SQUEAKY AND COLO
But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
"Did you remember your dream last night, Colo?"
"No." He said. He told Uncle Bill and Aunt Sharese about writing, and they looked sort of puzzled, in their stiff sort of way. "Do you ever write about characters, do you ever make up any characters?"
"Sometimes," Colo said.
"So you just write whatever comes to mind, is that right?" Said Aunt Sharese, her eyes fidgeting like two-year-olds as she stared at Colo through the bars.
"Yes, it's so," said Colo.
"And what does that mean? " she asked, looking at Colo as if he were a strange piece of fruit of a type with which she was not familiar.
"I don't know, so I'm just sitting here trusting to the muddy flow," Colo replied looking down and away as he said it, while the whirling slow advance of the Olentangy streamed its liquid way through the muddy banks of his brain.
"That's all you can do in the end," said Squeaky, springing to Colo's defense, and staring haughtily at Aunt Sharese.
Grinding down the malicious pathway, flying the fortunate flag of frank. Seeing the beautiful sun squat naked on the distant peak, we plugged a dunny nickel and flanked our steaks, right out there in broad daylight. "Scream!" said Squeaky, twirling her banana in a most lewd fashion. "Scream, or I'll shoot." Everyone looked up quizzically as Squeaky put on her bifocals and adjusted the volume. Don't tell me what to do, she muttered sarcastically, trying to decide if that was correct, or if she should have muttered sadistically. But she didn't know how to mutter sadistically, so she had to settle for sarcastically. This is the worst bind I've ever been in, she said, and the most unpleasant. Let's just hope Senator Philby will help us out. There lay the tale.
"God knows we need help," she said out loud to herself later as she stepped on it and motored up Powell hill, careening towards the Zoo. She, after all, had a plan. She was going to release Colo, the first gorilla born in captivity, and lead him to freedom, in Canada. She had friends in Canada, and there Colo, the first gorilla born in captivity, would be free to express himself and overcome years of cruel confinement in the Columbus Zoo, right across the street from the Zoo Park, formerly known as Gooding amusement park, on the shores of the great O'Shaughnessy Reservoir.
"I live in the zoo," Colo had said when Squeaky had left him last, "and that's all I know." "Oh, but you'll be so much happier in Canada, where gorillas run free," Squeaky had told him. Colo looked at Squeaky a bit quizzically, and absently pulled another peel off of his banana. "Don't fret," said Squeaky. "This will all be over before you know it." Squeaky lived on Home Road, near its intersection with Liberty. Liberty and Home, the center of the center of the good old U. S. of A. And all so close to the sad captivity of Colo, who in Squeaky's eyes had lived in oppression for his entire life, ever since his his star crossed birth in 1959. Squeaky had not thought about one other thing since 1962, when Miss Optomer had told the class about the birth just three years before of the first gorilla in captivity, right here in our area, only a couple of miles from the corner of Liberty and Home.
And what about her plan to kidnap Colo? Will there be time for that? Tune in tomorrow, same time same place for the conclusion of Native Populations, or Colo Visits Olentangy Caverns or The Blind Fish and Squeaky's last Stand, or Squeaky Frees Colo. Colo Flees to Canada. Colo the Conscientious Gorilla Objector, Colo Climbs the tree of life; Colo Visits Robbie at the Hospital. Colo, Flippo, and Me. Flippo and Colo take Columbus by Storm The Colo Connection, Casper the Colo, Flippo frolics with Colo, the Wonder Gorilla Colo the Gorilla born in Captivity, and his Claims to fame Colo Eats Flippo. Colo Sells Casper the Camel to Flippo for Bananas, while Lambchop interprets the scene to little Robbie, languishing in the hospital bed with Mononucleosis and a Concussion. Colo and Little Robbie, Masked Marauders, fight Zorro for a piece of the action. Colo, Casper the Camel, Flippo the Clown, Sherrie Lewis, Lambchop, Mr. Greenjeans and Robbie Occupy the Blind Fish Room at Olentangy Caverns.
"If your id got carded, they'd ask for its I.D.," said Colo, smirking.
"That's not even funny," said Squeaky. The channel 10 news crack reporter Frank Frond had said, "Hey Squeaky, where's Colo now? Was it worth it, springing Colo? Now that he's a famous Canadian TV personality who has forgotten all about the infamous incident that set him free, what do you have to say. Doesn't it bother you?" (klieg lights, a brace of microphones labeled CNN, NBC, CBS, micro-cassette recorders.)
Squeaky pushes her way past, gets into the waiting black non-descript rental car without a word, speeds off. The next day's headlines on CNN Headline News:
Squeaky Mum as Colo Heads Canadian Government Investigative Committee
This is really crazy, I thought, but I'm just skating across this empty plain, I'm walking, but it feels like skating, gliding, skittering like a water bug on surface tension, and all I see is dust and scrub brush and a few hills off in the distance. Columbus has sure changed, hasn't it, I murmur.
