the universal affliction, you know – I just duck down low behind something whenever it draws near. That way I am mostly kept free from its ravages. Do you know what I mean?”

I tried to speak, but no sooner did I open my mouth than Mangey Paul waved off my comment with a dirty-nailed hand.

“You don't know. You don't know. You CANNOT know,” he said. “If you knew you wouldn't be sitting here, waiting for the help such as it has ever been. Now...here.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out another piece of whatever it was that he had been chewing on. Brushing off another imaginary piece of pocket lint with his dirty-nailed hand, he offered it to me. “Stick it in yer' kisser,” he laughed.

I did not want to stick it in my kisser. I felt a little nauseous, and whatever it was that he had just handed to me gave off a funny smell – a little like cat urine, and little like a female gingko tree. A little like death and taxes.

I stuck it in my kisser.

A minute later, after I had blown my nose and wiped the little bit of vomit away from the corner of my mouth, Mangey Paul continued.

“If ever there was a single person who did not suffer the universal affliction, I suppose that he would have been a pretty special sort of soul. I use that word lightly, as I do not understand what a soul is...exactly. I was once told that a soul is...how shall we say? Bestowed upon the person in question. I rather liken it, also, to the universal affliction.”

I looked around for something to drink, as I felt a great need to kill the taste in my mouth. Nothing was to be had, and I instead opted to tear off a button from my jacket and place it beneath my tongue to stimulate saliva flow. This was a trick that I had learned from my great uncle (nickenamed “the hairless wombat of Scranton”) who was an explorer and who specialized in desert crossings. He had died an untimely death by choking on a ram's-horn button torn from his favorite wool blazer.

“And as affliction, inheritance and soul, then (all the three), bestowed, in a sense, are nothing that one can give oneself, likewise is the cure. The cure for the universal affliction.”

“The cure?” I asked.

“The cure,” he said.

Mangey Paul rolled his eyes and vigorously rubbed his upper lip with a dirty-nailed hand. He coughed and spat. Coughed and spat. The spittle looked silvery-inky on the pavement.

“The cure is that guy over there,” and he motioned with a dirty, bony finger.

I could not see anyone in the direction that Mangey Paul motioned, so I squinted hard until he slapped me on the back of the head.

“Stop that,” he said, “you look dumb.”

I felt really stupid, and I flushed hot and red. I put my chin on my chest and my tail between my legs.

“No one sees him, it seems, anymore. So don't feel bad. Here...let me make it up to you.

He reached out his bony, dirty hand in my direction.

“Go ahead,” he said, “pull my finger.”

Something told me that I really didn't want to pull his finger, but something else told me that I was going to pull it anyway – no matter how hard I might try to avoid it.

Pile? Who?

“Vat ees zees?” asked Doctor Weimar, the infectious disease specialist, prodding the moist, fleshy growth with a long, bony finger. “Ees eet a vart?”

The patient sat quietly on the examination table and spoke not a word, but stared at the floor and shook her head. The moist, fleshy growth wobbled back and forth a bit.

“Vy are you zo qviet, young lady?” asked the bony-fingered specialist as he turned to prepare a syringe. No answer issued forth from his patient, so he merely went about his business. A long, old-fashioned glass syringe. A long, old-fashioned corkscrew hypodermic needle fashioned from an otherworldly metal that was extracted from a meteorite. Four ounces of cold, cold gin. He drank the gin in one swallow and filled the hypodermic needle with the wondrous pile-driver heiney serum that he was known for.

His calling card. His stock-in-trade. Pile-driver heiney serum.

The patient began to tremble as Doctor Veimar approached with the heinous, heinous implement.

Just a brief word on heinous implements, please, if you will. My father had a heinous implement in his tool chest back home (that was before the war, of course). He eventually moved it into the drawer of his workbench, and mother was much happier. Anyhow, he would use the heinous implement to set straight the tinkling pipes when autumn was in the air. From time to time my Uncle Cheetah (not his real name) would stroll over to our house and ask my father for the loan of his heinous, heinous implement. Father would always deny his request, claiming that “the neighbor needed it later.”

I have become fond of this method of escaping treacherous and unpleasant duty assignments. When the kommandant asks me to saunter forth with my little, shiny rifle and procure animal corpses for feeding my fellow dragoons, I will often say “my neighbor needs it later.” The kommandant will thrash me with his riding crop, but it gets me out of the duty.

And I like that.

More to the point of my aside, it should be noted that heinous, heinous implements were largely outlawed under another famous “public safety act.” One can now only wield a heinous implement if one is also at the same time drinking a 32-ounce sweetened and carbonated fountain beverage. How curious.

