28. Rituals

For weeks I had begged C.W. not to follow me. I was taking my first long vacation since 1974, a cruise to Mexico. I needed some time away from his antics.

Lots of luck.

The most embarrassing thing happened this way. With some schooling in architectural history, I looked forward to a trip to Chichen Itza, the Mayan site. Little did I guess what would follow.

At the site, descendents of that great culture are reduced to selling trinkets to the tourists. They are small people, troublesome and annoying, but hey, they were there first.

Anyway, as we toured the great ball field, I didn’t notice a group of young Mayan boys playing soccer until one of them picked up the ball and wandered over to me.

“Pretty something, alright,” he said, nudging me in the side.

“Pretty something,” I said.

“Did they really chop off the head of the winning team captain?” he said in perfect English.

I looked down at a small, dark boy with black hair and a twisted smile.

Yep. It was C.W.

“Dammit,” I said, “I told you to stay home.”

“Jess,” he said. “Me at home.”

“Aw, man,” I said in exasperation.

“About this head chopping,” he said.

“There are differing opinions,” I said. Some say it was the losers who lost their heads.”

“You people do like your rituals,” he said. “Chopping off heads, eating your gods with a sip of nice Chianti, sacrificing your children. What’s the deal?”

“It makes us holy,” I said. “Now why don’t you go back home?”

“If it will make you feel any better,” he said. “By the way, did they really bounce the heads down those stairs?” He pointed toward the magnificent Castillo, or temple pyramid.

“Piss off,” I answered.

With that he kicked the soccer ball across the field and disappeared behind a temple wall. I thought no more about him until we followed the guide back to the Castillo for a discussion of the remarkable acoustics of the site. I became engrossed in the image of a great ceremony, imagining the costumes and headdresses of the priests and the huge crowds of people. I raised my camera to the uppermost section.

Then I saw it.

There was a blur at first—a figure darting between the uppermost columns. This was odd as tourists are forbidden from climbing the pyramid.

It got worse.

Down the temple stairs came bouncing—if you can believe it—a soccer ball. Not a head, but a soccer ball. I wanted to crawl under a statue, particularly as the entire crowd turned to stare at me as the last one who had been seen near such an object.


Look Closely to notice the alien's Mayan prank


Needless to say, this put a damper on the whole visit. The ball bounced all the way into the plaza and I must confess to imagining a head exploding into the crowd. I eased back toward the entrance.

I had almost made it when I heard a voice behind me. “Pretty neat, huh?”

“Get away from me,” I shouted at the top of my voice.

The young boy looked hurt as everyone turned to look. “Please Mister. You buy?” he said, thrusting a cheap plaster mask toward me.

27. Pickups

C.W. was late. We had agreed to meet by the river. I was watching a barge navigate the channel between one lock and another. Finally, I saw him and immediately wanted to run. He was channeling a prisoner from some classic movie such as “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.” He wore tattered striped clothing and carried what appeared to be a metal bowling ball attached to a chain bolted to his leg. Every dozen yards or so he would put the ball on the ground, rest, and then pick it up and proceed toward me again.

It was too late to run. He had already seen me so I began studying my fingers in the hope that he might walk on by. No such luck.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he plopped down beside me and rested the ball on the ground. “I became distracted while gathering data and failed to take into account being slowed by the ball and chain.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said, averting my face from a bicyclist who nearly ran off into the river looking at us.

“It’s about your means of moving about.”

This is a common topic for him. His fascination with the internal combustion motor and the automobile never slackens. He refers to it as our “global insanity.”

“I was down at one of the high-rise buildings taking notes on the vehicles coming from the parking deck,” he said, as he fiddled with his chain. “I assume these are people who work in the building.”

“Mostly yes,” I said. “Or people having business in the building.”

“That makes sense. They were dressed formally as if they had what you call “white-collar” jobs. How did that term evolve?”

“I’ll explain it to you some day,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Well, would you believe that in less than an hour, I recorded no less than 10 men in business suits exiting the building in ‘collecting-things trucks?’”

“You perhaps mean ‘pickup trucks.’”

“Precisely. Now what exactly are they picking up there?”

“Well, nothing,” I said.

