CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

Inside out fountain like bees released into a pollen stadium, off the bandwagon they poofed. The note launchers bounding into the shoe-gooed crowd. Fatslaff flagranted a whisping whirl that unfenced space like a waterholic discovering gills.

Harless bowed against me with his tugboat arm but I donkeyed still. Then, as I marionetted at the side show, I left my tight-laced everydays and piroueted through the looking glass, just sensing the decayed and without proportions, but not seeing. Well-versed on the flip side, he smoked across my ears, "Do re mi."

Before I had unlashed, Fannie doe-e-doed and alamanded Harless. She turned his clothes around, his tedium case into a hat, his pockets pulled and his hair honking. Like he was aboard a runaway zipper, he contorted. He was trying to legislate against the lava flow.

"Do re me, it's facile, La."

"But I'm not so sure of the score."

"The play is no less scaled without a score."

"Shall we finger-pip, before Jack brings back the Giant."

"Little bandits," from the corner of his mouth and he hopped on one of the bartered bikes.

Over my mina carta, he zingoed away.

Two blocks ahead and a downed payment, I optioned to malign the strait course and from over his shoulder he wagged his cheer.

Wheel upon round we centrifugled into a finger-clasp with what the outside wore. We watched the dasing geometries work to complete the circles they neither diametered nor circumferenced but perhaps at points, consciousing that theirs is a link in the most circle. And I began to uncacoon, butterflying that it was I spinning the earth.

Jest dialed up his peddles and cooled his seat. I coasted in, "I hear a throbbing stupid with each tired heart-pump."

As we waited for the tide to go out in our blood streams, Jest motioned towards a window, "Let's apply for gainful internment," and he football fielded it across the carway. I gandered into the blockless wall and it was signed: ACCOUNTANT WANTED ** ONE PLUS ONE IS THREE ACCOUNTING INCORPORATED.

"To the elevator!" He had landed with a small brown bag.

The sexectary was manicured behind her desk, "May I help you?"

"I'd like to palaver with Mr. One."

"Which One?"

"Yes."

She hipped and legged and dictated from the lap into his office.

The One came through the door with his boss face on. Jest was ready, greeting the One with a clown's rainbow. He recovered enough to say, "Well you do have the qualifications."

His eyes juggled with the patterning balls. "Did three send you up. C'mon Three put you up to this didn't he? No? Then he's got to see it or he won't believe it." But Jest was backing out of the center ring. "How am I gonna suspend the possible?"

"You can't, so cascade it like moons around a sun." Jest had backpeddled to the elevator and the doors slid shut.

I was floored with elevation. My orbs were a tail as they followed the comets being launched from Jest's hands.

"It's your turn."

I wrapped my palm around the first sailing ball, and I thought I'd likewised the second, each movement quickening the decline of my torso. I went for the second, still getting lower only to have the third bounce against the elevator wall. The door opened. The lobby was greeted with me gracefully jolting after the balls like a rolling hard-boiled egg.

Jest added his to the teeming smiles, "You can go for half fare. You're already very entertaining."

I miffed against him and he snuggled.

I lofted one, lofted and spilled two, until I could circle three and then I was uncorking like a pogostick. "1,2,3," I spinned.

"Yoou could juggle four balls," he leergested.

"Twice that number if I was to fade them into the air only to have them hang and burst like empty bubbles."

The suntan girl and her dog looked good shining over the trees. "Let's empty our hourglasses."

"An idea that goes against the grain. Spoke on out."

We safaried into Sonova Beach and awareyed our lucky hourshoes. "The hoofers are here for a surf-out."

The sand was fluffed like daffodil seeds by the gliding horses.

"Sweet to the eye, Lahal?"

As I traced their teasing hooves along the foam, "They're forceless in their power. Can you handicap?"

"Sired into racing. Reared easy and lazily. Then trained, ready or not. Classed and sorted and thrown in where they can't win and thrown out where they can. They're subjected to the indignity of the whip coming off the turn. They run in the mud, they run in the hot sun. Perhaps they pick up a purse, though what's a purse to running. Blinded and broke, they'd be made to run with three legs tied if it was thought they could win. They run for the money, they never just run. Even now, they frolic like an innocent thought beneath the reigns."

I let each word size me up before it walked on like Gary Cooper in spurs.

"On the other hand, if I had $2, I'd put it on the bay."

"You cad, putting on a Belmont Stakes discourse just to get odds on your cheap shot. But maybe all you said is the only way to get a best run."

