The narrow corridor echoed the short shuffling gait of the stick-like figure, bent over at the shoulders against the weight of the ceiling, though it was two metres at least above his head. His scarecrowness proceeded steadily onward, slightly darker than the hall’s walls and not much swifter. The dimness never varied except that the far end was a black rectangle that painstakingly dilated, sprouting a door. The distance did not daunt the black clad spectre. He had all the time in the world, though the world that called upon him, that put him into motion, was always in a hurry. Everything there was a crisis. Through this door at the end of the tunnel were other, like corridors, each a little darker than this one, each a little danker and cooler, though never so cold as to fog the breath–if indeed this man breathed at all. Each new corridor deadened the sound of the ancient’s passing, as if trying to erase his existence. Finally, he stopped. He knocked on the door out of habit, for there was no need–on the other side of the door the room’s occupant was in no position to answer the summons.
He walked to the prone form and laid a bony, translucent hand on the black shadow on its stone bed.
“Mr. Hellecchino, sir. You are wanted.” A thin, breathless voice barely above a whisper, a light breeze through fallen leaves afraid to let their presence be known.
A slow grating noise built up until it became recognizable sound, like the scraping of stone monolith on stone monolith in an ancient decrepit space, presaging the awakening of some timeless, mummy-curse.
The old man waited patiently. There was no reason or way to quicken an awakening.
“I don’t wish it,” abraded a voice.
“There’s nothing for it, sir.”
“Why is my peace being disturbed?” the voice growled, sounding almost human.
“A summons has come, sir. They are in need of a hero up there.”
“I am done with heroics. Let me be.”
“I am sorry, sir, but–”
Hellecchino sprung to a sitting position, eyes flashing in his hollow, sallow face, a massive block of stone released by some hidden mechanism from being held down.
“I don’t want to be a hero! I am nobody’s hero!”
“Apparently you are, sir. You’ve been summoned.”
“Who is it has called me up from my sleep?”
“Stan Lee.”
“Ah. That is different. Who has he sent to carry me back?”
“A Chinese, sir. Shi KeJian.”
“History repeats itself. He’s been here before.”
“Yes, sir. I believe he has.”
“Does he never learn?”
“You have not yet disappointed him, sir.”
“What a pity,” Hellecchino breathed heavily. His first breath in a long time. Then he pivoted on his heavy ass and put his legs over the edge of his stone bed. The joints creaked and groaned. He waited awhile, then held out his hand for the Summoner. “It’s been a long time since my feet have touched the earth. Be careful, Edgar.”
“I am ever, Mr. Hellecchino.”
There was no show of strain from Edgar as Hellecchino leaned on him and clunked to the floor. Heavy-limbed as he was, Hellecchino stood still, hand on the old man’s shoulder, until he felt safe and balanced.
“Lead on, Macduff.”
The sloping path was not steep but neither Hellecchino nor Shi Kejian could see its end up ahead. Their beginning place was shrouded in gloom. To one side was a precipice of great silence that disappeared into the blackness. To the other side was a rock-infested clay wall. Shi Kejian kept his right hand trailing across its surface. The pathway itself was smoothed stone carved out of the wall. Their footsteps did not resound.
“Wish I’d eaten more carrots like my mother said I should.”
“If you’d stay for awhile, you wouldn’t have a problem.”
Their voices did not carry very far.
“You’re hand’s going to be filthy by the time we get up top. You oughtn’t do that.”
“I can’t see where I’m going, Hellecchino! What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Trust in me.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“How many times you come down here?”
“I haven’t bothered to count. It’s not a journey I enjoy too terribly much.”
“Y’oughta know your way by now.”
They were silent awhile.
The grade grew steeper.
“Y’know. . .it ain’t easy being brought back.”
“It isn’t easy coming to fetch you, either.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“It’s my job.”
“Got a day job?”
“Hell yes!”
Hellecchino chuckled. “So how come you do this?”
“Penance.” As Hellecchino did not reply, Shi Kejian continued, “It’s my burden to bear.”
“Ah. Cheated death?”
“Not exactly. But I heard a voice.”
“From out of your past? One of your previous lives?”
“No previous lives, Hellecchino. Just this one.”
“And the one before.” Shi Kejian stopped at the definitive contrariness in Hellecchino’s voice. “Don’t turn around! You know the rules. You want to spend the rest of your life down here?”
“I wouldn’t have a life if I did.” Shi Kejian took a deep breath. “Well. . .I’ve looked down this tunnel before. There was a voice at the end.”
“When you were on a mission, yes?”
“When I cheated death, as you say.”
“What do you call it?”
“They call it near-death up top.”
“What do you call it?”
Shi Kejian did not answer. He took a deep breath of the dank, fetid air–and held it. Then he started moving again, his feet dragging as if his shoes were filled with the weight of the world.
“I called it a moment of peace. A moment of bliss,” he said after awhile.
“That’s why you keep coming back? To retaste the burdenless realm?”
“I’m cursed like Sisyphus.”
“To say so, you must still be human,” Hellecchino said with a caustic edge to his voice.
“Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Be sure to let me know when you make your last journey.”
“Christ.”
“He’s down here, too. Hey! The Pillar of Ildeth. We’re half way home. As it were.” Hellecchino drew his first breath as he passed the salt stalagmite. “Where am I bound?”
“Tonk Crossing.”
“Population of 3000 white folk. More or less. And about as many slaves.”
“That was quite awhile ago, Hellecchino.”
“Has anything changed?”
“Ah! Here are the stairs,” swore Shi Kejian as he tripped up the first few steps.
“Has anything changed!” bellowed Hellecchino.
“I heard you the first time.”
“Well?”
“Not appreciably, no.”
“Nobody listens to you, do they, Mr. Mirror of History?”
“No. Memory’s too short.”
“Yours or theirs?”
“Stupid question.”
