“Spare that man,” I yelled. “We owe him a lot.”
“Look, buster,” Rapunzel said. “You don’t owe me no favors.”
“Come down off your perch, Rapunzel,” I insisted. “I know what you did for us and we’re eternally grateful.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, giving one man a quick-as-a-flash karate chop.
But another man moved in quickly and subdued the gnome. The little creature fought back furiously, even digging his nails into the man’s back.
“Hey, wait a minute! Where is SAM?”
While we were fat-mouthing about Rapunzel’s fate, SAM had slipped inside his John. I opened the door of carved griffins and gargoyles. There was the Great Commode! But I had no time to admire it. On the floor encircling the bowl were SAM’s discarded shirt, pants and shoes. Footprints tracked the tile near the bowl. Well, at least one print. The other was the mark of a hoof covered with blotches of fresh dung. Had he disappeared into thin air?
I walked over to the bowl. There were heavy stains on its sides as if some object had squeezed through with much effort.
“I know where he is,” I announced to the crowd, some of whom had dispersed throughout the motel and were helping themselves to SAM’s legacy.
I ran up the stairs and out onto the path. Down toward the statues of the Presidents I charged, trampling twigs and cutting through the thicket. Some fingers were creeping over the rim of one of the mouths as an uneven flow of puslike substance roared into the Black Bay.
Then a gas mask peered out as SAM, coming out of RBH’s trap on his back, chinned himself headfirst on the lips. I crawled out onto RBH’s nose. It was a long drop to the bay so I moved with caution. When I reached the edge where the fingers gripped the lips holding on for dear life — while I clung to the cracked nostrils of the President — I kind of lost my cool and stomped up a storm on my man’s fingers.
“NO! NO! LET’S GOAT-SHE-ATE THIS THING.”
But lightning struck his mask as the smashed fingers slowly slipped from the rim of the lips. The gas mask tore away as SAM fell back into the waters sending a geyser of spray many miles high while ripples fanned out across the waters sending tides to the banks of the Emperor Franz Joseph Park. For one brief second as the gas mask fell away from his face I caught a glimpse of it.
NOW I WAS DA ONE. NOW NOT ONLY WOULD I BE THE NAZARENE BISHOP WHICH WAS AFTER ALL PEANUTS, BUT I WAS GOING TO RUN THE WHOLE KIT AND KABOODLE. ME DICTATOR OF BUKKA DOOPEYDUK. NOW DEY WOULD HAVE TO PUT DEM JOOLED ANTLERS ON MY HEAD AND NOW I WOULD BE DA ONE SURROUNDED WITH DEM TENDENTS WHO WOULD WAIT ON ME HAND AND FOOT AND EVERYONE DIDN’T LIKE IT WOULD BE SLUGGED. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, DA GOLDEN BEDPAN WAS MINE NOW AND I WOULD BE DA ONE GIVE OUT DA BINGO SCORES, HAR HAR HAR.
I walked up the path toward my motel, exultant, rehearsing the phonemes of UNNERSTAND and INNERSTEAD. I COMBED MY HAIR WITH A TWO-FOOT COMB.
A noise came from inside the main ballroom where people were running around the halls with their arms loaded with SAM’s legacy-locks of Roy Rogers’ hair, Picayune cartons, Hershey bars (semisweet and sweet chocolate), spittoons, phonograph records, etc.
But the fourth door had been opened. Deep tracks in the rug indicated that a massive object had been rolled from the room and into the ballroom. I opened the door of the ballroom. A giant smiling replica of HARRY SAM in a squatting position had been brought out. IT WAS WHITE HOT WITH ELECTRICITY! The people were climbing into the molten-hot lap and whining at the top of their lungs.
“WAIT! WAIT! GET OUT DAT LAP! I’M DA ONE WHO’S BOSS! LISTEN TO ME.”
On the other side of the room a familiar voice shouted, “STOP HIM! THAT’S THE ONE!”
