264. Hunter's Dream

Oh no, when I saw the shape of Ernest Hemingway at my desk, I knew it would be a long morning.

“Hello sport,” it, he, Ernest, … C.W. actually, said.

“Morning.”

“Question.”

“It’s a little early yet for a question.”

“This one is easy,” he said.

“Wait one,” I said. “I need coffee.”

I returned with a cuppa and sat near him. Determined to outwait him, I sipped.

After an uncomfortable silence, he spoke. “Been reading about this lion in Africa named Cecil.”

Oh hell. “Yes?”

“Do they give names to all the lions in Africa now?”

“No,” I said, “just the ones who are more or less pets,”

“I see,” he said.

“But …,” I said, “there so few left now that naming them all may be a possibility.”

He nodded. “So one could get a license to kill a specific one? Say pick one out of a catalog and say ‘I want a permit to come kill Ralph?’”

“Yeah,” I said, “nice and simple, and they could always use the ‘supplies are limited’ angle to boost sales.”

“Hmm,” he said. “It wasn’t like that back in my day. There were plenty of them. What happened?”

“If you are Ernest Hemingway, you should know.”

“What do you mean?”

“You helped make it a manly thing to kill them for sport.”

He changed the subject. “This dragging a dead animal carcass around to lure them into a safe place for the hunter to shoot them … do they do that here in America?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“Well that’s good.”

“They use something called deer corn.”

He ignored me. “We certainly never did anything like that.”

I stared at him.

He said, “We had ni… I mean natives that would drive them to where we waited, having our gin and tonics. Then we would shoot them when they came out of the brush, the lions that is.”

I nodded my head. “Much more manly.”

“Anyway,” he said, and I sensed he was the old C.W. again. “Anyway, we need to make some money off this hunting stuff.” He reached beside himself and produced a photo. “I have a preliminary idea for a hunting machine,” he said.



Big Dope never likes my ideas, but I think every
hunter in America would want one of these. - C.W

I looked at the model. “You’re mad,” I said.

“About what?”

“Just mad … crazy.”

“Come on Sport,” he said. “You never like my ideas, and this one is a winner for sure.”

“Have you shown this to my wife?”

“Mrs. Big Dope is more negative than you.”

“What did she say about marketing to hunters?”

“She yelled at me and I didn’t understand her.”

“Why? She’s usually pretty straightforward.”

“Not this time,” he said. “She kept babbling about, well … about men’s private parts, you know.”

“And?”

“She said I should just sell them something called an ‘elongator.’ Said it would serve the same purpose, cost a lot less, and bring what she called a collective sigh of relief from entire animal world.”

“I see.”

“So,” he said, “I made another working model.” He reached around and produced a long cardboard box emblazoned with a brightly colored label that read, “The Hunter’s Dream.” He turned around and said, “Hey Sport. Where are you going? Aren’t we going to box awhile?”

 

 Please click some ads. They weren't long on my recent money-making idea.

Oh, and see www.wattensawpress.com

And ... www.allhatnocattle.com

Finally, buy Big Dope's book so he'll shut up about it.
- C.W.

Available at major on-line retailers, or
www.wattensawpress.com

124. Boredom

If there is anything worse than a bored teenager, it must be bored alien. What could be even worse? Try a bored alien who has taken the form of a bored teenager. I was trying to grade papers from a class I am teaching when who should show up but Tymber Elysibuth, the 16 year old high school student. She plopped on the couch and began tapping her feet to music that only existed in her head.

“I’m bored,” she said, as if I would have not guessed in a thousand years.

“C.W., I’m sort of busy right now.”

“Do you think Tymber is a sexy name?”

“I think you should go out for some exercise.”

“Haylee Addison’s dad says the government is taking away all of our guns.”

“That’s nice. Now why don’t you go walking?”

“Oh, puleeez. Can’t you hear? There is a hunter every ten feet out there. Duh. I would get to the edge of the woods before one shot me. Gross.”

“Maybe you could read a book.”

“Londin Colclasure studied in school that the world is only 6,000 years old.”

“Great,” I said. “Have you visited home lately?”

“Get real. It takes a hundred light years to get there.”

“So where did London ..”

“Londin! Gee, are you dumb, or what?”

“Where did Londin get her news?”

“Her teacher learned if from a man running for president.”

“Running for president? We just had an election.”

“He’s getting an early start, I suppose.”

Returning to my papers, I tried to ignore her.

“The world’s coming to an end,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “Hope it happens before I get these papers graded.”

