An Embarrassment of Riches

by James Howard Kunstler

  I immediately endeavored to raise our anchor so as to escape this scoundrel, but I lacked the strength and collapsed upon the deck blubbering.

  “See how he weeps for joy at the sight of his old partner!” Bilbo exclaimed as he waded out to our craft. I lay there awaiting the long-ago-promised bullet to my brain, but rather than blast me to the next world, Bilbo clambered aboard and smothered me in his foul embrace, saying, “How happy I am to see you again, old fellow. Where’s grumpy-guts?”

  “Deathly ill and defenseless with the ague,” said I.

  “’Tis the high season for it. But fear no longer, for you have happed into just the right place.” He let go of me and rose again to full stature, dusting off his tattered frock coat and clearing his throat. “I have upon my person a medicament so powerful that all disease shrinks from it as worms and crawling things do shrink from the noonday sun.” He produced from his pocket one of our old specimen jars and held it up. Upon it was pasted a hand-printed label:

  Dr. Bilbo’s Universal Physic

  “You don’t look so well yourself, my saucy comrade,” the villain observed of me.

  “I too am in the grips of the ague,” said I.

  “Well then,” he proffered the bottle, “try a dose of this.”

  I took the bottle from him and regarded it with the sharpest suspicion.

  “What is it?” I inquired.

  “You will recall that pleasant wooded glade in the neighborhood of Zane’s Trace where last we enjoyed each other’s company?” he began.

  “I remember that you wanted to blow our brains to a custard.”

  “I prefer to think upon the old days of our consociation with fondness. But let us not quibble. Do you recall the place of which I speak?”

  “I do.”

  “Hard by it, I chanced across an humble springhole, and partaking of its waters I fell into a rapture. I was convinced for a time that we had stumbled upon the very fountain of life to which you had commended me. But repeated doses of the water failed to produce the desired effect. I searched about for some other cause. Lo and behold, I discovered it in the savory herb that my darling Bessie had used to flavor our viands.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “I at once undertook a program of experiments, and bugger me if this meek little botanical was not a marvelous wonder! It cured all my aches and pains acquired in our regrettable sojourn amongst the Shannoah. It drove out my gout. It dissipated my gastric vapors. It banished warts. It alleviated my dropsical ankles. But most of all, it improved my outlook. For where once the vicissitudes of life sank me in a bilious humor, now bluebirds sing. Where anger once tempted me to rash acts against my fellows, now benignity reigns. In short, I was made a new man, and thus set about to manufacture a tonic of this miraculous plant so as to benefit all humankind. And so much of my success do I owe to you, who led me back to the hurly-burly of the business world. I urge you, try some and see for yourself.”

  I unstopped the jar and sniffed it.

  “Why, this is whiskey, Bilbo!”

  “’Tis a tincture, old fellow, and what better medium than Monongahela sour mash, eh? Go on, I say: drink and prepare to be reborn!”

  I took a sip of the decoction. It had a very bitter taste.

  “Look, monsieur doctor, how his eyes roll,” Louis remarked.

  Indeed, Bilbo’s tonic did not lack puissance. It acted almost at once upon ingestion. My fever dropped in a matter of seconds. The pains fled my joints. My brain cleared. Suddenly I felt as strong as an horse.

  “There may be something to this, Bilbo,” I confessed.

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “Of course you would. But this physic speaks for itself.”

  “Come then,” said Bilbo, rubbing his huge hands gleefully, “let’s lay a dose on old piss-and-vinegar.”

  We went below to Uncle in the cabin.

  “He’s got it bad,” Bilbo observed, and sitting on a mealsack beside him, passed two spoonfuls of the amber tincture down Uncle’s rasping gullet. Inside of a minute, the patient ceased sweating, opened his eyes, blinked, and sat up. Imagine his shock to see our old companion beside him.

  “Heavenly merciful father!” he exclaimed in horror. “Not thee.”

  “None other than your old cohort in the very flesh,” Bilbo assured him and clapped his arms around Uncle, who remained horrified and disgusted while the old blowhard reiterated the story of his transformation from pirate to medical benefactor of the human race. But, on the other hand, Uncle was himself for the first time in many days, and much as he rued crossing the villain’s path again, he could not refute the wondrous health-giving potency of Bilbo’s elixir.

