The Captain of Disaster and the Sergeant of Surprise

He was a short slight man with a dark vandyke. He looked like, well, Lenin. Alone on the road, just alongside the German farm, with a big ham and a slab of bacon in a wooden barrow he trundled, he gesticulated and mixed pidgin German with Russian. “Stalin hat gezacht—” Stalin has said that any Russian Displaced Person could take whatever he wanted from any Germans anywhere. He held eye contact with me and stamped his foot a few times. When he made a fist, my point man, Driscoll said, lifting the butt of his M1, “Should I knock him down one time.”

“And take the groceries?” Finley said.


“For us, or the farmer,” MacEnroy asked.


“Take it easy,” I said, “all of you. Let me deal with him.”

Q. Please, what is a broomschlager?

A. If you must know, it’s a crustacean, particularly abundant off the Tonga Islands. It has long, fan-like spikes that it waves 180 degrees all around itself while it moves along the sea floor, sweeping in plankton that stick to each spike, or spoke, it you’re using the past tense, by the force of electromagnetism. It also wards off predators by the electrical shock it maintains in each projection or finger of its fan. The question for naturalists has always been why it knocks out of even slays giant squid and octopi, since they do not feast or even snack on broomschlagers or pose any threat to them. With the advent of modern undersea photography, we now have an answer. It’s all been a tragic mistake. Broomschlagers are not assaulting any squid or octopi but, down there in the murky depths, are merely tapping them on the shoulders to ask directions. Unfortunately, they don’t know their own power. How could they, come to think of it? They’ve never had any voltmeters or anything. And where would they carry one? They don’t even have a pouch: they’re all mouth and waving bristles. My own zoological advice, when unconscious or deceased squids and octopi are found, is to fetch up all neighboring broomschlagers in nylon nets—never wood nets, or even marginal hemp—and, being careful not to touch them with the human hand (unless a war criminal is in the boat), lift or drag them to a place like the Great Barrier Reef, which is filled with vicious mako sharks. Let them get some rough treatment for a change.sweeping in plankton that stick to each spike, or spoke, it you’re using the past tense, by force of electromagnetism. It also wards off predators by the electrical shock it maintains in each projection or finger of its fan. The question for naturalists has always been why it knocks out or even slays giant squid and octopi, since they do not feast or even snack on broomschlagers or pose any threat to them. With the advent of modern undersea photography, we now have an answer. It’s all been a tragic mistake. Broomschlagers are not assaulting any squid or octopi but, down there in the murky depths, are merely tapping them on the shoulders to ask directions. Unfortunately, they don’t know their own power. How could they, come to think of it? They’ve never had any voltmeters or anything. And where would they carry one? They don’t even have a pouch: they’re all mouth and waving bristles. My own zoological advice, when unconscious or deceased squids and octopi are found, is to fetch up all neighboring broomschlagers in nylon nets—never wood nets, or even marginal hemp—and, being careful not to touch them with the human hand (unless a war criminal is in the boat), lift or drag them to a place like the Great Barrier Reef, which is filled with vicious mako sharks. Let them get some rough treatment for a change.

Q. Are all place-names with h or k sounds automatically funny?

A. Yes, and then again no. Hoboken, New Jersey, is always funny—and not the New Jersey part. So is Hackensack and also Weehawken. As a matter of fact, if you throw in Secaucus—which is not a bad thing to do—and Hohokus, you’ve got quite a state there. But, on the other hand, Camden isn’t funny, and Hasbrook Heights has never doubled up anybody. Elsewhere in the country, Kalamazoo and Oshkosh are always good for a laugh, as is Cucamonga. Out there, of course, the whole state of California gets more and more hilarious. Still, Kansas isn’t humorous and, goodness knows, Hell’s Canyon is no laughing matter.Honolulu is somewhere in the middle—of the Pacific Ocean, I mean. Blandings, Florida, is about the best place for a rest.