“The U.N. has taken over our economy and is killing our economic system.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Now who told you that?”

“Glen Beck.”

“And he is an economist?”

“No.”

“Historian?”

“Not really.”

“A political scientist?”

“No, A talk radio host.”

“Talk radio?”

“You know, the guys who are trying to protect our freedoms and restore our economy.”

“Some call it ‘hate’ radio” I said.

“Whatever.”

“So why don’t you go shopping?”

“What! And fight those crowds?”

“Never mind anyway,” I said. “The last five times I sent you for toilet paper, you picked the wrong brand.”

“Soffeeah Gabrielah says her daddy is going to take her out of school.”

“Can’t blame him,” I said, trying to make sense of a student’s effort to describe the pros and cons of public sector collective bargaining. “Any particular reason?”

“They won’t let us pray.”

“Oh? Do you want to pray?”

“Not really, but that’s not the point. “They are taking away our religious freedoms.”

“About time,” I said reading the explanation again a striving for some sign of coherence. “What freedoms?”

It would be so neat if I could just
text my thoughts without actually
having to think them. - C.W.

“Did you know that God hates fags?”

“C.W.! We don’t talk that way in this house.”

“See, you want to take away my freedom in my own home.”

“It’s not your home. And besides, you are an alien.”

“Did you know that the government is going to put all of our citizens in concentration camps and put the aliens in charge?”

110. Fixes

C.W. needs our help, he says. The Falloonian Elders are having trouble believing some of the reports he is sending. The latest has to do with our treatment of pets, the poor, and the elderly.

“I know what I send the Elders doesn’t always provide a peal of verisimilitude,” he said.

“You mean a ‘ring of truth’”?

“That’s what I said, my son.” His condescension arose from his appearance, no doubt. He had chosen to appear as a high-ranking Catholic clergyman. I wasn’t quite sure of his rank, not being of that faith, but if expense of attire correlates accurately with title, he was up there.

“Pets, the poor, and the elderly,” I said, returning to his original theme.

“Yes, they are amazed, but somehow pleased, when I relate how much care and love your species lavishes on personal pets.”

Just then, as if to prove the point, the latest addition to our family, a young stray dog that my wife had rescued from under an abandoned church building, trotted into the room. She took one look at C.W. whined, backed off, and fled the room.

“I think that is some 20 or so strays that you have rescued over the years,” he said.

“At least,” I said.

“Of course the Elders are not as sharply honed about your interspecies sporting habits.”

“I’m not as ‘keen’ about them myself,” I said. “I gave up hunting when my military career ended.”

“The Elders would prefer that you engage in competitive sports in which both parties knew that a game was afoot.”

“Understandable,” I said.

“Now, about the others.”

“The poor and the elderly?”

“Yes, the Elders don’t believe me when I tell them that one of your political parties would like to pitch them out amongst the Canus Lupi.”

“Well, they don’t call it ‘throwing them to the wolves.’”

“What do they call it, my son?”

“Well, uh,” I struggled. “They would call it building self-reliance.”

“And they would call sodomy a case of following too closely?” He loves this quote by William F. Buckley, Jr. and I regret relating it to him.

“So, do you have a plan?” I tried to redirect him.

“Yes, my son.” He arranged his robe. “Why don’t you simply make pets of your poor and elderly?”

“Pets?”

Be kind to pets, not gays. - C.W

“Yes,” he said. “You could sell them in shops, give them silly names, teach them tricks, dress them in ridiculous outfits, and …” he blushed, “Have them ‘fixed’ when appropriate. This would be okay for pets but not full-fledged people, don’t you see?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“But,” he said. “There is one thing.”

“And that is?”

“You can’t transport them on the top your cars.”

75. Role Models

“We ain’t sorry. We’s hippies,” she said.

Oh my goodness. C.W. had only appeared as two people twice before, and those involved the conjoined twins Lucky and Lefty, one of his favorite shape-shifts. This time he appeared as two separate individuals, a couple who looked as if they had just been evicted from a “meth-house” in Alabama.

“Have you met my wife, Dolly Winona?” the male figure asked.

“What’s up, C.W.?” I said.

“I have an idea,” he said.

“And that is?”

“We want us our own television show,” Dolly Winona said.

“Television show?”

“Yes,” said C.W. “I think it would look good on my final report to the Falloonian Elders if I had a television show for awhile.”

“And?”

“Well they don’t exactly feature the best and the brightest on shows these days, do they?”

“No, you got to be crazy, worthless, or just a plain misfit to make it,” Dolly Winona said.

I must have looked confused.

