(Ms. Prescott and her associates discarded the first notion that came to them, that of selling Soja hispida Burtonosis as a snob food under some terribly chic trade name. Even after Lance came up with some terribly chick photographs of Fred, roller-skating topless through United Nations Plaza and waving Soja hispida Burtonosis vines joyfully above her head, which simply deserved to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan, they realized they couldn’t go through with it.
(Foisting off what even Ms. Sydney Prescott had come to think of (privately, of course) as “that goddamned bean” on unsuspecting New York sophisticates and intellectuals would really be a loathsome thing to do.
(“Very infra dig,” as Lance, who was into things British, said. “Letting the side down, don’t you know?”
(It was then, perhaps inevitably, that the idea came to feed Soja hispida Burtonosis to those who were not New York sophisticates and/or intellectuals. The idea, on its very face, had merit. For one thing, there were far more of these people than there were New Yorkers, and there were a hell of a lot of beans to get rid of. For another, as every New Yorker knows, anyone who chooses to reside south of Brooklyn, north of the Bronx or (especially) west of the Hudson River is not very bright and would more than likely slurp up with delight anything put on his or her plate, just so long as it didn’t smell too bad and came with a catchy name.
(For reasons that absolutely baffled Ms. Sydney Prescott, most people outside New York, as well, truth to tell as many bona fide Manhattanites, were absolutely fascinated with things of the Old West. Ms. Prescott thought of this as the “John Wayne syndrome,” and she was aware that a competitive cigarette manufacturer had done very well pushing his product by associating it in the consumer’s mind with Longhorn cattle and leathery-faced cowboys.
(“Lance,” she ordered, “go West! And don’t come back until you’ve got the cowboy’s cowboy. I want him to simply reek of the West.”
(“What’s that got to do with anything?” Lance replied. “Or Soja hispida Burtonosis?”
(“Never say that name again,” Ms. Sydney Prescott said. “That goddamned bean is dead! Wild West Beanos is born!”
(Here ends the parenthetical explanation of what Lance and Brucie were doing running around west Texas in their Winnebago, and why.)*
(* The astute reader may have noticed that the parenthetical explanation took in a number of pages and parts of two chapters. This was not entirely by accident, the authors having no better way of getting themselves listed in the Guinness Book of World Records than by composing the world’s longest parenthetical explanation.)
“But how did you get them to eat the Wild West Beanos?” Ms. Prescott asked. “That’s the important thing.”
“When I have to be, Sydney,” Lance said, “I can be very persuasive!”
Ms. Prescott was examining the photographs again. “I see what you mean,” she said. “It isn’t very believable.”
“What isn’t very believable?” Lance sort of snapped.
“The buffalo,” she said. “You got him, or it, in one of these pictures.”
“I just wanted you to see for yourself, Sydney,” Lance said. “The cowboy and the Indian alone sort of strain one’s credibility. When you add the buffalo, it’s just too, too much.”
“Well, Lance,” Sydney Prescott said, “you and Brucie get right back out there just as soon as you can and sign these two ugly, if native American, peasants to a contract. I’m going to make them famous!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lance said, “until Fred has a chance to do my face and hair!”
“We all must be prepared to make little sacrifices, Lance,” Sydney said. “Take Fred with you if you want, but get your little ass back to the Wild West!”
“I will not!” Lance said, stamping his Gucci loafer firmly on the thick black-and-orange carpet.
“Lance, you could take some wonderful pictures of Fred out there,” Brucie said. “I can see her now, on the desert at sunset, sitting sidesaddle on that buffalo, with the Indian holding its rope.”
“Perhaps you have something,” Lance said after a moment.
“And in the meantime I’ll send these pictures down to Mrs. Babcock Burton III,” Ms. Prescott said. “They’ll prove to her that Sydney Prescott & Associates are well on the way to solving the bean problem.”
