B Is for Beer

by Tom Robbins

  No, it hadn’t been a dream, in case that’s what you’re thinking. The Beer Fairy was right there with Gracie, perched on her chest. “Promise me something else,” the fairy said. “You mustn’t drink beer again until you’re at least eighteen. And you must never, ever drink and drive.”

  The idea of herself behind the wheel of a car struck the kindergartner as so comical she giggled out loud. She agreed, nonetheless, and as she was giving her promise, they heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “I’m blowing this pop stand!” exclaimed the Beer Fairy. She flew up to whisper something in Gracie’s ear, then in a flash (or, rather, a poof), she shot toward the ceiling and vanished.

  Mrs. Perkel was at the door. “Gracie, are you in there? What happened to your cake? What’s that awful smell?”

  18

  Well, boys and girls, assuming you’ve been paying attention, you now know everything you’ll ever need or want to know about the world’s most popular adult beverage. True, we didn’t examine from a scientific standpoint the precise physical effects the consumption of beer has on the brain, the belly, and the liver. Should you crave such information you can always consult your pediatrician—although don’t be surprised if he gives you a funny look. He’s likely to look at you strangely even if he’s Irish.

  There is one other thing. Should you have nothing better to do than to delve further into the origins of beer, you’ll come across some historians who contend that beer was invented in Sumer, the present-day country of Iraq, centuries before it was first brewed in Egypt. The Beer Fairy concedes that the Sumerians did, indeed, ferment a kind of grain drink, but that it would be stretching the point to actually call the slop beer. The Beer Fairy ought to know.

  Okay, that’s that. We’ve reached the bottom of the keg, so to speak. Let’s bid one another good-bye and good luck. Ciao, babies. You, too, Grandpa. Go forth with gusto.

  Oh, by the way, in case any among you are interested in what happened to Gracie Perkel, it’s sad to report that in the days, weeks, and months following her birthday escapades her woes did not diminish nor her home life improve.

  Upon her daddy’s return from Arizona, he and her mommy engaged in a vicious, tongue-smoking, brain-skinning, milk-souring argument. They continued to fight like that, off and on, until deep into December. Two days before Christmas, they called their daughter into the den, set her down, and told her they were getting a divorce.

  No child wants to hear that her parents are divorcing, but Gracie took it fairly well. She had, if you recall, made a promise to maintain a brave heart. She only cried once or twice. Maybe three times.

  Matters got worse. Charlie Perkel was not a particularly successful attorney, but he was clever. Before their wedding, he had convinced Karla to sign a contract stating that should they ever divorce, he’d be entitled to any properties they might jointly acquire. The document probably wouldn’t have held up in court, but Karla Perkel possessed neither the money nor the stomach to contest it. She and Gracie were forced to vacate their home.

  Since she’d dropped out of college in her sophomore year to get married (she’d been an honor-roll major in social studies), Karla lacked the proper education or experience for rewarding employment. She took a part-time job in a doughnut shop, and with her minimum-wage salary, food stamps, and—when he remembered to send it—Mr. Perkel’s monthly child-support payment, mother and daughter moved into a vermin-gnawed one-bedroom apartment on a sketchy street in White Center, a ticky-tacky, blue-collar Seattle neighborhood noted for the size of its rats, the aroma of its cooking grease, and the frequency of its gunfire.

  They couldn’t afford cable, so Gracie went back to Finding Nemo, watching the video so many times she surely could have qualified for a mention in Guinness World Records (a book, incidentally, that owed its existence to…beer).

  One Saturday afternoon, Gracie awoke from a nap to discover her mother sitting at the kitchen table sipping a cheap brand of beer from a can. There were two or three empty cans on the tabletop in front of her.

  Gracie frowned. Like a pea-size groundhog, a single drop abruptly poked its bald head out of her left tear hole and seemed to peer around for a moment, although due to the dim light in the room it could not have seen its shadow. With a blink, she shooed it away, but having only duct for cover, it popped right back up again.

  Except for an occasional glass of wine, Gracie had never known her mother to touch alcohol. “Mo-Mo-Mommy,” she began, stuttering as if she were back in that chilly conditioning room at the brewery. “Please don’t.” She paused, searching for the right words.

  “Beer’s nice for being glad and dizzy and sometimes for the Mystery and stuff, but the happy that comes out of a beer can is not like the real happy you got to make in your heart.” She paused again. “When the beer’s done working, you’ll only feel badder.”

  It was Karla’s turn to entertain a teardrop. She pushed her chair away from the table and rose to give her small daughter a hug. “I swear, Grace Olivia Perkel, sometimes you almost scare me, you’re so…so wise. Where on Earth did you learn to give advice like that?” She supposed it was the influence of the “ol’ philosopher,” though she couldn’t conceive of the likes of Moe Babbano having anything negative to say about beer. Or if he did, it wouldn’t be in plain American television English that people could actually comprehend. “Where did you ever learn…?”

