An Embarrassment of Riches

by James Howard Kunstler

  “Which is yer left foot?”

  Louis threw up his hands. “I do not know!” he cried.

  Bilbo stepped forward and silenced the Huggins throng.

  “Satisfied?” he asked them.

  “He sure air stupid,” the grandmother avouched.

  “Dumb as a p’tater,” the grandfather concurred.

  “A durned idiot,” Mrs. Huggins nodded her head in agreement.

  “What’s the genius part?” Mr. Huggins asked.

  “He speaks French,” Bilbo told them. “And in that tongue he knows the answers not only to all your questions but to many that heretofore have baffled the world’s greatest philosophers.”

  The family’s jaws dropped as one.

  “No!” Mrs. Huggins said.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Grandpapa.

  “I’ll be swoggled!”

  “Kin such a thing be so?”

  “Behold, ladies and gentlemen….” Bilbo gave the stage back to Louis. “Speak, my boy.”

  “Je suis charmé de faire votre connaissance.”

  The family recoiled in amazement.

  “Land sakes!”

  “It’s a wonder!”

  “How do we know he ain’t dumb in French too?” Mrs. Huggins inquired with knife-edged skepticism.

  “Does he sound stupid, madam?” Bilbo challenged her. “Go ahead: ask him something yourself in the French tongue.”

  She pursed her lips and squinted, then shook her head.

  “I reckon I’ll take yer word for’t,” she gave in.

  “I sure never seed sich a dadburn curiosity,” the grandfather scratched his head. “Say, mistur doctur, kin we git some more o’that’ere ague remedy of yourn?”

  “Why, certainly, friend. How many bottles do you suppose you shall require?”

  He glanced back to his loved ones. “I reckon five might see us through t’Illinois.”

  Bilbo hastened to a shelf at the rear of the museum and brought forward the requested number of bottles.

  “Here you are, old fellow. That will be twenty dollars.”

  “What!” the grandfather winced.

  “The house call was gratis.”

  “Mistur doctur,” Huggins replied sheepishly, “we ain’t got that kind o’money.”

  “Well, how much have you got?”

  The gaunt settler dug into the pocket of his tattered kersey breeches and produced a greasy leather purse. He opened it and peered inside as though it were four feet deep, then shook it upside down into his palm. Two coins spilled out: a Spanish gold dollar and an American dime.

  “Thishyear’s alls we got.”

  “It won’t do, friend. Why, it doesn’t even cover the cost of the containers—”

  “Bilbo, thou villain!” Uncle finally exploded. “Thee stole every bottle from us!”

  “Stole, sir! I beg your pardon. You entered into a business consociation with me and took flight when the going got hard. These capital assets thus reverted to myself, your partner in the venture, who has endured untold tribulation to make the scheme the success it has become. Your claim has no merit. I dismiss it. Now, Mr. Huggins, surely you have a few more dollars hidden somewhere upon yonder barge.”

  The family traded anxious looks.

  “Honest, mistur doctur, we ain’t.”

  “I reckon we could give’m old Bossy,” the grandfather suggested.

  “You propose to fob off that bovine bag of bones upon me, sir?” Bilbo laughed derisively. “This is a cash business, not a livestock mart. Return the merchandise, if you please.”

  “But … but … what if we die?”

  “The sun will yet rise, I assure you,” Bilbo crossed his arms. “The goods, please.”

  Huggins looked longingly down at the bottles in his hands and then back up at the hulking, implacable Bilbo.

  “Ye kin have my personal I.O.U.,” he proposed in desperation. “We’re gonna strike treasure when we git whar we’re goin’. You said so yerse’f. Please…?”

  Bilbo fluttered his eyelids and shook his head.

  “O, come now, Bilbo,” I pleaded in the poor pilgrims’ behalf. “Let them have a few jars, for goodness’ sake.”

  “This is not a charity, sir. Every day the river sends me ague victims by the score. Were I to treat them all free of charge, I would be bankrupt tomorrow, the venture would go up in a vapor, and all mankind would be deprived this boon of medical science. I am adamant. Pay or be gone.”