And with that, the travelers remained silent for the rest of the climb to the upper world. Shi Kejian was anxious for the top of the staircase. Hellecchino’s steps became more labored.
Hellecchino sauntered along the old Chisholm Trail heading for Tonk Crossing. As his appearance was timed appropriately, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the Brownwood Stage would be passing by and he could hitch a ride. Charlie Chaplin-like– jumping onto the boot. And then jumping off just before the settlement just beyond the crossing. Then he could walk into town, materializing out of the stage dust wake as if magically. The ways of a hero are multifarious. To say the least. Who was Hellecchino to deviate from the heroic mode? Appearing out of nowhere was so astoundingly expected and such good theatre. Why spoil a time-honored spectacle?
So it was that Hellecchino breathed in the dry dust of the East Central Texas plains, the Bravos River Basin anti-flood plain effluvium, and appeared in Chokepointe Piste as a mirage. And what a mirage he was with his slouch hat, creased and sweat-stained and billowing dust, drooping over his left eyebrow, below which there was an unshaven face. Hellecchino could not grow your manly, dark beard. He had a light northern Italian beard that took three weeks to become noticeable. The stubble, though, gleamed and glimmered like shards of frost in the dust, making him look somewhat, perhaps less than desirable in certain company. He did have a nice cambric shirt with piping at the seams, three-button cuffs and a loosely drooping bandana of purple, which was, of course, dust- and sweat-stained. His Levi’s were creased and bleached and ragged-like at their distal ends where they curved over well-worn brown boots, one of which had the toe top leather rising up and away from its sole revealing a holey red sock, pinkly spick-and-span toe winking out at the world.
“What a nice town you have here,” Hellecchino said to the first men who gathered around him, the stage incumbents having been judiciously forgotten for the more mysterious traveler in the dust.
“We like it,” said a suspendered man, looking Hellecchino up and down and curling his lip, twitching his nose.
“That’s good. That’s good,” commented Hellecchino. “Better to like where you’re livin’ than not.”
“I don’t like it so much,” said another man.
“Shaddup, McTortle,” said a third.
“Why don’tcha leave?” asked Hellecchino, raising an eyebrow.
“All he is is talk,” said Mr. Suspenders, waving a well-manicured hand in McTortle’s direction.
“And who might you be?”
“Mayor.”
“Got a name?”
“The.”
“I see. Well, The–”
“You can call me Mr. Mayor.”
“Ain’t that quaint!” ejaculated Hellecchino, drawing himself up to his full height.
“Don’t git smart, stranger. We don’t like smart asses ’round these parts.”
“Ahh. I see. Well, then.”
“What’s your business in town?” asked the second man, a sandy-haired, freckled cowboy who had obviously not seen the prairie much in the last few years.
“I was summoned.”
“Was ya, now. . .”
“Yes. Y’all wanted a hero and here I am.”
The three men laughed. The stage hands laughed. The remounting passengers laughed. This was the greatest joke since Santa Anna for these people. Humor out on the East Coahuila flatlands was greatly appreciated, everything else being so dry and prosy. This was, after all, Jim Hatfield’s Blacklands. Chokepointe Piste wasn’t so far from old Fort Fisher, home of the Texas Rangers. Hellecchino wanted to meet Jim Hatfield. He’d read a lot about him. Hellecchino knew, too, that later in history there was another bunch of rangers who weren’t such winners. Shi Kejian had told him. Shi Kejian of the historical encyclopedic knowledge. Damn him. Always confusing the picture. Why the hell couldn’t he leave well-enough alone? That is, ignorance.
So, Hellecchino said, “Is Jim Hatfield around?”
“Shit!” spat the third man, a short stumpy little man with crinkles around his brown eyes. “He ain’t but a pigment of your imagination.”
“Just shaddup, will ya, McTortle? If ever there was a killjoy, it’s you.”
“What joy’m I killin’, Mayor?”
“Don’t you mind McTortle. Jim’s out around Plum Creek checkin’ on some critters.”
“You mean armadillos?” asked Hellecchino, wide-eyed like.
The Mayor guffawed. “No. I mean real varmints.”
“I see,” nodded Hellecchino. “So, critter ain’t real armadillos but varmints is. Right?”
“Where the hell you say you’s from?” asked Sandy the Cowboy.
“‘Bout that far away.”
“Fuckin’ Easterner!” And Sandy spat.
The Mayor and Sandy the Cowboy turned on their respective high heels and walked back to the stage office. The stage took off, leaving Hellecchino and McTortle in a cloud of dust.
“Welcome to Chokepointe Piste,” said McTortle.
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Hellecchino.
“Half an hour and you’ll be a known quantity. Sheriff’ll be round to smell you out.”
“He’s a dog?”
Later, Hellecchino found himself standing at the bar of the Lone Star Inn & Bordello nursing a mug of pretty sad beer. Being at the inside end of the bar, Hellecchino had a good view of the batwings and, through the looking glass, the rest of the inn, raised stage included, though lord knows what kind of hackwork trod the boards. Averill’s Troupe wasn’t due into town for another week for a performance of the melodrama vaudeville “Bushbirds” about a good boy gone bad. So said the sign on the wall by the window–and the poster outside the batwings, to the right, near the window, as if it were twin to the in-inn announcement. Mark Twain was supposed to have commented, after seeing the show in Carson City, that anyone attempting to discover a plot, a narrative or a moral should be shot.
Hellecchino figured if he wanted accurate information, he could do no worse than the Lone Star Inn & Bordello. It was still early, so not many people–not many men–were in the Lone Star Inn & Bordello. Saloons and liquofers were sexist in orientation, which is perhaps why the liquor was strong, the talk big and the performances anemic. Saucy wenches and men of derring-do, good or evil, fit the bill, enspirited men being somewhat shy of discrimination. After all, they were after relaxing, not compound-complex contortion of intellectual dexterity.
