On the road again

In today's episode of BRYAN THE TYGER, my protagonists and the women who are riding them (Emily B. rides me while Emily D. rides my friend Myala the Panther) leave the aliens to repair their wrecked spaceship and walk toward the city.

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Twenty-One

As we’re trotting away from the burning smoking flying saucer that crashed into a bush on the side of Mount Horeb, my soul-mate Myala, who has Emily Dickinson sitting sidesaddle upon her sleek Panther form, turns to me, Bryan the Tyger, and inquires:

“Do you realize that there is a yellow brick road beneath our feet?”

I look down and reply: “Wow! No, I didn’t notice that; I was preoccupied with wondering whether we should turn back and fetch our chariot, which we left in the aliens’ laundry room, along with our cart of goods that we bought from the Torrible Zone; so I wasn’t paying attention to our immediate environs. My mind was in the clouds.”

“Lo,” now Emily Brontë, who is straddling me bareback, taps the top of my tyger-head and exclaims: “yonder approaches the form of a shepherd.”

Sure enough, coming from the direction of that shining city at the top of the hill, whose emerald rays are a beacon of hope for our broken world because they symbolize money (think about greenbacks, or U.S. dollars, and how it feels to possess them), I say, traveling afoot upon this golden path and heading our way is a frail dotard dressed as a herdsman.

When this fellow gets within shouting distance, I roar: “Who goes there!?”

The man stops and trembles in place without answering.

“Hey, you, wearing the pastoral raiment: Identify yourself!” I repeat my demand, in case he didn’t hear me the first time; and we continue to skulk nearer. — I’m thinking to myself that I might maul this fool and eat him, since I haven’t done that in a while, plus I skipped breakfast this morning in order to please Ms. Brontë, who wanted to get an early start on our adventures. (She has a fierce temper, which I find attractive.)

“The Tyger asked your name, old man — you should answer him,” sez Emily Dickinson. “Don’t worry, he won’t bite you, if you’ll just let us know who you are and where you’re going; also which gods you serve, and what is your present occupation.”

The fool’s reply comes weakly but solemnly from his feeble chest, like an old religious man from ancient times:

“My name is Moses. I was just coming out here in the wilderness to see this great sight: for there is a bush burning on that mountain — I beheld a star fall from the heavens and crash to earth, right over there: it was as if the firmament had wept one fiery teardrop into our world of scattered reflections. I was watching from my apartment in the Glowing Green City — to be honest, I should have been keeping an eye on my flock, for my day-job is to tend the herd of Jethro: he’s my father-in-law, the priest of Midian: so (to answer your question about which gods I serve) I worship the Midianite deities, the main three being El-Shaddai, Baal-peor, and Yahweh-Sabaoth. I’m sure you’ve heard of them: they’re quite popular in this region. (I just go along to get along.) But this shepherding is something I put up with just to gain an honest maintenance — I’m far more passionate about what I do on the side; for I also moonlight as a leech-gatherer: that’s my true calling. I love it because it’s hazardous and wearisome — and there are many hardships to endure! I roam from pond to pond, and from moor to moor, using my stick to agitate the waters, and then I gather whatever leeches I can find. It’s a lonely pursuit, and I often have long periods where I’m just waiting for the sluggish creatures to appear — there are a lot less of all the types of aquatic life now, because the worst among humankind extincted almost every type of thing — so, while I wait, I write anti-books for the sake of self-amusement. That’s pretty much all that I can say for myself. I have little ambition beyond just passing the time.”

By now, we are close enough to perceive that, indeed, the man gives off the odor of sheep.

“You say your name is Moses?” I begin my inquisition. “Are you then the same Moses who broke the Ten Commandments, in Exodus 32:19?”

The old fool chews his toothless gums and thinks for a moment, then answers in his feeble voice:

“No, that Moses lived about 1,500 years before Jesus Christ. Now Christ has been dead for more than 2,000 years, by my reckoning; isn’t that so? Or has time managed to swallow itself again?”

“You are correct, unless the false lying scriptures of this Tyger here can be trusted,” sez Emily Brontë (tho, in what follows, I am only paraphrasing her, as she peppers her speech with unprintable obscenities); “for you’re not the only one who writes bad books: Bryan here claims to have a daemon who has written two fake novels in which Christ is risen as a Vampyre and an Astronaut . . .” then Ms. Brontë squeezes my sides with her legs and sez: “Let’s go! Why are we still talking to this [expletive]?”

“Sorry to address you directly without being requested to,” sez Moses to the Emilies, “but, if I make it back to the city and get a chance to tell the people about my adventure, who shall I say I’ve met here on this golden road?”

Emily Dickinson answers: “Who do you think we are?”

The old man scrunches up his face, apparently formulating a guess. “I would say that you are the Angels of the LORD, mounted high upon cherubim.”

Emily and Emily exchange a mirthful look.

“Am I close?” asks the shepherd.

“Tell your people,” Ms. Dickinson makes a sign with her hand, “that there are two Gods in heav­en, not three; and they are both Magdalenes. — No Father. No Son.”

“Dual Mothers?” sez Moses.

“Magdalenes, [expletive]!” Brontë corrects him. (Pardon the redacting of her speech — I’m just trying to earn a “G” rating from the U.S. Board of Censors, signifying approval for “General Audiences.”) “Maul him, Bry!” her legs now squeeze me hard.

“No, Bryan, repress your Tyger-instincts,” advises Ms. Dickinson. “Emily is only blowing off steam,” she winks at Ms. Brontë. “Let this shepherd tell his kinfolk whatever he likes. Why concern ourselves with his tittle-tattle? Let us go seek out new forms of life to befriend.”

So we part ways with this Moses fellow. He continues in the direction of the crashed space-pod, while we all head off in the opposite direction.

As we pace away, I recall a tip that might help our latest acquaintance; so I turn around and yell at the top of my lungs to the old man:

“Sir! Hey, sir! When you reach the spaceship, ask to speak to Mr. Shelton — he can help you with your teeth!”

Moses flinches at the sound of my voice and picks up the pace.

“I sure hope he heard me,” I say.

“Ha!” Brontë points, watching Moses run: “the old [expletive] pissed himself!”

§

Eventually we come to a patch of daffodils, and we lie down and admire them while conversing about very many things.