The Thumper Amendment

by BRUCE EDWARDS

  Peter caught the spirit. “Thou hath asked for it, Maid Amy,” he replied with a British accent.

  Peter mashed his teeth in deep concentration as he took his first swing. His shot was masterful. The ball careened off the knight’s shield, ran along the edge of the moat, and landed squarely in front of the drawbridge.

  Peter placed his fists on his hips, like Errol Flynn in that old Robin Hood movie. “Come hither to mine castle, milady,” commanded Peter, “and bathe in yon moat.”

  “Nay,” I said, “for I have naught to wear, my lord.”

  “Weareth thy birthday suit, fair maiden. I promiseth not to gander at thy lilly-white flesh.”

  “Oh, my lord, thou hath turned my cheeks to blushing.”

  My first swing was deliberately off the mark. In spite of my hunger to win, I thought Peter should at least win one hole. But when he made it to the cup in his second stroke, I suspected that maybe he had been hustling me all along.

  Four strokes later, I finally made it to the cup. “I hath putted out in five strokes, my lord,” I said.

  I peered over Peter’s shoulder as he happily noted my dreadful score. “Verily, thy Tiger Woods hath no better done,” he said.

  Then he leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, but I was not in the mood. “Call off thy dragons, ye impetuous knave,” I said.

  Peter was clearly put off by this.

  I stood under the archway to the next hole. “Make haste, for I am still ahead of thee.”

  “Only for the moment, thou blue-haired wench.”

  8:50

  The game was half over. We sat across from each other in the Mini Golf Palace food court, and ate our burgers in complete silence. A shared basket of fries sat on the coffee-ring-stained table between us. This would have been a great opportunity for us to get better acquainted, but the game was tied, and all I wanted was to get back out to finish the match.

  I started a lame conversation to break the tension. “So, how about this weather?”

  “Oh, fine,” said Peter, his mind miles away. He didn’t think I noticed, but his gaze was trained on a golf training video, playing on a TV monitor behind my back.

  “How about that full moon last night?” he said.

  “Huh?” I replied, my attention focused on the putting technique of a player out on the course.

  I came back to Peter, to find him swinging his burger as if practicing his golf swing. While Peter’s attention was diverted, I slowly reached for the score card under his elbow.

  Peter’s eyes immediately shifted to my hand, then he looked at me suspiciously. “What’s the matter, Amy?” said Peter. “Don’t trust my addition?”

  “Just wondering what the score is,” I said.

  Peter covered the score card with his hand. “You know exactly what the score is. Maybe you’d like to change it to put yourself in the lead.”

  “What do you take me for? Okay. I may not be a very good loser, but I’m not a cheater.”

  “Oh no? How about moving your opponent’s ball when he’s not looking?”

  “That was an accident. How about when someone knocks the other guy’s ball out of the cup?”

  “I didn’t do that!”

  “I saw you!”

  We went back to giving each other the silent treatment, as we chomped on our burgers.

  Several minutes passed, and the long silence had calmed our anger. I was breathing easier now, and the disdain was gone from Peter’s face.

  One last fry sat at the bottom of our basket. “You gonna eat that,” asked Peter, softly.

  “You can have it,” I replied in a kind voice.

  Peter slowly reached for the final fry. It looked like a reconciliation between us was at hand. But as his fingers closed in on the greasy morsel, my distrust for Peter resurfaced. Maybe he really didn’t want that fry. Maybe this was yet another attempt to demonstrate his dominance over me.

  With his hand well inside the basket, I quickly grabbed for the fry, squishing it into a micro-mashed potato.

  “I know what you’re up to!” I said. “You’ll trying to tear down my defenses so you can cream me on the back nine.”

  Peter abruptly stood up. “Why don’t we get back out there and see who’s really the best!”

  “Fine!”

  We grabbed our putters and marched over to the ninth hole, leaving behind one, mangled french fry.

  10:30

  The limo ride home was a quiet one. Our eighteen holes of miniature golf had ended in a tie.

