by Tom Robbins
Masquerading as the pensioned widow of a Vietnam hero, Sissy had been in the hospital for three full days. On this, the fourth morning, the drain had been removed from her wound, a fresh dressing applied and a discharge granted.
On this morning, also, Dr. Dreyfus had learned that Sissy had spent the fortnight prior to her surgery sleeping on the warped linoleum of a condemned house, the rat-slobbered old Hankshaw residence in South Richmond. Now he was driving her to his own house, where his wife (who turned out to be the short gray woman from the office) was preparing a room for her. She was invited to stay with the Dreyfus family until the work on her hands was completed. Because of the magnitude of the wound left by amputating such large digits, Dr. Dreyfus had decided that four operations would be necessary. The first, just done, would remove her right thumb. The second would remove the left. The object of the third would be the pollicerization of the right index finger; the fourth, the left. They would allow six weeks between each operation. One doesn't get to be normal overnight.
Mrs. Dreyfus didn't approve of her husband's illegal ministrations to Sissy, but, like many native Richmonders, she was gracious to the point of agony. Margaret Dreyfus did her bust-a-gut best to make the convalescent feel at home. Meals were regular, cheerful and good. With air conditioning, showers and pitchers of limeade, Sissy's armpits were defoliated, fruit bats discouraged from hanging from her sex hairs. In the evenings, a portable TV was rolled onto the screened-in veranda, the programming left to Sissy's wishes. During late-night thunderstorms, discreet inquiries were made as to whether the guest was nervous. The latest magazines appeared on her bedside table.
If Sissy didn't feel completely at home, it was because Sissy wasn't completely at home; she wasn't completely anywhere, she wasn't complete. Part of her—oh such a part!—was literally missing. Even though it felt as if it were still there, it was gone, gone, gone; gone to her questioning eyes, gone to her fumbling touch, gone from all dimensions except the inexplicable dimension of bioenergy, where its heavy aura pulsated and practiced phantom poses just in case some psychic researcher should start taking Kirlian photographs with a wide-angle lens. Sissy was determined to feel no remorse, but shock showed on her eyeballs like a marmalade glaze.
“Lord!” exclaimed Margaret Dreyfus. “She acts like that big ol' thumb had been her child.”
“No,” corrected her husband. “She acts as if she had been the thumb's child.”
Two weeks after the operation, on the day the stitches were removed, Sissy phoned Marie Barth in Manhattan. She learned that the Countess had survived, although some spots seemed to be missing from his dice. There was a warrant for Sissy's arrest outstanding, but as long as she kept away from New York State, she was safe: The crime was not serious enough for extradition; in fact, in the High Renaissance of crime that New York was now enjoying, Sissy's little assault was considered no more important than, say, the after-hours doodles of one of Botticelli's apprentices. By Marie, Sissy sent word to Julian that she was well and that she would be coming back to him some day, but first she had some changes to go through.
After the call, Sissy felt a bit more perky. Several times she accompanied Margaret Dreyfus on shopping expeditions—to Richmond Kosher Meat Market on West Cary Street and to Weiman's Bakery on North Seventeenth. With Dr. and Mrs. Dreyfus and their son, Max, a law student at Washington and Lee University, she attended movies at the Colonial Theater and the Byrd. There had been few visitors to the Dreyfus home since the Bernie Schwartz scandal, and Sissy found the patio private enough for nude sunbathing. Once, she walked as far as Byrd Park, the weight of orchids and bats dragging her down, and fed the ducks. She returned home saturated, panting, her ears resonant with blessed duck music, and beat Dr. Dreyfus at chess. That night she seemed vaguely joyous.
For the most part, however, Sissy had joined the ranks of the Unhappy Waiters and Killers of Time. Oh God, there are so many of them in our land! Students who can't be happy until they've graduated, servicemen who can't be happy until they're discharged, single folks who can't be happy until they're married, workers who can't be happy until they're retired, adolescents who can't be happy until they're grown, ill people who can't be happy until they're well, failures who can't be happy until they succeed, restless who can't be happy until they get out of town; and, in most cases, vice versa, people waiting, waiting for the world to begin. Sissy knew better than to fall into that dumb trap—certainly the Chink had taught her enough about time so that she needn't ever mark it—but there she was, playing the zombie game, running in place, postponing life until normality was achieved—while simultaneously she mourned the decrease in personal magic that had occurred with the loss of that famous Airstream Trailer of digits, the thumb that had launched a thousand trips.