Q. Where does the salt go when evaporating ocean water lifts up in droplets, which fall again somewhere as pure rain?

A.     Most but not all droplets are distilled, leaving their heavy salt particles behind on the surface of the sea. But a minority of droplets retain light molecules of salt and are still able to rise up and form little-known “saline cumuli.” These clouds tend to group together over the Antarctic, where they discharge themselves as roaring salt storms. Some people, especially geodetic personnel who have been stationed down there too long, believe that they are ordinary snow storms; but they definitely are not. Snow falls, it does not pelt or knock you down. And it never makes very great noise by itself. As for hail, it simply does not occur in extreme southern latitudes for some reason. What we’ve got is sodium chloride, all right, no two ways about it. The proof is penguins. They have been obviously victimized by the fury of periodic salt-ball bombardment, accounting for their unsteady gait. If they could talk, what they would say! On the other hand, if they really could, they might only ask where the party is.

Q. I recently heard the expression, "I find the whole business are cane." Shouldn't it be "is cane?"

A.     No, it’s “are cane”—although nowadays you’ll find it abbreviated or, as the grammatical experts say, elided. In its original stage it had an apostrophe, “ar’cane,” which closed up into the modern “arcane.” This modern elision effectively conceals its earliest usage in Jamaican sugar fields, where it referred not to sweetness, as some ignoramuses think, but to the dense obscurity of the thick cane breaks. “Ah’m not goin’ into the ar’cane” was the common expression then, signaling fear of the lugubrious and unknown—now applicable to fields of any mysterious or unpenetrable endeavor. In any case it is never singular, though it is unexpected.

Q. I feel bad that I don't know what a "broomschlager" is.

A. We are not allowed to deal with emotional problems.

Phenomenal Farewell

From the embrasure of their evergreen fellows

deciduous cottonwoods and aspens—

a Montana cast of thousands—more like hundreds—maybe tens—

call loud attention to themselves, wedging in Douglas fir, poking around

and slipping through cedar and pine, their yellows

clapping, their reds a cheer, all their leaves hallooing,

the desperate trees themselves about to bound

from the stage of autumn into tiers of October sun.

            Wait a minute: nothing so fanciful teaches

truth. Things are not what they seem

if what they seem overreaches

so much. Actually, they’re not applauding

back at us or pushing fir aside, they’re done,

that’s all—

I mean the leaves. What we’re seeing, hearing, lauding

is the end of one more season in our heads, another curtain call

for minds over-kindled by vivid sunbeams.

It just so happens that they most wear well

in show-stopping glory, dry-leaf phenomenal farewell.

Moral: Don’t exaggerate, unless absolutely convenient. Or unless you’re into fables.

Otherwise, speak plain...like:

Goodbye is—goodbye.

The Bengal Tiger and the Himalayan Yak

“I am more and more plagued by a single question,” said the yak from Nepal: “What is the meaning of it All?”

“I am sorry to hear that,” said the Bengal, “and sorry that you are not well.”

“Who said anything about being sick?”

“You did. I distinctly heard ‘plagued.'”

“It was just an expression, a figure of speech, a vague make-do word. You know.”

“Yes, I know. So—it just popped into your head, a sort of accident? Well, there are very few accidents in the ways of the mind. Everything is relevant. Furthermore, for your information, whenever somebody speaks in virtual capitals, saying ‘Life’ or, as you said, ‘All’, they are not empty locutions either but broad, urgent, fraught, and he is saying that he is already lost in some wide catch-all empyrean, an indefinable Every Place or No Place—actually annihilation—and probably for a long while already—gone, as they say. How far, we shall soon determine.”

“‘Gone?’ I’m insane?”

Flora

What is the most intelligent plant?

Asparagus.

Why?

Because asparagus is the most monolithic of plants, with the loveliest fern lace in the world That shadowing lace helps keep its ground free of weeds, its immediate area phenomenally clear.

That doesn’t mean it has a mind.

No, no central brain. But maybe there’s mind in petals, stalks and flowers and—while we’re at this—just ordinary arboreal wood. Let’s mention trees.

A tree has bark for cellulose skin, foliage and fir that might do for hair; branches like arms, roots like feet, flowing sap resembling blood, stomata for breathing ambient air; capillary suction to pump up water; pods, cones, parasols in genital profusion. Isn’t it all elaborate, doesn’t it stun? And why not a sense, an over-all sense, a general, informing innate mind-in-matter, a totally sensate unified mood in any tree as a whole, there where it’s stood?