  “From a fairy,” Gracie chirped, just blurting it out—and instantly regretting it, wishing she could stuff the syllables back in her mouth.

  The mother smiled. “A fairy, huh? Despite everything, you’ve certainly not lost your imagination.” She walked to the sink, hesitated, took one last swallow, and poured the remaining beer down the drain. “Well, maybe you and I can imagine we’re going to share a pint of vanilla Häagen-Dazs for our dinner tonight.”

  “Rocky road,” muttered Gracie.

  As it was, they dined on buttered noodles that evening, and there was no dessert.

  Eventually, the ol’ philosopher himself got wind of their situation. At once, he invited them to come live with him and Dr. Proust in Costa Rica. Karla politely declined. There quickly followed a second invitation. Karla declined again. Ah, but Gracie: she pleaded and pleaded and pleaded; pleaded so long, so hard, so persistently, so sweetly, so annoyingly, that she could have landed in the Guinness record book for pleading, as well.

  Finally, with the arrival of a third invitation that included plane tickets, her poor mother caved in. On a Tuesday near the middle of summer, the pair found themselves on a flight jetting south-southeastward: past Texas, past Mexico, past Nicaragua, down to far Costa Rica. If they flew over Pimple-on-Chin, Gracie didn’t recognize it.

  Travel-weary, but excited (well, Gracie, at least, was excited), they were welcomed to a roomy, colonial-style house in between the jungle and the sea. Surrounded by coconut palms, the house had a white stucco facade, a red-tile roof, and heavy brown shutters to hold back hurricane winds and the tropical sun. There were ceiling fans that kept mosquitoes off-balance and lulled nappers to sleep.

  Outdoors, the air seemed as thick and sweet as chocolate cake batter; flavored by spice plants, scented with blossoms, stirred by the wings of neon-feathered birds, purplish bats, and butterflies the size of table-tennis paddles. At first, the Seattle girl took offense at the heat. She actually missed the drizzle—or did she miss that “Other” that lay between the mist and the murk? (Between the chop and the suey?)

  It was always cool and dim in the house, however. Gracie especially liked padding barefoot along the ceramic tile floors. She would have relished walking around birth-naked, but there were too many eyes. From the walls of every room small lizards constantly monitored human activities, and, moreover, Uncle Moe had acquired a parrot. A fat, cherry-lemonade-colored bird, it commanded a perch in the courtyard, occasionally squawking long sentences in Spanish. Within a week, Gracie had taught it to say “hi de ho.” The parrot seemed to enjoy the phrase as much as Grac
ie, uttering it with such frequency it just about drove everybody nuts.

  While her departure had little or nothing to do with the hi-de-hoing parrot, shortly after Gracie and her mom moved in, Madeline Proust moved out. Her hot romance with Moe Babbano had cooled off (as, kids, hot romances often do), and she’d come to miss the tortured feet of Seattle. Before departing, she generously offered to sign over the house to Moe. On one condition: he had to shave off his mustache. She claimed it was for the benefit of society at large, since she, personally, would no longer be exposed to it.

  The shaving ceremony was held in the courtyard. Pausing periodically to pronounce lines in Latin that nobody understood, Moe took an hour to scrape the melancholy growth, that electrocuted chickadee, off of his upper lip. “It’s the end of an era,” he said solemnly. “Mustaches such as this come around once in a generation.” The rest of the party applauded when the terminated whiskers, laid out elaborately in a coconut shell, were buried beneath a jasmine bush.

  With Dr. Proust gone and autumn on the way, homeschooling began in earnest for Gracie. Her mother taught her simple arithmetic and how to read and write in English. Uncle Moe instructed her in Spanish vocabulary, in philosophy, poetry, cool jazz, how the stars and planets got their names, and other subjects which, to her mind if not to his, had a hint of the Mystery about them.

  Gracie taught her uncle something, as well. Although Imperial beer was widely available, and the ol’ Moester consumed his share of it (he never once offered Gracie a sip, nor did she request one), he decided to brew some beer of his own. He purchased a sack of malted barley and set about cooking and fermenting it in a shack behind the house. Were it not for Gracie, who offered him helpful tips along the way, he might not have succeeded. Moe was astonished at her knowledge of brewing techniques.

  “How do you know all this?” he demanded. Gracie merely shrugged. It did occur to her that of all people, her Uncle Moe would have accepted, understood, maybe even personally related, but when it came to her adventure with the Beer Fairy, her lips were forever zipped. (Should you travel to Costa Rica one of these days and run into a spunky little blonde with guitar-blue eyes, don’t start bugging her about pixies, poofs, and pilsners, she’ll just turn her back and skip away.)

  For brewing, Moe used collected rainwater from a barrel. The water had run off of the shack’s tar paper roof. As a result, the beer he produced was black as night and had some kind of green moss growing on its surface. Whether it would have pleased the palate of vinegar eels is hard to say, but Moe declared it quite tasty. On the evenings when he drank it, he invariably saw UFOs.