Yes,
say the Chamber of Commerce representatives, in Greek chorus unison.
We are quite proud that Columbus has now annexed half of the state. We are planning to annex the rest next week, and we have our eyes on southern Michigan, Northern Kentucky, Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Indiana, and the panhandle of West Virginia. Columbus may not have many people, but we will be the largest city in the world. Just you wait and see.
Yes, I can see that you're proud. I am too. After all, when I was a kid, I was one of your biggest supporters, being from nearby Delaware County, and all. But where are all the people. This looks more like the Mojave Desert than central Ohio. What gives?
Well, we had some problems, but we like to think of them as challenges. We are confident that we have the capability and the wherewithal to meet any challenge in this great city of ours. Remember, profit is not a dirty word in Ohio. In spades and doubled for Columbus. Same thing, after all, isn't it?
I guess so, I say, as we continue to skate across the arid plain, not a soul in sight. There are some gophers, but they look more like penny arcade gophers that you can hit with a mallet while another over there springs up. When you do that, the one that springs up taunts you in computerized random insults that cut right to the quick.
Oh yes, that's our Gopher Challenge game, says the Chamber of Commerce, once again in unison. It's very hi tech, and designed specially for us, and to our specifications. The gophers hone in on the weak points of players, and taunt them specifically on those points. They are quite adept actually. They never fail to humiliate even the strongest personalities.
Oh, says I. I don't think I want to play.
Oh you have to play, say the Chamber of Commerce. Everybody has to play. Go ahead. You'll like it.
Well, if I must.
You definitely must.
So I grab the mallet, which is a lot heavier than it looks. It's so heavy that I have a time rearing back with it and bringing it down on what I think will be one of the gopher's heads. Just as I do, it pops down in its hole just in time to avoid the mallet's heavy blow. Off to the right, a high squeaky laugh pierces my heavy concentration on the percussion and the physical exertion of swinging the mallet. The laugh persisttently cuts through my momentary intensity, makes me look up. "Stingy, stingy, stingy," it says in a sing-song tenor. Then the laugh again.
"Son of a bitch," I say. It immediately gets to me to hear that voice, which of course is the voice of Gary Alban in the fifth grade, "Stingy, stingy, stingy," he goes on and laughs some more. Then I hear another laugh, the unison laugh of the Chamber of Commerce,
Hah hah hah, he he he,
They say. I am the walrus, I say, I am the walrus.
You are indeed,
say the Chamber.
And don't you forget it! We told you it could get to you. It was easy with you. You're an easy mark, you know that?
"Let's get out of here," I say, "I don't like this." What should I do? Where is Squeaky when I need her. Ah, there she is! Skating away across the plain. And you said you'd never see her again. See, you don't have to be so pessimistic all the time.
"What's the matter with you anyway? Why are you so reflexively down on everything? Why do you continually discount everything I say?" she said. That's right discount. Discount. Loss leaders! A bargain at half the price. What did you say? I said that's what you need to concentrate on from now on. You need to be more up, more go to, more right on , more hard charging. That's what we need, that can-do hard charging attitude. Don't you see? You're just a toady for the state.
And what of Squeaky, who, when last spotted was holing up in Olentangy Caverns, cautioning everyone not to stick their hands in the pool of the blind fish, rumored to be piranha-like, examining arrowheads left years before by the Delaware and the Wyandot? Or the inscription etched by Swamp hole Johnny, holed up literally with loot from his Delaware County crime spree.
Here on the banks of the Olentangy, limestone caverns spread underground the like lattice work inside chicken bones. Rigid cells of irregular shape musty and mud encrusted form chambers below the ground that are a constant temperature and humidity. A culture grew up here of cave dwellers from ancient times. They spent their entire lives in this controlled environment, flaking arrowheads, stone hatchets, scrapers, and other implements out of flint to be used by the tribes above, trading these products of the most modern technologies of the times with the tribes above for skins to wear, meat, onions, vegetables, and crunchy grains. Traces were left, and accommodations remained, of which Squeaky and Colo took advantage. They were able to live on blind fish and the water in the underground rivers and pools. They were able to survive after Squeaky rescued Colo from the Columbus Zoo. Colo's transition began there, as he survived on fish which squeaky learned how to grill on little fires built with wood gathered in midnight forays into the tree lines along the fences of property borders just above entrances which they had discovered. There was one secret entrance near the river which Squeaky used often. Undetected by the surface people, she would exit the labyrinth along the shore of the Olentangy, and go straight for her favorite tree, an ancient sycamore with smooth peeling white bark that exposed the silky and skin-like layer beneath.