“So we are hippies,” said C.W.

“Don’t you know hippies went out after the 1960s?”

It was his turn to look confused.

“So how about the 1970s?”

“Not much but disco.”

“Ain’t nobody would be hard up enough to make a movie about disco dancers, would they?” Dolly Winona said.

“We’ll talk about that another day,” I said.

“So what’s worse than disco?” C.W. said.

“In modern times?”

“Yes, we need a theme featuring what your gospel writer Matthew called, ‘the least of these.’”

“Outlaw truck drivers?”

“Taken,” he said.

“Intermediate hominoid species who live in swamps in Louisiana and, say, hunt alligators for their livelihood?”

“Taken.”

“Gun enthusiasts with diminished mental capacity?”

“Bless his heart,” Dolly Winona said. “Don’t he know the State of Texas ain’t never gonna run out of them shows?”

“Slutty women with no talent, no abilities, and no redeeming qualities?”

“Taken, taken, taken, and taken.”

“Whur’d we ever find a slutty woman, anyway?” Dolly Winona interrupted with some indignation in her voice. And besides, we’s figurin’ on bein’ a couple on the show.”

“A couple?”

“Yeah, You know how family oriented TV is these days.” She reached into her bag and retrieved two cans of Mountain Dew.

“You ‘ont one?”

“No thanks,” I said.

She handed the other a can and both popped the tops. Spray settled on floor and couch, but I ignored it.

“We got to think of somebody sorry,” Dolly Winona said. “Just plain sorry. We’s aimin’ for a big hit.”

Inspiration struck me. “How about ….”

They both leaned forward.

“How about …”

“Come on, spit it out, Hon,” said Dolly Winona.

“How about … Trailer Trash Ministries?”

“Say what?”

“You could be television evangelists specializing in ministering to a different trailer park each week.”

Ya'll come see us at our new
International Headquarters. - C.W. and Dolly Winona

They were speechless for several seconds. Then Dolly Winona broke into a big smile. “At tar’s got promise,” she said. “At’s got sorry stacked on top of sorry.”

“Where can we get us a Bible?” C.W. said, rising to leave.

57. The Sporting Life

C.W. promised to come by the condo last evening so when he called, I buzzed him right up. Glad I did. I wouldn’t want him hanging around the front door in the appearance he had chosen for this visit.


Let’s just say he looked like a walking advertisement for “The American Hunter.” He wore camouflage from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Even his hands sported “camo gloves.” His face was marked up like a D-Day paratrooper and his eyes rested behind a dulled set of aviator sunglasses.

It reminded me of how the reporters used to “garb-up” during the Iraq Invasion.

“What do you think?” he said as he banged his gun case into my most expensive piece of furniture.

“You wouldn’t even begin to want to know,” I said.

“Can’t wait for opening day,” he said. “If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m taking up hunting as a sport.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“Let me show you this neat stuff,” he said, opening a bag—a camouflaged one of course.

“See here,” he opened a large sack. “This here is called ‘Deer Corn.’ I can put it in my kill-zone everyday for few weeks and the deer will be coming straight to it come opening day.”

I tried not to retch.

“And this here is female deer scent. Know what it does?” He started to open the bottle but I stopped him.

“Oh, they won’t come in up here,” he said.

“That’s okay, I get the picture,” I said.

He pulled out a small recorder and flipped it on. There was a sound of repeated clanging.

“That’s a recording of two buck deer fighting over a gal.” He leaned back, evidently enjoying the sound. “That ought to raise a crowd.”

I motioned for him to turn it off.

“Now look here,” he said. He laid the bag aside and opened his gun case. “I prefer the most manly and primitive approach to hunting. Nothing but a muzzle-loader for me.”

I just stared at him as he unlimbered the gun from its case. Of course, it too was coated in camouflage.

“This here is a 50-caliber beauty build to the most exacting standards available,” he said. “And check out this telescope, 3-9x40 baby with a duplex reticle—waterproof, fog proof, and shockproof. What’ya think?”

“I’m simply overwhelmed.”

“Thought you would be,” he said, apparently missing the irony completely. “What an experience, just man against beast in a primal contest of inter-species confrontation played out in nature’s neutral battleground on an equal footing.”

My mouth dropped open.

He removed his glasses. It was the actual C.W. again.

“It’s not really, is it?”

“No,” I said.

“Tell me something,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Aren’t there enough wars going on at any one time to provide relief for your species’ blood-lust?”

“One thing to consider,” I said.

“I’m all ears,” he said.

“The deer don’t shoot back.”