There was a crinkly-bearded, leather-skinned old man–at least, he looked old–sitting at a table at what would be considered down-front when the show started. A young gimp stood, albeit a little cockeyed, about midway down the bar putting away shots of rotgut like they were liquid sugar. He smacked his lips after each toss-back. Hellecchino smiled wryly to himself. If you can’t make it in society, you gotta make do with society’s loose end. Personal welfare is what life was all about and sometimes personal welfare–sanity– required alternative states of consciousness.
Hellecchino saluted the cripple and choked down a swallow of Middle Bosque River beer that had lost its frigid edge about 200 metres from the edge of the river, about 2800 metres before reaching the saloon. But Hellecchino didn’t have much choice. Lone Star Inn & Bordello was the only imbibification platform in town to four churches, the most populous and prestigious being the Cary Nation Fourth Southern Baptist Altar of the Lord Come to Gitcha Church just down the street, on the city side of the Brownwood Stage office. The Lone Star Inn & Bordello being just a hair outside the 1826 city limits–which was just fine with the Bible thumpers who, nonetheless, drank their fill of wine Sunday mornings, though of course it was for a good cause–was exempt from the city’s dry ordinance.
And so, here was Hellecchino, waiting to establish his calling. Waiting to garner the interest on his investment, however unwanted. An ordination he didn’t particular want, mind you, but Hellecchino was not the man to shirk his duty. You can’t be a hero without a task, though, and Shi Kejian hadn’t told him, Hellecchino, just what that task involved, so, for all intents and purposes, Hellecchino was a hero waiting to happen. A character waiting for a story. Where were Pirandello and Ellen Datlow when you needed them? Hellecchino sighed, looked down at his warm flat beer and. . .it was just about this time, as he was wishing things would hurry up and happen, that the crip hobbled over to Hellecchino, pushing his pirated Jack Daniels along the bar before him. When he drew nigh of Hellecchino, he stopped and stared up into Hellecchino’s face. He didn’t speak. Not at first.
“Yer somebody special,” said the slightly tilted fellow. “Ya remind me of Coyote.”
“How entrancing,” remarked Hellecchino over the little man’s head.
“Ya don’t know Coyote, do ya?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
The invalid took a shot of unprotected whiskey. “Ya don’t say?”
“No,” protested Hellecchino in his most arrogant voice, “I most certainly do. He’s a trickster god of the Indians. Akin to Shakespeare’s fools, Foucault’s madmen and the Chinese monk Ji Gong. He has a doctrine of discovery and a thousand ways to trick Badger out of his wife.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” And the little man slapped his higher knee. “Yer an intellectial.” He poured himself another shot. “Welcome to Chokepointe Piste. Who’s Shakespeare?”
“Is that stuff better than this beer?”
“Oh. . .I don’t know. But after a couple shots, ya won’t care.”
“Barkeep!” Hellecchino raised his hand. “Another shot glass, if you please.” The bartender delivered, Hellecchino poured himself some of the lamester’s whiskey and raised his glass. “Thank you.”
They both killed the rotgut. The freak poured another for both of them.
“I toast you again,” and the halt held up his glass.
Hellecchino drank but he did not.
“You didn’t drink,” said Hellecchino.
“How observant you are! It is customary in these parts to drink three toasts. I join you on the fourth.”
“You drank of the first.”
“Anxiety. To you.” He poured a third for Hellecchino, who dutifully drank it down. It wouldn’t do to thwart local custom just yet. “And now. . .to us.” And together they slugged the obligatory fourth welcome to Chokepoine Piste–or Rut depending on which side of the river you came from–drink. Hellecchino was just warming to this custom when it came to a halt.
“I wish there was something to sit on,” remarked the deformed little man, looking round behind himself.
“Barstools haven’t been invented yet.”
“The hell! Toilet’s out back. Just squat over the ravine and let fly. Everyone does it.”
“No, no. No thank you. Would you like to sit at a table?”
“How ’bout that one there? Smack dab in the middle.”
“Oh. No, no, no. That one there,” said Hellecchino, pointing to the far corner. “We can see everything from there.”
“Hmmm. . .backs to the wall. Nowhere to go. We could get shot like Wild Bill Hickock.”
“We ain’t playin’ poker.”
“Well, bless my soul if you ain’t thought of everything.”
“Call it second sight,” said Hellecchino, grabbing the half empty bottle and moving off in the agreed-upon direction.
When they’d seated themselves comfortably in the cane-back chairs facing the batwings, the infirm leaned in.
“You play poker?” he asked.
“No.”
“Blackjack?”
“No.”
“Go fish?”
“Yes. I do that.”
“Good. I got a marked deck here. Let’s play.”
“Marked deck?”
“Sure. Only way a spaz can win.”
“I have second sight.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I’m a hero.”
“You don’t say. . .”
“As a matter of fact, I do say.”
“Ain’t that nice.” The twisted man began dealing out the cards, whispering to himself 1-2-3, etc. “Need a sidekick?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
“Name’s Buck.”
“Hi, Buck. I’m Hellecchino.”
“Yer shittin’ me! Got any threes?”
“No, I’m not. Go fish.”
“Yer lyin’! That card right there’s a three.”
“My goodness! You’re right. I overlooked it, it seems.”
“Bullshit.”
Hellecchino smiled. He finally had a friend. Although this fact might seem trite and not worth mentioning, the contrary is true. For, in this world, it was who you knew that was important. Connections. Networking. Making the right acquaintance, smiling to the right people. Get you everywhere. Regardless of how fake and forced the glinting white teeth. No need to bother with demur.
But Hellecchino also knew how to upset the balance. Like a good hero. For most times it wasn’t the hero who needed to do anything.
But before he could do that, he needed to establish his legitimacy. However illegitimately. This is the part he hated the most. But what do sentiments, what do feelings have to do with anything when you’ve got a job to do?
