Angry Camel, or Burden of Proof

With a toothy Semitic braying, the small dromedary, formerly fenced behind the wooden cut-outs of Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar, was now charging into the holiday-makers, who screamed, yelled, shrieked, gasped, and even thrilled that this made it all worth the price of admission.

Geoffrey and Andreas were just as surprised and/or taken aback as the rest of cheer-seekers, but maintained their sang-froid--one of the blessings of advanced age.  The two Romanians that they had just forestalled from making mischief had taken to their heels, perhaps reliving genetic memories of the Ottoman domination of their land.

The beast thundered on, crashing into the food kiosks, dragging along in its wake like festive raiment a few awnings, plastic table cloths, extension cords for space heaters, and a string of blinking Christmas lights.  However, the net of this beast had also caught up many a discarded red-green-and-white cocoa cups, the tennis-ball aluminum walkers of one or two senior citizens, and--concerning to say the least--several innocent children.

No one much cared about the cocoa cups (except a few dedicated greenies), while the loss of the aluminum walkers were of concern to only a few of Merryweather's valued senior citizens.  But the innocent little children garnered much sympathy, mostly from bystanders other than their parents, who were still thinking that this all might be a complimentary amusement ride that came with the pretty steep entrance fee.

Among these bystanders who did give a thought to future generations were Geoffrey and Andreas.  Any surprise on their part at this micro-stampede having passed, they dashed after the beast, risking broken hips and delayed-onset bursitis by their exertions across the chill pavement, as the ecstatic children caught up in the blinking web of lights and debris, their gleeful cries seeming to say, Oh, if every day could be Christmas.

But as Geoffrey and Andreas closed in on the beast juggernauting to freedom, their heroism was supervened by a squat but agile shape.  Anjay Shapurian, of all people, taking a brief respite from lurking in the shadow of Jeff "Doogle" Hanson, suddenly darted through a pair of standing tubs marked Garbage and Recycling.  With the energy of a frog making for an unsuspecting dragonfly, he leapt through the air and landed atop the camel.  This display of Central Asian rodeo skill, generating from all of the people about a silent gape of admiration.  For Geoffrey and Andreas, it brought about a screeching halt, as Andreas rear-ended his housemate and Geoffrey tumbled inelegantly into a Japanese skimmia bush draped over-abundantly with little blue lights.

From his perch on the saggy hump of the dromedary, Anjay Shapurian was delivering a barrage of throaty curses in some unfamiliar tongue as he grabbed at its dangling harness, while the camel itself brayed and shook its unappealing head.  Another stream of unkind words suitable for the caravansary or a rough-around-the-edges oasis gushed out from Anjay Shapurian, who was clutching at its hide in an attempt--fruitless--to steer it along.

This action sequence from the Nativity story came to a sudden halt (to no one's relief, since this was would always bring in the customers).  A second figure was intervening: a tall, mannish women draped from stem to stern in billowing black, a nun, rather than directing her forces from behind (like Geoffrey and Andreas) or from above (like Anjay Shapurian), was making a perpendicular charge.  In a flanking move, she seized the beast's halter, yanked it a few times to remind it who had bucket of the date paste and millet, and so brought all the fun to an end.

At this dousing of the excitement, the scales fell from the eyes of several sets of young parents, who ran forward and disentangled their tots from the twiney mess behind the beast, only to hear pleas of Can we do it again?

But into this this cherubic chorus of disappointed children, another voice, high, desperate, and horrified, pierced the chilly evening.  Like the dark sail of a ghost ship, there appeared another of the sisters of the Convent of Sorbo-Ruthenian Women’s Monastery of the Blessed Charles of Austria and the Servant of God Zita Of the Exarchy of Blainesville.

Running up to the lady at the head of the camel, she cried out in imprecise English, "The icon is left!  The icon is left!  The miraculous icon of Blessed Symeona of Blainsville is gone!"