  The wife began to sniffle. The children looked up with reddened, watery eyes. Mr. Huggins sighed and made as though he were about to hand the jars back to Bilbo, then apparently thought better of it, cried, “Run for th’ boat, ever’body!” and bolted out of the tent in the direction of the river. The family were right behind him—all except the grandmother, that is, for Bilbo had collared the wizened crone and was now escorting her down to the landing with a pistol held to her ear.

  “Look! He got Grandmaw!” one of the boys cried.

  “Let’m blow me t’tarnation,” the old woman squawked. Bilbo made ready to oblige by cocking the hammer of his weapon.

  “What do you say, friend,” he called to Huggins up on the boat.

  “I say you best lay yer mangy hooks off’n my maw,” Huggins replied, “for my Pa’s has got a holt to his squirrel rifle and is about to send a ball through yer ornery liver, less’n you trade her up here and back off.”

  As a matter of fact, the black muzzle of a rifle now protruded from the flatboat’s cabin door. Then, a gnarled thumb appeared and wiped the front sight. Bilbo slowly lowered his pistol and unhanded the frail old woman.

  “Go on, git back.”

  “Heh heh,” Bilbo laughed unconvincingly as he retreated. “’Twas all a jest.”

  “We ain’t laughin’, mistur.”

  “Let us say the price is negotiable.”

  A shot rang out and the pistol flew out of Bilbo’s hand. It discharged upon hitting the ground and shot the hat off his head.

  “It ain’t negotiable no more,” Huggins retorted and helped the grandmother aboard. The oldest boy cast off the line, and the flatboat, with its half-starved humans and livestock, hove away from the shore.

  “Thanks for the raree show, mistur!” the middle boy cried as the current carried them off.

  “Next time you shall pay the regular price of admission!” Bilbo replied across the water. “Damned rabble! Such is democracy.” He bent to retrieve his pistol and hat, recharging the former and dusting off the latter. “There go your pioneers: a ragtag and bobtail of diseased imbeciles who believe that the world owes them a sustentation. Let the ague take them all!”

  “Sammy, Louis, come along” said Uncle, who turned and started back up the path in the direction of Fort Assurance’s ruins, whereat our own boat lay at anchor.

  “Just a minute. Where are you going?” Bilbo asked indignantly.

  “We are departing thy establishment, thou weevil,” Uncle informed him. I was beginning to feel an onset of chills again and noticed that Uncle too had recommenced to sweat and shiver. Yet he seemed determined to go.

  “And how do you propose to survive the ague without my Universal Physic?” Bilbo asked smugly, following close behind with both the dwarf and his daughter.

  “Dost thee take me for an idiot too, Bilbo?” Uncle rejoined. “I shall make my own physic and to blazes with yours.” So saying, Uncle reached down, snatched a handful of phrensyweed that grew there, and ate it.

  “’Twere better perhaps you hadn’t done that,” Bilbo said. “The dose must needs be carefully regulated to achieve the desired effect.”

  “Piffle.”

  Uncle resumed his path to our boat. Suddenly, he halted in his tracks. A great shudder ran through him. Steam escaped his nostrils while his eyeballs danced in their sockets. Soon he was trembling uncontrollably.

  “Overdose,” quoth Bilbo, nipping at a bottle himself.

  Louis and I rushed to Uncle just as he toppled backward in
to our arms.

  “That will teach him to follow his physician’s advice.”

  “Villain! Is there no antidote?”

  “Time.”

  My teeth began to chatter as the ague once again befouled my own humors. The verdure whirled before my eyes, and my ears roared. I no longer had the strength to help support Uncle.

  “We’re not … staying here with you … another minute,” I gasped defiantly at the scoundrel as my knees wobbled.

  “That’s what you think,” Bilbo said with a smile, dandling the bottle of his remedy just beyond my grasp.

  The next thing I knew, the ground was rushing upward toward my face.

  We were now as much at the blackguard’s mercy as though we had been bonded slaves from the Guinea coast; more so, in fact, for a slave has but one master while we had two—Bilbo and the terrible ague. We were also in possession of something that Bilbo sorely lacked—a sound keelboat—for it developed that he had a scheme to relocate in the city of New Orleans, where his reputation as a miscreant was unknown, and there raise a fortune by proffering his physic to the multitudes who pass through that “keyhole to the continent.”