She would sit on an exposed root that looked like the sycamore's foot pushed casually out, as the ancient tree stood in conversation with its friends. Squeaky would sit on the root with her back against the smooth bark in the midnight moonlight, gazing sleepily at the shallow Olentangy trickling along to the south over rocks and fallen branches, pebbles embedded in grainy mud. Colo was afraid to come out even at night, and Squeaky was thankful for the excuse of gathering firewood so that she could come out occasionally and watch the river of a summer night. The Presbyterian church rose behind her high up on the bank and across the River Road, its classic steeple slashing the night with its sharp white blade until the night bled moonlight that oozed down the bank towards where Squeaky reclined with sleepy eyes.
She dreamed about escaping with Colo, about taking him across the border, off to the north, into the woods off in the muskeg and corduroy roads. "Away away, sway away me bucko," she thought. Balderdash hash and crash and bash. This is the cranking sound of my heart turning over and over under my rib cage until it feels like a fetus' jackbooted kicking to emerge to bull through with brute force, pushing its way out of my body, breaking the bars of its boney rib cage cell.
"And how would this play in Peoria, dear? People don't want to read this stuff, not unless its happening to a famous star who lives a secret life of depravity."
Ah but what about Colo? He's a famous gorilla, a local celebrity, and indeed internationally famous for being the first born in captivity. Such a claim to fame. Colo sat leaning against the stone flaking table, munching on White Castles, one at at time, savoring the holey onion draped burger morsels, licking his lips and grabbing another out of the bag, and then another. Ten cents a piece, you'll want a whole bagful. Yes, I want two, said Colo, licking his lips and dripping saliva on his dark hairy chest.
Now of course the tables were turned. Colo strolled upright and with confidence, the attaché case hanging from his right hand, swinging to fro with each step like Tarzan through the trees, so much a part of him, like an appendage, just as much as his wing tip shoes and Italian suit. Now he skates across the arid plain and Squeaky can only sit back and watch, thinking of how he used to be, cowering alone amidst the ancient flaked tools beside the underground river. Such a change in such a short time, and Squeaky was proud and sad at the same time.
"So bolt cutters are my only alternative," said Gorny. "We'll have to use bolt cutters to get them out of there."
"What are you talking about? That's crazy," said Ward. "We'll have to fight them off with fly swatters if we do that. This is the kind of thing I was telling you about. With them two down there holed up in the Cavern, anything could happen. They were trying to blackmail the school district. That's the difficult part. That's the hard part."
This is really scintillating, don't you think? So Squeaky and Colo made their break. They ran. They bolted, and they wound up in Kelowna, British Columbia. They did? Yes, they did. Gorny and Ward were left unawares as Squeaky and Colo hopped a Canadian Railways freight in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and rode the rails across the plains, and didn't get off until they hit Kelowna. Wow. What a story. A wild woman and her gorilla, a gorilla in the process of metamorphosing into a slick Wall Street gorilla riding the rails across the Canadian hinterland, heading for a new life in Western Canada. The stuff of legend. Yeah.
It can't be helped, said Squeaky, hopping off the freight at Kelowna, it can't be helped. The hell it can't, Colo said. By this time Colo had sprouted a brief case, and was walking as upright as you or me.
So you're here all alone, sitting by the phone, wondering if the zone will call. The zone, you know. The zone. The connected zone. In the zone, they know all about Squeaky and Colo. They have the complete scoop on Colo's transformation. They also know the natural history of Olentangy Caverns, and the way it was used for generation after generation of anti-Indians. anti-native Americans, living below the surface, inhabiting the bony honeycomb catacombs near the banks of the Olentangy. Using Sycamore root hairs for their secrete elixirs, feasting on blind fish, creating laws to preserve the blind fish resource for future generations of Catacombers. How did Squeaky know about this?
She was friends with Johnny Acosta in high school, the one kid with almond eyes and tawny skin. Everybody hated Johnny Acosta, don't you remember? He smelled bad, and looked funny. He was dirty, they said, he smelled funny, they said. We saw him in the back of the bus. He was back there and very quiet every day when Manny Gartlow got on. Manny Gartlow with the smooth smooth head, and tufts of downy fluffy feather-like hair, here and there sprouting out of his smooth eggshell head like new growth after super, like the smooth cool black rock after hot lava flows.
Where does all that lead, my friend? So Johnny Acosta had been telling Squeaky about the Indian Catacombs for years, and they even went to visit Olentangy Caverns on a class trip, but of course Johnny wasn't along for that. We also went to see Flippo, but John wasn't along, because, well I guess he didn't have the lunch money, and didn't want to be embarrassed. Nobody knew why. Johnny never joined in. Nobody knew why. Mrs. Grubel didn't say.