He assumed that look he has when something doesn’t pass through his “internal analysis mechanism” as he calls it. It’s a cross between looking stoned and falling asleep. He said, “That doesn’t calculate.”

“How do you mean?”

“They don’t haul goods for a living, do they?”

“Oh no, they probably don’t haul anything in those vehicles. It might scratch the paint.”

“They are so large and cumbersome—I can’t imagine trying to maneuver them through a parking deck.”

“I agree.”

“They have deplorable fuel efficiency?”

“Yes.”

He assumed The Look again. “I’m trying to understand,” he said.

“It has come to be an expression of masculinity and power,” I said.

“You are evacuating me from your bowels, right.”

“I am not shitting you, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’s going to take me awhile for my systems to recharge,” he said, with quite a bit of sadness in his voice. “Then I want to tell you about a 90-pound woman who was trying to enter a parking space in a ten-passenger monstrosity.”

“An SUV?” I said.

“No, she looked like a regular person who just didn’t have the ability to reason properly.”

26. Math

It was early morning and I was taking my walk in anticipation of a nice plate of eggs and grits at the end. It was cool, and a low-hanging fog was sliding up from the Arkansas River onto the park around the William Jefferson Clinton library and park. It was a good morning for thinking of past loves, Bob Dylan songs, and homemade bread.

Off in the distance, I could see a figure through the fog, sitting in a hunched position on one of the park benches. It was off the walking path, so I ignored it until I heard someone calling.

“Mr. … Mr. ... come here. You want math lesson?”

I looked toward the voice and was surprised to see an elderly Chinese man with a large, pork-pie hat working with intensity over what appeared to be an abacus. I decided to ignore him.

“No, no, come here please, mister.” He yelled insistently, and though it was morning, I feared he might attract attention, so I walked over. He thrust the abacus toward me with a grin.

It was C.W.

“Hey sailor,” he said.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Giving math lessons. Can’t you see?”

“Math lessons?”

“Ah, quite so, young mister.” He assumed his character’s voice.

“Why are you giving math lessons? And to whom?”

“Your species is severely lacking in analytical skills. We discuss before.”

“So?”

“Not to worry. Low analytical skills just make TV preachers rich. But lacking math skills make you destitute.”

“How so?” He had my curiosity aroused.

“Look,” he said, and pulled a news-clipping from a file beneath the abacus.

I glanced at the article, which I had read a few days earlier. It reported that the United States Treasury had issued bonds offering a negative return as the latest insult in a long period of low interest on savings.

“That’s something, isn’t it?” I said.

He relaxed. “It’s not going to get your species into the Intergalactic Math Bowl,” he said. “What’s the idea behind this latest brain atmospheric disturbance?”

“Brainstorm?”

“Whatever.” C.W. loves to pick up mannerisms from young people, sometimes forgetting his present shape.

“Best I can figure is this,” I said, trying to put on my best pundit’s face. “In a Corporatocracy such as ours, it is vital that corporations— our deities—receive cash infusions. We must place our savings in the stock market, and not in fixed-income instruments. So we offer no return on them. It’s a financial strategy known as ‘nudging,' as in out of fixed-income savings and into the stock market.’”

“Is that all?”

“Well, there is the additional fact that U.S. Treasury instruments are the safest investments in the world.”

“Oh,” he said and smiled. “So your money is safe while it slowly disappears.”

“Or, you put it in the stock market.”

“Ah,” he resumed his character. “Then you have ‘preasure’ of watching it quickly disappear.”

“More or less.”

He fiddled with his abacus. Then looked up at me.

“Most civilizations in the galaxy would, at best, use your species for cleaning sewage conduits,” he said.

25. Walking

The figure moved along the walking path with a slowness that was almost painful. Dark skinned and aged, she leaned against a walker that helped her stay upright but provided no other assistance in mobility. She wore a long shirt and one could see that, beneath it, she wore a pair of men’s work pants. She also wore men’s work shoes, slit down each side. I was on a bench reading a book and tried not to notice her as she drew near. No luck. Reaching me, she spun her walker around and steadied herself as she sat down beside me.

I kept reading. She poked me in the side. “You white folks shore don’t like us, do you?”