  Louis and I were put to work harvesting as much of the phrensyweed as we could well find growing in the vicinity, while poor Uncle fell into a sleep so profound that it was like unto death itself. His heart beat at the astoundingly slow rate of ten pulses per minute, while he barely seemed to breathe at all. I labored in the gravest anxiety for his eventual recovery. Not so Bilbo, who, opportunistic humbugger that he was, saw pecuniary advantage even in Uncle’s deathlike sleep, for he installed the great botanist in a prominent part of the museum under a painted bill advertising him as the mummy of dctr. benjamin franklin.

  So too was I at the mercy of that insatiable wanton, the Far-seeing Girl, who repeatedly coerced me behind a whortleberry bush to loose the fire of her haunches upon my helpless person. But my acquittance from this swinish duty sadly proved to be the undoing of another. One morning I awoke to the sound of footfalls. Who should I espy preparing to micturate not ten paces away but Louis. When he unbuttoned his breeches, out came an organ so prodigious that it would have put to shame any of the monstrous puzzles that figured in the late Madame LeBoeuf’s watercolors. One might have thought Louis were carrying a log of firewood in both hands, but for the torrent that issued from its massive end. The sound of this cascade roused Bessie from her slumber beside me. Her mouth, such as it was, fell agape. I tried to clap my hand over her eyes but she jabbed an elbow ’twixt my ribs, knocking the wind from me.

  “Unph…”

  Louis turned around, hearing me exclaim as I crumpled, while the torrent continued to flow from the monstrous member. He did not espy us in the thicket, but just went about his business. Bessie goggled at the display as though it embodied all her hopes and dreams. When he plodded away, she followed on his heels like a hound after some poor, unknowing prey.

  “You want to what?” Bilbo thundered that evening as our company, minus poor Uncle, sat ’round the fire to a supper of planked garfish and roasted snipes. Bessie leaned toward her father and again whispered in his ear. The old fakir went pale. “You want to marry!” he gasped.

  “Unh-hunh,” she nodded avidly.

  Bilbo fanned his face with his hat, so great was his shock. “Why, just yesterday she was a little girl rolling her hoop down Maiden Lane,” he exclaimed, breathless with the news. “And now: matrimony? How fleet are the years! But what provision is to be made for her dear old papa, I should like to know,” he squinted across the flickering fire in my direction.

  “Don’t look at me. I am not the lucky fellow,” said I.

  “What! You can’t marry Neddy!”

  “Hwong! Hwee pwunduh hwumpunh, pwuh hwonpwongfuh,” she assailed her father and then threw her arms around Louis.

  “Egad! Not the idiot!”

  “Hwonk hwumpah.”

  Bilbo turned a fish-eye upon the prospective groom. “Exactly what do you propose as a livelihood, Your Majesty?”

  “Commerce?” Louis ventured in an uncertain tone. “Like you?”

  Bilbo curled his lip in a sneer.

  Bessie glanced at her prospective husband with a look of exasperation and whispered again in her father’s ear, spreading her hands apart as though showing the size of a trout she had caught.

  “Really?” Bilbo exclaimed. “That big?”

  “Un-hwonk.”

  “Well now, this sheds a different light upon the matter,” the father of the bride said and rolled his eyes in calculation. “I suppose people might pay to see it….”

  Thus, the following morning, before commencing my hated labor of weed collection, did I observe the obdurate wretch at work installing the latest, and certainly most deplorable, curio in his lurid collection. He had cut a hole in a cheap trade blanket and hung said blanket from a wire. Above it flew a placard that proclaimed:

  Amazing Western Monster!

  The Talking Anaconda

  “Are you ready back there, my boy?”

  “Oui, monsieur doctor.”

  “Very well. Let the snake out of its burrow.”

  I heard giggling from behind the blanket. Suddenly, the monstrous pizzle appeared through the hole, a great ugly pink lardoon, bobbing this way and that like indeed the head of a terrible large serpent. Two eyes had even been painted on it. My capacity for revulsion was here outrun.

  “Excellent, my boy,” Bilbo praised the booby. “Now, pretend I am a visitor in the museum. What do you say?”

  “Allô, je m’appelle—”

  “No, no, in English,” Bilbo prompted him.

  “Hello, my name is Anatole the Anaconda. How nice to make your acquaintance. What is your name, little girl?”

  “My name is Sarah Huggins,” Bilbo replied in falsetto.