"Which is greater the horse or the run? Or is the horse the run?"

My tongueless look was the reverb.

We had shifted sand down the beach until we joined a boredwalk trophied with the evicted and projected. They spilled out across the benches in their strip-mined slumps.

As we seacliffed a checkers game, "Are you cognizant of the accepted misconception that your rooted next to the numero uno plaid player in the world."

"Consider yourself white-gloved at 10 paces."

"You're on." Jest unleashed a crayon down the walk into squares.

"A rare spectacle," he Olympic Auditoriumed. "The challenger," he said it like a fat chance pointing his voice in my corner, "will attempt to dethrone the champion," he hero welcomed himself. "But first, who wants to be moved." Someone timided a lifeline and Jest reached for it. He Barnum and Bailied two more.

"Who wants to go first and we'll be on their side." The two schoolers took their spots and waited with patience gathered from generations of beginnings.

Jest was jig-sawed.

"Smoke before fire," I of coursed.

When the board was playered, I began to put in my itinerary.

"Ah, splendid opener. What do you say we counter with a leaper, agreed?"

The play had jumped to a scaled balance and it was Jest's move.

I suggest we bound here, leaving a half-to-jump, and then get a king."

"Wait a minute. I don't want to leave."

"What do you mean you won't leave?" a redfaced reply puffed like an over-inflated tomato. "Who are you not to go? You've been jumped."

"Who are you to remain? You've been jumping."

Kapowie. The canes were in the sky, the kids were on the merry-go-round. Everyone was aboard.

I was yelling for corporation when my elbow was purred.

"But it's not the same game. I mean if they don't jump . . . how can you . . . ?"

"Be kinged?"

"But look at the indirected tangle. Nobody's the victor. Everybody's . . . " my voice unperked its ears, "the victor."

A Godmother boat was waving at the dock.

"We can just make it before the hour, if we scramble."

We crossed the rails where the brakeman looked good flaggin' down the double E's. As I stumbled across the threshold, Jest became acquainted on a first name basis with the landing.

"If it wasn't for the difficulty factor that would have been a routine plunge."

"Are you bruised?"

Had he waited I would have jumped off but he left me leaving. His hat bon-voyaged me, "It's a fair wind that fills your sails with your own breath."

The boat carried me over the evening water. Above, like a church slogan, the airplane clouding looked good going down over the sea . . . ELECT . . . My eyes turned towards where Harless would be and tacked into the holocaust lights.

"Who's that at the rail like a seal caught between the hoop and a gateway from the tank."

I'd seen that it was her before I came about.

"Reel that bait face over here and chantey some."

We wandered wavelessly until we came to the spanner. Drooped over the helm like dripping clothes, we saw half a man.

"This must be the rear admiralty."

He puffed to attention, "I am your captain," as if that commanded our respect.

"Excuse me, had I recognized the offspring of a galliass, I would have been more hydrophobic."

"I sit at the compass. It is I who sites the land."

"And what do you hope to discover, Columbus?"

"This is the fastest route into the golden city itself." He turned to me for verification.

My eyes swung across their brows, "The truth is in the crossing."