Answer: nothing. Nothing at all. Get over it. Chokepointe Piste was no different than anywhere else, after all. Even though it thought it was better than anywhere else. Like just about anywhere else.
This was especially true of the land baron to the south-southwest, one Gyorgy Yabu. Yabu had lots of land and lots of money and lots of cattle, many head not actually his. But that was of no consequence. Gyorgy Yabu had lots of friends, some in high places, some not but all appropriately placed. And Gyorgy Yabu was into business. He owned the sole transportation company outside of the newly created city of Waco. That was okay, though. Traders coming into the county from Waco or elsewhere had to buy options from Development Industries Yabu, including using the company inns and checkpoint transfer stations. DIY owned controlling interest in the Brownwood Stage, the telegraph office, the newspaper (The Yabu Yeoman) and the Lone Star Inn & Bordello. He didn’t bother to sit on the Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t have to. DIY was a by-ward in Chokepointe Piste.
Hellecchino had a sneaking suspicion Gyorgy Yabu’s behavior was the reason he’d been called up. For one man to own so much was hubris and hubris was a sure sign of tragedy. I.e., trouble.
“You got any aces?”
“No. Go fish.”
“Hello!?” said Hellecchino. “That’s an ace right there,” he flicked the top of a card in the afflicted’s hand.
“No it ain’t.”
“Yes it is.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re holding marked cards.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!”
“Pretty fast learner, eh?”
“I’ll say. Gyorgy Yabu’s gonna have his hands full with you.”
“Gyorgy Yabu. Not a name that rolls off the tongue.”
“Does ’round here.”
“Do tell.”
“Better to show ya ’round.”
“I was kinda hoping to see the show.”
“Ain’t no show tonight.”
“So what’s he waitin’ to see?”
“He ain’t waitin’. He’s seein’ right now.”
“Must be exciting, judging from his reaction.”
“Timothy O’Keryak. He’s learned how to sublimate.”
“What a terrible skill. I didn’t know it existed before television.”
“Television?” asked Buck as he pushed past the batwings.
“It’s a kind of in-house entertainment system. Schizophrenia at your fingertips.”
“Will I live to see it?”
“Most prob’ly. Society needs its blank cartridges to feel good about itself.”
“What the hell’re yew talkin’ about?”
“Don’t you think we oughta pay?”
“No need. Yabu Welfare. He gits a tax break. Y’see that sign yonder?”
“Brownwood Stage.”
“Read the small print.”
“DIY Depot. Wow! A handyman’s store.”
“Nope. DIY in this part of the world means Development Industries Yabu. Gyorgy Yabu owns it.”
“Oh, looky here. Here comes the sheriff,” said Hellecchino gaily, pointing dead ahead.
Hellecchino watched the sheriff as he approached them and they approached him down the middle of the street. He was a short man with a short, quick, bowlegged stride that said, more or less, and rather mincingly, “I ain’t afraid o’ nothin’ and you ain’t important ‘nough.” Polished silver-spangled double holsters with ivory-handled colts rode low on his hips, strapped to his brushed cotton denims neatly tucked inside his snakeskin high-heeled boots with dreadlock rat tail tassels. Blond. The boots were, of course, narrow and perhaps affected his gait. Their narrowness also allowed his easy manoeuvring through the horse droppings that dotted the street like brown mushrooms. The sheriff’s well-manicured hands protruded whitely from his immaculate scalloped double-breast-pocketed off-white shirt. Pearl buttons. Polished and shining big star pinned to the left pocket. Epaulettes. He had rings on his fingers. A black 10-gallon hat bent and tilted at the appropriately rough and facetious angle shaded Ben Franklin spectacles. Bifocals. So his eyes constantly shifted up and down.
“Has he got a bone in his nose?” inquired Hellecchino, narrowing his eyes.
“‘S how it got so high.”
“Oh. I thought that was a line of wispy wind-driven clouds up there in the blue, blue sky.”
“Nope.”
Buck stumbled to a stop to one side and behind Hellecchino. The sheriff stopped directly in front of Hellecchino, about 3.1 metres back. His circle of personal space was quite large and he was quick on the trigger.
“New in town, aren’tcha?”
“Yep.”
“I guessed so. I’m Sheriff in these here parts.”
“Yep.”
“Name’s Medusi Minkowski IV. You got a name?”
“Yep.”
The ensuing silence on Main Street grew until the shopkeepers stood in their doorways fearing the worst of it yet again and nothing they could do about it. The townies out and about stood stock still, afraid to move lest they be mistaken for someone who cared. This was a cowed town.
Medusi Minkowski IV, Sheriff of Chokepointe Piste, shifted position, his hands raising themselves out away from and over his holsters as if buoyed up by air.
“I ain’t usedta askin’ twicet.”
“Yep.”
In the blink of an eye, faster than greased lightning, like a scared jackrabbit two bright and shiny nickel-plated Colt .44’s sprung up into Hellecchino’s face, each gripped by a pink-with-emotion hand.
“What th’ hell’s yore name?”
“Since you ask. Hellecchino.”
“What kind names’ that?”
“Mine. What kind of names’ Medusi Minkowski IV?”
“What?!”
“What kind of names’ Medusi Minkowski IV?”
“Why, you danged smart ass varmint!” And Medusi Minkowski IV’s guns flared to life.
But not before Hellecchino waved his hand in front of him. Such a simple gesture with such amazing and difficult to explain consequences: the Colts blazed but there was no sound and all the bullets fell onto the sheriff’s snakeskin boot toes. Medusi Minkowski IV jumped up and down, his guns silently blazing away in all directions, though mostly toward the sky. Eventually the guns emitted only trails of smoke, proving once again that behind every forest fire there’s a smoking gun. Medusi Minkowski IV holstered his guns, cleaned his glasses and looked disbelievingly at Hellecchino.
“What th’ hell’s goin’ on here?”