  “Where is your family going, Sarah Huggins?”

  “To Illinois.”

  “How happy I am for you. Kiss me and I will bring you good luck—”

  I could not abide another instant of this execrable mummery and stepped forward to tear down the placard and blanket.

  “Put that thing back in your breeches before I cut it off,” I told Louis, who shrank from my remonstrance. “As for you, Bilbo, I implore you: don’t let success go to your head.”

  “Spoilsport,” quoth the villain.

  “So long have you lived outside society that you seem to forget that the law operates at all, even here in Kentucky.”

  “And who are you, the town magistrate?”

  “If you will not respect the dignity of others, at least consider the well-being of your own hide. Someone out there on the river might take offense at these shenanigans.”

  “Well, balls to the law,” he riposted, swigging upon a jar of his physic. “And balls to you. And balls to anyone out there.”

  It is a reckless physician who takes too much of his own medicine, and the sorry truth was that Bilbo had overindulged in his Universal Physic to the degree that it had begun to affect his judgment. Thus, later that same day, when I returned from the woods dragging a heavy sack of herb behind me, I found a very large keelboat of ten tons’ capacity and a pair of twenty-foot-long flat-bottomed pirogues tied up at the landing. A familiar-looking spotted gray horse stood upon the aft quarter of the keelboat. As I rounded to the front of the tent I heard the murmur of many voices, then saw that the museum was filled with customers, at least a dozen of them soldiers. My heart gladdened to see these ensigns of civilization and to know our deliverance from Bilbo was at hand.

  I entered and made my way amongst them. Bilbo was displaying Louis’s idiocy for the crowd, conducting the questions and answers, when a familiar voice rang out, “Captain, I know this man!” All heads turned toward the right. A look of anxiety came over Bilbo’s face. I elbowed my way closer.

  There, standing around the packing crate that contained the alleged mummy of Benjamin Franklin, stood those two manly young officers whom we had last seen in Washi
ngton City in the public room of Rupert & MacSneed’s Hotel, viz., Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark. And between them, gazing down upon Uncle’s prostrate figure in horror, was Judge Felix Ravenel.

  Bilbo’s fortune from that moment entered a phase of precipitous decline.

  “Permit me to explain …” he would protest at each stage of the inquiry into his conduct. But Judge Ravenel, who was visiting Kentucky’s westernmost counties “on court’s business,” recognized him for the scoundrel he was. There was some consideration of bringing him and his brood back to Lewis County for trial. But Judge Ravenel would be returning alone on horseback and did not relish the prospect of hauling them back as prisoners. Instead, he convened an “extraordinary session” of the circuit court on the spot in order to try the villain.

  “I know the law!” railed Bilbo. “I am entitled to counsel!”

  “So you are,” replied the judge from his bench improvised at the rail of their keelboat. And he temporarily admitted to the bar Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark, that they might serve respectively as prosecutor and defense attorney in the proceeding. They were given half an hour to prepare their cases.

  “Melancton Bilbo,” Judge Ravenel read the bill of indictment, “you are charged with defrauding the public, twenty-seven counts; unlawful detention, three counts; robbery, fifty-three counts [our boat plus equipments]; creating a public nuisance and practicing medicine without a license, one count each. How do you plead?”

  “He pleads guilty, your honor,” said Clark, sunnily.

  “What! I plead innocent!”

  “Guilty,” Clark repeated.

  “I want to discharge my attorney.”

  “Whom do you propose to replace him?”

  “Myself, your honor.”

  “You are incompetent,” Judge Ravenel declared. “You are also obviously guilty, but I will permit you to plead innocent so as to preclude an appeal for leniency when you are convicted and sentenced. Proceed, Captain Lewis….”

  Bilbo’s desperate histrionics testifying in his own behalf so delighted the soldiers and boatmen who constituted the jury that he won their applause, if not their sympathy. He contrived to have a bottle of his physic admitted as evidence, and sampled by the jurors, which put them in a much more amiable frame of mind. As to his demeaning exhibition of Uncle, he claimed it was necessary to defray the expense of his treatment. All in all, it was a most diverting defense, and in the end, despite the earnest efforts of the court, he was found guilty only of the twenty-seven counts of fraud (one each for the exhibits in his museum), each a mere misdemeanor.