  Peter was the first to speak. “You still mad at me?” he asked. “It’s only a silly game at a cheap tourist trap.”

  I crossed my arms and looked out the window next to me. “You didn’t have to get so nasty with me.”

  “Alright,” said Peter, raising his voice. “Let’s cut the crap. Why don’t we get to the real reason why you’re so pissed at me? You’re still mad over what happened seven years ago, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t you think I have a right to be?”

  “Didn’t I explain my situation to you well enough?”

  “You explained yourself perfectly, but I never heard you say you were sorry.”

  “Yeah, right. Like you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  I looked over at him, astonished. Now Peter was the one staring out the window, fuming.

  10:45

  The limo pulled up to Alan’s bus in the hotel parking lot. I leaped out before the driver had a chance to open the door for me.

  Peter leaned out through the open door and started to say something, but I turned my back to him. After a moment, I heard the door slam shut, then the sound of the limo driving away.

  A haunting stillness hovered over the parking lot. Inside the hotel, guests were wrapping up their parties, saying farewells with handshakes and kisses. But there I was on the cold asphalt, alone, replaying my date over and over in my head.

  My chin started to quiver, a sure signal that tears were soon to follow. The evening had started out with such promise. I was so looking forward to a fun—possibly romantic—evening with Peter. But I blew it! What must he think of me now, I thought?

  Then I felt something under my foot. A flattened, yellow rose lay on the ground, with tire tracks imbedded on its petals. I gently picked it up and lovingly held it to by chest, and thought:

  Thou hath made a fool of thyself.

  Chapter 12

  Fritterz!

  "Someone’s at the door!” shouted Marge. The pounding on the side of the bus woke me from a sound sleep. I had gotten so comfortable in my bus motel that anything short of an earthquake couldn’t wake me. I glanced at the Galactic Clock—another one of Alan’s inventions—and saw that it was 11:00 in the morning. I had set the alarm for 7:00, but I guess the time had been set for Alpha Centauri Standard time.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t stayed out so late last night . . .” said Marge.

  “I wasn’t out late,” I said, rolling out of my bed in The Lounge.

  The pounding on the door continued.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to admit it, of course,” said Marge. “Hiding secrets is a rite of passage at your age.”

  I yawned. “I’m not hiding anything from anyone.”

  “Then you won’t mind me telling Alan about your secret date with the son of his worst enemy, will you?”

  I was wide awake now. “You wouldn’t dare!” I said.

  The pounding had become intolerable. Wrapping a blanket around my shoulders, I dragged myself to the front of the bus and unlocked the door.

  The human wake-up call was Alan. “We’re late!” he said. Apparently, the clock in his hotel room was no more accurate than mine. “Chester left hours ago. We gotta get going! Move! Move! Move!”

  Alan jumped behind the wheel and started the engine.

  “You don’t mind if I take a shower first, do you?” I asked.

  “Better hang on if you do,” said Alan. He hit the gas, and I fell backward onto my bed.

&n
bsp; “I have an alternate plan,” I said, “I’ll take a shower second. First, I’ll turn on the gravity.”

  We were heading south. Marge would only indicate our general direction, withholding our ultimate destination on orders from Brian Breadcrust. She could only say that we had a good 500 miles to cover that day.

  We cruised along at a steady clip, keeping our eyes and ears open. The threat of having to face another bizarre encounter kept us on our toes. Meantime, the journey was long and monotonous, and small talk between Alan and I was our only entertainment.

  “How’d you sleep on the bus last night, Amy?” asked Alan.

  “Great,” I said, “until someone tried to use the front door as a base drum.”

  “Sorry about that, chief.”

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Not well. Headlights from the cars in the parking lot kept shining through my window all night. I finally draped a blanket over it. While I was at the window, I thought I saw a car parked by the bus. You notice anything like that?”

  Oh, no! The secret antics of Amy and Peter were about to be exposed. I had to think fast.