But one afternoon, some twenty days into July, word was flashed into the Dreyfus home, as it was flashed (impartially and regardless of whether the homeowner had ever turned a nice Jewish boy's nose into a six-sided museum piece) into the homes of all Americans, that . . . the whooping cranes . . . had been found. And Sissy was jostled awake, alive.
94.
SISSY ONE THUMB watched network news early and late, and Lone Thumb Gitche laid her ear to the breast of the radio, and Little Miss Nine Fingers was first person up mornings to retrieve the Times-Dispatch from the delivery boy's pitch. Scarcely anybody followed the whooping crane “story” more closely than Semi-Thumbelina, the single-minded seraph grounded in Richmond's West End.
As news, whooper developments were overshadowed by events in Washington, D.C., where the President was having a little hand trouble of his own. Which is to say, the President had been caught red-handed, hands redder than a travel poster sunset, pimp red, a red that could enrage bulls and stop locomotives, but not blood red, for blood is sacred and the red that ran off the President's hands was the red of lies and deals and greed and arrogant megalomania. The President's hands had been seen, coast to coast, in the till up to the elbows, and the public—hopelessly brainwashed about the true significance of movements—was more enthralled with the frantic scramblings of the President's crimson hands, wringing and jerking and shaking off bribery, diving for a safe pocket, trying to force their way into a distinguished pair of gloves, than it was by the graceful glidings of new-found whooping cranes over the hills of Dakota.
By no means did the media ignore the whopper saga, however; it was the number two news story in the land, rating for a while more time and space than the international situation, which was desperate, as usual. Thus did Our Lady of the Missing Digit, though she had to saw through cords of political punk to get at heartwood, stack the following facts:
The Countess had had nothing to do with it; his brain—and brains have their weaknesses, as we all know—had been involuntarily tuned to another frequency, perhaps to that channel that broadcasts to mongoloids, sleeping beauties and house cats. Nor, to the Interior Secretary's displeasure, had the government search plane located the cranes, although it had passed within an aeronautical whisker of them on several occasions. No, the Walt Disney Studios cinematographers had simply emerged one day from the Florida swamps, where they had been filming Lunch Time in the Everglades, learned of the whooper disappearance and sent word to the authorities: “Hey, why don't you have a look at little Siwash Lake in the Dakota hills; the cranes stop off there, and there're goings on around that place that you wouldn't believe.”
Very next day, two area representatives of the Fish and Wildlife Service attempted to check out the lake. They drove to the gates of a ranch, where they were turned back by a teen-aged girl with a rifle.
The following morning, the Fish and Wildlife agents were flown over Siwash Lake in a U.S. Forestry Service helicopter. Before shots from a band of young women on horseback drove them away, they observed more whooping cranes than any humans had ever seen all in one place (that is, any humans except those crazy girls, and who in Jesus Jumping Hell were they, anyhow?)
That afternoon, the two re
presentatives of the Fish and Wildlife Service returned to the ranch. With them were two Forest Service rangers, a state game warden, the county sheriff, four deputy sheriffs, Mottburg's town marshall, several of his deputies, the editor of the Mottburg Gazette (who doubled as regional stringer for the Associated Press), a couple of bird watchers and a run-of-the-mill thrill-seeker or two. This party was met at the gate by at least fifteen armed females, mostly between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, in jeans, skimpy tops and Western-style hats and boots. One of the young women, described as extremely attractive, identified herself as Bonanza Jellybean, ranch boss, and told the authorities, “Yep, the birds are here all right. They're in fine shape, and as you musta saw from your f—— whirly machine, unrestrained, free to go as they please. But this is private property and you aren't laying a foot on it, none of you.” The cops tried to bluff the cowgirls—for cowgirls were what they were—but it didn't work. “We'll be back with a court order and a fistful of search warrants,” warned the sheriff. To which Ms. Bonanza Jellybean replied, “Just come back with a couple of people who know what they're doing and we'll let 'em on for a nice close look at the birds.” Another young woman, carrying a whip and dressed entirely in black, added, “And make sure those two people are female.” Ms. Jellybean amended that demand. “Make sure at least one of them is female,” she said. “And you'd better do as we say or they may be trouble.” The lawmen told the Wildlife agents they'd get them to the lake then and there if they wanted, but the senior federal representative, as level-headed as a chopping block, replied that force could endanger lives, crane as well as human, and he was sure the problem could be safely solved on the morrow. “Let's get to a phone,” he said to his associate, and as if some Mottburg telephone booth was the last coffee break left in the universe, off all of them rushed.