The response from Mrs. Babcock Burton III to the photographs was not what Ms. Sydney Prescott had expected. There was a telephone call from a Southern gentleman of great charm and tact. It came over Sydney Prescott’s Number Three unlisted number, so she knew it was someone important.*
(* Unlisted numbers are as essential to New York advertising biggies as, say, pencils and paper clips. Ms. Prescott had three unlisted numbers. Number one, which was connected to the switchboard, was given to unimportant people. Number two, which was answered by her secretary, was given to middle-level biggies. Number three, which she actually answered herself, was given out only to upper-level biggies, including her cousin Maxwell and Lance Fairbanks, but not to people like Brucie and Fred.)
“Hello!” she snapped.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” the cultured, deep Southern male voice said.
“What number are you calling?” Ms. Prescott snapped, not recognizing the voice and naturally coming to the conclusion, as a New Yorker, that the caller was either seeking a charitable donation or offering, for example, a course in ceramic ashtray-making at The New School.
Her caller gave the correct number.
“Do I know you? Who are you?” Ms. Prescott demanded.
“My name is J. Darrell Kenyon, ma’am,” he said.
“Never heard of you,” she said. “Get to the point, Mac. I’m a busy lady.”
“I am calling at the request of Mrs. Babcock Burton III, ma’am.”
“Mr. Kenyon,” Ms. Prescott said, “how good of you to tear yourself away from your busy, and I know how important, schedule to call little old me. How may I be of some small assistance to you?”
“I just this moment heard from Mrs. Babcock, ma’am,” Mr. Kenyon said. “She communicated with me from the Babcock Burton Experimental Farm via what I believe is known as Citizen’s Band, or C.B. radio. Are you familiar with this mode of communication, ma’am?”
“A little,” Ms. Prescott replied. This was untrue, but she was not the sort of person who readily admitted ignorance of any subject.
“Splendid!” he said. “I confess that it sometimes is a bit much for me. I therefore habitually take the precaution of tape-recording all messages. Perhaps if I played it back for you, you might be able to make something out of it.”
“Well, we’ll give it the old school try, Mr. Kenyon.”
“What old school is that, ma’am?”
“Brooklyn Polytechnic,” Ms. Prescott replied.
“I didn’t think you sounded as if you’d gone to Duke,” he said. “Please stand by.”
There was a faint hissing noise, then:
“Little Momma, King-king-queen, Seven-zero-one- zero, Mobile Unit Four to Base. You got your ears on?”
“Come back, Little Momma,” a female voice replied. “You got the Typewriter Kid.”
“Typewriter Kid, this is Little Momma speaking. I’m out here on the tractor with Pigman. I just showed him the pictures that Weird Yankee Beaver sent down from Dirt City. You copy?”
“Ten-four, Little Momma,” the female voice replied.
“Pigman lays a big Ten-four on the pictures,” Little Momma continued, “a great big Ten-four. So I want you to get Kenyon and tell him to get on a land line to Weird Yankee Beaver, and tell Weird Yankee Beaver to get right back to me with the Ten-twenty of the photographer so that Pigman can meet them. You copy? Come back.”
“I think so, Little Momma,” Typewriter Kid replied. “Pigman wants the Ten-twenty of the photographer so he can join up with them. Ten-four? Come back.”
“That’s a big Ten-four, Typewriter Kid,” Little Momma replied. “And while he’s doing that, you get
on a land line to the airfield and have them warm up a plane. One of the little jets would do nicely. Pigman’ll be alone. You copy?”
“That’s a big Ten-four, Little Momma.”
“Get right on it, Typewriter Kid. King-king-queen, Seven-zero-one-zero, Mobile Unit Four, Little Momma, going Ten-ten.”
The hissing stopped.
“As well as I am able to judge, ma’am,” Mr. J. Darrell Kenyon said, “Mr. Babcock Burton IV, after having examined some photographs, has not only made his approval known, but wishes to join the photographer, presumably to supervise additional photography. Would that seem a reasonably rough translation to you, ma’am?”
“I would think so,” Ms. Prescott replied.
“Then the only problem I have, ma’am, is contacting Weird Yankee Beaver. I have only this number, and Typewriter Kid’s ... I mean, Miss Howell’s ... description of her.”
“What was that?”
“A good-looking Bella Abzug,” Mr. Kenyon replied. “Could you help me, ma’am?”