I turned to see a battery of microphones and TV crews wheeling in and out. The next-in-rank on the Civil Service list was being sworn in. He was surrounded by fourteen of his followers; little men in quilted jackets. Nosetrouble was administering the oath and Cipher X was pointing an accusing finger at me. I started to cop a plea but found myself looking into the barrel of a gun held by one of the little men.
I was hung by meathooks in the Emperor Franz Joseph Park. It was televised nationally, narrated by Fredric March and written up in Variety. On the first day a weird boat moved up the bay. The entire student body and faculty of the University of Buffalo were riding behind on surfboards. They held hoopla hoops under their arms. They also carried some subscription blanks for the Deformed Demokrat (which incidentally had bought serial rights for U2 Polyglot’s long-awaited paper). Two men leaning over the bank waved to me. They were Matthew and Waldo going into exile as guests of the mayor, Steve Wolinski. His honor stood next to them munching on a thirteen-foot kabalsa. Steve was overjoyed. Not only were there plenty of snowplows and cement in the boat’s hold, but now he’ll be the hit of the Chopin Singing Society with the news of all the BECOMINGS and avant-garde muggle-smoking and head trips going on in NOW-HERE.
On the second day of my swinging, I was visited by my parents. They placed a gaudy wreath at my feet, then made a request. “Bukka, we saw you on television and called up the television people to ask how much time on the air cost. They said that television is very expensive. Right, honey?”
“Right,” answered my father, having added a Billy Eckstine shirt to his items of adornment.
“We got the time chart to see how much air time cost. Way we figure it, you must be cleaning up. We were wondering whether you could turn us on to some change so that we can add an air conditioner to the sixth house we just bought to rent out.”
“I didn’t receive anything, mother. Do you think that I enjoy swinging by these meathooks?”
“Nigger probably lying,” my father said. “Soon as he get famous he forget about his peoples. Well, as my mother use to say before she flaked out, ‘hard head makes a soft ass.’ Let’s go, dear. The Donna Reed Show is on the other channel. We’ll fix him. We’ll support his competitor.”
Just as they walked toward the subway Rapunzel came up and placed a gift-wrapped box of Gillette razor blades at my feet. I was touched. “I was on the way to Aqueduct and I wanted to show you my ’preciation for sparing me and to ask you a couple of pertinent questions. First of all, how come you let me go?”
“The preacher said that you had stolen the secret of the Black Bay from Matthew and Waldo and gave it to him so that he might save us. Where did SAM get ahold of the bottle that cleared the Black Bay, Rapunzel?”
“SAM thought that if things ever got hot, he’d have to take it on the lam. Like if GOAT-SHE-ATE-SHUNS failed or something. So he had the Counter Insurgency Foundation invent this formula what would work if he ever had to swim the Black Bay. They worked closely with this ol dame who was corresponding—”
“O, no, no, no. That old witch again!” My father-in-law’s mother would be the death of me yet.
“Well, anyway, Bukka, tanks again.”
“Wait a minute, Rapunzel,” I asked. “Why did you bother to save me?”
“I don’t know. I ask myself that all the time. Why did I stick my neck out? Maybe it’s because you had balls and most of the kats who came up there were always talking about SAM behind his back but when they were with him they were kissing his ass all the time. You stood up to the guy. Which reminds me,” Rapunzel continued, “there was somethin’ else puzzlin’ me and it confused SAM too but he didn’t say anything to you about it because he thought it was some special custom your people had, and didn’t want to seem ignorant about it. What was that Nazareeny thing you kept yapping about?”
“Well, Rapunzel, it’s a long story,” I began. “It all started when I stood outside my dean’s office when he was pushing this ball of manure around the world by his nose. … I mean, you see, these kids were on an elevator one day fighting with clipboards and they disappeared. … You see, there was this thing stuck in my frig and it asked could I arrange an appointment for it with SAM. … O, no, that’s not the way. What’s the use?” I said, giving up the ghost, as the little man removed his derby and bowed his head.