When the rosy fingers of dawn next strummed the string of the horizon, there was gathered at the Rubber Rose gate the entire party from the previous afternoon, plus nine additional thrill-seekers, eight television journalists, seven newspaper reporters, six officials from the nation's capital, five more deputies, four Audubon Society members, three FBI agents, two well-paid consultants and a CIA man in a pear tree.
The cowgirls had gained in numbers, too; the wide-eyed editor of the Mottburg Gazette counted nearly twice as many as the day before. They were sipping cocoa, brushing one another's hair and rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Bonanza Jellybean, in a leather skirt so short her crotch thought she hadn't dressed yet, advanced to negotiate with an Assistant Undersecretary of the Interior. She spun a six-gun on her tiny fingers as she talked.
Eventually, it was agreed that two observers would be permitted on the ranch. They were to be the man perhaps most familiar with whooper life, the director of the Aransas, Texas, Wildlife Refuge; and the extremely nervous Inge Anne Nelsen, a professor of zoology at North Dakota State University. Professor Nelsen wanted a cowgirl to remain outside the gates in temporary custody, as insurance against the possibility of the professor herself being held hostage. The request infuriated the Rubber Rose forewoman, the darkly dressed Delores (spell it with an “e") del Ruby. Snapped Ms. del Ruby, “One reason we wanted a woman for this job was so we wouldn't have to put up with that kind of male mentality paranoia provocative bull———.” And Ms. Jellybean scolded the zoologist, “Don't be a traitor to your womb.” At that point, a cowgirl known as Elaine scampered over the gate, volunteering to stay with the authorities. Elaine delighted the cameramen and infuriated the cops by proceeding to hug the Assistant Undersecretary flirtatiously about the neck.
The zoology professor and the Aransas director were given horses, and escorted by a half-dozen mounted cowgirls to the lake. After about two hours, a period during which the journalists unsuccessfully pumped Elaine for information and the lawmen ogled, with that mixture of desire and disgust peculiar to men reared in a Puritanical environment, the cowgirls guarding the gate, the Siwash expedition returned. The government's delegates reported in private to the Assistant Interior Undersecretary (whom Elaine persisted in calling the Inferior Undersexed Assistant), and he, in turn, issued an informal statement to his subordinates and the press.
“It will be my extreme pleasure to report to the President, who has been gravely concerned about the fate of our whooping cranes [hee ha hee, snigger snigger] and to the Interior Secretary and to the American people that the entire flock of cranes is, indeed, at Siwash Lake, and in apparently healthy condition. The cranes have built brooding nests around the whole circumference of the small lake, and have hatched chicks there. Counting the young birds, there are now approximately sixty cranes in the flock.” (Loud cheers from the Audubon section and the free-lance bird watchers.) “While this is good news, it is also quite bewildering. Whooping cranes are territorially minded, militantly so. They have never been known to nest as close as a mile to one another, yet here they are virtually side by side. Furthermore, as long as man has been acquainted with this flock it has nested nowhere but in the wilderness of northern Canada. Why did this year it cut its migration short by over a thousand miles and choose to brood cramped up at this little lake, so close to human beings, when whooping cranes are notoriously shy of humans? Those are perplexing questions, which our best experts will attempt to answer in the near future. For now perhaps, it is good news enough to learn that our cranes are alive and [a furtive glance at the cowgirls] apparently safe.”
