B Is for Beer

by Tom Robbins

  “I guess so.”

  “The older you get—and this is a good thing to remember on your birthday, Gracie—the harder it is to interface with the Mystery. Yet adults still thirst for that connection, that alternative to the unsatisfying reality men have constructed for themselves, and which they feel locked into like a dungeon.

  “So, they resort to all sorts of things—a few enlightened, many destructive, most ineffective, some just plain silly—that might allow them even a breath or two outside the prison walls. To a certain extent, that explains the appeal of beer.”

  “It unlocks them?”

  “Well, it temporarily loosens their ties to the stressful world of work and responsibility.”

  “Like loosening shoelaces that are tied too tight?”

  “Exactly. That’s pretty smart, kiddo. How do you come up with these things?”

  Gracie blushed. “Hi de ho,” she said.

  Tired of sitting, perhaps, the Beer Fairy suddenly rocketed up in the air, where she performed an acrobatic triple loop a few inches from Gracie’s nose. By no means, however, was she done talking. “Let me be clear,” she said as she hovered, “beer is not a part of the actual Mystery or even connected to it in any direct way. No, no. Beer is merely a vehicle.

  “On rare occasions, and for very brief moments, that vehicle may carry a person beyond the state of being glad and dizzy (and I’m all for glad and dizzy, you know, glad and dizzy is my neighborhood); may shoot them through an opening between the glad and the dizzy…”

  “Is it like Alice’s rabbit hole to Wonderland?”

  “It’s much smaller than that.”

  “Like a mouse hole?”

  “Smaller. More like a crack in the egg of a barley beetle.”

  “Oh.”

  “Beer, if it’s just the right amount—not too little and definitely not too much—may on occasion transport one through that crack and carry one close enough to the gates of the Mystery so that one’s granted a quick but entirely rapturous peek inside.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  The fairy smiled and rotated her wings. “Everything. And nothing. Both at the same time. What does the electricity inside your atoms look like? What do forever and laughter and liberty look like? It’s the face everybody shared before they were born and the joke they’ll finally get after they’re dead. It’s the meaning of meaning, the other that has no further, and the which of which there is no whicher.”

  While Gracie was trying vainly to picture such a thing, her wee guide said, “Be warned. When considering beer as a vehicle, one had better bear in mind that it’s hardly reliable transportation. It’s a very old cart, in fact; a wagon pushed and pulled by forgotten forces, by agricultural spirits, the ancient spirits of grain and the land. It’s a wagon, my dear, that can easily swerve and run off the road.”

  Now, kids, if that grandpa of yours hasn’t given up and wandered off to watch a ball game on TV, he may well be skipping over this part of the story, believing that you couldn’t possibly relate to all this stuff about a Fifth Element, about the Mystery, about magic, ancient grain spirits, and so forth.

  He’s wrong, isn’t he? Because almost every child between the ages of, say, three and twelve (and a few lucky ones much older) seems at least vaguely aware of the presence of a separate reality: some half-familiar, magical Other World that, even when spooky or threatening, both thrills and nurtures them more than the reality that modern adult society would have them buy into. Do you agree? And do you think now might be the time to encourage gramps to pop open another brewski?

  In any event, before the fairy could say more (if, indeed, she intended to say more), she and Gracie were startled by the sound of screaming and crying. They turned to see a terrified young woman clawing her way up the grassy hillside, while close behind, two men pursued her, smirking, panting, and lurching, obviously intending to do her harm.

  16

  As the shrieking maiden, wild-eyed and bloody-kneed, neared the summit of the hill, the Beer Fairy was the first to act. Like a redheaded bullet with its pants on fire, she sent herself zinging at the nearest of the two pursuers. She circled his head, poking him in the eye, then the ear, then the eye again, with her wand. Around and around his head she buzzed, her wings whirring, her wand stabbing.

  The fellow must have believed he’d disturbed a nest of oversize, particularly disagreeable bees. Cursing the entire insect species and the Satan who surely created it, he swatted furiously at the fairy, who continued to circle his head with blurry speed. She rammed her wand up his nostril. He snorted. She shoved it in his ear. He yelped. Turning in circles, he was fast becoming dizzy, though anything but glad. The fact that he was intoxicated to begin with didn’t help his coordination.

  Finally, however, one of his swats connected. He was a hefty farmboy type and the strength of his swat sent the dainty pixie hurtling head over heels to the turf. Stunned, she lay in the grass, breathing hard, crown askew, her tiny back throbbing with pain.

  Meanwhile, the young woman had reached the hilltop, where she stumbled forward, allowing the second attacker to catch up with her. Before she could regain her feet, he grabbed her roughly by the wrist. Although out of breath, he was sniggering, and cooing some insane kind of baby talk.

  Gracie knew she must intervene—but how? For one thing, she couldn’t remember which side of the Seam she was on. She thought that after they’d poofed out of the brewery, she and the fairy had returned to This Side, but she couldn’t be sure; and if they had not, neither the attacker nor his victim could see or hear her.