On a hot day the descent to the catacombs is a miracle. The heat and humidity peels off your body as you walk down the stairs cut into limestone, and feel the coolness of the steel rail attached next the stairs, like slowly being immersed in cool cool water, first your feet, then your ankles, then your calves, then your kneecaps; slowly the water rises and you are simultaneously peeling away the heat and sweat and humidity like a snake's skin, leaving it on the surface under the hot sun for the bees and flies and stray dogs to lap up. The catacombs are cool and constantly maintain a steady temperature, and low humidity. The barometric pressure there seems low, too, and you instantly have the feeling of release of calm, you can feel your oily skin begin to dry out immediately, you can feel your head clear, and thoughts seem to shine with a brightly, glowing with significance, like rotating beacons flashing white, red, white, red, over a dark and cool plain, shining forever and ever with nothing in the way, no impediments to limit the distance of the shine so that the beam's flash can be seen forever and ever like starlight never stopping infinitely. Flashing white red white red in some code that can't be broken, a message to eternity, flashing on and on and on, the same thing over and over and over. anguish, the path, anguish, the path, anguish, the path, anguish, the path, anguish, the path. over and out. Roger that. Radio interference, static, loosing contact. over and out over and out.
Hiding from me, under mists and crenellations, foggy roads of consciousness, cool brooks trickling under thick growths of green leafy weeds, cool and damp places where meaty slugs trudge leaving shiny oil slick tracks. The tiny pink blossom weeds flourish here, branching back and forth in grassy tangles, allowing the prickly blackberries to get a start, here in the cool dark recess, the forgotten nook, the hidden cranny, in the damp shady crack, the cool crevice. No one ever looks. Dreams hide here, she said. She told me they lie on their backs propped against stones, smoking pipes held at jaunty angles, clenched between their teeth. She told me they laugh and speculate among themselves about how clueless I am, how I never know them, how they come and go at night, and I never know they were there, and then they go to hide by day amongst the slugs and centipedes in the dark and shady recesses of my back yard. That's what she said, anyway. That's what she told everyone. You're a lot like Squeaky, you know that? I said, trying to look her in the eye, to feel her perfect gaze across my vacant face.
My face is grown in weeds, untrammeled by women's' gazes, grown high in weeds with neglect, never feeling the vibration of the mower, or the laser gaze of beautiful women, opening like the wide striped petunias that wait day after day for the infrared scan of the bumble bees multi-faceted eyeball, waiting while the slugs chew at my stalk, decapitating one in twenty, leaving blossoms upside down on the splintery deck. But it doesn't matter anyway, I tell her.
Nothing matters. We walk along the hot melted tar road, our tennis shoes sticking with every step, sweat streaming down our faces under the heavy sun, the dull hazy clearness of the sky, the occasional random buzz of the wild bumble bee bumping against our shoulders and stumbling away, drunk in the thick atmosphere. We talk about the future and the cool damp possibilities of life far away along the northwest coast, a life that seems impossible, one that could be, or may never be, but she knows it well, and knows every other possibility, too, and although she doesn't tell me in so many words, she hints, and I am helpless, and can only listen, soaking up every word like hot steamy cream that my skin absorbs and that disappears and mixes with the slimy sweat.
We continue to walk, and I want to have her concreteness, but she slips away and I am left a boy of twelve walking down a bright hazy summer road somewhere near Alum Creek, along the fencerows, next to the fields of tall alfalfa here and soy beans there, the occasional field of wheat that is turning a golden brown, waving in tired breezes in the humid haze.
I do not feel anything. I know that my friends will not live long, somehow. I have visited them, made friends, talked to them, shared our innocent boyhood that had no field to let it grow, like the tiny pink blossom weed that grows on tangles of spiky weeds and grass in damp shady spaces years later near Puget Sound. How will I reconcile these feelings? What will happen to Danny Flipplet, Barry Talban, Gravey Pincher. Why did they die? What kind of morbid crap is this?, he says.
Shut up. Go away.
But why do you bother? I don't care about anything anymore. I hate everything, she said, and that felt so true, rang that bell, spoke to me, and still does. Where are we going, daddy? I don't know, I don't know. We'll just keep walking and see what happens. But don't we need a map? Don't we need to know where we are right now? Oh yes, you go find out, will you? That would be helpful. Coffee. cool. tanks that roll into remote villages in Kosovo. scattered visions in the fever of colds. "Where is this?" she says, "what is this?". "Where is Colo?" She was waking up from a dream that scared her a bit. "Where is this?" She mumbled again as she took in the dawn along the damp bank of the Olentangy.
She had fallen asleep against the smooth sycamore trunk, and woke now to see mist hanging six inches above the brown stream, and a robin poking along the bank, cocking its head, listening for worms. Oh yes, she thought, I must have fallen asleep. Where's Colo? Oh yes, it's light, I have to go back under, I have to get out of here before they see me, before someone sees me stumbling along the bank like a deer.