And take all the crops that became good fodder, multiplied by our most diligent tending—can’t we add that also as somewhat mind-bending? Who, exactly, is doing what to whom. Is it the man, at last, or is it the bloom? Who is superior to the other, giving or taking the relevant trouble? Which of the two is really more clever, who is the one who is thinking double, or treble?

And how about this: who figured out how to use the sun, the start of all life and everyone? You think photosynthesis was the work of fools? Nothing will outdo the grasses and trees, that trick they all had up their leaves.

All this begs the question of actual animal and sheer human brain power. Yes. But . . .

Moral: Life that doesn’t have an I.Q may wonderfully succeed or plain up

and down do.

The Fables in Flicks

About the carrot-eating Bunny, the kinetic Road Runner and coy Tweety-bird, remember that their enemies, not themselves, were doomed, time and again, over and over. Even if Elmer Fudd’s rifle was raised and exploded, he never had a chance (and the rabbit outrageously knew it), nor did Wile E. Coyote (and the Road Runner smilingly knew it), nor did Sylvester the Cat (and the canary gleefully knew it). Life was directly reversed in the cartoons, where the little and weak were constant winners, always with a smirk on their faces: the know-it-all infallible rabbit, the wise guy whirligig Road Runner, the smart-aleck superior canary. After a while, if their enemies weren’t also so sure of themselves, we would have wanted all three taken down.
           
Moral: It isn’t all that charming being smug or snide, even if you’ve got the writers on your side.

The Parrot

District Attorney:       For the court record, your name, sir?

Witness, Parrot:        Polly.

D.A.                            Is that your full name? Don’t you bear a longer appellation?

Parrot:                        If you’re suggesting Wannacracker, no.

Judge (to Parrot):     Answer the question directly, please.

Parrot:                        I am Polly Z. Psitlaciformes, according to the book.

D.A.:                          What’s the Z stand for?

Parrot:                       Zygodactyl, meaning pair-toed, unlike, say, the stork or the rook.

D.A.:                          That is a mouthful, if I may say so.

Parrot:                        I don’t see why: you’re here to ask a series of predictable dumb questions,                                             not to say anything in particular.

D.A.:                          Your Honor—

Parrot:                       Withdrawn.

D.A. (to Parrot):        You have been accused, among other things, of complete, off-the-wall                                                     smart-ass remarks that frequently deviate into sense.

Parrot:                       That may be. It depends.

Two Squirrels

Twice upon one time, there were two squirrels in the same wood, one of them in perpetual harvesting motion, wise and industrious, gleaning seeds and bugs and litter and nuts, while the other did not, enjoying instead the one season of good weather. Each of them indulged his situation, the one in fretful, even desperate endeavor, busy-busy to-and-fro-ing, the other in timely and sensible pleasure. (You think you know where this is going?”)

            

What a heaped-up harvest the good squirrel made, while the prodigal lay back on piney boughs in the shade of upper branches for noon nap breaks from his escapades. There were moments when the stirring one, worn to a frazzle, envied the other but could not condone either the laziness or fits of razzle dazzle. He collected mushrooms and dried them neatly on covert twigs, then stored them out of reach. The profligate ate a fading peach, not feeling the need of conscientious greed. He scampered and played all over the place, especially on one high tension cable, running back and forth in a daring race to improve his speeds (how his cousin yearned to follow his lead!) going faster and faster just to be able to better the records that he had made.

            

The Sea Lion

A sea lion on a sun-drenched day, bouncing gently on a small ice floe, was mesmerized by the horizon line, bobbing up and down and far away. He thought a single Great White Cloud, in sea lion’s shape and all aglow, was God, and he was God and God was he. Up and down the ice raft bobbed, he on top, in rhythmic trance, under blazing sky, feeling One-in-all and All-in-one, identity and unity.

When evening came and it grew dark, he slipped into the frothing sea and was eaten by a Great White Shark.

            

Moral: So much for that unified feeling. When all is said and all is done, the All may not feel one with you.

