Dirk Destroyer Part 46 Chapter 26

   

Now that I've angered both of you who are reading this serialized novel by posting the appendix last week, I'll get back to the story.

Chapter 26

Fate without Tartar Sauce

“Fish Stick,” Swampy croaked when I arrived in Two. All right, that made more sense now. I knew right where I was, and where I was going.

I had the two bags of fish sticks slung over my shoulders so instead of landing on me, Swampy circled impatiently. I put the sacks down and began feeding the flying swamp-rat bird. It was only after a couple pounds of fish sticks that Swampy settled into a gluttonous stupor. Still he opened his repulsive beak.

“You eat much more and you’ll never fly again,” I said.

Swampy croaked incoherently. Maybe that meant he agreed. Uncle Egg never wanted to be understood when he agreed with me.

“So the other me is talking to Mage-e-not and Ono right now?”

“Fish stick?” said Swampy softly.

“It’s your belly-ache,” I told him, tossing him a fish stick. I looked around my location and tried to remember where I’d been yesterday. Unless something changed, I was safe – meaning I wasn’t about to destroy everyone I’d ever met.

Dirk had lied to me. Did Dude lie too? Would his law code of what-ever-ma-call-it allow him to lie? He told me not to come back, or play with the dial in the nurse’s office before. Did he lie when he said that?

I couldn’t remember well enough – certainly not well enough to risk killing everyone I knew. I would wait here until Ono had gotten Tease to agree to let her take Mage-e-not along with her to Phasia as carry-on.

“I thought I smelled fish sticks,” said Akwar. “Is there enough for everyone?”

I hadn’t bargained on Akwar. She could spoil everything. I didn’t dare say a word to her in case I (the other one,) overheard myself and investigated. I handed her the bag I’d been feeding Swampy out of. Did Dude know I’d need two bags?

“Any tartar sauce?”

I shook my head in the motion that means no everywhere but Pogo. She seemed to understand the gesture which indicated that she was as non-Pogoian as Ono. That along with a vague femaleness was her only similarity to the woman I admired.

Thankfully, Akwar went away with the fish sticks without causing enough of a disturbance to bring the me that wasn’t me in my current location to investigate. Then again, would I have investigated, even if I had heard Akwar? I would probably have ignored her and hoped she’d go away.

Had she been there when I’d been the guy in the clearing instead of the guy in bushes? Did this change things?

Stay with being stupid, Dude had told me. All right, I wouldn’t worry about it.

I stayed low in the bushes and watched Ono give Tease his shower. I waited until I was certain that I was gone. Then I stood up and stepped into the clearing.

“I thought I smelled fish sticks,” said Mage-e-not.

“You flip-flopped?” asked Ono.

“That was the younger Elmer,” said Tease. “This Elmer is older by about a day.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“You have fish sticks.”

“I’m starved,” said Mage-e-not.

In the distance I heard Lustavious singing. “I will intercept him,” offered Tease. “It is best if he does not meet your elder self.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you want to go to So-Ho?”

“Do they have showers?”

“I didn’t check.”

“I will return to Phasia. I have missed the showers of Shangra Dee.”

“Near the fields of Salley?” asked Mage-e-not.

“You have heard of it?”

“My friend Gidget went there.”

Lustavious’ voice was closer now.

“I must go,” said Tease.

“You don’t want any fish sticks?” asked Mage-e-not.

“Gluten-free,” said the monk, and passed through the underbrush to intercept the Light Bringer.

“We don’t have much time,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not. “Did you bring any tartar sauce?”

“No, sorry,” I said. “Look, I know that Lip Ton Tease agreed to take you both to Phasia, but I need to know if that’s what you want.”

“Do they have tartar sauce there?” asked Mage-e-not.

“Oh no,” said Ono.

“How do you know?” asked Mage-e-not.

“I’m not naying your know,” she said to Mage-e-not, and then she turned to me “I want to be with you.”

“With me?” asked Mage-e-not.

“Oh no,” said Ono, “with Elmer.”

“What if they don’t have showers in Ho-Ho?” asked Mage-e-not.

“Filthy Elmer sizzles more than squeaky clean Phasia.”

“Even without tartar sauce?”

“In bubble of algae bars.”

“Wow,” said Mage-e-not, “you are stuck on the guy.”