“Prestidigitation.”
“You can’t talk to me that way!” And Medusi Minkowski IV twirled around on his left high heel and retreated to from whence he came.
“Don’t forget to load your guns, sheriff!” shouted Hellecchino after the retreating lawman.
“I don’t think you oughtn’ta done that,” squeaked Buck.
“Why not?”
“‘Cause the sheriff’s Yabu’s man and he’ll tell on you.”
“Smoking out the enemy, Buck. No better way to discover him than by insulting his ego.”
“Insultin’ his ego?”
“Yep. Disrespecting his authority.”
“Oh, my. That’s worse’n I thought. We better do something.”
“You were showing me the town.”
“You think we oughta continue?”
“Yep.”
“They’s spies out here. Lookin’ just like ever’body else walkin’ along the boardwalk.”
“Yep.”
“Damn if you ain’t crazy.”
Hellecchino laid his hand on the hamstrung little man. “Let me tell you a story, Buck, while we’re moseying on down the road.”
“Well. . .I guess it might take my mind off’n what’s comin’ up.”
“Long ago and far away, this did not happen. Weasel and Fox were walking along. In their way stood a rock. This was no ordinary rock. It only looked inert but it was special. It had a name. Katrinka. It had spidery lines of green moss all over it. The kind that tell a story. But we’ve not got time for that story here. Katrinka had power.
Weasel stopped before the rock, admiring it. ‘Wow! Cool rock, eh? It’s got power, I bet. Wonder what it’s doing here. . .’ So, Weasel took off his blanket he was wearing and put it over the rock. ‘Here, Katrinka, take this as a present. Take my blanket, friend rock, to keep you from freezing. You must feel cold upon occasion and the weather’s a-changing.’
‘What a giveaway!’ said Fox impressively. ‘You sure are in a good mood today.’
‘Aw, shucks. That’s nothing. I’m always giving things away, you know. Katrinka looks real nice in my blanket, don’t you think?’
‘Sure does. But. . .it’s his blanket now.’
‘Yes. I guess you’re right.’
So, Weasel and Fox went on their way and pretty soon it began to get cold. And it started to rain. The rain turned to hail. The hail turned to slush. Weasel and Fox ran for cover in a cave, which was wet and cold, as you might expect, what with the wind blowing and all. Fox was alright. His fur coat was intact and he could wrap his tail around his curled up body. But Weasel was suffering. He’d given his blanket away, so he sat on the damp floor shivering in his shirt sleeves. Pretty soon, Weasel’s teeth were chattering. He was freezing.
‘Aiya, friend,’ said Weasel, ‘go back and get me my fine blanket. I need it. That rock has no use for it. He’s been getting along without a blanket for ages. Hurry! I’m freezing!’
Fox went and was soon confronting the rock. ‘Say, can we have that blanket back?’
‘No,’ said Katrinka rock. ‘I like it. Looks good on me, don’t you think? Anyway, what’s given is given.’
Fox scratched his head and returned to the cave where Weasel was exhibiting blue lips. ‘He won’t give it back,’ Fox said.
‘That no-good, ungrateful rock!’ shouted Weasel, teeth clicking at every syllable. ‘Has he paid for the blanket? Has he worked for it? I’ll go get it myself.’
‘Friend,’ said Fox, ‘Katrinka, Breccia the Rock–he’s got a lot of power. Maybe you should let him keep it.’
‘Are you crazy? That is an expensive blanket of many colors and great thickness. I’m freezing. I need it. I’ll go talk him out of it.’ And off Weasel went.
When he got to Katrinka the Rock, he said, “Hey, rock! What’s the meaning of this? What do you need a blanket for? Let me have it back right now!’
‘No,” said Katrinka, ‘what’s given is given.’
‘You. . .you. . .you bad rock! Don’t you care that I’m freezing to death? Look at my finger nails. Look at my lips. My nose is running. Don’t you care that I could catch a cold and die?’ Weasel jerked the blanket from off Katrinka the Rock and slung it over his shoulder and dripping wet head. ‘So there! That’s the end of it.’
‘By no means the end of it,’ rumbled the rock.
Weasel went back to the cave. Just then the rain and hail stopped and the sun came out, hot and bright. Weasel and Fox lay down outside the cave to warm themselves up. They took out some of their supplies, like bread and butter, and began munching happily away. After finishing this up, they took out their pipes and lit up, letting the smoke lazily climb into the air, creating circles and whorls.
All of a sudden, Fox sat upright. ‘What’s that noise?’
‘What noise? I don’t hear anything.’
‘There’s a crashing and a rumbling far off.’
Weasel sat up and pricked up his ears, drawing deeply on his fine pipe. ‘Yes. Now I hear something.’
‘It’s getting louder and louder, like thunder or an earthquake.’
‘It is rather strong and loud. I wonder what it could be.’
They listened for awhile.
‘I have a pretty good idea, friend,’ said Fox. ‘Look there!’
Just then, they saw the great rock Katrinka, rolling and thundering and crashing down upon them.
‘Run for it!’ shouted Fox, taking to his heels. ‘Katrinka intends to kill us!’
Weasel took out after Fox and they ran as fast as they could. But the rock kept gaining on them.
‘Let’s swim the river!’ suggested Weasel ‘The rock is so heavy it will sink.’
So they swam the river. So, too, did rock, crashing over the bounding main.
‘Quick! Into the timber, among the trees,’ shouted Fox. ‘That big rock surely can’t get through that old growth forest.’
So into the woods they ran, running circles around the trees and cutting this way and that trying to lose the following rock. But to no avail. Katrinka the Rock tore on through the woods, cutting a swathe a kilometre wide, splintering and squashing everything in sight.
The two emerged onto the flatlands, prairie stretching from here to eternity, with rolling hills that would only enhance Katrinka’s approach.