Just as the nun made her frightful announcement, Geoffrey and Andreas stepped into the scene.  The old men looked about.  Along with the miracle-working icon, they saw that the Romanians were gone, Doogle Hanson was nowhere to be seen, and Anjay Shapurian had climbed off of the camel and sunk into the crowd.  (The funnel cake stand was gone as well in the all of the hullabaloo, that was not as concerning...)  They they gave one other a more sophisticated glance, one that said, "Correlation does not always mean causation, but..."

Two by Two, or Walking with Beasts

Andreas Stackenwalter had sighted, further up the line of shivering holiday fun-seekers, another pair of fellows also waiting to pass the turnstile and take in the millions and millions of tiny holiday bulbs in riotous display.  Despite their hand-woven stocking caps and generous padding against the chill, by their profiles and poses Andreas was able to label them as Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and his perpetual appendage Anjay Shapurian.

Andreas half-nodded up the queue to signal Geoffrey.  "Should we enter, mein Herr?" he asked. "Perhaps the roof upon us will fall."

"Ah," Geoffrey said as he recognized the pair, "but this is an open-air event."

"Perhaps the small children will stampede."

"The Pied Piper would be proud.  What have you learned so far about this pair?"

"As much as I know about those two peoples there."  A second time Andreas gave a half-nod up the queue.  Geoffrey let his sight billow along like newly falling snow past the young families and the lovesick hipsters, all waiting in chilly anticipation to smile at millions and millions of small colored lights while sipping cider and cocoa.  His gaze finally settled first upon a man whose utterly bald head was indifferent to the cold and at his side an elderly woman, hunched and squinting, her jaw sealed by a well-knotted scarf in an ethnic rainbow of colors.

"I remember them from the wake for Marjorie," said Geoffrey, bringing his complimentary cruelty-free hot cocoa to his cold-chapped lips.  "Romanians.  Latter-day Phanariots.  Marthe Bibesco would not be proud.  Oh, didn't we visit her in Paris?"

"1964."  Andreas had a great memory for dates.

But interrupting this doctor-recommended power-walk through the past was the sight of Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and Anjay Shapurian arriving at the admissions booth.  Doogle Hanson, even when papoosed in high-end survivalist winterwear, moved with a pantherine grace--while Anjay Shapurian slid along in his shadow like a ray or skate just beneath the surface.  They slipped, one elegantly, one surreptitiously, past the turnstile.


A little bit after this transaction, the Romanians (Son and mother?, we might guess) had also contributed to the till to start enjoying the Yuletide light show within.  Finally, Geoffrey and Andreas had their turn at showing to the juvenile volunteer their state-issued identification as proof that they were senior citizens (the eager do-gooder did not take the word of these octogenarians that they could remember Eisenhower (never mind the Empress Zita, Marthe Bibesco, and frankly, Adolf Hitler--He had pinched Andreas' soft little cheek in 1943)).  So, they too were allowed within to partake in the Oh, Noel! Lightfest.

Within the scarcely hidden but festively decorated chain-link-fence enclosure, Geoffrey was admiring the aesthetic of a billion or so small colored lights and weighing whether "galactic" or "cosmic" was le mot just, while Andreas scanned for the movements of not only Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and Anjay Shapurian, but the two Romanians, as well.  Most of the people comprising the happy holiday masses moved about, staring and pointing, chatting with acquaintances and scrupulously avoiding the smiling eyes of strangers--no need to take the goodwill towards men business too far.

Sadly, ill-will towards men was to be found in the two Romanians.  Apparently the funnel cakes or the cotton candy or the deep-fried angel food cake on a stick was not up to par, because the bald Balkanite and his squat mother were making a noticeable fuss, not limited to critiquing the spun sugar or the proportion of nutmeg in the crunchy coating.

Now, Geoffrey, Andreas, and a few dozen others were treated to the old lady demanding a gluten-free funnel cake, not getting it, and then smashing the napkin dispensers with her cane.  The cowed volunteer started to whimper a few mollifying words, but the trollish granny wailed something and with one grand tsunamian gesture swept her walking stick across the counter, casting the sugar-and-spice condiments, the donation can, and the brochures about the miraculous icon in the convent's chapel all on to frosty pavement.  Now the volunteer found voice and hurled a few jeremiads across the counter, at which the bald son yelled in thickly-accented English, "Elder abuser!  Elder abuser!"  And rotating about to the crowd about him summoned their indignation.  "You see!  Evil!  Evil!  Abusering!"

