"This shit wagon, this place of utter non-redemption," Herald muttered to Alberto. They squatted on the banks of the Vertigo and watched the rafts float by, steered by Fur People using long poles. On the rafts were crammed animals and vegetation: bobcats, flowering squash bushes, ruby-throated warblers, star nosed moles- you name it. Herald felt angry at the Fur People. He wanted with every fiber in his being to inspect the precious cargo. If he had learned anything at Yahweh's Mammalry Business College, it was to respect the sanctity of nature's abundance. What right did those Fur People have to take mammals from the past into who-knows-what kind of future.
"You're just jealous," Alberto muttered back at him. They'd been watching this parade for hours, all morning. Bashwalup! had wandered down to the banks and called out to a raft. It sounded like, "Herragh chockel kraww doo-doo?" and the Fur Person on the raft had answered back, "Smarrr-gellup gunden crumplin.Ho har-nu gallum carumph galloo. "
"I wonder what that was all about?" Herald and Alberto asked each other.
Medicine Dan called out from under the bush where Sally and her pups lay curled and suckling. "They say they're delivering a shipment of exotics to Lady Angela, for the Replenishment Project."
"Well how the hockey-puck do you know Fur-talk?" shouted back Alberto. Medicine Dan grunted and turned back to the pups, gently adjusting their positions so that none were uncomfortable. Sally adored Medicine Dan with her eyes and sighed.
"I say we follow them, we build a raft and go where they're going," said Herald to Alberto. "If anyone should be involved in this Replenishment Project, it's you and me. Didn't we graduate top of our class, with specialities in small mammal encouragement and habitat detection?"
"Yeah but, what about them," he nodded over at Medicine Dan and the dogs. "They shouldn't be moved, right? Didn't we learn that in 'The first twenty days of life; the newborn mammal environment'?" The two argued back and forth all the while keeping their eyes glued to the increasingly ridiculous procession of rafts.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Lisle von Fixin de Hoolie remembers
Here on the river, here in the future, we rest. The great flood of our time has come and gone, taking family and feathered fowl, and furred mammal alike. The sun unleashed its fury upon us generations past, and we suffered greatly in the falling light. Our grandmothers hid beneath pickup trucks, to little avail. Our uncles sequestered boats from weaker willed individuals and families and we were grateful. Survival of the fittest, indeed. And through that slender thread, here you and I stand, the descendants of survivors, grateful for familial tenacity. We have survived. From one survivor comes the rest of the lineage, the von Fixin de Hoolie family will not die, we will not! Our men, with impromptu weapons in hand, swung and swung again, striking out at anything that challenged their survival. Come rabid dog, come smaller men with larger wives and duller children. You will not triumph over our family. We have lived here on this road for over one hundred years! And so the von Fixin de Hoolie clan survived the hard times. In boat, in defiance, in glory blind to the future. This future, this place here quiet from the teeming masses, this eradicated landscape, this eugenic utopia. We live because we will. Taller, with flashier eyes and hands that react with deep succinctness. We are God's grace, an army of the living who refuse to be conquered.
So spoke Marylou's mother, Lisle von Fixin de Hoolie.
The truth, however painful it may be, will set you free. Think of it, the unthinkable. That which is, this everything about us. Under us.
Marylou felt it, in her blood like a lightening river, pulsing out painfully to one inexorable conclusion. Her father was alive, and in captivity. The pain of imagining. What must he have felt? The cold reality of a sword, held to his throat, or worse. Marylou couldn't think of it. Her father, Hans Sneebum, was a pacifist, through and through. She remembered him in her thirteenth year. They stood together on the banks of the Vertigo, away from the family at the edge of the swiftly moving waters.
"Father, tell me what it is that makes humans the way they are." She stood, tall for her age and not yet grown into her natural grace. Beside her, her father, a man of forty two years with beard and homemade overalls, felt a deep satisfaction. What wondrous spirits, what divine grace, had bestowed upon him this daughter, this jewel of innocent wisdom?
He gave himself time before answering, staring into the shifting reflections. What, indeed? The moon caught each small wave and graced it with a fleeting light. He strove, internally, to reflect a knowingness, an answer to her question.