On the morning after that one—and days do seem to follow days, don't they, students of time?—as the Assistant Undersecretary and his party pushed its way through the throng that milled outside the Rubber Rose, past writers, photographers, ranchers, loafers, mothers nursing babies, rural punks with T-shirt sleeves rolled up to show off the sum total of their personalities, Indians, tourists, bird-lovers, old men chewing tobacco, runaway daughters wishing to join the cowgirls and, of course, shootout enthusiasts from almost every branch of law enforcement; as the Assistant Undersecretary moved through this faintly festive mob, he was in a conciliatory mood. For one thing, his boss, the Secretary, had advised him to be conciliatory. For another, on the previous evening—and days do seem to antecede days—at the Elk Horn Motor Lodge, the Assistant Undersecretary had sounded out the citizens of Mottburg. He had heard that the cowgirls were tramps, lesbians, witches, dope fiends, that they fornicated with farm animals, subsisted on gook rice and flew funny kites. Yet the natives believed that these same cowgirls, trash as they were, had every right to keep “the government” off their land: prairie folk are decidedly opposed to federal interference. The Assistant Undersecretary paid the heed to local opinion that sailors pissing off bowsprits pay to the wind.
Thus was compromise born. Bonanza Jellybean agreed that Professor Nelsen and the whooper warden from Aransas could visit Siwash Lake twice each week to monitor the cranes. In return, the Assistant Undersecretary would see to it that low-flying aircraft were not allowed over the Rubber Rose. Moreover, he would seek the cooperation of surrounding landowners and the sheriff's department in keeping crowds of the curious away.
(Before the ban on aircraft was enforced, however, each major network filmed aerial footage of Siwash Lake and the cranes thereon. The sight of that pert pond, ringed round with cattail, reed and arrowhead, reflecting sweetly plump hills as a Tantric's eye might reflect his goddess's boobs, caused Sissy to squirm before the TV screen, as if being boiled by her own deep fires.)
Publicly, at least, the government was taking this position: the cowgirls seem to be innocent of any overt wrongdoing so far as the whoopers are concerned. The women admit to feeding the birds, but without apparent intention of interfering with their natural habits. Certainly they haven't tried to exploit the cranes in any way. The fact that they withheld information on the whoopers' whereabouts, and the fact that they fired upon federal agents, is suspicious, and in the latter case might result in charges' being filed, but for the time being, in light of the birds' multiplication and the fact that certain compromises have b
een reached, the ladies of the Rubber Rose would be extended courtesies and benefits of doubt.
Things went well enough for a week. Then Professor Inge Anne Nelsen requested permission—reluctantly, she professed—to kill a crane. Said she, “The birds' behavior is so atypical, their psychology altered so drastically and, I might add, suddenly, that I can only hypothesize that they are being drugged—unintentionally or otherwise. Ms. Jellybean has refused to allow us to inspect the feed with which they supplement the cranes' natural diet. Therefore, the only recourse is to perform an autopsy on a dead bird.”
“Kill a bird that is on the verge of extinction?” asked the Assistant Undersecretary, and moaned. His ulcer came out of the closet. “Why, we'd be lynched on the steps of the Museum of Natural History.” The noose was tightening around his ulcer already. Any last words, ulcer? Yes. Wahwahwahwahwah! it screamed.
“Consider this,” countered Professor Nelsen. “The cranes didn't migrate to Canada for the summer. Suppose they don't migrate to Texas for the winter? You do know, don't you, Mr. Assistant Undersecretary, what winters are like in this neck of the woods? The flock wouldn't last until Christmas. Better one dead bird than sixty. Sixty is all there is.”
“Permission granted.”
When the professor attempted to carry out the deed, however, she was accosted by cowgirls. They called her a disgrace to the nurturing traditions of womankind. They threatened to paint a mustache on her and shoot off her nipples.
At this point, the government decided to apply a pound of pressure. What the hell, the President was on the verge of leaving the White House via the fire escape; what else could go wrong? The FBI uncovered that the cowgirls didn't have title to the Rubber Rose. They sought out the rightful owner so as to persuade him to evict the young women and/or grant the government unrestricted trespass, but that person proved to be a cosmetics tycoon who had recently suffered severe head injuries and now spent his hours making eyes at the figures on wallpaper while listening to distant winds whistling down the necks of ethereal Ripple bottles.