Trout's Tale: Getting To Know The Gang

And Despite All Evidence To The Contrary, Some People In This Story Still Believe There Is Some Kind Of Plan In Effect

Chapter 5

According to the Hall of Records, The Plan went into effect the day the poet left town, two months before Wayne was boggled and New York became uninhabitable. Dewitt Madison, alias Deadeye, aka Dias de Jesus, a J. P. Stevens maintenance mechanic, offered to tell Fast Ed the Bartender about The Plan even before it had been implemented. “Come on, Eddie, gimme a beer, and I tell you The Plan.”

“Listen, Eye…” said Fast Ed, filling Wanda’s mug.

“I’ll buy your draft Deadeye,” said Wanda, “if you just quit yapping,” as she finished the crossword. It had been simple once she figured out “Gregarious mountaineers”, 106 across, were “SOCIALCLIMBERS.” She had already read Gil Thorp, where an anonymous tip led the Milford Police to discover two joints of marijuana in the locker of Huey Baugh, who was having as difficult a time as ever proving his worth to his fans, teammates, and coaches.

“Wanda,” said Fast Ed the Bartender, “How am I ever going to teach Mr. Eye a sense of responsibility if you keep buying him beer?”

“No one is ever going to teach Mr. Eye a sense of responsibility, Fast Ed. You’re not blind.” said Wanda Japan.

“See Ed? She know it ain’t my fault. I be don’t gotten no money,” Deadeye wailed. “You think you so big.”

No one was sure whether Deadeye suffered from palsy or whether he was always one sip from alcoholic poisoning. People only imagined what he was saying and tried to react appropriately.

“But I know what him be doing,” Deadeye burped, pointing at the poet, “And he know The Plan.”

The poet was reading about Idi Amin Dada who had just held a press conference during which he proclaimed: “I am the leader of a sovereign state, not the Queen’s shoeshine boy.” Then he retired to his chambers where he was served cervelle d’homme en chaud froid. 

The poet knew nothing of The Plan. He spent too much time slipping off on imaginary weekends to know more than an approximation of his name. In fact, he answered to a number of names with equal inattention. Some people called him preoccupied. It was as if before he was conceived, the skin and bone he was willed had already been claimed by another. He could have as easily been born a hermit crab for all the comfort and security he felt.

He entertained the curious belief that his only purpose on this planet was to receive a message he alone was meant to hear. Although his work was widely viewed as a reaction against Robert Browning’s reach/grasp school of naive optimism, the poet himself believed in nothing fervently and accepted everything else with a general lack of conviction.

“Excuse me?” the poet said, setting down his paper, “Were you addressing me?”

“They him, Missy,” Deadeye nodded, “I show he the one. He know The Plan, frontwise and backford.”

“Deadeye,” the poet said, “What are you talking about? What am I supposed to know?”

“Good point,” Wanda said, “Just what are you supposed to know? You should have known he was seventeen, for one.” 

“Seventeen? Who was seventeen?”

“Chatterton,” said Wanda. “Chatterton was seventeen when he died.“

“When he killed himself,” the poet corrected.

“Of course he killed himself,” Wanda said, as if this were expected behavior for everyone. “What does that matter? The fact is he was seventeen, and you said he was not yet twenty.”

“Oh, I see,” smiled the poet. “You resent my following. Seventeen is not yet twenty, after all. It grates on your mortality, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t know what detail means,” piffed Wanda Japan, “You’re a hack with his balls in his mouth. Be careful not to swallow.”

“I don’t have to take this,” the poet huffed, downing his draft. “I could be in New York.”

“New York?” asked Wayne, looking up from the sports page of The Greenville News, “Isn’t that what they turned New Amsterdam into when Peter Stuyvescent died?”

***

No one knows where the poet was born or what his real name was. Shortly after the revolt and the death of Fast Ed the Bartender in the Heart of Materex, the poet apparently offered his services to Wanda Japan and her commandos. The poet would, it is alleged, compose songs and slogans to win the undecided to the commando’s cause. He had access to a small duplicator and could publish broadsides condemning Materex’s arbitrary rule, while calling for a general referendum, a recall. He had a friend in the Life Protector’s office. Perhaps he could pull a few strings and… But Wanda would have none of it. “We have already wasted more words than Man has given meaning…”

“Be reasonable,” the poet pleaded.

“Reasonable?” Paul Bare growled. “That fucking computer just toasted Fast Ed like a marshmallow, and you want us to be reasonable?”

“Violence will get us nowhere,” the poet said.

“The shit you say,” Paul responded, catching the poet high on his right cheek and smashing him against the galvanized ventilator wall.

The poet has since dropped from sight and may, according to some sources, be a staple in Big Daddy Dada’s hidden larder.

Two curious stories from the poet’s childhood have surfaced in the Hall of Records. Although there is no way to vouch for their authenticity, here they are, presented in their entirety.

***

The Poet’s Childhood

Epiphany I

At age three, the subject exhibited masochistic tendencies while spending an afternoon with his paternal grandparents.

He stood in the backyard tossing a small pink ball down the storm cellar steps, where Mr. Swift was attempting to free a stray cat from a tangle of fishing tackle.

Each time the subject threw the ball down the stairs, Mr. Swift would rise to get it, toss it back up, and say: “Jonathan. This is the last time. Don’t do that again,” and each time the subject would say: “Okay, Paw Paw,” and throw the ball down the stairs.

This went on for hours until a thoroughly exasperated Mr. Swift, who was no nearer to reclaiming his gear from the cat’s hide than when he started, finally shouted: “Jonathan! You throw this ball down here one more time, and it’s going in the garbage. That’s that! You get me?”