"We are born into this world in grace, Marylou. On the night you were born, your mother labored so hard. To bring another human into this world, think of it! How amazing. And the instant you were born, your eyes shone like dark stones, and you did not cry. She and I looked into your face, so small and real, out of seeming nothingness." He paused and looked to Marylou, her silhouette silver in the moonlight. She stood still, listening with her every fiber.
"And every day since that day, you have been human." They stood quietly together, each striving to understand this humanness, this corporeal slant.
"I don't know what it is to be human, except to say that it is falling hard away from God, and yet falling towards God at every moment. It is divine folly."
That is how Marylou remembered her father. Standing on the shore, shifting patiently from one barefoot to the other on the worn river stones. He was kind and gentle, and he fell into the Vertigo and the river took him here, to this cruel place in the future, the lair of Lady Angela.
"Are you saying that you have my father?" Marylou's heart pounded, and her words came out wet like blood drops.
"He is safe, and waiting for your arrival." Lady Angela demurred. Her lips twitched almost imperceptibly, and she looked cooly over at George, and then back at Marylou. "He is in our finest facility"
Anger, drumming with every heart beat at her temples and in her throat, caused Marylou to shout with uncontrolled fury. "He has nothing for you! He is a seed peddler!" Marylou's hair sprang out like black fire from beneath the golden circlet. George witnessed, he saw the truth of the moment. The golden circlets! The two women stood face to face. Identical crowns upon such different heads.
"He has you, Marylou. And now I too have you, and we will continue on this journey and you will see your father. But first, you must give me the golden circlet."
Marylou felt it, in her blood like a lightening river, pulsing out painfully to one inexorable conclusion. Her father was alive, and in captivity. The pain of imagining. What must he have felt? The cold reality of a sword, held to his throat, or worse. Marylou couldn't think of it. Her father, Hans Sneebum, was a pacifist, through and through. She remembered him in her thirteenth year. They stood together on the banks of the Vertigo, away from the family at the edge of the swiftly moving waters.
"Father, tell me what it is that makes humans the way they are." She stood, tall for her age and not yet grown into her natural grace. Beside her, her father, a man of forty two years with beard and homemade overalls, felt a deep satisfaction. What wondrous spirits, what divine grace, had bestowed upon him this daughter, this jewel of innocent wisdom?
He gave himself time before answering, staring into the shifting reflections. What, indeed? The moon caught each small wave and graced it with a fleeting light. He strove, internally, to reflect a knowingness, an answer to her question.
"We are born into this world in grace, Marylou. On the night you were born, your mother labored so hard. To bring another human into this world, think of it! How amazing. And the instant you were born, your eyes shone like dark stones, and you did not cry. She and I looked into your face, so small and real, out of seeming nothingness." He paused and looked to Marylou, her silhouette silver in the moonlight. She stood still, listening with her every fiber.
"And every day since that day, you have been human." They stood quietly together, each striving to understand this humanness, this corporeal slant.
"I don't know what it is to be human, except to say that it is falling hard away from God, and yet falling towards God at every moment. It is divine folly."
That is how Marylou remembered her father. Standing on the shore, shifting patiently from one barefoot to the other on the worn river stones. He was kind and gentle, and he fell into the Vertigo and the river took him here, to this cruel place in the future, the lair of Lady Angela.
"Are you saying that you have my father?" Marylou's heart pounded, and her words came out wet like blood drops.
"He is safe, and waiting for your arrival." Lady Angela demurred. Her lips twitched almost imperceptibly, and she looked cooly over at George, and then back at Marylou. "He is in our finest facility"
Anger, drumming with every heart beat at her temples and in her throat, caused Marylou to shout with uncontrolled fury. "He has nothing for you! He is a seed peddler!" Marylou's hair sprang out like black fire from beneath the golden circlet. George witnessed, he saw the truth of the moment. The golden circlets! The two women stood face to face. Identical crowns upon such different heads.
"He has you, Marylou. And now I too have you, and we will continue on this journey and you will see your father. But first, you must give me the golden circlet."
Marylou suspects
Marylou had her suspicions. Lady Angela led her and George Conley through the Washup Downs with a cool superiority. It set off alarm bells within Marylou's head.
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