The Captain clicked his heels, presuming the compliment, but Fannie did not gather. She had sailor-slipped the rail onto the hood of an Explorer Jeep where her feet untied a shuffle and a tune began to roll out of her, "O Captain, hands on the helm, eyes on the brightest stars, betraying your own wake, disregarding the sextant readings by cursing the sea for its unsettleness, sailing for silver, sailing for silk, sailing for the edge." The song picked up strength and her hips picked up a rhythm, she threw in a Juba as she stepped onto a Plymouth whose driver was pounding on the wheel. "Blow the horn of plenty, the tables all laid out. Ain't the shine on your car proof He can't be far. The corns high on the stalk so give them back their seeds, tell 'em thanks for the loan, I'll call them, don't call me." She was pattin' the Juba now and moved in a Cakewalk on a Continental. "For a minute man, school was out, the subjects learned, the flag failing and the texts burned. The clauses left unlocked, the contracts torn and bent, the options all played out, everyone his own free agent." She Buzzard Loped back to a Monarch where she pressed her nose to the window and was squirted with wiper fluid and swiped by the blades. She laughed like the clown confronted by the spraying flower on a lapel and sprinkled herself with the Itch. "So bright the sun, so cold the wet grass that fathers to sons say, 'You'd better watch your sweet ass.' Hide behind the glass, ward off the rain, signed, sealed, delivered, we sold shares in our own precious future." She was setting loose the Grind on a Cordoba. "Arms outstretched to the black eyes they came to build and cover with riches, (catch was it was upon their graves), shouting remember the mission." Fannie never lost a beat moving into half of a Slow Drag on a grey pickup with a gun rack, "From the woods they charged the ridge and fell on hollowed ground. Are the last of Picketts' men gone, none left to rally round? The new dream should've stormed in like Stonewall's troops instead of the ghosts that defiled the memories of the dead." She moved onto a blue machine. "Paid for the chains with blood, more sweat could have bought the key but farmers left without a plow, is this their victory?" She let her dance unreign some improvises on a primer black Cadillac. "A hundred years they kept alive 'cause they knew there was a place 'cross the rivah. But in a seething city of hate they rot, waiting for Messiah Niggah." Letting the Shimmy fly now, "Dropping from the rain clouds, bounding from the floor. No concert master could lead those sea of sounds to shore. Oh Lady Day, are these the heirs to Duke? These drowning Jonah's in the whale?" She stayed with the Shimmy on a Cherokee. "Two leggeds in a land of visions, it is your spirit we fail. Our sight remains unseen when if it's not billboards it's drive-in movie screens from the highways in our Fords," Doing the Funky Butt, she boinged the antennae of a car. "We reach out our feeler blades and take our queues as to what we are from T.V. pitchmen selling nosepicking electric toaster dildo bars." She was into a full driving Hucklebuck on a Mustang, "They stood on the grass, the buffaloes and the planters. Each saw his shadow on the plain, but conglomerates harvest by night and only machines reflect machines." The Lindy Hop accompanied, "The rails divided what they joined into patterns not yet proven. The ad said 'Seats for All', but the choice was a few fine woven." The Dirty Boogie broke out all over, "So crank up a good time, 'cause not with guns or Bibles has the new man been preached, but with the steady grind of nashing teeth." She did the Skate onto a Volkswagen, "Inspiration under that funny bowler, but we tipped our hat and it flew away. Now we dare not bow or open the door to dreams that may refuse to fade." She came to a choice between a Rambler and a Toyota, Toyota sells more, but of course and she let go the Boogaloo. "Settin' round a filet of shoe stew, it's hard not to reflect on the hierarchy. But when the hard bullets bleed, there's just the living and the dead, no in between." She squatted like a big bird over a limo and from behind the tinted windows came, "Get off your scratching the paint." "each generation adds another coat to the shell," and then burst into the Hully Gully. "A vacuum engulfs your feet but ain't it bad business not to take more than you leave."

We hit the deck like a two headed ballpoint pen with no spring. The paper is stricken but nothing is written. She was Truckin' and unbridled chorus, "Ferry tales end before Jack becomes the giant, before the doctors and lawyers become their own clients. Fee-fi-foe-fum, the journey's not over it's just begun."

Fannie was just enough matador to avoid a goring by a Rolls and that ended her dance. "Ahoy thar, Hotspum dead ahead."

As the streetlight changed for him, the boat headed back over its wake, bowless it cuts no wave, sternless it feels no current. Harless met us before the intersection. "I knew you'd come around like the sun from behind the clouds." He flashed a grin like the glint of steel.

I matched his smile, "But don't the people of the world sing and dance for clouds?"

"Only because they don't know any better." He wheeled around to see Fannie whiz past on my bike. A cloud of dust, a whoa fella and she was down the street like a cross between a sidewinder in a slalom race and a hippo doing a head stand on a tennis ball.

"Four Central Met," he told the cabbie.

Through his cigar, he chawed, "You must be with the convention."

Harless didn't let himself hear a cabbie.

"Naw, we're with the circus, this here is the lion tamer and ringmaster during the flea acts."

The rearview mirror liked that. "That explains the clowns for fares and the jelly beans for tips. I'll say one thing, business couldn't be better. I've been pulling twelve and fourteen hour days with no regrets, if you know what I mean."

Harless may have been hurt by my absence, "You missed several reorganization meetings. We started at the top and juggled downward in an effort to establish a comprehensive ground floor program, I had hoped you would be there." He extended over, punched the lock on the door and left his hand on my shoulder like an extra-duty dead bolt.

"I'm sorry I missed it."

"We have a position for you and we're expecting a significant contribution on your part."