Two Pandas

Xien Won was a giant panda born with a normal, playful, good disposition in the Guiyang compound where she lived. Fresh, in fine spirits, she was positively delightful and cuddlesome, according to standard propaganda until—she wasn’t. Why was that? It was the place. She came more and more to scorn her condition. She grew bored with the monotonous gym set and routine, even gave up swinging on the swing. She came to despise the ooh-ing children and their ah-ing parents, and regularly faced about, turning her back to the crowd (to be rid of them, she thought). In these ways her disposition soured; she was out of humor, she lacked even momentary joy, and gradually her features more or less caught her sulky mood, and her face, though furred, seemed to glower.

           

She refused, of course, to couple with prospective mates, with whom, instead of love-and-hate, it was always hate. After a third and successful artificial insemination, she gave birth to a cub of her own to whom she was so indifferent that it had to be taken from her and put into incubation. She never missed it just as she had never kissed it. Her progressive withdrawal became deeper. She ended as a sullen ward, neither close to fellow creatures nor the staff, bonded to no one, anti-social and glum.

The Genealogical Conversation

“The thing is,” said the crocodile, “I look old—wouldn’t you say? Absolutely dinosauric: the lizardy corruscaded hide, the mindless devouring slithering predatory machine, slit-eyed, cold blooded, everybody’s idea of basic prehistoric ancient primary essence.”

            

“I am the model for all that,” said the shark, “millions of years before the likes of you, before even flowering began on earth. I’m not even bone but primeval cartilage, the reigning monster of the deeps.”

            

“You protoplasmic peasant,” said the Emperor crab, “you’re completely un-regal and inconsequent, next to me. Did you catch my name, you late-coming hulk? Learn what antique royal lineage really is.”

           

“What is all this hydrostatic priority?” asked the ant. “We are the teeming lords of the realm, for eons and eons and in continual hordes.”

            

“My,” said the bacterium, “such interspecial virulence! I’m counting on it to bring down your resistance. All of you together make me laugh. Fact is, we—” he was sub-dividing as he spoke—“in time have laid low everyone. We were here first, numerously, and we will be the last.”

            

Moral: Geneology—it’s not history, it’s bragging rights.

The Stag

When the forest started burning, a great stag held back while all other animals fled in panic. He moved calmly, picking his way before the flames, turning even to browse now and again. Everything in moderation was his motto. He’d never been in a fire before but that didn’t matter, he knew better than to run amok.

            

Creatures all about him paced ahead, including cougars, who might have waited to pounce on any deer or other game gone astray or lingering, but they also raced in frantic haste. So did badgers, humping fast across the tinder floor. And through the underbrush little things were scurrying, and in clearings elk went streaking, and grizzly bears whizz’d along. A ponderous moose bounded by. “Take it easy,” counseled the stag, but nobody heard, least of all flights of frightened birds who clacked or thrummed their wings as they zoomed straight out of there under a dimmed and lowering sky.

            

The stag, aloof, erect, majestic, bided his time. He sauntered through a grotto. He munched snow-on-the-mountain, though something coarse coated his tongue, roughened his bite. He strode slowly, in the darkening light, unperturbed by the pell-mell headlong rush all about him. A bolting horse from somewhere trampled past. Still, the stag held back. He sniffed the air, which had thickened with motes of—what? flakes? ash?—making him chuff and cough. His heart began to quicken.

            

He stopped his temperate grazing and wished now to be off, and he started, but his rack of horns was snared in a raveling bramble which normally he could have disentangled but, wheezing, he shuffled, swayed and bumbled further, folding to his fore-knees, feeling alarm but also curious surprise that he was not able to rise where he had stood but sagged and softly crumbled in the midst of smoke, the sound of crackling wood. Then, casually overcome, he succumbed.

            

Moral: Everything in moderation—including moderation.

The Grasshopper

A juvenile grasshopper under a toxic shroud lost her parents in a field of timothy grass. Only she survived the pesticide. She was adopted subsequently by a cloud of cicadas who acted, yes, in locust parentis. The whole swarm lavished affection and care, whereupon she thrived for the rest of that year—although, however much she ate, she never grew bigger but always stayed svelt, with the same slim grasshopper figure.