Squeaky got up and shook of the sleep like a thick wool blanket that made her sweaty and groggy. She located the entrance, and got down on her hands and knees, then on her belly, she crawled and wriggled through the weedy gate to the honeycomb catacomb, the cool underground spot where she and Colo lived. Ah it's cool she thought as she wriggled under the weedy tangle, into the dark recesses, under the loamy banks of the Olentangy. Here she was back home. Here she felt safe for a while anyway. She could get up on her hands and knees, then after a while she could get on her feet in a crouch, then finally she could stand straight up as she entered the main chambers and connected tunnels and followed the familiar path marked by the orange nylon rope that she had strung behind her, the rope she stole from Woolco one night before they found this cool and…
Maybe it won't matter. Maybe nothing matters. He doesn't care he doesn't care, he doesn't care, that's all that came to Squeaky's mind as she made her way in the dank passageways, back to where she left Colo in the middle of the night. He fell asleep staring at the inside of his brief case, looking at the empty cavity, the accordion file space, the velvet. He loved his briefcase because Squeaky gave it to him. It was all she had to give, and she felt she had to give him something after springing him from the Columbus Zoo. They named him after the town. Colo, the first and only gorilla born in captivity. Colo, born in 1957 at the Columbus zoo. Colo put Columbus on the map, she said. Did you know that the Columbus Zoo is not in Columbus, he said? It doesn't matter, it's the spirit of the thing. Mr. Feldman was his keeper. Mr. Feldman wasn't all bad, Colo said. He was your master, your keeper, your oppressor, Squeaky told him, but he wasn't so sure. Still, he loved Squeaky because she took care of him, and he loved his briefcase, because it was the best present anyone had ever given him. Now they were on the lamb. Now they were hiding out in the catacombs by the Olentangy River, somewhere beneath the loamy bottom land, in the honeycomb of caves, like living inside a bone. No one cares about you, or about what you may write. She was trying to help, but she is not invested in you. You are weak. You do not have what it takes. You do not have that killer instinct, he said to himself. That's your problem. These other guys, well they do, they're constantly plotting, constantly figuring out ways to put themselves center stage. Truth be told, you don't want center stage; you don't want stage right, you don't want stage left. You just want to be in the crowd scene. No responsibility. Even though you sometimes fantasize about being the hero, you don't want the aggravation, the responsibility, the necessity to talk to those that bore you. This is the crux of the matter. The crucifixion of Squeaky, she thought, seeing the hill and the trio strung up.
What about this story about Squeaky and the primate, Colo, and their adventures in the catacombs honeycombing the depths below southern Delaware County, in the fertile ground between the Olentangy and the Scioto? What kind of magic land was that, mystical, touched. So loaded down, freighted, soaking, dripping, sweating, bleeding significance. The land oozes hieroglyphic enigmatic excrement, I notice it, but cannot explain it, cannot talk about it, except with others who notice it too, and then you can't mention it directly, this feeling that the very ground under our feet is somehow full of the potential of deep meaning that is somehow locked away, the secret of everything that is as close as the gravel on the berm where we walk together toward the country store on a July day, hearing the loud grasshopper buzzes as they careen in the height grass of the deep ditch, bouncing off our legs occasionally, excusing themselves and bouncing off again at random like jiminy cricket electrons crazed in the dull world of Inevitable Fred, who stands rock hard and immutable staring with a hint of a smile at the corner of its mechanical lips, dressed in military fatigues, not even having to shake its head no, the no being always implicit, no, no, no, it's in his steely gray ice eyes, no no he says to me and to roger, and we try to ignore his cool hard presence, going about our business, like light sticks in a sweeping torrent powerless to resist his overriding no in the face of our lightweight feather dreams and wishes otherwise.
She didn't flinch, looked straight back. She held his gaze and let it stand there. She patted his gaze on the back and said it's ok, just stand there, and for that he felt relief and gratitude. That's the one thing he held on to. Squeaky knew all this, and she didn't reveal what she felt about it. She just kept doing the same thing: hanging out in the climate controlled cave by day, sleeping under the sycamore by the olentangy by night, only coming back inside when the sun started to break up darkness' monopoly, as it did every morning along the muddy riverbank. Don't let it fool you. This weather will not last, she said to herself, but she wasn't sure why that came to mind just then. She was determined to make it to Canada soon with Colo, but she didn't know how she was going to pull it off. So I ramble, and scramble my thoughts into this kind of thing, and it never sounds like much. There do seem to be a couple of characters, but there fuzzy and hazy, and don't have much to say, and have no story to tell, apparently.
