Dear diary,
After singing our song for the rest of the day, Tara and I retire to our house in the garden of Eden, where we’re still living happily ever after. Performing our usual pre-bedtime routine, we check the Baby Room and make sure that our parents haven’t yet escaped from out of their cradle that is endlessly rocking (it has an “auto-rock” function, which I switched on, and I keep it charged and plugged in) — and, look: little Bryan Ray Sr. and Tara’s mom are indeed asleep; tho they seem to be a little fidgety, therefore we gently chloroform them. This will help us, who are their children, sleep easier. — We now change into our eveningwear and lend a curse to God; then hit the hay.
“Dear LORD, keep your distance,” I pray; adding, for the sake of clarity: “at least seventy-five parasangs, at all times.” Then I dive into dreamland.
“O Father in the Heavens,” Tara whispers with eyes closed and hands folded, “stay back and stay alive.”
So we both hop under the covers and immediately begin to snooze. The LORD God, just to mess with our minds, sends a lumberjack down from the heavens to saw logs right outside of our bedroom window; therefore, all night long, we keep intermittently waking up and looking to see why our snores are coming from outside of the house; and, likewise, this skyjack constantly leaves off cutting his wood to peek thru our window, attempting to discern how much his racket is penetrating innerspace. After more than twenty hours of this routine, we all wake up refreshed. (The instant before I draw open the drapes, the skyjack absconds with his sawhorses and lumber to Cloud-cuckoo-land.)
“Ah, another perfect day,” I yawn, gazing out at Paradise. “Fully cloudy, without a hint of annoying sunshine; plus that subtly foggy mist is still exuding from the earth, looming over the landscape’s face and maintaining a mood of mystery.”
“Would you like lamb for breakfast?” Tara asks.
“You read my mind,” I say.
So we breakfast on lamb’s meat topped with a raw egg, and converse about art while sharing four bottles of Riesling.
“Where shall we wander?” I say, once we’re finished dining and philosophizing.
“Let’s just enjoy the mist and the swamps,” Tara sez.
“Simply walk out the front door and let our fancy guide us?”
“Yes, and bring the canoe along,” sez Tara.
So I portage the canoe while we head out into the misty swamps of Eden.
“Look there!” Tara whispers and points at a glowing lizard.
“Ooh,” I speak low, so as not to disturb the being, “very pretty.”
We walk further until we come to some fruit-bearing trees. I pick one sample for myself and hand another to Tara: this fruit is a cross between an apple and an orange, yet far superior to either. The taste is exquisite, and it causes us to feel fortified with warm electricity.
Now approaching a lime-green stream, I place the canoe in the water, and we let the current carry us for a while.
“What’s that, up ahead?” Tara gestures to the stretch of land just beyond the bend, before the upcoming rapids. “It looks like a cage — I could swear I’m looking at a chicken coop...”
I hold my opera glasses to my eyes and remark: “By Jove, you’re right.” Then, after observing the sight for a few more moments, while we continue to drift ever closer to it, I say: “Whoever built that coop should not have left it open at the top; they should’ve put some sort of roof or covering over it — for that hawk that keeps circling overhead has me worried.”
We’re drawing nearer to the land, till eventually our canoe thunks against the bank at the bend. “Wanna get out and have a look,” asks Tara, “as long as we’re here?”
Still gazing thru my binoculars, I say: “Let’s wait just a little while longer — I’d like to see if anyone comes out to tend to these fowl. Perhaps a local flapper or spendthrift owns them. I love meeting new people; and I especially love conversing about agriculture.”
As I voice the above response, our canoe slowly drifts away from the bend and is drawn by the current toward the rapids. Soon we’re being bashed against the rocks, and we almost capsize. Then a waterfall appears up ahead, and we have no time to escape: we go right over its edge, fall for ten thousand moments, and eventually land in a whirlpool.
Tara rights herself in the canoe, against the menace of the elements, and she throws out a hempen rope, which catches upon a tree branch that’s more than ninety meters away — the length of a football field.
“Are you sure that that will hold? It’s just draped limply over the branch, without any knot to fasten the rope to the tree,” I say, while the canoe continues swirling in the whirlpool and being sucked toward the abyss.
“It’ll either hold, or we die today in paradise,” sez Tara. “Don’t worry — I have a second rope that I’m now planning on tossing over another branch; and then I’ll use the pre-cut segments of twine that I keep in my front blouse-pocket to use as rungs, which I’ll tie at regular intervals between the two ropes, thus inventing what shall henceforth be known as a rope ladder. And we can use this to climb to dry land.”
I shake my head, “Whatever you say.”
So Tara tosses out the second length of hempen rope, which manages to reach a separate branch of the same tree that’s roughly 100 meters landward, while we swirl toward certain death in our canoe. Then Tara puts rungs between the two ropes by tying smaller pieces of twine between them at intervals.
“C’mon!” she shouts, over the wind and the rain. “Take my hand, and let’s climb to safety.”
So I trust Tara, and we hold hands while climbing the rungs of her rope ladder to the tree. Then we leap from the creaking branch over onto the firm land with its rolling green hills, just before lightning strikes the tree. While dusting ourselves off, now standing on the plain, we watch the tree (which has been felled from its prior position by the thunderbolt) get sucked into the abyss by the violent raging whirlpool.
“What about our canoe?” I ask, pointing to the trusty little outrigger — for it is now being bashed by the waves as it struggles against sharing the fate of the recently swallowed tree. “Do you think we can save it?”