“I’ll get right back to you, Mr. Kenyon,” Ms. Prescott said. “Sydney Prescott & Associates, as one more service to its valued clients, always knows precisely where its staff may be located at any given time. Just as soon as I locate Weird Yankee Beaver, I’ll telephone you and let you know where the photographers are.”
“I’ll be waiting for your call,” Mr. Kenyon replied. “Thank you so much.”
Ms. Prescott picked up another of the telephones on her desk even before she got the one she already had in her hand back in its cradle.
“Find out what they call the states between here and Texas,” she ordered. “And get me, one at a time, the chief of the state police in each of them.”
“Is something the matter, Ms. Prescott?” her secretary asked.
“You bet there is,” Ms. Prescott replied. “Lance Fairbanks’ wife and their triplets have just been in a terrible automobile accident, and we have to get word to him.”
“Lance Fairbanks’ wife?” the secretary replied, somewhat incredulously. “And their triplets?”
“You’d better change that,” Ms. Prescott said on second thought. “Say Lance Fairbanks accidentally forgot to take his heart pills with him, and unless we get the pills to him, he’s liable to die—unless, of course, the state police can find that Winnebago. It shouldn’t be hard to find. There aren’t many lavender Winnebagos out there with ‘Gay Power’ bumper stickers.”
Forty-five minutes later Ms. Prescott got back to Mr. Kenyon with the information that Mr. Fairbanks was at that very minute awaiting further orders at the Marysville, Arkansas, municipal airport.
And an hour after that a small jet aircraft appeared in the azure-blue sky over Marysville.
“That must be him,” Lance Fairbanks said to Brucie and Fred. “You notice how the jet engine contrail spells out ‘Smoke Babcocks’?”
“I am very much afraid that he will turn out to be one of those crude types of men who likes women,” Fred said, “one of your typical male chauvinist sexist pigs.”
“Sydney said we were to expect that,” Lance said, “and that we were to remember that as backward and as unenlightened as he might be, his Little Momma is paying the bills, and it’s hands-off time.”
“If that pilot expects to land that gorgeous little jet on this dinky little airfield, he’d better start slowing down,” Brucie observed professionally. (Before he had gone into the sign-painting game, he had been an airline steward.)
The pilot of the little jet did not slow down. He made a pass over the field at six hundred miles per hour at two hundred feet, then pulled up sharply to about five thousand feet, slowing down as he did so.
“What was all that about?” Fred asked. Then she quickly said, “Look, it broke. A piece just fell off.”
The piece fell toward the earth as the plane, gathering speed and altitude, sped off toward the horizon. And then a white canopy suddenly appeared in the sky.
“Oh, my!” Brucie said.
And then the strains of “The Tennessee Waltz,”* sung in a jubilant basso profundo, were heard floating down from beneath the parachute. Moments later it appeared that the parachutist was going to land right on top of them. Lance and Brucie, holding tightly onto one another, dropped to their knees. Fred was too startled to do anything.
(* The parachutist was actually singing the version sung by the 8th Special Forces group, stationed in Germany: “I was waltzing with my Schatz, East of Eschwege,” etc. But Lance, Brucie and Fred were in no condition to notice the difference.)
The parachutist landed lightly on his feet, then gathered the chute in his arms.
“Hello,” he said, “I’m Bubba Burton.”
“Do you always get off airplanes that way?” Fred asked.
“Whenever possible, ma’am,” Bubba Burton replied. He looked at Lance and Brucie, who were in the process of getting to their feet.
“You must be Mr. Lance Fairbanks,” he said.
“Oh, yes!” Lance replied in one enormous sigh.
“Oh, my!” Brucie said.
“I was afraid Mother would be right about you,” Bubba said. “But I don’t see where it’s going to be a problem.”
“You don’t?”
“I met your kind in the army,” Bubba said, “mostly in the Quartermaster Corps. But once they understood the rule, we never had any trouble with them.”
“What rule was that?”
“If they came closer than six feet, we broke their legs,” Bubba said.
“You’ll have no trouble with me, Bubba,” Lance said quickly. “Six feet it is.”