“What about you, Mage-e-not?” I asked.

“I’m not really stuck on you, Elmer.”

“Do you want to go to Phasia?”

“Nah,” he said, “I’d rather go to Ho-Ho, but you better have something other than algae bars to eat there.”

“There’s good food in Phasia, I hear.”

“Yeah, but I’m not that good at math.”

“Alright,” I said. “I’m not sure exactly how this works, but in case I can’t do anything, stay close to me.”

“Right,” said Mage-e-not, getting far too close – especially after eating so much fish.

“Actually, I mean the other me.”

“Teeny-tiny Elmer,” said Ono.

“I suppose,” figuring that younger was not a concept with many sound words. “You’ll be able to tell the difference because that me will be carrying around a scratchwing.”

“Instead of fish sticks?” asked Mage-e-not.

“Probably. Now when Lustavious points his finger at Dirk, and Dirk says, “That oughta do it,” you have to take the scratchwing out of my hand, and hold onto me.”

“What if you won’t let it go?” said Mage-e-not.

“I’ll fling scratchwing and clutch Elmer,” said Ono.

“Good. Swampy is around here somewhere. I don’t know what he wants to do, but…”

“I’ll quiz Swampy,” said Ono.

“You have real conversations with him?”

“Oh yes,” said Ono. “He cackles poetry!”

“Poetry?”

“It’s derivative,” said Mage-e-not. “I prefer a good lymric myself. You know, this planet really needs a place that rhymes with bucket.”

“The other me will be back soon, so I have to go. It’s important that you never saw me.”

“Which you?” asked Mage-e-not.

“This me.”

“But I can see the other you?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could teach you to disappear.”

“Yes,” I said. “How do I do it?”

“I have no idea,” said Mage-e-not. “I just thought it would be great.”

As I sat back in the bushes I wondered why I wanted to take Mage-e-not to So-Ho. I almost went back into the clearing to change everything when I heard Akwar shout. I ducked back into the overgrowth.

I’d left the bag of fish sticks with Mage-e-not and I watched amazed as the other me didn’t seem to notice that Mage-e-not was eating something out of a silver bag. I wasn’t that stupid, was I?

There was nothing I could do about it now. I sat back against a tree to wait. The fish sticks did smell pretty good.

I opened my fanny pack and had a fish stick. It really didn’t need tartar sauce. I sat back wondering what else I needed to do. There was something important – something I wasn’t thinking about. I munched on fish sticks and tried to think of what it was.

Finally I was down to my last fish stick. I was about to pop it in my mouth when I remembered. “I need to save the last fish stick,” I said to myself as if I needed to both hear and think the thought.

I put the fish stick into my fanny pack, and the world got fuzzy.

Was fuzzy a good thing? I didn’t think so.

A teenage girl appeared. Her eyes were closed, she was tapping her shiny red shoes together and saying something about home.

No, this wasn’t good. If I left now, how could I be sure everything would work out? How could I be sure if I stayed? All I could do is kill everyone I ever knew by coming out of the woods and interfering. Even if everyone survived the whole death problem, there was no way Dirk would go along with taking Ono and Mage-e-not, and maybe Swampy to So-Ho. It was only a three bedroom apartment, and he had the Stevens twins to think about.

Things got fuzzier. It was beginning to look like I was going to have to count on me – the younger me, to do the right thing. If only the younger me wasn’t so stupid.

Now I felt offended, and I had only myself to blame.

But wait! It wasn’t just me, I was counting on. Ono would make things work – just like when she lifted things in the air, and…

Oh crap!

   Just one more installment to go - really!  You don't believe me?  I guess I can't blame you.

As we approach the election I wonder how many comedians are hoping to get their break impersonating President H. Clinton, D. Trump or PCTBDL (Presidential candidate to be determined later.)

Slapstick Stickback

“A boisterous form of comedy marked by chases, collisions, and crude practical jokes.”  - American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
(This is why I so rarely quote - the reference is three times as long.)

Slapstick goes back to Rome.  Along with crucifixion, it’s one of those wonderful innovations of civilization that separated the Republic from the barbarians.
It’s named for a stick that sounds painful, but isn’t so much.

 I don’t think that was the intention with crucifixion.

Aptly or not, modern comedy has incorporated Crucifixion into the slapstick genre.  But it's not all so grisly.