Fox turned to Weasel and cried, ‘Oh, friend, this is really not my quarrel. I’ve just remembered I have something important to attend to, so I can’t continue to accompany you.’ Fox rolled into a little ball and squirreled himself away in a badger hole.
Weasel ran on and on, looking back at the rock gaining on him. What a predicament. Weasel tripped and Katrinka rolled right over him, flattening him like a pancake. The rock took back the blanket and returned to his place on the path, saying, ‘So there!’
A rancher rode by and saw Weasel lying on the ground. ‘What a fine rug this will make.’ He picked up the Weasel skin and rode on home, putting Weasel right in front of the fireplace.”
“That’s the story?” The whimpy cocked a disbelieving eye at his taller and straighter hero-companion.
“Yep.”
“Well, that’ll learn ‘im, eh? What’s given’s given.”
“Oh, another DIY sign.”
“Yeah. He’s everywhere. Owns ever’thing’n ever’body.”
“I see he owns the newspaper, too.”
“Sure does.”
“Must be something else to read. Quite amusing.”
“Used t’be but now it’s boring. ‘Course, no one notices anything. Leastways, ain’t no one sayin’ nothin’.”
“A reporter’s gotta keep his job, y’know.”
“Th’hell you say! Why just this winter Gyorgy Yabu bought the Brazos river and none o’ them ink-stained fingers had anything but fine words and praise and good predictions for future prosperity.”
“He did?”
“Sure thing. Said he was gonna make sure ever’body got water. Then he built a dam and we gotta pay ferit. Tastes kinda funny, if’n y’ask me. So, I prefer my Jack Black with sa’s’parilla t’other days.”
“He can’t do that! Why, people will go thirsty for not being able to buy a natural resource.”
“Well, he done it. ‘Bout 50-60 people died in the last six months. That’s about. . .let me figger. . .2% of the town.”
“Two percent? Why, that’s a pandemic!”
“All the more water for him, says the newspaper. His ranch is prosperin’. Nice fat cows. . .green trees. . .fruit galore.”
“I hear tell not all those cows are his.”
“You hear right. Say. . .where’d you hear that? You only been in town a few hours.” Buck stopped to survey Hellecchino.
“I told you. I’m a hero. I got second sight.” Hellecchino patted the man on the head. “Solving the cow problem’s no problem.”
“Every’body’s afraid of doin’ anything t’prove it.”
“Ain’t nobody here willing to stand up and say what needs to be said?”
“Not on yer life. Gyorgy Yabu owns the law.”
“Well, who’s cowherd has Yabu raided the most?”
“Guy by the name of Albert Cicifous.”
“Albert got a last name?”
“Yeah. But you don’t wanna know it. ‘Sides, I can’t pernounce it.”
Well, then, you go on and tell Albert to buy himself a can of pink paint and paint his cows under-hooves. Next day when he’s missing some more cows, he needs to ride over to Yabu’s and point this out to him.”
“Good idea. Don’t know why nobody thought of it afore.” Buck suddenly ducked behind Hellecchino, making himself as small as possible, kind of like Fox did to escape Weasel’s fate. “Looky there. That’s Gyorgy Yabu comin’ down the street now.”
“No-ooo problem,” said Hellecchino without breaking stride.
Gyorgy Yabu was taller than Sheriff Medusi Minkowski IV. And he was wearing the latest in Western fashion in the latest sloven style, as adopted by the great fashion houses of the Old World. Impeccable. With a thin-lipped smirking chimp kind of a smile and truly large monkey ears, rat’s eyes and a long, thin foxy nose, all under a white, floppy 10-gallon hat set back rakishly on his pointy little head. His feet were large and he slumped along the dusty street with a Dickensian pressured, long striding walk that said, “I wish I had 10-league boots, so I’m pretending, I’ll walk all over you.” And as Hellecchino approached, he grew himself taller so Yabu’d have to look up to him. When they stopped, virtually toe to toe, Hellecchino beamed down on him the most obsequiously gracious smile full of gleaming Hollywood star teeth.
“My name’s Hellecchino.”
“I know who you are. You don’t know me. I’m Gyorgy Yabu and I own this town and everything in it.”
“So I heard.”
“You heard about me?”
“Sure thing. You’re the greatest. Everyone loves you.”
“Really?”
“Sure thing. Why, even back where I come from people know who you are.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. You hear that boys?”
Yabu turned to his entourage, about three or four cowboys decked out in the latest cowboy fashion and with spurs that jingle-jangle-jingled when they walked–and when they were not moving, for they could not keep still, always shifting their weight around. A cookie cutter could not have cut out such similar shapes nor an oven baked them to such equal sugar cookie-soft whiteness.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Yabu, sir,” they chorused very like the Vienna Boys Choir, the oldest boys choir in the world. So old, in fact, that most moderns figured they were castrati.
“I hear you abused my sheriff and I don’t like people abusing my people,” said Yabu in a pug-nosed sort of way.
“Really? I don’t recall abusing a man. I’m not into abuse. But I’ll tell you what. . .some guy with double holsters and a bright shining star took out his guns and emptied their chambers at me and I call that downright unneighborly.”
“That ain’t the way I heard it and my people don’t lie to me. They know what happens to liars. Sinners go to hell.”
“They do?”
“Yes. They do. So don’t you go lying or you’ll burn in damnation internally.”
“I’ll remember that, little fella.”
“I’m not so little and you’re not so tall.”
“Taller than you.”
“I ride tall in the saddle.”
Hellecchino looked around behind Yabu and asked, “When’s the last time you been on a horse?”
“I don’t like your kind. You better shape up or get out.”
“Ah, yes. I will do that. But first I’m thirsty. I understand you own all the water hereabouts.”
“That’s right. You wanna drink, you come to me.”
“Well, I’m here. Comin’ atcha big buddy.”
“You gotta pay.”