  “’Tis somewhat palliative,” he grudgingly admitted.

  “Of course, further doses are needed lest the disease return, but in time my physic defeats it utterly, you’ll see,” Bilbo declared whilst helping Uncle to his feet. “Do come along now, my lambs, for I am eager to show you our new establishment. By the by, who is the plump young fellow?”

  “I am Louis Dix-sept, the King of France.”

  “Is that so,” quoth Bilbo, looking him up and down. Louis nodded his head that it was so indeed. “Well, Your Majesty could not have fallen into better company.” The scoundrel winked broadly at me as though sharing a joke. “Up now, one and all, to the sunshine of health and happiness!”

  “Might we perhaps decline your hospitality and instead continue on our way?” I asked.

  “You may,” he averred. “But then you shall have no more of my Universal Physic and, who knows, but that you will both perish of the ague.”

  Uncle and I shared a fearful glance.

  “Very well, thou extortioner Bilbo,” Uncle relented. “Lead the way.”

  “That will be Dr. Bilbo to you, sir.”

  We followed Bilbo across the little peninsula where lay the ruins of Fort Assurance.

  “Look here, friends,” he said, pointing to a patch of luxuriant herbage that sprouted beyond the old foundation walls, “an inexhaustible supply of my medicament!”

  “’Tis phrensyweed all right,” Uncle whispered to me. “Indeed as frightful a patch as ever I saw.”

  “When I look at those plants I see an half acre of Spanish gold dollars,” Bilbo declared shamelessly, nipping at a jar of the stuff. “Come along, kindred spirits.”

  A remarkable spectacle now hove into view on the Ohio River side of the prominence: an old army mess tent emblazoned with alarming advertisements. ague cured here, the topmost declared in red letters four feet high, large enough to be easily descried from the middle of the river. Under that, in blue letters slightly less grandiose, was the legend western museum of rarities.

  On either side of the tent’s front, canvas flaps depicted two of the “rarities” within. To the left was proclaimed one bungo the dogboy. His portrait there showed an hirsute monstrosity like unto a Barbary ape, with long fangs dripping blood. On the other side of the entrance was a crude painting of a voluptuous female attired in the bib and pantaloons of a Turkish concubine, including a veil that covered her face from the eyes down. This exhibit was billed as the far-seeing girl.

  We had no sooner arrived than said girl and said dogboy emerged from the tent’s interior, the first throwing her arms around my neck and honking with abandon, while the second scurried around our ankles raising clouds of dust, barking. Louis seemed astonished to behold Bessie, and not simply on account of her unique facial physiognomy, nor her peculiar costume. I do believe she was the first young maiden neither a Negro nor Choctaw that he had ever laid eyes on. For her part, she looked up and down his bulky figure and registered a most rabbitlike look of contempt.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Louis bowed awkwardly.

  “Hwump!” Bessie replied.

  “This way, gentlemen,” Bilbo urged us inside. Here, arrayed on an half dozen crude puncheon tables of obviously recent manufacture, were the curious articles of Bilbo’s museum: a collection of Indian miscella
ny, various bead trinkets, a quill gorget, a bow, and a few warped arrows, a rusted bayonet declared to be geo. washington’s own from the battle of great meadow; a pickling jug containing the wrinkled carcass of a two-headed opossum; an effigy, carved out of wood with less than a Michelangelo’s expertise, purporting to be the petrified hessian; a large nest of the paper wasp (Polistes fuscatus); a collection of spherical rocks of the type found in any stream bed, here billed as moonstones; a dead snake with the legs of a frog protruding from its gullet; a painting of an herd of cows, and a stuffed lynx—both objects that had adorned his parlor in the little cottage three hundred miles upstream.

  “What prompted you to abandon your snug harbor?” I inquired of his former home built out of pillaged flatboats.

  “Conditions grew somewhat warm for us there,” he related. “The newly minted state of Ohio is not congenial to the advancement of medical science. They burnt us out.”