Tara stares into my eyes with a serious expression for a very great while; then she sez: “I might be able to salvage it via psychokinesis.”
Then she kneels down on the grass with her eyes closed, facing our canoe that is creaking and spinning in the dangerous waters. She holds out her arms in the shape of a “T”; then she brings her hands together and aims them in the direction of the poor tossed vessel. Tara now concentrates her voodoo rays so that they pulse out of her forehead toward the canoe, and eventually the thing lurches up onto land.
“That was magnificent!”’ I say. “Thank you!”
“I’m just glad I stayed in practice,” Tara sez. “It wouldn’t have worked so well, if I had let my skills rust.”
So I portage the canoe over the rolling green hillocks while Tara walks beside me humming contentedly. We are retracing our steps on dry land, following the stream back to where we had been bivouacking before we fell off the falls. Soon we locate the bend where we spotted the chicken coop.
I set down the canoe and look thru my opera glasses, while turning around and searching in every direction: “Where IS it?” I cry; “I don’t see anything now! Could it be that someone came here and moved the coop while we were struggling against the whirlpool?”
“No, it’s right there,” Tara points westerly, to the gate where the vines cling crimson on the wall and there are leaves whispering in the twilight.
I remove the glasses to see which direction she’s indicating; then I hold them up again and look and say: “Ah! You’re right — there it is!” I smile, feeling happy. But soon, as I continue to gaze thru the binoculars, my countenance falls. “Oh no,” I say; “that hawk is swooping down toward the chickens.”
Tara is clutching her pearls in suspense and sporting an attractively disturbed look (if her pose in this instance were a still-frame from a film, we would choose it for our novel’s cover image), as we witness this tragedy together. The hawk speeds down out of the heavens and uses its talons to clutch a hen and steal her. All the other chickens squawk in terror as this occurs.
“That was awful,” I say. “He got the one with the brownish-red feathers.”
“Let’s go take a closer look,” sez Tara, stepping forth.
We reach the coop and try the door. It is not locked, so we enter and greet the birds verbally. Then I give them a treat — I always carry with me a bag of dried mealworms when we stroll thru Eden, in case we meet any creatures who like to eat healthy; so I give this bag a shake, and the chickens all spaz with delight, because they know that some tasty victuals are soon to rain down upon them.
So, as I’m broadcasting mealworms and the chickens are pecking them up, we are now startled out of our bliss by the sound of the coop door slamming. Tara and I spin around and look toward the entrance. There are two figures, vaguely human in shape, standing within the coop; the details of the forms are difficult to discern, because the sun is directly behind them, which leaves them in silhouette.
Still holding the bag of dried mealworm in one hand, I slowly reach my other toward my holster. I don’t take my pistol and indiscriminately begin firing, however. I just let my hand hover over the weapon, in case these figures decide to make a false move.
“Are you enemies, looking for a little rough-and-tumble,” I say in my velvety smooth voice, “or do you come in peace as the farmers who own this establishment? Perhaps you’re here to present us with one of your horses, so that we can all sit down together and become fast friends by sharing a meal of tartare.”
There is a moment of tense silence. Then the leftmost figure of the silhouetted duo raises its arms as if Tara and I are doing a stickup, and the figure sez: “I guess you could say I’m a farmer, but I always think of myself as more of a gardener. And yeah, sure, we could offer you one of our horses, if that would please you. My name is La Man, I haunt the surrounding bestiary; and this here’s my statue, whose title is Car Car War Tar.” (The speaker moves his or her arm so that it taps the side of the other gloom-shrouded figure, tho the latter remains inert.) “We come in peace; we’re only here to feed the hens.”
“Ah, what a relief,” both Tara and I now visibly relax; “I was just sprinkling some mealworm out, for a treat. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, no,” sez La Man; “go right ahead — these chickens are always hungry; and they’ll eat anything, and everything agrees with them.”
“Well that hawk sure didn’t agree with them,” sez Tara; “did you see that thing? It came swooping in and nabbed up your ruddy-brown hen.”
“Is that so?” sez La Man. “Oh well, hawks need to eat, too.”
“We should help you put a roof on this thing,” sez Tara; “to prevent future birdnappings.”
“Oh, that would be nice,” sez La Man. “Would I need to go find wooden shingles in the forest of the night, and a rubber barrier, plus tar paper and slime and bitumen…?”
“No, no,” sez Tara, “we could just toss a bit of wire fencing over the top of what you got here — real simple. That way, the light can still come in, and the rainwater can continue to fill this nifty trough system that you got here.”
“Ah, I’m glad you like the trough,” sez La Man; “I made it myself — the idea came to me in a dream. It’s engineered to be self-filling.”
“I see that,” sez Tara. “I’m Tara, by the way; and this is Bryan. We’re maji, by trade.”
“Pleased to meet you,” sez La Man.
So we perform a miracle that causes a wire-mesh roof to appear atop the coop. Then Tara and I sit down with La Man and his statue Car Car War Tar in the shade outside of their tabernacle and enjoy a luncheon of steak tartare. We explain where we live and invite them to come visit us anytime. Unfortunately, I never did get a good look at this farmer or his statue, because the sun remained behind them, low on the horizon, for the whole duration of our visit. And although the statue definitely accompanied us from the coop to the picnic and even finished every dish of its multi-course dinner, neither Tara nor I ever did see the thing move. It was always simply there; having obviously changed its position, yet remaining seemingly motionless, like the hour-hand on a clock.
No comments:
Post a Comment