This technology is something else, you know that? said Colo, scratching his chest and yawning. What do you mean? Squeaky said, looking at him quizzically. What is this crap. I don't know. I hate characters. What did you do yesterday, when the weather was nice? I went outside. We bought sandwiches at the little shop near Northwest Outdoor Center on Lake Union, and then took them to Magnusson Park and ate them sitting at a picnic table near Lake Washington while listening to the Spanish speakers chatting, and watching their little boy swim in the wading pool, and seeing the line of Canadian Geese swim across the area within the floats designated for swimmers. We took a walk, and I contemplated my situation while watching Flora and fido walk into and out of my life like tractors pulling plows turning over the dark loam as they pass in, pass out, in and out, fidong tracks as they go. And what is the meaning of Flora, who is getting so very slow, so very very very slow, and the feeling I get considering my insistent persistent needs clogging down always, and then the great sadness that overtakes me realizing the futility of ever satisfying those needs, and the only compensation is none at all for it looks as though grim fate smirks behind every dark tangle of blackberry thorn brandishing entanglements. What is the soft underbelly of this situation, or is there one. Who can say. I cannot understand my own inclinations, let alone hers. And never mind trying to empathize. It is impossible, he said, sitting with his feet propped and puffing on the big black stogie. Why don't you just forget about it? You're trying to do the impossible, he said. You should have got off that bus years ago. You're not a sap, she said, don't listen to him. You're a powerful man, no sap included. The sap is running in the veins of the maple tree. Do apple trees have sap, too, he wanted to know. Finally summer has settled on Seattle like a mother bird's feathery weight on nearly frigid eggs. Finally the warmth of her feathery body sucks the cold out of our houses like a Freon pump so fast you can see the thermometer dip blip by cozy blip. Why don't you just take it easy, she said. Just lie back and let me take care of you, she said. She was so beautiful, and had that all calming gaze and those warm eyes and those soft delicate hands with the long fingers and the almost fragile wrists. Just lie back, she said. Let me take care of you, she said. OK, said I. OK. And that's all there is to it. Nothing more. After all, what do we have here, he said, his brain clinging and clanging, cash register bells and gears whirring and jangling, he toted up all the plusses and minuses he calculated all the variables, the line of sight, the angle of attack, the standard deviation.
Isn't it fun. Disconnected, but all so irreverent. Don't you think so, Corky? Oh yes, I couldn't agree more. Or maybe I could. I could try, any way. One can always at least try to agree more. One could put ones heart to the grindstone. Ohhh that might hurt. The gritty grindstone polishing the pulsing muscle. That indeed would hurt, don't you think so, Squeaky? Granules of fine grit, in double O, Triple Z, and quadruple X. That's what you've got to watch out for, Ace. Don't overstep yourself. Stay within your self. Stare in from right field, and keep your mind in the game. You may only get one ball every game, once in seven innings of Pony league regulation. That's all. One ball, your big chance to snag the popup, and chunk it toward the infield. One chance not to fuck up. Pressure's on, Ace
Don't be full, don't be empty, don't be sinking, don't be floating, don't be feeling, don't be numb, don't be this don't be that, Don't peel don't remain clothed, he said as the northern front sank heavily in its fat high pressure on our lovely Pacific NW. Don't even try to explain, said Squeaky to Colo who sat on the front porch along with his counterpart, chin on hands and playacting depressed. She was born in nine months and ten minutes said the dirty olds leeringly to the young innocents who they mercilessly. Don't even think about it.
Did you remember your dream last night, Squeaky? No. I told Sam and Mary about writing and they looked sort of puzzled, said Colo. Do you ever write about characters, do you ever make up any characters? Sometimes, I said. So you just write whatever chaotically comes to mind, is that right? Said Mary. Yes, it's so, said Colo. And what does that mean, I don't know. So I'm just sitting here trusting to the muddy flow. That's all you can do in the end, said Squeaky. So how about that? You learned the meaning of Topsy. It came from a minstrel show: The black picaninny named Topsy comes out with corn rows, and they ask it where it came from, and it says it wasn't born as far as it knows, and they say, yeah, see it grew like Topsy.
What about Colo and Squeaky? They've been pretty quite ever since Colo took off hitchhiking for Western Canada, Squeaky in hot pursuit. The LA chase. Don't you ever look at me like that again, she said. It just infuriates me. OK OK. Shut up. Don't you even want to fly the right flag, to sail the right sea, to jump the right freighter? Oh my oh my. I'm so tired and so scattered, he said. So fly. Fly? Is that black lingo? You know, I believe you're
right. But I haven't got a clue what it means. Not an inkling, even.
Squeaky was only trying to help, but Colo didn't see it that way. He had mixed feelings about the whole thing, if you want to know. He thought sometimes she was trying to manipulate him, and that she acted as though all she cared about was his welfare, but he knew deep down she got her kicks helping out the poor misunderstood primate. Why else would she spend so much time on such a hopeless cause? But now here they were in Kelowna, British Columbia. He'd never even heard of it. It was February, and it seemed like it did nothing but sprinkle. Day in, day out the sky was a thick puffy gray, and it leaked sprinkles, as though it had been given a thorough work over with a meat tenderizer. The sky was flat, spread out, puffily dark gray, perforated, and dripping misty moisture so that when Colo looked up at the street light in the pre-dawn gloom he saw an extremely fine aspiration of water shimmering water droplets that did not seem to be falling. It was just the composition of the air. It sort of reminded him of the hills of Africa. He'd never been there, of course, but Momma had talked of it fondly when he was boy. The cool mists of the equatorial highlands. Here it was clamier than he had imagined, though. It was even bone chilling. But he had to wait for the bus. Colo had a job, and he commuted from their apartment in Suburban Kelowna to the strip mall where he strolled every day carrying a sandwich board that advertised the mall's pet food store, Petables. He was a tax paying Canadian, a member of the workforce, a full time employee of the budding retail powerhouse, Petables Pet Foods, Inc., and proud of it. He was a big draw. The crowds came in just to see him, Colo, the talking gorilla. They thought he was a man in a gorilla suit, and the kids were constatnly pulling his fur to check.