“Well, now. I can’t very well pay for something I don’t know the quality of. But I’ll tell you what. . .I got this here conch shell, a relic from ancient China, that I’ll swap ya for a good long drink. Then, if I like the water, I’ll buy into the program.”
“Lemme see the conk shell.”
Hellecchino whipped out of nowhere a big, beautiful, pink-shaded on the interior conch shell and held it out to Gyorgy Yabu. Gyorgy Yabu’s eyes grew big and round, though they still looked like rat’s eyes, close-set and real small in diameter. Before you could say Jack Robinson, Yabu’s hand shot out and snapped up the sea shell the Chinese once sold on the sea shore–and inland, too. He began drooling and his nose twitched.
“Come on out to the dammed. I’ll give ya yore drank.”
So they all trooped over to the north bend of the Brazos River, just above Tonk’s Crossing, where the Indian’s had been cleared out in the name of advancing civilization. And there it was. The dammed water. In a pool that was growing all the time into a silvery shining lake beneath the East Central Texas sun, swallowing up the scrub brush and scrawny trees and beavers. Hellecchino could see a few of the latter’s tails floating in the water. They weren’t going anywhere, either. And Hellecchino walked down to the lakeside and he bent over and stuck his head into the water. He drank for some time before he came up for air.
“How’s it taste? Good, huh?” prompted Yabu.
“I’m not so sure. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not done taking my long drink you promised me.”
“Alright. You finish up. No one ever called me a liar and a cheat and a thief. I got the best of everything.”
And, once again, Hellecchino submerged his head in the water and drank. After a minute or three, he came up for air, spluttered, held his finger up and dove back down to get his fill.
“I wonder how it is a person can drink so much,” mused Yabu aloud.
“We think so, too, Mr. Yabu, sir,” echoed the high counter-tenored trio or quartet behind him. Buck thought how nice it was to hear good three or four part harmony out here on the plains where sharpened tones and contrasting melodies were the norm, sounding like yowling cats on the prowl for pussy in the backyard. And he wondered if he might get a swallow of that cool, clear water too. So, he hitched himself down to the water’s edge and stood there as if he were watching Hellecchino near-drown himself to death. All eyes turned quickly and suspiciously in his direction. But Buck bugabooed not a bit. When Yabu and the halleluiah chorus returned their pre-possessing eyes back to Hellecchino, Buck struck. Falling to his lesser knee, he whipped out his portable Dylan Thomas shot glass and dipped. It is said that even the least perturbance creates a massive ripple effect in the space-time continuum and so it was with Buck’s dip, for Yabu’s hand shot out and plucked the host glass out of Buck’s hand and shot it out into the middle of the nigh-lake.
“Thought you could hoodwink me, didja, halfman?”
Buck’s lips trembled, kissing air. Closed, bliss-expecting eyelids fluttered.
“You wanna huntin’ with Clyde Moyen Bucket?” (Pronounced “bouquet.”)
The moment of limping Mexican stand-off was ended when one o the yes-men piped up, “Surely he’s got to be coming up soon.”
“Maybe, sir, he’s doing something down there.”
“No, no. He said he was taking a long drink and nobody would think of putting one over on me.”
“Of course not. Who could?”
“You got that right boys.”
Buck sighed.
However. . .Hellecchino was doing something down there. He was digging out under the dam all the time his head was under water. After all, he had to put his hands into the dammed water to stop himself from falling in and drowning. A drowned man was a pollutant. So nobody up top thought anything about it, though. That is, Gyorgy Yabu and his yoe-men didn’t think anything about it. After all, who was there in the world who could outsmart them–Him, huh? Besides, there were no bubbles, so Hellecchino must be drinking.
“That conk shell must be worth a fortune,” mused Yabu, rubbing his chin and smirking.
Finally, Hellecchino came up for air, shook his hair throwing water everywhere around him like a soaked dog just in from the pouring rain and pronounced his verdict, “That’s dammed fine water.”
Just then, the dam burst and the water went out into the valley and made creeks and rivers and mini-waterfalls, this being the plains. More or less.
“Look what you did to my water, you varmint!” shouted Yabu, stomping his foot and jumping up and down. If pushed, he could also chew gum and walk at the same time.
“The Great Big Bang Creator of the Universe and Everything Under the Sun did not make the water for anyone to own. He or She made it for everyone. Besides, if you got it all unto yourself, when everyone around you dies of dehydration ’cause they can’t afford to buy your resource, what kind of riches you got?” Yabu took his too-big hat off and began scratching his head and screwing up his face. His cowboy chorus followed suit. “You see. . .if you’re the only one, you may be on top but you’re also the last one.”
Before DIY could gather its wits about itself, Hellecchino bounded off laughing and screeching like a mad duck, Buck the Blighted fast on his heels despite his unwholesome leg. Hellecchino’s hysteria echoed around the small copes of trees as if nature herself were mocking the Yabu Water Reclamation Project.
It was all pretty comical.
When Hellecchino returned to the underworld, he told Edgar he might write a book about it, in his next life. “Horror story?” queried Edgar deadpan. “No. Comic book,” replied Hellecchino. And then he went back to sleep. But that was not til later.
pissed about pistorius
January 29, 2008Oscar Pistorius is a gimp. A crip. A handicapped man with an attitude. He’s also what’s known, in disability circles, as a super-crip. This is a somewhat pejorative label as it gives the rest of us a bad name–by and for the mainstream abled community. Super-crips make the rest of us look like slackers, like lazy no-goods out for a hand-out: if he can do it, why can’t you?, ask the able-bodied.
Let me here engage in blonde sorority girl ingenuousness: Well du-uh! Is anybody home?
From one gimp to a whole bunch of able-bodied people: Can you do what Michael Johnson did? Can you do as well as Wilt the Stilt? Are you Bret Favre? How about Ronaldinho, can you play like him? No. Of course you can’t. Why? These people are exceptional. . .and you’re not. You’re just average. Like most disabled, very many of whom are ex-military.