Well, to this, the reaction from the chilly holiday-makers ran the spectrum from ultra-apathetic to the infra-indignant--Really, that this could go on in Merryweather!  It just proved what cable television said about nuns was true.

At this, Geoffrey and Andreas, elderly people nonpareil, sidled up to the head of the funnel cake queue like a couple of ancient homeopaths to stifle this conniption.  Like the last exponents of chivalry both Gallic and Holy Roman (Perceval, Parzifal, all the same) who had left their palfreys at the prune-whip stand, they sauntered into the midst of the melee and played the ancient game of divide and conquer.

Geoffrey, as young people say, "got in the face" of the semi-reptilian bald son and announced with stern voice and unwavering gaze, "Milosh."  This name should do the trick, he thought, and it did.  The Romanian turned as pale and quivery as a blancmange and his declamatory mouth shriveled to a prunish pucker.

Meanwhile, Andreas was corralling the Bucharest matron with a protracted barrage of questions in violent German about the functioning of the snow cone machine.  This was a crude technique that ostensibly was not suited to a chevalier, but he was not rescuing a blushing maiden.  This blitzkrieg demanding technical minutiae about the ice-grinder derailed the lady from whatever scheme she and her spawn were concocting and both mother and son were now looking nervously around their respective attackers at each other to understand exactly what had transpired

And then the camel broke loose.

Merryweather Unleashed, Part I

The most dangerous people in Merryweather the Thanksgiving morn just past were the antisocial scofflaws who secretly loaded their dogs into the caged-off cargo spaces of their hybrid offroad sedans (whose manufacturers posed as sponsors on the fauxmercials between PBS programs on Saturday night) and with their unwitting, only-want-to-love-you hostages in tow, headed off in the frosty hours before dawn to the bleak and empty Tlasiwapsit't Wildlife Refuge, there to let the beasts run around as dogs are meant to--and maybe stir up a flock of snow geese or sandhill cranes.  (This gave the amateur wildlife photographers a chance at a nice action shot.) 

And this feast of lawlessness had to be on this day at this hour, since only then was there a good chance of avoiding a Parks and Rec deputy ready to hand out a ticket for allowing one's dog run free without a leash.

The Tlasiwapsit't Wildlife Refuge used to be just a muddy maze of pot-hole-pocked gravel roads running through a dystopian paradise of invasive weed species, all of it kept from the public by a couple of miles worth of chain link fencing.  In ye olden times, middle-aged bachelors would bring the pooches thither to run in the cool of the evening and while they shot a rabbit or two.  But as we learned, the ancient mothers of Merryweather had (after gerrymandering the boundaries to include key neighborhoods in the college town about twenty miles away) pushed through a measure to buy up the land, complete with its brackish ponds and sloughs full of waterbirds, and so was born the Tlasiwapsit't Wildlife Refuge.  (The eggheads in the college town said that they had to include the 't on the end of Tlasiwapsit't, otherwise they would be pronouncing it all wrong.)  The site was gussied up, given a paved parking lot, cedar walkways through the fens and reed beds, a guilt-inducing informational kiosk about the Tlasiwapsit people (the writer of the blurb in the kiosk did not care about the 't), and a gleaming sign declaring that dogs were forbidden, in order to preserve the native habitat.

So, this Thanksgiving morn, in the weak illumination in the chill fifteen minutes or so before actual sunrise, a few intrepid parties were disembarking from their hybrid adventure cars to throw into chaos their little corner of the world.

Through the main gates the drivers crept, in one hand drive-through mocha-mint lattes, but in the other no dog leash, for Lexi, Sasha, Bruno, Egon, and/or Shasta had already shot out of the vehicles like torpedoes, away into the frozen fog, with uninhibited, feral joy, eager after rabbits and voles.