Doctor Weimar loomed close. He was not a weaver, mind you, just an infectious disease specialist. The trembling patient held out her thin pale arm, ready for the treatment. She shook with fear.

Doctor Weimar stabbed the hypodermic needle into the muscle of his own lower jaw, just below his right ear. He pressed the heinous, heinous implement hard into the flesh, until it was stopped by bone. He squeezed the plunger and felt the wondrous pile-driver heiney serum flow into what would one day be his mortal remains. We all have a set of those, you know. Some have two.

“I feel infinitely better, Doctor,” said the young patient, hopping off the examination table. “Thank you so very much.” She exited the room with a shining countenance and a newly-found spring in her step.

Doctor Weimar prodded the moist, fleshy growth that now took up residence on his chin. He poked at it with a long, bony finger.

“Vat ees zees?”

Without a Half-Moon Shake

The half moon didn't shake as much as you would have thought, and certainly not as much as you were told. Nothing ever shakes quite that much, but you have to watch yourself. You go to bed a small child and wake up an adolescent; go to bed a young man, wake up an old man. You go to bed a scientist and wake up a shaman. I've seen it happen before.

So that is what the free-world would call the prologue, and that is what the not-so-free world would call collateral damage. Either way you try to minimize it, and explain it away until the point where everyone has forgotten it. So with the prologue behind us I share with you the tale-face of Misty Popper, hog-butcher to the world and a place where the sun doesn't shine. When people use that phrase and tell others to “put it there” (that is, in the place where the sun does not shine). That is the place they are referring to – the tale-face of Misty Popper, hog-butcher to the world.

Misty crawled away from the wreckage and brushed a little bit of the smoldering fuselage out of her hair. She could only think of the lunch she had never eaten and the lip she had never kissed. Just one lip. It was an upper lip. She had kissed the lower one, but could not, at the time, seem to locate the upper one. Sometimes you find challenges like that. Sometimes the challenges find you. Sometimes it looks more like ham than lip.

Go figure.

Misty Popper loved ham, and she loved lip, but her tricky-dicky neurons (remember them? Of course you do, sweet-ums) loved other things as well. The tricky-dicky neurons loved theft and fire and sticky fingers. She had to fight against the tricky-dicky neurons to get around to even a short thought of lips and ham.

Only one thing could silence the tricky-dicky neurons, and at times Misty Popper knew it. She knew exactly what could silence the tricky-dicky neurons.

Brushing a last little bit of the smoldering fuselage out of her hair, Misty cast her glance on what looked like a pelican with its head bowed low upon its breast. There was not even a sound.

Misty Popper looked at a broken pomegranate in her hand. There was not even a sound.

The tricky-dicky neurons fell silent, if only for a while.

Hello There.

Is this what writer's block feels like?  No, I think it might be something else...perhaps something like a fast-moving, flesh-eating bacteria.

There...doesn't that sound better than some pithy little "writer's block"?

Zzzzzzzzzz...

Yes, that is the idea.

I dare you!

WWPSD? (What Would Peter Switchback Do?), Part 2.

Peter Switchback would never follow his heart.  He knows that the heart can get a man into trouble.

Peter would only follow the conviction of the Holy Spirit.  That's a lot harder to do, but it works out a whole lot better in the end, he's always reckoned.

Peter would always choose to do his duty over his desires.  A free man works for a reason, he's always figured, and a man should be thankful for that.

Go get your Peter Switchback on.

This is not Fiction.

...I suppose that much is obvious.   I was about to post a fresh piece of flash, taken from a mega-stupendous ultra-compendium that I am working on, when my breakfast arrived.  Let me share this with you...

A greasy, blue-lipped lady brought my pancakes to my table with a cough and a tremor. Don't you hate that?  The cough deposits all kinds of germs onto your pancakes, and the tremor spills your coffee.  "Hey, Jack, here's yer bloody hotcakes,"  she coughed at me.

"Thank you," I replied, covering my mouth and nose with an errant piece of camphor-soaked ermine.

"What'cha writin'?"  she asked, slapping my breakfast down in front of me.

"Nothing of any importance," I said.

"I wrote something once," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. " You wanna' hear it?"

"Sure," I said, "why not?"

"Once upon a time," she began, "there was a boy named little Mikey Nitrous, who would eventually be known to the world as Mr. Michael Nitrous of West 43rd Street..."

"Wait a second," I said, "Michael Nitrous is MY character...you couldn't have written that."

"Yeah, " she said, "you're right.  I got it off a website."

"MY website," I said.

"Whatever."

"Well, tell me," I said, "why on earth would you steal my character?"