I was flattered and grateful. It was like I was being given a mission that only a top personal could complete. But I inexplicably held back some. I wanted to check out the position, and I didn't want to be in mid-air and find I had gas only for one way, no chute, and across the instruments was written: KAMIKAZEE.

"This hotel's too near the tracks and my room couldn't be in any worse position to catch all the noise from the incoming traffic at the station."

As the cabbie pocketed his fare, "Don't worry the past runs on train time."

Over the loud rush of the station, Harless informed me, "The final delegation necessary to win on the first ballot just bolted. The race is sewn up before the first ballot. It's all over but the speeches." A stategy board had moved in and was relaxing across the room. I felt the rumble of the tracks clearly now. The engine lunging, its iron hot and bubbling and the sweat from the shuddering station walls amassing on its fore part.

Harless was the cheerio general with the riding crop pointer. "You can see how at each jump the opposition is eliminated and we leave our people as a stepladder to the inevitable. Of course you'll be under me and report directly to me." Again the trains called ourt. The wheels locked in motion, the gasps isolated in quick last breaths, the white steam clotting in its own bowels.

"You'll be joining dedicated professionals, a base of people with a common vision. People with the sameunique reference points who have perceived what we are offering." No release from the tension of the movement into stillness. The train spasmed, the station walls seared and the merging heat brought both towards a slow withering moan. The station master flurred at the iron, hurling himself in screeches but he rolled off the engine, a bead of perspiration directing the engine to follow his track. "Yes, it is a select group but it is not without its rewards. Besides the chance for involvement and the peace of mind that stems from doing a job well-done, we have medical benefits, life insurance and credit unions." Again the round house man commanded the engine to line up with his track. The engineer bent at the rail and he tore it till it ripped him, till he hunched on his knees, the lashing in his voice tightening, ordering the track for its own use. His bulk lay limp on the ground and his arm fell feebly from its own wieght a last time to the rail. Both called out to secure the other in his place. The words went up and fragmented in a barrage of implosions. "Whatever it is our organization can take care of it. You'll be part of a grand pattern."

"Throw open the windows, unbatten the hatches."

I could feel the rush of the currents in the voice and I let it flow over me, but dug deeper into the shore till Harless sprang up, dressed to go out, muttering about setting the man straight.

I saw Harless suit and tie towards Jest. I couldn't help my face, Jest rocking on the wall like a poor man's Humpty Dumpty. It took a lot to laugh, a low whine lit out from the yards, it took the train to cry.

"Stop."

"Say hey, you wanna strum some."

"I don't believe I've heard your music on the radio."

"Are your ears to the pulse of the woofers?"

"You do record then?"

"No."

"Look, what are you doing here in the street? I mean what is your purpose?"

Jest's hand moved out of the belly of his shirt like a mole into sunlight. "I'm a holy man but Jerusalem's too far away, Mecca too foreign, the Pope speaks Latin, so here I be."

"Listen, if you need work, I can offer you a place."

"You sure can."

"Come around my office tomorrow morning."

"But I'd only refuse it."

~Stop, I find your irresponsibility rather disconcerting."

"Disconcerts ar a question of taste like a job in the bakery or a pie in the face. Lemon meringue, Bavarian Creme too rich, and good ole apple costs an arm and leg. No responsibility for me, thank you, I'm trying to cut down."

"Look, if you don't like the system you can change it from within."

"Like the hare and hawk? There once was a hare too slow, who lacked the old get up and go. He wished, he wished to take to the air. So a hawk he became, no longer a hare. But when he felt he needed to eat, he saw the hares had learned to fly on their feet and when he searched for them, none was found. He grew feeble and fell to the ground. Though he was a hawk in the sky, he was a hair too slow to fly."

"Listen, I think your afraid you might make adifference. I think your afraid to face the world."

"I am different and your world isn't filled with faces it's filled with things who have faces."

Harless looked up, "Doesn't Lahal look good coming after me?"

"Do the stars really come out at night or are they there unseen during the day?"

"Lahal's up there waiting for me so I can't be hanging around here."

"That's what I like about you, with your ass on backwards like it is, you always look like your leaaving."

Harless came up the path, moving the crowd and stiff-necking into the hotel. He plotted his way to his room like Amerigo Vespucci at the mapmakers table.

Jest hobnobbed with the herd-crowd like Lewis in a joyriding canoe plunging into the depths of a wild-green America.

I watched with concern and fondness like Collins on the threshold.

I shut the door behind me and headed for the back stairs, stayed with the crowd for the time it was convenient and broke off down an empty street.

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