But a few of canines this morning were not so enthused.  Squatting on the October-Revolution-red-leather front seats of a small, scarabesque foreign sports car sat a pair of Pekingese: Una and Olga, the wheezy reasons for the spendy veterinary and grooming bills accrued by Mssrs. Geoffrey Durant-Dupont, Esq. and Andreas Stackenwalter.  It was the latter gentleman, an elderly German in a National Volksarmee winter hat (ear flaps down) and 1989 army parka, who was in attendance on the palace dogs this morning.  But he had not come to this morning for a crepuscular jaunt over the hoar-becrusted mud trails.  Instead, leaving the golden beasts in the car (it was only 28 degrees...) Andreas Stackenwalter stationed himself outside of the driver's side door and stood there immobile, his breath like Hyperborean cigarette smoke.  To any eye catching sight of him that dawn, he was more forbidding than any pooch-precluding sign.  But no eyes were on him and his own gaze, aged but clear, was fixed like the sight of a rifle upon the gates of the refuge, where many a fleece-jacketed Merryweatherites with a Malinois mix was now quietly entering.

 

But no one had come out of the gate.  Yet.  Andreas Stackenwalter knew, though, that he would.  He would wait.

Through the bright canopy of a fall-time walnut tree, its leaves Robert Frost yellow, the October sun shone in glints and glances upon an impromptu memorial service that dear old Connie had thrown together for Ms. Marjorie Mayfield, whom no one had seen in about a month.  The muted light was probably for the best, since one might misinterpret someone squinting in the bright sun as being in the first stage of weeping, and really, no one liked Marjorie Mayfield very much.  Wherever she was, dead or alive, the unspoken consensus seemed to be that she had better just stay there.

Dear old Connie had posted a notice of these obsequies on the bulletin board at Summerfield Estates, then paid for a blurb in the Silver Tsunami newsletter, and crossed her fingers.  At the tepid response, however, she just told herself that this handful gathered under the big old walnut tree, its leaves as gold as the dome of a Byzantine church and its nuts like meteors bonking the picnic table and an occasional head, well, these folks were the ones that loved Marjorie Mayfield the most.

Despite their small number, they embraced the spectrum of Merryweather humanity: the narrow-eyed Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and his fungal amanuensis Anjay Shapurian (no one, even Anjay, was quite sure what nationality he was--but in Merryweather almost everyone had been brainwashed to believe that nationality did not exist); the billiard-ball bald Radu Prinzulescu and his toad-like mother, Maria, looking very much like a Transylvanian barn spirit; the elderly but undiminished Geoffrey Durant-Dupont and his longtime housemate Andreas Stackenwalter, with their Pekingese; and finally young and hale Marco Panzi and Michael Peighsley, whom some (read Doogle and Anjay) whispered were present just to get face-time with any grieving relatives and make a buck by selling off whatever was stewing in Marjorie Mayfield's condo.  But, then, so were Doogle and Anjay.  For as they lifted their plastic dishes of gourmet ice cream, dodged a few black walnuts, and shared highly-edited reminiscences of the mysteriously missing Ms. Marjorie Mayfield, Doogle and Anjay were recalling what she had always said: So many jackals, so few carcasses.

The faithful stood about for a few minutes with their cups of ice cream (which somewhere no doubt was seen as the food of the dead) and smiled pleasantly at one another.  Since Connie had worked hard to put this whole shindig together and was such an angel, it would not do to break her heart.

But in time, everyone (gratefully) dispersed, leaving Connie to gather up the ice cream-coated spoonlets and serving cups and place them in one of those leaf-green Bye-O degradable garbage bags: her little contribution to the Keep Merryweather Green campaign.  With this service to our little town out of the way, she slipped the tops on to the tubs of Cha-Cha Cherry, Mustafa Mocha-Chocolate, Cumulus Cloudberry, and Little Black Bits Vanilla and sighed.  She would have to bring all of this ice cream home, and with her husband being diabetic and even at 79 Connie still trying to keep her figure...But let her freezer bulge.  Anything for a friend.