  Uncertain just how to proceed, she ran up to the big snockered lout and yelled in her deepest voice (which was not much deeper than the chirp of a nervous cricket), “Stop! Let her go, you stupid man!” The lout didn’t release the hysterical woman, but his leer switched to an expression of great surprise. What was this child doing here? Apparently, he’d heard and seen Gracie all too well, and was now looking around frantically to ascertain whether or not she was accompanied by adults.

  Back in early September, when Mr. Perkel had been the coach of Gracie’s peewee soccer team—this was before a group of the soccer moms had banded together and fired him—he’d drilled his daughter over and over on what he called the “lawyer kick.” It was a way to kick an opposing player in the leg so hard she’d topple over and have to leave the game, yet was so sneaky that most of the time the referee would fail to notice it, so wouldn’t assess a penalty. Gracie considered it a dirty trick and she never tried it, but she remembered it perfectly well.

  The lawyer kick was delivered to the man’s shin with the full force of six-year-old indignation. “Hai dozo!” Gracie yelled as she kicked, imitating a cry she thought she remembered from martial arts movies. “Go go Tokyo!” she yelled, and kicked again. Already unsteady from excessive drink, the attacker lost his balance and dropped to one knee, maintaining, nonetheless, his grip on the woman. It was then that Gracie shouted, “Sapporo! Chop suey!” and kicked again. This time the kick accidentally landed higher. Much higher.

  For a couple of seconds, the drunken brute seemed to be sucking in all the oxygen from the surrounding countryside. He gasped. Then he groaned. Then he rolled over onto his side. Because he was at the very edge of the hilltop, he, against his will, continued to roll. His body went tumbling more than a third of the way down the hill before its progress was stopped by a juniper bush. He lay there, in no apparent rush to get up.

  While this was occurring, the fairy was rubbing her aching spine, flexing her rumpled wings, struggling to get back on her own two feet. She was done with her horror-movie bee imitation. Henceforth, she’d leave buzz-bombing to the hornets. From a sitting position, she pointed her wand at the lummox who’d swatted her. As if undecided in which direction to move, he was shifting his bleary gaze from the sobbing maiden a few yards above him to his friend who lay unmoving farther down the slope. The fairy took aim. She fired a single amber beer ray at the area behind his eyes
where his brain ought to be.

  It was a ray she’d used countless times before to subdue quarrelsome sailors, rampaging soccer goons, and obnoxious fraternity boys, and she should have used it sooner on this occasion, but she’d been so angry and upset she’d lost her cool. When it struck its target, the beer ray would instantly raise the alcohol level in an imbiber’s blood to such a degree that his lights would begin to flicker, his curtains commence to close, and his internal clock to chime midnight. Now this farmhand, when hit, staggered back a few steps before stumbling blindly back down the hill, collapsing, and passing out cold beside his pal.

  The fairy flew, if one could call such a wobbly display flying (she resembled some variety of popcorn moth trapped in an automatic popper), to Gracie’s side, landing with uncharacteristic clumsiness on the child’s shoulder. Together, silently, the two watched the young woman make her way down the opposite side of the hill, moving as fast as she dared without losing her footing. She appeared to be heading toward a distant farmhouse nestled between two barley fields.

  “That must be her family’s farm,” said the fairy at last. “She looks a mess. Her folks will think she’s had too much beer at the festival and order her to bed without any strudel.”

  Gracie was fixing to comment on how unfair that would be when the Beer Fairy suddenly kissed her. (You’ll probably never in your life be kissed by a fairy, but should you be, you’ll know it, and you’ll treasure that kiss forever.) “You were very brave, kiddo,” the fairy said. “Very brave, indeed.”

  “Thanks,” said Gracie. “Hi de ho.”

  “I want to show you something, braveheart. Down there in the town.”

  “You mean in Creamed-Beef-on-Toast.” Since she was so brave, Gracie thought she might as well say it. She’d show her tiny guide she was not only courageous but also knew her geography.

  The fairy looked puzzled. “What the heck are you talking about, child?”

  “The name of the town: Creamed-Beef-on-Toast.”

  “Are you joking? Whoever heard of such a place? The name of that town happens to be Pimple-on-Chin.”

  “Yuck!” said Gracie.

  Considering that in seven years or so, Gracie would doubtlessly sprout pimples of her own—as will you, provided you aren’t pimpled already—it was scarcely an appropriate response.

  17

  “Suppose, for example,” said the fairy, who was increasingly showing signs of recovery from the blow she’d suffered, “that an airliner is flying over Pimple-on-Chin, bound for, say, Seattle.”

  Automatically, Gracie looked to the sky. She saw acres of blue, a gradually lowering sun, and a skinny white elbow of moon, but no plane. It was only an example.

  “And suppose,” the sprite continued, “that aboard that aircraft there’s a passenger who’s on her way to Seattle to murder her brother so as to claim his share of an inheritance. Also aboard that same flight, there’s a second woman, a physician, a noted specialist, who’s traveling to Seattle to perform a surgery that will save an infant’s life.

  “The airplane itself is neither good nor evil, is it? It’s a vehicle, a neutral, unattached object, kind of like a knife that can be used for peeling turnips in an orphanage or for slicing off a man’s ears. Many things in life are like that, including, and perhaps most especially, people’s political and religious beliefs—but that’s a subject for a much later day. What you need to remember now is that matters are very seldom all black or all white. They can even be both at the same time.”