  “A car?” I said. “Uh . . . no! Uh . . . it must have been the garbage truck. They collected the trash last night.”

  “Oh,” said Alan, only half-believing my story. “You see anything, Marge?”

  Marge lit up instantly, and I prepared myself for the biggest bust of my young life. Getting caught in a lie is the most nerve-racking experience a teenager will ever face.

  Marge hesitated before answering. “It must have been a garbage truck,” she said.

  Good ol’ Marge.

  Having left so late in the day, reaching our destination before nightfall was unlikely, and as the sun disappeared, our headlights became our eyes in the dark.

  On top of that, our field of vision narrowed as a thick fog began to creep in. The road under us narrowed, too. Three lanes became two, then one. The concrete highway turned to asphalt, then to dirt. I opened my window and heard night frogs summoning their mates, like we were jetting across a Louisiana swamp.

  “Turn left at the signpost up ahead,” said Marge.

  “I don’t see any signpost,” said Alan. “I can barely see the road as it is.”

  A fork in the road suddenly appeared in front of us. Alan swerved to the right.

  “I said left!” shouted Marge.

  “It came up too fast!” said Alan.

  “Turn around and go back.”

  The road was now barely wide enough for the bus. Wetland hugged the road on both sides of us.

  “No room for that here,” said Alan. “We’ll have to wait till we come to an intersection. When’s the next crossroad, Marge?”

  “Don’t ask me,” she replied. “This road you’ve found isn’t on any of my maps.”

  The fog got thicker, and our visibility worsened, but Alan hadn’t reduced his speed.

  “You think we should slow down a little?” I asked.

  “It’s alright,” said Alan. “I have experience driving in these conditions.”

  Just then, a loud thump came from the front bumper.

  Alan slammed on the brakes.

  We stopped.

  Silence.

  “I think we hit something,” I said. Alan started to drive on. “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to see what it is?”

  “We’re already behind schedule,” said Alan. “Going backward is unacceptable.”

  “Oh, I see. But it’s okay to let an injured animal die on the side of the road.”

  Alan stopped the bus. “I can see by the look on your face that this is one argument I’m not going to win.”

  He put the bus in reverse and backed up.

  We stopped near the place where we heard the sound, and sure enough, something was lying among the tall grass beside the road.

  I opened the door and ran out into the dense fog.

  “Wait!” said Alan. “A wounded animal can be dangerous.”

  I crept slowly to the edge of the road. There it was! My skin crawled as I stared at the motionless object. The fog and the darkness made it too hard to see what it was.

  “Where are you, Amy?” called Alan. The bus was completely shrouded in fog. If not for the glow of the headlights, it would have been swallowed up by the night.

  A flashlight beam sliced through the darkness. “Here I am!” I yelled, waving my arms. Alan caught up to me and shined his flashlight on the lifeless body. “Looks like we hit a possum,” he said, “but not like one I’ve ever seen before.”

  Of course he’d never seen one like it. How often do you see a wild animal dressed in pants, shoes, and a long-sleeved shirt?

  “It must have been someone’s pet,” said Alan.

  “What kind of person would keep a possum as a pet, then dress it up like it was human?”

  Alan nudged the animal onto its side with his flashlight. We both jumped! As the possum’s arm rolled over, we saw a human hand out the end of its sleeve!

  “This is too weird, man,” said Alan. “We must be on the island of Dr. Moreau.”

  “Wait a minute!” I said. “Remember the sheep-headed drill sergeant I told you about, the one at the boot camp? This must be its cousin.”

  Suddenly, I heard the sound of footsteps in the gravel behind us. A group of people stood facing us a few yards away, their shapes silhouetted against the foggy glare of the bus headlights.

  “Looks like someone’s come to claim they’re property,” I said. “They’re not gonna be happy about this.”

  Alan took a step toward our uninvited guests. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t see it in all this fog.”