Squeaky found a river where she could hang out and plan the next move.
What happened to Colo, living in Kelowna, BC? It's like Billings, Montana. Colo goes to work at he airport, stuffing silverware in plastic bags for airline meals. That's an exciting job. Did that for months. And so forth. Writing the story of Rob and Roger visiting Mick and Patti and Meg. We drove out there to Billings and went with them to Red Lodge. Maybe it's Rob and Colo and Mik and Patti and Meg. Colo had an eye for Meg. And we drove up to a mountain resort on the mountain loop highway. How did? Id on't know. Maybe it's Banf. So we drove up to a cabin in banf, and we stayed there for a couple of nights, and the girls for some reason went to bed early, and we boys were up whoopin' it up, and Colo got so excited with the whoopin it up that he banged the floor with his booted foot, and made a loud noise, and the girls got pissed and at one point Patti comes in in her jamies and motions to Mik and she whispers heatedly at him for five minutes, while colo and rog smirk on the sidelines, and Mik comes back and says their pissed and they want us to cool it and roger and Colo smirk some more and we take it from there. The place was so beautiful, like a giant golf course with perfect green and little patches of white glacier that looked just like sand traps. The air up there was so thin, you felt light headed. and so forth.
Colo and Squeaky on the lam. Running from crime. 98% of chimpanzee genes the same as homo sapiens, and what's the percentage for gorillas like colo. Must be 95 or 96, don't you suppose? They were in the car with a case of coke in the cooler on the floor in the back seat. They were in a 1973 Ford Torino, bombing across North Dakota, Colo and Squeaky. Drinking coke to stay awake. Coca Cola keeping them up, Coca Cola keeping them going. Squeaky said, lets see if we can go one hundred miles an hour for one hundred miles," "Cool," said Colo. Have another Cola? "don't mind if I do," said Squeaky. Colo reached over the back seat, twisting around and opening the cooler. his hand felt the cool of the bag of ice that they' just replenished at the last stop as he grabbed one of the red and white cans, and then got another for himself. he put them on the back seat while he put the lid back on the Styrofoam cooler. Then he picked up both cans and turned back around to face the front. The plains were still slipping by like movie backdrop. He imagined they were actually sitting still, and that the plains were just a projected image on a big curved screen surrounding the car like in the movies and that it would be ok for squeaky to just take her hands off the wheel, but he knew she couldn't in reality that if she did it would be the death of them, that they would sail off the road and bounce wildly over the knobby soil amongst the giant sunflowers that lined the road and the car would roll over and over in the wild sunflowers, and that they would lie bleeding on the black earth with sunflower faces looking down on them with their vacant stares. So he carefully handed Squeaky the icy coke after placing his between his legs and pulling the tab on hers and hearing the pop and hiss as the carbonated elixir bubbled within its thin aluminum skin which glistened with sweat. Just then they heard the call of a red winged blackbird over the rush of one hundred mile an hour air around the Torino with its windows down. He passed the opened can to Squeaky. She held it with her right hand while hanging her left over the top of the steering wheel. She took a long quaff, lowered the can, and sighed contentedly as the bubbly concoction tingled down her throat and fizzed away into her esophagus and stomach. Man that's good, she said. "Hmm," said colo as he oil-canned his Coke and raised its cold sweated surface to his cheek to cool himself in the steaming heat box surrounded by rushing air. "Nothing like it," he said agreeably, staring off at the blank horizon to the West.
Squeaky and Colo play eighteen holes. Squeaky and Colo hit balls. Squeaky and Colo do a hole in one. And so forth. What does all this mean? Not likely very much, me hearty. And so forth.