           

After that time, it came to pass that the spiraling locusts buried their young, deep under sand and silt, beyond discovery, for the many years it takes for resurrection. She, being she, could not follow successfully, though she sank her whole casing in the same desert hollow. She was not able to draw grasshopper breath so far below. She had learned to chirp their cluster song, had migrated for the summer, and had managed to abide—but she died.

           
Moral:  More or less, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Q. Are glaciers on the move—and, if so, how fast?

A. They certainly are, but at highly variant speeds. You can’t see them move at all in

Greenland; you can’t even tell if they’re coming or going. Actually, they are moving above a  
millimeter a day in the east and sliding back the same in the west, all of which is very hard on 
the upper peninsula, especially the crust. Underneath, where all the fairies live, there’s no 
stress at all. On the other side of the Arctic Circle, though, in Faintheart, Alaska—on the cove, 
where the fishing colony keeps re-establishing its tiny village every twenty-three days—the 
saying is, “Here she comes again!” Nowadays, they have snowmobiles and can make quick 
getaways, but in the old days it was almost perilous. Why, incidentally, glaciers are female I 
don’t know, since there is no gender in that Esquimo dialect. It just gains something in 
translation, I guess.

The Ostrich and the Hippo

When the ostrich strode to the river bank, the hippo smirked and then sank almost out of sight. 

His ears were like a periscope turned in all directions, and he heard the ostrich, who said, “You, you enormous blubber, come out of there and stop your snickering.”

            

“What did you say?” tried the other.

           

“You heard me, your ears don’t lap over. And I can see both of them flickering; does it make you so nervous answering me?”

            

“I’m twitching off testy flies and fleas.”

            

“That’s tsetse flies, you illiterate hulk, you huge sniggering ignoramus. Now, tell me, exactly, what makes you laugh at the sight of me?”

            

“It’s seeing someone almost as ugly as I but far funnier.”

            

The ostrich said, “Oh, you admit you’re the ugliest creature alive?”

            

“I’ve got the disproportion, for a start. I’m so ungainly, all the way around. You can’t see my bulk so much in water where I move all right. But on land I’m ever so slow; if I went any slower, I’d go backwards. I don’t so much move as encumber wherever I am, like a piece of lax lumber.”

            

“Well,” said the ostrich, “I can sprint if not fly, and though I balloon at the waist, have a scrawny neck and a door-knob head, at least I can run, and I feel often spry. But you, I agree, have no redeeming traits, your head’s too square, your mouth opens as wide as a gaping lagoon, your tail’s all wrong, it stops too soon and, over-all, you should have stayed in bed.”

            

“Good!” said the hippo, “I accept all that and the fact that you didn’t dwell on my fat. Do you mind if I repeat the one thing about you that turns all your defects into a virtue? You’re a laughing stock—yes, with wings that don’t lift—and when you sprint, as you say, you whomp and you shift, careening and swaying side to side with a wobble and heave that make one feel you need a gyroscopic guide to keep you on course or you’ll tilt and keel head over heel, your neck stretched out, a glazed look on your face, as you jounce and leap in your ostrich pace, your feet over-long, your claws too splayed, sweat on your beak, even in the shade, your whole body careering, about to flop, when suddenly you come to a comical stop. I may be uglier, but you’re funnier.”

            

“Well,” said the ostrich, “all that makes me more special than you.”

           

Moral: Pride, on anybody’s part, will find its way.

Q. How come there’s no difference between “fat chance” and “slim chance?"

A.     It is what’s technically known as an idiot’s syncrisy of the language. Like, for example,

“slow up” and “slow down”—the same thing. Or “regardless” and “irregardless.” And “I couldn’t care less”—or, nowadays, “I could care less.” See? Still, to get back to the original query, and it certainly is queer, “slim” isn’t always equated with “fat,” as in the following joke:

First girlfriend: “Have you slept with him yet?”

Second girlfriend: “Fat chance!”

Well, who would, if the lover in question is some slobiferous pachyderm with a midriff like a Goodyear blimp and rapine in his bloodshot eye? But, come to think of it, I’ve never heard of some slender youth being turned down with “Slim chance!” either. Girls usually say, “Get lost!” and—I’m sorry, we can’t give advice to the lovelorn, this is a science feature.