Early films incorporated a great deal of slapstick.  Clever repartee was difficult without sound.

Chaplin was considered a cinema god for his mastery of the art.

Until we deported him for having different political views than most of his audience.

And so the entertainment industry sought out acts to take up the slack.

The Little Rascals

Laurel and Hardy

Abbot and Costello

and of course...

The Three Stooges

For eighty years they have defined American Slapstick comedy

Even when Shemp replaced Curly, they were better than any other team,

Then slapstick got relegated to cartoons.

Live comedies relied on snappy dialog as opposed to physical comedy.

With some wonderful exceptions.

Maybe that's why we're so angry all the time.  We take ourselves too seriously.  What America - the World needs today is...

A good pie in the face.

Or maybe just to watch a bit more Monty Python

TnT Excerpt Part 1, The Preface.

“An excerpt!” he says to me.

“A hippo,” I reply, ‘cause I had no idea what he was talking about and figured we were playing word association.

I was never very good at word association . I don’t recall winning it once. I never could figure the scoring.

“You should put an excerpt in your blog,” he says more completely.

So the next five posts are excerpts from the first chapter of Trouble in Taos. It’s the story of Slimy Beach, a notorious gunfighter and gifted latrine digger as told by Walter Bego, his best friend. In 1934, decades after Beach’s death, Walter discovers a western novel written about his friend…

Slimy killed more men than any three gunslingers I’ve ever heard of. His twin double-barreled sawed-off shotguns looked scary as hell even lying on the bar. They looked even scarier flashing in Slimy’s hands. Even without them, no man in his right mind would get within horseshoe-tossing range of Slimy. He smelled worse than a skunk and was the most boring man alive.

No man in his right mind but me, that is. Slimy was my best friend.

I picked up the Slimy book. There weren’t a lot of pages, but they were nice and soft. Norry Basset gave me a wink. I wanted to punch him in the nose, but I winked back because bad things happen when small, eighty-six-year-old men punch large, middle-aged storekeepers.

I put my dime on the counter and, without asking permission, headed straight for Norry’s crapper.

“Walter,” Norry called, “why don’t you wait ’til the Sears and Roebuck catalog comes in before you use my toilet? The pages don’t clog up the works so much.”

I pretended not to hear him. There are advantages to being old. No one can say for sure what you hear and what you don’t.

Norry installed an expensive brass crapper back before Wall Street crapped on the country. It was one of the fanciest bits of seating I’ve ever been pleased to utilize, but it was too high off the ground for my taste. I guess a big man like Norry likes to keep his knees from cramping. It’s a good thing he didn’t have children. A three-year-old might fall right in a toilet that size.

I climbed up to take a seat and cracked the cover of my new purchase. The book had the usual illustrations of horses, saddles, and six guns you see in every western dime novel. I’d never seen Slimy shoot a six-shot Colt in my life. It wasn’t a promising start.

The text wasn’t any better. According to W. G. Chesterson Rawhide Colmes, Slimy was a large brawny brute with fists like railroad sledges. Such a statement indicated that Mr. Colmes probably acquired his “rawhide” from sitting on a barstool in Philadelphia.

I’ve been accused of being an ounce shy of pint-sized, but at five foot three, I had the clear better of Slimy Beach. Slimy’s railroad sledge hands were smaller than I’d seen on a few ten year old boys, and I imagine there were a few boys that age that could whip Slimy in a fair fight.

Slimy didn’t believe in fighting fair.

His perfidious reign of justice began when Beach was only fourteen. The rapacious giant, Mike Finn, forced his unwanted attention on Miss Purity Homebody, Beach’s beloved schoolmistress. Finn was an infamous brawler who routinely killed and maimed men with his bare hands. Young Beach traded thunderous blows with the titanic Finn before the exhausted villain reached for his gun. Beach drew his pearl-handled Colt 45 and spun the weapon twice in his hand – just to give his opponent a chance. Slimy Beach dropped that evil violator of feminine virtue with one shot through the eye. So the legend began.

W. G. C. R. Colmes, Slimy Beach, the Tornado of Taos, p.18

Well, the page was nice and soft anyway, but Norry was right. The pipes of the fancy brass throne didn’t sound too pleased after I flushed.

Just in case a flood was coming, I skedaddled as fast as an old fart can.

Next post, Slimy and his watch.