The ape and the woman. Squeaky and Colo. What about that? I just don't know. There once was a gorilla named Colo, and he had a girlfriend who was a human being named Squeaky. Well you see they ranted and raved all across the country, escaping for a while to Canada, where they stole a car and bombed across Manitoba and Alberta, finally winding up in that town up north of Okanogan, and then deciding to dip back down into the states. It's so dark outside, with the rain coming down. distractions traction contraction childbirth. I've got you there, I know it. Everything has gone smooth for you, hasn't it. A life devoid of tragedy, you're a nerd. a psycho-nerd. I've got you pegged, he said, his eyes flitting nervously from hers to the arm of the chair, to her clothes, her big shoes, her frosted hair. Is that what it is, is it frosted? I don't know. What do I know about such things? I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies. And anyway. Lost ball in the weeds, he said. what do you think of that? The 3-D-ification of you know who. 3-D-ification. I like it. And so when are the meetings scheduled? Oh what meetings? I'm getting sick and tired of all this bureaucratic work, said Colo distractedly as he scanned his Palm Pilot. It played a little tune, old lang syne, it was, and I noticed him turning his head to one side as he fingered the tiny screen. His silver har bristling in the wind, here on top of a ridge in the cascade crest trail high above banf as off in the distance a grizzly reared, sniffing the air. What the hell? its olfactory center said as scents jammed the synapses, clogging the lines. this is strange, I've never seen anything like it, said the professor in the nerve center, surrounded by banks of monitors, flashing oscilloscopes, and glowing light emitting diodes of green, red and yellow. What do you make of it, Kelso? He said in his German brogue. My god, man, can't you see? Said Billington, tugging nervously on his handlebar moustache. See vat? I am sick and tired off this crap. Explain to me how a gorilla could wind up on a ridge in the Canadian Cascades on a fine bright morning in 19 hundred and 99? Explain to me that, and I'll give you my Noble prize. But they were stumped, and as a result, the grizzly un-reared, turned and headed the other direction, deciding not to charge murderously after all. No surprises, it muttered to himself. It ain't worth it. And besides, that salmon stream is running pretty good these days. Meanwhile, Colo, unaware of the low drama being played out in the depths of a nearby grizzly (he didn't even know what a grizzly was), shambled on, breathing the brisk summer alpine air and re-playing his options, one two three.
SENATOR PHILBY HELPS OUT
The scene is the offices of the honorable Senator Philby, coughing and snorting, scratching and sniffing staring out of his tangled nest, here in the top of a baobab tree.
He didn't know what to say. Senator Philby stared at his office. His office now seemed to be alive, he knew that for sure. He hated it. He loved it. He couldn't decide. There always telling me what to do! He said aloud, to no-one in particular. Who is this ape man, anyway? Dotty was telling him that he muttered, but he wouldn't have any of. I won't have any of that! he said I'm not a mutterer! Say what you have to say and let the chips fall where they may, that's what Phineas told me. That's the way it's done. I don't have any doubt about that at all. I'm comfortable in my convictions. My convictions are like giant Lazy-boys that swivel, recline, and contain coolers for ice-cold Bud. Don't you know that? Convictions cannot be negotiated. Convictions are what we need to rely on in these troubled times. Senator Philby cleared his throat, pushed off the desk, and rose with a grunt. My glasses. Where are my glasses? he bellowed, and Dotty Dillinger, hearing him clear on the other side of the thick oak paneled doors, came a-running. Senator, here they are! Said Dotty, holding them out to Senator Philby while simultaneously rearing back and looking away, as though Senator Philby were dangerously contagious. He snatched the glasses out of Dotty's outstretched hand and in one movement had them on his face. Ahem, he said. As I was saying, he said. THE GORILLA IS IN MY STATE. THE GORILLA HAS ENTERED MY TERRITORY. THIS SQUEAKY PERSON AND THIS... THIS... PRIMATE WILL HAVE TO ANSWER TO ME. AHEM. Senator Philby's office began once again to talk to him annoyingly. He tried to ignore it but when he did that the office slapped him up-side the head and said You'd better listen you old fart oh you'll wish you had. The office could be very forceful. Senator Philby heard it buzz most of the time, and when he tried to leave, he heard it buzz louder, and if he talked back or got up out of his chair, the office really got nasty. He was afraid of it, and he didn't know how he had got into such straights in the first place. When he had come to Washington the office seemed just a room, just a place just a fancy location, a forum for his senator Philby show, and not a living breathing entity that he had to be afraid of. My god, how did this happen? Things change so slowly you can't imagine. The essential character of a thing as mundane as your office can change in very important improbable ways, and the first thing you know you're crazy as a pet coon, taking orders from an office in the Senate office building in this god forsaken Eastern location. How did that happen? Where the hell am I? Senator Philby? Senator Philby? From his train of thought he could see Dotty out the dusty window, the train bell clanging and the clickety clack of the rails forming the aural backdrop of his realization that Dotty Dillinger was trying to raise him on the confounded intercom. Senator Philby? He gathered himself and reached out to push the button as the train kept rumbling through what used to be his office. Tickets! Tickets! A conductor was coming through. Tickets? I didn't even know I was on a train until just now... Train? Senator Philby? What do you mean train? I think you're muttering. I AM NOT MUTTERING! I AM NOT A MUTTERER! No, no. I didn't mean that... I meant... Oh Senator Philby I just meant to tell you t hat you have a visitor. A caller. Someone's calling on you. Can you see her? SEE WHO? SPEAK UP WOMAN, I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THIS CONFOUNDED TRAIN!