  As he moved closer, Alan’s flashlight revealed that these people were not the local townsfolk, nor were they the police. They weren’t even the A.S.P.C.A. With their faces now clearly visible, my insistence that half-man/half-animal creatures were real, was confirmed.

  They all had animal heads!

  I heard a rustling at my feet. The dead possum was anything but. It quickly jumped up and ran toward the group. (He was “playing possum.”)

  The resurrected animal was welcomed into the arms of the others. “Don’t ever make me do that again!” it said, speaking perfect English.

  “Well, well,” said Alan, strolling up to the motley group. “Breadcrust has really outdone himself this time, hiring midgets to wear rubber masks.” He walked up to a donkey-headed man and pulled on its ear. “Ow!” screamed the donkey. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Then the donkey pulled on Alan’s ear. “Stop that!” cried Alan. Clearly, these were not actors in Hollywood makeup.

  Alan scanned his flashlight down the line. There were half-rabbits, half-horses, half-dogs, and other half-animal varieties, in all shapes and sizes. And just like the half-sheep I had seen, only their heads were animal, while their bodies were as human as Adam and Eve.

  “Sorry to frighten you,” said a voice within the group. Out from the back stepped a large man with an elephant head.

  “I suppose there’s a reasonable explanation for all this,” Alan said to the nine-foot-tall pachyderm.

  “Indeed, there is,” said the elephant. “My name’s Dudley, by the way.”

  “And I’m—”

  “No need to introduce yourself, Mr. Freeberg. We’ve been following your progress on TV.”

  “You mean to say that you’re not with the show?”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but no.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “Fritterz!”

  “You’re what?”

  “Fritterz. Short for freaky critters. It’s a derogatory term—the F-word, if you want to be politically correct about it.”

  “You mean this is for real?”

  “What you see is the result of horrific science experiments, that have been going on for years, and kept hidden from the public.”

  I stepped up to the eloquent elephant. “I’ve met one of your kind before, sir,” I s
aid, “at a boot camp for misfit teenagers.”

  “That would be Sergeant Sheep,” said Dudley. “We know of him.”

  Alan paced back and forth in frustration. “Then what . . . I mean why . . . I mean how is it possible?”

  “Let me show you.” The head Fritter reached out to Alan and I, and placed the index finger of each hand onto our temples. A bright flash of light, and the three of us were now standing on a city sidewalk, at the entrance to the Tri-state Biological Research building. It was still nighttime.

  “Where have you taken us?” I asked.

  “Technically, nowhere,” said Dudley. “You haven’t moved an inch. Your minds are seeing the past as I remember it.”

  “Awesome!” said Alan. “You’re gonna have to show me how you do that.”

  “No point. Only elephants have Flashback Powers. Why do you think our memory is so good?”

  Dudley touched our temples again, and we flashed into a dimly-lit space resembling a hospital operating room. Alan’s flashlight accidentally came on. He quickly dowsed it.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dudley. “No one can see or hear us. These are merely my recollections, and have no material properties.”

  “Bahahah!” The cry of a sheep came from the back of the dark room. There in a wire cage sat a little sheep, as plain as the ones I saw everyday in Shankstonville.

  “Ever heard of Dolly the sheep?” asked Dudley.

  “I have,” I said. “She was the first animal successfully cloned in a laboratory.”

  “Correct. But I’ll bet you never heard of Molly, the cloning failure.”

  Dudley borrowed the flashlight and shined it at the sheep. Where her feet should have been, were human hands!

  Dudley explained that due to their shoddy research methods, the scientists mistakenly injected human DNA into an animal embryo. The hideous outcome would have so outraged the scientific community, that an elaborate cover-up was fabricated.

  “Bahahah!” bleated Molly.

  “But the experiments continued, anyway,” said Dudley. “They refined the process to the point where they could create any type of mutated animal they wanted.” He shined the light on a row of photos mounted on the wall. They were baby pictures, just like what you’d see at a Sears portrait studio, only these babies had animal heads on them.