The very worst athlete you see on TV is better than any athlete you’ve ever met.
So, if you can’t do what these athletes can do, why do you expect all crips to perform like super-crips, the exceptions to the rule?
Prejudice. Pure and simple.
We’re a sign of the fragility and meaninglessness of life. We are the embodiment of your life-fear: there but for the grace of God go I. So. . .God’s grace has been taken from the disabled and it’s therefore A-OK to ignore the disabled, want the disabled out of the way, treat the disabled poorly, as if they’re something less? Why is it they have to fight so hard for inclusion in this society? Where’s the humanity?
And now that a super-crip can perform at the level of an able-bodied exception, the prejudice surfaces with a vengeance. Why? Because a gimp is as good as a non-gimp and that makes the abled look like they’re less than they are. You think? And, by God, he can’t do that to us!
In reality, all Oscar Pistorius has done is overcome a handicap that most normal and, probably, most exceptional people could not overcome. And that pisses y’all off. Who the hell does he think he is, acting like a normal person? He’s a fucking crip! He belongs on the sidelines, living a bare subsistence life, dependent on the pity and piteous welfare of peoples and governments, living in holes in the wall or nursing homes–just damn well anywhere but out in public and independent. Yeah?
What an insult, what an embarrassment Helen Keller was to the abled community. Yeah?
Homer (blind). Milton (blind). Beethoven (deaf). Goebbels (club foot). Henry VIII (club foot). Cher (dyslexic). FDR (post polio syndrome). Abe Lincoln (manic-depressive). Lord Byron (club foot, manic-depressive). Lord Horatio Nelson (blind in one eye). Sarah Bernhardt (one leg). Steven Hawking (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). Walt Disney (learning disabled). Miss America 1995, Heather Whitestone McCallum (deaf). Deafy Hoy (baseball pitcher who invented umpire signs). Curtis Pride (baseball outfielder). The great NFL running back John Mackey (one leg shorter than the other). Moshe Dayan (blind in one eye).
Why is it that a disabled person must out-perform any and all abled persons in order to gain respect and recognition? Why is it when he does he is suddenly not allowed to compete? Why? Because he’s too good. And his disability shows. His adjustment to disability and his will to perform, no greater than any other exceptional athlete’s will to perform, is right out in the open.
What an insult to Michael Johnson if Oscar “Gimp” Pistorius even ties his record–a record gained by specially rearranging Olympic events so Johnson could perform at such a high level. Pistorius isn’t asking the Olympics for anything special to enhance his performance.
Oh! There’s the key word: enhance. Performance enhancing drugs disqualify you from the Olympics. Performance enhancing drugs for the able-bodied. Performance enhancing drugs that raise the ability of the abled above their natural capability limits. Since cheetahs enhance Legless Pistorius’ performance, he can be eliminated, too. Right? Well. . .he’s not normal able-bodied to begin with so. . .is it the same kind of enhancement? No. But it doesn’t matter: he’s a crip out-performing most able-bodied athletes and we just can’t allow that. Y’know?
So. . .the Olympic Committee gets together and in their able-bodied sagacity and prejudice ruminate over the matter. They decide to do a simulation. That simulation proved to them that, yes, Gimpy Pistorius’ cheetahs are an enhancement because he doesn’t have to put out as much effort as an able-bodied man. Let’s forget that he doesn’t have the legs to do what an able-bodied man could do to begin with, yeah?
But there’s a problem here. As Karl Popper points out in Conjectures and Refutations, simulations will always prove what you are setting out to prove because of the way the experiment is set up: with prejudice, with the desired end in sight. This, he says, proves nothing. If you want to prove a theory–and it is only a theory that Pistorius’ artificial limbs are performance enhancers in the illegal Olympic sense–you must try to prove that that theory is wrong. If you can’t, then, at least for the moment, you’re right. A simulation does not prove a theory at all; it proves a preconceived notion, a prejudgment. . .a prejudice.
A disabled person performing at the level of world class able-bodied athletes is untenable. It’s unheard of. Until now. Well, at least for the Olympic Committee members. They’re not up on their sports history: asthma is a disabling disease and many Olympic athletes have asthma yet they are allowed to compete even though they are taking medication that contains the performance enhancing drugs known as “steroids” and “speed.” All they have to do was tell the Olympic Committee they were taking this drug for their asthmatic condition, their disease, their disability. Pistorius doesn’t have to tell anyone of his performance enhancer–that an able-bodied man could not use–because it’s visible to all and sundry. Steroidal anti-asthmatic medication allows a person to perform beyond his normal capability; so, too, Pistorius’ cheetahs. What’s the difference? Well, I think you can see need. And the man’s got no lower legs. And he can run. And he has overcome his disability to such an extent that he can perform at world class able-bodied level. Those asthmatics couldn’t without their drugs. So, what’s the difference?
After all. . .a disabled man can’t do as well as an abled man, right? I mean, he isn’t supposed to be able to. I mean, we can’t let this happen. Can we? A disabled man as good as. . .me?
Hell no!
Disqualified!
On what grounds? Able-bodied prejudice. Fear. Fear of failure: a crip can do what a non-crip can’t. It doesn’t matter that we do what the abled can’t do every day: listen to yourselves. . .I’d hate to be like that, I could never. . . .
The Olympic Committee has effectively taken the disabled agenda to the international arena where everyone can see their narrow-minded, dismissive, segregationist attitude, the attitude that keeps us marginalized, inferior and worthless.
Oscar Pistorius asks for recognition and the OC, able-bodied athletes and the press spit in his face.
George Washington couldn’t have won much of anything if it hadn’t been for his two disabled officers. Yeah. Get that: the Father of the USA needed crips to be a winner.
Tags:cheetahs, disabilty, olympics, pistorius, secor
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