"Well," the blue-lipped waitress croaked,  "I didn't want to get caught."

"Huh?"

"Someone once told me that if you're gonna' cop, cop from the best..."

I felt my fuzzy little melon begin to swell with pride.  "Oh really?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, "but if you don't wanna' get caught, cop from the worst."

I looked down at my pancake.

"You want I should get you some syrup for that?"

I ate my pancake dry and washed it down with a  cup of cool phlegm.

Back to the woodshed.

With a Half-Moon Shake

Half-baked mumbling nutters running down the street and shoving pointy, pointy spears into fragile and innocent flesh is no way to start a tale, and it is sure no way to make a body smile on an otherwise fine day. But there you have it, and there was that pointy, pointy spear sticking straight out of a patch of fragile and innocent flesh.

You have to call them like you see them, I guess.

“You mumbling nutter,” cried a security guard in a dusty blue jacket, “you mumbling, mumbling nutter!” The security guard saw the pointy, pointy spear go right through the flesh, and he couldn't believe his eyes. Would you be able to believe your eyes if you saw something like that? No, I don't suppose you would.

Well, that mumbling nutter didn't pay any attention to the security guard, and just walked right on (after he pulled the pointy, pointy spear back out again). He knew that pointy, pointy spears had been made illegal under the 1974 “Pointy, Pointy Spear Act”, but when pointy, pointy spears are outlawed, you just know that only outlaws will have pointy, pointy spears.

Anyhow.

That mumbling nutter retrieved his pointy, pointy spear, and shambled down the avenue, with the dusty-jacketed security guard following at a safe distance. They passed a man with a small pushcart selling peach fritters, and the nutter thought about stopping. He thought better of it – the last peach fritter he ate gave him heartburn, and so his doctor had advised him to avoid fried pastries. The security guard stopped for one, though, and had nearly caught up to the nutter again when the saturated fats from the lovely, sexy, peachy fritter coursed their wicked, wicked way to the tricky-dicky neurons in his fuzz-covered melon and he toppled over in a heap.

The mumbling nutter walked back and stood over the security guard.

“Fragile,” he mumbled to himself, “but not quite so innocent.”

Tantum Ergo. Well, I Declare.

Peter Switchback done seen the best kinda' horse you ever gonna' need.  A horse like that is hard to find, and worth lots, besides.  Just imagine what it musta' looked like.  We all seen horses like that, but we ain't usually ever able to lay claim to 'em.

Know what I mean?

Sure you do.

So he seen it at the auction, and there was that music playin' - not the music you think. It warn't that "Brown Eyed Girl" song like you might s'pose.  It was even better, and it reminded him of things almost as good, almost as carefree and good.  Hell, it might've even been better.

It was sung in Latin, and he wept.

We all gotta' done have wept now and again.  Some just does it sooner than others.

Stabat Mater, You Might Say

“Nev'th'less, she stood there. All hangedy-outy like she was. You know how she was.” Folly Martin sucked a bit of barbecue out of his teeth and spat after he said this. “Damby, but'n if she wasn't a fool sometimes. Know what I mean, Tiller?”

Tiller just kept quiet and kicked at the dust. Lots of dust in Crawford County, there is. That's what my uncle John always used to say.

“Lots of dust here in the county,” he'd say.

Can't blame a man for just saying what's true. You know what I mean.

Anyhow, Folly spit some barbecue out of his teeth again and Tiller kicked the dust. “I think she knew it was the end,” he said, “and she didn't care too much. And I don't rightly mean she was hangedy-outy in that she was anything other than likin' to hang out with folks. Know what I mean?”

The question was again met with silence and a kick of the dust. Tiller pushed his baseball cap back off his forehead and cleared his throat.

“She never said anything, until I said something that I didn't think I was gonna' say.” said Folly. “Somethin' pretty bad. Not 'bout her or anything, just 'bout me. She knew it and I knew it, and she just made a noise so's there was no way I could miss what she meant by it. It was like a cry. A cry, I tell you. A cry. Anyone ever do anything like that for you? Do something without sayin' a word so's that you know exactly what they mean?”

Tiller scratched the center of his chest and coughed. He spit again into the dirt, and then pulled his cap down again over his eyes.

“So we all knew. She knew anyway. I think ever' damned person knew,” said Folly. “I just had to get over it and not say it again. You hear?”

Tiller looked off at the dry pea fields. “Who wouldn't cry?” he asked in a voice. A voice like bitter anguish.

We've all got a voice like that somewhere, I'd guess.

And in that harsh southern sun another patch of Crawford County dust got hard baked like a stone of stumbling.