“Excuse me?” I managed in the form of a question. I made sure anyone listening knew I was insulted.

“People who have to walk places,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You just treat us like domesticated canines.”

It dawned on me. It was C.W. “What are you doing?” I said.

“Resting.”

“Resting from what?” I asked.

“From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.,” he said.

“Give me a break,” I said.

“I thought you white folks didn’t like colored people, like your president,” he said. “But you really, really, really, don’t like folks who have to walk places.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I mean pedestrians.”

“I’m talking about what you call people,” I said.

“What do you call them?”

“Just people,” I said.

“Tell you what,” he said.

“What?”

“Why don’t you come go walking with me?”

“Sorry, I’m busy right now.” I held up my book.

“Afraid?”

“Of what?”

“Crossing streets given over to homicidal maniacs in personal vehicles.”

“No,” I said. “I do it all the time.”

“What? Walking?”

“Yes.”

“How long you been walking?”

“Since I was two or so.”

“No, I mean your species.”

If you count our closest relatives, more than five million years or so, as I understand it.”

“And how long you been driving cars?”

“A little over a hundred years.”

“Don’t make no sense to me.”

I made a show of returning to my book.

“You like to read?”

“Very much,” I said. He didn’t take the hint.

“Do all members of your species read?”

“No, only a small percentage of them bother.”

“What do they do?”

“Various things,” I said. “Eat, drink, sc ….”

He interrupted. “No, when they go home and relax.”

“They generally watch television.”

“You mean that device that shows people eating maggots and trying to dance with famous people?”

“That’s the one.”

So tell me why.”

“Why what?”

The figure sighed and looked at the ground. “If that’s what they do after they drive all the way home.”

“Yes.” I was getting impatient.

“Then why is they in such a dad-gummed hurry to get there?”

24. Prophecy

Who in the world should knock on my door last night while my wife was gone but—get this—Bernie Madoff? In the flesh. Well, it was C.W. in the shape of Bernie Madoff’s flesh but I still thought it was pretty neat. And was he excited.

“Jimmie, guess what?” he said, with that famous hustler’s grin.

“You’ve been in prison?”

“No. What makes you think that?”

“Just a wild guess. What’s up?”

“I have discovered this ability that I have. You are going to love it. It must be something I transported from Falloonia that evolved in earth’s atmosphere.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have the 'thing willingly given' of prophecy.”

“Uh, the ‘gift’ of prophecy?”

“Quite so.”

“Have you tested it?”

“Yes, I told the girl who makes sandwiches at the Cox Center that someone was going to give her a 20 dollar tip the next day, and guess what?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Like magic, there is was: stuck in the tip jar, crisp and new before noon.”

“Have you ever heard of ‘beginner’s luck’?”

“No. What’s that?”

“Never mind. Have you tried it again?”

“Oh yes. I struck up a conversation with a lady at a nursing home last week when I went to see how you treat your old people.”

“And?”

“She was in tears because her son in California hadn’t called her in a month. She was on the verge of giving up.”

“And”

“I told her that her son would call her that afternoon. And guess what?”

“He did?”

“Like timepiece-work.”

“Are you sure this is legitimate?”

“Absolutely. Now, one reason I came is that I need to borrow some money.”

I allowed myself to dream. The stock market would open tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. our time, and we were right in the middle of college football season. Less than 50 miles from here was a simulcast horse betting casino. Holy Mackeral!

“C.W., if you are right, you can borrow all the money you want. But are you certain about all this?” I was feeling great.

“You are proof positive.”

“Me?”

“Yes you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told my colleague in South America that you would receive a visitor at exactly 8:00 p.m. tonight.”

“Me? A visitor?”

“Yep. Now check the time.”

It was 8:10 p.m.

“But you are the only visitor I’ve had.”

“Well?”

“Holy crap!”

“I knew you would be astounded. Now about the money. The airline ticket to California was expensive, not to mention the 20 dollars.”

“You little Falloonian asshole.”

“What’s wrong?”

“C.W., if you make it happen, it’s not the fulfilling of prophecy.”

“According to the ministers on television, it is. Where do you think I got the idea?”

“I hope you rot in jail.”