h! It was terrible!
Little Jimmie was crying. Great sopping squalls came sailing forth to the accompaniment of large pendulous tears that fell into his cavernous mouth and tickled his nose and wet the belly of his multicolored pullover. Everyone else was laughing, their mouths equally as big as his. A few even had little-bitty tears trickling down their rosy cheeks.
Little Jimmie stopped his bawling long enough to look at them. Then he looked up at his sister. She, too, was laughing. He started crying again. This time his nose came into play. It was going to be a terrifically wet cry.
He looked back at the stage and increased his volume. Why were they doing those horrible things to each other?
"No-no-no!" shouted the red puppet, batting his compatriot on the head with a flat bopper.
The other puppet fell over and bounded back.
"What do you mean, no! They went that way!" and the blue-and-white puppet turned to point, the yellow club on his shoulder catching red squarely on the head, knocking him over the front of the stage.
Little Jimmie took a breathy pause and then tried to overpower the laughter.
"Hey!" shouted red, pulling himself upright. "Who's that crying out there?"
"Is there someone out there?"
"Of course there is, you fool." Bop.
"Don't hit me, you oaf!" Bam!
"I'm not an oaf, you dolt!" Slam!
"I'm not a dolt, you bungler!" Crash!
"Say--wait a minute!"
"What?"
"It's over there."
"Over there?"
"No. Over there."
"Oh! You mean Little Jimmie."
"Yeah. Hey! Jimmie!"
Little Jimmie stopped, looking around for his friend.
"No-no-no! Up here!"
Little Jimmie looked at the puppets. He stopped crying.
"Oh. That's much nicer."
"Music to my ears."
"That's laughter, bimbo."
"I'm deaf."
"You're deaf?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
he
two men stood and looked at each other. It had been easier than they
had thought. No muss, no fuss and they had gotten their farms back,
too. They looked back at the desk. They had done a bad thing. A very
bad thing. They looked at the desk for a long time. There were three
glasses on the table. One was empty. A man was slumped over. He was
in a beautifully tailored three-piece suit, an expensive spun cotton
shirt and a lavender silk tie with a diamond stick pin in it. He had
diamonds at his French cuffs and on his fingers but he had no hair
on his head.
He was dead and these two men in their never-quite-free-of-grime overalls had done it. Although they were the only live men in the room, they were not the only ones defiled. Outside, across the square on the grass, stood five more people--two of them women. They were not watching the puppet show. They were watching the big window of the bald man's office. They had witnessed the entire procedure. When these two men raised their glasses and drank, these five people turned back to the Bop and Bip show, Intrepid Hunters of the Elusive Yusotsuki. The five were satisfied and although no one really took any direct notice, the entire audience seemed to sigh and settle back to watch a very funny show. Casper Zaguast was dead and they could all finally enjoy themselves. They were free of his oppressive presence.
There was another watcher, too. She could not see very well with her glaucoma so she was looking through opera glasses from the window of her air conditioned car, a car she felt she had more than earned in service to the bald man in the office. She lowered her glasses as the men in the office lowered their glasses.
"Take me home, William."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I think I might need some comfort tonight."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Dismiss the rest of the household. My sorrow may spill out of bounds."
"We must retain a minimum, ma'am."
"Whom do you suggest?"
"I think, perhaps, Tina the downstairs maid and Romero, his personal valet."
"Why him?"
"They have been lovers a long time."
"I thought Tina was his squeeze."
"Very often one does not have a choice in these matters. Might I suggest the master's--"
"He's no longer the master, William."
"May I remind the lady, no one has found him dead yet."
She sighed and looked out the window. The scenery couldn't pass by quickly enough. She'd not had the audacity to do this deed herself--though Lord knows she'd had the chance. There was nore than one night Caspar had tumbled into the house senseless with liquor. Now he had had his last drink. The terror and fear dissipated with the lowering of three sets of glasses. How easy it was after all. Like one puppet hitting another in idiot rage. Yet far quieter, far neater than Caspar's idiot rage.
olonel Don-don,
sir."
"Yes. What is it, Captain?"
"You're not going to like this, sir."
"Why do you always tell me how I am going to feel about the news you are about to give me?"
"It's. . .ah. . .censor spin-off, sir. I want to make sure you feel the right thing."
"Well, what is it then?"
"Caspar Zaguast is dead, sir."
"You mean he was murdered."
"We don't know that for certain, sir. But it is a possibility."
"Who did it?"