  The fairy looked to see if Gracie was taking any of this in. She pointed again at the village of Pimple-on-Chin.

  “You’ve just witnessed how beer can contribute to vile behavior. If one is rude, beer can make one ruder; if one is a slob, it can make one sloppier; if one is mean, it can make one meaner; if one’s dumber than one looks…well, you get the picture. Beer can lead weak men to think they’re mighty, and foul-mouthed women to believe themselves amusing and hip. Worse, if one is cursed with an addictive personality, it can bring on the serious disease of alcoholism.

  “On the other hand, you’ve learned that every day, beer helps millions to be glad and dizzy, and that once in a great while it can lead to a brush with the Mystery.” She paused, as if to reflect. “As long as there are those who seek contact with the Mystery, no matter how misguidedly and crudely they go about it, I suppose there’s still hope for the human race.”

  Pausing again, as if to permit her words to sink in, the pixie gestured toward one end of the village. “There’s something else. You see that beer garden that’s closest to the water? Yes? Can you make out that soldier in uniform who’s sitting alone at the bar, staring at the river? At sunset, he’s expected to rejoin his regiment, and they’ll march off in the night to fight a bloody battle in some stupid war that in the end will benefit nobody but the rich and powerful, and maybe not even them. The soldier has been contemplating making a run for it, but fear has held him back.

  “Okay, now do you see that other fellow who’s just rather awkwardly, hesitantly approached a table of young women and asked one of them to dance?”

  Gracie did see him, though she was still stealing glances at the sky, looking for that airplane.

  “That guy is desperately in love. He wishes to ask the girl to marry him, but so far he’s been too timid to pop the question.”

  While they stood spying on the scene at the beer garden, the soldier nonchalantly slipped off of the bar stool and very slowly made his way, in a zigzag route, to the river’s edge. When, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder, he was confident none in the noisy crowd was looking his way, he stepped out of his boots and slid into the water, slid so smoothly he made scarcely a ripple. He swam, unobserved, to the other shore, which was heavily wooded.

  Meanwhile, the shy man had drawn his beloved off of the dance floor to a relatively quiet corner beside some rose bushes. He was down on one knee before her.

  “You see,” said the fairy, “the beer has dissolved enough of their fear to allow the men to act. Now, many would call this ‘false courage,’ and they might be right. But there are times, I think you’ll agree, when false courage is better than no courage at all. At least, tomorrow morning the soldier will wake up alive in his forest hideout rather than lie cut down like a barley stalk on a senseless, soon-to-be-forgotten battlefield.

  “And before Christmas, our other man will be walking down the aisle with the girl he adores, instead of weeping alone in an empty room while she weds another, less worthy suitor.”

  Gracie loved all this drama. It was like watching TV. Thanks to the fairy, there were even beer commercials.

  “Courage is where you find it. Having said that, I must admit that bravery that comes from a bottle—or from a book or a sermon, for that matter—lacks the full strength and purity of bravery that comes straight from the heart. Your bravery came from your heart, Gracie. I was significantly impressed.”

  “Hi de…,” Gracie began, but before she could get the “ho” out, the Beer Fairy interrupted.

  “I want you to promise me that you’ll always be this brave, that when exploiters disguised as public servants offer you protection from puffed-up dangers, you’ll turn your back and skip away. Promise me you won’t be afraid of travel, of people different than yourself, of spiders, bats, bullies, dentists, attorneys, peer pressure, bad taste, social disapproval, insecurity, Sugar Elves….”

  “Why would Sugar Elfs…?”

  “Never mind. That you won’t quake before old men with titles, and most especially, that you’ll never be afraid to love, not even when there’s a chance you aren’t being loved in return.”

  Gracie nodded in tentative agreement. “Are you a phil…a phil…a philockerfer?” she asked, obviously thinking of Uncle Moe.

  Her tiny teacher laughed. “A philosopher? Not me, kiddo. I’m just your ordinary universal Beer Fairy.”

  “But,” said Gracie, frowning about two wrinkles’ worth, “they’re drinking lots of beer
down there in…in Pimple-on-Toast. Why aren’t you down there with them?”

  “I am.”

  Anticipating Gracie’s confusion, the fairy let her fret a moment before going on to say, “I’m very much present at that village festival, and I’m at another harvest festival downriver at Poop-on-Shingle. I’m in a dozen rowdy taverns in Alaska, a hundred Irish pubs, a tailgate party in Ohio, a factory opening in Korea, et cetera, et cetera; and I’m also completely and totally here with you. That’s the way it is with my kind. I can be many places at once. And now, I—and you—need to be somewhere else.”

  Deftly, she slid her wand between Gracie’s fingers, and it was poof time again.

  The next thing Gracie knew, she was lying on her bed at home. She stared almost in wonder at the familiar surroundings. Oddly enough, her Hello Kitty ticktock clock indicated that no more than ten or twelve minutes had passed since she’d looked at it last. The pool of upchuck on the carpet was still shiny and bright.