  If you quizzed her, Gracie would have answered that her life in Costa Rica was pretty good. At times, it came close to being glad and dizzy. For her seventh birthday (yes, a whole year had elapsed since fateful Number 6), she failed once again to receive a pink cell phone, and it appeared that she was destined to go through life without one. She didn’t get that puppy, either. But she did get a monkey.

  She named the monkey Häagen-Dazs, but since no one present, not even the heavily educated Moe Babbano, could spell Häagen-Dazs, she soon changed its name to Hiccup. The two became rapidly inseparable. At last, the only child had a dance partner.

  Out on the veranda, Gracie and Hiccup would perform cheerfully wild boogaloos, largely of Gracie’s invention, although the monkey did contribute routines of its own. Children from the area would gather to watch. Normally bashful, they’d sometimes break into giggle fits and shy applause. They’d bring gifts of coffee beans and bananas. Usually, they’d scatter and hide behind trees whenever Uncle Moe ventured out onto the veranda to join in on bongo drums, hiding even though Moe wasn’t nearly as funny looking now that his facial hair had gone to mustache heaven. Or mustache hell.

  Despite schooling and monkeyshines and trips to the beach, their time passed slowly in the tropics, passing in harmony with the creaky old wooden ceiling fans. Then something momentous occurred; something strange, dramatic, and completely unexpected. Karla and Moe fell in love.

  Technically speaking, that isn’t entirely accurate. Karla and Moe didn’t fall in love, Karla and Moe discovered that they’d been secretly in love all along, had been secretly in love for years, had been in love so secretly that they’d kept the secret even from themselves, kept it locked away in the deep velvet vaults of their hearts. Now some force must have jimmied the locks.

  (If somebody ever calls you a “weirdo” or a “nut job,” you should consider the possibility that he or she has a secret crush on you.)

  In any event, on the eve of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Gracie’s mommy and uncle were married at a little thatched-roof shrine in the jungle. The groom wore his white suit, which had turned rather yellow from age, and read aloud a poem by a crazy dead Frenchman. The bride, who’d imprisoned her pretty feet in tight shoes for years, stood beaming in floppy straw sandals. Hiccup the monkey attended in one of Gracie’s old dresses; the parrot, from the rear of the hut, squawked “hi de ho” incessantly; and, at the appropriate moment, Gracie squealed with such joy she nearly peed in her pants.

  So, now you know. There they were. And did they live happily ever after? No, nobody ever does—at least not totally. But whenever Karla was blindsided by bad days, as most of us are from time to time, she’d make a point of refusing to take them too seriously, and that, dear reader, is the next best thing to everlasting happiness.

  By the most narrow of margins, Costa Rica had elected a conservative president, and though Moe was worried that the enlightened little nation would now be led down the path of relentless, sordid moneygrubbing (which seems to be the principal activity of conservative societies everywhere), he was too wise to let politics spoil his ongoing honeymoon with Karla and with life.

  For her part, on those rare occasions when her customary high spirits showed signs of taking a dive, Gracie, sooner or later, would remind herself of the parting words the Beer Fairy had whispered in her ear.

  “We’ll meet again someday,” the Beer Fairy had prophesied.

  “The ordinary world is only the foam on top of the real world, the deeper world—and someday you and I will meet again.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  When Uncle Moe refers to Gracie’s “monkey dance of life” he’s riffing on a line from Jack Kerouac. I’d love to pour Jack’s ghost a beer—although in life he seemed to prefer cheap red wine.

  Preferences aside, I’m here to roll out a barrel of gratitude to the editorial brain trust on East 53rd Street, most particularly Daniel Halpern, Abigail Holstein, and the legendary David Hershey (with his special knowledge of the interpenetration of realities); a second keg of thanks to Barb Bersche and the talented folks at McSweeney’s; and yet another to the artist Leslie LePere, for whom every pencil, every pen is a baton, a wand, a bottle rocket, a customized ’51 Mercury he drives to town on Saturday nights.

  Let me also lift a convivial mug to E. Jean Carroll, Phoebe Larmore, Alexa Robbins, David McCumber, Russ Reising, and Lee Frederick, among a handful of friends who assured me I could when other parties were warning that I couldn’t or shouldn’t, or wouldn’t bloody dare.

  —T.R.

  Also by Tom Robbins

  Another Roadside Attraction

  Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

  Still Life with Woodpecker

  Jitterbug Perfume

  Skinny Legs and All

  Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

  Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

  Villa Incognito

  Wild Ducks Flying Backward

  Credits

  Cover Illustrations by Les LePere/Cover design by McSweeney’s

  Copyright

  B IS FOR BEER. Copyright © 2009 by Tom Robbins. Cover and interior art © Les LePere. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this te
xt may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-191454-6

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