  We continued on among the exhibits: an horned beetle nearly three inches long pinned to a piece of clapboard; a tree fungus carved on the pithy side so as to portray a quaint pastoral scene of trees and clouds; a wreath of brambles advertised as like unto the one worn by our savior, j. christ, in his time of tribulation; a collection of divers feathers; two lumps of resin described as the gallstones of a behemoth, an assortment of cocoons; the dessicated remains of a fetal bear cub labeled dead pygmy; and finally a ten-inch-long claw the color of tortoise shell, dubbed satan’s toenail.

  “Where did you find this?” I asked the mountebank, holding the claw to the light for both Uncle and me to see.

  “’Twas extracted from my own hide after a brawl with its owner,” Bilbo said.

  “Pish, this is a claw of megatherium. Remember the drawing of the strange animal I showed you?”

  “Ah yes. That son o’Satan,” Bilbo took pains to recall. “This belonged to its father—”

  Our colloquy was interrupted by a chorus of honks, whistles, barkings, and howls from without. We hurried from the tent to see what the matter was. A flatboat was approaching from a quarter mile out. Bilbo waved his tattered lace handkerchief at them. A lank figure on the boat’s cabin roof waved back. Soon we could descry a half-starved cow and a swaybacked nag on the aft quarter. The human beings on board appeared to be a family of settlers: a man, his wife, three boy children, an infant, and an old grandmother.

  Bilbo rubbed his hands in anticipation. “Neddy, Bessie, to your stations!” he trilled cheerfully. The two hurried back into the museum. “Why this is the third boatload today. How I love commerce!”

  “Is this man your father, Sammy?” Louis whispered as Bilbo hobbled out onto his rough-hewn boat landing.

  “Most certainly not,” I replied, appalled at the notion.

  “Whatever put the idea in thy head, Louis?” Uncle asked the abashed booby, but before he could answer, the settler’s boat bumped up against the landing, while the father threw us down a line.

  “Welcome! Welcome pilgrims!” Bilbo greeted them effusively.

  All aboard looked very unhealthy indeed—gaunt, ashen, with red-rimmed eyes sunk in dark sockets. The grandmother was toothless and the wife lacked her four upper incisors. All were attired in the rudest and filthiest of raiment, their skin flocked with angry, scrofulous sores.

  “Where are you fine folk coming from?” Bilbo inquired pleasantly.

  “Virginny,” the husband said, squinting at Bilbo with suspicion.

  “Ah! The Old Dominion! Where going to?”

  “Illinois Territory.”

  “Your names, sir?”

  The father shifted his weight impatiently. “Huggins,” he said.

  “What a coincidence,” Bilbo rejoined. “I knew a Huggins at the University of Heidelberg, where I took my doctoring. Brilliant student. Any relation per chance?”

  The husband shook his head glumly. “We ain’t got no docturs in the family. Kin you cure ague?”

  “Verily, sir, you may depend on it.”

  “Grandpaw got it.”

  “How unfortunate. Where is the old gentleman?”

  The husband jerked his head toward the cabin. “Down b’low.”

  “You are in luck, Mr. Huggins. I have no other appointments for the nonce. Show me the patient.”

  Bilbo climbed aboard and disappeared inside the cabin. He reemerged only minutes later with the white-bearded grandfather, to the amazement of the family. In full view of everybody Bilbo administered another spoonful of his physic to the old man, who promptly leaped onto the roof with the spring of a billygoat and commenced to dance a jig. It was a most persuasive demonstration of the tonic’s potency. Next, Bilbo dosed the entire family, save the infant, and it was astonishing to see the gaunt, listless group come alive, like drought-withered weeds returning to vigor after a nourishing rain.

  “Sakes alive! What’s in that stuff?” exclaimed Mrs. Huggins, a forbidding blade of a woman prematurely aged from poverty and childbirth, with skin the color of tallow.

  “The formula must remain secret, madam,” Bilbo told her. “A precaution lest it fall into the hands of hostile powers. Why, just think what a cask or two would do for the doddering Spanish empire—”

  “What ye got in that’ere tent?” one of the boys interrupted Bilbo, while he and his brothers goggled at the alarming portraits on the flaps.

  “’Tis the Museum of Western Rarities, my bold stripling. Wonders and curiosities garnered from the four corners of El Dorado.”

  “Maw, Paw, it’s a raree show!”

  “Kin we go in, mistur?” his brother asked.

  “You are all welcome inside,” Bilbo declared grandiloquently.