“Okay, Paw Paw,” said the subject and sat on the steps to watch as Mr. Swift worked carefully and gently, snipping off the barbs of the last of the flounder and porgy rigs protruding from the shivering cat.

But then, suddenly, the boy stood up, took aim, and pitched the ball so it bounced off the top of Mr. Swift’s head.

“And what was that…” Mr. Swift began angrily.

“Now that,” said the subject, “was dumb.”

***

The Poet’s Childhood

Epiphany II

The subject at age three revealed an early preoccupation with alternative modes of expression while spending an afternoon with his paternal grandparents.

As he stood in front of the television set, flipping the tuner, he mimicked the screen activity by shrugging his shoulders, wagging his hands, and making big vowel shapes with his mouth.

Mr. Swift was recovering on the couch from an emergency operation no one wanted to talk about. Each time he heard the tuner kachunk, Mr. Swift would say: “Now Jonathan, what did I tell you? One more time, and that’s that!”

“Okay, Paw Paw,” the subject answered, and returned to playing all the parts on the television screen until he got bored and changed channels again.

This went on for several hours, until Mr. Swift frowned and waved a loose, flabby fist at his grandson, saying: “Jonathan. What did I tell you?”

At this point, the subject walked over to his grandfather and slammed his forehead against the old man’s fist with such force he blackened both his eyes and dislocated Mr. Swift’s thumb.

***

The poet was thinking of Wanda Japan. “I will be reading,” he thought, “and Wanda will be there. I will look up from my folder and our eyes will meet. I will be doing the poem I will write for her tonight. Later, at the party, she will say: ‘I see you haven’t changed,’ to which I will reply: ‘And neither have you, Ms. Japan. You’re every bit as beautiful as I remembered—when was it…ten…fifteen years ago?’”

“Yes, oh yes,” Wanda chuckled, shaking her head, “I could tell from the beginning you couldn’t write your way out of a disposable napkin.”

“You don’t mean that,” the poet protested.

“I mean exactly what I say, asshole,” Wanda huffed, “I’m not a goddamn poet. I don’t need to lie to get at the truth.”

Even in his dreams, the poet had little control over the workings of the world, and as he pulled into the exit lane, Mad Man Howell In The Afternoon was saying: “The weather dominates the news again today as the latest spring blizzard on record dumped new snow on an already buried Midwest. Traveller’s advisories have been posted for all of the U.S. east of the Rockies to western North Carolina as far south as Dallas/Fort Worth.

“Thousands remain stranded on snow-clogged highways, and emergency shelters are taxed to capacity. Seventy deaths have been attributed to the killer storm in Tulsa alone, bringing the seasonally-adjusted death toll to 73,231, the highest since…” he was saying, as the poet switched off the ignition, climbed out of his Fury, and jogged toward the restroom to take a leak.

***

He had just written “Something there is that doesn’…” and was about to cross the “t” when the door of his stall was torn from its hinges.

“I be Sam,” said the man holding the door, “and he be Dave,” as the poet crouched above the commode like a frog getting ready to outrun a gigger, one hand tugging at his cutoffs, the other clutching his pen.

“I’m a poet,” the poet gulped, forcing a smile. “At least let me pull up my shorts.” 

***

It was three days before he saw another human being. Alone in the bell-tower on the University of North Carolina campus, the poet spent his time in front of a small magnifying mirror that hung on the wall over a small wash basin near his cot. He ran his hand over the bulbous cheeks of the metal mask Sam and Dave had fastened to his head. All the while they reassured him: “This be on the up and up. Don’t worry bout nothing. We just be following orders from the President of these United States,” but all the poet could think was: Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

“I know I heard that before. I know it,” he thought, picking at his lower lip.

Suddenly, he heard the bolt in the loft door slide open. He scurried back to his cot and watched as the door groaned upward and a small tray containing a Kentucky Fried Dinner Box, a thermos, six cans of beer, and The Charlotte Observer was shoved onto the floor.

Then a short bent gnome of a man climbed into the bell tower. “Good evening, sir,” the gnome said.

“Deadeye!” the poet exclaimed, rising from the cot, “I’ve never been more…”

“Excuse me, sir,” the gnome corrected in a voice even Orson Welles could have admired, “but my name is Dias, Mr. Dias, if you would be so kind.”

“Cut the horseshit, Mr. Eye. What’s going on here? What kind of game is this we’re playing?”

Dias pulled a boggler from his jacket pocket. “This is no game, sir. You are Howdy Doody and I am Mr. Dias, your mechanic and reluctant host. If you want to eat, if you want to survive, you will remember these things. If you choose to be difficult, I shall give you a dose of this.”

“What the fuck…” the poet began, shambling toward Dias, dragging his chains, for the first time noticing the puffy bruise in the middle of Deadeye’s forehead. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said, “Deadeye, they’ve cut out your brain.”

“Respect, sir. That’s all I ask,” said Dias the Mechanic, his boggler catching the poet full in the groin. “I trust I shall not have to remind you again.”

***

When he finally regained consciousness, the poet cowered in the corner of his cot for the next three days.

—30—

Epilog In Media Res

It occurs to me that some straggler might want to read all of Trout’s Tale in its God-given order, assuming I live long enough to publish all of it. I guess I could start another stack and publish it in order there, but where’s the fun in that?

Instead, what I’ve currently decided to do is add this epilog as an index to previous posts in the order in which they were not written, but in the most recent order they have appeared in the Hall of Records. Links will become active as new URLs are generated.

Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions.

Trout’s Tale thus far…

Frontal Matter And Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33