“It might be worth it,” Brucie mused, then quickly added, “but duty before pleasure, as I always say.”
“Well, let’s get this show on the road,” Bubba Burton said. “People sometimes get upset when they hear my name, so the way we’ll play it is that I’m the driver of that Winnebago and my name is Bubba Jones. Understood?”
“Perfectly,” Lance and Brucie said almost in unison.
“My name is Fern,” Fred said. “And I’ll bet you’re just a great driver.”
“You mean ‘Fred,’ darling,” Lance Fairbanks corrected her. “Tell Bubba your name is ‘Fred.’ ”
“Mind your own business, you lousy pansy,” Fern said, taking Bubba’s arm and allowing him to help her enter the Winnebago.
Chapter Seven
Three airplanes were parked outside the International Arrivals and Departures Building* of Abzug International Airport. One of them was a droopnosed, supersonic, French-built Le Discorde. It had just arrived on the morning run from Paris, bearing the day’s freshly baked French bread, and it was about to depart. It was experiencing minor mechanical difficulties. The batteries were low, and the pilot was reluctant to shut down the engines. Since the rate of fuel consumption, at idle, was only five percent lower than the fueling rate of the fuel truck, refueling the sleek silver bird had turned out to be a lengthy process.
(* The International Arrivals and Departures Building at Abzug International Airport was the only building at the airfield, for the very good reason that Abzug had only one airfield, and aircraft (save those flying in circles, of course) arriving or departing were, ipso facto, on international runs.)
The second airplane was an American-built ship, a Douglas DC-9 bearing both the insignia of Air Hussid and the personal colors of His Royal Highness Prince Hassan and Kayam, heir apparent to the Hussidic throne, and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the French Republic, the Court of Saint James and the United States of America. It, too, when fueled, was Paris-bound, carrying His Royal Highness and Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer.
The third aircraft was a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, bearing the legend CHEVAUX PETROLEUM CORPORATION, INTERNATIONAL on its fuselage and two flags on its enormous vertical stabilizer. One flag bore the Stars and Stripes, and it was crossed with the official flag of the Bayou Perdu Council, Knights of Columbus.
The fuel tanks of the 747 were more or less full, with more than enough fuel to carry the ship to its destination, Spruce Harbor International Airport, Maine. It seemed, however, simple courtesy to Col. Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux that he delay his departure until the departure of His Royal Highness and Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov, especially since the cards were running his way.
The peculiarly American game of chance, known to the cognoscenti as seven-card stud, was being played in the forward cabin of the 747. Participants were: Colonel de la Chevaux; His Royal Highness Prince Hassan ad Kayam; Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov; a long and lithe young lady, Esmerelda Hoffenburg, prima ballerina of the Corps de Ballet of the French National Opera in Paris; and His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug, Sheikh of Sheikhs, Protector of the True Faith, the Lion of Abzug and Honorary Knight Commander of the Wheel of Chance, Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., whose insignia he wore proudly (together with the one-hundred-two-carat Star of Abzug diamond) to affix the golden ropes of royalty that held his burnous to his head.*
(* Those interested in grand opera, as well as those interested in the international oil business, will doubtless be curious as to how come the world’s greatest opera singer and the president of the board of the Chevaux Petroleum Corporation, International, not only happened to be playing seven-card stud with His Most Islamic Majesty, Shiekh Abdullah ben Abzug, but, whom, exactly, His Most Islamic Majesty happens to be.
Scholars are directed to M*A*S*H Goes to Morocco (Pocket Books), in which all the somewhat sordid details have been recorded in what has been described as "a very unusual style, indeed.”
For the purposes of understanding this narrative, however, it is probably sufficient for the reader to know that His Most Islamic Majesty is absolute ruler of the kingdom of Abzug, which is located “somewhere south of Morocco” (the boundaries have never been agreed upon) and which contains, in addition to 2,300,000 loyal subjects of His Most Islamic Majesty, 1,500,000 goats, 200,000 camels, a couple of dozen lions, tigers and other exotic fauna, plus oil and natural gas reserves second only to those of Saudi Arabia.
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