  “Do it cost money?” Mr. Huggins asked.

  “The museum is free of charge. In fact, you are in luck again, friends, for the afternoon performance is about to commence. By the by, sir, what are your little ones’ names and their ages?”

  “That’ere’s Henry, he’s nine year. T’other’s Thomas, he’s seven. Thishyere’s John, he’s four. An’ the baby’s a infant.”

  “How nice,” Bilbo patted the boys’ heads and kissed the grubby suckling. His gifts as a politician were on a par with his talent as an actor. “Step inside, everyone.”

  We followed the clan within. They perused the exhibits, oohing and ahing as Bilbo explained the provenance of each item. They were especially taken with the dead pygmy and Satan’s toenail. Next, Neddy mounted a packing crate while Bilbo put him through his paces as Bungo the Dogboy. He barked, howled, sat up and begged, leaped through a hoop, rolled over, and caught a ball in his mouth. How sad it was to see the little fellow recreate this humiliating chapter of his youth, though he seemed to enjoy his capers. Finally, Bessie the Far-seeing Girl was presented in her veil and Turkish pantaloons.

  “During this demonstration of her remarkable oracular powers, utter silence must prevail, ladies and gentlemen, so as not to obstruct the philosophical ethers that emanate betwixt human minds. Tell us, Far-seeing Girl, the names and ages of these boys here before you.”

  Bessie peered over her veil at the lesser Hugginses, her long-lashed eyes darting in concentration. At length, she replied.

  “Hwonk, pwee hungmwah nwum. Hunga pwee hingwam. Hwan hwong pwee hungapwonkmuh.”

  “She says they are Henry, nine, Thomas, seven, and John, four,” Bilbo translated.

  The family traded stupefied glances.

  “How do she do that?” the grandfather asked.

  “’Tis a power of mind few men understand,” Bilbo explained. “Go ahead, ask her anything you like.”

  “Kin you say whar we is bound for, gal?” the wife put it to Bessie.

  “Hwonk hwingwhum hweepwee,” Bessie said.

  “Illinois Territory,” Bilbo relayed the information.

  “I’ll be!” the grandmother declared. “It’s a sure enough marvel!”

  “Kin you prophesy what our fortune’ll be thar, gal?” Mr. Huggins next asked.

  Bessie here expounded at considerable l
ength as the family looked on raptly. When she was done, Bilbo cleared his throat and commenced the “translation.”

  “You shall prosper in Illinois beyond your wildest imaginings. The soil of your new homestead will bring forth munificent crops and colossal fruits. Winter there will be unknown. You shall strike a treasure of buried gold in the sod. Your son Henry shall grow up to be President. The baby will be the greatest general that the hemisphere has ever known, conquering both Mexico and Canada—”

  “But it’s a girl-child.”

  “No matter, sir. Does not the name Joan of Arc ring synonymous with the words ‘victory’ and ‘valor’? I tell you, this family is destined for great things!”

  The Hugginses looked at one another much pleased.

  “Dear friends,” Bilbo continued in a sugar-coated tone of voice. “This is indeed your lucky day, for the Western Museum of Rarities has this very afternoon just acquired the services of a genuine idiot-savant.”

  “What kind o’idiot is that?” Mr. Huggins asked.

  “A very special sort,” Bilbo said. “For he is perfectly stupid in some respects and a genius in others. Permit me to demonstrate. Your Majesty….” He bowed to Louis and gestured to the packing crate. Louis mounted it, happy to be included in what he no doubt took to be a kind of game. Uncle and I could only look on in helpless dismay.

  “I am ready, monsieur doctor,” Louis said.

  “Very well. Now, Mr. Huggins, go ahead and ask him any question you wish so as to satisfy yourself of his idiocy.”

  “What month o’the year air it?” Huggins asked.

  Louis puzzled his brains a minute. “I don’t know,” he admitted at length.

  Bilbo patted him on the head. “Ask him another, friends.”

  “Who air president o’the Yoonited States?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “How miny quarts to a gallon?”

  Louis shrugged his shoulders.

  “What sort o’tree do a acorn come from?”

  “What’s catgut made outer?”

  “Who was Adam’s wife?”

  “What’s the dif’rence ’twixt a crabapple and a road apple?”