The Bat

The question they ask about the bat is, how did he get from this to that? Between the time he was still on ground and finally flew in air, how did he stay hale and sound, how did he evolve from here to there, being such an easy prey? How did he last more than a day?

            

The answer is, he became an awkward sort of dancer. He began to run with a fanciful skip that was neither a waft nor a gait, skip-hopping along at a furious clip, an intermediate but distracting, off-putting trait. No longer treading, still not flying, he pushed his pinions, bobbing and weaving, rhythmically swaying and heaving, until one day, with the wind just right, all of a sudden— separation! genuine lift—flight—the climax of continuous hesitant application.

            

Moral: Being in-between in life may mean simply—or not so simply—that you’re on your way.

Q. Are pilot fish associated in any way with flying fish?

A. Not at all. A pilot fish lives in the mouth of a whale. When he goes to work in the

morning, he says to his wife, “I’m leaving for the orifice,” and that’ll be his day, darting in and out  

of whale’s teeth for his sustenance. His name is a misnomer, and he has nothing to do with your   true flying fish—or your fake one, for that matter. Flying fish, by the way, do have a sort of lateral 

fin-wing on each side. But they do not have, and never have had, propellers. Also, they never fly 

non-stop anywhere, but only make short hops. That might be because they've been de-

regulated. They’ll discontinue stewardesses next.

Best Friends

Best Friends

You cannot call your child “best friend,”

words that only honored others bear.

Not against the law,

exactly,

but it’s sheer impropriety.

Whether son as such,

or daughter as much,

children are disallowed,

cannot share

so matter-of-factly

in that surpassing praise

reserved for strangers to your blood,

privileged people, most loved

but removed.

The phrase is maudlin fault,

smuggled emotion,

so far around the language bend,

so callow,

gauche,

it is barred from polite or any society.

Even if true,

it will not do.

Still, though all three of mine are grown,

have their own

connections

further on down

the chain

of being, they remain

abiding, secretless closest confidants

and, therefore, no apology, no social correction

in this ungrammatic, unretracted

revelation

(which will do

because it is true):

these private friends are best

not in over-reaching far-fetched

but honest

public exclamation—

which can and must be said

before too late,

without subtracting from unrelated

comrades

or unrivaled mate,

with their own deserved affirmation—

For these special three,

lifelong bonded company,

may their own progeny—

good, better, or best—

be equally, or eventually,

simply

blest.

The Miner's Wife and the Butterflies

There was this once when, set apart in the brush of a Rock Creek campsite, I overheard a woman from Butte as she stepped out of her modest trailer and found the place thronged by a pullulating mass of monarch butterflies, en route to Lower Canada. A miner’s wife, she was suddenly and exultantly astounded by the sight and cried aloud, singing to her husband coming after, “Oh, Vinnie! will you look at all the {effing} butterflies! (her joy declared in seemly brackets). An otherwise sedate wife was beside herself, profanely enraptured by the enormous palpitating cloud rising and softly falling, heaving and gently bucking on that vivid riverine coast. In her downright, downhome, gross delight she exclaimed to her husband and to the landscape, her obscene ecstasy bursting at the bright abrupt beauty of the world.

            

Moral: Who you are depends on this: were you struck more by Decline and Fall or, after all and still in all, a woman’s bliss?

Q. Is "eftsoons" used anymore?

A.    No. The word was split in two after the seventeenth century, and we have used only half of it ever since. Remember, they used to say “Zounds!” a lot back then, and a simple expression like “Zounds! I’ll be over eftsoons” tended to confuse “Zounds” with “soons.” So they gradually dropped the “soons” part for about 150 years, saying “Zounds! I’ll be there eft” before hanging up the telephone, even before they had telephones. But in the middle of the nineteenth century, just before Alexander Graham Bell invented the cracker that bears his name, they shifted back over to “soon,” leaving off the s, which they really didn’t strictly have to do because they had dropped “Zounds,” both with and without the exclamation mark, entirely by then. Linguistic change is so skittish.... “Eft,” by the way, dropped the t by animadversion and became ef, the sixth letter of the alphabet.