"That has not been determined, sir. The local militia seem a bit confused."
"What!" He rose to the top of his imposing height, slamming a Sex Kitten Comix on the desk top. The Captain looked up at him from his inferior position and was, as always, duly amazed at his erect commanding officer.
"The lower ranks are just that, sir. Lower. They are without a leader."
"I guess that means I must go to quell the unrest."
"Might I suggest that you take a regiment or two in order to keep the peasants in order? They are a mean and unruly lot and might hinder the investigation if not given the proper guidance."
"Yes. Perhaps you are right."
"A Peacekeeping Force, sir."
"I like keeping the peace."
"Yes, sir. Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson."
"And Ghengis Khan. Should I be on my way, then?"
"It will take awhile to gather the army together. . . tomorrow morning might be good."
"Good. I'll go home and take my vitamin E."
ittle
Jimmie was tooling around the town square well as fast as his short
fat toddler legs could carry him. He had the occasional pitch forward
but his arms were still as long and pudgy as his legs so he never
plunged headlong onto the dusty ground, just kind of fell over onto
his hands and head. Besides, if he fell all the way over he might
have to cry--not out of pain, you understand it was a social expectation--and
then he would have to stop his singing and this was the only time
he was given free rein.
Little Jimmie knew when the gig was up so he was keeping a necessary eye on his mother and the three other gossiping women at the town square well. When his mother stopped for a breath, the gig was up. Little Jimmie ran and sang with an intensity that belied the importance of such an act.
When Jimmie's mother stopped talking, it was because the three other women tapped her to turn around and take a look at what was coming into town. Not that nobody didn't expect it. Everybody did. It's just how it came in. "It" was the law. For this and many another town, the law was an outside force imposing itself on their smoothly running order. There were different rules in each of the towns and so there were town justice forces. The law figured it should all be the same and so, upon occasion, rode roughshod over the townspeople and their officially perceived corrupt law practices.
This time, however, there had been a breach of the peace and so the Colonel himself, Colonel Don-don, rode in, sitting pretty on his white pony with the high-stepping gait. He knew how to impress his lessers, the swine. Just outside of town he had changed from the beautiful chestnut retired racehorse that now was posted behind the last troupe carrier because a white horse was far more impressive. To these townsfolk the Colonel looked like a miscast Cervantes astride a too small mount. But Colonel Don-don didn't see it that way.
As the Colonel, then, rode into the town square on his pure white destrier, Little Jimmie's mother nodded to her friends and sent them scurrying off as fast as their loads of pure, clean spring water allowed. And Jimmie, too. He stopped his rendition of "Bend Over Shake A Tail Feather" to watch the new showmen come into town. He knew they were a circus because the horse preceded a great caravan of motorized vehicles that spluttered and sighed as they worked overtime to accommodate their egocentric but useless ring-master's lugubrious pace. Their carriers and the side arms of their mission were of foreign make and therefore made to last longer and deliver better than the homegrown stuff. Jimmie didn't know about this yet.
And so, it was not an anomaly that horses led motorized transport and town centre well-springs worked alongside paved roads and refrigerators, but Little Jimmie cried anyway. Puppets were always beating on each other and he didn't want to see another show.
When the Peacekeeping Force nimbly jumped out of their conveyances and deployed themselves about the city square well, with all due decorum and weaponry, Little Jimmie was well into doing the Boston Sidestep along with his mother. They passed the town offices, where, two weeks previously, Caspar Zaguast finally got his and, today, the Colonel caught Little Jimmie's mother.
In all actuality, the Colonel didn't do anything, such work was the job of the Peacekeepers. She was dragged to the Colonel's beautiful, white horse, Little Jimmie crying and complaining all the way.
"We caught this woman, sir!" shouted the soldier.
"Ah," the Colonel intoned. Jimmie was pretty loud, they must not raise their children very well in the sticks, he thought. He shouted at the woman but she was uneducated and he wanted to be understood, "What do you think you're doing?!"
"I'm going home to feed my family!"
"Ah! Oh! Well, then, be on your way. Let her go!"
And Little Jimmie disappeared down some small street they didn't even live on. His mother had no treat for him, either, for being such a good boy all day long, so he had taken off at the first opportunity.
This Peacekeeping Force was brought in to insure that the Colonel got the judgment he wanted and that it was honored as befit a nation of this constituency. Otherwise, it would be his head. He gave the order for the issuance of firearms--after all, they had carried them all the way down here, hadn't they? Waste not, want not.
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